Thanks to blogcatalog.

One of the most valuable tips I have gotten concerning blogging came from material on Google.com. It was to register on the website, blogcatalog.com. This site seems to have been the source of a large number of references to my blogs, resulting in higher positioning of my blogs in searches.

Thanks, Google. Thanks, blogcatalog.

Santee event signals the notion of legend, not Christ.

The incident of me walking my bicycle on a highway in Santee, CA in the summer of 1986 might have seemed to the three pesons who witnessed it and lined up standing on the road shoulder for me to pass them as the appearance of the Christ because I put my arms out, but in fact it was not a Christ image but a legend, because I also put my legs out. This position formed a five-pointed star with my head. Although I cannot say it with certainty, I think of it as a legend, in the sense that it was a sign for use in understanding a map of the road.

Please do not think of me, for all my statements of outsize events in my life, as a Christ. I am not a teacher, though I may exhibit a lesson or two now and then. A teacher is lost in the diseconomies of lengthy proof, and anything worth learning needs a length of time to prove. I pursue economy, so that I can earn a decent dollar and provide a base on which my descendants can learn to do the same.

I apologize if I have left an unclear message regarding my view of the event of Santee, 1986. I may have reservations about even the term legend, but not nearly so much as for the term Christ. If other meanings of the term legend apply, including over time, as all legends grow over time, then I shall try to accommodate them. There was no name on that event, so if my name does come into prominence for some reason let it be known that reality is a strict logician, and that event will always be served by a strict logical truth. Christians who wait for a Christ are expecting something in particular. Any man who would accept that expectation as a stricture on his life would in my view be a very unwise man. As far as other religions also await a redeemer, and my understanding is that most religions do, then the same view of mine I would carry for them. I am a scientist, and an atheist. Nothing like a Christ could be farther from my intentions, and I hope this is clear.

Three eras of my relationship to blacks.

There are three eras in my life which bear on my relationship to black people.

1.) My junior year of high school.

2.) My freshman and sophomore years at Yale College.

3.) Starting with my homelessness in 1981 and ending with my writing of the poem, "Black Girl's Husband I".

In the first era, I was keenly aware of my mother's position, which was that intermarriage was the only solution to race relations in the United States. Then one day at school I was approached by my friend Norm Swett who invited me to join him and others in picketing the A&P food store in Glen Ellyn, our home town, because it had reneged on a written agreement to hire more black workers. I was not in the habit of verifying incendiary claims such as this, so to this day I don't know if it was valid. In any case, I trusted Norm and joined the picket line.

Before I did so I felt that I should give my father a chance to veto my decision to do this, since I was as keenly aware of his counter position to my mother's as I was aware of my mother's. Besides that, he paid the bills.

So I went to my father's beauty shop and presented him with my decision to picket. He kept his temper and made clear to me two things, one of which he didn't live up to. One was that he didn't want me to do it. This he did live up to. The other was that it was up to me to do or not do as I saw fit. This he was not able to follow through on even though he didn't stop me from picketing. He came home from work the day I picketed and was in a furious rage. He had gotten a report from a customer that I had gone ahead and done it.

Well, what was I to think of his word? He came off to me as a real unreliable testifier to his will. Moreover, he and my mother got into a huge argument over it, she defending my action. I didn't follow the argument long and I'm not sure how long it went. In any case, I was upstairs in my bedroom at some point and he came up and got down on his knees in front of me (the ceilings were angled because the roof was angled so maybe this was due to his height not fitting in the part of the room where I was sitting) and said, crying, that he was leaving because my mother had said they didn't communicate. Then he did leave. The divorce followed several years later. Clearly his marital problem was deeper than his race problem, or he wouldn't have quit being angry at me for the picketing, which he apparently did. He stated to me numerous times later than the divorce wasn't my fault.

The second era is important because it was my first public verbalization of my own particular feelings about race. At a three day event at the beginning of freshman year, sponsored by a New Haven Christian group, I was exposed to New Haven's black community and leaders. At a meeting with Willie Counsel, president of the Hill Parents Association, I and my coattendees were asked to go around in our circle and express our feelings about what he had said about what was going on in the Hill, a poor black neighborhood in New Haven. When my turn came I was in tears thinking about what I had to say, which was that I was actually a racist despite my thinking I was very sympathetic towards black people, and that's what I said. After we all spoke Mr. Counsel gave his reaction to each of us and when he got to me he said he thought I had a potential for doing a lot of good in the black community.

The next year I learned about a Yale work-study program in which if I found a community group to work for Yale would pay my wages.

My first thought was Willie Counsel and the Hill Parents Association. But when I met with Mr. Counsel he didn't seem to recognize me and made no mention of meeting me and speaking of me when I had visited him with the church group the previous year. I certainly didn't think it admirable for me to bring up that event with him myself, as it would have been terribly selfish. So when he asked me what I thought I could do for his organization I got the sense he didn't see that there was very much. I mumbled a little about some flakey notion of service and it made no impression on him. He didn't want me to work for him.

I finally ended up being a totally uninspired and unproductive employee of the Hill Neighborhood Corporation for sophomore year. I had no contact with anyone of authority and had no actual supervisor. Nominally my assignment was to start up a neighborhood newspaper. I had no budget. What was I to do? I went around in the Hill acting like a reporter investigating stories. That's all I did. I'm embarrassed to have billed Yale for it.

The next year I went back to visit my employer and met the man they hired full-time to start a newspaper. He impressed on me the fact that he loved comic books. He didn't say anything having to do with a newspaper. I don't know what his budget was.

The third era began in New Haven when I was homeless. I went often to a soup kitchen in an Episcopal Church, Christ Church as I recall, and there were a lot of blacks. I felt there was unnecessary crowding in the line to the food and I decided to make a stand of leaving plenty of space between myself and the person in front of me. The guy behind me would always complain and threaten me. I kept my stand. Something needed to be done. I was feeling a lot of pressure from blacks and I didn't like it. Too many stories to tell in a blog.

The era ends in about 2001 when I wrote a poem entitled, "Black Girl's Husband, I." It was fiction, but represented a form of truth about what was possible. It was a semi-finalist in an on-line poetry contest. When I tried to display it on the website I owned at the time, the system shut down and prevented me from doing so.

At about the same time I gave $20 to the United Negro College Fund. They asked me online if I wanted to inform anyone and I indicated Dorothy Jackson, the assistant administrator at my nursing home. They asked me if I wanted anyone else to be notified and I said no. Dorothy didn't mention getting notification and I didn't ask her about it. Better it remain our secret.

Another event within the third era was when I told the Chicago police I wanted to join the Mafia. I said then that I wanted to bring harmony between blacks and whites.

In 2006 I was the Republican candidate for state representative in the fourteenth district of Illinois. I didn't mention race.

In 2008 Barack Obama emerged from Illinois politics to become the president of the United States.

These two events were not within the three eras. They were the fruits of them, when taken together.

Pain and adulthood.

On the day I went into the hospital for what turned out to be a necrotic bladder I was writhing in abdominal pain and I became aware of overlords criticizing me for not ceasing my internal complaints. It was given a spin to the effect of "grow up!"

I had been working on my state lying in bed and had come to take a certain optimism about what was a solvable problem, both viscerally and ideally. This made me want to work on the abdominal pain even though it had an aspect of lengthy complaint reminiscent of youth. I ignored the criticism I felt as a result.

Shortly thereafter, in the course of my explorations of the pain, a sudden peace came upon me that I associated with modifications of my vertebral support attitudes. The pain went from a seven plus or minus two to a three plus or minus two, in a matter of less than two seconds plus or minus one.

Had I thought of it, I might have deduced from this evidence that I had a blood clot and managed to dislodge it.

The doctors at the hospital told me after the operation in which they removed part of my bladder that the only possible cause of a necrotic bowel is a blood clot in the abdomen.

Perhaps such a deduction as I could have made is of no value, since the doctors took care of the problem and told me essentially that I had had a clot anyway. But what of other issues of my internal body, and my abilities to affect and study them? But moreso is the fact that had I entered into exploration of my body earlier, before the necrosis began, I might very well have avoided the necrosis entirely. What drove me to explore was the pain. I delayed exploration because I applied normal diffidence to the earlier, slighter levels of pain, diffidence based on acceptance of pain.

So it seems evident I need more rejection of pain, not less, and the overlords stand as an obstacle to that.

I don't advocate childishness. I don't advocate crying. But it seems they're temporary measures buying time for science to displace folk wisdom, and in that children always have a better hand than adults, the kind that tell you to grow up.

Reelection of Mr. Obama.

It appears that fuel is increasing for there to be difficulty when President Obama enters the race for a second term. In reflecting on this it occurs to me that I may have contributed to this development by concentrating exclusively on getting him elected as a vehicle for racial harmony to the exclusion of the affairs of actually being in office.

After he was elected there was a certain ossification of the matter in consequence of the uncertainties of how his election was taken, by the various partisanships in the nation, as having been accomplished only contingent on my desire to harmonize black-white relations. While some of this uncertainty must stem from my ignorance of what my overlords have done to make known or make not known my role in the election, some probably stems from my struggle with my own striving with these partisanships, most importantly in the matter of the increase of my income to a level that would independently sustain myself, and ideally a wife and descendants. My failure at this point to succeed in this effort has led to numerous expressions of frustration which can only have had a negative effect on Mr. Obama's political fates.

I have noted elsewhere that greatness is an attribute which can be ascribed to Mr. Obama with some justification. I have not phrased it that way, but that is what it amounts to. We all have our own paths to tread and certainly Mr. Obama will win or lose another term on the merits of his own case as administered. A second term would be far more effective for racial harmony than otherwise. But the nation has other issues besides racial harmony and it may be felt by those who make the decision that economies and time constraints tend to dictate that another term weighs slighter than other considerations. This view can be seen as a blotch on the man, but if he is truely great we must remember that such men are rare and his service to the nation will need to be in a place of importance. No challenger came forward with a greater portent in the last election. If one does in the next it will be up to Mr. Obama to meet the challenge and find an even deeper reserve than any he previously has found. Such is the call upon great men, without exception.

This analysis relates to the election, but the present as always is momentous. I will seek solutions to these problems as always.

WiFi up at Bryn Mawr Care.

Free WiFi at my nursing home, Bryn Mawr Care, has returned to service.

Now we will see how long it goes before shutting down again. If it lasts at least six months with no more than less than 24 hour downtimes I will issue an endorsement for the nursing home, as I have posted previously.

truth and emotion in writing

Perching on the appearance of text that goes to the matter of any social service, commercial or charitable, a response of welling up of emotions cannot leave room for or otherwise cohabit with the specialized faculties of editing, which I know takes some work to get to a stage of development where deeper scales of effectiveness arise and invoke again the editing function, and this emotional response makes that impossible.

Effective prose differs from that which rouses emotions. The strength of a passage to point out truth is able to work well on any large audience, while one that rouses emotions takes many paths with no effect on understanding. Whether these many paths result in a net improvement in welfare is always hard to say.

WiFi at Bryn Mawr Care down now for three months.

Bryn Mawr Care, the nursing home where I live, has installed free WiFi. However, its histroy has been mostly one of downtime, the current run of downtime being something like three or four months running.

The nursing home administrator says the people handling it say the problem is the router and that a new one will be much better than the old, including less downtime.

I am now spending out the window, in my small scale, to get WiFi access at a cafe.

If I find out who is responsible there will be hell to pay.

My awkwardness

I realized today that I have a fundamental condition that causes physical awkwardness. This is why I never excelled at sports. It is also why I have always had a problem finding a girlfriend. And finally, it is why I have never found a professional calling.

This awkwardness lends me to rely on a physical framework to steady myself. This is why I took to solo bicycling.

Crystal and my character set.

I have shared with Crystal Newell eight of the sixteen characters in my set. Wednesday I showed her a sheet with them written on it and asked her to copy each one below it. She did so. Then I told her that there are eight more characters that I will give to her if we are married. She responded, "all right." This was a response along the line of her last two responses to my talk of marriage, which she greeted with wild laughter, the first, and mild laughter, the second. She's getting used to the idea.

Chicago sports championships

Having been content with my conduct during the course of the season when the Chicago White Sox won the world series, I expected that what I did at the time of the subsequent Super Bowl in which the Chicago Bears played would determine the winner.

Naturally, I wanted the Bears to win.

However, on January 23 of that year, before the Super Bowl, I was engaged in courting a ten year old girl at the Edgewater Branch of the Chicago Public Library, and this changed everything. At the time of the Super Bowl, I was still maintaining a belief in the possibility the girl would return to the library. If she did, I would try to make contact pursuant to her introducing me to her parents so I could plead my case for courtship to last until her entrance to adulthood.

I was walking on Clark Street at the time and it occurred to me that I was in no state to urge on the Bears to victory, being tied up in a relationship that, although it begged the greatest skepticism from any reasonable critic, certainly, given my own belief in it, required all I had to give, making support for the Bears, to the extent that would bring victory, impossible.

I realized somewhat after the talk got going about the Chicago Blackhawks' chances for winning the Stanley cup in 2010, that with my courtship of Crystal Newell having reached a certain realisticness I had every reason to engage myself in doing my part on behalf of the Blackhawks. I made this realization between games two and three of the finals.

I discovered in listening to the third game on my radio in my bedroom that radio was more exciting for hockey than television. The fact that I didn't know the names of the players made it impossible to gather the significance of the words of the broadcasters. The only way I had to tell whether the action was in favor of the Blackhawks or the Flyers was the tone of voice of the broadcasters, in particular the play by play announcer. This included the fact that any goal scored was known to me as Blackhawk or Flyer solely by the tone of voice of the announcer. Events prior to a goal were a confusing amalgam of evidence. In no way did this detract from the excitement I experienced listening to the games. In fact, it made them the most exciting games I had witnessed in professional sports, ever.

I carried my part throughout in keeping with the supposition that my actions were subject to conditions that were real time interelated with actions on the ice. This was not cause and effect. It was discovery of equal opportunity for delving into the possibilities present. Whatever place cause and effect had in such a situation depended solely on factors so arcane that it would be pointless to assume that I could reason my way into a Blackhawks win just by wanting one. Only by doing everything I could to follow the game with increasing understanding because of the power of logic--the same logic by which I had entered into the original relationship with the ten year old girl at the library--was there some possibility that I could bring about a victory in keeping with the Blackhawks being the rightful owners of the title.

So congratulations, Chicago Blackhawks! In my world, we both did it, and I surely will never minimalize your victory. As with Barack Obama, I would never minimalize his greatness or success in the election, but it would be hard to argue, from my point of view, against the suggestion that his greatness would never have emerged into the presidency without my affirmation just prior to my appointment as first of the Chicago Mafia that I wanted, as a prospective member of the Mafia, to harmonize black-white relations.

The fact that my father had played semi-pro hockey made this Blackhawk victory especially sweet, and something of a memorial to his memory, him having died in 1999, a companion memorial to the victory of Barack Obama as a memorial to my mother, a champion of racial equality and advocate, at least in word, of racial intermarriage.

The fact that I never told my father of my appointment as first in the Mafia in 1993, which he would have found thrilling if he had been able to believe it, perhaps makes my inability to tell my mother of it, since she died in 1986, something of an equal tragedy.

Crystal Newell knocks more sweetly than opportunity

I have seen a significant development last week in my courtship of Crystal Newell.

She knocked on my door, and when I opened it she asked if we could do something together, anything at all was the general idea.

I have my conjectures about what brought her do say this, and will keep them private.

I will be making the most of this new development as time progresses.

Crystal is one surprising and excellent lady.

Call for the killing or capturing of Osama bin Laden

I have made public statements subscribing to the view that Osama bin Laden is a saint, or other positive impressions.

I am now revoking those statements and issuing a call for bin Laden's killing or capturing. I will, in the event either occurs, publish here the names of those persons, military or otherwise, who achieve it, to the extent those names become available, and with some editing judgments in the case the matter of who did it is complicated.

Sainthood is in my view a national issue moreso than a religious one, and those sentiments of mine which led me to observe saintly traits in bin Laden now seem excessively inclusivist, especially as my support for the American people is becoming more firm and definable, definition leaving room for much criticism and alienation, but firmness reflective of recent improvements to my financial stability and romantic consolidation within the context of my courtship of Miss Crystal Newell, a fellow resident at my nursing home, Bryn Mawr Care, in Chicago, IL.

my budget for the working man now available on scribd.com

I have just uploaded to scribd.com my design for a working man's budget, on sale there for $2.50. Here is the url.

my autobiography, 100 pages so far, is uploaded to scribd.com

I have uploaded the first 100 pages of my autobiography to scribd.com. It divides my life of about 60 years into 100 segments, down to the second. Commentaries are added describing the events that occurred in each segment. The work is in progress and I will update it as a new revision every multiple of 100 pages. The completed work is very likely to be over 1000 pages, and material exists for a work well over that, something obscene, like 50,000 pages.

Here is the link.

Bryn Mawr Care's treatment of Crystal Newell will improve or I will not endorse them.

If my nursing home, Bryn Mawr Care, wants to culture my approval, it will improve its consideration of my girlfriend, Crystal Newell. The clinical director has said to me when I indicated I was pursuing a romantic relationship with her that, "with Crystal, I'm afraid what you see is what you get." High level staff have described her as a "runner" because she doesn't adjust her pace on the public sidewalk to those in her party. I have met her half-way with a brisk walk of my own and she markedly provided her half of the deal, so now we usually keep a pace we both like, though it can be a bit of a strain for me. I consider it nothing more nor less than good exercise to walk with Crystal. I see no validity in prescription of one person's pace over another's. To put her on restriction, as they have done repeatedly, for exercising her right to keep her own pace is ignorant and totally without judicial merit, in my view. Let us hope the current pause in such restrictions is permanent.

But other things are also bothering me about the way they treat her. This statement by the clinical director, Pat Blumen, is not what I would expect from someone who has responsibility for a large group of people of widely varying characteristics, such as we have at Bryn Mawr Care. I said to her that I chose to exercise patience in assessing Crystal's character. Miss Blumen, said that was my right, and clearly thought I was a fool.

Bryn Mawr Care needs to do better before I issue any endorsement of it, and I withdraw the unofficial endorsement I previously gave it for installing free WiFi, which has been anything but constant in service, thus my refusal to make the endorsement official at this time. Crystal's handling will improve before I utter any more endorsements.

Chicago Tribune article concerning mental illness developments in Illinois

Here is a Chicago Tribune article about a recent development in Illinois's provisions for the mentally ill. Apparently the Tribune did an investigation and found significant poor conditions in nursing homes for the mentally ill, and this development came about as a result. My nursing home has not been closed in these actions.

Unofficial endorsement of Bryn Mawr Care to remain unofficial

Due to the failure of my nursing home, Bryn Mawr Care, to maintain WiFi service 24/7, and not at all for more than a week now, the unofficial endorsement i issued of Bryn Mawr Care will remain unofficial until there has been a period of six months service with no interruptions of more than 24 hours.

Endorsement of the Pentel Rock n'Write pencil eraser

I endorse a product made by Pentel. It is the Rock n'Write pencil eraser.

This eraser is the shape of a writing tool, so it has the sense of a writing tool and compliments your writing functionality as a pad eraser does not, and this allows a more accurate erasing of the pencil mark, which meticulous draftsmanship will find a real advantage. It takes an eraser refill for the plastic barrel. As you use up the eraser you move a clip down a notch.

This is an excellent product that has changed my approach to writing and I heartily endorse it to all writers.

Religion.

Religion was accepted by me as an accompaniment in early childhood. I was not aware of its designs on my life but they were covertly all encompassing. Now that I see the place of religion in history I reject it completely. The cost of religious faith is a vacuum of civil invention.

leap seconds?

I have a problem with the practice of adding a leap second to the day because of the slowing of the earth's spin. The second is not just added to the day, it is also added to the year. But the year is not getting longer; only the day is. Can someone explain to me why my simple analysis is wrong?

In my thinking, the formula for leap days, normally every four years but excepted to at certain intevals and double excepted to on occasion, needs to be periodically revised to correct for the changing ratio of days to years.

Islam is retardative to progress.

All religion is retardative to progress. This includes Islam. Science has replaced religion as beacon for the future.

Unofficial endorsement of Timex watch.

Unofficially, I have found my Timex watch, Expedition brand, to be a valuable and enduring tool across the board in a range of applications.

I was initially drawn to its wristband, which is neither plastic nor metal, but some kind of textile. This yielding material has proven to be resistant to all the strains to which I subject the watch, and I am a fairly demanding user. I had found plastic and metal bands to be too easily broken.

One feature I am waiting for clarification of is the leap year registration. The watch does not input the current year when you set the time. How does it know how many days to allot to February? Each year I will have to check to see what the watch does at midnight at the end of February 28. That will be tonight this year.

Once this puzzle is settled I will allow my endorsement to become official, provided the watch proves able to negotiate leap years correctly.

The tassle.

When students go through the ceremony of graduation from high school or college they traditionally wear a gown, and a cap with a tassel. I knew this tradition before I graduated from high school. However, it wasn't until about the time I graduated from college, from Yale--the first time I graduated from college, that I ever heard of the tradition that upon the very act of receiving your diploma, from an official of the school as you walk across whatever platform they have arranged for all the graduates to be seen one at a time getting their diplomas in front of the assembled public and guests, you are supposed to grasp the tassel and move it from one side of your cap's mortarboard, to the opposite side, and you are supposed to have had it on a particular side beforehand, I'm not sure whether it's the left or right, in the front of the cap.

In thinking about the part of the tradition of moving the tassel as one crosses the stage right at the moment of getting one's diploma, it has occurred to me only very recently that there is a connection between this tradition and what I have heard to be a fetish about the object called a tassel. A fetish, it is my understanding, is something that inexplicably arouses someone. If it arouses you explicably, namely, it is a member of the opposite sex (I don't think homosexuality is a legitimate explanation for arousal) then it's not a fetish. And it was my understanding that any specific fetish arouses only a subset of the population. Curly, of the Three Stooges, had a tassel fetish. I always thought this inexplicable because I had never experienced arousal at anything resembling a tassel.

But I realized recently, as I said, because of an event following my graduation from high school--Glenbard West in Glen Ellyn, Illinois--that tassels are very powerful agents of arousal for everyone who hasn't felt the arousal from them yet. The tradition of moving the tassel from one side of the mortarboard to the other assures that upon the arrival of certainty that a person will have his diploma he will confront a sexual fetish through physical contact with the skin of his fingers, a confrontation which he by virtue of his graduation, and all that it represents, will be equipped to experience, and the sooner the better before other things distract him from whatever lesson is carried in this little act. Plus, it is a public statement that he has been in contact with a fetish, something that he must face to become a trusted, freely moving member of the public.

I wouldn't have given such an analysis credence at the time I learned of the tradition of the tassel, but I am forced to conclude it is accurate in light of what happened to me on the day I received my high school diploma, afterward at a party thrown by a friend. I was sitting with a girl who I knew had a crush on me because she had told me so, and we were idly chatting and glowing in having graduated from high school.

I happened to have my tassel in my hand--we were absent our robes, which were all rented, but we were allowed to keep the tassels--and quite unconsciously she started to toy with it as well, and we sat there for some time talking. For some inexplicable reason I became unable to resist starting to pet with her. We kissed and it was clear that we were then a couple for all to see. I had never been sexually attracted to her. However, we began to date regularly and during Christmas break of the next school year, which we both had spent at different colleges, we consummated our relationship by coitus interruptus.

It is entirely beyond reason that I would start to date a girl I wasn't attracted to at a time immediately antecedent to my entrance into life as a college student, where I was certain to be surrounded socially by many more girls of my own intellectual calibre than was the case in high school, even despite the fact that since Yale was coeducating for the very first time in my freshman year there it would only be admitting 250 freshman girls into a 1250-member freshman class, and 50 girls into the sophomore and junior years, each.

But if it was the fact that the tassel had the effect of bridging the gap between myself and this girl, because all it takes so to bridge a couple is sexual opposition and an enabler, or fetish, then the whole matter of this girl in my life as she came to be is not inexplicable, but is quite explicable, and serves to explain as well why there is this tradition of moving the tassel from one side of the mortarboard to the other as one receives his diploma walking across the stage at the graduation ceremony. I certainly have seen my life thrown into disarray by the effect of the tassel. Yet the ultimate result is good, because I have learned a great deal about sexuality, without getting married to do it.

After coitus with this girl I soon woke up to the fact that my options for partners were vastly superior in college, and I broke up with her over the phone after we were back at school. This ending served to prove the awareness benefits of coitus.

I don't mean to offend the girl here. She was a good intellectual comrade, and I never told her I wasn't attracted to her. But in fact, I was unable to get aroused by her when we were naked together so I imagined myself enacting what was the only way I knew would bring me to climax, which was another fetish--cross-dressing. This way I appeared to be her partner and she apparently was satisfied with me. The toward effect of the relationship was that I maintained a legitimate heterosexual partnership in public for a duration of about a year. This was a very different toward effect than that of feeling aroused by girls I really was attracted to. The issue for me was not so much who was my intellectual peer, something I regularly was able to learn about, but who was my erotic peer, and what magic would be able, ultimately, to bridge the gap between me and such a girl. The girl I did date proved I could bridge the gap and maintain it naturally for some time. But it was a weak eros. During college, both times, I learned much more than this about not only making a connection, but doing so with an erotic peer.

Crystal is an erotic peer of mine. Her morality is superior. This outweighs the deficit of her having no high school diploma. If she accepts me as her partner in marriage I can be sure our offspring will benefit from this as they cannot from me. Even I can benefit from her example, and I believe I am already doing so.

That, however, is a separate issue.

This issue is the reason resident in the tradition of moving the tassel from one side of the cap to the other on the graduation stage, when one grasps for the first time a token of public passage, his diploma.

The decision of the department of astronomy at Yale to admit me to their Ph.D. program starting in 1980 was a validation of my decision-making in something of a general way.

As such, it forces critics to look at outside reasons for my mental collapse in 1974. I was disregarded then by Ralph Montgomery and Bob Turner, who both held the position of Associate in the firm The Architects Collaborative where I was working as an apprentice, as a serious candidate for promotion as a seeker of the position of architect. Whether it was because I engaged in banter as a peer in the office, and in so doing left myself open to private judgments which may have been uncomplimentary because of the feeling of architects that as an apprentice I ought to not radiate my humanity so much because to them it was looked upon as superiority because they were not able to do it themselves to such a degree, that speculation is certainly relevant to any assessment of the events then as being either explanatory, or not, of the collapse. When the course of my employment had gone so far as to cement in everyone's eyes just what kind of an architect I looked to becoming, it was then time to watch what was made of it, and it so happens that just about nothing was made of it. In particular, no private gestures were made. Professions work by such gestures. Without them nothing evolves. And receiving none myself, it became tacitly obvious to me I was not going anywhere in that firm on the merits of my personal radiance. However, it was my feeling then, as it is now, that my humanity was uncommonly good and occupied a higher class of considerations than mere craft. Seeing no private gestures, I could come to only one conclusion--the firm that I had attributed good judgment to, as among the best in the profession from my vantage point, was unresponsive to my better nature, something I had come to appreciate as readily getting a positive response from friends at Yale as an undergraduate, people who had no need to see it as acting superior because they had no deficits themselves in terms of human radiance, each in his own way.

Because the firm did not warm to me professionally, and it was apparent that its judgment was equivalent to that of the whole profession, my entire dedication to the profession was dealt a serious blow. I could not sustain the exploration of all avenues of personal development as an architect. But it was a logical negative factor, being an across the board effect of equal volume everywhere, devaluing all my accumulated efforts, rather than a sharp effect on any single stand I had taken. No alternative reaction to what I actually did do was possible, and any fishing for such alternatives must begin with a rejection of one or other of my most innate qualities and long-established patterns of behavior.

Now you could say, "well, he didn't get promoted and became depressed." But this leaves out the fact that I was deeply involved in office life, and had a stake in everyone's own lives. I didn't know how important it was to look for private gestures. I thought my public stance would naturally lead me up the ladder of public promotion. It was my youth and lack of appreciation for minute interactions because I had never had a fulfilling romance, one that would slow me down and speed me up where those had natural rewards, respectively. All my romantic efforts to that date had been wild guesses, because my family life trailed behind my personal life, for better or worse, and this left me in a major struggle to find satisfaction in love. So when I felt great, I radiated it. At Yale, it was apparent where I was coming from because they had some idea of the kind of problems faced by people who outdistance their families. In architecture, it's more of a public world, and there are rough seas. People rely on private gestures because the public ones are so dangerous. I lived dangerous that way, living as a public person, because I sensed somehow I had a problem of rarity, one that only a rare confidante could comment to in any way, and in the mean time, life beckoned so I had to put my business out in public and play those risks as the only way to present myself fully. Well, bam, it went awry and I became mentally ill. But eventually I did meet the rare confidante. And pursuing that meeting, I was admitted to Yale's Ph.D. program in astronomy, a proof of good decision-making. But as a way to meet the rare confidante it was still dubious. I chose to go off medication, in order to confront the problems of love over developing the tools of craft. I travel this world not as a functional intelligence, but as a lack of a lover, until I find one. Hopefully Crystal Newell is the one. Yale's acceptance proved I had the makings of craft. In my position, really known only by me, this was a signal to look for love in a certain way, different from how I had looked before then. It was something I had needed ever since grade school, and all the romantic deprivation I had suffered then and afterwards was put into perspective by that acceptance, and assured me in a specific way that what I felt intuitively about my worth for love had actual proofs in the real world. It was time for a general release of conformity with expectations. It was time for walking into the world at large, perhaps no different a time than birth. It was time to risk, and ultimately to embrace, homelessness.

And in that decision to go off medication, there was enough sense and wisdom to lead me ultimately to be tapped by the Chicago elite society as a first. Same person, making the same decisions, to the same end. Part of recovering from mental illness is satisfying everyone that the decisions you made going into it were good ones. I have tried here to do that. Judge for yourself.

Valentine's Day with Crystal

For Valentine's Day I took Crystal across the street to Zanzibar's for ice cream. I'm going to post about them on Yelp, forthwith. Here is the link.

fully endowed courtship capacity

The inception of a fully endowed courtship capacity in me, at the age of 59, is completely unanticipated.

On the emergence of a better logistic for a species

Homosexuality is in my view a consequence of humanity's use of tools. Tools are a disengage. They produce bother upon bother. It is within this miasma, brought about originally because tools were seen as a boon without downside, that the confusion of homosexuality, and other confusions like it, came about.

Tools evolve a society of inequalities, injustices, and secrets, because of the elaborate involvement with keeping tools maintained in contrast to keeping the species up to date in the moment with all its powers applied to the biosphere directly. It is a society of eddies, where individuals fare vastly different fates for relatively insignificant reasons, and the elements that comprise the real species identity are never known. Scholars toy with all these most important of issues in familiar terms, content with fashion, tradition, and consensus, in the face of these inequalities that produce suffering, continuously at every moment.

We are living out the inertia of an earlier protean act by our species originator, accepting inequality as normal. An intelligent species origin will set its course in terms of elements of interaction, or logistics of sheer science and rigorous quantitative relationships between individuals descending from that origin and the natural universe they encounter.

First the tools must be circumscribed with a deeper logistical base, so that they lose their advantage to sheer science. A toolless science will better command tools than the science that breeds them. This will not have to be a matter of victories in every contest. Strategy will determine which victories to seek.

A population recipient to these ideas will produce a mating pool more ready to move in this direction. In mating itself, and in the creation of domestic structure, the rigorous quantitative relationships will take form. Management is a concept steeped in tools. A better logistic will triumph over it, in finance, commerce, and health, and lead to clearer military success, whether or not that means winning wars and subjugating peoples, which are of dubious value anyway. A more rigorous logistic will let people not ready to apply it reach their own inherent potential, strife being more a risk of delay and distraction than a field of competition and survival. The rigorous logistic will begin from a standpoint of balance, and move into areas of reduced uncertainty in larger contexts while allowing uncertainty to emerge in smaller ones.

This is a concept essentially sensible, having to do with the senses as the initial and final site of intelligence.

Two of my drawings put up for auction on ebay.

I have put two of my colored pencil drawings up for auction on ebay. They are pictured above, and links to their ebay listings are here: top image. bottom image.

Romance with Crystal is heating up.

Tonight when I was seated in the second floor dayroom of my nursing home Crystal came in looking for something and briefly spoke to someone before leaving the room.

I was overwhelmed by her bearing and radiance.

Two days ago I realized that my accumulated idea of what it takes to win a girl is with Crystal absolutely inadequate. Her morality, combined with her bearing, which I had seen once before at the heroic level, are an order higher than anyone I have had a chance to pursue before.

While I had seen her heroic bearing before, this was the first time I have ever seen her so radiant.

This romance is heating up.

toolless adaptation

My view is that intelligence is for toolless adaptation.

Cold turkey is not sensible. This is a many-ordered concept here.

The claim is that there is a threshold at which intelligence escapes tools by discipline.

endorsement of SIR Management

The nursing home where I live has put in free WiFi. Therefore I am issuing an endorsement of the nursing home, Bryn Mawr Care.

Free WiFi here is consistent with other frequent improvements instituted by the nursing home, but because it more significantly impacts my chances of becoming financially independent (through my business of English Transformation Art conducted online) and leaving Bryn Mawr Care to live on my own, I feel confident that an endorsement is an accurate statement about my relationship with this facility.

It's Crystal forever.

I just returned to my room now having told Crystal I will go out with her forever, no matter what. She said ok and really was clear about it in saying that. But then I added a repeat of my opening statement to her that I was sorry I had said I would never date her again and she didn't say anything, which made me think I should have been happy with her ok and just left, instead of belaboring it. I'm so torn over these momentary conversations, I guess because I would rather spend all my time with her. It certainly goes a lot better when we spend the day together.

I think my problem is that I don't hear some important sounds in my own body. I don't know what they are, but I need to find out. They would help me to respond in the immediate present to Crystal instead of having to rely so heavily on a prepared statement, which I always do when I go to her room. I don't write them down. I just prepare them mentally.

furthermore, about Crystal

What will now happen, in dating Crystal forever, is that I will not expect a kiss on the lips from her, before marriage, certainly, but after marriage too, though I may try it, but then I will still need her exactly because she holds herself from me. I am beginning to see a new sort of passion in this.

My father's mother told me that she wouldn't let my father's father touch her for five days following the marriage.c

New logic with Crystal.

It is certain that a girl of quality who happens to have been raised to delay all sexual stimulation until marriage will be in a position to give her suitor all the time in the world to realize two things: 1) once he makes the plunge to court her, and she keeps him from knowing whether she favors him, he will eventually reach a point where he has by his adherence to strict logic left himself no other alternative than to persist in pursuing her, no matter how long it lasts, because he has created a unique place for the girl that cannot be retooled for another one, not just because of her unique nature, but because of the unique logic of courtship in a state of true love, and 2) it is precisely this waiting for marriage before sexual stimulation, the primary measure of suitability a man of the world learns before finding true love, that establishes her word as ruler over his world, and her body as the only thing worth living for. The contract of two caring people, will always begin in that they shall not hurt each other, and therefore will not allow such a commitment as marriage in its most perfect sense to become possible unless this commitment has a definite, though not specified, place somewhere in the girl's heart and mind.

I am struggling with this. To rely on Crystal's care as a more perfect protector than an exchange of sexual permissions is not what I was taught as a child. It is, however, what I have discovered to be true, ever since I began to court a 10-year-old girl I saw and flirted with at a branch of the Chicago Public Library on Tuesday, January 23, 2007.

I was willing to wait until she reached the age of 18 to marry her. I didn't know anything about waiting for marriage for the first kiss, but that is what it seems to have brought about. I returned to the library every day at that same time for the next six days, didn't sleep during that time but for maybe five minutes, and worked continuously on plans and strategies, both for earning a living against all odds, and for gaining her family's approval, against even greater odds. I had the dvd of the nine videos in the sidebar of this blog by then and I hoped to be able to get the mother to view it.

When I told an aide at my nursing home a week later that I had a ten year old girlfriend--already a stretch because she didn't return to the library when I was there the other days--he reported it to his supervisor as an online affair. What did he have against me? They fired him when they found out it was an in-person affair. However, they found that out because they called me in to a tense meeting of all department heads to confront me with the thing and I had a real battle on my hands. Somehow I proved to them I don't have a thing for little girls and instead have no inhibitions about age, arguing that some ten year olds are ready for pairing. I might have cited Rene and Celine Deon, but I didn't think of it. I also got them to say they wouldn't bar me from returning to the library to look for her and continue our courtship/flirtation.

My strategies for courtship were entirely based on logic deductible from her and my behavior in the library. We spoke not a word. Glances were given. We spent time at the same table and she did some walking around. I developed the logic in the succeeding days and it continues to guide me with Crystal.

So it will not be surprising if now my game plan discussion about Crystal comes under greater scrutiny.

In the mean time, I'm going to tell her I will keep dating her forever and when the marriage proposal occurs is not an essential problem. I won't be looking for sexual signs. I will be happy because she goes out with me and doesn't appear to be favoring anyone else nearly as much. I will be able to tell everyone I know that I will be dating her forever.

Back to zero with Crystal.

Having given Crystal time to think about what she would do if and when I were to attempt to kiss her on the lips, I was confident that if I did try it, in a suitable setting, I would get reliable information.

So I tried it a couple days after our talk.

Her response: she turned her face away from me. No kiss on the lips, just a peck on the cheek.

I said nothing and repaired to my bedroom to assess my feelings and this new information. Well, it was clear that she has no intention of ever being romantic with me. It's been a year now that we have been going out fairly regularly and she's had an opportunity to see enough of me that if there were some intention to get romantic, it ought to show itself in a kiss. A kiss is not a big deal. This one was especially well managed, the advance notice given, and a few days passed for her to soak in the message I sent her. I was gentle. I was intentional and certain I had positioned myself to be kissed back if there were any return feelings to the extent of "let's be clear to one another that we have all the equipment and it works" and the only reasons that would tend in the other direction must be either discriminative--she want's someone prettier or cockier--or else she doesn't want to turn her equipment on for some reason, be that some archaic notion of chastity or something more deep and dark. I suspected something deep and dark when we went to the Art Institute and one of the only three works she hesitated over was a very lewd and vulgar female portrait, one of those you wonder what it's doing in an art museum, but then that's art. We walked by a lot of art. Nothing, not one comment or pause, except for these three, but still no comment. We raced through the place. I interpreted her response to the lewd picture as a hint that she had some erotic phantasies about lingerie. I certainly have them. And this work was sufficiently lewd that I think anyone would feel it strongly. But it was not a masterful work. It was crude and accentuated the lewd angle. It was unrealistically proportioned. It played on the guts, not the mind. Somewhere in between lay the heart. Crystal's definitely beat faster over it. Mine a little bit too. So because of this incident I tend to believe her equipment really is in good order, but apparently not in any expressible way.

Well, I'm not on comfortable speaking terms with her. I have no idea what I would need to say to her about all this if I were going to attempt to reach her conversationally over what seems to be essentially a physical disconnect. Realizing this, I returned to her to tell her it was over again.

I appeared to her, said, "One measure of how much you like me is whether you are willing to kiss me on the lips. You wouldn't do it, right?"

She said, "right."

I said, "ok, I'm never going to take you out again."

She said, "ok."

I left the room.

This is much more graphic an exchange than the last time when I asked her if she was attracted to me, and I don't think she will have any trouble figuring out why I won't be asking her out any more, and so I can't see her coming to me again asking why. But then I could be mistaken. In any case, if she does, I will be plain about letting her know that if she wants to go out with me she has to let me kiss her on the lips. It might be taken as a crude position. How does a mechanical issue get into a matter of the heart? But I have taken it very much as a matter of the heart. I never built up a mechanical relationship with her, but a deeply emotional one, for me anyway. I have to look at it as it being necessary for me to protect myself. If she has emotional issues she needs to open up with them. I'm not going to psychoanalyze her, at least not in conversation with her. That's a different kind of relationship.

As for sharing intimate details in public like this, it hasn't got that far. We haven't discussed keeping things private because essentially we haven't shared anything private. So while it may be cheeky of me to discuss her deep, dark, side, none of it is a matter of actual intimacy. It's all speculation.

I have to hope that whoever she ends up choosing as a mate, she will be satisfied. I wish it were me, but it's really kind of a logical bind. If she were to love me, then she must know well who I am, and that takes someone special. If she doesn't love me, then she must not know me well, and that must not be a very special person. It's the bind I've been in ever since I decided to first ask her out. At this point, it's simply too extreme a form of patience to continue courting her after she refused to kiss me on the lips. The logical bind ends with that interaction, and with that decision. The only way for her to restore it this time is to leap. I don't think she has that kind of courage in her, or that kind of inspiration. Nice girl, though. As I said, I hope she finds the right person.

back with Crystal

Yesterday was my birthday and I had the most tremendous birthday gift: Crystal came to me and asked why we haven't been going out. I noted that she had said she wasn't attracted to me and she said she didn't remember saying that. Who's to say what exactly was in her mind when she said it, but the long and short of it is that it doesn't matter. We're back together.

I realized that what I was looking for in originally asking her the question was some sign that she feels the same way I do about us. So I went to her room, sat down on her bed with her, and said, "I'm going to be kissing you on the lips from time to time."

She gave me a look that I've only gotten twice before when passion was flairing between me and a girl, so I gave her the male's look back. She then said we could go out as I had earlier suggested. I had been online and checked out the Museum of Science and Industry, which she had mentioned, and knew they have free days all next week, so I said we could go there. Then she said I could just drop by and pick her up whenever i wanted to go. That seemed to indicate she liked the progress we were making in our conversation at that point, including my intentions to be kissing her on the lips.

So that was quite a birthday gift.

my life, revealed

It is apparent that I was cut out to be a mechanical engineer. Very early in life I found mechanical objects the most fascinating things in the world, and was adept at figuring them out. I looked at everything with an engineer's eye. When they told me, at age five or so, my paternal grandfather was chief engineer at MacNeil Memorial Hospital in Berwyn, IL, I thought he was a graduate of a college of engineering, or something like that. I was very impressed. Unfortunately, he was only the building superintendent. This misunderstanding may be the root of everything that went wrong in my life. They thought I wouldn't know the difference between an engineer and a super. They were wrong. They tried to pawn my grandfather off on me as an engineer. As time went on and I saw what he did for a living reflected in people's remarks, it was apparent he was only a super. But while this realistic impression was forming and I still thought he was an engineer, I apparently decided engineering was a worthy occupation and I devoted myself to learning about the world through that perspective. The family had no idea what was going on. They thought I was a budding scientist. They wouldn't have known the difference between a scientist's mind and an engineer's mind if you paid them to guess. It's obvious they were trying to cultivate my grandfather's social position. I really doubt that his formal title was chief engineer, though I don't know. If it was, then the hospital can be considered overly protective of its mechanical staff. An engineering society would probably look askance at formally calling a building superintendent an engineer. Engineers are schooled and get degrees in engineering--college degrees. Building superintendents work their way up through various trades learning about mechanical systems from an operational viewpoint. The two are very different and deserve different social statuses. My interest in engineering was the result of a fraud, one might say.

Considering how disastrous my life has turned out, and that over more than half of it, I would consider the fraud a greater call to attention than anything positive that I might have going presently.

The family's desire to build up its members in society's view was basically a fraud. All my young life, doing well in school, was highlighted by the family building it up into an unrealistic mark of distinction. There was no correspondence, point by point, between my achievements and family recognition. It was all smoke and mirrors, taking advantage of what good I did do to build up the family's notion of its own grandeur, without care or concern for the realities of the directions I was taking.

Why I went insane.

I believe I know why I became mentally ill.

In my freshman year at Yale I had an intuition about the direction my life would take. I saw myself working in some inner city on behalf of the poor, with my own means totally unprovided for. I carried this into my preparations for a career at Yale, and when I got a job afterwards in an architecture office I continued to pursue this concept, and found no place for it in the profession and went nuts trying to find a place for it.

Today I face this same fate: no means, because my preparation was for no means and it's too late to make other arrangements. I am unable to conceive of anything related to money, so I am unemployable, and my English Transformation Art is not looking like a good sell.

rule and order

It is apparent there is around me a vacuum of rule and order since the presence of government is dilute. I am invested with ultimate authority to establish rule and order but even within my own mind there is disorder and competing imperatives. I was chosen for strong will within the disorder, not for my personal orderliness. This can be established without need to prolong deliberations. The best order is vanity. Time is short.

Order must enable everyone to act in knowledge of what order ordains and it must be manifestly useful. Provided I can be relied on to endow offspring with the ability to endow their offspring with strength of will, the order I create can be based on me as a necessary factor. Endowing multiple generations is a matter of speaking restraint as a first principle.

Order must respect the limits of the people, but enable the better concept to advance in preference to a worse, a state of order which the limits of the people will in some cases oppose. The addition of order must put the people in their places according to the advancement of better concepts, beginning with the whole. This is an idea new to many people, and without its expression progress will be held up.

Any collective will have its own means to augment but it is the whole alone whose means are synonymous with good.

Wholes begin with me.

One whole is my financial family, of which Chase, VISA, and Mastercard are a part. There is a natural goodness about this whole like any other. There are collectives here too and these obey what I have said about collectives. In matters of my financial family, my well being determines its goodness, and as VISA took a gamble on me it showed favor to me proving it had favorably assessed my financial soundness, an act closer to this particular whole than others had taken.

Gallery preview video, interesting.

Here is a video preview of a gallery show. I like it as much for the enunciation of the narrator as for the look at this person's art.

A video of a very talented sculptor--fascinating!

I found a video of a sculptor at work on a clay portrait of a very interesting man. The insights into the minute movements of the artist at work, how the portrait unfolds under his very adroit fingers, is just fascinating, and would be of great use to any beginning sculptor, and maybe even to a graphic artist. Here is the video:

a movie trailer

Here is a trailer for a movie, The Fall. I enjoyed it a lot. I haven't seen the movie. It has some music at the end that I really love.

Here is a very interesting video about a photographer who works with a whole crew to construct his work.

next blog for quality art blogs

I am exploring the function of blogspot's "next blog" button. They recently made it a relevant to blog last viewed button. So if you have a topic you want to look through blogs in, you have to first somehow find a blog on that topic and then hit "next blog".

I wanted to see some art blogs, so I googled art blogspot. It got me to a chintsy art blog and next blog continued to give me chintsy blogs. So then I tried googling art blogspot museum, to get the quality up. This got me to the University of Wyoming's art museum, and from there next blog took me to this blog, http://microsketchbook.blogspot.com/ and I liked it quite a bit. Now I will try next blogging some more along that path.

An art video of some merit and note.

Here is an unusual and I think merit-worthy video of some very abstract forms which I liked.

blink (hc gilje 2009) from hc gilje on Vimeo.

Courtship of Crystal is over.

I have made the final severance with Crystal Newell and will no longer be courting her. I had asked her if she was attracted to me and she said no. For a while I was thinking I would give it some more time, but it is very apparent that this is not going to change. Dating her further would be entertaining impossible changes, and a waste of both time and consideration.

English Transformation Art group, a new Google group

I have now created a Google group for anyone to join and discuss English Transformation Art. Its name is English Transformation Art group, not to be confused with English Transformation Art purchasers' group. To visit this group, click here.

This group will be for anyone to join and post their questions about the art, whether before or after purchasing, and have them answered by anyone in the group. This way it will serve as a resource for anyone with questions that others have had and had discussed and hopefully answered already. It will be of great help to the artist, James Batek, by enabling questions to be answered by others in addition to himself, and thus a better overall service to the potential buyer of the art.

English Transformation Art purchasers' group, a new Google group

I have created a Google group for purchasers of English Transformation Art only, for them to discuss their experience with the art. The name of the group is English Transformation Art purchasers' group.

no Target job

Target contacted me by email to tell me they have no job for me.