Wichita Falls, Texas. Fall 1971 —
Today she told me lies
like ravens standing
on the brink of winter.
The Year 2011 … Coming Up!
January 8, 2011, Weed, California: Time to take stock.
My counseling business grows, slowly. I’ve completed certification as a hypnotherapist, and I’m a certified Tantra Yoga educator now. Still working toward certification in EFT and Focusing.
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) comprises a large part of my practice these days, because it works so well, but I’m also learning the basics of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and find it easy to use and effective, once I understand it.
I’ve been giving monthly classes in Mount Shasta for four months now, on the subjects of dating and mind stuff. It’s also growing slowly in attendance. This Thursday we had a new record high, with 15 people attending. Cool Beans!
The Megatar touchstyle guitar business dimished for a while when the squabbling heads on television were screaming that the sky was falling, but now has been recovering just fine.
It looked somewhat grim at the time, but I felt in my heart that it was somehow a good thing, and so it was, for during that time I had time to establish my counseling business, and we created an entirely new construction method for two-hand tapping guitars made of metal and composite. A great sound and wonderful price point. Onward and upward with creating more music on this planet!
During the next three months I intend to become proficient at setting up (and doing) radio guest interviews for myself and a few friends who have digital download products for sale. It appears that I happen to have previously learned pretty much everything needed for such an operation including all the internet backend and email follow up. So I’m quite curious to see how it goes.
I’m now the coordinator for the Source School of Tantra events in Ashland Oregon, so if any current reader would like to explore a spiritual practice that generates tremendous intimacy at will, and a totally different approach to sexuality — best I’ve ever experienced in this lifetime, quite life-transforming — then contact me and I’ll get a reservation made for you in the March weekend class, or explain more about it, or both! 🙂
My health has drastically improved.
About nine months ago, I changed to a vegan diet and mild exercise and some mental things, and dropped 70 pounds, only 22 more to go, and I’ll be back at my weight at age 25. Cool beans.
I have more energy and feel better than for the last 20 years, and am again looking for the love of my life. I feel that she is drawing near.
Today and this weekend I have a lot of clean-up to do, clearing my desks, updating bookkeeping, planning the campaign for the Ashland Beginners Tantra Yoga Weekend Workshop, and generally making my plan for 2011.
My general resolutions for this year are —
1. More money and working easier, more security and fun in my life
2. To create a happy childhood
3. Love in my life, in every direction
My friend, what is *your* plan?
One Never Knows, Do One …
One day Chuang-tzu and a friend were walking along a riverbank. Chuang-tzu pointed to the fish.
“How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water!” he exclaimed.
“You are not a fish,” his friend said. “How do you know whether or not the fishes are enjoying themselves?”
“You are not me,” Chuang-tzu said. “How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?”
The Wonder of Acupuncture
White Crane Kung-Fu Studio, Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, 1974: In my Kung-Fu phase, I was crazy about everything Chinese … except the interior decorating. I know that may sound just too, too gay, but aside from mysteriously grand Chinese interiors in old movies, have you ever been in a Chinese restaurant that wasn’t garish as hell?
I’ve come to learn that it’s because Red is Lucky, and no sensible Chinese person on the planet wants to be unlucky. Of course, when you think about it, that makes perfect sense. I wouldn’t either.
Back to the Kung-Fu and acupuncture. This is a story about needles and eyeballs, but it turns out OK. Just warning you …
Being temporarily Chinese myself, I ate Chinese food, learned to use chopsticks, went to the fighting movies every weekend — A tip: the movies made by Mr. Run Run Shaw are better than movies made by his brother Run Me Shaw — and of course I joined a Kung-Fu studio, where we wore the most uncomfortable shoes ever invented.
We learned weird movements named after the White Crane, and there were huge bags hanging from the ceiling, and they were filled with rocks. One bag was little, bitty gravel. Another bag was marble-sized stones. And the third filled with great whumping big rocks.
It was kind of like the three kinds of porridge in the Three Bears house, except that none of the bags was just right. The idea was that you would hit these bags with your hands.
I did it once.
But getting back to the acupuncture … The deal is that, because my Kung-Fu master was also a master acupuncturist, I had acupuncture a couple of times. And then one time he wanted to send a needle to hit a point behind my eyeball.
This was to cure me of wearing glasses.
With some misgivings, I said OK. (The needles are very fine; I figured I couldn’t bleed to death through a hole that small.)
So he sent this long and thin needle twirling into the skin, and beyond, and further and further, and …
As it turned out, I got a real good discount on my seeing-eye dog, and we’ve been very happy ever-
Just kidding. It worked fine; I didn’t go blind, and in fact I could see without my glasses for the rest of the day. Go figure.
However, I’m a big chicken. I didn’t want to do it again.
Glasses seemed safer.
Now, I’m not so sure.
But that’s life in the kung-fu movie, right? You pays your money, and you takes your chances.
One’s True Nature
The snake begged the frog for a ride across the stream.
The frog expressed fear, but the snake reassured him, pointing out that should the snake bite the frog then both would die.
The frog agreed. And mid-stream, the snake bit the frog.
“Why did you do that?” asked the frog, “Now we’ll both die.” The snake just smiled.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m a snake.”
Tiny Flowers
Weed, California, Saturday May 10, 2008: Usually around mid-day, the dogs and I like to take a little walk around the house and the very large vacant lot next door. It’s mostly an open field, with some tall and graceful trees at the far end.
If we have walked to the end, and walked around one or more of the trees … well, we know we’ve been somewhere.
Today, the air was cool, but the sun was warm on us, and I plodded along after Charlie the dashing young boy, and I was lost in thought, watching my feet, for the now fast-growing grasses can hide gopher holes.
And I saw …
Tiny little flowers, a pale lavender color, just tiny little things.
And I remembered … back when I was four and five and seven and nine, and visiting my grandmother’s farmhouse, and how along the paved walkway to the chicken yard and the barns beyond … on the left she kept bushy thick plants with a million tiny little flowers, in yellow and blue and purple and white.
I don’t know what they were called. I had forgotten them.
And now, those tiny, tiny flowers came back, over the years. And as I walked here in the now, I realized they were everywhere at my feet, the tiny purple flowers. Everywhere. I smiled.
“Hello,” I said, “Hello, Grandmother.”
I walked on through those tiny galaxies, and once again I felt loved.
I realize: the flowers are everywhere, if you look.
The world is filled with twilight and memories and shifting shapes, if you look. The ones who have gone have left ripples, and sometimes we feel them eddy around us. And within us as well.
Tiny flowers. Filling the world.
I Say it’s Spring
Weed, California, May Day, 2008: I find myself waking earlier, for the sun bangs upon the blinds, and the dogs grow restive.
Yawning, I stumble outside, following the dogs. There is white frost on the newly-long grasses, and I blink in the light. The mountain is wreathed in clouds upon its shoulders, but rises above, up into a clear pale blue sky, and bright sunlight startles me in the crisp air.
Dogs dart here and there, in a world of fantastic scents hidden in the chill. As we make our way around the house, the frozen grasses crunch beneath our feet.
Suddenly I’m startled by the little tree near the road. I’d been told it was a cherry tree, but now I know.
Upon its twisted branches, pink cherry blossoms.
He’s baack … on YouTube!
YouTube, September 19, 2007: Over the last two weeks, in my spare moments (hah!) I recorded our ‘TrueTapper Eclipse’ instrument. This is our most basic instrument, and while it is perfectly suitable for a professional musician to do studio recording, any student with a summer job can afford this instrument.
The video is a demonstration of the features of the Eclipse, and the Bloggard in his guise of Traktor Topaz, strange musician from another planet, plays a couple of songs and explains how the instrument is constructed to make learning fast, and playing easy.
The video is a companion to the previous video which explains the Easy Touch-Style Method of learning to play music using the two-handed tapping technique. The Easy Touch-Style video is the first of several, and in one of the online forums, my very good friend Greg Howard suggested that I make a video playing some music.
So I thought — Why not?
So, assuming that YouTube is online and streaming just now, the Bloggard presents:
Now, at last, the neighbors can know the source of those strange flickering lights … late at night … and the … peculiar … sounds. Oh, yes. Yes, now they’ll know.
