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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 12:22 am
  

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I got some John Coltrane on the stereo baby make you feel alright
I got some fine wine in the freezer mama cause I know what you like!

Oh God, I feel words comin on again. I had to travel back to beautiful Southside Oklahoma City, the land of mezcan resteraunts and chicken fried steaks, recently and clean out the old Homestead. Dad's been gone a year and the headstone is in place. Mom is down in Grapevine Texas in a little apartment where the old folks go. You walk down to take the noon time meal and they have the walkers lined all along the wall next to the old folks eatin' salad, drinking tea, and talking about how their kids forced them out of the houses they spent their lives in. Meantime, 250 miles away, I am sorting through the crap, throwing away all the unrealized dreams of my mother and father. The 7 million yards of cloth and the blank canvas next to the unopened tubes of oil paint. All the things they had on hold until they got around to it. The time came and there was little energy left and all there was in the world was a bunch of old TV trays covered with remote controls and books and chess games in half gambit and magnifying glasses next to chairs that lift your ass up at the push of a button and a 47 year old son throwing shit out, occasionally stoping to look at old photographs or a box full of post cards from the 1950's with one cent stamps and wishes you were there!


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:27 am
  

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(((((PSB)))))


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:36 am
  

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It's bittersweet; hugs from here.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:45 am
  

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Whoa!


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 8:46 am
  

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PSB, you said it so well. Been dealing with it all lately too... every few weeks more boxes transfer from the house to mine... then the sorting and memories begin again.

Is there stuff you can donate? I found a really neat way to honor my dad by donating his entire rock/mineral collection to my fellow geology students... and many anthropology books went to the anthro club.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:01 am
  

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I will probably wander on and off this post for awhile dumping images that formed in my brain as a result of these events. When you dissociate from your past as much as i have (or is it just ramblin round) you tend to look back in amazement at the world you were formed in versus the world you have come to know. You know that old saying about a ramblin man has troubles hangin on to all that he has owned, its true, many things have gone by the wayside I wish I still had., but there are still vivid memories and I want to catch those before I lose my energy and all that is left is a blank canvas and a bunch of uncapped oil paints (which, by the way, I went to the basement and dug mine out after that visit back home in among my mountain of books and old phonograph records i have managed to keep a handle on. When I came upstairs I looked at my 18 year old daughter and said' "when I'm gone, don't throw all my cool stuff away, we gotta sit down and go through it someday!"

PS I want a cool name under my PSBEATY, Arlonetizen is cool but i don't know whatto put there? how about "confused!"?

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Mar 16, 2006 ---</FONT></center>


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:02 pm
  

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by PSBeaty:


PS I want a cool name under my PSBEATY, Arlonetizen is cool but i don't know whatto put there? how about "confused!"?

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Mar 16, 2006 ---</FONT></center><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

"Post Script" Beaty?... nah! How about "Partly Sane" Beaty? I think that's better than confused! And besides, I like my kindred spirits to be partly sane.......just like me. Or, if you donate 0% of your income to our church of the Terminally Confused, you could use the "Selectively Oblivious" tag line like I do. I ain't got no copyright or patent on it or nuthin'...... <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 2:08 am
  

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REALITY CHECKER


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 10:08 pm
  

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I wonder about generations, the significance of being part of a generation.I mean I thought I was part of a significant generation at one time, I mean I thought it was a generation of change of rebirth, renewal. I look back now and I don't know where that all slipped away. Where I was confronted with the fact that not everybody in my particular age group didn't view the world as I did. I can think now of some significant "guiding lights" as it were but still it was a wicked reality to learn that those around me in the world I was living in and who were dealing with the same future i was saw the way, the tao as it were, differently from me. What year was GW born, 1946 wasn't it, did he ever sing My Generation or Magic Bus?

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Mar 20, 2006 ---</FONT></center>


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 1:45 am
  

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No, Bush did not sing those songs. He was too drunk and not enough stoned. But we did sing them, and do, and we have made a difference. Don't let them fool you: Their reaction is fear because we have made that difference. It will come out okay, but we may or may not be here to see the full blossoming of it. Think of those people who in the late 1800s to the 1920s dreamed similar dreams. They'd be so thrilled to see the progress. It just takes more time than we can see, sometimes.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:49 am
  

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I don't disagree entirely with you Shel and I do hang onto that idealism so characteristic of my youth (and which I hope my daughter has as well) and as far as George Bush on the Magic Bus, well?? But in 1968 and 69 when I was only 10 the next generation, My Generation, was going to be different. And, without dwelling on it, you all know the world today! So that is why I come here to write my mind and try and make sense of it all as we all pursue the road Into The Great UNKNOWN nown nown own own own owm owm aum aum aum aum.

So when I was home going through my dads crap I would often find a number of stashed false starts, I swear to God it was the most bizarre thing. The old man had left folders full of blank pages and blank binders all over his "space" as it were with the first couple covered in quotes and observations of the world. Then after page two or three he would stop and file the blank pages away. So, he had blank canvases and blank pages, what did he want to say?

So that brings up generation (how I got on this I suppose), who were the members of my fathers generation. Let me see, Jack Kerouac and Elvis Presley frame my father by 7 years and Andy Warhol was spot on the same age, now I will tell you that when I was that idealistic youth of 10 who, at that time or over the next 6 years, was going to be so dramatically influenced by the works of the these members of my fathers generation, I would have never associated these people with my father and it made me wonder.
I looked at the quotations in the false starts, some dating back to the sixties when he was a relatively young man, and I guess I was a little surprised by the depth, I mean he would juxtapose the thoughts of Stalin and Hitler with Gandhi and Thoreau. Nothing startling just unusual and I came to feel as I looked at the words that, at some level, the words and actions of my generation had made him attempt to reformulate his thoughts, repackage them as it were, so that we may have a better understanding of his position (my father was definitely considered the opposite pole in my youth).

I don't know where this is going so I'll post and go, maybe it is just a false start!

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Mar 21, 2006 ---</FONT></center>


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:00 am
  

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I mean if I were going to step back and look at it from a different perspective and get all dramatic and poetic and crap I would say something like,
(bump bump bump bah (trumpets sound))

Bill was born in August of 1929 on the banks of the Canadian River at a time when a rush of wind would soon blow out the last glimmer of the Enlightment. Two months later the market would crash setting off events that would plunge the world into depression and war which would shape Bill's view of life and of the world until the day he died. A view that was principled by a dying Age of Reason that dreamed of a utopian world that could be molded by mans (and womans) intellect through a new theism of the Great Republic based on logic and mans ability to find the right solution. However, his experience led him to believe the world was doomed to the diluting affects of democratic ingorance and manipulated by evil influences, mans failure at logic and reason, that resulted in the terror of Final Solutions. It was always his dream that the principles of American Independence and Freedom were strong, and that we, as a people, could rise above the unplanned interruptions as we gradually overcome our ignorance and continue on to the great pie in the the sky, perfect, complete and blinding, Just Capitalism!

Well, gotta go to work! Have a nice day!

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 2 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Mar 21, 2006 ---</FONT></center>


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 3:37 pm
  

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I guess if you are reading this your probably wondering “why is he writing this crap and what is the point?” I don’t know and I don’t know if there is a point. I guess when it comes to generation, the point is that I find nothing unique at all about this description of my father and quite honestly I find nothing uniquely American about it either. I guess that is the point. I mean Bill valued things and looked at life in ways that made him truly unique as an individual. If I consider him in reference to the other members of his generation listed I believe there are interesting aspects of his nature in relation to each of them. Jack Kerouac for instance, made observations of the human animal. Not at the failure of the human at being human and therefore falling to level of an animal but at the human being as an animal (which in my opinion makes Jack unique from the rest of the literary world that preceded him). Right or wrong, mans basal instincts are that of an animal who only distinction from the rest of the animal kingdom is in his ability to not only formulate but implement the conclusion of abstract thought. I guess to Jacks point that in general most people don’t let the ability of abstract thought get in the way of there lives and at a different level, his Tao Buddhist level I suppose, he saw no reason for it most of the time (except he had a fondness of bee bop which is pretty much an abstract thought). I don’t know, people see Jack in there own ways I suppose but I believe my father was somewhat unique for his generation (given his station in life, there is no caste system in America but we all have perceived stations) in appreciating intellect. He appreciated the ability to conceive abstractions from thought and the greatest compliment that you could have paid him was that he was “an intellectual”. However, although I don’t know if he read Kerouac, I believe my father actually looked at humanity in the same objective and non-critical fashion that was Jacks style. Then there is Andy Warhol. I never discussed Andy Warhol, the poster child for Post Modern Art (sorry could not help that one), with my father. There were blank canvases in the house and tubes of paint and my feeling is he would have filled them with impressionism if he had the time and energy. Did he understand the concept of consumable art? Did he appreciate the fact that Picasso or Dali could doodle for big bucks and that to Warhol the work of art was not the object he gave Bob Dylan but the fact that Bob could then just toss it in the bin, an original Warhol (no matter what it was) that could sale for big bucks. You got me, but I know my old man would love to have had a Picasso or Monet and not for the value they represent but for there beauty as a creation of man. Then there is Elvis, my father had no opinion one way or the other about Elvis nor (which I guess gets to the abstract) did I ever see him pay any attention to fad (he wasn’t really about keeping up with the Jones’ and know I don’t know how or why I connected this with Elvis). Another thing about my father (and my mother for that matter) who where both southerners and proud of their heritage, I never heard him utter a racist word the whole time I knew him. I guess the point is really that the things that would have separated my father from the herd of his generation are, in the grand scheme of things, meaningless footnotes to the description that has homogenized his generation and our culture (that exquisite piece of non-denominational rhetoric in the previous post).

Lunch is over! I don’t know where this is going and I welcome comments and criticisms! So in the immortal words of Frank Zappa, “Go man Go, Go Man Go, Go ManGo!”


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 5:33 pm
  

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Hopefully PS, our generation made a contribution to the long term health of mankind. But change of the proportions we may all like to see is going to happen more by evolution than revolution due to the nature of man.All compunds in nature over time reduce back to the base elements from which they are formed. Mankind is not much different in that respect. Governments, religion and philosophy are tools of man to keep the compound of man intact and evolving, so far as we can influence our own evolution.But even in the best of goverment,religious and philosophical systems, the majority of mankind is only short distance away from reverting back to base primal elements if faced with the lack of food, shelter , the fear of the threats of others (real or imagined) and for some even a lowering of thier standard of living may be enough to tilt the balance, if there ever was one in the first place. Such is human nature.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:22 pm
  

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Of course we gotta keep trying! I figured I'd mention this cuz my last post did sound kinda defeatist!


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