Velvet Verbosity

Now even the homeless are blogging.  For reals.

The Homeless Guy 

Some excerpts:

All the libraries are closed today - not a good thing for the homeless. Yesterday’s balmy weather and high temps in the 70’s will be tempered today with highs in the 40’s.

With the library closed, I hope to do some cafe hopping. I hope they let me hang out on their computers for most of the day. That shouldn’t be a problem if business is moderately slow. Now to just find a good position in this seat, so that my back won’t hurt.

The Homeless Guy even Twitters!

I am on Twitter.com Start up an account, if you haven’t already, and follow me! I am at twitter.com/thehomelessguy.

What the hell?  I have a Mac Book Pro and I still don’t really get Twittering.

There are benefits to losing one’s memory. Like when you slow-drag step to the kitchen wanting something, you don’t know what, but something that isn’t in your kitchen. You open the fridge, glance over the milk, the cheese, the stuff you already knew was there. Then you open the freezer, out of a need to complete the moot ritual, and to your genuine surprise, you find this!

It is then you remember that you were just at the store three hours ago, you bought this, and it was YOUR OWN HAND that put it in your freezer in anticipation of this very moment.

Don’t forget this week’s 100 Word Challenge!

Is it Tuesday again? Yes it is. Time to announce the next 100 Word Challenge. This week I picked up a book off the shelf called The Language of Argument by Daniel McDonald. It seemed ironically appropriate.

Close eyes, open book, point finger to land upon this week’s word for the 100 Word Challenge:

Precise

Now drop and give me 100 by THURSDAY. That’s right, I’m moving the 100 Word Challenge submission deadline to Thursday. For rules, regulations, fine print, and the history of 100 Words, click the picture above (it’s been recently updated). Happy writing!

Sometimes other people are able to speak/write about things I think about but can never articulate as well.  Slickaphonic is one of those people, and sometimes I swear she’s got a direct line into my brain.  We sometimes joke about being long-lost twins, but no, she’s just an eloquent and well-written kindred spirit.  Her latest post, “But I Didn’t Mean To…” on forgiving “accidents” vs. “non-accidents” was an issue that was on my mind a fair amount in the not too distant past. Particularly how to communicate this.  I had failed, frustratingly so, but I changed my circumstances so it was out of my mind, but when I read her post I had a “yes, that’s how I meant to say it!” moment.

It seems that there are two types of people I meet in my life.  Those who find me easy-going and forgiving, and those who find me “difficult” and unyielding.  The latter I can count on one hand.  I’ve never been able to articulate very well to the second type just what it is about their behavior that inspires me to anger, though it’s much more frustration and disgruntlement.  The “difficult” part is because I try so hard to communicate this to them, but fail time and time again.  Perhaps if I had had Slick’s words in my arsenal, some of those conversations would have turned out better. She illustrates so well the difference between an honest mistake and a careless mistake and why the latter carries more weight and less forgiveness.

However, there are occasions wherein “I didn’t mean to” just doesn’t cut it. If you knock a glass over and break it because you didn’t see it, I won’t be angry. If you try to take the tablecloth out from under a fully set table and all of the dishes crash and break, then we’re going to have words. In neither case does the individual “mean to” break something, but in the latter, the offender knew there was some probability of breakage and proceeded anyway, hoping to land in the “happy” tail of the probability distribution–hoping to “get away with it.” In the courts, we call this negligence. If you own a pit bull and build a ten foot tall impenetrable fence and the dog escapes, you are not held liable when Fido bites someone leg off because you took reasonable actions to guard against such misfortune. However, if you are a pit bull owner and built a 3 foot tall shrub around the back yard, you are liable under the law for negligence. Further, even if you are the responsible fence-builder, the second time that dog escapes, you’re in trouble. Almost every known set of laws from Hammurabi’s Code to the Laws of the Old Testament lay out punishment for such negligent behavior.

So, in my life this translates that I am very easy-going when someone “breaks a glass” truly not meaning to, and could not have taken much precaution against the accident but is sure willing to be more careful in the future.  Mistakes will be made, verbal blunders will slip out, but when the core intent of someone is noble, those mistakes and blunders are just that.  Mistakes and blunders to be forgiven, to be laughed at, to be dissolved and blown away on spring breezes.  I have no bone to pick, no “beef” with such individuals, and often I cultivate friendships with this type because I can trust that whatever their flaws, their intent toward me and others will be thoughtful.  Everyone gets along swell.

The second type, the ones who find me difficult are the type who don’t look before they step, think before they speak, or consider before they act.  They are the table-cloth pullers.  They seek thrills and pleasure and give little thought to the consequences of their actions.  What’s worse is that they often feel self-righteous when others around them get upset.  The whole world ought to “lighten up” in their view.  I don’t get along so swell with this type.  It’s hard for me to not want to point out that their mistakes are more often attributed to carelessness rather than honest mistakes, particularly when they continue to make the same type of mistake and refuse to change their own behavior.  Or as Slickaphonic says:

There’s also the problem of cumulative emotional neglect. When you see that someone has rolled the emotional dice with your feelings and their actions, you begin to question their innocence for past transgressions you might have assumed at the time were cases of true accidents. I have the problem that until some transgression really pisses the hell out of me, I smile, rationalize their behavior for them using much better excuses than they could ever contrive, and sweep it under the rug and out of my mind. It’s like putting the raging pit bull back in the yard without telling the owner it escaped. When the dog finally takes a bite out of my hand, I’m out of grace and understanding and am ready for the pruning scissors.

So I’m learning.  Learning that I simply don’t need to point out the obvious to anyone.  To date, my talking has done little to reverse this behavior in anyone anyway.  Besides, it’s a form of arrogance on my part, that I feel I can persuade anyone to change their behavior.  In future, as soon as I get a whiff of the negligent type, I’m just going to get up and walk to the nearest exit.  No harm, no foul.

Back in 2000 I bought a CD called “File Under Futurism”, a collaboration between DJ Spooky and the Freight Elevator Quartet.

I had introduced several people to this CD over the years and I was often asked by others to borrow it. I was always hesitant as it was one of my most prized CDs, and yet, I wanted other people to hear this amazing work of genius. With all this borrowing and returning, the CD eventually got lost. I was bummed but thought I would just buy a new one. No. After 2003 I couldn’t find the CD anywhere, NOT EVEN ON ITunes. Everytime I visited a music store, I would go to the DJ Spooky section, and run through the stack hopeful that I might find FUF. No luck. It was kind of mind boggling to me that such a phenomenal piece of work was so hard to come by, but I relented to the idea that mediocrity had won out in America. Ah well. I had found it on Amazon.com and bookmarked it to order, but for this or that reason never got around to it. This and that reason may have been related to my need for instant gratification, but that’s another story. In this story, the CD just magically appeared in my collection again one day not too long ago. I was beside myself with joy, even though I didn’t have proper stereo equipment to play it anymore. This CD is not something you can listen to on the computer. It is an experience that requires high volume, closed eyes, and a dark room. In my opinion anyway.Last night I got the chance to listen to it on a good system. There’s nothing I can tell you to describe this music. Avante-garde? Yes. Experimental? Yes. Subliminal? Yes. Energetic? Yes. Evocative? Yes. Provocative? Yes. Mind altering? Yes.

I thought maybe the customer reviews on Amazon.com might be more helpful. How about this one?

Hi, my name is Ed and I live in Seattle Washington, I’m single, white, male. I like to listen to this as background music and it is really great.

There you have it folks. An intelligent review of intelligent music. The end.

Just kidding. Here’s a better review from Artist Direct:

DJ Spooky’s File Under Futurism is the result of a six-month collaboration with the Freight Elevator Quartet, an avant-garde electronic and acoustic group dedicated to pioneering new musical sounds and techniques. File Under Futurism features variations on compositions by DJ Spooky that were then reworked and remixed by both Spooky and the Freight Elevator Quartet. Each of the album’s pieces reflects society’s increasing speed and reliance on technology while exploring different subgenres of electronic music, from the breakbeat-inflected “File Under Futurism (Groove Protocol Mix)” to the minimalist, cello-driven “Downtempo Manifesto,” to the heavily processed digital hardcore of “Experimental Asynchronicity,” to the gentler, ambient “Chromatic Aberration.” File Under Futurism also includes DJ Spooky turntablisms “Interstitial A” and “Interstitial B,” as well as Freight Elevator Quartet compositions like “Bring Me My Mental Health” and “The RCA Mark II Synthesizer,” which was composed on the first synthesizer ever built. An ambitious and fascinating album, File Under Futurism is a rare successful combination of academics and kinetics. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide

Or this one from scaruffi.com:

The quartet augments Miller’s eccentric genius with a few gems of baroquely aristocratic chamber music in the vein of the Penguin Cafe` Orchestra (the middle-eastern motif of Infrared, the exotic adagio of The Revolution Will Be Streamed, the romantic aria of This Is What Happens) and Miller floods them with his rhythmic fireworks.

This is a delicious excursion off the beaten track that showcases Miller’s potential as a full-fledged composer.

Bottom line. It’s genius, but it’s not for everyone’s taste. DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller), aside from being a DJ and composer, is also an activist, a writer, philosopher, and artist. Did I mention he’s also warm-hearted, humble, has amazing hands and oh yeah, he’s hot? Scroll down to the next post to see him speak on Duchamp. He gets a couple points off for not being the most coherent speaker, but then he would be PERFECT and that would contradict some cosmic law and we would all cease to exist.

Look at those dimples.  Look at that creative brain.

“One good turn deserves another”. So I share a story of kindness. Last night, after being steeped in a painful situation for many months now, I reached out to a past lover and current friend. We call those people “friends” who can meet us halfway through the gaping chasm that often separates us all from one another no matter how close we stand or how much of each other’s exhaled breath we breathe. It is the friend who can stand on the other side of the earth and make us feel that we are touching one another through a secret portal in the time-space continuum.

Tonight, R did that for me. He reached across many miles, across digital wires, and held me, held my hand while I released the buildup of pain and anger I had been feeling. Right or wrong, I was feeling it. Everything I said, it was familiar to him. He could’ve written the script having had someone in his life so similar. “Don’t believe this”, he said, and while my head had been screaming it all along, my heart had become enmeshed so tightly in a web of confusion that I couldn’t sync the two.

“You’re a good woman”, he said, and I thought that thing in my chest had retreated too far to burst open and start beating again. I heard it in my ears, my own heart beating, my own mind returning to me, my sanity advancing and filling up the corners of my skull.

To be heard. To be nurtured, and held in someone’s care as I was hurting. It was a long cool drink of water after being in the desert. It was having someone put a soothing cream on a wound, touching me gently and murmuring soothingly until the tremors subsided. The relief, the sense of safety was profound. With each shared word, I felt my limbs return to life, I felt the blood coursing through veins along my bones, underneath my skin.

Sometimes you forget how much you’ve allowed deprivation to be the default. You definitely forget what sanity feels like. When so steeped in pain you don’t know which way is “up for air”, to have someone reach a hand out to you and gently say, “this way back to yourself” has to be the gentlest, kindest gesture from one human to another.

Thank you R for being that gentle hand. I owe you one.

As for me, it’s moving on. Wise words spoken from the heart should never be ignored

Image: http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/Christine-Ellis/Loving-Hands-Photographic-Print-C12153830.jpeg

Not to usurp the 100 Words on Bold submissions, remember to KEEP SCROLLING!

A new Friday means time for 100 Words here at Velvet Verbosity. If you’re wondering what this is all about, click the picture above to learn about the 100 Word Challenge. There’s still time to submit, I’ll add you here. \

I am stunned that Lceel took it upon himself to write a 100 word Haiku. I’m impressed.

Words are bold, sometimes
writ large so we don’t miss them
they shout loud to us

young people are bold
sometimes brazen and foolish
bold without wisdom

our leaders are bold
and their bold has brought us war
where is the wisdom?

little kids are bold
they try to do things and learn
from things that don’t work

the things that cause pain
become that which they avoid
bold becomes a tool

what tools do they use?
those we have chosen to lead
what things do they learn?

discipline? respect?
humbleness? One thing well done -
they shout loud to us.

To read the full entry, click on the link above. My own submission this week comes after making a bold step in a new direction, my own direction:

To be bold is to live courageously, without fear, without skin. To walk in the world with the heart beating wildly at all that strikes fear in it, at all that causes it to swell and stretch, at all that would make it shrink behind its bony cage. Be bold I say, and do not let your heart beat feebly in your chest. Make it sing and swell and beat like a drum in your ears. Strike down fear when it rises, strike down illusion and delusion, strike down all that harms it, and let the heart speak its truth.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard commitment described so well as LouCeel does here:

It can be awfully lonely, being on the outside looking in. And as for your fear of ‘getting comfortable’, committing - Have you ever stood on the side of the pool, thinking to yourself “Man that water’s going to be cold” and you hesitated to jump in for fear of the shock to your system? But you got up the courage and jumped in and it wasn’t so bad - the jumping in - and once in, you didn’t want to get out?

That’s what it’s like, committing.

Who doesn’t enjoy the pool once in?  Ok, maybe if there are imported sharks in the water, or there’s an 8 year old with a mischievous gleam in his eye and a yellow watery halo around him.

Image: “Arial of Woman Diving from Diving Board” framed photographic print by Rick Raymond, found at www.art.com

This gal was one of my first and only readers back in the day.   That day was a year ago, and it was a Wednesday.  Or maybe it was a Tuesday.  Maybe it was a someday.  Anyway, she doesn’t blog often, only when she’s really got something to say.  It always packs a punch, tugs at the heart, makes you go hmmm, or haha, or “oh me too!” or “I wish I could fecking write like that”.

But I Digress…

Tell her Velvet Verbosity sent you.