Below is graphic of the homemade job seeking card I’ve printed. I am pinned in to gigs that don’t require a background check. Hopefully renewables — wind, solar etc. — has enough of a boom that need of a reliable, educated employee out weighs protocol. All I know is that when I get to work with people first; the fact of having been incarcerated (for murder) doesn’t carry an ounce to the ton of built impression.
Hacking away a stumps in the freezing rain. I did make some progress — hopefully ;you can see from the pictures that there is a crater around the two pictured. The goal is to get them hacked down — not entirely pulled — to the surrounding ground level, which will be filled about 6″ thick as a platform for the 14′ camper trailer. The trailer will go between the two big pines pictured, and since I don’t want them falling on me I am in the contemplation stage of how to drop them big mofo’s!! [The upper branches develop symetrically (cylindrical symmetry?), so the high lop sidedness requires an extra degree of consideration.]
Man do I get down about just trying to get shit done. Task… directed effort… accomplish… satisfaction. That’s for congenitally successful people not rolling failures comme moi. Grand scheme; one could say “who cares?” You did your eighteen plus years incarcerated now just live until you’re dead. Hmmmm…that sounds like the protocol for doing time inside, not outside.
Inside is: get a routine, stick to it. So, now outside there is what I feel is the “macro” routine of a job, meals, and maintenance of whatever (yard, house, cars, pets…). This, of course, neglects building up to the yard, car, dwelling, pets…all the accouterments of an actualized American; which is everything lost to incarceration.
The frustration of the lost building phase comes in, for me, by the little schemes — which keep following a failure pattern. The latest that has me torqued is trying to put mounted snow tires — full wheels — onto my car.
I had purchased the rim/tire set last spring from a person who did the same thing I was scheming: swap four wheels on the hubs of the car instead of the tire shop swapping tires on rims. Similar model of car and the rim specifications checked out — bolt pattern and offset. Thus I was following in a trod path. I got the wheels out of storage and balanced ($50) then last Sunday did the wheel swap: jack up the front left, remove, replace, torque bolts sequentially, let car down, repeat three more times and it’s getting dark and starting to snow. Just in time Jason puts all the equipment away, starts the car to drive it out of the woods back to civilization and … .[mechanical seizing screech sound]. The front brake rotors are seized. Something is egregiously wrong!
Abandon the car and walk back to the house. Eat something and think. Recalculate. The front rims have to come off, so back out with a head lamp and maximum frustration to swap back the radials on to the front. Take the below pictures and still leave the car because the front and rear wheels may not have the same circumference and it is an all wheel drive car. This frantic wheel swap is where the back pain starts.
Drive not inspected truck to work Monday and order spacers ($85) to push out the rims the one inch to give the brake pad assembly clearance for the rim to turn. Get home before dark and swap the rear wheels. Back feeling more tweaked. After twisting and lifting plywood at work Wednesday back is blown out.
Here is where I’m thinking of the continuous failure of everything I try. I often use the expression: not getting any traction. Perfect fucking metaphor. Car, like my life, will not have any traction for winter weather.
Oh yeah; one of the front lugs snapped during the second wheel change. It paradoxically tightened in the loosening direction and just flat out broke off in the lug nut. Who knows what the metaphor is there, but it added $90 to the oil change on Tuesday. Tally is $225 and if my back is still nonfunctional when the spacers arrive the tire shop labor will bump that to $285.
The constant feeling of no traction belies all the effort. Maybe everyone is caught in their own failure loops…big, small, and in between. the only solution is to not mourn the failures and to acknowledge the occasional success. Often though, when there is a quantum change in the seasons from one day to another and I spin around in the woods to relish the moment it occurs that we’re mostly working for a tortured retribution false satisfaction fuck you moment before death, so why not make all moments such and be always ready for the final fuck you disappointment.
Happy Holidays
Justin Free 27 November 2022 17:50
–>Just found this draft and am posting it now. the link to the text file of the blogspot entry should still be valid. As far as keeping a patch of ground dry; I had to replace the extra layer tarp cover on the marine vinyl shelter after a year. That is covered in the next entry. (JF, 26 Nov 2022, 20:40 EST)
This a text file of a 2013 blog entry that documents what really happened in the reckless homicide of Marc Bender. The URL of the original entry on blogspot.com is the first line of the file. It is titled “Materially False Information”
Prelude: It’s 22 October now. The below roadtrip story happened last week of September. Just like the first sentence of the story; I’m going at maximum consistent 56 year old pace and never beating the to-do list. So…fuck it. I’m a half a glass of wine and two hits of weed in, laundry needs folding, I may sleep out in the tent tonight (where typing doesn’t work in dark camping conditions), took last dip of the year in the pond, and will do some therapeutic typing for a few minutes. .;:.;:.;:>>>>
Week Off Road Trip
Another quick essay, because I always feel that I’m behind the eight ball, not getting any traction, and just generally not coming out of the gate -- of time lost to prison -- effectively. This year has been a lot of work at the small water treatment company, where my labor is necessary but my expertise in electronics/firmware is just not applicable. Labor is not going to cut it at my age and transition is required. As it was I was contemplating career move to my Air Force specialty of avionics or solar/wind renewable. The result of the road trip is a big recalculation.
I have intended to procure a not-corroded, cheap truck from my Durango contact in Colorado, for almost all of the two years that I’ve been back in Maine. Nothing was really forthcoming until Tom suggested that I could buy his old work truck. A somewhat mutually beneficial situation. The truck is a manual -- which I like -- and not a kick around Denver vehicle. Tom’s other vehicle is a get around Denver, and get anywhere fast, car. Alright, the truck is on the table and I’m going to take a week off to go get it. I’ve been working consistently all year and need some sort of time away. So, I book a Saturday flight to Denver and the following week off of work; with the intention to drive the truck back.
First civilian flight experience since March 2001. [The 2007 con-air rendition flight in which I flew with 240 other shackled inmates is a whole other story!] Get to Denver at noon and rendezvous with Tom no problem. I’m at a Tex-Mex cantina eating a savory burrito and feeling real weird about being 2000 miles from home base. We discuss the truck, having dinner with friends, and driving back to Maine. It all follows the script – we have dinner with John and Ty at Twin Peaks (https://twinpeaksrestaurant.com/locations/arapahoe-co ...hooters style joint where the waitress was just oh so perfectly glittered ;-)). Tune up the truck Sunday...get up to Superior to visit a couple I know from the old days in Fort Collins...have breakfast, pack the truck, and start driving Monday morning. Pull into the driveway in Maine Wednesday night.
The drive entailed pushing through the first night – all nighters at mine and Tom’s age...ugh. This put us through Chicago at fuck-me-a.m. and we were so desperate to get around a pair of mated semi trucks causing a 8+ mile backup that we detoured through Gary Indiana. Through Cleveland then Erie and rain the next night in New York. By 8 p.m. the rain was fatiguing and a hotel in Brocksport – near Rochester was the remedy. Leisurely breakfast at Tom Horton’s and fourteen hours to West Bath Maine.
Tom stayed until Saturday October first and flew out of Portland Jetport a week and 6 hours after I had flown out of the same. We toured around town Bath and the coast at a place called Head Beach/Hermit Island. Partied with the neighbors. Hiked around the family homestead. Cooked and ate lobsters. And, cut split some wood. All in all it was a good week off of work and packed with memorable experiences...so, a win.
Now, how am I going to get this truck up to state vehicle inspection standards?!A friend was unconvinced that a cat picture I sent him was of a baby linx. Thus, I sent the following reply:
On closer inspection I think it may be a Mongolian Civit…interdimensional time travelers… They sell insurance discounted by reincarnation potential.
July 24th 2022
Started layout for the triangles that will make up the hexagon panels. See video here of worksite Crazy exciting high energy scenario! 🙂
Continue readingBig porcupine out back, at the edge of the lawn.
