This week I’m clearing out my computers files of stories I’ve started and never did anything with during this past year; some of these may become a part of something else in the future or they all may end up going no further than this article, little tidbits, odds and sods, like The Beatles did on side two of “Abbey Road”; all those short little ditties they seamlessly string together into one longer, more complex presentation. This is the second side of “The BiPolar Reality Dispatch” series of blog articles, cool? So, without further ado…
My Work Here is Almost Done
Living here in The San Joaquin does not come without its challenges and one of them we face daily as a community is the drought. Now in its fourth year, it’s a devastating sight to behold to see the fallow orchards and dismal malaise on the faces of the community. I have been doing a rain dance, however, a special Midwestern shaman spell for some moist days and nights which is almost complete. In another few full moon cycles, before the planet completes its trip around the sun, there will be rain falling upon everyone in California and my work here shall finally be done. Laugh, perhaps, you can call me a fool and I will not stop you; a fool in the rain is better than an ass in the sun. Within 100 days, the rain season will have begun and at last, at last my work here will finally be done.
Haversham Leaves Home
Buddy Haversham never liked his name, his given name was Percival Westminster Haversham but he likes to be called Buddy and he never tells the truth about his roots. Haversham was from a wealthy family, descendants of Lords and Governors, entrenched in the drama of colonial roots in the tightly bound town of Wooster, Massachusetts. Haversham spit out his silver spoon when he was only 17 years old, he ran away with his high school sweetheart, first to New York and then to L.A., Buddy wanted to play saxophone and his childhood sweetheart wanted to have his child. She got she wanted, but Buddy did not and after living the rough life in the underbelly of The City of Angels, when the baby was born Haversham took the high road and followed the girl back home to Wooster. In less than a year, when Haversham had traded his saxophone jazz dreams for a suit and a tie in his father’s investment group, his childhood sweetheart had her sexual awakening and decided she was a lesbian so she took their daughter and ran away with a biker dyke from South Carolina.
The Haversham Family always keeps a stiff upper lip, they don’t let things like lesbian ex-wives slow them down and young Haversham was expected to do the very same. He worried about the child, he felt a love for his flesh and blood and wanted to be a part of her life but his father discouraged him and got in the way. One day, a year after the high school sweetheart lesbian had gone when Buddy was having no luck tracking them down, his father gave him a huge promotion when he made him the first executive of the company’s brand new London location. Buddy Haversham had to leave for England in less than three days and so he did what he was told, what was expected of him because, well, Haversham’s are just that way, aren’t they? In England, in the early 1990’s, being a wealthy American Investment Executive was like being King of The World. Buddy soon found out and for the first three or four years, he got into the London swing of things. Buddy made his rounds around the town and his father’s company was soaring with little effort at all; it seemed almost perfect, or so Buddy thought, he was 28 years old and he could no wrong, a boy wonder, The American Hero.
Along the way, as things often go, Buddy Haversham met someone, a woman 7 years his senior, from a new money family from Ireland and she was the altruistic (although less attractive) older sister of his weed dealer’s sister. Her name was Penelope McDaab and she operated several fund raising efforts for various charities as a way to ease the guilt of her family’s enormous wealth. The father McDaab had discovered a supercomputer chip or something and they were rolling in the cash for the first time in this otherwise very modest family of farmers and peasants. Penelope felt guilty that her father struck it big while the rest of his family, four brothers and three sisters, plus their children all lived in abject poverty. That’s how she and Buddy first met, at one of her fund raising events. They started dating a few months later, a year or so after that, Haversham asked for her hand in marriage. It was a joyous event, both families were pleased to come together in the remote English countryside as Penelope married Percival, who hated the fact they used his real name in the ceremony. A traditional affair, a foreshadow of their very traditional marriage, Penelope and Percival continued to live in London for almost 5 years. It was a very normal, routine life without much variance or challenge. Penelope always called Buddy by his given name and although it bothered Haversham immensely, he never said a word.
When Haversham’s father called for his return to America, Penelope was all giddy and thrilled. She had been to New York when she was a teenager, but she always wanted to return someday. That day had come and when Buddy told her it would not be for another six months, Penelope just couldn’t wait so she decided to fly to Boston ahead of Percival to set-up the home. Buddy didn’t argue, if anything he thought it was a good plan. He wanted to have one last London swinging good time and he needed some time from his do-gooder wife. Penelope flew out two days later, while Haversham was away on business in Berlin but she left him a note to wish him good luck. They would see each other in August, it was the beginning of April and Haversham felt shafted, left alone with his pud in his hand! Fuck it, he thought, he would get into his work and at night, party like it was all he could do and for the first 2 weeks, this went pretty well. But Buddy was almost 40, his party days were faded and he wanted something more in his life. The rest of his days in England he was a minimalist monk, stripping away all the possessions in the house and boxing them up to be shipped across sea. He practiced yoga and meditated, took long walks in the hollyhocks at night and again started smoking cannabis, having given it up when he got married. The days slipped into weeks which evaporated in the months and when August arrived and it was time to get back to the old U.S.A., Buddy Haversham was ready to go as a completely new man.
That’s when life went to the left, just when Buddy was feeling right. Not three hours after landing at Logan International in Boston, as he rode in the back of the limo on the ride to Wooster, Penelope turned to him and said, “Percival I want to have a baby.” She wasn’t even looking at him, she was painting her lips with a thick, red lipstick. Buddy put down his newspaper and looked at his wife like the alien she was, she repeated, “I want you to give me a child, soon.”
“A child?” Buddy folded the paper in his lap and snapped, “Just like that? You want me to give you a child, just like that? Poof, here you go love, a baby?”
“Actually, I’ve taken care of the hard part, darling…” Penelope closed her mirror compact and slipped the lid on the lipstick stick. She finally looked her husband in the eyes, smiled briefly and continued, “It’s a child from Kosovo, he’s three years old, his name is Niko and we have to sign for him the day after tomorrow.”
“Sign for him?”
“The papers, the adoption papers…” the wife looked away, the dark suburban night flashing past, her voice resonated with disdain, “Goodness Percival, don’t you read your mail? I told you all about this, I told you about my charity work with refugees…Niko is a refugee.”
“You never told me, you didn’t say a word…when did this happen?”
“I wrote you about it, in the letter I sent!” Penelope snapped in defense, “If you wanted to talk about it more, you should have said something sooner, but now, now it’s too late. Niko has a room in our house, in our home Percival…”
“Stop fucking calling me Percival!” Buddy snapped so loud the limo driver tilted his head back to get a better earshot, “That’s my fucking grandfather’s name…I’m Buddy, of if you’re family, Trip…you can call me Trip…but fuck this Percival shit!”
“Well, do I even know you?” Penelope was offended, she pulled out a cigarette and was about to light it when she added, “Yes, I started smoking, it’s not a good habit but I like it!”
“Fuck…” Buddy half sighed to himself as he opened the window of the limo for fresh air. He didn’t say another word, all the way home, he was silent and just stared out the window wondering where in the hell he life was going, where in the hell had he been and why the fuck was he sitting in the back of a limo with this stranger he never really loved?
Life Before The Internet
Although it seems difficult to imagine what life was like before we integrated the world wide web into our daily lives, after all, this very article is being brought to you courtesy of the information superhighway…but if you could for just a moment, consider this notion, I’d be Grateful.
Like our browsers, we all have an Internet history. Mine started around 1995, while I was operating The Split/Apple in Chicago, one of the guys on the steering committee (Atom Space) was something of “tech genius” and he first introduced me to the world wide web. Back then it wasn’t a bunch of graphics, fancy buttons, moving animations and endless streams of various information, news, selfies and cat photos. There wasn’t even any porn, it sucked that much! Yet I was intrigued, I was amazed and fascinated by the prospect of this new form of media. I have always had a thing for “new technologies”, I remember how very excited I was when we got our first COLOR television set; in 1967, it was amazing to see crappy shows in color at last!
Other “revolutionary” technologies crossed my path and I jumped upon them to ride them for what they were worth; computers? I started using one around 1982, it had really big 8 inch floppy disks and was the size of a small refrigerator! Computers used in music and recording? I started doing that about ’84 with the Fairlight CMI; I was using digital video in ’86 when I got my Sony D1, I’m all about the digital medium…but even when all that was happening, none of it seemed as fascinating to me as this powerful tool of communication called “the Internet”.
Despite the plain black screen with tiny green characters that slowly scrolled up the screen, each line an odd assortment of letters, numbers and symbols (code) and between them, there were passages of dialogue written by somebody in someplace else; even better, we could engage with them in real time conversations! It was weird, it was cool, it was only a skeleton but I could easily see the potential and that excited me. I discovered vast resources of information and educational material from all my favorite universities. I was thrill to even discover “dead.net” where I could quickly communicate with other Deadheads across the country! It was a whole new world of opportunity for connecting the dots, bringing people closer together, one mind at a time! I was in love, I adored the potentials I felt and wanted to be a part of this new boom in some way, some how. I started learning about the Internet, about it’s basic concept and I read a lot about what was coming next too. It was exciting to me, it was like being there for the dawn of radio, television, recording, movies…another new media!
The next significant encounter was in 1996, while residing in Las Vegas, I worked for a man who was very involved in the “adult entertainment industry” and he hired me to work with another programmer dude to develop an adult website. I was the creative one, I took the photos, I wrote the text and working with the programmer dude, I helped to arrange a website for shopping for “out call dancers” (hookers)! Fortunately I escaped that realm, and city, after only six months so it was more of a mild amusement kind of activity and not something I made a career of doing. During the following couple of years, like many of you may remember, there was an increased awareness about computers in our lives, and the need for computers in our lives with the advent of “Y2K”; remember that false flag with airplanes falling out of the skies, dams bursting open and power grids going dark as the clock changed from “1999” to “2000”?
I do, I made a bunch of cash selling “Y2K” complainant computers in Arkansas with my little Internet/dot com business “dphilip.com” and "The Small Business Website Marketing Program”; it was for designing/building/hosting/operating websites for small/medium businesses.
I was again fortunate to unload the marketing rights to Earthlink just before that “dot com bomb” exploded too. Ever since then, for the most part, my “Internet History” has been like most other daily users…I like to use it for a multitude of applications, from creative to educational to informational to communicating and connecting with others across the vastness of this complex web.
These days it’s a bit difficult to remember those days before the on-line reality, strange how quickly somethings are erased. I still have enjoyment in this experience but there’s something that’s significantly changed about my feelings for this media. I am not so excited by it, I am, if anything, a bit disappointed in what this “information superhighway” has become. I also don’t like the feeling of being a “user”; everywhere you visit on-line calls us this, we’re always clicking “agree” on the end user agreements we quickly click through…but how many of us have actually stopped to read and seriously consider how much we agree with the “end user” agreement?
I’ve been reading them a lot over the last year or so, especially regarding the ownership of content. I am a writer, an artist and this, in a way, is my commodity. I certainly love to share it, I’ll do so gladly much of time but I do like to know in no uncertain terms that what I write, what I create and post is indeed mine, I own the rights to my own creations. However, in doing this research I also learned a great deal about the metadata, marketing preferences, tracking and cookie policies and whole shit storm of other legal bullshit crap! So much stuff that I’ve become a bit weary of participating too much for want of a sense of privacy. I’ve even gone back to books, in doing my research and information gathering, I don’t like the prospect of people reading over my shoulder, so to speak.
Too many sites, too many forums and places where we share ourselves is open to scrutiny from a variety of sources. Some of them are simply sales people, trying to get you to buy this or that…many of them are marketing ninjas who hide out in your browser for ages only to pop out and stimulate your senses as soon as you click through the right combination of algorithms. Some are much more nefarious, be they enemies of this nation, or this nation itself…or some other psychopathic miscreant who bears nothing but ill will.
I know I might sound a tad paranoid, forgive me if I do but even so, it doesn’t mean I’m wrong, that we are not being tracked, watched, bulk data collected. It’s happening and we all know this, it’s easy to rationalize that it’s necessary to surrender our liberties for the sake of protection, but that’s absurd and, frankly, rather non-American. I care about my privacy. I don’t have anything to hide, other than my private thoughts, dreams, desires…but not caring about my privacy because I have nothing to hide is like not caring about free speech because I’ve got nothing to say. I value and cherish both so to that aim, I’m thinking about organizing an ad-hoc campaign of subfratuge…let’s toss a few monkey wrenches into this mass marketing apparatus just to gum things up a little!
Oops, I might have said too much, I’m already on somebody’s watch list so I should just shut the hell up and let it go at that…but you know what I’m saying, be a little bit reluctant to follow this trend. Life is full of lemmings, be aware and you should be all right. Okay, the Israel secret service and Homeland Security are knocking are storming my firewalls, time to bug out!
Loose Lucy and The Magic Man
They tried to hide from one another, they tried to hide the fact they were in Love, but it was useless. There was nothing that was going to stop these feelings from taking root deep inside either of their souls, they were right for each other, no matter what the circumstances, they belonged with each other. But timing, fate and half a United State kept them apart. Only time, patient time will bring them together. Loose Lucy has a schoolhouse of children to rear and The Magic Man is busy changing the world, so until the time becomes ripe, until the moments when they’re fate will bring them together…they have that one Sapphire Moon.
Chemical Energies
Over the course of history it has been artists, poets and playwrights who have made the greatest progress in humanity's understanding of love. Romance has seemed as inexplicable as the beauty of a rainbow. But these days scientists are challenging that notion, and they have rather a lot to say about how and why people love each other.
Is this useful? The scientists think so. For a start, understanding the neurochemical pathways that regulate social attachments may help to deal with defects in people's ability to form relationships. All relationships, whether they are those of parents with their children, spouses with their partners, or workers with their colleagues, rely on an ability to create and maintain social ties. Defects can be disabling, and become apparent as disorders such as autism and schizophrenia—and, indeed, as the serious depression that can result from rejection in love. Research is also shedding light on some of the more extreme forms of sexual behavior. And, controversially, some utopian fringe groups see such work as the doorway to a future where love is guaranteed because it will be provided chemically, or even genetically engineered from conception.
The scientific tale of love begins innocently enough, with voles. The prairie vole is a sociable creature, one of the only 3% of mammal species that appear to form monogamous relationships. Mating between prairie voles is a tremendous 24-hour effort. After this, they bond for life. They prefer to spend time with each other, groom each other for hours on end and nest together. They avoid meeting other potential mates. The male becomes an aggressive guard of the female. And when their pups are born, they become affectionate and attentive parents. However, another vole, a close relative called the montane vole, has no interest in partnership beyond one-night-stand sex. What is intriguing is that these vast differences in behavior are the result of a mere handful of genes.
Crystal Shatters on My Mind
She was one in a million my friend, I met her quite by accident and never expected it to become all this but it has and the only I can do now is let go…so I will.
The Beginning of The End...
So as the work I started to do concludes, as the year is shifting into the final weeks of it's run and while we make plans for the Life which which surely follow, I am drawn to the notion that this series of blog articles is also needing a conclusion. There will be 75 articles in this series by the end of this year and come the first of next year my obligations to promote "My BiPolar Reality; How Life Goes On..." (available EVERYWHERE but get it for half-price at my portfolio destination,
www.dphilipchalmers.net) will be over so I can focus on the next couple of projects. So, this is very much the beginning of the end for "The BiPolar Reality Dispatch" blog series...after this article, only three more remain. Next week is a compendium of my favorite articles over the last year condensed into one easy to find post. The next week is Christmas so naturally I'll have some kind of holiday thing to say, then the last article which will publish on Thursday instead of Friday...then this blog serial is done!
In 2016 I do plan on continuing to write regularly, I can't help it, it's what I do, it's who I am...and you know I enjoy sharing these thoughts, so I'll most likely start another blog series. I don't have a title or theme for it yet, I may not find time to manage or promote it either, but I'm likely to do it anyway. I do this sort of thing for myself more than anyone else, so why stop sharing it, right? As I work on the next book and that screenplay project, I'll no doubt find it useful to step away from those boundaries to frolic in the abstract once in a while, so stay in touch and when I get something going, I'd be happy to let you know, cool?
In the meanwhile dear reading friends, I am Grateful for your time and attention. I cherish your responses and interactions, so please don't hesitate to say something. I'll listen, I might respond and if nothing else, you'll feel better for telling me so, right? okay, well it's a long Friday for me and I must make haste...until next time, or someplace else, take good care, be very well and please stay safe!
