Saturday, August 19, 2023

Escaping Life in a Bubble

 I've existed in a bubble that I wholly created. It wasn't transient, like soap bubbles blow out of a bubble ring from a bottle.    This bubble was made of thicker material similar to an exercise ball.
Tough enough that inside of it feels like being trapped in a swimming pool, underwater, with a cover on the pool holding you under.  Gasping for breath, but sucking in water you're unable to claw through and save yourself.  That kind of material surrounds me.

Is it the intellectual naivety, the propoganda ... the wisdom of things I can Google faster than you?

We are trapped by information.  Surrounded by it.   Worse, it can interrupt us.   Yes, our computer like minds, meant to multi-task like an operating system are now set so that almost anything we sign up for, join, shop at or date can cause an interrupt of whatever thread of execution we're on ... and gain our immediate attention via our cell phones.    The information runs us.

Translate this into relationships and humans are doomed.    The stereotypical gender roles have been redefined and mashed into many re-interpretations of self.   Woman in masculine frame, Man in feminine frame and these are just our tendencies and likes, when it comes to our actual love partners well, I can't really put a number on the permuations nor understand LBGTQRSTUVWXYZ ... we'll run out of alphabet trying to un-bubble the confusion over the sexes.   It's literally turned into war.

Joe Jackson famously sang, in "Real Men"  lyrics '... if there's war between the sexes then there'll be no people left'.  I don't know, I see families, I see the young ones popping out, the husbands with their beards and wives and kids ... and it seems procreation is alive.   I think it's the bubble that ensues, that thick layer of information, that familiarity ... the knowing of all of your significant other's glitches, faults, gnits, nags, dirty laundry and some secrets that kills it.   It takes these people that start out with good intention and eventually over the course of a relationship just brings it to its knees.


There you pray, begging for a different relationship paradigm.   You have fights about it, make up, try new things and still ... the lifeblood has been sucked dry.  And you go on.  And you age.  And the world spins some more revolutions.   The world with us sucked to the edge of it by gravity, the biggest spinning bubble, our lives a microcosm of a spinning bubble.

Inside of here we feel safe, but we're insulated from everything.   So much insulation, we feel nothing.

Facts are meaningless, lies pointless and the information, the news, events and things occuring are transient.  Blips.  Doesn't matter if its the biggest event of your life, a SuperBowl, a school shooting they are blips.  Nothing stays.  Photos, digital, gone.  Music, services, gone when you stop paying.

You work, for exceedingly high priced and expensive shit (house, car, groceries) and get no reward or pleasure, you just bail and bail and bail the debt like water in a sinking boat.  Toys don't matter, Amazon shit doesn't matter, candy, roses, fine meals ... all meaningless.   Your time to fund this inglorious lifestyle is wasted.  Indentured servant to the banks and government you are a wage slave.

Escaping this bubble?    You get a knife, cut out an escape hatch and let air in so you can breathe, first.
Next you have to go against every norm that keeps you in a rut of information overload and debt, and live like a recluse. Freeballing and spitballing in the now, the present, every day.  I mean, don't avoid other people entirely, they are fun to learn from just don't allow the toxicity of some of the people seep in and start manufacturing another layer of bubble material.

People's opinions and coercive nature tend to sway our thoughts too easily, as does the news, any Internet article, any YouTube video ... they are all throwing information at a wall to see what sticks.
And it's gumming up your head.   The key is to take Life with a grain of salt (I know very cliche) but it is true, you needn't worry that you are needing any of this information.

Live your life, approach people with care and listen to your intuition.  Wake yourself up and out of the bubble.

Monday, July 31, 2023

Support ticket

 I've been in the IT industry nearly 40 years, seems surreal that I saw the first IBM PC's in the early 80's. It makes me feel like father time of computing.


There was something very satisfying about the click of the OEM IBM keyboards, they hit different.

I put in a support ticket to Microsoft for apparently Lenovo 'bricked' my system when they put a new motherboard in, and BitLocker was enabled on the hard drive.

I was able to 'nuke-and-pave' (an affectiionate term, meaning 'blow it all away and re-install the Operatoing System), just as well, I downgraded to Windows 10 (instead of 11) because much of the software and drivers I need were avails on Windows 10 (or easier to come by).

So in 25 years of Microsoft Support, pretty much 10 priority support calls, I've used a handful (maybe 3 or 4) out of 250.  And of those, I probably beat the answer ... myself, by grinding it out.

That's the awy it is in tech, when you're driven and good.

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Positive drift


 

I've always been fascinated with the concept of time, and how it plays into my life's journey.

We constrain it into a 24 hour cycle, based on the sun. We move it up and hour, then back an hour.
We pack it into the years, by days-  365 of them.  We are consumed with managing it.

I sang karaoke with a girl, a Stone's song "Time, is on my side" in my twenties,
it was (on my side).  I didn't care about time or place, or anything (well, except her. I dug her.)

Also, wrote a poem "Time is a theif" .  What did that mean?  What is time stealing?

I think it robs you of:  the here and now, the present.   It is this moment that time cannot touch, so it wants you to think about time ago, or into the future.  Time is flummoxed at the idea of the infinite present moment.   It can't mark it, it can't time-box it, it is the exact moment, right now, that if you try and define it with time ... you can't.   A second before now is the past, a second from now is the future.
Dammit, the present confounds and irritates time, really makes it mad that it can't control the present moment.

Time isn't on anyone's side, it just isn't.   Just as a robber doesn't care,
time doesn't care.  It has to do what it has to do, tick-tick-tick.

As we drift through life it is important to stay positive.   We age, we experience the winds of change, constantly.  Any one of those changes can throw us off course, if we let it.

The energy of the universe plays out on our canvas and paints with its rhythmic harmonic tones, a tapestry of beauty and splendor.  The universe doesn't care about time, it has seemingly been around for an infinite time.  Our life and karmic energies, a blip.  Energy is energy.  It can't be created or destroyed (Julius Robert Mayer, 1842, First Law of Thermodynamics)

The universe then channels her energy vibes to us all the time.   They come in unexcpected patterns and ripples but we are beating to the pace of another taskmaster, the clock, to time's second hand.  

It's a ludicrous human orchestra sound.  Crash-cymbal-beat-horn-honk  The universe gives a clean note, we miss it, or keep tapping like a metronome to time; to the seconds.  Often we can't get the balance or rhythm right, the harmonic dis-resonance is in our bodies, we feel off.

Paying attention to our soul, drinking in the energies around us is the only antidote to time.  The ONLY antitode to time.   The only way around marking a life with time is to enjoy this moment. 
When we are syncopated, I think some might call this a flow state, or zone.   Time becomes irrelevent.

As change happens in your life, drift along with it.   Flow.   You'll be a lot happier with the ride.

Live your life like a successive, infinitely strung together, beautiful, present moments. 
Like all of your moments are grains of sand, blown across a dune, or the water molecules holding themselves together flowing down the stream.

Drift positively.


Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Love is a verb


Sanskrit has 96 words for "love", from Sneha a maternal love, to Kama - erotic or amorous love, Rati - enjoy or delight in something or someone, to Priya or "darling", often reserved for love a little girls in India and Nepal.

In the English language we have one word: Love.   Love with its several definitions. Websters Dictionary primarily defines it as a noun. A noun?   A person, place or thing.  Hmmmm.

See Webster's def. of Love  

As a noun Love then is defined as:  tender affection, or warm, personal attachment or sexual passion or desire.   That could mean anything from "yummy soup" to "I want to rip your clothes off". Confusing, at best.  So much is left up to the listener to figure out the nuance of your spoken words "I love you".

Such is the English language.

But, I challenge something different- something that can clear the air about Love.   I think love isn't primarily a noun.  It isn't the Webster's limited verb scope usage, either.   I don't think the verb used to conjugate an object and a predicate (as in "Her fans love her") is enough for this powerful word.  I think the definition, is off.  I think it's verb meaning is deeper than that.  Love pun intended.

Love is a verb, but only through its use as an action

The little things, the big things ... the daily things that we as a human species do for our fellow humans.  The efforts we give, the encouragements, the tone and the purpose of those tones (soft and pleasant, or forceful and directed) ... to help others.  I'm often asked why something tastes so good, to wit I proffer "It was cooked with love".

The way in which we do communicate, act, show up, support, encourage, titillate, humor, cook for, watch over, do laundry for, clean, wipe and burp are .... all Love!

The absense of love is the absence of doing for other humans.   Babies who aren't held are shown to be in trauma by many studies.  Trauma !   If we negate "not doing" it becomes doing, which is an action, is therefore a verb. It's simple equation reduction that brings me to this final answer: Love = a verb, but moreso, Love = an act of doing.  

An axiom I have held as true: the opposite of love isn't hate.  No, it isn't.  Hate has its place in the yin-yang of the universe as dark form of love.  Some will gravitate to it, to their own hurt.  Hate is like a fallen angel type of feeling, that shouldn't land on you.   It is best to process through and let go.  You have to care about someone to really hate them.  But why be dark?  Forgive, forget.  Get back to Love.

No, the "not doing", or the opposite of love is indifference.   It is both milquetoast and debilitating, this thing called indifference.   It's the opposite of connection.   When we feel another person's indifference it sends a chill through our heart, it's palpable in reverse.  Why?
Because we want to be acted upon, feel that connection ... we want to be loved.

Taking that apart in- and difference, means not making a difference; So we musn't be indifferent.
As a verb, Love must be shown through action - so make a difference in someone else's life today!   

Do something for someone and you will be defining your verb, your action, your Love.

Monday, August 15, 2022

An Actress's final Act



Imagine our life as an etch-a-sketch,
how simple it would be to erase
and start over
just shake that shit off our mental screen

What a splendor it would be for the tormented
Anne Heche to shake away those images
of the perversions of her father on her

How him contracting  AIDS spoke to his inner demons
how her curiosity and love (yes love)
of him, may have pushed her into Ellen's arms for a while

How her brother found a tree,
to wrap his car around,
perhaps the shame too great to bear.

How her crazy, couldn't stop with drugs,
or alcohol, or sex ... or work (she had over 40 films to her credit)
nor would her book "Call me Crazy" spell relief.

Blame the fentynal laced coke,
blame the paparazzi,
blame the father, swine
Mostly the father, that fucker.

A life so smothered with shame, guilt, hate, confusion
she raced her Mini-Cooper full speed to nowhere,
into a house,
unable to shake the etch-a-sketch board clean

Did she think, smoldering in her car
'Oh, great I survived' this as a dreamscape
Only to have the fire department, put out the structure fire
as she smoldered and time ticked on ...
did she hope this is it, or just another bad dream

As they took her cloaked, covered and charred body
to the Ambulance
she sat up, like a zombie apocolypse 
showing "life" , one last time as if to say "I'm free!"

almost.

The tortured life of a kamikaze pilot.   R.I.P.  Anne Heche

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Life and death

I read a quote from Anthony Bourdain, that had me wanting to try a new drink.

I thought about my fondness of teaching and helping others that sprang out of a T.A. job I had in college.

I thought,  'what is life about?'

It dawned on me, life is a reflection;   of that which we imbue on each other.

Nothing more.

If we can learn anything before we leave this planet it should be this:
We were made to relate. To share, to lift up.


love.  It is the force behind each and every imbuement.

Negroni

"But I think the Negroni is the perfect cocktail because it is three liquors that I don’t particularly like. I don’t like Campari, and I don’t like sweet vermouth and I don’t particularly love gin. But you put them together with that little bit of orange rind in a perfect setting… It’s just: It sets you up for dinner, in a way it makes you hungry, sands the edges off the afternoon. In an after dinner, it’s settling. It is both aperitif and digestive. It’s a rare drink that can do that." ~ Anthony Bourdain


Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Bottom

Deafening Silence blares yet the mind can't conjure anything.

For the first time in a long time, vacant. 

If ignorance is bliss, I'm approaching ecstatic.

Mentally aware, that I'm checked out.

I feel myself hurt.  Physically.  It's bad. Awful. Neglected. Wretch of a man.

Repeatedly incurring that sinking feeling

so this is the downward slide

to bottom.