{"id":85,"date":"2010-05-21T09:37:20","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T14:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2011-08-18T16:22:42","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T21:22:42","slug":"sitting-at-the-dock-of-my-mind-may-21-2010-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/sitting-at-the-dock-of-my-mind-may-21-2010-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"SITTING AT THE DOCK OF MY MIND May 21, 2010 Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t $\"Fb-Button\"$ \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I never thought to dedicate. Life is curious; especially the last few years needing to be free, open, receptive and absorbing. Playing a mind game, you let things fire away. Pick a topic; see where memory synapses take you. Synapses just fired from ‘Easy Rider’ to Otis Redding, Pete Seeger singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ to Eisenhower running for President and an “I Like Ike’ button my mother told me to save; pure random unorganized wondrous thinking processes. I just thought about a friend in Minnesota, Brenda (I call her Gracie, she calls me George.) The words of this blog entry are herewith (almost sounds legal) dedicated to Brenda. She encourages intellectual pursuit; winds of synchronicity (and David Gergen-Facebook) brought us together.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now the blog title: The Shark River Inlet jetty (Belmar, NJ) is a favorite place, a spiritual bookmark. Many days synthesizing Vitamin D were spent on its boulders, dreaming of worlds and be(longing). I love Otis Redding. Words echo so it became my dock of solitude, thought and imagination. A computer screen may be in front of me but I’m really there, getting sprayed by wave remnants, shielding my eyes and catching a glimpse of the horizon and a ship heading to Kilimanjaro. Hemingway and F. Scott are aboard. I can barely make-out hands waving at me.\u00a0 When I was ten years old, I used to spend hours sitting at the dock, on a boulder and dream of the day I’d take my child to the jetty, and stare at this same horizon. When my son was ten, we did just that. Sometime later, he mentioned doing the same thing to his child. Another dream; he’ll fulfill his dream.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Somehow I want to say, if you’ve reached this point in reading my blogs, and have concluded, I might be a bit on the serious side, let me make this perfectly clear(right out of the Richard Nixon book of public speaking) I’m actually a frustrated comedian. Making people laugh is a lofty aspiration.\u00a0 Some (I don’t remember how many) years ago. I started writing a comedy act for local improvisation clubs. Two months later, I moved on; becoming a quantum physicist might be easier than stand-up comedy. Point being, I love laughter. A magazine says it’s the best medicine. Before I can laugh while blogging, I need to get the serious stuff out of the way first. It is a long way to Tiperrary( for you WWI buffs)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There’s a word, maelstrom that comes to mind. I’m in it now, hopelessly being tossed and turned (great album from 1963 ‘Tossing and Turning’). An old man and the sea rowboat, a vortex nearby, golf ball sized hail (what if golf was never invented?) and impenetrable fog conspire. More thoughts about the maelstrom; from my pharmacology days (one of my best courses at Rutgers); when the human body nears the finality of death, it slowly, methodically prepares itself by shutting down systems, organs and cellular communications on all levels.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now I’m in a rattling mood. No rhyme or reason. No rowboats heading to shore. There’s an archangel, Michael. So what’s this I hear about the New Jersey budget problems? I sound like Ensign Pulver. The look on James Cagney’s face. A billion dollars gets slashed from education budget here in New Jersey. Size of classes may double when we need all the education we can get. With all the children we have, seems a better educational childhood is gone. And my alma mater, Rutgers, their state funding slashed as well. Libraries closing and cutting back on programs all over the body of the country. Airlines merging and cutting back on routes. Atlantic Blue Fin tuna nearly extinct (25,000 left). The gulf oil disaster. The UN the other day suggesting in forty years, that the 20 million people who earn a living from ocean fishing may have to look for new work; no more fish left. Carbon dioxide acidifying the ocean; oysters can’t reproduce, coral dying. Male small mouth bass fish in fresh water lakes in America now have eggs (71-100% of them). Endocrine disruptors messing with our bodies (all those hormones people took the last fifty years gets pissed into the ocean) Too many people not enough food and changing climate patterns so less farming lands. More video games and ways to play them on a mass transportation bus while fares went up 40% here in New Jersey. Can it be true certain American companies since the end of WWII collectively have killed more people than the Nazi’s?\u00a0 Hint: tobacco. \u00a0Or do drug\/car companies know they’ve got a bad product but leave it on the market longer because actuaries say extra sales more than cover extra law suits. A sewage treatment plant in Massachusetts moving to higher ground because future rising sea levels jeopardize safety.\u00a0 The Middle East. Nuclear proliferation. Neville Chamberlain, “peace in our time.” They want to build a coal plant in Linden, New Jersey and dump all the waste off the New Jersey shoreline. I thought about a “Frankenstein” amount of money for New Jersey tax collectors so to hell with the lungs of the people of central and northern Jersey. Great article:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/stoppurgencoalplant.org\/http:\/stoppurgencoalplant.org\/why-linden-why-not-rumsen-a-frankenstein-moment<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Enough rambling and rattling. I love sitting on the dock of my mind, firing away, chest rising and falling with troubled breathing, worrying that I’m not shutting down like the world around me. Silver linings in clouds, seeded with iodide. I wonder if that ever really worked to make it rain. A jet plane just flew overhead. I’ll bet it’s heading to Kilimanjaro.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh one more thing. A commercial. My first one. If you like this stuff and that’s what it is, stuff, why don’t you mosey (Texas accent) over to my website, check out my novel, ‘Vichy Water’ and maybe order. It’s all from the same gut.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/vichywater.net\u00a0\u00a0 And thanks.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t $\"Fb-Button\"$ \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I never thought to dedicate. Life is curious; especially the last few years needing to be free, open, receptive and absorbing. Playing a mind game, you let things fire away. Pick a topic; see where memory synapses take you. Synapses just fired from ‘Easy Rider’ to Otis Redding, Pete Seeger singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1177,"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/1177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vichywater.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}