Breadcrumbs
Oh, for a time machine from which to view all creation, all dissolution.
Alas that dreamtime does not exist as more than imaginary filament.
* * * *
I be a born again agnostic.
* * * *
I be not bound within by any law fashioned of human conception,
For I abide in nature’s realm, and no other shall stand before it.
* * * *
Been there, seen that; the wheel of creation and destruction rolls on and on.
* * * *
Happy Birthday, oh, Happy Birthday …
Sickness, sorrow, pain, and despair …
People dying everywhere … but …
Happy Birthday, oh, Happy Birthday.
(Sung to Russian tune)
* * * *
In some musty, ancient, gray basement of the Ivory Tower, reside I,
Knowing enough to know I perchance know a little something,
But very little compared to the ethereal layers of the scholarly keep above,
Spiraling so high, so pristinely, so unequivocally, into the exalted realms of imagination.
* * * *
Alas that your bladder shall have to wait for mine.
* * * *
The rut grows daily deeper, and the calls to action daily fewer.
* * * *
My many opinions, my many views, my many generalizations,
May often be flip and overdone – gospel they are not, and hopefully will never be –
So best accept, best believe none of them without due consideration.
Critical thinking is the chasm between sage and fool.
* * * *
I mind my own business.
How about you do the same?
* * * *
A harbor for political correctness, I am not.
* * * *
Pretty sure I did not intend to offend, but some people are just too thin-skinned avoid it.
* * * *
For the want of a pen, a thought was lost.
* * * *
A future denizen of the Dead Poets Society.
* * * *
If I cannot save myself, how can I save anyone else?
* * * *
Uh-oh, no paper and pen, alas, another ditty gone and lost forever.
So it goes, too bad, so sorry, oh well, deal with it, get over it, move on.
* * * *
A good friend is content with your cordial attention.
A fair number of women seem to expect your soul, too.
* * * *
Bookstores and libraries and boxes of books at yard sales always make me drowsy.
Something to do with the overwhelming concentration of consciousness, methinks.
* * * *
A walkin’-talkin’ fountain of gibberish, I am, I am.
* * * *
I think, therefore I think I exist.
I think, therefore I think I am.
* * * *
If you do not care, why should anyone else?
* * * *
Just a few four-letter words to which I yield little or no attachment:
Love, hate, hope, good, just, luck, fair, cute, nice, pink,
Work, time, herd, fate, true, gawd …
* * * *
It just so does not matter at all.
* * * *
Another day of sketching with words.
* * * *
Fortunately, there is a good chance I can resist killing you for that little blaspheme.
* * * *
Joe Everyman wakes to another day.
* * * *
Resting in solitude, basking in sunlight.
Content that it is not limelight.
How fortunate I am.
* * * *
The human species hankers for stories,
And if I really strained my ability,
I could probably come up with something.
But it would likely be stiff, and not all that rousing,
Because storytelling takes too much effort, too much drudge.
Far less engaging than the reason I picked up the pen in the first place.
The so-it-goes of nature-nurture molded me into a maximteller brand of scribe.
* * * *
Something to do until the sun sets.
* * * *
Did I ever really care? I cannot remember.
* * * *
Why all these thoughts?
Well, I guess you could say:
Nothing … interested me more.
* * * *
Well beyond weary I am of this ofttimes torturous mortal shell.
* * * *
Another day underway.
* * * *
Cannot save myself, how could I ever save anyone else?
* * * *
The irony of these many thoughts is they came from the unassuming, gentle loins
Of a humble farmer who could have been a sculptor of garden statues,
And a kindergarten teacher who loved reading and bridge.
* * * *
Did I do everything? No.
Did I do enough? Yes.
More than enough, actually.
* * * *
Awash in nada.
* * * *
One of the first go-to ditties that bubbled to mind back in the late 80’s happened
While teaching fifth grade at Oak Grove School in Ojai, California.
It came out as a response to one of my students, Alicia,
The willful single daughter of a single mother,
Who was trying to run the classroom:
“Alicia, I don’t know how it is at home, but here,
‘Yes means yes, no means no, and maybe does not mean yes.’”
The next day her mother said in passing, “I don’t know if Alicia likes you.”
To which the retrospect rejoinder would have been, “It’s not my job to be liked by Alicia,”
Followed by, “Nor is it yours.”
* * * *
Because I had no agenda, no plan, no purpose, no objective, no raison d'être,
The great mystery took me into its bosom and flung me every direction.
Took me for a whirl out on the cosmic dance floor, so to speak.
And somehow I survived long enough to tell the tale.
* * * *
As far as passing on this cadaver’s genetic material goes,
My metaphor is that I toured many gun ranges,
But seemed to have been a lousy shot.
It was many years later
That I came up with the phrase,
“I love my kids too much to bring them here.”
* * * *
I am Spock.
* * * *
These breadcrumbs will hopeful assure there will be no pedestal placed beneath this scribe.
That all sages and fools, all saints and demons, are all the same ineffaceable mystery,
That everything, that everyone, are all created of the same quantum illusion.
It is a nothing-more-nothing-less dream from any get-go to any finale imaginable.
* * * *
Granted, dystopian collapse may be eluded before this lifetime’s exit,
But to even for a second believe calamity cannot happen
Would be a imprudent error of judgment.
Always good policy to hope for the best, plan for the worst.
* * * *
Had my opportunities, made my choices, living with them.
* * * *
How I long for the purity of the Darwinian world before our advent.
* * * *
Way more than this wee brain craves or needs,
Or is even able to wrap its head around
At this stage of its mortal dream,
Its sojourning reverie.
* * * *
Am so over our kind and all our bullshit, all our absurd self-absorption,
The last wheezing breath will be a sigh of relief that it is finally over.
* * * *
There less and less being an “I” in the everyday worldly sense,
Who-what-where-when-why-how is scribing all this silliness?
* * * *
An aphoristic collage,
A puzzle jigged, a puzzle sawed,
An assorted potpourri of motley thoughts,
A mystic drunkard’s trail of doubt,
An epic, long and winding.
* * * *
Dissolving the world one meme at a time.
* * * *
Another wispy snowflake of a thought
Melting from pen to paper
For time to do
Whatever it will, or will not.
* * * *
Older than the stars, younger than the moment.
* * * *
Wandering in and out of time
Like a drunk staggering from bar to bar,
Bottomless drink in hand,
* * * *
So many things I am supposed to care about, and just do not want to anymore.
* * * *
The world is my urinal.
* * * *
Please feel free to go bother someone else.
* * * *
Fellow Earthlings, I have created you all today …
* * * *
On and on and on the scratchy recording plays.
Who in their right mind would ever read
This babbling brook of silliness?
* * * *
Perhaps the dream will find use
For these many thoughts, perhaps not.
‘Tis the nature of any gift to not know its fate.
* * * *
I know you take this all very seriously, so please pardon me for laughing.
* * * *
Fading back into nothingness.
* * * *
You would no doubt have them entertain a different way,
Were it possible for enough to hear what you have to say.
* * * *
More witness than participant at this writing; such is the doneness of retired life.
* * * *
Why in any god’s name would I want to fit in to any part of this inanely absurd paradigm?
* * * *
Nothing like a little gloom and doom to gladden this dark heart.
* * * *
Self pleasantly poof discerned; all ambition poof gone.
* * * *
My faith is so strong, no word or act, no belief or creed, is required.
* * * *
A line of work for which there is no job description.
* * * *
A student of time rooted in eternity.
* * * *
Daily growing into more and more of an anachronism, and okay with that.
* * * *
Epiphanies can be very addictive to the pondering mind, indeed.
* * * *
You raise me from the dead, and we will have an issue.
* * * *
Freely received, freely passed on.
* * * *
Disseminating an infinite vision of that which many call God,
A vision that includes anything and everything,
A vision that includes even you.
* * * *
Plenty of material, and not much audience, but at least I got to read most of it.
* * * *
Where’s the hemlock?
* * * *
Your conclusions about me are as meaningless as mine are about you.
* * * *
Not interested in debating some tiny vision, sorry.
* * * *
Where would these writings be without word processing,
And all the spellcheck and dictionary and thesaurus functions?
* * * *
Some things must age a bit before they are appreciated.
* * * *
I have been allotted the destiny to discern that awareness, that vision, that insight, that wisdom,
Which has been perceived by many thinkers across all times and geographies.
The concepts and symbols and dogmas may vary greatly,
But the source is ever the same.
* * * *
Written for another time I am ready to awaken.
* * * *
Everything fading, foggy and distant, as if it all never really happened.
* * * *
I came, I saw, I puttered.
* * * *
Well, my fine pretty, aren’t you a sight for lustful eyes.
* * * *
A cadaver replete with multiple personalities.
* * * *
Going nowhere … slowly.
* * * *
I know what I really am, and it is up to you to figure out the same.
* * * *
Who can even guess how that one came to mind?
* * * *
Field notes from yet another observer of the unmanifest underpinning of the dreamtime show.
* * * *
Another anonymous dreamer a-dreaming away.
* * * *
Bliss? Joy? Ecstasy? Rapture?
Perhaps sometimes in the once and a while,
But more often, in this particular mind, through these eyes,
Words like cynical, sardonic, wry, ironic, paradoxical,
Are more accurate descriptors of the attitude.
Someday, perhaps, joy will effervesce,
But, until then, let what it is
Play on as it will.
* * * *
Who can even guess how that one came to mind?
* * * *
Some women want forever and a day, and will slice off your balls to get it.
* * * *
Even this ethereal aphoristic view is pitted with delusion,
But it is as holistic as this finite, mortal mind
Has as yet discerned to imagine.
* * * *
Done went native.
* * * *
Well, that is what seems obvious from this reckoning, anyway.
* * * *
A vision with no attachment
To the confabulations of the mind in time,
For you to discern as it is your destiny to discern, or not.
* * * *
Dementia rules; the tyranny of passivity continues its reign.
* * * *
The ultimate vision a scientific mind has to offer.
* * * *
You can take it or leave it.
No matter to me, I got mine.
Just sharing the wealth.
* * * *
Yup, I’m laughing at you, too, so I guess we’re even.
* * * *
Pen to paper is the most efficient means
To communicate this concept or that
In the squalling winds of time.
And even in that medium
There is no guarantee
You will be heard.
* * * *
Nary an ounce of ambition left for this world, or any other.
* * * *
It is That about which I Am.
* * * *
Men only turn gray on the outside.
* * * *
Just when you think it might be done,
More little thoughts, little ditties of this or that,
Bubble into yet another inky scribble.
* * * *
I know you believe you understand what you think I said,
But I am not sure you realize what you heard is not what I meant.
* * * *
A hodgepodge of thoughts of a wander through time.
* * * *
And not even one itsy-bitsy-witsy miracle.
Tch, tch, tch … or congratulations … you decide.
* * * *
Always something of a shock running into another who ponders the mystery as I do.
Someone who appreciates what has been written, and the way it has bee written.
Lights up that pleasant, self-absorbed, warm-fuzzy, narcissistic, vanity thing.
* * * *
Becoming a mystical philosopher,
Why would anyone do that to themselves
If they had any choice in the matter?
* * * *
In all honesty, I am pretty locked in, as well.
* * * *
No need for a publisher when the work is destined to be freely given to all who seek it.
* * * *
Throughout its so-called religious history, the Middle East has been a lead sponsor
Of a delusional, dangerous madness, that threatens egalitarian ideas with annihilation.
* * * *
Am I talking about you? Or am I talking about me? The same, you see.
* * * *
The wisdom of age is meager compensation for a strong back and hard cock.
* * * *
Probably should not even bother writing all this, but I just cannot help my Self
* * * *
Just another bit player in El Teatro Grande.
* * * *
A ministry of one.
* * * *
Another message in the bottle, so to speak,
For time to sort out however it will, or will not.
* * * *
I am now.
I am awareness.
I am unborn-undying.
I am That I Am.
* * * *
There is no other, only me, ethereally eternal, forever present.
* * * *
The art of the comma, and its pausing nature, is subtle play, indeed.
* * * *
Just raising the bar, so to speak.
* * * *
I witness you; whether or not you witness me is of no concern.
* * * *
Be grateful that I do not have the power of some ancient, wrathful god,
For the flood this mind imagines would make Noah’s seem but a puddle.
* * * *
Am reconciled to the reality that I can neither do it all,
Nor see it all, nor hear it all, nor taste it all, nor smell it all, nor feel it all, nor think it all.
A hearty statistical sample will have to do.
* * * *
Hobby time again.
* * * *
The list grows daily longer.
* * * *
In the never-ending tug of war between consciousness and awareness,
Sometimes I see clearly, and sometimes I do not.
So it goes, dust off, move on.
* * * *
Because someone else did it, I do not have to.
* * * *
Another day under the radar.
* * * *
A knack for wordplay.
* * * *
How I have managed to survive all my transgressions, all my inanities, is indeed a mystery.
* * * *
Once upon a time, the feminine mystic was unbelievably spellbinding.
Once upon a time, the masculine virility was irrepressible.
But alas, oh well, so it goes, things change.
And the correlation, beyond-any-and-all-doubt palpable.
* * * *
Not a meal that ever needs repeating.
* * * *
Another day, more food for words.
* * * *
Not too many adventures would draw me back into this mortal circus voluntarily.
Seafarer, linebacker, mercenary, assassin, jewel thief, hermit, might kindle a twinkling of interest,
But papered occupations like engineer, programmer, accountant, social worker,
Physician, lawyer, or teacher, most definitively would not.
* * * *
Me, negative? Well, Pilgrim, what is there to be positive about?
* * * *
Yet another tiresome, annoying human being.
Is it me? Is it them? Don’t know. Don’t care.
* * * *
Wouldn’t mind believing in something, but I don’t, unless believing in nothing is something.
* * * *
Never had much of an agenda in the younger daze.
For sure got nothing in these twilight, fourth quarter ones,
Other than to continue to babbling all this silliness into cyberspace.
* * * *
This temporal, mundane, food-for-worms existence has been spent wandering all camps.
Weaving in and out of very sort of box of both the parochial and cosmopolitan kinds.
Attaching and detaching, bonding and breaking, as need and inclination allowed.
Label me however you will, it is that which has brought you all these many thoughts.
* * * *
Another epiphany … Oh joy.
* * * *
Why should anyone listen to anyone who offers them nothing?
* * * *
Here now I be,
Fulfilling this destiny,
This fate, this kismet, this vocation,
One ditty at a time.
* * * *
The procession from mind to paper to digitalization is ever the merry chase.
* * * *
Nothing more I need to see, to hear, to taste, to smell, to feel, to do, to be, to become.
* * * *
Is any creative work ever really done? Certainly not this one.
Give me another one hundred or one thousand years,
And who knows what will never be written.
* * * *
As honest as an impulsive nature allows.
* * * *
Sometimes wakeful, sometimes lethargic,
Sometimes sober, sometimes intoxicated, sometimes high,
Sometimes while laboring, sometimes while playing, sometimes while unwinding,
This perpetual wordplay happens no matter the state of mind or body.
Sleep is perhaps the only time free of their absorbing call.
* * * *
If I am not Buddha, I certainly be close enough for this and any future past.
* * * *
This mind is like a Magic 8 Ball teaming with thoughts galore.
A murky quagmire from which wisdom distills so clearly.
One ditty after another serenely floating into vision.
* * * *
Posterity … Pfft!
* * * *
Breadcrumbs is a section for all my vain bile and malice.
Good therapy for the little self’s perpetual notions of grandeur,
And other ceaselessly elaborate and hollow notions of the human kind.
* * * *
What a world. I will not miss us.
* * * *
Less and less truly matters anymore, and though I regularly consume and cling and vent.
I could just as easily walk away, as I have from so many things so many times.
And yes, I even toy with the thought of tossing these many thoughts.
Delete the website, Google, Facebook, Twitter, all the blogs.
Dumpsterize every bit of hard copy I can retrieve.
Maybe even become more of a recluse than I already am,
And depart this magical garden world as anonymously as I entered it.
* * * *
I want to be the Reaper when I grow up.
* * * *
It is up to you to figure out the mystery on your own.
Whether or not these myriad thoughts are of any use in that quest,
Whether you read part or all, or move on perusing elsewhere, matters not one iota.
My wallet is full enough, and I have no craving for mansions, limousines, yachts, or glass cathedrals.
Let the three vanities: power and fame and fortune, be someone else’s bother.
* * * *
What a huge trap women are to a man’s freedom.
* * * *
What a wretched statement about this mortal existence
That this mind derives so much pleasure from a cynical stance.
Some sort of Nero-watching-Rome-burn thing, no doubt.
* * * *
Yay oh yay, yet another helping of not necessary.
* * * *
From mind to paper, these many thoughts: zits popping like volcanoes.
* * * *
The monkey made me do it.
* * * *
Glynda Lee thought the title should be “A Stillness Before Time,”
But a more definitive “The” has always sounded better to me.
* * * *
I told you so.
* * * *
You and your puny little labels can quick march somewhere else.
* * * *
So that is your big satori moment, eh?
Sounds like ivory tower babbleon to me.
* * * *
Have I become a solipsist in the metaphysical sense?
* * * *
Excuse me while I once again try to swallow my pride.
* * * *
In most every ditty, something to unlock in perception’s rainbow.
Not quite koans, but close enough for this mind’s roguish purpose.
* * * *
Every day I beg the Grim Reaper to take me home,
But he just sniggers and says, “Maybe tomorrow.”
* * * *
Buddha my way.
* * * *
Oops, ya got me again.
Paradox and irony rule.
* * * *
The Secret Life of Michael
* * * *
Doom and gloom, my favorite.
* * * *
Yet another interesting La Mancha Quixote
Out to save a species that cannot be saved.
Another interesting book I need not buy.
Another interesting group I need not join.
* * * *
Running on empty.
* * * *
Wikipedia defines Emotional intelligence (EI), also known
As Emotional quotient (EQ) and Emotional Intelligence Quotient(EIQ),
As the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others,
Discern between different feelings and label them appropriately,
Use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior,
And manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt
to environments or achieve one's goal(s).
Haven’t got the EI or EQ or EIQ to play the guru spiritual leader game,
Or even participate in more than a cursory manner in this or any other world anymore.
I be done in all but the kaleidoscoping here-now of this here mind and body.
* * * *
Don’t have to care anymore, so I try not to as often as mind allows.
* * * *
Save the world? I think not.
* * * *
One foot planted upon the quantum ground,
And the other afloat in an unknown abyss.
* * * *
The beginning of corruption can be but a Banyan seed,
Or even a Tootsie Roll covertly snatched from a grocery store shelf,
And too hastily, too greedily, opened in the rear seat of the family station wagon.
The world only saved, at least for a bit, by a mother’s ever-constant virtue,
A mumbled apology to the cashier, and plea that a father not be told.
Memo to Self: If you’re going to be a thief, be smart about it.
* * * *
Never understood people who exclaimed during interviews that they loved problems.
I despise them so thoroughly that I squash them as soon as they broach my awareness.
* * * *
Once upon a time, I enjoyed all the details, but now, ugh and bother.
* * * *
Save the world? Maybe tomorrow.
* * * *
Before you enter this thinker’s house, please be sure to check your limitations
And beliefs and conclusions and assumptions and fears and desires at the door.
* * * *
It takes a lot of work to grow old.
* * * *
Am I absurd beyond all doubt, or simply a jester, a life force willing to lend itself
To exploring, to plumbing the unfathomable depths as deeply, and in such manner,
As the singular, indivisible, indelible aloneness of the given body-mind will allow.
* * * *
Getting old and creaky and withered, and grumpy and whiney, too.
* * * *
Whether or not awareness has through this set of eyes
Discerned its Self as clearly, as lucidly, as other minds might
Does not matter one iota of a particle of a smidgeon.
All fates are but mirages born of imagination.
* * * *
Worn enough hats to know they would all fit if I had the interest and capability.
* * * *
Always interesting to watch these ditties unfold.
Can never be sure in what way they will evolve.
Whether or not they will end up as they started.
* * * *
And if you had never said or written any of it, who would know, who would care?
* * * *
Fascinating how the technological wonder of word-processing in these modern times,
With its spell check and grammar check and dictionary and thesaurus functions,
Works with this mind to weave these so many thoughts onto any given page.
The cuneiform tablet could never even begin to magic-carpet-ride it quite the same.
* * * *
A mystic’s therapy.
* * * *
Offered my friendship … She wanted my soul … No-no-no-no-no … Oh-no-no-no-no …
* * * *
It’s that “old” thing raising up its head again.
* * * *
Woke this morn up feeling a wee bit more …
Irritable, argumentative, difficult, cross, complaining,
Petulant, unreasonable, curt, belligerent, snappish, fiery, tetchy,
Touchy, grumpy, prickly, disagreeable, ill-tempered, crabby, bad-tempered,
Argumentative, peevish, hotheaded, grouchy, incensed, unruly, quick-tempered, errant,
Bad-tempered, snippy, infuriated, impatient, annoyed, disobedient, fuming, ratty, willful, exasperated,
Furious, beside myself, rebellious, enraged, angry, passionate, heated, sharp, hot-blooded,
Insubordinate, crusty, volatile, manic, fervent, brusque, defiant, short-tempered,
Surly, contrary, naughty, cranky, awkward, irascible, uncooperative,
Temperamental, ornery, crotchety, and cantankerous …
… than usual.
So, back to bed for a few more zzz’s.
No need to face this ludicrous asylum that badly.
Wondering if I will wake up in a better, more enlightened mood.
Perchance less weary of this human debacle,
And so many of its denizens.
* * * *
The appetite for this world and all its tasty venues grows daily less.
* * * *
Another project started; another never to be finished.
* * * *
What are all these philosophical-slash-mystical thoughts
But something to do when nothing more interesting calls.
Shows just how utterly prosaic this existence has become.
* * * *
The Cheshire Man
* * * *
Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, or a year or three after that.
* * * *
200 million in Year One Anno Domini
First billion mark reached in 1804 Anno Domini
Second billion 126 years later in 1930 (Dad age 4, Mom age 1)
2.6 billion 23 years later in 1953 (Moi Year One)
Three billion in 1960 (Moi 7 years old)
4 billion in 1974 (Moi 21 years old)
5 billion in 1987 (Moi 34 years old)
6 billion in 1999 (Moi 46 years old)
7 billion in 2011 (Moi 58 years old)
8 billion projected in 2023 (Moi 70 years old, maybe)
9 billion projected in 2037 (Moi 84 years old, likely long gone)
Ten billion projected in 2056 (Moi 103 years old, very likely long gone)
* * * *
A simmering volcano.
* * * *
What an absurd, pathetic hoax the human drama has become.
What is the cosmos to me anymore but a muse for more thoughts,
More thoughts than anyone but myself will ever even begin to peruse.
* * * *
Yet another day of mining the insight, of talking the walk of the Ruby Slippers
That have wandered the long and winding Yellow Brick Road
Through the mystical-magical Land of Oz.
* * * *
I am kindly served by so many distractions, so few of which anymore matter.
* * * *
The ability, the courage, to walk up to total strangers and start a conversation,
Was a talent that Lyle displayed again and again to his shy friend.
It was but an ember when he departed so very young;
A gift parlayed in many ways ever since.
* * * *
I have worked very hard to do nothing.
* * * *
Christen once called me a hierophant:
A person, especially a priest in ancient Greece,
Who interprets sacred mysteries or esoteric principles.
* * * *
There was an epoch to witness, to write,
And disperse across the planet in the many ways
This contemporary dreamtime offered.
This is what I was born to do.
How utterly amazing
To have been given the opportunity.
* * * *
The main difference between Democrats and Republicans
Is whether the money goes into their left or right pockets.
* * * *
The confines of form are a cauldron of intrigue,
In which less and less interest daily finds muster.
* * * *
Neither powerful nor famous nor wealthy,
The contentment of anonymity was my magic carpet ride
To all of the above, and much, much more.
* * * *
Out into the day, a mild breeze steps.
* * * *
Alas that nearly every day I reel from weary antipathy
Toward all the ugly and fat and stupid and vain people
That so abundantly burgeon in my wandering presence.
Alas that I am all-knowing, all-accepting, all-benevolent,
Only in the most detached recesses of spotless awareness.
Consciousness is the inherent flaw that all must endure.
* * * *
Writing is not more than a hobby for which I gladly retain amateur status.
* * * *
I think, therefore I think I am.
I exist without labels or definitions.
What others think of me means nothing.
* * * *
Having never followed, having never imitated anybody,
Why would I ever insist that anyone follow or imitate me?
* * * *
Rest assured, the depths to which my cynicism flows, have yet to be fully plumbed.
* * * *
It is the long and winding journey
Through so many different frames of reference
That has spiced up this seemingly endless collection of thoughts.