Adjustmets and ADHD or just plain ADD

 I never feel like I can move into a more permanent understanding of my thinking process. Is that what I want to or meant to say? I question myself more now than in the past. I rarely questioned myself in the past, hurt lots of people and never gave it much thought and now that I am older, keep going back to that past and trying to make it go away for my bad actions, because there is no fixing what I did, but the almost daily thoughts of Damn!

 

I wrote this before today, that is the first paragraph. I have been learning to accept the things I can not change more and more recently. The day as the afternoon has progressed has turned brighter, however, the moisture of autumn is in the air. Who, knows what affliction to my thinking that I have. I went to a high priced high IQ psychologist  who gave me a battery of tests and I gave them my history of banging my head, right in the executive branch of my brain. They told me, brain damage is accumulative. I have not hit my head out of fear of hurting myself beyond repair. All that hitting came out of my own insecurities and punishment for transgressions that I did out of frustration growing up. Since my father beat me with switches for my behaviors that were contrary to what I had been told or unsupported by adults and my own frustrations for not understanding and being told my questions were better answered if I paid attention on the first place. 

 

I have to now think more closely about I write, because I want it to accurately portray how I am feeling and isn't that often what we want others to see in us, better understanding of who we are and how feel? I am done here. 

But for the indomidable spirit that lives in all of us......

 In my truck tonight I got a flash of that hippie energy of long ago. I was standing in my truck cab, standing is an option looking towards the North when a young woman across the street looked in and I said hi and just like that she said hi back. That was it, that was that flash from the past in the present. That energy exchange lasted me several hours, it rekindled my spirit. I was thinking it would be nice if she would walk by once in a while and we could say hi. It is such a great feeling with nothing else attached, just an acknowledgment of being a friendly human being. 

This topic is coming up because I made a comment on Oregon or Portland for safe a safe return to campus on Face Book Group in response to someones comments. Someone made a comment the topic which is CRT which stands for Critical Race Theory and they don't want it t about is drug many take in the book Brave New World author Aldous Huxley that I read maybe when I was 12-16 in my reading addiction before I got into the other drugs. Right around that time. Took my first LSD in 1965s when I was 15. Took quite a bit back then and even  have a memory of a capping party in the Haight. I don't know iif it is a real memory or just an illusion. People wearing over the ear and in the ear headphones while out in public are the new turn on, tune in and drop out generations. They are so addicted to that form of having it whenever they are out, they can ignore the rest of us easily and do. It almost like a slap in the face for those of us who want to engage on a up front and personal level as little as saying hi while passing on the street. That was part of what was so refreshing about the energy with the woman who said hi when I said hi, we both present and that is important to me.

The constant sound as if from a coffee pot singing to it's owners that the hot beverage is almost here.

is how the rain sounds and it is likely to increase although it has slowed to the old Portland constant drizzle. 

Almost 17 years ago I wrote something that I feel I should share here. I would love to share writing to Facebook, but it all disappears there and at least here it is safe for a while. I have experienced a lot of life in my 71 years and now understand everything is fluid and nothing is as permanent as we might think it is. 

I was sitting, listening to the quiet, celebrating the first day of Summer, down by the water. I welcomed the solstice by playing my tin whistle, walking my dog Buster down by the shoreline, a part of the Oakland Estuary feed and MLK Waterfront Park that I felt safe to take him where he could swim and walk without a lease part of the time. 

The reeds are growing out of the shore and make a contrast to the flotsam that wahes up there. It is obvious that this is still a little used park, that the parks dept. has better places to spend their diminishing budget because of the amount of development and lack of trash pickup. 

chapter 001 about aviation.

June 6th, 2020

When did I begin noticing airplanes? It was probably in San Mateo, the Hillsdale district. We lived on a hill and I could sometimes see the airplanes in the pattern for San Francisco International Airport. They would make the turn by the Dumbarton Bridge on the aviation frequency they call that Dumba up near Menlo Park and fly mostly straight on their final approach to the airport. The planes were mostly 2 or 4 radial engined planes with propellers. That was to early, in 1954 and 1955 for jets I think. We still had steam locomotives on the rail line down by the El Camino Real.  We used to take my dad to the station so he could take the train to his job in San Francisco.

Sometime in 1955 we moved from San Mateo to Los Altos CA a rather upscale small town. My parents were purchasing a new house there, just been built right in the middle of an apricot orchard with a walnut orchard still next the next plot over with an old barn where mushrooms grew and they had a rail cart with high sides we could push and jump into that ran the length of the barn in the mostly dark with some light provided by missing planks on the roof and walls. I remember it was like up in the loft.   I remember when we looked at houses there in the new development. We looked at the yellow one up the street, a two story, but they didn't want that one. It had a second story as an architectural feature with like an A frame roof. 

It is important to know about living and seeing airplanes as there were different ones to hear and see. Los Altos is just a little northwest of Mt. View which had the Naval Air Station built back in the day when the navy had dirigibles. At the time we lived in Los Altos, the navy had A-4 Skyhawks and they flew regularly over our house and often we could hear something breaking the sound barrier. The A-4 was a subsonic plane and didn't go that fast. However, there were often visiting planes and the Navy flew the Gruman F11-F1 which was also a carrier plane and the Blue Angels flew them from 1957 to 1968. The did go supersonic and I remember regularly hearing sonic booms and thought Awesome. Apparently the encroaching civilization didn't like them much and petitions were filed along with complaints to the Navy and A-4's were moved down to Lemoore Navel Air Station.  We called them sonic booms, but the people in the new housing developments got testy about the booms and complained enough that the navy moved the A-4's to Lemoor Naval Air Station out further, but still habituated by folks.

Winding down

 A high schooler just went by on his skate board and I remember doing that. The motions are the same, the boards have advanced as have the skill sets and the amount of athleticism these young folks exhibit. I think it is awesome they are experimenting with doing stunts and bowls and pipes, 1/2 pipes etc. 

There are some serious amatures and serious professionals out there. 

Just got back from a walk and sitting outside cooling down, observing life as they go, the wind has also wound down to a breeze and the big cumulonimbus clouds with their boiling cauliflower heads extending high into the atmosphere have blown away or dissolved into small clumps of stratus and clear evening skies with neat a 1/2 moon. I didn’t get the memo if it is waxing or waning, if you want to know their are resources available. I know it is there, tranquility for thumped moments.

New chapter in the midst of the Covid-19 May, 2020

10/13/2020

Well, I am house sitting for couple of nights and time almost up. I have a dental appointment tomorrow early and then get my new lenses to glasses. I have to get my shit out of the house before I leave for dentist I think in AM and then return to visit, find out when my friends coming back in afternoon. To short of a stay for all the prep I need when staying at someones house, from my living situation in the truck. This is all to personal to post on FaceBook. when I post on Facebook, I open myself up to opinions from friends that I am not looking for. I am more about journalling and trying to figure out how to move forward on my thoughts etc. For instance what spurred me on to write this little detail is I was crossing my legs, left over right and my left knew, shit the pain. I have already decided to pull out the knee braces I have been using for years. I had already looked for new ones that I could use to replace the tired ones about 2 months ago. They don't carry what I am looking for anymore. Looks like Amazon will be my answer. Amazon,. the online answer to Walmart. Amazon is the on line store we love to hate if we are for fairness and certainly someone is not operating on that principle. It is just the way it is in this capitalist system. It is not fair and either we can stay angry about it, move out of the country or try to change it from within or with out. 

I was really struggling finding the right buttons to use to update, publish and revert to draft. I get worried that my thoughts transcribed to here which have no real value at all will get lost if I hit the wrong button. Am I that unfamiliar with this page that I have to first get frustrated and finally figure it out? I guess so. Then it was in the wrong place, somewhere in the middle and I finally figured that out and moved it, of course, here it is in the beginning because it is the most recent entry. 

Saturday May 23, 2020

I am watching, listening to the Robbie Robertson interview on you tube in 2016 , talking about his life, his magic, how he got into music, playing the guitar, living in Canada, Living in Arkansas, back to Canada, Ronnie Hawkins, how he got into the band, Levon Helm, Bob Dylan. It is Bob Dylans 79th birthday today. Robbie is talking about writing his Biography. I am listening so it may have an influence on my own writing. I think about, the focus that I never had. I just have to write it from my best recollections.The interviewer brings standing Rock to the interview and Robbie his answers, his focus, his pace, his rhythm is so measured.  Six nations is near where he lived and what he learned from his cousins.  

Book stuff. I can do it from my head. It brings tears to my heart, why who, what can I do? How can I tell my story and who would be interested. From my heart, from my heart, from my heart, how I have thought from my heart. 

When and where I was growing up people rarely validated my feelings.  I think my parents may have not thoroughly understood me for sure from the start, I was so different. I was happy, happy kid, and they just thought what they thought. I was different in many ways, I was brought up with feelings that when I tried explaining them people never seemed to actively listen to me when I spoke about how I felt. From an early age, when I would tell someone, my stomach is upset, why was my stomach upset, anxiety. I had anxiety about going new places, a feeling. Boys, we weren’t supposed to have  feelings. I was based in feelings, but I wasn’t supposed to have them. I was a boy. I was supposed to be different according to what I had later found out. 

We are each our own persons. Some of us figure it out sooner than some others of us. I didn’t figure it out for many years, at least until I got cleaned up from my drug abuses, woman abuses and other abuses, I can remember some pretty crazy things. I will talk about them when the time comes, another chapter in the continuing recollections from this aging retiree. 

In elementary school in Los Altos CA I was labeled right away as a trouble maker. I was almost ok until about 3rd grade one day at lunch. I remember lunch there at Portola Elementary School. The cafeteria with their steam tables and the nice ladies that cooked the food and the tables with benches. I worked in the kitchen cleaning up but don't remember much about how I got the job or when it ended or why. I was a boy I was distracted, probably had ADHD, letters after my name, that no one knew about in those days.   It is important to recollect these things since I don't generally make any note of them in my daily life, but they did contribute to shaping the person I became, The Who I am now. I didn't capitalize them. 

So, in third grade I remember being after lunch and on the grass out by the ball diamond and there was my teacher I suppose out there and we were sitting in the grass. I said something about having an upset tummy and she said I was imagining it. Nothing else or perhaps, stop making things up, you just ate lunch, wait for it to settle. I don't recollect what it was making my stomach upset, perhaps something I ate, but no validation or consolation. Just as I perceived it, this cold response. Maybe my stomach was upset by the way I got treated by adults and some children in school. Why was I sitting alone near the teacher and other kids were playing? I would not be playing if my stomach was badly upset, I would be sitting or was I being punished for something? My troubles started around then as I recollect asking a lot of questions in class and being told to listen because apparently they thought I wasn't listening or didn't instruct me how to actively listen. They must have thought everyone knew how to actively listen because a majority of the kids seemed to be listing, therefore, I was just trying to make trouble. 

I remember riding the bus to Portola School. The school was sold long ago, maybe 30-40 years ago and there are some kind of housing there as I recollect from a previous trip down memmory lane.  I remember they were Crown buses and I used to catch it at the street that Bob Crane lived on Langston ST. real close to Los Altos Ave. 

I remember, going to the bus stop and it was raining sometimes, the driver looked like my grandfather. He wore the same kind of khaki trousers and the same kind of long shirt as I recollect my grandfather wearing.  

more updates, 

I am celebrating Bob Dylans 79th birthday today, SATURDAY the 23rd of May. By listening to and watching U tube videos of Robbie Robertson and the last Waltz and I remember someone asking me if I was going at some point, though I was in Santa Cruz County at the time. I didn't;t go and missed a great event, It was a thanksgiving dinner and concert at Winterland a place I don't recollect ever going to except in a distant fog of a my memory. 

May 24, 2020

All my entries are sometimes not all of them but I have to have dates, perhaps places listed, from the parking lot at  SE Cesar Chavez Rachelle and Jim's who seem to be  hell bent on me moving to Arkansas. Although 1/2 my age, they seem to be my bestest friends. That's a hard one. Perhaps it is because we just sort of keep in touch and I am included a lot when their parents come. Rachelles mom, Jeanie helped me move last June. I couldn't believe it. I am forever grateful to her. She was a school teacher and she was visiting helping with Jim and Rachelle's new baby and took the time to help schlep boxes etc. She is my age. we are from a different time period. 

I just had to watch a video on using hinges because I was trying to mount a couple of strap hinges on my rustic cabinet doors and they wouldn't work without being mortised. I seemed to have forgot about that. Cheap apartments I once worked in hung doors without mortising the hinges and I almost always looked at that and whined.  Now the screws are to long, so1/2 round molding is required for the screws to die into. I will glue the moulding on there.

I am not publishing any of this until I get it all squared away or at least it seems to me to flow and then come to a reasonable stop somewhere up the road. When the wheels stop turning, the vehicle will still pursue the future. I think that is the end and it is. One more thing, it is June 6 in the evening and I am done with this piece. 

Just about July 1, 2020

My whole intention right now is listening to music at Daryls House, where he invites other musicians to come and play music and he also has guest chefs for the food part. I can listen to the music and also transcribe my thoughts here at the same time.

Today was a bit unusual. I went to pick up a package on my little get around 1982 Honda XL 185S that I purchased a few weeks ago. I have a little difficulty getting my right leg over the seat and getting it on to the kick starter lever which is on the right side of the bike.

Once I got the bike started, I rode across town, Portland, Oregon from the NE to the SE to pick up a package but also to go to my storage and again, the 2nd or 3rd time trying to find my messenger bag. Got it, almost missed it again after totally rearranging that small 5 foot by 5 foot space. My goal this summer is finish the cabinets in my truck, get rid of the storage at the give it up place. Anyway, back to the pick up.

I get to the pick up location and get off my bike and go into the Plaid Pantry, chain local convienence store. I got to the hub locker popped it open, got my package and back outside. Reached in my pocket for my bike key. Well, it wasn't in any of my pockets, not on the ground, back track into store, not showing up there either. Not feeling real good about it. I almost called for a ride, but then got hold of the locker company, Amazon and after several minutes got them to open the locker thinking I dropped it in there. It was empty.

I have a spare key, over on the other side of town, where I had come from. Called the cab company, Radio Cab and a the driver drove on all these small streets, faster than the posted speed. I know as a professional driver, not going to tell him anything about his driving. He is a professional too and I am in the back seat and many of us know what it is like to have to listen to someone telling us how to drive. Get to the truck, get the key, drop some other things off and back the way we came. I gave him a handsome tip, because he is an excellent driver.

Got the bike going again and decided my other errands could wait to tomorrow. Came right back to the truck, my mobile living situation and using the tools that I had picked up to compress the spring on a pair of shocks I bought to take a specific part off that is missing from my motorcycle. No, couldn't use these shocks on my bike, from a different size bike, but the parts are similar. Got the hang of the tool, not quite like on the video I watched on You Tube but I managed. With that, I was done.

The loss of my two keys got me in a bad place. I intend to go back there tomorrow and bring a magnate and push it under places in the store I could not see under etc. and finish up my errands, likely buy some fireworks and get ready for the 4th. We don't have any loud fireworks in this state, but there are people living here who have them. Those loud booming fireworks scare animals, children, babies and throw some veterans into PTSD action and that is scary for them and sometimes us.

I know that about veterans from living with one who was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, Khe San in 1968 in the Ten offensive. That is another chapter and onward here. July1, 2020 10-4 over and out!