Tag: words

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Uncategorized Writings

The Way of the Double Saint

What is a double saint? Is it someone who performs twice as many good deeds as a regular saint?

No. The problem with regular saints is they push themselves too hard. To serve. To be good. They strive. And so pressure builds up inside. One day they blow and to prison they go. This is what we call the saint paradox.

The double saint seeks to avoid this paradox by striving less, but also being less at the same time. When you are nothing, you don’t annoy people as much. Then it takes fewer good deeds to repay them for tolerating your existence.

In this post I will assume you want to become a double saint to get along better with a man. If not, adjust accordingly.

Here is the path of the double-saint.

  1. In all things think vapor. You are no longer a person. You are a vapor. Always ask yourself “What would a vapor do in this situation?”
  2. Speak less or not at all. A vapor listens and absorbs.
  3. If you do speak, make it short, light and pleasing. Even praise should not be heavy handed. Coming on strong- even in a positive sense- requires the other person to be aware of your presence, which is taxing to their mind. Just one dandelion puff of uplifting words will do the trick.
  4. Never question, criticize, disagree or weigh in on any subject unless asked. Why would a vapor do this? If you are in a car with a man who is driving off a cliff, you go off the cliff too. Wordlessly. You are a vapor. You will be fine.
  5. Do nice things for the man. However do not strain yourself doing nice things or you will reach the saint’s paradox. Do nice things you enjoy doing, so that you don’t need him to notice or appreciate them. Needing to be appreciated would be a tax. The double saint strives to be completely untaxing and always relaxing.
  6. Remove standards & expectations. A double saint must not only avoid putting pressure on the man, she must remain unpressurized herself. Do not hold him to any standards and if this makes it difficult to uphold standards yourself then let them blow away.

    Do not become saintly by performing a mega house cleaning. Become double saintly by not caring. Once again this prevents the build up of emotional pressure that will eventually cause you to express yourself.

    7. Be pleased by pleasing yourself. If men see you are pleased, they will take credit for it and be happy. If you tell them how to please you they will feel bossed. So learn how to please yourself in all ways while crediting your happiness to him.

    8. Release objective reality. The double saint must never expect another person’s words to align with objective reality. Do not feel tangled up when words are false, nonsensical, self-contradictory etc. Just hear words as clouds of modern poetry beholden to neither rhyme nor reason. What is a word, but a tiny bird that a cloud once thought they might have heard? In this way you float gently through skies of lies without being tangled in a single knot.


    Are you getting the idea? The saint strives, feels like the man isn’t holding up his side of the bargain & gets frustrated. She expresses this & ends up in the hospital. The double saint doesn’t care what the man does. She is able to not care by remaining in a non-pressurized state. She is able to be non-pressurized by removing expectations & activities that pressurize her.

    Is a double-saint the same as a slacker? Not at all. To remain a vapor requires great discipline. She twas loose as a goose when they slipped on the noose. She received all abuse while remaining diffuse. Tho she lacks the vigor of the regular saint & is unlikely to slay dragons, her strength lies in equanimity. She knows her soul is immortal and therefore no problem will be the end of her.

    And what does the double saint do when treated unjustly? What if she is yelled at, blamed or punished for a crime she didn’t commit? How can she avoid that natural emotion of anger or the desire to stand up for herself which she must avoid at all cost? What if she is stolen from, betrayed, raped and beaten, how does she retain her vaporous personality even then?

    This is a tough one and I don’t know the answer. Just recognize that no one can be perfectly saintly, much less double-saintly. Try stress gummies, vallium and- in cases of verbal attack- attempt to discreetly cover your ears. If this is impossible, write down the words and turn them into a rhyme.

    Why are you so dumb, you stupid cunt?
    When in yonder field the falcons doth hunt?

    Feel better now?
Categories
Charleston, West Virginia My Life Story Writings

help*

(This post was written March 1st 2023 but lost due to server problems then recovered thanks to way back machine.)

I don’t know what to do. I am so stressed out. I am trapped in a crevice with nowhere to go and I can’t endure the crevice any longer. I can’t talk about the crevice either because there is an upcoming trial in which I am a witness. I could write in my journal or talk to the nice shrink the government gave me but at the end of the day telling her my thoughts and feelings doesn’t change anything. I already know what I think and feel. I just don’t know what to do or how to endure. I don’t see any practical solutions. And I’m too anxious to pray cause when you are anxious and try to send out your thoughts they just spiral back down onto you. And to be real about it, it was my faith in God that got me into this trouble in the first place. So I don’t know what to do. If I stay in my current position, I will lose my mind. Imagine if every time you spoke the people around you started shrieking like chickens then swirled around in circles collapsing on the floor where they shook and screamed “Why did you do this to me? Why did you do this to me?” over and over. And you don’t know what you’ve done. How long can a person live like that and not go insane? I feel like I’m trapped in the Queen of Heart’s court in Wonderland. And I can’t even talk about it. Except vaguely like this.

No matter what I do I am always bad. There is always very complicated reasoning as to why I have done something wrong. So you just start recessing more and more. But no matter how recessed you become it doesn’t matter. Now your whispers count as screams and one wrong word makes you a murderer. So you try harder. You try different things. But every step you take is just one more crime you’re guilty of.

Somehow I ended up at a Wikipedia page about psychological manipulation and it had a list of traits that the recipients of manipulation generally share. It was like reading an exact description of my personality.

Naïveté or immaturityPeople who find it too hard to accept the idea that some people are cunning, devious and ruthless or are “in denial” if they are being taken advantage of.[17]
Over-agreeablenessPeople who are too willing to give another the benefit of the doubt and see their side of things.[17]
Low self-esteemPeople who struggle with self-doubting, lacking in confidence and assertiveness, and who are likely to go on the defensive too easily.[17]
Over-intellectualizationPeople who try too hard to understand and believe others have some understandable reason to be manipulative.[17]
Emotional dependencyPeople who have a submissive or dependent personality. The more emotionally dependent a person is, the more vulnerable they are to being exploited and manipulated.[17]

I’ve always had the hardest time accepting that someone could truly be lying or acting in a devious manner. I don’t know why. And if I am close to people I tend to believe anything they say without question. Even if I know for an absolute fact that it is untrue, something in me still believes. I’ve always struggled to have confidence in my own perceptions, instead I let other’s words override them. I will bend my mind into a pretzel trying to make sense of what people say, no matter how self-contradictory or flying in the face of reality their words may be, and I have always been emotionally & physically dependent on others to a humiliating degree.

So I guess this is a chance for me to learn how to trust in my own perceptions. Do I believe the person who says I am hurting them when I’m pretty sure I’m not or who says I am screaming when I’m pretty sure my voice is room temperature? Objectively I know what is true, I just don’t know how to have faith in my own mind. My faith automatically goes to believing what I am told. Unless you have this problem yourself, I fear it won’t make much sense.

Another big problem is my need to be good, which is used like a cattle prod to control me and force me into situations of increasing powerlessness. If you assert yourself, you are bad. You can get screamed at, but if you scream back you are bad. You must treat other people’s emotions like Golden Kings to be worshiped while ignoring your own or you are bad. You must swallow the words you are fed no matter how little sense they make or you are bad. You must accept that you are bad or you are bad. You must accept that other people weren’t hurting you, you were hurting them, or you are bad. You must believe what you are told or you are bad. Because if you don’t accept the words that are thrown at you you will see those around you crumple on the floor shrieking “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!!!! LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!!!” Now you can see how bad you are with your own eyes.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to hold my mind together. When it gets bad I can hardly sing, clean or function at all. I can rarely think or plan. The thing that helps is complete detachment. But once again, this triggers my issues with being”bad” because it is bad not to care. You are supposed to care about other people.

And I WANT to care. It’s just that it becomes the rope that is used to strangle me.



* I just realized that titling this help sounds bad, like I am playing the victim. Anyway, don’t worry I will think of something.

** I was just walking and panicking cause my arms have started to shake probably due to nerves because I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel…. it feels like the road leads off a cliff. And having the shakes is making it harder to perform basic tasks causing me to panic even more. Anyway, just when I was about to break down I saw this on the corner of a sidewalk.

It felt like a sign, because I see teddy bears as being one form that angels take. It’s like no matter how alone you feel there are always more beings watching and ready to help you than you could ever realize.

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire

No More Tears

Try, try open your eyes, but its my head- no… where am I ?
days, months, seconds, years, I told myself no more tears.

I always use the words that drive him away
sometimes I don’t know what I mean to say I
try to clear my head, slipping like sand…
I can’t lose one more man.

First you’ll go cold and then you’ll open the door
but could you stay and please don’t leave?
You run around and still I’m chasing you down
as though there’s something that I need.

I know I drove you away I turned you cold
cause I was talking all of the time.
Trying to hold too many things in my head
to make me seem right inside the mind.

Try, try, I won’t cry, just look into the air and you will
find something inside your mind to distract you from what you feel.

I know that I was wrong chasing him round
that’s why his shoulders turn away from me now.
Try to search my mind to find a way
but words and words are all I say

hello blanket over me, pull me down I can’t breath
hello room, hello pink, pull me down I can’t think

First he’ll go cold and then he’ll open the door
because he hates me on my knees.
I’ll grab his arm again oh please understand
sometimes I don’t know what I mean!

I’ll grab his arm again oh please understand
I think its broken in my mind!
But he goes crazy on me when I beg and then
I’m not supposed to cry.

Try, try open your eyes, but its my head- no… where am I ?
Days, months, seconds, years, I told myself no more tears.

No More TearsDownload

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia men Writings

dry words, testicles, men & things which are hard to relate to

Recently I have been feeling it is pointless to say anything in dry words (words with no music) because you can never really say what you mean and if you DID say what you meant it would be inappropriate and everyone would hate you. Consider the lyrics of any song and imagine speaking them to a person. Your life would be over instantly. But somehow when words & music combine it becomes okay to say what you really feel.

Still there is a practical limit to how many songs I am able to write so this forces me to use dry words to fill in the gap. In order to record a song, I must ask my husband has to disassemble the microphone from his computer & attach it to a different device so I can use it. Then, I have to get him to move the song from this device & put it into his computer. Then I must ask him to let me sit at his computer for a few minutes to do the sound. So basically I must make three requests of James & separate him three times from his computer in order to record one song. Each request must be carefully timed to avoid conflict. His schedule is quite odd and windows of opportunity are infrequent. Sometimes it takes days or even weeks for me to get up the nerve to ask him. If I could just write songs & post them directly it would be much easier & I would hardly need dry words at all.

There is just something about musicless words that always ends up feeling pretentious. They are so lofty & detached. I always end up getting this weird Butler feeling, as though I am impersonating Oprah. The meaning of what you are trying to say gets warped by the dryness of words and you end up seeming like an asshole.

Plus, so many social rules apply to dry words that do not apply to music. You can write a song called “Please Help Me!” and that is totally cool, but to say it in words would make you a pariah. You can express feelings, needs & desires in music when expressing them in words would make you seem like a narcissist. You just have to be very careful how you use dry words. You must never reveal to much & always follow the rules. There is really no point.

*****

Perhaps though it is the case that dry words belong to the world of men. I have really been trying to understand men these past few years, but I’m not sure I have made much progress except to realize that there is something very, very strange about them. I don’t think anyone really accounts for how differently their brains work & this is the cause of much conflict. Here is the small amount of info I have gleaned so far…

  1. They are more attuned to survival than women. Their testicles seem to be two extra brains which feed them info related to survival. It is possible that their testicles may be two separate beings altogether who feed information to their host in exchange for warmth, food and shelter.
  2. They are more attuned to status, rank, respect, & prestige than women, although they will not admit this. Hence why they believe women seek out men of high status, something which, in my opinion, is fairly uncommon for women for whom love is the ultimate attainment of life and not a means to an end.
  3. They are also very attached to their dicks & sexuality… somehow this ties into their sense of self & power at a core level.
  4. They think in blocks, which makes it easy for them to work with certain types of info but more challenging to work with others. They don’t seem, for example, to have the same access to feelings and inner states that women do.
  5. They are less trusting. Women are more geared towards dependency & caretaking while men seem geared towards independence & battle. If you ask a woman how she is feeling, she is likely to see your interest as a welcome sign of concern. A man may view this same question as a potential trap and try to choose his words carefully.

    The end result of this is that if you treat a man the way you yourself would like to be treated, he may see you as a foreign invader. In general it seems that maybe women like to be probed, while men do not.

    ***

When I was a kid my friends were mostly female. We would do creative things together. Then at some point men began to seem more interesting. But still there is a constant friction which feels like an unbridgeable gulf. Your actions are viewed through a lens of suspicion. Gestures intended to heal are batted down defensively. Words are translated through some mysterious lens leaving you with no idea of what you are supposed to have said. The culture tells you again and again that talking things out is the solution even when talk itself seems to cause all the problems.

What is the answer? If a man reads this, will he believe I have insulted men? I hope not, but based on my experience, this seems likely. Perhaps when dealing with men you must stick to facts and figures or be prepared to pay the ultimate price.

***

What if men interpret words in a more solid manner- as pronouncements on the official nature of objective reality- whereas females interpret words more as fluid & subjective expressions of feeling states?

For example, “Men are dumb” could mean “I am trying to establish a permanent belief in the group mind that men are intellectually inferior. Submit to my view, insects!” Or it could mean, “I am upset because I just had a bad experience. I wish someone cared.” Females tend speak & interpret language more through the second lens but I’m not sure men always get that. The language women use to bond, express emotion & seek caring seems to trip off wires in men which relate to power, domination & control.

Luckily, songs are automatically interpreted through this female lens- as expressions of mutable subjective states. Thus we give them a wide berth. Sometimes I wish men would give this same berth to women. To see them as songs rather than barbarian hordes. Then men wouldn’t want to be with elevator women anymore than they want to listen to elevator music.

Categories
Brooklyn Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire

Something bout Words

 

Nude woman with wavy hair in fur coat by pool.I just found this song the other day. I don’t really remember writing it, and I’m not sure I ever sung it. Like so many of the songs I wrote in the past, it now seems shockingly crude to me, although ten years ago, I would have felt differently. Words that seemed wholesome and commonplace when I was married to Hugh Heffner, now stand out like gigantic monsters when I’m married to Ned Flanders.

Still, I like it, and don’t think it’s really crude, as long as you’re not a Jehovah’s Witness. I don’t think words themselves really can be crude. To me, words are hollow containers, packed with meaning by the speaker and also the listener.

In the south, people always pack their cruelest messages inside the sweetest words, share affection through teasing, and give praise in a way that sounds like an insult (this allows the praise to be accepted without the receiver feeling like a narcissist.)  Therefore, it is hard for me to judge a word by it’s surface meaning.

That is why I feel disturbed by some of the hate speech controversies that have been sweeping the nation recently (Donald Sterling, Don Jones, Robert Copeland, Maurice Price etc.) I feel it would be a horrible mistake to set a precedent of punishing people for their words. If we really want to make the world a safer place, we have to look beneath the surface of things and resist knee-jerk reactions to predictable provocations.

But it would never do us any good to suppress people’s words.

For example, if someone makes racist comments because they are a racist, at least their words are letting us know where they stand so we can react accordingly. If a man makes sexist comments, that could be a useful clue that you don’t want to marry him. Unfortunately, the most dangerous predators probably don’t go around saying dumb things. But when someone does reveal their hand, we can be grateful for the info.

Other times, offensive words may be a cry for help. They may express an immature person’s need for love and attention, or a desire to feel powerful. They may be the ramblings of a mind that has come unhinged and is spouting notions it heard in the past. They may be the bilous expressions of a pain and agony that has become unbearable. In these cases, I feel we can forgive people for their clumsy attempts to get their needs met, and respond to the underlying message, just as we would with a child who is misbehaving to win affection.

One way or another, words are messengers, and as the saying goes, you never kill the messenger!

Download MP3: Something bout Words