the indeterminance of idle moments and the space between God, man, and other men.

Cheevers, Cheevers, Cheevers.

Heaven on the right.

Hell on the left.

Volley.

And thunder.

I occurred to me I had for a few moments, or some indeterminate period of time elsewise, as it were, become lost and given over to whatever.  But then, from outer space, I came back, like the proverbial thing from the sky, and landed hard, my shoulders and back, ankles, stiffened from coarse and unaccustomed use: labor.

It was something of a refreshment of the mind, something of the stirring of the blood and the mixture of oxygen, with the endorphins and the other things spraying about like fountains of wayne, or ray or donna or somebody, spraying and spraying, and the brain lulled through vigorous activity into a kind of At Once awareness, and the period of rest, what the Buddhists call Emptiness, and seek some.

Mark that.

That's emptiness, an idle cessation of stuff, but after the milking and tossing some seed to the chickens.  After even, averting war, but paying for war and all that.  Getting kicked off of Twitter, but then, to roll, to be a rock, and to roll or not roll, 54 dollars a share, and rocket aimed at Palo Alto, all the sandal wearers with Master's Degrees complaining bitterly, gnashing the teeth--

but to not gnash the teeth.

And what beguiles, the odd video clip, and that, the thing lived for, satisfies for a time, but always to have another, to be alive to be "on the wire".

The rest is just waiting.

But in that time, what are you doing?  Does your spirit cry out for more?  Does the idle wheel make thread?  How so does it turn in your own discourse?

Of emptiness, and volleys distant, not near and not particularly fearsome: someone else's problem.  Someone's compunction for mayhem--indeed, professional monsters, butchers to the herd, and all that.  Little more than a game of checkers played on a large scale, and no, it doesn't touch Davenport, Iowa, in their fair realm of decency and common sense.

That person, in that sort of fog, can reach through that cloud of non-substance between himself and God, and with that possibility of catching hold of something more substantive, nothing else will cause us to reach after or jump to other things.

The elapsing of such other skirmishes be then but the time and space between people.  And at some point, there is a reach into the non-substance, and the forgetting, intermentioning, and intermingling, of the Creator and the base creation.

The returning to the Garden, and the very dignity and miracle of creation, something said by so many to be, well, an accident.  I would deter the nature speaks into being no accidents, but only a sort of truth, even if a particularly starfish is missing an arm, or other anamolies of being, that is rings of a sort of natural truth.

And in the idle moment, the loom spinning free, maybe we can feel it, almost like a song, a natural kind of hum or vibrational resonance, the vibration of the universe and the passing of time into and towards eternity.

To Not Be, Like Them, or something simliar.

In times of turmoil, it has been to demonize the opponent, perhaps a Nazi label.  If we think of THEM as treating people bad, we begin to see the opponent then as less human, and more deserving, themselves, of inhuman treatment.  People used to do that.

What good is victory over the inhuman if you sacrifice your own humanity?  What if you became the enemy?  What if it was "Tales of the Black Freighter"?  You became what you hate, you justified yourself and cut corners until finally, it was what you wanted, and the good guys have to send somebody to stop you, Cheever.

Don't become what you hate.  After all, Aurelius said the best revenge was to "not be like them."

Shake your tail fetters.

I also hosted a fake seminar on Natural Serection.  Prediliction and Answerection.

It was good.

I drew stupid pictures while they worked their little worksheets, things like Bart Simpson yelling Ay Carumba and stuff like that, Punisher in an alleyway, and the Michael Jordan sky hook slam pose from the Jordans.  A fakhir gave me one once, a pair, as a gift, and I sat there admiring them and eating candy-coated pistachios.

Poetics on love... the tyger and the lamb very much paraphrased out of recognition

Of life and love, love is willing vulnerability to that one person, to become vulnerable, susceptible, and open.  Maybe the jaded wish and hope and bolster against doubts, but the truly loving let the feelings of love overshadow that doubt, far and away.

When they have feelings....  when they care....

When Harris, inspector Gadget, is driving the car from the passenger side, some kind of half-a**ed driver's ed coach, and at once, annoying, but you have to smile in the moment and let her be her.

 

"Your language would offend Allah..."

"You got salty with Allah..."

Instigate with frivolous ways that burden Faulkner....

The terror of her burning hair, and me, about to spray her down.  She breathes fire, and I spray my garden hose on her belly.  I make a pattern, like peeing in the snow, "happy bday to me."

And though, it isn't my birthday, everyday with Harris is like my birthday, special, and special like not "ha ha" or Jim Carrey, but special more like Jared Leto, or the Penguin in the Batman movie that I won't watch.

I have my love's tax return in my desk drawer, and I would like to ask her some questions about it, torturing her with teases with my No. 2 Faber Castel pencil.

She said, "I know its been so difficult for you.  I'm just gonna stand here while you get these feelings all out of your system."

I brought her a glass of milk, and told her to pour down the front of her blouse.  Because the house was all on web-cam, on a VPN from some Baltic nation, and time was money, and I had to keep that meter spinning with some content.  She tossed a paperweight at me, I dodged and it busted my drywall in my makeshift office in the corner of my bedroom.  I just stick that office stuff anywhere I find a hole around the house.

 

And this house is a hole.

what hand could enumerate that dreadful, awful vintage of the fountain of you....

I say God bless thee.... little Charles Lamb rumpot s.o.b.; God bless thee....

I say blessings to you, and now, would, please go, go, please.

 

Belief: On faith being a compass and not a cudgel.

They had sent the Apostle Paul a donation for his ministry, did the few believers in hiding at Philippi.

He makes a few points, in his correspondence with them, saying, "yall are the only ones that sent anything."  He goes on to speak of their common lot as believers, their hope, together....

Finally, near the end of the letter, he says.....

"I know how to live in either abundance or in need, because my faith in Christ strengthens me."(very heavy paraphrase)

The original verse can read as snarky, poorly-worded or even dogmatic, but the point is this:

"My faith helps to sustain me in any circumstance."

 

Your faith should never be an excuse to condemn another; in that circumstance, your faith has become the reason people persecute Christians, even the Romans remarking of the "obstinence" of followers of "Cristus".

Faith when oriented towards love and healing becomes a remarkably restorative force, just as they say even thinking a well-hidden placebo can yield results, but here we have something much more, not a trick to bolster our spirit, but a real connection to the Creator of the world!

Recipe: Five Spice Garlic Bread

The thing about garlic bread, the choice of breadstock is a matter of taste and preference.  Commonly, plain old run of the mill loafbread is used.  But then many also opt for the cheap, plain French bread.

I opt for a slight upgrade, with an artisan whole grain loaf, mostly.  Last iteration used Honey Wheat loaf bread.

The layers:

bread

butter

pepper

garlic powder

onion powder

chili powder

basil  (note Basil is probably the most crucial ingredient, even more so than the garlic powder.  if you don't use it, the flavor is very bland.)

OPTIONAL: Graded Parmesan.  and yes, on the underlayer, before the cheese.

CHEESE.  I opt generally for yellow cheese, pre-grated, and it makes for an interesting visual presentation after its heated, and allows for better heating of the underlayer.

OPTIONAL TOPPER: MORE Grated Parmesan.

The Contemporary Mean: A Day in the Life of a Rounders Star.

Such as is said, there is no commercial, and even less often than never, a magical combination of words that are sure enough to sway; but such can be attempted, and will, to some end or other.

In the end, before the final nailings and the chickens under the house crowing, only you can decide what you want, and such is none to sway, but then, also, something can burble.  For instance, a ginger crossing a parking lot, then forgotten, or so I thought, but hours later, a certain feeling, a hunger for cookies and milk in my underwear, or should I say, eating milk drenched cookies while sitting in my underwear, which is the blogger's mean, the kind of penance and gratification in one fell swoop, as if I were, become, as destroyer of worlds, a satire of my own self.

*Only you can decide ultimately what you want.

That said, it is far easier to break a manipulation if you are aware of it.

You decide what you want, and then put barbecue sauce on it.

Would life be logically easier if you knew what you wanted?  Or would you opened the door to the possible of 50% disappoint likelihood?

If you didn't know, and weren't actively petitioning, life would seem varied, at least, and perhaps, in that respect, interesting, more so perhaps than waiting or plodding along at some side-quest.

Perhaps life is too varied to have only a singular thing, and as we see of the famed, they have an epiphany after attaining that dream, they realize it was all empty, and the time, perhaps wasted.

They could have been living, but instead they were merely planning so much, instead.

Do you play Rounders for money or fame?

Do you play Rounders because you enjoy it?

Do you play Rounders because you're skilled enough to make a professional go of it?

Do you do it for the chocolate chip cookies?

Will the universe permit it, or will you be crushed by ball lightning?

I honestly wonder, though, the potentials for disappointment, and life being persistent and all, it never seems to get fully brought off, it seems, and in the end, over here, there is a kind of hanging on, neither really desperate or in despair, or overwhelmed, overburdened by too much joy, nay, not that, but sort of subsisting along.

If one did not come to enjoy the usual, then one is a sad ass, right?  What happens all the time, and can you not enjoy it?  I see some gnash and kick against the prickleburrs and so forth, and their lives are constant teeth-bared fangs flaring struggle, and its always, some day.

Some day.

At the expense of living today.

My idea of living was talking to stray cats, earlier today, which I enjoyed, my freedom of verbosity, and the cats seemed to enjoy it a lot, and the pranced along brushing my calves as I stroke their backs.

At the thought of it, I could play a variation of cornhole, but with chocolate chip cookies on a tabletop playboard, played with a silverware contrivance like a shuffleboard stick.  And imagine, you play the game for a time, then you ingest all the evidence, using the metallic stick to shove the cookies down each other's gullets.

I play Rounders, then, around the ripe old age of 42 or so, I become a offensive coordinator, just hanging around at camp, practice and home games, while raising my youngish blonde son.

Was that after the universe crushed me with ball lightning?  Do I also have to ask you if I survived, and this is not some sort of half-assed word from beyond the grave left to tell you not to make the same mistakes I made.

*common goals make for common results.

BUT.

Common results aren't so bad, and you'd be surprised to learn maybe that more are mostly happy rather than mostly sad.

Common results in a land of the exceptional?  Why to be exceptional, to be on the wire and contending, that too, common?

How common too, the general expense of going through the common day, unless I were, stolen bicycle at my side, walking the sidewalks with a discarded fish sandwich.

Would my eye rise in greeting?

Or would that be TOO common?  Or would it seem the other, the despair were too common?  But then too, nation of the exceptional, the common are expected to contend to some extent, so.....

half empty, half full...

and then I forgot what I was rebelling against, and just decided to be mad at myself for falling for all of the inbound nonsense.

Hope besprings and bubblewumps eternal, anew.(Vlaid the Impala)

I see, I see, 

Oh say can I see?

Did you see, would you see, I saw?

The sap is running and the flora is a burgeoning.

Anderson really goes on about those Impalas, don't he?  Guess nothing really beats the rental car experience.

Here I am, Here I am, the hurricane, the machelaise, the cry of the Republic.  "This is who I am, yo; this is who I be."  Just like the old flipper Willie Abachilie, from Aeropagite, IN.

What the wind-making done blown-up....

Unicorns and rainbows or something.  I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was something like Caged Heat or the Big Bird Cage.  And I was like... uhm... wow....

They say the world hinges on a stray world, and the world can take a turn, you know?  Uncertainties, and profitears, and all the rest, dividends, and the machine is made up not of spreadsheets and SQL, but willing participants.  Like, there wouldn't be a bad Moon Knight, without the established precedence of there having been a good Moon Knight.  Or Tobes and Andy.

I don't just give figs to just anybody.  Like, I had sent James and Timothy, but when it Timothy's time, I had to see some titty.

Something to liven up the floor show, ya know?

Give my salutations to Mallorie and Christy.  Mallorie knows I could have made her a convert, read to her first and second Peter, Hebrews and some stuff, and she would have converted and made housewife.

In her heart of hearts she knows.

The Fall of Saigon.

Devotchkas holding to the chopper cleats.  One falling off the building, the big helicopter doing a sweep move across the pad.  Tumbling and greasy fumbling, bumbling and stumbling, the hap-spun and doubt-footed pesky women and children, along with a few stray CIA drug kingpins.

Actually holding onto the bands of the rainbow, like the thing was made of pool floaties, and I was starting to chuckle intermittently, sounding like I was bubbling or something, and the server farm was having a peak usage event, AWS and Google kind of red-lining on the thing.

Moonraker had given up on Twitter?  Or no?

They had kind of "presented" her to me, a runway walk, and I as like, fake-calm side-eye-ing the whole thing.  And it was a trick of the universe, women's panties cost something like 8-12 dollars or something.  But I suppose such a tale makes Anderson lapse into unconsciousness, black-out and wake up sometime in the middle of Don Lemon's pissy talk, and Anderson's like, "why's everybody mad all of a sudden?"

Or was it more or less, not a presentation of possibilities, but a perp-walk?  I think so, too; my heart burns there.  "A free and gentle flower, growing wild."  And all, you know, you don't know if you want Honey Roasted or something else, Ranch dust and all.  Cajun.

Raisins and fake M&M's?

See I how I just went all hard and Gander Mtn on them?  That's you could probably knock them over with a feather when I pass by.  That's freestyle, and a lot of people can't do it to good.  Anderson sounds like a Krishna when he tries....

"Ummmm...."

Say that Ranchero was in Hope Springs, Laurel Hill or Raeford?

I'm beating feet.

his eyes did a 360; the wedding in cana: non plussed

Anderson was about "do a work".  He went to the on air prep area and climbed into the big make-up chair.  Immediately, he took up his knitting to fill the time.

But... something in the mirror caught his eye and he looked ahead into the big mirror.

It wasnt the make-up artist behind him.

"Breathin down your neck" austen aries said.

The space between man and God.

I was reading of the undefinable, that which is, but to point it out, that is not, it elapses into so much vapor to disappear, into the atmosphere, opposite the crawl space, cookie salesman, and the space between my ears, the space between the earth and moon---

the space between man and God.

You ever seen them follicle pits on chicken skin?  Lisa has those, and its not, like well, off-putting, you know, it is, at once, the wagon wheel at the driveway, just there, kind of like, well, look at this.

Cocksputter and spleenblood; with a war on, the streaming services cratering?  The popular narrative caught hold of something?  Not realizing when the self, one's own words, become the cruelest satires, and just for quoting them, the well-meaning, one could get tossed-off.

Something about the "intrinsic field", bio-mechanical energies and then chemical transmission between beings, the sub-conscious sensory field.  Things you only dimly perceive, and that in the dark, not even with the fingertips, but something of a breath from away, the flutter of butterfly wings sighing in the distance.

Those people Obama would have spared from the conspiracy theories, he so pushed them away when given the chance to do some real good.  He pushed them towards the stuff.

For me, not Barack Obama, but Barry Pepper, preferring as it were, old Ironhead over old Rabbit Tooth.

I prefer to believe I did the thing, and got a reprieve from the universe, but somehow both ring false in my heart of hearts and I know, a great karmic balance, and all that, endless cycles through lifetimes, and at some point, it just becomes clear, I serpose, it do, and it be.......

A snoot of the very substance of the universe.

Mindset/Mindfulness: Moment of Clarity for the depression and addiction sufferers.

"When in despair with fortune and men's eyes, I alone beweep my outcast state." -William Shakespeare.

 

It was Seneca that reminded his readers that he was claiming to be no expert, not condescending to give advice to lesser people, but rather, he was in this boat called Life just like anyone else, and he was not the physician, but the sufferer, just like you and me, sharing notes and advice from the common malaise.

In the common course of things, we can indeed be sidetracked some times down some unhealthy footpaths.  Many of us are eventually saved or spared by that rare moment of clarity, like a healing touch of sunshine on our scalp, our neck, our faces.

This is "mindset", when the Moment of Clarity comes and refreshes the senses.  Immediately, we are back in control, back in our good senses, able to take an overview but also able to make granular, fine adjustments, as well.

Sometimes maybe, we find that our own tears have dried, our frown has lost its fire, and we've gotten on with the necessarily business of living, and that as a distraction.  But while distracted, while, we're "not dealing with the problem", something in the mind or spirit has worked away at it in the darkness of some corner of our mind, while we were scrubbing a toilet or making toast, something other than not wallowing or obsessing in our despairs and secret fears.

In the Goth mosh pit of despair, Opium den, it was like the end of a vampire movie, where the vampires are slain by the approach of dawn, and there it was, one healing ray of sunshine to dispel the adversary, the drapes left askew by the rookie.

They say, in all these darknesses, there is somewhere, be it alcohol addiction or some other, there is a moment, a clear moment, somewhere within years of dissipation and feeding the beast that is simultaneous destroying the host being, there is a moment of clarity, where all comes into focus.

"I just now remembered who I am."

"Who's your deddy, baby?"

"I know that dude, I wot."

"I got a face, I got a will, and now I got a name."

A moment in the most vile sort of pit, where paradoxically, the answers, solutions readily at hand in the province of mind, and none of the pressing despairs or joys can touch you, but perhaps, you've blown some kind of fuse in your mind already after years of substance abuse, and its like you're that sage, suddenly, on the mountain, you know the what and why-for of all the things not to do, and you're ready for that other path, the seemingly better-in-every-way one.  You're the sage, clear-headed and suddenly, after being down cast so long, there is a new certainty and clarity in you, something solidified, you've looked the addiction demon in the face and lived to tell about it, and in the clear mountain air of newly-found consciousness, you are ready to give that advice to the sufferer, the needy, the poor in spirit.

Movie: The Journeral(1926)

Put down the chuck and try the porkchops, oh my lovely, would you, light of my eyes.

 

Herr Wheatstraw threads the needle on multiple topics.

The true story goes that Bill had forgotten the words and ad-libbed, "I know, I know, I know, I know..."

"Hey, I better leave the young thang alone."

Meanwhile, Herr Wheatstraw, the pimp crane, in a vacant lot, dissheveled, be-pink-ed, discried and bark-spangled.

I say, maybe, Lucius, not an expert, but one of the same malaise, sharing notes and not otherwise spurning, past hoping in general, for success.  I cleave the matter so, and disseminate that we are, of the same stripe, like the black cat in the Pepe cartoons, striped and thought something different, and taken to, taken up, and other wise, even asked.

And that's how vampires work, Cheever.  They knock on your window in some friendly state of dress, some friendly comportment, and ask to make interruption, taking to even the carpet on the floor as some new novelty that might make them, well, less bored and tired of infinite existence.

Did you leave the young thing alone, Bill?

No, she wanted my money.

Guess that makes her a hoe, don't it?

And my ass ain't Santa Claus.

Did you ever see the evening crimson over Mckinnon?  I bet you ain't, cause you don't act like you ever did much beyond Disney Plus, unsexxed yourself in secret with some blunt little tool, and in the end its opposite, cause you unsexxed your familiars and you are in fact

the blunt little tool.

She had some s-kin in the game though, and I betting my pistols, telling her all the while, pushing them across the gaming table, telling what I would do to her before I fell asleep.

I'll drop a house on her like its damn Wizard of Oz.  Remember the witch, the Kansas iteration where she's riding the bike?

What passes around here for Goodreads.

This.  Reading "On A Day When Absolutely Nothing Is Pressing Except The Hair On My Head", a collection of sonnets by Winifred E. Windsor, and I'm laying there in sockfeet with my A-shirt on, man-tits schizophrenic, askew, one peaking around the strap, the other nuzzled in an arm pit as if to snuggle towards sleep.

 

Futnuckery Classics: The Squirrel circa 2006.

 

And that from the folds of its red fur, and I was almost at a trot myself, making egress, to look back, look over, and say, "make ye linear regressions and graphical distillations, with that blunt little Melvin Purvis?"

He asked Will Munney about being with women, and he finally he said, "You use your hand, Will?"

So it was becoming a discourse on technique, perhaps, something for the more technically minded.

On Flat Earth Theory: "For the Earth is a dinner plate, and I have traversed the sky."

 

The very linchpin of flat earth theory is mistrust in politics.  Let a president talk about going to the moon, and the dishonest business of politics and the popular line of talk are lampooned by what, 30%, 40% of the country?  A republican be, or worse yet a democrat?

"We will go the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

Story line, that, to be made spectacle of for a class of invested, professional journalists, some with celebrity, reputation, even station.  I don't begrudge people like Thomas Friedman a paycheck, though.  There is a certain indefinite hope of liberated thought in that, which draws one.

What is this new thing?  What is new is of old, circa 14th century?  The earth is flat?

And yet, with the advent of flight, pilots have been high enough in the sky to perceive the curve along the horizon with their own two eyes.

How then doth a GPS divine one's position along the poles of the earth?  The Force?  The Titan Mogambo?  Wiggling its toes and wishing?  Is not the earth so much like a teenage girls round bottom?

There was, for the not-so-easily-bored, Mathematics.

Look at that nexus in the graphic, be that China?  The Mileu Peninsula?  Monaco?  There was a film once in the popular consciousness called "What Lies Beneath", and I remember too, the 76 ford with C6 transmission, it wouldn't shift to third gear, so I stopped, crawled under and put the vacuum line back on the modulator valve.

Where was I going with my diatribe? Oh yes, Grandmother's house, and somewhere towards the Renaissance Era, which incidentally, the conspiracists might deny too.

Or how they say Einstein suggested the possibilities of a something like GPS, "you could take a stick, from the surface to the sky."  If that's so, then maybe I invented or "helpfully suggested" a few things, my own friggin self.

"Where's that stick, Albert?"  But look yet at that curvature, that gradient, smell of sweet candy, the law making her liberated, and tank-top straps on her bare shoulders, Technical college id badge hanging from a lanyard on her rearview mirror, like Balzac taking to the open air for a pull of Opium and a word with a lady.

Yes, dear, hand to me, the trash from the backseat, just turn and reach back there, and I will be the security of your bottom end, raised into the air like the Titanic as it went finally and implaccably under as the universe watched indifferently, people in life boats, and my hovering at the drivers door, Idiot Wind of her air conditioning, smell of her body wash, perfume, and, quixotically, bestill thyself oh my soul, lotion.

When they made it political, I wot, the setting upon the rails, to the commoner maybe more off the rails than on, haphazard and agreed upon, made into popular storyline; why, it was like my old house, how we painted the front, but not the back, and after I time, I saw rust as I spent more time back there, even a picnic table, reading things like Popular Ecology and Onanist Monthly Annual Tips and Tricks.

You mean I had to do math?

Peace be still, meesh negroes.

And Seneca himself said a man who follows the crowd is lead by fools, and another, who said to put himself in charge was to be lead by fools.  Indeed, if you did the common thing, you get the common result, and the popular thing, the popular result, and for so many, a "come to Jesus" moment in which the realized their dreams where not so well defined, and fame was, well, like farting in a quietened library.

many on many pathways: the growing class.

With so many ways, to find addiction, we see an emerging class of addicts, a growing class of addicts, with always something different on which to prey, or to be preyed upon by.

And a growing class of former addicts, that mistrust the healthcare industry for its former incompetence with pain management in the form of rampant opioids.

The police, formerly enemies to the hustler, become incompetent and useless to battle the scourge of substances to be abused.

An emerging class, a growing class of people that fell hard in the trek of life, but picked themselves up and limped onwards, and that with no real alternative.

"but there it was...."

So much, so many, a plurality of life, and we do all we do, but consistently mitigate the noise and nonsense towards something we think might be real happiness?  We make little changes, some of us, "I put my dimes and nickels in the other pocket today, so maybe something better will happen."

We approach, in advance of old age, something that might be happiness, but that too, do we appreciate it, or not?  Do we look back later and say: it was happiness!  Didn't even realize I was enjoying it, until was gone.

But there it was, and there you were.

Cheever.

We might then rebuke ourselves for reckless stupidity, to have been happy and not appreciated it, not show that its due diligence, and yet, if we were conscious of it at the time, the moment would have faded, like a butterfly being scared away.