It was rather recent, and I hoped I’d get ‘em all back. Losing balloons was one of those kid things we hated doing. Popped balloons was murder. Floater-away balloons were heartaches on-the-fly. Waiter, there’s a fly in my heart-soup.

Oh, forget it.

From out of the old northwest an old band played this to the delight of many ears (approximately two per head):

My next must-do (might not get done) would be to thank all the folks who expressed sympathy and condolences during my recent bereavement crisis. You are truly a blessing to me, so THANK YOU KIND FRIENDS for those thoughtful words of yours.

This just in (12 hours ago):

Duane Cyril Redfield
born February 4, 1923
died November 7, 2009

His family loved him dearly.

Many others loved him just like his own family (perhaps not quite as dearly).

Only ONE of us got to be his son, however. Personally, I think he could have done better to have a different son, or more of them, but he was never one to complain about that shortfall.

See? I told you I was not like anyone else.

Please *click* and go on to YouTube to see/hear this clip of sentimental value:

I have long thought this would be great memorial-service material, and remember watching it on the TV in 1962, when my future ex-wife was two weeks old, to the day (14). Ironic? Heck no, not even slightly…

Same comment about this song, but of course there is no story about TV shows and family planning to go with it:

Maintaining any consistency has its benefits and drawbacks — if one maintains a foolish pattern of behaviour one is thought to have let the hobgoblin move into the shrunken mind to set up good housekeeping to seal the whole deal. So again the title here and the “slug” for the URL as well would seem have some sort of obscure raw, uncooked connection to something-or-other but we cannot quite make it out; it’s all blurry, from the fluid motion or the brisk flowing pace of events and changes in our lives. We know how we want things to go, but they go otherwise, far too often, yet somehow most of it remains just barely within reach, and we can keep going, keep trying, not give up.

Even without a ship, we do not give up. It takes at least one other person to help you float your friendly ship, if you have one, or to think of having one at all. Seems like all too often, having too many of the wrong kind of friends can easily sink that entire battleship of yours. It did mine, or some other kind of mine did. Ka-boom, blub-blub…

These are today’s anagrams:

Reflections All Watery
• Yellow African Letters
• Client Software Really
• Early Fellow Interacts
• New Flotilla Secretary
• Certain Flowers Lately
• Increase Latterly Flow
• Fellow Certainly Rates

Here I blindly (to nearly everyone else by myself) cite from another glob, I mean, blog:

“I want to see what you see.” he whispered to me.

These words are now memorialized twice, or thrice if they’ve been written by hand somewhere on paper (my guess is yes they have or soon will be); if we were across the sea we might say they’re memorialised, I just now realised. Surprized?

The point is, it is not always necessarily the best idea to explain everything in detail, yet that is often what I would do if allowed to “do my thing” whenever the time seemed right, or whenever it seemed right, at the time, or the right thing to do at the time. You know what that is like, surely. If not, you will eventually know it when someone says they want you to stop explaining. That would depend, of course, on how much explaining you tend to do. If you rarely do it, you might not be told to shut-the-hell-up-already before you reach, say, your forties. Who know? I don’t, but I’d like to, probably. Or, prolly.

Prolly wanna cracker?

Thus, for today’s end-of-summer sale, we have (only to save y’all the time of navigating around unless you have a hankerin’ to go surfin’, so I’ll give you linx) some things about my all-time favorite stranger, and surely you’d know who that is if you know me at all, if you ever did. Chances are, you are part of an amazing silent majority. It would barely be an exaggeration to say that nobody talks to me anymore, out of all the folks I used to know on the web. The number now is near zero, but it is definitely not zero. And, ironically, I prefer it that way, but I know something else: it is wrong, and should not be this way, and yet it is. It is somewhat like the paradox of how I can use the very same mouth to both bless and curse my fellow human beings or their ideas and efforts. Same (ugly) mouth, completely different purposes (opposite ones, really) and both rather easily done.

So if you ever followed the public visibility of one young Kansas woman (and apparently who is now residing further east, in Tennessee, or there lies her interests more) who always went by the name of Jennifer Knapp. That’s a good idea (by the way) if you can do it: keep the name you were given at birth or most of it, or some of it, or at least keep some part of it next to your heart (even if only to let it torment you), and use it out here in public, so’s we can tell who it is you are (am, be). That is, if you do not wish to disappear completely and “be someone else” you should try to keep the name your parent or parents gave you. It keeps them happy, to start with, and that’s usually not too foolish. It might seem that way a lot of the time, though.

Many of these URL’s are ones that you could easily guess at and be right. Jen’s using her name, and she’s going to perform in a couple of days, in Los Angeles. I wish I could go. I missed the chance to go (or skipped it, like an idiot, by being otherwise occupied) every other one of her shows, and this includes the ones in Oregon, where I’d only have had to travel just a few miles. Then, it would have been so easy to See Her In Person (SHIP)™ and now it is simply overwhelming to think of leaving the state (or even my own county) to see anyone in any kind of concert. Those days of “reachability” are gone for me, it seems. But that’s another story, and one best untold if we’re trying to think positive.

Here is the way the top of Jen’s myspace page, where she has a blog and also some photos:

---

This, for anyone who goes to her official site’s homepage to see ahead of time or again if they’ve already been (get it?), is what her letter to us (her adoring fans, the public at large, no matter how small) says:

9/18/2009

Yes, it’s true. I am the REAL Jennifer Knapp and I’ve
been doing a little music lately.

With every ‘old friend’ I run into these days
there is the sudden rush of questions…
How are you? Where have you been? Are you
working? What have you been doing? What
hole did you fall into? Were there any trolls?
Did you have enough water? Is this a real
jenniferknapp.com or just another rouse?
Are you really coming back? Are you making a
new record? And so on…we’ve been flooded
with emails and phone calls simply by
putting up a humble little homepage. So
much for my little holiday. It’s looking very
much like it may be over.

Despite what some may say, I haven’t actually
disappeared. I have truly been corporeal this
whole time. I’ve just been traveling mostly.
I’ve seen many of the place I’d only previously
flown over and eaten some fantastic cuisine
that has pushed mashed potatoes down the

[page break]

list. I have wasted too many days sulking
about how strange life is and many more
discovering just how truly beautiful people
can be. My experiences have been both wildly
exotic and extraordinarily mundane. But
mostly I will say that I have had a chance to
get my feet under me. I took that time to
discover more about myself and my own faith
without the vail of expectations to a cause.
Without writing a novel at this point, I’ll just
say that I’m starting to thing that I might
actually be a songwriter, musician or artist
of some kind…So, maybe I should do something
about it?

I know that many of you here have persisted
in hope that I would return to music.
Why you have waited or even cared has been
one of the greatest of mysteries to me, at the
same time, a complete and utter blessing as
it has always been. Thank you for your
support. I can only hope to repay you with
what you have waited for… music.

Jennifer

Any and all transcription errors in (error sin) the above: mine

This is the real deal, if you want to have a look from here:

As you can see for yourself, Jen has lovely penmanship. I could never make my handwriting look that good, and it usually annoyed me that most of the teachers at lower levels put lots of emphasis on something I could not do well. Little did I realize how much that governing principle would dominate everyone’s life. You know what you want to do, but you are not necessarily “gifted” in the area you would like to be. Sometimes I wonder if anyone is, and then I look at someone who seems to think it is wonderful that he or she has so much more than everyone else, and refuses to share it. Fortunately, I do not have lots of anything, so sharing is not something I can refuse to do, even if I wanted to keep everything to myself, I would be keeping almost nothing from anyone. Poverty is so simple.

The hope might be that something official might be posted soon on her YouTube channel, and a good “bet” for that would be any footage they decide to make of that performance she and Phillip LaRue are giving on Thursday evening, at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles. These are places that I (myself) am not going, but if I could choose to have whatever I wanted, this would not be planet Earth. So I’ll miss this show, too. It’s only fair! (Only, it’s no-fair…)

If I try enough times, I might be able to relay her new song “Letting Go” for you here but in the meantime, you can just do what I did and go listen on her mySpace page (another place where I do not reside and never will, whereas persistently revisiting the same page over and over, like some obsessed maniac is something I can easily handle) to see if you think “she still has it going on musically” like many of us always thought she did have, about ten year back, more-or-less (meaning, not exactly).

Perhaps other things will be tagged onto the end of this post. I’ve done that before. And I can use that “more” code (with the square brackets) to put more on the back page of this post, since, for once, I didn’t do that to it, and maybe for once, I will not! Don’t bet on that one, please.

In keeping with my old good/bad habit of thinking of songs to go along with my own life or anyone else’s, I was delighted to find this one the other day, and hope that it does not mysteriously join the many countless data-loss favorites that we cannot find where they used to be on this ever-rapidly-changing web we call the internet, or internet we call the web. I say it is so obvious: we be sumb dumb basses (not bass-players, fish-types). We is in the all-humanity sense of the word. Or words to that effect.

This song is not for my friend. It is not for anyone in particular, but there is an entire crowd I’d like to sing this one to, and if I can “have my way” then I will be doing just exactly that. Meanwhile, it takes me back to my high school daze. I often could hear this song inside my own cranial imagination during P.E. class, for example. Those jocks sure thought they had all the right stuff. They did, but not very much of it.

enjoy!
–g♥

-kind-

If the past thirty years were to be explained, it might take too long. Instead, just imagine that Osaka were Coeur d’Alene and somehow we have arrived here in cyberspace. On this date in 1979 it was my past experience to marry once and only once. That is the end of the story from here (page two has more, maybe). To hear more would require continuation, and perseverance.

Not much to see, even so. Someone mentioned this somewhere else months ago. This is not that place, nor is this really any place at all. Where we are — this is a place, even in the middle of nowhere, where there is nothing. In the city, there is always more, more, more. Therefore, at this, I shall say less, if possible.

The following is taken from an e-mail received recently, sent by what I’m calling my personal Best Example of what it means to be True and Real as any kind of friend (like as in forever) who thinks she is not even a very good one. That’s nonsense of course, since everyone should eventually realize that Best always amounts to more than Good, no matter what, and so forth, no matter what else. But when life goes through tougher times we might figure we’ve not done enough somehow. Fact is, she’s just about the only one out of many who still remembers me ‘just because’ and ‘for old time’s sake’ or any of that kind of enduring and endearing stuff.

NOTE: to further the cause of modestly decent presentations, one photo has been altered from the original. That’s all I’m saying now. At any rate, my best friend made me do this:

If you have boys, you will understand.
If you have girls, you will be grateful.
If you don’t have children, you will invest in contraception.

Why

BOYS

need PARENTS:

And you also find out interesting things when you have sons, like…

1. A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inches deep.
2. If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
3. A 3-year old Boy’s voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20×20 ft. room.
5. You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
6. The glass in windows (even double-pane) doesn’t stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
7. When you hear the toilet flush and the words ‘uh oh’, it’s already too late.
8. Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
9. A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36-year old Man says they can only do it in the movies.
10. Certain Lego’s will pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year old Boy.
11. Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.
12. Super glue is forever.
13. No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can’t walk on water.
14. Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
15. VCR’s do not eject ‘PB & J’ sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.
16. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
17. Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
18. You probably DO NOT want to know what that odor is.
19. Always look in the oven before you turn it on; plastic toys do not like ovens.
20. The fire department in Austin, TX has a 5-minute response time.
21. The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.
22. It will, however, make cats dizzy.
23. Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
24. 80% of Women will pass this on to almost all of their friends, with or without kids.
25. 100% of Men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid.

Seems like something’s missing. Maybe it’s the song…

16:50 4/19/2009

This setting of the clock passed by at the onset of this writing. Significance in any form is unique, if it is even present at all and not some mental conjecture. Many of those things that I ever found significant turned out to be my own delusions, but many more of them were not; to maintain irony it would seem, sadly many of my most tragic mistakes were those sorts of things where I was certain I could not be wrong. Yet, in the end, I was wrong.

Nobody wants to be wrong, or it seems unthinkable to me that they would want to be wrong. It feels bad to realize our errors, especially if we’ve made them for any length of time. Catching our own errors is better than letting them stand for others, but that does not need to become an obsession: nobody ever manages to get through life, or even one single day, without making some kind of error. Bumping your elbow if you didn’t mean to bump it would count as one, but of course it is no big deal, so we ignore all the little things. We have to ignore them; there are lots of them, and knowing how many serves no useful purpose in most instances. If the elbow were getting bumped and injured a lot, it might be something to investigate, but otherwise, forget it, right?

So it goes with many other errors, some of which are much more serious than an unplanned elbow bumping. What we as thinking creatures (if we are) should strive to do is to learn from all mistakes (with primary attention on our own), to anticipate possible ones so as to avoid them, to detect and to correct them as easily and quickly as we can find ways to do that (not doing this amounts to yet another error: Negligence), and to be patient with those who do not seem to believe in the lessons that others have learned but must make their own mistakes. This last part is not as easy as it might be. If we care about someone and that person is going to do something we think is unwise, we might very well decide we need to talk her or him or them out of their wild idea. This can often produce nothing of any value, if that person has already decided to know enough to make the choice before letting you in on it. One often gets nothing but animosity when attempting to confound strong-willed individuals.

My days of striving against the popular mind-set are over now. My swim with the school is ending. Nothing I have to say could be of any value to anyone but me, and I already know it, so writing has no further purpose now. If it were otherwise, then I would know it, and feel it, and not be able to resist it. As it is, I have difficulty believing I ever spent so much time online, expecting something to come of it. Thankfully I can say that it was not all in vain, but the significance of notable occurrences recently shows that the list of what-to-do has stopped filling up, like it once did. Sometimes it seems like there’ll “never be an end to it” when things are not going well, because we see nothing good coming. That is certainly true enough now, that nothing good can be seen on the horizon, but it is also rather normal, and has been the way of life for at least 20 years. To have it end is, in itself a good thing. Not knowing what is next is almost hard to notice. If more were expected, then I’d have to do more. If I’m nearly done, then I will be going Home soon. Thus, I need no plan now, any more than I ever did.

The first idea I had for the title on this post (which for now is the final one) was Nothing Of My Own Now (NOMON) but it did not seem to pertain to much of anything at all. This one, which might suggest spring cleaning is in the air, which it is, has more to do with not being connected to much of anything or anyone now. Why it has become this way, I will probably never figure out, and even if I did, it would not help. The facts are as they are. I have nothing in my life now that could be considered “a purpose” and yet I have some tasks that need to be completed. Thus, Completing Unfinished Tasks (CUT)™ is again the perfect match for what is happening now.

What I have not unfinished, for all that anyone can tell, is writing in this blog, or posting anything at FaceBook. It is possible that this (the blog) will show a minor change from time, if I should continue to ‘Tweet’ every so often. But chances are, I am going into ‘listen-only mode’ now, and will not have any public presence in the near or medium-range future. The distant future has an entirely different outcome, but that has nothing to do with this. It is even possible that this, itself, has nothing to do with this. It is irrelevance, turned inward on itself, looking for deeper meaninglessness.

Who needs it!!! (not a question)

So, I bid you all, adieu, farewell, and good health.
May God continue to bless you (unless you want to be ignored, but that, too)
All of your wonderful days and nights
Kiss someone for me, but not a total stranger, okay?
–g♥

When unforgettable people leave our lives for any reason, it leaves significant holes in our souls, unless said feeling of un-wholeness is entirely imaginary. Feelings may indeed be imaginary, but that does not make them unreal, any less than dreams might be said to be unreal. Indeed, dreams are supposed, or assumed (by many of us), to be unreal, and life is supposed to be real. Some tragic events make it seem not real, not possible, and certainly not acceptable. Today, it seems unreal that Vanessa’s daughter would have died so soon, or so easily it might seem, after only bumping her head the way hundreds if not thousands do on the slopes every day. Brain injuries were not all created equal. My own major brain injury (major injury, minor brain) was not the result of any event, yet I was allowed to survive (Sep 2001). She was merely taking some time to herself, and now she’s gone.

That is not my life. My life has other people in it, some coming (very few) and some going away (hardly anyone remains) and the number shrinks toward zero. Nothing would seem to indicate that those who drift away will ever drift back. Sometimes this is how we get their drift, by having it be gone. But that is some other song about a yellow taxi. We’ll do that again, no doubt. Joni never fades away.

Drifting back to the point, we have three songs, presented in forward and reverse order, and in single-file no-color order (to match to posting at FaceBook) of the individual songs with the comments placed there, but of course repeated here) to allow one-shot vibrating. This is another obscure reference, to something technical that once had an interesting purpose. What this world needs is a good, one-shot multi-vibrator. Any suggestions? Specs are helpful, if you have some.

Meanwhile, the songs represent three individual people — not actually real people, but hypothetical ones. You know, the kind that they have on the movie screen, or the DVD player, or in your hand-held device of some sort, these days. Technology will eventually become so sophisticated, even the engineers will not be able to keep up with it. Then, who will profit?

Never mind, go on with whatever you were doing. It was more important or interesting, or both, that this could be. Or, turn the page and listen.

–g♥

Forward, as they now appear top-to-bottom on “The Wall” of mine:

Reverse, reflecting the order they were installed last-to-first:

Finally we sing to matching birthdays, for Layla, who had no middle name. Unless she added one, she still has none. This song was the reason her Mum (okay, her parents, but that part of her life seemed to have the nearly Dad-less aspect of the ass-pecked existence to it, with an entire ocean between them) had named her Layla back in the late 70’s (I’ll never tell), and I guess I remember her father’s name was Evans, and she definitely had no middle name at all (some folks have two or more). Maybe I remembered that part wrong. Maybe Layla’s birth father had a different last name than Evans. Hell, I don’t want to remember anyway, so why do I try? Why can I not just simply switch off this disturbingly pretentious head-computer in this decaying noggin? Someone tell me!

This is in place of “Locked In A Cage” which I could not find. The explanation (unstated) for this could be similar to the previous one if it were to be expressed. Instead, it is implied; this song might be completely irrelevant and meaningless. The listener may hear, and judge or not judge, as the case may need to be. In my case, I have no further comment. Anagram artist/title: Skillet – Comatose is the same as Cloaks – Mistletoe, who may or may not be real. They’d be green, it would seem! Like a parakeet in front of some soup can, maybe. This reference, obscure, unverbed.

♫♪(reformatted for your convenience to 128kbps)♥

If memory serves she favored Relient K, back when we met at that Alabaster forum; with commonality amid differences we aspired to form some friendship across hundreds of miles. Their name was seen recently on her I Like list, but not now, so this is not wisely chosen. Instead this random pick gets put here as some kind of gift. Even if it is not really my gift, it seems fitting somehow. Perhaps the meaning will emerge in due time.

Meanwhile, this forces another posting to the blog, but instead of waiting for an entire week to accumulate, the short-term goal is (just for today) to post some other, less personalized gifts, not aimed at Amy, but at anyone even remotely related to what Amy and I have in common. We *do* have something, whether anyone else admits it or not. We need no more than what we have; what is between us is exactly right, and that is what is most amazing. Yet I will do more, even if not needed, perhaps a blog post today.

Prove me wrong, if you will. I may.
–g♥

That’s it for this Wednesday, now passing into forever-land as one more yesterday.