Once more into the breach........

http://anacreofsand.blogspot.com/2011/01/once-more-into-breach.html

Dances with Leaves

I want to rake this autumn yard

but leaves keep falling down

the job itself is not so hard

but leaves keep falling down

this season never seems to end

and leaves keep falling down

the yard keeps getting deeper still

as leaves keep falling down

I wish that Winter would arrive

and no more leaves fall down

but I think that winter went away

and leaves keep falling down

and soon enough the Spring will come

when leaves lay on the ground

and then will turn on Summer's heat

and dry the leaves

still on the ground

The Journey Towards Being ME

     If personality is the seat of the soul and character is a roadmap to one's fate, I am screwed in more ways than one.  Try as I might, I have never been able to convince myself that I have an enviable ownership of either.  How others view me, I probably shall never truly know, at least to any degree of real accuracy, but don't they say that a certain level of self-assurance is all one needs?  Well, sometimes that's all I have to protect myself from a total abandonment of whatever self-esteem I believe I possess. 

     This all sounds like some grand pity-party, but I assure you, my friends (my fondness of you based entirely, of course, on your continuing to read this work of literary conundrum and liking it…..hehe….), at least to the best of my awareness, that it is not.  I merely seek to find and reflect upon the truth of the matter, the matter being the equivalent value of my soul, in the greater scheme of things, "things" being life, the universe, and of course, everything.

     Into the remainder of my days I carry all that has gone before, where I came from, where I exist now, and were I am headed, which is very much an undiscovered country, however predictable it might appear to be.  Yes, I am a creature of habits, of never straying much beyond the bounds of my comfort zones, and of being happy with being something other than very unhappy.  The problem that presents itself these days, however is the ever-thinning boundary that lies between what I accept as happiness and what I conceive as what happiness really SHOULD be.  I am also burdened with the guilt that accompanies knowing full well that I have all the Gods in the pantheon to thank for all the good and very dull fortune that has befallen me in this last decade.  I have a home I "own", I have a "job", and I have not known real hunger or depravation of any real sort for quite some time.  If I were the superstitious type, I would also now realize that I just jinxed myself, but I thankfully refuse to give into that kind of fiction, although believing in magic, you have to wonder how I prioritize my spectrum of reality versus fantasy.

     I have been accused simultaneously of being sweet, gentle and kind as well as selfish, angry and bitter, the perception being I suppose based on the observer's own state of mind at the time and circumstance of our encounter.  So of course, when I have dealt with a person who is in pain and/or anguish, my own response tends to be according to how they welcome my overtures.  Thus, if they are the least bit approachable and I hold their hand, while grinding the gears of my empathy to arrive at some relief of their suffering, there can be a genuine bond of mutual respect formed between us.  Then there is the person who blames the first one they see as the source of their pain and takes it out on them, which has the effect of putting negative pressure on the attempt to be helpful.  You know there is a disconnect between reality and perception when patients are being wheeled out of the CCU with smiles on their faces and profuse thanks for their care, followed by another who is informing you of the hell your are about to face as their lawyers respond to your downright evil treatment of them.  If you welcome me with expectations of my failure to help you, then chances are very good I might not be able to overcome the conditions you have already put in place.  But I will try.  That's all I can do.  

     The same applies to interpersonal relationships I share with people I am acquainted with and whom I am related to……..if you perceive me according to what's going on in your own life, I may already have my job cut out for me.  In my hard-won wisdom earned through the art of mere survival, I have adopted an approach of trying (I say try here because being the imperfect person I am, I am doomed to fail in this regard every now and then) never to make personal attacks against anyone who has not already done the same to me.  Thus, if you really think of me, in your heart of hearts, as a genuinely evil or troubled person, yet have the decency to pretty much keep that opinion to your self in the public (and many times private) arena of our interactions, then I will do my very best to return the favor, no matter how equally evil and misinformed I think YOU might be.  It's called "getting along" and it seems that more and more Americans are losing the ability to do that, or even WANTING to do that.  Once one has come to a superior world view that brooks no challenge, then the best you can do is tolerate them, responding to them in self defense when necessary.

     So, the best I can do as far as being who I am is to inform those who think they know me that I have little choice but to accept what I've become and ask that they do the same.  The good news here is that as far as family is concerned, that seems to be the state I enjoy so far.  Yes, I know that we have spiritual and philosophical differences that could lead to some very nasty interactions, but part of the art of having family is being willing to just shut up about it and seek out those things we all have in common, like, DUH, love of family.  My own surprise has come from having certain assumptions fall flat on their face, like who was most likely to treat me with respect and who was most likely not to.  By now, most if not all of my family is well aware of my particular sense of humor, which can appear caustic sometimes to the untrained eye (the eye viewing my tongue-in-cheek comments on Facebook, for example).  I have several cousins who have "FB" personalities similar to my own, yet I have done my best to take their pontifications with a healthy grain of salt lest I misread them entirely and lose out on knowing them better.  Then there are those who surprise the hell out of you and you realize that those you thought were the sweetest angels fallen to Earth are actually just as human as you.

     So, back to the beginning of this post, I need to assure everyone that although I have reached a comfort level with myself as a human being, I am WELL aware that I have personality traits which are an acquired taste to some.  And yes, I have quirks I rarely wish to admit to that on reflection do exist and I spend a fair amount of time working on mediating them also.  However, I am one very unique individual who really has no desire to become just another zombie on the spiritual and philosophical landscape, who refuses to join the herd and be led by emotional bankruptcy, and has as much hope as anybody that if there is a consequence to be had for how one lived his life, that on balance I finally DID make more contributions to the positive rather than negative side of the balance sheet.  Believe me, if I truly were able to believe in a devil and then have the stupidity to want to serve his interests, I witness on the news daily the best ways to serve evil in this world, and those ways are not exclusive to terrorists or serial killers.  Most of the evil I see being perpetrated these days is in the faces of those who campaign the loudest against it.

     But please, allow me to leave you with this:  Who I love and how I love them is not negotiable.  And that should apply to all of us.

Truth Spoken to Denial (Such Sweet, Sweet Sorrow....)

I love the way we try to buttonhole each other with labels such as "liberal" and "conservative", when in most cases these labels can be less than honest or accurate.  Everybody has a viewpoint which is most often molded by their own personal life experience, although I truly believe that we DO have a certain percentage of citizens out there who do not actually have a valid, self generated viewpoint, having surrendered to some outside interest the job of providing it, all due to a certain laziness or lack of ability to think critically.  Who needs to exert their brains when there's talk radio to do your thinking for you?  To you, the zombies of right-wing radio land, I can only offer my most sincere pity.

Thus I come here to speak for MYSELF and no other.  Yes, I DO have an opinion on the matters of the day, and YES, this outlook was built carefully over several decades of actually paying attention to what was going on in the world around me and doing the hard work of really caring as to whether or not the "news and opinion" I was exposed to was really worth the paper they were printed on or the radio waves they were broadcast with.  If there is one thing I have learned about propaganda is that is rarely stands for long against the truth.  Eventually, the truth will ALWAYS rear it's ugly head and bite the ass of those who tried to suppress it.  I promise you that Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck will BOTH find themselves with no ass at all in good time.  As will many pundits smelling up the halls of our national capital.

So, you ask, what IS this truth you claim to have dug up, oh righteous Michael?  No, my friends, this is my OPINION, and I in no way declare that anything I say here is the God's honest truth, for if I have been fed bullshit, then I will regurgitate same said BS.  Let's see if MY BS smells any worse than yours……..

Immigration and citizenship.  Boy, if ever there was a sticky wicket, this is one!  This nation was built on the backs of immigrants, and any indigenous American Indian will tell you that we are ALL immigrants when push comes to shove.  What I object to in today's world is that we have a severely exploited underclass of illegal immigrants in this country who in their quest for a better life help to keep our own exploited underclass of poor Americans from achieving that same dream.  Yes, we know that most American's will not accept jobs that illegal immigrants accept, but that is not really due to the nature of the work but instead to the level of compensation for that work.  This is supposed to be a system of supply and demand, and since there is a demand for workers who can perform these often hard jobs, you would think that the wages would support that.  But no, business wants it's cake and to eat it too; they just want the profit, not the fair trade in wage versus working conditions that applies to other sectors of our economy.  Yes, my friends, I can assure you that if the wages were right, they would come.  "They" being American workers who are not as willing as people from a third world train wreck to be exploited for their cheap labor.

As far as citizenship is concerned, well, I welcome all good people from any corner of the globe to come join us……..LEGALLY.  Just because you snuck in, undercut Americans for shit jobs, and had a few kids on American soil does not grant you special consideration over people who played by the rules and attained their citizenship legally.  And another thing, I think this "accident of birth" bullshit about attaining citizenships really does need to be revisited.  I really think that half the people BORN here under perfectly ordinary circumstances don't deserve to be granted the citizenship we all take for granted just for being born here.  How about the RESPONSIBILITIES that come with citizenship?  How about serving your country, keeping your stupid ass out of jail, and participating in our democratic system of government by voting?  Is THAT too much to ask of you?  People have DIED trying to come here for the privilege of electing their leaders!  People have given up EVERYTHING for the right to worship or not worship as they please and not have some theocratic dictatorship throw them in jail or execute them.  No, my "fellow Americans", I think it's time we start making citizenship and the advantages of same a privilege that must be EARNED and MAINTAINED rather than given away so freely to people who have no idea what a precious thing it really is.  How "liberal" am I sounding so far?

But let's get to the very root, the very essence, of ALL our problems, shall we?  That being US.  People.  LOTS and lots of people.  You see, this insignificant little marble, this miracle of remarkable coincidences which made life as we know it possible, is only so big.  And, relatively, when you compare it to all the real estate that makes up our known universe, it is very, very small.  So, it can only go so far.  It can only support so much hungry, thirsty, shit and pissing humans, much less all the other lifeforms which inhabit this planet with us.  And, on top of the limits imposed by only so much space, we have this so-called intelligent life form spreading all across it, spoiling everything it touches, poisoning the ecosystem and even changing the very climate of the planet.  So, what would you think would be the best possible way to mediate the effect all this pestilence is having on our home?  Yep, if you have the guts to even think it…..PEST CONTROL!

We haven't had ENOUGH war, or plague, or natural disasters visited upon us.  Despite all the ill fortune which has befallen us as a species, we are still reproducing like rabbits and putting an overwhelming strain of our planet's resources and ability to absorb our waste stream.  Until Homo-sapiens came along, nature had a system of checks and balances, something we called "survival of the fittest" which kept any population of any and all species in check, no more or no less than what the ecosystem could support.  Then came an ape with an idea and it all went to hell.  By the time the 21st century had arrived, we had all but cheated the system that kept US in check as well as the other predators and prey.  In the wild, a stupid horse with six legs would be bear meat in no time, but in OUR world, we have antibiotics, amazing medical interventions and miracle drugs to keep alive thousands of humans that couldn't possibly survive even a few years in a natural world.  And all these humans do is produce even more genetically crippled humans who contribute nothing to the strength of the species and apply even more strain on our resources to keep them alive.  I am not suggesting that a young healthy man of say 28 shouldn't have an operation to fix a burst appendix, but why are we spending thousands of dollars and weeks of human resources to warehouse 98 year old demented chunks of bed-sore-ridden flesh whose souls dearly departed us years previous?  It makes no sense and is nothing more than an emotional form of species suicide.  Yes, we need to pull the plug on granny, not because we hate her, but because we LOVE her, and ourselves, for there too will we be consigned by our own children.  Death is a part of life, and those of you who put so much energy in avoiding it need to get a clue.  YOU are NOT special, but life, ALL the life on this planet, in it's NATURAL form, IS.  

My blogger name is Alex Pendragon, and I damn well approved this message.

Writing's on the Wall

One of the things that cripples me as a writer and one of a myriad reasons I no longer blog on a regular basis is that I have such a hard time sorting and settling on set paths.  I also suffer from a tendency to write sentences so long you have to wonder if they really are sentences or a sneaky sort of paragraph that enables a writer to keep expressing a thought long after your normal, everyday sentence had given that thought up for good.  If I wanted to, I have no doubt I could set the Guinness Book of World record for the shortest number of sentences written to form a full fledged novel.

The closest I ever came to diving into a concerted effort to write a REAL novel was my idea concerning a bubble that appeared around a small town and expanded to shove aside the entire world.  Then Stephen King came out with "The Dome", which I think the bastard psychically stole from me, and pretty much killed that idea.  And I honestly think MY idea was better, even if it was going to be written with a minimum number of sentences.  

I have this aversion to thinking that my failure to pursue a genuine written career has a lot to do with just plain laziness, so I embrace the excuse that once I envision the general idea of the story, I can't seem to settle on which twist and/or turn that idea can take within the story.   Plus, by the time I finish one of my legendarily long sentences, I might have forgotten exactly what the story line was supposed to be.  At my age, THAT's becoming increasingly easy to do.  Perhaps writing is a young person's game.  Or at least a YOUNGER person's game.  

Then there's the point of it all.  Most of our most beloved authors have stood the test of time and become immortal, talented ghosts stalking the halls of our schools and libraries.  But what of what I might create today, even if it DID stand a rat's chance in that hot place of making the New York Times best seller list?  There's not much time left for this race to enjoy anything I might write, and thus there will be no immortality for THE Michael save for the very unlikely chance an alien archeological team finds a dog-eared, termite-eaten but otherwise intact copy of my novel buried deep within the rotten remains of our dead civilization and they mistake it for serious literature.  Stop laughing, it won't be a comedy.

My one other major deterrent is walking into a Books-a-Million and being faced with all those choices for the reading dollar.  There are just TOO damn many choices, most of them ending up on those bargain tables and probably from there being shipped to a recycling center.  That's a lot of trees having been killed for no real good reason other than vanity and all those failed grasps at immortality.  Whatever immortality I will garner I believe is already set in stone, that stone being the internet, which will crumble into dust with the rest of all those paperbacks and leather bound limited editions that line those thousands of shelves in those hundreds of bookstores, libraries, and schools scattered around our world.  There will be no more downloads when the next really big solar storm hits and our electrical grid is fried, our computers all burned out, and our cars with their electronic brains dead as doornails.  All that will remain will be those English majors who memorized all those works of Shakespeare and are kept alive by those of us who didn't but can till a garden and shoot a bow.  Maybe THEN I'll try and write a book……with those old manual data transcribers we in the day called a PENCIL.  If I can remember how………

By Request

 One of my three loyal fans mentioned during our last chat that he would like to see another post appear on this blog, preferably one written by me.  It certainly warmed the cockles of my heart to know that SOMEone out there can actually roll with my tendency to use capital letters and ………… for strategic emphasis.  I fully realize that those of you who excelled in grammar during high school and perhaps even college just simply couldn't handle it anymore and stopped following me rather than take the risk that you yourselves might be infected with this new, less rigid and clearly lazy sort of communication skill.  I admire you for your caution.  The rest of you, I admire your thick skin.

Now, the problem with granting this request is that I have entered a phase in my life that doesn't easily lend itself to retrospection, inspection, or any other sort of spection period.  You see, these blogs I have created are public in nature, in that they are available to anybody who knows me or is slightly familiar with me, and is even accessible to those who hit that "next blog" button up there in the hopes of coming across something awe-inspiring.  That availability to people who know me means that whatever I write has the potential to piss same said people off, and regardless of any incidental vitriol you have witnessed in these blogs so far, it is NEVER my intention to (at least publicly) anger, hurt, or disrespect those people who through blood or congress are involved in my life to any great degree.  Thus, I face a certain self-censorship which causes the relief valve of my inner " boiler" to function only in extreme circumstances.  Otherwise nice people going postal on their friends and family is a good example of that relief valve not working when it is supposed to.  That is why a public blog such as this one does not contribute much in the way of venting when the angst and turmoil gets truly personal.  Anyway, getting back to awesome inspiration...... .The only "awwwwwww" this blog will ever inspire would probably come as a result of post regarding kittens or baby goats.  Which, incidentally, has just inspired a topic………shall we?

Lately I have had an incredible deficit in "joy of life".  Now, please don't get me wrong; I do rather enjoy the practice of breathing, interpreting light patterns on the back of my eyeballs, and other such things that life forms indulge in, but as far as those fun things that "advanced" species such as humans enjoy……..(there, see it, the ………..?)I haven't been enjoying much of that lately.  I've pretty much lost most interest in writing (as evidenced by my lack of doing so on this last remaining active work of trash literature), I never go out on the town or eat at a restaurant, can't remember the last time I actually danced (which I used to live to do), and the closest thing I can think of doing that relates to a hobby is lusting after some electronic toy I can no longer afford to even think of buying (Although I must admit to taking the leap and getting back in bed with a major wireless provider just so I can stroke and coo  Apple's latest electronic crack pipe, that is if they don't look at my credit score and have me arrested for even TRYING to do so).  I am kept halfway busy by this ever enlarging zoo we have here at the Hold, which now includes one lizard, one cat, one kitten, one dog, and four goats, including THOR, the incredibly cute baby pygmy goat which has been wowing them over on Face Book.  Now, I DID purchase a new 1800 psi electric pressure washer at the behest of THE Wife in order to blast the yucky dark mold off this deck of ours, and it was fun, but now I'm even bored with that.  I also have laundry, dishes, floors, and cooking to help fill the time, and believe me, you haven't LIVED until you've done laundry, dishes, floors and ruined a few meals all for the sake of contributing to the responsibilities of shared responsibility.  

No, I'm not insinuating that life sucks.  In order for life to actually SUCK in this day and age, I would have to join the ranks of the more-or-less permanently unemployed, lose my home and car, and experience the joys of homelessness along with millions of my fellow Americans, something I loathe to do simply because I have already experienced minor versions of such conditions and I do not care to repeat the experience.  Now, yes, I COULD suffer from some sort of medical condition which makes life on Earth a living hell, a condition which my "health" insurance company will do it's best to avoid having to pay to have treated, but again, I am thankful not to be suffering from anything major so far.  

Plus there is all that angst built up inside for which I have precious few outlets, the kind I can confide in with no risk of making things even worse.  I suppose if I had to define happiness as it applies to MY universe, I would have to describe it as a condition where-upon (is that actually a word, and am I using it correctly?) my outer appearance does not cause alarm or consternation amongst those surrounding me.  Yes, I am doing my level best not to alarm anyone, upset anyone, make anyone unhappy, or otherwise contribute to the idea that I am SO not perfect and might actually never have been.  Perhaps this idea that all that is really necessary is what has my insides churning while my outsides appear relatively calm.  I so want to be happy, but I also would like to know exactly what that really means, and if achieving such a state really does mean others might get rather un-happy as a result.  Should I really CARE if they do or not?  People have told me that the very idea that I worry about it means that I really AM a good person.   Thank you, people, that really helps…….

Of course, all this is rather moot when you consider the fact that I have arrived at a juncture in my life where I have lost all faith in humanity and/or it's likelihood of surviving very much longer.  The grist of our most entertaining and scary science fiction horror movies of the past used to be what aliens from other planets or some natural disaster would do to us, but it turns out that it's much more likely what we are doing to OURSELVES that's going to kill us all.  Pile on top of that this unnerving tendency for large segments of mankind to blissfully ignore or deny what's happening to our ecosystem while the evidence keeps mounting, and you get to the point of just not caring anymore.  No, I never DID want to die an early or unnatural death, but we are ALL gonna die sometime, someway, so the fact that we are all gonna do it together like some great big suicide party hardly matters when you get right down to it.  It just really pisses me off that the lives of all those wonderful Einstein's and Picasso's and George Harrisons and Michaelangelos simply didn't mean anything in the greater scheme of things.  So, if mankind thirsts so badly for his rapture, then I say let him have it.  I just wish they would leave me behind to enjoy the peace and quiet and beauty of a place without them in it.

When I started this post I gave a full 47 seconds to the idea of trying to come up with something more positive to write, even though anything positive and uplifting is not my strong suite.  But I realized that other than expressing how grateful I am for the love and kindness so many people have shown me during my life, I have very little joy to express otherwise that would go perhaps past a medium length paragraph.  However, for those of you who have suffered through my pessimistic pool of pathetic pity thus far, I leave you with this, my one witness to the joy of life.  I hope it forces a smile out of you as it has me……

Thor, One Small Package of Joy

Father's Day

I used to be a blogging fool.  I mean, I was once able to come up with something epic (in MY mind at least) at least twice a week and sometimes every night for several weeks at a time, making my old blogs some of the most prolificly uncelebrated works of introspection of all time.  Those were the glory days!

Now, I go for weeks at a time with this guilt gnawing at me that I am letting some sort of amorphous audience down by not posting something fascinating more often.  This is even occurring long after I wrote the final chapters to my long running and long winded chronicle of life on an acre of sand in sunny, conservative Florida, where people like me are looked at sideways by people with questionable DNA.  Why in the hell should I give a damn wether or not some readership which hardly ever existed is entertained by my self-centered observations from a jaundiced eye?

I guess it shares a certain sick similarity with my karaoke days, when I discovered the joy of singing to a crowd and not having that crowd throw rotting vegetables or worse at me for having done so.  I was complimented on my singing many times but the praise, lukewarm as it was, never really squared with what I heard on tape recorders.  I would have shot the sonofabitch who subjected me to THAT voice.  So, I have had people read some of my stuff and ask me why I never got published, and I in turn have wondered who they were really reading because it certainly couldn't have been MY stuff they were complimenting.

I really hate myself for the ways I hate myself.  On this Father's day the best praise I can offer my own sperm donor is that he didn't stick around to observe the mistake he'd made mixing his DNA with my Mom's.  Now, I do NOT blame my Mother for her part in my creation.  She loved me more than sin and even though she wasn't really capable of being a responsible parent, she certainly had the heart for it, and the best years of my entire life were those I was lucky enough to have spent getting to know her and holding her hand as she passed beyond the veil.  As far as the rat bastard whose last name I still bear (something I really need to jettison), the Gods only know what ever became of him after he abandoned me so cruelly to my lonely unloved fate as a foster kid.  I can only hope he went on to sire other kids who perhaps made his life a living hell.  I am if anything charitable with my hunger for karmic justice.

However, I made it in this world to were I am mostly on my own, and I own most of the condition I find myself in, due to the choices I made and both the good things and bad that only I can take responsibility for.  Yes, my father launched me from a shit shore in a boat full of holes, but once I was on my own and fully in control of my own rudder, I only had myself to blame if I broadsided an iceberg or two that I plainly saw floating in my way.  Even now, I am making choices that may or may not contribute to a life best lived, given all the Karma I have saved up or pissed away.  I imagine it's the same for everybody, silver spooned piss-ants or working class heroes; hell, George Bush proved that it's not what you know that can make you the President of the most powerful nation on Earth, it's whose hand is stuck up your ass calling the shots you have to give credit too.  That's probably why I am where I am, and where I will always be.  I have one tight sphincter.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.  Choke on it.