Looking like 79 miles hard road rode until exhausted and put up wet he sat in Tom Young’s Fitness Center’s, Las Cruces, New Mexico, dressing room. I guess he declined my idea of writing up an article with photographs for publication about his recent kidney replacement. I gave him my card and credentials. A thumbnail of the experience follows.
    There is no privacy in a men’s locker room, I was late for water aerobics and tarried to hear his tale. My interest not limited to his miracle four years in waiting but also the concern for the bad press received by The Veteran’s Administration.
    A Viet Nam veteran his need obvious but the wait nearly killed him. Late one recent night the local police called saying, “You have one and a half hours to board a plane in El Paso bound for Nashville, they have a kidney for you.”
    Accompanied by his daughter they arrived and boarded a Lear Jet, some forty miles distant, they the only passengers. The plane failed over Memphis. After critical delays they were chauffeur driven to Nashville where he received the kidney of a recently deceased nineteen-year-old girl. The staff chief surgeon, a thirty-five-year old female, in reply to his query, “does that mean I’ve breasts and a bubble butt?”
    “No. It just means you’ll have to squat to pee.”
    Such is life in these United States of America. In a time of crisis and anxiety we, a people of grit, know life goes on.
    In another instance of father Vet and daughter; during conversation at Mountain View Memorial Center I leaned that her father, one of only six, had been blown off the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor and survived. Seems he never sweats the ‘small stuff’ either, insisting that she drive him to the hospital during a heart attack which he also survived. An otherwise $600 ride.
    We the people should be proud to be who we are as citizens. As for myself, living in this Land of Enchantment, New Mexico, I know that the survivors of the Bataan Death March still celebrate surviving the event arriving in Japanese cars. It changes a person to know such people. It makes me proud too.

120607 22:14 new kidney

120607 19:41
    Across the years down the days to this moment I find surprise in a life blest beyond all that I know in others. Principle amongst these blessings is the fact that though painful at the time I grew to maturity in two different venues:

    1.) Rural a transition point for the Underground Railroad on the Ohio River
    2.) Greenwich Connecticut one of the three wealthiest communities in the then world

    I sensed myself in those growing years incapable of learning within the vocational context of public school. Remembering best being admonished by a Colonel's wife, my fourth grade teacher, someone I then described as having flown past the class room on her broom, purple hair and all: “Don't you want to grow up and earn $10,000.?”

    That was in the '50s right now I am living on less than $13,000. Social Security annually yet am at peace and happy though I intuit my classmates in Greenwich at least some have stolen not merely my fortune but processing their competitive greed have destroyed the world's economy . . . I'd love to use the recently acquired Navy phrase; “Who f__ked the pooch?” here.

    Without malice/rancor/vengeance envying no one or anything I appraise my next course of study in the Hard School of Life's Knocks--my pleasure and joy--but mostly for you and for all of us. Seeking a measure of: adapt, improvise and prevail in a time of extreme anxiety and attentions of the Authorities those fools who lead us astray.

    We are what we consume food, air, water, news, education and opinions of others. And I have a concern that we are being psychologically factory farmed as slaves to the intentions of those who essentially are psychotic having virtually no compassion since they lack the gray matter to do so. Not their fault but when they institutionalize their theft of our lives, the lives of our children and pets, our future and the very existence of our species upon this home our planet . . . well then . . . I do protest.

    The subtext of my personal education, ongoing, is Power, addiction, grief, love, crimes against humanity, unusual practices of convenience to the few at the expense of all others. We or Us. Add to which I would know if allowed the full measure of that which, or who, created us to begin with; not from idle curiosity but from love for the beloved.

    I can, as you may and can, be anything you long to become. It follows that prayerfully I request God's will for us that we give not steal as most do arrogantly. This self same irreverent child's mind enabled me to survive stoically the depredations and slanders of my time and parentage.

    Though I had shelter food and clothing my tutelage was in the school of indifference otherwise. To my dismay I judge, applying the same standards to myself, the current rulers of the world, the Corporations, have essentially destroyed the family idealized and made fear mongering the dominant form of control the masses they disabled to consume their products.

    With hope and love we learn how to survive first then thrive living fully at peace with ourselves. I intuit that to God all life is precious. Even those who persecute us and steal the world in their competitive race for profit.

    Anger and rage are byproducts of fear. In their turn they own us so long as we allow it. By entering mine after a very long time I am now free as we can all be.

   Be well.

120606 04:21

Conservative in the extreme I do obeisance & kowtow to what made me so
in all praise supplication and prostrations reverent gratifications gracious prayer
dance song petition silence mindless void yawing emptiness absorption of whom
by any and all names remains the Creator of all things gracious and good.

The Whoness of Who i am is your servant unto nothingness forever more nameless soul who selfless blind no eyes or “I's” ego id would follow all and any Prophets speaking of THE ALL by any name creed deed gender celibate corporate merger color paring mating celebrating cohabitation collaboration co creation no arms or limbs incline inspired by you defining Love as Self declared manifest in absence free will god?

In/By chance/choice childless accidental or war or travesty greed creed selfishness the soul given form formless aborted remains resilient this fragile thing called life manifest biodegradable heard in whoooing train night passing echoing across the valley waterless smoke tinctured earth on fire charred wasteland every fallen leaf remarked and purposeful god? pray for us!

120606 05:30…notes to myself a soul in process

“The impulse of power is to turn every variable into a constant, and give to commands the inexorableness and relentlessness of laws of nature. Hence absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.” --Eric Hoffer, in The Ordeal of Change (1963), Ch. 15 : The Unnaturalness Of Human Nature

Atonement: I am guilty of assuming that badge rank symbol of power is an accomplished fact or Fiat money—in others as well as myself. It is not what role we play, the costumes, postures & words: but what we do that matters. And is finally the judge jury and executioner of us: “Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.” --Albert Einstein

Do no harm--please--choose wisely!

I feel/intuit/sense/think I am 'called' as vocation to use my own words without resource/recourse to those of others discovered in quotes. And though I am confident I will fail this ideal, real, imagined, implied or inferred—it now seems best that I stand a deliver what I can as I am here and now these final moments of life left; many or few.

This also — that I live, I consider a gift of God. --Ovid

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be. --Rumi

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part. --Washington Irving

120606 08:03

    I am at times ambivalent & others confident that I should make available, fully, this process which I experience as a dialog with God. I too was once shut down crushed beneath the weight of my fears and inadequacies but now I surrender as Jesus did and submit in the sense of Islam as Mohammad said to the will and gift ever present in what we call “God” who by any other name will remain a rose is a rose forever thorny or thorn less regardless the names applied.

    “Higher Power” works equally and is synonymous; implied and/or inferred. All institutions  at birth are miraculous yet age, then decay and die; given their governance and accountancy by imperfect and fallible fools such as i.

    In a sense, for now at least, I will continue to share this self-evisceration for those who in reading what I write—the greatest joy I've ever known, none barred—-might profit. I long to be forgotten, it is my nature to love others ever more highly than myself. It follows when in doubt regarding motive I remember my children. The child I begot out of wedlock = Lising = Living in sin however briefly the child then aborted and now mourned equally to those 'licit.' The brother/sister unknown following my birth by one year aborted—and now, even now I weep for them the lives they never lived. And of the daughter adopted, abandoning each other, I am speechless with grief and her daughter and new friend too.

    Of all the many forms of divination I know this seems most effective for me. Supplanting both meditation and contemplation it's form follows flowing from my training between the hammer and anvil of life in the University of Hard Knocks . . . could it be my unconsciousness of prayer continual?

    I ignorant of the art, craft and institutional/classical sense of How To Write. I know only my desire/why to write and will close with the thought that instead of a Prayer Wheel what I publish for now will resemble a Word Wheel: thought, association, inspiration; with attendant information: cause and effect. . . .The following discovered in process by multitasking; my current practice. I.E.:

--Boris Marshalov
“Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees.”

--G. Weatherly
"Forgiving those who hurt us is the key to personal peace."

--Paul Valery (Poet)
"An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it."
“At times I think and at times I am.”
“Conscience reigns but it does not govern.”
“God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.”
"Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This ... is a precious gift."
"Love is being stupid together."
"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."
“What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.”

. . . the latter, just for the hell of it!

The greatest evil I have ever known resides within me and it is by choice, given the opportunity, not to kill, abuse, use, take, steal, covet . . . you know the drill. It predates “THE TEN COMMANDMENTS” by millennium and stemming from Gilgamesh approximately five thousand years before our version graven in stone.

"They who give have all things; they who withhold have nothing." --Hindu Proverb

120607 0113

    trilling thrilling awakening my mockingbird singing to me awake get up jump and shout! mendicancy thoughts could it possibly be that like Jonathan Winters Robin Williams I am as equally self abandoning to make you laugh? m&m lunching talked about those events most memorable to the several cinematic recapitulation she described seeing Winters climb a flag poll to the very top whereupon he wavered forth and back shortly the butterfly catchers stretched his hands arms etc behind his back disappearing from the audience he'd collected . . . Oh well swell what I image was recorded on film for which I paid a price to view she saw in the flesh as usual and Dave Brubeck too.
    I think wolves sleep better than I do
    I know so and celebrate no snarky ranchers killing me with bated traps on public lands where normally I'd be safe to make a living too in the Republicans of Death. So pardon me while I disappear in my slappy high heels wearing sixteen coats in 111 degrees chrome Nazi helmet and red nosed too.
    I've just reinvented my persona for now ever awhile Slappy Jack Giant Killer at least I don't have Dick Cheney's arm up my backside flapping my jaw talking ventriloquy through my wooden head. The New proposition seems self propelled.
    The nature of creative ecstasy is to be who you want to be when you want it. Annie, my cat, just stares when I roll my eyes, wiggle my ears and flail my tongue from ear to ear. And ordinary female would call the buttery fly catchers. In this case I'm not sure who owns whom. Maybe we're just a pair of bookends self propelled derived and defined.

. . . a sad note in parting with Ray Bradbury whose “Dandelion Wine” I first read in high school and said to my History Teacher when requested to deliver my homework, “I've escaped!” Walked away. 

"Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down." by him of course!