BEAT BOOMER'S SILENT DAY TRIP

Felt so "dead" this morning, I couldn't force myself to work on the Manning novel. Instead, took a drive North into a rainy, gray landscape of hills and expensive homes, hunting for something. Back in Spokane, I used to drive into scab rock areas, seeking out roads marked as "Primitive" so I could enjoy this feeling of ... what?

Today, I realized I'd been hunting a specific "feeling". Some call that feeling a spiritual feeling. Modern religious people continually seek new churches ... they wish to get that spiritual high. They want to be moved. Popular music brings modern youths to those "spiritual" moments, just as the symphonic music moved me to tears a couple of weeks ago. Others have sought god in the wilderness and many have had experiences of transcendent power in a natural landscape.

Atheists, like myself, are no different. We like to feel "spiritual" experiences too. The fact that atheists can have transcendent experiences separate from the idea of a god is one proof that all highly charged emotional moments have nothing to do with god or gods or goddesses for that matter. The one is an idea; the other is a purely physical sensation.

The thing I keep in mind when I think about "religious" experiences is that all highs are universally accompanied by lows of a depth equal to the intensity of the high. In my experience, cycles of highs and lows signal an imbalance of feeling. Moderation in all things is the antidote to emotions run wild. Now, that said, will my urge to complete the Manning novel return or has Jorge Tomas reached another dead end? 

"Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Vantucky
With the Memphis blues again?"

Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/stuck-inside-mobile-memphis-blues-again#ixzz2vDcFcRGI"

THE SILENT BOOMER AND FRIENDS

I used to think that for one to write well he (or she) must know himself extremely well, but then along comes Hemingway and other writers like him who was so lost he offed himself.

Ernie Shades McKnight

Maybe those who are busy knowing themselves well are the most romantic and self-observing types. They write one sort of literature and those who pay close attention to others write another type of literature which, of course, would be more objective and realistic. 

Geraldine

As the seasons turn, one type of writing rises to the top and next season the other sort of writing becomes popular again. Roughly you can see a progression like that from the Enlightenment to the Romantic and Transcendental Movement, followed by the Victorian Period which was followed by Realism and Naturalism. They in turn were edged out by the Existential writers who were followed by the Beats who were, if you ask me, romantics in their own way. Supposedly, we are now in the Post-Modern Era (since 1965), a cooler and more cerebral literature. I'm beginning not to care so much anymore if I understand anything about GREAT literature. The distinctions slip away and all one seems to care about is selling something, to stop suffering romantically and make a few dollars. Never mind if one's creations are literature or not.

Meet a couple of my friends who I think I know almost as well as I know myself.