The DN has returned. Long live the Daily Neurotic!

You can also follow any shennigans, stories of the wilds in the suburbs, common complaints of the dailies and what have you @thewildblues.

Once again I have come to the shore of the daily blogger. Humbler than before. Tumbled and smoothed by time.

time and tidepools

Do not give up all metaphors. Though I rather like similes myself, I would be hard pressed to give you three reasons why they are different from metaphors. Some suspect that similes lack the nuts and bolts that make metaphors a more significant construction project. Similes are less formal comparisons and can be used as a description rather than creating a parallel universe that the metaphor is intended to do. Similes are coated with a thin layer of grease if they are elegant similes and can slide into being far more simply than metaphors which require incubation and an elaborate birth ritual.


Eventually, metaphors become dials on the dashboard of your consciousness or switches that click. Eventually, you get touch button controls; then just thoughts. Probably, eventually, you can reach through with your own hand into the deep well of a hologram. Your hand becomes an archetype with robes that are dimensions in time. And you can circle through all the strings of reality the physicists have found until you reach for the contact that is the god or goddess, the holy one, or grandmother, who is really the person you’ve always known when wisdom was a tide pool and you were a new life swimming, just swimming. And the light and the shadows. As Shakespeare might have someone sing, with a heigh and a ho. What we focus on produces heat. Whether fire or foul, the worst that is fear or the energy that is beauty, depends. It depends on everything going on that particular day. It’s about levels. Loren Eiseley saw the entire history of the universe from the formation of the earth through to the earliest life forms, in a small puddle. Or you might have someone like Rachel Carson, knees still working, kneeling down over a tide pool watching all the life going on there in that little ecosystem. The water goes in and out pulsing with sounds and miniature currents.

Thirty years ago scientists predicted that the depth and dimension of holograms would change the way we would store information. Holograms will be the new sea deep and unexplored, with all possibilities, all levels. Imagine shelves, closets, alcoves. This new place and you reach in and pick up a starfish, just for a brief moment, to see its tubular feet searching for solid ground to move along. But your hand is also deeper. It also has more dimensions, more bodies, more territory unexplored. Although you know it is your hand it is also an archetype. Archetypes are from way back and come along with their stories, gift of meanings layered and faceted, shining like the night sky, galaxy after galaxy. Suns and moons all over the place. Many lives. All the languages. All reaching with your hand into the tidepool.

I like to think that I carry the sea in me. I would dive in and the waters would meet. Sea to ocean. Like recognizing like without a brackish water intermediate. This is how some might describe desire met in that pool where identity swims round till the whirlpool comes and everything that is you slides down, merging, becoming the whirlpool – dissipating into another realm of being.

Different people leave different messages, cause different structures to form depending on their need. Whether duck paddled or boat engined. Whether full moon or runoff. The ebb and flow of the tide isn’t as symmetrical as I first thought. There’s a different tide each time but the coming and going remains the same.

 
 
 
 
Coda:  Sometimes there's music and nobody is playing it. 

The Daily Neurotic is getting out of here

Friends and neighbors - keep an eye out for some changes. The Daily Neurotic will be moving to its own site shortly.  Keep checking here for the switcheroo.  The address will be:  http://www.thedailyneurotic.com/
just as you suspected all along. 

What the who ha hay?  What does this mean?  Who knows?  Check with Ms. Whoozywhatsitwhooziewho to find out.  I'm thinking the dailies really don't start until Monday. Check it out. Consider it yourself. If you're stuck on the couch, or in your home for whatever reason and are sitting outside of the Monday through Fridays that have been previously mentioned, are you then experiencing the dailies?  Probably. Right? Everyone has their own version of them.  Most likely.   There's really no need for concern or alarm. There's still every opportunity available to you to be neurotic and to receive The Daily Neurotic for free.  These days, there's so many emails and newsletters and posts and whatnot for free that it almost seems like you're paying for it in a sense with your time. Enough already with the free things. Alright then. Show me the money.  Just send a check to Ms. Whoozywhatsitwhooziewho in whatever amount you can afford, throw in a cookie for Santa, a dish for the angel, pay for the piper and their cut - whoever they are, and consider that we're square. 


Coda:  Adopt an animal. Leave your land to an organization that will keep it undeveloped. Be good.

Writing rights

Writing is such an interior act and behavior. We all do it. So inside that it’s strange for me, sometimes, to think of it as a right. But it can be broadly interpreted as a human right. It is what sets us apart from other creatures. Maybe not the octopus and any other animal that might leave ink writings. There’s bugs that work on tree limbs and leave hieroglyphics. There’s the path of the slugs on the flagstones. Birds are leaving tracks in the sand. It could all be writing and we think we’re special; when really, we just have a language that takes physical form just like the cat paws in the snow. When I think about it, everything a cat does is deliberate. They might be writing all the time and we just don’t know it. Well, they wouldn't be writing all the time given the union rules of soaking up as much sun as possible and their obsession with personal spit distribution.  But I would have sworn that my cat Stoner was leaving messages with her nose prints on my windows. I used to kid with her that it was a cry for help. Maybe it was. She's gone now. Could be her ship came in. 

Coda:  Everything that's interpreted is also everything that it is without the interpretation.

back in time, approximately two days ago

I have no good account, reason or rationale for not posting. Apologies and mea culpas.  Please accept.
It must have been that yes, some days are Wednesdays and it then follows, in this linear sort of  non-imaginative way that some days are Thursdays. I'm here on a Friday and I find that yes, again, this seems true to form, some days are indeed Fridays. However this turns out, and it seems as though it won't be much of a mystery, I'm hoping that for everyone some days are just amazing, and miraculous, and totally neurotic free, and filled with joy or inescapable smiles; the kind that tickles like a good ricotta dish with just the right marinara sauce. Some days are shadow days and some seem filtered through so many different kinds of lenses. Some days I can't remember people's names. People that mean a lot to me. Some days I can only wish for other days that weren't those days. I know, I know. This is so common. It's human nature. But I understand that in some places or at least in some times among some humans there weren't days. Just imagine swimming through time without the currents of days moving you along or slowing you down or otherwise affecting your life. Just swimming.  Just days without time swimming.  Some days are like that too, aren't they?

Some days are Wednesdays

There's frequently no way to know when you'll run into a day of the week that is difficult. Unless of course you can plan your difficult days in advance. There is a lot to be said for planning.  Wednesdays are sometimes called 'over the hump' days for those people challenged with the soul and scheduling constrictions of a nine to five job, Monday through Friday.  Wednesday, just like Tuesday and Thursdays are those days not considered significant enough to be mentioned every time someone mentions Monday through Friday. Often called 'the grind', Monday through Friday or M-F, clearly doesn't even acknowledge Wednesday.  This is the part about the culture where your day is invisible - so how could anyone know your story? Wednesdays are only known as 'over the hump' day by those people living the grind.  Is there not anything to grind on these other days?  Are they so insignificant that they can't be considered equally?  What is your Wednesday like today?  I hope it's filled with promise and connection.  If it's not, consider the fact that in just one more day you'll get to Friday and there's a lot to be said about that.

Coda: Everyone has to live through a Wednesday. It's a universal law.

Schmatas, a case - finished finally already

Heading home after a long day she saw the most beautiful flag furling and unfurling in the wind just above the rise. As she drew closer, she realized it was her mother’s schmata – extra large to allow comfort when sitting or moving about the kitchen; her mother’s schmata had what seemed like an endless supply of material; a pattern fit for a country picnic table or a flag representing the motherland; a schmata bringing peace to her heart knowing home was only just over the rise and that her mother would be there with her schmata lufting like a sail that lost the shape of the wind.




Coda:
the good news about neurosis – it is completely portable and can come along on any trip, be it bicycle, kayak or banjo. never worry about being without worries.

I am a ghost

I am a ghost. My mother used to call me her star but she was wrong. I am a ghost, not a star. Sometimes other ghosts see me; sometimes people that aren’t ghosts see me. It’s not like this is startling news since ghosts have been around for a long time. They live on the fringe of society. They’re accepted into the popular culture because they’re presence, like mine at times, is seen but they are not considered a real part of the culture. That’s why I’m on the sidelines and not fully recognized by my neighbors. They know somebody lives there. Actually, if they listened to their neighbors they would know that this somebody, me, the ghost in question, has lived there for over twenty three years. And has lived there with another ghost the entire time. In fact, this ghost couple has been together nearly as long as the neighbors are alive on the planet. Ghosts like me have a very strange relationship to reality, in fact, to almost everything about a culture. For instance, we have to work and pay taxes and we do many of the same things our neighbors and the other non-ghosts do. But we’re not seen by everyone in the culture as being real. And our deaths are quieter and the support from the community when we’re having a tough time, sometimes going through the normal life stages, aren’t always supported either. That’s understandable. We are, after all, ghosts. It surprises some to know we go through normal life stages but frankly ghosts aren’t always original and have been known to mimic regular people. So we live and die, fall in love and want to share our lives with others; we lose our brothers and sisters to cancer and other sad deaths, and we also lose friends to death and the hazards of an uncertain economic time. Most people really don’t know about this side of ghosts. How can they be expected to? We’re barely visible and for the most part, despite some interactions we may have with the real world, we’re pretty quiet as a cultural group can be. What I find most odd about my people, other ghosts, is how we always seem to weave our lives into the real culture and yet we’re like invisible threads. Our place in business, community and other areas of society seem solid. That’s the strangest thing about this ghost life of mine. I can count on a lot of the obligations and tasks that real people have to do and go through but I can’t count on the same support system. If something happens to me or my ghost partner of 25 years, for instance, if one of us dies, I have to pay taxes on our property that we own together. You know, that’s just money and these days, who really cares about that? What I find so strange is that if my mother were alive today, she’d be so hurt to know that her star was a ghost and that this ghost would have to suffer the stigma of being an outcast, both economically and socially. Mothers are strange though too. I mean, as a group, they tend to care for their children and want them to do well, succeed in their goals and be safe and secure. My mother was so typical that way. I’m glad she’s not around to realize that even ghosts age and go through challenging life stages together. Now that me and my ghost partner are together for so long and facing some of the life stages and questions that gain in weight and importance as one ages – at least I don’t have to worry about my mother worrying about me. There, now that’s something ghosts have in common with their neighbors. I’m sure glad my young neighbors can be secure knowing their right to love and marry, and all the financial obligations and securities that goes along with their rights, are solid. Ghosts shouldn’t have to also worry about their neighbors. That just wouldn’t be fair.



Coda:
Movement is a key that unlocks stagnation.

Popeye Theory Caput

The following piece is published in honor of Valentines Day.  Schmatas, a case for same sex marriage will resume and conclude over the next few days. 


There are those who view the world with pre-Einsteinian philosophies. They're not convinced that the world is round or that gravity curves space. I refer to a popular philosophy of these people as the Popeye Theory. Everything in this world-view is based on a utilitarian theory of life. Smack a zebra into an oak tree and you get zebra coats on wooden hangars. It's a formulaic approach to life that doesn't necessarily lack imagination but does hinder the possibility of different realities. Popeye physics is in direct opposition to the wave and particle theories which are a natural extension of Albert's algebra.


Simplified, particle physics holds that everything is always in motion. Therefore an object that appears solid is really a trick of the eye. Popeye physics says you can't be both a particle and a wave, you must be one or the other. This world-view is famous for the creation of zebra coats and dichotomies.

When someone pigeon-holes you, puts you down, or simply, calls you a name, they're practicing the Popeye Theory and living by its mandates. One of these mandates holds that if you’re a such and such, that's all you are. Nothing else. You can't be a lesbian and a fully functioning human being at the same time. It's one or the other.

Objectified as such, you're perceived as a human target not a human being. The world of strip malls and highways, beaches and offices is turned into a Robin Hood Festival and Popeyan people take aim at you as if a bull’s eye is central to your core. Under these circumstances, it's not difficult to appreciate the hard work in coming out. If you're a queer, dyke, faggot, fairy, lezzie or lesbo then you're an automatic finalist in the Run the Gauntlet Arrowfest. That's why coming out is more of a process than an event. There will be many, many arrows heading your way. (Some, hopefully, will be Cupid's.) Stripped down to the bare essentials in a Popeye universe, your diminished self is seen as a target for every pot shot from amateur and pro alike.

Many gay people hate how other gays use the names mentioned above as well, though some believe, as I do, that the sting of the epitaph is reclaimed when you take it back and make it your own. They become words of power and privilege. Privilege, because when you use that word you're infusing it with content and meaning. You're extending the definition of the word to include pride in an aspect of your being; you're adding a cultural reference to your identity; you're being defiant and strong, and claiming the ones that you refuse to stop loving. Popeye physics, by limiting realities, makes your love invisible when it's most successful or an object of ridicule when paradox creates a crack in its fragile world-view.

I hold to the Theory of Relativity. Like it or not we're all connected. If you diminish someone or a group of people you diminish yourself, reduce your possibilities, and limit your world. Don't buy into that. Even pigeons can't return to smaller pigeon holes. You're worthy of a full spectrum of rights, dreams, lives and honors. And don't stand still when they try to close the borders on our lives. We're here. They can't take that away from us. Not in this reality.

 
Coda:
Make nice; be good. Peace.

Schmatas, a case for same sex marriage

Part 3 of 3

As I am reminded of my mother's schmatas, or schmatas of the past, I am also reminded that any two women can choose, at any time, to walk down the Ocean Grove boardwalk, arms linked in intimacy, wearing schmatas, and apparently nobody can stop them. If this doesn't show the impoverished and impotent ability of the Homeland Security Act, what does? Our way of life is threatened by schmatas and everyone should know of this danger.

Rag men, always plotting a pattern of discontent. We’re watching you.

Coda:

Fears generate energy of their own. Scientists are now researching the possibility that fears are the perpetual motion energy source that they were always looking for. If that is proven true, run for your lives, or someone will try to harness you to their blender or microwave.

Schmatas a case for same sex marriage

Warning. Corrugated sentences to follow:


Is it more important to challenge the freedom to marry the person of the same sex on the boardwalk when, as many know, at low tide the stink of seagull poop and dried Sargasso can challenge anyone's nostrils, or to protect the unarmed public from the view of anyone walking down the boardwalk in a schmata? I think a net that can prevent that from entering the hallowed grounds, air and boards of Ocean Grove should take precedence over whether or not two people wish to bond and subject themselves to the convention of being conventional and nonconventional in a conventional world while challenging the convention and aping the convention simultaneously; as if locked in embracing funhouse mirrors, in a possibly limiting or expanding role of their relationship, is far less important for the actual direct aesthetic benefit that could be had from limiting schmata wearing on the boards.

Schmatas, a case for same sex marriage

part 1 of 3:

I am far off my main topic today, the issue of whether gays should be able to marry on the Ocean Grove boardwalk. That's not my concern since the topic of marriage is so fraught with and compromised with value issues, issues of ownership and relationship. I think the topic is best to avoid and what else, if nothing else, is neurosis good for, if not to avoid topics that are uncomfortable. But more to the point and closer to my level of appreciation is the issue of walking down the boardwalk in a schmata. As most people should know, a schmata is a rag that became a house dress.  (Miraculous transformation - not.) My mother wore them. She would even customize her schmatas by tearing out any sleeves that were nicely sewn in and sewing stitches around the gaping armhole she left in its place. Her needlework reminded one of Dr. Frankenstein's handiwork on his walking corpse of a monster. (Frankenstein's monster wasn't as charming as a golem. (A subject for another day.)

Positive thought for the day:

Remember you cannot be forever young, but you can always be neurotic.

first pee, red wing blackbird

In honor of today’s snowstorm and in anticipation of the spring, please humbly accept this days’ blog:


I just realized that I have to accept the fact that I cannot make a
living doing bird calls. I don't want to have to drink water for a living
and so my famous red wing blackbird call would be lost. For those of you
who also know how to do that call you know it's lost at first flush anyway.

I got to thinking about the qigong exercise called 'chasing the clouds'
or 'following the clouds'. This is the one where you go from side to side following your fingers with
your eyes. Chasing the clouds exercise brings me back to birds.
Who else but birds really chase clouds? 

According to Peterson's Birds East of the Rockies the onomatopoeia (or would it be transliteration in this case?) of the blackbird's call is:  konk-la-ree or o-ka-lay.  Now the konk-la-ree blackbirds are generally from the north and those that sound more like o-ka-lay tend to be from the south. That said, most blackbirds prefer the undulating sway of the phragmites or marsh grasses to the solid stillness of a piling. This is how one can tell them apart from seagulls.


I bow to the spirit of the neurosis in all of us.

Token Tuesday a day late and mite sorry

Mite or a  mite sorry could be a tale about an orphan arachnid. But it is not.

There are good things about being a token. You have your role explained and delineated for you. No questions. Probably only a trace amount of neurosis. Tokenism has been given a bad name. It should be considered as an essential element for the UN bill of human rights. As suggested to a friend:  'How about we start the year off right and call this The Year of the Token? That way, your esteemed token hetero self will get the respect you deserve. It's about time you stood up for your rights. Stand up for all the others silenced by the assumptions of the culture; falsely led to believe that there's no need to explain who they are because they are everywhere.' It's time token heteros formed a movement. March on Washington girlfriend!!!!' 


Don’t let the hedgehogs get you down.

Dig it

Blog honesty.
All apologies as a disclaimer.
If fric and frac are at your back
then hope for snow so work you won't go. 
But upon learning that they might have been real people
and the more positive definition is how closely associated they are: 
let's call it a rest and give our soul some zest.  


Power trips require at least two people.
Let's hope one of them is standing in a puddle.
Did she write that or just think it?

Serious now, respect is a right that should be about process as well as people. 
It ain't always so and I'm sorry if anyone else had a rough day today.
Hang in there and know that you have dignity.
From the word dignus.
In other words, I dig you and you should dig yourself.
Or as some would say, namaste.
The soul in me digs the soul in you.

Pieces of Nic

Check out pieces of Nic at http://www.conversationswithnic.com/  for inspiration about quitting smoking and other undesireable characters.

on hok

"Hok a tchynik" which means loosely "bang on the tea kettle" which is a way of saying 'to yak or nag endlessly'. When I first heard this phrase I took it as it sounded alliteratively. So forever in my mind "hok" means hock and hok a tchynic, well I say it like this, "Don't hock my china." Meaning, don't sell my dishes.


They say that when we die our cells go off in different directions and eventually the organization of our body into the lungs or kidneys, the knees even or the liver, dissipates because the cells are not just dying but wandering off unorganized. I think they say that. In any case, what I say is, my brain cells are already on diaspora. Doesn't that sound like a holiday though?


The sun's out
the snow sparkles,
make soup.

how I'm coping today

Just so I don't give real neurosis a bad name thought I'd suggest a subtitle for this blog. The daily neurotic or how I'm coping today.


Some might call it an internal dynamic coded into our emotional state with frequencies of unrest or turmoil; while others may find that whatever it is about anyone that they might deem neurotic, they can only trust these people and those free of neurosis become suspect. Or as some see it and lay claim to comfort, the neurotic person is aware of consensual reality and still feels a need to hold on to something in case gravity disappears. Whatever causes may be difficult to bear in this world, such as making a living or dealing with the continual onslaught of bad news - bad news about the environment both human and non-human, knowing you're not alone in your concern or with your case of nerves, I'm hoping, is a good thing. Of course I'll always recommend finding ways of positive action or positive non-action to soothe and smooth your days. But when you got bugged or a bug up your butt, check out this blog to see if your spirit has been kindred - or if kind has been wedded to your spirit and you're not alone with your difficult feelings.



Don't let your love go stale.

chronic blog

I'm not literate yet re blogs and cannot, apparently, find my way out of this virtual blog bag. When breathing in the air from a blog bag you get back blog air into your system; clouding your brain even further and making it that much more difficult to get out into blog land where I imagine the sun is shining and nothing beautiful is left unsaid.  Such is my fate today; and hence the name of this site cause I'm not getting nowhere fast and it's frustrating.  Blog blog blog blog blog. If you read those out loud as I said them inside my head you'd hear me badly punning on blah, blah, blah and so on. Maybe not the truest interpretation of what I'd like to state here but I'm keeping this site clean.  Unless I get an ulcer and then if need be, for curative purposes only of course, I will curse my fool head off.