WRITINGS

Shakey Jake was a long time Ann Arbor personality, strumming his reverse air guitar songs on street corners, dressed in Salvation Army dapper while spinning his down to earth advice.  Gravely voice barely intelligible, he was most famous for his reason for living… “On the Move!” he would say.

 

We’d often pick him up and give him rides around town, always entertaining.  One day my buddy G and I spotted him hitching and pulled over.  G jumped out, opened the door for Shakey, and then jumped in next to him.  G was always searching, and what was often the case, he was searching for the answer to relationships with women.

 

“Shakey” G says, “I’m always picking the wrong women.  No mater what I do, I end up with the wrong women.  How do I know if a women is right for me??”

 

Shakey looked at him, and with his aged-curved hand doing an almost epiletic pointing at G, said “You KNOW.  YOU Know. You Know. YOU know…”  He must have said it 7 or 8 times.  Just repeating it over and over, as if he was drilling it into my friend.

 

I was a long time before I really knew what he meant.  Men, myself included (I can’t speak for women), often only look at the good aspects of a new relationship. Somehow we ignore/rationalize/disguise/gloss over the obvious problems. But really, we know.  If we’re honest with ourselves, look at how we are looking at the relationship, simply allow the problems to be recognized, we know.

The Next Moment Belongs To You...

...Guaranteed

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There is no one, no thing, no god, no nothing, that could occupy the combination of time and the physical realm that you are about to move into.  It can't happen.  The next moment is yours no matter what.  You are just about to put yourself there, you are aware of your surroundings, you make a myriad of decisions, from the blinking of an eye to the beat of your heart to the coordination of motor skills, and you go there.  There may be people all around you, pushing you, forcing you down, but no one is in that spot but you.  You may not be able to control what happens to you, but it's still you and only you.  And the decisions you are making are still making the next moment yours.  Should you fight back?  How much? With what?  Should you totally give in and lay there?  How long?  Should I run now?  I'm sure you get the picture.  A couple of moments from now... who knows?  You certainly don't, and no one else can.  But the next one is always yours.  And the one after that...and after that, one at a time.  No matter if your greatest enemy is in your face, if you are waking up by yourself, or in a crowd, the next moment is a product of your most recent thoughts and actions and could not have been predicated or predetermined.  You have thought it yourself and acted yourself into it.  Not even you knew ahead of time what would happen, but you do now, because that moment was yours.

Well...? Where is he???  

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If we could take our current level of science back to when I was a child (10 years old-ish, circa early 60's) and I was able to see the first complete set of pictures sent back from the Hubble telescope, that's what I would have said...  

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Well, where is He??  
Where's the Big Chair???  The Big Staff??  The face the size of the sun watching my every move???  Where are the Gates?...and my friends??... And where is my image and likeness???  Back then, there were no ands, ifs, or buts about it... when I was a child, God was a man, sitting in a chair, looking down from the sky.  Literally.

This, to me, is one of our greatest cultural opportunities from the last century (although the 60's triumvirate ... equal rights for woman, the end of discrimination against blacks, and 'boys will no longer be boys' are contenders).  We can now allow ourselves to know that God clearly does not look human, or breathe oxygen.  Actually, I suppose God could breath oxygen, just not near by.  Not even close.  The next closest oxygen breathing atmosphere is at least 500 million miles away.  Maybe He is human looking, just really, really large.  So large we can't make out His characteristics.  Sorry, that just doesn't get it...we may be in His image and likeness, but He's definitely not in ours. (My friend says we just got that saying wrong.  Should be 'He imagined us and liked us')

I often wonder if the missing quality in our understanding of God is humility.  If God is not humble, then we don't have to be.  It's really just a convenient oversight which allows our religious leaders to take the meaning of God into their own hands and express it through their own interpretation.  Lacking humility, they can speak for God, thus becoming God-like themselves. The farthest thing from humble. 

It's not the lack of understanding that bothers me, it's the knowing and the telling.  So many of our religious leaders know they're right without question, and that's wrong.  They should not be telling others how to be, who to be, which way to be...they should be leading them to knowing and finding God within themselves.  That God is everyone, and everything.  Not just humans, but animals, plants, minerals, cells, elements.  To treat all of God's creatures with respect, and humility.

I believe we all know and be God

...Marijuana, Paranoia, and My Month Long Effort

 

I was paranoid when I first started smoking pot, but afterward I couldn't remember why.   So i sat by myself and got high, then tried to remember what the paranoia was after I came back down. I did this once a day, everyday, remembering a little more each time.  After about a month, this is what I wrote down.  circa ~1975

 

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When I get high, I begin to wonder if, when i am straight, I correctly judge the overall atmosphere of any particular situation.  I feel that the accumulation of all my experiences act as a reflex in situations and I participate with an attitude I have previously developed and stored away to be called on instinctively in a particular, and probably somewhat similar, situation.  This could cause a stagnation of thought, never developing (any) new thoughts on how to accept or feel about people and how to act and react to them.  This in turn seems to be leading to not accepting people at all, just 'putting up' with them, in the sense that I develop no 'description' of the person in my mind, I merely acknowledge their existence.

 

part 2

 

I feel that I try to understand how people feel by trying to place myself in the situation they are describing  (I try to find a time I might have gone through the same experience).  This causes several problems.  If I am incapable of empathizing" with them, then I am in a sense foreign to the situation and I become unable to get a real feel for the problem (it need not necessarily be a problem, a simple description of an experience brings rise to the same situation).  So consequently I just sit there and nod my head once in awhile to act as though it really is sinking in (more to go here)

 

On the other hand, if I can come up with a similar experience in my past, then I am, instead of gaining insight by seeing a similar experience through their eyes, simply reliving an old experience.

 

part 3

 

What is happiness?  When is someone satisfied with themself?  I think before I grow up, I must come to realize what it is that, with out the affliction of society’s 'the way you should be”, fulfills *my* desires and needs.  Not to just pick from the choices offered (i.e. Marriage, what type of work, etc, as opposed to choosing or finding a work you're happy with) but to react and act according to what you *want* to do.

  I wonder if I would find happiness sitting somewhere, painting or whittling, or if its behind a scalpel helping others.  I think selfishness and sacrifice must tie in here.  Maybe not though.  If happiness (fulfillment) *is* the real goal, and it *can* be distinguished, truthfully from ones own "pseudo happinesses" then one involvement should stand out from another as the 'fulfiller'.

   Question:  Do enough people exist who find happiness in dealing and helping people to justify a solitary life? (i.e. if everyone were to shed societies pressures to conform (work at any job for a living, happy or not) would enough people choose the path of helping other people to get by?)  So we're back to where we started from .  Is sacrifice a necessary evil to exist in a society?  Are the people who exist as solitaries and yet rely on society for some basic needs, leeching off others, in that they failed to realize the sacrifice necessary?   Shirking their responsibility to sacrifice?

 

part 4

 

I now am capable of choosing my own life, my own direction, should it be continue with school, finding a wife or going off on my own to find what it is which satisfies me ( or going off to realize it).  The only trouble is that this is big time.  I really shouldn't just take off to fine something better.  I should be certain of what I need before I take such a big step.   Or should I?  Should I find out what I want before I go any farther, or should I play it safe and get my degree so I have “something to fall back on" or show for myself.  This all seems to be leading to going out to find my niche, but I am reserved.   I feel as though I should find myself first.  I don't necessarily have to be happy doing what I am, but I should be happy how I am doing it. (esp. along the lines of self control and RESPONSIBILITY!!)