What is a destiny and am I running away from it?

Tucked away behind a stack of unopened boxes of interlocking wood flooring pieces is a set of shelves covered with dozens of VCR tapes.

"Tell me more, tell me more!  Did he put up a fight?!"

The tapes, most of them prerecorded, cover topics ranging from the heyday of 1990s Univ. of TN football to the Avengers TV series to pop films.

None of them discuss the measurement of the billiard ball interaction of states of energy (at least, not in that terminology - of course, they discuss it in all its abstract redefinitions).

The blank VCR tapes we bought are mostly remagnitised with NASCAR races, football games and films/shows recorded off the tellie.

Not having kids, we don't have a collection of what we thought at the time were cute actions by our children long since grown up.

Together, the VCR tapes and shelves exert a downward force on the floor which exerts a downward force on the joists which exert a downward force on the foundation blocks, etc.

There is, also, the centripetal/centrifugal* force of Earth's spin associated with the Moon, the planets and last but not least, our local star.

(*will I ever keep the two words distinctly defined in my head?)

What is my physical attraction to the shelves?  Literally.

I can't get to the tapes easily but I can reach some of them and almost all of the DVD discs stacked nearby.

Those magnetised bits of material and stamped discs have helped rearrange my nervous system circuitry.

Here I sit listening to the Music Choice(R) "Classical Masterpieces" channel and contemplating the universe as exemplified by the stacks of material around me.

A thought process tens of thousands of years in the making (hundreds of millions, to some degree, but only sort of billions of years in the making).

Somebody told me there's a big brouhaha being raised about the phrase, "brood library."  I'm not sure if it's a controversy taking place on the campus of an agricultural college or a chicken farm but I'm sure it's exciting to those who know the details of the event.

In any case, as much as holding the universe (by extension) in my hand (virtually through the thought process) is interesting, I pause to note the state of ice sublimation and snow melting around the house and ask what does the heating of the Earth's surface and atmosphere have to do with the flow of liquid and gases we call weather.

Science is a word that represents much but science is not the answer to every question, not abstractly.

Neither will I prove the theory of Higgs boson by thinking here abstractly for a million years.  Speaking of which:

Higgs Boson enters a church. The priest says 'get out!' and the Higgs Boson says: 'but without me, how can you have mass?'

I chew off the dead portion of my fingernails because there's a puzzle that's puzzling me.


Should I think colloquially, using contractions and droppin' my g, or is the only, best, way to think by using the most proper form of the language/subculture common to most of my central nervous circuitry?


Life moves on.  I have no need of taking advantage of others' less-motivated lifestyles to motivate myself to build an empire, big or small, because of my beliefs.  I have no children.  I have, at most, my wife and perhaps my parents to support - compared to the changing costs of living in our local economies, our combined incomes and investment holdings should suffice to keep all of us alive as long as we need/want.


At the same time, I desire to deal with the envy and jealousy - states of energy assigned to the realm of emotions - that arise when I see others doing what I believe I am also capable of but for whatever reason have chosen not to compete.


If my destiny is to report to the Committee of 7.5 ideas and potential events that benefit me in no way but makes the other committee members wealthier, then what kind of destiny is that?


If I don't have a dog in the fight, there's no reason to put myself in a position to make a sheriff's reelection prospects more appealing.


I know who I am.  The question remains, where do I want to be myself that causes the fewest unintended consequences?


My life journey is both my own and that of the people with whom I communicate most often (family and close friends) and infrequently (the rest of the population (as well as the rest of the universe)).


Some tell stories with books and some tell stories with computer programs.  I have done both and of either one of those, I'm done.


Time to move on.


Time to talk to myself somewhere else.


Where, I don't know.  I am tired of the days of being boxed up in the cattle yards and chicken coops of office buildings, laboratories, classrooms and factories, where and when I used to be most comfortable.


It's easy to prognosticate and see a certain view of life from behind a keyboard and in front of a computer display.


Time to get away from the electromechanical virtual world, which is but one of many subsets of the worlds within the universe as we see it.

Border Collie Collar Boarder

She stood in the grocery supermarket aisle talking with a neighbour.

She stood on the front porch of the family farmhouse.

She stood for something.

She lived in a cycle of intersecting tricycles, quadriceps and quintuplets.

She tried to recall the definition of pronouns.

She counted the count.

What she stood for, that something, had changed.

A member of the Chinese Triad made peace with a member of a Japanese keiretsu.

She did not know this fact.

Yet she did.

No, not "woman's intuition."

Something older, predating gender differences.

Drapes in the wind of the heat pump's output.

Sensing change.

Call it science and sterilise it, like grocery market plastic packaging removing all the smells of fresh produce so that one has to read labels to guess what one has the choice of buying for nourishment.

Call it the call of the wild.

Untamed and undomesticated but not uncouth.

The method doesn't change but the messages do.

The courage to call it the way she sees it to someone for whom the something matters.

Knowing that hypnosis works only after someone has been told that hypnosis exists.

Otherwise it's just called living.

Sensitive to vibrations in the air.

She doesn't "have to" believe.

She is.

She is no longer she.

She stands outside the place and time of species-specific roles.

Where does she stand?

Don't you know?

You're her.

Philharmonia in C Minor

'Tis a guessing game we keep playing, is it not?

You want to play but I grow tired of the rulelessness but not the unruliness or rudeness.

You outlive me by factors I see but do not comprehend.

Entities without form.

Not formal, either.

Neither.

It's just too easy to sell out, to forget the unconditioning, to give in to ennui and the mild euphoric hypnosis.

These words and sentence structures are part of the cardboard shadow box imagery.

I do not want to gain and therefore I get what I do not want.

Back to the false comfort of logic.

Recycling old storylines.

Breathing the same air, the same recirculated states of energy.

It always comes back to the issue of reproduction.

The rest is fodder for the udder and father.

This is going to be a tough year for me...again.

Best that I stay off this blog and muse elsewhere, away from interested eyes that can't distinguish artful scribbling from reality.

When characters are faceless/nameless, their voices blend into one emotional chord.

Here.

Near.

Can you hear 4400.00001 Hz and tell me you hear 4400.000011 Hz at the same time?

Seven billion people making noise - how subtle is the difference from one to another?

My fathering instinct morphs into random patternmatching tricks.

Not being a biological father, is connecting dots with imaginary lines all I have left to enjoy the remaining days of my life?

God help those whose lives I nose into to smell out unhealthy habits and potential trends.

I've degraded into a busybody.

Happiness, where is your short-term memory erasing tendencies?

I want to forget for a while but with sleeping my only natural escape I'm trapped into entering the world of random brain firings/repair known as dreams.

Can I forget my dreams before I wake up?

Can I forget my waking state before I dream?

What was life like before tinnitus and migraines?

Too, too, too many questions posed rhetorically for this melancholic character.

Hickory Nut On Skylight

This blog entry is a dive into some personal meditative repetitive thoughts not designed for public consumption.

The heavier I get (that is, the more fat that accumulates in my posteriour area), the more difficult does reaching around to clean feces from my anal area with toilet tissue after defecating become.

At nearly 250 pounds of body weight, I have reached a new upper limit to my adult size (the minimum being 166 around 1982).

When I was younger, I had occasional thoughts about whether I was taking good enough care of myself to be an exquisite corpse.

That's why a funeral pyre or other form of cremation is in my future.

There's a certain freedom in knowing it doesn't matter if I live a long life - fewer funds expended on life-extending medicine, exercise equipment/clothing and gym memberships.

It's my path toward less vanity in daily living.

Of course, the level of states of energy in my body (e.g., hormones) influence my life-stage decisions.

From now on, the days will pass by, separated by dream states, and natural end of self gets closer.

The body parts slowly lose their fight against entropy.

My goal of becoming less interesting becomes more and more achievable.

No more wordsmithing tricky work combinations.

No more revealing how our simple social connections work.

Leave the planet in better shape than I first occupied it.

Let the hordes of junk dealers/collectors sort through the junk I've hoarded, dealt and collected.

Happiness is a type of silence.

Go in peace, like a slight breeze through the forest, rearranging leaves randomly, without prejudice or bias, nothing to forgive or forget.

And then there were four.

Rubbish Canister Enclosure

While my mother in-law returns her house decorations to their pre/post holiday conditions, our youngest Cornish Rex sits gargoylelike on my knee.

I look back over the past week and a half while looking forward.

Quietude.

Solitude.

Etude.

Thanks to many, including Henard Lumber Company and Pal's Sudden Service.

The days get longer every year at this time - some tell me it's because the Earth is tilted on its axis and it revolves around a local star.

I'm never exactly sure what's going on.

That's okay, though - I've lived and I'll die, having enjoyed the ride.

That's all there is, isn't it?

Feel free to disagree.

Home-made for the Holidays

This year, my wife and I kept our holiday giftgiving simple.

I gave her a set of swing dance lessons and tickets to a stage performance.

She gave me a carved cricket that when stroked with a stick of wood sounds like a cricket in summer/fall, a couple of handblown glass balls and some handmade notecards.

In our later middle years we've grown accustomed to each other's desire for less.

Some our age rule the world and some live in a world of underpasses.


My father gave me a rubber mallet and I gave him a single blade knife for Christmas.


Time slows down - I'm happier about peace on the Korean peninsula this year than with much else.

The way muscle tissue and tree limbs can bend without breaking fascinate me more than monetary investments or sports scores.

A log in a stream am I, spinning and bobbing toward a river or lake or sea, maybe, I don't know.

Going quietly into the dark, snowy night.

Once you shatter the illusion of the body as a sacred vessel, there is no turning back - you can only create a new illusion that accommodates the belief set you best (or better) believe in.

I am an old man who has stopped counting his days.

Every day is a new beginning and a new end.

I have given this world all I have which is all I know.

Anything more and I'll repeat myself dogmatically.

The quest for life is the satiation of anticipation - I have nothing left to anticipate.

I sit, no longer waiting.

The moment is here.

All is all.

House for sale/at auction

When one is left alone to meditate (albeit in public view amidst crowds and family), one is no longer one.

Praying for people to accept what has happened and will happen with no thoughts/dwelling on what might have been.

Listening to conversation at a Christmas open house about: enjoying the Andy Griffith TV show, trying to sell a nice one-story rancher house in this economy, becoming a great-great grandmother, the 93-year old sixth grade teacher alive and doing well (the student in his 70s still appreciative of the teacher's positive influence), the city schools' band director recruiting flute players, the storyteller Doc McConnell's young daughter now retired with a teenage daughter of her own, Crook & Chase back at it again...

The world has changed but it hasn't.

One's 16-year old niece with a job of her own, buying her uncle a box of practical jokes (joy buzzer, whoopie cushion, flies-in-ice, etc.) with her personally-earned money - just like her mother and uncle before her, buying family gifts with their first jobs. Keeping her sensitive, artistic side open through painting, expecting perfection.

One's 17-year old niece getting engaged to a nice young man in the military - wasn't her stepgrandfather a military man when he proposed to his bride-to-be?

One's 18-year old nephew continuing the family thespian tradition a [BIG] step further.

Dogs making tracks in the snow.

Cats curling up under the covers.

What if the power to brighten a single light bulb was more significant than deciding whether to add ambiance for a holiday gathering with the flick of a switch?

Assuming much when assuming nothing.

What if, instead of filling prisons, we found meaningful work for those who were willing to risk their families' health and security to build meth labs at home? Fulltime pharmaceutical laboratory test subjects, for instance, earning minimum wage, hazard pay and medical benefits.

Turn self-interest into something more profitable.

Meditating the self out of the picture.

The father's speaking tours on industrial engineering in the U.S. become the son's blog about reengineering the species' place in the universe.

Pi Safe

Is it all right to think about one's self when many unsolved mysteries would provide more food, shelter and clothing for others after self-contemplation opened the mysteries for serious consideration of their perplexities?

In other words, to give oneself permission for self-reflection, when one's self is the combination of others, means one is permitting the self to see itself as its components/parts and thus examine anything and everything at the same time.

Time for dissociating the cultural clues to what the states of energy attempt to associate with.

Deep meditation or prayer (actually very shallow, if you want to know the truth) - back to one's prelanguage/symbology days, when all our senses were flooded with unidentifiable images and we saw life as abstract art.

The journey of the self is a filtered view of the universe.

Decorating Cookies

Like pieces of broken cookies scattered across the floor, leaving a trail behind playful children running around the house provided for them by loving parents, characters from previous stories and blogs drop crumbs here and there to hint to me they want to be talked/written about again.

For whom do I write?

I have no idea.

What about the GE 'jet engines' at the John Sevier steam plant and the use of exhaust to power another turbine (Toshiba, left over from a project) to create a setup as efficient as a coal plant?

Or the control center in Chattanooga that makes sure cities have power and TVA operates at the lowest cost possible?

How long does it take for an efficiency expert's recommendations to be read, understood and implemented?

Do you realise how inefficient most computer/smartphone interfaces are today?

Can you automate intuition?

Can you create synergy?

How do I keep myself busy so I don't have spare time to analyse my thought process that is busy analysing how to keep busy integrating itself seamlessly into the environment on its lifelong journey to death of self and release of states of energy one last unselfish time, the self completely integrated and finally invisible?

The way to one's end is neither beginning nor end.

Some would have us eliminate "to be," the ism of life.

Right now, in this instance of the instant of the moment, I don't know if I will eliminate the "I" of the thought process before the body to which the "I" is attached perishes.

Perish the thought!