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amazing
November 2009 
What is amazing about today?
Posted on Nov 11th, 2008
by 
TextMage
TextMage
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for November 11, 2008:
It's amazing that Joe Honeywell and I weren't officially Gaia friends after following HIM around this site for more than a year. I rectified that this AM. Also amazing that Joe used an H. L. Mencken quote before breakfast. The man must be truly cynical.
More amazing than all of that is that I am even out of bed this morning.
Didn't go to bed until four hours after my bedtime; slept restless, which I hardly ever do and had to pry MY eyes open with saline solution: Something I probably do twice a year. Ugghh! I am a genuine morning person. Love the dawn and its promise. Is it karma that Sweet Siona asks this question on this day? Or just coincidence.
Hand-made card for the reader who tells ME the best answer for what a scientist like MY-Self calls the reason that Siona asked this question on this particular day.
Finally, extraordinarily amazing that I actually ask people here: "Will you be MY friend?" Every time I ask that of someone, I feel like a socially-backward junior high school student somehow partially-cloned to Mr. Rogers! Is that stupid, or what?
Love to YOU ALL this fine, wonderful morning. Dance on the clouds and make love to everyone YOU meet!! And never pass a child without making HIM/HER laugh!
PS: I'm up because I have to change some equipment before lunch and add two more Mencken quotes that I personally cannot live without:
“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who Is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.”
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
More amazing than all of that is that I am even out of bed this morning.
Didn't go to bed until four hours after my bedtime; slept restless, which I hardly ever do and had to pry MY eyes open with saline solution: Something I probably do twice a year. Ugghh! I am a genuine morning person. Love the dawn and its promise. Is it karma that Sweet Siona asks this question on this day? Or just coincidence.
Hand-made card for the reader who tells ME the best answer for what a scientist like MY-Self calls the reason that Siona asked this question on this particular day.
Finally, extraordinarily amazing that I actually ask people here: "Will you be MY friend?" Every time I ask that of someone, I feel like a socially-backward junior high school student somehow partially-cloned to Mr. Rogers! Is that stupid, or what?
Love to YOU ALL this fine, wonderful morning. Dance on the clouds and make love to everyone YOU meet!! And never pass a child without making HIM/HER laugh!
PS: I'm up because I have to change some equipment before lunch and add two more Mencken quotes that I personally cannot live without:
“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who Is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.”
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
Access: Public
LOL! Richard, I bet you're not the only one who feels akward asking to “be friends.” Just today, I got a nice message saying, “Wontcha be my neighbor?” It made me smile. The trick is to stay engaged with friends. I'll admit, I have deleted a few I never heard from again after the initial request, but upon looking at their profile, discovered they had a nice collection of pretty faces…
Love to you too, on this beautiful day.
M
I agree that “The trick is to stay engaged with friends.”
I wish I knew the trick of staying engaged though.
I am an irregular correspondent and friend at the best of times, and at my worst just another lost soul on the Island of Misfit Toys. I have a million excuses for my sometimes eccentric and often incoherent behavior toward myself and my friends, but I have done little to remedy, or even to modify, my conduct.
No … that's not really true: I have made an extraordinary change. My new world and my past life are day-and-night. I have gone from being an openly violent, nearly-psychotic, drunk and drug addict to being … well, I don't know.
This is not an elaborate, open-plea aimed at my future flakiness; neither is it anything like a fair warning. I am making the attempt to be honest and more open in all the areas of my life, but this is not that either.
I want you to know. That is the foremost thing, and IF you are truly a student, you will see in my struggle something about the world, and about your own struggle: Buddha, Jung and Jesus say this is so. WE won't need an amen.
After wanting you to know, but feeling more congruent to me, I want to talk these things out, think them through and settle 'em in my mind. Were that possible.
I've left this site, and half a dozen others, because I just get to the point where all of this is overwhelming and seems slightly pointless. I can see getting into my car and driving some drunk to another state for treatment, even when it takes a coupla days, but there are times when I withdraw from 12-Step work. I can see going to prison for a three day workshop and putting up with well-intentioned, condescending abuse to work to overcome violence, but I've taken the summer off from that as well. I just get stuck in a way and frustrated beyond action.
I berate myself moment after moment, day after day, but still do nothing.
I beat myself up like this, cause dontcha-know, to be a real peacemaker, you have to be like Gandhi, Jane Addams and Martin Luther King rolled into one and additionally, to be a real man, one must be like Steve McQueen, Richard Boone and Lawrence of Arabia, all rolled into one. That's quite a burden and no matter how many times, I think that I have set it down, I find myself picking it back up.
Sometimes that makes it hard to stay engaged – honestly, mostly because I don't wanna be seen walking around like a black cloud feeling sorry for myself, but a large part is because I don't wanna rain on evrybody's parade.
Sometimes, it is ALL that I can do to get my mind back into some sort of day-to-day reality that just makes breakfast and washes its bowl.
“Sometimes, it is ALL that I can do to get my mind back into some sort of day-to-day reality that just makes breakfast and washes its bowl.”
I got an Aha! when I read that. But I'm not sure exactly what that aha is all about. I couldn't figure out how to leave as a comment to your talking about feeling stuck lately. It's not that I'm not interested. I'm also feeling stuck, but I'm sure the lessons and experiences are different. I don't know but from my vantage point your stuckness appears a lot more to me like a bud on a stem, that is something that contains within it the promise of life. Whereas for me and my stuckness, I just feel like I'm being an idiot. LOL but you know the old Mississippi Fred McDowell song : “When the lord gets ready/You gotta move.” We all have our work cut out for us.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about the practice of mindfulness enabling our lives and peacemaking. I so loved the part of “washes its bowl.” It sounded like mindfulness. A little different from depression or laziness when the bowl gets left in the sink.
Hellooooo!!!! Found my way to your place, love the writing! Am about to step into your mailbox and ask you to be my neighbor. ;) I am so happy to have connected yesterday. :)
Di
John, I'm not sure, either, whether Others can respond publicly to what WE put up on OUR profile pages: That was a nice feature at p'omidyar though.
Remember how long it took for lots of US to get familiar and comfortable with the format and tricks at Omidyar? I'm having the same sort of experience here, but people seem more forgiving here.
Most frustrating is not knowing where I am at any given time; so then I don't know where I left some remark. When that happens, I don't know how public anything is, so I just assume everything is public, which for me, as you know, is not troublesome at all, but which may be upsetting for some of my correspondents.
Who knows? One just begins to think one is finally growing some social skills and THEY go and change the rules on ya anyway.
John, you can message me any time, or come by MY house – I hope you know that and I don't have to come out to Bugtussle and thump your ass.
MY email and cell fone number are here:
peacemakersink@hotmail.com
(607) 434-0163
I'll post them on MY profile page today. My BAD!! I love you, RicHIe
No such thing as mere coincidence in this realm, dear Richard… but I think you knew that long, long before you arrived here. :)