Something I meant to post in the previous post.

Carlos Santana said in an interview that all he wanted to do since he was a little boy was play the guitar and that is what he focused on, that there were no distractions for him.

I lived in the another world with nothing but distractions. However through the frustrations of my distracted mind, through the distraction of people who would not listen to my concerns growing up was spawned a level of writing helping to relieve some of my frustrations. This is a part of my story of why I have had multitudes of jobs, careers, girlfriends, fights, discontent, drug addiction and still managed to survive in as world that treated me like I didn’t belong, that cast me out so far that I assumed the role of outcast, the crazy boy, the bad boy, because it was so much easier to fill a ready made category than try and get them to think outside of the box where all my thinking took place in the 1950’s, ‘60’s and 1970’s. Although this is part of an introduction to my own book, you may come across some familiar sentences or ideas because.I have almost always had a tendency to repeat some things since I struggle to recall what even I have said or written.

Imagine sitting in the kitchen and my mom is cooking lunch. I’m 4 years old and she is cooking soup on the gas stove; it smells so good! The weather outside is a cloudy, blustery and cold day, she is wearing an apron with a check pattern; there is a fly going in circles around the light fixture attached to the ceiling and a draft is coming in under the kitchen door that goes down the back stairs to the garden, the wind is making a sound that reminds me of Halloween. My older sister, Margaret is at school and won’t be home until 2pm. Instead of walking home from school, she will be taking the bus because of the weather. Hot soup weather!

It’s ready and she brings the bowl to the table, beef alphabet with little pieces of beef, carrots, green beans, peas, noodles in the shape of numbers and letters of the alphabet. The soup is hot and steaming! All those ingredients floating around in there, ummm. Well the soup bowl is my brain. Information comes in and floats around in there and when I want to retrieve it, I have some trouble doing so because I grab at bits that have no standard place to live, they just swirl around in the bowl, following an order I don’t have a clue about.

I am working on my book but all of my distractions are.....

I have been working on my book since I decided to write one 2004. I am a little superstitious about talking about it or excepts from it, but I have to share something about it, because I contend with a high level of distractions every day and I think they come out more because of old behavior patterns that were instilled in me in the past. I have a self destruction gene or programing that rears it's head especially when I try and organize my thoughts or accomplish something important. Many of my old feelings surface, low self esteem, which translates into very negative thoughts from the past.


I have been trying to live my life now for about 11 years with the knowledge that I have forms of ADD and perhaps TBI. These are serious challenges that have kept me from leading a more normal life, yet are not readily detectable by others except when I act out in a negative way. I have been reading some books on ADD/ADHD by a couple of authors and a little on stroke, but have been writing journals etc. for a long long time to deal with my frustrations on functioning in a world that emphasizes individuals yet when someone such as me comes along fails often to reach us, to seek what it is that makes our individualism and fails to help us with our assets. What society has always done with me is tried to change me to fit into preexisting categories which requires changes to my make up that doesn't allow me to pursue my own assets with my own abilities. I don't know if this makes any sense. It is my way of attempting to clear my thoughts so I can get back into my own manuscript.

It seems I have spent my life trying to find my path and my path keeps coming back over and over, starting over and over. My path has to do with communication and truth, integrity and honor. I have taken the long way around to come to this conclusion often blinded by frustration and anger because there has been few people who were willing to listen to words that I use to attempt to describe who I am what I am about. Writing is a way to get the words out, to calm myself, because we all need to find our focus, our center, our peace. It is becoming more and more apparent that I need to continue on my path of pursuing my writing, my book. I'm encouraged by some books I've read that are small and have less than 200 pages because thinking of a book presents a library in my brain of all kinds of large impossible books that tend to daunt me into inactivity. The struggles I have, they are not the greatest or most painful struggles in the world, there are people with greater struggles, more pain, yet we each have a story. I am alive because of many factors. I tell newer friends I have checkered past because I have done many things that I am not proud of beyond the past 25 years. I have been making amends to myself and others this last 25 years and continue to struggle with how I feel, changing my patterns of behavior, doing what is right as opposed to self destructive life styles etc. At least now, I have had plenty of time to steer a different course, one that is not so self destructive, but it is still not the healthiest. I know what I need to do, but turning direction is hard to do with years of self doubt and shame etc. Details... I don't want to list things I've done. I want to get out of here and work on the piece. I came to clear my head and this is about as good as it get. Thanks to the universe for allowing my existence and pushing me to reach beyond my comfort zone.

When I was a young curious lad in North Los Altos, CA

When I was a young lad with my friends, we got into the basement of a house that was vacant at the end of a street that was a dead end. I remember Bay trees there. We got into the basement and it was stacked with magazines and newspapers and there were little pathways between them. It was dark, but we had lights and I found a Life Magazine from either 1921 or I recollect 1926 and in it were pictures that were taken of Lincoln's exhumation in 1901. I remember seeing a picture in that Life Magazine of Abraham Lincoln with coins on his eyes in his coffin. Now, I am looking on the web and I have found nothing to substantiate my memory of that day, that magazine. I am going to continue looking more, but it could be that someone made a decision to suppress that picture at some point along the way. I would have grabbed the magazine, but I did have a sense of right and wrong at the time. Of course, I think that month's later I found out they destroyed the house completely loosing all of those magazines to the land fill. They are probably decomposing under the Shoreline Amphitheater complex in Mt. View, CA.