Thoughts that burst out into the open when I least expect it, let loose in all their resplendent, if somewhat irreverent, glory. Some are actually worth going back to.
Father’s Day.
It’s also Ray Davies’ birthday, true grounds for worldwide celebration, but …
it’s Father’s Day!!!
Was just sitting outside with Gracie, got to thinking about the three most important lessons I tried to teach our kids. The ones I’d love the opportunity to pass on to our grandson:
1) Don’t ever – and I do mean EVER – tell someone they shouldn’t feel the way they do. Never ever. There are many times people don’t even understand themselves why they feel the way they do, and there is no way you know how they feel better than they do.
And it they do have a barely tenable grasp on why they feel the way they do, and it doesn’t make sense to you? I don’t give a shit, ’cause that means less of a shit than the one I don’t give. It doesn’t have to make sense to you. You’re not that important in the scheme of things. You actually don’t matter. Really. You don’t.
If you want to help them try to understand why they feel that way, God bless you, because that might be one of the reasons He put you in their lives to begin with.
If all you want to do is tear them down for feeling that way, shut your damned pie hole and consider the fact that you really, really don’t have all the answers for yourself, much less anyone else.
2) Whoever talks the loudest and the longest and the last doesn’t always “win”. More often than not, they’re not even in the running.
Someone’s silence in response to such a buffoon usually doesn’t mean concession, it means they’re just fed up with trying to actually converse (or maybe even compare opinions) with someone who is obsessed with being “right” even when there’s no possible “wrong” answer to the question at hand …
meaning to say –
opinions are never wrong. They’re never right. They are neither irrefutable facts nor brazen and outright bullshit, and very often there are really no verifiable facts that can support those opinions or render them useless.
These days you can just mention in passing that you like the taste of Coke over the taste of Pepsi, and I guaran-damn-tee you more people than you might think will tell you that you’re wrong.
There are some people out there that are obsessed with being right or winning the “argument” when it’s just not possible. Even when there isn’t any argument.
And that is when they start talking the loudest and the longest and will keep going long after they’ve run out of words or coherent thoughts on the subject.
The infamous, and thoroughly over-rated, “last word”.
And finally, Number Three.
And this might be the most important out of the bunch.
Write it down for future reference. Cross-stitch a sampler, frame it, put it on the living room wall next to the big screen:
3) Never stop laughing at farts.
When the urge hits you to go out and play in the mud, then go outside and play in the mud. Middle of summer? The ground is the consistency of concrete? Break out the hose and play in the mud.
Eat desert before you even touch your veggies.
And never, ever, EVER stop laughing at farts.
It revives the childlike enthusiasm that too many of us buried under the shroud of adulthood way too early in life …
AND it’s the Great Human Equalizer.
You’re sitting in your fourth grade class, taking a math test, you can hear a pin drop in the classroom all the way down the hall, and someone tosses out a cheeseburger?
Ain’t gonna be a single person in the room who isn’t fighting back a chortle or chuckle or two.
The saintly, hallowed chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States of ‘merka. Nine semi-continent geezers in robes deciding the fate of Roe v. Wade or Obamacare or Citizens United or the Satanic onslaught unleashed upon the moral fabric of fine upstanding citizens by a bunch of faggots wanting to get married.
A little gastric melody floats gently – yea, even subtly – into the open air outside of one of those robes? Ruth Bader Ginsburg might burst a blood vessel trying to stifle a giggle. John Roberts (who seems to harbor a certain proclivity for blowing it out his ass) might actually concur and smirk at the very least.
Scalia would blame Obama.
Farts are the one parcel of common ground upon which all mortals have trodden. They neither acknowledge nor kowtow to insignificant specifics such as race, creed, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, native language, political affiliation or how many weapons one keeps in an unlocked, Stars-and-Bars flag draped cabinet in their bedroom in case the black helicopters are circling late one night and they need to lock ‘n’ load on a split second’s notice.
You quit laughing at farts and you’ve pretty much abandoned all vestiges of humanity remaining in your hopelessly shallow soul.
Oh yeah:
never swing at the first pitch.
And rock ‘n’ roll is made to be played loud.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Just got one of those thoughts that usually hits right around this time of night.
Morning?
Day.
Don’t see it coming and it just shows up out of nowhere, drops its ass into the easy chair of my pre-frontal cortex and figures it’s gonna stick around for a while.
Usually happens right after I lose track of my sheep count, or maybe it’s the other way around, but there it is when I really don’t feel like thinking about it – or anything else, for that matter – but it’s just too good not to invite in for a chat.
If nothing else, gotta get it down somewhere in case tomorrow morning, or later this morning, or later today comes around and I can’t remember whether I really thought this or not.
I’ve determined the one definitive advantage that meth and heroin have over prescription and over-the-counter medications.
How those little $10 smack sacks and comparably-sized bags of ice you get from some really sleazy dude with stringy white hair, shoulder length (all eleven of them) and, like, no body mass whatsoever hanging out on the street corner –
those little pouches are actually better (in one unarguable way) than the little bottles of a veritable plethora of delectable treats awaiting them from their trusted pharmacist…
… with the pharmacist being the lowly street dealer, the “Jay and Silent Bob”s of the Health Care industry with Pfizer being Heisenberg and Kaiser taking over for Jesse Pinkman.
One overlooked advantage to virtually any one of the street drugs, so we might as well go with the two biggest bullies on the block:
at least with heroin and methamphetamine … you pretty much know how badly they’re gonna fuck with you.
Even that creepy bastard hanging outside the local biker bar or in private room of the closest upscale X-er dance club ain’t gonna shit you about that.
And he is generally the one that is expected of.
And just as an afterthought …
if the Walton family could work out a deal to have it grown in China, and get the exclusive patent,
and the Koch Brothers could arrange transportation and distribution without having to rely on the illegal cartels and crackheads receiving SSI …
well then, pot …
(that dangerous, deadly Schedule 1 “gateway drug” known to treat and manage – if not actually cure – cancer, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, asthma, Crohn’s Disease, anorexia, epilepsy, fuckin’ Tourette’s Syndrome, PTSD, anxiety, depression, Hepatitis C, hypothyroidism, Bell’s Palsy, degenerative arthritis, glaucoma, psoriasis, and Alzheimer’s)*
… weed would be legal in all fifty states quicker than you can say “Jeff Spicoli”.
Legal and right up there on the shelves alongside the Camel non-filters, quarts of Jim Beam, twenty-four packs of Lone Star and those piquant-yet-mildly-fruity-with-a-hint-of-oak Syrahs the true aficionados religiously and orgasmically quaff by the quart every single night of the week.
Right up there on the shelves, two aisles down from the Hungry Man frozen dinners.
I got Gracie a new toy today. Seemed fair. I got the BluRay of “Interstellar”, Liz got four banana/nut muffins (the only culinary delight left that doesn’t trash her stomach), and some people got paid..
I was out a bunch of the morning doing first-of-the-month stuff, was heading over to see my Brit buddy Thomas early afternoon, then take Gracie to the doggie park to unwind. We’ve been spending a lot of time in the yard the past week, but family stuff has to come first. But I was going to be gone quite a while, which tends to twitch up her energy level to warp drive, so …
… it’d be nice to get her a toy, a new toy to keep her busy while I’m out doing all sorts of things that were fun and exciting and seeing all sorts of friendly people and dogs who wanted to play with me, and all sorts of dogs I think I’ve seen there before (“Hey… don’t I know that asshole?”) and there was tall grass I could eat, and fresh piles I could check out and a water fountain I could slobber in …
all those things our dogs know we go out and do whenever we leave them in the house alone.
Got her this Nerf ball. Rubber on the outside, more dense than any of the Nerf footballs I’ve ever had. Inside of that was a nylon covered ball stuffed with whatever. Between the sizes of a baseball and softball. Would be easy for her to pick up, nice bright colors. Checked it out pretty well, seeing as how Gracie can take some serious chunks out of even the Pirelli-grade toys she’s had. Figured it would work.
I thought I got our baby a pretty neat toy. I was even looking forward to playing with it, tossing it for her so she could chase it, then stand there looking at it, then look at me, bark once to make sure I knew where she found it, then get distracted and go running after whatever it was leaving me to walk half-way across the park to pick it up, which was only fair ’cause I was the asshole who had it and threw it away to begin with.
She just went along with it till something better came up ’cause she loves me, wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings.
But Gracie did love that ball. Tossing it up in the air, pouncing at it. Barked at it a couple of times when it didn’t roll by itself. All sorts of fun.
Lasted about three minutes.
I was right about the outside part of the ball, that could still put up with some serious wear-and-tear, but I was almost right about its that nylon-covered ball. Kevlar would have been more effective.
Gracie disemboweled, or disemballed, the damn thing.
Took her three minutes.
Damn thing cost $7.00 which could easily have been spent on something frivolous as opposed to three minutes of excitement.
(Let’s see: sixty minutes divided by the three, gives you twenty, times seven dollars gives you…)
That sounds like it would be Vegas hooker rates.
Damn good thing she likes little sticks.
A bit of wood every now and then can keep that girl happy.
Wipe that smirk off you-
DAMN! you people have filthy minds.
After neurologists familiar with the workings of the brain and ophthalmologists familiar with the visual process of the eyes and the brains and physicists familiar with the nature of light waves along with any number of photographers who have ever had to adjust the white balance on a photo (which is done is a much more responsible manner than it is with determining Electoral districts)… after all of those learned people have all explained why some people see black-and-blue and others see white-and-gold… the attitude, mindset, conclusion and heartfelt belief of most people is that the dress is whatever damned color it is because that’s what they say it is.
Fuck the truth of the matter.
Only confuses the issue.
Their view is the only one that matters. Their beliefs are the only acceptable ones.
Their version of the elusive truth is axiomatic..
Well, they’re wrong. ’cause I say so.
Neener neener neener.
A little sidebar to further illustrate the point:
a dear friend of mine from back during my Morrison years was a gentleman by the name of Art Gore. A photographer who had a shop in town and some of his works hanging in the White House.
Still life and landscape visions that could leave you breathless.
Also had a cat named Tommy Tucker, the subject of a number his photos and a few poems. A cat who was known to hump chickens every now and then, not the strangest thing to happen in Morrison back then by any stretch of the imagination.
Here’s a sample of some of the work Art did right outside his studio, ten feet off of Bear Creek Avenue as it entered Morrison and the Rockies:
Knowing Art, this was probably taken with his 4 X 5 Linhof, Vericolor Professional sheet film, no filters, not even any metering. The “Sunny 16” rule of photography. Art just had an eye for such things.
Just one eye.
The one that wasn’t glass.
The one that was color-blind.
Art actually used to have to come in to the Tabor Inn (the hippie/biker bar next door to his studio) to ask some of his more trusted and relatively-sober-at-the-time drinking buddies if the color in a print he just made looked… well … “right”.
There were many times he just didn’t know.
Subsequent prints could very well have been fine-tuned and adjusted according to the observations and recommendations of the local drunks. They would be based on the perceptions of others.
Art was, after all, making and marketing and selling those prints to people who didn’t see things the way he did. Or, rather, he didn’t see things the way they did.
Majority rules, right?
I mean, Art knew what he saw but he just had to make sure it matched what one could fairly confidently refer to as “reality”.
But he sure as shit knew the strawberries weren’t green no matter what his eyes told him.
He knew and acknowledged and accepted that his interpretation was not always right.
Getting harder to find people like that.
And who actually uses film any more?
With years of practice and experience and remaining both open to and dependent upon the perceptions of others, Art grew to recognize what his singular and particular shade of green actually translated out to on the color wheel.
Might have been a kind of pumpkin / salmon concoction.
Headed into my 50's figuring I finally had at least almost all the the right answers.
Passed into my 60's realizing I might not have asked the right questions to begin with.
Oh shit ... gotta start all over again.
Lakota People's Law Project
Our goal is to secure the return of the more than 2,200 Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota children who have been illegally taken from their homes.
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All written and previously unpublished photographic material: copyright 2014, 2015, 2016 by Harris Lieberman. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Harris Lieberman, "Prodigal Orphan" and / or "Nocturnal Admissions" with appropriate and specific direction to the original content;
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Hey, Nice to meet all of you, my name is Heather. I have BPD. I am here to share my everyday struggles with you, be a support for you, and I am here to chat with you if you want to chat...:)
I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.