Rob Krabbe's Blog: From a Krabbe Desk, page 2

The Fading Silence - New Novel

The Jake Collins Band and the Fading Silence

Hey folks, my new speculative fiction/novel is available in Kindle format here and Print versions (paperback or hardcover), as well as other eBook formats at The Krabbe Web Site.

Thank you for grabbing a copy and for any reviews you feel moved to offer both here and on Amazon!

Blessings,
Rob Krabbe

A Clean Slate

What a year.  The good, the bad, the ugly, all represented.  I thought about a “look back” at 2012 today in my post, but y’all lived through it too, and isn’t New Year’s Eve about anticipating a fresh start?

Deep cleansing breath, and cleansing of the pallet.  It’s always good to learn from our past, and yet for a moment, let’s just look forward.  Some things we may be wishing for seem nearly impossible, but maybe with a good do-over and a merciful God we could see some really cool things happen in 2013.

So, with that in mind, I wish you all a year of incredible blessings, success and God’s joy and peace.

Happy 2013 everyone!

Rob

 

It's Just So.

© 2012 from Today's Journal by Rob Krabbe

I know you don't understand
about the questions, the choices;
to listen or not listen to the voices, but
why is death so much to you really?

Here, slowly . . . touch me,
run your fingers across me;
bring me to new life,
from this rancid death.

Be selfless, whole and in sacrifice, free.

In a single moment of love making,
we become perfect.

The promise, without the premise.

Intimacy, no distance; romance it, roll it around between your fingers.
Dress it up high, and sensual like an art-house nude.

The best things are not so wise in the long haul.

Nothing is quite as momentary as a good hard erection.
No answer as perfect as the last breath.

I'll spell it out for you:
I don't want to pull the trigger.

I just need desperately,
to truly live,
and to do that,
I need to believe
that I can die.

Into to the Digital Revolution & Publishing

Some of the positive aspects of new digital technologies include greater interconnectedness, easier communication, and the exposure of information to the masses in a faster and easier way than in previous technologies.  Technology has also made it much easier for the indie author, artist or musician to pursue a career in a creative art form.  Traditional publishing, which was for the unpublished author notoriously difficult to navigate, is no longer the only outlet, . Now authors are free to publish as they wish, and the public has access to infin

itely more material.  This has positive and negative consequences, of course.  Some argue that the ease with which authors and other creative artists can publish and disseminate their work means that the quality of submissions can be questionable. The traditional publishing techniques had acted as a filter to some degree in the past, however most people agree that the freedom of artists to publish and the public to read indie authors and listen to indie musicians, as well as appreciate indie artists in other media, is a great benefit, and outweighs other concerns.

The economic impact of the digital revolution on the larger business scene has been large as well. Without the World Wide Web (WWW), for example, globalization and outsourcing would not be nearly as viable as they are today. The digital revolution radically changed the way individuals and companies interact. Small regional companies were suddenly given access to much larger markets. Concepts such as on-demand services and manufacturing and rapidly dropping technology costs made possible innovations in all aspects of industry and everyday life.

In the next few articles I will detail some of the ways you can publish and also market your material, no matter the media.  Keep in mind that publishing is only a small step in an indie artist’s process. If no one sees your work it is hardly worth publishing it.  The key as in anything in life is marketing. There is even better news, however. Digital marketing is part of this digital revolution and has been opened up in the same manner that the arts themselves have been.   I will include several articles on digitally marketing your work.

Onward!

Rob

Indie Authors Stay Tuned

The digital revolution has opened up the market to Indie Authors like never before. I am going to do a blog series or place a new blog page for the purpose. I’ll keep you updated in the coming days. Indie authors need a place to discuss the marketing techniques that are working and not working, and resources for those who need them in terms of graphics, design help, printing and POD *(Print on demand) systems. It’s a new wild west out there, and we need to navigate it, to find the great opportunities in publishing that have come with the digital technologies. Check back!

Rob Krabbe’s New Novel — Available Now!

The
Jake Collins Band
and the Fading Silence

by Rob Krabbe

Jake Collins had worked his whole young life to get to that night. Rock and roll, the big times. The boys knew they had made it. Three number one hits, a sold out amphitheater concert in Tinley Park, Chicago, and a five album deal. The crowd was insane. The music was great. The energy was legendary. But, what happened next was even bigger. Life, as they knew it, was suddenly and irrevocably changed by powers they could never have imagined in a million years. Rock and roll, became life and death. The beginning of super-stardom, became the unexpected adventure of a lifetime, and the world they knew became the world that was never the same again.

Join Jake Collins, singer-songwriter, rock and roll star, and all around sexy guy; Ray, an old crazy librarian; Sa’li, a female Cherokee retro-warrior with a bad attitude; Drummer Dave, a optimistic drummer bordering on total madness; Mara, gorgeous young thief, with a talent for scavenging and making conversation; Big T, a bear of a mountain man bent on revenge and some great barbeque; Bradley, a seven foot tall, 450 pound government created experimental killing machine with a childlike sense of humor, and Garcia Garcia, an East LA want-to-be, urbane refugee and ticket scalper, who was also a drag queen on alternate Thursday nights, as one world ends and another begins, in this thrilling adventure story that brought them all together to survive, make a new life, and try to figure out who they are becoming if they live through the day to find out.

 

Direct From Noon At Night Publications and Rob Krabbe for signed copies.  Also available from Amazon and most on-line book sellers.

Go to http://www.krabbe.com and order your copy today!

Rick F.‘s review

Oct 29, 12

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Read from October 24 to 29, 2012

WHAT A MAGNIFICENT COMING OF AGE TALE- Rob Krabbe has created a true emotional experience for the reader, as one delves into the lives of a diverse group of people- brought together by extreme circumstances. This novel is far more than a simple character tale- it is a complex human drama- written in such a way as to grab the reader by the heart and brain and not let go.

Very Highly Recommended

AN OFFICIAL JAMES MASON COMMUNITY BOOKCLUB MUST READ

RICK FRIEDMAN

FOUNDER

THE JAMES MASON COMMUNITY BOOK CLUB

Jackson and the Rubber Stamp Kit

Part One, © 2012 by Rob Krabbe, Noon At Night Publications

He was old.  Everyone was old to me then, because I was seven years old, but Jackson looked like he was a hundred.  His face had an intricate road map.  It showed everywhere he’d been in his ninety plus years.  He was the one in my life, at the time when I was a young child, who noticed me. Great Grandma was mostly worried about being worried, and my parents were wrapped up in survival, work, day to day living, which seemed to me at the time to be the theme of most of the adults around me.  Children were seen and not heard in mid-west Illinois, in the sixties.  It was even better if they were not seen too.  For me, at elementary school age, everyone being busy gave me more freedom, of course, but sometimes a great deal of loneliness.

My brothers were fun, but they were young enough, they just wanted to play, and I couldn’t really talk to them, plus Lee had just been born and at that point all he did was eat and fill diapers, and as to playing, he wouldn’t be viable till he could at least run away from me.  Great Grandpa Jackson?  He was the real deal.  He didn’t have a job anymore.  He was old enough that he could do whatever he wanted, but not so old yet that people watched him carefully; that would come later in his life, in a sad season leading up to his eternity.  This particular day he was the all and all for me.  He told me stories of world war one, that I found out later he had not told anyone else.  He smiled a lot, but not the kind of smile that felt like it was because I was being stupid, but the kind of smile that felt happy, or even joyful, even though I was far too young at the time to know what that meant.

Jackson, which is what I will call Great Grandpa Jackson for now, because its shorter to type, and to read, was a happy old man who had an eventful but rich life life, not in money but in love and family.  He was a veteran of both world wars, was a head watchmaker for the Elgin watch company back in the day that mechanical watches were the best technology and an art-form.  He liked kids, when no adults liked kids, and even respected them as people.  Once he was retired, he loved life even more than before, loved making jokes, teasing his wife, so she would say “Ray Jackson!” And he just flat loved each and every day for whatever it brought.  He was an easy man to like being around.  I don’t know what he was like as a younger man, he was always old to me, but as an older man, he was the kind of happy that made a kid happy to be near him.

One day, when we had gone to visit great grandma and great grandpa Jackson, like any other time, we were going to have dinner, and take our turn being the ones that visited them.   They were both there smiling, just like always.  Just like any other time, grandma and mom went to get dinner going.  Grandma was nice, and yet always worried about everything, especially grandpa.  Like any other time, we went into the living room and sat down near the piano that later in life I would learn to write songs on.  The “boys,” doing what boys did in my family, waiting for the girls to get dinner.  See, in my family the men complained about how they couldn’t even boil water, and how the women were the only real masters of the kitchen.  It was cultural not disrespectful.  It was also just the way it was.  So that day while we were sitting talking about how glad we were to be mothered and my dad and grandpa married to such a wonderful cooks, Jackson smiling but not partaking in the talk about food or cooking, as usual, but then, he looked at me and said “Hey Robbie, I want to show you something.  Come with me to the basement.”  I tied not to be visibly prideful that he said this just for me.  I glanced over at my brother Greg, and Greg didn’t even notice but was playing with matchbox cars he had smuggled in. Still I felt good that only I was invited to go to his workshop in the basement, a special and magical place.  I’m sure I must have seemed like a cat that caught it’s first mouse.

The basement was down a narrow dark staircase.  Most houses in Illinois had a basement of some kind, because of the storms (another story or two for another time) with a sump-pump and most times in rural Illinois, a well pump that would make noise and scare the crap out of kids when it decided to pump water.  Water in or out.  Grandpa explained it like this, “the sump-pump was to keep us dry, and the well pump was to keep us wet.”  Of course the other uncontrollable noise was only seasonal.  The fiery demon.  The furnace was a model from 1937, and when it lit up it groaned and moaned because of the ghosts and bodies of all the unsuspecting children that had been burned up in it.  Of that I was convinced and no amount of mundane explanation from adults would have convinced me otherwise.  It was haunted.

Luckily this visit was during the long hot and humid summer which apparently vanquished the demons until the colder seasons, an environment they preferred for haunting.  Of course with my grandpa there that wily furnace was smart enough to sound only like a furnace.

“Did you see what your dad and your grandpa got me to keep me out of trouble?” Jackson laughed.

“No Grandpa what?”  He had my curiosity now.

“Well look.”  he said happily, and held a rubber stamp up for me to see.  ”They thought I needed a hobby.” he said with a twinkle in his eye.  ”I think they were right, I love making rubber stamps in the new rubber stamp furnace they got me, and I get to make a few dollars when I do.” He was genuinely happy. I liked it when Jackson was happy, and maybe that’s partly why I loved him so much, he was almost always happy, and almost always invited us to be too.

“I made you a stamp too, but it has to be our secret.” He said, unexpectedly, looking from side to side to make sure we were not followed. He reached into a drawer, and pulled out a different stamp wrapped up in a black cloth.  I knew it must be a big deal.  Almost all secrets, wrapped in a dark colored cloth were big, big secrets, like a murderers gun or, a pile of money from a bank job, even a seven year old knew that.  He continued to explain, “I know, that sometimes you like to say words that you aren’t supposed to say don’t you?”  He twinkled again, and looked around making sure we weren’t overheard. “And your dad and mom get mighty angry when you do that don’t they?”

“Yes grandpa.  I get in big trouble, I should never say those words, but I get angry.”  I was seven and had no clue where he was going with this line of questioning.  I only hoped I wasn’t in trouble, and that my confession was not being overheard.

“Well Robby, I know that, I’ve seen it.  Now open this stamp up and push it into the ink pad there on the table, and then stamp this piece of paper, and see what it says.  I know you read real well,  you will be able to read this for sure.” He smiled a sneaky smile.

I was completely confused, and yet excited.  Excitement comes easy for a seven year old.  I eagerly took the package and unrolled the stamp from its mysterious cover.  I thought to look at the stamp face and read it backwards, I was so interested to see what it said.  I opened the ink pad, and tapped the stamp into the felt pad to apply the ink.  He handed me the test paper, and I set it onto the work bench, and was about to stamp the paper.

“Now, Robby, slowly press it onto the paper and push on it real good to get a nice clear image on the paper.  People get so funny about slapping the stamp onto the paper and sometimes it doesn’t even make good contact.”

I pressed it nice and solid, and even for an extra moment.  The excitement was almost to much for me.    I pulled the stamp away and looked at my beautiful image.  The word I had stamped onto the paper with my new rubber stamp.  There staring me in the face, in wonderful bright blue ink, in nice clear letters, was a single word.  A wonderful word.  A word that could get a seven year old in a lot of trouble.   Jackson giggled.  I giggled. It was a bad word.

Not the worst word, certainly not the queen mother of all bad words, but for a seven year old in Illinois, in the sixties, in our family of soap-to-mouth-washer-punishments for bad words,  it was bad enough.  My grandpa has made me a stamp with the word “butt” on it!  Not “but” with one T, no sir, it was “butt” with two delightful Ts in it.  I laughed aloud and then quickly covered my mouth embarrassed.

“Oh don’t be embarrassed with me young whipper snapper, I know your mom and dad don’t like you to use bad words, but you and I know, that once in a while a man just has to use a bad word.  Right?  Well, this way, you can stamp it on something, and guess what?”

“What grandpa?” He was now the coolest grandpa in the whole world. Nothing could bring you closer to a seven year old’s heart than understanding the funniness of the word butt with two T’s, and he had called me a man, which really was a little funny but also felt really cool.

“Well the best part is, when you’re done stamping that on something, you can wash it off.  I got that ink pad full of water based ink!  Just remember, Robby, it’s our secret.”  He twinkled even bigger now, and smiled at me.  Then he did it.  What he always did when he wanted me to know we were sworn to secrecy.  He raised his eyebrows and wiggled his ears without even touching them with his hands! I tried to return the salute. I raised my eyebrows anyway, and when my ears would not budge, I used my fingers to move them in a return acceptance of our pact.  I was smiling so wide inside, I couldn’t have been happier if it turned out to be Christmas the next day unexpectedly.  I’m pretty sure that my face showed a smile too even though I was trying really hard to look secretive.  Jackson wrapped up the stamp, and the ink pad in the cloth, and handed it to me.

“Make sure you find a good secret hiding place for this ok Robby?”

I nodded, and touched my nose.  That was the signal he had told me to make when I couldn’t wiggle my ears.  He told me once that a man can only wiggle his ears when he gets old elephant ears, and boy did his ears look twice as big from then on.  I learned that a man’s ears grow even after he dies, in the grave, they continue to grow.  Well I believed that was the what he said anyway.  I found out years later I had probably misunderstood him.

I had the hardest time at dinner, keeping a straight face, and I guess Jackson saw my dilemma, because he waited until I was doing something silly, and he said, “Don’t you be a butt now.”  And then he winked at me, and we both laughed.

“Ray Jackson!” Great Grandma Jackson scolded, and gave him the look. I was able to burst out laughing even more, without giving away my secret, which I was sure at the time was the reason he had sacrificed himself on the field of battle and said a bad word to get himself in trouble, knowing that no one could blame a seven year old, or a five year old either for that matter, for laughing out loud at his saying the word “butt.”

I knew, secretly that my great grandpa Jackson, was the coolest man on the planet in all of history.

There never was an answer to the neighborhood mystery either, on our street, that next month.  Someone had stamped the word “butt” on fence posts, and rocks all over the street, and even in front of Stupid Billy the bully’s house.  It was scandalous, even when the adults tried to play it cool and not act like anything had happened.  Of course I didn’t put two and two together, and realize that the rain had probably washed away my artwork that very night.  In my mind I had private satisfaction that I had gotten even with that bully Billy, and not gotten into a real fight, which Jackson had always told me was the worst kind of foolishness.  ”Always better to be smarter than the bullies.” He had said.  I didn’t figure it out till years later that my parents had told Great Grandpa Jackson about the bully, and he had helped me, not return blow for blow, but feel ok about myself anyway, with that silly rubber stamp.

The older I got, the more I thought of my Great Grandpa Jackson. In the end of his life, Great grandma had to carry him from room to room, and he lost weight until he got down to below 8o pounds.   You know, even though he had health troubles, and forgot what he was, even after he forgot who he was, he still had that twinkle in his eye.  Even the last time I saw him.  I was convinced he still remembered me, even though he didn’t remember how to eat or anything.  Or at least he just loved kids, and even though I was no longer one, he still loved me.

 

 

 

A Lady Asked me How My Older Daughter is Doing; not Tess, Melissa my Wife.

by Rob Krabbe, © 2012

When did I become a post-mid?

Past middle age?   Well, according to the stats, there is a slim chance I’m not there yet, but who am I kidding, I’d have to live to be 104.  Middle age, and then the season just past it, I am indeed a “post-mid.”  That means, well I don’t know really.  See, candidly, I still laugh at body humor, and yet not anymore to the point of tears running down my fa—ok that’s not true, I laugh till I cry at really stupid things, and there’s nothing funnier to me than a good unexpected fart, and I hate to admit it, but if in the midst of any serious conversation you just blurt out the word “scrotum,” for no reason, I will lose it completely, while everyone else is offended.  If that ever happened at church, I would have a heart attack from laughing.  Other than that, I am more mature . . .

Maybe here is where the “mid” comes in; it’s no longer funny to me when someone is mean spirited.  When jokes come at the expense of other’s feelings, etc.  I don’t like seeing someone victimized at all, even in the movies, well maybe even especially in a movie.  I love America’s Funniest Home Videos, but when it really looks like someone really gets hurt and while everyone else is laughing, I cringe first for a moment, before I begin laughing.  See?  More mature.  I find secret satisfaction, that when I was growing up my parents would yell, “turn that crap down, that music is garbage,” and now when I yell to my children (they’re mostly grown) to turn down the stereo, it’s because they are blasting that same “garbage” turned classic rock music, the same bands I loved and still love.  Why?  First because, and here’s part of the satisfaction, the music wasn’t garbage, or people still love Garbage maybe, but that’s because it too is already a classic rock band, and more because my son, who does enjoy a little modern rock, or “dubstep” or some other music I don’t know about that was invented last Thursday, says “The only rock that’s good enough to last is classic rock.”  Amen halleluiah, got the witness, and he wears the T shirt.

So age is a mental state.  I agree, except that my knees I am told, need replacing, a wonderful consequence of my weight for thirty five of my fifty years, while I boldly stated my heart was great, cholesterol fantastic, that I had genes that would have me wearing triple-house size pants until I was in my nineties. Fact is I forgot to consult my knees that apparently were saying “geez really?” as they groaned under my hulking body all these years.  So I have that to look forward to. Other than feeling old because my knees, or lack of them, I feel pretty good.  I have never felt older than 13 in my head, well I guess, truthfully, until around 35, then I started to feel like 24 for a few years, and I felt 72 for six months when I was sick, and had sinus surgery, but mostly I guess now I feel about 28 in my head.  My 51 year old body sometimes gets my attention, but I generally ignore those pangs, and I take “longer to heal” when I’m stupid.

So here is the rub, I love my age.  Post-mid, old, past it, whatever. I love my children, and I also love seeing them make lives for themselves. I love seeing what great adults they have become.  They are people I respect. I love my new grandchild, love to play with her and I really love that my daughter, who had the stinkiest poo on the planet when she was a baby (I’m sure she doesn’t mind my sharing that), now has to change diapers, and I don’t!  Plus there are less witnesses to me and my wife’s going to bed early, actually because we’re tired (to be fair we have to get up at 5:30 in the unGodly morning).

The crux of it though; if you were a genie, and offered to make me any age I wanted to be, well I would not change my age, I might ask to make my knees 30 years younger and I’d finish the diet.  My third wish may be a shallow one for great gobs of money, but I always tell God if I won the lottery I would tithe double!  I love who I am and what age I am and that my wife at her age is more beautiful to me than when she was young and hot (oops I didn’t mean she isn’t hot now), now she’s middle aged like me although no one believes that. Why is love better?  I don’t have any wise truths for that one, but in my heart of hearts I believe it is because we’ve lived life together for 31 years, and worked like hell to make it work, and still do.

I wouldn’t trade my marriage for anything.  And I wouldn’t trade my age either.  I get to play music as loud as I want, because it’s my house, and I can eat anything I want, and yet I choose to be losing weight now (100 pounds so far in two years) because some day I will go ahead and get those new knees, and they say they will last longer than a year or two if I lose the extra weight.  I get to wear what I want and not wear what I don’t want, and I get to hold the TV remote, the DVD remote, the Cable remote, the Roku and DRV remotes, even when I have no clue what they do, so I generally watch the same early news and reruns of the same shows, but boy, if I ever wanted to I could watch like a bazillion channels and play HD games, where I could skateboard digitally, which would be much smarter than taking my fifty year old flesh out on the unforgiving concrete.  Mostly though . . . uh oh . . . here is where older comes . . . I am happy with reruns of I love Lucy, and Andy Griffith (bless his soul in heaven now) and I do like that “Big Bang Theory,” the sit com, not the science.

Post-mid is great.  Lots of life left, Deo Valente (God willing), and not near retirement, adventure to come, but I’m old enough that young people call me sir, and I almost always get mistaken for the senior discount tickets at the theater because my hair is mostly grey, and it feels good to say I don’t qualify.

Ok, most of that is meaningless, as the teacher says, but here is the main reason I love being post-mid: my wife has been “back in school,” getting her MDiv, and all her new college buddies freak out when they find out she is old enough to be married to me. Multiple times people have asked me how my other daughter was doing, the one that goes to Erskine (my wife, and she graduated).  I love that.  Doesn’t bother me at all that I look super old, and she looks super young, because I know they walk away after learning that we are married . . . amazed I could land such a young and hot wife!

Post-mid?

You betcha.

Cheers!

Meaningless, Chaos and Ghosts – From Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1

xTreme—paraphrase, by Rob Krabbe © 2012

This is the first chapter of a poem based on the words of the “teacher”, son of king David, and King himself, found in the book of Ecclesiastes.  

Shadows-of-meaning,

illusion, everything fades.

Nothing but shadows-of-meaning,

fading. It’s all shadows

like fading steam from a grave.

What is there to show, to know, for a lifetime

of effort, struggle, work, and dreams?

Working till your half dead, burned up;

health fades, death waxes, and the constant?

Fading again, and a fresh grave.

Generations work building empires.

Poor and rich thrust spires to the sky.

Generations die paupers and kings,

but every single one dies,

working towards the grave.

At the helm of the ship, generations die.

Youth takes over,

youth becomes old and dies.

Fading to the grave;

my children at the reigns?

Until their death, or whoever.

Yet, the reigns of what? Vapors?

It’s a heavy burden, God,

not to even know what

is worth the effort.

The world spins and the earth quakes,

the storms come and go, and at most

the sun rises and falls and

indeed, the sun sees all,

from his lofty old place.

Oh that jolly old sun.

That lofty old happy sun.

Yet . . . men’s dreams of conquest fall.

Governments “put in some work”

making great plans

for mankind, personal gain,

“greed works!” It’s said.

New governments, soon are

in the history books; gone.

Ghosts dancing behind shadows of fading graves.

Nothing new? I laugh so hard

a bit of lunch comes up.

Indeed my friend, nothing,

nothing, nothing; everything

ends that’s been tried.

Still someone says . . . look at this new thing!

People marvel.

That too will die.

Depressing isn’t it?

All the waters rush to join the sea.

The waters need some kind of Prozac,

maybe the size of Texas.

The winds rush to their destiny.

Then of course, the sea,

very happy to suck up the water

spits it to the sky, doing it’s thing

with the winds help, comes round full circle.

Hoorah!

Rains fall, and water rushes

in rivers to the sea, all over again.

It’s a heavy burden, God,

not to even know what

is worth the effort.

Work, work, work, feels satisfying, eh?

Is the eye, however, never satisfied with the view?

Is the ear, never satisfied with the sounds?

In all this wonder, the soul drowns.

Nothing new, nothing, nothing, nadda, zippo zip.

Everything has still been tried,

and some new man says

get ready for this:

“Look at this new thing!”

When he holds it up

his hands are empty, because,

it is already a reflection of a ghost in a shadow

of what used to be, a shadow of meaning,

fading.

All the great things and small,

that happened years ago,

and all the great people and humble,

that lived years ago;

none are remembered now.

Even those born tomorrow,

are already dead, into the new grave.

Both ideas, and people of greatness.

All the meaningful things

will be shadows of meaning,

nothing remembered.

Tie up your horse,

walk into your old church

Same words, same horse,

ghosts in the halls,

spouting the same prayers, but to God?

The “teacher,” let’s face it,

king of all Israel,

he was a learner, a good thing.

he was a wise man, a good thing.

he was man who tried to figure out

the mysteries and happenings

of this world under heaven.

He saw much, and all of it,

was a ghost in shadows of meaning, illusion.

It was like trying to catch the wind,

Futile attempts were made,

to sort it all out.

But, if it was twisted,

it stayed twisted.

If it was only a dream

it could not be counted awake.

It’s a heavy burden, God,

not to even know what

is worth the effort.

He said to himself (the king),

I sure have gotten damned wise

and sure, more than any

king before me.

My experiences are vast,

in wisdom and knowledge.

I have even impressed myself.

Yet more so in madness, and

even just outright fun craziness.

Trying to find meaning,

I learned that I would sooner break the wind.

So, in the end, wisdom brought me down,

like a dead shot, I crashed and burned.

Knowledge brought me trouble,

and further down still,

to that old, old familiar grave.

The only good, was to be home again;

with more wisdom, and more nothingness.

 

The “New Simplicity” or Sanity in a Post-Post World

Part 1: Finding out who we are, not who we are told we are, by Rob Krabbe  © 2012

Simplicity is Very Complicated.

Writing a post about living a life of “New Simplicity” is ironic. Plus, what’s with the word “new” for, anyway? Admittedly, taking the big “chill-out” plunge is a process in de-processing. In this modern digital world, how do we keep our pudding in the pate? Simplicity can be complex, indeed much more than just placing a trash can by the mail box. This is one of those changes to one’s life that fully requires a deeper desire, and a lot of fire. An ice-burg with much more under the surface. So let’s let that percolate for a bit, to be sure the graft will take, while we consider where we have come, and how we got here.

Simplicity starts with our own perception of us, and the difference between joy and happiness.

In today’s culture, we belong to the philosophy of the month club.  We fad diet, microwave our laundry and covet every new gadget, before the old one is unwrapped.  Each new version of each innovation has the potential to save the world all over again, and make us feel much better about ourselves that we own it.  So, as they say about slow weight loss, being not only healthier but it having a greater chance of “keeping it off,” so let’s consider carefully this idea of simplicity and peace of mind.  Here’s the “rub,” I came to a place today, where I realized, at some point, I had, sadly and surprisingly, become a . . . Consumer.

Human-being definition: an end user. A target market. A bell curve. A statistic. One piece of the world’s market-share graph.

It seems, I surrendered over time.  The man behind the curtain told me how to dress, what to own, what to drive, where to live, how much to make, how much to collect, how many storage units to fill, how fat is fat, and what is healthy, my body type, what is success, what is family, what to believe, what to fight for, who to elect, what church is right, what faith is true, a lot of what I perceived about myself was now being told to me by the media. The sad part is, the media, like it or not, is us. We are the media, by our voting with dollars and attention.  Radio, internet, television, even when I don’t think I’m paying attention, wails away at us with the programming.

Part one of living a more sane and simple life is noticing, listening, and paying attention. Assessing or reassessing one’s reality is always a good thing.  So let’s look at the things that we take for granted as fact, myth, philosophy and belief.

I sipped my coffee unaware of the epiphany looming. The network neo-news anchor was building to a teaser that would, I’m sure, excite me enough to stay focused through the commercials to the next segment of programming.  The news anchor, a delightfully coiffed man, who had no specific hair style, no accent, and no features except a wonderful savory manliness and trustworthy mature sounding voice, chuckled and pluffed with his Barbie partner, about the previous story’s cuteness, and how we would all have a better life if we just sat back and enjoyed his perfect teeth for a while.  That’s when it struck me, I accepted a long time ago, that I don’t really believe much that comes out of the television anymore, just like the feeling I have about Washington politicians but I sit glued to the screen, subconsciously, to this Pavlovian Oracle telling me what to think and feel, and redefining, “newthinking” the English language and what I believe about happiness, and I still show up to vote for the lessor of many evils so I have the right to complain.

So this week I am going to make a list.  I’m going to listen, and notice.  I will make a list of the things that I believe matter to me today.  Then when I have exhausted the making of that list I will meditate on it, and consider what I really think, myself, of each item, and cross off the things that really, in the end, don’t matter so much.  I wonder if I will have a list at all when it is over.  I know family will be there, God, and the wonderful natural world around us, but what else will survive?

I don’t want to be a “made-man,” anymore (not in the gangster-sense, although I will avoid that as well), I simply no longer want to be told who to be, and what reality is.

So let’s make our lists, whittle them down, and our simple lives will slowly and peacefully begin to emerge, led by what we really believe and hold precious like a pied piper, and then with the room on our lists, we can begin to appreciate the many blessings we have, and a deeper joy will replace fragile happiness.