New Year Resolutions

I do these every year. The year I make the resolutions, they seldom come true. But if I persist, they find they're way to fruition in years after I've forgotten I've made them.

This year:

1)Back to watching what I'm eating. I've gained four inches around the belly since I've been back in the midwest. I could blame it on the lifestyles here, but I'm the one responsible. There's a lot of negative influences that waddle about leading me to believe that bad food is "good." But I have to resist and just tell them I don't agree and take care of myself in this department. But it's like being in the core of a dysfunctional family, you start adapting just to get along.

2) Take up the dobro and get some lessons.

3) Have to make some art. I've stopped being as creative since being here. There's something about the lifestyle here, the people, getting involved with a church - that's cut off my creativity. Not happy with what I'm building here completely. The church folk are so conformed. I think they know it too. They go through these rituals and uphold practices that are all a part of passing down a religion. I understand that. But it hardens a creative head. Recently, a priest tried to start an experimental service apart from the "regular" service. He asked me to play the music. I played interpretaions of the hymns. The congregation just can't do it. When they sang, it was at a conformed tempo and I had to conform to them on the spot. No deviation in tempo or interpretation allowed in their practices, perhaps in their lives. They held a service over the holidays where they held up cue cards that read, "Amen" at certain points - like a TV audience that's conformed to laughing at certain points, whether there's anything funny or not.

I can feel myself getting grey and I don't like it. Is that what Jesus wants?

4) Relationships - I still struggle with this one year after year after year. I think the struggle is with fantasy vs. reality and always has been. We live in an era of illusions and fantasies. It's very hard these days to really decipher what you're getting into with the facades people put on and parade around in. I have a tendency to become smitten with a fantasy and don't trust myself to make good choices in relationships. I've disappointed myself so often. It's not the other person's fault. I've hung clothes on them they had no intention of wearing most of time. Some are truly deceptive, mentally ill people. Most are completely innocent. But I need to open up a bit more and take more chances. Get over my own fantasies and see them for what they are and accept them, good and bad~~ both. For both is what people are and always have been. No one is enlightened, perfect creatures on this earth. They are human. And if they wish to be loved unconditionally, they have to accept that.
Being loved in an adult sense means being accepted both good and bad. Loved only for what is "good" is fantasy.

Thank God the master painters saw humans for what they were (are.) They showed us humans in an imperfect state and created beauty of it. Present society and media only show us humans in the perfect state of "celebrity." Hair combed,teeth white, perfectly dressed,perfectly thin, perfectly tanned, tailored, and conformed to what is acceptable. Perfectly boring in my book. Ever noticed how many times people say "perfect" when something is agreeable these days?

Roots Music

I've taken up the study of roots music and passing it along to young, new music students. Concerned these days about a lack of American heritage being available. As a society, we're jabbering about diversity of incoming immigrant populations, but neglecting assimilation.

In Los Angeles, Babel has risen with this polyglot of languages of the newly-arrived. They splinter the city into various small ethnic enclaves. One can literally spend the day out and about and 80% of the time never hearing the English language spoken. I say that and many will remark, "how cool..."

Hardly.

We're gaining diversity, but losing our own heritage. It should be passed along to immigrants. We can start with song. American folk songs. I've worked with many, many immigrant children who have never heard even the most common of our American song. Songs we take for granted, but would never do without as part of our own childhood.

Music is neglected in their schools as well. Most are public school students and music always faces severe budget cuts or neglect in favor of math and science studies. Politicans, school boards and "education experts" are misleading us on almost all fronts, including this one.

Roots music is scattered with American gospel and religious hymns. These are also shunned by public systems like schools, and government-sponsored cultural programs, because of that distasteful subject to many - religion.

The simple, three and four chord structure of most American folk musics make for great teaching tools. For generations, music was passed along on the front porches of Americans in community music circles just by listening and attempting to play-along. Using this method of teaching makes for good community building and efforts in decreasing loneliness and combating depression prevalent in our present society of shallowness, celebrity worship and narcississm.

Sharing

A dozen years ago, I began a process of restructuring my life. I stop using cars, stopped watching or owning a television, became mildly vegetarian (I still eat fish on occasions that I can afford it.) I started using bikes, playing more music, became interested in community, worked at what could be done to make life better for youth and how to decrease the problem of loneliness in the world through sharing time with others. Until one tries this kind of shift in living practices, it's hard to imagine how truly "radical" they are. We've been sold a life based on self-centeredness as "the norm."

Another change is sharing a space. Sharing a meal. Sharing food. Sharing time with people who may not be like us. Who may be elderly. Who may be liberal or might be conservative, when we're not. Who might be younger. Who might have different tastes, talents, or views of the world than we do.

The opposite of sharing is hoarding. For the better part of the past decade, I rented a room beneath a hoarder. By observing this person, I watched "the norm" in action. Possessions were always more important than friendships or relationships. Space was used to collect more, but never to share. She even displayed a cartoon on her refrigerator door that neatly summed up what I attempt to get at here with too many words. It was a cartoon of two women in a cluttered room, one women is saying to the other,"You don't have any room for anyone else in your life." Sharing was not part of her makeup. If she did share, she expected a return, and "with interest" for her act of giving.

Although her outward appearance suggested she had lots of friends, she really didn't. She lived a lonely life. Her life was separated by an automobile shield, an Internet shield, a telephone shield, an iPhone shield, and an inner shield that prohibits giving freely to others. She displayed the illusion of friends as people do on Facebook. Who has this many real friends? Friendship requires a lot of understanding and acceptance that most don't possess.

After eight years, I had to move out, because she needed more space for "stuff" or to use the space to convert it into a space for more car parking. In either scenario, I was second-banana to objects.

There's something truly "new" in rediscovering how to share in a society like ours that teaches us to only hoard. Could you be a roommate that doesn't divide the dwelling and shares common spaces? Could you share your food, or would you divide the refrigerator with "yours" and "mine?" Could you take care of your fellow human being without expecting a pay off of some sort from them?

Would you know how to share with respect, without abusing the rights and boundaries of others? We aren't taught how to do these things.

Living a bike life

I ride a bike everywhere. Been doing it for the past decade, having given up on cars in 1998. I've observed biking go from being something I did alone a decade ago, to become extremely popular means of alternative transportation for many. There are bike shops, bike cafes, bike trails, bike lanes, bike culture, bike clubs and activist movements that simply didn't exist when I started.

Yet, for the most part, we're still an extremely car-dependent society.
It doesn't have to be that way. I know I changed my mindset to try to live within a two-mile radius of my dwelling. Shop locally and find what you need closeby. Get jobs that are bike-distance friendly. Housing and jobs that are close to subways and trains. The best scenario is to find housing and jobs that are within that two mile radius.

All these thoughts and ways seemed eccentric a decade ago. I was shunned for my eccentricities by friends and family. I ventured into territory unfamiliar to most and they could only react by avoidance. Or by degrading and devaluing my lifestyle. "Simplicity" became "poverty" in their reactions to me. They became superior to me for having cars. For having houses with garages for multiple cars. And for filling the houses and garages with stuff that I don't have. So when we stack our possessions next to each other, I suppose one could view it as "poverty."

But how much stuff can one lug around on a bike, anyway? We are odd creatures. Even the bike culture has begun the process of elongating bike frames so they can haul more "stuff." Or devising ways one can pack on a weeks worth of groceries on a bike, rather than shopping less or grocery shopping for what one needs each day, as I do. I just need a cloth bag hanging on my handlebar for my groceries each day.

I enjoy being visable on the street on a bike. One develops street relationships with people riding around each day. People wave or talk to you. They greet you. New sidewalk friendships form. These things don't happen in cars. In cars, isolation happens.

I'm still shunned for eccentricities, but a little less. I suppose that's progress. Some of my ways are politically and culturally accepted now.

Time to find something new to weird about.