Hey now! 

Looks like she just saw a ghost 

I'm the gypsy 

The Spider Lady 

Another one with Frankenstein 

Are you a good witch? 

Which one is Freddie? 

Love those fangs 

Just like Frankenstein 

Captivating Piper's Opera House with her real life ghost stories 

Someone looks pretty grumpy 

Piper's Opera House stage for Halloween 

The newest goat skinned member of the family  

Smiles at the drum circle 

She can drum 

At "All Things Mystickal" in Carson City 

Thought I heard a young man mourn today

I guess it doesn't matter anyways

This is an appropriate time for me to post something somewhat bleak as we are now one day away from Daylight Savings time, and slowly approaching the saddest time of the year for me. Autumn always seems to represent grief and loss for me, so a title thread with the word "mourn" in it is the winner this week. Anyone who ever saw Jerry Garcia sing this song (author listed as Bonnie Dobson) live knows how much raw grief and emotion came out of this voice when he did. And the subject of loss and grief here is going to revolve around the family I was born into, so here is the warning right now to not go any further if you want to stick with pleasant topics. My older brother recently asked me how I come up with these ideas when I write them. In this case - it has been a haunting of my own, but not the cheesy haunted house, ghost, vampire, or monster you may be seeing out this time of year around town - this is a real emotional haunting that has been a part of me for my life. In thinking about this subject ahead of time for the last week, I have woken up in the middle of the night and had trouble sleeping pondering this. Some very tired next days have been the result of what I am about to write. There may be other characters involved in the haunting, but this is not about pointing the finger. I have tried that before, but my final conclusion is that it really isn't anyone's fault when it comes down to it - or it's everyone's fault - but it can't come down to one person.

It starts with an informative web link to an article labeled Understanding Latino Culture that I came across while assisting Victoria in research for a paper she has in her local Anthropology class. It is hard for me to read this article from start to finish, but there is one thing that stands out very clearly to me - just about everything in here is a sharp contrast to my experience of my family during my childhood. Compared to the closeness and bonding described in this article, my family was a family in name only - because all of the actions and attitudes I know of are about as far from this article as anyone could possibly imagine.

I believe that both of my parents are broken people, haunted by pasts of their own. My father grew up in poverty and lost his parents early on, and he never really recovered from it. He was motivated to change his class status and have the material means to provide for us all, but emotionally, there was nothing left for him to give us. I don't remember any real involvement until I went into my depression, and at that point he attempted to make up for lost time. He was there physically - he took us on trips, did toss a baseball around from time to time, and he could be an incredibly charming and charismatic person when he was in the mood, but overall there was an unreachable wall around him - not something he could control, but was there nevertheless. My mother, who was drawn to his angry and removed personality - seemed to marry her own father through him, and with that in mind - I am sure it was not easy growing up in her house either. Her own father from what I know was subject to fits of rage and his own madness ultimately consumed him. Asked if I would want to trade places with my father, no - I would not - but at the same time, if my main ambition at the age of 20 was to find a way to end my life, I would surmise that somehow or another, despite the difference in material means, that emptiness and darkness he experienced got transferred down to me. I wasn't there when they were raised and this is all second hand, but the main point I am getting at here is two broken people trying to build a family is like a construction worker trying to build a house with broken bricks - if the material is not there, even if the effort is - it is bound to fall apart - and from my experience, that is exactly what happened. So saying it is their fault is too simple, it goes back generations upon generations of unfortunate events.

With that in mind though, family values were given lip service only. We were constantly reminded of the other's shortcomings when the other person was not around to speak for his or herself. Talking behind the other's back was common, especially with the parents doing this - as if in some ways, the line between the parents and the children was never really established - as some would say this is pretty childish. We were taught to mistrust the other, and to this day, have received constant reminders of the pending bloodbath that will occur once they pass on, as we will be clawing, kicking, and scratching for every last inherited possession of theirs. Our actions and decisions were always questioned and doubted. So is it any wonder that none of us are close, that my younger brother can only experience a brother through his in law and not his real life brothers, that all of us have looked to something outside of our family to fill the void that our real life family presented? It might seem crazy to some that I post these writings so openly, but if not for that nobody in my family would have any idea who I am and what I think. This is the way I reach the family members that read this - and it is pretty sad that this is the only way I can - but something is better than nothing.

Although we are a "dysfunctional" family, that alone cannot provide an explanation for our distance. In my wife's family, the head of household was a chronic drinker prone to fits of violence, and the police were called out on a regular basis. The mother was constantly depressed and overwhelmed - but yet in spite of all this, there is a real sense of family there that is not present in our dysfunctional family. I am sure that it is clear to our daughter Sara that there is a difference, in that the family members on her side will make an effort to stay present in her life even when she is away, but in our family - out of sight, out of mind - once she says goodbye to them, she will never see or hear from them again, absent a holiday card or present. There just really is no sense of family with us as there is with my wife's side, and the differences are very clear.

From my point of view, I always wanted this to be different, but after years of trying to reach out to everyone, I finally realized I was going against a wall. You can't make people be close who just don't want to be. I realize that part of the blame lies within as well and it is not fair to be blaming everyone else. I am a part of this too, and yet it seems clearly beyond me. For whatever reason that I can never really know or understand, I will never really know just about anyone in my family. I am closer to my older brother and his wife, and can have more direct and genuine communication there than anywhere else. As for my remaining siblings, there is a hell of an act that requires a strong effort to maintain while I am present, but once I am gone, it is like I was never there to begin with.

There is a section on the role of the grandparents in the paper. The grandparents on our side have one ambition - and it is to get as far away from their grandchildren and travel the four corners of the Earth. They worked hard for what they have, it is their choice, and what they want. Their travels have come as first priority to the point of being away from the birth of some of their grandchildren. At one of the Bar Mitzvahs, I was put in a somewhat awkward position of having to explain to the other side of the family why they were not there for that either and I know technically they can turn all this around and blame circumstances and changes of plans, but the reality is - priorities are priorities, and travel has been number one for them, and how dare anyone question it. They waited a month to even see my daughter, even though they were two hours away, and the first visit in a month was a quick drop by on the way to a play. Compare and contrast this to one local friend of ours, where the mother came down from Seattle to stay with them for a long period of time for the birth of that child. But again - I can't criticize them - they do the best they can and offer what they can, unfortunately, they are so broken they have nothing to offer except for a re-count of their travels and the constant reminder of the estate they will leave behind. My father once questioned why some were not present at the 50th anniversary gathering, and my question in response was why would they want to be there - his answer with a grin was "dollars, lots of dollars". If that is all you have to offer someone, in my mind that is the definition of a tragedy. They lived in the same town as my older brother when he had his children, but made a conscious decision to be absent in any type of real participation there. I think if they were emotionally capable of being involved, they would have been - but it just was not there. I don't know if on one of their dying days there will be any regrets that they were not involved more, since they don't believe in life after death and really only live on in our minds. I must sadly conclude that as easy as it would be to criticize their actions, they have given us the best they did have to offer.

Which brings me to being thankful for what I do have - I am self-sufficient now, I am capable of providing for my own family, I work hard, exercise, have no real health problems to speak of, and I feel spiritually connected to the world around me. They put me through school, gave me the model of sticking together as a married couple that has motivated me to stick it out on my own, a lot of what I have I owe to my parents and I have never had to go hungry. I do have a debt to them in spite of the lack of any real family presence now. It is not all bad so to speak. I am not lying at the padded walls of a mental institution as I once expected my life outcome to be. Despite the grief in writing this, overall I would say I am somewhat happy and content with who I am and what I am - and I do owe this to them, so this is not a black and white situation. There are those that starve, are beaten and have no hope and I do not fall into that category - at least not now anyways.

All the same, this subject of loss and mourning has been with me my whole life. I have always longed for a family in the sense of the word described by the article, one where it is a life time commitment and all participate and contribute, where there is a real meaning to the word and sometimes I wish I was Mexican just so I could experience this. As a compromise, I just married one and the closest I can get is living it second hand. As losses go, it may be easier to live with then a loss of limb, loss of sight, or loss of ability to walk on two feet - but make no mistake, it is still a loss anyways and to have any hope that it will ever change is just deceiving. Although we will still be polite, I will never know my younger brother and the events of 30 years ago will haunt him forever - I may have some blame there, but this just will not change. He did make the effort to visit us a few times, but every visit seemed to be cursed with something going wrong time and time again, until it became clear that despite his good intentions, the darkness and anger toward the mean older brother of childhood years will be a permanent mark in his psyche. I just simply will never have a relationship of any kind with him. I wish him well, but that is just the way it is - too bad because we are a lot alike and have a lot to offer each other, but as I find with the entire family, any hope of a real relationship is about as dead as the cold grave stones resting at the cemetery here.

It is overall a time to mourn what I never had and never will have with my family, but just like the ghost of future present in Scrooge, it is also a warning to me that I have to do everything I can to avoid the Cats in the Cradle song and be there for the family I do have. I want to be there for my daughter in a way my parents could not be there for me. I want to be there for life, and God help me if I want to be traveling around the world when and if I am fortunate enough to be alive when she has her own children. I want my own small family to have the closeness and warmth that I never experienced for myself. With time, effort, prayer and a little help from some supernatural powers, just maybe I can make the change in this generation of the cursed family I come from.

Right now I can't read too good

Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

Probably going to piss a few people off by saying this - but oh well - here it comes - although I guess I am considered a "blogger" - I don't read anyone else's with any regularity. I have tried to read a few - I just admittedly lose interest pretty quickly. So if the deal is "I read yours if you read mine" - sorry if I am breaking it - but it is hard for me to pretend to be interested in something that doesn't interest me. I mainly do this for myself, knowing that some people - mainly invisible since they rarely admit it - are reading this. The problem is - I usually feel like I have an idea what some are really trying to say and if they just don't spit it out and say it, I just get bored. A lot of members of our American society spend many hours hypnotized by a demonic little box that ask us if we want to be just like someone on TV and then from early on we have this notion that we are supposed to be like that, and then if we aren't like some overpaid model who doesn't know how to act and has a generic personality, than there we believe that something is wrong with us.

So people spend half their lives trying to act like something that some overpaid television writer thought up in some caffeine-nicotine contaminated room, and when we are not those things, we feel like something is wrong with us and SHAME comes along. So what I am getting at is when I see people who are trying so hard to act non-human, act like what they have seen on TV or perceive to be "Normal" it comes across as incredibly one-dimensional, and although I can be Mr. One Dimensional Cheese when I am on an appointment, in my spare time I just don't have much patience for it. I used to watch cheesy shows like Three's Company and think my life was supposed to be like that. Well - my life never has been and never will be like that. My favorite radio show host Jim Rome said that a real life reality show would be some guy coming home every night frustrated that he is not getting laid and drinking himself to sleep every night, because that is a lot more real than anything we are going to see on the devil's favorite box. Not that I believe in the devil, but if he did exist - the television was invented by him. And if does not necessarily have to be TV, but as long as people have a notion of what society says they are suppose to be, an image of perfection that does not exist, than their lives will be ruled by shame and instead of being "themselves" they will try very hard to live up to some idealized notion that does not exist - so long story short - I see this in most blogs I have read - the notion of acting within those confined parameters - so I politely pass by and then rarely come back.

Now people have told me I am a good writer. That is nice to hear and I am humbled by that. I am not sure if I entirely agree with it as we are our own biggest critics, but if people like what I write here - I think one of the reasons is some of the better stuff I have written here is about the idea that it is in fact okay to Show a Little Bit of Emotion. I have written some stuff in some of my more rage consumed moments that might really freak some people out, and Victoria has pointed out more than once that this does not show up here. Well - I don't want to completely freak people out either, and as most of those notions have somewhat passed through my system (although they may show up in a dream from time to time) I don't need to dwell on every dark aspect of my psyche, or cause people who read to worry about me. But I don't dwell on every sexual fantasy, infatuation, spell of depression, anxiety, or anger that comes my way - as most of these things tend to be fleeting - so I don't necessarily walk through society or these blog sites with my exposed penis hanging out of my pants. So I have some constraints myself, and it is hard to write in a place that people will read without being a little self-conscious, a criticism I once came across. I also know that some of the strongest feedback comes when I do just whip it out so to speak, and just get straight to the raw emotion and let the chips fall where they may.

I spent a lot of my Great Depression months about half of my life ago feeling completely ashamed of who I was and hating myself for having emotions of such incredible depth, and I just concluded that the world had no place for anyone who felt those things, which made me conclude that I was not made to live in this world - and I admit - those feelings never entirely go away. But the more it is clear to me that all of us sit down and squeeze out incredibly strained and odorous defecations every night, and that everyone I have come across has some kind of emotional handicap that manifests somehow or another, in some ways it has allowed me to reach the point where I could tear down the wall and just realize it is okay to just express who I am without the world coming to an end. If it offends you or freaks you out, just don't read it. I am okay with who I am for the most part, and even though there are still enough neuroses, anxieties, and unresolved issues to fill up a shrink's office for months non stop, I can still function in spite of it - something I never imagined I could do when I was caught up in my emotional hell 20 years ago, and even though I have not done it by myself - I am proud to have gotten where I am - The Good Lord Willing if He Says I May

I told Victoria who is freaked out about writing that the best way to go about it is just say FUCK IT - this is what I have to say, and I am just going to say it - especially if you have an essay exam and limited time - second guessing and doubting is just going to take up time. Our society is so hung up on education, but Bob Dylan, one of the greatest writers of this time, did not have education beyond high school, and same with Frank Zappa. There is a lot to be said for higher education, as in our society it opens a lot of financial avenues, but in itself - as far as how good you are at whatever you decide to do, it really has nothing to do with it - a BA, BS, Masters or Phd can't make you good at what you do - a lot of our education is a function of how many hoops you can jump through, how far down you can bend over, and how much debt you can get into in the process. So as the least educated member of my family, I really don't spend too much time dwelling on the pecking order status issues that some of us are so caught up in, because I believe in what I do despite the lowly credentials. I think it is great that my brother and brother in law are both pursuing it, I just know it isn't for me and for my wife who is so concerned about her past education, I just believe that as Mavis Staples says in one of her songs "You are never too young, never too old, and it's never too late" to say what you have to say and do what you are going to do, and that none of us are any better or worse than the other when it comes down to it. He ain't no better than you

Dancing fool

Click here to watch Sara filming me and Zukey dancing to Funkytown

"Dont know much about dancin
Thats why I got this song
One of my legs is shorter than the other
n both my feets too long
course now right along with em
I got no natural rhythm
But I go dancin every night
Hopin one day I might get it right
Im a dancin fool, Im a
Dancin fool
I hear that beat; I jump outa my seat,
But I cant compete, cause Im a
Dancin fool, Im a
Dancin fool"

Frank Zappa

The helping friendly book

courtesy of Icculus

I don't know why, but the idea for this post has been lurking for a while and I seem to be in procrastination mode. I will at least start it now. I have lots of ideas which I probably won't get to at once, or maybe some will die by the way side, but what comes out will make it here. I am writing about religion - and ultimately - I must emphasize - since I like to use the word "ultimately" so much - MY VIEWS on religion. They are my views, they may not be yours - and I respect that they are my views only, and they may not necessarily be the universal truth that all must abide by. I don't claim to have the answer and state that if you don't believe what I do, that you will spend billions and zillions of years in a hot boiling place - but I do believe that respect for what others believe makes the world a better place to live in at the present time, and that the present is far more important than anything that may or may not follow real life.

I note we often see a debate between science and religion that plays out in the form of evolution vs. creationism. As with any debate, rather than deciding which side is right, I tend to believe that if you zoom in on them close enough, you can come to the conclusion that to a certain degree they are both "the truth" without having to pick sides. To me evolution and creationism have a lot in common. Sure God supposedly created the world in 7 days, but a day's length in itself is never defined, and God - as described in the bible - could have gone about it through evolution as a pretty effective means of getting us where we are. Those are my personal views - that science is in fact the most practical way of accumulating information and can explain more than any piece of religious writing, but that in itself does not mean that science explains everything. It describes how the car works and the machinery contained within pretty well, but the nature of the driver has many questions unanswered. What it does explain though, until I find something else to refute it, I am going along with. If science had a way of explaining our notion of "God" I am sure it would, but science hasn't gotten there - not yet anyways - other than possibly explaining it as a human instinct to believe in something like God.

And speaking of books - I am going to let you in on my book now - consider this my Bible so to speak. You can take as long as you want to read it - you can spend a lifetime reading it - or you can read it in about one second. You will find the contents of the book in the parentheses below - so here goes:

( )

and there it is. Infinity is contained within. Within those parentheses there may be nothing, or there may be room for every book ever written, including the Bible, Koran, whatever your choice of writing may be. In my definition, every book ever written can fall into those parentheses. Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" is just as much a book of God - as "The Bible" - to me anyways, because from my perspective, no one book has the answer. I am not going to buy into something just because a book says it - and if any one book claims to be the answer, by nature I am going to question it. That is not to say that book may have some answers, but as a thinking person, I am going to decide for myself that it is my answer. If one of the 10 Commandments gets changed to:

"Thou shall jump over the nearest cliff"

I am going to have some concerns there. A lot of the 10 Commandments need to be questioned from my point of view. "Honor thy mother and father" - well - I'm sorry - if they deserve to be honored, I've got no problem with it - but if they do something that (theoretically anyways) knocks them off the honor platform, I am not going to give them a free pass just because they are my parents and the book says I should. If my parents were to insult me, molest me, or assault me - should I still honor them anyways, or should I call the police and have them arrested? I could see this commandment getting people into trouble. I also don't buy the Bible's notion that only a man and a woman can be married - I have no problem with homosexuals having the same rights we do and some outdated book of over 2,000 years isn't going to sway me. A lot has changed in 2,000 years and looking back at a book from that age, some of it comes across as outdated and primitive. I am not planning on sacrificing any animals tonight for example, or sending up any "burnt offerings" to please the demanding dude up in the sky looking down on me.

Again - no disrespect to anyone who believes the Bible is 100% the answer - if that is what you want to believe - I can respect you as long as you can respect me, and even if you can't. I just have decided I like thinking for myself, rather than having a book spell it all out for me. A lot of my criticism with religion is that it is used as a crutch. God is asked to do a lot for us and then God may serve as an emotional toilet for us to dump all of our crap into. Of course all of this has been pointed out in an excellent and not too well known book that my buddy John gave me called God Laughs and Plays which he sent me after reading my "Dumb All Over" rant. If I am a sex addict for example, and I decide I am "living in sin" and that I will go from this extreme to only engaging in the act under the holy vows of marriage because this "pleases God" - it seems to me I am placing an awfully heavy burden upon God instead of taking the time to go into therapy or an AA group and understand for myself what has driven me to go these extremes to begin with. I would think swinging from one extreme to the other would have a pendulum effect, with one extreme waiting to follow the other.

The same thought method applies to life after death. I happen to side with believing that it does exist, but I can't know that. It is nice to have that assurance that we will live on - because a book tells us we do, and that as long as we follow the exact instructions of that book, that we will go to Heaven, not only have eternal life but that we will have the eternal life that allows us to be pretty happy on top of death. I don't know of anyone not going through a depression or terminal illness that really wants to die, and I would think most of us are pretty frightened of that. So organized religion plays on our fear by assuring us that as long as we send our cash or donation to their way of thinking, that we can be assured that we will live on. If I had 24 hours to die, I would imagine I would have a good chance of being converted to the religion of choice of the guy who came to see me in my prison cell if he was convincing enough. Are we going to choose to live our lives out of fear and the notion of appeasing that fear, or again - deciding for ourselves what is right? Death scares me too - but part of my faith is believing that whatever is going to happen is the way death, God/dess, or nature intends it - and that is about as much of an answer as I am ever going to have. It may not answer my questions, but it is the best I can do - kind of the way science is.

Personally - I believe in something powerful. I can't walk and drive through some of the most amazing landscaping and wonders of nature without feeling inspired and feeling a sense of wonder. My own book - the empty book - explains it about as well as anything can - because I find the more I try to explain it, the further away I get from it. Why for example do so many "bad" things happen in the world - well I don't know. I know I have been pretty lucky in comparison to those starving to death or suffering hell in a concentraction camp. Why it happens to some, and not to others - I can't explain. Nobody deserves those things - at least I believe that. I can't live my life believing that we are all chemicals and particles, the way some atheists can - because I do believe that we are spirit as well. An atheist is taking just as much of a leap of faith in saying there is no God, as a religious person who says there is - because on either side of the equation, you are making a decision based on faith that something this powerful does or does not exist. Science can't prove it either way, other than to say that no scientific tools have proven God does exist. I choose to believe that we have some element of spirt, or God/dess within us all - and that is far as I will go. I can't try to explain something that can't be explained, and I cannot prove it either. On faith I believe it is there and in believing that, my life is richer, but my faith cannot assure me exactly what will happen in my dying moments. I will probably be pretty scared - but maybe in the face of that fear some faith will kick in and I will be calm as well. I at least hope so. Buddhist writer of "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" states that our biggest test is how we face our death, and that we must spend our life preparing for that moment.

If I take a little from all religions I have come across and studied - the One God concept of Judeo-Christianity, the meditative and introspective aspect of Buddhism, the harm none concept of Wicca-Paganism, combined with the questioning and evidence gathering nature of science - somewhere in all of that is an answer. My writings here are just as much the writings of God as the Bible to me - in that I see us all as individuals cells of something God-like, and once it is written - whatever it is that is written - it becomes part of the infinite "Helping Friendly Book" to speak.

A whole other realm woften ties into religion - morals and ethics. I have my own beliefs what is right and wrong. I don't think that a lot of good comes out of taking a human life for example, but a cow might call me a big hypocrite for eating one of their dead brethren the other night - and who am I to say what is right to me is right for everyone? Maybe we do kill each other out of some biological instinct to limit our population. I am not planning on doing it any time soon, or at all - because I have decided it is not going to help me or others. Again - the 10 Commandments provide a lot of order for us, but what is right and wrong makes a lot more sense if we come up with it on our own, instead of believing in it because some book tells us to. Whatever you may agree or disagree with here is your decision, but I wouldn't tell you to believe it just because I wrote it. As the shirt says "God is too big to fit inside one religion". My own view on religion comes down to three words - think for yourself. Don't believe it because it is written, believe it because it makes sense to you. And of course...

Believe it if you need it if you don't just pass it on.

Laugh and laughing... 

Fall apart 

Check out my new umbrella 

Delilah was a woman... 

She was fine and fair 

Dixie Valley 

Dixie Valley 

From a rest stop on Highway 305 between Battle Mountain and Austin 

Just east of Carlin approaching the tunnel