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  • Enough
    How much is enough? Wouldn't it be nice if there was one right answer? No? Oh, excuse me, I see you have given this a little thought. Or perhaps you know that right answers are a trap because they depend on opposites and opposites are exclusive. We're most aware of it in food choices. Chocolate or vanilla? Both, please. I'd like chocolate and vanilla, thank you very much. Not everyone can say that. Probably because they'd prefer Neapolitan, which includes strawberry as well as chocolate and vanilla. Perhaps the more sensitive will forgive me for including ice cream as a food. The way I use the word food has a broad definition which includes air and water as well. If I want to speak of some specific food I have other words I use. While on the phone today I was speaking with a young woman who was from Canada. The way she said about gave it away. I mentioned she must be from Canada and she figured I'd put eh and about together and got Canadian. She was half right. She hadn't said eh. I told her my wife speaks Canadian. It's her second language. She used to teach a lot of classes in Canada for a while so she learned to speak Canadian. It's an important language for an American, at least the kind that come from the United States, if you travel to other countries often. No one seems to be too terribly fond of Americans so it's often nice to have a second language like Canadian so you can not like people from the United States along with the rest of the world. You just say you're a Canadian, toss in a couple of eh's and an about (properly pronounced) and you may be able to escape with your life. It also helps not to act like a loud mouth who thinks he owns the world but that's not crucial because, believe it or not, there are some loud mouthed Canadians too.

    Language interests me. Not just the foreign kind either. I like special languages as well. Medical language, lawyer speak, scientific languages and the like. It seems everyone has their own special language these days. Of course, it makes it more difficult to communicate with one another but communicating with one another doesn't seem to be high on our list of priorities. There's always the universal language if all else fails. Love? No, silly. The universal language isn't love anywhere but in songs, poems and fairy tales. The real universal language is the one everyone on our planet understands. Violence, force, might, power. When it comes to our efforts to understand other people we give priority to men with guns. Not a very pretty picture but I didn't paint it. I'm just noticing it. Don't send any men with guns to my house to talk about it, please. When they talk, people end up dead, bleeding, wounded or bereaved of their loved ones. The only time we like to see men with guns coming is when other men with guns are making us do things we don't want to do. Then we hope the new men with guns have different rules than the other men with guns. Eventually though, they all end up with the same rule. Might makes right. Please don't think I'm preaching against guns. I'm not. We don't need guns to violate one another. See what I mean about language? Violence and violate come from the same Latin root.

    People sometimes get annoyed with me. What? You didn't know that? Oh yeah, sometimes, not always, but sometimes. It appears I can be tedious when it comes to words. But I like to know what another person is talking about when they talk to me. So I ask them what they mean and then try to find the right word to match their meaning. Well, wouldn't you know it? Our attention span has diminished to just seconds these days. Is it any wonder? With instant everything we simply do not have time to wait for anything. One might think that with so many time saving devices around we'd have lots of time to spend on things that were important to us. And we do. It's just that the things that have become important to us don't amount to jack shit when we're on our death bed. See? Language is great. Even vulgar slang. Vulgar used to mean common people. Oh well. We don't have patience for communication. I don't anyway. I finish people's sentences. Some people love it and some people hate it. Interestingly, both the lovers and haters wish to be understood. The lovers seem to desire to be understood so much they're willing to have help. The haters wish to be understood so much they don't want any help because it will probably be wrong. I think it's a personal problem but in the interest of good relations I rarely tell them. After all, they're already annoyed with me for finishing their sentences. Okay, I've had enough but I hope you haven't and you'll come back for more.

  • Ignorant
    If someone said you were ignorant do you think you might feel insulted? What if they said it in front of others and intoned it? It's a perfectly respectable word but we often give it the power to get our backs up. Lately I've been wondering about ignorance. Mainly because I am so ignorant. While thinking about it I remembered being called ignorant as if it were a name and I don't mean like a person's name. I mean like name-calling. People laughed and I felt put down, abused, which was fine because that was the intention of the person calling me ignorant. Because I was ignorant I didn't know that he was giving me a gift. So, I failed to receive it as a gift and received it instead as he had intended it. As an insult. How ignorant of me. Because of my ignorance I went to the dictionary to see what others had to say about the word. They were straight forward: Ignorant - lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated. They went on to further define the word as lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular. It comes from the Latin ignorant- not knowing, which comes from the verb ignorare and tells me to see ignore. I ignorantly ignored that. Unlearned is similar to ignorant in that it refers to a lack of learning in general or in a specific subject, but it does not carry the same negative connotations.

    To be insulted by being called ignorant today would once again prove my ignorance. Ignorance of the worst possible kind. Ignorance of myself. But ignorance of oneself is not a crime though it can bring with it a good deal of pain. To be unconscious of what goes on in our own psyche is far too common in our society. There is a story about Buddha that I like. A man came to him heaping abuse on him, calling him names and casting insults at him like stones. The Buddha sat calmly and listened to the man. When he'd finished his tirade the Buddha asked him simply, Sir, if someone brings you a gift and you do not receive it with whom does the gift reside. The man answered, Why, with the giver, of course. The Buddha replied, I do not receive your gift. The man realized in a flash the wisdom of such an attitude and response and asked to become a disciple. But why become a disciple? Because the man could see that allowing such a gift to remain with the giver would take a good bit of something of which he had very little. Self-knowlege. But why self-knowledge? Because with enough of it one may master self-control. Oh, how I'd like some more of that. And who wouldn't? Well, the ignorant of course.

    It takes a certain amount of knowledge to be able to value something. Once upon a time, when Art Linkletter had a show on television about kids he demonstrated something I've remembered all these years. He had a father and his very young son sit on a sofa in front of the cameras. Before them was a coffee table with two large, clear glass bowls on it. One was filled with old, crumpled, dirty dollar bills and the other filled with shiny new pennies. The boy was then told he could have as much as he wanted of either. To the father's chagrin the boy began digging into the bowl full of shiny pennies with both hands while the father watched in helpless despair. What Mr. Linkletter was demonstrating was that children valued what they knew and what they knew of money back then was what we gave them. Pennies. My grandfather used to give me a penny on the Saturdays we went to see him. I'd run down to the corner store and buy more candy than you could imagine one could buy with a penny. I doubt I'd have known what to do with a dollar. Today I don't mind being called ignorant. I call myself ignorant. Knowing I'm ignorant means I can find out. I think that's pretty smart.

  • Death
    As a rule it's not something about which we like to talk or think. We have industries that deal with that sort of thing and jokes about morticians and undertakers. Undertaker is an interesting word is it not? We're an odd lot. We call dead animals meat and dead people corpses and cadavers. It appears to me life prepares us for death if we're doing it right. Lately I've been thinking a lot about dying but I'm not so sure it's physical death that has been occupying my mind inordinately. Death, in reality, is little more than separation from some things to which we've grown attached and with which we've become identified. The body, people, places and things pretty much covers the physical aspect. People who are so identified with the body they can't imagine being without it will have trouble with this. Having given up a large part of my body at an early age has given me the opportunity to develop a somewhat unique perspective. Most who have not had that opportunity may not understand my gratitude. It was a choice. Having been hit by a car at age nineteen my left leg was crushed beyond repair. The doctors explained I would die if they didn't remove it. They asked me what I wanted to do. At that time the perceived peace of death looked more appealing than the perceived sensations of pain. But my mother was by my side and she refused to let me go, pleading with me to stay. We were close so she knew that look in her first born's eyes. So, for love and duty I gave the leg and kept the life. Over forty years later I do not regret the choice. But probably not for the reasons one might think.

    After living a few score of years we may become aware that life is a training ground teaching us the art of living. Then, if we're doing it right, we begin to realize the art of living is really the art of dying. It may appear morbid to a society obsessed with youth and everything young. But I find that society's attempts to futilely and unnaturally freeze life in one stage of its inevitable progression to be much more morbid. How can one fully live life if one fears and recoils from death? So much of what we call life is our experiences with death in one form or another. The fetus we were is no longer when we enter this outside-the-body world as an individual, unattached from our host mother. The infant we were is no longer as we slowly, almost imperceptibly grow into a toddler and so on. Where are those people? They were distinct people, different from us in many ways, though we still retain some of their memories. They were replaced cell by cell, thought by thought, feeling by feeling. As one cell died another cell was born to take it's place. We're dying every nanosecond on a cellular level. Of course, the pollyanna who fears death and the unknown will recoil in masked horror at the very idea of embracing death as our daily bread. The Greek origins of the word hypocrite springs to mind when I think of what lies behind the happy mask of most positive thinkers. And like any good comedy it's amusing when we understand, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players". And so one may choose to mask death by saying cells are being born every nanosecond. And they'd be right and I'd agree. But then it's easier for me to look at both sides since I fear neither. Once I heard the fourteenth Dalai Lama say that he thought the idea of reincarnation was wonderful because when this body wears out you get another one. I don't know if you do or not.

    Actually, that would be my plan B if I were going to have a plan. The Apostle Paul's idea of a second body fascinates me because it's so easy to extrapolate. We have more than one body already. We call an author's or painter's products a body of work. We have a body of thoughts that make up our intellectual side, unstable as it may be. It might be easier to view our emotional side as an emotional body. My plan A would be to build a body while here that could exist in the realms of thought and emotion. I suppose one would have to say a body that could exist in the realms of consciousness. A universe easily as large as the outer universe of which we are a physical part. But building it wouldn't really be enough if we didn't know where we parked it and didn't practice living in it while we were still here. What if this life were a kind of workshop school where we could choose Consciousness as an elective course? Judging by the way the majority of people live their brief span of time here it would have to be an elective course. Only a little objective observation makes it clear there's nothing compelling people to become aware of anything other than a life lived wholly by and for the senses. Since that's what is natural here it must be the mandated course. But if one wished to develop further than the mandated there are teachers and methods available to those willing to put forth the effort. Of course not everyone who enrolls in a course will complete it. There are dropouts in any school. The tougher the course the more dropouts. So, for me, death is more like graduation day. Something to be celebrated if you graduate. If not? Try again? I don't know.

  • Riled
    Rarely do I get all riled up these days. It's okay because it's not something I miss. The increased respiration and heart beat. The rush of blood to the head and solar plexus isn't as compelling as it once was. A much older and wiser friend told me once that I was passionate. To me it was just getting riled up. Riled is a fine word. It had an early nineteenth century variant of roil. Roil is another wonderful word. It means to make a liquid turbid or muddy by disturbing the sediment. To rile is to make someone annoyed or irritated. Giving someone else, someone other than myself, that kind of power seems absurd to me now. But I didn't used to see it as me giving my power away. It was just getting stirred up, agitated. In fact, there were times it was great because it gave me the feeling of being more alive, more in control and powerful. Never mind the fact that I was out of control and giving away my power. It didn't feel that way and how it felt was everything. Those days are gone now for the most part. I don't regret their passing one little bit. I'm joyous about it. Is it okay for a heterosexual man to be joyous? If it is or it isn't won't really matter to me because I'm past caring what people think is okay or not okay for me. It's for me to decide because I'm the one who'll pay the price for what I think, say and do. It's true too that others will pay for what I think, say and do on many occassions. But there's really little to be done for that other than to make damned sure what I think, say and do is worth the price I and others will pay. If it's not it's up to me to not think, say or do it. Why? Because that's part of becoming a mature, responsible citizen of the planet upon which we live.

    Many Eastern disciplines liken the mind to a pond or pool of water. If allowed to become still the sediment in the water settles, making it possible to see clearly what is in the pond or what is reflected on the surface of the water from outside the pond. Most folks in their calmer moments can see the benefit of such a practice. These same Eastern disciplines recommend meditation as a way to still the mind. Thoughts and feelings have a tremendous power to roil the mind. Disturbing the sediment which has collected in it and making the mind cloudy, opaque, thick and slow with the suspended sediment. There was a time when my mind was so disturbed, riled and roiled that it was nearly impossible to see anything clearly, as it actually was. What? You think it may not be possible to ever see things as they actually are? You're right. That state of mind does make it impossible. But there are things which are possible to a clear mind that are impossible to a riled up, roiling mind. Passion is a strong and barely controllable emotion. To someone like me it's like walking along the edge of a razor. One must be careful not to lose one's balance and fall to one side or the other and at the same time tread lightly enough not be be cut in two. Because I know this I tend to eschew passion when possible. When I must handle it I muster every ounce of directed attention of which I am capable and move slowly and deliberately.

    Unfortunately, there's a great deal of sediment on the bottom of my mind making clarity much more difficult than I'd like it to be. Until I'm able to purify the waters of my mind it's prudent for me to work to keep it as still as possible. The sediment was blown into the pond by the winds. Some fell in like autumn leaves. Some was invited and collected because I thought there was value in it. How it got there isn't nearly as important as sorting through it to see what needs to go. The process is a long one but I've found it very rewarding. It's not required of us by life. Rather it is an elective study for those wishing something more than life offers as its basic course. The other day my wife sent me some photos someone had put together about parenting. The first was a young mother holding a toddler in one arm. Her mouth was an ugly snarl. Her right hand raised at the end of a stiff arm brandishing her middle finger in a familiar gesture. Two of her other, older children, held the same pose. One child, between toddler and older failed the test by holding up her index finger instead. She didn't have it right yet but you could see where practice would take her. By the look on Mom's face you could also see the little girl was going to get plenty of practice. That's sediment.

  • Less
    Recently I did a Podcast titled More Is Less. The more I think about it the less I think I was able to convey. Isn't that the way it goes? If I thought about it long enough I would have so much less to say I would end up saying nothing at all. That's a goal of mine. To say nothing at all. Actually, I've been doing pretty well here in Xangadu. The only reason I'm breaking my silence is because someone has subscribed to the site and I feel duty bound to provide some kind of soul sustenance. As if I could. Soon, if I live, I will complete sixty years of my sojourn here. Although where here is I'm still not entirely certain. But that doesn't bother me so much, though I am able to look back to a time, and a person who lived in that time, who very much wanted to know where here was. The more I think about it the less I think he knew about what he was so sure he knew. That's somewhat disconcerting if applied to this current person. Certainly he thinks he knows something. Don't we all think we know something? How else could we get up in the morning and do whatever it is we do? If we go through it all in our ordinary half asleep stupor it's not so bad. Enter drugs, sex, rock and roll or whatever other diversions we find to keep us mentally and emotionally dull. Analgesics for the soul. Life is for living and what we call living is for dulling the pain of life. But don't think about it too much or look at it too closely because it can be very uncomfortable. Without some kind of anchor outside of all this it could cause one to despair. Despair is born of ignorance masquerading as enlightenment.

    Zen begins to appeal to me. Don't tell me. Don't say it. Show it. Live it. Be it. Save your meager amount of life force for doing instead of squandering it in words that are carried away by the winds of life and scattered to parts unknown. Blown into the crevices of rocks or the cracks in the pavement where no one looks. I'm not smart. I can't think with the intellectuals, run with the big dogs. The more I see about me the less impressed am I. My vocabulary is such that I must have a dictionary program in my PDA and two on my desktop. No matter what one thinks one knows there is always someone else knows more. What? You think this is a midlife crisis? Only if, God forbid, I live to be one hundred twenty. No, this is the fruit of dispassionate self-observation, self-examination. A reality check, as it were. One that seems to have bounced. Since 1969 I've studied,     learned, read, taught and shared the journey in many different forms. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good student. The other day I asked a handful of students if we should continue. Was any of it worth it? Was there any value in what we do, have done, are doing? Though I see little they see more. Where I see others who are more capable than I, they see something in our relationship worth more. No, I'm not depressed. I'm flat. Not flat like champagne that's lost its bubbles. More like a seesaw balanced, poised, feeling the energy building that will soon tip one way or another.

    This can't be a midlife crisis because this is not early midlife. But it is a crisis of identity. A manufactured crisis of identity. Manufactured in the laboratory of my own inner world. Brought about for the purpose of forcing him to reorganize. To develop, to grow into what we might become we must change. That change is rarely pleasant and often painful enough to cause most folks to avoid it at all costs. We'd much rather others change and leave us to enjoy our lives once they've stopped being so annoying. The dedication it takes to change oneself instead is sadly lacking in us. After all, we're pretty good guys. Yes, we are. At a glance. But upon closer examination we find there are some serious flaws in the foundation of this little house in which we live. So we stay in our favorite little room where we have a sense of control. Where we can put the best pictures of us on the walls and look only at them when we think about ourselves. We even throw a few goofy ones up there to prove we're not egoists. Today I am less and tomorrow I hope to be even less than I am today. But there is a part of me mourns the loss, even though the loss is of nothing. It's the nothing that looked like something. The mirage caused by the strange atmosphere we create in our little room. This didn't turn out the way I thought it would. Now that I think about it, nothing has. It's better.

  • Irony
    There's something wonderful about irony. It's that elusive something not easily defined. Today I received a couple of emails from Pod-Planet.com congratulating me because, A fan of your Podcast added your RSS feed for James’ World Lite to the Pod-Planet.com Podcast Directory! Pod-Planet.com is quickly becoming the hottest Podcast directory on the Web. There were two of them. One for each Podcast. Both Phat and Skinny (Lite). That's nice. Didn't say who the fan actually was/is. It's not that I'm particularly suspicious. The fact is I'm pretty gullible as a rule. But where my ego is involved I've learned not to cut the monster a millimeter of slack. It's the old, give it a millimeter and it takes the whole universe thing. First of all, I didn't know anyone listened to the Podcasts. That's not entirely true because there are a few subscribers and some have written to me from around the world. There are listeners in about thirty countries. Well, at least there are downloaders in that many countries. If those people actually listen or not I don't know. Some must because they've written to me and referenced things they could only have known by listening. Actually, I got a question from a guy in Portugal who sent me a WAV file excerpt of one of my own Podcasts. He had a question about that particular part of it. Probably shouldn't be so hard on myself, but it's not really myself with which I'm being strict. It's that ego thing again.

    Back to the irony. The email wants me to go and categorize my Podcasts so they can put them where they belong. So, I went to look at the categories. What I found was two categories that have nearly twice as many Podcasts in them as any other. Religion and Comedy. Religion had 1120 Podcasts listed and Comedy had 1030.  This strikes me as ironic. What? Life sucks so we either laugh to forget it or pray to make it better? It's probably better than suicide to get out of life altogether. It's true, I can be funny, but I don't really belong in Comedy. It's not the main thrust of the message. But neither is Religion. In fact, I couldn't find a category that worked for me. So what did I do? Well, I laughed at the irony then came here to write about it. Why? Because I like the new banner and color scheme and wanted to write something new in it. Because the only thing I know makes a good laugh better it to share it with someone else you think may appreciate it. Because I enjoy communicating with people. Because I want you to listen to the Podcasts. Because I want you to make your life better than it already is no matter how great it is. Because I want you to make the world a nicer place for yourself and others. Because I think we can. Because I think that helps to pay for this great gift of life that we've been given. Stuff like that.

    Irony is better than sarcasm, causticity, cynicism, mockery and sardonicism. With irony nobody gets hurt, wounded, burned, cut, ridiculed or generally damaged. I like that. Harmlessness appeals to me. You don't have to be trying to peddle religion to be harmless. With the history of religion on this planet that would be a tough sale. Irony is the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect. It's the contradiction that makes it funny.  Religion isn't funny and most Comedy isn't either. Most comedy is hurtful. But the fact that religion and comedy have such overwhelmingly large numbers of Podcasts strikes me as funny in an ironic way. Podcasting is like radio or tv. A very powerful medium that could be used to bring about so much good on our planet. And how do we use them? You know the answer. Why? Because it's hard to make money doing good. Actually, it usually costs to do good. And it can cost a lot more than people think. There can be a lot of truth in comedy. That's why it can hurt. But religion usually makes the people participating in it feel good. Probably because there's so little truth left in it. But it sure can hurt the people not participating in it. The God hates Fags thing springs to mind. God doesn't hate anyone. People hate people and blame it on God because they created him in their own image and after their own likeness. It's why so many people who want to do good go around saying that they're spiritual and not religious. Whether it's true or not. I'm out of space. Think about it.

  • Unforgivable
    Today, I did the unforgivable, again. This morning, as I went through my email there was a notice I had an eCard waiting for me, along with a link to it. It was from my wife. In fact, there were two. It seemed odd to me because my wife, like most other people, doesn't particularly like me. This observation may seem odd to many but it's only because the truth of our condition is so difficult to bear we rarely, if ever, face it. Generally, no one particularly likes anyone else on our planet. If they do it's simply a matter of time before the circumstances change and they return to dislike. To help make the shock of this easier we can also say people on this planet don't like anything all the time. We live in the land of like/dislike and swing between the two states with monotonous regularity. What keeps us imprisoned in this dizzying hell is our complete certainty that we aren't like that. At least not without just cause. Aye, therein lies the rub. We have just cause. We don't like people because they are not likable sometimes. They do things. Unforgivable things. Not once, no, not even twice, but over and over again even after they've promised not to do them again. Just cause for liking and disliking. Need a bit more salve for that? Well, disliking isn't like hating. Feel better? Give it time to work.

    As I watched the eCard play, objections presented themselves to me for my approval. The theme was things that make me smile. One of them was drinking from a hose. Something which does not make me smile. Okay, thought I, if that makes you smile I'm happy for you. But what has that got to do with me? Sleeping in was another but it found approval. I'd like to sleep in and it makes me smile to think someday I could sleep in. That's a nice thought even if it doesn't happen. When the silly card finished playing there was a message at the end. Something about twenty-five years and Who'd a thunk it? My wife isn't the only one who has been married twenty-five years. I have too. I've been here. But I was amused at how she'd jumped the gun. Our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary isn't until the fifth of May. This made me smile because I knew this was still April. Then, oddly, a doubt crept into my mind. Or perhaps it was just me looking at the calendar on my watch to see how far off May actually was. The number in the little window was five. The fifth. Today is the fifth. The fifth of May. Cinco de mayo. Oh.

    The kind of person I am most of the time is not the kind of person other people like most of the time. I'm a proctologist kind of person most of the time. If you don't have a pain in the ass at the moment and you come and see me I'll give you one. Not in a mean way, but that doesn't seem to matter to most of us. We don't like people messing with either end so we don't really appreciate dentists or proctologists unless there's simply no way around it. So, today I forgot our wedding anniversary. Certainly forgivable. But we have accounts. When this is added to all the other line items that have been entered into the ledger over twenty-five years the balance swings into the red. Red ink. The kind of red ink that doesn't come out easily, like blood stains. What would it take to remove that much red ink? What would it take to balance the books? Nothing. It's impossible and remains impossible as long as one approaches it from that perspective. If people on this planet have any hope of escaping the state of like/dislike they will have to first stop making accounts. Then they will have to go back and cancel the debts. All debts. All the way back to the beginning. To do that a person would have to see their true place in the Universe. Then they would realize they are not owed but rather owe. If we could understand that we could forgive and nothing would be unforgivable. Nothing.

  • Sheep
    Did you know that sheep can bite? Hard? Well, they can. If you irritate them long enough they can bite you and it can hurt. Now I don't really know much about real sheep and whether or not they can, will or do bite people. So, you may as well know now that I'm speaking metaphorically. Also, I'm not saying that it's the fault of the sheep if one gets bitten. My old Irish Mamma used to say, Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. As with many things my old Irish Mamma used to say, it has stuck with me and given me pause to think more than I might have thought had she not said that to me so many times when I was young and impressionable. How I take that these days is that if a sheep bites me once it may be a naughty sheep but if it bites me twice I'm an idiot.

    It can really be difficult to get a glimpse of oneself as one actually is. What makes it difficult? Well, our resistance to the reality of what is there in the face of our own imagined self-image, which is really only in our own imagination. Are you beginning to see a connection between the word image and imagine? The other day I saw something about me that I really didn't like. My considerations were that I'd dedicated nearly forty years of my life to something which now appears to be somewhat useless as well as absurdly ridiculous. The following Gary Larson cartoon depicts what I realized in a flash. The one standing represents the me that I thought I was. Doing what I thought I was doing and may well have been doing. The others represent whomever they may represent.

    Today, the standing sheep appears somewhat arrogant and a lot stupid to me. After all, the other sheep just want to mill around and munch grass, make baa sounds and do other sheepy things from time to time. The upstart in the middle needs a good head butt to bring him back to the reality of sheepdom. But he's so into some other reality I doubt he could be brought back to the reality of sheepdom even with a good head butt. It would probably take, and in fact has taken, many years of head butting to bring me to this realization. The thing is sheep want to be just sheep more often than they want to be anything else. When sheep want to be something other than just sheep they like the guy in the middle. But when they want to be just sheep they can get nasty if the guy in the middle keeps pressing them. What this means in the real world of sheep is the guy in the middle creates his own misery by trying to get just sheep to be something other than just sheep when they are busy being and wanting to be just sheep. It's a long road to recovery.

  • Pride
    Somewhere I heard or read we should write about what we know. But if we did, these pages would be blank. Xangadu and all the others wouldn't exist. So, I'm going to write about what I don't know, can't see and don't believe exists. My pride. Writing about pride is like stalking the legendary Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka. If you find the Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka and it looks at you while you're looking at it you fall into a catatonic state. Yeah, it was from an episode of South Park. As I was thinking about pride I thought how much it is like the Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka. It doesn't exist and the only people who can see it are a bunch of crackpots. When was the last time you looked in the mirror and said to the person or frog staring back at you, You're so proud, arrogant and full of yourself I can hardly stand being in the same room with the stink of it.? Because this is Xangadu and Xangadu is part of this reality in which we believe we live, someone will proudly say, Why, just this morning I said those very words. If I ever did I promptly turned around and forgot whatever it was I had seen in the mirror. Pride - a feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

    A    ccording to my current, incomplete level of understanding, what that means is if we're getting off on all the great stuff we think we've achieved we're proud. If we're getting off on the achievements of those with whom we identify ourselves, kind of like a mini me, we're proud. And if we're getting off on others getting off on our widely admired achievements, we're proud. What was wrong with pride again? If you dare say there's anything wrong with pride you're bashing the American dream. That dream is all about pleasure. So if you're trying to tell me that pleasure is wrong, you need to be peddling your wares in some other neighborhood. What frog? I don't see a frog. There's no such thing as a Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka. Now, to add insult to injury, this stupid dictionary also calls pride, the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's importance. Excuse me but I thought quality was something good. So, are they saying an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's importance is good? The only people who think it's excessive are those other people. Yeah, you know the ones. The crackpots. The people who go around talking about the Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka.  Not us.

    So, you see? This whole pride thing is easily as bogus as the Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka. If you had it you couldn't see it. But you don't have it so there's no chance of seeing it anyway. And even if we did catch a glimpse of something green moving over there it wasn't pride, err, I mean the Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka. Pride is something other people have in excessive amounts. What we have is a healthy self-respect and dignity. Something every human being needs to make it through the obstacle course created by all these other prideful idiots out there who are making life miserable for our humble, dignified, self-respecting selves. The bastards probably killed Kenny too.

  • Joy . . .
    And other pains in the ass. Butt, butt, How could joy be a pain in the ass? you ask. Actually, it's not, but we have the unhappy knack of making anything a pain in the ass. If you open your eyes you'll see examples of it everywhere you look. But opening our eyes isn't easy because it disturbs the comfortable stupor in which we live. As a matter of fact, anything which disturbs our comfortable stupor is a pain in the ass. From time to time life opens our eyes for us. Usually against our protestations. I wanted to say against our will but we'd have to have some will to have anything go against it. Vision seems to follow desire. When we want something we see it everywhere we look. It's easy to confuse will with desire. If we desire something we sometimes think we will it. But if we can't make it happen we lack the power of will and it becomes another of the illusory abilities we ascribe to ourselves. There's not much we can make happen. Try growing a hair on that bald spot. Try turning one of those gray hairs some other color without the outside help of Clairol. What? No gray hair yet? Then you're going to have to work harder to get my meaning. What? Too arrogant to work. Run along then, there's nothing for you here. See?, now I'm a pain in the ass. So are you. The only question is, Whose ass are you paining today? You probably don't know the half of it. How could you? You didn't set out to be a pain in the ass. It's more a function of the ass owner than the pain. Such a great out for us. Yesterday someone explained to me how they were not responsible for what others perceived. True enough. Here's where I get to be a pain in the ass again. One who wishes to develop cannot afford the luxury of that perspective.

    The truth is a pain in the ass. But only because we can make anything a pain in the ass. It's why we invent our own truth. It's why we deny the possibility of absolute truth. It stops the pain. Sometimes, often, life is all about stopping the pain. Damage control and prevention. Once we get the pain stopped, or at least anesthetized, we seem to spare no expense in doing what we think needs to be done to prevent pain from being experienced again. This may well be the reason drug use is epidemic in our society today. Why we spend billions on entertainment which ultimately changes nothing. We erroneously call that learning. Real learning would be what had taken place if we could take the pain in a different way. Something to be embraced rather than avoided, stopped, changed, made to go away. Someone looking at us from another planet might think we liked pain the way we create it when we don't have it. This would be a mistake. We don't like it. We're addicted to what causes it and we've forgotten what that is. We've placed the cause elsewhere insuring we can never remove the cause as long as we continue to place it where it isn't. The catch twenty-two of the whole thing is that owning the cause, bringing it back home to us, brings us pain. The very thing we're trying to avoid. Faulty programming.

    If joy is nothing more than the absence of pain, peace no more than the absence of conflict, we're idiots for not killing ourselves and getting right to the great reward. There are some unable to take the plunge because they fear death. There are those who think there is more to life than being conflict free and pain free. I'm one of them I suppose. If I've been a pain in your ass and you're still around you are probably one of them too. Sorry. Not that you're one of us but that we, I, can't suck air in and push it out without being a pain in someone's ass somewhere on the planet about all the time. The smartest thing to do is to grow up and learn to live with the pain. But you can always try to run away, forget, change partners, songs or dance halls until you grow up and learn to live with the pain. For life, after all, is a great pain factory. Can you feel the joy?

James

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