Purgatory for non believers
fiction
edward w pritchard
Purgatory for non believers is a place, here and now where there's never quite enough money, you never lose that last twenty pounds and a chest cold never finishes the charade of living because of the benefit evolution gave your immune system from 3300 generations of spunky ancestors.
Housing values never go up when you are in purgatory, only property taxes, both the old house and old car needing looming repairs, mortgages and loans are always adjustable with inflation threatening from the next recession, bank accounts are checking only with no savings and overdraft fees on the rise from bank consolidations, cash in hand is just more than enough to support your unhealthy habits and perversions, and military veterans with fat pensions and high school students with good life prospects are always soliciting lucre over and over when you enter a grocery store to buy an instant caffeine fix to get you through another interminable morning. You live in the wrong place and time happy to be just alive under the dome of a protective sky and timeless landscape.
Pretty women keep getting older and older when you are in perpetual purgatory, and they never have red hair anymore, and never know or want to know anything about art history, Vermeer's best paintings, their sparkle left then a dozen years ago, and you have to endure tons and tons of idle discussion about money, see inane most current movies, and when they finally invite into their circle you always remember someone else anyway.
Doctors only prescribe more/more/more pills in Purgatory, Ministers aren't spiritual only officious, pedantic and obtuse and politicians not only aren't philosopher Kings, but they are dishonest, and are raving fans, [rah rah rah $], about their party to a fault.
The sky is too bright at night where you live in Purgatory for non believers to see the wonder of the distant universe and the hiking trails are crowded with over population on sunny days during your walks and every one drives way too fast in over-sized trucks to ruin your bike rides on the serene hilly roads.
Old Jesus was just another poor fellow, one of about three million the cruel ambitious Romans crucified in rows, Jesus who was another perfectly beautiful baby but grew up to have lots of problems with authority and got in all kinds of trouble because of talking about class warfare in his times and place. If you try to talk to Jesus silently in your head inspired by your childhood faith he sends you thoughts deep in your brain about randomness, probability and maybe fate and determinism that you learned in college instead of ready solutions to your insurmountable problems.
Purgatory for non believers is day to day but mercifully each morning about six am you get out of bed and get real busy doing nothing with about fifty important things to pass the time until it's time to go to sleep alone again after you are done worrying about houses never going up in value and old cars never running right anymore and how many days there really are in five to ten more years.
Monday, February 27, 2017
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
quiet students discontented octogenarians
quiet students discontented octogenarians
fiction
edward w pritchard
go ahead and blow up the bridge, the river's not as cold as it use to be
The students are polite and very quiet when the grandson learning to walk and I pass them on their campus. Students here seems to have no badges of unity and other than their backpacks and their student loan meal plan cards the college students in my town display no communal party patches of solidarity at all observable to the casually interested.
Also wearing the backpacks now a days are the underclass of America best observed as humble folks traveling about on city buses or on street-corners carrying signs to pander coins from rushing motorists. The signs are not political messages against our leaders but pleas for sustenance presented handwritten in magic marker on cardboard signs stored under expressway bridges and sometimes shared by more than one of the near homeless standing in a cold rain around holidays here in our hometown. There seems to be no connections between the backpacks worn by the near homeless locally and the students use of backpacks as the students use backpacks starting in fifth grade and on into college to carry expensive books to learn how to succeed in the business world and the near homeless use backpacks to display an affiliation with American cultural norms to authority persons driving about in shiny uniforms and new expensive vehicles paid for by the Octogenarians in our Society.
The octogenarians are the ones who are discontented now a days. The old guys don't listen to Barry McGuire " Eve of Destruction" anymore but they often complain vocally about inept government leadership, inequality in the implementation of taxation strategies across the Centuries, and have strong opinions on which middle age wealthy male glamour boy understands the forgotten man in America the best. Octogenarians should never wear a backpack- it's like putting a hat on a horse, and anyone over sixty five in America is pretty much harmless anyway in reality, that is unless he is an older male politician. In any case the elderly including the octogenarians have no solidarity either. The elderly have no clout collectively at all because too many of them are sidetracked by economic issues but when sitting in a group at the McDonald's having the discounted senior coffee the elderly express loudly to the entire dining area strong heart felt opinions on libertarian-ism, rising health insurance costs, property taxes and of course why if a person can stand in a cold rain all day holding a sign begging for money from drivers at expressway exits why can't they just get a job, like everyone else.
There is no Solidarity in America among the students, the under classes, the elderly or anyone else that I can see. But somehow we all maintain the Hope that the wealthy short haired conservative male politicians will look out for the interests of all of us commoners. Most of the time we just go on with our lives forgetting about how dysfunctional things are now compared to when Ulysses S Grant or Warren G. Harding was our President
Advice to students from one of the elderly? I hear our new President wants to beef up our navy with some new mega battle ships and restart the nuclear arms race. Students work for or invest in companies that make 1950's style bomb shelters and maybe listen to a little of Barry McGuire's " Eve of [Disruption] strike that of Destruction". Both are a little corny but since the future is so hard to predict I recommend -everything old is new again. Watch for me in a backpack hiking along watching and silently observing or maybe complaining and pontificating a little too loud over a McDonald's senior coffee.
fiction
edward w pritchard
go ahead and blow up the bridge, the river's not as cold as it use to be
The students are polite and very quiet when the grandson learning to walk and I pass them on their campus. Students here seems to have no badges of unity and other than their backpacks and their student loan meal plan cards the college students in my town display no communal party patches of solidarity at all observable to the casually interested.
Also wearing the backpacks now a days are the underclass of America best observed as humble folks traveling about on city buses or on street-corners carrying signs to pander coins from rushing motorists. The signs are not political messages against our leaders but pleas for sustenance presented handwritten in magic marker on cardboard signs stored under expressway bridges and sometimes shared by more than one of the near homeless standing in a cold rain around holidays here in our hometown. There seems to be no connections between the backpacks worn by the near homeless locally and the students use of backpacks as the students use backpacks starting in fifth grade and on into college to carry expensive books to learn how to succeed in the business world and the near homeless use backpacks to display an affiliation with American cultural norms to authority persons driving about in shiny uniforms and new expensive vehicles paid for by the Octogenarians in our Society.
The octogenarians are the ones who are discontented now a days. The old guys don't listen to Barry McGuire " Eve of Destruction" anymore but they often complain vocally about inept government leadership, inequality in the implementation of taxation strategies across the Centuries, and have strong opinions on which middle age wealthy male glamour boy understands the forgotten man in America the best. Octogenarians should never wear a backpack- it's like putting a hat on a horse, and anyone over sixty five in America is pretty much harmless anyway in reality, that is unless he is an older male politician. In any case the elderly including the octogenarians have no solidarity either. The elderly have no clout collectively at all because too many of them are sidetracked by economic issues but when sitting in a group at the McDonald's having the discounted senior coffee the elderly express loudly to the entire dining area strong heart felt opinions on libertarian-ism, rising health insurance costs, property taxes and of course why if a person can stand in a cold rain all day holding a sign begging for money from drivers at expressway exits why can't they just get a job, like everyone else.
There is no Solidarity in America among the students, the under classes, the elderly or anyone else that I can see. But somehow we all maintain the Hope that the wealthy short haired conservative male politicians will look out for the interests of all of us commoners. Most of the time we just go on with our lives forgetting about how dysfunctional things are now compared to when Ulysses S Grant or Warren G. Harding was our President
Advice to students from one of the elderly? I hear our new President wants to beef up our navy with some new mega battle ships and restart the nuclear arms race. Students work for or invest in companies that make 1950's style bomb shelters and maybe listen to a little of Barry McGuire's " Eve of [Disruption] strike that of Destruction". Both are a little corny but since the future is so hard to predict I recommend -everything old is new again. Watch for me in a backpack hiking along watching and silently observing or maybe complaining and pontificating a little too loud over a McDonald's senior coffee.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Grandson's first birthday wishes
Grandson's first birthday wishes
fiction
edward w pritchard
Ordered by your Mother not to buy you a present for your first birthday party today I'll impart advice to sit with the Love and comfort I give each time I am blessed fortunate enough to spend a few hours chasing you about as you perfect your walking and understanding. Fret not little King I'll slip you a cookie, vegan of course, with no sugar the next time we exchange vowel sounds standing in front of a mirror down at Quaker Square were we spent some time together way back in early Winter 2016 before the oat silos where torn down, you grew into a man, and I disappeared into your distant memory.
First listen more than you talk to those around you during this the next year as you face the daunting and extremely fascinating challenge of learning to talk to be understood and hearing to understand. From your Mother's parents may you harvest eternal curiosity with the nuances of words and symbols, spoken, written and sung and the intricacies between our language, our dreams, our Culture and the invisible Universe that sometimes is easy to forget and difficult to understand.
For your tenth Birthday Love and worship your Mother and smile kindly at your Father when you best him in a race. Play the piano with your uncle and grandmother when they sing you happy birthday. When you are twelve sleep outside on hard ground in the wind and cold, capture breakfast food from a Lake or stream and tramp joyously about the hills and valleys enclosing your environment.
For your nineteenth year be polite to your elders, kind to your girlfriend and respectful of your neighbors. Stay busy, value rare time alone, and stop and brush snow off your Mother's car in an early morning winter storm.
to be continued
and me, your grandfather, what was I like at about 65 years old coming to grips with my mortality?
here is something I wrote, some what related to how we are born, bloom and eventually die and must eventually pass on,
fiction
edward w pritchard
Ordered by your Mother not to buy you a present for your first birthday party today I'll impart advice to sit with the Love and comfort I give each time I am blessed fortunate enough to spend a few hours chasing you about as you perfect your walking and understanding. Fret not little King I'll slip you a cookie, vegan of course, with no sugar the next time we exchange vowel sounds standing in front of a mirror down at Quaker Square were we spent some time together way back in early Winter 2016 before the oat silos where torn down, you grew into a man, and I disappeared into your distant memory.
First listen more than you talk to those around you during this the next year as you face the daunting and extremely fascinating challenge of learning to talk to be understood and hearing to understand. From your Mother's parents may you harvest eternal curiosity with the nuances of words and symbols, spoken, written and sung and the intricacies between our language, our dreams, our Culture and the invisible Universe that sometimes is easy to forget and difficult to understand.
For your tenth Birthday Love and worship your Mother and smile kindly at your Father when you best him in a race. Play the piano with your uncle and grandmother when they sing you happy birthday. When you are twelve sleep outside on hard ground in the wind and cold, capture breakfast food from a Lake or stream and tramp joyously about the hills and valleys enclosing your environment.
For your nineteenth year be polite to your elders, kind to your girlfriend and respectful of your neighbors. Stay busy, value rare time alone, and stop and brush snow off your Mother's car in an early morning winter storm.
to be continued
and me, your grandfather, what was I like at about 65 years old coming to grips with my mortality?
here is something I wrote, some what related to how we are born, bloom and eventually die and must eventually pass on,
when the circus packs up and steadily moves out of town
when the circus packs up and steadily moves out of town
fiction
edward w Pritchard
Us farmers, store keepers, women and children milled around a long time after the circus packed up and steadily left town. The ground shook from the trump of the elephants, the squeak of the wagon wheels carrying the fat lady and the fire eating boy could be heard for a long, long way off and you could see the red hair of the world's tallest man for over a half mile before the entire circus retinue was out of sight; steadily traversing Cario hill off southwest to Carterville.
For four glorious days our lives were transformed by all the performers of the three ring circus but now the strongman who wrestles a giant bear, the woman who trains miniature horses, and the rest of the troupe are all gone; off to the next venue.
Back to our lives tomorrow.
fiction
edward w Pritchard
Us farmers, store keepers, women and children milled around a long time after the circus packed up and steadily left town. The ground shook from the trump of the elephants, the squeak of the wagon wheels carrying the fat lady and the fire eating boy could be heard for a long, long way off and you could see the red hair of the world's tallest man for over a half mile before the entire circus retinue was out of sight; steadily traversing Cario hill off southwest to Carterville.
For four glorious days our lives were transformed by all the performers of the three ring circus but now the strongman who wrestles a giant bear, the woman who trains miniature horses, and the rest of the troupe are all gone; off to the next venue.
Back to our lives tomorrow.
Monday, January 9, 2017
a poet, an artist, and a romantic in the trenches
a poet, an artist, and a romantic in the trenches
fiction
edward w pritchard
Captain says he don't need a poet, an artist or a romantic in the trenches when the enemy starts to bomb with the big guns, sends over the noxious gases on a foul wind, or sneaks up on you in the dark and sticks a twisting rusted bayonet in your buddies neck where it attaches at the jaw.
Ain't that the way it is, you try to behave with civility and some mercenary from over there blows a whistle and over the top they come at full gallop giving the rebel yell fighting with a fury for King, Country, big business interests and their own intricate long range plans of economic comfort after they retire from the competition to have stuff and earn a good comfortable living.
If you are going to carry a bible here in the trenches don't read it, and don't follow what it says about love thy fellow man; stick it in your shirt pocket it might just stop a bullet one day.
You can't reason with them on the other side, they ain't your friend, you don't owe them nothing and this disagreement between countries is just a catastrophic explosion that will send pieces of the heart's of a poet, an artist and a romantic flying in all directions.
There ain't no civility or rules involved protect yourself at all costs and don't forgive them with passing time nor does self interested explanations mitigate what the enemy did. Protect your heart from further damage.
Don't close your eyes for a moment staring out into the darkness and dust across no man's land. One day they will be a comin back over the top.
fiction
edward w pritchard
Captain says he don't need a poet, an artist or a romantic in the trenches when the enemy starts to bomb with the big guns, sends over the noxious gases on a foul wind, or sneaks up on you in the dark and sticks a twisting rusted bayonet in your buddies neck where it attaches at the jaw.
Ain't that the way it is, you try to behave with civility and some mercenary from over there blows a whistle and over the top they come at full gallop giving the rebel yell fighting with a fury for King, Country, big business interests and their own intricate long range plans of economic comfort after they retire from the competition to have stuff and earn a good comfortable living.
If you are going to carry a bible here in the trenches don't read it, and don't follow what it says about love thy fellow man; stick it in your shirt pocket it might just stop a bullet one day.
You can't reason with them on the other side, they ain't your friend, you don't owe them nothing and this disagreement between countries is just a catastrophic explosion that will send pieces of the heart's of a poet, an artist and a romantic flying in all directions.
There ain't no civility or rules involved protect yourself at all costs and don't forgive them with passing time nor does self interested explanations mitigate what the enemy did. Protect your heart from further damage.
Don't close your eyes for a moment staring out into the darkness and dust across no man's land. One day they will be a comin back over the top.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
it's the system, it's the system
it's the system, it's the system
fiction
edward w pritchard
It's the system, it's the system, the last six words from the lips of that old misanthrope myself as he passed from this domain were a continuing diatribe on the exploitation embedded in the American Capitalistic system. Throw me in the ground to shut him up, undertakers, insurance men, medical billing folks, hospital personnel, probate court referee's and a host of others have to make a living too.
There is an insidious sadness built into the invisible hidden structure of the American Capitalistic
system.
How do I know? Why can I understand what other won't mention?
I took the bus to work for two days. Getting up at 6 AM I rode the bus to work. it's the system, it's the system. Capitalism has an insidious sadness, seldom mention, but always apparent.
One very overweight young Woman hopping off the dark 6 AM bus at the Mc Donald's for some mcbreakfast before starting her eight hours on her feet as the cashier at the nearby dollar store.
Take the bus one day to work.
See the dark side of the American way of life. That's about it. Just him singing off key in the old wilderness while the wheels of the system squeak and grind along. Meanwhile the downtown bus number 19 takes it's 96,432 journey from my neighborhood to downtown and back since I was a student learning about the invisible hand of capitalism back in college.
fiction
edward w pritchard
It's the system, it's the system, the last six words from the lips of that old misanthrope myself as he passed from this domain were a continuing diatribe on the exploitation embedded in the American Capitalistic system. Throw me in the ground to shut him up, undertakers, insurance men, medical billing folks, hospital personnel, probate court referee's and a host of others have to make a living too.
There is an insidious sadness built into the invisible hidden structure of the American Capitalistic
system.
How do I know? Why can I understand what other won't mention?
I took the bus to work for two days. Getting up at 6 AM I rode the bus to work. it's the system, it's the system. Capitalism has an insidious sadness, seldom mention, but always apparent.
One very overweight young Woman hopping off the dark 6 AM bus at the Mc Donald's for some mcbreakfast before starting her eight hours on her feet as the cashier at the nearby dollar store.
Take the bus one day to work.
See the dark side of the American way of life. That's about it. Just him singing off key in the old wilderness while the wheels of the system squeak and grind along. Meanwhile the downtown bus number 19 takes it's 96,432 journey from my neighborhood to downtown and back since I was a student learning about the invisible hand of capitalism back in college.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
substitution immersion therapy
substitution immersion therapy
fiction
edward w pritchard
Financial problems or rather my dread at the prospect of tomorrow's arriving lead me to entering the latest fad in psychology substitution immersion therapy administered with a licensed artificial intelligence smart machine GHE Freud 107. A generation ten physician, psychiatrist, and generation five psychologist. I took 75 gg's Prosaic [T] to hyper stimulate the flight from the reality of my "real life" problems and existence. For the setting of my immersion I spent 26 pre-weeks stage 1A as a slave in American 1840's South Carolina followed by 30 weeks as an adult conscript soldier in Robert E Lee's army of Virginia American civil War 1862 boundary spacial within 60 miles of Richmond Virginia Summer 1862 And 63. With primary emphasis on the seven days battles offensive stage Confederate armies struggle for Richmond.
I had several survey history classes as a sophomore in college and had seen the Ken Burns Civil War series on the television but my un-usually high adoption to the substitution immersion was [generally] attributed to Prosaic [T] as I did not bond well with GHE Freud 107 at a personal level, due to my stubborn streak I suppose [ha ha], but my experience has become here in my old age the text book case human/artificial intelligence directed substitution therapy. I receive over 2800 units quarter dollars each month residual royalties from book reviews and news commentary from that one year of my life which supports me here in my waning years.
I don't consider myself a typical soldier based on the substitution immersion therapy military experience in my youth. I am not jingoistic foreign immigrates nor do I oppose or support gun control as member NRA. Like most ex soldiers my philosophy of the worth and value of youth time spent in combat has changed with age.
fiction
edward w pritchard
Financial problems or rather my dread at the prospect of tomorrow's arriving lead me to entering the latest fad in psychology substitution immersion therapy administered with a licensed artificial intelligence smart machine GHE Freud 107. A generation ten physician, psychiatrist, and generation five psychologist. I took 75 gg's Prosaic [T] to hyper stimulate the flight from the reality of my "real life" problems and existence. For the setting of my immersion I spent 26 pre-weeks stage 1A as a slave in American 1840's South Carolina followed by 30 weeks as an adult conscript soldier in Robert E Lee's army of Virginia American civil War 1862 boundary spacial within 60 miles of Richmond Virginia Summer 1862 And 63. With primary emphasis on the seven days battles offensive stage Confederate armies struggle for Richmond.
I had several survey history classes as a sophomore in college and had seen the Ken Burns Civil War series on the television but my un-usually high adoption to the substitution immersion was [generally] attributed to Prosaic [T] as I did not bond well with GHE Freud 107 at a personal level, due to my stubborn streak I suppose [ha ha], but my experience has become here in my old age the text book case human/artificial intelligence directed substitution therapy. I receive over 2800 units quarter dollars each month residual royalties from book reviews and news commentary from that one year of my life which supports me here in my waning years.
I don't consider myself a typical soldier based on the substitution immersion therapy military experience in my youth. I am not jingoistic foreign immigrates nor do I oppose or support gun control as member NRA. Like most ex soldiers my philosophy of the worth and value of youth time spent in combat has changed with age.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
scientists
scientists
fiction
edward w pritchard
13.7 billion years ago to the day,
so certain are we of the date,
we enshrine it in our memories.
fiction
edward w pritchard
13.7 billion years ago to the day,
so certain are we of the date,
we enshrine it in our memories.
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