"How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge into a million points and leaves it bleeding."

~ Isaac Asimov

diversity and balance, that is the secret of nature and how life survives for millions of years in a universe that is not all that hospitable to life... and yet we intelligent life forms, we humans, continue to narrow our knowledge and abilities... how many of us really know how to hunt and gather anymore?... or make fire?... or even make a wheel?... how many of us could grow our own food?... or build our own shelter?... fix a wall, or pipes, or electricity, or even ourselves?... and more and more those advancing our cultural through science and technologically are specializing in increasingly narrow fields of study...

what this does is it blurs the big picture... it reduces the chances of truly major breakthroughs because those almost always required a combining of disciplines, thinking outside of the box, so to speak... it is the same for art or life... and yet, our culture marches further and further along the narrow and separate bands of specialty...

this thought probably has nothing to do with that thought, or even this entry, maybe, but before we get rolling I what to mention that I've begun a new effort to assist the rich... please pass the link along to any rich people you might know since a public service is only as good as the public is services, or something like that...

meanwhile, back home...

Hours of sleep this weekend: approximately 3.5
Hours of fun this weekend: 45+ or so

how can I be sure? (in a world that's constantly changing)... for one thing, losing track of how many hours of fun had over a weekend because two people can not add them all on all their fingers and toes is a sure sign of more fun than a barrel of monkeys and as many have provide, including the esteemed Inspector Clouseau, monkeys have more fun in a barrel than fish do... and besides, z0tl said so and that, for those in the know, is all we need to know...

yes, dear severed spirits, I finally did it� I looked into the eyes of one of the most enigmatic diarists we have here at diaryland, the one and only offbeat literary playa who offers up challenging convolutions of language as easily as George Bush can stare blankly into a camera, the one and only z0tl�

and here I thought that all I was going to do this weekend was laundry, clean the house, and browse the web (through blogmad! of course)�

obviously the mind spins and imagination reels with enlightened thought after spending a day with the Z-Man... it was the Z who inspired the funda to emerge from their other plane of existence and ponder the human condition... it was the Z-dude who challenged candora do to come down to Earth more often and rap about the experience... and that's just the beginning of time... challenge yourself to open your mind as you look for the meaning in his words...

alas, the zin must have it's zang and I thoroughly neglected my newly forming online life at blogMad and I miss those wild and wacky online people, but life offline needed an injection of soul so I shot me full of rhythm and blues and remembered how much fun can be had out there (and I was actually quite subdued compared to the awake me, much the spectator, but still in that sweet space I felt in the previous entry and loving every minute of it... in that space between sleep and awake where you still remember dreaming {and can you tell us where that line is from?} as I got two hours sleep all weekend, everything is more beautiful)... and it is very good to know that I can instinctively still cozy up to a bar and ask for something and have a girl turn around and light up as if she's known me forever and proceed to enter my personal space and seriously flirt with eye contact and hair play...

ah, dear hairplay (still my desktop reminder of what was once an instant visual libido-melt {and perhaps may still be}, but this is perhaps way beside the point)... since we had only an hour or so before having to rush off to the airport to make a flight home, we focused on what we came for, getting a bite to eat... we did squeeze in a game of pool before heading to the airport though... though my inner voices said to me that had my smiley bar room flirt started melting libido or grabbing something else inside, I'd have happily invited her along... this is, beyond doubt, an excellent sign that the recovery (I refer to my open heart surgery, metaphorically, of course) is in full swing...

most interesting to me is that I do appear to be, finally (it's been something I've attempted to actualize all through this life), ready to follow someone else's lead... always being the leader in everything, especially when going out to play, gets quite old and tiresome after a while... now all I need is some Lone Ranger or Don Quixote or Batman to come along (is actually goes places and does things) so I can play sidekick for a while (at least until ego explodes and I laugh at the fun I am having playing undercover squirrel holding back my true identity from the masses of would-be screaming fans... oh, those lovable throngs in thongs... hey, we were at the beach, after all)...

sometimes you just have to have experienced some of my history with me to truly get all of the subtle nuances between the lines, but that's all the better for my current disguise as innocuous internet babbler, ya know?... startling new discoveries are still being made every day and all you have to do to make one of you own is ask yourself, do you feel lucky?... well, do ya?...

and show up...

but call first so I know you're in town and want to yank my chain (I'm playing the role of the sidekick these days, remember?... though I believe now more than ever that I could easily find motivation to swing back into the lead role for the right Dulcenea or Catwoman or girl of my dreams, for that matter... and you don't have to look like hairplay, though I am pretty sure that you will have to melt libido at first glance to inspire me to leave the happy sidekick role)...

of course I know that a look of sheer innocence does not infer that there are not ulterior motives, even harmful intentions (or at least careless and selfish motives), behind beautiful wide-eyed wonderful eyes... I've been fooled and screwed in many ways, good and bad and ugly, by more than a few pretty faces, after all... and perhaps that was the final impetus that inspired me to actually achieve a modicum of comfort in the sidekick role that I am now so eager to try out... you don't have to be a rich person to apply for this gig, in case you wondered, but you are required to be comfortable and highly effective as a senior partner in a pair of masked marauders rising to any occasion from windmills to boo-boos to cats stuck in trees to damsels in distress... it is really not a newbie role, though that qualification does not necessarily apply to the girl of my dreams...

don't you wish your life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show too?...

well ok then... would you believe I have only slept 3.5 hours in the past three days?... oh yeah?... why?... come on, maybe the question wasn't rhetorical... maybe I really do want you, yes you especially to answer me this time... you'll never know if you do not do it... you may always wonder if I was truly looking directly at you through my magic mirror... yes you, sitting there looking at this screen right now... don't look around... are you feeling me in your mind?... are you getting me under your skin?... deep in the heart of you?... so deep in there that I am feeling a part of you?...

what am I, chopped liver?... am I to be bandied about like candy in a pinball machine of dreams?... am I to be condemned to elitism and idyllic stature merely based on my extremely good taste and sheer brilliance (before you even gaze upon my heart-melting good looks and drop-dead gorgeous charisma)?... how unfair could life be, after all, no one has truly heard me sing yet... and until my abdominal muscles get back from the cleaners, nobody actually can... you don't really want me to pass myself off as a reasonable facsimile of myself, do you?...

well, if you really want that much trust, you'll just have to look me in the eye and take (or rather give) the time to earn it... I mean, that is how it works, no less, right?... left is never wrong merely because it is the opposite of right, no matter what some people say... so remember that the layers of passion and profundity amidst this word play we call a diary behind the candoor are only as deep, for you, as you dare submerge yourself... remaining faculties are asked to park in the auxiliary lot and walk up to the stand-by window...

provocation does not guarantee a response... in fact, nothing does, except maybe the libido-melt... and the heart melt, for that matter... a mind-melt is also a relatively sure bet for personal accolades from the master, even if it is disguised as innocuous babble and loosely injected into a stream of consciousness carefully designed with you in mind so as to at once draw you inside and keep you off balance until you recognize your own great worth to the cause... and then, fall forward or spring back, as you wish...

what if every word was an entry of it's own and we flashed through pages like flash cards designed to blend the words into your stream of consciousness by enabling your visual cortex to experience the play of literary film?...

are you visualizing?...

and would you be sitting there on the edge of your seat as I do so often as these massive missives unfold and evolve, wondering what it's really all about and when will it ever come to a point if there is even a point to come to?...

how many fingers am I holding up?...

and you?...

so what we have here is a reference to Cool Hand Luke, for those of you interested in imagining you understand everything and speaking of Steve McQueen's great escape, is Paul Newman still alive?... I could swear I saw his name leading the flashed credits of in an upcoming animated feature... but just remember, if you think you get the point, you've probably missed it...

it's ok if you don't have time to click on all the links, you'll only miss out on the scattered references and influences and possibly greater understanding of where the mind was wandering at the time, but when I center a rhyme it means I didn't not include the entire rhyme here because this isn't actually a rhyming place at that and while the message in the rhyme may be integral to the theme of the entry (or just an exclamatory side note, but still a point and we've got so few points, after all), it is often, perhaps usually, the an artist's rendering of the deeper meaning beneath what might be found between the lines should anything be found at all... but then, you already know this and that would be telling the telling, now wouldn't it?)...

I sure didn't this weekend and as you know well, my weekday time is spent here in this online world less and less (in spite of the recent attraction to chatting over at blogMad, huh?)... and then there's baseball season starting and Rasputin is calling about lineup information and I've got my 24 date with Precious and above all else, Monday is for sleeping (since I don't do any of that sort of thing on the weekend)...

but it was refreshing and fun to wander back to the beach again, even if it was just for dinner... and we did the Kennedy Space Center, a place I had not been in many years... and I once again remind myself most tangibly that I could do with an expansion of social life and activities offline...

but just when did this entry return to clarity, anyway?...

this was actually supposed to be Monday's entry, so let's just pretend it is and we'll fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle of the life in black and white some other time when we have the time to sit and catch up on our lifetimes... I wonder how much you've forgotten about yours... and how much of that did you actually want to forget and how much was just pushed to the back of your mind by the routines of daily life... do you have the same dreams you had when you were sixteen?... or when you were four?...

I do...

my life has been a tapestry of fairy tales and lies... a never ending melody of wonder and surprise... and each thread is a story woven deeply through my mind... more colors than a rainbow fantasy visions can find... yes, I borrow from another again as I do so often and only randomly mention it... the words have been changed to protect her innocence, and mine... or perhaps it's just my way of playing (perhaps?), don't you know... if I ever formally published all this, the bibliographies and references would fill volumes all their own... and I wonder if that would ever be fun for anyone outside of me...

by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong, you know?... half a million strong, now that's a lot of stardust... ancient... innocent... getting back to the garden... this is my way, my garden of words where I come to play, it may be absurd to you but it's my way, my thing, my cause, and when I am gone it will be here to tell you I was...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)