the road of lost time

l've decided time is what makes me human. and with that might be pain, though these might be two sides of the same coin. a friend recently had a brush with death. being a doctor, he never felt other people were really feeling pain, they exaggerated. he learned his lesson. agony can go on for a long time. theoretically, the nerves could be cut. but not in my whole body. 

of course there's morphine and heroin. if i wish, i can be a complete zombi. ah, i have escaped the human condition. unfortunately, it could easily kill me. then death is the final escape from time (i hope). what i mean is,  as a human i can manipulate time. i can find ways. i can travel, for example, overwhelmed and invigorated by new sights and sounds.

i'm sure that's why the days in childhood seemed so long (as well as painful). the world new, i had plenty of things to explore, a snowball a miracle, the moon lending the whole world a mystery. alas, i got used to the world. prison must be painful due to the routine, the same thing every single day serving time. even as i wish for security, i know too much of it can be deadly. 

okay, travel, pain, what are some other ways to avoid being human? sometimes it just happens. i've had time slow down to a snail's pace during an automobile accident. suddenly, i've gone in slow motion, turning the wheel this way and that. this must be more than simple fear, rather a place beyond it. fear is common to all animals, as is instinct. 

it's not just my awareness of time. a lot depends on my control over it. all machines depend on timing. my mother and shakespeare said everything does. and i have choice? alas, listening  to the biology professor robert sapolsky from stanford. i hear him say over and over again, 'there is no free will, everything depends on biology.

no wonder people hate science. it reinforces the tyranny of time. yet sapolsky saying so many variables involved, it makes me believe in free will, the exact opposite of what he wishes me to believe. with all the world and emotions floating within me, i believe i must have the ability to choose different paths to where i wish to go. 

and what about einstein? he discovered the speed of light doesn't change but time does. this is something we all know. a work day may last a day or an hour with the clock never changing it's tune. and the indian teacher chopra says two things make me old: my feeling little time left for me and the looks of other people. 

and what about THE FLOW, tapping into an action like catching a foul ball, or running the Iditarod? I'm carried by time in such a way it disappears! and so, maybe everything depends on me being super-interested, super-involved. always have something to look forward to. is that the lesson childhood can still teach me?

i wonder where i wander

i feel less guilt, knowing people's minds wander 30% of the time. ah, hah, i'm not quite so crazy as i thought. and the accusation i'm a daydreamer bears less weight. true, i've always looked out the window and no writer's wife believes he's working when he does that, nor does anyone else. but...

maybe i can't focus my mind on one thing without unduly stressing myself. for example, if the computer whacks out for some reason, i will go day and night to fix the problem. suddenly, my whole body starts shaking. the day goes black. i become incapable of doing anything. if i unfocus my eyes for a few minutes, i relax. making the brain forget everything except one thing must take a lot of work!

i'm not sure what consciousness is, and i find nobody else does either. i tend to think of it as this huge bubble, filled with floating objects: memories, bricks, hammers, outlines of tables, and so on. my consciousness keeps snatching at pieces and putting them together. even dreams i think of as my brain having fun, most of all when it feels like a nightmare. everything gets tossed up in the air and unlikely objects collide with each other, creating fantasies. 

well, the creative mind has to dream most of the time. and in so doing, i collect materials with have a mysterious infinity with each other. i imagine consciousness as much bigger than myself. if i limit my attention to a point, i leave out so much that might help me. i read somewhere we use 3% of our brain. that's astounding. how do i access the rest?

no wonder the modern world with it's lists, tableture, categories, definitions, loves DRUGS so much. they shake off our desperate grasp of the facts. for awhile i can float in pure perception, or misperception. i don't have to worry if things make sense. of course, this could be fatal if i suddenly feel i can fly and jump out a window. 

i've decided i can't make reality yield without letting go of it often. true, at such times i bump into walls, trip over ropes, stumble among the rocks. i do have to be careful to sit quietly in a chair at such times. as kafka said, rest peacefully  at your desk, don't do anything, and the world will roll at your feet in ecstasy. i won't say that has happened to me. that said, i find it easier than running around the block, getting the exercise i need. 

where will i sleep tonight?

a terrifying question, or it has become one. in my salad days i slept in the backseat of a greyhound bus all the way across canada, the place where smokers could still smoke. and crossing turkey by train, i slept in the luggage rack watching the folks below me parcel out food and play music. what has happened to my resilience? why do i have to plan ahead at least a week, maybe more.

no, i am a fake nomad. true, our family moved 32 times by the time i left high-school. and i've had to move 110 times to and from the lookout, not always knowing where i'd land in the winter. going to australia last year taught me a lesson. after 16 years of no travelling, i'd lost my travel skills. so i went back the next year to practice them. i worked. i could now sleep soundly with other bodies breathing around me.

i'd done it in coast guard boot camp and on the ship. i'd lived on trains in europe with my pass, locking the compartment door and stretching out over empty seats. of course, i lost my taste for this when the girl across from me did the same and had her pocket picked, not to mention the time i woke to find algerian guys going through my luggage. 

why do i now need a secure sleep? ah, lack of sleep one of the worst aging events, and i remember how the soviets changed prisoners characters by keeping them awake for two weeks with bright lights and loud sounds. going to sleep under the best circumstances means leaving my control behind. essentially insomnia comes from thinking constantly: how am i going survive? the  dark-minded philosopher cioran couldn't sleep and spent his paris nights walking all over the place. 

even after having six vw buses and sleeping on beaches, in the woods and suburbs, i don't seem to have kept that particular capacity for adventure. in fact, i realized this made me feel too lonely and i abandoned the process. swearing i would never have another vehicle in which i could hibernate. 

and this makes me wonder how the homeless do it. they do band together like hobos during the depression, sitting in bands at the downtown plaza, there always seems to be company, as well as a lot of arguments. a friend has a step-son who can sleep in ditches anywhere. in a catastrophe, could i do the same? perhaps if exhausted enough. 

despite my many peregrinations i come back to being terrified of being homeless. i couldn't waste my time on the computer, or even have the peace of mind to read. i could daydream. that's a luxury i've always allowed myself. yet it's hard to relax enough if i have wolves howling at the door. maybe as the end gets closer, i want to avoid as many deaths as possible. 

meetings with remarkable people: lorraine

i never got her last name. and i knew she wasn't that interested in me when she said, "it's strange, after i say goodbye to someone, i never contact them again." it was a white lie to dash any expectations i had. she did give me an email and it led to 

                            

                                            https://vimeo.com/outofthebluemountains 

videos she puts together for musicians in katoomba, australia, where i met her in the YHA youth hostel. from my diary:

Wish I could have recorded Lorraine's story, so interesting. And people come talk to her in the middle of the night while she's cleaning the kitchen. She still has a sense of wonder about things and people that happen to her, another member of the lucky generation.

i figure she's in her late fifties. she studied animation with a famous Czech film-maker in hobart, tasmania, and worked with disney studios until they abandoned australia. let's see what else i've got.

Did just make a short video of Lorraine give an harmonica lesson:

she showed videos of Jim Conway (famous australian harmonica player) and with whom she studied years ago & his group Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band: My Canary Has Circles Under Her Eyes:

Jim Conway, who now has MS.

Lorraine wants to set up an old Cinema Cafe. She has a storage space full of film equipment, old movies. etc. $240 a month for ten years.

i think that adds up to $52,800. 

talked with lorraine for a couple of hours. she loves doing the video documentaries. Father a navy office, played music & women. Lots of parent fights. Lorraine the oldest, children holding onto her as she watched parents fight. Once she stood between them, father grabbed her & threw her against a table. Mother German, maybe her perfectionism comes from there. 

She's bought & sold houses, taught by an architect she met doing drawings on the street. Learned to be an entrepreneur. At 17 she had a secure gov. job (some program trained her) ended up working with the architect (Swiss I think) who  created a company making jigsaw puzzles. She can make $40 in two hours busking with her harmonica. ESL son in Sydney moved in with his Korean girlfriend who's an operating room expert. Oldest of 8 children, 5 sisters, 3 brothers. Looking forward not back she's now being brought to understand herself. Very good at pattern recognition. 

too bad i can't convey all her expressions and interests, like fighting to build tiny houses, not the thing in australia. at the moment she has way too many interests, like the young irish bicyclist who made a pass at her! she sees him off on his travels. 

 She sometimes covers her mouth while talking & with the accent i have to ask for repeats. Once in awhile she's really struck by something I say & becomes very attentive. She said Paul the guy in my room gay, hard to get close to. Made me a little nervous! L's longest relationship 5 years. 

Recommended she get a job & regular income. Recommended museum guard & guard at construction sites. L's mother very creative making things. She said she already has a sense of accomplishment.

no doubt she'll be another invisible, if special and unusual, person to disappear without a trace. like the flowering tree i once saw behind the post office, blooming with spring and unnoticed by anyone. 

landing on a bomb (stagefright)

i can't remember who said this, but she wrote I jump out of bed and land on a bomb. i spend the rest of the day putting myself back together." this has been my experience over and over again. i climb out of bed in the morning feeling great. five minutes later i'm cascaded with gloom. whatever i have to do becomes overwhelming, not just the next 12 hours, no, my whole life!

it's taken me a long time to make some sense of this. what does my mind do to me? leaving dreams it builds my daytime world all over again. this takes effort. evidently scientific research proves our thoughts wander 30% of the time. concentration of the yoga sort takes years to develop. when i wake my mind expands to include the whole universe. i'm knocked over.

it's the surprise, i'm sure, that does it. reading about stage fright in theater, the conclusion: inadequate or the wrong kind of preparation. the actor Oliver Olivier spent six years fighting his fears onstage. he didn't quit, for fear he'd never return. i don't know his solution, but i know. he was famous for working from the outside in. he'd put on a fake nose and suddenly he'd be Cyrano. he'd walk with a limp. voila, richard the third would inhabit his body.

well, i figure he'd lost his concentration and this method wouldn't work. in other words, inadequate preparation. most modern actors work inside out. they do a lot of personal soul searching, finding emotional moments in their own lives to fill out the character. they prepare by stumbling around in their minds and past experiences. eventually they roll out a living snowman. 

so, when i leap out of bed and explode, it simply means i have not prepared myself for the day. that space between waking and sleeping full of wobbles, broken walls, shifts of earth beneath my feet. how could i solve this? i presume by meditating a moment, not forcing myself into action, rolling with the punches, let the memories of the world i inhabit come back to accrue.

to quote susan m. weinscheck from One Hundred Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, a book i highly recommend, after all, we are a mystery to ourselves:

          The latest research on unconscious mental processing shows that people receive 40 billion sensory inputs every second, and are consciously aware of 40 at any one time.

wow, that reminds me of time a friend's teenage daughter in the hospital for a psychotic break. leaving the hospital for the first time, she ran off down the street, her mother chasing her. obviously, she'd lost her filter and the 40 billion hit her with full force. we need to screen up to get the 40 billion down to 40. that really says something.

unfortunately, i'm usually too sleepy, mesmerized by dreaming, to put anything approaching this kind of common sense in practice. i have learned to pull back from the world as it grows black. alas, i'm often too dimwitted. and all day i'm picking up pieces of myself while trying to relate to work, school, friends, all the bits of information streaming  onto my eyeballs.