Someone told me there's a girl out there
with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair

Notes From a Life in Progress is hereby placed on temporary hiatus while the life of it's author (me) progresses toward that great ineffable inevability.

Yes, the big move is upon us! Please wish us luck dear friends, casual acquaintances and idle passersby as Sarah and myself pack up our small, dim cat, Mang, and the rest of our humble home and haul it across this grand and horrible country.

It could be as long as two weeks before fresh text finds it's way to this blog. In the meantime, you may want to amuse yourself and satisfy any curiosity you possess about the face behind the rambling by visiting the photo links* I have provided below (The Face Behind the Blog).

California here I come!


* I apologize to those of you who have been reading my poetry and experiencing intermittent errors when the pages load. Geocities is hosting those pages (as well as the photo pages) and it is a bug in the code which I have not had the time or energy to figure out. I can hardly complain, of course, as it is free web space!

Is it hot in here or is it just me?

Stuck Tune Syndrome . . .

At last, a name for the condition that has kept the Alka-Seltzer jingle in my head 20 years after I last heard it.

As if to punctuate the ideas I was poking around on the 10th , earlier today I was mulling over the topic for this very blog when I clicked over to OnePotMeal and read this typically well reasoned and eloquently written post about identity. Steve blogs:

"The appeal, for many people, of the web is that it allows a flexible self. A self unbound by the 'realities' of real life. I can recreate myself as many times as I want to, even several times simulataneously, assigning each aspect of my own personality it's own blog and identity if I want to. The unfortunate corollary of that freedom, however, is that relationships formed in that environment are based not on whole selves, whole people, but on particular aspects in common. A blog is, by necessity, a very narrow window on someone's life, and trying to 'know' someone through their posts feels a bit like the blind men groping the elephant. We may find similarities on our opposite sides of the elephant, and we may find differences, but none of us is seeing the full picture of who the elephant and our fellow gropers are.

That's the nature of constrained communication, whether constrained by PC terminals or by real life reticence and deceit."

This struck me because I had been thinking much the same thing in regards to my own "real" life. As my final day at the law firm where I have been employed for the past year and a half draws near, I find a number of people (all women it might bear noting) telling me that they will miss me. I have not been quite sure how to respond to these statements because, cold as it may sound, I will certainly not miss them. By my own choice I don't know them and they don't know me. Or, more precisely, I might say that I don't really know them and they don't really know me. To employ and mutilate the analogy Steve used, we are nothing but incomplete elephants to one another, these women and myself.

Let us ponder for a moment this observation by the late, great Alan Watts from his seminar, Self and Other :

"You know how Henry Emerson Foster wrote a book called 'How to be a Real Person'? Translated into it's original terms, that means 'How to be a Genuine Fake.' Because the person is the mask, the 'persona' worn by actors in Greco-Roman drama. They put a mask on their face which had a megaphone-shaped mouth which projected the sound in an open- air theater. So the 'dramatis persona' at the beginning of a play is the list of masks, and the word 'person,' which means 'mask,' has come to mean the real you. 'How to be a Real Person.' Imagine."

The persona that I present to my co-workers on a daily basis, the mask they have seen every Monday through Friday for over a year now is: Richard, amiable but reserved and efficient in the dispensing of paper clips and pens.

None of these folks know much about me beyond that. They have no idea that I enjoy Mozart and Blue Oyster Cult, that I write poetry, that I have four tattoos, that I am something of a mystic. Anybody who has spent even a minute reading this blog will be closer to the "real" me than the people I have been working with for almost two years. As stated above, this is by choice and the reasons for that choice are, perhaps, subject enough for later musings. The bottom line here is that they will not miss me but only a particular mask that I sometimes wear, a small fraction of a much larger whole that is me.

We all wear these masks, of course. Here in blogdom, out in the real world, our actual faces are more often than not obscured by illusory ones. The challenge for any and all of us who are striving for perfection is to drop the facades and be real. Really.

P.S. What was your face before your parents were born?

Leaving Florida

The boxes are packed (except for the computer, stereo, and CDs, which I refuse to part with 'till the last possible moment), the utilities are set to be terminated, the mail is soon to be forwarded and we are counting down the days until we pack up and ship out of Orlando. There are some things I may miss about Florida - the amazing birds (herons, eagles, buzzards, cranes), the typically balmy nights, the sky shredding thunder and lighting storms, even the theme parks to some small extent - but we are beyond happy (for reasons that I touched upon here ) to be returning to California. Perhaps my nearly two years absence from the state of my birth has made me overly sentimental or ridiculously romantic but I find myself thinking that California's nickname, The Golden State , has a deeper reference than the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848 . Just as the gold of alchemy has been largely misconstrued as the physical metal only, so to the gold of California. Is California The Golden State because it is a place where we might be capable of tweaking the chemistry of our spiritual/psychological make up, transmuting it from a base substance into a pure one? I think that more so than many states in the union, California is such a place. Certainly more so than Florida, at least in my estimation. I suppose that the generally perceived notion of California as a haven for whackos and mystics is hardly surprising considering that the very name of the place was derived from a 16th century Spanish fantasy novel. The Spanish who "discovered" California believed it to be an island - I think that they were right!

The List

I have just recently discovered Mike Golby over @ PageCount and, after reading a few of his epic posts, have added him to my roll. I know I am not the first to muse about this, nor will I be the last, but just what criteria does one use to decide who will be added to one's roll? This is a stupid question, of course, because it is a completely subjective one. The blogs that I have added to my (currently) short list are blogs that have in some way resonated with me. There are blogs that I enjoy - such as Ghost Rocket and Quiddity - primarily for the news/entertainment links they provide. Then there are those that, through the words of their authors, engage my mind and stir the "little grey cells" a bit, as Hercule Poirot would say. Among the latter I would include OnePotMeal , Kalilily and, most recently, PageCount . Others fall in between and all around these two types.

In the short time I have been blogging I have gotten in the habit of reading all of the blogs on my roll regularly, if not daily. I experience, when link surfing here in the blog community, much the same feeling that typically engulfs me in a bookstore or library - namely the "so many books, so little time" syndrome. Time is a precious commodity and, because I only have so much of it that I can allot to blog reading and writing (I have a wife to love, books to read, a job to hold down in the real world), I choose to be selective about the blogs included on my roll; especially because I prefer to give those blogs the attention they deserve when I am checking in.

Still, if I happen upon your blog and it speaks to me in the ill defined way I have mentioned above, you may just find yourself linked.

CLICKETY
SWISH!
CLACK

. . .the bones of popes long dead are skipping rope inside my head. . .

Selling Brand USA to the world has got to be a tough job these days, even for the most savvy of ad people. For instance, how do you put any kind of positive or justifiable spin on torture as a means of interrogation?

Thanks to Empty Bottle for the heads up on the torture atrocity.

As I begin this particular blog entry I am listening to Spiritchaser -






- the last album (released in 1996) from the incomparable duo known as Dead Can Dance .

From the back of the CD insert comes this quote, excerpted from Harmonies of Heaven and Earth by Joscelyn Godwin:

"In most musical instruments the resonator is made of wood while the actual sound generator is of animal origin. In cultures where music is still used as a magical force, the making of an instrument always involves the sacrifice of a living being. That being's soul then becomes part of the instrument and in the tones that come forth, the 'singing dead', who are ever present with us, make themselves heard."

While those few words are full of thought snacks, it is the concept of music as a magical force that interests me here. Not many of us these days are using music to raise the dead or to communicate with enitities beyond our vibrational plane. Music is used, however, to induce certain moods, to create atmosphere in personal interior and exterior space. Think of a favorite song or piece of music and consider the effect that music has on you. Does it make you happy? Sad? Bouncy? Serene? If it has any effect at all it is working a change within you, coloring your perception for at least the duration of the piece. Depending on your definition of magic , this may or may not fit the bill. I think we would all agree, however, that if music has the power to change you - your mind, your mood - for even a moment, then it is a force of some kind. Personally, I have no problems accepting music, some types of music more so than others certainly, as a magical force - my definition of magic (in a nutshell) being the working of change, via the agencies of imagination and will, in oneself and the world at large. Music provides an ideal medium for the focus of imagination and the channeling of will if one is willing and able to use it as a tool to do so.

My tastes in music have changed and grown over the years. My earliest interest in "real" music was influenced by my mother who, at that time (mid 1970's), seemed to be listening to "lite rock". For a time my ears followed hers. At some point in my early teens I heard Electric Funeral by that definitive heavy metal band, Black Sabbath and my brain, under the influence of Ozzy's haunted wail and Tony Iommi's volume 11 swirling guitar riffage, melted and reassembled into something altogether different. Most of my teenage years were spent banging my head to heavy metal and strumming air guitar to "classic" rock. From these narrow musical confines I stepped into punk rock and various types of alternative music which ultimately led to a grand expansion of my musical mind. These days when somebody asks me the impossible question, "What kind of music do you like?", I typically reply, "It depends what mood I'm in".

So, what magical forces have you been listening to?

The poem that kept me awake on the 5th has continued to be troublesome. It has not come together at all smoothly but in bits and pieces in need of careful consideration and brutal hammering out. This painstaking, arduous and time consuming procedure is one of my creative modes. Another, infinitely preferable, method is the one in which a story or poem seems to form in my head all of a piece, from whence it spills without effort onto a paper or electronic page (there are differences between writing on real vs. virtual paper but that is another post).

Stephen King on Good Morning America, apparently, made the following comment in regards to writing:

"My job is not to create, per se, but to unearth, to get these things out of the ground as fully complete as they can. . . I never felt like I wrote a story. I felt like I found them all. I feel more like an archaeologist than a creator."

This notion is one that I can empathize with and endorse completely. While I can only wish that I was as efficient an archeologist as Mr. King, I can attest from my own experience that writing is like finding buried treasure.

This line of thought leads me directly to Jung's theory of the collective unconscious . This concept, as I understand it, deals primarily with archetypes , which are more general, of course, than a specific story that Stephen king or myself might write - or should I say discover? - but any difference between the general and the specific here is minimal, I believe, when we are talking about these largely uncharted regions of the mind.

Let us consider the following excerpts from an interview with Alan Moore regarding what he refers to as Idea Space :

"For the sake of argument we can imagine that our thoughts occur in some sort of medium which we will call Idea Space. That our personalities, the things we call ourselves might be a kind of travelling nexus in this Space, that ideas or concepts are solid forms or the equivalent of solid forms within this space. How this space differs from our space is, firstly it isn't a space � space does not actually exist there. The distances are associative like in the real world Land's End and John O'Groats are famously far apart but you can't think of one without thinking of the other � so in Idea Space they're next to each other."

". . .There's no time either. There's no space and there's no time. It's just as easy for you to think about what you were doing this morning as Victorian street scenes. You can go there instantly. You can imagine a scene from ten years in the future. Time is not the same. Time does not really exists other than to the conscious mind, that's what I believe. Our perception of linear time is purely a construct of the conscious mind...."

"...Your mind is not bound in time the way your body is, it's certainly more fluid � there's not really a time barrier in the world of the mind. Now it struck me that a good model might be, we've all got our own Idea Space which is individual and unique to us. This is like having your own house. We've all got part of our unconscious in the back garden but the back gardens all lead onto the same street. In another model you might say there's all these little individual inlets of consciousness, but they all connect to the same central ocean."

"... Interestingly, when James Watt did discover the steam engine there were about six other people in the same two or three month period who, completely independently, also discovered the steam engine. Charles Fort , who documented much of this, said, in his special whimsical way, 'I guess it was just steam engine time.'"

". . .Someone has got a film out with the same idea. And it's tempting to think that the idea could either have been a solid thing floating in a mutually accessible space you happened to come across, and so did somebody else. When we say things are in the air, what do we mean? What air are we talking about? We all know that phenomena, you have a word explained to you, and within the next three days you hear it three times...
I don't think I'm saying a lot here that hasn't been suggested by people like Jung and Plato before me, where he talks about his world of essences. I'm coming up with this theory to explain things that seem to have happened to me."

Jung' s collective unconscious and Moore's notions of idea space ring very true to me. This concept of a single field of mind ties up nicely with one of the standard characteristics of mystical experience , namely the awareness that all things are one.

So where does the problematic poem bumping around in my head fit into all of this? It's simply a piece which I am having trouble excavating, I suppose. I'd better hurry up and get it out, though, before someone else does!

After ten years of apprenticeship, Tenno achieved the rank of Zen teacher. One rainy day, he went to visit the famous master Nan-in. When he walked in, the master greeted him with a question, "Did you leave your wooden clogs and umbrella on the porch?"

"Yes," Tenno replied.

"Tell me," the master continued, "did you place your umbrella to the left of your shoes, or to the right?"

Tenno did not know the answer, and realized that he had not yet attained full awareness. So he became Nan-in's apprentice and studied under him for ten more years.

Where is your umbrella?

Clifford Pickover has compiled a list of the top 10 evil people of all time and the top 10 good people of all time . He is taking suggestions for alterations and/or additions to either group if you are compelled to weigh in.

Except to say that they are interesting reading, I am withholding comment on the lists themselves. The subject of good and evil, however, is something I would like to spend a moment on. In particular, I am concerned with whether or not good and evil exist apart from humanity. These two extremes (opposite sides of the same coin) are, of course, inherent in any system of morals which we construct for ourselves or have imposed upon us. As a human creation, morality is subject to alteration, evolution and mutation over time and depending upon, in regards to social morality, who is in power. Is there a larger morality beyond the human mind?

I don't know but I find in asking the above question that another way to phrase it might be: Is there a God? For surely, if there was a fundamental morality extant in the universe itself, it would have to have been fashioned by an intelligence greater than ours. Assuming that God (whoever or whatever you conceive that to be) does exist, we find ourselves asking where evil fits in. This is only a question, of course, if the God you are assuming is a good one.

I tend to believe that the human animal is more than he/she seems, that we are merely a part of something larger than ourselves. Good and evil are human constructs but are not excluded from divinity because of that - we, ourselves, are divine. But again, if we are indeed Holy creatures, how can we be capable of evil? We are capable of evil because we exist in a world of dualities - it is our obligation to use the brains we have been born with to be the best that we can be. Everday we are faced with choices of good and bad (evil is not a daily thing for most of us but let us consider that great evil can accumulate from many small bad choices). I know what good is for me and I know that I must choose good whenever the choice arises to grow into that larger part of myself.

Elaine , musing recently about a musical synchronicity she expeienced, has inspired me to pull my own musical synchronicity from the coincidence files for your perusal. The following is not a recent event. It is an actual journal entry (in an actual - not virtual journal!) from just over five years ago. I offer no interpretation (see the synchronicity link above for some interpretation of coincidence) of the events described below beyond whatever I wrote at the time. Make of it what you will.

1/17/97

I am at this moment reeling from what seems to me a remarkable coincidence. . .

Two days ago, during my lunch break at Peterson, I went to The Wherehouse on Kearny St. with the express intent of buying 1 or 2 used cassettes. While perusing the used tape selection I happened upon a Joe Walsh cassette (I don't recall the title) which included the song, A Life of Illusion . Upon seeing the title of that song I thought to myself: "I haven't heard that song in a while".

Tonight, Friday at about 10:20, I sit down at the computer to work after tuning the stereo to KALX . Within minutes I am startled to hear a familiar but long unheard song beginning on the radio. That song was Joe Walsh's "A Life of Illusion".

There are a couple of things that make this a remarkable coincidence to my mind. First of all, I rarely if ever, work on Friday nights as Sarah and I usually stay up. . . Tonight, however, Sarah was tired. . .

Also, I usually (not always but usually) listen to prerecorded music while working, not the radio. And, while the chances of hearing most any song or type of music on an eclectic college station are good, I have to wonder about the DJ playing any Joe Walsh song much less a song that I had recently been musing about.

My bladder woke me up this morning in the lonely hours before dawn and I have been awake since. Usually, I sleep like a dead man and, while nocturnal calls of nature might rouse me they seldom disturb my slumber for long. This morning, however, I find my mind occupied by a poem that is trying to take shape. Actually it is an old poem trying to take a new shape. I have typed a beginning, at least, into an MS Word document. I will work with it later - see if the words are going to cooperate and fall into place or if this particular piece is going to be a problem child in need of spanking and stern discipline in order to find it's form.

I turned 35 yesterday (thanks to Anita and Elaine for the birthday wishes). I was glad to spend the day with Sarah before she travels again. We occupied our time in small ways, mainly. In the evening I was treated by my beloved to a ritual bath and body rub. Ahhhhhhh. . .

Looking at Sarah yesterday, I was amazed that after nearly 13 years together I can gaze into her luminous eyes and find myself transported to a world of love and wonder just as I did in the early days of our relationship. True Love, Real Love as I have known through Sarah has brought me closer to God - to a Love that reaches beyond the unit that is us to all of humanity and creation. I wish everyone could experience this transforming power. I count myself fortunate to have found, in all this wide and spinning world, the one person who could bring it to me.

March (as well as being my natal month) is Women�s History Month . Like Black History Month which precedes it, I find the concept of a certain month set aside to celebrate specific portions of the human population vaguely depressing. I suppose this is because I am unrealistic, an idealist in regards to the human condition. I would like to see all of humanity � regardless of gender, race, religion, etc. etc. � recognized all the time. As I say - I am unrealistic. I ought to be glad that the Androcratic system we have lived in for the past few millenia even allows such pockets of celebration and recognition. In fact, perhaps it is a sign that things are changing for the better. Anything that raises awareness, after all, is a good thing.

Speaking of good things, I would direct your awareness to Blog Sisters and advise you to decide for yourself if this new blog - "where men can link, but they can't touch" - is one or not. I must admit that my initial reaction is one of dismay.Besides an obvious question such as how, through the nebulous channels of cyberspace, does one verify the gender of anybody you are linking to or allowing to post in one's blog, I find myself asking if we really need more division of people in this world? Perhaps I am over reacting or misinterpreting their intentions, perhaps I need to give this new blog more time to see exactly what it can and will do, but it seems to me that by excluding contributions from one half ( more or less ) of the human population, they are engaging in the same oppressive practice that the Androcracy has used to keep all of us in our separate places.

I can certainly understand why women, blogging or otherwise, would want to form their own club. As John Lennon and Yoko Ono so plainly pointed out, "Woman is the Nigger of the World" . My sisters out there in cyberspace (where men also seem to dominate ) are probably just seeking a place to call their own. While this may in the short run seem to be empowering women, I fear that in the long run this type of exclusion - whether practised by men or women - is harmful to humanity as a whole.

Inclusion is what we need - across the board sharing, mutual support. Riane Eisler provides models for just such a system - referred to as Gylany , in her books The Chalice and the Blade and The Partnership Way (co-authored with David Loye) .

I post the above observations well aware that I run the risk of alienating and/or angering some of the people I have had the pleasure of communicating with since I joined the blog community. It is not my intention to do so. My intention is simply to point out the fallacy of thinking at the same level as the enemy - assuming, of course, that you feminists out there percieve the Patriarchy/Androcracy as a nemesis. I certainly do.