I’m not sure I’ve changed much in the going-on-one-full-year since I arrived on these lack of shores. That’s not really a good thing. I mean the obvious and simple changes are evident; no dogs, where I shop, how I waste my time (ok, no, more like where I waste it) and, according to my daughter I’m probably rubbing elbows with, if not a better than a warmer, class of people (actually realer I think is closer to what she means. Honestly I always kind of liked the pretentious weirder than thou aspect of Portland. It’s homegrown and effortless, damn near natural.).
But I rely on the same old coping skills, modified, of course, for the advanced deterioration of this meat sack we are all cursed with, that I always have. I mean I think to some degree everyone does that, I mean why change a coping skill that works? It’s one of the main reasons I would argue with the diaries dedicated to atheism on OD, the issue of whether or not God exists is academic when someone’s comfort depends on him existing and, conversely, on him not existing. The existence or not of God is not the core issue; the comfort of the side you slide down that razor brings to the sack of meat that started rotting the second you popped from your mama’s larder, well, that’s sacrosanct.
Personally I discovered with certain things the more I learned about them the less wonder and joy there was, and then at one point you start realizing you don’t really know shit about shit and you just learned enough to get by. In your twenties and certainly in your teens you get that patronizing shit from people with a decade or more on you that goes something like “You’ll understand when you get there.” It’s a lot kinder than saying ‘the further the rot progresses the more urgent your desires become’. In a certain sense that whole bucket list thing set off by that terribly mawkish movie about death (swear to god, next to the five people you meet in heaven --- I don’t know, but I swear to god about it. Do I get mad at the entertainment industry for taking us for suckers or at the public for being suckers?) did more harm than good. That whole comfort thing? It needs to be set in the real world; that’s why the converted say things like ‘I’ve seen god’ or ‘God has spoken to me’ it’s not literal but it’s meant in a literal sense, the comfort has to be tangible. The bucket list thing is a castle in the air. Suggestion? Do it right the fuck now.
I’m not trying to paraphrase any version of eat drink and be merry because tomorrow you may die, though, sure that’s right, I just mean if you want to sky dive do it before the bones in the meat sack get brittle. Oh. Yeah, I meant that, but not exclusively; do it while it’s still a desire and not an act of desperation. I really wish the eastern influence here wasn’t just kung-fu, pad Thai and foo-foo Buddha’s for disillusioned round eyes to place on their mantles burn a little nag champa and chant nam myho renge kyo too. What’d be cool is instead of “Bucket list” coming into the national consciousness that “It is important to rid oneself of regret for this world” came into the lexicon. It allows for both sky-diving and letting the idea of sky-diving go with equal weight placed on either. Cynical as I might be and as good diary fodder it might be I really don’t want to type “It’s raining old folks!”
Heh. Discovered this morning that the carpeting at the top of the steps was coming up. The self-same demented shuffle that kicked it lose is the one that’ll fall down the stairs screaming. Long story short; all the various glue stuff I found was decades old and hardened, the death of glue. Among the possibilities were sticky rat traps that I’d probably place at mid-eighties, I mean purchased between 1984 and 1986 and probably on sale because they were originally stocked in the mid-sixties. I thought “Oh, even if they work it’s a bad idea, but it sure would make for a hysterical journal entry”. I’m still amused and frightened by that thought. It’s not that dangerous a thought by it’s lonesome but if necessary I would leave a post it note in the part of the brain that follows silly shit down the rabbit hole that reads “Here there be Monsters” mostly because that’s just silly enough to distract me the dangerously silly shit on the other side of “Yeah, but it sure would make for a funny journal entry”.
Because the hard corp crowd that stuck with OD (that includes prosebox as this likely gets posted both places) is a much different beast than the crowd that lured me in. I’m not judging at all, I don’t stay in places I don’t want to be (you’ll note, please, how very different that is from not staying where I’m not wanted) but yeah the current crowd is not so much the guerilla reality type of crowd. The current crowd is upset at, say, fake diaries, invented personae’s that sort of shit, the long gone old guard just expected you to know when and where they’d gone off trail and when and where they took you back to the highway. I just mean I could have gone into how I used rat traps to fix the carpeting and found my father stuck to the stairs nibbling cheese and less than fifty percent of the readers would note “You are so lying!” I’m thinking these days I’d get advice ranging from non-dairy cheeses for healthy geriatric living to sympathetic ‘that must have been hard you, you holding up okay?’ the latter I’d have to bite my typing lip to keep at bay the maelstrom of rat trap/holding up puns.
Some of the more creative nonlinear thinkers are stuck back up at my spelling of hard corp. That brings this all back together; I haven’t really changed, I’m still going to go with old habits, jokes so ingrained that their glue has hardened in a sealed container, and habits that aren’t meant to be funny at all but that I’ll insist on like, I don’t know, I’ve never been to a theater, I go to the theatre. Microsoft is so tired of correcting my spelling it doesn’t even color half the shit that is not standard American English. What concerns me about not having changed much is not the tangent I went off on that was really just meant to be a place marker saying we don’t really change shit that works, entwined in that somewhere was the other tine of that fork, once I’ve exposed my own illusions there is no going back; combined it means todays haredawg will probably be the same haredawg whose ashes are scattered at night in Oneada gorge. I’ll send y’all an invitation, should be sometime between tomorrow and the crack of 2051ish. See? There’s another one; the crack of something –ish.
I’m not going to read this nonsense before I post it. If it came across as morbid that was not my intent, nor callous, maudlin, cold, aw shit y’all have your own adverbs and adjectives, I’m betting y’all carry all parts of speech in your ditty bags. I wasn’t trying to be funny either, or I wasn’t trying very hard.
Huh. I’m sure there was something else. Guess not. And I’m spent.
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