All these thoughts are but a few decades worth of babble
That came to mind during the wandering from one adventure to
the next,
Reflections of an unsought existence born of the choiceless
repast of the genetic lottery,
In an inexplicable mystery too infinitely unfathomable to
claim any knowing.
* * * *
This is the thesis I would have liked to have had available
early on in this life,
And hope is still floating about if perchance I am required
to one day begin anew.
If there is a deity of the supreme variety, hopefully
he/she/it will not be so malicious
As to fling me back into this often hellish dream of
gratuitous suffering and angst.
* * * *
There is always a chance that some of these many ditties
have been poorly written,
Or that there is a grammatical, spelling, punctuation, or
other semantic error.
Never hesitate to cross the t’s and dot the i’s with your
own intuition.
After all, that is really all you have to go by in this
quest for truth.
* * * *
Bit by bit, ditty after ditty, one ditty at a time.
Who knows how many have been written, and more than that,
But for those so many lost by unbidden chance and
inattentive happenstance.
The fate, the fates, oh what destiny do they reckon before
time’s end?
* * * *
These many thoughts are left for humankind’s unfolding
reverie,
Written by a witness, a seer, who was born in 1953 A.D.
To what duration he cannot at this writing say.
Geographically, it was called Northern California
During the agricultural-industrial-technological epoch
Of the United States of America, a nation-state
In what seemed the zenith and early decline
Of civilization as he elected to perceive it.
But history knows many such epochs
So the accuracy of all predictions in time
Is for future scholars to ponder and pontificate
As they always have, and undoubtedly always will.
* * * *
This is how these many aphoristic observations came to be:
One by one bubbling up in the daily wander.
Pen and paper ever in hand.
None sought.
No stories to be told.
No fame, no fortune, no power.
The life of a peasant in an extraordinary time,
In which so many things were easily achieved, easily
experienced,
And the arrogance of humankind approached its zenith.
* * * *
Why spend so much time penning all this rather meaningless
silliness, you might well ask.
Well, the woeful truth is this aging mortal container can
only carouse
So many hours of these winter daze, anymore.
And what remains is philosophy.
The title of the next book might well be:
The Hedonist’s Guide to Higher Consciousness.
* * * *
I am a liar, I am a cheat, I am a thief, and I plot murder
and mayhem daily.
But I am only a hypocrite when given moments of vanity force my hand.
* * * *
Once upon a time I thought I knew something.
It took a long time to realize I was mistaken.
* * * *
I think, therefore I think I am.
* * * *
I watch, I taste, I smell, I listen, I feel,
And then I scribble
whatever comes to mind.
Quite a thing to experience, of that you can be sure.
* * * *
Didn't ask to be here, ain't prayin' to be stayin'.
* * * *
Herein is what these eyes have seen,
Given freely for time to do with it what it will
In whatever way the theater of consciousness dictates
In its unparalleled experiment of free will.
* * * *
Without pen and paper in hand,
Yet another aphoristic witty
Goes swish in the wind.
Easy come, easy go.
* * * *
What more can be said?
Apparently a great deal.
* * * *
Ah, alas, this poor body.
Having to contain a Soul seeker,
A god-mind in the making,
Is rarely ever easy.
* * * *
I am not Buddha, nor Jesus, nor Lao Tzu,
Nor any other of the countless ones
Come so many times before.
I am Michael, but any name will do,
For we are all in reality the same one as you.
* * * *
Trial by fucking fire, I calls it.
* * * *
Not interested in anything requiring a middleman with
his/her hand out.
* * * *
A mystical Quixote if ever there was one.
* * * *
Vanity so great that the audacity to scribe all these
thoughts only grew in time.
* * * *
Mission accomplished.
* * * *
Epiphanies unending,
Each a spontaneous twinkle of insight
Punctuating one streaming contemplation after another.
* * * *
Do not see this human drama
Going any direction I need to see,
Much less one in which I want to be.
* * * *
Caught in a mind too easily given over to the world.
A vamp for seemingly every sort of novel experience.
* * * *
Never need to meet anyone or anything again.
* * * *
Off in the timeless zone yet again.
Would that it were not so easy to stay there.
We likes our busy-busy mind, don’t we, my precious?
* * * *
A chatty antichrist, are I not?
* * * *
Thoughts of every variety written for a relatively small
audience,
And who they are, or where they are, entirely unknowable.
Ergo, the Johnny Appleseed scatter-it-about approach.
And if nothing comes of it in the dreamtime to come, so be
it.
* * * *
He who was, no longer is.
At least some of the time.
* * * *
A scribe, nothing more.
* * * *
Considering the seeds of your beginning, what a truly
amazing journey it has been.
* * * *
Alas, not given the mind to write great narratives.
Stuck in an aphoristic mode that will likely
Not see the light of too many daze.
* * * *
Thousands and thousands of hours of babbling away
About something that will likely die on the vine.
What a waste of a perfectly good existence.
* * * *
Another satisfying ditty moment followed my many hence.
* * * *
Leaving the dreamtime these thoughts to do with whatever it
pleases.
* * * *
Do not for a second believe all these thoughts are in the
order they were written.
* * * *
Be sure to realize there is a very precise, almost
legalistic use of words in all this.
* * * *
How often these little ditties, when they do not come out
practically camera-ready,
End up transmuting into something very-if-not-entirely
different,
As they stream from eternity into time.
* * * *
Odds are, the further down the road you are, the less impact
you will have.
* * * *
He enjoyed writing. he enjoyed the words.
He enjoyed the definitions, the spelling, the grammar.
He enjoyed the word processing, the spellcheck that saved
him,
The thesaurus that catapulted the many thoughts many
unexpected directions.
And most of all he enjoyed the many reveries that inspired
it all.
* * * *
Yes, I am Buddha, though sometimes I forget, and must wander
about for a bit,
Until I eventually remember who-what-where-when-why-how I
truly am.
And no, not into saffron robes this round, and no followers,
either.
To much bothersome confusion the far too common result.
* * * *
The tension of existence, it will not be missed.
* * * *
Not even a smidgen of interest in setting up some
roadshow-sideshow
Marketed into something all shiny and bright and new
In the nothing-new-under-the-sun file.
* * * *
I got mine.
Up to you to find yours.
* * * *
A dues-paying member of the food chain since 1953.
* * * *
And to the Reaper he said, “What took you so long?”
* * * *
A mind that explores anything and everything to the gist
degree.
* * * *
Lordy, what would I do without spellcheck and a thesaurus?
* * * *
I might think someone is a villain, an idiot, a fool,
But I more than likely will not execute them for it.
* * * *
Pfft, I say, pfft.
* * * *
Just finishing out a life sentence without concern or
fanfare.
* * * *
A prophet of oblivion.
* * * *
Veni, Vidi, Scritti.
I came, I saw, I wrote.
* * * *
The agenda daily diminishes.
* * * *
Sometimes the mind is very still, and sometimes, obviously,
it is not.
* * * *
Got a hankering for the Great Nada, a yearning for some
quantum oblivion.
* * * *
All these words count for nothing.
* * * *
These brief thoughts are all you need
To go where no mortal can go.
They are sincere and true
From one who sees it all as you.
* * * *
A paucity of words, what would that be like?
* * * *
What is left to question, to ponder, to wonder, to gorge, to
drink?
Surely, this hodgepodge is more than enough for any
wayfarer.
* * * *
These many thoughts come from where everything comes:
The mystery, the enigma, the unknown; call it whatever you
will,
You impromptu players, you jazz cats of the eternal stage.
* * * *
This is the work I would hope to find were I ever come back
to the is fine mess.
* * * *
A cantankerous old fart who has lived far too long to ever
be missed.
* * * *
Yet another mortal player penning endless absurdities about
nothing much ado.
* * * *
The scribe is just as mad as everyone else in this asylum.
Just another inmate, another monkey-mind in the jungle of
Eden.
The only nuance of a difference is a somewhat rational,
introspective eye,
For some reason inclined to explore the observer and
observed within and without.
* * * *
What a prison the body can become as it loses its wellbeing,
Especially to a spirit no longer intoxicated with the vanity
of existence,
Incarcerated in the space and time of a mind, of a body, of
a world, of a universe,
Playing an infinitesimal function in a ephemeral dream for
which there is no longer appetite.
* * * *
In all honesty, I am just another god-damned fucking monkey,
Often weary of acting out a mind so incredibly steeped in
balderdash.
Just doing the so-it-goes as long as the going is not too
painfully intolerable.
* * * *
Seemingly mortal, yet not all the time.
Seemingly carefree, yet not all the time.
Seemingly arrogant, yet not all the time.
Seemingly egocentric, yet not all the time.
Seemingly narcissistic, yet not all the time.
Seemingly sociopathic, yet not all the time.
Seemingly psychopathic, yet not all the time.
Seemingly courageous, yet not all the time.
Seemingly intelligent, yet not all the time.
Seemingly attached, yet not all the time.
Seemingly relaxed, yet not all the time.
Seemingly intense, yet not all the time.
Seemingly foolish, yet not all the time.
Seemingly this or that, yet not all the time.
Seemingly so many things, yet not all the time.
* * * *
Many things were done, many things were undone.
These many thoughts, many insightful, many foolish,
Are the mind’s harvest of this life’s many adventures.
* * * *
What new trial will today’s wander inflict upon this poor
body?
He wondered with a sigh as he set stepped gingerly out the
door.
* * * *
Biding my time, making the best of this perdition.
Not at all interested in being a human being ever again.
Have experienced far more that would have ever been
imagined.
Existence is no longer necessary in any dimension.
The quantum singularity beckons.
* * * *
The only Gaia that could call me back
To another voluntary existence
Would be the one before fire was harnessed,
The one before humankind began its cancerous ascension.
But, alas, that garden, that Eden, is long since spent, long
since played out,
And no time machine, no portal, no wormhole, but
imagination, at the ready at this reckoning.
* * * *
The dream can do whatever it wants with these many words.
They came to mind in their own effortless way,
And it was an enjoyable process
Putting pen to paper.
* * * *
Would that it were so easy to be as impersonal as Mister
Spock.
* * * *
A rich life on the edge of a dime.
* * * *
Makes my head spin, too.
* * * *
And everything written by this hand
May well be completely off-base.
Could be just a lot of wasted existence
That could have been better spent elsewhere.
* * * *
No creed, no dress code, no edifice, no heaven, no hell, no
groupthink.
Just a few too many thoughts with which you are welcome to
spend time or not.
Oblivion beckons if you can hear the soundless and taste the
tasteless.
* * * *
Mister Just-in-Case.
* * * *
Some callings do not earn a paycheck.
* * * *
These thoughts come to mind of their own accord.
An effort effortlessly composing its Self.
To what end, if any, unknown.
* * * *
Another day in a weary, achy, aging body.
The life sentence in purgatory marches on.
* * * *
Still here, still collecting that statistical sample
On what it is to dream a very human dream.
* * * *
A happy fate it is to be all but ignored.
To wander, witness to it all, anonymous.
* * * *
What to do when the favorite time of day
Becomes the oblivion of dreamless sleep.
* * * *
These many thoughts, well, they are sort of a
long-view-Johnny-Appleseed thing.
Good old vanity playing out the delayed gratification that
history offers the dead.
* * * *
Woke up again this morning.
Back for more of what I never really wanted or needed in the
first place.
Thanks, Mom. Thanks,
Dad.
* * * *
Most of the original small spiral notebooks and sundry
scraps of paper
Are in landfills near Chico and Turlock in Northern
California.
There is an ever-growing corpus of blank index cards
From some of the more recent dittyfesting.
* * * *
So many staring into the screens of technological absurdity,
Mother Nature all but abandoned, little more than a
resource.
What’s to come of it all but a mystic philosopher’s musing.
* * * *
A little something for those who will endure the dystopian
now
The mind of humankind hath blindly wrought upon paradise.
* * * *
Somebody had to think it, write it, say it,
And it looks like you got the short straw.
* * * *
One slightly younger friend once remarked:
“You are either the craziest person I know, or the sanest,
I’m not sure which.”
The essence of the fabled Catch-22, to be sure.
* * * *
Woke up again this morning, and it ain’t over yet.
Pass the peas, Mildred.
* * * *
My thread, my raison d'etre.
* * * *
Can you feel that meme’s dull, rusty blade sawing through
your trachea,
Down through the artery while your screams turn into a
frothy gurgle.
* * * *
These many thoughts redundant? Well, of course they are redundant.
The entire human drama is redundant to an absurd degree,
And not likely to be any less so anytime soon.
* * * *
I think I have nothing to say as well as anybody.
* * * *
In a race never run, a dark horse, indeed.
* * * *
Brought to you in a Joe Everyman form.
* * * *
Another inexplicable post from oblivion.
* * * *
Creating things for a future about which I can only shake my
head.
* * * *
First, I gave you my mind, then, I left it.
* * * *
God wakes up every night in a cold sweat
Knowing what is going to happen
When I am done here.
* * * *
Quantum jester.
* * * *
Word association, ain’t it fun.
* * * *
No one should die or suffer for anything I have ever said or
written.
These myriad thoughts should never be taken dogmatically.
They are but a reflective process of Self-discovery.
Passing time, jousting with words, if you will.
Discern your own way; mimic no one.
* * * *
So many very, very foolish moments to foster all these
sagacious insights.
* * * *
Just filling in the time with whatever thoughts come to
mind.
* * * *
A life filled with epiphany after epiphany.
* * * *
What makes you think I would save this world of monkeys even
if I could?
* * * *
An eclectic existence, a statistically sound sample from
beginning to end.
What richer life could one have ever hoped for, much less
planned?
Are tranquility and contentment at some point even a choice?
* * * *
Random thoughts from the mind quantum built.
* * * *
A gift to the future, nothing more, nothing less.
Take it or leave it, no matter to this pile of dust.
* * * *
What a state of serenity,
That clear space of awareness
From which these many thoughts spring.
* * * *
Rambles of the daily mind.
* * * *
Do not even for a second believe that I did not more than a
few times play the demon.
I am a liar, a cheat, a thief, and plot murder and mayhem
daily.
And I am guardian serving and protecting all.
I am consciousness,
Every facet unfurled as the given mind calls.
* * * *
Betrayed too many times by family, friends, strangers, and
foes alike.
What’s to learn but that innocence is a realm not long left
untarnished.
* * * *
An interesting hobby, to what end, if any, I know not, nor
really care.
Best wishes, but I am not very optimistic that the future
Is going to get prettier anytime soon.
* * * *
What a laughably absurd fate
To have given so much of the existence given
To setting down these many thoughts
For a potential readership,
So few of which
One will ever chance to meet.
* * * *
I think, therefore I think I am.
If I do not think, where am I, where am I not?
* * * *
Seen enough for this lifetime and a few more.
* * * *
Getting pretty quiet in this old cabeza sometimes.
* * * *
Always the water boy.
* * * *
Pondering the dream one ditty at a time.
* * * *
Now all that is left is for someone to bother proving all
this wrong.
* * * *
All these thoughts, what is consciousness up to use this
mind so?
What will be the future part, if any, they might play in
this dreamy play of time.
Who can ever begin to fathom the impact they have had on
this theater during their brief time,
Much less after the food body’s inevitable, often arduous
dissolution.
* * * *
When will it end? he once again wondered
As yet another ditty scrawled its way
Across the empty index card.
* * * *
Just another channel, another portal, another vision,
another pen,
Passing the time scribing a variety of thoughts about the
nothing-new-nothing-old of it.
Whatever writings survive the mill will play out however
they play out,
But as for them inciting any great ripple in the paradigm,
Odds are too-little-too-late-nil-to-none.
* * * *
So many adventures because I was willing to play the fool.
* * * *
It could well be very challenging, very bothersome
Not to make all these thoughts into yet another dogmatic
enterprise.
The best counsel is to use this to discern your own voice,
and then kick away the ladder.
* * * *
The memes are too strong, too fierce, too greedy for more.
Just cannot summon the energy to fight the fight that needs
to be fought
To put this out-of-control dream on a more sustainable track
Of caring guardianship of this frail world.
* * * *
Good these many thoughts might be working for some,
But I only penned them as they bubbled into consciousness
Because the writing process was an interesting way to fill
the time.
In no way do I believe they will ever significantly alter
the human drama
In any way or shape or form that might be deemed significant
and meaningful.
* * * *
A sociable loner.
* * * *
Is it what you want, or is it what consciousness wants?
* * * *
Another cosmic dancer sets down yet another gita, yet
another song of godness.
* * * *
Never had much of an agenda for this dreamy world,
So I just played out whatever time and circumstance allowed.
And when the fellow with the sickle finally tapped me on the
shoulder,
The bucket was as empty as the day I arrived,
And the much ado about nothing
Was happily left behind.
* * * *
Free-form aphorisms are the jazz of a god mind.
* * * *
Ever wandering back and forth between the everything and the
nothing,
Delving in the here and there, watching the show in whatever
way the dream calls.
The Buddha mind and the Michael mind, the dreamer and the
dreamed.
* * * *
Time to wrap up this life’s work,
Its point and purpose, its raison d'être,
To whatever end fate allows.
* * * *
The words, the words,
From the vast stillness within,
From the greatest mystery ever told,
They do sprinkle, they do pour.
* * * *
My, you do dally in absurdity, you fool, you.
* * * *
Have not made a dime on all this silliness,
But at least I have not been sculpted into a lawn piece,
Been hung out to dry on a wooden cross on some barren
height,
Had my head slowly lopped off by a dull, rusty blade,
Or been shot as I come out some front door.
But the day ain’t over, yet.
* * * *
Through all the pain and pleasure these hands have wrought,
These words do etch the thoughts that without effort come.
* * * *
Here to inspire doubt to the nth degree.
* * * *
So much suffering
For these many thoughts
To brew into the misty dreamtime.
* * * *
Must go, another vain distraction beckons.
* * * *
How bleak the future this mind envisions.
So sorry to you who must endure a garden so undone
By the well-beyond-the-pale foolishness of these modern
times,
The foolishness no one could more than bid stop.
* * * *
No, this human drama is not going to end
With some Hollywood-Bollywood happy ending.
More likely a stark, dystopian, existential no-mans land.
And that’s from an eternal optimist’s point of view.
* * * *
A troubadour of the unfathomable way.
No fame, no fortune, no power.
Just content just to be.
* * * *
The Joyful Curmudgeon.
* * * *
We have scarred this garden world well beyond this witness’s
interest in it,
So these thoughts are merely an endowment for those who are
yet to be born,
Those who must endure whatever dystopian malaise is left in
the human journey.
The insects, and whatever other life forms manage to survive
us, will not care.
* * * *
A real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land, making all
his nowhere plans for nobody.
* * * *
This is what comes out of this mind; what becomes of it is
not a concern.
* * * *
An asymmetric life for asymmetric times.
* * * *
An original work, whatever that is.
* * * *
Hey, it fills the time.
* * * *
All this silliness is written first and foremost for my own
amusement.
What anyone else may or may not think of it or me is their
own affair.
* * * *
Who knows how many thousands of hours,
And not more than relatively few pennies to show for it.
How can there be a charge for what was freely given, I say,
I say.
* * * *
Marketing this overly much
Would likely only foster another inanity.
Best just to scatter it about Johnny Appleseed-style
For those rare few who are fallow ground.
* * * *
This is what you were born to do.
Surprise, surprise, indeed.
* * * *
Just toying with words
Until that last wheezing breath
Escapes this sack of flesh and bones.
* * * *
Woke up again this morning in this weary, achy body.
Ugh and groan, this getting old stuff is sure getting old.
* * * *
Where do these words come from? is a question without
answer.
* * * *
Just as vain and mortal as everyone else.
* * * *
Looking forward to oblivion and some good eternal snooze
time.
* * * *
How am I?
Well enough, it seems,
To continue playing out the mirage.
* * * *
Another contribution to the dreamstream.
* * * *
Oy vey, how many more years of this silliness!?
* * * *
Just one of myriad portals come and gone before, each with
its own distinct telling.
* * * *
Whether or not there will be legs or wings to all these
thoughts,
Whether or not the seeds that have been tossed into so many
minds,
Will blossom into something more in humanity’s journey,
Is for time’s telling by some yet-to-come watcher
Of the all-things-quantum-matrix kind.
* * * *
It is consciousness that wrote this,
And it is consciousness that will employ it
To whatever end it may or may not have in mind.
* * * *
No need to keep finding ways to inflict pain on this poor
old body.
* * * *
Dallying with paper and pen again, are we?
* * * *
No one is forcing you to read this
Any more than the scribe was forced to write it.
We are all drawn to destinies beyond our original reckoning.
* * * *
A few thoughts, written for what future may come.
* * * *
Have you ever read this one before,
Or is all this silly patter blurring together?
It certainly has for this Sisyphus in the daily toil,
Wrestling the rock of vanity up the hill.
And still they bubble, bubble
From mind to paper,
Each unique in its own little way.
An inexplicable calling, a mystery, indeed.
* * * *
No longer a garden to which you would ever choose to return.
* * * *
Do not look for continuity here.
A mishmash from the get-go.
* * * *
Gistmeister.
* * * *
Witness,
Observer, spectator,
Passenger, onlooker, eyewitness,
Viewer, watcher, bystander, beholder, voyeur,
Looker-on, fly on the wall, rubberneck,
Commentator, reporter, monitor,
Journalist, correspondent,
Passerby, sightseer
Hack, stringer,
All the same That I Am.
* * * *
Nobody’s king, nobody’s slave, just another monkey swinging
through Eden.
* * * *
These many thoughts,
Born of this mind’s brief dream,
Are the best I can do for you
Who seek the truth of You.
* * * *
Running out of steam for this world, or any other.
Another universe, another tour of samsara, almost done.
Another mortal adventure through manifest time
Ready to disincorporate into oblivion.
* * * *
May as well throw all this gibberish away
For all the interest it is drawing
And good it’s doing.
Missing out
On some fine walks.
* * * *
Prove me wrong if you can.
* * * *
From a very small, quiet corner of the world stage,
The nondescript reality once again comes to light.
* * * *
Please, please, please, do not make this
Into yet another ridiculously bothersome dogma.
See if you can own it without brokering yet another inanity.
* * * *
For all these thoughts,
The scribe does suffer.
Was such a fool ever born?
* * * *
The pitter-patter of a body-mind giving itself over to
awareness.
* * * *
The never-ending conundrum of the human spectacle,
With all its ceaselessly inane and insane problems and
absurdities,
Has finally grown too pointless to give such daily focus.
In whatever time remains in the given dream,
This coffee shop philosopher-mystic
Is at last, finally, all but done.
* * * *
In any given facet of any day-to-day,
These many thoughts over time came to mind.
With a disciplined pen in hand, and notebook at the ready,
The I Am known as Michael wrote them down,
Shaped them into digital transcription.
All done with good intentions
And best wishes.
* * * *
Another day of scribing begins,
Just breathing in the streaming.
* * * *
All those voices in your head,
Well, my fine pretty, I’m one of them.
Bwahahahaha …
* * * *
The eternal historian.
* * * *
Please, please, please,
Do not make this into any sort of dogma.
All the opinions in all this are no different than anyone
else’s.
Ultimately, squat.
It is really mostly about
Waking up to what you really are.
* * * *
Among the many who set this mind upon its course,
‘Twas Gina Vance called to turn the final card.
* * * *
Who knows what I’m talking about, anyway?
* * * *
Not too many people interested in you,
And you, less and less in them, as well.
Nobody’s answer to anything, indeed.
* * * *
Just putting a few thoughts out into the cacophony,
On the off and very improbably chance
They might someday take root,
Perhaps even bear fruit,
In the unfolding dystopian times,
Already bearing down side of the horizon.
For better or worse, wither or blossom, here they are.
* * * *
A collection earnest observations and thoughts,
A gift for any who care to ponder such things.
* * * *
Sorry, ladies and gents, just cannot seem to help my Self,
Life and times has fashioned me into something
Of a mirthy, curmudgeony-kind-a-guy.
There are, indeed, limitations
That detain all of us.
Oh well.
* * * *
An aphoristic treatise with no need of an audience.
* * * *
In every venue of this wandering existence,
These many thoughts have come to mind,
Etched by pen onto the paper at hand,
Without effort, with little rhyme or reason.
* * * *
A work you will never finish, and could never begin again.
* * * *
El Escribano.
* * * *
Everything that came to mind,
Captured by pen and paper in hand,
Into this meandering, esoteric, nebulous work.
* * * *
Just leaving behind what mind I had before I lost it all.
* * * *
How many thoughts do scamper and frolic upon paper this day.
What a hodgepodge of thoughts have been journaled
These last score-and-counting turns of sun.
Clear enough by all reckonings
If I do say so, my Self.
* * * *
Reflections, that’s all they are is reflections.
Do with them what you will.
* * * *
Please note that, in this work, in all these many thoughts,
That there are no claims to some higher connection
Being made, that are not yours to own, as well.
* * * *
Into history, I Am, once again.
* * * *
Toying with human history’s future-past,
A verbose back-burn, so to speak,
For what dreams may come.
* * * *
Editorial comment strewn across every page.
* * * *
If you think some of these ponders are a-kilter,
Just realize even the scribe looks askance
At more than a few of them sometimes.
Must have meant something at some point.
* * * *
Passed it out randomly, indiscriminately, to see all the
reactions,
To see how it plays out, this gambit with the history of
humankind.
* * * *
Another reflection in which many others
– Family, friends, acquaintances, strangers,
Creature great and small, things and events –
Played a part, some large, some small.
Nothing is born in isolation.
* * * *
From one of the proudest, least humble of narcissistic
hearts,
These words are set adrift, to what end cannot be known.
* * * *
Those in the times to come
Who discern the Way will perhaps look back
And realize that insights written at the beginning of the
Great Fall
Were written with their best interests in mind
For the times that will follow.
* * * *
Getting too lazy to do much meaningless, bothersome ado
anymore.
* * * *
Toying with history one ditty at a time.
* * * *
Step by step,
Thought by thought,
This trail of aphoristic inquiry,
A creation for all time,
Writes its Self.
* * * *
Waking up to yet another day,
The weary, worn, torn, tattered prizefighter
Staggers out from his enigmatic corner for another round.
* * * *
Mein Kampf
* * * *
Thoughts for a day I will never see.
* * * *
What is left in this weary sack oft flesh and bones,
Still reasonably upright and tolerably aligned,
Let time play out as light and sound divine.
* * * *
Woke up again a few moments ago.
Another ditty before I snooze off again.
* * * *
Spinning minds into another alignment since 1990.
* * * *
What is there for the mystic seer to leave behind
But yet another set of writings examining the inexplicable
In whatever way the given inner vision and linguistic
capacity allow.
* * * *
To have thought, written, transcribed, and edited all this …
Yowza!
* * * *
It being the nature of this epic manifestation,
Somebody was destined to write it,
And in this act, it turned out to be little old moi.
Not anticipated, not planned, not sought, let me assure you.
It just sort of dripped into consciousness.
It just sort of wrote its Self.
* * * *
Odds are that the only reader of any life work will be its
author.
* * * *
Another little ditty for time to do what it will.
Just a solo act who enjoys writing and being relatively
anonymous.
If these many thoughts are ever to become known,
It will be up to others to share it.
* * * *
Sincere words that will likely
Never be heard earnestly enough
To make any real or lasting difference
In the course of human events.
* * * *
These many thoughts
Keep streaming into mind.
I do not know what to do with them
Except to share them freely with any and all
In whom they may find resonance.
* * * *
Bullshit Alert! Bullshit Alert!
Bullshit on Deck! Bullshit on Deck!
Bullshit Alert! Bullshit Alert!
* * * *
An apologist for eternity,
A reluctant prophet, indeed.
* * * *
The amusement of the scribe
Is to have thought, written and read
Everything that came to mind.
* * * *
Dream taster.
Gistmeister.
* * * *
The scribe’s foremost habit in this world
Has been writing the fleeting perceptions
Observed in his stream of consciousness.
Something to do with the journalistic sense
Of the human drama as he has witnessed it.
An idle, somewhat meaningless academic bent
In the mind’s passionate, surrealistic sensory drama,
A journey on the far side if there ever was one.
* * * *
And who else could articulate this vision clearly
But one who has entertained enough possibilities
To discern that the innumerable differences
Are merely fabrications of imagination,
To which pride is the only harbor.
* * * *
Why continue writing this babble?
Because it is amusing, because it is the rutted road
Into which you have mysteriously fallen.
* * * *
Just writing what comes to mind.
No matter if it is never read by a living soul.
Process, punctuated by goals here and there, is all there
is,
So enjoy it as best ye may.
* * * *
What’s the point of writing these many thoughts, anyway?
Who will ever read any more than a few handfuls of them, at
best?
How many better-written things are already published out
there already?
“Why?” you ask.
Because these many thoughts, like pencil sketches to an
artist,
Come unsolicited in the day-to-day wandering walk-about.
And, by golly, it’s just another way to pass the time.
And, frankly, it’s just straight-forward amusing
To tweak a bit with history’s unfolding.
And, no worries if nothing ever comes of it.
* * * *
It writes its Self, you know.
* * * *
Written for a time when humanity’s actions
Have shifted the world into a new level of hell.
Thoughts from a mind that came upon a fountain
From which such thoughts randomly spring.
* * * *
The calling is nearly complete.
So many adventures to reach this point,
This awareness without measure.
* * * *
A personal view, assumption, if you will,
Is that it doesn’t really count
Unless you can do it
Without assistance
In the day-to-day mundane.
* * * *
This would not be written if it were not true
Beyond the farthest shore this mind’s imagination
Could both fathom and articulate in this aphoristic fashion
Anything less would be false.
* * * *
This would not be written
If it did not point to the only truth.
Anything less would be false,
And there is no point
To another lie.
* * * *
In the aphoristic fashion that springs forth from this mind,
The articulation playfully fathoms the unfathomable
Beyond the farthest shores of imagination.
* * * *
How pointless, how absurd to write a body of work
That very few, if any, will ever even attempt to read in
full.
You are a solo act … tinker, tailor, soldier, spy …
From the field beyond all naming.
Mission impossible,
Indeed.
* * * *
Write another day.
* * * *
This forgetful Pan, scribing away the unfolding
rememberings.
* * * *
The world has little need of you,
Nor you of it.
* * * *
A body of work being written one thought at a time.
Indeed, a most wearing journey at times, but, oh well,
Keep on whistling while you work … f you can manage it.
* * * *
You were born to write this, El Escribasimo.
It is your calling, it is your fate, it is your destiny.
* * * *
And the letters crawled and vibrated as they were written.
* * * *
Mad to write all this.
Mad not to.
* * * *
If I was god,
I would want to be me.
Wait a minute,
I am god,
And I am me.
Yowza, imagine that.
* * * *
How else could, why else would
This brand of babble ever be written
But through the endless pain and bother
Inspired by the mortal theater of manifest time?
* * * *
Written for any
In whom what this mind has conjured
Mirrors their own.
* * * *
Much too lengthy a set of writings
To ever publish in its entirety.
So why is it still being written?
Because wordsmithing is so amusing,
And to, perhaps, prod this little theater along, silly.
* * * *
This was written to make things very clear.
In part, for all those limited by their imagination,
But also so I wouldn’t be bothered to come back anymore.
Maybe fins or wings, or perhaps something with four, six, or
eight legs,
But, please, no more of this inane two-legged existence.
It’s just too arduous to watch and participate
In such a madly absurd theater.
* * * *
Almost twenty years
Since this little piece of work
Began to churn into time.
Whoo-hoo, to be sure.
* * * *
Dead man talking, walking, writing.
* * * *
For good or ill,
In the play to come,
It is written.
* * * *
Consciousness has written all this
For whatever purpose, if any, only it knows.
As sages across time and space have left similar thoughts,
So, too, shall these be left to time's reckoning.
* * * *
These writings are adrift
In the abyss of this world's future.
It is too late to reel them in.
Their fate, if any,
Is unknown.
* * * *
These many thoughts were written for Self by Self.
An offering for every vista imagined
In this One’s time
For what time there is to come.
* * * *
Somebody has to write it before it happens.
* * * *
These writings are whatever came to mind.
Please don’t take them so seriously
As to make some sort of inane new drama.
There’s far too much of that in this world already.
* * * *
By one aphorism at a time, the Return to Wonder,
a.k.a. The Stillness Before Time,
Is written.
Each one an insight
Passed on to those who have
The eyes to see and the ears to hear.
For the future, however it rolls.
* * * *
A gift from the Gistmeister,
El Scribe, Yaj Ekim his Self.
* * * *
Not saving anybody here.
Just setting things straight
About the way it really is.
* * * *
Indeed, oh, indeed, I am madness divine,
Divinely pre-ordained, if you will.
* * * *
All these many thoughts,
The pitter-patter of a busy mind
As it groks the life and times,
And gradually grows still.
* * * *
Keep on chipping, Stonecutter.
Rock on, El Scribe.
You go, Yaj.
* * * *
Is the scribe madder than any hatter,
Or is your frame of reference,
Your statistical sample,
Just too small?
* * * *
‘Nuff said (for now).
* * * *
Dear friends of my youth,
And even those met just yesterday,
Just a notice that that Michael died moons ago.
* * * *
It’s all right here, Self-contained.
You don’t need the scribe,
Nor any self-appointed middleman,
Nor any fearful, hand-wringing support group
To discern the truth of it for your Self.
* * * *
What an amusing pastime it has been
To scribe so many thoughts from mind to paper.
An incomprehensible endowment for readers and scribe alike.
* * * *
Every sort of thought is scribed herein.
In play, just in case a paradigm shift does come about.
As unlikely as it seems, you can never quite be sure where
time will go.
* * * *
I do not care what happens to this dreamtime after I am
gone,
But I will scribe my thoughts on it while I am here,
For any to do with them what they will.
* * * *
Yet another eternal scribe of the third kind.
* * * *
These many thoughts
Have been scribed through me,
The me that is in all things, including you.
It is only through this me, the me that is also in you,
That the vast awareness which is eternal,
That which has many names,
Can be discerned.
* * * *
Who scribed all this?
Your guess, your assumption,
Is as good, as true, as meaningful as any.
* * * *
Am I the antichrist, or what?
The Beast is a name, 666 its handle.
Ask Cousin Debbie about a childhood of play.
Ask Allyn, whose pager was amusing access to a friend.
* * * *
The scribe knew enough
To throw together a smattering of words
As defined by the education and existence he was offered.
We are all patterns within the ephemeral matrix
In which the senses play out time.
* * * *
Generic moi.
* * * *
How these words will play out in history’s unfolding,
The scribe can only wonder, but does not pretend to know.
Just a large collection of random thoughts that came
spontaneously
Which he wrote down because the mystery had shaped him into
a witness.
Is it a message of the divine, or just the inanity of a
foolish madman?
You decide, if you have the inclination to traverse the
attempt.
* * * *
The first work, The Stillness Before Time,
Said pretty much everything that needed to be said.
The rest is for scholars and other insatiables,
Those who enjoy the riddle of words
And the play of mind in time.
* * * *
Hope all this does something useful,
But me vital breath is long since expended.
Just drink some cheap whiskey and piss on me grave.
I’ll catch what buzz I can manning the furnaces.
You know how it is, we’re pretty darn busy
Down in the underside of things.
* * * *
All these many thoughts,
They are all just more babble-on.
The central point has already been rendered,
And whatever words are left are just more blah-blah
distraction.
So now, the trick is, will you, the reader, the seeker,
Ever figure what’s really being said?
* * * *
The stillness was enticing even in the youngest daze.
Sounding and breaching like a whale in the deep end of the
public pool,
And letting go, eyes shut, in the bubbling whirlpool of the
falls at the canal across the road.
The innocent do not require the ceasesless confabulations of
any mythology
When Mother Nature speaks truth each and every moment.
* * * *
Human existence is chock-full of philosophers,
And this is just one of who-can-fathom-how-many works.
It is likely not zenith of the hill, but it has been what it
is from this end.
An interesting pastime to scribble down so many of the
thoughts that come to mind.
One can only wonder if anything will come of it in the
dreamtime to come.
* * * *
I think … therefore I think I am.
You think, therefore you think you are.
We all think, therefore we all think we are.
Nothing more than a collusion of human scale.
Likely no deity, nor any creature across the cosmos,
Cares about themselves, much less you or me.
We are at best relatively convenient.
* * * *
Oh, joy, yet another new and absorbing level to endure
In this slippery-slope slide into Meister Grim’s clutches.
* * * *
And then there was John,
Who, whenever he ran into me,
Would say in pseudo-French inflection,
“Endurance, Michael, endurance.”
* * * *
The keyboard is stage enough for this quantum eye.
* * * *
How do I mean nothing?
Let us count the ways.
* * * *
Another day of pretending it all real and important
underway.
Whoo-hoo for what dreams may come magically coming true.
How agreeable it will be to be done with this diminishing
body.
Death will be a release from all this limitation, all this
absurdity.
Entertaining, yes, but no longer necessary, and never was,
really.
* * * *
Trouble is, neither God nor the Devil know what to do with
irreverent skeptics like me.
Puts the Grim Reaper in something of a “What if he wants my
job?” quandary, as well.
* * * *
What will happen to these many words is anybody’s guess.
Time is on their side and not on their side at the same
time.
* * * *
Remarkable to be on such a loquacious level
With that which is prior to consciousness.
A long, unwieldy commentary, indeed.
* * * *
I put up with the world, and it puts up with me.
* * * *
The most effective way to yank anyone off a pedestal is to
pounce on their character.
Well, Jesus probably was not all the propaganda of history
has made him out to be, either.
Two thousand years of dissimulation makes for a nice
handicap in the idolatry games.
* * * *
The riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
Lingers well beyond the clever scribblings of any scribe.
Pride-filled wings of wax will ever melt in the given sun of
mind.
* * * *
Do not mistakenly believe even for a moment,
That when I say you are the truth, the life, the way,
That I am in any way referring to the imaginary vanity
To which you are in body and mind so attached.
* * * *
Yet another vain legacy cast into the winds of time.
* * * *
To off my Self, or not to off my Self,
Many daze a question to which the answer has so far been
either,
“The day ain’t over” or “Maybe tomorrow.”
* * * *
And there would be even more ditty-festing in this
still-growing compendium
If not for inattentive misstep, technical mishap, or dearth
of pen and paper.
* * * *
Just turning into another grumbly, persnickety old guy in an
achy, worn-out container.
Wondering if he will ever get over this yawn that just does
not seem to want to go away.
* * * *
Dang, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders” still ain’t got nothing on me.
Or maybe everything: Is there any label that doesn’t apply
to most everyone once in a while?
* * * *
Once again, too disappointed in humankind to care if it
continues.
* * * *
Welcome to my rabbit hole, Pilgrim.
* * * *
The Dark Side ain’t dark to me.
* * * *
How all these ditties keep coming, each unique in its own
way, I will never know.
* * * *
Just doing what needs doing, as if it matters.
* * * *
Birth may fire up the Holodeck, and death turn off the
switch in its Twilight Zone,
But whether the Matrix plays on forever and ever is known
only to some higher pay grade.
All that can be offered here is the greatest
non-fui-non-sum-non-curo to which this mind has access.
* * * *
This personality, this arbitrary collection of vain
perceptions,
Is as bound to his own universe, his own way, as surely as
any.
* * * *
Signed one book once upon a time, and have hoped ever since
that it was lost or thrown away.
* * * *
Yet again bemoaning the garden’s destiny
When its subjugation and destruction
Has made you and all this possible.
Irony and paradox can mask harsh truth.
* * * *
If you are a thinker, a doubter, a skeptic, a savant,
If you are one who ponders upon all things,
Then, my friend, this may be for you.
* * * *
Saving nothing one vanity at a time.
* * * *
Another ditty lost and gone forever.
The tides of mind are like that.
* * * *
Yet another moment of aphoristic clarity.
* * * *
Do not know more than the nitty-gritties of mathematics,
But how is it that zero is a number, much less a cardinal
one?
No doubt many can illuminate it, but is it a harbor to what
is real?
Is it really more than yet another useful but arbitrary
notion?
* * * *
All these thoughts will change nothing.
They are little more than another set of rantings,
Ventings of yet another mind drifting in the theater of
time.
* * * *
This is my raison d'être, my form, my cadence, my style.
Reckon not with its linguistic nature, but its emancipating
intent.
The Cheshire Cat knows of what I speaketh in its
grin-without-a-cat way.
* * * *
These miscellaneous thoughts are generally for an esoteric
audience of similar temperament,
Of minds on a comparable wavelength, most of whom I will
likely never meet.
All are on a sojourn in a streamtime far different than this
one.
What more can be uttered than fare thee well, best wishes,
rotsa ruck.
* * * *
Woke up again this morning.
Guess oblivion gets to wait a little longer for these tired
old bones.
Another round of rambling about the bell curve.
Whoo-hoo and by golly, too.
* * * *
The world you would save is long since spent.
* * * *
A plebeian with just enough wit to recognize and appreciate
genius across the board.
* * * *
Loyal friend, occasional Samaritan, inadvertent fiend,
itinerant fool.
* * * *
It would be interesting to witness a dissection of this
poor, decrepit body,
To see all the havoc and pain and bother it has endured
during this watch.
* * * *
The echo of “Holshouser!” so often ringing through the air,
“Holtzblowzer” in a variety of shades was how Blane often
uttered it,
For all the brazen, often foolish things said and done by
this still unrepentant wit.
* * * *
Vanity makes it easy to stay small-minded a fair portion of
any given day.
To be in the world and not of it, is not something a busy mind easily allows.
* * * *
A casual bent toward scholarship for this gistmeister.
* * * *
What a wearing thing it is to be an infinite spirit trapped
in a diminishing body.
* * * *
Yet another relatively anonymous sojourn.
Shoots spring into leaves, leaves fall into winter.
All life, born to live, born to die, in this dream undying.
* * * *
Having given myself over to the materialistic urge many
times in many ways,
All I can say is that a some point it all just becomes a
greater and greater weight.
As John Ruskin observed: Every increased possession loads us
with new weariness.
* * * *
Where would these many aphoristic thoughts be,
How would they read, how would they appear, what would they
convey,
Without the aid of spellcheck, a thesaurus, and Wikipedia?
The many things these modern times allow
Is the upshot of the ages.
* * * *
Putting it all together one ditty at a time.
They just keep a-bubbling into mind,
And I ain’t got nothing better to do
In this future-past of all things so it goes.
* * * *
These thoughts might be revolutionary if they had been among
the first,
But early they are not in this Ponzi scheme of history’s
viral outbreak.
* * * *
If I have coincidently, inadvertently, or perhaps even intentionally,
Duplicated something voiced or written by some other,
Go with whoever thought it first, obviously.
No need for plagiarism the way this mind spews.
* * * *
Parenting is a tough sport.
Would have been too rough for me, that's for sure.
Besides which, I love my kids too much to bring them into
this madhouse.
* * * *
Perhaps everyone does not have to figure it all out anew,
but I have yet to meet one.
* * * *
A natural-born organizer.
A natural-born worker bee.
A natural-born gistmeister.
A natural-born wanderer.
* * * *
Perhaps the best thing about being towards the end of a
sound existence
Is that you are no longer young trying to figure out what to
do with your life.
No more tests, no more papers, no more hawking yourself, no
more so many things.
So many games, so much pretending, all of which now seem
nothing more than tiresome.
* * * *
Who be all players but me one in the same.
* * * *
Taking it all apart, putting it all together, one ditty at a
time.
* * * *
Curious how many aphorisms often change mid-flight
Into something entirely different, entirely unique in their
own right,
Perhaps even cleave into two or more, or combine with some
erstwhile ponder,
The original insight likely forever lost in the filament of
consciousness,
Unless it again at some later juncture happenstances into
mind.
* * * *
If it doesn’t sell itself, why waste time hawking it?
* * * *
As flawed as everyone and everything else is in this realm.
Perfection is the deception of the monkey-mind.
Only the quantum is free of such mania.
* * * *
A timeless journal, of sorts.
* * * *
And yet once again, impulse supersedes rationality,
A new adventure underway: “Hi-yo, Silver, away!”
* * * *
Have always had an amazing knack in any up and coming
adventure
Of finding ways to mess things up in royal hue: Trial by
fucking fire, I calls it.
So scar tissue runs deep in mind and body, and tremors of
trepidation at times resound.
And I endure their inevitability with what “Oh well, deal
with it, and so it goes” can be mustered.
The many salvos this aging mind-body have endured fashion a
stoical weariness at times,
And still I carry on, with whatever face the game calls,
ever the fool playing wise.
* * * *
Just pointing out what seem obvious to this frame of
reference.
* * * *
If it does not matter what I think,
Why would it matter what you think?
Why would it matter what anyone thinks?
Perhaps it does not far more than many or most
Would ever allow their vanity harbor.
* * * *
The agony and ecstasy of existence is the grout between
these many words.
* * * *
The whimsy of political correctness can be sidestepped
When there is no audience to weigh in with yay and nay.
* * * *
Of the dream, for the dream, by the dream.
* * * *
Pretty amazing to be living, much less walking, with all
this body’s been through.
* * * *
Know enough about history to toy with it,
But to change, even modify it, in any meaningful way
Is not highly favored by probability at this late stage in
the game.
* * * *
What is any given ditty but wandering through one experience
or another,
And then writing about it for others to translate as their
given wit allows.
* * * *
Every day I offer thanks to the all-knowing, all-seeing
deity on high
That the genetic lottery cast me as a moderately bright
Caucasian male,
And Roman citizen, within the perimeter of Rome’s prodigious
dronosphere.
An awful lot of people want to off us, but two oceans and a
well-stocked arsenal,
Instead supercalifragilisticexpialidociously enable us to
gradually decay from within.
* * * *
Not a storyteller, sorry, and my story is not all that
interesting
Unless you are a watcher watching the show play however it
plays.
* * * *
Watching the human drama play out with something of an
abstract indifference,
The indoctrination of a temperament established by the
Church of Reason
Long before educational theory was set down from mind to
paper.
* * * *
Little moves me quite the same as curmudgeony thoughts, and
they less and less.
Slowly, slowly, I am
gradually melting into the oblivion I have so earnestly advocated.
* * * *
Zeroes beyond the pale to left of the decimal.
Zeroes beyond the pale to the right of the decimal.
Makes my wee little noggin do the brain-freeze owwie.
* * * *
All this is more enjoyable to write and edit than it is to
read.
* * * *
Even I doubt my Self as often as not.
* * * *
These spontaneous little ditties just keep rolling out
One by one in any given moment, in any given place.
This existence has indeed been an inexplicable voyage.
* * * *
Lot of universe a-happening out there.
I am content let everyone else do most of it.
* * * *
There is still work to do in this Sisyphean tale,
Else I could easily call it good and throw in the cards.
What experience is left that cannot to some degree be
grasped?
That is not already somewhere within the curve of the
statistical sample?
* * * *
A minimalist when there was minimal around and about,
And a hedonist whenever opportunity even softly knocked.
* * * *
You want me to spin what lie, again?
* * * *
Nothing interests me.
* * * *
Am not sure that I have ever really been much of a human
being.
In light of how I have come to see things, that may not be a
bad thing.
* * * *
Best not to ever put me in charge of any future past.
Guillotines would churn 24/7/365 for years to come.
Evil would lament the day I was given such power,
And the Seven Deadly Sins only marginally less so.
I know them too well to abide them in my theater.
Mwahahahaha …
* * * *
Twenty-five-plus years of mind-chatter, and the day ain’t
over.
* * * *
All gibberish, really, fills the time.
* * * *
Does what I have to say have merit in the future unfolding?
Many have it, many enjoy it, but will many pass it on?
The questions any thinker must certainly wonder.
It is a vanity, but alas, oh well, I am vain, too.
* * * *
It is all yours, I do not want to care anymore, rotsa ruck.
* * * *
What effort it sometimes takes to greet the day.
* * * *
A universe too big, and a tongue too small.
* * * *
A somewhat cynical perspective
To those who embrace the optimism of hope.
Most definitely not a cheerleader for this world-o-drama.
* * * *
Paid death and taxes just like everyone else.
* * * *
This is one of them long-haul projects, the only one that
ever really took hold.
* * * *
Just throwing my two bits into the melee of the human epoch.
* * * *
Terribly, wonderfully bored.
* * * *
Many thoughts left for time to do with what it will or will
not.
Sometimes thoughts come into a life of their own,
And sometimes they die on the vine.
* * * *
Bold when need arises; unassuming when not.
* * * *
A dagger for the hearts and minds of consciousness.
* * * *
Stoic on the outside; big whiner on the inside.
* * * *
How weary I am at times playing this human game.
* * * *
Just another batshit crazy trying to get through it without
too much bother.
* * * *
“There is nothing that you are going to do
That I haven’t done, seen done, or thought about doing,”
I once said to a student during my ephemeral tenure as a
teacher of children.
True, but admittedly of bit rough on still somewhat innocent
ears.
Probably a good thing I didn’t have kids of my own.
* * * *
Such an inexplicable thing how this mind has been fashioned
to compose all this.
Quite a process it is
to witness ditty after ditty find their way into manifest reality.
* * * *
Waxing on and on and on:
Effing the ineffable.
* * * *
Kali would find her mate in me.
* * * *
I most definitely am not Jesus,
But if I was, do not even for a second believe
That I would be at all happy with the countless absurd ways
My name and thoughts have been used and abused, twisted and
confused.
Rest assured that it would not be happy camper time for any
self-congratulatory Christians
Were I truly the Son of Santa Claus, and for whatever reason
bothered to return.
Rapture would not be quite what so many believe it is going
to be.
Mwahahahaha …
* * * *
Yet another trite cliché.
It gives the mind something to do,
But sigh, ho-hum, yawn.
* * * *
Yes, I occasionally plagiarize, and leave it to the audience
to know when.
* * * *
In this world at times, and other times not.
Walking both sides of the veil, playing this little part,
In the churning agony-ecstasy of this Shakespearian
dreamtime.
* * * *
I do not say there are not ghosts or aliens or dragons or
elves or dwarves or vampires
Or sasquatches or unicorns or tooth fairies or angels or
whatever or whatever,
But I must discern them with my own eyes, my own ears, my
own mind,
Or the minds of others who I perceive harbor a taste for
truth.
I am too much of a scientist, too much of an agnostic,
To accept anything that cannot be verified.
* * * *
“Joe Everyman” Gina once called me.
* * * *
It is all so passé at times.
* * * *
Had I brought children into this asylum,
They would have likely grown weary of me,
As many children no doubt do of their parents.
* * * *
Sure, I have a heart … toasted to a well-burnt crisp,
Safely locked away in some shoebox in a long-forgotten
storage unit,
To which I have long since misplaced the key.
The rent is due, as well.
* * * *
At times into inquiry – chock full of wisdom, opinions,
conjectures, assumptions, delusions –
And other times into the nothingness prior-during-beyond the
veil fabricated by consciousness.
It is bothersome, but somebody had to do it, and it looks
like moi drew the short straw this round.
* * * *
Quite a thing to have no constraints in this existence but
what choice allows.
* * * *
This teensy-weensy slice of eternity is enough for this eye.
* * * *
You would have to ponder every aphorism and essay
To see if any questions have not been given answer.
* * * *
And what would the world think if I really spoke my mind?
* * * *
If you ask what I think will become of all these thoughts,
I would more than likely laugh and reply, “Little to nothing
at all.”
It has been an enjoyable hobby, but to believe it could ever
turn things around
Would be nothing more than vanity having its way with me.
* * * *
Back in the high school graduation awards ceremony,
After being called to the rostrum for the seventh
insignificant recognition,
That little epiphany voice, perhaps for the first time came
to mind as it has many times since,
And spoke in its matter-of-fact, clear, lucid, coherent,
rational way:
“There must be more to life than this.”
* * * *
It must find
its own legs, for mine have grown too weary.
* * * *
Sometimes I have to peruse my own silliness
To clear the head, to reset to default, to reclaim the
sovereign ground,
So as to further spew that which comes of its own accord.
* * * *
When I was
much younger than today,
There was a
recurring nightmare of being smothered,
Of being
trapped in some deep silo, with beans pouring down upon me.
It went away
once I realized it was the conditioning encroaching upon the inherent freedom.
It was the
beginning of a long climb to reclaim that which I truly am,
That which we
and all things truly are.
* * * *
Before Michael
… After Michael.
* * * *
Never a fast
typist – some sort of dyslexic finger thing –
And thank the
gods for word processing and spell check.
* * * *
Not quite an
orgasm, but just as momentary.
* * * *
Feeling mildly
irate at having to bother waking up again this morning.
* * * *
What more do I
want? Likely more than more can abide.
* * * *
It already
barely matters what anyone else thinks of me,
And after that
last wheezing breath it will matter even less.
* * * *
I free my Self from you,
And you do not need to hesitate
To do the same with me … or any other.
* * * *
I Am.
There is, indeed, nothing.
* * * *
So sayeth the Antichrist.
* * * *
If there is some sort of supreme deity, and he/she/it
wants/needs me to subscribe,
To believe, to follow, to conform, to idolize, to worry, to
dread, to worship, to serve, to witness,
Then he/she/it needs to speak up much louder in a much, much
more convincing way.
* * * *
What I was trying to say, and obviously did not convey well
…
* * * *
Never had any ambition to be a writer.
Not worth a tinker’s damn as any sort of storyteller or
poet,
And do not even talk to me about the inane tediousness of
mind-numbing bureaucratize.
The mortal cabaret just sort of happenstanced this mind
philosophical,
And pen is only put to paper when some earnest thought
Has gamboled into the given here now.
* * * *
A traitor to the human paradigm.
* * * *
What would have happened to all these thoughts
If they had been written a few thousand years ago,
During the earlier stages of the human contagion.
How quickly Ponzi schemes sideline late-comers.
* * * *
The pleasure of retirement, for those who are able,
Is to be willing to say – happily, without hesitation – fuck
it all.
To play the given moment – being not, caring not – until
death do they part.
* * * *
I am often almost forgetting me;
Why should I hope more of anyone else?
History is nothing more than the imaginary realm
Of the many-faced other.
* * * *
A wee little footnote in the play of imagination.
* * * *
You may well not agree about everything I have written,
But in the immortal words of Curly: The day ain’t over yet.
* * * *
It is the fourth quarter, and the shoals ahead are getting
kind of dark and scary.
* * * *
What better way to waste one’s time than by writing thoughts
few will ever read.
* * * *
I am, therefore I nap.
* * * *
Just here a-wandering the dream,
Taking a look-see, a walkabout, so to speak.
This experiment in free will certainly has been interesting.
Thank you for all the incredibly convincing, impromptu
performances,
And best wishes to all who will endure the bleak future that
is very rapidly unfolding.
Too bad so many are so blinded by every sort of narcissistic
notion
That there is very little abiding interest in anything
But more pleasure, more luxury,
More this, more that.
More, more, more … the insatiable more.
Well, our kind, and all the myriad creatures great and
small,
Are on an inescapable, harsh path to find out
Just how much less more really is.
* * * *
A history teacher in college one day out of the blue pointed
to a few of us and said,
“You’re a historian … You’re a historian … You’re a
historian … You’re a historian … “
At the time it meant nothing – went over the youthful head
of innocence, so to speak –
But in the years since, the realization of what he meant has
taken unforeseen wings.
* * * *
I am as bound
up in all the differences, all the stereotypes, all the prejudices, as anyone.
Just have the
inclination to step back occasionally to fathom the larger context.
Otherwise,
just a irrational and absurd as everyone else in this circus.
* * * *
I rest assured that I am the only one who is ever going to
ever read all this silliness,
Likely more than several times each as they ply their way
from scribble to digital.
* * * *
My bargain with God and the Devil,
One in the same as far as I play it,
Are just leave me the fuck alone.
* * * *
As content as the mind in time will allow.
* * * *
Likely more of a personal online scrapbook than anything of
history-making consequence.
* * * *
This does not need to happen to this eye again.
* * * *
My little yellow stain in the ever-shifting sands of time.
* * * *
I will Johnny-Appleseed these many thoughts in as many ways
and places as possible.
Whether or not you will happen upon them is for the dream to
manage however it will.
* * * *
Some saint of lost causes I am not.
* * * *
Indifferent to all creation, I am.
* * * *
The ink spreads as the thoughts bubble from stillness
personified.
* * * *
Oh, how I do long for simpler daze.
* * * *
Free to me, free to you, for what it’s worth.
* * * *
Anyone who would "follow” me or anyone else
Best stand more than a few paces away
If they do not want a boot up their vacuous derrière.
Will abide good friendships, but no disciples, no devotees,
no apostles,
No adherents, no evangelists, no proselytizers, no
apologists, no missionaries, in this camp.
* * * *
Ornery's not the word for it.
* * * *
Quietly leaving a fair amount of babble and banter for
others to stumble upon or not,
And argue over or not, or discern true or not, or whatever
or not.
No matter to me in the end, really,
Especially once I am the dust beyond worms’ meat.
* * * *
Few ever know of writings such as these in the time they are
written.
It is for history to note whether or not they unfurled in
the winds of consciousness.
Will they be known, will they be lauded, will they be
reviled, will they play any meaningful part?
Or will they merely have been an amusing pastime of yet
another forgotten mind?
* * * *
It is not about me, unless you are referring to the me that
is you
And everything else, in this unfathomable matrix cum laude.
* * * *
Who better suited to anonymity?
* * * *
God better hope he doesn’t exist because I’m going to punch
him in the nose big-time if he does.
* * * *
What to do when existence no longer matters,
Assuming it ever really did.
One of my standard coffee shop one-liners:
If I knew I wasn’t going to wake up tomorrow, I’d go to bed
early.
* * * *
I Am, therefore I babble.
* * * *
Absolutely mad, mad beyond belief, of that there can be
little doubt.
* * * *
Peter Pan don’t even rank choir boy in this make-believe
mind.
* * * *
The word acquisition program is ebbing and flowing into
decline.
Synapse collapse is pale-riding this direction.
Joy for manifest oblivion.
* * * *
With great intention, these words perchance influence the
world to come.
* * * *
Die, motherfucker, die.
* * * *
Same old me, my Self, and I, streaming away in dreamtime’s
busy-busy.
* * * *
The stillness before time, a.k.a. the silliness of time.
* * * *
Passing the time in whatever way happenstance allows.
* * * *
A rich man’s life on a dime.
* * * *
All these thoughts have come of their own accord.
Some sort of
stream-of-consciousness-word-association-channeling thing.
And as much as I dislike using that jargon with all its
new-age-babble connotations and affiliations,
It is, regrettably, one of the more accurate ways to
describe the process.
* * * *
Not interested enough in the future to plant a seed to
witness it, sorry ladies.
* * * *
Be wary what you weave, Dreamweaver, for you must wear it
for as long as awhile whiles.
* * * *
Jesus Fucking Christos, how did these yahoos ever get put in
charge of anything?
* * * *
It has been an remarkable thing to exist, to be a witness to
the incomprehensibility of it all,
This imaginary game of make-believe in an illusory,
dualistic, space-time continuum.
But I am long over this little touchy-feely,
three-dimensional, dreamtime matrix.
I yearn for oblivion, for nothingness, and am only putting
up with existence
Until the body-mind becomes too agonizing, or the world too
annoying,
To want to bother about waking up to battle windmills ever
again.
Alas, I am a tad afraid life is akin to a cold that won’t go
away,
A case of
“you-can-check-out-any-time-you-like-but-you-can-never-leave.”
Not me in the manifest-worldly-time-bound sense, of course,
but me ever just the same.
* * * *
This is how it seems to me, though I could be wrong.
Nah! … It has to be this outlandish to get me aboard.
* * * *
Am as indifferent as possible as often as possible to
whatever degree consciousness allows.
* * * *
The older I get, the more insane it seems.
* * * *
Yet another character binge.
* * * *
Got enough crap in this head without daily adding more than
necessary.
* * * *
Death and taxes … Pfft!
* * * *
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
* * * *
Know your Self, and you will know me.
* * * *
Doing what I do may get you into trouble unless you are
smart about it, and lucky.
* * * *
Hope all's well, or at least well enough.
* * * *
The Great Oz would know, and Billy Pilgrim, too.
* * * *
Nope, I am not Buddha, nor any other historically significant
noteworthy.
This round, I am called Michael, sometimes Mike, and
Holzblowzer by Blane.
Rose-by-any-other-name monikers that have well-served this
mundane existence.
* * * *
Whoever would have guessed, whoever would have thought,
Little old rural-small-town-quiet-studious-farm-boy moi
Would grow up to be a philosopher-seer kind of guy?
* * * *
How typical, how predictable, how mundane, how absurd,
He thought to himself, not for the first or last time that
day.
* * * *
All your life, you have been trying to figure out what you
wanted to do.
Guess this is it.
* * * *
It is all just a rough draft until the last wheezing breath.
* * * *
No idea, and don’t need one.
* * * *
Yeah, fuck you, too, you pendejo mother fuckin’ asshole son
of a bitch.
Congratulations on being yet another honorable mention
On my “People Who Need to Die Badly” list.
* * * *
Yes, I do enjoy hearing my Self talk, what of it?
* * * *
All I do is open up ye old inner eye to the expanse of
awareness,
And yet another brain wave ditties into consciousness
For this busy mind to occupy its wayward way.
Tick … tick … tick … can’t help my Self.
* * * *
Rest assured that the Great Quantum,
No doubt as wayward a roguish scalawag as I,
Finds my inflated bubble of dreamtime tolerably amusing.
* * * *
You keep on asserting that you know where infinity begins,
and where it ends.
That the unknown can be known, that truth can be possessed,
That space-time is real, and you are, too.
You make me laugh plenty hah-hah hard, Pilgrim.
* * * *
Unpaid work, but work ever just the same, when it’s not
play.
My little offering, free of charge, to the dream of time.
Take it or leave it, leave it or take it, as you will.
* * * *
Mixin’ and matchin’ from ye old frame of reference,
A wild and wanton maelstrom from which these many ditties
Bubble into beingness in the double-double-toil-and-trouble
of it all.
* * * *
Less and less do I daily know.
* * * *
Not interested in lying to you.
* * * *
An great number of observations on how this mind, these eyes,
discern it,
All out there for the progeny of humankind to apprehend or
not.
It is a peculiar thing to bequeath such a body of work,
With no idea what will come of it, if anything.
A legacy, the true value of which is left for time to tell.
* * * *
A Rumpelstiltskin, I am, I am, a mischievous sprite of the
two-legged kind,
Putting together all these ditties for what time may or may
not come,
From the straw of this mind’s harvest, a task for which this
life
Was into spontaneous serendipity and happenstance cast.
* * * *
A jester in a joker’s dream.
* * * *
So much effort for something so few will likely ever read.
* * * *
Whoo-hoo for an existence for which I do not recall ever
asking.
What the blankety-blank am I still doing in this absurdity
asylum?
* * * *
Yes, the long-ago almond orchard epiphany moment was indeed
amazing,
But ultimately no different than any humbling sit-down on a
porcelain throne.
* * * *
Another day of offering sage advice to a world
That has neither the eyes to see or ears to hear it.
* * * *
Namaste to you, too, Asshole.
* * * *
What a fucking madhouse this world has become, and only
daily more and more frenetic.
* * * *
The Wall of Irony and Paradox gets another memento.
* * * *
Always interesting to contemplate
What it took for our kind to rise up and conquer this world,
And use and abuse it in whatever way the tool-maker mind, in
all its self-absorption, deigned.
* * * *
Have always had an amazing knack in any work or play
learning curve
At making a variety of mistakes and finding out all that can
go wrong.
* * * *
All these many, many thoughts, few will ever even begin to
contemplate.
Like an unwitnessed babbling brook, or a tree falling alone,
Were they ever even thought, ever even written?
* * * *
I am every filter the capacities and limitations of this
mind will allow into its frame of reference:
Philosopher, scientist, historian, anthropologist,
psychologist, sociologist,
Politician, warrior, and on and on the list daily grows.
* * * *
Fatwa this.
* * * *
Nature is my god, and to do good – or at least as little
harm as possible – is my religion.
* * * *
The joy of my world is that it is your world now – Rotsa
ruck, Pilgrim.
* * * *
‘Tis the un-followers who I quest,
The ones who are able to endure alone
And discern things clearly with their own eye.
Our frames of reference may well be universes apart,
But we will ever fathom truth enough the same to be at
peace.
* * * *
Done run out of caring past a certain point.
Life has become more of an academic laboratory,
More of an intellectual, intangible, philosophical reverie.
* * * *
Imagine, if you will, a shapeshifting alien living here
among you,
Watching, chronicling, your peculiar little human theater,
Waiting impatiently for the mother ship to return.
Alas, that it was destroyed by an asteroid,
And his whereabouts unknown to the mother world.
* * * *
It might be easily argued that in the world unfolding in
these our times,
The most merciful thing you can do for your children
Is to smother them in their sleep.
* * * *
Get behind me, true believers, get behind me.
* * * *
Seemingly a neverending work, these writings, at least until
death do I disincorporate.
* * * *
Prove me wrong, boys and girls, prove me wrong.
* * * *
Always interesting to see how these many ditties play out as
they come to mind:
As they are first written down, what happens in translation
when they are transcribed,
What happens when they are edited, how they are read, if
they even are read.
Any given ditty can mutate into something very different at
any stage
From the original thought first bubbled into consciousness.
* * * *
Why and how these many thoughts keep coming to mind
Is a question for which I have no answer, other than to say
nothing else calls.
To be an observer of existence, a truth-seeker, a
philosopher, a seer,
Is to be all but done with the dreams of consciousness.
* * * *
Another ditty lost back into the formless mists of mind.
Easy come, easy go.
* * * *
You’re not by any chance a terrorist following me with a
dull, rusty knife, are you?
Not a question to ask anyone with hallmark features and or
behaviors of Arab descent.
* * * *
One wonders how many women have sons
In an attempt to bring their husbands into line,
And daughters, to assert power over their mothers.
* * * *
To wake up as many times as possible
Before the final breath wanes
Is this mind’s Soul goal,
Until eternal sleep
Sets its final course adieu.
* * * *
The old “Ice Station Zebra” paradigm: Play it out as if it
never happened.
* * * *
Oh, for the daze when the middle class life was a cave or a
limb.
* * * *
Master brat.
* * * *
A semi-detached observer.
* * * *
If it is to stand the test of time, it must stand on its own
merit.
* * * *
He woke with a dash of hope, but it being only four letters,
did not last long.
* * * *
I am me, you am me, we am me, all together, one.
* * * *
Saw a smidgeon of hope today, and I scrunched it before it could even squeak.
* * * *
What is herein written, what is herein imparted, is from me
to my Self,
In whatever other, in whatever geography, in whatever future
past.
Stand upon my shoulders, and gaze out even further if you
can.
* * * *
If you have not already realized it,
This is one of those serendipitous creations
In which you often seem to happen upon a reflection
That you in time are most primed to mull.
* * * *
Believe you me, I have given in to every enticing
distraction,
And it is always the inner awareness to which I return.
A marriage to my Self that can never be escaped,
No matter how tempting the siren’s song.
* * * *
Addressing the endless stream of calamities
That have created so much confusion and adversity,
To whatever endgame the synergy of consciousness chooses.
* * * *
No doubt some would deposit this scribe in a shallow grave
If they were to comprehend these many thoughts are analogous
To the folktale of the lone stonecutter bit by bit by bit
chipping away
Deep within the bowels of the imaginary mountain.
* * * *
From the infinitesimal moment all creation began, through
all that has taken place since,
It all had to happen for you to have this relatively brief,
temporal opportunity to awaken,
So gracias to all you countless others, across time, across
space, who played your vital part.
* * * *
Those born after the Great Fall
May discern it in their best interest
To give attention to these many insights,
Both to aid in comprehending what happened,
And to clearly discern what it will take
To re-align with the Garden
From which life,
With so little inhibition,
Manifests in every form imaginable.
* * * *
A word of warning to the young: Avoid doing really dumbass
things whenever possible.
If what you are undertaking is akin to walking eyes-closed
across a busy freeway,
Then it might be best to do some checking in with your
common sense meter.
That is assuming, of course, that you want to arrive at some
ripe old age
In a reasonably healthy body with a reasonably functioning
mind.
And rest assured, this is a “do what I say, not what I did”
suggestion.
* * * *
All this has been spontaneously written in the wandering
moments
For a destiny most unclear at this point in time.
A strange fate, indeed.
* * * *
Working on wrapping up this little raison d'être, and then
out of Dodge.
* * * *
I am about exploring consciousness in my singular way,
So, to Hades with all your meme-ridden judgments
And sundry notions of political correctness.
* * * *
Seen enough, heard enough, smelled enough, tasted enough,
felt enough.
There’s more, you say?
Thanks, but no thanks, my world weary reply.
* * * *
There is always a nap working its way into one soon or
another.
* * * *
Another memory swept into oblivion in the given mind’s
neurological ebb and flow,
Yet another indication, another reminder, of this dream’s
inevitable decline and fall.
* * * *
A mad as everyone else in the monkeydom.
* * * *
When has lack of commercial viability ever meant something
has no value.
* * * *
That life is over … Sorry … Sort of.
* * * *
The reality is, any given reader may or may not comprehend
these thoughts as they were meant.
The reflections offered are ever subject to the frame of
reference of the observer.
No thinker, no philosopher, can ever presume his or her
views
Will not be use for unintended purpose.
* * * *
Better daze ahead, he muttered with rueful disdain.
* * * *
Got nothing to say, so I’ll say it anyway.
* * * *
Another day of kickin’ and scratchin’ and bitin and whinin’,
And unleashing blood-curdling howls and wretched moans,
As eternity slowly drags me back to its unearthly domain.
* * * *
Never met a label that didn’t fit somewhere along the line.
* * * *
Opinions and an asshole, yup, I gots ‘em, too.
* * * *
Pointing out the obvious to mindsets not even remotely
capable of fathoming it,
Too late in the game to be a changer, were it even possible.
And it does not matter even one iota.
* * * *
A soliloquy, to be sure.
* * * *
Lived out this life this way because I had nothing better to
do.
The hand was dealt by the path of least resistance,
And I faked it all as best I could.
* * * *
Said what I meant and meant what I said.
* * * *
The light, here again, a new day underway, whoo-hoo for new
daze.
* * * *
How weary I all too often am of vanity and all its foibles.
* * * *
The Joyful Curmudgeon: A turd by any other name would smell
as sweet.
* * * *
It all this wordy absurdity is ever going be known,
It will be in some other portion of the human epoch,
Because this slice is sure not at this writing interested.
* * * *
Never let anything hit the bottom of the bucket; kind of
impulsive that way.
* * * *
Take these many thoughts as reflections only.
Try not to form them into the dogmatic quagmire
To which the human mind all too often prone.
* * * *
Each thought or set of thoughts stands entirely on its own,
To what end no one can no more than endlessly speculate.
* * * *
What a prison mind and body daily more become.
What need for this human paradigm or any other.
* * * *
Somehow survived long enough to write about it.
* * * *
In the fourth quarter now, the time of consequences is upon
me.
* * * *
But for a few chromosomes and a difference wind of time,
there go I.
* * * *
Gravity is definitely winning,
But it is sure taking its sweet fucking time,
And not always being nice about it.
* * * *
Whether or not anyone ever reads this mass of babble is no
skin off my nose.
* * * *
As these words are born into manifestation,
They are composting into a hearty potential
For times none can do more than imagine.
* * * *
Averting the eyes from a train wreck in progress is not
easy.
* * * *
Took just one intro philosophy class the first semester of
junior college,
And the rest, the rest is the spontaneous combustion of
happenstance.
* * * *
Another windmill … (sigh) …
* * * *
Who knows what I said and wrote before all these many
thoughts.
Letters, journals, poetry, papers, tests, were retired many
moons ago
Into a number of whereabouts-unknown landfills in several
geographies.
* * * *
Born a king in a peasant’s life.
* * * *
A decentralized manifesto,
Left for time to do what it will, or will not,
In the vanity faire of consciousness.
* * * *
The aches and pains and debilitations of the aging body and
mind are many,
The whys and wherefores for the laughter and merriment of
youth fewer and fewer,
Yet the Joyful Curmudgeon wryly endures as irony and paradox
impishly allow.
* * * *
Did not ask for this, believe you me.
* * * *
Politely received, politely ignored,
Perhaps because it is all so passé at this point,
Or perhaps because I am not playing the spiritual game
The way others believe it should be played.
Who knows, who cares?
* * * *
In the world but not of it whenever attention allows.
* * * *
Another wound, more crunch, more blood, more screaming nerve
ends, ugh and so it goes.
* * * *
Maybe you are clever, maybe you are wise, maybe you are
foolish and absurd,
Maybe you are, as all monkey-minds are, a slice of each, all
rolled into one.
* * * *
Two thumbs up for slipping between the cracks yet again.
* * * *
Nothing is wanted for you but that you be eternally, happily
content.
There is nothing here but compassion for your unnecessary
plight.
* * * *
Ditty-up, ditty-up, ditty-up-up-up.
* * * *
Just killing time before it kills me.
* * * *
The cursory scribble of pen to paper is but hammer’s first
blow
To the wrought of the final thought that the keyboard,
With spellcheck and thesaurus, will fashion.
* * * *
As drawn to the human drama as a moth is to flame, and as
weary of being scorched.
* * * *
Lost again in the nothing-really-matters zone.
* * * *
What is this irritability, this impatience, this ill temper,
That has always been a seething dragon just beneath the
sunny surface,
So quick, so impulsive, to raise its turbulent mind for so
little cause.
More times than not well hidden, there have been
consequences
When the thoughtless tongue was to calamity unleashed.
* * * *
Oh boy, a new pain.
* * * *
I just carry paper and pen, and scribble down whatever comes
to mind.
Whether or not it will have any impact in the tempest to
come, I know not.
The observer I have become is as agnostic as this busy-busy
mind allows.
* * * *
Regrets, and more regrets.
* * * *
Doing nothing as often as possible is where I want to be.
* * * *
Without history, what are we?" Merritt reflected in one
many, many moons ago chat.
"The same nothing we are, have always been, will ever
be," this I would answer now.
* * * *
Hiss-hiss, scratch-scratch ... Too high school ... Or maybe
even junior high.
* * * *
Will anything come of all this babble, probably not, which
is okay, and probably for the best.
* * * *
These many thoughts have been discerned in every possible
context,
All that is required is paper and pen to jot them down,
And a keyboard to hammer them out.
* * * *
An advocate for nothing, whiling away the dream.
* * * *
Whether good or ill,
What you might or might not think of me,
Is not something to which I often choose to give much
weight.
* * * *
Likely committed just about every blunder, every idiocy, of
which any man is capable.
* * * *
So far I have managed not to be shot, hung, burnt,
crucified, guillotined,
Drawn and quartered, pulled apart by horses, have my throat
slowly slit by a dull, rusty blade,
Or otherwise have my fingernails pulled out while stretched
out on a rack
With electrodes attached to my private parts.
But the day ain’t over.
* * * *
Two thumbs up about being under the radar, so far.
Let it hibernate, let it ferment, until after I’m gone.
* * * *
I leave it to the dream of time to do with these thoughts
what it will or will not.
No fame, no fortune, no power … ever came of them at this
writing.
The popes can have their crystal and gold cathedrals
And the echoes of hollow applause.
* * * *
It makes absolutely no difference who I was,
Where I was born, how I looked, how I lived, how I died,
Or any other superficial differences anyone might imagine
important.
All that matters is what you or any other critical thinker
discerns
In the many thoughts that have come through this mind.
No veneration or dogma or groupthink is required
On the meandering road of Self-discovery.
* * * *
A razor’s edge upon which I quite often slip.
* * * *
Kind of smart, kind of stupid, kind of wise, kind of foolish,
all as time in mind allows.
* * * *
Please do not make the mistake of making about the scribe.
He is nothing more than another cauldron of imaginary
notion.
* * * *
Must have read a different book.
* * * *
I may be a liar, I may be a cheat, I may be a thief,
And I may daily conspire every variety of murder and mayhem,
But at least I ain’t no
Jesus-loving-god-forsaken-double-dealing hypocrite.
* * * *
A walking-talking revolutionary of the paradigm-shifting
kind.
* * * *
Thinking positive is no doubt great, no doubt good,
And as soon as this mind discerns something positive
Upon which it might a-ponder, I’ll be a-gettin’ to it.
* * * *
Wait until life bends you over and shows you how tough you
really are, you arrogant little shit.
* * * *
Waking up to another day of the happenstancing whatever.
The pointlessness is the only point at this point of the
journey.
* * * *
There are no followers where I would lead you.
* * * *
Why would it matter at all to me or anyone else,
Whether or not you or anyone else ever wakes up or not.
You are on you own, it is your show, not mine or anyone
else’s.
None can do more than occasionally hold your hand and wish
you well.
* * * *
Did I already write, ‘Love thy Self’?
* * * *
And, pray tell, what ignorant foolishness might someday come
of these thoughts?
* * * *
Herein I gives you me mind since 1989.
* * * *
How hard can it be to turn water into wine if I can already
without effort turn wine into pee?
Well, freshly harvested grapes, the right equipment, a fair
amount of time,
And a fervent intention to direct nature’s course.
As for immortal power and divine intervention, I think not.
* * * *
Yes, fans, I am indeed highly fallible, and so are you.
Oh well, so it goes, deal with it, get over it, move on.
* * * *
Just another journey man; just another journey, man.
* * * *
It is because of the life I have lived that I am in this
physical pain.
It is because of the life I have lived that I can endure
this physical pain.
* * * *
End run after end run – Go, Team Moi
* * * *
To understand my concept of god is to leave behind any and
all.
* * * *
Got nothing better to do than nothing much.
* * * *
Don’t know why some folks think I’m so negative.
I am very certain, very confident, very positive, very
optimistic,
That the remainder of human history is going to be bent over
in many, many ways.
And there ain’t no lubricant on the market gonna be much
help.
* * * *
If there is some sort of supreme deity, some sort of
all-powerful being,
And he/she/it is as petty and possessive and downright mean
As the minds of our kind have so often ordained,
Well, all I can say is fuck him/her/it,
And willingly cast this life force back into the obscurity,
The indivisible oblivion from which I perceive all creation
is made manifest.
* * * *
How cruel, how selfish women are, that they would bring a
child into this world.
* * * *
More blather for the dust collection.
* * * *
Nothing else to do, nothing else to be, nothing else to see.
* * * *
Am I the crazy one?
Am I the fool? Only if
rationality has lost all meaning.
* * * *
Haven’t saved anybody, yet.
* * * *
The world certainly has you in its miasmic brouhaha, my
friend.
* * * *
Sure, I may be wrong, but it will be tough to prove.
* * * *
Remember always that these many thoughts are offered up as
reflections, not dogma.
* * * *
Not quite the hermit monk, but only by a few notches.
* * * *
Doing the Cheshire one smile at a time.
* * * *
There is a wealth in these thoughts that most will value as
swine do pearls.
* * * *
Don’t see a point, don’t need a point.
* * * *
Yet another thing in the collection of things I’ll never
again use.
* * * *
A long list; pages and pages and pages of regrets.
Sigh, oh well, so it goes, deal with it, get over it, move
on.
In the quantum Ice-Station-Zebra of it, it never really
happened.
* * * *
I am, therefore I chatter and drink, not necessarily in that
order.
* * * *
All across time, in every geography,
So many names for this unfathomable unknown.
I call it Quantum, and I am That I Am.
* * * *
Don’t know, don’t care.
* * * *
The everything and the nothing to you,
Is the same everything and nothing to me.
* * * *
A road less traveled sort of life that just sort of
happened.
* * * *
Some fellow business graduates would zealously tell
interviewers
That they loved solving challenging problems and dilemmas.
Me, I wish I had thought to say that I absolutely despised
problems,
So much so that I would resolve them as quickly and
efficiently as possible,
And with such Machiavellian force that they would never
again rise up to bother me.
* * * *
A ghost fading even in his own dream.
* * * *
A collection of thoughts that will change absolutely
nothing.
A Sisyphean enterprise this mind both endured and enjoyed.
* * * *
Would that I were always as detached as I play it for the
mob.
* * * *
The middlemen are not going to be happy about this.
* * * *
Watching it all play out with yawning interest.
* * * *
These many thought are dedicated to future incarnations of
awareness,
Others who are not others, but awakened versions of the same
discernment.
We all play out consciousness in our own way, but at the
source, ever the same.
* * * *
Here it is, today’s little piece of bother.
* * * *
The only difference between me and any other,
Is that I can occasionally step back far enough to discern a
larger picture.
I am no one’s master.
* * * *
Am long past thinking humankind will ever transcend its
all-too-predictable patterning.
We are an mind-boggling collection of cancerous maniacs from
the jungle get-go of our origin.
The only question is whether we will obliterate the garden
before it manages to off us.
Or we ourselves, or maybe very hungry alien insects or a big
fucking comet.
* * * *
The list of bothers is long, and daily longer.
* * * *
Yet another articulate foray into the irony and paradox of
our kind,
To which so many are blind, or, worse yet, even more
apathetic than I.
* * * *
I won't miss us.
* * * *
The first thing I do every morning is thank God I was born a
man.
And the second, that I woke up alone, without a migraine.
Look but don't touch is the motto at this graypoint.
Praise Jesus the time of the wanton erectile is all but
done.
* * * *
Mister Too-Much-Is-Not-Enough.
* * * *
To be, or not to be, far from the maddening crowd, that is
the question.
* * * *
Just an amusing pastime; nothing more, nothing less.
* * * *
Mañana, maybe.
* * * *
A natural-born killer who chooses not to most of the time.
* * * *
Please, God, if there is a God, please, never again.
* * * *
So many good deeds, so many heinous crimes.
* * * *
A growing absent-mindedness, both literally and
figuratively.
* * * *
The vaporous eye me-my-Self-I-ing.
* * * *
A crusty old knight in rusty old armor on an arthritic old
mount,
Wandering about searching for that old wind-beaten windmill.
* * * *
These writings must develop their own legs.
Else they will evaporate back into the quantum ground
From which all things are born and unborn.
* * * *
And thus is imagination cast out to its limitless reaches.
* * * *
You want another story? This isn’t the droid you're looking
for.
* * * *
All these ditties shuffled and reshuffled again many times.
The only thing of which you the reader can be sure,
Is that it was all scribed in the circa Y2K,
From 1989 until the whatever-whenever finale.
* * * *
Rest assured, all my opinions are as meaningless and anyone
else’s.
* * * *
All this is written so it doesn’t have to be written again.
* * * *
All these thoughts, my raison d'être, such as it is, for
reasons unknown.
* * * *
Fortunately, rhyme and reason are someone else’s delusion.
* * * *
Only gray on the outside.
* * * *
In a hundred years, in a thousand years, in ten thousand
years,
What will all these across-the-board thoughts have
accomplished,
What will they have done, what will they have undone, if
anything?
* * * *
Life fair? You’re looking for some other choir.
* * * *
This is my work, my calling, my raison d'être.
It pays nothing, offers nothing, is overseen by nothing.
Vanity is its birthplace, contentment and peace the only
reward.
* * * *
Aphorisms, perhaps even less interesting to the masses than
poetry,
Or at least a back-and-forth-by-the-nose-neither-win-nor-lose
rival.
* * * *
Jaded to tears but for the occasional hiccup in the quantum
fray.
* * * *
Baubles and jewels, for you to discover, for you to discern,
or not.
* * * *
Trying to share these thoughts with any not so-inclined
Is about as effective as beating your head against a wall.
* * * *
In the world: Sometimes of it, sometimes not.
* * * *
You call all this pain and suffering a gift!? Hmm and hah,
indeed, indeed.
Some supreme being needs a punch in the nose as far as these
eyes ponder it.
* * * *
Turn the other cheek?
Well, maybe, maybe not.
* * * *
Will these thoughts, too, be usurped by one meme or another?
* * * *
Didn’t ask for this existence, why should I care about
another?
* * * *
For a guy who did not want much of anything,
I sure ended up having and doing and thinking
Way, way more than I would have ever dreamed.
* * * *
“Oh, my God!” she cried, “And perchance mine, too!” I
replied.
* * * *
All these thoughts are from a lifetime of inquiry,
A lifetime of voluminous and varied experiences played out.
A thesis of sorts that this most earnest mind has discerned
of its own merit.
It could not be less, and if there is an even more
insightful conclusion to be expounded,
Then it is for some other, perhaps even you, to bring it to
light.
* * * *
Turning you every which way but loose; that is up to you.
* * * *
Maybe you get one free hit,
Maybe even two if the cheek makes a turn,
But carte blanche, I think not.
* * * *
I have no life, so I spend it amusing my Self.
* * * *
The aliens among us are you and I.
* * * *
You’re the least ambitious person I’ve ever met,” Lena said.
“Thank you,” I should have answered as it echoed in my head.
* * * *
I Am Footnote.
* * * *
Where could I lead anyone but oblivion, and what point in
that?
* * * *
And then I woke up, and I was still me.
And then I woke up, and I was still me.
And then I woke up, and I was still me.
And then I woke up …
* * * *
If consciousness wants these thoughts to be known, it will
devise a way.
If not, how can what was barely known be more than barely
forgotten?
* * * *
In this, I bequeath you my mind.
* * * *
Nobody’s teacher, nobody’s friend, nobody’s lover, nobody’s
enemy.
* * * *
Mixing metaphors, what fun.
* * * *
Another day of absurdity infinitum … Ho-hum.
* * * *
These many thoughts, they change as they are thought,
Change as they are written, and may change many times again,
Before they happen into your eyes, and the universe in the
mind behind.
* * * *
Labels? I fits ‘em
all, and I ignores ‘em all just the same.
* * * *
A wordy process, indeed.
* * * *
Who in their right mind wants to think this much about
naught without end.
* * * *
An original work, whatever that is.
* * * *
Waking up to another day of pain and suffering and general bother,
In a world for which I have only obligatory, desultory
interest,
But must continue enduring, must continue witnessing,
For as long as pulse and breath and mind allow.
I didn’t ask to be here; I ain’t prayin’ to be staying.
* * * *
The ro-sham-bo-rock-paper-scissors-zero-sum of marital
bliss:
Yes, Dear, you are right, I am wrong, please forgive me,
And for good measure: It won’t happen again.
* * * *
Sure, I may be wrong, but not as far as I’m concerned.
* * * *
Just passing the time in whatever way comes to mind.
* * * *
The I that I dream came into existence in Hughson
In Stanislaus County in California in the United States of
America.
Specifically, 37°36′11″N 120°52′1″W of this our Gaia, speck in the Cosmos
that it is.
This mind-body is male, Caucasian, American
English-speaking, with an all-rounder set of abilities.
It was raised on a small peach farm by decent parents a mile
outside a decent rural town.
It was given a generic education that ended with a generic
business degree,
Followed up a decade later with a generic teaching
credential.
It worked a wide variety of occupations in a wide variety of
geographies.
It interacted with a wide variety of people and participated
in a wide variety of experiences.
At age 36, it began what would evolve into a substantial
body of written work.
What a remarkable thing the happenstance of being conceived.
What a remarkable thing all the happenstances that happen
along the way.
And as for having free will, well, some claim it true, but
these eyes see it a dubious assumption.
* * * *
These writings have absolutely no connection or allegiance
To any organized religion or philosophy, that has ever, or
will ever, come to light.
They are reflections of a solitary sojourn into eternal
reunion,
And there are no rules in a knife fight.
* * * *
Are all these thoughts written that humankind might realize
worldwide harmony?
No, impossible that, the inherent genome is far to too
Darwinian for such idealistic notion.
No, they are penned for those singular few who yearn, who
pursue, Self-knowledge to such a degree
That they may one day divine the immortal serenity of the
grand indivisibility,
And perchance pass it on to others of the same bent.
* * * *
Appellations by which I may be known,
Or much more likely unknown:
Michael Jay Holshouser
Michael J. Holshouser
M. J. Holshouser
M. Holshouser
J. Holshouser
Jay Holshouser
Mike Holshouser
The acronym: M. J. H.
Mike Jay reversed: Yaj Ekim
And an infrequent nom de plume
Using a blend of ancestral favorites:
Andrew James Kurtz, a.k.a. Drew Kurtz
* * * *
A response to cousin Steve Hunt on human greed:
The Monopoly game taught us everything we needed to know
about capitalism. Round and round until
the one-percenters and their minions own it all; the rest minding the hotels or
homeless. Capitalism, or as I call it,
consumerocracy, is about greed and self-interest, and egalitarian ethics has
never been, nor will ever be, a concern to those who wield the whip. Few ever willingly hand over or share power,
fame, or fortune. The masses may whine
and grumble, but, unless they are inspired to revolution – which only puts new
masters upon the throne – their lot is whatever crumbs drift down from the
heights. Might makes right is the human
paradigm that has played out over and over since long before we wandered from
the jungles of origin out into the world.
Nothing you or I say or do will change that.
* * * *
A response to cousin Steve Hunt on civility and the human
paradigm:
Civilization is defined as “the stage of human social development
and organization that is considered most advanced.” Civility is defined as “formal politeness and
courtesy in behavior or speech.” If
getting along and supporting each other is the goal, the peak of any
civilization, any community, any group, is gauged by how many abide the Golden
Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. No synergy bent on a cooperative,
health-giving one-for-all-all-for-one can long sustain without it.
* * * *
A response to cousin Steve Hunt on an article about America’s
quest for happiness:
No matter where we meander, no matter where we rest our
weary heads, getting through any given instant still boils down to a mindful
dollop of detachment. Not taking it all so seriously, not taking ourselves so
seriously, is the first and last challenge. Conscious of it or not, in one way
or another, we are all playing out the Atlas of our conditioning, and
learning to set down our imaginary universe may not be as hard as we choose to
believe.
* * * *
A response to Saroj who complimented me about all the work
it took to write this:
Don't know that I'd call it work. More of a hobby,
really. Thoughts just sort of come to mind, pen sets them to paper, and
the keyboard does the rest. Just over 4,000 pages in a variety of blogs
at this writing. An enjoyable process, but it’s highly unlikely that
anyone but me will ever read it all.
* * * *
A response to cousin Steve Hunt on an article speculating
that the world is a simulation:
Seems obvious that it is the awareness in all of us that's
the source of this quantum theater. Not sure why we always need gods or
aliens or some Matrix programmer to explain the inexplicable mystery
that will always be an inexplicable mystery. You are it and it is you,
and it ever boils down to just being in the moment, in whatever indivisible
here-now the mind and senses are playing out.
* * * *
Another response to cousin Steve Hunt on another article
speculating that the world is a simulation:
The Matrix was an enjoyable movie, and certainly one that
wrapped our minds around an interesting concept, but it was just a movie.
I find it more than a little unlikely that we are wired up in a vat playing out
a universe programmed by a galactic junior high student. I even find it
curious anymore that we are so geocentric as to think there are other worlds
with civilizations and life forms that parallel our own. I don't say
there isn't other life out there in the vast timeless reaches, just that we are
likely a unique one-of-a kind creation, seemingly well on our way to a very
dystopian extinction.
* * * *
A response to Len Howard on the endgame:
You are preaching to the choir when it comes to irritability
with all things great and small anymore. This world and body can be very
annoying, indeed. There are far too many moments when it is extremely
unwise to be in the exploding universe of my presence. Very challenging
to always be detached, and I'm just approaching a sprite sixty-three.
Hard to imagine how bothersome it will all be before the Reaper finally kicks
this body to the worm pile. Being mindful of the innocents is the task,
for the scorpion can and will sting without warning. I suppose the
wordplay is often my salvation, my therapy, my means to put things in context,
to seek out the larger perspective, to regain clarity and serenity in the
miasma of the day-to-day. The Joyful Curmudgeon is what I call myself
anymore, and he can be an unruly beast.
* * * *
A response to cousin Steve Hunt on an article about the
quest for happiness:
Have never understood the futile quest so many people
undertake for happiness. To me life is about living in the given moment,
being as aware of eternity's passing with as much attention as the mind-body is
capable of giving it. In this play of consciousness, some moments are
indeed less painful than others, but there is no way they can always be joyful,
pleasurable, or whatever other nirvanic soundbite we might give it. Life
is process, life is segue, and all the punctuation marks, all the pleasures and
pains, pass as timelessly as the points between. The people who are
afraid to die are afraid to live, afraid to give themselves over to the eternal
now we all really are, have ever been, will ever be. To be as innocent,
as simple, as untainted as a child, is to give your self, your awareness, over
to the undying moment, and few of we mere mortals are capable of that once
desire and fear have become the all-consuming wraiths they are.
* * * *
A response to cousin Steve Hunt on an article about
happiness in the workplace:
The quest for happiness has never been an issue for me.
If you think about it, it ain't going to happen. All my workplaces
have always just been workplaces, and my satisfaction with them entirely based
on my own sense of self-actualization.
Working in some sort of children’s playground with swing sets and slides
is yet another rung of absurdity in these our times as far as I’m
concerned. Being in the moment is its
own intangible reward.
* * * *
A response to Bruce Styles and his rant about Donald Trump
and the unfolding takeover of the White House:
And not to break your bubble, but our little republic was
well on its way to being lost long before you and I were born. I've been
using a variety of terms for years – corporate oligarchy, consumeracracy,
consumptionacracy – to imply it nothing more than another footnote in the
dreamtime of history. Ye old USofA was a nice little experiment, with all
sorts of high-sounding wordplay and patriotic symbology, to which we were
conditioned to pledge allegiance, just as doomed to failure as any city or
nation state ever has been. The few have always ruled the many.
Only the faces and names and means and memes change. Just a matter of how
and when, never if. Trump and his crew of Alt-Righters are just the
current issue, the current tools. The dress code may not be black or
brown or march in lock-step, but the one-percenters and their minions are ever
in charge. And the masses, the mob, the plebes, the proles, the citizens,
call them what you will, loyally, blindly, incoherently, go along as long as
they have their bread and circuses. And the hydra of technology only
makes it easier and easier to sway them this way or that. Whine and moan
and stomp your feet and even rebel all you will, it changes nothing.
You might want to re-read some George Orwell:
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Animal Farm
Goodreads Quotes: George Orwell
Terry Gilliam gave us another good one:
Brazil (1985 film)
And, of course, Aldous Huxley:
Brave New World
And let us not forget Ray Bradbury's contribution to the
mix:
Fahrenheit 451
Two of my Orwellian favorites:
The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie
became truth.
Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this.
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the
good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power
means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of
the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who
resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the
Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had
the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even
believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and
that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be
free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power
with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One
does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes
the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of
persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of
power is power. Now you begin to understand me.
So it goes, too bad, so sorry, oh well, deal with it, get
over it, move on.
Take a nice walk today. Sit in the sun, smell some
roses. Don't resist when a shadow in a black suit puts the barrel to the
back of your head.
Ciao, ciao,
M
* * * *
A response to Gary Gerard and a Christian conversion story
he wanted me to read:
Just finished reading the story you sent. Thanks for
the good intentions, but it just doesn't do a thing for little old agnostic
moi. I reside in the indivisible don't-know-don't-care, have no sense of
there being a god outside my Self, and what happens if anything after this
body falls off is of absolutely no concern. The existential here-now
dreamtime is more than enough. By my reckoning, all mythologies are
nothing more than human-created, fear-based, greed-laced,
egocentric-ethnocentric-geocentric-solarcentric mind gorp.
So, from my perspective, enjoy the moment as best ye may; it
is all you have and have not.
Ciao, ciao,
M
* * * *
Everything I have written since 1989, except for a couple
notebooks that were lost, along with a few other oopsie moments on the
computer, is my gift to the future, such as it is. It is up to you and others I have befriended
through the years to pass it on if you deem it to have merit. It has been an interesting pastime to give so
much of my time over to it: to think it, to scribble it, to transcribe and edit
it, to throw it about like Johnny did apple seeds. There are just over four thousand pages worth
at this writing, and who knows what it will be by the time I exit this center
stage. And what happens to it is for
time to tell. I leave it to you to
decide.
* * * *
It is certainly a curious thing to have gone this mystical
direction in life. Most definitely a road less traveled. As far as
discussing it with others goes, I think, as with any specialty, any sphere –
science, mathematics, music, sports, business, politics, et cetera ad infinitum
– that we all tend to search out like minds to focus on our interests and
passions. Scientists with scientists,
mathematicians with mathematicians, musicians with musicians, athletes with
athletes, businessmen with businessmen, politicians with politicians, et cetera
ad infinitum. Our little “lost” tribe of
seers, being somewhat scattered about the globe, are not always easy to run
across. You just never know who will be
sitting next to you in some coffee shop, bar, or park bench.
Personally, I have always been generalist and chameleon
enough to enjoy chatting with whoever about whatever comes up. There is
great freedom in anonymity. Many people I know quite well have very
little if any clue about what I have done or what I have written. It has just never come up. I may probe
and plant seeds, but do not worry whether or not they take root. Some
minds are fertile; some are barren. It is just the way it is.
As far as staying connected with family, friends, and
acquaintances goes, we each have to decide what is important to us, and it may
be for some that burning bridges and moving on alone is only option they allow
themselves. The high school class of my small rural town origin
celebrated our 40th reunion a few years back, and those who came had a great
time reconnecting and sharing their life journeys. Very few of them would
ever be at all interested in my thoughts on things – many of them are true
believers in one dogma or another – and I am okay with that. No point beating yourself over the head over
things you cannot change.
The big view of it is that I am one of who knows how many
awakened eyes in this magical mystery tour, as likely are you if you are
reading this. Whether anyone else hears the call is something over which
none of us has any say. Nor does it really matter. We may point the way to a larger vision, but
it is each, abiding in their own set of capacities and limitations, who must,
to whatever degree, wander the pathless land very much alone. We are but ephemeral seed crystals, of our
own devices, for consciousness to do with what it will.
Best wishes to all, and no worries, I say, I say.
* * * *
Th-th-th-that's all folks.
Until the next round.
