Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Most people are crazy, aren't they?

Have you ever wondered "what the hell were they thinking"? Especially when somebody thinks differently than you do? I run into that all the time. Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy and the rest of the world is sane. So, to hedge my bet that I'm sane, I only accept things that are pretty much provably real. What method do you use to prove that the things that you believe in are well founded in fact and sanity?

When you run down a flight of stairs do you feel safer with at least one hand on the railing, or do you just fly down the middle, like Obama disembarking Air Force One? Remember President Ford did a few headers of AF1. If I'm pretty sure of my subject, I can fly down the middle without grasping the rail, but other times I need that firm grip on reality, my railing, my touch stone.

When I go out in the ocean, I try to determine if I think that I can swim to shore from where the boat presently is. At some point, I have to accept that I'm just plain to far out to survive if something goes wrong with my boat. Not a very comfortable feeling for me! I don't really feel that anybody will be able to save me in time. It seems like most rescues have a high percentage of disaster.

When somebody "Loves" a redwood tree, (I do) I feel that I have to know all about that tree. I really feel That I have part redwood sap in my veins. I'm at least 5th generation of people that have lived in the redwoods. We built our own houses, mostly from redwood. My family hand split most of the lumber in the houses that they lived in in the early days. I have split many tons of redwood. I can split anything that can be split out of a redwood. I have hand-dug up small redwood stumps, and dozer-dug up larger ones. I know all about how tough and strong the roots of a redwood can be. I know that most of the trees that people look at, and admire, and think they are a couple of thousand years old, really only have three or four hundred growth rings. Yet, I also know that the same redwood is really sprung-up as a clone from the roots of many ancestor trees. Many redwoods are the same genetic stock back ten to twenty thousand years to the original tree grown from seed stock. Yet people will see a redwood, "fall in love with it" then set about protecting it, when they really know nothing about what it needs to survive. To me that's insanity. My first reflex is to reach for that railing of reality, I am compelled to learn enough about a subject to offer an opinion before I express one. Or at least ask a few questions.

People use drugs just to "get-high", to me, that's insanity. I fear not being in control of where I am and what I'm doing, yet I see people with no fear of getting high. I tip a beer every now and then, it goes away rapidly and I'm sober after and hour or so,and alcohol is a natural part of fruits and other vegetables, so it's not like I putting anything in my body that is not good for me, but to drink so much that I would not be in control of myself would be insanity to me. Remember, I don't like loosing touch with reality. Why do so many people seek that insane place of obliviousness?

Life can be so darn much fun if you live it. Why do people drop-out, hate the man, and basically become a recluse. Some people actually live on the streets out of choice. Some people have fried their brains on drugs and alcohol. Why do they do that? No amount of counciling changes them. Are people inherently insane, and why do they do the things that they do?

My solice in deciding whether or not I'm sane is, I seak the things around be that I know are real, and use these things as a base. Other people seem to take great joy in imaginary things, drugs and not dealing with reality. Who's crazy, me or people that live in a fantacy world.

25 comments:

Rose said...

Everybody chooses their own path.

two crows said...

Everyone does choose there own path.Then one day you wake up and see you have lived someone else's life. Time to choose a new path ernie. Good Luck.

Robin Shelley said...

Some days, I'm on my own road. Other days, I'm just along for the ride. Or, so it seems.

spyrock said...

groovy for some reason transfered to uc bezerkely his junior year. he was in the cal band. he fell in love with this sweetie from santa barbara. they went to watch elvira madigan at the cinema and his girlfriends roommate called the police on him when he started acting out the movie they had just seen. they took him to the 4th floor of merrick hospital. when i went to visit him it was very much like one flew over the cookoos nest. nurse rachet was there and they had pill time and he was basically on thorazine for the next few years. until, he decided to run away from home, sleepy hollow in marin county and came to the freaky dude ranch where i was living. somehow he thought the freaky dudes were a little too freaky so he started hitch hiking to l a. he wound up down in venice somewhere they eat after hearing a sermon. the preacher asked the audience to come up and confess their sins. well, say no more, they took poor groovy to camarillo state prison for the criminally insane. in just a couple of weeks he was on the phone to rich daddy sleepy hollow to save him from the prison brethern that were trying to break down the bathroom door to rape him.
so he got his get out of jail rich dude free card and wound up in the rich people's crazy house resort where he resided for several years until they decided that he was officially sane and he actually has a paper saying that he is sane.
unlike the rest of us. so what does that tell you. you have to go crazy before anyone thinks you are sane and you can then get a certificate to prove it.

MetaMuseAl said...

Sometimes I choose the path,
sometimes the path chews me.

Casey said...

"Never judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins."

Life isn't cut and dried. Some
people may have suffered trauma in
their youth and are drowning their
sorrows. You never know what others
may have gone through or are going
through.

Be thankful that you think you have it all figured out.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Casey
What makes you think that I have it all figured out, also what makes you think that my life has been completely sweet?

I know that you can't help someone who won't help themselves, I know, because I've tried many times. Maybe I'm lucky that I have seen a little adversity and refused to sucumb to it. I've been known to wimper and wonder why I'm being picked on, but I also know that I'm the only one that can help myself. So I find great solice in the fact tyhat I have a "plan".

The last time I walked in somebody else's mocasins, all that happened is I got stinky feet. I repeat, you can't help one that won't help themselves.

Charlie Two Crows said...

I wear my moccasins and my spirit bag every day. What's your point?

Ernie Branscomb said...

Charlie Two crows
You said something once that I'm not sure I understood. You said something about the timber companies funding the environmental movement of the late 20th century. I've often suspected that myself, because all they did was drive up timber prices and increase the value of the Headwaters Forest that you and I ended up getting to buy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was hoping that you might have something that points that information out. I'd like to get my hands on it, because it would explain a lot to me.

Casey said...

Why do you think the loggers that
you idolized drank to the utmost
extremes and fought in the dust and
mudd? You seem to understand them
okay. Everyone gets to pick their
poison and who is to say one is
better than the other. It's all
poison.

Robin Shelley said...

"You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays, everybody's crazy."
- Charles Manson

spyrock said...

having met charlie in november of 1967, i would agree with his statement. back then he was one of a kind. nowadays, people like him are a dime a dozen.

Robin Shelley said...

I wonder if he remembers you.

charlie two crows said...

Robin....I have a family member that opens charlie's cell door every day for an hour outside. This person is the one that found the cell phones under manson's mattress. Maybe charlie is trying to call spy.

spyrock said...

remember that i looked straight back in those days. i was in rotc that year and i used to get my haircut on haight street. he probably thought that i was a young republican rich boy. it sounded like he hated me for what i looked like. what i appeared to be. he was trying to lay some kind of guilt trip on me. i had a big crush on sharon tate back in those days. but i never thought that manson had the guts to kill anyone. he was an instigator type person. he got those girls to kill sharon tate because she represented everything that they hated.
manson was born november 12. my mother and my dad's mother were both born on november 12. either one of those women would have scared the shit out of manson. so i think i had some kind of immunity to him. he looked like my ex brother in law bret. his hair wasn't much longer than mine. it would be classified as short hair these days. he's a real little guy. not very scary in person.
now scary cary, that's another story.

spyrock said...

this is for ernie. go rent nowhere boy on dvd and you will find out about john lennon's early life. i did find out something interesting when you were claiming a manson beetle connection because of the helter skeltor thing. i read somewhere that the beetles had stayed at the house sharon tate was killed in and may have taken lsd there. it could have easily been john lennon that was killed by the manson girls and tex watson instead of sharon tate. imagine that kind of publicity.

Robin Shelley said...

But it wasn't.

spyrock said...

but they got him anyway. manson never did make any sense. i always thought that he was a plant by the cia to make hippies smell bad in the public ear.

Joe Blow said...

Ernie, I just know you love hearing from me, I'm so insightful, honest, and stimulating to such a backwoods, armchair philosopher as you.

Crazy people by definition are incapable of distinguishing between what they think and believe from who and what they are. Get a grip, Branscomb, that's unfortunately you. Remember, everything, including you, is about something different.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Thanks Joe, coming from you that's a real compliment.

Charlie Two Crows said...

Ernie......The statement I made in an earlier blog your asking about is this: In the 90's I read an story revealing EPIC had received $842,000 from grants. And $2300 in public contributions. The grants came from area foundations who's major contributors were large timber companies. The story claimed big timber companies may have financed the head waters fight with EPIC, just to raise the value of land and old growth timber. I wonder if that is EPIC's real agenda today at richardson grove? Ernie I see they are looking for a new leader if you have some free time.LOL

spyrock said...

the native americans have a name for people like manson and jones.
they call them twilight masters. they are: individuals who have mastered the use of the light and the dark sides of human nature in order to control or manipulate others. instead of integrating the two sides to attain balance, they show their understanding of the light to fool unsuspecting humans, and they employ their mastery of dark forces to harm people they consider to be opponents. twilight masters also use the alure of claiming to be spiritually enlightened in order to draw others of goodwill to their way of thinking. by masquerading as a spiritual, caring individual, the twilight master influences or bends the resolves of other spiritually committed individuals in order to serve his or her hidden agendas and selfish aims.
i have to give credit to my mother's covelo and spyrock upbringing for keeping me out of harms way back in the sixties. my mother taught me that there was a very fine line between the light and the dark about the width of a cork oak switch. she made sure that the wild little indian boy that i was set a good expample for her kids at school. i used to play ditch with those kids during the pta meetings but some of them were so afraid of my mom they would see me and run away for fear of her reaction to seeing them with me. and she was a lightweight compared to my great aunt who was her namesake, a teacher who never married and my grandma bonnie who was a teacher in kansas back in the early 1900's.

olmanriver said...

I miss Suzy... sniffle.

spyrock said...

saw a movie about religion on netflix tonight. the guy went all over the world but only talked to one indian medicine man. a piute from the reservation above reno on pyramid lake. no wonder the guy still sounded confused at the end of the movie.

Anonymous said...

most people arent crazy. ALL people are crazy.