Lesson learned?

I have been screwing up lately. I may have lost a friend. Too early to know for sure. I repaired the damage as best I could.  I responded to a perfectly innocent email with a hurricane of hate. If I had only listened to that little voice in my head when I started to click Send. “Are you sure you want to do this?”  but I was angry and….. I have had a pattern of doing this. So, I am declaring in this post that I will pay attention to that voice in the future, because the consequence can be great. I have been abusive to friends in the past, and now I think I want to try having more friends instead of less. I am immature in many ways (Once again, I remind any prospective employers that this is not a problem I tend to carry over into my work life. It is reserved for friends.) but the fact that I recognize this is a sign of maturity. I am going to try to take the screw ups as an opportunity to grow and improve, instead of an opportunity to hate myself. I am certain that I am not the only person out there that has sent vicious emails that they regretted afterward. It might even be a good design feature to have a pop-up window that asks “Do you really really want to send this?” and then yet another pop-up asking “You’re sure that you’re sure?” because it is a serious screwup. I could make excuses for my behavior but why bother? Nobody cares. They just want to know that it won’t happen again.

I am now much more skeptical about bringing out your feelings. While I would not necessarily characterize any expression of feelings as “drama”, I see how it can easily degenerate into “drama” when you self-indulge in those emotions. It is very tricky, and self-destructive. And the internet isn’t a good place for it. I try to focus on what will be useful for my readers, instead of just venting and ranting. Or if I insist on doing a bit of that, I will try to keep it about bonehead politicians, and the crazy things happening in the world. Even that can get out of hand. I want to be honest and straight forward, but not stupid. I hope that my posts have been enlightening, entertaining, and most importantly, useful. But I see the need to be careful, now more than ever. I have hurt someone that I care about, and that serves as a wake-up call. A demon lives within all of us. It is the hurt child. It should be dealt with appropriately. The internet is not a good venue, unless written about responsibly and carefully. This is the lesson I hopefully have learned.

Given that lesson, I will probably refrain from the more personal material and lighten things up a bit. Or  I might focus more on politics and world affairs, music and whatnot. But when it comes to myself and my friends and family I will tread carefully. The more personal stuff is boring to the public anyhow. I got into the habit of shooting from the hip in some of my posts, and it made it’s way into other parts of my life. A mistake I don’t want to make again. Thanks again to everyone that reads this blog.

What is wrong with me?

I hate it when I discover things about myself that I don’t want to acknowledge. I am hyper-sensitive. There!! I’ve said it! You have a problem with that? Well, then don’t read my blog, you insensitive dolt! I have this friend. He has been a devoted friend to me for, well, over thirty years!! Crap, that’s a long time! It’s too damn long! But he knows me pretty well, and almost any time he opens his mouth (or sends an email, same difference), and it is about me, I am on the defensive, with my dukes up (is that the right word? you know, ‘get your dukes up?’. You young’uns probably don’t remember that expression.) He means well (actually sometimes I don’t know what the fuck he means, but I think the worst.) but inevitably I take it wrong. I don’t always acknowledge it, because I know it’s fucked up. I really wish I could just give it up, and give the guy a break. I mean he is the closest friend I got, except my cat, Buddy, and he can’t talk. (if he could, we might not be friends). It makes me think about what I wrote about my brother Keith being so sensitive to imagined slights. I’m the same way, I’m not a mine field, well at least I hope I’m not a like a mine field. If so, I think I blew my friend’s head off a few times.

Whoa!!! wait a minute! Slow down! We readers don’t even know what you are talking about. What, for Pete’s sake, did this friend do, to earn this rambling post?

Fair enough!! He merely mentioned that he had checked out my blog (What!! without my permission!! Only strangers can check out my blog!) and read My Dream of Diane and speculated on the moral of the tale. He thought I was saying how an attractive girl could still be attracted to a total fucking loser. (Actually, he didn’t write ‘total fucking loser’, as a matter of fact, I just checked, he wrote: “the moral of the story that you can attract a woman you desire no matter what your thoughts about yourself are?” ) So, you can see that I should not be a court reporter. I got it all wrong. Not only did I detect an imaginary slight, but I distorted the whole thing. This ties in to the post I wrote called House of Mirrors, where I discuss the distortion involved in internet communication. Ok, even though I don’t think I mentioned anything in that post about my feelings about myself, still. It’s crazy. It is a classic tempest in a teapot situation. (for you younger readers, do I really need to explain what a tempest and teapot are? You do get…ok I’ll leave you alone, then)

And this crap goes on all the time!! My friend writes something, I write something insane back, and then have to email him that I am, in fact, insane, which he already knows.

If my feelings were fine china? My friend would be the bull charging through the china shop. He can’t help it. He’s a bull. (and as you can tell, I like bull.)

The Dark Lord and the Wildman

This post is the result of the memory download that has occurred since I wrote the previous post “My Dream of Diane”. I have been flooded by memories of that time, and how strange it all seems, like the life of another person, which is why I wrote that post in the third person. At some point I may try to fashion an extended version of the previous post which includes much more detail, but for now, I wanted to provide some background for interested readers.

My adolescence, teenage, and early manhood was dominated by a strange relationship I had developed with a very charismatic boy/man who I shall refer to as the Dark Lord. Because he was, and I would assume is, an extremely private individual, for, as will become apparent, obvious reasons, he will remain otherwise nameless. He cast a spell on me right from the beginning, when he introduced himself as a new student, to the eighth grade class I was in. He was a handsome boy, with a mesmerizing intelligence and intensity. He piqued my curiosity. Previously, I had pretty much cornered the market on intensity in my little school. I was the class clown, the school oddball, and now I sensed a competitor. He attracted a lot of attention, and, yes, I was jealous. I can recall some early fights between us, but don’t recall who instigated them. We were definitely rivals. Then, one day he and I were sitting next to each other in class. I can recall looking at him, wondering what it was about him that was so fascinating. I wasn’t sexually attracted to him, he just had a quality that drew you to him. I probably was staring at him, because he turned to me and our eyes met. He stared into my eyes with all the intensity he could muster. I thought to myself, ‘there is no way I am going to look away, I am the master of this sort of thing. Nobody is more intense than me. I invented intense!’ I definitely thought I had a reputation to uphold, as the craziest kid in the school. So we stared into each others eyes for quite a while. I never flinched. Finally, the teacher interrupted our staring contest, by saying “I know you two are in love with each other, but could I please have your attention?” I was especially embarrassed because this teacher was friends with Keith, my oldest brother, and I suspected our little bout would get back to him, and I would be teased endlessly for it. I don’t recall the Dark Lord’s reaction, but I do know that we became basically inseparable after that. Whether I was under his spell, or he under mine, is debatable. But he told me later that at that time he knew I wasn’t like any of the other kids. I was different, and he had to get to know me. Over time, as we grew older, he developed a dark, enigmatic personality, which in retrospect seems more than a little absurd. But this is why I call him the Dark Lord. He cultivated a menacing, hypnotic look, and made cryptic remarks followed by a mysterious pause. It sounds comical, but he had it down to an art form, and many girls fell under his spell. Although he was also very funny, and a skilled cartoonist, he definitely had a Charles Manson quality about him. In fact, I did three tarot card readings of him in a row, during one lunch break, and each time his significator card was the Devil. Whoa!! I still wonder about that. When I saw what the Dark Lord was doing, I developed my own act. I decided to portray the exact opposite pole. I became the light to his darkness. I would approach kids in the hall and touch their third eye, saying “Bless you, my son” or my daughter, as the case may be. I was a big hit! All the other kids loved my Jesus act. Finally, one day I was doing this, and I hear the Dark Lord behind me yelling “Crucify him!!!”. I was pinned up against a locker and the Dark Lord pretended to nail my wrists to the locker. Of course, this was all in good fun! But teachers and the principal were concerned, as were my parents. Everybody thought our infatuation with each other was unhealthy, and I’m sure they were freaked out by the whole Good/Evil business. We were very much an Odd Couple. He was essentially impossible to get to know, all artifice, and dark performance. He could never allow himself to look foolish or vulnerable. I, on the other hand, was outrageously honest, and fearless, liable to say anything. I was extremely forth coming about myself, and other students were greatly entertained by my antics. I had no problem with appearing foolish or vulnerable, in fact, I embraced it. I dressed outrageously, copying Elvis with brightly colored scarves around my neck. I was amazingly ugly, with horrible acne, extremely skinny, and you-name-it, but it didn’t get in my way. My yearbook picture my Senior year was so bad I covered it up so no one could see. So this established the beginning of he and I’s relationship.

After high school, I suspected I might not continue to know the Dark Lord. After all, we didn’t hang out together outside of school. But I ran into him at the local library. He was sitting with this ridiculous looking girl. She had on way too much makeup and lipstick, a very short skirt, and most of her breasts were showing. This was pretty outrageous for such a small town. The Dark Lord introduced her as his girlfriend. I asked her name, and she says “I’m not really into names.” Right away, I knew something was amiss. This girl is a prostitute, it’s as plain as the nose on my face. Is the Dark Lord out of his mind? I took him aside, out of earshot, and warned him. “Something is not right about your girlfriend. She is bad news. You had better watch your back.” Unknown to me, the Dark Lord had become, in just a year, the primary drug dealer in the county. I didn’t know that he was the primary source of pot, LSD, you-name-it, for kids all over the area. At that point, I had only had a little encounter with pot, when I was invited to a party in which there were ‘magic’ brownies. I wasn’t that impressed and had no plans to get into drugs at all. But all of that was soon to change. In any case, this girl made no attempt to hide the fact she was a hooker. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain. She would shout out to guys on the sidewalk, as she drove down the street, “Hop in! I’ll take you for a Magical Mystery Tour!” I hated her, because I knew what was going to happen to my friend. Basically, the Dark Lord was just a naive kid, who wanted to impress everyone with how hip and cool and evil he was. Inside he was a scared little kid. It is amazing in retrospect that I had more insight into what was going on than he did, even though I was just a snot-nosed kid myself. Unfortunately, the Dark Lord did not heed my warning, and he got busted shortly thereafter. After some major aggravation, mostly on the part of his Dad, he managed to avoid jail. I don’t know all the particulars. If I had had any sense I should have avoided the Dark Lord after that episode, but I didn’t. I loved him. We were an inseparable team. I was mesmerized by him. Both he and I embarked on an LSD, mescaline, peyote, marijuana fueled journey of self-discovery which I have not regretted. We absolutely trusted one another, and felt a spiritual bond with each other. I think I was probably the closest thing to a friend the Dark Lord had. It was very difficult for him to open up to me, but there were a few times when he did. In many ways, he was a tortured soul who thought he found a kindred spirit in me. He never told me, but I suspected that he developed a trust and love for me when he realized how I had watched his back in regard to that setup (the prostitute had been given a plea bargain in exchange for getting the goods on the Dark Lord). I really think he regarded me as a holy light in his life, that the role I played in high school wasn’t entirely in jest. Unfornately his guarded personality and difficulty in discarding his carefully constructed persona, prevented our really becoming close friends although we spent a great deal of time together, much of it under the influence of one thing or another. I have no idea where he is now, or even if he is alive. He may be in prison for all I know.

Diane and the Dark Lord had a brief encounter. I had wanted her to meet him, and invited him to come to the student union so he could meet the love of my life. They went camping together!! It totally made me jealous at the time, and I regretted introducing them to each other. But, to my knowledge it was the only time they were together. And it sheds some light on what Diane said to me when I confided my love for her. A bit before they met, I told the Dark Lord all about how I was in love with this incredible woman, and he told me that I was actually in love with the Goddess she represented. “It is very important to distinguish between a person and the divine feminine.” he said. He was always saying crap like that. He never said anything ordinary. Now, looking back, it seems ludicrous. Basically he and I were a cult of two. But I was dishing out my own share of bullshit in those days too, so, it wasn’t always clear who was bullshitting who. But I think the Dark Lord was better at being a cult leader than I was. I could never keep a straight face. In any case, he had said that I was not in love with Diane, but with the Goddess within. Now, all these years later, I realize that he might have said something like this to Diane. It would not surprise me if they had discussed me, after all I was what they had in common. It is even possible that the Dark Lord sabotaged my relationship with Diane, because he didn’t want to lose his only disciple. Anything is possible. Who the hell knows. It was a long time ago.

Finally, I want to give a bit more background on what my life was like when I became enthralled with Diane. It is hard for me to relate to the person I was then. I had quite a few friends, which was, and is, very uncharacteristic of me. I drank fairly heavily on the weekends, did LSD and pot, and had a group of about five or six guys, plus Diane, that I hung out with. I can’t believe that I was actually a bit of a ringleader. Although I didn’t call it that at the time, it was my ‘posse’. We did all kinds of shenanigans. The one that sticks out in my memory was when we decided to check out the ‘Leeton light’  The Leeton light was a ghost tombstone, in the Leeton cemetary. To be totally accurate, it was a light that no one could account for, not even Ripley’s Believe or Not, who investigated it. Me and my posse determined that it was a ghost tombstone. We went down there late one Friday, with the lovely Diane in tow. She had always had an otherworldly quality about her, but with the moonlight falling upon her face, and the ghost upon the hilltop cemetary, she was magical. I volunteered to be the guy who went up into the cemetary with a walkie-talkie and a flashlight. I may have had someone with me, I don’t remember. From the road, the gang was telling me over the walkie-talkie, that I was standing right next to a glowing tombstone. They could see the light shining on my pants. They could almost make out the name on the stone. I informed them that I wasn’t standing next to a tombstone, the nearest one was fall too far away to be shining on my pants, and besides, none of the stones I saw were glowing. It was a total mystery. When I returned, I looked for myself through the binoculars and could see a glowing tombstone, and, like the others, I could almost make out a name. Although it was creepy, I didn’t feel scared. Everybody was freaked out by the whole episode. I still can’t explain any of it! That was also the night I lost my large sapphire class ring. It flew off my finger and into the weeds by the road. I could never find it.  Although I tried to include the Dark Lord in my exploits, and make him part of the posse, it was to no avail. He was uncomfortable around a lot of people he didn’t know, It was the only time he seemed awkward. I recall a time when I went out to his inner sanctum, an attic at the farmhouse where he lived, and he seemed at a loss for words (odd, for him), because I came cruising in with five other friends. He remembered me when the only friend I had was him. Now here I was! Popular! Who would have thunk it! I was growing up and developing a maturity which allowed me to come out from under the Dark Lord’s spell. Interestingly, the Dark Lord came to visit me (whereas before it was always the other way around), on several occasions and took a genuine interest in me, it seemed. He still didn’t reveal much of himself, although he had given up his Charles Manson routine, and seemed more himself.

One day as I was returning to my dorm, I heard someone imitating Neil Young, singing “Helpless”. I exclaimed “Neil Young is here!!” and this short, good-lookng kid, with an unbelievably cheerful personality popped out of a doorway, holding a guitar and singing. He said his name was Kevin, he had just enrolled for the next semester, and was there to meet me. He had heard I was a real ‘Wild Man’, he said with his eyes bulging, and a big smile. “I’m no wild man.” I said, “Quite the opposite.” But he said that several guys he had talked to said that he had to meet Russell Miller, that he was the coolest guy they knew, a real ‘wild man’, and gave examples of my wildness. I certainly didn’t see myself that way, and it is still hard for me to realize that a lot of guys (and I suppose girls as well), perceived me that way back in 1975. Like I said, it feels like I was a different person then. I did shoot off my mouth a lot, and was into every weird, outrageous thing you could imagine. I had a crazy sense of humor, and was very much the hit of the dorm cafeteria. I guess I had a bit of a reputation. Kevin wanted to be a part of that, he wanted to join the posse. You couldn’t help but love Kevin, his enthusiasm, and cheery personality was infectious. We became friends right away, and hung out quite a bit. I have a poignant memory of me showing him around Windsor, not long before I left college for good. I remember an amusing time when Kevin met the Dark Lord. Kevin was excited (of course he was always excited, but this time he was really excited) to meet the Dark Lord, that he had heard so much about. But the Dark Lord didn’t quite know what to say, and it was one of the very few times in which I saw the Dark Lord actually being shy. The last time I saw the Dark Lord was when I rode with him and his girlfriend to another state, and I had them drop me off at a Taoist retreat, a sort of commune I had wanted to live in. I told him I wanted him to write me a letter, and he took out a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote the letter L on it, and handed it to me. That was my letter. Then they left and I never saw the Dark Lord again. I had quite an adventure at that Taoist retreat, but that is another post. I hope this gives a bit more of an idea of what my world was about back then. I remember it as a magical time, somehow enchanted. I never had as many friends, all of them charismatic and fascinating individuals. But the Dark Lord was an extraordinary individual, troubled, but talented. I hope he is ok. I hope he learned to be comfortable just being himself.

My Dream of Diane (a true story)

Hop on board the time machine I have constructed for this occasion, and go with me back to 1974. To the campus of Central Missouri State Univ. There you will find two friends, one incredibly skinny, long haired boy with tear-drop glasses, a mustache and beard. His name is Russell. His friend, Jeff, is more muscular, with shorter hair, and more conventional glasses. Jeff practices yoga, and studies biology. Russell practices LSD, and studies his dreams. They enjoy joking around about philosophy and religion, and are killing an evening at the student union. They see an item on a bulletin board about a meeting of the Ba’hai faith, an introduction to this obscure religion. It was scheduled that very evening, starting in about ten minutes in a nearby conference room. So they went. Russell scoped out the room and spotted a thin girl, with impossibly dark eyes, long straight hair, and the profile of a Goddess. He just had to get to her before Jeff did, you see, Jeff was fairly confident with girls, had a charming smile and an easy manner that girls liked. Russell was awkward around women, and was self-conscious about his acne scarred face and bad looking teeth. He tended to come on like a combination of Woody Allen and Dennis Hopper. But Russell was in the seat next to this girl in a heartbeat, leaving Jeff looking at Russell partly irritated, and partly impressed. Russell didn’t get much chance to talk to her, but they smiled at each other, and Russell managed to not make too much of a fool of himself. The meeting was led by John, a handsome boy who looked like he could have stepped out of the Brady Bunch. He had an engaging smile, and blue eyes, and didn’t take his off this girl the entire time. Her name was Diane, and she had fallen in love. So when John asked if anyone wanted to come to their ‘fireside’ gathering next week, Diane held up her hand. Russell and Jeff raised their hands as well. They both had their eyes on Diane.

Diane seemed to move in her own world, which emitted it’s own soft, golden light. Her face was a like a painting, in fact, years later, Russell discovered her face in a painting by John Waterhouse. There were many paintings of this same woman, they all looked like Diane, not just in the face, but the entire body was identical. It was as if she were the reincarnation of this woman from the nineteenth century. One painting in particular captured her mystic quality perfectly, the one of the mermaid. Russell’s heart ached when he saw her, he wanted her so badly, she seemed to personify everything feminine and beautiful. He got lost in those eyes. He was falling in love.

When the ‘fireside’ came, Russell and Jeff arrived, each intending to get to know Diane. However, once again, Russell managed to get closer to her than Jeff. Jeff sat for much of the evening glowering at Russell. Russell was fantasic, he pulled out charm and charisma he had no idea he had. All of the self-consciousness left him. Halloween was coming up in a few days, and so Russell and Diane talked about trick or treating, and all of the weird candy you would get. He had her in stitches, she laughed so hard she choked. They were having their own little ‘fireside’ separate from the rest of the group (and to their annoyance, I believe).  Russell and Jeff had walked to this event, but when it came time to leave, everyone jumped into a van. Once again, Russell managed to jump in next to Diane. This time, Jeff was visibly angry. Russell didn’t care. As they left the van to go to their separate places, Diane ran over to Russell and whispered “I don’t want our talk to end. Can I come over?” Russell’s heart began to race, but he managed to nonchalantly say “Of course! No problem. Let’s go!” “I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes, I don’t want them to know I’m leaving with you.” she whispered mysteriously with her dark eyes shining. Russell loved this woman. This apparition of the night, (This occurred at 1 am). So, Russell walked toward home, but it felt as though he were floating. Soon, he felt her impossibly soft and warm hand in his, and her mischievous face next to his. His parents were asleep, so they sneaked into the house and then his bedroom. They sat down on his bed. Diane’s eyes were as large as an owl’s, her lips were full and beautiful. Russell couldn’t believe she was sitting right here, on his bed! He was so horny he could hardly stand it. They talked and as he gazed into her beautiful brown eyes, he had an inspiration. He had been practicing kundalini yoga recently, which involved staring fixedly at a single point, while visualizing a ball of light moving up your spine and out the top of the skull. They had been talking about Hinduism and yoga, and so he invited Diane to do a little exercise with him. He told her about Kundalini yoga and Diane was wide-eyed with wonder. Their faces were close, their lips almost met. What the hell was Russell thinking?? One can only speculate as to what Diane thought. However, they sat there staring into each other’s eyes and holding each other’s hands. They didn’t break their gaze for several minutes, and a bright golden light began to fill Russell’s vision. He felt hot. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead saying “I will be with you always.” Russell wasn’t at all sure why he said that. It just came out. It freaked Diane out, she said “This is too heavy. We’ve got to stop doing this. I can’t handle it.” Russell felt like an idiot. “Why did I spoil such a great opportunity to get laid?” he thought. He apologized, and fully expected her to get up and proceed to leave. But she stayed sitting there on his bed, and they were still holding hands. She began to confide in Russell. She said she was in love. She wasn’t looking at him when she said this. Not a good sign. Just as he suspected, she was in love with someone else. She talked about John as Russell thought “she can leave any time now.”.  But he patiently listened and even offered some advice. Diane kissed Russell on the cheek and said he was a good friend, and that she had better get back to her dorm. He offered to walk her back and she accepted. They held hands as they walked back to her dorm, but said very little. Russell felt like a jerk. How often do you have a beautiful girl that you are nuts about in your room, no less!, and manage to fuck it up so royally! Then he wondered about her. She’s in love with John and she…..but he didn’t want to think about that. His sacred Diane would never do such a thing!

But this was the first thing Jeff brought up when he told him about his adventure. “Maybe it is just as well nothing happened. She doesn’t seem like the kind of girl you….” “Oh, shut up! You don’t even know her!” “You didn’t give me a chance!” They would argue about her, and Russell would brood and plot out how he could win her love. Diane and Russell spent many times together over the next few months. She would have him escort her to parties, so other guys would leave her alone. Once she sat with Russell as he was tripping on LSD. She sat wide-eyed as he described all of the things he was experiencing. They had become friends. Then Russell blows it a second time. On one awful, lonely, tortured evening, filled with longing for Diane, Russell called her and told he was in love with her, and wanted her. She insisted he wasn’t in love with her. The call degenerated into an absurd shouting match, consisting of Russell saying “I guess I know if I’m in love? How can you say how I feel. That’s crazy! If you don’t love me, that’s fine, but there is nothing you can do about how I feel. That’s my business, not yours!” and Diane would counter “Not my business! Are you out of your mind? You tell me you are in love with me and it’s not my business? Then why tell me? Why couldn’t you have kept it to yourself? We were such good friends! You knew I wasn’t….” she didn’t finish. She knew she was breaking Russell’s heart. Finally the call ended with Diane shouting “Say you don’t love me!!” over and over. Russell just hung up. Ugly scene. Oddly, enough, that wasn’t the end of it. A couple of weeks later, Russell gets a call from Diane. She says she has been thinking about him a lot lately. Russell says “Oh yeah? So what have you been thinking?” in his best ‘I don’t give a shit’ voice. She wouldn’t say. He could hear her breathing heavily. It was almost comical. Russell decided not to take the bate. “Well, if you ever decide you want to actually talk to me, give me a call, but I don’t have time for this.” and hung up. Russell couldn’t believe that he had just rejected her, Diane, the woman of his dreams. It would be so great to say this was the end of it! But, it wasn’t. He called her a few days later and apologized and they agreed to get together. This time Russell contented himself with just being with her, being very careful not to bring up ‘love’ ever again. She did the same. It was like a unspoken agreement. But they weren’t able to recapture the friendship they had before. The conversation often felt forced. Russell still loved to look at her, and appreciate her beauty, her mystery, but the dream was over. He continued to think about her and even called her a few times over the next few years, but it was only a feeble celebration of a flame that had died long ago.  Russell remembered fondly when he was deepest in love with Diane. It was winter, cold, and the snow was heavy. There she was, walking to one of her classes, across the quadrangle, an exquisite dream drifting through the winter air, in her long elegant trench coat which accentuated her slim, sexy figure. She was so beautiful. Russell’s mother hated her.

Why Facebook Sucks

More ranting I’m afraid.

Have you ever noticed how much Facebook sucks? and yet you still use it, or may even be addicted to it? I brought up in my last post about the illusion of intimacy. This is the dangerous allure of Facebook, except for those people that understand that it is all bullshit, and refuse to take any of it seriously. That should be me. I am usually the cynical one. But I had hoped that Facebook and Twitter for that matter, might actually be an opportunity for total strangers to connect with one another about real things. I thought that this could be a chance to make a difference in the world and with each other. Instead, I see a lot of trivial bullshit. I guess trivial bullshit is ok, but it is hard for a total stranger to care about your particular trivial bullshit. That is the sort of thing you reserve for friends, or family. Guess what I ate today? Oh, I can’t believe you ate that! etc. For me anyway, that is a waste of cyberspace. That’s what text messaging or phone calls are for. I am in a profound funk. I am really disappointed in Facebook. If this is an accurate picture of humanity, then we deserve to go extinct. I mean really!!, people, let’s raise the bar a little, elevate the level of discourse so we can save this fucking planet!!, for Christ’s sake! (literally!!) All of my life I have tried to cut to the chase in my communication, let’s get to what really matters. I have found a few kindred spirits along the way. I would like to find more. But, you know what? you wouldn’t believe how many morons, assholes, and absolutely worst of all!, celebrities there are on the internet. All of it is a huge waste of time. If you have nothing to say, if you just want to be cute, or, most of all, you’re  just trying to sell something, get the fuck off of Facebook!! You have other places to pollute, leave Facebook for people who genuinely want to connect with one another. Put your lame ass on Youtube. I am positive you will get a lot of hits. Everybody loves a moron.

Trying to make your presence known on Facebook, or the internet in general is very frustrating. For one thing, you have very little idea of who you are dealing with. People click Like, but they don’t comment, which puzzles me. As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t like something well enough to comment on it, you don’t really like it. I crave genuine communication which contributes to each of our lives. Shouldn’t that be what Facebook is all about? I can’t stand Mark Zuckerberg, although I can acknowledge his genius in creating this drug called Facebook. He is the number one pusher in America today. His vision for Facebook is for it to be a marketers wet dream, a paradise for laissez-faire capitalism. All the communication is scooped up by businesses so they can better target you with their non-stop ads. There is absolutely no real meaning, or spirituality, or anything else to this vision. It is T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland come to life. Empty shells of human beings clicking Like, and buying useless crap, sharing trivial nonsense as a pale imitation of life. Welcome to Facebook.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. I will continue to challenge that fucked-up paradigm. I will continue to offer my views, and share my heart with the faceless population that might see my posts, and the “followers” that express some interest in my rants. I will because I am addicted and because I keep thinking that perhaps I am wrong about humanity. Maybe there are some real human beings out there that I can have genuine communication with.

I just take things far too seriously, don’t I???  Here is a silly cat video to make you feel better.

Growing up is hard and wonderful

I saw my friend again tonight (the one I blogged about a few days ago), and again, I greatly enjoyed her company. As I sat and listened to talk about her family in Vietnam, and snorkeling in Hawaii, and the frustrations of her job, I realized how relatively sheltered my own life has been. I am still a kid inside. I haven’t grown up yet. Or, to put it more accurately, I am in the process of growing up, which is both hard and wonderful. As caught up as I can get in my own daydreams and develop crushes on celebrities I admire, nothing compares to the connection you can feel just simply sitting across from someone in a restaurant and listening to the story of their life. This is Real. So much of our lives are spent meaninglessly, at jobs we don’t care about, mindlessly watching tv or cruising the web. Worst of all, we wallow in our own thoughts, nurturing our hopes and fears. All around us is the real world, which if properly engaged should fill you with wonder, and reveal, beneath the ugliness, a beauty that is painful to experience. It is kind of hard for me to explain all of the things I am feeling. Even as I try to grasp them , I can feel my feelings fading away, replaced with the comfortable obliviousness I am used to. All of my life I have wanted something real, something honest to happen in my life, and was driven to distraction by the relentless phoniness of life. When all that time it was right in front of me. Occasionally when you least expect it, you get a moment or two of clarity. The beauty of that moment is heartbreaking, because it doesn’t and can’t last. Growing up is the process of leaving behind the false world of the imagination and engaging something truly real, but also unknown. It is hard for me to write about this because it has nothing really to do with the circumstances of your life. It has to do with how you experience something.

The reason I am going on and on about this is because I had been really depressed lately, and in a state where I just couldn’t derive any satisfaction from anything I did. Then I experienced the opposite of that, where I was caught up in a reverie over all the wonderful things I was going to do with my life. My daydreams became intrusive. imagining myself becoming a celebrity and being able to express my thoughts and my humor on a large scale, an international scale. I think a lot of this has to do with the internet. The experience of putting your thoughts on the web as I am doing now, can be very infectious. You imagine having an impact on people all over the world. Then you return to your mundane existence, in which just being able to go to work each day can be a struggle. The contrast between that high and that low is very stressful. Then, once again I spend some time with a friend. A friend who simply through the act of being totally herself and sharing herself with me triggered a transformation. The actual activity was mundane, but it opened up my consciousness to something other than my own mind. No. I am not talking about falling in love. I have been in love and that is something quite different. When you are in love you are in a state of bliss, but a kind of blinding bliss, rather than a clarifying bliss. I suppose I could just be going on about just a simple fact of friendship. No big deal. But I have had many conversations with friends, which are more like two televisions facing one another. There is no true connection. I believe this transformation has more to do with me than my friend, although she served as a catalyst. I am opening up to myself and the world around me in a way I haven’t before. I have decided to call it growing up. Maybe, finally, at the age of 58, I am growing up.

I realize that this post hasn’t really been about anything, but rather an attempt to express what cannot really be expressed, at least not adequately. Sorry about that. I think my orgy of self-expression lately has something to do with this opening up as well. I feel as though I am pulling myself up by the roots. Not necessarily an unpleasant feeling, but a unique one. Perhaps my future blogs will reflect less drama and more truth telling from a unique perspective. This is one of those posts which should have the tag ???????