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Rewards
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2238
As part of any good motivational program I have a system of poorly defined rewards. For example, I pay bills X, Y and Z and then I can reward myself with something good, like toilet paper. Sadly things like scotch and whiskey have moved into the realm of "daily necessities...".
Or, if the bills I pay are large enough (and there's no shortage of those), I could reward myself with a Big Screen HD Color TV.
I dwell upon this fantasy for a while.
Odd, because I don't really watch TV. The odd DVD once or twice a year, but that's it. The TV is more of an eyesore than anything else, one of those "Must Have's" for 20th Century life.
But I imagine it set up downstairs in the living room. To justify the purchase I'd put it down as an "improvement" on the property, it wouldn't be mine, it would stay with the house and when the ex moved back in it would be hers. And I could purchase a terabyte hard drive and move all my movies to it and run a cable downstairs to the TV so I could download and watch whatever movie whenever I wanted.
It seems like a good idea, the economics are sound and it would be a reward, of sorts, except that I never watch TV.
Never, ever.
Maybe I'd watch more TV if I had a giant screen HD monstrosity taking up the spare wall space in the living room, but it seems like poor reasoning and bad speculative logic to purchase the TV on the off chance I might watch it. And really, my life is pretty full without it.
And so I'm left searching for some other grubby materialistic reward to justify a life lived in servitude. Maybe a new watch? (and here I laugh, because I have over a hundred watches and need another watch like Calgary needs a $25 million dollar pedestrian bridge, but, hey, I paid for the bridge, why shouldn't I pay for the watch....?). Or - and here I take a big leap - a trip?
I could take a trip with the boy...Las Vegas, or some other major US center...maybe even London for a few days, take in some shows, comb the Thames for broken bits of china and clay pipe stems, bits to be used in my mixed media projects....
But the logistics of this, in the job I'm in, well, they're difficult. And so I'm back to searching for some other way to blow off a bit of economic steam...
Rewards implies something I need or want, and I'm at this curious impasse in my life where the only thing I need or want is time to myself. Which is the one thing, ironically, I can't afford. And so it goes...
nested dreams like boxes
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2082
Two nights running, a mish-mash of odd dreams, waking up with the scrambled recollections, they seem to make no sense. And one jumps into the other, I have the impression that they are all sharing the same wooden box, nesting one within another or joined by invisible wires. One, vaguely recalled this morning: I have a frog, small, slippery, with a bar-code upon it, and I am using it as a magician might use a dove or rabbit, as a prop for my tricks. The frog doesn't like this, it's a rare South-American frog, endangered from the rain forest, strange bar-code birthmark upon it's mouth....and the frog is talking to me, escaping, it smashes a pen holder I had (stained glass, given to me by my mother) and I'm now angry with frog, trying to pick up the glass (careful, it's sharp), find another pen-holder, capture frog (still talking to me, giving me attitude...)...
Kubla Khan - Coleridge
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1798
"In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."
More interesting dreams, other people's dreams. In this case, Kubla Khan, a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - or, more accurately, a fragment of a poem, having emerged from an opium induced slumber he was filled with inspiration and upon writing down the poem found himself interrupted by a persistent traveling salesperson; the dream was lost and he only ever recaptured fragments.
Link: Wiki on Kubla Khan
Link: online-literature - complete poem
Note the ending: "For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise..."
My Own Biographer
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2387
IFN and I'm taking the boy to see "True Grit" by the Coen Brothers. And on the way I check to see how his memorization of quotes and poetry is doing. He's learning them, but knows nothing about the authors. I've reassigned these for next week.
And perhaps this is what inspired him, because he takes out his pen and paper and begins writing down my quotes. By which I mean all the offensive 4 letter words and explicitives I toss off in ordinary conversation. He jots them down faithfully and reads them back to me, I correct them for accuracy and try to append explanatory footnotes to some of them - he won't have it. "For my teachers and social worker" he tells me.
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