Lawrence R. Spencer's Blog, page 14

64 BOOKS I HEARD LAST YEAR

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I stopped watching television.  I refuse to be “dumbed down” by the “vast wasteland” of insidious drivel produced by the “mind-control media”.  I prefer to spend my time with great writers.  Like most writers I read a lot of books.  In recent years I have become a huge fan of audio books! I listen to at least one book each week on my iPhone.

Recorded books are read to you, sometimes by the authors themselves, such as Stephen King or Neil Gaiman, while you do the routine hands-free activities of daily living: driving, grocery shopping, riding a bicycle, jogging, walking, cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, eating and pooping.

There are thousands of recorded books available.  You can start by downloading a FREE AUDIO BOOK from Audible.com.

This is a list of 64 Audio books I personally enjoyed hearing during the last year (many for the 2nd or 3rd time):

The Riverboat Series (5 books) by Philip Jose Farmer

Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Series of 6 books, including “And Another Thing”) by Douglas Adams

The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

The Long Lost Tea Time of The Soul by Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

Ecco Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche

Heresy by S.J. Parris

Prophecy S.J. Parris

Sacrilege S.J. Parris

Touch by Clair North

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Clair North

Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc J. Seifer

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla

The Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama

Our Occulted History by Jim Marrs

Ubik by Phillip K. Dick

The Hair Potter Series (7 books) by J.K. Rowling

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Domain Expeditionary Rescue Mission by Lawrence R. Spencer

Alien Interview by Matilda MacElroy

Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez

Daemon by Daniel Suarez

Influx by Daniel Suarez

Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan

Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan

The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean

Pirates and the Man who brought them down by Colin Woodard

Far Journeys by Robert Monroe

Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell

Off to Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer

Spell and High Water by Scott Meyer

Seize The Night by Dean Koontz

Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz

Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

The John Carter Trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Boo, by Neil Gaiman

Good Omens by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman

Dune (Series of 7 books) by Frank Herbert

 

DRIVING FOR MY SOUL

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About 40 years ago I bought a semi-truck and hit the roads of America hauling furniture as an contract trucker for Mayflower Van Lines.  I spent 2 years of my life running back and forth, up and down the freeways, byways and back roads of the U.S. of A — about 200,00 miles of driving.  I wanted to escape the city life of LA and years of reading spreadsheets all day as a corporate CFO.  There isn’t any other experience quite like driving 10 hours a day across the highways of America.  I worked all day loading my van with a house full of shit people wanted to take with them in search of another life. I was physically exhausted, but mentally revived.  I got into the best shape of my life:  160 lbs. of rock-hard muscle that made women want me more than I wanted them, even after being alone for 3 months between a visits with my (ex)wife.

There isn’t any way to see a country and meet it’s people unless you go there in person, seeing; listening, eating truck stop food, sleeping in cheap-ass hotels and spending five thousand hours in the cab of a truck all by yourself.  A trip across Texas take 3 days — north, south, east or west. No matter where to go in Texas, there’s more of it, and there’s almost always nothing there except more of nothing.  Scrub brush. A few cows. Dirt and dry grass.  Ironically, my current wife is from Texas – born and raised.  She’s the love of my life.  I’ve never known a more nobel person or a kinder soul.

The western US is the embodiment of desolate beauty.  The old Route 66 across Arizona and New Mexico to Chicago has an aura all it’s own: you can’t help feeling like there are alien space craft hidden in the Mesas whenever you go there.  Colorado is a planet all it’s own. Cresting the top of Eagle’s Pass for the first time scared the shit out of me when I saw how steep to decline was on the other side!  Air brakes have a limit and so did my courage.  Every region, every state is possessed by the beings that congregate there.  There is a spiritual presence of the people who share the reality of the South. The Civil War never ended for them.  The Northeast is like one big Courier & Ives post card: the crimson and gold hues of the trees in New Hampshire and Maine are a magnificent reflection of the Face of God!

I finally left the road behind after two nights sleeping in the single-bed bunk of my cab in the parking lot at a truck stop in Kansas City, MO in a blizzard, at Christmas time: it was 20 degrees below zero and the wind-chill made it twice as cold!  What a god-forsaken shit hole!  The tires of my truck were frozen solid to the ground with no hope of a load to get me out of town!  I called my dispatcher in Indiana and said, “Honey, fuck this!  I’m coming in.”

It turned in my truck, collected my final check and drove a “drive-away” car to Florida — anywhere to get out of the fucking frozen tundra of the Mid-West! I’ve been to Nashville and Milwaukee since then and finally learned my lesson: Never, Ever Go Back East In Winter Time!  Hell was never as cold as Wisconsin in the dead-winter of February!  Since then I’ve stayed on the Golden Shores of California.  Thank the Gods for sunshine!

Retrospect  (the rear-view mirror of 20/20 hindsight is your reward in old age ) reveals that I wasn’t your average truck driver.  I spent all those isolated hours driving 60 miles an hour, 10- hours a day, toward the horizon listening to cassette tapes of classic literature and philosophy.  I completed the education I never got in college on the asphalt highways of America.  You can listen to a very big pile of books in two years if that’s all you do all day long, every day, 10 hours a day, seven days a week.

Many years later I became a writer. My first book was ‘THE OZ FACTORS’.  My editor was Carol South, my wife’s best friend.  She died — young and painfully — of breast cancer.  We are blessed to have received the benefit of her tenacious intellect, aesthetic sense and technical ability.

Those two years I wasted on the road were more valuable to me than a 55-foot tractor-trailer full of gold.  It was there and then, in a hundred towns across 10,000 miles, that I conquered the physical universe on my own, mile by mile, load by load.  There are few things more gratifying than moving a baby-grand piano up a flight of stairs all alone.  I learned that it wasn’t my muscles or my body that made it move — it was my soul: the essence of myself deciding to make it go.  What else is there to know?

This song and video remind me of my days on the road.  It wouldn’t do it again, but I wouldn’t trade the lessons I learned for anything. — (Lawrence R. Spencer. 2012)

POPULATION PIE

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SHADOWS AND LIGHT

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Enjoy some of the very best jazz music of the past century.  Shadows and Light – with Joni Mitchell – electric guitar, vocals, Pat Metheny – lead guitar, Michael Brecker – saxophone and Lyle Mays – keyboards, The Persuasions – vocal backup.  Recorded at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in September 1979 on the Mingus tour.  Video includes classic “camp” clips from James Dean films, and other vintage footage.

Shadows and Light  — lyrics by Joni Mitchell

Every picture has its shadows
And it has some source of light
Blindness blindness and sight
The perils of benefactors
The blessings of parasites
Blindness blindness and sight
Threatened by all things
Devil of cruelty
Drawn to all things
Devil of delight
Mythical devil of the ever-present laws
Governing blindness blindness and sight

Suntans in reservation dining rooms
Pale miners in their lantern rays
Night night and day
Hostage smile on presidents
Freedom scribbled in the subway
It’s like night night and day
Threatened by all things
God of cruelty
Drawn to all things
God of delight
Mythical god of the everlasting laws
Governing day day and night

Critics of all expression
Judges in black and white
Saying it’s wrong saying it’s right
Compelled by prescribed standards
Or some ideals we fight
For wrong wrong and right
Threatened by all things
Man of cruelty-mark of Cain
Drawn to all things
Man of delight-born again born again
Man of the laws the ever-broken laws
Governing wrong wrong and right
Governing wrong wrong and right
Wrong and right

PATHLESS LAND

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“Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.”

___________________________

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895/1896 – February 17, 1986) was an Indian speaker and writer on philosophical and spiritual subjects. In his early life he was groomed to be the new World Teacher but later rejected this mantle and disbanded the organization behind it. His subject matter included psychological revolution, the nature of mind, meditation, inquiry, human relationships, and bringing about radical change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.

BIRTH AND DEATH

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Titus Lucretius Carus ( c. 99 – c. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem De rerum natura, a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into English as On the Nature of Things. Lucretius has been credited with originating the concept of the three-age system that was formalized in 1836.

SCIENCE OF THE SECRET

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A marvelous video about the origins of the primordial “law of attraction” which appeared in popular “new age” western literature in 1906 with the book titled “Law of Attraction in the Thought World“, written by William Walker Atkinson. (CLICK TO READ IT ON-LINE)  This video was produced in 2008 by my friend Venese McNeill, with Chance Gardner and others, reveals the ancient origins and premise of this spiritual phenomena.

BLEEP! BLEEP!

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The Big Bleep is the story of hard-boiled, Harley riding detective Sam Shovel, digging up the truth on a comedic, existential journey of self-realization. It digs deep into the opinions of plants and trees to explore a universe where a fictional characters become self-aware — just like in real life! And, it’s the only book that tells the truth about what REALLY happened to the Earth dinosaurs, and where Superheros go when they retire.

THE WAY

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“The river of human history is clogged and fouled with the putrid refuse of unworkable solutions to the mysteries and problems of life: war, ruined civilizations, insanity, mental anguish, drugs, despair, murder, disease, criminality and starvation. We are the victims of our individual and collective inability to find workable solutions to these unwanted conditions. Our sciences, religion, government and education systems, which should be held responsible, have failed to resolve these basic questions of our existence. As proof, our humanity has long since been exceeded by our ability to destroy life with nuclear and other weapons.

               Meanwhile, each of us, knowingly or unknowingly, search for a spiritual way home; a way home to the resolution of the primordial mysteries of our existence: Who are we? Where did we come from? What is our purpose? Each step along the road in our search is heavily influenced by the directions we have been given by those who have traveled before us. Our ancestors, friends, teachers, leaders, scientists, philosophers, writers and artists of the past and present serve as guides in our journey. They help to shape our ability to make our own decisions as to which is the wisest route to travel, or whether to travel at all. Yet, our trip on the road to personal truth may be slowed or quickened, straightened or perverted, by those we have considered to be our friends. Have we been led astray?

               Our thoughts and conjectures about life and universes are often based on assumptions, unproved theories, hearsay, rumors and misinformation. The actions we take in life may be based on ancient attitudes and archaic practices which are impractical or no longer applicable. Our view of the physical universe and of our own spiritual universes are spawned and nourished by a panoply of educational and environments influences. Lies replace the truth when a vested interest is being served.

               Our decision making processes, the road we choose to follow, is a sort of “logic”. The solutions we use to resolve the problems and mysteries of our lives will be workable or unworkable, depending on the workability of our “logic”.

               Yet, in the end, the decisions we make, individually and collectively, will influence the road taken by future Man. Our own lives, the duration or extinction of the human race and all life forms on Earth depend on the decisions we make today.

               In the midst of this constant decision making process, modern Western civilization is confronted with an unprecedented, uncontrolled explosion of technological innovation, unseen in recorded history. “Reality” is regulated by vested interests who seek personal gain to the detriment of the greater good. Science has become the soulless and impersonal religion of the 21st Century. Our planetary environment is at risk of irreversible damage, bordering on the annihilation of every living creature. Psychiatric drugs and an unseen one-world government are invading our lives like the flying monkeys in the Land of Oz. Encounters of a Third Kind have replaced the gods of mythology with a more tangible awareness that we may not be alone in this universe. New Age archaeology is rediscovering our past and redefining the paradigms of our history with shock waves of revelations that the Theory of Evolution is archaic and unworkable.

               “The Oz Factors” analyzes the subject of Western Logic: How was it created? What are its parts? How does it work or fail to work? How does it effect our lives?

               Each of twelve Oz Factors are defined as “A COMMON DENOMINATOR OF WESTERN LOGIC WHICH PREVENTS OBSERVATION, UNDERSTANDING, AND THE ATTAINMENT OF A WORKABLE SOLUTION” to problems of human origin and existence. How these factors influence our history, science, philosophy, our lives and our future is clearly demonstrated, offering a wide variety of new theories as possible alternative routes to the traditional directions we have followed in the past.

               The story of “The Wizard of Oz” is used as an analogy through which the reader can more easily understand unfamiliar subjects, in much the same way that Chemistry, for example, can be more easily understood when compared to the familiar subject of cooking; i.e. mixing chemicals in a laboratory is similar to mixing ingredients in a kitchen. The material covered in this book provides examples of incidents which shape our viewpoint of the physical universe and which impinge upon our own personal universes.

               “The Oz Factors” offers a simple, yet comprehensive method through which anyone can discover for themselves workable solutions to problems which are considered to be “mysteries” in Western science and philosophy. Discover what is true for you, without religious or academic dogma. Join me in our mutual search for solutions to the primordial questions of existence. May you find a simple and useful road map in “The Oz Factors”. 

Lawrence R. Spencer, The Forward to THE OZ FACTORS

CHANNELING VISIONS OF JOHANNA

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As long as I’m having a Dylan Concert, let’s Channel some “Visions Of Johanna”.  Visions are a spiritual adventure, my friends. Dream on, dream on….

LYRICS:
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet ?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handfull of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing really nothing to turn of
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watcman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise she’s all right she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
Oh, how can I explain ?
It’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn.

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.

The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Saying, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man ”

As she, herself prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.