The BellGab Disrobing Room: Who Are You Really?

[aldousburbank]

Internet anonymity is great and everything and is a part of the pleasure of doing business on this forum.  It is also the means by which a lot of bullcrap gets ejaculated into the data stream, which is fine by me, but amongst virtual friends such as us, it can result in a certain fogginess of distance.  Inspired by a couple of  (you know who you ares) getting to the point of virtual foot massages, I decided to throw down and let my hair hang in a new thread, giving permission to whomever wisheth, the opportunity to tell us something more about themselves than may gleamed from posts.  Let this thread be where Bgabbers can choose who to PM, meet up with, rub feet, whatever.
I cherish my personal firewalls but here’s my expanded member profile offering:
Somewhere it was said that I’m a dude playing a dude playing a dude.  While this is correct, the dude playing the dude playing the dude has a much stranger life than the dude the dude is playing.  I was raised a young Chicano child until I figured out I was an American.  Dad was instrumental in the civil rights era, especially the formation of the civil rights bill, the United Farm Workers and such.  My summers were spent in the back of a ’66 Impala with Cesar Chavez and 2 of his german shepards, with my mom and dad in the front seat traveling the west.  Very democratic party/socialist type environment.  Surrounded by leftist Hollywood stars, media, cops, threats, and spooks, I saw lots of weird social/political games in day-glo relief, hanging with hipster college kids taking a year off to follow their altruistic yearnings.  I saw strikers beaten by bikers and cops and crooked play on both sides.  It taught me well.
Somehow I ended up befriending many other of the movers of that era, many of my favorite authors and influences.  I somehow, accidently, had face time with the Dalai Llama twice. (Not a Buddhist!?)  In the fashion of a psychedelic Forrest Gump, I also ran with the “in” 60’s mavericks and most of the crew you all would recognize from reading “Acid Dreams”, the story of the Acid Age, the CIA, MkUltra etc etc.  I in fact, was the dude Terence Mckenna asked what I thought about going on the radio with Art.  I said do it.  Danced at many a dead show yes, but a dead head no.  Stephen and Ina May Gaskin (The Farm, Spiritual Midwifery) are my 22 year old son’s spiritual godparents/midwives.  Smoked the spirit molecule with Dr. Leary whose BS I miss. (The motto of the Neo-American church, based at Leary’s Millbrook mansion, was “Victory Over Horseshit”, while bullshit was considered a sacred activity.)  I also spent many nights with drums and coyotes and brothers and sisters on the reservations in sweats and tipis.  Many.  My out their-ness was thus fortunately contained by virtue of the fact that I was raised by and around traditional native people who already have the language and structure in place to accompany the journeying proclivities of a dicky male doing his best to find his place in the cosmos.  I had an article published in one of the first issues of “Shaman’s Drum” magazine and was soon contacted by a person, living indigenous style in Mexico, whose books on shamanism were among my favorites.  I was suddenly pulled into his family of traditional Mexican native people, including my “tata” Don Jose Matsuwa (Rios), the then 90+ yr old medicine person who many have said was Castaneda’s “real” model for Don Juan.  Luckily, was able to be there for his last 6 years on earth.
These were the circumstances where my partner of 25 years and I found each other in deep Mexico.  Our common interests in ethnobotany and the mysteries of life have kept us engaged with these things and each other since.  We started in a VW van, moved to a bus, then to a farm.  We’ve written, published, and edited various material over the years having to do with the incredible stuff that happens on this journey, about our favorite plant allies, and we’ve also had stuff published about us.  Which IS part of why I love the anonymity here.  The Mrs. Says I should be a philosopher or radio host and I tell her that clearly, in my mind, I am.
Son of the Sonoran Desert, I managed an organic vegetable production racket for the S. AZ market for many years and now cultivate my dreams in Northern California.  I’ve never been on facebook or watched breaking bad, American idle, or the sopranos.  Does that make me a bad person?  I travel but hardly go out.  Raised a hunter, I still like my rifles, but haven’t had a shred of meat in, I dunno, 30 yrs?  Therefore, I don’t hunt anymore except I take down inanimate targets for pleasure.  I’m basically a conservative, gay loving, heterosexual, bible thumping, weed smoking, libertarian freek.  We tend a large garden and work hard to raise our kids and be a healthy presence for our 3 beautiful granddaughters.  Our youngest child is a nine year old boy prodigy, my two older boys work with me and live on the back 40 of the compound, a daughter in college, and sadly, my oldest baby girl passed away due to sudden medical tragedy (29 yrs) at the beginning of this year.  It’s been super tough but also super cosmic, having someone you love more than yourself constantly on your mind… true love.
And BTW, aside from my alter ego potty mouth and purposely sometimes bad attitude, I like to consider myself a fairly nice guy who believes it’s all about Love, and babies, and music, good work, good friends.  And yukking it up fer sure.  So there you go amigos y amigas.  Feeling naked.  Your turn.

[shell88]

Thanks for sharing.  You sound like a really nice guy.  Sorry about the loss of your daughter. Life's really hard at times that I know.
I wont share too much now as it's hard for me to write anything long with my jumping cursor.  My life has not been as eventful as yours though I have trekked through Peru and plan to do it some more in other places.  I've spent the last 20 years raising my own son and now that he's left plan to travel now.  I'm vegetarian too.  I've had my fair share of dharma talks though you wouldn't know it, seeing i've been bashing George Noory.  I don't participate in unkind words otherwise.  Don't know how I let him get to me!  I live in the country do my fair share of gardening and been into horses for a while.  I'm a seeker of truth and a dreamer.Currently working in the health care field. 

Thanks for sharing brother! 

[West of the Rockies]

I have encountered people who post online using (or saying they use) their actual names to ensure that they don't say anything they are not proud to say and willing to stand by.  I admire that.  I think it's probably not a bad goal.  However, as someone who has posted once or twice under just a bit of a beer buzz, I would be hesitant to be quite so forthcoming.

Maybe its my long-ago Catholic upbringing (ah, there I just revealed something about myself), but I do believe that confession can be good for the soul.

Nonetheless, as interesting as this thread is, it probably will cause MV to remind us all about forum privacy issues and such.  You can always use private messaging to contact a BellGab poster if you want to be a little more circumspect about just who you reveal your true identity to.  If someone wants to go all cyber-hacker on me and find out who I am by tracking my IP address (or whatever it's called), I suspect they'll find the effort sort of wasted.  I'm not the most interesting person on the planet, on this forum, probably on this thread:  an under-employed academic who feels like I've been sold a bill of goods over the years.  I went to school, got my degrees, pay my taxes, try to be a good father, and so forth.  I still feel like I'm 13 when I gaze up at the stars.  I wish we all exhibited a bit more critical thinking and courtesy when engaging our fellow citizens on matters political. 

Ah, here is a true confession:  I do not post much in the political threads here anymore.  I think we all pretty much know how everyone else feels.  Poster X does not understand why I do not consider Rush Limbaugh to be a credible source.  Poster X does not understand how I can be so stupid as to suppose global warming is real and human-caused.  Opinions seem pretty set in concrete around here, most of us -- as near as I can tell -- being middle-aged or older. 

[aldousburbank]

You can always use private messaging to contact a BellGab poster if you want to be a little more circumspect about just who you reveal your true identity to.  If someone wants to go all cyber-hacker on me and find out who I am by tracking my IP address (or whatever it's called), I suspect they'll find the effort sort of wasted.

Exactamente.  Plus, everything I say here is made up fershitzngiggles.  I got stuff to do elsewhere for serious.  And why go all upskirt cam when you're in a room of naked?

[aldousburbank]

My life has not been as eventful as yours though I have trekked through Peru and plan to do it some more in other places.  I've spent the last 20 years raising my own son and now that he's left plan to travel now.  I'm vegetarian too.

Thanks for the kind word.  I don't really consider  myself "vegetarian" (never had birkenstocks) just lost my need/desire so long ago can hardly remember.  An eventful life is good.  Happy and well integrated with others is better, I think. If you can have all of the above, great.  Me, I meet the most interesting and often wise people in the most common of circumstances. Good to make your acquaintance amigo(a?).  There's towels in the drawer.

[Juan]

I was born on the back seat of a Greyhound bus heading down US Highway 41.  A month or so before, the man reputed to be my father found himself on the wrong end of a gun.  My mother abandoned me and left me to be reared by two wolves in the hills of Rome, Georgia.  I eat nothing but Kimchi, Greek Yogurt and hoe cakes, but since Florida has now legalized hunting squirrel with an airgun, I plan to add meat to my diet after November 2.

[MV/Liberace!]

Internet anonymity is great and everything and is a part of the pleasure of doing business on this forum.  It is also the means by which a lot of bullcrap gets ejaculated into the data stream, which is fine by me, but amongst virtual friends such as us, it can result in a certain fogginess of distance.  Inspired by a couple of  (you know who you ares) getting to the point of virtual foot massages, I decided to throw down and let my hair hang in a new thread, giving permission to whomever wisheth, the opportunity to tell us something more about themselves than may gleamed from posts.  Let this thread be where Bgabbers can choose who to PM, meet up with, rub feet, whatever.
I cherish my personal firewalls but here’s my expanded member profile offering:
Somewhere it was said that I’m a dude playing a dude playing a dude.  While this is correct, the dude playing the dude playing the dude has a much stranger life than the dude the dude is playing.  I was raised a young Chicano child until I figured out I was an American.  Dad was instrumental in the civil rights era, especially the formation of the civil rights bill, the United Farm Workers and such.  My summers were spent in the back of a ’66 Impala with Cesar Chavez and 2 of his german shepards, with my mom and dad in the front seat traveling the west.  Very democratic party/socialist type environment.  Surrounded by leftist Hollywood stars, media, cops, threats, and spooks, I saw lots of weird social/political games in day-glo relief, hanging with hipster college kids taking a year off to follow their altruistic yearnings.  I saw strikers beaten by bikers and cops and crooked play on both sides.  It taught me well.
Somehow I ended up befriending many other of the movers of that era, many of my favorite authors and influences.  I somehow, accidently, had face time with the Dalai Llama twice. (Not a Buddhist!?)  In the fashion of a psychedelic Forrest Gump, I also ran with the “in” 60’s mavericks and most of the crew you all would recognize from reading “Acid Dreams”, the story of the Acid Age, the CIA, MkUltra etc etc.  I in fact, was the dude Terence Mckenna asked what I thought about going on the radio with Art.  I said do it.  Danced at many a dead show yes, but a dead head no.  Stephen and Ina May Gaskin (The Farm, Spiritual Midwifery) are my 22 year old son’s spiritual godparents/midwives.  Smoked the spirit molecule with Dr. Leary whose BS I miss. (The motto of the Neo-American church, based at Leary’s Millbrook mansion, was “Victory Over Horseshit”, while bullshit was considered a sacred activity.)  I also spent many nights with drums and coyotes and brothers and sisters on the reservations in sweats and tipis.  Many.  My out their-ness was thus fortunately contained by virtue of the fact that I was raised by and around traditional native people who already have the language and structure in place to accompany the journeying proclivities of a dicky male doing his best to find his place in the cosmos.  I had an article published in one of the first issues of “Shaman’s Drum” magazine and was soon contacted by a person, living indigenous style in Mexico, whose books on shamanism were among my favorites.  I was suddenly pulled into his family of traditional Mexican native people, including my “tata” Don Jose Matsuwa (Rios), the then 90+ yr old medicine person who many have said was Castaneda’s “real” model for Don Juan.  Luckily, was able to be there for his last 6 years on earth.
These were the circumstances where my partner of 25 years and I found each other in deep Mexico.  Our common interests in ethnobotany and the mysteries of life have kept us engaged with these things and each other since.  We started in a VW van, moved to a bus, then to a farm.  We’ve written, published, and edited various material over the years having to do with the incredible stuff that happens on this journey, about our favorite plant allies, and we’ve also had stuff published about us.  Which IS part of why I love the anonymity here.  The Mrs. Says I should be a philosopher or radio host and I tell her that clearly, in my mind, I am.
Son of the Sonoran Desert, I managed an organic vegetable production racket for the S. AZ market for many years and now cultivate my dreams in Northern California.  I’ve never been on facebook or watched breaking bad, American idle, or the sopranos.  Does that make me a bad person?  I travel but hardly go out.  Raised a hunter, I still like my rifles, but haven’t had a shred of meat in, I dunno, 30 yrs?  Therefore, I don’t hunt anymore except I take down inanimate targets for pleasure.  I’m basically a conservative, gay loving, heterosexual, bible thumping, weed smoking, libertarian freek.  We tend a large garden and work hard to raise our kids and be a healthy presence for our 3 beautiful granddaughters.  Our youngest child is a nine year old boy prodigy, my two older boys work with me and live on the back 40 of the compound, a daughter in college, and sadly, my oldest baby girl passed away due to sudden medical tragedy (29 yrs) at the beginning of this year.  It’s been super tough but also super cosmic, having someone you love more than yourself constantly on your mind… true love.
And BTW, aside from my alter ego potty mouth and purposely sometimes bad attitude, I like to consider myself a fairly nice guy who believes it’s all about Love, and babies, and music, good work, good friends.  And yukking it up fer sure.  So there you go amigos y amigas.  Feeling naked.  Your turn.

Fuckin' hippie.

[aldousburbank]

Heh, if I'm lucky

[PB the Deplorable]

I was born on the back seat of a Greyhound bus heading down US Highway 41...

My daddy left home when I was 3 and he didn't leave much to ma and me, and before he left he went and named me Sue.  Back when I was a kid I remember plenty of times when some gal would giggle and I'd get red, some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head -  I tell ya it wasn't easy being named Sue.   Well I grew up quick and I grew up mean, my fists got hard and my wits got keen, and I'd from town to town to hide my shame.  I guess I'm tougher for it now though.

[Eddie Coyle]

        Please allow me to introduce myself. I was born in a crossfire hurricane, have nasty habits, drink tea at 3 and all my friends are junkies. But that's not really true. I pledge myself to Lady Jane. And there's some little jerk at the FBI, keeping papers on me six feet high. And I don't just have that much jam.

[aldousburbank]

Hi Mick!

[RealCool Daddio]

I left the north, I travelled south, I got confused, I killed a nun.

[Foodlion]

I'm an asshole.

[ziznak]

I'm an asshole.

me too!

damnit M stole my first reaction to your wallography alduos... at first I started to read it thinking "I'm not gonna finish this its too fucking long" but then... i finished reading it.  If the wall wasn't just fershitsngiggles then wow man you've had a quite an interesting life.

don't you owe us a UFO story or some such from many moons ago... something about drug smuggling maybe? I didnt forget that lil teaser.  If you posted it then link please. 


fuckin hippies

[onan]

... alduos...

don't you owe us a UFO story or some such from many moons ago... something about drug smuggling maybe? I didnt forget that lil teaser.


fuckin hippies

It had to do with some jail time in Mexico, I believe.

[aldousburbank]

Good memory ziz. You're right. My last post prior to finding my way out of the K hole and getting back on Gab was a tease about a real Mexican kidnapping. Not the Noory type. I didn't mean to make it a tease- but shit happens. Anyway, maybe a new catch all thread, something like Fucked Up Stuff That's Happened To Me, Or I've Done, Or Said, Or Have Seen Go Down.

[onan]

12 years ago the wife and I were released from a Mexican federal prison.  Boy do I have stories, if somebody begged me to tell them.

this is what I remembered.

[11angeleyes11]

I'm an angel `~!~`

[aldousburbank]

this is what I remembered.

Busted

[sleeplessinca]

^^^Jeez sounds like^^^

[Sardondi]

I was born and raised down in Alabama, on a farm way back up in the woods. Well the night I was born, I swear the moon turned a fire red. The son of a woman and a man who lived in strife, I was tired of being poor. No one knows what it's like to be hated, to be fated to telling only lies. I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396, fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor. He wants to dance, oh yeah, he wants to sing, oh yeah, he wants to see the lights a flashing and listen to the thunder ring. Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month. For days and nights we battled the Bantu to their knees. I couldn't quote you no Dickens, Shelley or Keats, cause it's all been said before - make the best out of a bad joke and laugh it off.

[FightTheFuture]

I am the time traveling, albino love product of one, James Tiberius Kirk  and an Orion slave girl, known only as, Tzvina.

I am still waiting for Art to designate a call-in line for me, and those like me. The stories I could tell...

[sleeplessinca]

I was born and raised down in Alabama, on a farm way back up in the woods. Well the night I was born, I swear the moon turned a fire red. The son of a woman and a man who lived in strife, I was tired of being poor. No one knows what it's like to be hated, to be fated to telling only lies. I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396, fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor. He wants to dance, oh yeah, he wants to sing, oh yeah, he wants to see the lights a flashing and listen to the thunder ring. Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month. For days and nights we battled the Bantu to their knees. I couldn't quote you no Dickens, Shelley or Keats, cause it's all been said before - make the best out of a bad joke and laugh it off.

Every Picture Tells A Story.

[basswood]

For days and nights we battled the Bantu to their knees.

You too?! Small world, brother, small world...

[ziznak]

ahem... mexican federal prison stories paleeeeze

[BobGrau]

My own story is extraordinately similar to aldous's, except I was mostly just reading about it.

[bateman]

ahem... mexican federal prison stories paleeeeze

Do you watch the series Locked Up Abroad? You should.

[Yorkshire pud]

Okay, I'll fess up...

I AM DEATH> [attachimg=1]


That's me walking home from a night on the town. Absolutely bolloxed. 

[UnscreenedCaller]

Holy crap, Aldous, that's some story. It reads like a chapter out of the Electric Kool Aid Test, which is about as good as it gets. But, I'm very sorry about the loss of your daughter.

For my part, I'm the result of years of suppressed Catholic school rebellion which boiled over the summer I discovered Greenwich Village in my carefree, young and innocent early teenaged years. The rest is history, and all I'll say is listening to Frank Zappa live in the Cafe Wha? during my formative years when he was just hitting NYC and the Mothers still had Flo and Eddie made me the the person I am today: Suzy Creamcheese.

[Nucky Nolan]

Pleased to meet you. Won't you guess my name? My mother was a tailor; she sewed my new bluejeans. My father was a gamblin' man down in New Orleans.