20 November,01 10:03 A.M.
It has certainly been a long time since my recliner and remote control back at Acornia, the farm.
So much has happened and it's all very tedious facts and governmental pronouncements and various personal traumas.
I read a story once where a German Shepard jumps from a station wageon while vacationing up in Canada and runs into the woods never realizing the harshness and lonliness of life in the north woods where even survival would be in question.He had grown along side of a television laying on his designated blanket and where he hnew all the signs for dinner coming or walking and even had a few kids around to get manic with..."Not in the house!" .in the backyard under a friendly maple tree.
Running into the woods, wrapped in his dog enthusasms, chasing some mysterious scent, he could never realize all that would be lost.
My lawyer ignores me. Won't answer my calls requesting expaination of events.
It's just so fitting and typical: that reaction. Simply no one will extend themselves for the simplest accomadation or explaination.
I simply am locked out. "They" have me and thats it. Congressman, lawyers, and letter writings by people will not work. Nothing will work. It's just like Nazi Europe. I am absoutely powerless to even get an explaination from my LAWYER.
What can I say.
When I returned from a visit to Belize and the rainforests in January of 1999 my troubles began. I have been confused ever since. What's going on around me?
I was in court in June and in August I received what was labled a "entirely favorable judgement". When I receved the first check in October it was approximately one half of what I had received monthly for the years from 74 to 99. This check, which was about 480 dollars, disqualified me for countty welfare and that meant the motel room was gone as well. I was left standing on the shoulder of route 130, south of Trenton, with 480 dollars in my pocket. Winning an "entirely favorable judgement" was another step down for me.
The past due money is being held up until January whle the payback money is being taken for county welfare I received and the lawyer's percentage is being taken out.
So there is no way I even had a security deposit to get a place, I saw it as a get out of town notice. Especially with winter coming I realized my best chance was to head south where the weather suits my clothes and try to find a place to play my guitar. A place to "Play and stay". I saw heading south as my only option. Do backpack,Hitchhike and carry my guitar.
However. as the fates would have it, an old friend who is renovating an apartment was able to make an accomadation for me. Thus, glory of glories, I have, for now, a "castle in the sky". It's a second floor apartment and has these incredible light giving windows.
Empty apartments don't have furniture but I found this aluminum picnic table someone was throwing out and have set up my recording equiptment. Then....after much effort I have been able to produce another CD. I finished the recording yesterday.
Homeless veteran's find really good stuff in other people's garbage. It's a stable table and is about eight feet long.
I'm not going to try to fill in all the details of my struggle and how I kept myself online and got a 230 dollar CD burner and etc. I can see I started to write "catch up" entries for this essay collection for my last few entries.. Clearly that doesn't work and makes for tedious reading. I might edit them severly.
Writing this stuff out however is great theropy. So I'm going to remind myself of my earler deportment. That is, I'm just going to write. Like water filling up each space before it moves on.
And I plan to have fun writing stuff up.
And all the while wondering who, if anyone, is reading it all.
I wish it wasn't like this but it is also important for me to feel that by writing this site that I am not alone in a back room with hitlerian thugs. Some folks read what I write. And it also might be important that I get "my story as I see it" OUT.....to the outside world. I feel surrounded by tyrany.
It's a bad feeling.
Its been two years this past October since I left the farm. I went back to get a frying pan recenty. It is now window smashed and heavily vandelized. Built in 1788 and now Gone with the wind.
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Me,the universe and my guitar
It seems appropriate that I should provide you with some sort of overall summation of my guitar. It has become very central to my experiance since leaving the farm.
My CDs.
Thats a good place to start.
My web friend from Wisconsin I suppose was the start of it all. One year I made a video of myself playing Christmas carols.
They were instrumentals. I knew that it's difficlt for a guitar player to do instrumental christmas carols. I took it as a challenge in an attempt to dazzle my web associate. Afterwards I was primed for a more serious attempt.
When my first homeless christmas was coming up I wanted to make a recording for gifts. I was thinking "cassettes".
I wasn't yet aware that many many people all over town burn their own CDs all the time. It's almost like having a phone or a refrigerator apparently. So a friend ran off Homeless Veteran's Chistmas for me on his CD burner. And due to another friend's urging I put a price on them and tried to sell them. It worked.
Then in July I had "Songs from the Pine Motel" ready. I had a lot of housing problems so instead of Feb/march as I had planned it was delayed. It did not sell as easily as "Homeless Veteran's Christmas". I probably sold about 35 of them over a three month period.
But you have to remember I was bottenecked with my web acess restricted to after midnight while staying at the welfare motel. I'm a day person and I would always nod off once I got on line. Besides which everyime my terminal decided to call the 800 number I was off line until I could find someone who would let me plug into their phone line to retrieve the local number. It's complicated to explain but the point is that I was off line for days on end. It can be hard to find someone who will let you plug your terminal into their phone line for three minutes sometimes.
So after being evicted from the motel because I got my award and landing here where I have web acess and a place to plug in my CD burner. I quickly ran off "Homeless Veteran's Bottle of Wine".
Well.....not real quickly but it was ready about the 16th of November. I haven't made any sales efforts on Homeless Veteran's Bottle of Wine.
Instead?
I ran immediately at preparing another Christmas CD. They simply sell much more easily then my usual fare. At least according to my experiance with "Homeless Veteran's Christmas" and "Songs From the Pine Motel"
See....financially I had never been in such dire straights since I received the "award". It's been a great leap backward.
It made me ineligible for the more viable progams the county provides.
My plan was to slip into my backpack and walk south to escape the cold looking for a soup kitchen in a warmer clime but my friend who was renovating an apartment (this one) made an accomadation for me to stay here.
The way I saw it I needed a new CD to sell because my sales were slowing down with Pine Motel music and having won an award from Social Security I was in danger of starving. So I made Bottle of Wine.
However....in the interim I saw Chrstmas sneaking up again as well and I knew I wanted to make a new and improved christmas CD because they are simply much more vigourous sellers. People buy muliples and use them as gifts. Thats not done with the usual CD music.
So I decided to send out the Homeless Veteran's Bottle of Wine" CD to some of my supporters without any solicitation at all. I did however include a self addressed envelope. The plan was to rally enough funds to carry me to December and the release of my yet to be named christmas CD. The plan seems to be working.
I know that in January I'm supposed to receive some kind of lump sum gleamed from past due months. The award was retroactive. And from the pace of the work being done with the renovations I know that I'll be safe here from now until after the New Year. This is good.
So......thats where me,the universe and my guitar are at present.
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Old Dreams and Past Lives
6 December 01
I've become very deeply involved in my guitar. Its been dfficult and confusng up to this point at least.
The illusions of youth are in conflict with the dillusions of age. Was the world always as I see it now? And was my youth lost in the illusions of flower power and love? Or is the world as I saw it in my youth, and now I am lost in the dillusions of age?
I remember a "gathering" I went to several years ago with a friend of mine from the farm. I wound up on the stage in the evening as a part of the entertainment. I played a few songs. One was "Red River Valley". I had srylized it a little and was using the stage microphones.
An incredible thing happened. The sudience started to sing along as gently and as softly as I was singing and playing it. It IS a sweet and sad song about lost love you know.
It felt like the earth had lifted up. I was startled for the moment it took for me to realize what was happening. It was a wonderful experiance. Hundreds were singing with me sharing the mood.
When I record my CDs the situation is a lot lke staring into a microscope. I do a song many times and listen intently. The effect is that I tend to lose sight of "value". I can't see the forest for the trees.
I can't tell if my guitar work is good,bad or indifferent. My belief that people could enjoy my music simply disolves out from under me. It is only later that I can hear the CD and find any spirit or upliftmet in the music.
Back in the magic times of the late sixties and early seventies my guitar was a very central experiance not only for myself but for the "group"", the extended family, the "tribe" , whatever those fascinating illusory guasi organizations where.
Those were times when friends would call each other and make pans to meet in Stacy Park along the river. Bring a blanket and something to share were common enough plans. Of course guitars were brought.
If there was a free concert in the park people would bring extra soda and pass them out. Food,marijuana, hugs, good vibes were all shared across a group of relative strangers.
There were coffee houses where people would attentively listen to various guitar players and performers. There are "open mike" nights around town today, and some with the correct ambiance but no one listens to the players. The players are merely something that interferes with conversation to the majority of those present, Why some even show up is a mystery beyond me.
And among the players thmselves there are divisions. There was a sense that we were all taking part in some mysterious and wonderful event back then. When the place would close plans would be made to wait for the sun together at some remote locale with a good view.. Not anymore. At least I don't see it, not in my neigborhood. For me the wonderul and mysterious event we are all experiancing together doesn't seem to be happening anymore.
And maybe it is because I am more recording oriented recently but I have the feeling that I'm playing into a void where there used to be somthing. Maybe I just need to play at more "gatherings" so I can feel as if I have my role back. And find real comort in groups again where everybody had value. And lock arms and sing Blowing in the Wind swaying against each other in time. Of course people don't sing Blowing in the Wind today, nor do crowds lock arms and sway.
I'm playing my guitar again with a similar fervor as I had during the magical times. But these are not those times. These are hard times. Youth and age may have nothing to do with it. And its a small wonder that I am not even more confused. Or that things are not more difficult. Things just arn't the same way now.
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Shooting the Breeze
Hello???
Anybody here???
Probably not. Just me and a screen. Comparible to the tree that falls in the forest with no one to hear.
With all the unedited blather I've left behind me so far its a wonder my site hasn't been deleted by my server.
There are a few things I need to clear up badly with you. But first you must understand the progressiveness of my troubles from the landlord to my benefits and how distressingly alarming it has all been. My intent has not been to mislead or misrepresent myself. As things developed I have tried to respond. And I have been quite emotionally disturbed by events. I did what I could. I represented my self in the light of each devopement.
I had been through I think it was four address changes during my last semester of community college. This was in 84 or 85. And my curriculum was demanding.
I probably accomplished the impossible at that point. I was never able to locate a job in my field.
The state explained I had no aptitude. That my math was weak.
So...thats my Veteran Preference Hiring the state professes to have..
I tutored math and aljebra at my own grade level. They made an exception for me because I was so strong in it. This was at the junior college. And of course simply having a degree in something does not mean you have any aptitude for it.
They gave me tests and all that routine.
Look....I ain't going to study math and I ain't going to learn how to show I have aptitude for programming when I have a degree in it. My life is nuts enough with out me adding to it.
So....after a few years I gave up on my efforts to get off disability. I figured they want kids. Younger people. They also said I have no relevant work history. Thats true too. They hired the kids outta high school.
So after my "last blast" which was a hitchhiking endevor into Canada (during my job search years) I wound up in a low rent situation in a semi-communal old (1788) farm house. This was good.
And along the way (1987) I heard about a teacher in a special ed school who apparently tried to strangle one of his students in class. Novel approach to discipine, don't you think? Specal ed classes can have a lot of beavioral problems (thats kids) in them.
I wound up there as his replacement along with a friend who had been working at this "special" high school as well.
I knew that Social Security had told me that they interview my employers about my work performance. I was concerned that this might be the problem for many jobs that did not work out for me previously. After I work for a while somebody from the state comes by or on phone and inquires about the mental patient they have working for them.
I felt this might be the problem with my previous work efforts.
So I didn't tell them. Not until later.
After the ambulance ride to the hospital for an anxiety attack they feared was a heart attack. Okay? Then I told them.
I know I told them.
So what they have is I worked for five years and made over the limit seven years previously. By their arithmetic it was ten years previously that I demonstrated I could work. The job had no benefits as I was working only as a substitute teacher.
And I know I told them back then that I had been working. Its a clear memory.
After the hospital ride.
Anyway......then they increased my benefits in 1998 Septeber. I asked the congressman what was going on. He said it was cool. Based on past earnings. Then five months later Social security says that they made a mistake in increasing my beneits because of work earnings and that I owe them 93,000 dollars for the years since 1989.
And the congressman just wafts along like a leaf in a gale and accepts their new finding as the end truth. The messnger boy congressman. Whatever they say he will find a way to accept as truth. No integrity to the information he provides.
Congress????
I was frightened by this reversal of his and the trauma of the experiance will never leave me. Who can I trust in this "gang"?
Anyway......maybe I didn't present the full facts in my previous writings but I did not try to deny that I made too much money.
And as the machinations of this seeming government plot against me has proceded I have tried to address it accurately in my writings.
I went over to other lower stress school systems and continued sub-teaching after my hospital trip. I kept a few local districts on call so I could escape the firing I have become used to. I figured don't stay in one place too long and I'll be able to make a dollar.
In 1992, May, I realized it all for the mistake it was and ceased working for years. My medical history has continued.
My posture in all of this is that the manner in which this "problem" is being addressed is all wrong. I shouldn't have had my life's circumstances destroyed.
Okay.......
Thats what I have to say today.
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