This poet is dead. So don't cross him. - Don't remember when the last time was I got a full night's rest. These days/ approximately every hour my sleep breaks because I have to go pee in the pot. - In spite of what I and my doctor are doing to prevent it, I have a feeling my bones are turning to dust. - This afternoon while sitting in a chair in the livingroom I told Janice's alien doll which I have standing in a nearby rocker: I think the end is near. I then noticed tears welling. - Am considering posting all my poems and related works at Sprintedon Migrasaurus one per post in this blog. I know many are of no value, but I care not. If 6 or less are worth saving, the effort I expended was worth it. - A flea bite from a flea I killed last night has suddenly spread and become worse. I put some triple antibiotic ointment on it. - And what about the swine flu expected to be in this country in October? - Should you be in need of some ways to ruin your life/ I have a few. rho00368
Sunday, August 2, 2009
warnings
Friday, July 31, 2009
visit with dermatologist positive
My legs are improving. Dermatologist has reduced my need for four daily applications of Triamcinolone to two daily. For that I am thankful as the routine I must use is time-consuming and somewhat difficult. Will be on the antibiotic medicine for another week. Am to visit him again next Friday. rho00366
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
autobio notes
Yesterday I searched through my Seminary poems and determined every poem there was trash. Without a doubt I was grievously askew spiritually during my year-and-a-half at that Jesuit school. Conflicts in my soul I should have come to terms with while I was in high school intensified my misguided fervor and most of the poems I wrote were ruined by it, to say nothing of my technical inadequacies. - My local sister bought a pair of jeans shorts, and when I tried them on today I found I needed to roll them up some, but I also found I no longer needed to use the towel I was using over my legs so that my keyboard would be high enough for its right end to rest on the mouse pad on the stool to my right. Thus, I now have that towel on top of the towel I have been using on the table between where I sit and where my monitor is atop the desk. Surely my feet are now elevated high enough. I may not get to heaven but my feet will. rho00365
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Have been feeling oddly empty
recently. Am unable to determine why, but have some guesses; however, let's just say my psyche is in the horse latitudes and/or the horse latitudes are in it. Here is a little something I wrote two days ago: Others There are a million voices out there, and they all keep changing: clippity, clippity, chug, chug, bitter as butterflies. ---------------------------------------- Received another prize-winning book from the Academy of American Poets. Am reading it. That is, I was reading it. Perhaps I'm totally out-of-sync with the variant new ways of writing even though some of those ways I have used in my writing. In any case, next to nothing is exciting me, not even Fanny Howe or Franz Wright. There's an old song I one day tried to track down, something about "and the days go by" is in its chorus. Have it in my head it's a song by Devo; so am going to try a Devo songs search. Have grown tired of my minimal song lyrics, but an autobio project which is not yet ready to continue posting awaits/ and poems to be added to Scatterings which are in nearby folders. It's just hard these days. rho00364
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thinking Lizard revisited
As I remember it, I invented Thinking Lizard (the icon and the press) and the pen name of Alden St. Cloud in 1979. In 1980 I published in the cassette medium and registered with The Library of Congress 1976 (the 366 sonnets and 12 reflections version), Postures, and Fond du Lac; and in 1981, I believe, Rooted Sky. I no longer have saleable copies of these. In 1982 in Austin, Texas, I published as a paperback, First Pick, a selection which included some poems that were previously unpublished. I also registered it with The Library of Congress. I have a mockup of it, but I have dismantled this book. Soon thereafter I let Alden St. Cloud die. Thinking Lizard remains a viable press, but I would need to update its ISBN system. The point of this rehash is that I self-published books of my poems. Those events are precursors to what I have since done online, especially at Sprintedon Migrasaurus (thinkinglizard.b---), and to what I hope to do in the future: make all my books of poems available for free in PDF. As it is, I am not selling any of my poems. You are welcome to browse through, and if you encounter one you like, link to it or display it on your web site. Heck, you can even do that with one you think is horrid. rho00363
Monday, July 20, 2009
Body challenges have taken over
with some being temporary. Trying to keep my legs elevated is permanent and I have been innovating toward that end. Fortuitously, the furnishings I have for my computer equipment are nearly perfect aids: the 30-inches tall desk my monitor is now on, the 22-inches tall table partially under that desk on which are my modem and a towel folded so it is two inches high for the heels of my feet, the stool which is 23-inches tall and is being used for my mouse and the right end of my keyboard, the folding chair I am seated on with a cushion beneath my rear and a cushion behind my back, the glasses I wear which are set for viewing my monitor which I have for some years had three feet from where I type. My keyboard is on a towel I've folded which is over my upper legs. Am having to use a yard stick to turn my computer and monitor on. Will try to improve on this, but for now it will have to do. rho00361
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Why Am I Online
is a question I have asked and answered often. The Internet is my house of learning. That is my common response. And while I'll never even scratch the surface of what I would learn, no further response is needed. However, there are deeper reasons. I used to be out and about easily, but that ended in mid-January of 2003. It doesn't matter that by current standards I am still a young man. So I am a hermit, but not a true hermit. It isn't in me. Yet, even if I made no contacts with other humans, being online would suffice because I think it would be enough to alleviate my loneliness. An early post of what was my last AOL journal is a note about Frederick Seidel. Due to a recent comment by Michael Robbins beneath a Harriet post, I have been learning more about this American poet. If you do a Frederick Seidel 2009 search via Google and choose the Google books result, you can potentially read many of his poems. I read, among others, "The War of the Worlds" and found I liked it mainly because of his straight- on yet imaginative way of engaging a difficult topic. Three reviews worth reading are Sarah Crown's "Chronicle of excess", Adam Kirsch's "The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", and this one by Wyatt Mason in which he writes ". . .the cultural definition of what a poem is: a thing that wakes us, shakes us, moves us, and pays equal attention to the details of living and the art of poetry." Therefore, God willing, I intend to be an online human in spite of the varying technical challenges. rh00360
Thursday, July 9, 2009
It is my life
and I can live it destructively and I can live it constructively and anywhere inbetween, and I have. For a long time my opinion of myself has been: I am not right. As much as I do not want to--though sometimes (as the evidence shows) it seems I must want to, I too consistently have made poor choices. Had I had the vision, I would have lived both as I chose and as I did not choose. Have been a Brian and an anti-Brian. Examples: 1. As a writer I would have been both reclusive and highly visible. 2. As a purchaser of stocks, I would have traded aggressively and invested judiciously in growth stocks. 3. As a general consumer I would have allowed myself some excesses but would have found a residence I intended to remain in. 4. As a mind/body being I would not have favored my mind over my body. There's a current body story I am tempted to share but a voice within says: Don't. Share it with your doctors. As some of you know, my life here in Missouri is one of greater isolation than it was in Florida. This is not to say I can't make it less so, but I am more limited. Other blogger's write about books and journals they are purchasing or have received and about what they're reading out of their extensive libraries. I have a library, but little in it is contemporary, and presently my days are heavy with other concerns. Actually, I maybe shouldn't have a blog. Does it seem I'm confused? I am. However, it isn't just isolation, it's my lack of pertinent knowledge. It's my inability to keep up. So much of my time is spent visiting blogs and making my often difficult-to- compose comments. Besides, that I do not have a defined agenda to push as do certain bloggers in that I do not belong to a coterie and am not bound to a specific style makes me less interesting on the face of it. --- Am at the second chapter on Imagination and Fancy in Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought, and at the end of the first chapter Barfield presented the passage in which Coleridge defined the Primary and Secondary Imaginations. Barfield had stated Coleridge was at odds with most thinkers--oriented as they were toward scientific rationality--of his time. Thus, as I suspected, Coleridge assigned the Primary Imagination to the ". . . infinite I Am." This puts me in line with Coleridge. --- Events of late have been signalling to me I am in my last days. Yet there's no way of knowing. I could concentrate my weakened energies. Fanny Howe and Franz Wright? St. John of the Cross? The Age of Pisces is in its last days. Even so, it may be more than 300 years before the Age of Aquarius fully takes over, which some say St. Germain will rule. Others are expecting a new reign of Jesus and 1000 years of peace. Barring more miracles, I'm expecting to be dead. The Dow had a lackluster day. Read that President Obama said the government won't get into healthcare insuring unless Congress can figure out how to pay for it. GM is getting a second chance. They ought to help revitalize the railroads. For me tomorrow means another trip to my GP's office. Just remember: a good poem is one you like, even if you don't know why. rh00359
Thursday, July 2, 2009
2000-03-17
was the date I became an AOL member. Today, after spending days clearing out and moving and/or deleting what was being held at my Thinking lizard email location at AOL, I deleted t l. Later I submitted a completed formal electronic AOL membership cancellation. bl00357
Sunday, June 21, 2009
This Summer Solstice Father's Day
is a day of new beginnings for me. In the physical progenitorial sense, I am not a father, and it is doubtful I ever will be or even want to be. What then? Sometimes how one sees one's spirit becomes reflected in one's body. Even though I have been forgiven, I had let my outer body gather the dust and dirt of years. Today, partly as the result of my new GP's insistence, I began the move toward the proper care of that organ. Am also in the process of making more changes toward the betterment of my inner body since she gave me permission to do that which I thought I ought not do. Are you enjoying my post-avant indirectness? If you are not, you need to get with it as I can't promise anything. It's all in the flow, and I cannot know how that flow will go. Yes, I do already feel better but the road ahead is long and treacherous. Those of you who are fathers, I hope this day has been, and continues to be, kind to you. - Ditched at last my old home page and made Google my home page. Google is a spider you know, and we authors are arcane delicacies. - Have upped my water intake, mostly by diluting my nutrition drinks more. - J J Gallaher posted a rant against accessible poetry which is drawing rebuttals from recent commentors at Poetry Foundation's Harriet--am really not certain, it may be from only one commentor at PFH. If it isn't difficult it is isn't art, JJ contendeth. Bet you can't find where I hid the egg. bl00355
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
mostly silly stuff
Get off computer stool. Go directly to toilet. Do not take a side trip. Do not save/ joke for today. - Gorgeous George fell in a gorge, and now the gorge is gorgeous, George. - As I told a security guard one night in Gainesville: I used to be a slut for the FBI. - Brina had a little goat. She used to grab it by the throat. But when the goat grew big and strong, Brina left the goat alone. Then one day the old goat died. Poor Brina, she was mystified. - So I've been having trouble getting to the hidden places on my blogs, and trouble connecting to AOL, and trouble getting comments to show on other blogs; et, et, et, et. Well--not that I hadn't seen this before-- come to find out from Google: Your browser has cookies disabled. This time it hit me, and so I minimized out and went to my browser's advanced settings and removed the check mark from the request to clear temporary files each time my browser is not being used. It hadn't occurred to me until today that clearing the temporary files also meant cookies would be cleared. bl00351
Monday, June 15, 2009
recent things done
Beginning early last Wednesday and ending several minutes before noon on Sunday, a long-avoided necessary internal project was essentially completed. The upshot of that, however, remains an unknown. That it's done is joy enough. - Just completed a secondary project which had been ongoing for some time but which was halted while the more substantial project held me. - It is now 3:33 PM and I have a knotty post pertaining to haiku you might enjoy: it is Bill Knott's looking for the no-center - Still having connection problems with AOL but I think they may have begun the day I dowloaded and installed IE8. Definitely, IE8 is more security-oriented than IE7. If Google Chrome has a recovery feature, I may well try using it. I did open a Google Mail account, but I prefer AOL's email services/ even though I won't be using them as extensively as I had been. - Wish I could say I am done re-imagining past events in my life, especially those wherein I made disastrous choices, but--. bl00350
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
autobio stuff
Have begun a piece entitled "A Life Litany" that already has an ending but that might become rather long. It has four-line stanzas with the fourth line/ the same three words. In a way it's a test of how much a reader can take. - Placed a comment beneath post kh00031. Everyone who reads this should go there and read that. - Am having problems in my recent posts section. So either I will delete it altogether or change it to a list. - My sister took me out today to pick up a book, Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought, at the library we frequent; then to return an improperly packaged item to a specific Wal-Mart, where we also bought a few things; and then to a specific QT for gas; and then back to here, where my sister put together one of the things we bought. - With a spattering of lightning and thunder, threatening weather passed through here earlier this evening, but it didn't deliver. bl00349
Sunday, June 7, 2009
just considering
No doubt the Bald Eagle is a beautiful national symbol but while the Industrial Age passes/ I think we should temporarily let the Crow be our national bird. - I have been posting my quirky song lyrics at a rapid pace as of late. They come as and when they come. I have no overriding plan. If you want to snatch one or more, go ahead. Feel free to mess with any of them in your own space. - Visited Adam Fieled's Stoning the Devil yesterday. Left a comment. May link to that post of his at my K H today. - If William Michaelian and Joseph Hutchison wish to continue their recent crow project, my encumbrance need not be part of it. I will do whatever I do/ as an aside to what they do. That is why I didn't post "Rhetorical" in a comment on William's blog. I was merely riffing. - My body is in hesitation mode again, but I've been and will be eating 4 ounces of probiotic yogurt every day. Am also trying to get myself to get out and walk for at least ten minutes daily, and I am making other changes. - Although I first came online in April of 2000, I am not of the Net Generation as Don Tapscott puts it, and so I lack the confidence and skills NGers have. I learn what I need to, id est, when I am ready to learn what I need to or am forced to. - I live moment to moment, my ongoing as an ashable human primarily dependent on the will of God. I am not out to prove myself better than or even = to any other human. bl00348
Monday, May 25, 2009
yesterday today notes
Yesterday: Spent most of my online time changing things in AOL Mail and in my blogs. - Took a short parking lot walk. Today: In the early morning of this Memorial Day the green-tinted (beneath its heavy translucent covering just under the roof of the apartment building north of this one at its southeast corner where still growing Sturdy Bush is) light/ went dark. - My ever-changing body in its weaknesses/ forces ne to be ever innovative regarding it. - My subconscious continues its war against my conscious, but I can't let one dominate/ for I need the strengths native to each. - Having problems in my blog spaces I never had before, especially with the one migrated from AOL. The only recent major thing I did was open a Gmail account. Seems my best move might be to record and/or PDF my books. bl00344
Monday, April 6, 2009
passed new rare events
Photo of Sturdy Bush as it was in March. | blossoms: click to enlarge
This month light-green leaves have taken over. This afternoon a rare event that was a daily one when I was in Gainesville, Florida: a Mockingbird. The female Cardinal was just ahead of it. Apparently she'd been in its territory/ which is not on this property. The/ the Mockingbird was quiet though, even when it flew in to one of Sturdy Bush's branches, and then out to the recently cut grass, and then back to its somewhere out of sight. The things I see// through my bedroom's cracked window. White/ wing bars! Holy stars! bl00329
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
This Is About Who Cares
clovers of four before your door
Honestly, even though the idea for this post was the result of events late last night as I was coursing from blog to blog--specifically what was mentioned in comment 100 beneath Kasey Mohammad's Dale Smith . . . post at his Lime Tree, I am not certain why I'm doing this. Maybe I sense my continuance as a viable human will soon cease. Maybe I sense civilization as I have known it will soon cease. Maybe it is both. I do know/ the high-class intellectuals (some of them, anyway) whose blogs I visit do tend to misunderstand me and may consider me an interloper. Rarely are comments from me lengthy. Rarely are posts on my blogs lengthy. However, while I neither seek nor want sympathy and while most of what I will be sharing today is available in older posts, I've concluded that the major facts need to be in one place. So: Age: 68 Zodiac sign: metal dragon Health: moment-to-moment * My genes have seen to it that I would never know true health. Shortly after I was born I had to be returned to the hospital because I had impetigo. My body, not unlike my psyche, is too sensitive. Eczema, hay fever, asthma have been with me from the beginning. It has not been proven, but at an early age I may have contracted TB and somehow overcome it. Just the sort of knowledge that makes me want to believe in reincarnation when the megalomania balloon inflates. Epilepsy, both frontal lobe and generalized. May have had some form of it since childhood, but wasn't medicated for it until my 1999-11-01 adult onset grand mal seizure. For approximately five years it has been controlled by Keppra. Will be using a generic form of it. Voiding, which I thought was due to a non-cancerous en- larged prostate. Have had two TURP op's and am now no better than I was before. Turns out my bladder empties fine. This means my urethra is the problem. It is messed up and the last doctor I visited about it said that operating on it might make it worse. Ishkabibble & the double dribble. Osteoporosis, oh yeah. I am crumbling. Genetics again. I was once an amazing 5'6.5" tall. I am presently 4'11" or less. Shortly before my rup- tured appendix was removed in the spring of 1962 (another by seconds escape from death), I weighed 135. I now weigh less than 100. Of course, I have fractured 3 vertabrae. Metal dragons are risk- takers. Have been drinking those nasty nutrition drinks in order to bring my weight up. Can't eat the foods I once ate, yet I need the calories. This is a problem I am trying to rectify. As if this were not enough, I've also had to have my esophagus dilated, and the nutrition drinks are causing a buildup of mucous and who knows what else. So I remain what I call Earth-alive because someone greater than I wants me to be. I am certain I've escaped death at least three dozen times. Education: Mainly in Roman Catholic schools until the autumn of 1962. Then three years at Wisconsin State College–Oshkosh where I majored in English and minored in History and was editor of the student magazine for two years. In 1965 I entered the workshop at Iowa, graduating in 1967 with an English MFA (poetry) degree. I then took a summer Education course at Marian College in Fond du Lac. Around 1983, while residing in UF town (Gainesville), Florida, I took computer and accounting courses at Santa Fe Community College and began studying diligently for a GRE administered in June of 1984 at UF. My score on that exam (1370) was the high point of my intellectual life. Got accepted into the Fisher School of Accounting at UF, but had to drop out early in my first semester as I found it too difficult to bike to school after working all night at a Holiday Inn, and I realized accounting was not for me. Next I got accepted into the English PhD Program. There I completed one semester, but again I was too worn out to concentrate properly. Then there was the stock market where idiothead tried to be a trader in an environment that was better for investing. Through my own efforts and God's nudgings, had I seen the light and had I lived till now after choosing the wiser path--there is no way to know such. Though it doesn't detail everything, if you are interested in knowing more, read Intelligence Is Not Enough, the 19th post in Money Rho. Finances: Oh it could have been worse, but I played the American Dream game. I bought into the oil/auto/credit paradigm. Where then am I now? I am totally dependent on governments; and if the gloomiest analysts are right, one day I will no longer have that. When trust leaves the playing field, the only call that can be made is: Game over. That is the gist of my simplistic equation: capitalism = something to sell + someone to buy it For, indeed, without someone to buy it, that paradigm withers and dies. In some ways this is already happening. A new less aggressive paradigm is growing, and if it survives and takes over, greed will fade/ and all humans will be drawn closer to each other. Call it what you will, I call it the inexorable force of God, the Omega Point, the Singularity, the Nth of Love. But then, I am the ghost in the dumpster. * rho00317
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Leaking water heater
forced me to call management, and they sent out a maintenance man. Heater is fixed, but because the furnace is below it/ and the filter for the furnace sits atop the furnace, the filter got soaked and I was told not to put a new filter in until tomorrow. The maintenance man will be back tomorrow. Had to turn off the heat. Luckily, if I need them, I have enough blankets. Rho00181
Thursday, September 11, 2008
significant 911 notes
* Around a month ago I stopped answering my land line. It continues to be hard to do, but it is imperative. >>> Use your land line for 911 calls. - My new challenge is: to cease visiting adult sites, even though I've been only a now-and-again visitor. Monitor me. I don't care. I won't ever again be going to categorically pornographic sites. However, this decision of mine has nothing to do with any conception of morality. - Back around 1964 during the year I was a drugstore employee/ I tried various tobacco products. Since that time I have stayed away from tobacco products. I never did mess with any of the drugs associated with groups into mind-altering experiences. I did drink beer et cetera rather heavily for a time, but I'm not allowed to drink such beverages anymore and I do not even drink sodas and the like. - I do pray, and all my prayers are prayers of thanks. Yesterday a sister convinced me it is good to pray for one's leaders. I have, but in a general way. If you want to pray for them by name, find out who they are/ if you don't know. - Another, and more difficult goal is: to get myself to stop complaining. Complaining, like worrying, is a waste. Better to act responsibly, and thus erase complaints. * * If you have not registered to vote, register now. Find out where in your area you can register. It does not matter what your opinion of a particular major candidate is, there are others to vote for; and there are issues requiring votes. Citizens who do not vote need to form a party of non-voters and get involved. If you do not participate, you are submitting to whatever results from those who do participate, and that includes the deceptions of candidates. The voting machines some use are one of the issues voters need to address. * Rho00176
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
difficulties note
Have visitors this week who are helping me, but their being here disrupts my daily romp, such as it is. Today they left a bit early, but they are not angelic creatures. Like me, they are human. It is not possible for me to let them go about doing their charities while I do my online dancings. If I do not monitor what they do, I have to spend time rearranging. Living alone, I find having this there and that here and/or at such-and- such an angle/ matters. Bless us all. Rho00173
