Happiness is...

... a state of mind. It is nothing else. It is not the sum of our experiences and neither the by product of our actions nor result of our thoughts. It is not one thing over another. Happiness is the kaleidoscope view that combines choice with results and the things that surround us - both people and activities. A walk can create happiness. Doing the dishes can create happiness. Alone, happiness has no power, but as a measure of life satisfaction it cannot be discounted regardless of its amorphous quantity or quality.

The problem with happiness as a quotient of anything is the fact that more often than not it is constructed by an unhappy individual determining what happiness might be. That's the unfortunate disposition of fun - it becomes the subject of review, a process it cannot survive, perpetuating the unhappiness even further.

But happiness is simple in and of itself. It requires one or more people. It takes a book or a suggestion. It might have travel involved. It could be just a meal. It could be as easy as putting the dishes away. It has uncountable manifestations. The only requirement is a choice and an eye for being alive.

Sublimation

works

for awhile

Substitution

works

for awhile

who knows how long

there was no mistake

reckless and imprudent.

ridiculous, miraculous failure to understand

or be understood,

but there was no mistake.

i heard this loud and clear in all my confusion.

there was no mistake.

i know what is real.

Pigs in wallow

I'm tired of bleeding for others.

Retrenchant idolatry

Who's the cowboy of your mind: the Marlboro cutlass of John Wayne or the saddle tired Remington?

Is there freedom or is there always the dependent horse?

Knowing and naming, these are our tools and our weapons.

We are little without.

Seven generations of weeks of 2012 in a month of Sundays

You want charcoal filters
I'm coal fire distilled.

The afternoon of our lives is yet to happen.

I demand freedom
You are attempting to prescribe it.

Control is a funny thing:
I appear completely within
you want to be without.

I wonder who knows who better - I wonder who knows how to be out of control?
Who is in control? When does this end, if ever?

The month of Sundays is nearly over seven times whatever you want.

one million things

one million different things, and i think that may be a lowball estimate. that is how many things i will have handled by the time i leave the resale biz. one million things, acquired, discarded, and re-distributed. i am so weary of touching all these things.

Eating

As animals of this planet we are consumers, how many times do we have to consume ourselves with insecurity to find the will to just live? In the US it looks like about 100 million voters.

If the house is Home where is the EPA?

There was a time when we celebrated the advancement of science and engineering. Now that is sneered at in lieu of being "green." I just painted my new attic stairs with a green stain, I hope they don't look any closer -- I saved almost $300 dollars off the box hardware store costs building them. I'm sure I have sinned.

New Pragmatic Philosophy

Give to Rome what is Rome's.
Give to Peter what is Paul's.
Give some more if you can or cannot.
Money is made.
They'll make some more.
Go get it.

Fetch, Fido, Fetch.

a dog for all the wrong reasons

I got Tito on impulse. I was bored, lonely, sad, and I just wanted a new puppy. Tito is the worst dog. He took forever to housetrain, he ate my bamboo rug, he ate a couch, he ate the klick-klack, he ate another rug, his listening abilities are pretty iffy at times. He is the best dog.

tornado: a dream spring 2009

i was on a rooftop, in Hermosa, it seemed like Hermosa.
the skies became very dark, a storm was coming.
i felt calm, and then i heard the sound they say a tornado makes.
and i thought...fuck, i am on a roof and here comes a tornado.
i saw it coming, and then it began to take me up in it.
there was no time.
but in a split second i saw a large tree branch.
with some sort of super-power i reached out of the tornado,
my arm became larger than life, my hand took hold of the branch
i pulled myself from the tornado.
just as i did the branch broke
i fell to the ground.
the things you can do in dreams.

Why the new "difference" doesn't matter

If gravity worked a little faster on vapors and mists
I wouldn't have to put up with your Rainbow network
there would be no rainbows.

G.O.A.T.

greatest of all time.

Valent Shelters

Influence is created by magnetics, blood or faith.

Gravity takes our feet and our blood.

Gravity

In the dark of an unremarkable Wednesday night with an absent moon the sound of several car doors were heard to shut at the same moment when the sounds of a plastic garbage receptacle's wheels stopped on the curb and the protagonist moved back up the trek just traveled with the weight of his week's refuse pulling him along. Considering the weight, his thoughts were somewhere between living greener and not caring, musings really about the pointlessness of the debate. As he approached the honeysuckle thicket's shadow he was overwhelmed with the thought, "When the earth is done with us as a species, we'll just be gone." Part irony, part self reassurance - when the mother doesn't want us we will just be out. His thoughts were neither arrogant nor demanding, just passing through when it happened.

Something took his left leg and threw it into his right leg. Something touched his shoulder. The wind gusted for a minute. Looking over his shoulder as he leaned into the trunk of a parked car he yelled out, "Who are you?" His voice was so demanding and purposeful even the crickets stopped. Silence was a constant refrain for several seconds as he repositioned himself and looked back to see his attacker. It wasn't human, he knew that when it stopped. It wasn't an animal that was truly hungry either for the same reason.

He turned further to face the attacker and confront death. "What do you want?" he said to the night, "I'm not into fucking games."

From the shadow of the honeysuckle thicket he caught a glimpse of a pair of red eyes. The hair on his neck raised as his shoulders began to go cold. The eyes were more than three feet off the ground, but were they real?

After a few minutes of staring and questions running through his mind unsaid he turned to walk back into the door he had left to begin this saga, but discovered that gravity had affected his left knee at the time the red eyes first struck: walking was painful; his knee had hit both the concrete and the thing in the honeysuckle shadow. It would be a lifetime of hurt.

Betty the Bugeater

Can you believe this is the face of the Boston Grasshopper Slayer?

one European joke after another

Karma
Darma
Da'hani

Butterfly
Papillion
Schmetterling


Death and laughter are equals.

Calendars in binary

The cliche light of the full moon
Last week when I broke
lent itself to the Shadow

I am through with that useless dialectic,
this petty light and dark sequence.

Autovoron

Mass is a gravitational abstraction
Distance is not Freedom
it only lessens the emotion
the soul is influenced
the heart is darkened
the mind is bloodied
Isolation becomes the second valence of destruction
What is not lost is consumed
What is not consumed is silence
Emptiness eats itself.

Failure is always an option

For those living and dead that tried
What else can be said?
You tried.
You did our best.
"Failure is not an option."
Death comes.

America wears a different stain
and I'm just one traveler.

Time

If Time was a Father of anything it would be Disaster.

The Mother we love is Invention;
the moment when our soul speaks.

Debt

The screaming starts with you
the wind doesn't dry your tears or carry your voice
It eats them both.
The fear devours you
I am only a thief
but I will take your soul.

Emotions versus Intellect

Standing in the Badlands a week ago, there was a possibility for endings to come, but the reality is that every person lives life with at least this much -- is it real or just perceived?

Our emotions can get the best of us when we don't know enough to understand the final action or decision. This happens frequently in relationships where one partner expects the other to know how to do things that need done but is not capable to do the work on her own. It also happens that old models infiltrate our thinking and he doesn't do his work to support her either at home or in her career.

Truly, this is the reason for so many failed couplings, marriages and so on. We live with these old notions and still want to feel free under the new models. Competing visions destroy US.

At the same time depression as an illness continues to infect the populace. Again, I don't think that it has to do with people or machines. Standing in the Badlands of SD clears that from one's mind. But more often than not we do not have that opportunity and the world just beats us down. It can happen with the smallest comments. It is just about the subtleties and the connotations, but it soon becomes the reality.

I for one have traveled the suicide path in the past. I have friends and relatives that were successful. I will not live that way. The problem with the world is the world's problem. I am fine regardless of how sick I might be. I will not adopt their thinking. I may be alone. I am ok with that. I can be alone with others.

Over Rainbows and Full Moon Walks

Somewhere along the path of humanity the notion of rainbows and full moons both became romantic - part of the lovers' walk on the second date or first. I am tired of these notions. The earth, our mother, hates us -- and it has nothing to do with global warming or any Pharasee theory.

Full moons produce full emergency rooms and rainbows also follow hail and tornados and hurricanes. The treachery is always there. We are fools and geniuses as a specie. There is no love from the supposed mother.

It is true that all our sustenance is derived from her dirt but that is not a substitute for a relationship and neither is a macro diet.

All the neighbors' dogs are barking tonight. It is a full moon. My dogs are quiet and obeying. I wish I new the Neanderthal's language for quieting dogs. I sometimes feel I dream those types of things.

Tomorrow will raise the fight again and I can only hope that there is a reason to say something. The alternative is just life. We live with all the full moons and the rainbows; we live love and death and night intercedes.


There is something poetic in that.

-j