Footnote - will be updated as I add footnotes

#1:

The original quote is from Plato's Apology "an unexamined life is not worth living" - I never thought much beyond the expression so I just accepted it as a negative comment on my how I lived my life. Deeper research lead me to find this

However, there would be no need to exhort us to examine our lives if we did not think that there were human beings who do not, and so have valueless, bestial lives. The noble ideal has a harsh implication: some in the herd of humankind may as well be animals, or dead.

 We should also keep in mind that Plato says this is a quote from Socrates but all we know of Socrates is what Plato says of him so, in truth, it is a Platonic quote.

#2:

Dear Anonymous (warning TMI) -

These paragraphs first appeared in DA; some are my posts and some are my response to posts; feelings and emotions expressed are subject to change, the facts are not.

response:
For the longest time, my motto was 'an examined life is not worth living' see #1. I believed this until I was in my 60s - why? Because there was this big emptiness inside of me - there was no me inside of me, just a vast wasteland. I read books - hell, I read one entire encyclopedia from cover to cover for each of 3 years (worked out perfectly, the library ran out of them just as I graduated - I graduated 52nd in my class.

beat

beat

Number 53 did not graduate, there were only 53 in my class.) I read philosophy books, I read science books, I read books about parapsychology, meditation, to no great affect. I did read about some interesting concepts in meditation ("first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is a mountain") that even went on about facing the emptiness within. I went to counselors and bullshitted them; they would test me and i would use my mental Tai chi to turn it around on them but never, ever let them see the emptiness inside (oh, crap - did I just quote the Moody Blues?
"If only you knew what's inside of me now You wouldn't want to know me, somehow But you will love me tonight We alone will be all right In the end"
that is not the quote I was looking for but it fit me to a tee from age 22 to 38 - they did love me for the night but they all went away)
Things actually started to get better for me when I started to actually talked with someone who listened and did not judge.

post:

I can not watch an embarrassing situation developing on an effing sit-com! I am bingeing on Unbreakable Kimmy and every time the setup heads for embarrassment, I get freaked out. This behavior is really beginning to grate on my nerves. When my ex and I would sit down to watch a show, I would have to get up and leave the room - I just fast-forwarded part of Kimmy. My stomach is all tensed up. Crap! I forget about it until it sneaks up and kicks me in the gut.

This is incredibly Pavlovian. I wonder how deep I am going to need to dig to find what buried humiliation lead me to this impasse. I have the ability to hide things from myself for later - in times of stress, I can actually observe myself going through certain actions and commenting on my behavior; other times, I completely block out what happened until later. The implication of this is (in a certain way) frightening but mostly confusing since I don't know that I blocked something until I determine it is 'safe' to remember. I neither believe nor disbelieve in recovered memories and am not sure this is the proper direction to look.

I am already seeing a therapist but this is a short-term thing, his job is to find a direction to look and, maybe, a long-term therapist. Adding this to a list issues just leaves me motionless. Cascading possibilities branching through multiple paths leaving me feeling like an experimental rat that is shocked randomly so it/I can't figure out the direction of least pain.
sigh, I think I need to melt some glass and make more puddles.

I know the stories I tell myself are the stories I have to change; I started my 'Random Acts of Art' project to change the 'I am not a nice person' story - I catch myself at that story fewer times now but i still tell it, sigh. Baby steps.

Yes! I, also, get really upset over scenes of helplessness - I am so glad that "Kimmy" glossed over the pre-rescue with "yes there was weird sex stuff" and just did not go there. I don't worry about what I am hiding from myself; I expect it will come up when it is necessary.

Today, i was making glass puddles of one of my monsters (the kind I call crackheads) and the glass stuck to the top of the kiln. I just have to either remember the restraints within which I work in this particular kiln or increase the working dimensions - working within constraints is good for learning control but glass needs at least +10% volume over filling the mold (even more boring details glossed over) so if I want to cast glass in a 2 inch deep most, I have to stack glass half an inch over the top of the mold which then touches the top of the kiln. Usually, it works out because the glass subsides into the mold but today, the piece did not subside, it adhered to the top of the kiln.

but I digress. I will be spending the week of my birthday in in the mountains of Montana with my sis and bil. Then we will go to their home in Wyoming to watch the eclipse.

I consider meditation to be the elephant in the room; I talk to people who hear me describe what I do and they say your elephant is not like my elephant therefore what you are doing is not the elephant.
I learned to meditate while at a monastery school when I was 15; we prayed on our knees for hours; I learned to watch the second hand of the clock. I eventually was able to be 'gone' within 5 seconds; now I can lie down and let my thoughts wander - I do not hold on to them nor do I let them go, they just are. I love this state but too much. I can spend a day just wandering.
Since my elephant is not their elephant i still do not know if I am meditating and they say what I am doing is not meditation!?

*response
I am schizoid (at least that is the diagnosis in 1969) so I understand you - I do not understand your friends (but I have never understood my friends either). There are feelings that other people talk about that I am unable to understand; there are feelings that I have that other people do not (or at least appear not to have). There is nothing wrong with you.

The struggle is the be-all and end-all of it - find your joy.
*Post titled "I know I am but what are you?"

(did you catch the play on words?)
I am not a nice person.
I know this because it is what I have been told all my life
I see it in how people react to me; I see it in how I perceive others; and it is what I tell myself all the time. (every once in a while, I catch myself saying "I am not a good person" phrased in different ways).

Please do not reply to say "You are a good person":
1) you don't know me
b) if telling me that helped, it would not be an issue.

I am here shouting into the universe (sounds remarkably like shouting into a large/huge metal pipe - the echoes reverberate off into the distance and return, amplified).
I started a project which, for lack of a better name, I call "Random acts of art". I give away objects I make. It is actually pseudo-random since I have to have some sort of connection. Example, I was going to pick up my contacts at the eye-glass place and I was going to say "I have a project I call random acts of art" and leave a random collection of glass objects (a skull, a star, a t-rex, and a couple other items - I forget what all) but the person who I normally talk to was not there and I had no connection to the person who I dealt with so I left w/o doing or saying anything. Also, it has to be some place I do not go very often because I do not want a big deal made of it.

I have given a lot of items away at work - that is comfortable because my job is so intense that I barely get to speak with my team (who are as busy as I am) so I seldom get a chance to interact with any one else (I am a seasonal worker so I have a new team every year; with 12 people to a team and I have been here 7 years - #s).

Sometimes, when I interact with someone like a person at an airline desk at the airport (and who helps me) I ask them "skull or heart"? It is so out of the blue and so not a normal customer interaction that I have to ask a couple times while they stop, see me as an individual, and pay attention - oddly, most ask for the skull, though the woman in Montana asked for the heart (I told her, next time she has to take the skull). I had to give this method up b/c there were not enough of these interactions to help me get rid of all the crap I have made.

See, I make glass puddles and my joy is looking into the kiln to see the world at 1,750 degs F but I end up with glass objects. I have this crap all over my apt - on the window sills, hanging on the windows, hanging on my door, little dioramas at work.
Sigh.

So, I think that if I give away some pieces of myself in my art/craft (if it is perfect, it is craft - if not, it is art - heh,heh), maybe, just maybe I might become a nice person.
Or at least be perceived as one - time for bed

*this is a response to a response to this post:

I work on the 17th floor of my building and I have about 300 co-workers who I can recognize as having seen around; in that short ride to my floor, I can find one thing to comment on to make a connection and get a smile. I have honed this skill to the point that I can turn a 'cash register moment' into a human interaction - where that person has to stop seeing me as a customer and see me as a person. This is something I delight in but it is a card trick all surface with no depth.
I know so much crap, that I can find a connection and talk with anyone about anything - for 5 minutes, then I start to get uncomfortable and move away. In high school I read one complete encyclopedia set a year for 3 years, I know a little bit about everything and not much about anything. I am schizoid so even when I panic, I am observing myself panicking, sigh. Like I said, I am shouting at the universe and your response is one of the echoes I get back. Otherwise, I would be completely trapped in my own head. I am here today to hear the echoes.
Thank you.

*this is a response to another response to this post:

The way I learned the trick was during high school I had insomnia so I would be up until 3 in the morning trying to sleep; the radio station out of Canada (CKCK/CK62) had a '5th wheel' program for truckers that was 3 hours of comedy albums (Shelly Berman, and many others whose names have been lost in the 50 years since) - this went on for 2 or 3 years before they switched to country music. My last 3 years of high school study hall were spent reading 3 complete sets of encyclopedias from cover to cover. Then in the 1970s, I started doing acid; I did so much acid that I actually started to talk with people about my experiences (one woman said "I waited for 3 months for you to start talking to me"). I lost weight (down to about 154 pounds from over 200), worked as a bartender, became a clothes-horse and got seduced a lot because I became a pretty-boy.

finally, I learned the trick because those 30 seconds on the elevator are the only human interaction I have. I was married to someone who had worse human skills than I for 25 years with the last 6 years of her trying to destroy my mind. My current list of human contacts is a coffee shop on Sundays, a friend's 4th of July party, a friend's birthday party in August and the same friends' Thanksgiving.

I am schizoid - my entire life is lived inside my head, my early family life consisted of me being completely isolated from a mother who competed with me against anything I tried to do. I learned to become just good enough at any one thing that I was better than 90% of humanity but not good enough for my mother to notice. My dad came home, said nothing at dinner, and retired to his bed, right after dinner. I can juggle, I know 3 types of martial arts, can do performance tumbling/gymnastics, I can throw darts and hit the bulls-eye while so drunk I can barely stand up (to me darts are hunting weapon, not barroom entertainment), but I can not talk to anyone for more than 5 minutes because I get really uncomfortable and expect them to turn on me with insults. I can only think of 4 compliments that I got during my first 21 years of life and none of the compliments came from family. I was a passout drunk from age 14 to 19; the number of times I got home from drunk from dances with no memory of how I got home is not countable (sometimes I had to drive 30 or 40 miles to some podunk town nearby where there was a dance). I was not an alcoholic, i just did not know any other way to behave.

In the 80s I was sent to see a counselor who asked me if I was an alcoholic - I answered "no". She said "you know I am a counselor who specializes in working with addicts", I shrugged. Many sessions later I was describing my behavior at parties - I drink until my nose gets numb and I start drinking non-alcoholic beverages and i am sober by the time I head home . She looked at me stunned and said "you aren't an alcoholic!" - I shrugged, DUH! that is what I said.
I earned the tricks I use.

My username in the past was GrimJack

  - I have lightened up a lot.Lately, I have been considering microdosing acid (I think the last time i did acid was 1986) as I have heard some good things about how it helps but, since i am a federal employee, all the things I used to do are now held against me at a higher standard, I can't even smoke pot though it is legal in my state. Hell, I used to smuggle Cuban cigars and 222s down from Canada, crap no longer an option.
Apologies for the rant.

**digression**

 This is my 'Grumpy' avatar:

*this is response to another response to this post:

Ooh - I like that! It is an act of selfishness; I do feel it is sort of conniving to try to convince people that what I have to give is of some value. When I talk of 'puddles' of glass, I do not necessarily mean that the puddles have no form - my heart series includes ones that are transparent but have a dark center; for the twins downstairs, I did a 'shared heart' design that actually was kind of sweet (but then the twins aren't even one yet so I certainly didn't want to show them my true heart). It turns out that if I 'polish' the glass with a brass brush - it gives the glass an interesting metallic patina, to be honest though the patina disguises the nature of the object; rather than looking like glass, it looks like metal and you have to touch it to know its true nature.

Glass is the most amazing substance in the world but that is a digression I do not want to get into. I am still trying to determine my true nature.

 *
So I get to the stochastic man in this scenario - I can handle it. But, still, sometimes I have to shout at the universe with rage and frustration (other times I shout love at the heart of the world).

*

When I was in college in Billings MT, we would go up to the rimrocks that surround some of the city. We had wrist-rockets and cherry bombs - they would make it out over the city and explode in the air. Since it was 1967, it was not considered terrorism (besides, we never stood around waiting for the police). Also, I still had some blasting powder and blasting caps left from when I was working on a seismograph crew (part of my job was to screw together 2 units of BP, insert the cap and lower it into the hole we just drilled); I would scoop about 2 fingers from each 5-pound unit - 2 units per blast and about 3 or 4 holes drilled per day. I was finally fired when I drove over a couple tubes of BP on the way to get more water. The crew boss jumped onto the side of the truck screaming at me, sigh.

How I got so sleep deprived to make such a mistake is a digression for another day. The BP was interesting stuff; if you lit it, it would burn so hot it would melt through asphalt but even shooting it with a .22 would not set it off. The blasting cap is necessary to produce enough compression energy to set it off - driving over the BP was not really dangerous but pretty stupid. When the ground was too wet to drill, the crew would lay out some organic material around a cap and wait for a gopher to investigate (this was not particularly entertaining for me but I was not a Texas oil-field worker).

I have only become 'enlightened' in the last decade or so -  before that, I am not sure I knew right from wrong - I did know what would get me in trouble with the law and/or other people.

*
I am so concerned because I am so concerned. I give a shit so I do what i do and I ask questions about what I do. I get something out of making - though, to be honest, the joy is in opening the kiln and seeing the world at 1700 F (and it is so brief and transitory - if I stare too long, my gloves burn, then my fingers.

when I was growing up I used to stare into flames in the fireplace; I used to take gasoline from the tool shed and light fires in the sand but there is nothing like the inside of a kiln glowing so hot that it is almost transparent with the glass puddle almost cool in comparison). The glass puddles are just a reason to heat up the world. The drudgery of making a mold, tempering the mold, coating the mold, determining what colors of glass to use or not use so that I have a reason to lift the lid off the kiln and stare for a moment at molten glass.

You are right - I really don't care if they like it or not (well, some minor part of me wants them to like it and to think I am a nice guy - but mostly, they should just say thank you and move on). If the object I make is perfect, I call it craft; if it isn't perfect, I call it art. I seldom make craft - I mostly make art.

*

Do I know you? How do you know about my T-day meals? Have I been babbling away on Ambien again? I loved those days! I remember one year there were so many people in my apt that people could barely move - one of my neighbors pounded on my door shouting "I am going to call the police" - my detective friend answered the door with his badge out saying "we are already on it", slam.
But the year between Thanksgivings is a long lonely time.

*

When I was very young we played with stones, tossing them high into the air over a lake, hoping it would would make a 'gloop' and sink without making a splash or causing ripples; we called this 'cutting the devil's throat'. I have a vague memory of standing near the pool at the bottom of a water-fall (I must have been 7 or 8) trying to get this effect. I bring it up because that is how I expect to go: quietly, with no splash and no ripples. When someone recognizes me, I see a ripple.

An odd sort of metaphor, but it might also explain why I give away my glass castings - small ripples that might reverberate beyond my passing. I am unable to find the source for this name or game - just something kids pass down through the years to other kids. I am not sure most adults even know about the game (er, does that mean I am not an adult?).

*
You have no idea. To be honest, I have no idea - I have to make the assumption you and the rest of the people who occupy the world around me have their own thoughts and motivations - that maybe you are all more than distractions. I do not know because I am unable to make connections with people that have more depth than a 3 minute conversation in an elevator.

Sorry if what I am saying makes no sense but I am responding to each comment as it comes up and so to me this conversation is part of thread that may make sense in the context of what I have said to the previous person or persons. And I will add this to the thread as I respond to the next comment. So, yes I walk to the beat of a different drummer, but it is not a dependable beat (I can't keep time and can barely dance but damned if I don't keep moving, keep trying). I am here to be serious, though I often digress.

*

Agreed. That is why I do 'drive-by' arting; I don't want anything in return - I live every day in my head, alone. I get thanked all day at my job - sometimes, the caller wants to talk to my boss to tell him how wonderful I am (twice so far* in the last 4 weeks) - it embarrasses me and i don't to want get my boss on the phone but I am required to. As soon as the caller hangs up - I hate my job, then the next caller and I am totally focused on helping and I love my job. Then the caller hangs up and I hate my job. People tell me "I did not know that the IRS could be so nice". One caller said "damn you, I am angry as hell and you made me laugh"
shrug
I hate my job. But I do a damned good job and I actually love my job when I am talking with a caller but I hate my job, otherwise.

 That was a pretty long thread and it went a lot of unexpected directions

There is a deadline on this site - all topics are closed after

4 weeks but the MOD reopened it for whatever reason

so it went on far longer than it should have.

*This is the first of a few posts talking about work:

I got a good government job about 7 years ago but things got very strange right from the beginning.
The first 6 weeks was training - in class, 2 classmates stood and yelled at me in anger that I was lying.
The next week one of the instructors was still talking when it was 2 minutes to the end of the day so I politely said "excuse me but people have to catch the ferry". The next day I was called into the supervisor's office and given a 'Letter of Reprimand' for disrespect towards a teacher. Since I was on probation as a new hire, this was pretty serious and the letter would actually go into my permanent record. I finally went to my union rep and grieved the letter so it was removed and classes were scheduled so that they ended 10 minutes before time so we had a chance to clean up before leaving.

Once I was trained and on my first team, I had a team mate stand and shout at me in anger that I was wrong, wrong, wrong. (all teams meet for an hour each week to go over 'stuff'). There was dead silence, then other team members said "'er, I think Grumpy was right that was the way to handle it"

Later (I am compressing time here as these things happened over the 7 years I was there), I came to work to find a note (written in Sharpie) that said, roughly "your feet stink, if you don't do something about it, I will report to your manager". I was stunned but just dropped note into the shredder box. The next day, I noticed my manager walking around going 'sniff' 'sniff' - so I went to her office and told her about the note; it seems she got a similar note with a similar threat about me.

One year a team member barged into my cube shouting that I can't say that (while I was on the phone) and that I was wrong (keep in mind, I am on a new team every year so the similarities are not because of the team or team member). I ended up with my finger over my head-set mic shouting over and over "get out of my cube, get out of my cube". Then that person got angry at me for 'ratting her out' - da fuck?! She was in my cube shouting at me and I was shouting at her, there was no ratting needed - the whole fucking floor had to have heard us.

In a skill up class (I am a seasonal so I work half a year and am off half a year) the person sitting next to me decided to quit and in her exit interview blamed me and said that I burped too much. I was called in for meeting (with the same person who first issued the letter of reprimand) and told me to stop burping, that I was annoying people. I said "isn't this like that stupid 'stinky feet' note?" She said nope that person was no longer with the company (this is the only reference to the incident that anyone ever made - but at least I learned that something was done about it).

I had a team mate tell me he was going to rip my face off. There is more but I just get angry when I dwell. Physical threats pretty much make me chuckle (internally) but I am really, really not very well socialized so I just put my head down and keep doing my job.
So this is the source of my 'random acts of art' project - I seem to inspire very odd behavior in other people (one of the 2 people who shouted me in the first event is still with the company - we are cordial. Someone tried to explain it to me that strong people evoke strong emotions. I seem to gather enemies and I have to assume that I have allies also because, well, I have to believe that. But I do not trust my co-workers - and does not inspire me to reach out.

Situational code-switching

When I was about 24, I started using my middle name (the first name of my father who actually preferred to be called Rod) Rodger. The reason is immaterial for this conversation. What it allowed me to do w/o a struggle was to keep my lives separate to a far deeper extent than I or anyone else noticed. It went so deep that when I played with my friends' kids I would say "come to uncle Greg" (I really wish I had been able to be an uncle for Ky and Chantal, I will try with great nieces and nephews - that was one of my jokes when Ky and Chantal had kids - I am not just an uncle, I am a great uncle). I was a wonderful uncle to the local kids; we would roughhouse, I would use them like nun-chuks, fly them in circles, tumble down hills with them. So the original code-switch was - if I am uncle Greg, we have a different conversation than if I am Rodger. It was a way to allow them (and me) to know what language we would be speaking.

In the following vignettes you will see me as Rodger - Rodger and Uncle Greg are the same person and both will show up but Rodger is also not uncle Greg. Uncle Greg would not have survived a night of drinking and doing acid at a biker gang's prospect party - but to be honest, Uncle Greg did have a run-in with a biker gang over an ex-girlfriend (a story for another time) - my very first girlfriend with whom I had sex, sicced a biker gang on me. Her biker boyfriend was pissed because she was pregnant with my kid but he had to face her parents.

There is a website for people who want to reach out; they are often in pain, have no idea of where to turn or how to make a change. The conversations are limited; they are locked closed to further comment after 6 weeks. The following is a compilation of my confessions and my responses to the confessions of others - the first attempt at this was TL:DR so I am breaking it into more manageable bits.

Some backstory: in 1967 I was the first student at Eastern Montana College to have their dorm room raided for pot; I was just leaving my dorm room (with a lid in my pocket) when the police knocked on the door. "We have reports of you possessing marijuana" I stepped out of the room and said "there is no pot in my room". They sat me in a chair and proceeded to take my room apart looking for pot - they found a bottle of Everclear. I was sweating big-time since the pot was in my pocket but they never searched me (pot was still 5-10 year hard-time state felony.). I joined the Marine Corps the summer of '68 for reasons that are still not clear to me. Long story short, I was honorably discharged for medical reasons in December '69 but not before I had my first taste of acid.

The first 3 years after I got out of the USMC, are very confusing to me. I have a lot of difficulty getting the events organized in a time sequence. These were some of the most important years of my life and how I would develop - I may spend some time trying to put those years in perspective. But it is late and time for bed.

I keep wanting to go back and add more detail like taking karate classes from a Korean instructor from 1966 to 68 (though I was never really any good, it gave me a lot of confidence and a certain grace when I walked). At the time it was OkinawaTe but it is called Taekwondo now.

 I suppose I could go on and on and on as I keep triggering new, random memories.

Dynamic tension

I am not that small slice of time you think I am.

When I was a boy, my brother and I were tossing rocks into a small lake in the woods (Echo Lake??) - we skipped some rocks. Every once and a while one of the rocks hit on edge and sink with a gloop - Gerry called it 'cutting the devil's throat' (no idea??); the rock would not make a ripple. That is how I imagine my passing, slipping below the surface leaving no ripples.

I have always thought of myself as a zero, someone of no import with nothing to say of myself except that I lived this long - just a schlub. I talk with my friends, people who do good things who are in all aspects more than I - why don't they have better stories to tell? I spend 95% of my life alone in my room but I have better stories - what is wrong with them?

So, back in my youth I used to burp a lot; I mean Olympic quality burps - 3rd graders would be stunned with awe at my burps. Turns out I had an hiatal hernia (the sphincter muscle that closes off the esophagus passes through the diaphragm and the 2 muscles work together - my esophagus is displaced and does not have enough strength to close off from the stomach so the stomach acids can enter the esophagus) plus an esophageal ulcer; this created some problems that lead to the burps. I did not know all this and did not find out until about 20 years later. I thought that I was somehow swallowing air as I ate. I went to a clinic at Harborview Hospital  to get a painful warp removed from my hand and happened to mention that I swallowed a lot of air when I ate. The clinician told me that they had an expert on hand who could take care of the wart and he asked me to wait for a bit until the expert was free. After 45 minutes the guy stopped by to say the expert would be by at any moment. Finally, after another half hour wait the expert stopped in with the clinician and said "What's this about chewing on your hair and beard?"

I was confused "hunh? what are you talking about?" - the doctor asked "do you swallow a lot of hair when you eat?" "No, I swallow a lot of AIR when I eat" - the doctor gave the clinician a nasty look and started to leave so I asked "what about the wart?" - the doctor told the clinician to get me a bottle of compound W and pay attention to what people said. They were going to lock me up in the crazy ward because the stupid clinician misheard what I said.

I stopped by my favorite coffee shop (now a pizza place and coffee shop) like I usually do on Sundays to read and have my favorite sandwich an English muffin & sausage with cheddar cheese, tomato and basted egg - I have to teach the chefs what basted means!?!?!? served open-faced with no damned fork. Yes, I have to be that specific because I want to be the one who breaks the yoke so open-faced, no fork because it is a sandwich - and if the chef does not know what basted means, I will explain or do not make the sandwich. They once served me an over-hard egg - I told the server I would eat it this time but never again. So now I ask who the chef is before I order (I got the idea from the Japanese movie "Tampopo" - the scene with the gangster and his moll kissing and passing a raw egg back and forth from mouth to mouth - you had to be there).  Anyway, I was looking at their new beer menu and noticed that they included the IBUs for the ales; the owner asked what I wanted to drink but I said I was just admiring all the listed IBUs and she said "you should, it was mostly you that we were thinking of when we did it" - I would always ask what the International Bitterness Unit was for the beer I was drinking and no one knew, heh! She said they had a new IPA on tap but since I was not interested in a beer then I told her I would check it next time so she poured me a small shot to taste and it was marvelous; it had that sharp tang of hops bitterness but a real nice fruity mouth - I was going on, then stopped myself and said "but I should'nt sound all 'wine-talky' - it was good beer"
.
On the way home from work, I stopped in to a game store that is on my route (I am trying to 10k steps every day, but damn my knees hurt). I looked around for an old game I used to love called Cosmic Encounters - it was an exciting game requiring a lot of thought and deviousness. I began to talk with the owners about gaming: table-top, D&D, card based games, that sort of stuff - they tried to convince me to go to a gamer-con the next day, my immediate response was "I am not agoraphobic but I do not go far from home". That is not anything I thought about but once it was out of my mouth, it sounded right.

Random act of art

This is a reply to someone on a website called "Dear Anonymous' for people to vent on - the posts are closed and deleted after 3 weeks.

Thanks!

I have already let it go (since i got to vent here).

I do not like being yelled at but I can't carry a grudge

The picture you see is probably my best casting ever. No one will ever get to see it since I do not dare take it anywhere (if someone were to ask for it, I am not sure I could say 'no'). I am a solitary man - I 'beta-tested' my apartment 3 or 4 years ago by inviting some friends over for dinner - no one else has been up here. I do not expect anyone else. Some ask 'why don't you ever call anyone?'; I ask 'why hasn't anyone ever called me?'

I started to assemble all the casting I have made (that I have not given away - I try to keep at least one example of everything) - there are things I forgot I did, things that I did not realize I could do. Every time I clean some part of my apt., I find more crap/castings. They were on the window-sills, on the bookshelves, under stuff on the table, behind stuff in the work room - shit, I even stepped on one piece when I went into the back bedroom to answer the phone (er, I keep my phone in an unused bedroom).

My random acts of art is going well - the other day, I was admiring an old, restored Harley out front of a rehab center; I asked who the owner was, they said he was inside and pointed to an unmarked door (next to the coffee shop/center) - it was pretty dingy and there was only one guy in there all tattooed and leathered up staring at me sullenly. I asked if he owned the bike out front, he nodded, then I said I really liked it and started my spiel "I have a project I call 'random acts of art' and you can choose one of these objects". I don't think he quite knew what to make of me! Worse, the only pieces I had left were a heart, a Hello Kitty, and a black 'ninja turtle' - he chose the turtle sort of reluctantly. I said "I really do like your bike" and walked out. This worked out just as I like - I walk in, blind-side a stranger, and walk out never to see them again. One day, I will list some of my 'art hits' somewhere.

I mentioned that I dropped some off at work 'anonymously' well, someone I like a lot received a heart (I think - this was a random art hit, I did not know she got one) - figured out it was me because of the art show I did a few months ago. She thanked me and I nodded and said "shhhhh" - she smiled and I walked away. Sigh! This is the part where i worry about doing this at work - having to deal with people after the art hit. I would rather just do 'hit and run' type things.

The reason the octopus will probably remain unique - I had to destroy the mold to get it out and it was pretty complex to create the mold, color it and so on. Most of the things I make are pretty quick one-offs and the molds are reusable - hell, I even keep using the molds after they break to create what i call monsters. I have block-heads (the bottom falls out of the mold) and crack-heads (the mold splits into parts) making interesting 'adjustments' to the basic images. A skull mold split into 3 pieces so, depending on how I arrange the mold, I get skulls that look perfect but you can see faint lines or they look like they were broken and reassembled by a 3 year old.

Crap - sorry for talking your ear off

Onion Boy

When I finally grew up and became self-aware (mid to late 20s), one of the scariest aphorisms I read was "an unexamined life is not worth living". There was an emptiness just barely coated by a thin film of learned social responses. I have no idea how I was perceived by others but apparently mom and dad were worried enough about me that they sent me to a monastery in North Dakota (Assumption Abbey) for my freshman year of high school. I learned some interesting things there. Every day from 6:00pm to 7:00pm, we got on our knees and prayed at our desks; at the front of the room was a clock - by the end of the school year, watching the second hand, I could 'go away' within 5 seconds and not come back until prayers were over. Some people think I was just sleeping but the monks would have beaten me silly if they caught me sleeping - I was never caned like some of the wilder boys (all boys Catholic school) but I did get bent over a desk a couple times and whacked with a yardstick. Anyway, I do not know where I went; was it meditation? Why did/do I feel so good when I am back in my body? I was repeating the prayers with everyone else so could mean that it was a form of the chanting meditations (nom miyoho rengee kio or om mani padme hum) rather than the current 'mindful' meditation being practiced where you just breath. The next thing I learned was to not be in my body when something bad was happening like being beat with coat-hangers by upperclassmen - I could watch what was happening but not be in it. Another thing I learned is that even if someone beat the crap out of me then asked me if I learned anything, just say "I learned pain hurts" not give them any satisfaction. Then I took karate as soon as there was a class available which was when I went off to college - I did not care much for hitting people but I learned quite enough that no one ever hit me again - er, more than once my defense was almost impenetrable which did not win me any tournaments (though I did get 3rd place in board-breaking.

My place in the family was always the basement. my sister Jacquie always got the 2nd bedroom upstairs while Gerry and I lived in the basement. I was talking with Jacquie the other day and brought up the basement dwelling and she said "Oh, that is why I have no memories of us being together growing up". Dad was always in his bedroom reading or just laying there. I asked Jacquie about it and she says that she and dad used to play games until she got to a certain age and that stopped - this is similar to mom's stories about how dad used to play with Gerry and I while they were courting and for a while after they were married then it stopped. Dad was so extremely shy/introverted that he never talked to anyone (I guess over a certain age) - pretty odd for a bank loan officer (I later learned that the locals called him Mr. Giggles behind his back, for his nervous laugh, I suppose). Only at the cabin did he ever really talk to us and that was usually over drinks.

Living in the  basement was interesting, it started when dad bought a house on the hill in Livingston; there were 2 bedrooms upstairs and an unfinished basement. I think that building a bedroom for us down there was about the only real 'handy' thing dad did. But that house is the house at the edge of civilization mentioned in other posts about Livingston. The first 2 houses we lived in in P'wood (many sticks, murmurtonia and other odd kid names for the town) were on the crick. The first house did not have enough bedrooms so Gerry and I slept on the porch until dad found a house with enough room (ie a basement for us boys) but we did not stay there long; don't know if it was because the previous owner died in the basement when the crick flooded and the basement wall collapsed on him but that kind of creeped us boys out. Then we moved into the Boundary house with another basement but this one had a mother-in-law basement apt with sink and 2 rooms with a bathroom.

I knew how to play chess and so did my brother and he would come home and make me play him but I beat him almost every time and he would so damned angry. Sometimes I would pretend to be asleep when he got home but he would wake me up to play and I still beat him. I pretended to be asleep because I never got to sleep before 3 or 4 in the morning; I would just lie there in the dark thinking my thoughts; eventually, I started making up stories in my head where I was not quite so alone. Then I got a radio and listened to CKCK (CK62) out of Regina I think - at about one in the morning they had a 5th wheel program for long haul truckers that was 2 hours of comedy albums. Can you imagine listening to 2 hours of full comedy albums every night! Shelly Berman, Bob Newhart, Dick Gregory, Godfrey Cambridge many,.many others I can't remember right now. I suppose that contributed to what some see as my sense of humor. It was always cold in the basement in the winter; it got so that I needed the cold sometimes - like I would sleep with the window over the bed open (so this was after Gerry got married so I was promoted to his bed). I remember sometimes waking up to shake the snow off my blanket and closing the window. Other times I remember being so cold my feet never warmed up.

more later, maybe

Tears

What a stunning eulogy! What a great man! What a wonderful President of these UNITED States!