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Saturday, July 17, 2010

Jibber Jabber, Slibber Slabber, She Liked to Hop and Skip and Hippidy Dip 07 16 2010

Jibber Jabber, Slibber Slabber, She Liked to Hop and Skip and Hippidy Dip 07 16 2010



Morton had just dropped his mother off at the physical therapist. There had been rain lately and the weather was hot, in the nineties. There was a park not far away where Morton could finish his coffee and read the paper and maybe do a little writing.


A single lane road led down to the parking lot by the river. There was no boat launch there but Morton thought if they were to put a boat ramp in cars would have trouble coming and going down the single lane road. And it would not be easy place to back up a boat with a trailer on it to provide leeway.


Morton parked the car in the shadiest spot close to the river. He could not see the river because there were yards of forestry between him and the river. He had the front windows open and leaned back the seat to take a little knap or rest as it where. As soon as he did this a four door sedan pulled in and parked closer to the river than him.


There was a suspicious looking man in the car next to him. If he didn’t know any better he would think he might be some kind of criminal. His car had a bad lifter noise and a rattle in the air conditioning compressor. Morton leaned back in his seat and said very loud, “Turn that shit off.”

Morton then a little disturbed that someone is starting to ruin his rest looked over at the driver as mean as he could. Then Morton eased back in his seat and rested some more.


Another car then pulled in between Morton and the shady character, looked at Morton and then backed out and parked on the other side of the lot. This man had a bald head. Morton eased back and rested some more. He then heard the car door of the first car close and looked up to size up the fellow. He was tall of reasonable build; he had a grubby beard, and dark sunglasses. His skin was mustard colored and Morton knew he could take him if he had to. Morton watched him walk to the river and thought nothing of it.


The driver’s seat on Morton’s 2001 Buick Regal could recline pretty far. And one could nap pretty well. Morton glanced up and saw the man return and get in his car. That son of bitch started up the engine again. “Don’t these low class people of this day and age know how to keep a car properly maintained?” Morton thought as he heard the groaning engine.

Morton’s feet were getting hot so he opened the door and took off his shoes and socks. He shut the door and stretched out his legs forward, much better he thought. As he sat there with bare feet he thought. “You know I have my gym bag with me, it has a towel in it, and it also has my $3 orange colored rubber sandals in it. By golly Morton you ought to go walk about and find a place to lie down in the sun on the grass like you see people do in parks and on the beach.”

Morton now saw the bald head man approach the car on his left. He didn’t care to let this detract from his afternoon. If it was a drug deal what could he do, make a citizen’s arrest. He probably should have a gun to do this, but like MacGyver he did not believe in hand guns. If those two men had a gay rendezvous what the heck was he supposed to do about that also.
So a little more perturbed about the noisy engine next to him and figuring that he might be smelling exhaust smoke he decided to rummage through his gym bag and find the towel. He found the towel his sandals and a car blanket in the trunk. He gathered up these items plus his morning’s newspaper and his writing papers that were enclosed in the clipboard that had a compartment for them. He also grabbed his digital camera and stripped off his fleck camo tank top. Morton’s chest muscles were as big as a baboons and he often liked to hunt this ancestral way. It was hot.


Morton then made his way to the river. His sandals went flip, flop, flip, flop with every step. When he got in front of the four door sedan he gave the driver a pronounced look that would scare the living shit out of a ghost. And made his way flip, flop, flip, flop. When he got to the river he watched it for a little while. The water had risen from the rain and was shit colored brown. It looked like a spot people might like to fish at, where he was standing. Actually per his memory he had seen people fishing there before. He knew that if he put his blanket down by the river the stench, however so subtle would make him sick. So he kept heading south, flip, flop, flip, flop was the sound his sandals made as the heels of them flapped back up to his heals as walked through the grass. There was a path that led along the river and went into some forestry. He decided to take it. All of a sudden he decided to take a look back, before he could not see the parking lot anymore. Both the cars were now gone.


Morton walked through marsh grasses like he might see far away from the city. There were little pools of water on the path he walked around by stepping on some tall grasses. As he looked towards the river there were more pools of water and the upcroppings of a few trees that had fallen years ago and now had some good blackened rot to them.

The path became grassy and almost disappeared. There was a clearing of tall grasses to his right and he thought, if those were nice short green grass that would be a nice place to catch some sun and peace and quiet. Flip flop his orange sandals tread over thistles, they did not bother Morton. He figured if it was put on this earth he could be in harmony with it. Besides thistle was often a remedy for allergy anyway, in fact Morton took some thistle herb capsules at night to help him sleep.

Flip flop as Morton’s path around the tall grass clearing started to turn right he decided to take a picture of the scenery. He stood and stared a minute. By looking at the scenery now, for all he knew he could be in hunting grounds far away from the city. At this particular spot there was no sign of civilization at all.

Flip, flop he continued. As he tried to encircle a pool of water in the path his foot sunk down in the water and dirt. He thought he should probably wash it off right away and then he thought that pool water could be nowhere as bad as the shit brown water in the river. So path water he thought to himself was not as bad, as he felt the coolness of it on his right foot.


He walked a little further and looked down to see a feather from Blue Jay on the path. The feather had a black herringbone outline with the royal looking blue filling in the gaps. It might contain germs he thought before its beauty compelled him to pick it up and place it under the clip of his board.


The path came out by the parks maintenance shack and he could see the parking lot again. There was the same black man with bald head and younger black woman sitting on the park bench in the distance. Morton surveyed the park and headed west, just at the edge of the forestry was a nice grassy spot under a large tree. It was sunny in that spot and he could put the tree between himself and the parking lot. So that is what he did.


He looked around and back at the parking lot, a SUV had just parked and another bald head man was getting out and walking around cagily. The same rules that applied to the first applied to him.


He laid down his car blanket and his damp gym towel near the head of where he would lay and laid down.


At first the heat of the sun caused him to sweat a little. Then that subsided. The ground under him was firm, and Morton and the earth were one. Morton summoned the energy of the honest earth into his body and him and the earth became one. He stretched back his arms as he lay and inhaled deeply. His chest rose high as he inhaled. He controlled his deep breathing as his massive lungs bellowed naturally upward a few inches upon inhalation and he held it there for a few moments to recharge himself and the earth before he took another breath.


Morton just started to enjoy the heat of the sun when he heard a black man near the maintenance shack jibber jawing about this and that. He thought he heard him say in the near distance, “I’m gonna mow me lawn or chop something up.” He assumed it was a maintenance man but did not care to look up. Him and the earth were one. He was not breathing only for himself but for the earth also. Like a monk he let thoughts and words pass by him with no regard. Morton could sleep like a Samari and awaken just as deadly. He thought to himself, if someone decides to come walking about where I am out of the way here I will say, “Don’t bother me know, be on your way!”


Morton and the earth had rested long enough. He regained his muscle tension and turned to his side. There was a biography in his mornings Investors Business Daily newspaper that he would read. It was about George Pullman. It turns out that Chicago was built on a marsh and that the streets had to be raised. George devised ways to raise buildings on a whole acre of land while the people were still in them. The entire sewer system of Chicago was raised to allow waste to flow into the Chicago River and then Lake Michigan. Today the sewage canals were loaded with Asian Carp that threatened the great lakes. Morton remembered an article he had written in jest to the President a few weeks ago about how people from Milwaukee should man barges loaded with rocks and clay and plug the mouth of the Chicago River. Morton read further in the biography and was becoming sleepy from the sun and reading, it was almost time to pick his mother up from the physical therapist. He started to identify with the ingenuity of George Pullman and thought, that must be some kind of a screw jack based platform that could evenly and level raise such massive objects. As he read on he became more tired and saw that George had then went on to devise a way to make train cars that wend their way clackingly on the metal tracks easier to sleep in. Morton was distracted by a blade of grass tickling his left leg. It was more than a blade of grass, it must be a caterpillar. Morton looked down to his leg as he felt it brush him there twice more but this time further up his leg.




Morton’s chest spasammed and his reeled to his right, the noise coming from his mouth was a dull groan. Morton was instantly on his feet as he saw the Black Snake about a foot and a half long that tickled and teased him slither away quickly into the forest.


Jibber Jabber, Slibber Slabber, She liked to hop and skip and hippidy dip.

Thomas Paul Murphy


Copyright 2010 Thomas Paul Murphy



PS: When Morton got home that night on the News was a story about how Milwaukee was seeking to take legal action against Chicago to have its canals closed.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Fathers, Sons, Husbands and Daughters

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Fathers, Sons, Husbands and Daughters 07 05 2010

The teachings in the prose that follows employ the Socratic Method. Socratic Method teaches by asking questions. As you read these questions make a mental note of how you answer them. Sometimes an objection people have to the Socratic Method is that they do not feel they should have to answer questions. But it is the best way for them to confront their own ignorance. Often learning is a matter of drawing small ties to things you know already, in order to reach a larger understanding. Sometimes things we know already are false. Part of learning is the willingness to accept new ideas. This means listening. Listening means accepting that you do not know everything already. Many who cannot learn cannot do so because they cannot listen because it means lessening their ego. And they feel that means not having as great an opinion of themselves. It is that and unknowingly to them a form of disrespect to themselves and others.

What kind of father do you wish that you had? One that teaches you right from wrong? One that would spend time with you and take an interest in you? One that would tell you not to smoke? One that would tell you not to do drugs? One that tells you it is wrong to fixate on someone every waking hour of your life? What do you do if you had a strong father? Would you treat him with respect or try and destroy him? How would you treat a father that was not your natural biological father?

What kind of man do you seek to marry? Like your father or like the father you wish you had? Do you wish that your father did not abuse you? Do you wish your father did not abandon you? Do you accept bad things done to you? Do you accept bad things done to you because you feel you did not have any way to prevent or control them from happening? Does your acceptance of bad things done to you make it alright for you to do bad things to others? As you look at bad things that happened to you how would you seek to prevent bad things of that nature from happening to others? Do you even care? Or are you now the person who does the bad things yourself? Do you know right from wrong? Do you feel good things come from doing wrong and that is your justification to making others suffer? Or are you just jealous and envious and will not admit this to yourself as these are forms of self hatred?

Does your mother or wife have a bad relationship with her father or husband?

How does your father see that you develop as a person? Does he leave that up to someone else? No. Was your father one who was raised in an alternate family structure? Does he now choose to see that you are raised properly? Having been raised poorly does he know what this means?

Does your father leave your development up to anyone that comes along on the street?

What does your father think of you? Does he resent you because you are like him? Does your father truly like himself? If you feel he likes himself, do you think he likes others also? If in this case he does not like others, do you see this as a contradiction to him liking himself?

Is your father jealous or envious of your constructive accomplishments in life? Does he encourage you to take risks in life regarding your own capabilities? If you have risked nothing in life what have you truly learned? If you have risked nothing in life what can you truly teach?

Does your father ever truly praise you, “Nice work son!” Or does your father in effect say, “You stole good for the family today, have a smoke, our way is the only way.”

Does your father see to your safety? For instance does he have you use a chain saw or axe to chop wood or trees and not see that you protect YOUR eyes? Does your father make sure that you are not being abused?

Were you raised not to like women? Were you raised to hate your father and father figures? Do you believe in authority? Do you believe in God in heaven?

Does hatred or distance from your father cause you to seek a man that loves? In other words did your father raise you as a homosexual? If you were raised by a woman do you bear the common sense regarding the physical world that a man does?

Does your father seek to ruin others? Why is this wrong?

Does your father lead you be example? Do you accept your father’s behavior?

Do you recognize when your own father makes a mistake? How does your father own up to mistakes? If he is human, and I say this in slight, does he recognize his mistakes and try and not repeat them? Is it hard for your father to think that he has faults?

Is it too painful for your father to try and raise you? Thinking involves memory. Are your fathers memories too painful and therefore he cannot think? Have you ever seen children that are beat on the head for doing something bad? Does this cause them to associate pain with thinking? Can this reveal this reveal itself later in someone’s life? Does your father need a scapegoat to teach you how to learn? Do you need a scapegoat to learn? Are you your father’s scapegoat? Does your father live to point his finger in judgment of other and yet not have any true abilities of his own? Are you the son of another father that is lead to believe that he has no skills at all by someone as just described? You may have more skills and abilities than you ever imagined by comparison.

Is your father jealous of good work? What do you see that your father is envious of? Do you see his envy as a sign of weakness? People of all ages get snotty when their feelings are hurt. Has someone been snotty to you and you can’t imagine why? Most likely it is from envy and jealousy.

Do you become snotty and mean to other children that have more loving fathers than you do? As an adult are you like the spoiled child that does not let others play with his toys? Do you do this to make others jealous and envious of you in response to your own feelings of self esteem or worth?

Do you feel that your family wealth makes you better than others? Or are you jealous of children whose fathers have less money and yet love their sons and daughters more?

Do you recognize jealousy and envy in yourself? Do you recognize your own snotty reactions? Do you recognize this as a weakness? Do you recognize the behaviors they lead to?

Do your surround yourself with a peer group that has the same bad behavior as you do? Or do you surround yourself with those of the similar nature of envy and jealousy?

Do you know how to change your behavior? Do you know how to resist temptation?

Are you so jealous of the good works of others that you fixate on them in an evil manner? Can you not accept that you are not someone else? Do you know what a delusion is? Do you know how having one is destructive to yourself and others? Do you seek without willful intention to cause delusion in others about their self worth? Do you seek this in a positive sense or a negative sense? Do you seek to profit from a negative self image or delusion you created in another person? Did you give them a negative self image that is quite contrary to what they truly are? Do you enjoy doing this? Do you thrive on this? Your name is Satan.

This one is very important; do you know why delusions of yourself are unhealthy? Do you know when you are lying to yourself? You may have to search through the pains of your life to figure this one out.

How do you choose friends? Do you seek friends with better capabilities or abilities than you? Do you like to be at par with friends? Do you like to un-thoughtfully nick pick at friends? For example not try and think about why they make decisions the way they do but instead impose false idealisms on them.

Do you recognize when friends are detrimental to your development? Do your friends truly respect you? If they made you a criminal or conduct criminal behavior would you recognize it even then?

Are you a criminal that has not been caught? Do you know what crime is? Were you raised to respect the rights of others? Do you recognize other as having rights? Do you just see others as tools to further your life’s evil nature in terms of wealth and power? Do you drain energy from people in this manner? Is your true life’s religion one of witchcraft and demonic possession? If so do you seek to make someone need to use a psychiatrist as you seek to facilitate and maintain your delusion of self?

Why do you choose the work or profession that you do? Is it for status? Do your really do the work you have the title for doing in terms of the benefit to society that the job or profession represents? Did you just chose to be something because it is what your mother told you to be, and therefore you go to all costs to be that person even though you are detrimental to our society in doing so? Who in society are you trying to fool? Be honest with yourself when choosing a profession. The aptitude tests they give you in high school are pretty accurate. Do not try and stand in the way of someone that has the true aptitude that you do not. Do not destroy people of true talent and then feel that because you did so you now possess that true talent, you don’t, and you never will.

When you have done bad things what was your father’s response? Do you respect your father? Upon reflection due you respect your father or others for the times you were disciplined? Can you think of any time that you should have been disciplined that you were not?

Did your father try and prevent you from growing up to be a criminal? Do you respect the rights of others?

Was your father jealous of other fathers and snotty to them? Does your father recognize his own faults? Does your father his own limitations? Is your father like his father? Do you want to be like your father or someone else? Why? Would not you be better off by trying to be like your father but in a better way, in other words, think of some good there is in him and also think of the good you see in others as you age, try and be like that. And if you cannot think about one good thing about your father so be it!

What can you say about yourself as you think about your own behavior?

As an adult do you not feel comfortable in the presence of children because you were abused by an adult when you were a child? Or are there other adults, they might have been abused by an adult when they were a child, and they try and instill these feelings in you? Do you often see adults and think that they were bad children and are also bad adults and would not trust them with your children? Are you insightful with your analysis or superficial regarding the integrity and character of people?

As an adult are you complacent with those that abuse others and children? Do you as an adult seek to abuse children or adults, or adults just starting out and look for jobs and careers in society where you can do so with little fear of being caught or punishment?

Here is one of that most people are never aware of but is very significant and it is the true nature of Satan; do you as an adult seek that children abuse adults?

Did you grow up not to view people as equals? Do you not feel that all men and women are created equal under God?

It always amazes and then sickens me when I find out that people and friends I had as a boy feel that all men are not created equal. The reason they feel this way is because they are unable to learn and change. I have come to the position via rethinking that they were not raised responsibly. They were raised as scapegoat children. Children their parents had as a byproduct of life. That they were children raised on scapegoats. And children raised on scapegoats are indeed scapegoats themselves. I want you to try hard and think why this is true.

People that feel that all men are not created equal have so many faults and limitations that they think, self serving to their egos, there is no way someone, read scapegoat, could be so smart. In reality these people cannot confront their painful memories that prevent them from thinking for themselves. Memory is the basis of true learning. This also prevents them from truly believing in themselves. To form your own memories and learn from them as you think about them in life is a sign of great intelligence. Start by revisiting the memories you have. If they are not positive what constructive things can you learn from them? Let them form a basis for new life’s adventures and learning. As you go through life keep a list of the positive accomplishments and complements you have achieved and let them form bases for new life’s activities, instead of just rocking away in the chair gaining weight. Do not let impressions others have made unto you, through jealousy, stay with you through the years. I have explained these people already.

Always think in terms of what you truly love to do if you feel it was not your fault you were not successful at it, even though you are doing something else. If you have been tested fairly and are not good and what you would truly love to do, respect those that do it well, and find something else you love to do. Sometimes aspects of what your truly love to do are skills that are present or needed in many types of functions in society. You may find out some day that you fit the definition of a Polymath, or someone that is a professional at many things. I am going to be a little self serving with this next comment, Artists are our true Polymaths.

In reality people often cannot confront painful memories that prevent them from thinking for themselves. This also prevents them from truly thinking for themselves or believing in themselves. The reason for this being, they were put in a position of harm’s way or abuse of some form and are indeed not able to confront their abuser or rationalize there was nothing they could have done otherwise. Here is where guilt is a painful memory that prevents them from thinking for themselves. Should we feel guilty? I would argue that if we did not feel guilty for our actions we would not be human but something lesser. Are there things we feel guilt or shame for that we should not, because there was no way at the time we could have known to control the situation better? As you think of these latter events it might help to try and figure out how to truly prevent this from happening in the future or at least think of ways to support those who are going through or have gone through it.

If you do not believe in yourself are you destructive of others in return? Is not the biggest loser excuse you could ever think of in your life, “All men are not created equal?” Do you belong in this country if you feel or promote the construct that, “All men are not created equally?” Who else among you, besides your self do you feel does not have potential? Why do you project your negative self and the way you were raised on others? Why do you look down on those with more talent than you that might be working for you? It is in fact you saying to yourself, I was not born as good, so I should never strive to be better. The psychological term for this is learned helplessness. How did you learn helplessness? Were you raised via a scapegoat and therefore will never possess true leadership or sense of self.

What does your behavior say to others? What example of leadership do you set for others as you feel you are not created equal? This spells out the word loser to me.

If you think someone was created better than equal as compared to you, do you seek to victimize them?

Are you a man of the past, a boy that lives on the baseball field? Or a man strong for the future?

Do you revel in a childhood past you are comfortable with and not think of yourself in the present or future? Do you feel like life is over for you? What do you feel this way? Did your father or mother teach you to feel this way? Are you indeed looking at the lid of a coffin?

How has your father or mother truly helped you in life? Contrast this to how you feel your father and mother has helped you in life.

Who would you like to be and why? Remember from a prior article of mine you should never truly seek to be one person, because you might develop you didn’t know were coming. But instead ask yourself, what are the aspects of that person that I admire and how can I be like those aspects or character traits in my life? This type of analysis allows you to recognize change. If you know what is changing in yourself and why, you will understand yourself better. Go ahead examine your life. Do not be afraid.

Do you feel those raised to follow make good leaders? How do and should followers seek to be of independent thought from leaders? By ruining the leader, the one who feels he is not created equal thinks! Do not try and break that mold, or father figure, you might need that mold you seek to break in the future and later in life. Smile. I knew a terrible person like this, his motto in life was, “Anyone can be broken”. Do these words repulse you as they do me? He was a Republican. The way a follower truly becomes a leader is to think for himself, as I described in other parts of this article. Thinking for yourself involves trying to answer questions you yourself have thought of asking. Just because you think of a question to ask does not mean you should ask it, think how you would answer it first and then see if it is in the process of being answered. (This was covered in my essay, “How to ask a good question” published in one of my blogs under my index)

A word about changing your mind. Most men were taught to never change their minds when they were boys. This is easy way out thinking. Evaluating all inputs to the decision process leads to the best decisions, plans, implementations and procedures. Do not be afraid to rethink things and change your mind.

Are you taught to never question your father?

Do you feel that your father loves you? Why?

Do you feel that your father hates you? Why?

Are you taught to never question your mother?

Thinking might be painful for some of you probably got a good swat to the head for trying this. Now changing your world that would require truly independent thinking

What kind of person are you anyway? A mindless skull full of pain?

I am fortunate that I can say most of the good things I have written in this essay are indeed my father. God Bless Him, a retired teacher and my mother who was also a teacher.

Thomas Paul Murphy

Copyright 2010 Thomas Paul Murphy