070808

 

Cincinnati, OH

Tuesday July 8, 2008

     7:09am  I got 6.38 hours of sleep last night.

     8:41am  I am leaving for my first trek into Cincinnati. I am leaving Tom's house. I'm going to take a day off from scrapping.
                  
     9:30am  I walked up to the bus stop in front of the Kroger on Hamilton. I've been here for like an hour. I'm wondering when the bus comes. Two dollars it will cost me to get downtown. I'm not going to ask for a courtesy ride. I'm going to get downtown first and then I'll ask for a ride on the way back.

                   I've got forty bucks. I'm going to go buy some supplies. I need a one-hitter. I need to buy some batteries. I hope that's the bus coming. Cool, 17. I'm going to get on it.

     The world, they are saying, is a mirage. Everything is forever falling
apart and there's no way of fixing it, and the more strenuously you grasp
this airy nothingness, the more swiftly it collapses in your hands.
Western, technological civilization is, thus far, man's most desperate
effort to beat the game—to understand, control, and fix this will-o'-thewisp
called life, and it may be that its very strength and skill will all the
more rapidly dissolve its dreams. But if this is not to be so, technical
power must be in the hands of a new kind of man.
     In times past, recognition of the impermanence of the world usually
led to withdrawal. On the one hand, ascetics, monks, and hermits tried
to exorcise their desires so as to regard the world with benign
resignation, or to draw back and back into the depths of consciousness
to become one with the Self in its unmanifest state of eternal serenity.
     On the other hand, others felt that the world was a state of probation
where material goods were to be used in a spirit of stewardship, as loans
from the Almighty, and where the main work of life is loving devotion
to God and to man.
     Yet both these responses are based on the initial supposition that the
individual is the separate ego, and because this supposition is the work
of a double-bind any task undertaken on this basis—including
religion—will be self-defeating. Just because it is a hoax from the
beginning, the personal ego can make only a phony response to life. For
the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from
the standpoint of someone standing aside from it—as if it were quite
other than himself—and then trying to grasp it. Without birth and death,
and without the perpetual transmutation of all forms of life, the world
would be static, rhythmless, undancing, mummified.
     But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on
the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the
world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on the
realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process. This
realization is already in us in the sense that our bodies know it, our
bones and nerves and sense-organs. We do not know it only in the sense
that the thin ray of conscious attention has been taught to ignore it, and
taught so thoroughly that we are very genuine fakes indeed.

     10:16am  I just got off the bus at the main library downtown.

     11:30am  I am coming out of the library. I extended my update all the way to the second of July. I had the HTML files already made and proofread, but they don't have the Sandisk memory card slot or Frontpage so I can't add the pictures. They'll be pictureless until whenever.

     12:09pm  I've been wandering around downtown looking for a headshop. I've been told that there's not one at all downtown. I just got directed to Washington Park. I'm going to try and score some weed somehow.

     12:23pm  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Mission-accomplished. I bought me a twenty sack. I have my silver one-hitter bat to smoke out of, but I wish I had a fake cigarette. I'm bored and there's nobody to tell my story to in the park.

                     I never mentioned that at the library I discovered they did indeed have the slot I needed to access my pictures! I have them all on my litle hard drive already. I even took the time to name them already. I killed some time at the library.

     1:35pm  What an awesome presentation I just had with Rosemary Stein. Oh yeah, they had a bum-feed here around the corner from the park by Lord's Gym, umm, the Lord's Pantry. I told this older lady working there my story and she listened to me great. I cut to the important part and she agreed with everything. I passed out my website like crazy.

     2:01pm  I just had an awesome presentation with this guy Dan. He had come out on his smokebreak and he listened to my whole story. He was all excited.

     2:14pm  I walked to the bus terminal and I'm waiting for the 17. I'm going to ride it to a headshop and buy a pipe. Then I'll ride it to the Kroger.

     2:31pm  I just got off the bus at some random spot. I was rattling off my story like crazy on the bus. Anyway, I'm going to walk to Pine and Clifton and look for a headshop.

     2:57pm  About ten minutes ago I stopped and took a smokebreak in front of Inwood Park. I'm walking up Vine Street. Right now my backpack opened up and all my shit fell out. So I stopped for a smokebreak.

     4:01pm  I just got to The Smoke Shop. Oh yeah, right before it I was walking and I noticed some girl in the distance sitting down playing with her pussy. I walked up to her and hit her up for my story and she listened to me great. Odyssey and all. She only had one leg and lived with her girlfriend in the apartment right in front of where she was sitting.

                   I went in the pipe shop and I blew ten bucks on an acrylic fake cigarette. I'm back in business.

     4:44pm  I've got to make an update. I was walking towards Hamilton, I kind of remembered that being the name of the street. I asked this brother Orlando at the stoplight which way it was and he told me that he was going that way too. He warned me that it was a long-ass walk though. I smiled and told him, "That's okay. I've got my stick." I told him to lead the way.

     5:23pm  We went up W Smithers Street(it sounded like), turning left. He's showing me a shortcut to Hamilton.

     6:36pm  Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, me and Orlando, he called his sister and she sad she would come pick us up. We sat down at this park to wait for her and I got to tell Orlando lots of my stories. He even read Fawn's Message to All. His sister Andrea eventually pulled up in a Hummer. I've never ridden in a Hummer before. She's giving me a ride to Vince's Sports Bar. Mabye Patty will be around. Awesome. Then I can walk to Tom's.

     7:15pm  I just got to tell Andrea my story. We were driving around in a Hummer. Right now it's storming outside. I'm still at the bar, but I've extracted my rain poncho, so I'm not scared. I'm going to walk to the Kroger from here.

     7:21pm  Stopped at the White Castle and bought me a double bacon cheeseburger. I've never had White Castle before. I had one of their breakfast things the other morning. I'm going to walk back to the house.

                   Oh shit, I left my rain poncho on the counter. I have to walk back.

     7:38pm  I am back home at Tom's house.

Page 93 of The Book:

But the neglect of ecology is the one most serious weakness
of modern technology, and it goes hand-in-hand with our reluctance to
be participating members of the whole community of living species.
Man aspires to govern nature, but the more one studies ecology, the
more absurd it seems to speak of any one feature of an organism, or of
an organism/environment field, as governing or ruling others.

Next day..