Author Archives: mandala56

Old Jules, can I watch the dumb, and become smarter? Or is there another way?

Just my personal viewpoint, but I believe intelligence is severely over-rated. I’ve known a good many people who had IQs in the 80-90 or lower range whom I’d trust far more quickly than 90% of the PHDs I’ve known who believed their most valuable asset was their intelligence. A solid, loyal, courageous person with a low IQ has a lot to teach anyone who watches.

And an intelligent incorrigible person is also sure as hell worth watching.

Old Jules, do you think that the older you get and the more you learn (like studying subjects well) you gain more knowledge of life?

It tends to make a person believe he/she is wise at whatever decade in life he/she has arrived at. Unfortunately, belief in self-wisdom has a way of being the antithesis of wisdom.

I’ve witnessed it myself almost seven decades and witnessed it in all ages of others around me.

Life doesn’t make us wise, doesn’t make us know more. Life just throws more tricks into our paths. Life has more tricks than a monkey on a 50 foot rope.

Old Jules, what is an example of people disliking something because it is different?

Tenured geologists circa 1970 disliked plate tectonics theory because it was different. A lot of grad students bit the dust before the air cleared.

Baptists dislike Catholics because they are different.

I dislike 21st Century spelling of words in the English language because it’s different.

I dislike Mac computers because they’re different, and I disliked Windows 1.1 because it was different from MS DOS. Didn’t like IBM PCs because they used MS DOS instead of CPM and they were different from Kaypros.

Old Jules, what is life and who is the master of this world?
how can i proof it?

Proofing is the easy part. Just check the spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Whatever age you happen to be, you’re old enough to have observed what life is. It’s the stuff on your plate when you eat, the four legged creatures you see roaming around your neighborhood, the winged things you see in the trees and sky, as well as the trees. It’s a large part of the stuff you flush down the commode after you evacuate your bowel.
The master of this world is up for grabs. They’ll be holding an election one of these days and whatever gets the most votes will take office.

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

Good afternoon blogsters:

One of the ways I keep up on world events and amuse myself when I’m alone in an eating establishment without a book involves eavesdropping.  I gaze at the food, a picture on the wall, something outdoors through the plate glass, and I listen to conversations at the nearby tables.

It’s curiosity, as much as anything else.  And mostly I lose interest quickly because so often the talk is about some sports event, concert, or a television show.  But sometimes it’s pay dirt.

Today I was doing the listening routine to the goings on among several BDU clad people of both sexes, all toting large-bore automatic pistols in holsters hanging from their waists.

Turned out these folks were part of a conference between Federal and State Homeland Security forces (whatever that might be).  I’d never seen that particular uniform combination, nor the patches and medallions, so I listened as closely as I dared without drawing attention to myself.

The eating establishment is on San Felipe Tribal Lands.  Maybe that’s why the conversation drifted in that direction.

Fed:  “Do you have any issues dealing with any of the tribes.”

NM State:  “You wouldn’t believe it.  Everything’s an issue.”

And so on in detail involving a lot of ‘issues’ a person born in 1943 (me), would never have believed could ever be discussed by government employees as though they should be part of any reality here.  The attitude was clearly that the tribes were being irresponsible in reluctance and obstruction of the aims of Homeland Security.

The topic broadened in a while.

NM State:  “I think a lot of people just don’t understand what we’re doing.  They don’t realize how dangerous things are for them.”

Fed:  “That’s a problem all over the country.  I was in Phoenix a few weeks ago .  . ., etc”

That NM Homeland Security lady all dressed up with a gun and nowhere to go was wrong.

I believe most people understand perfectly well what they’re doing and have an inkling of why they’re doing it.  It isn’t a lack of understanding that makes me smile and cheer inside, knowing the tribes, at least, are dragging their feet.

I think people are beginning to ‘realize how dangerous things are for them’, to the extent that dangers actually exist in this hostile reality we’ve chosen for ourselves.   But at least a part of the ‘danger’  people feel involves a new kind of policeman who thinks the US Constitution is obstructionist.

They just don’t know yet what needs to be done about it.

Jack

Hi everyone, Jeanne here. Going offline for a few days, actually driving down to New Mexico to try to get the pack rats out of my cabin. Posts are still scheduled here, but I won’t be checking for comments until next week. It will be a different kind of trip for sure, not having Jack to comment on the crops, the history, tell me stories, or speculate about all the things we notice on the road along the way. But I’ll try to be as fascinated with what I see along the way as he always was.
Back next week. Thanks for reading, and hello to new subscribers!
Jeanne

Nocturnal Nonsense

3 am I wake

Find you atop me

Kneading

I savor

The soft purr

Of you

The gentle scratch

Of nail on flesh

Tiny pleasure pain

I hold

I hold

I hold

I can wait

No more

Lift you

Lovingly aside

And rise

You follow watching

My grimaced

Downward

Push

Muscle pressure

Pain

Release

Your feline tail

Lashes S and Z

On empty air

Your green eyes fixed

I search absently

For a synonym:

“Involuntary

Urinary

Engorgement”

Runs a poor second

To “false Gods”

The prayer ends

While I ponder how this

Like the useless

Appendix

Serves no function.

No.  No.

It reminds

Remembers

Other uses

Other times.

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright©2002 Jack Purcell

———————————————————————————————————–

Almost every facet of the human life experience has been celebrated to death in poem and song.

This one hasn’t.   Remember where you heard it first.

We’re talking MEME here.  (A word I learned a few days ago and knew in a flash of insight applied to the future of this ground-breaking poetic genre.)

Jack

Jack wrote this in February of 2006:

Hi again, blogsters:

This blogging experience might turn out to be too much for my psyche.  I don’t watch television, deliberately don’t read newspapers.  The reason is that I discovered a decade, or so, ago, that knowing about matters I can’t influence doesn’t lend itself to inner-peace.

However,  I’m finding something just as good as television and newspapers to stir up inner-confusion, dissatisfaction, anger.  About issues that aren’t my business as I define it, because nothing I can do might influence those issues.

The Native American feeds are a microcosm of the phenomenon:

My general feeling about the Native Americans I meet in my daily life is one of respect, of acknowledgement, of consideration.

Yet, on blog sites, I find a daily flow of feeds on Native American issues to inspire the antithesis of respect.

I see whines by Native Americans concerning inadequate health care for the tribes.

All over the US non-natives of all groups, and Native Americans who don’t happen to have tribal census numbers are faced with the daily challenge concerning health care.  Only Native Americans with census numbers are provided total free health care by the US Public Health Service.  Yet they complain and ask for Non-Native support to try to make what they have more comprehensive.

I see complaints about the limitations on tribal sovereignty.

There is no tribal sovereignty.  The tribes, with a few exceptions, are entirely dependent on US Government funding to maintain survival.  US taxpayers have been the mainstay for continued aboriginal survival, for Rez roads, Rez housing, Rez incomes, Rez education and Rez ‘independence’ for more than a century.

• I see nothing wrong with some US citizens getting an easier deal in life than others, if they can manage it.  Inherited wealth and ethnic preference have a strong basis in precedent in the US.
• I see nothing wrong with the tribes continuing to burden the remainder of society with dependence, with holding to life on the Rez without having to hold regular jobs and concern themselves with the daily issues of survival,  as do other Americans, should they choose to make that their goal.  The lure of a free ride through the Welfare State is seductive for individuals of all ethnic groups.
• What bothers me is the litany of complaint that it ain’t enough.  That somehow the ‘rest of society’ muddling along without such benefits, with no safety net, ought to feel more is ‘owed’, based on something that dead men did to other dead men more than a century ago.
• Something in me protests that we’re all born naked.  That we can each make our own choices every day.
• Something in me protests that begging is a lousy choice.  That whining and blaming others for our choices and our lot is not a behavior devised to command respect, so much as guilt.

Which is none of my business.

Jack

Old Jules, given ‘the raptures’ imminent arrival, how many cans of beans and wienies should I stockpile?

Don’t buy any and figure on taking it out of the homes of them who were raptured out after they’re gone.

Old Jules, what’s the biggest social injustice in today’s society?

The treatment of prostitutes by the criminal justice system.

Old Jules, what do you think forgiveness really is?  How do you break the mental link to the person you resent and set the process of forgiveness in action?

Seems to me forgiveness is a recognition of our own boundaries as they apply to our ability to influence the behavior of others, and the release [for our own benefit] of that which didn’t conform to our expectations.

The burden of carrying around whatever the alternative is to forgiveness is ours as individuals and, quite frankly, carries a lot higher cost to ourselves than it does for the unforgiven.

In my view it’s self-therapy, entirely a means of releasing ourselves from all manner of lousy baggage of no consequence to anyone but ourselves.

But the other side of it involves a more subtle piece of reality and self-definition.  A matter of recognizing the real question:  “Just who the hell am I to impose my expectation-slavery on another human being?” 

We’re all of us just flawed creatures stumbling along trying to find our way in life, most of us not making a particularly good, nor admirable job of it.  The judgement-arrogance involved in needing to forgive someone else for doing something to not live up to the slavery of behavior capsule we placed around them is a statement of what dishonest creatures we are.

So dishonest we’d lock our minds into the belief we occupy the moral high ground as though the ground around it was also high.

Jack posted this in February of 2006:

Last Friday Night

“It’s just too deep in the Rez

For a white-man style killing,” he says.

“A bullet each to the back of the head,

At Pueblo Pentada two brothers are dead;

Two Navajo brothers are dead.”

“It isn’t a skin-walker killing;

No feud, not a woman too willing.

A knife, a club, a thirty-ought-six

Is common enough and at least doesn’t mix

White man logic with Navajo tricks,

“No bullet each to the back of the head!

But at Pueblo Pentada two brothers are dead!

Two Navajo brothers are dead.”

From Bread Springs to Shiprock you’ll hear people say,

“No place is safe now!  You can’t get away!”

Nageezi to Yah Ta Hay

You’ll hear the Din’e people say,

.

“The killer’s from Pie Town or Santa Fe!

Some white, somehow, somewhere must pay

For a bullet each to the back of the head!

At Pueblo Pentada two brothers are dead!

Two Navajo brothers are dead.”

From Poems of the New Old West 

Copyright©2002, Jack Purcell

Note:

I wrote this a week or two after the killing.  At that time it wasn’t yet known who the killer was, nor why.  A while later that changed.  The killer was a neighbor, just down the road.  He fled the Rez to California, but was soon apprehended.

All of which changes little for the poem.  The two-week certainty that an execution-style killing in the center of Navajo country would never be perpetrated by Navajo had the accusations and demands flying fever-pitch.

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

Morning blogsters:

Yesterday someone asked in the comments about practical ways a person who’s beginning can get a start with energy work.

I suggested practicing with a pendulum as one means for getting the mind into the right place.  Here’s another:

I’d recommend sitting down in a relaxed position when you do this.  Choose a time when you don’t have anything demanding to be done for about an hour.

Hold a double-terminated crystal in your fist and ‘listen’ to it a while.  When you begin to feel a buzzing sensation, hold the crystal cradled between your thumb and third finger.  Tap on it with your index finger, still ‘listening’.

If something begins happening immediately, stop when the sensation reaches your shoulder.  Wait a few minutes before deciding whether to continue.

If nothing happens, try it again daily for a while.

It’s one of the ways of training yourself to ‘tune in’.

• Learning anything comes easier to some people than it does for others.  Each of us tends to have affinities and talents in some areas, math, music, whatever, than we might in, say, art.  Metaphysics is no different in that regard.
• I used to belong to the Digital Dowser group.  Hundreds of people belong to the list.  Newcomers frequently want instruction on how to begin.
• The old-timers tell them about strings and washers, tell them a few other elementary aspects of dowsing, but in the end they also say, “Practice! Practice! Practice.”
• You might turn out to be a natural.  Every step you might find you make three more without any help.  Happens with many people.
• But if you aren’t you can still learn the hard way, the same way most people have to learn.  Practice and determination.
• While you’re learning you might consider checking used book stores, or your library for a good translation of the I Ching…. Wu Wei is a good one to start because it gives detailed explanations about the process of separating the yarrow stalks  (use soda straws, skewers, whatever).  Practice that, too.
• You might find it helpful, also, to detach yourself from the daily ‘anger fix’  you might be getting by keeping too close a watch on the world news.  The war lovers and king worshipers needn’t apply when it comes to energy work.  Anger places a finite limit on progress toward these ends.

Energy work isn’t a single series of steps, walking down a line until you reach the end, and “Voila!” you’re an energy worker.   Knowledge and information never ceases to come in if you’re listening.  I’ve been doing it more years than I’d care to tell, and every day I still learn something new.

Jack

Old Jules, should disrespect be tackled or accepted?
If tackled, how? If accepted, how do you cope?

Any disrespect I discover for myself I tackle. Disrespect by others is meaningless and not worthy of my attention, my energy, my time.

My tactic is self-examination and identification where I find disrespect for some facet of myself.

As for others: I don’t have enough respect for the opinions of others to bother nor to care what they might think.

If what they think is true, or real, it’s for me to discover in myself and decide whether I prefer it or wish to change it.

If [far more likely] it’s their biases and stupidity projected in the form of communication, I don’t have time for it.

Old Jules, are you a nice person to other people?

I’m generally courteous and walk around with a smile, nodding to men I pass in a store or parking lot, winking at the women if I meet their eye. I tip 15-20 percent and am always friendly to waiters, waitresses and store clerks. I don’t complain to them about things they have no control over.

But I’m not nice. I’m a hard bargaining person when the occasion calls for it.

And when a man I nod a greeting to looks away or sneers, as frequently happens, I usually grin and tell him quietly, “Don’t you be saying ‘hi’ to me now! No telling what I might be up to.”

Old Jules, how can I completely scrap the belief that “You need another to complete you”?  I believe Disney enforced this. But how can I actually go about the habit of truly being content with being with myself and enjoying my things?

It’s a major hurdle and not an easy one. Those who’ve done it usually aren’t entirely sure how they managed it. Solitude helps, learning to live with yourself in your own essence helps. Keeping your boundaries small helps, recognizing what’s ‘your business’ and what isn’t helps [defining it with precision]. And disciplining yourself to respect the fact you can’t own and can’t even influence much about another person (and that it would be inappropriate to want to) and absolutely have no wish to be owned, certainly not to be influenced.

Recognizing we’re all seriously flawed and that you won’t find anyone who isn’t also helps.

Good luck.

Old Jules, which would you choose, to serve in heaven or to reign in hell?

If Christians, Muslims and Jews are in heaven I’ll dance all the way to hell and celebrate ever after. Call it reigning there if it suits you. A pauper in hell who doesn’t have to put up with religious fanatics is a great improvement over just being a monarch.