My Existential Crisis

       He fancies himself to be like the writer Bukowzki.  An Epicurean man of living free and in the moments.  Well traveled, educated by European standards and practices.  Insane and sometimes unpredictable will fits of crippling depression and legal issues. He's a man who has lived the life I wish I could have and always dreamed to do.
         He is well traveled and has lived in several countries with friends from all over Europe. He has hook ups to drugs  and a life free from starvation and wanting.
       For most of my life I wanted to live a life similar to his.  I wished to travel, see the world, get international experience, and live a life of freedom and passion as an artist, muscian, lover, and seer of the world. Instead, I lived a life of a working man.  Striving and toiling with very little to show for it. I gave my life to an opportunist and a leech.
        I lived much of my adult life in a world of Sarte-ian, "Bad Faith". I did what was "right", to be the person society told me to be even if it it made me unhappy. I gave and I gave. I toiled and toiled. I took better and better jobs. I was promoted and landed every bonus. I gave it all to my family . That was what was right to do, right?  It did not matter if it left me dead and hollow inside to be giving, and giving, and giving to an ungrateful person. It was what "adults do", right,
      I became a parent. I gave myself, my time, and all my money to those people. (I never regret a single moment that was for my children), but the abuse of the material from my spouse made being in the relationship unbearable and sickening. The constant mess, the horrific money management, and the constant requests that were road blocked by their own choices and issues kept me from being happy because of the sacrifices I made to try to keep them happy. When they stopped being my lover (because words on a phone screen generated 5,000 miles away told her to),  that passion stopped I really saw just how empty the relationship truly was.
         I was putting up with her just because I was getting laid and she'd been my regular sex partner since I was 19...  Not really a good foundation for something lasting.  Hell, she kept the "relationship" on "life-support" so she could travel to have an affair with her new bf just to make sure it would "work out" & I could still be her comfortable fall back if it didn't.  Just like she has done to me so many times before. Why I kept allowing myself to be used by her is beyond normal or rational. But I kept allowing it and that was my main flaw.
         I did take other lovers.  It was wonderful to have someone care about me, and enjoy time with me, without feeling like I was just being used and critiqued by them. To have real passion and friendship was beautiful. I was miserable and should have gotten out once I saw how I could be happy outside of her.  I didn't make that move or choice.
         Like each  time I  got a better and better jobs. I was still made to feel low because it wasn't enough for them. They belittled the work I did and when I desperately needed time off, and time for me, I was told what I wanted was petty and unrealistic. (Though they stayed at home, kept the house a total wreck, spent their time building a relationship with someone else and traveling to a new land to be with them while I worked and did all the house work)  I ultimately allowed it, and was miserable in it. I didn't make the change that was needed.
         I have now sacrificed my late teens, all of my 20's, and half of my 30's to a woman just feeding off of me till they could move on and "be happy". There is nothing like coming to that realization this far into life... It hurts, it burns, and one just has to look toward to future at that point.
        I'm glad I'm not much older, but I'm no spring chicken anymore, either. At least I hope I learn from it all and can take that into the life I have left. Being pretty and open to fucking just isn't enough.... It just isn't enough.

Death

I do not want to come to the end of my life jumping into the arms of death glad to release this mortal coil due to depression and hatred of my life and existence on this earth.




Nor do I wish to fear death so greatly that I would sacrifice my everything to spend just a little more time on this plane of existence.




I'd wish for death to be a natural process that I take in as the inevitable and remain neutral to it as it comes to pass.




or:


Jeg ønsker ikke å komme til slutten av livet mitt å hoppe i armene på død glad for å slippe dette dødelige coil på grunn av depresjon og hat i mitt liv og eksistens på denne jorden. Heller ikke jeg ønsker å frykte døden så sterkt at jeg ville ofre min alt for å tilbringe litt mer tid på dette planet av eksistens . Jeg ville ønske for døden å være en naturlig prosess som jeg ta i så det uunngåelige og være nøytral til det som det kommer til å passere .


--
Tim

An Update.

Wow.
Life has been a roller coaster ride for sure.
Just wow how tine changes so much.
A little over a year ago I lost my dad to cancer after switching career paths. I tried to be strong.for my family and took too much on and it.all crumbled.
The wife found someone new and wants to leave me for a new life with him so I am looking into the future as a single man.
I now have 2 beautiful daughters and they are the center of my.world and all that I do.
It is looking as if I'll be moving to Germany as soon as I am able to be with my girls. The education there is superior to that of the United States and I have always wanted to be an international traveler and a citizen of the world. Now I am looking that opportunity in the face and can't wait to see where it takes me.
I'm hopeful and optimistic about that is to come, but I know the challenges will be real.
Learning a new language won't be the easiest thing I have ever done, but so far in grasping German faster than I thought I would.  Time will just have to tell how well it continues.
I can't wait to meet all kinds of new people and see what life will offer.

Collect, Collect, Collect, Law Enforcement's Latest Paradigm.

Collect, collect, collect.
         This is all our officers of the law focus on. Hell, this is what our entire judicial system is based on.
        Notice how crime rates have risen? Because the system is not defending us; but only collecting revenue for the department. They continue to have newer vehicles, higher grade assult weapons, more victims, more slaves in the privately owned prison systems of America, more pay, but yet the rate of unsolved crime is rising higher and higher. The crimes that go "unsolved" are the crimes that do not gather revenue, but cost departments money. That is no coincidence.
         Judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers on the same pay roll; benefiting from the "punishment" of "crime" as they turn the accused over to privately owned corrections facilities so the cost to the Sate is maintained. While at no time in human history have so many people been imprisoned by its own government. (Not even the "Red" & "Communist" countries the US claim as our enemies house as many prisoners. Though they are hated because they aren't as "free" as we are.)
         We look back at the days of kings and knights. You see  these same systems were used to squeeze collections out of the already impoverished society just as it is happening today. But we don't have a "Robin Hood" or a "Zorro" in the wings to assist us here in the United States. As a "modern society" we seem to have turned blind to the same happening in our world and are too placated to fight injustice, theft, and murder by our modern captor. It could be the new technology, it could be the force fed media feeds tarnishing an objective view, or it could be a society we secretly want through our compliance.
        Similar happenings happened in Germany during the 1940's. Germany was at a peak of technology, state saturated media,  government control of thought and art through censorship, record setting prison populations, and a military constantly at war to expand its belief in the Führung.  Even as people were disappearing around them, the society was easily lead to believe those who were disappearing "Where Unclean" and they were being removed for the "purification" of the State.
        At this Time the United States has similar prisons in foreign lands where the vast majority of those tortured and interned there have a Muslim faith. We have a military that has been constantly at war, we have a media that is now state run and filled with the propaganda it wants us to know. Those who "Toe the Party Line" live a life of ease, while anyone who needs to be "broken" is raked through to judicial system much akin to the story of Jesus. As if to say, "Stand for the rights of the people who are less fortunate & be quelled with violences that the state run media will never tell you about." AKA much of the Michael Brown and "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" movement were organized through social media and until the riots the main stream media did all it could to stay away from reporting the story.  The same places where many found out about the happenings (Social Media) also made possible the public outcry and education of what happened.
        Why all this strife? For the money.  The same money printed at the US Mint itself. Capitalism ran so far amuck that even the governing body has been given up to pure (and adulterated) greed and avarice to such an extent the it has to find new ways to fill its own pockets to "continue" running. I can't be the only one that sees this system feeding upon itself like a snake eating its own tale. Will we stop the avarice before we are consumed and crushed by the machine?
Do we need a Zorro, Robin Hood, or Brave Heart?

#Californication

         It has been many a year since I have been this drawn into a show of fictional characters.  It was like finishing a great Russian novel. Full of great stories with twists and turns and more characters than you can keep up with. Miss an episode (or a chapter) and miss out on the development.
      Great writers, actors, and pop stars made appearances or were referenced. I believe my favorite was the reference to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina near the end of the series, or when Hank was compared to "a poor man's" Bukowski or directly titled "Bukowski" himself by the mother of his child. (Though some will say Hank's character is the the main character from most of Bukowski's novels.)
          I could relate all too well with Hank Moody.  He was a former rocker who became a writer. He had a beautiful and intelligent daughter (Becca) that seemed to teach him more than he let himself be open to; & he had an odd, and usually astringed, relationship with Becca's mother Karen. One could always tell that Hank had good intentions but they never worked out for him.  Karen was always seeing Hank caught up in messes he really wasn't interested in, but looked bad as Karen walked in on him. No matter what he said or tried to do, he was always a snare away from disaster.
         Becca's character was always a blast.  Well behaved and always wanting to learn. A great touch to the series was when her Thanksgiving Prayer. A Satanic Prayer of gratitude to the meal where the bravest of the family Hailed, Satan with her.  She was also shown in an episode reading the Satanic Bible by Anton Levay showing that she wanted to be well informed and study life for herself. (Too bad she wasn't shown reading his Satanic Witch.  But that may have been lost in the less Church of Satan savvy watchers.) As the series progressed one sees her become a young adult living life on her own and took what was given to her while finding her own existentialist freedom.
         Each season was well acted and well written. I really felt they just kept getting better as they progressed. Sue Collini (played by Kathleen Turner) is a riot of a character that is only more humorous when one remembers her preference as "Serial Mom". The fact that the character Krull really was a member the Sex Pistols. Plus the battles of the Runkle family seem to hit home for anyone who has wanted adventure in life and just didn't know how to do it without damage.
         Some will say that the series ended with too much left unfinished. But I feel this added to the main theme that the main character was a writer who rarely was able to write. He couldn't finish what he started on paper, or in his own life. It also goes back to my reference of 1800's Russian Novels. Too much was going on to wrap up every little piece of the story.  It lets the viewer's imagination take over and that is where the best forms of art leave off, "Where the audience can take it with them and still find happiness and enjoyment".
For any parts that I missed, and the interesting relationships of the members of the acting staff:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californication_(TV_series)

Aryton Senna

•. •. •. What is success? A. Senna set records in his time for most times starting 1st (pole position), finishing 1st (winning), and assessing the most points per season more times than any other driver of his time. Then, gunning for 1st place behind Michaels Shumacher he slammed a wall @ over 185  mph. The crash took his life and sent the country of Brazil into mourning as the rest of the Formula 1 community also suffered for the loss.

         No political skirmish, with his team or Formula 1, could hold him back, no track could keep him from success, and he seemed free of any inner demons that could hold him back on a personal level either.
          I was blessed to watch the beautiful documentary on his life from Netflix and I am very glad that I did. It showed me how the petty and childish do fade away.  The true winners are winners.  They do not always find the same type of success, but it is the type that is still read about for generations and decades after the individual can no longer tell their own story.
         Senna was a hero who brought joy to a suffering country.  He gave his time and his being to the country when he was not in a race car, and he was loved greatly for it.

Rationing

        I was working my heart out (like I always do) and I was think of ways to budget my time so that I could get to all the tasks at hand and to keep my performance level up. While I was planning out my time I realized I was getting thirsty. I devised a plan to reward myself with a cup of water after I got to a certain stopping point. For a bit, the idea sounded genius. Then I thought about it for a bit...
       What was I thinking? I'm in the industrialized part of the planet, where water comes out clear from the tap, I work at a desk, we have bottled water shipped in, and I always get my work completed. But... I want to hold off getting water into my system so I can sort through accounts faster.  It just boggled my mind that that would be my thought process.
        I'm so very lucky to be living where I do, good at what I do, productive, hard working, dedicated, and think that a suitable reward could be water...
       Though it made me think of others who could not have have the option of clean water, it did come as a complete absurdity to ration my liquid intake so I could reward myself with quenched thirst later. Too many 1st world health issues can happen from dehydration that makes me thought process to not need retooling.

Literature

Book Love. 💙💘

        I adore books!  For me they have been the windows to many parts of my life.  There have been types, styles, and recordings of certain musicians that I would have never gotten to experience if it were not for a book the I read that opened my eyes to its exsistance.
         A very good case in point is Ray Manzarek's Light My Fire. I had listened to the Doors but I'd never taken in an entire album of their work.  It was not until I had read his autobiography that I was opened up to his amazing life.  It was knowing that he took many of his phrasings and melodic ideas from songs he learned taking piano lessons as a child that encouraged me to listen to these great works and virtuosic playing skills of the band.  Also his words told me of a band called the Grateful Dead.
          He hated this other great band of the late 60's.  He called them self-indulgent, over  intoxicated, out of tune, and sloppy when he wasn't speaking of how selfish their Keyboard player was.  Thus turning me off from listening to the group for years and years.  But one day I was on an extended road trip and stopped at a gas station to get some tunes for the tape deck to keep me awake. 
        I saw a tape of the Grateful Dead's American Beauty on sale and I grabbed it up.  I had read they were hard rock for their time and wanted stay awake for the rest of the drive.  What a mislabeling for my ears.  I though I'd hear something like Steppin Wolfe or something that would evolve into Stone Temple Pilots, instead I hear beautiful hippie jams of rebellion and intoxication.  Though beautiful, it wasn't the brutality I expected when I got into extreme metal like Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth years later.
        After falling head-first in love with this mellow group of recreational drug users I started reading the vast library of work on this group.  I found out they are the most written about music group in history and I fell in love with Jerry Garia's oral biography of his life Dark Star.
          This book captures his life in the exact words of those who were around him.  His family, friends, most of his co-workers, and partners would tell of this man's life as they were around the man living it.  Every detail from how he lost the finger on his right hand from a childhood game to his battles with cigarettes, heroine, and diabetes to how these effected the life of those around him and his art.
         Finding that the cigarettes did more damage to his body than all the hard drugs he used encouraged me to give up smoking and watch what I ate and try to stay away from the extreme amounts of candy I would eat.  No matter how much I respected his ability to play the guitar and preform music; what I took from that book was to not live a life of pure indulgence to the point of shortening the life I do posses.
          I still love and adore biographies and autobiographies to this day, but I have expanded my readings to religious books of all religious beliefs, formal philosophy, and science fiction past the types that were made into bock-buster movies.  I have learned so much reading how others succeeded or failed in their existences, or how their world view shaped who they were and the world it created for them. Being able to see their pit falls helped me watch for them or attempt to avoid them.
       None were more so than Voltaire.  The man wrote and spoke his mind just to be persecuted for it. He spend most of his life on house arrest.  But the joke was on his captures.  Voltaire lived in a beautiful castle and his lover was a gorgeous and brilliant woman that came to him.  He spent his many hours drunk, fucking, and writing works that we still love and learn from today.  He also avoided the plagues being locked in his own home and lived to be an ancient old man of the late 1700's.  His persecutions caused him to live a life we can be enriched by all while we have enjoyed the good fortune of knowing he was happy and blessed unlike Dostoevsky.
        Dostoevsky on the other hand angered those whom forced him into military service, torture, and starvation.  He turned to gambling and booze to try to calm himself and the world of torment he was forced to live.  When these did not work he turned to religion and writing.  His craft became some of the greatest novels ever written in any language.  We also know he died starving and alone.
        Voltaire was a giant influence upon the structures and beginnings of the United Sates. Ben Franklin met with Voltaire during the Revolutionary War for ideas while he and John Adams tried to get monetary funding from France. 
        I also can't help to think for all the influence that great French thinkers had for our country I see us heading the same direction as Russia of the late 1800's.  Any differing views or beliefs are silenced by prison, forced labor, military service, falsified criminal charges,  or a silencing of their communication abilities by censorship of all mediums they can use.  I don't think it is coincidence the Salinger had most of his life's work under lock and key till many years after his physical body's death.
         

Start Searching Police Vehicles With Out Warrants?

        I have thought of an idea for trueer accountability for police officers. Those who hold the cards use the guise that officers are there to protect the public; and this is a service paid for through our tax dollars. These "protectors" can search us at any time with out real probable cause because of their "duty".

        We as citizens should be allowed to search their vehicles at any time because they are bought by the public domain. This should help us as citizens know that these officers are being held accountable and not allowed to live above the law while on duty by the citizens so heavenly taxed for the service officers provide.

       This will be Homeland Security by those that live in the home land to hold those in power accountable! Sounds like winning all the way across the board.

Destruction & Sustainability Can Not Work Together

        Trying to believe in the world as a great & wholesome place has become tougher and tougher to do these days.  I'm not sure if it is because I'm older, or if it my lack frolicking free time.
        I have a much sunnier outlook on life than I have for most of the 3 decades I've been on this earth; I can not help but to feel the cycle of the ebb and flow of human exsistance is taking a turn for the worse.
        For all that time we were looking into prosperity  and a world of grand new experiences, I now see the ill effect of humanity balancing precariously back to a time of sadness and decay.  Where literacy was something everyone had, it has become common place to no longer have the ability to read and still go through life without literacy.  People spend hours on Twitter reading 140 character blips, but so few will spend that same amount of time reading a great full length work by a great published author.  We work too little to pay our bills or so much we don't enjoy the benefits of being employed. We have sex partners and fuck buddies but we distance ourselves from having a lover because they might get them too close to us.  People would rather watch the super rich fight with each other through a lens and a copper wire than have their mind expanded by something intellectual.
       I realize it is just a down turn and a lull after a long batch of wonderful creativity; advancements in the arts, sciences, and human dignity were everyday and revolutionary new break throughs came to us almost more rapidly than we could grow accustom to.  Sadly there were also advances in destruction, torment, harm and war.  We learned to turn "crime" into profit and make criminal prosecution lucrative.  We took the justice out of the justice system and made it about making money rather than protecting those who need the help of the the state.  Now the profiteers hold all the cards.
       It took great international and domestic shake ups to create change back when the world saw a total upheaval in its standards and practices in terms of human exsistance.  Democracy and sanctions against torture came to be the ruling way of life.  It took the bravery of those who were sick of the way things were and knew change had to take place for there to be a better world.  They took it upon themselves to bring to light the wrongs and to fight the tyranny when they know the odds were stacked far against them. They took to any means necessary to gain respect as a human race and be known as back bone of the empire they were apart of, and decided to break free from.
         But we have to watch out for needless and senseless loss of life in the changing paradigm. We must not see predation and stratification in society as natural and something that can continue at these gross disproportions. Unity and not conformity need to be our motto instead of letting them divide and conquer us.
       When we live in a time when we spend more money killing the poor than it would cost to feed them we need to realign our values live in this world of plenty to its fullest.  We can not joke about eating the poor when the food supply runs out.  We need to see where innovation will be rewarded over mass profit margins.  To sustain those that are brought into this world.  Where they can have a standard of living this world can sustain for them and t future generations we produce.  A disposable society is just that. Expendable and non enduring.
        We don't need a larger television when the lands that supply the food to our future generations shows signs of decay.  And the ability to create sustainably is only a scientific breakthrough away.
        And just like we saw the French of the 1700's killing and filling the streets with blood (only to do it all over again when nothing of real substance changed).  A revolution can not be centered in violence, it must be centered in change and progress for the whole of humanity and not a focus on the violent over throw of a political power that only has power when we give it control.   We need to have our eyes opened to that fact that war feeds those who are infinitely rich and steals the lives, minds, & souls of those who do the fighting while keeping those at home waving flags and rooting on the senselessness killing of the impoverished of the 3rd world for profit.  No one is a hero in war times.  Violence only begets more violence and this is something we must get away from to continue the move forward.  Destruction of the earth and our race through violence will not sustain us anymore.