Once upon a time there was a weblog that very few people read called The White Lodge, written by a man who called himself the Squabbler. This weblog was hosted by a small web site called Blogstream which was run by a fellow in Connecticut. Blogstream made very little money, and its continued maintenance was largely a labor of love for its creator. Blogstream writers were fanatical about their little blogs, The Squabbler among them, and over the years a true sense of fellowship grew up around them. Although their blogs and their ideas were often quite different, fast friendships were formed of the type that last. 

On April 30, Blogstream will go dark. I, John Aufenanger, author of the White Lodge, speaking on behalf of the Squabbler, do not believe that any enterprise that doesn’t make a profit ought to continue existence, so I well understand the necessity of closing it. I wish Blogstream’s owner and founder all great luck in his future enterprises. May they be blessed with success. And I want to say thank you, John, for everything. Blogstream has changed my life, and I know there are others who will say the same.

The new physical location of The White Lodge is at Blogger. I've never been able to create hyperlinks here, so if the address isn't in blue print you can copy and paste it into your browser bar, or type it in.

http://thepicklemonkey.blogspot.com

“Do it to Julia!”

That’s what Winston Smith cries out when they put the rat cage on his head in George Orwell’s “1984,” as I’m certain every White Lodge reader knows. His betrayal of his lover signifies the breaking of his will. I’m listening to the radio today, and I live in a state where the new governor is advancing an agenda of budget cuts to some state run programs, so a multitude of political advertisement sponsored by this committee and that committee are clamoring for my attention in opposition to the governor’s plan. They all seem to be saying “Cut somebody else! But not us – no, we’re indispensable. Do it to Julia!”

I enjoy watching the rats scurry. There’s no honor among thieves, Amen? These moocher “programs” are quite prepared to kill one another before they give up their own pale ghosts. And actually I’m much in sympathy with the people employed by some of these systems that may be facing cuts, for indeed they are merely advancing their own personal interests by working at a job, which is good. In fact, it is the definition of good. But, when a company makes no profit because of mismanagement, incompetence, or criminal mishandling of funds – which certainly describes government – its employees would be out of work in a flash. In this case, profit is taken out of the picture – except insofar as it is supported by the profits of others – but mismanagement, incompetence, and criminal mishandling fits the picture perfectly. It is the bosses – in this case the government – rather than the employees who are at fault. But every time I hear one of these commercials tell me how “vital” this or that service is – always acknowledging, mind you, that cuts need to be made somewhere, anywhere other than here – I am reminded of Winston and his rats. I can’t seem to help it. It just comes to mind.

Anyhoo, that’s providing the incidental music for my day. I love that term – incidental music. I’ve seen it in film and television credits ever since I was a boy, and I often wondered what it must be like to compose incidental music. I’ve also wanted to see someone given credit for accidental music. When I see a movie I’m very much aware of the work that is done by persons other than the actors. It is the actors we see, of course. But I’m also quite interested in what gets the rest of the product from the factory where it is made to the movie screen where it is consumed. I’m certainly not alone in having such an interest. Film releases on DVD are loaded with “The Making of…” documentaries and bonus commentary, and all that sort of thing. I borrowed my son’s DVD copy of “Pitch Black,” a Science Fiction movie starring Vin Diesel, (whom I suddenly find irresistibly attractive, either because I am a latent homosexual, or bald, or both), and after viewing the movie here on my computer I checked out a few minutes of the commentary. Vin Diesel excitedly identifies 14 different shots as his “favorite shot in the whole movie” which I thought was quite funny. But that’s not what I opened this blank sheet of electronic writing paper to talk about today. It’s… incidental.

What disturbs me… Well, many things disturb me; I’m just disturbed… Specifically, what disturbs me today is my inability to communicate. When I am speaking in English, and writing in English, quite often I am misunderstood by people who also understand English, or at least say they do. (Read that sentence again, if you’d like). I often make the mistake of assuming my basic premise is understood by everybody I speak to. Not so. As a result I might as well be speaking (or writing) in another language. I approach the specific situation of my state’s money problems, for instance, from a particular premise about money – what it is, where it comes from – that doesn’t seem to be shared by everybody I talk to. When I remember to state what my premise is first, however, disagreement with whatever else I might have to say seems to vanish. People often respond by saying, “I never thought of it that way before,” and go away to consider it on their own. I suspect that they don’t know what their own premise is, or that they don’t actually have one. What they have is a ready number of set responses that they have acquired from… somewhere – some opinion pundit somewhere, but they have never closely examined what those responses mean.

I’m not exceptionally intelligent. You can tell from my writing style that I’m too impatient for true scholarship which focuses on minute details and finer shades, and all-stuff-like-that-there. I like “big picture” thinking. I’m into the “wow” factor. If I’m watching Vin Diesel movies… I mean, really. I’m very impressed by scholars. They bore the hell out of me, and the more bored I am the more impressed I become. But intelligence is by itself no guarantee that a person possesses the wisdom to discern the true from the false. Some of the most intelligent people in this world are some of the most confused people in this world. It takes a great deal of intelligence to rationalize and justify obvious falsehoods so that they can be presented as truth. I’ve known incredibly intelligent people who have tied their thinking up in so many knots to rationalize nonsense that they’ve become for all intents and purposes nonsensical themselves. They have begun with a pre-ordained “truth” which is really an article of their faith – whatever that might be – that must at any cost be protected against honest and objective examination because at its heart it is false. All of their powers are then dedicated to spinning a set of imaginary principles by which it might be true. But nothing has changed; it’s still false. When intelligence is pressed into such service it is a terrible thing. Spinning a set of imaginary principles by which something that is false may be presented as true is known as subjective thinking. We so want a thing to be true that we’ll figure out a way to make it sound true.

Everybody does this sort of thing to some extent or another. For instance, I might wish that a particular girl was in love with me. She isn’t. Too bad. But I can’t face that truth. So I start spinning. I tell myself that true is false and false is true. I launch my premise – she is in love with me – and then twist my mind into all kinds of knots to justify that belief, that article of faith. It is like a public opinion pollster who wishes to get a particular result from a poll, but in order to do so he must phrase his questions in a leading or misleading way, or overbalance his sample with people more likely to express the opinion he would prefer to report. My point is simply this: that the greater the intelligence the more resources may be available for delusion and self deception; that intelligence by itself is no guarantee a person possesses the wisdom to discern the true from the false.

I am not an exceptionally intelligent thinker, but I am a moral thinker. That seems to mean that with my average intelligence I can often comprehend what more intelligent people cannot comprehend. And, since I don’t suffer from whatever it is that makes a person a scholar I ought to be in a good position to articulate ideas in an accessible and entertaining way rather than bore the hell out of people.

Or, you would think.

I know, you’re reading this post and crying “Do it to Julia!” Bear with me.

All wealth is created by private enterprise. Period. There is no other source of wealth. You can take a rocket ship to any place in the universe and you will find, no matter where you land, that all wealth is created by private enterprise. It is not a “natural resource.” It is not God-given, at least not anymore than our own lives are God-given. If I receive a gift I own it, not the giver.

Money is nothing more than a certificate that stands for the achievement of earning it. In other words, it is like a diploma. It stands for the value of doing something on your own behalf, and by extension the behalf of others.

Government, which is not a private enterprise, cannot by definition create wealth. It can only consume wealth that it has been given to use for its intended purposes by the creators. Just as a young family requires baby car seats and a play pen, and extra diapers before taking a long automobile trip, wealth-creating people are required to drag along some sort of government. These are expenses – the necessary cost of taking a long automobile trip, or the necessary cost of doing business; the necessary cost of defending borders, maintaining infrastructure, and so on.

If I require somebody to clean my house I will hire somebody to clean my house. I will pay whatever that service is worth with money – certificates of achievement. If I don’t have the money, for whatever reason, she’s got to go. I’m sorry about that, and I hope she can find a good situation elsewhere. If I require a government to serve more complicated functions I will pay for one in the same way – that is, whatever that service is worth. Guess who gets to choose how much that service is worth? I do, because I’m the one paying.

Just don’t tell me my cleaning lady runs my house, and don’t tell me my government is the source of wealth. No matter how intelligent you are, that’s ridiculous.

Now I’m going to join the Vin Diesel fan club, as long as I’m on-line. I’m not ashamed, though I ought to be because it is Lent.

Twice I went off the road this year. That’s a record. It doubles the number of times I’ve gone off the road in all previous years, which is zero. That includes the nearly 20 years I drove drunk very frequently. That’s interesting. Must be I was a particularly cautious drunk driver, especially in snow. Gosh, I wish I could remember it… Anyhoo, a friendly plow truck driver pulled us out of the drift this morning, and this morning dawned upon the date March 7, 2011.

The new thermostat is installed and working well. La-dee-da…

And – oh yes – from the dream file: Last night I dreamt that several young, attractive women, (though I should qualify that by saying the only thing that was attractive about them was their youth), decided to go skinny-dipping in a tiny backyard pool with a fellow I know, and I witnessed this frolic in my dream, along with several other fortunates. I particularly remember that one of the girls was tattooed with the image of the New York City skyline on the small of her back. The nightmarish aspect of it was that the fellow they opted to go skinny dipping with is not someone I would prefer to see without his clothes; he’s truly ugly. You may know of porn movie star Ron Jeremy – that kind of ugly. But you know what? I’ve learned that what I might find appealing in a man has absolutely nothing to do with… anything. This fellow, of whom I speak, this fellow in my dream, is highly popular with women. They tell me he is very manly, very attractive. Not every woman I know (who also knows him) tells me this. The Princess just hates him, but… well… I’ve always had the sense she was fighting down a sort of animal attraction to him that she found unattractive in herself; that her body fancied him but her mind did not, if you know what I mean. My standard of attractiveness in men is not likely to sway women one way or another, but if I’m attracted to a man the chances are he is thin, well-formed – Michelangelo’s David comes to mind. Years ago my closest friend was a queer guy who always went out with manly men – the ugly, hairy ones. I told him, “Tommy, I just don’t see it,” and he said, “Well of course not; you’re not gay. You like men that look more like women.” Oh yeah, that does make a little sense, come to think of it. But I’m getting away from the dream, though there isn’t much more to it than I’ve already told. The pool was in a very “public” sort of place, within view of many people, like in a suburb. There were several of us who happened to see this going on, but I can’t identify the others – guys I don’t really know but was meeting for business, or the sort of thing. One of them pointed the naked frolic out to me through an open window, saying “They’re going to get into trouble doing that.” I just shook my head and laughed. “That’s Tony and the young things. Gather the rosebuds while ye may…” And that was it; I awoke.

It’s rather ordinary by my usual standard – no giant snakes or malevolent man-eating ducks, just a butt ugly dude – but it’s been replaying in my head all day. I haven’t been feeling terribly attractive lately. Let’s have an “Aw,” on three… One, Two, Three… When I found that Pentangle album I told you about a few weeks ago I was absolutely ecstatic because it was a lost remnant of my own glorified youth, and the songs on it have been playing in my head (varying in degrees of accuracy, of course) during all the years since, though I haven’t had the album to play since 1992 when I walked out on my marriage, my house, and all of my possessions. I’ve been gradually rebuilding the music, mostly on vinyl. But, let’s see, I bought that album, “Solomon’s Seal” out of a budget bin at a place called Papillon Records in Huntington, Long Island. I was 14 or 15 years old, which would have made the year 1976-77. It wasn’t until I played it again quite recently that I remembered what I most liked about it then. I’m not big on Folk music, not usually, but this is rather dark stuff, very rich tone color, traditional lyrics – a bit bawdy. Touch of Blues. The album’s lyrical content dwelt in forbidden themes, forbidden to me, that is. One song depicts Joseph and Mary having a quarrel over the paternity of the child she carries, who we know is Christ. Another tells the story of a young girl who becomes pregnant by a man who is not her husband, and that such a thing was even possible, much less fair game for a song, was a revelation to me. That my parents would not allow the album in the house if they had known how casually it dealt in such themes was all the more reason for me to really appreciate it. So… there it is.

There what is? Oh yes, the song that opens this venerable vinyl is the traditional English Folk song “Willy O’Winsbury,” which John Renbourne has made a career of performing – I swear there’s a version of it on every album the man ever made, with and without The Pentangle, (whom I think broke up in ’73, or thereabouts), and the melody is a familiar one to many people who have an interest in traditional music. It’s a ballad, of course, and although I’ve heard a few different versions to the same tune this one tells the story of a King who returns from the wars abroad to find that his daughter is pregnant – and he ascertains this fact by commanding her to strip before him – who then sends for the culprit sire, Willy O’Winsbury by name, so that he may be hanged. But when Willy arrives, it turns out he is exceptionally good-looking and quite richly attired – I suppose the word is sartorial. I love that word, don’t you? And so, the King instantly changes his mind about hanging the rascal and says:

“Will you marry my daughter Janet,
By the truth of your right hand?
O, will you marry my daughter Janet?
I will make you the lord of my land.”

Isn’t that wonderful? I love happy endings.

The King also says:

“But If I were a woman as I am a man,
My bedfellow you would have been.”

Wow! There’s a man secure enough in his self esteem to tell another man he’s attractive. That’s rare. (Of course, they are British.) But, let us think about this for a moment. What is the lesson here? Willy O’Winsbury gets the girl, and the Kingdom, and all the goodies because he is very good-looking. That’s all. What was his achievement? How did he earn this great reward? How did he acquire this merit? The simple answer is, he didn’t achieve anything, and in fact he committed a crime – knocked up a Princess, no less – for which he was supposed to be hanged. Anybody else in that situation would have been hanged, but not pretty Willy – oh no. He received all the most desired rewards of this world solely on the basis of his princely pulchritude. Well, well, it’s a fair world, in’ it?

No. No, it’s not a fair world. Nowhere you might look for fairness in this thing we call reality will you find any. The appearance of fairness in some cases is a happy accident, but pretty Willy is going to get the girl, and the rest of us must be content to watch. That’s life, in a nutshell.

So, the song has been playing in my head – along with my dream – all day; driving off the road into snow drifts notwithstanding. I’m singing it to myself now.

“The King was made a prisoner,
In a prison all in Spain,
And Willy O’th’Winsbury,
Has lain long with his daughter at home…”

You can’t hear me singing right now, but I am. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

“What ails you, what ails you,
My daughter Janet?
Why do ye look so pale and wan…”

Anyhoo, spring is nearly come. By the time I post this celebration of self pity it will have truly begun. It can snow all it wants to at this point. The light is different. There’s hope! I love this particular time of year because I’m seeing a birth, or a re-birth if you prefer. Even today, as dismal at it began, and a few weeks away from the actual Equinox, the willow branches are yellow. Little splashes of color begin to appear. The world that had been nothing but gray and black – various shades of brown that might as well be gray or black, and evergreen, which is somber in the winter – begins to change. In a few short weeks I’ll see the green mist, and that is a religious experience for me. I’ve spoken of it before. I’ve tried to capture it in photographs, without success. People think I’m crazy. Of course, they’re right. But I see it. I see it every year. I expect it. It’s my perception. I’m sure you’ve all wanted to “freeze” time at some point or another. We’d scarcely be human if we didn’t occasionally long to be able to make the kiss last forever, or keep the corn or the barley at such-and-such a height. We’ve probably all said, “Oh how I wish this night could last forever, my love!” – or equally silly words to that effect. For me, it’s the time of the green mist I would freeze in time forever.

It’s a solitary appreciation. I’ve never known anyone who can see what I see, just as I’ve never met anyone who can think like I think. That’s OK. It gives me something to say. It’s a challenge to describe it. I have always enjoyed a healthy hunger to communicate – will you just look at this… White Lodge, of mine.

Anyhoo, I was speaking with some people today about the universality of certain ideas. One of them had brought up the Four Horsemen, specifically the Pale Horse who is by far the most popular, being creepy, and I mentioned the Hungry Ghost Realm of Samsara which internally suggests grasping for the things of the world, the money, the toys, the sex, and so on. These are things that die, that in a spiritual sense are already dead. You know, the naked attractive young woman with the New York skyline tattoo from my dream is already dead. Her youth is an illusion. In reality, she is a rotting corpse. That is what she will become. It is only a matter of time. To grasp onto that, and to say, “Ah, Beauty! Beauty is meaning!” is to grasp onto a corpse, to embrace it, and to lock your rotting lips to the corpse’s rotting lips. I wouldn’t want to freeze time at that point. It’s like the symbolic idea of the Pale Horse, as I was explaining it to that fellow. The Pale Horse isn’t Death; his rider is named Death. It’s not just death; it’s the love of the world and the things of value to the world. People get terribly confused about this. They say “Aren’t we supposed to love our world?” And well, yes, and no. To be able to appreciate beauty, like my green mist, to derive satisfaction from making some money, to enjoy the love of the bedchamber, (without thinking of corpses, hopefully) – there’s nothing wrong with this. But to put these things ahead of all other things, and to devote your entire life to the pursuit of these things will ultimately lead to much unhappiness. My point is that here, in either case – Buddhism or Revelations – there is this common sense advice which is wrapped up in layers of symbolic language. Once again I’ll say religion has very little to do with life after death, but it has mostly to do with life after birth. And somebody told me not to say “life after birth” because it sounds like I’m talking about the placenta, and stuff, but… you get the idea. Life can be a bloody mess, alright.

And it’s not fair.

Hungry Ghost Realm sounds like a video game, doesn’t it? I could easily imagine finding my boys hard at “work” with their game controllers, staring into the television screen, and asking them “What are you playing?”

Without glancing away from the TV one of them would say, “Hungry Ghost Realm, Two.”

Happy spring!

Thank you, goodnight.

(I wrote this post a few weeks ago, before learning the Stream was drying up, and since then I’ve heard from a few of you about where we might crash land the remnants of our Blogstream planet. Who will have us? We’re just like refugees on a boat, following an apocalypse. So far, Blogger seems to be the site I’ve heard cited most frequently – cited site? That can’t be right – but something called tumblr (or rumblr, or some such thing), has been mentioned, and of course Wordpress. I look at Wordpress and wonder if I should be using the tradesman’s entrance. Anyhoo, it looks like I’ll have to run several blogs at different sites – cited, or otherwise. In the meantime, please continue to keep me linked. We have a little while yet to spread our picnic blanket here with our backs to the abyss. Feeling daffy a few weeks ago, I wrote the following. Please enjoy it.)

Gorilla my dreams…

An old flame has reasserted her presence in my dream world. Her White Lodge name, or rather title, was the Lady. The last time I saw her was over three years ago, and the last time I communicated with her was about two years ago. She was the last woman I saw nude – albeit accidentally, through an open doorway, and I immediately averted my eyes – almost a decade ago. If a thing of beauty is a joy for… as long as it holds one’s interest, as I proposed in my last post, then she certainly continues to qualify for I have an excellent memory. But, why on earth do I assign titles to my lady friends? A few of them may also have names, for instance the White Tornado was also Elizabeth, (and also the Amazing Monkey Girl), and Sister Midnight was also Zoë, and the Princess was also Clover’s older sister Faith, but I usually preferred to refer to them by their titles. The Lady never had a name – at least not that I can remember giving her. Oh Lord, I’m such a geek! Well, you don’t have to hold any degrees in Psychology to figure out that I assign them titles in order to objectify them. I don’t desire them in the usual way a man desires women; I worship them as if they were architectural edifices. The titles indicate not who they are, which is of little interest to me, but what they mean. By that manner I set them apart, and like any misogynist worth his membership card put them on the proverbial pedestal. Is this a bad thing? I don’t know. I’m an electronic avatar created by a guy who likes to write. Ask him – that John (owns John) the Squabbler guy. A splendid fellow.

But that’s not what I wanted to write about. Who remembers the Squabbler? He was about seven feet tall, had a gas mask for a face, he wore size 14 sneakers, and he had two children, Daphne Sunshine and Mister Sludge who occasionally escaped from the cage made of Psalms where they lived; and his wife was accidentally turned into a municipal building in Illini, Illinois – that Squabbler. I wrote about him during a time of security and confidence, when being silly was the order of the day. I was happier, generally-speaking, and more at ease about the future. The world changed very quickly, and now there are other things to talk about. But he’s still around. He says hello.

Hello.

I ran into a fellow I know today who had been away for a little while. He asked me what I had been up to. I said “I got married last week,” and he said, “And you didn’t invite me?” I said “I don’t like you.” He said, “Yes, of course. How’s the wife?”

I was listening to a fellow say on his radio program that he was 49 years old and it was “after halftime.” I have never sat through an entire football game but I understand what halftime means. My sons were in the car with me, and the younger one said, “Dad, aren’t you 49?” Oh yes – Janet Jackson has already flashed her nipple, the band has played, the champion cheerleaders from the Whassnussit, Nebraska Central High School have already pommed their pom-poms and shown us their underpants… I think I must have dozed off right about then. The next item on the program was a simple execution… My old neighborhood, after dark and snow covered. I didn’t mind paying the fellow $4.25 to gain admission to the house where I grew up because it was Winter Carnival time and how was he to know I wasn’t a tourist, even though nobody seemed to be around? Vaguely lights shone and circus calliope music played down low in the miniature city, but all above was snow and darkened windows, and I trudged homeward through the hip deep snow that melted by the time I reached the door. It was so impressive inside – so cleaned up, nothing like it since Mom died, and it was much bigger too. Entering through the cellar, my brother was there chopping wood with a large axe, and I suggested he chop the wood outside where he could get a better swing, and upstairs gradually the people had arrived, and I knew them as one knows his own family when he has lost his mind, not specifically. We were going to do something fun, all of us together, and it fell to me to take care of the child, a little boy, but when I approached him his father picked him up. I said “I didn’t know you were here.” Somehow I joined the procession out the door carrying a talking cat that stood like a cat-sized man on my arm, and we lost the group. Outside was lit as if there was a moon. Hilly fields like a moor of green, or a moraine, extended as far as I could see. The voices of my friends and family members came across the breeze from just out of sight, but otherwise I was alone with the cat that had now become a girl who might have been the Lady or the Princess, or anybody with skin like milk, and we walked confidently in the direction of the voices, ambling along, taking our time. Elevated boardwalks crisscrossed the gentle green landscape under which were tufts of fern-like grass which I realized were tiny hens with frond-like green feathers. I either said out loud or thought aloud “I am so glad they are not ducks,” and of course looking behind me as we made our way up a stair I saw out of the corner of my eye that one of them had turned into a duck which stared at us malevolently. The nightmare attacked so quickly I had no time to react, and my companion was instantly killed. Her body crumpled down the stairs onto the wooden boardwalk and I knew that she was dead, and ran or fell down after her to gather her up in my arms – she was light as a feather – and scream out “My poor baby!” because I knew that was exactly what people in that sort of situation did. And then I said out loud to the ceiling… I said…

“Why a duck? Why a-no chicken?”

You see, this is why I don’t need a television. I told my son the dream and he suggested the Lady was back to reclaim her throne because she was threatened by Luna, but of course she never really was in any danger of being replaced by a mere flesh-and-blood woman in my unreal waking life. I decided I’m too young for Luna a few days ago, although I didn’t tell her that, obviously, for she had basically told me to poop or get off the pot and wanted to play the wide field until she found a fellow who would actually touch her without cringing. I said “There’s the field – go play.” (I didn’t actually say that either, but words kinder and more nuanced to that effect were said.) The truth is, I don’t actually want companionship, but it was good to know the option existed with someone who was actually attractive, for she is young-looking and slender, a year or two older than I am. Why can’t we just walk and talk, just as we did all summer long? Why is this horrible pressing together of mouths suddenly so necessary? Mouths eat and mouths spit, and mouths are extremely personal things. It won’t do any good to get angry at me for something over which you have no control, but I prefer young women and I can’t make myself appreciate women my own age, or older. When I try – and I try when opportunities arise – it doesn’t work. That’s me. So what?

Georgie-peorgie, puddin’ and pie,
Kiss the girls and make them cry.

Don’t bad people ever get themselves into trouble? You’d think so. I’m always hearing about “when bad things happen to good people.” But let’s hear from some bad people, for a change. It’s just boring always hearing about “good” people getting into debt, or getting into trouble with the IRS, or whatever. It’s almost as if getting into trouble is what makes them “good.” But that’s silly. The whole world is silly – I ought to know that by now. I want to hear about “when bad things happen to bad people.” If I was a bad person I would certainly want to know that I wasn’t alone, that bad things sometimes happen to other bad people too. I went into AA ten years ago and they told me I wasn’t a bad person, I was a sick person. How did they know that? Don’t bad people get sick too? Well yes, it turns out they do. There are plenty of very bad people in AA who are also very sick. The notion that sickness is a virtue is as ridiculous as the notion that poverty is a virtue. No, sickness and poverty are states that seem to have no connection to whether a person is virtuous or not. Amongst those that are sick and those that are poor the proportion of good people to bad people is probably about the same as the proportion of good to bad people in the rest of the world. This is why poverty isn’t the cause of theft. There are many more poor people who don’t steal than there are poor people that do, and plenty of people who are not poor are guilty of stealing. Heck, all of Congress…

To steal because you’re a bad person is… bad, but to steal because you are trying to be thought of as a good one is beyond bad. It is abominable. For the bad person there is the promise of redemption if he repents. I was once a bad person, despite what my well meaning but ignorant friends in AA told me. But for the truly evil person, the one whose soul is black, the one who steals to be thought of as good so that he may amass more power to himself, the politician, there is no chance of escaping eternal torture. At least not if there’s any justice…

“Where does money come from?” Have they started asking that question of political candidates yet? I know there was some talk of doing that, but I live in a shack in the woods so I don’t know if it happened. It should be compulsory, like “Do you know how to tie your shoes?” or “Name, please?”

It helps me to know who is reading The White Lodge. That’s always been the case, ever since the very first day when I was surprised to find that somebody who called himself “trust the rust” had actually read what I wrote and commented on it, and I thought oh gee, I’m onto something here. Then Sherry joined in, and then POH and purps and wayf and… everybody. Some of them are still here and others seem to be gone, and the ones that are gone I really miss. I don’t miss people that way in my 3-D life. You know, people come and go… so what? But… what was his name… Prank? Do you remember Prank? Biggie T. I liked a lot. When I write a post I’m often writing for specific people. It’s not like doing a newspaper column or a magazine feature. It hasn’t been quite as personal this time around because of the delay. I’m not in “real time” like I used to be, so we’re not chatting back and forth. This post will get posted some time in March maybe, depending on when I can get to a computer that’s on-line. I’m writing more essays, which used to comprise about half of the stuff in this blog. The rest was clowning around. I’ve been writing a lot of these recent posts for Ron, by the way. It’s a little disappointing not having him here lately. (Of course, this is the last day of February as I write this. Who knows what’s going go be happening by next month?) At various times during the composition of these posts I may be thinking of Rosie – Do they have ducks in Australia? I’m sure they do – prob’ly call them something different – or I’ll be thinking “I wonder what Sherry’s going to make of this bald-faced declaration?” You may take for granted at all times that I’m as aware of TR’s presence as if he were reading over my shoulder. In the old days I used to enjoy the occasionally heated exchanges with purple fly who reminds me of Clover, but I got the sense she didn’t enjoy them as much sometimes. I like her quite a lot. And n.lynn, Whispered Promise, Taylor, Bella… No one is ever left out. Oh no – he forgot to mention John the Squabbler – the bastard! I’m going to get into trouble making lists because I could easily leave out somebody very important, so that’s enough of that.

This took a few days of revising, so it’s like a crazy quilt. No, that’s too personal – I’ll delete that. No, that’s politics – they know my deal… The process went something like that. I have to stop somewhere, I suppose. But then I remembered how wonderful it has been to be able to meet with you like this, and how my life has been so enriched by knowing all of you, and I wanted to mention that before the next time something I write really pisses you off. I’m serious as a heart attack these days, but the times demand some seriousness, and something you never knew if you were getting in The White Lodge before, sincerity. There really is a time for every purpose under Heaven, by golly.

Anyhooo…

I have heard these words in combination, or seen them written, for as long as I can recall: “Plus Shipping and Handling.” Sometimes in written form is it “Plus S&H,” and very often “…if you order right now the shipping and handling is free!” OK, I understand shipping. I’ve worked on loading docks and I expected to be paid. I’ve sold things on E-Bay and Craig’s List – a house once, for a friend, but the deal fell through. I understand shipping, but what’s “handling?” If I were to order one of those inflatable love dolls could I pay extra for shipping and skip the handling? I certainly wouldn’t want anybody handling my inflatable love doll before I got the chance. And what about mail order brides? Don’t worry – I’ll stop right here.

The house is saffron colored now, with deep red trim. It’s a ranch style home built in 1975 and extended some time later but within the same lines. A very wide chimney on the front elevation – a non-gable wall – is its chief architectural distinction, and it is clapboard sided. I had thought before buying it that it might be fun to alternate colors on the clapboards but my first painting, last year, was by necessity a hurried one. A very odd fascia board – actually three such boards – cut to follow the roofline on the gable end is warping and needs to be replaced. I was thinking that Peter Sinfield’s cover artwork for “In the Court of the Crimson King” would supply the inspiration for a mural covering that replaced fascia. (Perhaps I was also thinking I would become suddenly wealthy enough to commission an artist to paint it, but one cannot help the thoughts that come into one’s head.) That gable end, by the way, is the elevation that faces the road, and hence the most visible. As the shape of the hill dictates the house seems to have two stories from that angle because the cement block wall of the basement, (painted white), is exposed, with a door I’ve painted the same deep red color of the trim in the middle-left side of it. My plan was to knock at least one window through that wall and gradually transform the unfinished basement into living and entry space. I had also thought to make shutters for the otherwise rather undistinguished windows with plain crosses cut in them like you would have found in Southwestern homes of a certain era where they served as rifle sighting ports against Indian and desperado attacks. I’ve already commissioned the sign painter to paint “Integer Vitae” for what will be the entry. The decks, which are prominent, probably want tearing down and replacing ultimately with stone walled elevated patios. They’ll fall down on their own if I let them go for too long, so I’ll have to decide whether I want them repaired or whether I want to take this dramatically different direction.

Well I’ve written about that, as promised. Now what?

I’m starting to get excited about the coming of spring. Today is February 24, 2011. I’m quite sure you’re reading this some time in early to mid-March. During a two day long thaw we had here last week I took a few long walks. I could smell it coming – spring is coming. The birds know because the light is changing. Who cares if the next few weeks bring frigid cold and blowing snow? Let it blow, I say. “The snows they melt the soonest when the winds begin to sing,” as goes the song – not “The snows they melt the soul mouth.” What the heck is a soul mouth? Anyhoooo…

My older son worked the whole long day for a friend of mine who owns a hotel franchise nearby – that is, switching from one franchise to another – oh heck, it was Ho Jo’s and now it’s going to be something else, and afterwards when I went to pick him up she took me aside and said, “If he shaved, put on some khaki pants with a belt and a colored button down shirt he could write his own ticket – do anything at all he made up his mind to do.” Asking a seventeen year-old man to shave is… well, you can ask. But they’re trying desperately to grow the stuff at that age, most of them. I’ll bet we can all think of exceptions, of course. I remember a kid in my school who needed to shave during fifth period because if he didn’t he was jugged. We weren’t allowed to sport facial hair in my school. You knew the same kid? What a shock. That was in the 70’s, when whiskers were fashionable. Then they weren’t. And now they are again. It’s darned confusing. But the money part of what my friend said was “anything at all he made up his mind to do,” and on the way home I asked him, “What do you want to do?” He said “I dunno.” Is that story too normal for the White Lodge? Yes, but this is technically my day off.

I said, “That’s OK. I don’t know what I wanna do either.” I said this because I’m Father of the Year, but it’s a white lie. I want to play for the NBA, as you know.

He grew up with the daughter of our babysitter whom I have seen working in a dozen places over the past few years. She is ubiquitous, and cute. Her mother was cute too. Now and then I’ve mentioned to my sons that I had seen Brandi working here and working there, and then immediately regretted it because my parents used to tell me about all the glorious achievements of my cousins – first girl at West Point, and that sort of thing – when all I wanted to do was sit around with some friends, get stoned, and listen to Gentle Giant, and I resented it at the time. Lately she has been working in a store I often bless with my trade so I’ve chatted with her a few times about her exemplary work ethic, and I asked her how many places she’d been fired from so far. She said, “Oh… a few.” Who cares? She keeps trying, and she keeps growing into a successful person, and I told her so. She said, “OK. I think it’s five now.” Atta girl. A person can be overflowing with intelligence and ability but it takes drive to make those things valuable, and without that drive – of the sort exhibited by my young friend – those things are useless. I wrote in an earlier post about achievement, otherwise known as merit, and that money is really nothing more than certificates of achievement. If you try to define merit without the word achievement in it somewhere you’re not really talking about merit. I don’t know what you’re talking about, in that case. But that young girl – Brandi, I’ve dubbed her, because it’s close enough to type – has far more merit than someone with twice her brains and a hundred times her potential.

Did I mention she was cute? So am I – sometimes.

My son tells me he doesn’t get along with people for long. That is, once people get to know him they stop liking him. I’m sure this is inspired by some or other bitter experience, and such experiences are wounds just as surely as a stubbed toe is a wound. You’ll stub it again, and again. Why is that? Well, you’re not really bumping it into things any more often than usual, but the fact that it is already sore makes it seem so. What’s wrong with that analogy, damn him? I thought it was apt.

Now he tells me he has only one other pair of pants to his name and they’re in the wash, and that gets me to wondering why a name would wear pants. Isn’t that an odd turn of phrase? I have one pair of pants to my name. Well, it’s an archaic way of expressing the concept of ownership. That’s easy enough to figure out, but it’s no less interesting. My name is something I pass on to those I’ve given my name – my sons, for instance – along with my possessions, pants for instance. Names are quite important, though I think there was a time when they were much more important than they are now, and that it was from such a time that phrase originates. My name means… what? My name means… me. I hear a great deal about identity theft, and I know that usually involves not names as much as names in combination with certain numbers associated with those names – social security numbers, credit card numbers, birth dates, and so on. But the principle is the same even if the paperwork is more complex. Did not Jacob steal Esau’s identity? For my brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man. I love that story. They didn’t even wear pants in those days. I have heard the world’s oldest profession is prostitution but I think it comes second after the law, that there had to be lawyers by the time men had reached such an advanced stage of civilization that they felt obliged to pay for their pleasures. And before there were lawyers there had to be names, and the property, and the possessions associated with those names, to keep and defend. Naturally you know all this and I am being less than profound, but this is still technically my day off. These thoughts are therefore the kinds of thoughts I think when I’m not thinking.

I polished off a few more Mark Twain stories and articles before plunging into the next major work, and in the meantime enjoyed Somerset Maugham’s “Cakes and Ale.” His characters are writers in that novel since writers write best when they write what they know, or so I’ve heard over and over, and over, and one of them identifies a few literary rising stars among them Aldous whom I took to be Aldous Huxley. I heartily agree with Maugham’s fictional character’s assessment. Huxley’s writing was called “showboating” by just about everybody who couldn’t dream of writing as well, and “tour de force” by anybody who felt left out of the first group for whatever reason, but if you’ve got it flaunt it I say, and he did. I also enjoyed Maugham’s observation (again spoken through one of his characters – the first person protagonist, indeed) that a thing of beauty is a joy for… as long as it holds one’s interest, and I suppose that is what differentiates between the romantic, (Keats in this case), and the realist. Beauty doesn’t last, and neither have I appended does joy, but I would say to W.S.M. in reply if he were brought back to life that both, though fleeting, are fortunately in infinite supply. Also I’ve discovered that when a thing of beauty stops being a joy you can always stand on your head and squint at it, and if that doesn’t work then ceasing to stand on your head and squint at it will most certainly do the trick. He wrote of visual beauties, like landscapes and sculptures, and such like, but he omitted music. There is music I think I could hear for eternity, but eternity is… well let us define eternity. By now you must know that once a thing is defined in the White Lodge it is – ah – definitive, so this definition is for once and for all: Eternity is a very long time. I’ll have repainted my house several times by then.