The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

Bishop Nippo Syaku

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San Francisco, 1975: I saw the flimsy poster, but it was quaint rather than crude. Bishop Nippo Syaku would give some short talks about Zen. In the rawboned Victorian near Filmore street, poor lighting made the room seem drab, but Bishop Nippo lit up the place. The Bishop was a round-faced, cheerful fellow, very chipper he was. He spoke often of the nature of things.”We say, ‘Oh the flower is pretty!’” He beamed, “But flower does not care!”

On this evening, he spoke of how the True Buddhist is without fear. This amazed me, and made me ponder. I raised my hand.

“Yes?”

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. I pointed to an empty chair. “Let’s say the True Buddhist was sitting right there.”

Bishop Nippo nodded.

“And let’s say that a Sabre-Tooth Tiger came through that door.” Everybody looked at the door. I continued, “Now the True Buddhist would feel no fear, but he would jump up and run like hell, correct?”

“Ah!” said Bishop Nippo Syaku. “That is True Buddhist!”

John and Joan

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North Texas State University, Denton, Texas, 1965: There were two girls named Patty. I loved each of them, at different times. The one called Pretty Patty eventually ran off with a guy named Gary; I lost track of them in Santa Fe.

The other was called Patty Cake, and on the eve of my 21st birthday, completely misinformed while I was away getting the beer, threw a fit and all my records onto the floor of my apartment, and so I stopped phoning her. When next I saw her, she was abashed, embarassed. I leaned over the table, looking into her eyes, and said softly, “You scamp,” and she knew it was over between us.

But this was before all that, when life was still fresh and light-hearted. Now the deal was, there was John, and there was Joan. John was younger, because, being brilliant, he’d graduated high-school at sixteen, and now found himself editor of our college Literary Magazine.

Joan I no longer recall clearly, except that John showed us the marks she had made on his back, so I guess she had her points.

But the thing was, the two of them squabbled. Squabbilus, squabbelaste, squabbalorum. All the time. About anything. About nothing. Without regard to anyone present. Always, always, always. So annoying it was, to wade through this movable skirmish.

So Patty Cake and I, commiserating over wine, hatched a plan to cure them.

First, we invited them to an evening, dinner and wine, at my tiny apartment at 1308 1/2 West Hickory, across from the English Building. We had the usual student meal in which spaghetti was featured, and red wine. And a little more red wine.

About the time everybody was feeling good, we arranged it that John and Joan sat on the sofa, out of the way. They’d bickered earlier, off and on, but were basking in a fine mood now.

However, Patty Cake and I began to quarrel. We really began to quarrel. We grew more and more heated, until we were standing mid-room, screaming into each other’s faces. Patty Cake drew back and slapped me, hard. It staggered me.

Bellowing in rage, I ran to grab a huge butcher knife, and, raising it high, I sprang at her. She shrank, screaming.

At the last moment … we stopped, and turned together to where John and Joan sat paralysed, eyes wide in horror. And Patty Cake and I said, calmly, “See? Do you see how unpleasant it is to be around people fighting all the time?”

Numbly, open-mouthed, they nodded.

Later, more wine. Sometime late, late, late, we four found ourselves in a children’s playground, in the dark, upon a grassy knoll, falling off some kind of merry-go-round contraption, and laughing and laughing and laughing.

It was very late towards morning when Patty Cake and I got cozy in my apartment, to spend some time together. Perhaps it was a long time together. My bed was next to the window, and just as we were drifting off to sleep, there was a hint of daybreak outside, and the sounds of birds singing.

I fell asleep, smiling, content.

Carrie Street Station

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St. Louis, Winter 1967: I was saving up my money, so I got two jobs.

Days: Yard clerk at the Rock Island Railroad.

Nights: Night Manager at the Hilton Inn.

With different days off, only three days had me working both jobs. At night from eleven, until seven in the morning, I ran the front desk at the Airport Hilton Inn. (Usually pretty quiet, except that time the Stones arrived). In the wee hours, I balanced the NCR 1600 bookeeping machine, and in the morning …

I walked through the halls and past the aviary — a large cage with the tiniest, quickest tropical birds, bright as a paint kit, and full of song so early, with cheery quick eyes askance — onward, to the Olde Weste Coffee Shoppe for my free breakfast. Oh, that was grand!

Then, piloting the volkswagen home to my unheated trailor, just off the end of the jet runway at St. Louis International Airport. Though the planes were very loud, I slept soundly.

A quick sleep it was, as needs be I’m up and dressed in Sears insulated underwear, thick roustabout clothes, and big brogan-style boots. Off to the Rock Island Railroad, Carrie Street station.

Not a passenger stop, no. A rough-looking switchyard in a rough part of town. Here’s how it works:

There is a local railroad called the Terminal Railroad. Their only job is to go around St. Louis, to the real railroads: Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, Rock Island. Railroads hand off cars to other railroads, and Carrie Street was the Rock Island switching station.

When the Terminal Railroad showed up, I stood beside the track. They have 54 cars for the Rock, that’s us. Our switch foreman, Danny, would tell them to put the cars into our switching tracks 7, 8, and 9. As they backed the cars into these tracks, I stood alongside and wrote down the cars and their numbers, as fast as I could. (If I could write them as the cars passed me, then I didn’t have to walk up and down the tracks writing them down.)

The conductor on the Terminal Railroad would give a thick wad of the “Bills of Lading” to the Bill Clerk. These are forms that show where the cars are going, and what’s been laeded into them, laddie.

The Rock Island Line

Me and the bill clerk sorted them, to discover we had sixteen cars for Kansas City, fourteen for Oakland, and so on. The switch foreman Danny figured how to move these long strings of cars around so as to get all the Kansas City ones together. It took most of the day.

Then, our train took off to Kansas City and points west. I think that, on the other shift, some of those cars went back east, but I never saw them, and for all I know there are thousands stranded somewhere out west.

Danny, the switch foreman, was a young fellow, and acted very sour. I think it helped him control his tough-guy crew. So I would often annoy him by striding through the bitter cold, along the track outside the switch shanty (while they huddled around the coal stove). I’d swing my arms wide, taking big strides.

In a loud voice, I sang, “Oh, the Rock Island line is a mighty fine line! Oh, the Rock Island line is the road to ride! Oh, the Rock Island line is a mighty fine line! If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you find it, get your ticket at the station for the Rock Island line!”

Sometimes my voice cracked, but it was never less than completely chipper and enthusiastic. And loud.

This goober act never failed to amaze Danny and the switch crew, and they pretended disgust with such cheerfulness, while I in turn pretended not to notice nor comprehend in any way.

Just before eleven each night, in the office bathroom, I’d change into my suit and black shoes. Then off to the Hilton Inn, to balance those books.

In the St. Louis winter, daylight comes late and night falls early. Some cold and snowy days there were when the sun hardly showed. During one stretch it had been over a week since I saw the sun, and snow fell heavy that day.

That evening, trudging across the yard toward the office, underneath the yard’s lamps high on their poles, I noticed that all the falling snow ahead of me, and the snow upon the ground ahead, glittered in sharp bright points, so beautiful they were, glittering.

Glittering before me like gold.

How to Pick Up Girls (Part 1)

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Wichita Falls, Texas. Spring 1971 — A bright idea pays off.

Havingness, noun, Your willingness, often automatic, to experience something in your life; how much you are ‘having’ of something, such as: love-life, money, nice apartment, etc.

Havingness What You Want!

From puberty to age 26, I had been incompetent in learning about women, and then one day it dawned upon me that this was something I could systematically learn. I’d learned other things; why not learn this?

So I did. I studied carefully, and then discovered that the Havingness Concept provides a key that makes it easy …

When is something Easy?

The easiest time to get a job is when you got a job. The easiest time to get a girlfriend is, ulp, when you got a girlfriend. The easiest time to find an apartment is when you got an apartment. It takes money to make money.

These are metaphysical statements. I can’t prove them. But go find any human, and have him experiment, and he will report it seems to work that way.

Why does it work that way?
Internal, Automatic -- Your Havingness Level.

You have an inner gauge we’ll call ‘havingness’, how much of something you can experience. Maybe you can experience money easily, but girlfriends not so well. It’s running on automatic, so just your wanting it to be different doesn’t make it so. In fact, the more desparately you desire the thing, the more sharply you are focussing your lack, and this self-fullfilling target perpetuates itself, in accordance with your inner vision.

For example, let’s say you’re male and there’s an acute lack of girlfriend. It seems like you don’t meet anyone; and the ones you do meet, well, there’s something wrong with them.

If you keep on doing what you been doing, you’ll keep on having what you been having. So if you make no change, you’ll suffer lack of girlfriend for far longer than need be. This is an easy thing to change, when you’re willing to change your focus.

Hard to find a girlfriend? OK, it’s an illusion, but when you are inside that illusion, it sure looks like that. Therefore, let’s just set it aside and look at something else.

How can you change a shortage?

Instead of trying to change the girlfriend shortage (which appears very difficult), let’s just look at changing your internal level of ‘Havingness’. (Which will appear surprisingly easy.)

Here’s what you do: First, stop saying no. Start going out with anybody at all. Go out with people you’re not interested in. Any female at all, go out for any reason whatsoever. And go out five times a week! Don’t be “reasonable” and scale it down. Five times a week.

Remember, just now, you’re not trying to find a girlfriend. These folks aren’t girlfriend material for you at this time. (Don’t sleep with them. That will just snarl you up.) Just go out five times a week, and enjoy it as best you can. Without expectation and target-seeking, you’ll generally find yourself having fun, you wild guy you.

Remember, again, that you are engaging in this activity — five times a week — in order to increase your internal, automatic ‘havingness’ level. It’s a fair amount of work, so don’t do big productions. Go out for coffee. Go to the library with someone. Go to the laundromat. Keep it simple. Do this for a few weeks and watch what happens.

What results will you get?

It’s quite surprising. Suddenly, mysteriously, attractive and interesting women will begin to fall out of the sky. You can’t go to the parking lot without bumping into several. At least, it will seem that way. And, they’ll start giggling and smiling at you.

Now, start asking them out. You’ll discover that much of your normal clumsiness will have vanished! You’ll now find it surprisingly easy. You have changed something internally; the world looks different. Without trying, you have stepped outside of the former illusion.

But don’t make the blunder of stopping your program. For now, continue going out five times a week. You’re not done yet. This simple and pleasant exercise is what’s building your internal, automatic havingness level. Keep that going for a while, because even more attractive women will show up the next week! Further, the longer you run this program, the more “permanent” it becomes.

You see, without even worrying about the cause of your internal programming, you have changed it. The old program, the old restricted-havingness level, cannot stand against the evidence of your eyes, your ears, and your other senses. When you actually see yourself going out frequently, your internal program will change immediately and automatically. No psychotherapy required. Call it magic. Call it human nature. But call it; and it will come.

When you try it, you will see.

Havingness — how to Have what you want — a concept that opens any area of your life where you’d like to have more. You’re now seeing more of what you’d like to see. Why? Because, knowing how to look, you begin to see. Learning to see, there’s a lot to like! This is a workable map.

Do you want things different? Follow this map.

You will see.

Mental Health Made Easy

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[reprinted from my former site How to Tune a Human, August 17, 2008]

What is it about taking a shower that causes new ideas to pop into your head?

Is it the invigorating ions that are caused by splitting water droplets?

Or is it a simple as Murphy’s law triggered because you will never have pencil and paper in the shower?

I don’t know the answer to this time-proven rule, but as of this morning’s shower, I do know a super-simple way to look at mental health, a simple way to be happier and more productive.

It’s simply this —

[Read more…]

 
 

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