You can check out any time but you can never leave

If you don't know what that line is from I can't help you. I can tell you I didn't think of it. You know I thought once I stepped off the ship it would end. For almost 2 years (I think I knew on some level it was inevitable I was going to end up on the croooooooooooooozzzzzzzzzz ship) I dreaded the encounter, anticipated it. It triggered dormant rage issues, it triggered yet another power struggle with the Gods who raised me, it triggered a dispute with my wife, a drama with my daughter, I am going to have to withdraw more money from my retirement plan just to cover my side of the trip expenses - for a trip that I dreaded and never wanted to do in the first place - I mean I AM NOT COMPLAINING (it may seem like it) in that I know this is all my KARMA - and nobody took a gun to my head or anything - even though a wife's pressure in some ways is probably worse - but what I am saying is that out of my own seemingly FREE WILL (if that really exists) I did agree to go on this dreaded outing - and during the trip - it really - amazingly - wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - thanks to the miraculous escape of Deck 7 and the ability for me to retreat with my guitar. The food - I'd give it a C+ - and the family interaction was about what I expected it to be - restrained, polite, distant. I just thought once I walked off the ship it would be over. But

IT'S NOT OVER!!! - I keep obsessively having bad dreams about ships now. I am stuck on one, I can't get off one, I am back to the scene of the crime and it won't leave me alone. Every fucking night I dream about a ship and this is haunting me and I think I am really messed up now. What's going on? This is going to screw me up. I may even have to do something really drastic - like quit my job, have my house foreclosed and show up at my parent's front door with a beggars' bag and see if they will let me move back in with them - because I can't get these dreams to go away. I am haunted now, I am branded for life - I will spend the rest of my eternity in a dream world as a prisoner on a haunted ghost ship and they won't let me off the boat. When I die and go to the next realm I know where it will be - I will be spending limbo on a ship. And I thought it was all over - but it's not - HELPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Test me - test me - Why don't you arrest me

This secret blog may not be so much of a secret any more - anybody who has read my shit somewhere else - I left great big gaping foot prints for everyone to track me over here. So this may not be a great secret any more. Oh well - nothing to hide anyways. I saw in the paper some people actually end up doing time over the pics that show up on their sites. Good thing my party days are long gone in the past - and that's the truth - and nothing but.

Mountains of the Moon - Electra - bow and bend to me

Twenty degrees of solitude,

twenty degrees in all,

All the dancing kings and wives

assembled in the hall.

Lost is the long and loneliest town

fairy sybil flying.

All along the, all along

the mountains of the moon

Where I live I get an incredible access to a view of an event that is pure religion from my limited "fucking perspective". From the kitchen side of my backyard last night I could see the moon rising over the Rawe Peak mountain range. At different times of the year she (I almost wrote it - my mistake) may appear to be rising from different portions of the mountain range. I knew where to look since it had occurred the previous night. It starts with a very faint glow of light - almost kind of orange, and you can't even quite tell if it is real or not because it is so faint, but the color and intensity slowly starts to lighten up until it turns a very distinct white. The white glows more intensely and there is an almost orgasmic anticipation of the rising of our beautiful lady of the night. And then just when it seems like it is going to take forever, the very tip emerges of a pure, beautiful glowing white light, just over the top of the left side of the range, and then slowly but surely she emerges - her glowing white face, pure heavenly light - the light that reminds me of the reported images of those who have claimed to survive a death experience and imagine they are being pulled to a light.

I was outside - singing the above listed Grateful Dead song as this even occurred, also turning to my favorite personal song that describes the interaction between an observer and a very seemingly spiritually charged environment - which I call "The Witching Hour" - with a tribute line "souring to a black cloud in the sky, with a full moon pouring through a flowing tide" (never mind that I got the flowing tide idea from a nearby dive restaurant) - and then of course - followed by one of my favorite lyrical experiences of the Grateful Dead - Help On the Way - and this way my own way of having a tribal experience with this event. I understand out in Reno they have all night drum circles during the full moon - a little much for a 42 year old who likes to get his sleep, but even so - I am out there alone with this experience - not entirely as I feel a connection to a Goddess force in the shape of the moon, and very much apart of God's world and when I experience this, I don't really feel alone - but I couldn't help but wonder why I was alone in my neighborhood observing this- with all the AC's roaring (like we really even need them at all - what the hell did they do before they were invented - I think AC's will go down in eventual history as the reason our species became instinct), and most people inside, probably watching some cheesy movie on their big screen TV's - trying to re-enact a little fantasy in their lives, when outside Mother Nature was putting on an incredible show that nobody even cared about. It made me long for the tribal days when that was the entertainment, when there was no TV or AC to turn to and the Great Mother Goddess in the form of the moon was the source of inspiration and light for all to see. What the hell has happened to us that we can't see the light in front of our eyes.

Even so - I stayed out enjoying this incredible light for as long as I could, and I felt so fortunate to be able to have this experience, to musically and spiritually connect to it with my voice and guitar, to have this soothing blissful light just pouring into my soul. I would like to try to put into words better, but "Statements Just seem Vain at Last".

Divine to define she is moving to define

Divine, to define, she is moving to define, so say so, so say so


The world moves on a womans hips


The world moves and it swivels and bops


The world moves on a womans hips


The world moves and it bounces and hops


A world of light...shes gonna open our eyes up


A world of light...shes gonna open our eyes up


Shes gonna hold/it move/it hold it/move it hold/it move it hold/It move it


A world of light...shes gonna open out eyes up


She is moving to describe the world


Night must fall now-darker, darker.


She has messages for everyone


Night must fall now-darker, darker.


She is moving by remote control


Night must fall now-darker, darker.


Hands that move her are invisible


Night must fall now-darker, darker.




From The Great Curve

I have had a lot of time to come up with my own religion and now I am going to describe it here, as insane as it may sound. Really the idea that we have come to worship a man who was nailed to a wooden object in the desert could sound crazy to those who don't know any better, so crazy is all relative. It is no great relevation to anyone who reads the stuff I write that the person who has had the biggest influence over my life the last several years is named Don Miguel Ruiz, and one of my favorite ways his philosophy is expressed is in this You Tube video which magically keeps showing up on the top of my favorites. How I do this - magically - is by continuing to add and remove it as You Tube has no way I know of to organize favorites differently. In my comment to the guy who assembled this video - beautifully set to two songs from Loreena McKennitt and with very fitting slide show images on top of it - I wrote : "I've already been in but one more time expressing my gratitude for this video - it is my favorite on on this site and I have come back to watch it several times - it is like drinking a glass of cold water on a very hot day", shortly following some guy asking someone else to suck his cock - as these types of primitive comments seem to show up all over You Tube. Ruiz writes very much to the point - no real big words - no need to show off how smart he is or how much knowledge he has - in fact he seems to think knowledge in itself is a weakness, as also pointed out by Ram Dass - my very close second influence behind Ruiz.

I was introduced to religion through Judaism, which being my first date so to speak, is something I have stayed with. I still believe in the idea of one universal being described as God. The idea that this being chose any one group of people as his people to me seems ridiculous, and believing that one individual as a person or group is better than others - unfortunately - sets up all sorts of horrible events such as gas chambers and mass executions. I am not saying we as a people were to blame for the Holocaust, but I do think such destructive mindsets can lead to bad things and made us pretty obvious targets for a desperate group of people looking to blame their own problems on someone. That is the problem I have with Judaism - we are chosen and you are a bunch of Pagans who need to be destroyed - as spelled out clearly in The New Testament. Now that I have some beliefs which fall into the realm of Paganism, I kind of have a problem with this. I also - wondered as I sat in this empty silent building known as a temple, why God happened to be listening to our prayers here - here only, as opposed to the prayers everywhere else - what gave us the right to be his sole petitioners. I had some of the most torturously painful and boring experiences of my life at a synagogue, and to this day I will never believe any type of building from a so called religious institution of any kind has the answer for me. Attending a communion here in town at a Catholic church, I was relieved to know Catholic services are just as torturously cold and empty as Jewish services. I also wondered why these folks from thousands of years ago were the only ones allowed to experience God directly, while all we could do was read about it.

At some point in my life I started having thoughts come into my head that I did not recognize as my normal everyday thoughts. They were magically inspiring - I had them in my home town, and often at times at college - and somehow in the face of all sorts of anxiety, depression, and self-doubt I found something inside of me to reassure me that despite all of the obstacles to success and happiness - that seemed overwhelming and impossible at times, that I was going to get through it and get to the places I need to go to. This voice seemed to be like God speaking to me. After much going back and forth about this, I am now convinced it was. I am not the only one who has the ability to speak to God - we all do - it is just that some of us may have these things happen more, or be more open to it. Obviously someone with a very scientific mindset is going to see this as the voice of the self, id - or whatever you want to call it - a deeper part of the brain that can all be explained by chemicals and atoms. That's fine - maybe it's that too, but that just is not going to be where it stops for me. At some point I have to surrender myself to my own intuition to think as a religious being as most of us are, and say whatever science has come up with does not rule out God and the spirit, even though I have a great respect for science and scientists.

The Grateful Dead - obviously the greatest musical force in my life - their concerts were a place where this force of God seemed to come out very strongly. I believe part of this was the music, and then part of this was the energy of a very charged group of artistic and creative folks, with a little hallucinogenic magic on top of it - and you had the recipe for a great source of inspiration that I could never find in the building of a religious institution. I could experience this either under the influence of some of mind altering substances, or not - and I would often find that it was hard to tell the difference - as I had some amazing mind altering experiences completely sober, with nothing but a contact high with those who were ingesting those things. After 120 plus Dead shows, 30 Phish shows, and God knows how many other shows I went to - I was into a local reggae group called the Cardiff Reefers in San Diego that I saw a bunch also - I believe that you take this magic and it stays in a part of your soul somewhere. I remember my friend Kirk who I saw more shows with than anyone else - telling me that he saw Dead shows as a kind of school, and at some point we were going to graduate. Graduation was forced on me with the very sudden and tragic death of Jerry Garcia, but my life changed as well. I believe the spirit of these concerts, and even a part of Jerry's spirit, lives on within me and I have stored it up somewhere so that when I play my own music it comes back out.

So cutting fast forward to where I am now, musical experiences still remain as my pathway to God. God to me is the sum total of everything - which all living beings are a part of - and together we are this entity - kind of like Jung's notion of Collective Unconscious. I don't adhere to the Bible's notion of a particularly pissed off old man up in the sky throwing down lightning bolts at us and sending us to hell when we don't do what he wants. That makes no sense to me at all. I have a higher regard for God than that. God to me is a being that transcends sexuality and even to a certain degree - existence in the form of any living being I can relate to. I can say he since it is a little more flattering than it, but it is only for reference, espeically since I mainly relate to God as a female Goddess being. I am presently reading a book by Deepack Chopra called How to Know God which honestly is a little hard for me to follow at times, but essentially talks about how God can be experienced at so many different levels - from the pissed off old man in the sky I described before, to a much larger and all embracing figure of love and acceptance - which is more the notion I buy into.

I make no claim to have any predictions of the after life. I am leaning toward believing in some form of it, but I wouldn't bet my life on what is coming next. I just know that to have faith in life and God as I do that whatever is coming next is the right thing - whatever that may be. What I have to work with are the days in front of me as a mortal human walking this planet, so those are of greater relevance than what is coming next. Somehow I think whatever that may be coming next will work itself out when the time comes. I am not believing in God because I believe it gets me preferential treatment, or a key to the doors of heaven - I believe because this is what I feel.

So let me just cut to the chase now and get into my religion. My religion is interactive. In the last book I read by Don Miguel Ruiz - at least a co-author anyways - a beautifully inspiring book called Beyond Fear - he said that the earth is a living being. (I see some people at Amazon just flat out didn't get this book and gave it bad reviews - and that should be encouraging to my brother that just because someone doesn't like a book there it really doesn't mean shit.) I actually posted my one sole Amazon review there saying I loved it. I experience the earth as a living being. I know all of the faces I have seen - from the faces in the cliffs at La Jolla, to the faces in the rocks eveywhere , the trees in my backyard, the mountain next to my house which seems to be magically alive - seem like living beings to me. While reading this section of the book on the flight to Nebraska, I looked down to see some incredible rock formations that seemed to be bursting with magical life and spiritual energy. Under the right amount of hallucinogens everything seems alive - but I no longer have to take them to sense that. To me the great Mother Earth is a magically alive being. I don't discount a "tripping" experience - if anything I think that "tripping" is the gateway to a new and magical reality that our present spiritually deprived awareness has a tough time taking in. Once this is experienced and you see Mother Earth as alive, you find it sad to see us as humans treating her so poorly, and it is heartbreaking to see all the smog, and smoke from fires, and the gradual destruction taking place to our beautiful mother, but I think that is a whole side point for now. When I am outside with my guitar and feel particularly inspired, I experience the wind as a living being that responds to my presence. The wind picks up at times in seeming response to what I am playing or feeling. I know - this could also be descrieed as random coincidence, but after enough of those random coincidences take place - that what if the wind is really alive notion takes over, and I believe as an element of the living being Earth that the wind is a part of this and she really does talk to me in in her own beautiful way. I don't care how irrational it sounds, this is my experience.

So now I slowly make my way back to the words and lyrics listed by David Byrne at the beginning of this post. I understand these words are a reference to a Goddess religion of a tribe or group of people who believed in a great mother female force and saw the world moving on a woman's hips. My connection to the life force, to God so to speak, is actually through the energy of the female or Goddess. It is no coincidence that I am a male and the female force has made me what I am. The perceived lack of loving female energy took me into a horrible depression, and knowing that this potential always exists, I see it as my task, both spiritually and emotionally, to constantly summon this force. Victoria and I have now been together 12 years - ironically the 12th anniversary of our relationship was the day I with great relief walked off of a cruise ship with an enormous sigh of relief. 12 years together comes one day after the 80th birthday of my mother. I got Victoria 12 peach colored roses (one for each year) with a note saying thanks for the best 12 years of my life. Not that it has not had its struggles, conflicts, and disputes over some of the lamest and dumbest reasons for a fight that ever existed - it has. I have had to redefine my desires - emotionally and physically - from the time when it seemed like the passion was happening constantly, to present times when being older and having a child to take care of, there was also an adjustment to an opposing desire level which is not always on the same page as mine - but I still believe my life is much better with a woman in it, than without. I love my wife, would miss her very much if she left for whatever reason that might happen, but I also have faith that if that were to happen I would be able to adapt to it. I do love her, want her, and have a need for her, but I don't need her to the point my life depends on it. I love her, but she is not essential to my being. I love her, but give her the freedom to do what she wants and go where she wants, even if she has to leave me altogether. At one point in my life that would have shattered me, but now - I know it would hurt and I would miss her , but I would be able to get by

And this in part is due to the "other" woman in my life. I am convinced that this woman - the woman so beautifully described by Jung as Anima - is a living being. How do I describe her? The first woman I ever experienced gave birth to me, so naturally the mother force as lived out through her shapes and influences this being. I wrote about my romantic experience of females in one of my songs that I recorded in Utah on my You Tube page (This is a song that...) - and I listed out names of women I have all been in love with - starting with Cathy - the flute player in my high school band. The subject of projection is interesting. I fell in love with a complete stranger, and filled in the blanks, imagining she was also in love with me. I believe she may have had some kind of attraction to me, but whatever it was - it was not enough for her to accept my nervous invitation to come to a dance with me. My projections of the feminine force go in both directions - the very beautifully all embracing love I experience at times, to the more ugly reactions to rejection ("you fucking bitch") - sometimes I here myself muttering the "bitch" word without even realizing it, and I see that the negative wicked witch feminine energy is taking over again. (I know there are good witches too) When I ask myself if these women who have brought me in tough with the anima - starting with Cathy in junior high, to Tracy in High School, and Christina in college - all women who I never experienced anything with other than fantasies - even if they were incredible fantasies - are these women real - the answer is yes and no. The Goddess force experienced through falling in love is the other person, but is also more than the other person, and sometimes completely separate from the other person altogether. At some point there is the realization that this is a human being after all, but without the face of a human being, The Goddess has a difficult time existing on her own as we relate to her as human beings through other human beings. So the best answer is yes and no when you want to know is that woman you are magically in love with really the one you think she is - because she is those things, and she is not at the same time. Any woman I interact with, from my wife to a woman I have sexual fantasies about - will become both sides of the experience of the feminine I have - the loving, accepting, warm embracing being on the one side, to the cold, cruel, hateful, critical, rejecting being on the other. That is my experience of the feminine - the yin and yang. One of them can bring me great joy and happiness, while the other has the potential on its own if unbalanced to literally bring me to depression and even suicide. So they seem to have to balance each other out. If I went too far into the ecstasy direction, "get too much you get too high" as the Sweet song points out, that could have consequences as well. Being in a full state of mania makes the basic essentials like holding a job and paying bills a little difficult.

So trying to sort of get back to what I was starting at from the beginning, this feminine force of love that I need as an essential to my being - just like I need exercise, food, and water - is the being that I summon now when I play my music in my yard. Sometimes she arrives, sometimes she doesn't. She is a real being which almost seems like a ghost, but I know she is real. To call her nothing but a figment of my imagination just doesn't cut it any more. Last night for example - I was playing certain songs that are like invitations "Crazy Fingers", "Help On the Way" by the Dead are too good ones, a beautiful romantic song by Syd Barrett called Terrapin, one called Broken Arrow that the Dead covered - that focus on love - and then add on others of my own like "Behind Me" and the one I wrote about "now's the time to treasure every precious breath alive" (whose title is constantly subject to change) - and one which I intend to You Tube soon called "The Witching Hour" - these are summoning songs. When I was experiencing the bitter cruel feminine rejection energy in the early 1990s, I would write very depressing songs to capture my experience - ones like There is No Love, hopelessly waiting for a love that would never arrive, or stuff like God damn I hate being alone and this really sucks (to paraphrase) and then that became my reality. The songs I write and sing now focus on the positive experience because that is what I need to have more than anything, (especially after 3 days on a fucking cruise ship). So yesterday, when I summoned and she came and I experienced the Goddess energy - it filled me up and made me feel very alive with love. Then I bring this energy back to my relationship here - I am not a desperate being seeking fulfillment from my wife, but I am a being glowing with love and I want to share this love with my wife rather than seek it from her, and I even concentrated on this notion during our intimacy last night (yes it still does happen from time to time) and even though I was obviously getting something out of it, I was not just taking something to get my rocks off, but I was focusing on giving back too - and I actually received a rare positive review of the experience from my wife. This to me is the key to relationships that Ruiz so beautifully nails down in Mastery of Love - when your cup is full - as stated in Ripple - may it be again. When you have something to bring to a relationship - something to offer - than you can share that without having it be the life end if it does not come from the other half. So even though sex can be a beautiful experience, I have to be willing to give it up for as long as I have to, so that I am not an overwhelming burden upon my wife, who may not be in the same frame of mind I am, and then have that faith that it will happen again when meant to, and that even if it is a long time, that I am still loved and nourished through my experience of the Goddess. Buddhism describes this in the emphasis on freedom from desires and giving up attachment. That way, when a real woman cannot be present, the woman of the Spirit is always not far away. She is experienced as the Virgin Mary in Christianity and other religions, and McCartney described her very well in Let it Be - she comes to you when you need her "in my darkest hour she is standing right in front of me".

When I am fulfilled - when my cup is full - when the Goddess energy is there, I feel love for human beings. Even with my parents - who I have every justifiable reason to despise - and I could go back over every single hateful past incident, or think about how much of a pain in the ass they can even be in the present, especially the way they treat my wife - I can still feel love for them in spite of it all. It helps though to not get so locked into the parent-son role - as Ram Dass talks about in a couple of books - and just see them as people. I was wondering if I had it in me to hug my mother after all the negative emotions and past experiences were stirred up in my head from the events leading up to the cruise, but it came naturally to hug her at the end, and to sing Happy Birthday very enthusiastically. I can go in either direction - the hate can be summoned very easily and I have every reason in the world to justify my hatred, but in the end - it just doesn't do much for me to hold onto it. Sure I will get angry, sure I will not be necessarily be happy with the way I was raised or even the way they continue to treat me, but I can love them even in spite of all this - just because they are human beings, not because they are my parents. I don't expect a damn thing from them and in a fit of anger they can cut me off any time they want to - cut me out of the will, cut me off of communications - and I'll love them anyways. I may not like what they do, or the way they handled this God awful cruise experience, but I love them. They may not like the way I write about the cruise, or see me as some ungrateful ass-hole for not gushing the experience with praise as some may have done. That's fine too. Some positives even came out of this - my sister Edie is going to come visit us and see Sara, I have been in touch with my nephewJosh, got to have a good talk with my nephews who I had lost touch with up to this time - and our family did need to come together in its own strange way, even if we spent a great part of the time avoiding each other - that's just who we are. Part of love is just accepting what life is, and who people are, even if on one level you can't stand them or feel disappointed by their actions, because once your cup is full, it really doesn't matter what they do. You love them anwyays, because your cup is full and you have love to offer. It then becomes an offering - I have this to offer you, and whatever you want to give back is fine - even if it is nothing at all.

So again - I am all over the place and not even quite sure if I accomplished what I originally set out to do in the first place - but hopefully I got something across here. I think I did. And I close with one of my favorite summoning Dead song lyrics from Help On The Way:

Paradise waits on the crest of a wave her angels in flame
She has no pain Like a child, she is pure She is not to blame
Poised for flight Wings spread bright Spring from night into the sun
Don't stop to run She can fly like a lie She cannot be outdone

Tell me the cost I can pay Let me go Tell me love is not lost
Sell everything Without love, day to day, insanity is king
I will payday by day anywayLock, bolt and key
Crippled but freeI was blind all the time I was learning to see

Help on the wayI know only this I've got you today
Don't fly away'cause I love what I love and I want it that way
I will stay one more day Like I sayHoney, it's you
Making it too Without love in the dream It will never come true

See the world

This is an age where gas prices are going up - up - up - up - just like the line from Shattered by The Stones. And although I don't like paying more at the pump, in some ways I'm glad because maybe it forces people to stop their excessive wasteful ways that are slowly beating the shit out of our beautiful planet Earth. Maybe it ain't so cool to cruise around in a gas guzzling RV now that gets 5 miles to the gallon. Times are tough - I understand. So I have it figured out. How can you see the world? We all want to see the world, don't we. How can this be done in a way that we can afford, that does not screw up our environment, contribute to global warming, or allow tons of toxic human waste to be dumped into the ocean from an excessive glutonous wasteful display of excess known as a cruise line? How can we get from one place to another without flying on an airline, which apparently also contributes to global warming. You know - the answer may not be as complicated as it seems, and it is pretty inexpensive too. Ready?
Here goes - open a fucking window - walk out the fucking door - and there it is - there's the world right there! How can it be anything else than the world. It may not be the cheesy glamorous world you want with fancy waiters walking down the aisle catering to your every need, and it may not be some exotic place that makes you revel in your cheesy ability to traverse the four corners of the globe - but I'll tell you what - maybe it is another world. Maybe it is the world you are trying to run away from - maybe it is your own world - your inner world. What the hell is wrong with facing that world and taking a good look at it while you are still fortunate to be alive. Who knows - maybe you even find out that once you take a good look at that world, it isn't so bad as you thought and there is less of a need to leave skidmarks on a trail behind you and run away from it.
Call me one twisted fuck but I like the world I live in. I like every minute of the desert air around me, and it actually kind of irritates me to have to leave it. When I sit down and really take a look at it, and look inside, do a little bit of a musical meditation and tune in, I am no longer in one spot - I feel like I am everywhere - looking at everywhere from one spot - and I feel like I become one with everywhere - and then I am everywhere - and once I am there why the hell do I need to get onto a plane and go to some cheesy place like - oh I don't know - BALI - for example? I'm already in Bali - I'm already there in my mind and I don't have to get on some gas belching airplane to make it happen. Maybe the world around us we see every day we are spending so much time trying to avoid has an amazing infinite realm of possibilities that we aren't even bothering to try to notice. I see every day I wake up and walk around there is so much to see that surrounds me on a daily basis, and I don't have to spend a hell of a lot of money or waste any gas to get there because I am already there. Call it mind travel if you want - the only way to fly.
To each his own - if you need to burn through every corner of the globe to say you've been there, knock your socks off. It's just not the way I choose to go about it.

To twist a Zappa song be a cruise slut and see the world. Just remember - I ain't gonna squash it and you don't need to wash it.

I love my work, if u don't fuck u - & pollution from cruise ships

Sounds kind of blunt - but that is the way it has to be. I have a confession - I must be my biggest fan. I have read and re-read my last writing over and over and every time I read it I make myself laugh. I think it's funny, and it is real at the same time. These are my feelings and I captured them. I captured my experience of three days aboard a cruise ship, and when I read it I know it is real. When I read it to my wife, we are enough of the same mindset - she was there too - that she also knows that is the way it went down - for us anyways. Maybe others saw it differently. Great. No matter what you say, you can't take away that this is my perspective, and that is what writing is all about. I don't care about style, grammar, techniques - once I know it is me that is all that matters. I know - laughing at my own jokes sounds pretty self absorbed - but I do. The fact is I like what I write. I don't need to hear it from anyone else. If you like it too - great. If not - well - I already like it already, so that doesn't really matter. I am not a slave to the opinions of others. Same with my music - I write it to sing it over and over again and some of my songs I have sung close to 100's of times and every time I get something new out of it, like it comes to life and has a life on its own. I love to sing it, play it, and listen to it because it takes on a life of its own - something I may have given birth to in some ways, but something above and beyond me in many other ways. Some may be offended by my writings - but they are real. If I don't feel it, I don't write. They come from me. This is who I am. In some ways I feel like I am not actually writing any of this - like I could really think of this - from my ego - and sit down and make it happen. I couldn't do that. I am just like a vehicle and the force comes through me, and there it is. Somebody else may have said it before, and I don't claim to be original, but maybe nobody has said it just the way I did. That is what I think the key is to creativity and I highly recommend this approach to someone else who possibly may be reading this down the road, who seems to take it very personally when someone criticizes his work. Two word s- fuck 'em. Fall in love with your writings, and then once that happens, the bad reviews aren't going to matter. Not if you already love your work. Once that happens, nobody can take that away from you -no matter what they say or do.Oh - and by the way - just in case you are wondering how much cruise lines fuck up the environment - check out these stats from this site:"Cruise ships - the largest of which carry more than 5,000 passengers and crew - are floating cities that produce enormous volumes of waste. A large cruise ship on a one week voyage is estimated to generate:210,000 gallons of human sewage,1 million gallons of gray water (water from sinks, baths, showers, laundry, and galleys),25,000 gallons of oily bilge water,Up to 11,550 gallons of sewage sludge, andMore than 130 gallons of hazardous wastes.Most of this waste is dumped directly into the ocean, some treated, some not. In addition, luxury liners spew a range of pollutants into the air that can lead to acid rain and contribute to global warming. They can also spread invasive species by dumping untreated ballast water in coastal zones."See this site for information about Royal Carribean:http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnN1cmZyaWRlci5vcmcvYS16L2NydWlzZS5hc3A=In 2001, Royal Caribbean admitted in court it had installed special piping to bypass pollution control devices and pleaded guilty to dumping toxic chemicals. Royal Caribbean was levied fines and penalties totaling $33.5 million to settle dumping complaints that occurred between 1994 and 1998. Apparently Royal Caribbean has one of the worst pollution records out there. You wouldn't know it by reading their Save the Waves link on their website. California is one of the few states with a "no dumping" law, but something tells me Mexico doesn't have one. I wonder what we were doing spending so much time floating around their waters. What a bunch of horse-shit. It sickens me to know I was on one of their earth raping vehicles.

Cheese, Splotch and Elephants on a Ship of Fools

The bottles stand as empty

as they were filled before

Time there was and plenty, but from that cup no more

Though I could not caution all

I still might warn a few:

Don't lend your hand to raise no flag

atop no ship of fools

Ship of fools on a cruel sea

Ship of fools sail away from me

It was later than I thought

when I first believed you

now I cannot share your laughter

Ship of Fools (words - Robert Hunter)

At the time I started writing this I was half way through it. The light was at the end of the tunnel. I can now say I have been on a cruise and I can safely say it has lived down to all of my expectations. I am concerned now about the human race. If human beings can actually desire to pay to be on one of these massive cheesy boats and look forward to the cruise experience, spend their hard earned money on this type of experience, than I think Frank Zappa is correct when he says there is absolutely no hope for humanity. It is nice though to see during the life boat drill that the cruise line is so concerned about the environment to ask people not to throw their trash overboard. Never mind the thousands of tons of carbon put out into the atmosphere from the tons of fuel used up, just don't throw a can of soda pop in the water because a fish already choking from the fuel spilled on the water might be hurt. How conscientious. And speaking of pollution, I think we now deserve the full effect of global warming. Send in the hurricanes, tornadoes, floods - you name it - our species is so completely pathetic that I now realize we don't deserve to be on this planet. Cockroaches - take over - it's all yours - you can have it.

Our family has done well. Nobody killed or physically attacked one another. No instead we split off into our respective camps and pretty much did a good job of avoiding each other, or keeping contact to the bare obligatory minimum. At the time I started on this writing, I may have exchanged about 5 sentences with one of my brothers, and on my way to 10 at most. We did manage a full on conversation about the last full day. There were several elephants in the room that members of our family were all doing a great job of pretending to avoid seeing. So many elephants that they were all on the verge of suffocating each other. You can't come out and say look at the elephant because then the classic reply is "what elephant?". I used to, but now I've learned. I observe all the elephants, so close they are practically shitting on my face, and act like they aren't there. It ends up for the best that way. My laptop finally crashed - there was no technical reason - but I am convinced it just simply could no longer handle the weight of the elephants one moment longer. Our family is like a bunch of magnets that basically repel each other in different segments. We have done a great job of staying the course. This has been the greatest union/non-re-union ever conceived by the Jehovah like God who arranged this. Thanks Jehovah. I don't know how Jehovah did not have a heart attack with all of the neurotic attempts to control and orchestrate this entire endeavor. Some never learn that the more they try to take control the more out of control everything becomes. Maybe that's why he was shaking so much. And he thinks I am the one messed up in the head. I also see the dark, ugly, hateful rage in all members of the family - including yours truly - to be something like a Medusa that you cannot look directly in the eye. Most of us drank excessively to avoid looking at this Medusa. As for me, I minimized contact - and eye contact especially.

When you walk onto the ship before anything happens, after you have cleared all the procedures to show you are really not Juan Jose trying to smuggle into or out of the glorious U S of A, the first thing you notice is a stale musty smell in the middle of the ship. It kind of seems like someone has ripped an enormous mold encrusted disgusting fart, and to make up for it they have sprayed a whole bunch of odor remover, but the odor doesn't quite go away. The fart is so odorous and strong, that maybe the farter died in the process, because it also smells like someone has just died. All the reason to crank up the deodorizer, but the smell of the dead farter never quite goes away. After a while you kind of get used to the smell - almost - well maybe - not quite. And then the cheese attacks from all directions. It is so overwhelming you almost can't quite take it in. It is beyond Godlike. You almost have to bow down to it. And then there is a constant sensation of having a phallic like object stuck up your butt, and no matter how much you try to avoid the sensation, you can' t get rid of it. BOHICA - bend over, here it comes again - courtesy of a caller of the Jim Rome show. Where to start. Well - let's see - how about the music. You are greeted by a cheesy synthesizer and a lady trying to sound Latin - to go with theme of heading down to lovely Ensenada. Other groups perform completely watered down Reggae versions of Everything's Going to be All Right and Margaritaville out by the pool, while quite appropriately people are getting wasted "wasting away" - drinking their sun exposed asses off and having the party of their lives. It seems like everyone on the boat is engaged in constant sexual activity - all except myself - unless self-gratification counts for anything.

Let's hear it for the food. It is a luxury experience as described by the Jehovah who arranged the gathering. Let me try to describe the food. Imagine being in a futuristic space ship where magically you can have anything you want - all you do is tell the computer. And then SPLOTCH - out it comes out of a little faucet - but it is a just a couple chromosomes away from what it is supposed to be. SPLOTCH - give me a steak. But instead out comes a shoe - with about the same texture and consistency. Luxury dining at its finest. The orange juice is delicious too - imagine a can of left over concentrate that has been in the refrigerator for two straight weeks, and then so much water is added to it that it almost is a stretch to say an orange ever gave birth to it to begin with. OJ on the house - drink as much as you want. Anything else - cough up the money - because if you don't feel like lemonade, iced tea, OJ, or mutated apple juice - its gonna cost ya. I will say the food improved toward the end, and that quality was definitely better away from the taste bud Jammer cafe buffet. The coke and bottle of water they kindly place in your room - boom - two bucks each you are told - and that is after you have already downed a couple of them. Toilet paper is complimentary - at least for the time being - though I am sure that is subject to change. I was almost afraid to wipe my ass. It seems like just about everything I ate at the buffet was a SPLOTCH version of something it was supposed to be, mutated away and just could not arrive and ended up in a bland wanna be version of what it was and never quite arrived. But there was plenty of food - eat all you want. Eat up - the space aliens want you fed well so they can eat you for dinner - ala TO SERVE MAN - a Twilight Zone episode. The way we were herded into the muggy kitchen at the beginning, I almost felt like they were getting ready to round us up for a mass execution and throw us into the gas chamber or shoot us once it was done. And eat up - as much as you can - stuff your face - if you can't just throw it away - never mind the beggars rotting away in the Baja town awaiting that would sell their souls to even get a chance to eat the McFood that you have the luxury of eating all you want of - if that is grammatically correct - if not - well - oh well. But seeing it was a short little McCruise to begin with that was okay. I am not complaining though. Even a short cruise was far too long for me.

The sleeping arrangements are like Sting's "packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes" you almost bump your head on the ceiling on the bunk level as it appears the residents of the adjacent sardine units are all loudly screwing the daylights out of each other and bumping into your box on the way. The constant motion of the waves provides the sensation of a constant feeling of nausea that never quite goes away as your mind plays trick on you for your close to near sleepless night to welcome you aboard to the cabin. I had one decent night of sleep. The last night I was awakened to the sound of a drunken female lush singing that her friend Ashley never takes it from behind. Being back home now, I thank God constantly I am no longer in that sardine box, and I don't have to pay for a drink of water from a bottle. The little things we take for granted in life...

And the crew was so friendly - good morning - good morning - good morning - to the point you want to go like the dude in AIRPLANE - who starts punching everyone in the face who comes across his path. Shut the hell up - just let me enjoy my God Dam good morning without telling me how f-ing good it is. Shut up - but the cheese continues - the cheesy sounds of the crew telling you the latest cheesy event coming up, or the waiter dancing away to the cheesy disco music that they are dancing to as the "meal" comes to an end. So much cheese - it comes from all directions - there is no way to avoid it, so all you can do is surrender. For the last time, I don't give a flying rat's ass about how much is in the bingo jackpot. Find another way to take my money - you have found plenty already - and I wasn't even the Jehovah funding most of this thing.

But - there is a cloud behind the silver lining. I can now say I have survived a cruise - once I made it to the finish line - and 3 days seemed like 3 years. It was nice - kind of - to see some elements of the family - especially the ones I could actually have a somewhat honest conversation with, the ones who are willing to open up a little and not constantly try to act like the elephant isn't in the room, or that the thing they just told you five minutes ago does not completely contradict what they have been telling you for the last year(s) in Orwellian double speak. And I have had some very spiritual experiences here, amazingly enough. The guitar sessions under the lifeboats, where I could get away from everyone and I probably spent a good 3-4 or so hours a day on average were particularly inspiring, especially at the sunrise and sunset portions of the day. An oriental lady doing what looked like Tai Chi did some weird chant while I was singing Misfits by Ray Davies and smiled at me - it was somewhat bizarre but nice. It was fitting to finally record "Everything is Cheese" on such a cheesy venue - and it is soon to show up on You Tube. I had a nice talk and singing session with my brother Dan there, even if I may not see or hear from him for another decade or so - it was still pleasant and I take that with no expectations of any kind for the future. That's the way it is with my family - now you see them and now you don't. Many times we flat out avoided each other. My daughter couldn't understand why. She was baffled by the lack of interaction. My wife was astounded by this, especially at the beginning when we separated off to our cabins, and at the end when we were dumped at the airport almost 7 hours before the flight without an invitation to hang out or come to the house. I was constantly reminded of how much warmer her family is. My daughter is now heartbroken that the family she was so close to for a few days is now long gone and makes absolutely no effort to stay in touch with her or follow through with the empty promises to come and see her. But for me - I have no expectations, and that is why I didn't feel the same empty misery I felt at our last gathering in Mammoth Lakes, even if that venue was much easier to take physically. (For the next gathering if one is proposed I suggest either an Alaska Iditarod - we all get our own dogs, or a re-enactment of Dan's book hiking across the Pacific Crest Trail, with a detour over Donner where we can all eat each other for dinner). I have come to terms with what I would like our family to be as opposed to the clear reality of the distant being that it is, because I have made my efforts to bring us closer and now I resign myself to the fact that it can only be what it is. Nothing more or less. I have pretty much come to accept what it is - it is kind of like a ghost family - it no longer seems real to me. It is clear after all the demons passed through me a year and a half from the time I found out about it, all the way up to the days before, where I confronted some major emotional baggage on the way, that the most difficult part was all of the mind fucking leading up to the cruise. The actual cruise, though not particularly pleasant, was kind of anti-climactic. No one fought - my wife and mother in law did not come to blows, we all smiled and took the family photo - which I couldn't bring myself to smile for but I endured anyways. We are not going to kill each other over the $250.00 jackpot of an inheritance that will be left for us, but we will never exactly be in love with each other. That's okay. I just for now - thank God constantly that this ordeal is over and I am back - home sweet home - where I belong.

As a little follow up post script - if it sounds like I am completely over this - I'm not. Just moved a little closer but not there - that's why I avoid family gatherings because at some point the depression inevitably kicks in. I didn't get thoroughly depressed about this during the actual journey - which is a plus, but it is slowly creeping in now the more it all starts to slowly sink in - how completely impossibly hopeless the whole situation is with my family relations. So no - I have not risen above this by any stretch. Many demons still remain. To quote the author originally cited at the beginning of this:

Any which way you are tempted to roam

It's a long long long long long long way

Way to go home