Saturday, September 01, 2007

JOURNAL ENTRY FOR TODAY: SEPT. 1st., 2007

SEPTEMBER 2007/ELECTRONIC JOURNAL\WILLIAM M. NEAL
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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1st, 2007
“We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become fast in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.” –Martin Luther King Jr.,
This quote here is from radio broadcaster Frank Sontag’s website. A fella heard on 95.5 KLOS, here in Los Angeles. It’s the “touchy-feely” show called: IMPACT, on Monday mornings from 1 to 5 AM. Sunday night, eh? For most people. He talks philosophy. He goes on tour and will have something on the 4th of this month. I wonder if I’ll go. Nope. Don’t consider it. It’s rather like the Voices From The Street bit, where the character goes to find this person every one is going to…to find out something about themselves, in their life, etc. Whatever. That boy was a character in a novel…now I’m reading about a girl in a novel and it’s dedicated to PHIL. And I think we all know: Philip Kindred Dick. Philip K. Dick.
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"Times glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light." –Shakespeare
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Another quote on his page: This one, from under a heading: Our Mission Statement. His father got a job in Los Angeles, as an electrician at Universal Studios. Frank was born in 1955 in Ohio. Did a lot of things and got on the Mark and Brian radio show way back when as a board op., etc. Now he heads up a group called: The Project For Social Change. He’s got a lecture Tuesday, at 7.30, at the Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church up the hill from me in Costa Mesa. The cost of the lecture, which is entitled: The Pursuit Of Happiness, the last of the year for him, (This is the last time he’ll do a public appearance this year.) is $10.00, and is like the words read around there somewhere on the site, sounding like something that just covers the cost of the function itself.
Maybe I should click on the link and go. I think I can make it to work the next day by getting up at 3.30 and more importantly, going to bed at 10 at night…and I may not even have to. I have the thing, the deal, just down the street. Why couldn’t I just show up, you know? Okay. Ten at the door. Why not? I live just down the street and though you’d normally go left, you can’t do that out of that drive way down that hill and all, no. You’d turn left and go up and turn around in a parking lot with a signal given at the top of the hill in Costa Mesa. Okay. So, what’s there for me? Won’t know unless I see, do, go.
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I tell the story of a writing class: I talked to the instructor, whose name conveniently escapes me, and she said you’re spending your energy on journaling and not writing. So, for this class we’ll try a little experiment (my embellishment here), and have you not write in your journal for the length of the class. Just write the assignments, and see how you do. I did well. I wrote some things of which I’m proud. I liked it. It was deceptively simple. Don’t know how/why I’ve not done more with my fabulous gift.
(People who heard the tale used to gasp when they heard that bit, she said, and knowing I write a lot in a journal or that they do themselves write a bit in a journal as well. But they come around if they know about or want to write “professionally”, and it’s all about discipline…etc.)
It occurred to me the other day, how, I wasn’t even interested in sitting down and shooting a film with someone. The nuts and bolts part didn’t interest me. I just wanted to write something and have that be that. I didn’t and don’t want to even read it aloud to groups and things. None of that. I just want to write it as best I can and get it out there. If people buy it, fine. If not, fuck it. Oh well. I hope later then that I could make a living off of it. I’d like to get an English degree or something at UCI. Maybe. Something…but not any thing else, you know? I just…don’t care…and I really find it so very difficult to clear out my storage space with no place to put things here…because I don’t want to just toss every thing…and I’m crowded out here…and I’ve no means I can tell, to make a move any where else. It’s difficult for me. I need something and some one and I’d like to just get it via writing and have that be the thing and carry me forth.
I know life is a spiritual journey as well as a physical one. I don’t want god or jesus or mohammed or buddha…I want to meditate and live in a nice house and have fun. I want sex with beautiful women and to have friends I can count on who don’t live so gat-damned far away. I want to have a state of being within/without (to share-give by example), of love and kindness and giving/forgiving…patience and equanimity…I want to live in that world as well. By that I mean it’d be nice, more than just a little nice, to have it be in such a place that is like that in re-turn.
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Joy lies in the light, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself.

-Mohandas Gandhi

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Pretty cool stuff. I mean, I like the fact that it’s not all slick and there’s all these “professional degrees” and such, bragging about all the stuff. I think that it’s like people helping people and really opening up and getting along that gets it going where it needs to be. That’s what makes life worth living and all such as that. (Touchy-Feely.)
Call it humanistic or atheistic/agnostic or whatever. I don’t care. I think it’s right. It’s not like I’m now going to throw it all in to Frank and former Irene Clair or some kind of prophet/profit I am unaware of…no. I’m not. I am going to make it a point and more of an effort as always, to make it happen, make it occur. Get the stuff out and throw every thing I can away or what I mean is donate what I can to good will and all. That kind of thing…if I’m not using it now and can’t use it. If the material is not any good any more due to mold or whatnot as that, you know, yeah, get the stuff trashed…moving on like that…but, not into bazillions of dollars as…the answer to every thing but so too, it’s pretty helpful around here. Systema….what that is for me…have to find something…constantly improve and make that up as I go, all along the way.
Systema, something I culled from Spook Country. It’s I think off the characters relying on Santeria or something, from Cuba. But, I think, the word: System…and the rhythm of it, and thinking of it, like a mantra or OM for meditating…walking down the road…using at work perhaps…when there’s a “situation”. STOP. Breathe, and what’s going on? LISTEN: Really hear. Then maybe make a decision…sure, there are times when you must ACT right split second fast right away, but a lot of it, if avoiding ugly conflict and anger hate ugliness goes; then taking the time to STOP. What’s my systema? What’s theirs? Breathe. LISTEN. What’s going on? What do I need to do and is it really necessary to DO any thing here? That’s important…really. One doesn’t always need to “do” any thing about what goes on.
BLINK SMILE DO NOTHING: BSDN. Say those letters over and over again to yourself, out loud when alone and needing to meditate. That could be your mantra, or one of them. Create a mandala with those characters. A nice fine drawing of that in the pattern, a circle or mandala, to focus on when things get hairy.
Where is this thing going? Could I really write something here or should I just quit because I’ve got to have this posted to the two websites and I want to see how they’ll fit. I need to wash out my juice glass and get to my tai-chi-chuan and grocery shopping and other things to do like get a hairs cut at 9 A.M., when the place opens, but before that I must eat more fruit because it’s breakfast still. I’m hungry. I need to eat a little more and top it off with a banana for my grumbling stomach. There’s the matter of coffee (some wee-bit of caffeine), and then real good, good-for-me, heavy-matter foodstuffs. Not lunch necessarily, but solid foods from there…not fruit mixed with any thing, but not necessarily “breakfast” foods either…they don’t fill me up. They’re in the stomach one moment, and then I pitch head-first into a lack of energy dive I cannot recover from--some times--it seems till way late in the day; if ever after that. It sucks. It’s great to be able to get the metabolism cranked up, but it’s also very tricky. One has to be able to keep the engine burning…and that’s the thing about writing too, eh? Does making it move more just produce more or evaporate all that good sou? (It’s a bit of both?) Exercise, you are more vital. And then, you can be spent as well. Same thing perhaps.

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