Big Guy has brought home the Brotherhood to me more than anything else has and we have been friends for a while but because he's the friend of my friend. Yesterday we got a chance to talk for a while and it was huge thing.
For me elevation of a 'friend of a friend' to a 'friend' is always wonderful because then there is a simpatico and perhaps in time find more.
The Big Guy has a raft of medical woes as well but and the litany is always (with anyone)
Big Guy: Can't complain!
The Silas: Who would listen!
In the sixties, it was ...
Well, they can't send me to Vietnam since anything else really didn't matter next to that.
In every man it was clear 'they' is not 'we.'
There's a special Brotherhood for they who were in The Nam and only they can call it that. They see better than anyone all gave some and some gave all (VA Motto). It seems there may be a newer Brotherhood in the younger vets and not all of them really get it yet it's all the same but I know for sure it's that way at VA where the most blood-chilling sound I have ever heard has been the clicking of artificial legs.
Note: the musician wants to sample that and present it, with all respect, as a symbol of what comes but it's absolutely forbidden. Whatever goes into VA stays in VA. That's my own rule but it looks to me like everyone out there follows it. Some dress up for it and they wear their colors saying I was on this ship or that unit in Vietnam or wherever. These aren't formal military colors but those of whichever very special Brotherhood they belonged.
Note: some want to tear down VA and they say what a terrible job it does. They offer nothing beyond vague plans of privatization and that's sure a peach of a plan when a private insurance company, Liberty Mutual, started this when it canceled me or I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. It's far too easy to say the VA is useless when your life does not, as mine, depend on it.
The thing most clear to both of us was the Army destroys everything it touches from the first moment of contact with it. I didn't realize until yesterday how accepting the Big Guy was of that but maybe I should have known because maybe no soldiers ever saw the lie of the war so clearly as those drafted into Vietnam Era after the final betrayal when they got home. Every bit of it was based on a lie (i.e. Gulf of Tonkin hoax by LBJ). How much more insulting can any country ever get to its own.
Part of this is working through my own acceptance and, even after over forty years of gutting myself, going over and over through it, I've never seen any viable alternative. I had seen what they did to conscientious objectors and they try to break a man in every way they can from what do you know of Lao-Tze to putting him on KP every day to Drill Sergeant Harvey who wanted to bone him with a jackhammer.
The most insidious one they throw is what would you do if someone tries to rape or kill or your wife and that's the most cowardly and disingenuous line of the lot when it implies it has any relationship whatsoever to killing someone you don't even know on a battlefield.
He did not crack. He would not kill.
He was beautiful because he knew clearly what he had to do.
The first day we marched out to the firing range, he told the Drill Sergeant his weapon would not fire. The Drill Sergeant tried it and said it worked for him. The CO said it does not work for me.
That was the end of it and he never fired a weapon. They sure fired every legal weapon they could at him. He has my immense respect and in large part for knowing exactly what he needed to do. After having fired the weapon, to say I will not is simple insubordination and that has to be pushed through yet more slimy battery.
There was no questioning anyone for me and there hadn't been since arriving in the country in which everything is observation to try to find some idea of what is this place. It would be decades yet before I had any real idea and it's still tenuous.
Breaking through to permit success in anything has always been the most formidable task and that's why everything except music blew up in one way or another. None of that was wasted because all of is part of the observation trying to figure it out. What the fuck is this place and why would anyone do what they do. I see marginal sense to it (i.e. they make big bucks with marginal conscience) but there's still little which remains rational toward making a better humanity. There's so much focused to destruction it builds an endemic toxicity in society and rising from out of that is probably the most formidable of any task.
Quite the revelatory day ... and then the sucker punch. My arm just now started going numb at the shoulder and it was radiating down my arm again. This was after I believed I should make some elbow support and put one of the arms back on the chair, hardly a construction effort as I slide one metal bit into another one. That arm was removed again and easily because I didn't try to bolt it and then numbness started ameliorating quickly.
Maybe there's wondering why this goes on so long but that should show it's fookin' complicated as to cause. Relieve one thing and it pops up elsewhere. Yah, it's complicated. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm convinced it's ergonomic and it can be fixed. So it goes and I will.
One unanticipated benefit of the keyboard is the action isn't just better but almost infinitely-better than the Low-Profile Snakebite Keyboard. There are subtle cues for hand placement such as a tiny dot over the J. It's a subtle touch but finger brains know from that where the other fingers should be so it's much, much easier to correct positioning and without looking. That would drive me aggravated as hell with the low-profile jobs with so much time wasted on trying to position my hands.
The action of the keyboard as to how much of a keypress is necessary is seriously like a touch-sensitive keyboard for a synth. It makes the thing exquisitely more 'expressive' because it 'knows' what your fingers are doing. The finger brains take over and you don't even really have to think about it, just do it.
Maybe comical but I wanted a typewriter class in high school because I wanted at least some damn thing which could possibly be useful. I was not the fastest and it was definitely competitive because you can easily hear all the key impacts in a roomful of Royal or IBM Selectric typewriters. Girls would have a bit of an attitude because no boy will type faster and I. As a boy, I didn't care because the testosterone answer is always the same: whoop everyone. I was good but I wasn't the Big Dawg and it was funny to me for trying. I don't remember the name of who he or she was, regrettably, or we could have a little celebration. How did you DO that! (I'm not mocking as that kind of competition is silly, harmless, and entertaining, finest kind)
Note: Insert editorial on two-finger hunt-and-peck typing or that typing on a flat screen on an iPad is just as good. Summarize as so: bloody rubbish. We have seen here how two-finger typing abominates English and also the actual thought which hardly ever comes as it was stated, in our view, to no-one's fault but the device. That wasn't hogwash about how a Royal typewriter imposes a silent discipline of don't screw it up whereas going electronic doesn't even seem to matter much. Oh well, I can go back and fix it. That's not discipline but, in the Rockhouse view, hog slop. How to prevent hog slop when I do not have the benefit of the Royal typewriter discipline is difficult and it's nostalgic thinking but I do see the value of it even as it slips out of reach. From what I understand some pro writers will only use such a device and likely for exactly that discipline. For any publisher to accept that, we imagine you would have to be a big pro.
Things are all over and they will be. Things come. No idea what. Really it's still just a matter of observing while trying to take every moment as a participant rather than a spectator.
For me elevation of a 'friend of a friend' to a 'friend' is always wonderful because then there is a simpatico and perhaps in time find more.
The Big Guy has a raft of medical woes as well but and the litany is always (with anyone)
Big Guy: Can't complain!
The Silas: Who would listen!
In the sixties, it was ...
Well, they can't send me to Vietnam since anything else really didn't matter next to that.
In every man it was clear 'they' is not 'we.'
There's a special Brotherhood for they who were in The Nam and only they can call it that. They see better than anyone all gave some and some gave all (VA Motto). It seems there may be a newer Brotherhood in the younger vets and not all of them really get it yet it's all the same but I know for sure it's that way at VA where the most blood-chilling sound I have ever heard has been the clicking of artificial legs.
Note: the musician wants to sample that and present it, with all respect, as a symbol of what comes but it's absolutely forbidden. Whatever goes into VA stays in VA. That's my own rule but it looks to me like everyone out there follows it. Some dress up for it and they wear their colors saying I was on this ship or that unit in Vietnam or wherever. These aren't formal military colors but those of whichever very special Brotherhood they belonged.
Note: some want to tear down VA and they say what a terrible job it does. They offer nothing beyond vague plans of privatization and that's sure a peach of a plan when a private insurance company, Liberty Mutual, started this when it canceled me or I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. It's far too easy to say the VA is useless when your life does not, as mine, depend on it.
The thing most clear to both of us was the Army destroys everything it touches from the first moment of contact with it. I didn't realize until yesterday how accepting the Big Guy was of that but maybe I should have known because maybe no soldiers ever saw the lie of the war so clearly as those drafted into Vietnam Era after the final betrayal when they got home. Every bit of it was based on a lie (i.e. Gulf of Tonkin hoax by LBJ). How much more insulting can any country ever get to its own.
Part of this is working through my own acceptance and, even after over forty years of gutting myself, going over and over through it, I've never seen any viable alternative. I had seen what they did to conscientious objectors and they try to break a man in every way they can from what do you know of Lao-Tze to putting him on KP every day to Drill Sergeant Harvey who wanted to bone him with a jackhammer.
The most insidious one they throw is what would you do if someone tries to rape or kill or your wife and that's the most cowardly and disingenuous line of the lot when it implies it has any relationship whatsoever to killing someone you don't even know on a battlefield.
He did not crack. He would not kill.
He was beautiful because he knew clearly what he had to do.
The first day we marched out to the firing range, he told the Drill Sergeant his weapon would not fire. The Drill Sergeant tried it and said it worked for him. The CO said it does not work for me.
That was the end of it and he never fired a weapon. They sure fired every legal weapon they could at him. He has my immense respect and in large part for knowing exactly what he needed to do. After having fired the weapon, to say I will not is simple insubordination and that has to be pushed through yet more slimy battery.
There was no questioning anyone for me and there hadn't been since arriving in the country in which everything is observation to try to find some idea of what is this place. It would be decades yet before I had any real idea and it's still tenuous.
Breaking through to permit success in anything has always been the most formidable task and that's why everything except music blew up in one way or another. None of that was wasted because all of is part of the observation trying to figure it out. What the fuck is this place and why would anyone do what they do. I see marginal sense to it (i.e. they make big bucks with marginal conscience) but there's still little which remains rational toward making a better humanity. There's so much focused to destruction it builds an endemic toxicity in society and rising from out of that is probably the most formidable of any task.
Quite the revelatory day ... and then the sucker punch. My arm just now started going numb at the shoulder and it was radiating down my arm again. This was after I believed I should make some elbow support and put one of the arms back on the chair, hardly a construction effort as I slide one metal bit into another one. That arm was removed again and easily because I didn't try to bolt it and then numbness started ameliorating quickly.
Maybe there's wondering why this goes on so long but that should show it's fookin' complicated as to cause. Relieve one thing and it pops up elsewhere. Yah, it's complicated. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm convinced it's ergonomic and it can be fixed. So it goes and I will.
One unanticipated benefit of the keyboard is the action isn't just better but almost infinitely-better than the Low-Profile Snakebite Keyboard. There are subtle cues for hand placement such as a tiny dot over the J. It's a subtle touch but finger brains know from that where the other fingers should be so it's much, much easier to correct positioning and without looking. That would drive me aggravated as hell with the low-profile jobs with so much time wasted on trying to position my hands.
The action of the keyboard as to how much of a keypress is necessary is seriously like a touch-sensitive keyboard for a synth. It makes the thing exquisitely more 'expressive' because it 'knows' what your fingers are doing. The finger brains take over and you don't even really have to think about it, just do it.
Maybe comical but I wanted a typewriter class in high school because I wanted at least some damn thing which could possibly be useful. I was not the fastest and it was definitely competitive because you can easily hear all the key impacts in a roomful of Royal or IBM Selectric typewriters. Girls would have a bit of an attitude because no boy will type faster and I. As a boy, I didn't care because the testosterone answer is always the same: whoop everyone. I was good but I wasn't the Big Dawg and it was funny to me for trying. I don't remember the name of who he or she was, regrettably, or we could have a little celebration. How did you DO that! (I'm not mocking as that kind of competition is silly, harmless, and entertaining, finest kind)
Note: Insert editorial on two-finger hunt-and-peck typing or that typing on a flat screen on an iPad is just as good. Summarize as so: bloody rubbish. We have seen here how two-finger typing abominates English and also the actual thought which hardly ever comes as it was stated, in our view, to no-one's fault but the device. That wasn't hogwash about how a Royal typewriter imposes a silent discipline of don't screw it up whereas going electronic doesn't even seem to matter much. Oh well, I can go back and fix it. That's not discipline but, in the Rockhouse view, hog slop. How to prevent hog slop when I do not have the benefit of the Royal typewriter discipline is difficult and it's nostalgic thinking but I do see the value of it even as it slips out of reach. From what I understand some pro writers will only use such a device and likely for exactly that discipline. For any publisher to accept that, we imagine you would have to be a big pro.
Things are all over and they will be. Things come. No idea what. Really it's still just a matter of observing while trying to take every moment as a participant rather than a spectator.
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