Breadcrumbs
I have seen enough, heard enough, tasted enough, smelt enough, touched enough,
And thought and done enough, for all the lifetimes I could have ever imagined.
And if I signed up for this mortal playhouse, I was too drunk to remember.
* * * *
When you find that enlightenment thing, be sure to let me know what it is.
* * * *
What a thing to be all creaky and cranky and otherwise out of sorts.
* * * *
If someone is soliciting your wallet for these free-given words,
Or pretending to represent some spiritual groupthink that hopefully will never spawn,
Put them behind you as quickly as them running shoes allow.
* * * *
How will scholars and pundits and critics and adherents,
Praise, condemn, ignore, these many thoughts,
Should they ever gain momentum
In times this dead poet will never witness.
* * * *
Where this nomadic mind wanders, I can only say, I can only write,
And you can only discern to the reaches of your frame of reference.
* * * *
Of course, there are many seers out there who could do it better, say it better, write it better,
But the pivotal point, is that this mystery is you, right here, right now, this moment,
Doing it, saying it, writing it, as well as your given nature-nurture allows.
And if I have gotten it completely wrong, it will not matter.
If I am not wrong, it will not matter, either.
* * * *
An audience would only distract me from my hobby.
* * * *
Sweet oblivion.
* * * *
My two cents.
* * * *
Why didn’t I speak up louder?
Because I didn’t want to lead anybody,
I didn’t want to endure endless discussions or debates,
I didn’t want followers, I didn’t want to create another absurd religion,
I didn’t want to endlessly circle the world trying to save a narcissistic, hedonistic species,
Consumed by vanity and greed in a headlong dash towards a great fall.
All I ever really truly wanted was to be my Self by my Self.
Becoming a member of The Dead Poets Society
Was a much more tolerable cup of tea.
* * * *
If you knew where I started, you would understand
Why I manage not worrying about anything too much.
* * * *
The last project, underway.
* * * *
Another day wandering down Trope Lane.
* * * *
I putter, therefore I think I am.
* * * *
Whoo-hoo for diminishing gray matter.
* * * *
At one point in the early 90’s, a Chico friend asked why I was putting my name on writing such as this.
The reply at the time was that it was just how it was done in these modern times.
Shoulda-coulda-woulda given it a bit more pondering.
An anonymous offering to the future-past might have been a bit more intriguing.
* * * *
Books wait patiently detached for any minds seeking to feast on whatever it is they offer.
A book without plot, without goal, without purpose, without meaning, what is that about?
* * * *
Illusion that it is, still I wander to and fro through the ebb and flow.
* * * *
I am no authority, I have no authority.
I am just a Joe Everyman, with an outside-all-boxes slant.
A Joe Everyman with an independent, autodidactic outlook on the mystery,
One that couples nicely with a churning mind that regularly spews out every category of thought.
One that seamlessly synergizes with a flair for writing, a knack for word processing,
And a world wide web to launch the entire work across the globe,
In directions and destinations, I can never know,
All with no one at the helm.
* * * *
Talk about tossing a message-in-a-bottle into the sea.
* * * *
I do not believe, expect, or in any way, hope,
These words will have any meaningful impact on the future, at all.
Writing and editing and organizing them on the world wide web for free, was just too hard to resist.
Believe me, when I testify that none of this would have ever happened to the degree it has,
If I had had to write books, generate a following to buy them, build an ashram,
Sit up on stage having every word be closely judged, maybe filmed,
Pose on some golden throne for hours and hours comforting the miserable,
Or arguing over absurdly meaningless dogmatic details with true believers of every ilk.
* * * *
Do not make this your only book.
* * * *
“Will somebody get this guy offstage? He’s killing me!”
* * * *
And some day it will be your turn.
* * * *
Well, most the writing and posting is done; now the only question is, will it be read?
* * * *
What I think I meant to say …
* * * *
Explaining this in so many ways is a rather odd hobby, don’t you think?
* * * *
It is a good day to die; yesterday would have been better.
* * * *
Working on caring less every day.
* * * *
All written for a future I will never see.
* * * *
And why again should I be all that interested in your vanity?
I have more than enough of my own with which to contend.
* * * *
The editing will not end until I am too departed to do it.
* * * *
Am letting you make that call.
* * * *
If it is not written down quickly, likely gone for all eternity.
* * * *
Doubt me, too.
* * * *
Another day begins; into the rabbit hole I go, I go.
* * * *
Thinkers thinking, dreamers dreaming, philosophers philosophizing, it is what we do.
* * * *
Yet another day of dead man walking.
* * * *
So over it.
* * * *
The bubble-popper.
* * * *
This is what comes out, so this is what me does, whoever “me” is.
* * * *
Changed me mind again.
* * * *
Another mountain to climb … sigh … yawn.
* * * *
No, I am not going to kill or harm you, nor will I ever encourage others to kill or harm you,
Simply because you disagree with me, or do not comprehend what I am saying.
I may, however, choose to not spend a great deal of time around you,
Or quietly wander on in search of some other itinerant,
More inclinded to my brand of nonsense.
Oh well, so it goes, deal with it, get over it, move on.
* * * *
Glad I am too old to have to bother about it much longer,
And no children or grandkids (that I know of),
To have to agonize about, either.
* * * *
Oh ye of dim wit, please shut the f**k up.
* * * *
Being crazy does not make me wrong.
* * * *
Well, it sort of made sense at the time.
* * * *
Needs never really an issue, I delved into wants, and slowly but surely, found them wanting.
* * * *
Musings of an erstwhile mind.
* * * *
Always good policy to re-read it a time or so before you send it.
* * * *
Awareness is the spirit of totality.
* * * *
My end of time is near, and nearer every moment.
* * * *
My conclusion is there is no conclusion.
* * * *
Refining the search.
* * * *
Things were said that never should be said.
* * * *
So many years spent giving into every calculation and impulse this way and that.
So many things I thought I needed, so many things I thought I wanted.
And now, little if any interest in such dilettantish pursuits.
A contemplative, anonymous endgame, serenely beckons from the shoals.
* * * *
Get out while the getting’s good, I say, I say.
* * * *
One book, many titles.
* * * *
It is a curious thing, these many years of so many thoughts coming to mind.
Not sure how they come, how they keep coming, so often, and with such lucidity.
Starts any given time and space, usually with a pen scribbling onto a blank index card,
And then on to Microsoft Word on the MacBook Pro, with all its cherished accoutrements:
Google search, spellcheck, dictionary, thesaurus, and a knack for word association.
All the drafting and newspaper layout make for the spatial machinations.
And … Voilà !
* * * *
Life has certainly proven to be pretty darned dangerous by my reckoning.
* * * *
Mother Nature does not take prisoners, I always say, at least not until you're born.
* * * *
Long past caring if anyone ever reads any of this babble; I just likes writing it.
* * * *
My tribe ain’t worth a spit.
* * * *
Day ain’t over yet.
* * * *
Regarding COVID-19:
It is not a political issue.
It is not an economic issue.
It is not a religious issue.
It is not a macho issue.
It is a health issue.
* * * *
Nothing calls.
* * * *
Oh, the things you wish you had said, or not.
* * * *
Very likely history will not shine a bright light on the United States of Amerika.
Assuming, of course, humankind manages to survive its absurdities
Long enough to contemplate the how-we-got-here thing.
* * * *
Note to Self: Self, I was thinking ...
* * * *
If you make it about me, you have missed the whole point and purpose.
* * * *
Not my motivation.
* * * *
Yet another babble-on day.
* * * *
Another day in the human debacle, the human contagion, underway.
* * * *
My secular response to how all religion is sustained. is akin to The Emperor's New Clothes folktale.
A story about vanity, and how others play along for fear of embarrassment being found out.
It is a collective narrative, a miasma, seemingly built into humankind’s genetic coding.
* * * *
I may be very wrong about all this, but do not see how.
In every way truth can be comprehended: from rational to irrational,
From absolute to relative, from to realistic to delusional, from infinite to infinitesimal,
From sensible to absurd, from ironic to paradoxical, from black to white,
It all melds into a unified certainty that cannot be undone.
It is this acuity, both deliberated and intuited,
That doubts all other contenders.
* * * *
Oh well, so it went, dealt with it, got over it, moved on.
* * * *
A few hours, most every day, sharpening the legacy, imaginary as it is.
It has been absorbing, it has occupied a great deal of time,
But, hear me, hear me, I am well over it.
* * * *
How weary I sometimes am of the intensity of this conditioned mind.
* * * *
A good-natured rogue.
* * * *
Have a fondness for commas; something about that little pause.
* * * *
It would be hard to believe that most everything yappable
Has not been yapped about somewhere in this aphoristic edifice.
* * * *
Have done many foolish and stupid things in this dreamtime.
No need to add more to the list as often as the moment allows.
* * * *
My vocation, my fate, in a nutshell, seems to be to spend many years scribing all sorts of thoughts,
That will more than likely only be read by me; many, more than a few times.
Oh well, so it went, dealt with it, got over it, moved on.
* * * *
Regarding power, regarding fame, regarding fortune,
There is nothing in your world that I need to control,
There is nothing in mine that I need you to applaud,
There is nothing you possess that I in any way covet.
* * * *
This lifetime exploration of consciousness, of imagination,
Has been a long and winding expedition down the road less traveled.
A destiny to which I have been haphazardly, matter-of-factly, irrevocably drawn,
As the world, the universe, gradually lost its hold over the intelligence prior to consciousness.
* * * *
We are a species that deserves extinction.
Unfortunately for Mother Nature, she has not come up with the final solution fast enough
To save all the other life forms her mystery has spawned.
* * * *
This mind has become like one of those Magic 8-Balls,
The plastic sphere, made to look like an eight-ball,
That is used for fortune-telling or seeking advice.
Each thought placidly coming into mind’s eye,
Slowly finding its way to those whose fate it is part.
* * * *
In the world, and not of it; or in the world, and less and less of it.
* * * *
Happened upon the Self again today; always a pleasure.
* * * *
I can be any name you want to call me, Honey.
* * * *
Altered states of mind have always been both enlightening and enjoyable in many ways.
* * * *
Mister Whiney.
* * * *
Another respite.
* * * *
Remembering the good old daze.
* * * *
A satisfactory, enjoyable work, not as edited, not as organized, as I might like,
But time is running out … Oh well, so it goes, deal with it, get over it, move on.
* * * *
It takes great skill to be a successful failure in this world.
* * * *
Dead man walking; a goner not yet gone.
* * * *
Good agnostic that I am, I treats aliens like I do God, I'll believe in ‘em when I sees ‘em.
* * * *
Another thing I will never know.
* * * *
I am a liar, I am a cheat, I am a thief,
And I daily plot murder and rape and pillage and mayhem,
But I ain’t no gol-durned hypocrite, unless of course, the truth don’t bear telling.
* * * *
Problem? What’s a problem?
* * * *
In the world … sometimes of it, sometimes not … no worries.
* * * *
Know that we are all thinking that, too.
* * * *
Poor widdle me.
* * * *
Ramblings of a busy mind.
* * * *
If I must have a title, let it be: The Most Useless Man Alive.
* * * *
How weary I am of nerve endings.
* * * *
From outside the box, I see you.
* * * *
The human paradigm has reached such a level of absurdity for me anymore,
That even just waking up to the bother of getting out of bed
Is proving more and more a challenge.
* * * *
What men could endure playing out the absurd existence of so many modern women?
A near-endless fascination with hair, nails, eyebrows, make-up, clothes, shaving, waxing, bodily fluids,
Children, cats, rat dogs, parties, flowers, cards, shopping-shopping-and-more shopping,
Romance novels, soap operas, chick flicks, game shows, song and dance shows,
Froufrou drinks, pastries, thighs slowly spreading across the couch,
Insatiably sucking out the soul of the man they bagged,
And ever still wanting more, more, more.
Mind-dulling ad infintum.
* * * *
I am a liar, I am a cheat, I am a thief,
And I daily plot murder and rape and pillage and mayhem,
But I ain’t no gol-durned hypocrite, unless of course, the truth don’t bear telling.
* * * *
Problem? What’s a problem?
* * * *
In the world … sometimes of it, sometimes not … no worries.
* * * *
Know that we are all thinking that, too.
* * * *
Poor widdle me.
* * * *
Ramblings of a busy mind.
* * * *
If I must have a title, let it be: The Most Useless Man Alive.
* * * *
How weary I am of nerve endings.
* * * *
From outside the box, I see you.
* * * *
The human paradigm has reached such a level of absurdity for me anymore,
That even just waking up to the bother of getting out of bed
Is proving more and more a challenge.
* * * *
What men could endure playing out the absurd existence of so many modern women?
A near-endless fascination with hair, nails, eyebrows, make-up, clothes, shaving, waxing, bodily fluids,
Children, cats, rat dogs, parties, flowers, cards, shopping-shopping-and-more shopping,
Romance novels, soap operas, chick flicks, game shows, song and dance shows,
Froufrou drinks, pastries, thighs slowly spreading across the couch,
Insatiably sucking out the soul of the man they bagged,
And ever still wanting more, more, more.
Mind-dulling ad infintum.
* * * *
Not interested in being a sheep in anyone's flock, nor having a flock of my own.
* * * *
Too sentient to spend it forever tortured.
* * * *
Just warm from the kill.
* * * *
Going through the motions, are we?
* * * *
These hands tango with the pen on paper, and cha-cha with the fingers on the keyboard.
* * * *
It is through my own vanity, corruption, and limitation, that I see clearly what is true.
* * * *
Wasn’t too happy about that one, but there it is.
* * * *
Gone boy.
* * * *
You call me a coward for departing, I call you a fool for staying, suffer well.
* * * *
Not all that interested in traveling the direction this body is heading.
* * * *
What was once new, what was once adventure, is now boredom and bother.
* * * *
To bask in the eternal moment,
Some call it nirvana, some satori, some rapture, some joy, some harmony, some ecstasy,
Some paradise, some heaven, some bliss, some contentment.
I call it home, sweet home.
* * * *
So many people, so many places, so many adventures.
* * * *
The pen and keyboard dance for me.
* * * *
Double-checking, always double-checking.
* * * *
Don’t like it? Don’t read it.
* * * *
Ride it out to the bitter end?
Or abandon ship before the inevitable?
Let the judge, the jury, and the executioner decide.
* * * *
What is left that can sate the incessant craving of this weary mind?
* * * *
Fortunately, I am not a politician, so your vote, for or against, counts for squat.
* * * *
The list of bothers inflicted upon this mortal frame is long and harsh.
* * * *
Did I say I was free?
* * * *
Why postpone the inevitable?
* * * *
Look where your dick landed you this time.
* * * *
What concern have I for heavens and hells,
For reincarnation or any other time-bound conception?
Of past lives I have no memory; of future lives I have no certainty.
All that matters is this very right-here-right-now eternal moment.
As it would have been, or will be, in any future-past ever coined.
* * * *
I have left you with nothing.
* * * *
Hard to remember how I did all that.
* * * *
Whether you accurate translate what was written is not the author’s burden.
* * * *
Ate plenty, drank plenty, played plenty, worked plenty,
Ran plenty, walked plenty, sat plenty, slept plenty, thought plenty,
Watched plenty, heard plenty, tasted plenty, smelled plenty, touched plenty.
No need to beat a dead dog; enough was enough long ago.
* * * *
Quit you’re whining, I have to listen to enough of my own already.
* * * *
This is a haphazard collection of many thoughts set down over many years.
It is up to the earnest reader to separate the wheat from the chaff,
To grade, to sort, any of my subjective, limited thinking,
In their astute quest for the irrefutable truth,
To which all have access, but only the rare few discern.
* * * *
No place to lead you, nothing to teach you,
Except right-here-right-now is the only place to be,
And for that you are most truly on your own.
* * * *
Herein witness the joy of word association.
* * * *
I am glad I am old to endure much longer the even harsher world unfolding.
* * * *
In sleep, every night is a new adventure.
* * * *
Neither deities nor demons have much use for philosophers.
* * * *
Older and more pathetic by the day.
* * * *
If I were to off myself, would I be happily asleep forever?
Or wake up in the same hell, or some alternate perdition?
* * * *
It is not like I have not thought about that before.
* * * *
Nomad, wanderer, traveler, sojourner,
Explorer, sanyasi, student, apprentice, pupil, learner,
Adventurer, transient, trailblazer, itinerant, speculator, buccaneer,
Pioneer, migrant, drifter, rover, vagrant, rambler, voyager, trekker, rolling stone,
Dreamer, philosopher, sage … All of the above, and more, I have been.
* * * *
A gun in the hand is worth two in the holster.
* * * *
Probably guaranteed I do not want to follow anybody who wants to lead me.
* * * *
Give me street smarts any day, a piece of paper means nothing without it.
* * * *
No grand Nietzsche-esque treatise to be usurped in this body of work.
Hopefully, history will either use these many thoughts to rational ends, or ignore me entirely.
If not, at least hopefully it will not seize them for abominable purpose,
As it has the writings of so many other seers.
* * * *
Why would you praise any god that did this to you?
* * * *
Can’t prove a thing, really.
* * * *
Worked harder, not smarter.
* * * *
I don’t do groupthink
* * * *
Wandering a dream, aloof and free.
* * * *
Just another dusty, all but unread manuscript.
* * * *
Why wait to go out on a bad day?
* * * *
“How astounding so many across all times, all geographies,
Have been born in the land of the one true religion,”
He said in a voice laden with ironic mockery.
* * * *
Anything but a human being.
* * * *
Incautiously cynical.
* * * *
I know enough to know how little I know.
* * * *
Those who read this, where they are, I do not know.
It is a snowball set in motion to which end I have no clue.
Nor has any other seer whose allotted time has come and gone.
* * * *
A poor memory is not necessarily a bad thing.
* * * *
It always makes me laugh that you ever thought there was a point.
* * * *
The joys of being a crippled-up old man are few and more than a little far between.
* * * *
Yet another day in Perdition.
* * * *
Lose the whiney voice.
* * * *
"Just one more good day!" the crippled old man whimpered plaintively from his wheelchair.
* * * *
By this mind-body, and the cosmos and world it has somehow fashioned,
I, whatever ‘I’ imagines itself to be, will not much longer be afflicted by this reverie of space and time.
One moment in some relatively near-soon, by, if the fates deign it, this own crippled hand,
This inexplicable awareness shall back into the serenity of oblivion be cast.
* * * *
The bliss of travel is leaving behind the weights and measures of the day-to-day.
* * * *
How much can the world give that the human species will not without hesitation take?
* * * *
How's my race with dirt doing this fine day?
* * * *
The prophet who never was.
* * * *
The world, the cosmos, is filled with ghosts of your creation.
* * * *
Living a long life is nothing to write home about.
* * * *
Did a lot of things that I don’t never need to do again.
* * * *
History toys with all who believe.
* * * *
The world you know is destroyed each and every moment.
* * * *
Same old rolodex of imaginary perceptions, none more real than the next.
* * * *
It so wearies me to much longer endure the pain and suffering this mind-body has in store.
* * * *
Those were the daze, my friend, we dreamt they would never end.
* * * *
Going through the motions.
* * * *
Applause, limelight, fame, celebrity, stardom,
Recognition, reputation, distinction, eminence, renown, praise,
Appreciation, approval, sanction, prominence, acclaim, popularity, glory, standing,
Status, notoriety, infamy, disrepute, ignominy, dishonor, legend, myth,
Or even obscurity, insignificance, irrelevance, anonymity.
What are they, for whom Self is all there is?
* * * *
Life is a marathon, not a sprint.
* * * *
A thing for things.
* * * *
A churning rolodex of memories.
* * * *
Keeping it real.
* * * *
Free at last.
* * * *
What a lucky man he was.
* * * *
I have delved into the aloneness, and it is me.
* * * *
Many times, it begins with just the inkling of a notion, not even close to being fully formed,
And the new ditty takes fuller definition as pen scribbles across paper.
And later, when time is made for the keyboard,
That squiggle of an idea often magnifies even further.
The joys of word association are many and not far between.
* * * *
My little soapbox, off to the side, out of any limelight.
Who knows if anybody is even listening,
And who is left to care?
* * * *
What was I thinking!?
* * * *
Keeping up with it all, what a chore.
* * * *
What is old age but dollop after dollop of bother.
* * * *
Not quite as superior as you.
* * * *
Not quite as humble as you.
* * * *
A zen life without the zen.
* * * *
You call this a plan?
* * * *
I have been my best friend and worst enemy.
* * * *
How many women always want men to aspire to their limitations?
* * * *
Sun and moon and planets going indivisibly round and round, where’s the time in that?
* * * *
Nothing I need see, nothing I need do, nothing I need be, oblivion beckons.
* * * *
Alas, I am prone to making mistakes, but I am never wrong, ha-ha.