Chapter Oblivion, infinity

Feb. 8, 2016

My rebellion started long ago. It is now obsolete. No one cares that I have long hair, no one really has to deal with it besides me. There are much younger people at my work who have colored hair, mohawks, shaved on one side, long on the other. My battle over hair is over. Employers, schools now know that hair is not an issue that they care about. They still care about some of the same things, behavior, lack of funding, how can they teach those who can't sit still. I am nearly obsolete as well, not just my rebellions. I continue to fight against the system, but it has grown to big. I continue to stumble around with no apparent anchor. No foundation that keeps me stable, that I base my life on. In March of 2020 this is not exactly true for me now or was it then. I do have a foundation of truth, honor, justice, empathy and compassion. 

Sometimes I am afraid, afraid of what I am doing, how I can accomplish my goal. Afraid of not accomplishing, afraid of succeeding. I am alone and when I accomplish my goal will again be alone. I intend to visit folks, but I will still be alone. I have been ok with myself and being alone, I have been ok with myself for all this time, since about 1984 when the big change came. I have been alone with myself for a long long time. 

Watching the movie Kidnapping Mr. Heineken with Anthony Hopkins as Mr. Heineken. 

I am just hanging around waiting it seems to go back to work. I should be engaged with going to the outdoors, to the woods but I am holed up. Holed up in my place and watching a movie that is rather dramatic. A dramatic movie. Desperation, is following the kidnappers, desperation. Got all the money, but isolated. Got little money and isolated I am. I am isolated because I chose to be, I guess. Something is really wrong, it is to quite, the movie that is. Not trying to scare anyone here especially myself. 

One of Sir Anthony Hopkins lines as Freddy Heineken's in the movie was there are two ways a man can be rich: he can have a lot of money or he can have a lot of friends, but he can't have both. Hmm, food for thought. I have neither a lot of friends or a lot of money. I have neither. That is not true either here in April 2020. I have many good friends, good people like me. I have people who are concerned about my health, people who call me, people who ask for advice important moral questions. I have many friends. Why would I say I don't have many, I am a social person, perhaps because I still trying to avoid something that is difficult in my life. This is how it is with me, time traveling, it is what I do, jump around a lot, only metaphorically though. The jumping is in my mind. I am not physically jumping. 

Comeback to this in March 23, 2020

I don't have a lot of money, I have enough and a little more, but I have a lot of friends who have stepped into my life to make sure I am ok. I am ok, will weather this better than some of the people I know who can't live without employment. I have already set my life up for retirement and living without working. Before 1984 if I got uncomfortable, I would just disappear, a big mistake on my part. I left two different women that I found out later I was in love with them, each at separate times. I am discovering rather harshly that reality is a cruel companion at times. I regret my mistakes before 1984 and my own isolation is necessary. 

I have made up for a lot of my past. I became a school bus operator and really came to appreciate what the job entails. It is about building relationships and then as the children mature and move on we have to recover from that. But there are more children, more parents, more teachers, more administrators. Newer bosses. Changing partners. 

No job that I have ever had has affected me so deeply and with more satisfaction than keeping children safe on a moving school bus. Oh yep, I know that I wrote once it was the worst job I ever had, it is the hardest, but certainly not the worst.  It is a rewarding job, but there is a lot of BS and a lot of misunderstanding by the public and the whole education system for the job we do and the cooperation we are asking for and not usually getting it. 

I wrote an article once for a magazine, PDX Parent about school bus safety and of course, I got a rejection notice. I was surprised and disappointed. A magazine that catered to parents and they said they have in-house writers thank for your submission. It was just a passing thought. Have sights somewhere about that my career there is just a hapter in my ling blogging, that I may who knows, go into a book but it would certainly have to be self published. 

There are words I have had in my head for decades and whose definitions I must have got confused long ago because as I look them up, totally not what I thought they meant. Wow! This is just me, how I go about things when I am in my own time line, if I don't have to do anything for anyone else. 

Our President! This was 2009 and a far cry from today!

Add caption

once upon a time.

स्टील कंप्यूटर illiterate

इ दोन'टी क्नोव। इ दोन'टी क्नोव नो वहत इ हवे फौलेद up

Sometimes, I speak in tongues and even I don't know what I said, like here. I don't know, certainly not illiterate. Something. So, googling the text above brought me to conspiracyprophecyguy.blogspot.com

I must have liked it, I can't read it, ok by me. Just have to and the original date was 12/29/13.

Observations from the home is where I park it, my truck.

It is March 21, 2020

I am listening to the Grateful Dead Show on KBOO community radio which is another story in itself.

I am parked outside of the Bison Cafe in NE Portland Oregon. Having now been living, urban camping in my 23 foot step van since July of 2019.

Urban camping is especially a strange and challenging lifestyle. I have been working towards this for some time, although the actual working is still taking place. I have procrastinated many hours away because without a structure to my life, I am to distracted with my ADHD to settle down.

Now that the Corvid-19 virus is here, I am feeling more motivated and having survived the winter without having hooked up my little Dickinson Wood burning stove that is meant for those of us who might be living an alternative lifestyle. Actually made in Canada for marine use, but it has promised to be very excellant in my short van of which the living space is shortened to about 13 get long.

There are all kinds of blogs and ideas out there or van conversations and I am so far out of the box I did not follow any of them really.

Onward, this will be of my hang outs, no not the online hang out, but real time because I can use the internet here. However, there is a sign that says no overnight parking. Cully Blvd. Alliance.

March 22, 2020 no more hangouts for awhile, I am fixed here at my new home in SE at my adopted family who are also from another state. We do share a similar state of mind and they and I have been very close for the last 13 years.

I put the levelling blocks togetther this afternnon and backed my truck onto them. It looks pretty level, so I take out my torpedo level and viola, no not the instrument; the bubble in the level, only off one or two degrees. Sometimes we get lucky, but other times we practice and do well. There was steong motivation for me to get the truck leveled becuse my weather app says 95% chance of rain tomorrow.

It looks like a tornado went though the interior of my truck, I completely took almost everything out of where it was stowed. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to clutter or organization. Going to work has almost always been good for me because it provides an established structure. Did I mention I have ADD or some kind of variant to that.

More adventures of a school bus operator.

4/29/17

5/4/20 I came back and started looking at my drafts. I always get distracted. I started here this morning. was into my daily journal, did a walk and came back here and now it is 1730 and I am thinking about dinner, but I am not Rollin yet. As it stands now in 2020, I am officially in the retirement state of mind. I have yet to give notice at my job and will be doing that around the 7th of June. That is when the school year would have been over. I plan on hitting the road end of June for Sisters Oregon to visit my good friend Sue Purcell. I have visited with her a few times most recently last summer. She will be my first stop before an extensive tour through Oregon and down to California where my two sisters and I are planning a get together in Santa Cruz County.

I have a lot of friends in CA and some 0f them want to visit with me and I them. That is going to be the rest of my life, hanging out with friends who have made a strong impressions on me and I on them. They know who they are since most of us have had contact with each other in the last 20 years. This is just the continuing story, another chapter in the life and time of this one guy.

I try and put dates on my writing because I need the refrence for later. Without a date, it just rolls into oblivion for me.

I was just pouring my 3rd cup of coffee and thought, wow, I plan on rolling along the highways of America in a couple of years for the Twighlight of my life. Twighlight and morning light. I like the mornings the best and on Sat., like today, they are awesome. I imagine spending the twilight evening hours drinking some hot tea, watching the glow of the setting sun. My memory recollects some of those times in the quiet evenings of my past.


Today, I don't have to wake up at o'dark anything and it is usually light when I get up. I am at work week days by about 6:10 am and because of that time I get up and wake up, coffee, come out of that haze of sleep and do the things I find help me wake up. Shower and dress. When I leave the abode I am awake, driving to work I am awake and awake when I arrive. Some of my fellow drivers often look like they fell out of their car and that woke them up as they drag into the dispatch office. To me that is scary, but part of their routine and some of those don't start work as early as I do. They drink the free to them coffee, with the imitation creamer that comes out of a cardboard can with a metal bottom and a plastic lid. They drink a lot of coffee there with creamer and sugar. Every place in the transportation industry I have worked provides coffee, some of it free, some of it not so free.

Workers today like to complain about many things when they have jobs that they made a conscious design to accept. Whether they chose it or it chose them. I once knew a guy who was telling me that the school bus operators job choses us, not the other way around. I believe that to be true. Back to the complainers and "free"coffee and creamer. If workers would get the big picture about their situations they could start getting organized and take charge of their lives .When. it gets down to that though, they are afraid of the companies they work for and act as though they could be easily replaced.

It would not be in my best interest not to note the passing of Gato the cat who lived where I live, yesterday. He was such a wild and beautiful cat, Tuxedo cat as they seem to be known. Of course he was part feral and not an indoor cat. I have fond memories of him. He helped me get over my loss of my other pets as pets often do for us. Our companions of unconditional love!

I do have to get moving along though because I will be going over to NoPo and getting my truck to work on it, purchase some more 2x4's etc. Spring is here and the weather is dry and I can now work on it more steadily since school will be letting out on 15th of June, just a month and a half away. I am signing up for summer work though and have taken on a job tomorrow at 12:45 pm taking a band from Ceasar Chavez School in NoPo to Snitzer Theater for a show.

A lot of my decisions are now based on feeling, the way I feel. I feel coming to the end of my working career I must still keep my hand in it, to earn that extra, not money to subsidize my lack of working steady. I have been having trouble with some kids that I drive and the VP doesn't seem to understand how difficult and dangerous the behavior of these kids is when driving a 40 foot bus.

Hopefully these kids will mature and understand how dangerous it is their behavior and find other areas to amuse themselves because it is not ok. I have had to really focus on not giving them fuel to have me fired which is thier stated objective, not understanding what kind of impact that would have on me or anyone else. I have started citing the Administrative Directive from the school board as one of the violations. AD 4.30.060-P on anti- harrassment. I want the record to show that the administrators at the schools know what we know, that they are in violation of not thoroughly investigating or nipping at the beginning of the abuse we suffer. It is not ok. I have asked the kids before what they thought of if their parents went to a job and a co-worker was harassing them? They side step because they don't want to face that they are committing abusive behavior towards a person who just wants to do his job safely, get paid and go home and do the things that make us happy.

Nothing says home from work like..........

I forget to take off my boots, but when I do wow! My feet are free again from the confines of my boots. I can freely wiggle my toes, twist my foot around at the ankle, back and forth. Feel the air as it penetrates my socks, yes still wearing my socks.

Home, boots off, Freedom!

As it turns out, this thought ocured to me again in 2018 a year or so past when I started writing this tought as an essay if some sort.

Kicking my boots or shoes off initiates my feeling home at last after a trying day safely transporting the children.

The Cyclical Wondering Life

March 10, 2016

Old Men spitting. Yes, we are on our way to being droolers. When we spit some of us just can't,  that simple. Getting old is like when you are younger but in reverse, a lot skills we had to learn, we are unlearning or having to learn again too. You know you are an old guy when you think back to when you first learned how to spit as an awakening to adolescence. You remember spending time with your friends letting the thick drool and letting it slowly escape from your mouth with gravity and trying to stretch it out all the way to the toilet bowl  and then sucking it back into your mouth before it touches anything there

So, you know you are getting old and pull out the nearly week old  bread from the storage and there is some mold on it. You remember the story of how penicillin was discovered, scrape off some of the light mold and slice the bread for toast thinking it will not harm me, I have survived much worse and it could have a beneficial result.

You know you are becoming an old guy when you go to spit and you then find it later on your collar or your sleeve. It could be embarrassing in social situations. You know you are getting old when your already undersized junk is shrinking even further and trying to get hold of it becomes a real challenge and you got to pee like mad, yet can't seem to extract it from your pants. Depends! Maybe it is time for Depends. I don't want to go back to diapers yet!


March 6, 2016

It should be no surprise to me  that persons I admire who came before me are passing back to dust, just as I must when my abused body gives up. The ultimate and final surrender when we exhale our last breath. Death comes to us all, I have worked through many regrets, yet a few still linger reminding me that I could have done better. I don't need to be to curious because my time will come and I will then not know forever more, reduced to dust as from which I came.(posted to Facebook this day. We will see, we will see who comments and what they say)

Today, Feb. 28, 2016

I have drunk two cups of coffee and it is great for getting me going but better even for me to procrastinate. It is a balancing act and I did some clean up after breakfast, Sunday I am going to do my OHP paperwork, I think it is about due and need it done. Then to the Hollywood Theater to see a movie that is hosted by Chris Rock and meet another school bus driver there, a guy who tries to find as many free events to attend. Younger than me of course.

I am de-revolutionizing,  moving towards a nomadic life style.  I just thought of what I am doing and why. it is all starting to make sense to me, all the going back to my past to reclaim or assimilate it into my current life, revisiting friends, reclaiming friends or just perpetuating friendships has come full circle for me now including me in the chain of events. Where I used to be looking at it from outside, I am now looking at my life from within.

I am working towards a nomadic life stye. I may have experienced one in my past lives. I just heard on the radio the Mississippi River and it's flooding. then I thought about tornado alley in the midwest and the cold winters in the Northern territories. Then I am thinking about great civilizations and how they have fallen under setting down roots. I think about the season, our planet and it's orbit, I think about the natural cycle of life and determined I can find my happiness on a wandering path. It all ties together and I am working on moving towards it with my idea of mobile home where I can visit people and places and choose the weather I want to experience.

I am coming to a better understanding of my place in the world. One of the links in my personal evolution has been revealed to me. I am an important link in my own destiny! The cyclic nature of our world, our environment. I need to be more nomadic and that is what I am working towards.



 My reading comprehension is good in the moment, but recollecting what I read is something wholly different. I got that typo you made because of the context and the sentence structure. My little brain works well in most cases. I went to the web because I needed a little back ground on Expressive Arts Practice. I had little inkling of a name for this practice. Makes sense. Many of us know healing the human is about a total experience and communicating through music, art and humor are important aspects of regaining mental and physical health or just communicating if regaining is not possible. We can elevate those who are down, including ourselves through experiences.

It is a bigger world out there and  we are so small.  As far as age goes, besides the physical, I have learned to nurture my inner child, adolescent and older guy. I have been learning to honor most of myself. This means I have continued to learn and be teachable, to not loose sight of the big and small picture. I do get easily distracted, but am working on a goal of a nomadic life style and am pretty focused on that, yet I am taking a more circular route to get there.



Dec. 12, 2014

Posted to my facebook page this short writing:

I have always thought of myself as someone who missed or travelled from one time to another. I am not sure whether it is truth or fiction, yet it is my life and what I have made of it. As I am getting older, I am again traveling through my own memories back in time to when I only skirted along the surface off my more youthful times and now I am inspecting those times with more attention than I seemed to have possessed then!

For me, this is a new understanding of incorporating my past with my present, finding the depth that I so carelessly misplaced in my immature thinking. However, it is that very thinking that made who I am today, the kind, warm mature person who is living the dream that I have always wanted. I always wanted to know who I am and I have a  better understanding of who I am today. Barriers have always been placed in my path, yet I have adapted, adjusted and navigated around them. I have had help from that positive energy that continues to go unnamed except as magic, the connection that we all share. Sifting through and finding the good purposes is often a challenge that distracts us from that goodness. I have had my share of distractions. My life has not been boring, even when I am wiling away time idly. My focus has been building over years and as long as a decade of independence without owning property, seeking that nomadic lifestyle. I even sought that lifestyle as early as 18 years old but didn't know that was what I was searching for. The clues were unclear to me. My intensity has always distracted me from what it is I truly believe in.