Tree of Life

I awoke this morning and stared at the tree outside the window. The vision I had was how every event in our lives ends in one little twig. But where are we at any given moment? At the end of which twig? Well, that's how I feel anyway. I see the trunk as early youth and consciousness and then it splits where interests become different and each interest leads to another branch and then the people we meet are at the end of the twigs and each twig keeps growing unless we prune it and we can always direct our attention to that twig but the other twigs keep growing.
So it's my mission to identify every twig. To map out the whole tree. I think this is what the glass bead game is about. The book itself is about the person who learns about life, but the game itself is about the multiple directions life takes. Is it possible to map the whole tree? It would be more useful to map A tree in such a way that it replicates the tree-ness of everyone's life. Mapping the tree is a reminder that life leads to many branches.

Your Erroneous Zones

Raise your hand if you read this book in 1977. Anyone? Well, I found it in the library next to Dick Clark's treatise of adolescent life. Frankly, I'm blown away. With the info packed into these two books I feel empowered. Dick Clark tells me to plan ahead. But Wayne Dyer tells me to live in the moment. And, you better sit down, we can control our emotions. I know, it blew me away too. Why didn't anyone tell me this like twenty years ago when it would have done me some good. Basically, Dyer writes that I can feel any way I want to feel. So today I'm going to feel good. No more regretting the past and dreading the future. My landlady asked, "Where's the rent?" And I just sailed past her with my arms swinging. I was whistling a tune by Frank Sinatra.
"Hey, you!" she wheezed, "You owe a weeks worth of rent. You think we're running an orphanage?"

She mumbled something about changing the locks but I was out the door...and feeling light on my feet.
Then it was down to the local convenient store to eat some food.
"You gonna pay for that?"
I laughed and said of course not.
I haughtily added, "Do you think I'm made of money? I'm hungry. Now stop bothering me while I masticate."
The baffled clerk called the police but I was long gone by the time the mounted police rode up.
I feel good.
Never mind that I am wearing pin stripe pants and a Xanadu shirt that would make anyone feel good.


I control how I feel. I'm in control. So the new plan is to live my life in the present. No more journeys to the Erroneous Zones, AKA Land of the Self Defeating. No! I'm going to actualize myself. Get myself a watch fob and top hat and strut down Main Street Laconia wagging my junk.




Don't stop in those erroneous zones.

Facebook

I admit, posting on a blog is a little too self aware. What starts as an easy way to keep several people abreast of the trivial details of one's life soon becomes an exercise in metaphysics. Like, "I wonder how that will sound on my blog." Or, "I better not do that because someone on my blog will read it." Or, "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. I was thinking about how I will describe this on my blog."

It's the act of living through the blog and not apart from the blog. It's like, "That didn't happen because it's not on my blog." There is more than one incident that I consider in limbo because it has not yet been posted here and can "only" benefit me. I mean, what's the point?

Now, it would be fair to say old Oggy Bleacher has a bit too much time on his hands already and the perils of the online world don't affect people as much as they affect him. He might even be accused of inventing them to further his mental decline and to have ammunition to indict the imperfect world with. Point taken. But raise your hand if you haven't thought for a moment, "My parents never had this kind of virtual networking and they managed to survive."

So, to put it as timidly as possible, we are the first lizards who are growing wings. We are that fish who flops on the beach and realizes it can breathe. We are the ape who bangs another ape with a bone and then gets laid. Something had to change and in the case of our generation it is the way we communicate. Yes, it is true that we can go to the moon but can't cross the street to meet our neighbors. Why? Because we have other ways to know them. Communication is still power and the old lady across the street (what's her name?) knows almost nothing that google can't tell me. It's nostalgic to be neighborly. I don't know the neighbors down the hall at the halfway house. But when one of them lost the key to a lock they had no choice but knock on my door and ask me for some bolt cutters. Is there a way to google that? I tried it when I lost my toothbrush. Still looking...

So, Facebook is something. I admit it is something. I am more like the fish with weird proto-lungs who is still dubious about getting out of the water. I like it in the mud. But I'm curious about the sand. Is it true you don't die? If a squirrel can wear a scuba bell in Spongebob then I can post on Facebook. My protection is my alibi. Oggy Bleacher.

See, where Kerouac went wrong was using his own name. He was wounded by criticism because he took it personally. Well, what he wrote was very personal so it is kind of putting yourself in harm's way. He could not only be criticized about his style (rambling, verbose, plotless) but his content (aimless, hedonistic, self-absorbed) is a journal of his life. Dharma Bums is a book about his life. It almost has a plot but only because he was totally adrift and sought solace in solitude and friendship. So to examine Kerouac is to criticize the writer and the man. The same could be true for Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. Steinbeck, on the other hand, skirted the edges of fiction. His two memoirs, Sea of Cortez and Travels With Charley, are pure unaffected journalism. Wolfe and Kerouac were journalists who couldn't get out of their own way...so they turned it into an advantage by writing EVERY DETAIL.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah, Oggy Bleacher is not only the character in Memorabilia, but he can give me some distance between my self-absorbed, plotless, existence online, and my self-absorbed plotless existence offline. Well, it hasn't worked yet, but neither am I offended when my posts fail to amuse. I blame Oggy. He's immature. Arrested development. Blah blah.
So look for me on facebook. egotrip@gmail.com. be my friend. mass wolf awareness events are planned.

Dick Clark to the Rescue

One of the books I've been referring to for the next stage of my life.
"Dick Clark: Your Happiest Years."




The other book is "How to Marry a Millionaire"

Fear can hold you prisoner...hope can set you free

That's the tagline for Shawshank redemption. I'm not sure why it applies to the case of a guy wrongly imprisoned and then unlawfully kept in jail who then escapes. He had no hope of getting out but stubbornly kept going. And he wasn't afraid while he was in jail...he was just miserable. Somehow the pep talk that Red gives Andy about living or dying sort of ignores their situation. Did he mean that he should get busy living...by trying to escape? Or should he resign himself to the situation? It sounds to me like Stephen King heard that trite expression in a Maine coffee shop and decided it had to go somewhere. Anyway, The tagline could be on the crest for Riverbank Rooms. It would be a good neighbor to the dusty old christmas decorations and one broken sea shell decoration that says "Go to the beach" or the ragged doll with "Welcome Home" carved in a piece of wood.

Brooks is the old guy played by James Whitmore. He finally gets paroled and bags groceries and lives at a rooming house that reminds me in every way of Riverbank Rooms. He feels he has nothing to contribute to the world so he hangs himself after carving "Brooks Was here" on a beam.
Red, played by Morgan Freeman, also gets paroled and ends up in the same store bagging groceries and sleeps in the same room that Brooks lived in. He writes "So was Red" on the beam. He also feels that his life has no direction but instead of hanging himself he remembers that Andy has buried something for him to find.



I didn't get a job offer yet and I'm not crying any tears. That 6 am - 2:30 shift making medical forceps wearing a white gown in a soundless dust free cavern looked fairly nightmarish. The take home pay is terrible, just enough to let me live in Brooks's old room and eat fried chicken. The future is nonexistent. They expected a 12 week production boost that I will be used for. If I am needed after that then I will be retained and if not then I will be let go. Their loyalty to me is zero and I don't like working for people like that. It's bad for my health. If I want to be treated like a number then I can rob a bank and go to jail like Andy. Then I can escape through the sewer and be everyone's hero.

The real goal for the winter is to turn my homeless stageplay into a musical. Like Little Orphan Annie for adults. Instead of orphans we have pedophiles. How funny is that? I think there are precedents like Avenue Q. Anyone see that? So I've got to keep my eyes on the prize.



Also, there are some courses I'd like to take at the college. It's never too late to learn an industrial trade. That way I can go work at the golf tee manufacturer. Did you know all buttons used to be made in the lakes region? And electric train sets too. There is a ton of pre-china assembly plants up here. Webster Valve is over near Franklin, the home of Daniel Webster. There are others.

There is no internet access at Brook's room. Just a streetlight and a clock radio. I take my laptop to the library and use their wireless connection. I've been reading a book a day since I got here. Naturalist, Ship of Gold. Slaughterhouse Five. Fear of Flying, On Chesile Beach.



I've been clean and sober a week now. I was walking the tracks the other day to see where they went. They cross a river and lead out of town. That's about it. I was reminded of the movie Distant Thunder about a Nam Veteran, played by John Lithgow, living in the woods, picking ferns to sell. He walks the tracks to get in and out of the woods. It's also where the bush folk go to get hit by trains and end their misery. Sounds plausible. His son eventually saves him. It came out in 1988, I think I saw it at the Newington Mall. I didn't feel anything was wrong with living in the woods then and still don't. The villains all drove cars and sold things. They were nasty and petty bullies. The hero is basically a subsistence farmer with a bowie knife. But I remember a few kids at school laughing at the bearded character and saying, "Oggy! That's Oggy. A dirty hobo!"
I also slept in the forest on the weekends. It seemed organic. I didn't think other people were phony by getting drunk or smoking pot but I felt I would be phony if I joined them. The lesson Distant Thunder taught me was that if you are completely out of touch with your society then the only place for you is the woods. Also, once you leave, don't come back. Just stay out there. When you turn your back on society then society will turn its back on you. That's the rule. The movie did not, however, teach me how to gather ferns and sell them to local florists to make money. I tried that in Santa Cruz and was almost arrested.

It's not every day you get to walk the tracks in New England.

Laconia has a small downtown area. Not many tall buildings to speak of. There is a Lowe's and a Shaws on the way in from the east. Many nursing homes and old people playing bingo. There is a Family Dollar nearby. I have started a series like Lake Wobegon called "Where The Lake Meets The River." I want a kind of fake history of Riverbank Rooms. Like, what is that horrible stench in my room? The story behind that must be funny. The series be just about the rooms or about Laconia in general. I don't know. It might be a musical also.