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...on Willow since he was a pup.

He was resistant at first,  hesitant and a bit shy about everything that he had heard on the streets... but I knew it would only be a matter of time...

Temptation finally stirred,  he was always a bit curious for one so young.

I could tell by this time that all he needed was a taste and he'd be hooked for sure.

Now Willow is a full fledged addict.  He can't give it up to save himself, he won't stop and I won't stop giving it to him,  because I'm his Pusherman,  the man your momma warned you about!

Stay off of the streets kids,  or THIS could happen to YOU!

                                                  GUILTY!

                               WANTED 

The Diary of A Grass Eater:  

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Today's theme is:   The Blase';  fighting nonchalance and challenging the self with enforced time and notepads.

I am sorry.  Don't think I have totally abandoned you.  Yes,  I have been seeing Facebook more often and yes, some of the people from here have actually migrated over there and enmeshed themselves with my old school friends, family; near and distant and unmet, as well the professional world of colleague...  

It has occupied my time.   I have also been off, having another spread of 3 weeks without working,  always having planned for emergencies and unneeded as scheduled but have found myself occupied with reducing the swollen nerve coming from the vertebrae in my neck, hopefully, not encroached upon yet by the ever advancing ossification... 

I have been doing and going to neurologist,  MRI, physical therapy... got my own TENS machine and that and exercise helps the most, as well as rest and underuse.

I have seen movies galore.  I saw Black Swan finally and was not impressed with any of it...

I haven't seen much else but in here I did watch "Maybe I'll Come Home In The Spring"  with Sally Field, which had a profound impression on me as a young tween when it was aired on network television.... she wanted to erase her "good girl" image...

Then I had to watch "Go Ask Alice"... the same type of deal... druggier... earlier...  of course I topped this off, and this was all over one weekend,  with a nice Joan Crawford   in "The Autumn Leaves",  a bittersweet tale of unmet human needs, weakness and mental illness through the eyes of an era of repression, strict social mores and little information on mental illness and the neurochemical processes which give us our experiences of the environment and make up an individual's reality.

I also saw a great sordid little gem called "New York After Midnight",  or "Manhattan After Midnight"  from 1977, a spoken English, French made film about an insane French woman... turned out to be a very early covert homosexual disco slasher with tons a great footage of Disco era Manhattan and clubs and Christopher street..

This was the weekend of the insane and pitiful women.

Along with this I bought a bunch of books and have been reading a ton...

Currently I am totally enthralled with "The Girl in Hitchcock's Shower"  by Robert Graysmith... I bought some other stuff too,   "Story of the Eye" an literary sex novel from the 20's, German I think, or French... a couple of serial killer books, "In Their Own Words"...  I think it is called... and I bought  "If I Did It"  by ' The Goldman Family".... OJ.s book with their forward and which he was sued out of the rights to. 

If you are at all INTO MOVIE EDITING,  you will love the "Hitchcock" book as it goes far deeper into details of the filming of that one scene, his life,  the obscenity laws and censorship of the era and a total ton of Hollywood connections of the early movie world.

Anyhow... whatever..   "The Bone Thief" by Jefferson Bass,  the "Body Farm" novel team of criminal pathologists who use actual decomposing bodies to reconstruct and solve crime is coming out in paperback soon... I am following this series,  it is kind of schlocky.. not the best writing although interesting.   I like a bit of morbid science....

Anyway.... I missed the King Tut exhibit... I wanted to see it. I want to go see "Sanctum" or Inner Sanctum in 3D, that underwater movie,  don't ask me why.  I want to go to the Jewish Museum and see the Houdini museum... I am cleaning my apartment and have really done a TON of stuff too...  right now I am washing the tops of my glass topped desk in the kitchen sink... it's such a nice day...   the other day I saw an eye Dr. and too 93 photographs as I walked around to and from and had a nice lunch....  I'm kind of bored and leisurely...  

There is another movie I wanted to see but I can't think of it....  YouTube has a TON of old B-movies available to see and I can hook up thru HDMI to play on the big flat screen...

You can actually see just about any movie on the internet if you know how.  I have seen several first run films being broadcast from China or other countries... but I haven't tried it in a while...  It is nice go to the theater... except for the fear of bedbugs...  I'll still go,  I did go...

I had a surreal NYC moment seeing Black Swan,  I saw it under Lincoln Center and the movie actually takes place at Lincoln center so I was actually watching scenes in a famous film that were recorded just yard from my seat and above the surface.   That happens often living here.... It's neat.

Right now I am avoiding paperwork,  calling the accountant, even thinking about my taxes... paying bills just because I'm lazy... going out and have not showered at all...   I told myself I would be productive today and I have accomplished several things already. 

I thought I would just blog a bit.    I love the snow and cold weather,  when I don't have to go out that is... if I don't want to... I haven't been out at night in the cold for a while... I am not good at that...   I need to update the virus software in my net book ,  which means finding another wireless signal in here because I disabled it before because I wasn't sure if it was accessible to someone to tap into ...   I didn't need to deal with wireless much...

I may be a bit bored, procrastinating.... Have been uploading a TON of photos , scanning the actual photographs ,I have literally thousands over the years... and uploading to Facebook to share with family and friends...  I have been taking photographs sine I was 10 years old and I my mother was taking photographs before me...  I got her old camera when she got the new one in the 70's...

Anyway... I better go finish lest I regret wasting time after the fact... I hate that....   I make a list of little chores,  give myself the time allotted for each one... 10 minutes to do the dishes,  15 minutes to go through the stack of mail...  this way I have worked my way through stuff all morning and I told myself I would vacuum and I would love to take care of the plants but I don't know if I'll have time for that...  I set a timer to keep me focused and on task.  I sometimes wonder if I was ADHD or any of that crap but I was never tested nor diagnosed and seemed to have dealt with language and stuff in ways that have successfully worked around it if so... I just have a short attention span and get distracted easily...

What are you doing?

The pretty female Betta, she was rosy, pink.   I called her "Dinofish" because she was nearly prehistoric... how long has she lived here,  I don't remember...

Since leaving CA and my hobby,  my 50 gal salt water fish tank... and moving back east,  I have always had at least one fish.

Generally without the trouble of tank and filter and anything electric, basically a bowl with a fish.

Unlike goldfish,  which die often, Bettas are used to living in extreme conditions in their native environment... the Bettas people often buy here may be bred domestically now although I have no idea... but they are plentiful for a reason.. 

A pet store employee wants you to buy things.   Bettas don't need things and I have often chosen a female Betta because I don't need the fancy "Siamese Fighting Fish" label, a fish is a fish..

Also, there is a certain fish called a "Paradise Fish" which will be kept easily in a jar or bowl, or large vintage ball shaped water jug!

Anyhow... I knew she was "dying" for a while, as they do... maybe 3 to 4 years?  She was dead the following day.   This was before the holiday so there is a Christmas tour too...

In the video I seem to be feeding her EXCESSIVELY!!  I AM because I am aware she is DYING!  These fish need to be fed sparingly! ...but on a regular basis..

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Years later,  after I was an adult, Mom and I were talking.   She was telling me that at one point Daddy asked her why I was so distant,  it seemed I tended to leave a room when he came in,  or did not visit him in his room a lot when he was sick.... or would go off to my room and play by myself often...

Avoider and Avoidant  and Bonder are not words, apparently, however, they are descriptive words here.

She told me she explained to him that it was my way of "dealing with" his illness.  Dealing with his inevitable death.

What she was telling him was very true.  She was explaining avoidance as a psychological defense mechanism.  In order to protect the self from emotional or mental pain (and obviously with physical pain, you would think) one, especially a child, would possibly use avoidance to do exactly that, avoid a situation where these emotions / feelings / thoughts... emerge.

When I look I back,  I see this.   I thought I sensed "death"....  I think this may have happened with my mother too.  I actually spoke with her before she passed away about visiting the family for Thanksgiving the year she died.  It ended up with me deciding I was not going to go back and visit.

As it turns out,  I ended being there any way for Thanksgiving with the family,  just shortly after Mom's funeral...

As it happened,  I am terrified of flying.  Also,  the more frail she got,  I was afraid of her getting exited or upset,  or myself getting angry and possibly starting an argument, and then the leaving, it was always so hard on both of us but really hard on her,  she never fully let go of her children or allowed them to become independent adults....

I told her I wouldn't want her to get all stressed and try to cook a huge dinner for everyone and she was insisting that she wanted to...

she wasn't angry,  she just said that if I came home she was going to cook the huge dinner for everyone just like she used to and I had said,  well, I don't think you should do that and no one would expect you to so this decided I would not go,  and she seemed to be with well, fine then... 

...but if I did she was going to cook.. it was a very bizarre conversation... she wouldn't relent.... she was very calm about it, I wasn't sure how to take her, was she serious or was she "teasing"?? 

I thought it in both our best interests for me not to go.  I thought summer is the best time to visit.
I especially do not travel well on these travel holidays..

on some level I think she may have actually known she would not live...  of course she was always worried, even before anything was wrong... worried about everything at all times...

She had always complained she couldn't do what she used to,  and I would feel guilty for making her feel like she had to "emulate" the "mother" archetype and do everything,  yet she wanted badly to act that role... she couldn't have dealt with the stress... obviously that would have been a horrible horrible tragedy if I had come home and she had died during that time...

Conversely, I wonder if I had made plans to come,  if she would have lived to Thanksgiving and I would have seen her one more time,  she wouldn't have died expecting me to come for a visit...

I have these horrible thoughts forever... 

I avoid people who complain constantly about the same things... in general... It becomes a broken record...

A friend I avoided so much so that it angered him and we are no longer friends,  once told me,  and he often had stinging,  although good advice, that I  invited criticism by complaining...

It makes a lot of sense...  My tactic is to work through and move beyond things... let go of things that "caused" my problem, and I did it with professional help.  I really feel cheated when other people do not seek professional help, yet have the same complaints...

Over the years,  this became a good way for a loner and depressed person with social anxiety to build friendships...   over the years I realized how counterproductive it can be... to be the "good listener"..... 

It all started in an "Interpersonal Communication" class,  I was on a city bus in Sacramento and I noticed this woman was telling me her deepest secrets, and I thought of my circle of friends, how we talked and shared our collective woes, but I would listen... 

I would listen to my mother since childhood... she would complain and pine about the children who did not help themselves, who needed her so badly , yet lament how much it was taking a toll on her... all of my life I tried to say... to talk some sense... to just let "those people" go...

Every individual needs to move on in order to progress.

Uncut the tie with the people who do not improve their life, they both grow needy for you and you seem to be feeding off of this horrible dependence...

the only way to help someone who will not help themselves is to not help them... even if you are the mother...

I am not a mother so I will never know this conflict...

I avoid people who intentionally have destructive behavior and do not take care of themselves.

I avoid people who for some reason expect me to be a sounding board for all of their stresses or a therapist,  and then not able to respond...  just to listen.... I do not want to be a listener...  I don't mind being an adviser... but why did I allow myself to be seen as some type of listener or bonder for things I cannot share in,  or things I have left behind, or spent time and energy to move beyond?  

I fell into this role in life,  the listener... the patient understander..... it is not a healthy role and it has taught me another role,  the avoider...  I do notice that I have always avoided people who cause me to feel discomfort on any level.. and I am non-confrontational, so the easiest thing to do is to avoid being "The Vessel"..

I do this for a living as I am skilled at becoming  "The Vessel",  however,  in my personal life, and the older I get, I really notice how much I cannot be a vessel for people who do not seek out help,  personal enlightenment or improvement of personal problems,  just like I have worked so hard to do...  It just isn't fair...

I notice things about myself,  I noticed a wave of this years ago with a specific people, early on with family members,  first the perpetrators of the unacceptable behavior, and then the people who would talk about the unacceptable behavior as if they were the victim of it,  which to me means the person should draw the line and disconnect from the person who causes pain,   as I would always do,  rather than wallow in the sorrow of both...

Anyhow... Self preservation is a behavior that generally goes unnoticed.  I notice avoidant behavior in myself and my mother pointed it out to me at an early age.   Years of work, being guided on self analysis and self awareness was also a big help... I find moving forward is progress.... keeping one foot in the mud just doesn't work for me...
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.What type of defense mechanism do YOU use to protect yourself from "emotional" stress or pain???
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This may actually mark my 20th Winter in Manhattan!   At least the 19th and it is the snowiest one yet.  So snowy in fact that I had a snow day and I work for a city agency that is famous for NEVER CLOSING! 

What did I do?

I put on my snow boots and was at the East River Walk taking photos before 7 AM~!  Woo Hoo.. I took a LOT of photos and they are going up on Flickr NOW and can be seen by clicking on the Flickr icon on the lower right in the box at right. 

My shoulder is bothering me because I slipped yesterday and I am not going to crop nor edit these photos, there are too many.

My battery died before I even reached Gracie Mansion,  it was beautiful... but for the better as I was soaked to my hips from trudging through the snow and I was SO HUNGRY I ate TWO SAUSAGE McMUFFINS with Egg.

Then I noticed THAT was 1800 CALORIES ALONE!  SHIT!

I can't imagine how those pioneers did it!  I mean,  like, DONNER PARTY!  I worked up an appetite!

I needed snow shoes! 

The river was beautiful and I caught the very early sunrise.

anyway...

I'm gonna go shower and enjoy my snow day... kind of bored in here... I'll watch a movie or something...
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I have developed the habit of going there first now.  I need to come here first to blog as my early morning ritual for several reasons.

The most important reason is that everybody on Facebook knows me!  Everyone here is a total stranger if anybody happens to look and very very few people in my real life know that I have this blog to begin with,  so I am basically anonomyous here and can insult people freely without knowing that I have insulted someone I know and love.

I don't mind insulting people, it is just that I don't want to insult people I know and love.

...The Patti Smith book "Just Kids" was absolutlly wonderful!  I highly recommend it for all, even if you don't like Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, it is the tale of artists building one another in late 60's, early 70's Manhattan and is a wonderful cultural historical nugget.  I really really enjoyed it.

Now I am reading "Hiroshima" by John Hershey,  the actually eye witness account of the after effects of the first atomic bomb dropped on a human population.  It is the description of 6 people and their families, who were lucky enough to be in a favorable position to have lived through it.

We won't call them "Survivors",  as that may be an affront to the dead.  We'll call them "Bomb Affected Persons".

...also a very enlightening example of Japanese culture.

It isn't about the ethics or morals or rights or wrongs about the war, it is an eyewitness description of the struggles to survive and the slow realization of what this type of weapon does.

It's gonna rain and snow and I'm hoping the Mayor Bloomberg will tell everyone to go home early...

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...and quit spewing on Facebook.  I don't know why.  I get up in the morning, I look at the news,  I start putting the religion and political stuff on my Facebook page and insulting everybody who supports whatever I'm against.

I gotta stop this.... I also gotta stop drinking so much coffee.  It actually makes me high and I have grown to like the experience...

I have followed Patti Smith and been a fan of her since the mid 70's.  I actually have hand written letters from her sister Kimberly and her Mother.  I have signed books and very very early poetry pamphlets and limited prints of some of her spoken lyric poetry and publications.

She was always an oddity to most of society.   I saw in her the artist she was and am delighted to be reading her crowning achievement, or one of them,  her New York Times Best Selling,  National Book Award Winning Memoir,
Just Kids  which recounts her arrival in NYC in 1967 and meeting Robert Mapplethorpe by chance and their early years together.

It is both beautiful and a very intimate and enlightened peek into a corner of history that would never have been known.

It is both a wonderful memoir, beautifully written in artistic prose and also a historical document recounting the very beginnings of both artists.

I highly recommend it.   I am totally blown away by the innocence of the two artist "kids" blooming in the Chelsea Hotel.    A must read no matter if you like her music or not.  Not all of the Mapplethorpe photographs are sexual in nature, but each one proves genius.    Patti's words flow beautifully bringing to light the dark and hidden corners of the late 1960's  New York art world.

I've always felt a little bit psychic.  It runs in the family.

There are several stories in the family history about supernatural events.  People knowing things,  dreams,  contact with the dead,  spirits,  futures foretold...  I always had an "invisible friend" as a child, that I still remember interacting with,  and have seen many things and experienced several situations which I cannot rationally explain,  other than as "tricks of the eye, or the mind" or even "symptoms".

However,  being fully functional, independent and apparently somewhat able to remain successful in life,  even with the emotional and mental "uncomfortable disturbances" I have dealt with in life,  I am very very reluctant to believe that  I am "mentally ill"....  at least not when on the proper medication..

Of course that is the first thing they say about the mentally ill, that they don't know it and deny it,  so it helps that I keep an open mind.

Anyhow,  listening to an "inner voice" has been a life long practice.  I thought, and still think, that most other people do it too,  but maybe you don't really separate it from your "surface" or notice it...  But I have been doing that since forever. 

In early morning waking,  I have seen the presence and heard my dead father speak to me.   He told me something important I needed to hear. 

I was practicing astral projection before I was even in my teens and began reading Tarot cards at an early age.  I easily understood how the archetypes on the card become a simple framework on which to overlay and structure my mental impressions.   People began to ask me to read and bring my cards to parties... I stopped.   I did not like that attention from others.   I was born a natural interpreter of symbolism and that is what I happened to develop into a career, although in the literal and practical world of visual linguistics.

Anyhow... rarely has the inner voice been anyone I thought was other than my "myself"...  that is until now.  I have had a few experiences and came to a realization over the holiday break that often,  and with practice it seems to be strengthening,  that inner voice talking to me and giving me advice is Mother.

The very first time Mother spoke directly to me was after I returned to New York over three weeks after her death in 2006,  I believe.   I lost a year then and often think she has been dead longer or shorter than she has.

I was stiff with grief on my first day to return to work.  I was in the sock drawer.   Mother had a portrait that hung in the house since before I was born. 

My name was on the back of the picture when she died so here it is,  of course as a tiny child I had asked her outright  "Mommy, can I have that picture when you die?"  which I believe made an impression on her because she laughed and caught herself almost saying "I'm not going to die.... the we had the talk I guess..."... an aunt and grandmother had died early on so I was familiar...

Anyhow this picture is on my wall over a small shrine of items of memory and a candle I sometimes burn for her and I was in the sock drawer digging for socks and starting to cry... and had just jumped the side of the fence that said "I need one more day" and was certain a choked up plea to the boss would result in a warm "as much time as you need"  when my mother clearly and plainly said;  "Son, get dressed and go to work. Don't cry for me now,  you need get ready and go!",  which I promptly did, big smile on my face.

I was startled for a second,   I froze in place, uncertain if the voice had come from inside or from the out and looking up at the photo my heart warmed and a warm rush spread over my whole body.   I smiled.  I said, in my head, I thought,  "Mom, can I hear you?" 

 "Yes. I am here.  I can always be with you.  I have other things to do, so I won't always be with you, but I am here..."

It was what it finally took for me to believe and to understand that people are with us forever and that what I have experienced in my lifetime,  also with what I have learned about quantum physics and Multiverses,  that "the afterlife",  "spiritualism",  whatever you want to call it...   my idea is that it is infinitesimal small,  sub-atomic...  but anyhow...  it is as much a reality as the words you read and the keyboard I type them on.

The most recent convincing experience,  the one that REALLY did it,  was during the holiday...  I thought I was getting sick and had a low grade fever and cold and cough.  

I wanted a specific guided visualization on an audio CD that talks me to a special place and helps me heal my body, mind and soul.  A pleasant woman's voice guides me somewhere,  usually a tiny cabin,  on an island that does not appear on maps, in the crater at the top of the volcano,  it is overgrown with vegetation and there are vegetables and animals there left by the previous castaways and everything is all set for me.

...but anyhow I could not find the CD.   This is really superficial but it was important...  I opened the drawer before the picture of mother where several of the CDs used most often have been dumped without their cases.  I could not find the specific one.   I picked up a boxed CD,  which I could not see inside of,  as I was looking ,  the box to ANOTHER CD,  clearly marked and plainly NOT the CD I searched so and ABSENTLY MINDEDLY popped it open and there was the missing CD. 

Not so much of a big deal until the very next realization,  that this CAME UP FROM INSIDE ME,  an action I DID NOT WILL consciously,  to pop this box open.  THIS was the INNER VOICE, and with practice I could hear it.  THEN, it was MOTHER.  She said  "Yes, you can talk to spirits, you always could."

I realize that often I have heard Daddy and thought he was near but not this clearly and not this specific.  Mother told me that, again,  she had other things to keep her busy but she was there when I needed her.  This was all in my head of course, an inner dialogue... She was neither happy nor sad,  very blunt and frank and honest,  as she was in life... humorous though much smarter than I ever gave her credit for, although I did consider her highly intelligent.

I realized at that moment that I could speak with her and then in a flash I saw a future of channeling Mother, taking her on the road and making a show like one of those television psychics or writing a book , or reading Tarot professionally...

She said, nearly aloud "Yes, but since when did you ever listen to a word I said?"  and we both burst out laughing.  I laughed out loud in my apartment,  she in Heaven, and that was it,   I knew it really was her.
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