I miss the darkness

[stilltrucking]

but the militarios don't got no monopoly on fatigue outdoors jackets

.......speaking of that and thinking about those hats that say
Vietnam Veteran.


Wichita KS
Air Cap Truck stop
big guy with a beard and a viet nam vet hat
they sell those hats truck stops
I don't think anybody checks your discharge papers to see if you are eligable to wear one.
I could even buy one
they are generic no unit identification
maybe he stole it
I had a buddy at the quaker meeting in nashiville that had one of those camoflage floppy hats with a little patch on it that said
"participant south east asian war games 1968" somebody at Vanderbilt stole it. He was working on his masters in Chemical engineering there. He had burn marks up and down his arm. From cigarettes, some game the guys would play he said.

SO anyway there this big cry baby was shooting pool in the driver's lounge bitching and moaning because his company had screwed up his cash advance for the day
he had to layover and had no money for a motel
big fucking cry baby bitching and bitching
because he would have to sleep in his truck
so I gave him forty dollars for a motel because he was a viet vet.
but now that I look back on it I dont think he was a veteran at all
or if he was he spent the war stateside
or maybe he stole the hat.


because the men I had teamed with, the ones who had seen the war upclose and personal never would have moaned and groaned about a little thing like that.
they expected the snafu
and when things went wrong they even seemed to get more cheerful about the little indignities of civilian life.

like Johnny, one of the best of the best I ever ran a sleeper team with.
his only idiosynchracy was he could not watch a slasher movie
he had seen enough slit throats

we made a trip to L.A. once where everything went wrong, one break down after another, flat tires, blown radiators, ect etc ...

it only brought out his sense of humor

I heard later that on a holloween night in Utah somebody had a sick sense of trick or treat and hung a cinder block on a rope under a bridge. Just windshield high. he survived after a long stay in the hospital
johnny was a big old pooh bear
gentle soul
with the reflexes of a natural born killer.
But I can't talk about that night in the alley behind a bar with the mean drunk, I only told him that if I were him I would stay out of bars and away from mean drunks
oh well
going to be a lot of men coming home from Bush's military adventures with deadly reflexes. You guys are going to have your hands full helping them transition to civilian life. good luck.

....Have you ever envied a bum?
National CIty California down around the waterfront, sitting in a ragged old peterbilt with a sleeper that smelled like someone had used it for a kitty litter box, leaky air line on the brakes, bald tires, and a treacherous jake brake that would fade in and out, the only job I could get at the time because I was just out of jail and no respectable outfit would hire me.

I had spent the night in a cheap motel and got somekind of bite on my foot, later homeboy said it was a black widow, cause I was nauseous the next morning and I did not feel a thing. Later my foot swelled up like a purple football so there I was sitting in that truck with my foot bandaged up and I saw a bum sitting on the curb at the corner where I was waiting for the red light to change. His foot in a bandage too. his crutches by his side. Me on my way to NoCal, up and over Grapevine with bald tires and funky brakes.

How I envied that bum on his nice safe curb, and a bed at the mission that did not smell like a kitty litter box.

No tea for a month but today I am getting high for sure. maybe not, I been avoiding my baby sister, well not so much avoiding her as the tea.

but it beats the hell out of effexor.

I edited my reply to the Hester['s post on culture.
http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtop ... 5&start=30
Thinking about mother's and their sons, dead mothers, live mothers, dead sons live sons

and I am always more concerned with the living.

Good book called Denial of Death almost finished it.

my last post for a while
I am working on a maximus opus post for eyelid.
be back when I finish it.

[stilltrucking]

correction about my partner in crime and the slasher movies.
it was not slit throats
he said he had seen enough heads roll.

I heard a guy from MIT say that we could support a population of fifty billion on the earth if we are careful.

Not sure what that has to do with the topic of darkness.

[jimboloco]

My grandmother loved me
I kind of wish she had not spent so much time washing my little noodle when I was just a little jackster
Maybe I would not have turned out to be such a narcissistic prick

now i know what to say in a jam

i had a group therapy at the vet center in bossiier city lousy anna
one guy who said he was with the navy seals in cambodia told me he used to sneak up on a guy in the jungle
the guy would be leaning up against a tree
he would light a cigarrette
the seal would wait until the guy took a drag
come up from behind him and slit his throat

that was real therapeutic
i looking at him with soulful eyes
he was friends with a gay fellow in the group who moved to auStin
who was with VVAW back in the day

fucking bush says that if we leave iraq millions will suffer
just like they did in vietnam
he hasn't a clue

my grandmother washed my noodle too
but when i turned against the beast
she got cold as ice

i am waiting for some pot
hope i don't lose my wife

it's her stepson
he is my friend

thazz alllll folk

[stilltrucking]

My brother and his wife can make a quater oz last a month. It is good stuff but I can't have it around cause I got to smoke every bit as quick as I can. I never had any trouble with booze. I could always take it or leave it but I am a maraholic. Smoked my last bit four days ago. Today headache and irritable. Headache may be allergies. I will go a month or two without and then probably binge again. Still better than staying drunk for a week. I think.
I hope you don't loose your wife. I guess she thinks you are corrupting the morals of your step son maybe.
I think THC is a better than the pills they give out for depression. Just my opinion.

You are an upfront standup guy jimboloco. I worry sometimes that what we write here will come back to bite us. Thinking about the guy who was tired of looking at the flag and emailed someone in your family.

My family and a few cyber pals is all I got.

Who ever wrote Bush's speech was a double minded lying son of bitch. They had to know what the truth behind the "killing fields" or maybe, just maybe, there are people that ignorant of the the history of south east asia in the sixties and seventies. The Kymer Rouge was our baby. The killing fields our doing. There would have been no Pol Pot in power without our machinations. Nothing to do with pulling out of Vietnam.

Yeah my grandmother she played this little piggy went to market in the tub with me. For years I thought I had eleven toes.

Amazing woman, her greatest joy in life was just to watch her grand son eat. Eva Shapiro, coming to the new world when she was 15. Brought twelve children with her. She was the eldest in charge.
I was named for her father
a man who had five wives and thirteen children. his wives kept dying in child birth in 19th century Poland.

I was named for him

"Strong Jack" was his nick name. I can see sort of a resemblence.
My nose used to be that straight, now it has been broken so many times it looks like a cork screw.
Fidler On The Roof like my family history. Nobody ever talks about the pogroms anymore. They saw what was coming down in Russia and thanks to to the good Baron De Hirsch my family came to the new world.



Bush speech was surreal here is a good article from the NYTIMES by seven soldiers in the 82. The red font emphasis is mine

August 20th, 2007 5:02 pm
The War as We Saw It


By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY, Op-Ed Contributors / New York Times

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

more here
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/lates ... p?id=10147

[jimboloco]

Yeah my grandmother she played this little piggy went to market in the tub with me. For years I thought I had eleven toes

I am off work 3 days, beat. Gonna go out back and roll a joint.
My wife left this morning a bit prissy. I told her
she's my sweet missy.

That was your grandfather?
Wow.

still straight. no coffee yet either. journalled about the pot. i got it locked up in my old trunk, my father's ww2 army trunk, out in the shed. i visualised taking my american cigarrettes out there and locking them up and leaving the pot also, which i will do as soon as i can habe one last smoke, then a hiatus for awhile.

who knows what wil happen.i accept that i will carry on regardless.
i let it gooooooo. just be.

she got called by a head hunter for a job
was goonna do her resumee at home and send it,
but i want to take the puter in, the cd drives won't pick up photos or data
she got all hissy, so i said that i would wait, then she said
she wasn't even gonna doo it
then i said go ahead
then she said, no, i gotta go
just take it in

like that
into the wild urban freeway commute.

[stilltrucking]

Why don't don't you buy her a computer of her own?

Just wrote a long reply here but lost it. My eyes hurt too bad to try and retype it.

He is my great grandfather jim.

Speaking of wild freeway commutes I got to find a bit from Genesis Angels

[jimboloco]

i can'y afford another puter
we share around here, man
central putersville

that dude is your great grandfather?
wow!
i know nothing about my great grandfathers
oh yeah my maternal great grandfather was a rum runner and caribbean bum
one time he showed up in Panama where my colonel grandpa was stationed and gramps gave him some money, never heard of him agin, told him to shove off
Evidently he left a stream of racially mixed descendents in Jamaica, so who knows, lots of jamaicans make their way into Florita,
maybe I'll meet a kinfolk Rastamon.
My paternal great grandfather lived out west. He was old white west.

[stilltrucking]

Geez jimboloco
It don't hardly pay to fix computers no more. You can buy a new one cheap these days. Under 400 bucks for a nice one. It seems like a good way to avoid conflict to me. But what would I know about marriage?

[jimboloco]

we are going on our 8th weddinh anniversary vacation end of next week
doing the food and garden festival at EPCOT

half fasting

[stilltrucking]

Did you carry her over the threshold eight years ago?

I don't know jim
I am still saying grace
about the only practice I got going

Walking again
but just baby steps
Cooking chicken now for my hungry foo dog
I been eating a lot of frozen fish sticks lately
Lost count of the calories
too many
watched my self on a tv monitor today
I looked like a beer beer barrell in a white shirt and hat.

Stepped on my sisters digital scale got a big red Error sign.
I am off the scale

Suicide by jelly donut

[stilltrucking]

It has been a couple of months since I smoked any pot, I am feeling strange, a very subtle kind of withdrawl I had not noticed before. Maybe because in the past thirty years I have seldom been this long without it. The last time was in 1989 when I went six months no smokey. Very strange kind of withdrawl, I have no cravings but I am quicker than usual to anger. Maybe a serotonin deficiency. No cigarettes in over two weeks, I got one of those nicotine inhalers it works like a charm.

I been starting a new webpage, keeping me busy, I feel guilty about showing my face on studio eight but I still do, I promised lrod and doreen I would make a donation but the money is going so fast, charity begins at home

I been thinking about Algorithms

Watching a movie called inside job, about the wall street crime of the century

taking notes, so much information, my webpage will be my last effort to tie it all to gether, my magnum opus, a shattered brain still craving the rush of of connecting the dots

After the cold war ended the physicists and mathematicians decided to put their skills to work in the financial services industry.
making algorithms for the derrivatives market
Weapons of mass destruction warren buffet called them
derivatives using algorithms

The movie was called Inside Job

[Steve Plonk]

"Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again..." -- Simon & Garfunkel
I never thought I'd ever hear someone call me a christian wingnut warmonger...
But that is exactly what someone did on another thread. So, I took it here, to person(s)
who'd understand what it's like to be misunderstood.

[still.trucking]

I deleted a couple of posts to you cause I thought they were not helpful.

I remember one of the deleted posts, it was:

"Steve you are making me nervous."

And another was, "Steve you are starting to sound like a true believer."


I know you are a good guy, I like your poetry, I just think you need to know when to let it go. I feel so good when I stay out of pissing contests. Why should I care if he wants to vote or not?
It feels so good to sit on my hands and not let anyone punch my ticket. What do you need to prove to him?

remember that song The Gambler
know when to hold them
know when to fold them
know when to walk away
know when to run
....

[Steve Plonk]

Thanks, Still Trucking. There's a few stars out tonight. Good advice, "The Gambler"...

[panta rhei]

i miss the darkness, too.

here's part of a story that talks about this subject (written ten or more years ago):

"(...) I go outside to get the milk from the farm. It is dark. It is good to be outside in the night. I walk quickly because I want to get away from the lighted areas as soon as possible. I want to be surrounded by darkness. Streetlights are harsh and false. I prefer the softness of the dark. Always did. Light is a nice metaphor, but there is no reason to suppose that it is any better than darkness. The gentle night wraps me in velvet black and I am as clear as the stars. The cold bites my cheeks. Winter is about to come. The Great Bear is right in front of me, right above the horizon. So huge. So clear. So cold. So far. I walk down the path towards the brook. It is dark there, perfectly dark. So dark I can see my thoughts dancing and bouncing in the moonlight on the rippling waves. I take off my shoes and step into the ice cold water. My heart misses a beat. As I walk on, darkness swallows me, yet I grow and expand with the whispering mystery all around me.
I love the night, I loved it even way back when I was a kid. I remember walking home from swimming lessons. My way led through a ravine, and in winter it was already dark then. The other kids would say 'Uuuuuhhh! How scary! How can you walk there all alone in the dark!', but to me it was great... it was grand... it was perfect in its cold and dark and silence. I refused to be picked up by my mother at the swimming hall. I wanted that walk in the dark. I wanted that sublime nocturnal solitude. I rubbed my chlorine face with snow until it glowed, and looked up to the stars. I wanted to become an astronaut. I wanted to fall, fall high up into the beautiful eclipse of the sky.

Years later, my mother told me that she had always come and watched me going home. She used to hide behind trees and corners, so she could see me but I couldn't see her. And, yes, I remember once seeing her stepping back behind a bush as I walked up the ravine. She thought I hadn't seen her but I had. I got mad at her. I felt cheated out of my private darkness, out of my own personal experience of night. Night is mine, I thought. Not a stranger but a friend. Grand in its perfect beauty.

And I still wonder, why is it that darkness is so negatively occupied? Why is everyone so afraid of it? Why do we need all these artificial lights to deny darkness? Yes, light is warm. Yes, light is bright. But it can also be garish. It can also be blinding. It can be false and deceptive, misleading and fatal. Yes, of course there is the twilight, beautiful in its transition. The borderline state of the intermediate stages of dawn. There is sunrise - light slowly creeping, filling shadows and spaces. The vastness of the morning sky. And the sunset! The western sky! The falling of night! This means more to me than I can explain. But still... none of these are any better (or worse) than darkness. Darkness has its own power, its own beauty. It has its own perfect balance and peace.

When I return to the lighted streets I feel like awakening from a dream. It seems to get colder in the light. I go to the cow shed and get the bottle of milk. It is warm in my hands. I walk back home. Bernd has come home from work. We eat. We talk. We are silent. We argue or kiss. We go out or stay at home. We spend the evening together or by ourselves. We watch the moon rise above the mountains, burn candles and drink wine. We read. We work. We listen to music. We make love or chocolate pudding. We fall asleep."