Membergoosecap

Real Name

Teddy

About My Library

(general comments)

~On the one hand, I do try to include different sorts of books in several different ways, but on the other hand, if it’s bad enough I delete it. It’s only a record of all the books that I’ve read that are worth something; it’s not some legal document. If a book doesn’t have a redeeming factor and deserves to be forgotten, I’ll forget it.

~ I enjoy thinking that what I write is sound, and that it is a good product I offer freely and for my own benefit and improvement, and this pleasure is no small part of why I bother using this site and reading and reviewing books. However, probably the MOST instructive thing, for me, is what I hide from you as soon as possible—my mistakes. I record my thoughts, and this makes it possible, almost easy, for me to analyze myself, to find not only the good but the bad—the things that are, in retrospect, glaring mistakes….

It’s that moment when you realize that you’ve been manifesting people that are shit, (to use the phrase loosely, not scientifically), because YOU are the problem, and that they, were, you, right.

And without this site I don’t know that I’d have that. It wouldn’t be as easy, anyway. ….

(shrugs)

…………………………………….

nature & science: 15

I: 10 (1 ME)

II: 3

III: 2 (1 A, 1 B)

IV: 0

***

general history, sociology, and politics: 32

~Strangely, it’s probably more of a ‘foreign’ experience for some Americans to go to the airport, than it is to go to Paris, right: therefore the divisions between the ‘diverse’ histories/sociologies, and the ‘general’ ones.

On the other hand, it IS still possible to be radical, while looking at things like national politics, ‘the will of the majority’, if that’s what it is, and economics: in a way that’s radical, and over time, I will radicalize this section….

And yeah: the relation of the ‘national’ or racial or whatever, diversities, to the gender and sex ones, does tend to be pretty enigmatic; but they both matter…. What would ‘post-capitalist desire’ be? What would post-patriarchal desire be?…. Is our pleasure, is our happiness, based on a lie: is it based on something illegitimate, (how the very word has been twisted!)…. Does our happiness come from the destruction of happiness?

I: 19

II: 7 (1 II?)

III: 5 (5 5 B)

IV: 1 (1 M)

***

general philosophy: 9

I: 7

II: 1

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 0

****

general religion: 48

(Child Hermes) (eating a small cake)

(Isis) Hermes, who’s your friend?

(Child Jesus) (waves) (has the little nails sticking out of his hands)

(Child Hermes) He’s not my friend. (cake)

I: 29 (1 w/II; 1 w/III or IV, B; 1 w/I, H)

II: 13 (1 Q)

III: 4 (4 B)

IV: 2 (1 B, 1 N)

general interfaith: 37

I: 21 (4 J; 1 w/J; 1 ME; 1 w/III, A; 1 w/III or IV, A)

II: 6 (1 J)

III: 8 (7 A, 1 N)

IV: 2 (2 B)

special interfaith: 33

I: 15 (1 H; 1 w/III or IV, N; 1 w/III or IV, A; 1 w/III or IV, ME)

II: 15 (1 w/I)

III: 0

IV: 0

N/A: 3 (2 I/II N-B, 1 I/II, w/I, Q)

***

biological and psychology and popular psychiatry: 4

~Ableism is a form of masculinism…. Infantilizing is a form of the feminine mystique; but as in society, masculinism is in our age a commoner, more deadly, and more fundamental disorder than the feminine mystique, to this social system: so too is ableism the common, deadly, form of the disorder, which to a great degree gives rise to its derivative form.

Which isn’t to say that people always, or even usually, make good choices: the ‘disabled’ are heir to all the same disorders that women are heir to—that flesh is heir to, the flesh of these times, right….

But sometimes I wonder if I’ve been put where I am largely so I can learn, I don’t know, I’ll have to think of my own word: people like to find some fancy adjective, and then suck the life out of it, right…. But yeah; I am to learn to feel for these people, right…..

I used to want to take the racism or whatever, the face fascism, the background stuff, out of stigma and ‘Hell’ and everything, right…. Christians write some ‘great’ books about hell, lol…. And it’s like…. I don’t know…. But the church race, the race of church-men, have had it in for humanity, not just the people who look a certain way, right: you want to have ‘mercy’ on the system; you don’t want to disruptively jangle the manacles on the ruler’s mind, right…. One of those manacles IS ableism, right: almost the original form of masculism, you know…. The Reason for Conquest, right….

What if society’s goal was to care for people, though, and not to build seven overlapping Under-worlds for them, though, right?…..

I: 3

II: 1

III: 0

IV: 0

general psychology and applied philosophy: 15

I: 5

II: 6

III: 0

IV: 1 (1 B)

N/A: 3

mental health memoirs: 7

I: 3

II: 3

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 0

psychoanalysis et cetera (n.b.: books): 5

I: 3

II: 2

III: 0

IV: 0

general enlightenment philosophy: 11

~The whole journey is to know that we never missed the mark, never left home, never missed the mark.

~”It’s like a chief of police trying to find an arsonist, when the arsonist IS the chief of police.” —Eckhart Tolle on spinning your wheels

~Happiness is the reason.

~I trust myself. I am safe.

~Life is a journey. You are the destination.

I:

II:

III:

IV:

Eastern philosophy & esotericism: 6

general life enhancement spiritual psychology: 11

I:

II:

III:

IV:

fancy occultism theory and philosophy paranormal investigations and shamanic philosophy: 14

general astrological psychology: 12

general witchy psychology: 15

***

general literature: 34

(18 HB;

~Although, yeah—I don’t know if this is related, but: I mean, I wouldn’t read “Grapes of Wrath” again, but, in part, my attitude to John Steinbeck was false, right. I mean, fuck snobbishness, sexism, and racism, right—and you could pick a rune for each of those, and together the rune script would be “John Steinbeck”, right: his ego—but class isn’t irrelevant, right. And, in our material culture: it isn’t good….

I: 15 (2 w/II, 1 H, 1 ME)

II: 10 (2 ME, 1 A)

III: 3 (3 B)

IV: 6 (4 B, 1 N, 1 A)

general romantic literature:

*****

Diversities: 24

~I perceive myself as a Canada goose, but most people perceive me as a snow goose.

Some people, but not all, perceive me as like a Mallard duck with a green head.

Please do not make me into a jacket.

~ It’s easier to flatter women-- when the flattery is part of some elaborate media delusion, right: but it’s easier to respect men. Complimenting women usually comes off as sarcastic, (or maybe…. I don’t know). Which is why I don’t do it, lol…. Whereas it’s easy to look at another man, and be like, Hey man! You go, man! Good job selecting the right gender, man! After careful consideration and an agonizing cost-benefit analysis, I chose the same correct choice, as well…. Pound it!

Although the more ~classically~ male thing would be to collide with the fucker, and then curse at him and say it was his fault, and try to start a fist fight, right.

I: 5 (1 Q, 1 H)

II: 7 (1 J, 1 N, 1 w/I, 1 Q)

III: 7 (6 B, 1 A)

IV: 5 (3 B, 1 A, 1 H)

****

Prosperity: 22

I: 11

II: 6 (1 w/various)

III: 3 (2 A, 1 B)

IV: 2 (2 B)

***

Cars and technology: 2

I: 1

II: 0

III: 0

IV: 0

N/A: 1

***

Health and Food Science and or Philosophy, History, etc: 5

I:

II:

III:

IV:

Kitchen craft and house craft: 2

~I remember when I was seven or whatever and my dad got divorced from my mom: (really it is men who withdraw from women, especially in that generation; men aren’t just ~women~, right…. They’re, out there, somewhere, you know…. ;they just can’t be bothered to formalize the arrangement, you know—they delegate that part), he briefly became fascinating with cooking, right. His whole attitude was: “A big man makes his own pasta sauce…. But you’re just you: don’t worry about it.”

Everything was lies, in that part of my life, right…. Everything was deception…. They were deceived, themselves, no?….

I:

II:

III:

IV:

***

general humor: 9

I: 4

II: 1

III: 2 (2 B)

IV: 1 (1 B/Q)

N/A: 1 (1 w/I-IV)

***

pop and academic visual arts: 10

~I draw cartoons with words.

I: 7 (1 w/IV, B)

II: 2

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 0

****

music performance, history, and general music studies: 3

I: 2 (1 w/III or IV, B)

II: 0

III: 1 (1 A)

IV: 0

***

media studies (memoir, biography, group biography): 6

I: 2

II: 2 (1 w/I)

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 1 (1 A, w/III, A)

***

general sports: 6

I: 3

II: 2

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 0

***

general romantic literature: 18

I: 1

II: 14 (1 Q)

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 2 (1 B, 1 A)

literary mythology etc: 12

I: 6 (2 w/II)

II: 3 (1 w/I, ME)

III: 3 (3 A)

IV: 0

literary youth lit: 6

I: 3

II: 2 (1 ME)

III: 0

IV: 1 (1 B)

popular mythology etc: 8 (FP/DP)

popular fiction: 14

popular youth lit: 15

***

Audiobooks & YouTube etc: 3

(cannibalizing)

I: 1

II: 0

III: 2 (2 B)

IV: 0

*****

Ballet & opera performances: 1

~Incidentally, I ‘bundle’ together things like operas, ballets, and movies that I combine into things of book-like watching-projects, right.

{However you slice it, most of the leaders just plain ol’ Is, lol….}

***

general TV shows, total: 9

~And what is MY identity? That’s one secret, I'll, never, tell
—“Gossip Girl” 👩‍🔬 👒

~N.B. This notes the //creator(s) of a show, which obviously slants it towards the white guys at the very top, but that’s kinda the point: how much diversity is there, interpreted strictly, although because of this the numbers themselves will be very ‘I’-heavy, due to the nature of the age. My system makes sense, though, because although I allow that an actress exists in a way that a fictional character does not: and yet, we do not say that Emma Woodhouse has invented herself, do we?

Second note: Also, with TV shows, the ‘director’, to use the movie term, is an un-credited ‘show-runner’ who runs the show along with the creator or star or whatever. Since show-runners are generally white men, shows fronted by diverse talent (show creators/narrators or frontmen of non-fiction TV, although those shows are not included here), are actually probably a case of mixed parentage, if you will, with regards to background. That is not reflected in the numbers below (but only in this note).

I: 6 (2 w/II)

II: 3

III: 0

IV: 0

Films: 14

~I also try to rate things that I don’t have a review for, whether for technical reasons, (film, ballet, opera bundles), or for theoretical reasons, (changed stance on book, still interested: but have not re-read firmed up ‘beliefs’ or whatever), or some other reason: such as certain more technical reads, right. (“Recycling for Dummies”, etc.)

I: 10

II: 3 (1 w/III, B)

III: 1

IV: 0

***

Outdoors (Woodcraft, Gardening, Exercise etc.): 2

I: 1

II: 1

III: 0

IV: 0

***

language materials: 1

~ “Use whatever language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.” Emerson

~I have had a lot of bad experiences learning languages, which is why I gave it up for many years. I don’t regret mastering gringo-caveman Spanish, but I cherished more than one illusion along the way. At first, I studied languages because of power—every Tribe in Europe has its own Language, its own Speech. This was a little psycho, you know. Then I gave it up, but came back to it, almost and sorta, as Pure Learning, as Duty to Humanity. “There are ten major languages for me….” I never got far with that, although I started to become interested in dictionaries (like Malcolm X). (Before I read about—and was quizzed about—grammar. That needs a good joke, needs a good put down…. But if I need to tell THAT joke to you, I’m worried! “We can quiz people on grammar! Logistically, it works! Success!” There you go….) Obviously my plan to learn one Middle Eastern and one Asian language and about seven or eight others was a little…. Yeah. And in both those periods, (especially the first, which lasted longer), I was scared to do much learning because I was scared of the ‘necessary’ goal of ‘fluency’, you know. It’s usually unreasonable to try to become as good in another language as your native language, to never make language mistakes (which people can make in their birth language anyway), and just all that Kantian crawl knowledge perfectionism crap. Unless you’re a translator, or unless you live abroad or are culture-fascinated or a language freak—maybe not even then—you do NOT need to become as good at French as you are in English, as though you were an American actor in a B-movie, making a gratuitous display of ‘intelligence’. I hate to hate on the French—the Parisians, at least—but we should all have a little patience for immigrants, travelers, and unknowledgeable (try spelling that five times past) or imperfect people. Ditch the Kantian crawl, and try to live your life, right.

But my god is Hermes, and languages can be fun. I think the important thing is to look at it as a hobby, and have fun. Your worth as an American/white person, etc., is not in question. (You’re already screwed, lol. 😸) So pick fun languages, and make a hobby of it. I think I’ll pick Celtic, Scandinavian, and also Romani (Gypsy) languages. They’re all vaguely Wicca-y like I’m vaguely Wicca-y, none of them are important or ‘modern’/powerful/avant-garde…. They’re safe. I’m safe.

…. You learn ‘the way you’re supposed to’ until you wake up and grow up, and realize you have a choice, you know. Recently (post #2 Duty to Humanity language phase), I would think, you know, How would you decide which language to learn, right? How would one choose, you know, “Today I want to sign up to be with (Ethnic Group X), you know. How could you ever do it?” And the answer is: arbitrarily.

Like language itself.

~ Though of course, Romani isn’t really as well documented as Danish or Irish, so maybe I’ll add Navajo to cement the ancient-strangers-among-us part of my little equation. If Navajo is hard to find stuff for, after a while I can add Nahuatl.

.... Really one has to love a language to make progress. Spanish isn’t French, but when I chose Spanish, it was very much a matter of the greatness of the Spanish Empire (I was an empire person back then), and the many millions of people who speak that language in Mexico and elsewhere. But you don’t make much progress when you look at things like that. You learn a language because you want to dip into a particular linguistic culture, not because you are very anxious to meet people you are likely to meet but care nothing for. That’s the ‘statistical’ folly, the Greek/French thing is similar—so you can read books you don’t like, etc. Talk to people who hate you. That doesn’t lead to progress the way love does. So I’ll dip into Gypsy and Danish, and so on, because I’m a weirdo.

I: 1 (1 w/III or IV, A)

II: 0

III: 0

IV: 0

***

sex-centric fiction and non-fiction (not popular romance): 1

~ I suppose I don’t really decide, “today I’m going to think about X”, right; thoughts aren’t as closely controlled as that; although in the long run, you don’t have a history of thought without having fed it, right.

What I notice is that when I have sexual thoughts: I feel humiliated; I feel I will not be respected; and I feel happy. It’s actually not the belief for me that delusions will satisfy, right. A lot of the humiliation (maybe not all), is its sexual-morality character: being supportive, planning how to do it. That isn’t taught, and especially not to males of the IRA-Shakespeare coloring, right. And what is America, but the IRA/Shakespeare, right? If Gerry Adams—the IRA/Sinn Fein guy: he’d never care about Shakespeare, in any language: or being translator, right; but if you put him in a math or logic class or something: I feel like he’d do well; not least because he’d figure out how to cheat, and then if he wanted to, he could become a professor, or a college administrator: whatever you like, right.

But yeah: but then, when I think about how vain intellectualism is, how empty, empty-headed intellectualists, right—judging each other over things that aren’t true and don’t matter, right…. Then I think: (a) (small malus) but I can’t “prove” this to people, because the rationalistic stock of our civilization can only be taught what strokes its little-dick ego, right: and nothing else; and (b) (large malus) This just doesn’t make me fucking happy, right: just…. Knowing.

I: 0

II: 1

III: 0

IV: 0

……………………………..

Fellowship of Isis books: (March 2023):

Fellowship of Isis ritual books—ie not the “Call of Isis” or the “Isis of Fellowship” memoirs, the pagan liturgy books, are So Short: they’re like movies or magazines or something in length, so I think that those will be the only books I have that will be like, bundled together in groups of three to form one, “book”, right…. (One imaginary bundle, lol.) They’re not like, proper-length books, and I wouldn’t have published them in that format. But, I can be a martinet for discipline about stupid shit like that, right. (shrugs)

……………………………..

popular vs “noble”, or popular vs humanities

(late July 2023) I want to try to get a sense of how much popular stuff I read—although you can think as much as you like about a decent popular book, if it’s written well—and how much humanities (I don’t read much science, but that’s a different story—nobody mistakes a book about the new physics for a Star Trek adventure), and to strip it of the whole popular vs noble claptrap. Homer is noble and a romance novel isn’t; fairy tales, folk tales, and the tales of the elders of the ancient nations are noble and a romance novel isn’t; Jane Austen is noble and a romance novel isn’t. Although of course, Jane’s books and at least half to two thirds of the fairy tales are romances, and all the books mentioned EXCEPT for Jane’s are the product of a popular imagination, simple people, and not the producers of the “good” art, you know. Jane deserves some credit, but, bless me, it’s like “the world as it should be”—the most “artistic” in its proper place, selling more than the median popular book, right. It’s a little artificial. And, La!—you’re not supposed to know how things are done, so the whole aspect of money is mostly hidden from you, although precious, precious, precious!, Pure! bastards like Hugh Auden thought that Jane showed a little too much of real life (the bare ankles of real life, perhaps), you know, like…. Can’t let the peasants know anything about money! They’d stop serving my soup! ~You know, like the <poverty thinking> of the traditional rich person, who couldn’t raise an extra hundred dollars above his traditional income on his mother’s life, you know…. ‘Noble’, that’s what that is. Yeah, it’s noble alright…. Noble as propping up a corpse behind a cheap desk in a schoolroom, you know.

(sighs) (British sigh) But I’m NOT disaffected, Mr Cherryderry; no; no; no—a thousand times no! (cackles)

………………………………

Pointless rant for a biased world, ironically: Friday the 13th, October 2023

So you do not like the world, Christian! Your many factions need only discover the why of it, precisely…. Of course, the day people out in public talk about the church the way that the church talks about the world when they are in private, supposing themselves alone with each other, and successful in their village schemes—on that day, the (admittedly unhappy) day that the world ‘talks back’ to the church, we have a piece for the newspapers, the roving problem-finders…. Well-schooled by theology, I suppose! Sin is everywhere! All is evil, like shit concealed by snow! (You can almost understand an African saying it, except you Know that the imitation is practically always rather the other way.)

So you do not like the world, Christian! The village oppression is thick as thieves; the library of museums is bringing me to my knees! But how well do you do, Christian, without this world you do not like? Would even a half hour of real discomfort bring a philosophy-of-poverty smile to your pious face? As if even the fortitude you probably do not possess could justify you stealing another’s joy!

You probably get the idea….

…. And it’s like: people will read these books about well-being, about money, and also health and relationships, and they’ll say that they didn’t finish the book, but they don’t understand the point of wanting the well-being, you know—for money they’ll just come out and say it; they don’t want well-being, they want a Higher Power, although for health and relationships it’s more of a liars’ game—I preach the Christ! If you think my ice-heart don’t got a relationship, just ask my beat-down wife!…. And it’s like, they won’t finish the book and on the book they don’t finish they’ll say that they don’t understand the why of having money—more than them, that is. You can have more money than people in some other country, or some other race or gender, but you can’t have more than them, because they’re the measure of all propriety and all okay and all grace and all truth, and all humility, really, and it’s like—ARE YOU FOR REAL? You know, like, is that your honest answer? I mean, I know you have to ride the village elder train with your patriarch ticket to where you think that you’re going to go, but gosh: where do you suppose that IS, right?…. Museum talk is this sickness, but whenever people see it, it looks So Normal to them, and it’s like: normal must be really really sick for us, you know.

……………………………….

(2nd half of October 2023)

Of course, even though I deleted/tried to forget a certain amount of Christian books, such as the books from the Most Unhealthily-Tempered Famous Men of the Christian Era series, (never my main go-to), but realistically, some Christians books have influenced me, some I even like, and it would be inaccurate to say I died became a new being overnight when I went back to the craft. Still, I feel less obligated now to waste my time, you know. The strange confluence of Christian Brothership & Total Acceptance I had before led to this situation where as a liberal Christian I felt I had to reach for those outside the magic circle of Christianity with one hand, and to the other for the conservative Christians, but now I just feel like the folk Christians, the conservatives, just want to be left alone, and will sin on anyone who gets too close, you know. Going through my old free samples which I’m trying to organize and trim, a review: “Liberals, blue meanies, anti-Christs, and woke people will probs hate this book. That’s why I liked it. Security blankie book! Let’s cuddle!” Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for the heads-up…. I mean, you should do well by all the children of men, but if someone just wants to be left alone in their isolation, isn’t the (passive) good deed just to ignore them? I’ve got a life to live, I can’t waste it on the people who negotiate in bad faith, consider all creation to be their own ego, etc…. It’s kinda like, although I hate to do this to the punk kids, the worst manifestation of punk, or snob, controversy with the pop kids. The problem isn’t what you do: it’s that YOU are YOU. If I put down “Harry Potter” and pick up an album influenced by punk, immediately suspicion falls on that punk artist, or when the ordinaries adopt parts of academic ideals, the academics just adjust their attack and change their ideals, you know…. People just do what they have to do to exclude. It’s a waste of time reading that person's book; it really is. Reading that person's book isn’t inclusion, it’s just wasting your time, and it won’t help you be at peace with them.

……………………

(Dec 2023)

Ironically I had to get a replacement Kindle in August 2023, about a month before…. And it was very weird, lol.

Anyway; now it’s different.

(Knights of the Old Republic Jedi Counsel guy) I fear the Christians will lead Jesus down an all-too-familiar path….

I guess I’m dating myself. I found a (copper) 1981 penny today: older Milennial; that’s how I feel. Days are gone, days are gone, ah…. I remember being a Sith; I remember being an overweening naive Jedi tyrant—that’s how I started out; it’s a long way from the Right Way, the ‘right way’, you know…. I’m green and grey. Because I’m all this, you know….

……………………..

(Dec 2023) And all this is not mine, and not permanent.

I guess that I just think that “Christianity” is not a very good classificatory scheme, you know. (And some Christians think of it almost exclusively as a classificatory scheme.) I know that sounds weird or like a nonsense phrase almost, but what I mean is that saying, “I am a Christian”, really doesn’t mean much, one way or the other. You could be a Good Christian or a Bad Christian—a good witch or a bad witch, so to speak. You could be an isolated and/or muscular male Christian, or a codependent and/or mothering female Christian. And so on. It really just doesn’t mean much as a classification system. I also think that Christians are too rejecting of power in theory and too drawn to it in practice. But mostly, again, the problem I have with the concept in practice is that it’s supposed to be this One Great Thing, whereas really it’s many different things about which you really can’t say much universally. That’s what I think.

………………………

(religious memoirs, miscellaneous) (April 2023)

Sometimes religion memoirs are stories of Loss and Hardship; people are sold the idea that this will bring them bravery and resilience. Sometimes they get their money’s worth. But it’s also true that sometimes people tell stories like that to seem more profound than they really are, (even women do this), or to protect themselves—like people will like them because theyre unhappy; they’ll get pity or, at least, they’ll be protected from jealousy…. Or maybe it’s their ticket to the mainstream, right; “I may be an immigrant, but I got cancer! Anybody can get cancer! I’m one of you! I uphold your values!”…. And, sometimes, people tell stories of “loss” not because something terrible has happened to them—of course, oft-problematic human nature happens to us all, but sometimes the protagonists of stories of “loss” are unusually fortunate— but simply out of habit, they complain. So a story of loss could either create gratitude from terrible trials, or a sense of entitlement and pessmism from unusual good fortune.

…. (May 2023)

Two brief and (mostly) unrelated thoughts:

—As I noted on the previous profile page in different words, there’s probably nothing I’ll say that I won’t come to disagree with later, either in an obvious way, or subtly. You either take a walk, turn around, and go back; or else you venture further into the crystal cave. That’s life.

—As I’ve also written before, if somewhat sloppily, I guess—and I’m a perfectionist—although I’ve worked very very long and hard on taming anger and not being weird and resentful or lashing out at people; at the same time, a certain amount of discontent at the way that normal people dump on the world and on each other, is satisfactory, in my opinion. You have to be a little sad that you’re angry and you have to take care of yourself, but you can’t just will yourself to be the sort of uncaring robot who is indeed one of the different kinds of normie who dumps on the world and on people. “Be ye angry, and sin not.”

(May 2023) But it’s never personal, you know. Others simply act in the way that some dream or some pattern suggests to them; whether it’s an artful pattern or not to me might not be a part of their reality. But ultimately I choose my own feelings in the matter, whether those of love or some other feeling, you know.

(September 2023) Sometimes I intentionally leave auto-miscorrect’s suggestions if it’s a nice turn of phrase, you know. The “prize of pretzels” is better than the “price of pretzels” as a metaphor for nervous workaday noise, you know.

(April 2024)

Billy Joel can be fucking unbearable, but yeah: (a), “No Man’s Land” could be like a pagan anthem, you know: “who remembers when it all began—out here, in no man’s land? Before the whole world was in our hands—out here in no man’s land! Before the banners and the marching bands….”, and (b), “The Great Wall of China” is kinda how I feel about Jesus, lol. (Whoever the hell he is, right.) “We could have gone all the way to the Great Wall of China!—if you’d only had a little more faith in me! In lieu of diamond gold and platinum, reminders, will still shine, bright…. You never win if you can’t play it straight—you only beat me if you get me to hate. It must be, so lonely, to think that you have only, somebody else’s life to live if they let you—I ain’t too, selective: but it don’t take no detective~ to find out how fast your friends with forget you…. Help yourself! It’s all you can eat at the Empire Diner, to-night…. You coulda had class! You could a been a contender! Charlie! You shoulda looked out for me! You coulda been standing on the Great Wall of China!….”

The first song has a higher proportion of relevant lines, (I mean, I guess you wouldn’t say that “thanks to the condo kings, there’s cable now in Zombietown”, anymore: and ethical, responsible commerce to facilitate happiness and even comfort CAN be a good part of life: but pretty much everything Billy says in that song does seem true and even—I mean, I hate those things where it’s like, “Wordsworth was a pagan”, and you try to make it like a “trad white man” synonym, right, but: I mean, on the other hand, it would pig-headed and narrow not to view certain things as ~serviceable~, right…. And yeah, “The Great Wall of China”—and Christianity is expanding in the East where it’s unknown and hasn’t sullied the waters so to speak, and no one knows what will happen there: but it is funny, because it is Difficult to be a Christian in the PRC, because the military government/export business looks at religion as irrational, which is partly on them, although Christians and science is not such a fun story always—it’s almost like child abuse, really…. But yeah: they probably do see the church and then say, you know, And how did this religion spread to the six continents again? Oh, that’s right: imperialism! (laughs and locks everyone up and proceeds on merry military government/export business way, right)…. But yeah, that song has more lines that don’t fit into the interpretation I’m giving it, because they’re to classic-Billy-Joel-extreme, right—how jaded and cynical do you have to be before this sounds like plain pop, right; it’s more like the Stones, IMO: maybe there’s some technical-musical-chord argument that that’s not true: but it seems like missing the song for the sound waves, basically, so else just: you know, it’s not metal, so it’s pop, right…. But yeah, it also is more surprising and curious, once you adopt my interpretation for those lines that are relatively calm, right…. I mean, not calm, but: in control. You don’t have to calm-calm in battle, but you don’t want to be trigger-happy. I guess having weak nerves facilitates violence, you know. Think of Gandhi, right. Nothing wrong with being a feminine man, but that was NOT Gandhi. He was tough as nails. Anyway….

(April 2024)

Yeah, and then the next part of the album is kinda vanilla Billy Joel: I’m drinking because the world is shit…. And you know, I’m not an alcoholic. Can you see the difference between calling Billy Joel an alcoholic, and the world Billy Joel-ic? ~Yeah, pretty much worthless, yet amusing, like all musical songs, almost.

And then: I mean, part of it is so melancholy-beautiful, but it’s also a little unsettling, right…. I mean, I’m not a zoomer, and I don’t support the baby boomers being rounded up and put into camps without an internet connection, lol—jk at zoomie, right—but it is kinda this classic pattern of my parents’ generation, right: where they bitch and moan and bravely attack the system, only to settle down and worship it as soon as they become calm, basically…. It’s a very emotional album for me that I’ve listened to in several different seasons of my life, since it’s a childhood thing from dad, right…. But yeah, I can sorta get the rock prophecy, and I can sorta get the my-wife-can-calm-me-down (it’s her job!) bs, and I can Certainly get the ‘I love my children’ thing, but it’s like…. I mean, this is the thing that conservatives stumble over, right: Renaissance Italy was beautiful, THEREFORE, no women priests: hard pass, case closed. ~Right? “If the human spirit was beautiful in the 20th century: then that’s just how it’s gotta be….”

But there’s a lot that’s creepy in those songs, despite the contrast (not the same as balance, lol) of the different parts of the album, and despite their occasional great beauty…. It’s like, We’re all Christians, even those of us who are atheist Jews, right…. And society is something we have no say in: we inherit it from our parents, and we pass it down unchanged to our children; not to sing the lullabies of yore would be a stain on the Irish fore-bearers that we All share, right: and a direct negation of our father’s ghost’s right to exist, right…. And not only does society never change: we never change; our souls never evolve; we’re put on this earth to vegetate unchanged for millennia after millennia, to prove that we need do nothing, nothing but loyally vegetate, right. And if you don’t like it—ask the wife, right. She’s such a good wife; she never gave me any problems even when I made her life shit through all those years of drinking. She never said she needed some more time for her own career, her own friends, her own family’s Thanksgiving. And after all she’s done for me, you’re not going to dishonor her sacrifice by allowing people not to emulate her beneficial example, are you? (“Got to keep the loonies on the path….”).

But yeah: it does seem like blues rock/hard rock to me—in the beginning, because of the lyrical style and almost because of the music, (although probably a little punk pop got in around the edges), and at the end, for its very pronounced 60s-era musical style: Black music, blues rock, roots rock, right…. It just seems too cruel to call Billy Joel plain pop, right, when, deluded or not, he pretty much plans his day—80% of it, at least—around being, usually more, occasionally less, rebellious than that straight, plain-pop sound, you know….

Oh, and I almost forgot: as unbearable as an Eight can be, sometimes when he gives up on justice, and says that “I don’t give a damn, anymore”—you know, to the whole world, basically….

That’s not good.

……….

(September 2024) Somebody’s watching a popular Black talk show, and a lot of it is garbage, because it’s like, apolitical by virtue of being beneath the level of considering politics; I don’t know how to explain it. Like, against the system, but against woke—shockingly ignorant, in many ways (gender, age, etc….)—by virtue of being…. Just against systems, organizing…. Issues, almost. Against the engagement with the system and the non-street world necessary for opposing the system, being against…. Anything like politics which requires being informed, on some level, right.

But yeah: one thing I DID feel, right: I FELT, somebody had their money taken away, and it was like: ‘was it XYZ?’ ‘I don’t know if it was XYZ: but it was slick shit.’ That might enter my vocabulary: slick shit. Like, people don’t mean what they say: and it doesn’t make sense; and there’s no honesty in it.

But they know the laws better than the judges and the politicians, and if they ever make a mistake, they’ll just pay somebody to fix it, and still walk away with money, right?…. Because they got their slick shit, and they got it set.

I’ve read a lot of the “good” books, and some of them ARE worth reading, right…. But, I don’t know that I wouldn’t reject wokeness for its being too informed, or whatever, if I were a Black person of a certain social class, right. Turning the rage that devours its tail, into a coherent, radical criticism doesn’t always seem worth it, right….

Because all around you, the informed people with their knowledge: they’re conjure-men, and they’re conjuring slick shit, right. They could conjure Jesus, Allah, the Devil, or anybody else they took a fancy to…. And turn around the next minute, and lie to your face about what they said, just cause they TALK FUNNY, right. They talk like THEY don’t talk, even, right.

It’s all a game. Try to get a good seat, no?

(February 2024)

I once thought that enlightenment meditation was all I’d ever be interested in, but since I’ve turned away from that—and I mean, I suppose I’ve lost interest in, say, thirty minute mindfulness/guided meditations, for example—but there was the initial change in goal, and then gradually it dawned on me how much of the method has remained since I changed the goal and oddly enough kinda dropped much of the neurotic Buddhism that people give dharma talks to guide you away from, where you sit down and get afraid that the mind is going to make noise, right. Actually I still have some of that—it’s habit energy—but sometimes it can surprise me how different it kinda is now, really.

I mean, it’s like Starhawk talks about Talking Self and Younger Self. I love that, although I actually think it should be Talking Self and Babbling Self. Younger Self isn’t actually ~literally~ pre-verbal in adults. Small children are fascinating—can they figure out that you’re saying hello?—but that pre-verbal or semi-pre-verbal stage is not what happens when you let Younger Self talk, you know. It talks just as much—more, maybe; he doesn’t stop, doesn’t weigh phrases—but it’s wild, you know…. And sometimes, you realize that meditation doesn’t have to be, shouldn’t be, sitting down and waiting for Babbling Self to shut up, right. Sometimes you just gotta let him babble it out, you know. If you sit down for ten or fifteen or twenty minutes, and he or she is only quiet for a little space at the end, or little pockets of time, and the rest is just babbling, then that’s meditation, and not just because of the little pockets of silence. It’s nice to learn what you actually think, deep down, or outside in the wilds of your mind, right…. Not just what you get yourself to think, right. It can be nice to give Babbling Self some time to talk it out, without being told what to do all the time by his rigid older brother, you know.

(April 2024)

You certainly do not have to think that all philosophers are equally saintly, or else equally weird, or else equally, I don’t know, human-all-too-human, right. In that sense, you can certainly reason. But it is provisional: you might be wrong, even as they could have been wrong. You might go down the path of understanding more, successfully, right: and come to the place where you see the thinness and incompleteness and wrongness of your original foundations or basic ways of thinking or life-stance, right. Reasoning is provisional. You think, and you reason, and you come to the answer: and then that is your answer, until you find out it was wrong, basically.

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(August 2024)

(writes some crazy cool radical thing) ~BUT, you know: I’ll always be a Six: I’m Arthur Schopenhauer/Beth March, you know: “Existence is something that never should have been…. Therefore, I am too afraid to play the piano for you, Mama.” The

About Me

(general thoughts about me/stuff)

(a) I notice that even on Threads—on literal Threads-sized gulps of text—posts I do that are more ambiguous get much less feedback, right….

(b) I remember when I went to a mental health program, I saw a poster on some staff member’s door: “In the midst of difficulty, is opportunity.” (It was an Einstein quote, with elaborate text graphics.) Now, I see the idea as similar to the reasoning behind Wiccan lore considering things like Full Moons and Eclipses to be times of sacred energy: even though life tends to get more difficult and complicated during those times.

But at the time, the poster just gave me subconsciously registered flashbacks to being seven or whatever and seeing posters like that, with the, slightly numbing, feeling that the intended meaning was, “I am very intelligent”, right….

…. Right? Like the one that went, ‘When you’re thirty, you won’t remember what clothes or shoes you wore; you’ll remember what you learned, and how you used it.’

Less self-serving for the administration, would be: ‘When you’re thirty, you won’t remember which sneakers were the coolest or which tests were and weren’t graded leniently; you’ll remember the relationships you formed, and the knowledge and discipline you acquired.’

Right? Like, all this glorified, ‘shut up and don’t talk, learn algebra, the end’, can lead to very warped personalities, in the unlikely event it’s taken seriously…. ~(person smoking weed) “But no one takes my advice seriously, so I can write whatever so want, (rambles on about calculus while in an altered state of consciousness)’

~Yeah?

…………

(birth chart) Basically, my birth chart is CRAZY ambiguous. I’m a crazy ambiguous person. Crazy/extreme…. Yet, undecided. I must have a fucking amusingly ambivalent past life, right?

Details to follow.

(Enneagram type) Six.

………….

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(July 2023) One time a butterfly made me afraid. Well, not a butterfly—a picture of one in a book. It looked like a…. bug, and I was like, Oh save us mommy. Truly am I afraid.

Other times I can listen to metal and close my eyes and feel peace. Truly I love all people. The man gets to express himself; I’m happy. I love the man, mommy.

…………………………

(June 2023) I know that recounting specific instances would only make the skeptics scoff, (they might or might not be trained as a scientist, a group that in turn might or might not be skeptical, and if they fulfill the stereotype it might or might not be a sort of cool kid conformism, you know), and indeed trying to make a little journal either here or perhaps on paper would be quite voluminous and distracting, and anyone else who saw it would probably—even if they didn’t go full on Downfall Dawkins on me, or even be skeptical at all—but it would just be like: random things in some other random person’s life; what do I care if you get little messages from God, you know.

But in a way, I do, although it’s not because I’m special. Wayne liked to say that nobody is special, and nobody is non-special, right…. But there’s a difference between getting schizophrenic, and having synchronous things happen to you. I’ve had both, and I know they’re different. The essential difference is feeling, your felt experience, and I guess that the ‘reason’ is the presence or absence of judgment. (To get schizophrenic is to be judged, by colors and coincidences, and words in books and characters on the television—and often it is to judge those real and imagined persons around one as well), and synchronicity is just…. Knowing that things are okay. It’s as though God were your big Black nanny who says, Honey, the people around you don’t tell you that things are okay for you, because they don’t know and maybe they don’t care, so child, I gonna go and tell you myself that you doing good, you know…. It’s a simplification I guess that if you’re not schizophrenic or ill or whatever that things are good, but essentially it’s basically true, you know. It’s just that there are different sorts of illnesses, and people aren’t grateful for their health because they’re ill and don’t know it…. But anyway, it’s like: you think that the thing you want isn’t here because you can’t see it, but you’re doing good, so it is here, you just can’t see it yet, and you will see it, too, and you’ll do what you have to do in the natural to see, guaranteed, but as Joseph the Prince once said, with Jesus it’s not him pointing at you, saying, Do! Do! Do!; it’s done; done; done…. I think that’s love, the love of our ancestors, the ones from before, whether they’re the Jews or the Hawaiians, the Europeans or the Africans: it’s all done done done, in that love that’s always been here, and obviously sometimes that’s been called grace, and grace isn’t always used to mean that you can’t and you won’t and you’re helpless: that’s not what done done done is supposed to mean. It’s supposed to mean freedom, a word ironically often used by various sorts of tyrannies….

But anyway, when you’re not ill, life is good and you do fun things; but the main thing is just that you’re not ill and there’s no particular thing that you really have to do forever and ever, you know. You’re not judged, because you don’t have schizophrenia.

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(April 2024)

Your little truth, no matter how true it is in your own case, is a lie, if you think that THE truth, is just—your, little, truth.

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