Home
of Wild Bill Hickock
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2084
I'm somewhere traveling through United States, small towns, ghost towns of the American West. I'm at a party with some strangers, one of them is passing around a joint. It's Christmas and the stagecoach comes through - it's not cold, hot desert, but me and some older gentleman take the stagecoach through town - it's being driven by an coolie, who knows my companion and jokes with him - my companion wants him to take a new route through the town, but as there's only one road through town it's kinda tough....
We end up at a Saloon....
The next morning Wild Bill Hickock is there, I'm in this town or another, some archeologists have found the remains of the Eastend boys, I know them, they were a gang that rode down from Moose Jaw in the twenties and disappeared. They disappeared 'cause the Apaches got 'em, and we walk down from the hotel to a star shaped trench cut in the desert, the Apaches had lashed the boys to logs, suspended them in the trenches and then covered them over with dirt. Buried them alive. Some tribal elders show up, they look old, so old the skin has crawled back from their teeth and jaws leaving just the bone and their eyes roll freely in skeletal sockets, they look and nod, "They found 'em" they say...
Now I'm talking with Wild Bill and asking him if he's dead and all, I was pretty sure he was but he assures me he's not, there are these old prospectors showing me the opals and gems they've found in the desert, there are museums everywhere and he has along some famous Indian sidekick I should know, I do know in the dream, but I can't recall his name now. And they're showing me all sorts of stuff, and asking me all sorts of stuff, and we're getting along famously. It's like we're old friends. We trade some things. Then they do the show, it involves Wild Bill spraying a hose around in front of people, he's holding the end by the water barrel, and eventually a bullet makes it's way through and accomplishes some miracle of marksmanship. We're amazed and he's warning us all to stay back so we do, but one of the bullets goes astray and hits the fireworks-for-sale hut, it sputters, then goes up in blazes, everyone "ooohs" and "aaaahs" but then at once realize it's just another part of the show and break into applause...
New & Improved
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2605
Everything is new and improved. I'm not really a new and improved kinda guy, it's not my market, I buy what I have to, what inspires me, and that's it.
But there's a market for it. It's been created, the stage set with 50 years of laundry detergent and dish soap getting better and better, until finally you would think it would wash the sins from the world, yet somehow still it's only laundry detergent...
The laundry detergent was only the marketing research. Then came technology, with obvious and noticeable improvements. The kind that demanded you replace things every couple of years. They caught on to this, the technology people, exploited it by building their products to fail should you ignore the cultural imperative to upgrade. More Memory, more RAM, flat screen TV's, flatter screened TV's, richer streaming content, games and media. Most people have more technology on their desktop than NASA had when they sent people to the moon. It is used in over 90% of instances as a diversion, recreation, an escape. This is the world of New and Improved.
Jealousy
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1856
Jealousy. I've wondered about this, wondered where it came from. I've had girlfriends who'd been jealous, some more than others. And I'd been jealous myself. And of what value was it?
And I had an Epiphany.
Jealousy is the imagining of what we would do were we in our partners position.
It's the projection of our worst selves upon others. And, if we've made a bad match, maybe we're right.
And then there is lack of jealousy. In which we project our best selves upon others, imagine that they would do what we would in similar circumstance, by "we" I mean the best of "we", the "we" possessed of those noblest of qualities: love, loyalty, fidelity and honor.
And if we've again made a bad match, maybe we're wrong.
But I understand it now.
To boil it down, make it quotable, try this: "jealousy is the presumption that others are doing as we would do in their position."
Birds on a wire
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2490
There's something zen about this. Not just the music (the Asian Influences are obvious), but in the recognition of the sublime in the ordinary...
Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
Page 1025 of 1091