Phase One:
In prose, I suppose.
This all started a few years back when someone suggested that I compile all my writings into a 'book', It sounded as a good enough scheme, carry around a few pens and some pad of some sort and when I had one of these inspired musing, write it down along with dates and locales and thoughts pertaining . . . yeah yeah yeah, the pens leaked or got lost or the pad used for something else or the stray sheets I had pulled out (the good stuff I wanted to save) got messed up - one even had the dubious noble honor of cleaning the dipstick on my car so I could check the oil 25 miles out from town. So all in all, that method was not going far in helping me keep track of these scribbles.
Phase Two:
The Voice of the Demon.
Then, with wisdom still scarce, I heard voices: "Ya' Know, if you had one them lil' tape recorder things, when you had that there ‘brain burp' ya' could just push the lil' button, and save yer words for all mortality, Know what I mean?" Excellent Idea! Who said my redneck friends were just good for nothing? That was a borderline stroke of genius.
The clerk at the discount store, however, thought I was nuts. The executive model weighed in at a mere 10 ounces, minus batteries, tapes, auxiliary headphones and true speech dual head recording microphone with a windscreen. Those and the genuine leather case (to protect my investment from the elements) only cost me about $140.00, plus the $15.00 a month warranty if . . . um . . . anything should . . . um happen to it . . . hang on, I need to check to see if I'm still paying that warranty, BRB, darn it, I knew I should have canceled that thing years ago.
Anyway, now I had this tape recorder with all its accessories plus six batteries and five tapes. The unit uses four batteries so I have two more that are brand new or quite dead, I don't know since they all look the same. And of the five tapes one has my good stuff on it somewhere, two more are brand new (I think) and the other two have been possessed by a demon. The voice that speaks to me from the tape is somewhere between space warp monsters and silly chickens. The clerk at the store said to keep fresh batteries in the unit, I did all that, it just made the demon talk faster. So, lesson two in the art of futility.
Phase Three:
Golden Threads.
So there I was, surrounded by this menagerie of recorders and recorded material trying to make a theme (or at least the semblance of order) from this hodgepodge of scribbles. After reading Golden Thread (for the 200th time), it hit me, a gossamer web, a tapestry of my thoughts, my experiences, an inside look at my growth and understanding. I COULD PUBLISH! I could . . . I could . . . put my stuff on the web! And access it from anywhere, and work on it anytime, and show it off to my friends (well, at least twice so far).
After checking to see if www.dummy.com had been taken, I started this site. It ain't gonna win no awards. But then again, I'm not trying to win anything. I just want to express my self. My family doesn't contribute to this site, I do. My friends don't decide what to put up here, I do. Just me. If I don't like something I can take it down or redo it. If some bit of code doesn't work, I'm the one who gets to fix it. This is more than a web site, This is a diary, a journal. A rather strange but complete autobiography. My very own ‘Country of the Mind' with a spash of "Conscience".