I’ve had problems writing the last few days. Even though I’m going out the routine of a Donut Walk™ has its limits as blogging material. I had a harrowing experience. As I was crossing the street a car ran two red lights and passed right in front of me. I have never seen such blatant reckless driving. He didn’t even slow down and kept going after he passed me. He was close enough that I felt the breeze. I actively try and find the most benign explanation for bad behavior, but unless he was racing to save someone’s live he was just a jerk. So was the guy on the motorcycle riding on the sidewalk. Most people are fine but if you interact with enough of them you’ll run into some schmucks.
Yesterday I went to Aldi straight from Krispy Kreme. That means taking the underpass on Kingsbridge Rd below the Grand Concourse. That means facing a look at one of the saddest aspects of society. Homeless people live there. I wish I had a less visceral response to experiencing the sight and especially the smells. I take to heart Phil Ochs’ words, “There but for fortune go you and I.” I wish I felt more compassion and less revulsion; I’m working on it. It’s why I don’t take the literal high road and walk on the surface. Feeling guilty about how I feel is the best I can do now.
The alien that records Gord’s Gold for Folk Music Notebook finished Tuesday’s show last night. This shows my modern scientific worldview. Other people, especially in other times, would have called the entity possessing their body a ghost, or demon, or angel, or if I were a Roman a genius. But I don’t believe in any of those things and my working hypothesis is that it’s an alien. It could be a machine intelligence, but we are nowhere near being able to create one, by Occam’s Razor, an alien it is. When the impossible has been eliminated, whatever’s left, no matter how improbable the truth must be. OK there’s one more possibility, that when it comes to Gord’s Gold I have mastered my procrastination, but that seems even less likely than people secretly creating machine intelligences that can control minds.
Even though it’s done at the prodding of an alien I still feel proud when I see the how the show is constructed and hear what my voice is saying. Each and every time it feels like a miracle that I did it. No, I’m not getting religious, I know it’s an alien. Where I’m being irrational is be proud of what the alien’s work. I can see by the way the show is evolving it’s only a matter of time before I start talking about this on the air. I’m still feeling the adolescent influence of Isaac Asimov. He gave up writing science fiction for quite a spell in the 60s. He restricted himself to science writing, but like me, always inserted the personal in his science essays. In one he explained that the Roman genius that guides him wasn’t guiding him to science fiction. It’s where I learned the concept of Roman genius. It’s a convenient metaphor.
Today’s plan is therapy and the Sunset Singing Circle. I will try and incorporate the Donut Walk™ on the way. I’ve been good an averaged over 3 miles a day for the course of a week. That’s all me, not the alien. There was just a knock on the door. I was hoping that it was the super coming to fix the doorbell. We’ve been trying to get him to do that for a month. This morning someone from the super came but he didn’t fix the bell. He just came to see what needed to be fixed. We had already told the super it was the apartment doorbell that didn’t work, and not the building bell, but all the guy that came did was check to see if the building bell worked. He said someone would come later to fix our doorbell. When I got to the door there was nobody there. No such luck. I’m not disappointed, as it was a package for me, a photo from Gen of the first aardvark she saw in South Africa. I love that despite my pedestrian life I have friends that do things as wonderful as wildlife photographer and conservationist. She is also a singer/songwriter but that I’ve come to expect of my friends. If you want a beautiful photograph from Gen you can order one from her website, Late Shift Media. Here’s my aardvark.
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Wise Madness 