October 31st, 2005--
Happy Halloween and sorry about the forums! I went off all half-cocked and succumbed to the latest scary "security
issues" email from phpBB, who make the forum software. I've been running the .11 version and finally figured I
needed to bring it up to speed now that they are on version .18, which has brought us to version zero. I'm working
on it and hope to have it all sorted soon. The good news is that, as advertised, the forum is currently safe from
hackers...
Happy Halloween and sorry about the forums! I went off all half-cocked and succumbed to the latest scary "security
issues" email from phpBB, who make the forum software. I've been running the .11 version and finally figured I
needed to bring it up to speed now that they are on version .18, which has brought us to version zero. I'm working
on it and hope to have it all sorted soon. The good news is that, as advertised, the forum is currently safe from
hackers...
Friday, October 28th, 2005--
I have a few internet...pet peeves is too harsh...disapointments is more like it...
One of those is checking back at a blog I've seen before and finding it has been ages since it was updated. Why
does this person even keep the page up? It's stupid. And disappointing. And now its me.
Real nice.
I apologize about that. I was very busy for a while. Then I wasn't. Which led to being desperately poor, which is not
only expensive but remarkably time consuming. You'll notice that all the great autobiographical writing about being
poor was done just after the writer was poor. One can't take time out of a busy day of monetary worries to do
something as frivolous as writing. There is sitting and worrying to be done. Pacing. Walking to places to buy
ridiculously small guilty pleasures: newspapers, coffees, the occasional sandwich. These items take on such an
oddly satisfying crunchy outer shell of neurotic guilt. Once broken, that crust explodes, filling your mouth with a
delicious geyser of the pettiest decadence ever. Careful, there's always a hard pit of recrimination. Don't break a
tooth...
I have a few internet...pet peeves is too harsh...disapointments is more like it...
One of those is checking back at a blog I've seen before and finding it has been ages since it was updated. Why
does this person even keep the page up? It's stupid. And disappointing. And now its me.
Real nice.
I apologize about that. I was very busy for a while. Then I wasn't. Which led to being desperately poor, which is not
only expensive but remarkably time consuming. You'll notice that all the great autobiographical writing about being
poor was done just after the writer was poor. One can't take time out of a busy day of monetary worries to do
something as frivolous as writing. There is sitting and worrying to be done. Pacing. Walking to places to buy
ridiculously small guilty pleasures: newspapers, coffees, the occasional sandwich. These items take on such an
oddly satisfying crunchy outer shell of neurotic guilt. Once broken, that crust explodes, filling your mouth with a
delicious geyser of the pettiest decadence ever. Careful, there's always a hard pit of recrimination. Don't break a
tooth...
October 13, 2005--
Technically speaking, it is impossible to enter the same room twice. It's never exactly the same as you left it,
however short your absence. You may have to look closely to see the difference. Very close. Sherlock Holmes big
ass magnifying glass close, but it is most assuredly different. And so are you. You left. You've been somewhere.
The last breath you brought within you from the Great Out There spills over your lips as you walk through the door
and if nothing else, look; you've gone and Changed the Air.
That said, how is it possible to feel as if a well worn rut stretching forward with a straightness of laser purity has
climbed rib high? Fog ahead, more of a mist behind. A memory of the Rut as a Young Path, maybe ankle deep,
but no recollection of the trail head, the first fork. That Frost remembered the damn fork, saw it for what it was,
well, thats what makes poets and the insufferably dull, I suppose.
These are the thoughts that come with a toothache. Sleep won't, but thoughts do. Life takes on an intensity. For
the past thirty hours I have lived moment to moment in a way I rarely have before, in a way that would make a
hippie proud. No amount of oversimplified Buddhism, bastardized Hindi yoga terms or acid could compete with
Toothache.
Toothache has discipline. Toothache may rest, but will regroup, not retreat. Toothache will bring you to that
spiritual Promised Land-oh yes it will-because Toothache will break your shit down into a series of moments like
nothing else. Each one new, each one different. A moment filled with hope may lead to another moment of hope.
Or, it may crossfade immediately into a moment of despair, resignation, obstinance, panic, regret, euphoria....
One never knows.
This gamut of emotion may confuse the uninitiated. Understandable, because Toothache is working under an
alias; in a disguise of sorts to make the whole thing seem more simple. Like Zeus and the swan... without all the
parts that books fall open to...
Websters defines an ache as a "dull persistent pain."
And there's the lie.
Toothache pain is anything but dull and persistent. Thirty-one hours ago I thought that the phrase "Symphony of
Pain" existed only to issue forth from the vaguely Pan-european-accented mouths of movie villains. But a
toothache, a real, proper Toothache...it deserves the hyperbole.
There is a general theme. A sort of drilling..Soprano, really, is what I want to say, so maybe a symphony is not
such an apt metaphor. Perhaps an Opera of Pain. Yes, now I've really gone over the edge, which is good
because thats where this discussion belongs.
A sort of drilling Soprano supported generally by a deep Bass of pressure. A chorus of more general,
headache-style pain keeps things together and occasionally a great cymbal clap of blinding white lightning shoots
straight through the sinuses and out the top of the head just to wake the blue hairs in the boxes. Arias by each
Principal, Duets, Ovetures...not quite as much tap dancing as I'd like, but a little High Culture never hurt anyone...
The occasional intermezzo, when the Tooth in Question slips back to being taken for granted and inexplicably, the
tooth below it, on a different jaw for chrissakes, takes up the tune for a few minutes.
And then there are the pauses.
When at once all the music stops...and suddenly there is the awareness of all that air in the concert hall.
Suspended. Enclosed. Not.moving. A sense, with its absence, that the music was not-as some fool taught
us-evenly spaced concentric arcs being animated down a contour-line ear canal to move some sort of tiny elbow,
but a physical presence that until the silence had wrapped itself around us, holding us, and that we called it sound
only because our ears were the only ones who could see it.
That sense of absence of pain. When suddenly the shoulders drop and the lower jaw unlocks and even the
knees loosen from that state of unconscious tension. It's almost worth it. And clearly a lesson in appreciation.
***
Not of suffering, but the relief of suffering. To appreciate Not Suffering.
The Nobility of Suffering is a cliché. How? How did something so patently untrue become a cliché? Suffering is
anything but noble. That's how we recognize it as suffering.
The Nobility of Suffering is a defence mechanism we (and I sincerely hope you are in this group) the Not Suffering
use to avoid feeling horribly embarrassed and guilty.
Still believe in it?
You work for the United Nations Department of Suffering Alleviation. (Yes, it is a better future you live in) Your
assignment involves the delivery of a Huge Ship full of Relief Supplies to a Southern Pacific kingdom spread over
several islands. An unfeeling bureaucracy has stipulated you can only dock once, on one island, to reduce
paperwork. Wanting to help those suffering most, do you ask you guide to show you to the island of the Most
Noble or to the island of Those Living Without a Single Remaining Scrap of Dignity?
There you go.
Technically speaking, it is impossible to enter the same room twice. It's never exactly the same as you left it,
however short your absence. You may have to look closely to see the difference. Very close. Sherlock Holmes big
ass magnifying glass close, but it is most assuredly different. And so are you. You left. You've been somewhere.
The last breath you brought within you from the Great Out There spills over your lips as you walk through the door
and if nothing else, look; you've gone and Changed the Air.
That said, how is it possible to feel as if a well worn rut stretching forward with a straightness of laser purity has
climbed rib high? Fog ahead, more of a mist behind. A memory of the Rut as a Young Path, maybe ankle deep,
but no recollection of the trail head, the first fork. That Frost remembered the damn fork, saw it for what it was,
well, thats what makes poets and the insufferably dull, I suppose.
These are the thoughts that come with a toothache. Sleep won't, but thoughts do. Life takes on an intensity. For
the past thirty hours I have lived moment to moment in a way I rarely have before, in a way that would make a
hippie proud. No amount of oversimplified Buddhism, bastardized Hindi yoga terms or acid could compete with
Toothache.
Toothache has discipline. Toothache may rest, but will regroup, not retreat. Toothache will bring you to that
spiritual Promised Land-oh yes it will-because Toothache will break your shit down into a series of moments like
nothing else. Each one new, each one different. A moment filled with hope may lead to another moment of hope.
Or, it may crossfade immediately into a moment of despair, resignation, obstinance, panic, regret, euphoria....
One never knows.
This gamut of emotion may confuse the uninitiated. Understandable, because Toothache is working under an
alias; in a disguise of sorts to make the whole thing seem more simple. Like Zeus and the swan... without all the
parts that books fall open to...
Websters defines an ache as a "dull persistent pain."
And there's the lie.
Toothache pain is anything but dull and persistent. Thirty-one hours ago I thought that the phrase "Symphony of
Pain" existed only to issue forth from the vaguely Pan-european-accented mouths of movie villains. But a
toothache, a real, proper Toothache...it deserves the hyperbole.
There is a general theme. A sort of drilling..Soprano, really, is what I want to say, so maybe a symphony is not
such an apt metaphor. Perhaps an Opera of Pain. Yes, now I've really gone over the edge, which is good
because thats where this discussion belongs.
A sort of drilling Soprano supported generally by a deep Bass of pressure. A chorus of more general,
headache-style pain keeps things together and occasionally a great cymbal clap of blinding white lightning shoots
straight through the sinuses and out the top of the head just to wake the blue hairs in the boxes. Arias by each
Principal, Duets, Ovetures...not quite as much tap dancing as I'd like, but a little High Culture never hurt anyone...
The occasional intermezzo, when the Tooth in Question slips back to being taken for granted and inexplicably, the
tooth below it, on a different jaw for chrissakes, takes up the tune for a few minutes.
And then there are the pauses.
When at once all the music stops...and suddenly there is the awareness of all that air in the concert hall.
Suspended. Enclosed. Not.moving. A sense, with its absence, that the music was not-as some fool taught
us-evenly spaced concentric arcs being animated down a contour-line ear canal to move some sort of tiny elbow,
but a physical presence that until the silence had wrapped itself around us, holding us, and that we called it sound
only because our ears were the only ones who could see it.
That sense of absence of pain. When suddenly the shoulders drop and the lower jaw unlocks and even the
knees loosen from that state of unconscious tension. It's almost worth it. And clearly a lesson in appreciation.
***
Not of suffering, but the relief of suffering. To appreciate Not Suffering.
The Nobility of Suffering is a cliché. How? How did something so patently untrue become a cliché? Suffering is
anything but noble. That's how we recognize it as suffering.
The Nobility of Suffering is a defence mechanism we (and I sincerely hope you are in this group) the Not Suffering
use to avoid feeling horribly embarrassed and guilty.
Still believe in it?
You work for the United Nations Department of Suffering Alleviation. (Yes, it is a better future you live in) Your
assignment involves the delivery of a Huge Ship full of Relief Supplies to a Southern Pacific kingdom spread over
several islands. An unfeeling bureaucracy has stipulated you can only dock once, on one island, to reduce
paperwork. Wanting to help those suffering most, do you ask you guide to show you to the island of the Most
Noble or to the island of Those Living Without a Single Remaining Scrap of Dignity?
There you go.
Don Wood Online
For the love of Pete, who's in charge here?
For the love of Pete, who's in charge here?
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Hallway and sliding door to office.
Door from main to bath and bath.
View from down the street.
The store "Medium Green", the job on Division Street.
Main room.
Looking into office.
Looking back toward hall and bath from the office desk.