tao1776

As I stated previously, my oldest daughter and my granddaughter have moved home. You know the story. Bad relationship gone bad. She needed to pull back and get the proverbial shit together. We have been telling her for months that the door was open. I know that this has been a stressful decision for her. She has had a run of bad luck. Moved into a bigger place. Took a new job ( off the books ) at the insistence of her boyfriend; who then proceeded to leave her. After she paid her bills, she had less than ten dollars left and a little one to care for. Also, she bought a 1996 Neon last spring with her income tax refund only to have the head gasket go and make it non drivable within a few days. She has been without a car since. Because she bought it from a dude in New Hampshire, there was no lemon law to protect her. She had it fixed and made payments until it was paid ($1300 on top of the $1500 she paid for the car) so that she could take it home. Once home, it would not run. I checked t...

I was thinking about Elvis today. I know that the anniversary of his death was a week or so ago. But today, for some reason, I thought about where I was when I first heard the news of his passing. I just moved back in with my parents after having explored the possibility of my having a career in the Christian ministry. Instead, in Martin Luther form, I went to prepare a place for me and my soon to be wife. In my early twenties and feeling the angst of perhaps going against my calling for the love of a girl, I moved home, found a job and as is always the case, I seem to stand out like a sore thumb. I am an individual. Never follow the crowd. And not unlike Elvis perhaps, I have had some copy my personal trends. Don't forget. I am the inventor of the mullet! I didn't attend my graduation of high school or college because pomp and circumstance makes me ill. So, I started this job at a furniture factory and smoked pot for the first time in several years. I had just stapled my left...

We took the four plus hour ride back from mid-state Maine leaving shortly after noon. I knew that the roads would be busy. I'm never afraid of a little traffic but this was ridiculous. A four plus hour ride turned into a six plus hour ride. I know that people are on vacation. My foray into Maine was family business, wrapping up the estate of my wife's grandparents home. Knowing that what we experienced on I-95 and 295 and 495 was being repeated in just about every major state highway system in the country is rather sad. Gallons and gallons of gas and millions of cubit feet filled with carbon monoxide. There were back ups for miles. Even when the highway opened up and returned the masses back to their 20 mph over the actual posted speed limit, it was still one large moving parking lot for as far as the eye could see. Travel is good. I don't discourage it. But there are wonders right in our own back yard that are worth seeing, that for many often go undiscovered. I'm pla...

"A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountaintop." Ah. My arrogance is showing again. But I say, "It takes one to know one." Its always been about the power. Kings and Popes; Business and Politicians. How blindly men follow and die for the cause. Raise the royal banner! The framers of the Constitution knew very early that their idealism was more an experiment than a reality. Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” “A Republic, if you can keep it.” (Thanks, Dr Franklin) Beat down, assimilate and Christianize the Red man. Check Flood the country with cheap Opium, addict the masses, Christianize the Yellow man and exploit all available resources for their own good. Check The stage is set. The ground is fertile. Is there anything we cannot do? We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and some...

Okay. I admit it. I'm clinically depressed. I won't blame it all on the bio-chemical notion of things. Much of it is situational. But the guilt, the blame. I can't help but feel the loser. I can't provide. I cannot lead. I suck as a husband, father or friend. Marginally successful in some things and major suckville in others. I feel my depression and my inability to act like a weight on my soul. Yes, the big "S" word has entered my thoughts. Fucking dolt! I have a hard time being thankful and I can only focus on the negatives; which are too many to name. Perhaps this IS the beginning of wisdom because I give up. Like a few of you, I post as a way to reach out to others. To perhaps feel something good. To learn. To have fellowship. To inspire and to be inspired and to share. I cease because I am not. I have had some good friendships.

In its simplest form, Buddhism would state that our experience of struggle in this life is often based on our desire for things to be other than how they are and an equal aversion towards how things are. A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. "I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived." We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we ...

We all have had those friends that leave us feeling refreshed for having spent our time with them. At times, it would appear that all others are but"psychic vampires" sucking our necks in an attempt to turn us into one of them. I have discovered that there are less and less of these refreshing relationships to be found; and I know that it has to start with me. But it is unlikely that you will be reading about anything too uplifting, inspiring or refreshing here. This makes it very difficult to comment on this blog. Although I do get many readers per week, I find it difficult to know why anyone would want to return. Morbid curiosity? A closer look at what it is to hear from a curmudgeon? There are things to which I could report, "Bravo," but I am too disgusted and depressed to address those things. I am amazed at our communal effort to keep our heads buried in the sands of distraction when there is much injustice happening right before our eyes. But again, I am often...