I think people mistake liberty and freedom, and they mistake having a lot of money and possessions with, "Now I'm fucking free, I've got two cars and a house." But that actually limits your liberty. I remember Tom Lennon saying, "I don't want to own a house that's gonna force me to do things to keep it." Tom Lennon lives in this nice little house that he can more than afford, so he's not like in this constant cycle of debt just to make it look like he's successful.

My guide to old age

If you can avoid it, don't become 80. But the alternative, remember, is a good deal worse

Brian Aldiss
Wednesday November 1, 2006
The Guardian

Many famous men and women have been celebrating their 60th birthdays lately. Well, Virginia Ironside and Bel Mooney for a start. I want to put in a good word for being 80. True, there are disadvantages to being so old; the great thing is to count the advantages. When you are 80, there are all sorts of things you don't have to do. You do not have to go out to dine if you can't be bothered; a phone call in a whiney voice, a burst of sympathy at the other end, and you can stay in snugly and read Tolstoy.

Things that might seem like disadvantages when you are young - say 70 - can be transformed into pleasures. I tend to wake up at four or five in the morning. Instead of lying there whingeing about it, I shuffle downstairs and make myself a mug of tea. Sometimes I switch on the TV and discover a world that does not exist in daylight hours. The riches of Istanbul, a chap making friends with a crocodile, someone climbing the Himalayas in a wheelchair, the last orang-utangs in Sumatra, dining off durian fruit.

It's wonderful! They didn't have TV at four in the morning in my young days. In fact, they didn't have television at all.

The number of things they didn't have then and do have now is always cheering. I can remember when our town got its first traffic lights. And when bright-coloured plastic washing-up bowls came in. I remember when washing machines came in, but so do you, most probably. I remember when I bought my first Volvo estate. I am still driving it after 2m miles, although I don't go that far these days.

I see a lot of interesting consultants. Yesterday, I talked with a consultant who knew all about the Sittang Bridge disaster in Burma in 1942.

Talking of newer things, we now take for granted the computer - the computer that guides and governs most of our activities, pleasures and pains. How easily now I fly to a Greek island every so often, baggage intact. I have forgotten how difficult travel used to be. Just for the nobs, really. I remember Heathrow when it was Bushey. Terminal One was a Nissen hut.

A tip worth passing on is not to go out looking miserable even if you feel lousy and the ingrowing toenail is playing up. Look cheerful. Keep your back straight. And lo and behold, there's a good old friend having a coffee at the patisserie up the road. Not that it matters if you can't remember his name. He can't remember yours.

It's a good idea to get out and about. You need exercise. And it feels so pleasant when you arrive home again. There are many foodstuffs you can buy which never existed once upon a time. Mangoes, pitta bread, Madagascan prawns, goats' cheese, Australian Shiraz, Belgian chocolates, peppered mackerel fillets you don't have to cook, free range bananas, loganberry yogurt ... Why, I remember when yogurt came in, together with Green Shield stamps...

Many people feel old at 30. I still feel young in spirit. And there is a great abounding reason for that, though she has begged me not to mention her name. She is just the most empathic, intelligent, adorable woman I have had the luck to meet. My winter sunshine.

In case it might appear that I wallow in the bright side of being 80, I had better end on a cautionary note. Don't become 80 if you can avoid it; but remember the alternatives are even worse...

I require spasms of sleep during the day. I will be sitting in an armchair, perhaps watching television or perhaps reading - at present it is the TLS and John Heilpern's magnificent biography of John Osborne - and I fall asleep. At least, that is what I call it. But, like those unfortunates caught on the wrong side of the Sittang Bridge when it blew, I find myself on the wrong side of consciousness. I have entirely blanked out.

Perhaps I come back to myself after half an hour. I am astonished. And I reflect that a time may come when I blank out for good, there in the armchair, Heilpern's book unfinished on my knee. Be warned, darling!
This marvellous, unique lifetime will be over. But what an easy way to go ...

So I'm reading this collection of things that people have overhead. Funny silly stuff that was heard out of context or just nuts. Here's an example:

Mother, taking her daughter by the hand:"Hurry, we'll have to pick up Willem."Daughter: "Willem?"Mother: "Yeah, Willem. You know. Your little brother."

So I read this one just now:

"HEY!!!! I got a meteorite from Ruby"

It was listed without explanation and reads as just crazy.

Except that I knew within a second exactly what that person what talking about and how it all makes sense. I even know who Ruby is. And I had a meteorite.

Weird.

While vacationing in Puerto Rico 12 yrs ago, our rental vehicle had a blow - out on our way back to our hotel. It was around 2:30 in the morning on a pitch black two lane road. A pick-up truck with 3 men stopped to see if we needed assistance. My husband was trying to lower the spare from the underside of the vehicle and said no. They started getting out of the truck anyway when my husband said that assistance was on it's way already. One of the men cane around to the back of our vehicle and shined his flashlight on my husband under the back bumper and I became petrified when the light shined on my husbands trouser hem and stopped, I knew the guy had realized what he saw and started laughing and calling his friends. My husbands pant leg hem was half way up his calf and the light from the flashlight was glissening off his nylons, (my husband is a crossdresser in private but a wonderful, heterosexual and strong man). When Don got out from under the car he was immediately hit in the back of the neck and knocked out cold. Within minutes Don and I were on opposite sides of the vehicle with our heads inside the car with the windows rolled tight to our necks. We were both repeatedly raped by these three drunken men. The sight of my husband bent over wearing panties, garter and hose being animalistically raped and the tears and sweat rushing down his face and the look on his face was too much to bear. I tried to make my movements as pleasurable as possible to hopefully exhaust their stamina but I was petrified. They were slapping our bottoms and screaming obscenities as they continued to pound us. I was then analy raped like my husband and to add to the horror they started loudly comparing how our bodies responded to the rape, bragging how their prowess made even my husband ejaculate in the panties he was wearing. It was close to daybreak before they left us. Fortunately we were able to free ourselves, put our clothes on and drive to the beach and clean ourselves up before returning to the hotel. We never reported this to the authorities for the obvious reasons. Although I have completely recovered physically and mentally, my husband and father of our 4 children has never been the same. I can see the humiliation in his eyes. No matter how I try to comfort him and reassure him that he is a man, my man, and that what happened was a normal physical reaction to what was happening to his body, he feels like it was all his fault for being a crossdresser.

Today I get my wisdom teeth removed. The good news is that I only have two wisdom teeth on the bottom. My dental surgen said to thank my parents as it's genetic. Thanks Mom and Dad for the lack of wisdom.

They are going to put me out completely via IV for the event. I have to warn them that I've woken up during surgery more than once and I woke up swinging. They are going to strap me into the chair.

Then it's a couple of sick days at home (which count as holidays at the bank, cheap bastards). I'm loaded up on popsicles and senior citizen liquid meal supplements.

I'm more scared about this than I was about getting a vasectomy.

Icck. Icck. Icck.

So between my mom who spent the time with me doing that, both my parents said if you act up we can make another one just like you. We're not all that attached to you. So whatever, go act like an idiot and then we'll just beat the crap out of you - although they never did. It was more of a threat than anything else.

So, on a Thursday I drive into Houston at an unusually early time for yours truly to board a plane bound for Columbus, Ohio and the Ohio State campus. They put me up in the downtown Hilton - Merv owns a big share in the company, apparently - and I must say, it was very cool. I've never been on a plane by myself, or in a hotel room by myself, or in general completely alone in another city. When I got in at the airport, I had to hail a taxi. Apparently, this practice is not like it is in the movies - no whistling or shouting or waving. There's a nice cab stand and you get in the line and the man at the desk loads your bags and you're on the go. How about that?

"yo no creo en la edad"

- pablo neruda

Translation = I do not believe in the age.

ODA TO THE AGE
I do not believe in the age.
All the old ones they takein the eyes a boy, and the children sometimes they observe to uslike old deep.
We will measure the life by meters or kilometers or months? As much since you are born? Whateveryou must walk until like allinstead of walking it superficially let us rest, underneath the Earth?
To the man, the woman that they completed actions, kindness, force,rage, love, tenderness, to that truely alivethey bloomedand in its nature they matured, we do not approach the measurementof the time that perhaps it is another thing, a mantle mineral, a bird planetary, a flower, another thing perhaps, but not a measurement.
Time, metal or bird, flower of length pecíolo, extiéndetealong of the men, florécelosand lávalos withwateropenedor with hidden sun. I proclaim to you wayand it does not mortise, scalepure with steps of air, I brought sincerely renewed by longitudinal springs.
Now, time, I coil to you, I deposit to you in mywild box and I am going away to fish with your long thread the fish of the aurora!

What's brown and sticky?

A stick!

What's a foot long and slippery?

Slippers!

Hee hee.

Waaaaahaaaaaahaaaaaaa. Gasp. Choke. Waaaaaaahuhhuhhuh. Sniffle. Ha. Hee. ha. ha

His work would not have been weakened by a greater commitment toward concision.

http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2002/07/23/darger/index.html

concision
(Gr. katatome; i.e., "mutilation"), a term used by Paul contemptuously of thosewho were zealots for circumcision (Phil. 3:2). Instead of the warning, "Bewareof the circumcision" (peritome) i.e., of the party who pressed on Gentileconverts the necessity of still observing that ordinance, he says, "Beware ofthe concision;" as much as to say, "This circumcision which they vaunt of is inChrist only as the gashings and mutilations of idolatrous heathen."

If you head east out of Melville past Donny's place on the road to the Agripark and then keep going east for a while and then turn left you end up at "A Drinking Place".

Such places are established areas out of town just off of some gravel road that end up being good places to hang out in your car and drink.

The first time I was at this particular place was with Dickey and Al. In Al's super big boat of a car. I don't know what the car was but it was purple and had power windows and. And it was a massive monster car. We drank supersize cans of "Extra Old Stock" and I ran around drunkenly in the dark trying to get fireflies to find each other. I had never seen a firefly before. They flash to attract mates and I was trying to help out and play matchmaker. I was really drunk. Those supersize cans have tried to kill me more than once. But that's another story.

Another time at this drinking place was with Mark and Mike and bunch of their friends. I hid in the back seat of Mark's car while they blasted "You and Me Go Fishin in the Dark" and screamed the lyrics at me. Bastards.

And the final recollection of this wonderful space is the time my first girlfriend and I went out there for some summer lovin in the sun. After the "act" I threw the condom into the bush. Well....I meant to throw it. Instead I ended up slamming my fist into her eye. The fist holding the recently used condom, ick. I didn't see her behind me when I swung my arm back to throw. She cried the whole way home.

Good times.

Here’s your inside-baseball trivia about having TV interviewers in your home: they will inevitably want to unplug your fridge, to get better sound. Then they will put their car keys in your fridge, so they don’t forget to turn it back on.

"I bought you apples."

She breezed in from the garage where we keep our wheezing second refridgerator packed with beer, milk, fruit, sourdough starter and the occasional tub of slow-rising dough. Her skin radiated sun and clean sweat and a field of heat from her five-mile walk, tan arms against a neon-green tank top, tight in all the right places.

"What?"

I was clueless, as usual -- at the computer trying to figure out why my pages don't validate.

"The apples in the outside fridge. I bought them for you. The Fujis. Have you had any yet?"

"Oh yes. Had two last week. Yummy. Fujis. Thanks."

And that was that.

Until today, a few days later, during my lunch hour, escaping under a cluster of live oaks. As I take my third bite of one of these apples, the juice spraying and dripping down my chin, it hits me: this is what a life together is like.

She was at the store. She saw apples. She thought of me. She bought them.

I bought them for you.

I see then that perhaps this is what well-aged love becomes. Gone are the days of extravagant gifts, high-impact vacations, passionate weekends. Three children, a mother-in-law and multiple jobs have inked their way in to once-nonexistant planners. We communicate primarily through emails and sticky-notes.

We find the time in the granular moments of opportunity presented to us. For now, these are the only ones we have.

I rub her feet. She calls me from work to get me up in time to run before work. I have dinner ready and her pajamas out for her after she's worked a gnarly double. Sex is as infrequent yet dazzling as meteor showers. And of course, she buys me apples.

She will deny this, of course.

"I only got them because they were cheap."

"Well, then you got a bargain."

"I know."

Whether she means the apples or me, she'll never tell, but either way I win.

I put on Fishscale one day and everyone popped their heads above their cubicle dividers like prairie dogs, staring at me like I'd grown two extra heads that were tongue-kissing each other

I hate moving. I've said more than once that I lived in the same apartment for almost 10 years just because of how much I hate moving. That and it was an OK place and I didn't really really have to move.

But here I am again. We are selling the one bedroom condo and cashing in on the real estate prices before it crashes completely. So tomorrow morning we are renting a van and carting all the stuff out of the storage space and other crap out of the apartment and out to the house. At least there is room at the house. By the time we actually move to the house it will be full.

And our course the entire bathroom needs to be redone. Broken pipe in the ceiling means all the pipes are to be replaced. And all the tile around the tub is going to be ripped out by yours truly today and we have to rebuild. Ugg.

The new job at the Bank is a little boring and no real challenge at all. The team isn't quite at the level I'm used to working. I guess I can slow down to this. I am noticing that I've the brain and power bandwidth for other things. I'm starting to write new music, I'm blogging again and I'm recording various ideas for a new business. We'll see how this business thing works out.

I guess it's been a couple of years. Thanks for waiting for me little bloggy.

Today is also my wedding anniversary. And the bathroom ceiling is waterlogged and ripped out.

And I have a new job at the bank. And we are gonna sell that ceiling and everything wrapped around it. So long to the one bedroom leaky leaky condo. Reading back in this blog reminded me that things didn't start well with that place. It treated us well but it's time to cash in and move on.

I'm seriously thinking about starting my own business.

Three years of marriage. Still really dam good, I love my wife. And we've got the house now too. And I ain't gonna be making any babies. Although I think they are growing back?

Hm.......

As Jandek told the Texas Monthly reporter who asked him whether he wanted people to "get" what he was doing, "There's nothing to get."

Ummmm....yup. Work, house, hottub, school, work, house, hottub. Busy. Good. Yup, good.

Give me head or the monkey gets spanked.

...which is about as redundant as an 'orange orange