"A notion once held that people only came into themselves partway through their lives. They woke up, were they lucky enough to have consciousness, in the act of doing something they already knew how to do: feeding themselves with currants. Walking the dog. Knotting up a broken bootlace. Singing antiphonally in the choir. Suddenly: This is I, I am the girl singing this alto line offkey, I am the boy loping after the dog, and I can see myself doing it as, presumably, the dog cannot see itself. How peculiar! I lift on my toes at the end of the dock, to dive into the lake because I am hot, and while isolated like a specimen in the glassy slide of summer, the notions of hot and lake and I converge into a consciousness of consciousness - in an instant, in between launch and landing, even before I cannonball into the lake, shattering both my reflection and my old notion of myself. That was what was once believed. Now, it seems hardly to matter when and how we become ourselves - or even what we become. Theory chases theory about how we are composed. The only constant: the abjuration of personal responsibility.

We are the next thing the Time Dragon is dreaming, and nothing to be done about it. We are an experiment in situation ethics set by the Unnamed God, which in keeping its identity secret also cloaks the scope of the experiment and our chances of success or failure at it - and nothing to be done about it.

We are loping sequences of chemical conversions, acting ourselves converted. We are twists of genes acting ourselves twisted; we are wicks of burning neuroses acting ourselves wicked. And nothing to be done about it. And nothing to be done about it."

i just finished son of witch, the sequel to 'wicked' the book that tells the wizard of oz's wicked witch of the wests story from her perspective. i was surprised - i liked wicked. i kinda thought it would be more of a chick book. but it was interesting, thoughtful, worked on different levels and had an absolutely great ending - which is damn hard to do in a book. the sequel tells of the witches son, and for the most part was a good read, but the ending, in complete contrast to the 1st book, sucked, sucked, and sucked some more. left you hanging, made no sense, left all the charactors hanging. but there was some choice bits, the above passage is one of them.

posted by bluematrix at 02/27/06 19:58 | link | comments

never know where words of wisdom will come from - even winnie the pooh has something to offer. beware the bisy backson...

From the Miserable Puritan came the Restless Pioneer, and from him, the Lonely Cowboy, always riding off into the sunset, looking for something just down the trail. From this rootless, dissatisfied ancestry has come the Bisy Backson who, like his forefathers, has never really felt at home, at peace, with this Friendly Land. Rigid, combative fanatic that he is, the tightfisted Backson is just too hard on himself, too hard on others, and too hard on the world that heroically attempts to carry on in spite of what he is doing to it.

It's not surprising, therefore, that the Backson thinks of progress in terms of fighting and overcoming. One of his little idiosyncrasies, you might say. Of course, real progress involves growing and developing, which involves changing inside, but that's something the inflexible Backson is unwilling to do. The urge to grow and develop, present in all forms of life, becomes perverted in the Bisy Backson's mind into a constant struggle to change everything (the Bulldozer Backson) and everyone (the Bigoted Backson) else but himself, and interfere with things he has no business interfering with, including practically every form of life on earth. At least to a limited extent, his behavior has been held in check by wiser people around him. But, like parents of hyperactive children, the wise find that they can't be everywhere at once. Baby-sitting the Backsons wears you out.

posted by bluematrix at 02/21/06 01:37 | link | comments (1)

we put her ashes in an empty pop tart foil wrapper.

well not her actual ashes - those were sitting on a shelf in the den of lisa, a woman that took care of my sister at the end. my remaining sister and i had hoped to get her actual remains for a service we were trying to put together. (my parents just wanted it all to go away, which is just so fucked up it hurts to think about). but this lisa decided she was going to keep them safe and warm, and screw what the family wanted or was entitled to. i talked to a lawyer, and was told she didn't have any right to keep them, but i would have had to find a lawyer back in ohio, and the thought of suing the person who, though was being incredibly thoughtless now, had took such good care of my sister, well, i just didn't have that much fight left in me. though i confess that there is something hardwired deep inside me that feels that family members require a proper send off to the great beyond - not only do you deny the scattered extended family a real reason to come together, it sets a bad precedence.

so my little sister, anne, and i decided we would meet at halfway in a beautiful state park, play lots of old genesis and peter gabriel, get hammered, tell stories of our older sister, and have our own private service.

it was a very cold morning as we stepped out onto the porch of the cabin we had rented. in our hands were the letters in which we had written our last words to our older sister on the backs of the photos of jacquie i had printed. as the photos burned i realized belated that i would need something to put the ashes in - bourbon does that to a person. so with big snowflakes falling like so many frozen tears, we put the ashes in the foil pouch and walked to the car and drove down to the river. we walked in silence, bundled up to keep the near zero temperatures at bay, for nearly a mile until we found a suitable spot.

the ashes stayed together on the surface of the water in slow, strange, constantly morphing patterns... a school of tiny fish, a writhing snake, wisps of smoke. but caught in an eddy, it refused to join the current and vainly tried to go upstream - we laughed at how like jacquie that was. we watched the particles slowly change and disperse for long minutes, straining to keep our eyes on it as long as possible.

finally, we made our way from the river and as we emerged from the forrest trail, we came upon a field with a small cemetery that we hadn't noticed before. given the circumstances we were obviously drawn towards it. nearly all of the several dozen graves held members of the crabtree and handel family. some were so old and weathered you could no longer make out the text beyond the mid 1800's dates, and others had yet to even grow grass over the mounds. what struck us as we stepped lightly between the tombstones, was the sense of family and continuity - and how greatly this contrasted with meager ceremony anne and i had just concluded. no parents, friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, not a soul save for the occasional bald eagle circling the skies above wooded valley. some of the newer tombstones were elaborate affairs with realistic faux flowers in stone vases, and intricate carvings - how different from an empty pop tart wrapper. neither of us said it, but both of us were thinking it...there is something wrong with a family that doesn't look after it's dead. but we had each other and that was more than jacquie had, and we were thankful.

they say funerals only benefit the living. in that respect i guess anne and i have at least some sense of closure and of doing what we could. but as we hugged and went to our separate cars to drive in opposite directions, both of us wondered at the sad lack of interest from the rest of our clan in this basic familial rite. our thoughts were deep upon our own mortality and eventual passing.

(the picture to the left was taken of jacquie while she was in college and already an accomplished concert photographer. the picture on her shirt was one of her favorites, and when she gave it to iggy pop, became one of his favorites too.)

posted by bluematrix at 02/14/06 13:38 | link | comments

argh, matey's, i've been tagged and released...

Four jobs I've had:
seller of art supplies
framer of pictures
sprayer of chemicals on expensive yards
seller of party materials not exactly available at stores

Four movies I'd watch over and over:
what the 'bleep' do we know?
the nightmare before christmas
blade runner
what dreams may come

Four places I've lived:
mentor on the lake, oh
kansas city, mo
houston, tx
lawrence, ks

Four TV shows I enjoy:
love monkey
daily show
drawn together
austin city limits

Four places I've vacationed:
abacos, bahamas
st. martin, caribbean
bryce canyon, utah
kauai, hawaii

Four favorite dishes:
dungeness crab
crawfish etouffe
torre's pizza in kansas city
tuna sashimi

Four sites I visit daily:
yahoo
motime
radio paradise
cassini/mars rovers

Four places I'd rather be right now:
sailing someplace warm
snorkeling someplace warm
drinking on a beach someplace warm
ireland

Four bloggers I'm tagging:
malinov
alohalani
eat a peach for love
banzaidescent

posted by bluematrix at 02/09/06 09:01 | link | comments

if not for an extraordinary set of circumstances, i'm not sure i would have had the cojones to start my own business. but when the fortune 500 company i worked for downsized my department a few years ago, i somehow talked them into making me a contractor. and while i don't always like the roller coaster of not knowing how much money i'll make every month, working for yourself on your own time and your own terms is worth the uncertainity. reading 'affirmations' by stuart wilde reconfirms this...

'Developing abundance involves effort. But there is a big difference between effort and struggle. If you are doing work just to survive it becomes drudgery, which pillages your energy. Decide what you want, and then go for it -right now. Getting paid for what you love to do is one of life's great joys. It is a way of honoring yourself.

Money is your escape hatch, but that escape hatch is not effective untii you work for yourself. No matter how considerate your boss is you a!way live according to his destiny, not yours. If it is not possible for you to be self-employed then begin by developing as much freedom you can within your employment. Perhaps, you can sell your expertise to your employer as a subcontractor.

Alternatively, you should try to develop other income producing ideas, or part time work or investments, so that you have as many options as possible. This grants you fluidity and allows you to be adaptable. You could move at an instant if you wished.

For some, adaptability is natural, but not for others. Yet often it is impossible for you to become a success if you do not leave the place where you were raised, for it holds you in a vice of memories and associations. It is hard to affirm, "I am this now," when everyone around you remembers and affirms the old image of you. Leaving a sate haven and heading out is an affirmation in itself that says, "I now have the power. My positivity and effort will guarantee my success no matter where I go or what I choose to do."'

posted by bluematrix at 02/06/06 10:03 | link | comments (3)