So Far From Heaven

From Poems of the New Old West:

Say It Like You Mean It

(Trust me on this)

Send her roses now and then

A box of chocolates might help

She loves to hear, “I love you”

Even if you don’t

Candy lies with chocolates and roses

When things get bad

And the secretary winks

Keep in mind

This won’t make it any better

Keep your valentines at home

Secretaries don’t come easy

And two women in your life

Ain’t a big improvement

Over one

When the embers cease to glow

Don’t forget or you’ll regret

You forgot the anniversary

There’s nothing out there better

Give her candlelight and roses

Candy lies with candlelight and roses

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

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There’s something noble in satisfying her yearnings for romance.  It won’t cost you much and, for some reason I never understood, she needs it.

Jack

Jack wrote this in June, 2005:

Old Jules, what were some of the social, political, and religious aspects of the 1940’s and 1950’s?
Socially everyone got together and played canasta or dominos while the kids ran around finding ways to get into trouble without being noticed while they did it. No such event ever happened without one father or another taking off his belt and giving his kid a strapping on the behind.

Politically, most people supported the government, worried about Communism, hated Harry Truman, Ike, and Keefaufer with his coonskin hat. The UnAmerican Activities Committee filled the radios daytimes, and the investigations of the US prisoners from Korea who were accused of collaborating with the enemy. The ‘cheerleaders’, white housewives, went out every day in Arkansas to yell insults and harass eleven black children who were being integrated into ‘white’ schools, accompanied by US Marshalls to protect them from the cheerleaders and the Arkansas National Guard placed there by Governor Orville Faubus to keep them from attending.

Religious, most people were Christians. The more they hated blacks the more Christian they were. They also hated Mormons, in most areas, Catholics, Hispanics, and whatever ethnic groups and religious denominations they weren’t members of.

As a youngster I witnessed heated, vicious debates between Church of Christ kids and Baptist kids about which of them were doomed to hell and which would be going to heaven. The favorite putdown for days afterward:

“I won’t be seeing YOU there!”

Old Jules, what can you tell me about open range ranching in the 1800s?

It still exists in a lot of states. The person owning the livestock isn’t responsible for fencing them in. Instead, anyone who doesn’t want them grazing and damaging his property has to fence them out. Cattle graze across public highways and if someone hits one he’s responsible for the damages, both to the animal and to his own vehicle (if the road had a sign on it showing a cow on a yellow background).

It’s a holdover from the wild west days when ranchers developed a tradition of running roughshod over anyone who got in their way, and they still do it and the cattleman organizations are powerful enough to keep it that way.

Old Jules, what are some of the disadvantages of war and advantages of peace?

The disadvantage of wars is that usually both sides begin them with the expectation of winning and one or the other side eventually is proven to be wrong. This fact becomes established at the cost of large reductions in the size of the gene pool on both sides among men of reproductive age.

As a rule, wars breed physical and moral cowardice, overall reductions in character and intelligence, and reduced incentives in succeeding generations because of this gene pool phenomenon.

The advantage of peace is that it’s cheap, easy, and the patriots can’t get their claws into the aftermath, make money from the exercise, and gain power so thoroughly and rapidly.

Old Jules, why should I study history?

Nobody who quotes the cliche can go a step further and show where any mistake in history was avoided by knowing history. The opposite is true.

You are required to study and memorize something called history to indoctrinate you to the views your elders and government believe you should be indoctrinated to in order for you to hold the viewpoints they wish you to hold. You need to know the names of forgotten, obscure females of the past so’s to give modern females a feeling of worth and an idea they, themselves might possibly accomplish something in life (implying they couldn’t do so if there weren’t obscure females in history who did something worth memorizing).

You are required to memorize facts about oppressed peoples and slavery so you will feel sorry about it and will conclude those people of the past who experienced hardship represent an explanation for their descendants who didn’t experience it to have reason for resentment and frequently an excuse for resisting becoming educated so’s they have a chance to amount to something.

There are solid reasons you are required to study history, though nobody cares whether you actually learn it, but those reasons don’t include anything akin to history.

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

Hi blogsters:

On the Pine Hill Navajo (self-determination) Rez south of Ramah Chapter there’s a place that’s come to be called, “Skin-Walker Valley” by everyone who’s willing to use the word.  Interestingly, the valley extends into an area checker-boarded with white-owned lands called Candy Kitchen.

What’s surprising is that, while the Skin-Walker phenomenon clearly began on Din’e land, the weirdness and negativity spills over and permeates into the white community.  Although some good folks, both white and Din’e live and make out as best they can in this remote area, it’s shockingly pervaded by all manner of crime.  Speed freaks and laboratories are drawn there as by a magnet.

Violence is pandemic.  As an example, a few years ago three Navajo youths tortured and killed an octogenarian white woman in her home, puncturing her skull with a screwdriver eighteen times until she died.  She had nothing much worth stealing.  They did it for ‘fun’.

When the lads were identified they were arrested on the Rez, where tribal authorities resisted giving them up for white justice for several days.

Meanwhile, deep in the Rez to the north, near Pueblo Pintada, another valley is rapidly coming to be known as ‘Skin-Walker Valley’, and another at Alamo, far to the southeast.

This phenomenon, were it discussed openly and recognized as in need of investigation, would be far easier for tribal officials to develop strategies to deal with.  Open discussion would also help nearby residents and authorities off the Rez toward a clearer perspective concerning an energy and a belief system that is oozing up through the cracks of their lives, slouching across from tribal lands.

More of this later.

Jack

Jack posted this on a forum for energy workers in 2006, but there is something for everyone here:

I’ve given some of the first steps in the mechanical process for beginning energy work.  Those should help with practice, or maybe without it.

However, there are some other facets to energy work that are more basic and certainly as necessary.

If you’re filled with anger you’re already spilling off metaphysical energy.  You just happen to be out of control.  The problem with that is that in some ways metaphysical energy behaves in a ‘liquid’ fashion.

As an energy element anger is force.  It’s compelling.  It tends to be expelled, both in bursts, and in a general spillage.

When anger leaves your spirit-body in bursts it does so in a way that leaves behind a vacuum, and it leaves open a channel for other energy to re-enter to fill the void.   When it does so as a sustained spillage or overflow the return is slower, but still inexorable.

That void will be filled with the kind of energy you’ve surrounded yourself with, invited into your life.  Usually it’s manifested in ways designed to reinforce the habit of anger, to justify continuing the same course.

The great negative mandala.  The circle of self-limitation and self-destruction.

The components are blame, lousy self-esteem, fear, and more anger, all chewing away at themselves inside you, dissolving your spiritual power and frequently your physical power, as well.

Self-Esteem

If you have lousy self-esteem there’s a good chance it’s because you’re the one who knows you best.  You’ve bought into some value system, measured yourself by it, found yourself wanting.

• One of the ways you can short-circuit the negative mandala is to examine that value system you’re measuring yourself by, and decide whether it’s one you adopted consciously, or whether it’s something you came by through brainwashing by the society you live in.  Your parents, your peers, your television set.
• If that’s the case, you’ll probably need to adopt another yardstick to measure yourself by.
• However, if you have lousy self-esteem because you are a lousy person no one should respect, I’d offer the observation there’s only one way to change it.  Become the kind of person you do respect.

Blame

• One cornerstone of the anger-cathedral is blame.  Where ever there’s anger Old Man Blame is always there lurking in a dark corner, whispering, “You aren’t responsible for what you are.  It’s your parents.  It’s the school.  It’s the government.  It’s the white man, the black man, the Jew.  The Arabs.  The Demos, the Republicans, the New Agers, the Christian fundamentalists, ad infinitum. It’s the boss, the job, the ‘system’ that’s to blame.  Not you.”  Never you.
• You know better.  Every moment of your life you are making the choices.  Everything in this reality is open to you, same as to everyone else.  If you see doors closed in front of you, you are well aware you can kick them down, or go around them.  If you want to take control of your life you are going to have to accept total responsibility for what you are, who you are and what you are going to become.

Fear

• If you are like most modern humans in the western world you’ve conditioned yourself to be a moral and physical coward.  Your electronic media has helped you along with a daily dose of fear.  If you want to end your anger, blame and lousy self-esteem, you’ve got to break that cycle of fear.  Nobody respects a coward.  Quit worrying about diseases that might kill you, terrorists that might crawl up on the beaches of your life with butcher-knives clenched between their teeth.  Quit worrying about something that might happen next week, but probably won’t.
• You are going to die.  It ain’t a big deal.  Happens to everyone.  Whether it happens to you this evening driving home, or next week or next year is mostly up for grabs.  Whether it happens at the same time as it happens to a million other people, or just as part of the usual trickle of human death moving through time is of absolutely no consequence in the overall scheme of things.  You’re going to experience pain, hardship, loss, the same as everyone who’s ever lived.  Those are a part of life.  They can also be a source of joy if you love what you are.  You couldn’t be what you are if it weren’t for the growth that came from facing hardships and challenge.  Recognize you have reason to be grateful for every stumble, every hurdle, every pain.
• If you want to end your anger, dismantle your structure of negative energy loss, you’re going to have to quit being a coward.  You’re going to have to quit being afraid.  You’re going to have to learn to focus on the joy between the crying and the dying.  You’re going to have to recognize that you’re blessed with some finite, but unknown limit to the number of days you get to walk around this mudball, and that for this lifetime it’s all you have.  If you want to respect yourself you are going to have to live it without fear and without reaching out ahead of yourself to find ways it might end prematurely.

Boundaries

• One fundamental source of anger in this life involves a failure to recognize what’s your business, your challenge, and what belongs to someone else.  If you can’t do anything to influence it, it belongs to someone else.
• Knowing what’s happening to someone in some distant place is not something you can control.  Quit knowing about it.
• Knowing about lousy choices your president, your second-cousin, your favorite celebrity, your aunt Tillie are making is also out of your control.  They ain’t your business.  You can do nothing about it except seethe.  ANGER.  If you can’t change it, get it out of your life.

Forgiveness

• Without a constant injection of forgiveness all the rest is meaningless.  You’re going to have to recognize we’re all a lot of flawed creatures muddling along, not doing a particularly good job of doing our best.  No one else is any better at it than you are.
• Begin by forgiving yourself for what a piece of dog-dung you’ve probably been in your life and maybe still are.  Recognize that it’s the choices you make today and tomorrow that will allow you not to have to forgive yourself tomorrow.
• Forget what everyone else has done, is doing.  It’s outside your control.  Forgive yourself.  After you’ve done that, if you need an occasional reminder that what others do is none of your business, forgive them, too.  Every moment, every day, forgive them for being flawed creatures, no better, no worse than you.

There are a number of techniques for doing all this.  Step by step methods.  If there’s any interest, I’ll go into some of them in future entries.

Best to all of you,
Jack

Jack wrote this in July, 2005:

Old Jules, what was all that Y2K stuff about?

I don’t claim to know why Y2K happened to society in the sense it was

obviously a trumped-up affair that sent a lot of mitigation money

into computer programming wallets all over the world, and didn’t need

mitigating.

I do know why it happened to me. It’s because I’ve always leaned to

preparedness, expecting something that hasn’t happened all the way

back to the 1961 Berlin Crisis [which got me into the Army with the

expectation of killing Russian lads a few weeks hence]. In 1967-68,

I expected it to come as a result of the riots across the US and the

vulnerability of society to collapse because of the interlocking

dependencies on the power-grid-transportation-grid- communication-

grid. I was all prepared, and though it didn’t happen, I wrote a

book about  how it would have looked if it had.
My entire adult life has been spent expecting things to go badly

wrong and preparing myself mentally for when it happens, as well as

my physical preparations. In a sense one of my careers [Emergency

Management] grew out of that mental state, along with a book, [Desert

Emergency Survival Basics].
When Y2k came along my certainties were so absolute as to lead me to

cash in all my accumulated retirement funds from two careers and

establish a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere. It was a great 14

months, me, a passel of chickens out there during those post-Y2k

months wondering what we were going to do next, but reflecting on

what I’d already done and trying to learn from it.
I’m all for a person being prepared mentally for anything. It’s none

of my affair what they do insofar as dedicating resources to other

types of preparedness, as well.
I do, however, believe a person can go overboard with such things.

While I don’t suggest they do otherwise if it’s their choice to do

so, (it’s a pretty good way to spend a lifetime – keeps the juices

flowing and gives a person a lot of adventures of thought and

spirit) – I do think it ain’t a bad idea to always retain a modicum

of self-doubt.

Jack wrote this in June, 2005:

On the magnetic date/numbers thread I mentioned that business about 10s hitting an awfully lot on the 9th, 10th and 11th of the month draws. It used to be a rule I followed consistently….always included a 10 in the mix on those days… Last night I didn’t because I was too smart… 10, says I to my brilliant self, doesn’t show up in most of the smart-alec methods I’ve abandoned for the moment because they didn’t work consistently, but still run things through when I’m making my picks.

I’m an economizer at the moment, thinks I. I’m not gonna be no fool, looking at those methods that used to work pretty well for me for quite a while….. 10 as a ‘dater’, 10 possible as a repeater from the last draw…. Not me. My mama didn’t raise no fool.

There you are.

I generally mislike auto-shufflers, usually won’t play tables (blackjack) that have them. But a few days ago I sort of got herded into playing on a $2 minimum/$100 max table with an auto-shuffler. A series of coincidences and watching the way the cards were running out of that machine got me doing some things I wouldn’t normally do, including playing two hands and using some betting strategies that run contrary to the usual wisdoms.

I watched, tried things, shifted things around, refined, until after about six hours of play I found myself winning so consistently and so much money the other players were making funny remarks about it. So I moved to another table with an auto shuffler and tried it there….. I was in that casino from early afternoon until 5am the next morning. Went home jittery with coffee, lack of sleep, and wobbly from being too old to live this way, but quite a bit better off than when I went in.

Started a thread about that on the Gaming Forum.

Whew! Last night one of the cats, Shiva, slipped past me and zipped out when I got all the others in…… I went out and called her several times, at which time Niaiad (or however it is you spell water-nymph—-I never can remember), the black cat with aspirations for killing an eagle, plunged through the door.

I went out several times calling for them every time I awakened…. ms water nymph came in around 2 am, but Shiva never answered my calls and wasn’t around this morning at 5 when I went outside….. figured her for being in pieces inside the gut of an owl or coyote.

Then, a few minutes ago she came wandering out of the back of the house wanting out. Mixed emotions is what I’m plagued by.

Jack

Jack wrote this in July, 2005:

Four Limericks on Life

He goes by the surname of Fauna
From the platypus to the iguana
He hunts and he stalks
And he ceaselessly talks
Of the death and the killing he want’ta.

She goes by the surname of Flora.
She’s plankton, she’s trees, a plethora
But lives in a dread
Avoiding his tread
He’s Sodom, he’s death, he’s Gomorrah!

He eats, he digests, he excretes her;
She’s worried each time that he meets her.
It’s not so dismaying
To find him decaying:
His syrup of nitrogen treats her.

Submerged in a hostile reality
Humanity flirts with finality.
He yearns to transcend
But his carnal self wins
And he spends all his life in banality.

From Poems of the New Old West
Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell