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.

A poem by Wallace E. High about War!

I copied this text by Wallace E. High after reading it in the June 24, 2011 Street Roots, which I hadn't read until Aug. 3, 2011. I don't necessarily, am not starved for information that I have to read something right now, after purchase or getting a hold of such as free press. I like to let things rest before diving in sometimes.This week the Veterans for Peace and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against War are having their National Conference in Portland.

This poem by Mr. Wallace E. High brings home to me the devastation of war. It makes me want to gather body parts in a bag, take them to those who would wage war, yet not be among those who were losing their lives and go to their palaces with their fine furnishings and place the bag of body parts, bleeding and discolored with death upon their tables of plenty. I have not lived through war in this lifetime, but that is not to say I don't have memories of carnage. My memories weigh heavy in the depths of my being. I wonder if those that promote war, read the accounts of war by those whom they have sent to it, who have returned, changed forever?

" I Am War" by

Wallace E. High


"I am war,
I am a living, breathing, beast,
Mercy I know it not,
My fuel is diesel and blood,
Bleak detritus of forceful men
Who once knew honor,
Who once knew love,
But power stole their souls.


I am war,
Unleashed bequeathed upon the earth
Where no segment lies untouched,
Carried by the winds of hastening
To escape the horror that stirs them,
That makes the cyclone a child's toy,
A mere puff from a lad's lips
Blowing at the dandelion's laces.


I am war,
I am a ravenous beyond sating,
Starving for destruction,
There is no justice here within
For there is not heart n this;
This is the madness of men,
Cruel beyond imagining,
Relentless in pursuit of death.


I am war,
I am brilliant in my scheming,
My intelligence soars soars seeking,
Leaping like a springbok
For meaner ways to erase
Memories of faces smiling,
Baby's tiny fingers grasping,
Laughing at daddy's nose.


I am war,
I am the master of waste
Making mothers pale and cry
For dying children torn from the breasts;
My breath comes of napalm blasts,
Clouds of sinister, seeping gases
That stifle feeble efforts at life
And turn good deeds to mockery


I am war,

I am a strident voice ringing
In cloistered halls where
Old men gather to vent their ire
With the lives of stalwart sons
And daughters directed to the fray
Beguiled and betrayed to stand
Before the maws of howitzers roaring.


I am war,
I am misery beyond reckoning,
The greedy grider hastening
The return to the earth of dust
Made of moldering bones
Strewn by deadly claymores leaping,
Blasting upward from concealment,
Scattered by jackals of the desert sands.


I am war,
I am relentless in my pursuits,
Making no distinction in the dying,
Man, woman, child or beast,
What care I where shrapnel flies'
Suffice to say I am here,
My history written in blood, darkly,
Learn form this, my child, and fight no
more”

I am consistently inconsistent

At least this is an attribute, there is a plus side to me that is not always obvious to me and if not to me, how to you?

I'm still driving a school bus here in Portland Oregon, except, not really because it is summer. I have pursued this way of earning a living now for almost 4 years and am looking at getting in with the regional transit agency. My age may play a part against me, but I am keeping a positive hopefulness and projecting that feeling outwards so that I may get an interview. I have also this last weekend cut and shaved off my long, can't remember the exact name of my type of beard that was 3 or 4 inches long in hopes of the whole feeling of being willing to go to lengths to make myself appear to be less gruff.

I really do love this blog, but there is just so much info available and I am working on other pieces not electronically on any media, but somewhere to get into the public eye through paper media. A friend of mine says I am looking always for a way to get something published to become established and at my advance age. It is a daunting task that is as much push and pull as any of my endeavors. Got to go, think I will attempt to come here more. :)

I know that face book is not the place to post my rants

I am disgusted with our society! Here we are living our lives, complaining about our lives or not and 1% of our population is off in countries chosen by our politicians fighting wars they are never going to win. Of course, the credo in that is we can't not fight or our fellows that have died will have died in vain. WAR! What is it good for? The wars we have been engaged in have plenty to do with our economy! They have to do with profits and companies such as Boeing Aerospace Corporation and making money for their share holders. This sucks! Boeing is not the only company that profits from a war economy. Many of the aerospace companies, the oil companies, and many more, to many to list are making money from WAR! Isn't it time we stood up and said no more. Sunny weather is here and there is nothing stopping us from massing in the streets and saying NO MORE WAR, fuckers!

the company I work for pretty well sucks.....

Every time our buses go out, the propane ones there is a huge sucking sound. Since propane is like having a V-6 running on 3 cylinders they suck a lot and give us little power to get out of our own way.

I finally broke down and applied for Tri-Met, but think that maybe they aren't biting my application. Maybe I have to know someone which is often the case when applying to some jobs. I just know that I need to work more, earn more. I am so tired of working part time and being hungry for work and having to deal with harassment from other workers who don't have a procedure, from the bosses down. You don't know about a procedure until you violate it because they don't want to be held accountable for having said anything. Some of the issues I have are "oh, we haven't paid for that in the past" My answer, page 32 or 34 of employee handbook that says "any work you perform that benefits the company shall be compensated" I printed the page and every time I do work that they don't pay for attach it to my pay sheet. And there is a system they use for electronic pre trips that is shaving time off of our sign on times. We have to pick up our pay and trip sheets and keys and this disputed and sign an attendence sheet and they give us 5 minutes to get to our buses and wand on there, but if you get there 6 minutes late, then you are late 6 minutes, even though you have already started working. This. job is taking and they want to take more. Our next contract negotiation is scheduled for June 13th. And of course the company wants to only pay us 1% for the first year and 0.05% the second year. That's down from 3% We have no leverage, since we have a no strike clause and our union officers are signing contract extentions without asking us what we want. Oh well, same union at Tri-Met and the union officers made these operators essential services back in maybe 2005 taking away their ability to go out on strike. Our Mar/Apr transit magazine reports on Toronto Government stripping transit operators in Canada of their right to strike calling it a set back to labor. Hello! drip, drip drip.