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This week my father told me he thinks I'm an "a-theocrat" rather than an atheist. I do believe in an essential life force that is what Tolle called Source. What I can't tolerate is bureaucrats/theocrats trying to get between me and my relationship with the cosmos.

*Lord's-Jester*

This week I picked up a perfume we made when I was in Florida; I was calling it Euros, but I think I'll end up calling it Cuir du Farceur (The Jester's Leather). To me the first iteration smells leather like, but it can smell more so, somehow. The salient notes, out of 15, are pine needle, orris-violet, frangipani, and jonquil. I toyed with the recipe a bit, and plan to re-make it with my assistant next week, with a total of 18 notes. Tobacco, cedar, star anise, and black pepper might turn it into something more like what I'm looking for. Old leather does strike me as basically dull with just a hint of sharpness. Leather scents are quite common in perfume, especially men's.

It finally really struck me how easy it is to make the different perfume strengths, eau de cologne, eau de toilette, eau de parfum (EdC, EdT, EdP), and parfum. I made an EdC once with 140-proof alcohol, but it doesn't really work (the alcohol isn't strong enough to dissolve some aromatics). From now on I will make EdC and EdT with 180-proof alcohol, and EdP and parfums with 190-proof. Once you have the right alcohol (to make 180 from 190 is easy), all you need is the total weight of aromatics; then you can calculate exactly how many grams of alcohol to add to make a given strength. I take it this is not the way most perfumers do things.

To this end, I got a nice digital scale which can weigh up to 1200 grams; the digital scale I have now is 100 grams max. It's accurate to .005 grams, whereas this new one is only accurate to .1 gram, so the old one is for aromatics and the new one just for alcohol. In this way I can be ultra precise, as I like to be with most things (poetry not so much :-) Precision has no place in poetry). Here are the sizes of containers I will be using (last week I wrote about it in ounces which makes no sense at all): liquids in 5ml open-top bottles and 10ml bottles with three kinds of tops (open, atomizer, roll-on), and solids in 7.5ml tins and 20ml and 30ml aluminum with white glass jars.

*Poems*

The last of the rancor toward my ex-wife is, I believe, expelled with these "poems." I apologize in advance.

We Kept On

We are the men who

kept on loving the women

we promised to love forever.

They've left us in the dust;

we're still hopeless

and mystified.

How can one forsake

the oaths of a lifetime,

and the other be stuck

forever in some kind of

a robotic glitch,

always repeating mistakes,

a computer hung up on itself,

unable to proceed,

crashing into eternity,

re-initializing over and over?

We kept on loving because

we didn't realize there was

any other way.

Like the streets we walked on

once that went on straight,

who turn once to look for us

before jumping, gasping,

we keep on,

one foot in front of the other,

honest to a fault,

dreaming our would-be world,

always longing for the way

it used to be.

We stamp our feet and

refuse to accept that

the way it was won't come again.

We keep on straight for

the sake of the few who love us,

for the hope of what could be,

and because we realize

we never have been hopeless in truth.

_____

Always the Last to Know

I understand now.

I can't relate but

at least I understand.

When I tell the story

of how I proposed

to you, on stage

in a skit at

an improv comedy

show, most people are

amazed and congratulate

me on a great idea.

I've never had

the nerve to mention

how you were not happy

at all in the days

to follow. Angry.

I had no idea why

but I finally figured

it out; and I realized

why your father took me

to task afterwards:

by making my proposal

on stage in front of

a hundred people,

I had effectively

removed your choice

in the matter.

You couldn't then say,

"Oh, thanks. That was

sweet. But I have

no intention of staying

married to a cripple."

You couldn't have said

that; you knew it,

your father knew it.

Always the last to know.

_____

The Oil Company

After my ex abandoned me,

with half a friend and

no family for 2000 miles,

I didn't decide to move

back home, as any sane person

would have. I stuck it out,

just to show her I could

make it without her.

Though I had arranged for

every single aspect of

our lives, I was so hard

pressed intellectually

and emotionally, still

recovering from a terrible

diagnosis and now from

desertion, I was simply

overwhelmed with all

the things I had to take

apart--she left it all

to me of course.

I must say I did

a damn good job,

but I failed at one thing.

When we moved in,

I was told I had to

set up an account for oil

(heated by an oil furnace).

Naturally, I assumed that

upon my moving out,

the property management

company would take the oil

account back to their name.

What a grievous error.

About five months later,

I got a bill from

the oil company

for the oil burned

all during a northern winter.

I called the oil company

saying there must be some

mistake; how could I be

billed for oil burned

in a house I wasn't

living in?

Nothing to be done they said;

the bill was on me.

I called the property

management company,

expecting they would be

apologetic and fix things;

they were nothing short of

indignant, insisting I

should have called to cancel

my account. They would do

nothing. In the end,

it was $700 I lost

senselessly,

in much the same way

I did my ex-wife.

*Quotations*

I believe in the unsubmissive, the unfaltering, the unassailable, the irresistible, the unbelievable--in other words, in an art of life.

--Margaret Anderson

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

--Thornton Wilder

One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up.

--Nietzsche

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.

--Epictetus

God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us.

--Gandhi

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

--Joseph Campbell

Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.

--Lord Byron

My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.

--Jung

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.

--Chinese proverb

Peace love and ATOM jazz