r_o_rambles_along_with_oe REAListic optimIST The impressive machine rolls on and we sit aware and watching wishing we could grab the controls. We occasionally plug in the visceral inputs and float along down the sensory streams Reaching out blindly to embrace experience, we lose perspective again and in the process we spin these words. With four sets of trilinear paragraphs, i've defined the space of this blathe as an ordered set of chaotic elements. 050821 ... REAListic optimIST Œ ramble along with me Œ 050821 ... pobodys nerfect *rambles* sorry,i couldn't resist. =X *hides* 050821 ... REAListic optimIST hahaha hi pobody that's the shortest ramble EVER! is what i'd say lickety split in a scant few minimalistic lines if i wasn't rambling on about stuff in an ambling and rambling sort of way. but i'm talking the long route along the less traveled scenic trails througout the blatherblue wilderness; the route along which the blatherbeasts scamper. it IS rather nice to have company along such lonely trails, pobody. will you ramble along with us? i'm sure there's a clearing past that copse of trees! 050821 ... daf Perhaps our Cancerian friend is just checking this blathe out, to see what happens before lending his ramble to the cause. Never can be too careful, you see..particularly if you're the tender-hearted crab of the Zodiac. One also tends to wonder whether or not a Cardinal sign (Cancer, Libra, Capricorn & Aries) might find the title of this blathe a bit presumptuous because it could be read as dictating what one is going to do. Cardinal signs generally DESPISE having their actions dictated. Cancer folks will normally move even SLOWER (if such a thing is possible) when you start telling them what they're going to do. I'd say there's about a 70% chance most Cardinal signs would just ignore this blathe on principle, but phebe's a pretty evolved, mellow old cuss. If I were a wagering man, I'd bet he shows, because he is a loyal friend, but with some trepidation. 050822 ... daf I completely misread the title of this blathe...sigh. 050822 ... daf Ha! No I didn't either! (whew thought the slide into senility was accelerating.) P.S. This blathe is a sterling tribute to your very sincere affection for our old phebe. Nice job. 050822 ... REAListic optimIST when oE commiserated with my answer to how_do_you_define_alone, i wanted to reach out, and this blathe is the result. 050822 ... oldephebe daf - how apt, how dreadfully and disconcertingly apt. ro - man anything i could conjure would pretty much be an empty bag of wind. i can only write or respond to something unless i'm inspired to...i can't will the words or even summon the intellectual effort it would take to comment on your insightful inaugeral salvo up there. my apathy is a function of my exhaustion, and not anything lacking on you or dafs behalf. i'm going through it ya'll. can't even begin to understand it or explain it. i've got to allow my spirit to rise to the holy of holies and summon that which i no longer have...otherwise... ... thank you ro and daf---the words are very much appreciated really ... 050824 ... oldephebe damnit daf! i don't like being known! RO--my embattled brother I apologize for taking so long in getting back to you..the naked heart that yearn for the touch of someone's soul upon its quivering vulnerable depths..how many ghosts of the past DO WE grapple with in the sepulcral silence of our empty apartments and homes? I mean sometimes even rigorous, unrelenting merciless Talmudic disputations serve as surrogates for human contact..but whether we subjectively win or lose we often sit wasted as the illusory echo of argument quickly evaporates. What would you care to ramble about freind? If you could follow my fractured syntax what would your take on it be? can a term like..."cultural precedence" really be invoked to explicate or exculpate gender and or ethnic hegemony and exclusion in the field of the Arts? I mean if we haven't heard from everyone can a term like "aesthetic exhaustion" as it relates to the commodification and consumption of the Arts and not the genesis of them--can it really be blithely and knowingly uttered, or disingenuously opined as some rationale for the defacto dismissal of other traditions and or other traditions that are in part derivative of a gender, class, sexual orientation/experiental (such as)i.e.--works in part influenced by the crucible of rape--should i abandon myself to apathy, to spend whatever time i have left to this rueful existence searching fruitlessly for justice--perhaps if i cannot find justice in my own life perhaps i can find it in the Arts, or in the Art of anothers life, perhaps the sting of the Devils quil can be lessened, by --you know,,i thought if i were an average joe--safely encased in the encrusted acoutrements of respectability, with my family, duplex, stepkids and kid and wife and white collar lower management drudge of a job folded around me..that perhaps I could escape trauma. I thought if I could wrap myself and my memories tightly in this simulacre of security maybe me and my family will be safe. I thought maybe the trauma and the intransigent and inevitable cultural and neuro-chemical and god just that damned crown of thorns that was shoved hard and deep into my head in utero and in the bruising fugues of that majesterial and imperious arbiter of ambivelant and definately capricious maternal approbation and patriarchal wisdom sheathed in the prophylactic of a tediously professiorial distance and detachment---But that's like chasing the 7:15 am Paoli local along the rails at 7:17am. I've learned, or rathered had it related to me by several women who'd been raped at a young age by a trusted family friend or relative--that When a woman is raped if she is strong, or if she is weak enough to allow that weakness be an open door to rebirth like the forest that is felled or burnt to the ground, and the seedlings spawned from the honey combs as the trees very soul writhes in the consuming fires--a denser and more vibrant one would replace the one burnt to the ground-- This certainly does NOT belong on this page.. I guess part of what i'm trying to say is that--there are so many narratives out there that begin as dreams, or that transmogrify into dreams that could not find thier being in the flesh.. Should our dreams, should our emphatic desire for justice and or validation be relegated to the realm of what is no longer spoken of? I wish caring realy were contagious. I wish I were stronger, had more wisdom, I wish for anything besides this damned fatalistic soul shriveling APATHY--but then I wander into the cultural and artistic enclave of another and I am rescusitated. But can we allow even at the cost of peronal safety another or others to steal our lives from us? Can we approach the whispering and at times roaring flame riding a beam of light, in total and utter surrender to accept the hatred and torment of our accuser, and to still utter a small breath of hope for a soul so twisted and beaten out of shape even as it seeks our death? People that think I am wise or endowed with some strange but beautiful gift--well I wish you could see me now. I wish you could feel my uncertainty, I wish you could see me stalled in mid-stream afraid to go forward and unable to look backward and just praying for some noble and or divine life taking and affirming act of intervention. Some diviely inspired exculpatory gesture. The years have bequeathed nothing to me. Only that I can carry more pain upon me back, my heart holds more anguish and seeks almost violently within me justice. The holy men whose lives I've studied tell me true transcendancy begins with surrender. My life or death will not release my accusers from thier torment. I have said this to them, I have shouted it at grimly painted walls and closed windows and even into the burning raging furnace of thier equisitiely articulated death threatrs. I wish not only for me, but more than just my release from this trial, I wish they could look into the radiant eyes of The One who does see them as finished, complete perfected with no quid pro quo required to be redeemed and restored and reunited with the Source. I I d-d-don't know how to SAY this w/o sounding maudlin or invoking every poorly written Hallmark card ever written--but aside from the discomfort, aside from the exigency the protracted exigencies I've had to experience as a result of becoming thier neighboor--I really do wish they could find release from the endless howling of thier tormented hearts. ... knit your narratives here fellow blatheskites ... 050827 ... REAListic optimIST Œ, buddy... i can commiserate with the weighty pull you describe holding you firmly planted when you must act, when your future depends on your immediate action. i, too stand transfixed when i should be scampering about in a million directions to assure myself the future i desire. how sad is it when a person can't even be motivated by such carrots? i feel the stirrings of the very actions i need, but i wish i had friends who would help stoke the sparks. i wish for the same divine intervention. the one capable of intervention is me, and it is high time it happened. the struggle for adulthood involves giving up on one's dreams for making a difference, on caring; and just getting your kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames. i hope to never be an adult, as more and more of my friends are becoming, because it means stamping down on the last fiery embers of divine selfhood. if i can, i will breathe hope and fire into everyone around me, though it's harder to do when you are faltering and falling from grace at the rate which i'm currently falling. that being said, it is the inimitable humanness of my situation that may allow me to reach another. to fan the flames of hope and inspiration into just a select few, and maybe that karmic flame will come back around and light a fire under my ass and get me moving... who knows? until then, keep writing, my brother, and know that another soul across the blue ether searches for the same tangible handholds and slips, but retains compassion and foregoes apathy for pain. 050828 ... oE yeah. i relate man. see: what_is_justice .. 050901 ... oldephebe RO - I was in a discussion today with some folks and I we touched on a few things we discussed on this page only I didn't hold back this time, i've gotten in the habit sometimes with THIS group i chill...i pare my heart and mind back..when i let go they just kind of treated me strangely. I rarely meet folks who speak the way you write. see: blatherskites ... oh that's right you already did. ... 051023 what's it to you? who go blather from