Catharsis

It's not that I have a philosophy. I don't think I am that deep of a dude to claim to have a particular philosophical view on reality. I have written many posts about my absolute atheism, but in reality, what is absolute atheism? I believe in luck. I believe that what many people consider luck has a lot to do with you, Mr. Lucky. The strength of your desire. The power of your your own ability to take chances. It's like a canoe trip on a rough river, something I love, I crave. The flow of the river is so powerful, but if you have the skills, you can see through the rocks, the white water, the rapids. You fix your desire on the other side and what ever happens, you can deal with it. I have always considered myself, Mr. Lucky, because I believe that if I want something, if I want to do something, I will always find a way to do it. I suppose my saving grace is to not want too much. You create your own luck.
Part of my take on luck is my naive belief that if I give, I will receive. I know I can make a difference, a tiny insignificant difference, albeit, but I belief every action is somehow rewarded. I won't waste too much more on this, my philosophical discourse, but I lived in New York City for almost 25 years on the same block in the East Village of Manhattan. In 2001, I had already physically moved to France, but I was still spending a lot of time in NYC. On September 11, I was an eye witness to the destruction of the World Trade Center. I lost friends over the next few years as a direct result of physical effects of the destruction of the Towers. I saw the second plane slam into the tower from few blocks away while on my bike in Lower Manhattan. I escaped the roaring dust cloud from the collapse of the first Tower riding as fast as I could the wrong way up Sixth Avenue through the massive traffic jam until I got to Central Park. I was trapped in Manhattan for a week waiting to have my plane back to France rescheduled. I still had an apartment on East 5th Street and Ave B, but the entire area below 14th Street was under Military control and I had to show ID to leave or enter the "zone". That was a life changing experience. Less than a year later, I was working with Moroccans and Algerians, most of who were ver friendly to me, but a few were openly hostile to me because I was the token American. I resolved to make them like me. I was relentless and it worked. I changed their outlook on the world and they changed mine. I resolved to make my experience an opportunity for me to open my mind to the experience of other cultures and ideologies.  I came out of a chaotic adolescence in the inner city of Detroit. Somehow I became a rock musician in Manhattan and a graphic artist working in a very specialized niche. How did I do that? I believed I could, I wanted it, I created my own luck. I became Mr. Lucky. I fell in love with a French citizen and believed I could be happy in France. It wasn't easy, but I did it. I'm a happily married man with no real income who owns a house and land and has managed to create a life that makes me feel very wealthy inspite of the fact that on paper, I am a pauper.
Again, this is all the result of my hard work, but with out believing in a dream and having the guts play the games, I would be a fat neurotic broken retired railroad dude in Ohio with a fat wife and kids who hated me. But I will never be like anybody else. This week, I got rid of a blog follower after reading a series of utterly inane racist posts on his blog. He began posting about the Trayvon Martin meme being used to discredit him to the effect that the Skittles and Arizona Watermelon drink he was carrying was really evidence that he was going to brew a narcotic elixir which he was addicted to. I thought the blogger was being totally sarcastic and exhibiting a sense of humor that I had never expected of him. Then after posting on his blog complementing him on his clever sarcasm,  I realized that no, he wasn't being sarcastic and he really believed this crap. Then he doubled down on his racist rants. His buddies had a cluster fuck circle jerk and started telling him that they had checked out this blog and it proved that I was not one of them and some how deranged. Well, I am very proud not to be one of them and these dudes are everything I never want to be as long as I live. Today, I asked him him to take my blog off of his blog roll and I got rid of his and now I feel cleansed. Like a dose of the best psychic laxative. I insulted him, his friends insulted me. It's over and history! I feel so much lighter. Now here are a few pictures of my sick and sordid lifestyle if any of these dudes are still lurking around here and want some more evidence:

here I am shovelin horse manure in late April after the ground got broken for my garden this year.

We couldn't get the garden cultivated until late May because of the rain....

Here is the garden today, full of potatoes, melons, beans, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beets, carrots,
turnips, zuchinnis, pumpkins and spices...we already harvested about 20 kilos of raspberries and strawberries....
the tree on the left is a fig getting ready for a record year. And the guy in the back?
That's me, Microdot giving the racist jerks who are haunting my blog the finger.