Please feel free to use this article as long as you give credit to the resource box.
© Copyright Arthur Levine 2010
Words: 438
Keywords: Real, Worthwhile, Love, Faith, Dreams, God
How do you know if you are any good at whatever it is that you like doing?
How do you know if the person you love really loves you back?
How do you know if what you are doing is worthwhile?
How do you know that God is real?
How do you know if you are real?
How do you find the faith to follow your dreams?
How do you know if you’re doing the right thing?
How do you know what the future has in store for you?
How do you know how to make choices and avoid doing evil?
I guess none of us have all the answers
I guess the answer to all of the above questions are to follow your instincts. If you don’t believe in yourself and what you are doing, how are you ever going to succeed?
We can rely on various experts and even on the search function of Internet Companies such as Google and Yahoo and Bing, but in the final analysis, the only ones we can rely on to help us find the answers to our questions and help us solve the questions that are plaguing so many of us are ourselves.
We have to learn to have faith in our abilities and follow our instincts. We have to learn to believe in God without questioning whether He is real or not. We have to care about others so that they can find it in their hearts to care about us.
We have to believe in ourselves and the choices we make so that we may know that we are real, and serve a worthwhile function, and have a purpose in life, and have a unique promise to fulfill for ourselves and our loved ones.
If you do all you can do, you will discover that you are a worthwhile person who is entitled to believe in yourself. You will find confirmation that you are good at what you do by the recognition of your peers, and the encouragement you receive from those that care about you. You can achieve theis confidence of faith by believing in yourself and your God, but don’t worry if you still have questions. That’s only human.
Hi, his is Arthur Levine, the author of the novel Johnny Oops. To find out more answers to your questions on how real you are, please go to http://johnnyoops.blogspot.com
……………………………..
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
What’s My Genre?
Please feel free to use this article as long as credit is given to the resource box.
© Copyright Arthur Levine, 2010
Words: 421
Keywords: Genre, Virtual Reality, Prophet, Charlatan, Sex Maniac, Real
I feel like a cross dresser. I’m not sure in what category or categories my novel falls. The thought occurs to me that my book is having a schizoid fit. My principal character has a badly split personality, or is that just a result of the alternate reality worlds he slides in and out of with all their attendant quantum entanglements
This must be the literary equivalent of who am I and where am I going. Is Johnny Oops maturing, growing up, or devolving into a transient human being who thinks he’s a prophet and immortal?
Maybe Johnny is dwelling in different virtual reality worlds that suit his purpose at any one particular time. Maybe the world he lives in is all too real for the level of inner turmoil he is capable of dealing with. Perhaps this is Johnny’s way of protecting himself from his sexual excesses.
The sex maniac in him seems to come in undulating quantum waves as his qubits are distorted by passion and insecurity. Johnny wants it, needs it, and has to have sex with a whole bunch of beautiful women, but to what end? Is this the human weakness in the Guru or is he just a Charlatan at heart?
Tumbling from one world to the next reality, Johnny doesn’t know if he is real, or the puppet to some super intelligent Game Master. Is he part of a speculative fantasy? Is this the coming of age process for a Genius? Do other people have an inner self that’s one foot tall and dresses in a Boy Scout uniform? Do his love scenes trump his deification, and his human transgressions prevent his salvation and redemption?
Why does Johnny question his relevance? Does he have so many second comings or near misses or rebirths because he is in effect a messenger of God, as he sometimes believes? How do you classify Johnny when he jumps from one sense of reality to the next in a flash of emotional response to whatever force is driving him on to try and change the world we live in – which ever world that happens to be at that particular moment in time. How does Johnny fit in when he doesn’t really think that he does? Is this madness, debauchery of the soul, or the refinement of a life well spent?
Hi, this is Arthur Levine the author of the novel Johnny Oops about a young man who can’t decide if he is a Prophet or a Sex Maniac or a Charlatan. Find out more at http://johnnyoops.blogspot.com.
© Copyright Arthur Levine, 2010
Words: 421
Keywords: Genre, Virtual Reality, Prophet, Charlatan, Sex Maniac, Real
I feel like a cross dresser. I’m not sure in what category or categories my novel falls. The thought occurs to me that my book is having a schizoid fit. My principal character has a badly split personality, or is that just a result of the alternate reality worlds he slides in and out of with all their attendant quantum entanglements
This must be the literary equivalent of who am I and where am I going. Is Johnny Oops maturing, growing up, or devolving into a transient human being who thinks he’s a prophet and immortal?
Maybe Johnny is dwelling in different virtual reality worlds that suit his purpose at any one particular time. Maybe the world he lives in is all too real for the level of inner turmoil he is capable of dealing with. Perhaps this is Johnny’s way of protecting himself from his sexual excesses.
The sex maniac in him seems to come in undulating quantum waves as his qubits are distorted by passion and insecurity. Johnny wants it, needs it, and has to have sex with a whole bunch of beautiful women, but to what end? Is this the human weakness in the Guru or is he just a Charlatan at heart?
Tumbling from one world to the next reality, Johnny doesn’t know if he is real, or the puppet to some super intelligent Game Master. Is he part of a speculative fantasy? Is this the coming of age process for a Genius? Do other people have an inner self that’s one foot tall and dresses in a Boy Scout uniform? Do his love scenes trump his deification, and his human transgressions prevent his salvation and redemption?
Why does Johnny question his relevance? Does he have so many second comings or near misses or rebirths because he is in effect a messenger of God, as he sometimes believes? How do you classify Johnny when he jumps from one sense of reality to the next in a flash of emotional response to whatever force is driving him on to try and change the world we live in – which ever world that happens to be at that particular moment in time. How does Johnny fit in when he doesn’t really think that he does? Is this madness, debauchery of the soul, or the refinement of a life well spent?
Hi, this is Arthur Levine the author of the novel Johnny Oops about a young man who can’t decide if he is a Prophet or a Sex Maniac or a Charlatan. Find out more at http://johnnyoops.blogspot.com.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Johnny Oops Steps Into A Virtual Reality World
It had been a long painful time in the making, but Johnny finally discovered that he could no longer live in the now. He was being pushed inexorably into a new virtual reality world of the future. Not a world of his making, but delivered all shiny and new by some Game Master who must have populated this new world with people to entertain him and keep him from the boredom that only a superior intellect could understand.
Johnny could only speculate on who this superior intelligence was or how he or she could construct a whole world in the blink of an eye and a flash of comprehension by one of the populous that things had changed, and the world he had thought he knew all his life was not as it had ever been.
“How could this have happened? Where was I all this time? How could I not know?” Johnny said out loud, but no one was listening. “Was it ever thus? Am I just some bit player in someone else’s game – a mere puppet to satisfy some deity’s fancy? Am I nothing but a fiction,” Johnny said out loud again?
This time some one was listening. Johnny heard a roar in his ear as if a trumpet was blaring, “How dare you? If not for me, you would not exist. If not for me you would have no cognitive thought. Without my blessing you would be nothing.”
Fear came over Johnny and he started to shake as the question formed on his lips, “Who are you?”
Then there was thunder and lightning. Johnny felt a giant hand on my shoulder, but wasn’t weighted down. He was relieved and felt a wonderful sense of calm come over him. And he heard a soft voice saying, “You know me. You know my virtue. Do not be afraid. Step lightly, and with joy in your heart into our new world for I have built it for your enlightenment. I have brought you forth into a new reality so that you may learn to believe in that which is beyond your comprehension to understand, but you are free to move into whatever sense of reality holds the most promise in your mind’s eye. for I am the ultimate Game Master, and I gave you the ability to have independent thought. It’s up to you to decide how to play the game, What ever world or reality you chose to live in, I will always be with you.”
*****
Hi, this is Arthur Levine the author of the novel Johnny Oops. To see what Johnny’s doing please join us at http://johnnyoops.blogspot.com.
Johnny could only speculate on who this superior intelligence was or how he or she could construct a whole world in the blink of an eye and a flash of comprehension by one of the populous that things had changed, and the world he had thought he knew all his life was not as it had ever been.
“How could this have happened? Where was I all this time? How could I not know?” Johnny said out loud, but no one was listening. “Was it ever thus? Am I just some bit player in someone else’s game – a mere puppet to satisfy some deity’s fancy? Am I nothing but a fiction,” Johnny said out loud again?
This time some one was listening. Johnny heard a roar in his ear as if a trumpet was blaring, “How dare you? If not for me, you would not exist. If not for me you would have no cognitive thought. Without my blessing you would be nothing.”
Fear came over Johnny and he started to shake as the question formed on his lips, “Who are you?”
Then there was thunder and lightning. Johnny felt a giant hand on my shoulder, but wasn’t weighted down. He was relieved and felt a wonderful sense of calm come over him. And he heard a soft voice saying, “You know me. You know my virtue. Do not be afraid. Step lightly, and with joy in your heart into our new world for I have built it for your enlightenment. I have brought you forth into a new reality so that you may learn to believe in that which is beyond your comprehension to understand, but you are free to move into whatever sense of reality holds the most promise in your mind’s eye. for I am the ultimate Game Master, and I gave you the ability to have independent thought. It’s up to you to decide how to play the game, What ever world or reality you chose to live in, I will always be with you.”
*****
Hi, this is Arthur Levine the author of the novel Johnny Oops. To see what Johnny’s doing please join us at http://johnnyoops.blogspot.com.
Monday, January 25, 2010
I’m Listening As Hard As I Can
I’m listening as hard as I can, but the silence is deafening. Why won’t you talk to me? Don’t you have something to say to me?
Every once in a while I hear a tiny whisper; a little murmur, as if you were trying to say something, trying to communicate, trying to form a union or meeting of our minds, but I can’t understand you.
Won’t you please speak up?
I know you have vast knowledge and important things to say. I know you mean well and have my best interests at heart. I know you love me, but why can’t I hear you.
Won’t you please speak up?
In my mind I imagine we are talking and smiling and laughing together, but I can’t quite catch your drift. What are you saying that is making me laugh? Why are you smiling? Your thoughts are not clear to me.
Won’t you please speak up?
Sometimes I feel as if we are passing in separate canoes down a raging river shouting something at each other, but the roar of the rushing waters keeps me from hearing you, and it keeps us apart.
Won’t you please speak up?
Sometimes I feel like we are strangers passing each other on our way home from work on a rainy evening without a word or a nod of greeting. I know you know me, and I know you. Why won’t you recognize my virtue? Why don’t you say what is in your heart?
Won’t you please speak up?
There are times when I feel alone, yet in the back of my mind I know you are there. Can’t you feel my desire? Don’t you know I want to embrace? Where are you? Don’t leave me here all alone. I need to know you are there and that you care.
Won’t you please speak up?
Is this the way it is always to be between us? Will out petty prejudices and hang-ups keep us apart? Are we never to know the beautiful music we could make together as we interact? Have you no mercy?
Won’t you please speak up?
Sometimes when I am asleep, I dream that we are together; gathered in a beautiful field of nature’s grand design. And we are holding hands, and talking to each other and singing sweet songs of happiness.
In my dreams I can hear you. I can hear what you are shouting to me. I agree. It’s time we came together. It’s time we made love, not war. It’s time we stopped our petty squabbling about different traditions we do not even remember the reason for. It’s time we remembered how we started, and that in the beginning we were of one desire. Together we can make a difference. Together we can change the world. Together we can make something wonderful happen.
It’s time we both spoke up and made a new beginning.
Can you hear me?
*****
Every once in a while I hear a tiny whisper; a little murmur, as if you were trying to say something, trying to communicate, trying to form a union or meeting of our minds, but I can’t understand you.
Won’t you please speak up?
I know you have vast knowledge and important things to say. I know you mean well and have my best interests at heart. I know you love me, but why can’t I hear you.
Won’t you please speak up?
In my mind I imagine we are talking and smiling and laughing together, but I can’t quite catch your drift. What are you saying that is making me laugh? Why are you smiling? Your thoughts are not clear to me.
Won’t you please speak up?
Sometimes I feel as if we are passing in separate canoes down a raging river shouting something at each other, but the roar of the rushing waters keeps me from hearing you, and it keeps us apart.
Won’t you please speak up?
Sometimes I feel like we are strangers passing each other on our way home from work on a rainy evening without a word or a nod of greeting. I know you know me, and I know you. Why won’t you recognize my virtue? Why don’t you say what is in your heart?
Won’t you please speak up?
There are times when I feel alone, yet in the back of my mind I know you are there. Can’t you feel my desire? Don’t you know I want to embrace? Where are you? Don’t leave me here all alone. I need to know you are there and that you care.
Won’t you please speak up?
Is this the way it is always to be between us? Will out petty prejudices and hang-ups keep us apart? Are we never to know the beautiful music we could make together as we interact? Have you no mercy?
Won’t you please speak up?
Sometimes when I am asleep, I dream that we are together; gathered in a beautiful field of nature’s grand design. And we are holding hands, and talking to each other and singing sweet songs of happiness.
In my dreams I can hear you. I can hear what you are shouting to me. I agree. It’s time we came together. It’s time we made love, not war. It’s time we stopped our petty squabbling about different traditions we do not even remember the reason for. It’s time we remembered how we started, and that in the beginning we were of one desire. Together we can make a difference. Together we can change the world. Together we can make something wonderful happen.
It’s time we both spoke up and made a new beginning.
Can you hear me?
*****
Monday, January 4, 2010
CHAPTER 13 – STUD -Excerpt Johnny Oops
Adult Language and Situations
I’m home from France, two inches taller, well tanned, six pack abs from swimming in the ocean each day, and fifteen pounds of muscle heavier from Mama Gellet’s cooking. To tell the truth I’m a good-looking seventeen-year-old stud with a very positive attitude.
My folks can’t believe it. They think I’m ready to go back to college. We put our heads together and came up with the University of California in San Diego and a major in Humanities. The school finally accepted me after much pulling of strings by my Dad and a glowing progress report from Doctor O’Hara. He said my perspective on life and my emotional stability was now superior to that of most of the weirdo’s whom the school matriculated. I’m really proud, I think.
I decided to approach UCSD as the domestic version of the French Riviera. After all, the climate is similar and they are both near the ocean. Granted it’s a different ocean and Danielle and her friends won’t be there, but I intend to have fun anyway. Oh yes, I will take my studies seriously, but I don’t intend to let them occupy all of my time. The new Johnny Oops is going to be a social animal for a change.
Life seems a lot more relaxed here at UCSD than at Harvard. The kids are less intense. I guess I’m less intense. No one seems to spend much time going to class. Surfing and boozing appear to be the order of the day. I’d never been surfing before, but it came naturally to me. I guess all that swimming in the Mediterranean left me primed and ready for a surfboard. Learning how to drink turned out to be a totally different story. I come from a long line of Wilbert men who have proven time and again that they cannot hold their liquor.
It all started innocently enough. I joined the Sigma Phu Fraternity in an attempt to fit in and make my parents proud of what a social animal I have become.
“Daddy, your son is no longer a philosopher nerd, now I’m a social drunk.”
I was in a dazed stupor at a Saturday afternoon booze fest to celebrate the coming of the weekend when one of my fraternity brothers dared me to jump off the second floor porch of the Frat house. My inhibitions decimated by 3 whiskey sours, I happily complied shouting, “This is the life.”
I broke my right leg. That was the end of my surfing career. I was driven to the University hospital by two of my fellow fraternity brothers who were so drunk that the emergency room attendants at first thought they were the patients. It’s a miracle we got there alive. The doctor in attendance put my two buddies in temporary detox and proceeded to x-ray my leg, which had snapped in 2 places. He then set it in a cast, which ran all the way up to my hip saying, “The more immobilized you are, the safer I’ll feel.”
A student nurse helped him apply the plaster. Jennifer is a knockout with typical blonde California good looks, a body to die for, and a dazzling smile.
While Jennifer and I were waiting for the plaster to dry, I invited her to the Saturday night party at the frat house.
She laughed and said, “I might as well. Someone has to drive you back and show you how to maneuver your wheelchair and your crutches.”
I guess I was a little zonked out from the painkillers by then because I remember mumbling something about, “why don’t we use a stretcher, that way you can have me flat on my back where you want me.”
I woke up in my room with a terrible headache and Jennifer still in her nurse’s uniform stroking my forehead with a damp washcloth. The guys in the house thought this was the coolest thing ever. Three of them volunteered to jump off the porch next Saturday.
Let me tell you about the amazing Jennifer. Being a nurse and all she is very practical and scientific in her reasoning. After I had recovered a little she suggested that we spend the evening in my room talking as I really wasn’t in any shape to go downstairs and party. That made sense to me. We talked and talked, mostly about me, and my experiences as a philosopher genius.
I told her about Dialectic Spiritualism, my summer in France and Danielle, leaving out any reference to Alice or Harvard. She told me about growing up in San Diego, about her parents and about her life and her friends. She claimed to be a Buddhist, but I must have dozed off. I awoke with a gigantic erection that in true nurse fashion Jennifer ministered to with warmth and kindness. I never had to move a muscle, well, only one muscle. Blew my mind. I thought I was still dreaming.
I’m beginning to think there is something wrong with me. I try to be a philosopher and to go to school and study and to be a good son to my parents, but all I do is have sex. There’s got to be more to my life than this. Oh well, until I’m mature I guess I’ll have to settle for what I’ve. It’s not so bad. I can handle it. I’m pretty tough. After all I’m a philosopher genius, and we are prone to leading really mixed up, sexed up lives.
Jennifer and I spend a lot of time together. She’s a lot of fun. She has taught me a lot about Buddhism. I think my karma has definitely improved and I’m on a course to a personal nirvana. The Buddhist theories on rebirth fit in nicely with mine on the alternate realities I may live in. I’m just pursuing my chosen course of study.
I signed up for a course called ‘Recognition’ during pre-pledge week. I must have had too many champagne Mimosas before registration at a rushing breakfast where they try to show you how great fraternity life is. I thought this was a course designed to teach you how to deal with the public once you become a public figure. I’m sure I’m going to be famous.
‘Recognition’ claims to put in touch with your inner self: the real you, your authentic self. The course tries to get you to examine why you act the way you do, and how you can change all that by gaining a better understanding of who you really are. The class goes on and on like that until a minor hangover can become a major headache. I’ll never drink before I register for classes again.
The teacher running the course is a Professor Flex, or Mr. Fixit, as his few graduating students like to call him. To show you how popular this course isn’t. I was one of only 4 students out of a student body numbering over 10,000 to take the damn thing. The good part is that the professor seeing the small size of the enrollment decided to hold classes at his house on Tuesdays and Thursdays at four o’clock in the afternoon, which was when I usually played Hearts at the frat house. He probably saved me a fortune. I gamble just about as well as I drink. In this case I’m not sure it’s genetic. Anyway his wife served tea and hard as a rock chocolate chip cookies, and a miserable time was had by all, but I learned a lot about myself. Much of what I learned I didn’t really want to know, but it’s a beginning.
The good professor insisted that we all expose ourselves totally regarding the major people and events that shaped out lives as a necessary prelude to reinventing the inner self that each one of us according to Mr. Fixit has lurking somewhere deep down within us.
The class consisted of me, an ugly skinny girl named Beth who hardly ever spoke, and a black guy that looked like a cross between Richard Simons and an axe murderer. We called him Bubby. The fourth kid was a no show; too busy having his own nervous breakdown to attend class. Too bad, Professor Flex could have reinvented his inner self and split his personality into quarters.
I was forced to detail the following people and events that had a major effect on my life.
People that shaped my life:
My Mother and Father
Billy
Alice
Chaplain Bill
Doctor O’Hara
Danielle
Jennifer
Events that shaped my life:
Becoming a philosopher genius
My mother and father having sex
Masturbating
Inventing Dialectic Spiritualism
Getting kicked out of school
Having sex with Alice
Having a nervous breakdown at Harvard
My summer in France with Danielle
My first blowjob
Learning how to give pleasure
Not jumping off the cliff into the dark water
Finding out I valued my life
Jumping off the porch at my frat house
Breaking my leg and meeting Jennifer
Professor Flex upon hearing this dissertation scratched his head and said, “You are quite a case. More sex maniac than philosopher genius if you ask me, but that’s just what’s on the surface. Are you really, deep down in your inner self, a true philosopher genius or is this just an act to impress the girls?”
I blurted out, “I always thought it was both.”
Professor Flex smiled and said, “See, there is hope for you yet.”
I never knew which way the good professor was going to go when it came to helping us identify our inner self. I later decided this was part of his act to get us so confused that we wouldn’t know whether we were coming or going, and thus perfect subjects to be reinvented as people with worthwhile inner selves.
In my case his antics worked perfectly. I got so confused about who I really was and who I wasn’t and where I was and wasn’t going that I resorted to writing Doctor O’Hara for advice. I told him that I was drinking, gambling, screwing my brains out, and had a professor called Flex who was reinventing my soul. I told him I don’t know who I am any more, or where I am going with my life or whether I’m a charlatan or a guru.
I wonder if the Game Master and the different realities I may be living in have anything to do with my current state of confusion?
Doctor O’Hara wrote me back and sent a copy of his letter to Professor Flex. He told me he was pleased to hear I was doing all those things that make a normal college kid like me enjoy life. He told me to stop worrying about who or what I was. As for the good professor he indicated he was not an accredited shrink and should stop messing around with other shrink’s clients, or he would report him to the Association of Psychiatrists, and tell the University he was practicing medicine without a license.
Shortly thereafter the good professor took an unexpected year -long sabbatical. Before he left he issued all four of us A’s in his class including the sanatorium special who never showed up. And you think I don’t know how to pick my classes.
I’m still a little confused about who I’m and where I’m going. As far as my inner self, I don’t think I’m approaching my personal nirvana quite yet and certainly haven’t reached a defining moment. I guess what you see is what you get. For better or worse I value my life and try having as much fun as possible.
In terms of reinventing myself, at the end of the semester I dumped Jennifer. The relationship had begun to bore me. This was probably a little cruel and uncaring of me, but I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of power.
I decided to get rid of the sex maniac in me by practicing celibacy over spring break. That was a joke. I never made it through the plane ride home. I ended up under a blanket in first class with a cute stewardess who was grabbing me on a free hop back to New York. Her cleavage was a real turn on. In the tight little uniform she was wearing.
You know having sex in the air is much easier than underwater.
So much for reinventing myself and finding my inner self. I’m not even through inventing myself the first time around.
I think I’m really learning a lot here at UCSD. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do with all this knowledge. It’s a little like packing sixteen shirts into a suitcase and then having no idea what to do with them when you arrive at a nudist colony for a week’s stay at a nudist colony.
I did my term paper on the effects of spiritualism on the inner self and got an A. Life is good. My folks are proud of me. I’m proud of me. I’m beginning to think I can fulfill my promise again. I still wish I knew where I’m going. I suppose I won’t find out until I get there. I love this reasoned spiritualism stuff, fits right in with my way of thinking. It’s logical, and gives me something to hang on to in these troubled times.
Remember these words for I am the Messenger: The good Lord gives pleasure and takes it away. It’s not for us to reason why.
I’m sensing I’m about to have something taken away from me again, but I don’t know what. It’s just a feeling, but us geniuses can tell when something bad is about to happen. I wish I knew what and when. The anticipation is a killer. I can’t imagine what I’ve done wrong, but I feel like I’m about to be punished.
Do you hear me God? Whatever I did, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.
*****
I'm looking for a few people to read my novel in manuscript form in return for their comments prior to publication. If you are interested please indicate in the comment section.
Thanks.
Arthur Levine
I’m home from France, two inches taller, well tanned, six pack abs from swimming in the ocean each day, and fifteen pounds of muscle heavier from Mama Gellet’s cooking. To tell the truth I’m a good-looking seventeen-year-old stud with a very positive attitude.
My folks can’t believe it. They think I’m ready to go back to college. We put our heads together and came up with the University of California in San Diego and a major in Humanities. The school finally accepted me after much pulling of strings by my Dad and a glowing progress report from Doctor O’Hara. He said my perspective on life and my emotional stability was now superior to that of most of the weirdo’s whom the school matriculated. I’m really proud, I think.
I decided to approach UCSD as the domestic version of the French Riviera. After all, the climate is similar and they are both near the ocean. Granted it’s a different ocean and Danielle and her friends won’t be there, but I intend to have fun anyway. Oh yes, I will take my studies seriously, but I don’t intend to let them occupy all of my time. The new Johnny Oops is going to be a social animal for a change.
Life seems a lot more relaxed here at UCSD than at Harvard. The kids are less intense. I guess I’m less intense. No one seems to spend much time going to class. Surfing and boozing appear to be the order of the day. I’d never been surfing before, but it came naturally to me. I guess all that swimming in the Mediterranean left me primed and ready for a surfboard. Learning how to drink turned out to be a totally different story. I come from a long line of Wilbert men who have proven time and again that they cannot hold their liquor.
It all started innocently enough. I joined the Sigma Phu Fraternity in an attempt to fit in and make my parents proud of what a social animal I have become.
“Daddy, your son is no longer a philosopher nerd, now I’m a social drunk.”
I was in a dazed stupor at a Saturday afternoon booze fest to celebrate the coming of the weekend when one of my fraternity brothers dared me to jump off the second floor porch of the Frat house. My inhibitions decimated by 3 whiskey sours, I happily complied shouting, “This is the life.”
I broke my right leg. That was the end of my surfing career. I was driven to the University hospital by two of my fellow fraternity brothers who were so drunk that the emergency room attendants at first thought they were the patients. It’s a miracle we got there alive. The doctor in attendance put my two buddies in temporary detox and proceeded to x-ray my leg, which had snapped in 2 places. He then set it in a cast, which ran all the way up to my hip saying, “The more immobilized you are, the safer I’ll feel.”
A student nurse helped him apply the plaster. Jennifer is a knockout with typical blonde California good looks, a body to die for, and a dazzling smile.
While Jennifer and I were waiting for the plaster to dry, I invited her to the Saturday night party at the frat house.
She laughed and said, “I might as well. Someone has to drive you back and show you how to maneuver your wheelchair and your crutches.”
I guess I was a little zonked out from the painkillers by then because I remember mumbling something about, “why don’t we use a stretcher, that way you can have me flat on my back where you want me.”
I woke up in my room with a terrible headache and Jennifer still in her nurse’s uniform stroking my forehead with a damp washcloth. The guys in the house thought this was the coolest thing ever. Three of them volunteered to jump off the porch next Saturday.
Let me tell you about the amazing Jennifer. Being a nurse and all she is very practical and scientific in her reasoning. After I had recovered a little she suggested that we spend the evening in my room talking as I really wasn’t in any shape to go downstairs and party. That made sense to me. We talked and talked, mostly about me, and my experiences as a philosopher genius.
I told her about Dialectic Spiritualism, my summer in France and Danielle, leaving out any reference to Alice or Harvard. She told me about growing up in San Diego, about her parents and about her life and her friends. She claimed to be a Buddhist, but I must have dozed off. I awoke with a gigantic erection that in true nurse fashion Jennifer ministered to with warmth and kindness. I never had to move a muscle, well, only one muscle. Blew my mind. I thought I was still dreaming.
I’m beginning to think there is something wrong with me. I try to be a philosopher and to go to school and study and to be a good son to my parents, but all I do is have sex. There’s got to be more to my life than this. Oh well, until I’m mature I guess I’ll have to settle for what I’ve. It’s not so bad. I can handle it. I’m pretty tough. After all I’m a philosopher genius, and we are prone to leading really mixed up, sexed up lives.
Jennifer and I spend a lot of time together. She’s a lot of fun. She has taught me a lot about Buddhism. I think my karma has definitely improved and I’m on a course to a personal nirvana. The Buddhist theories on rebirth fit in nicely with mine on the alternate realities I may live in. I’m just pursuing my chosen course of study.
I signed up for a course called ‘Recognition’ during pre-pledge week. I must have had too many champagne Mimosas before registration at a rushing breakfast where they try to show you how great fraternity life is. I thought this was a course designed to teach you how to deal with the public once you become a public figure. I’m sure I’m going to be famous.
‘Recognition’ claims to put in touch with your inner self: the real you, your authentic self. The course tries to get you to examine why you act the way you do, and how you can change all that by gaining a better understanding of who you really are. The class goes on and on like that until a minor hangover can become a major headache. I’ll never drink before I register for classes again.
The teacher running the course is a Professor Flex, or Mr. Fixit, as his few graduating students like to call him. To show you how popular this course isn’t. I was one of only 4 students out of a student body numbering over 10,000 to take the damn thing. The good part is that the professor seeing the small size of the enrollment decided to hold classes at his house on Tuesdays and Thursdays at four o’clock in the afternoon, which was when I usually played Hearts at the frat house. He probably saved me a fortune. I gamble just about as well as I drink. In this case I’m not sure it’s genetic. Anyway his wife served tea and hard as a rock chocolate chip cookies, and a miserable time was had by all, but I learned a lot about myself. Much of what I learned I didn’t really want to know, but it’s a beginning.
The good professor insisted that we all expose ourselves totally regarding the major people and events that shaped out lives as a necessary prelude to reinventing the inner self that each one of us according to Mr. Fixit has lurking somewhere deep down within us.
The class consisted of me, an ugly skinny girl named Beth who hardly ever spoke, and a black guy that looked like a cross between Richard Simons and an axe murderer. We called him Bubby. The fourth kid was a no show; too busy having his own nervous breakdown to attend class. Too bad, Professor Flex could have reinvented his inner self and split his personality into quarters.
I was forced to detail the following people and events that had a major effect on my life.
People that shaped my life:
My Mother and Father
Billy
Alice
Chaplain Bill
Doctor O’Hara
Danielle
Jennifer
Events that shaped my life:
Becoming a philosopher genius
My mother and father having sex
Masturbating
Inventing Dialectic Spiritualism
Getting kicked out of school
Having sex with Alice
Having a nervous breakdown at Harvard
My summer in France with Danielle
My first blowjob
Learning how to give pleasure
Not jumping off the cliff into the dark water
Finding out I valued my life
Jumping off the porch at my frat house
Breaking my leg and meeting Jennifer
Professor Flex upon hearing this dissertation scratched his head and said, “You are quite a case. More sex maniac than philosopher genius if you ask me, but that’s just what’s on the surface. Are you really, deep down in your inner self, a true philosopher genius or is this just an act to impress the girls?”
I blurted out, “I always thought it was both.”
Professor Flex smiled and said, “See, there is hope for you yet.”
I never knew which way the good professor was going to go when it came to helping us identify our inner self. I later decided this was part of his act to get us so confused that we wouldn’t know whether we were coming or going, and thus perfect subjects to be reinvented as people with worthwhile inner selves.
In my case his antics worked perfectly. I got so confused about who I really was and who I wasn’t and where I was and wasn’t going that I resorted to writing Doctor O’Hara for advice. I told him that I was drinking, gambling, screwing my brains out, and had a professor called Flex who was reinventing my soul. I told him I don’t know who I am any more, or where I am going with my life or whether I’m a charlatan or a guru.
I wonder if the Game Master and the different realities I may be living in have anything to do with my current state of confusion?
Doctor O’Hara wrote me back and sent a copy of his letter to Professor Flex. He told me he was pleased to hear I was doing all those things that make a normal college kid like me enjoy life. He told me to stop worrying about who or what I was. As for the good professor he indicated he was not an accredited shrink and should stop messing around with other shrink’s clients, or he would report him to the Association of Psychiatrists, and tell the University he was practicing medicine without a license.
Shortly thereafter the good professor took an unexpected year -long sabbatical. Before he left he issued all four of us A’s in his class including the sanatorium special who never showed up. And you think I don’t know how to pick my classes.
I’m still a little confused about who I’m and where I’m going. As far as my inner self, I don’t think I’m approaching my personal nirvana quite yet and certainly haven’t reached a defining moment. I guess what you see is what you get. For better or worse I value my life and try having as much fun as possible.
In terms of reinventing myself, at the end of the semester I dumped Jennifer. The relationship had begun to bore me. This was probably a little cruel and uncaring of me, but I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of power.
I decided to get rid of the sex maniac in me by practicing celibacy over spring break. That was a joke. I never made it through the plane ride home. I ended up under a blanket in first class with a cute stewardess who was grabbing me on a free hop back to New York. Her cleavage was a real turn on. In the tight little uniform she was wearing.
You know having sex in the air is much easier than underwater.
So much for reinventing myself and finding my inner self. I’m not even through inventing myself the first time around.
I think I’m really learning a lot here at UCSD. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do with all this knowledge. It’s a little like packing sixteen shirts into a suitcase and then having no idea what to do with them when you arrive at a nudist colony for a week’s stay at a nudist colony.
I did my term paper on the effects of spiritualism on the inner self and got an A. Life is good. My folks are proud of me. I’m proud of me. I’m beginning to think I can fulfill my promise again. I still wish I knew where I’m going. I suppose I won’t find out until I get there. I love this reasoned spiritualism stuff, fits right in with my way of thinking. It’s logical, and gives me something to hang on to in these troubled times.
Remember these words for I am the Messenger: The good Lord gives pleasure and takes it away. It’s not for us to reason why.
I’m sensing I’m about to have something taken away from me again, but I don’t know what. It’s just a feeling, but us geniuses can tell when something bad is about to happen. I wish I knew what and when. The anticipation is a killer. I can’t imagine what I’ve done wrong, but I feel like I’m about to be punished.
Do you hear me God? Whatever I did, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.
*****
I'm looking for a few people to read my novel in manuscript form in return for their comments prior to publication. If you are interested please indicate in the comment section.
Thanks.
Arthur Levine
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Patch Of Faith Makes Miracles Happen At Holidays
The results are in and the facts are irrefutable. A patch of faith can make miracles happen. In the beginning many questioned this result, but the skeptics have been silenced. Having faith in God works, especially at the Holidays.
The truth is it works all year long, but many of us only remember our faith at the Holidays or when tragedy hits us.
At times like this we try and patch our faith together so that we can prove to ourselves, and our families that we really are worthwhile people. Well of course we are. Why would you ever question yourself that way?
Why all the attempts to be politically correct and to avoid certain symbols of the Holidays and certain salutary greetings when all that is needed is a patch of faith that let’s you know it’s how you feel and your traditions, not what you say that counts.
Why all the uncertainty about what we should and shouldn’t say and do. We used to know instinctively how to act. We used to have enough faith in ourselves so that we didn’t have to patch ourselves together to get the true spirit of the Holidays.
How about reaching back into our pasts and remembering the Holidays we spent with our parents as we were growing up and how wonderful everything seemed to most of us – how miraculous. We didn’t need anyone to tell us to get in the mood in those days, it was a given.
How about looking around at our family and friends and marveling at how much we have to be thankful for? How about rejoicing at the wonder of it all? Why is it so hard just to relax, enjoy and do what comes naturally?
I guess I’m old fashioned. I always appreciate the gifts God has given us more at the Holidays. I always make a ton of resolutions for the New Year, and I always forgive myself when I break them.
I want to wish you all, as it applies to each and every one of you, a very happy Hanukah, a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.
You can find out more about a patch of faith and finding inner peace at
http://www.faith-patch.com
The truth is it works all year long, but many of us only remember our faith at the Holidays or when tragedy hits us.
At times like this we try and patch our faith together so that we can prove to ourselves, and our families that we really are worthwhile people. Well of course we are. Why would you ever question yourself that way?
Why all the attempts to be politically correct and to avoid certain symbols of the Holidays and certain salutary greetings when all that is needed is a patch of faith that let’s you know it’s how you feel and your traditions, not what you say that counts.
Why all the uncertainty about what we should and shouldn’t say and do. We used to know instinctively how to act. We used to have enough faith in ourselves so that we didn’t have to patch ourselves together to get the true spirit of the Holidays.
How about reaching back into our pasts and remembering the Holidays we spent with our parents as we were growing up and how wonderful everything seemed to most of us – how miraculous. We didn’t need anyone to tell us to get in the mood in those days, it was a given.
How about looking around at our family and friends and marveling at how much we have to be thankful for? How about rejoicing at the wonder of it all? Why is it so hard just to relax, enjoy and do what comes naturally?
I guess I’m old fashioned. I always appreciate the gifts God has given us more at the Holidays. I always make a ton of resolutions for the New Year, and I always forgive myself when I break them.
I want to wish you all, as it applies to each and every one of you, a very happy Hanukah, a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.
You can find out more about a patch of faith and finding inner peace at
http://www.faith-patch.com
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