the timboucher experience

I guess what I’m really thinking about is perfecting how I want my life to go and then fulfilling it and even exceeding it. While I’m really sort of sketched out about where things like “the world” and “the economy” are going, I’m feeling pretty fine about my own life. Things are going well for me right now. I’d like to ramp it up in certain areas and take on bigger challenges, but I want - for right now - to have a stable home base upon which to do it.

So I see several paths open to me right now. What looks like several paths, sometimes, is just the way that one very large (or very narrow, depending how you want to look at it) path looks as it comes up in the distance. One of those strands is this notion of service. Half of my whole “will work for free” Craigslist gambit was getting actively involved in enhancing the value of the community on a practical obvious level. Building things, getting actual work accomplished. Not arbitrary or vague things. What needs to be done.

And that’s giving me this other idea for how to approach this: this, what is it? I guess you could say I approach life as though it were some kind of series of interlinked art projects or personal experiments played out in real time in the real world. And I like sharing that process with other people in a collaborative multi-modal way where everyone involved benefits on a lot of different levels.

I’m thinking of just putting myself out there in a more direct way than a Craigslist ad, the street-corner handbill.

NEED HELP? CALL TIM.

And then my phone number is what I was thinking. Or maybe a separate phone number, and it would be sort of like my red phone, direct to the Bat Cave or the Commissioner, or whatever lop-sidedly heroic comic book role I would be subconsciously copying at that point in my delusions. But I can also make loftier philosophical arguments and present pithy Wikipedia quotations about historically connected traditions I would be associating myself with, thusly:

The word deacon (and deaconess) is probably derived from the Greek word diakonos (διάκονος),[1] which is a standard ancient Greek word meaning “servant”, “waiting-man,” “minister” or “messenger.” One commonly promulgated speculation as to its etymology is that it literally means ‘through the dust’, referring to the dust raised by the busy servant or messenger.

I’m working on an action-adventure comic book series, actually, which centers around a tough-guy bike messenger in a post-Apocalyptic fractured US of A who comes close - at points - to reaching the description above. At least, he ends up traveling a lot, and kicking ass at least twice as much as he has his handed to him. Those are good odds I figure.

My grandfather was a deacon, actually - in the Catholic Church, not in a post-Apocalyptic USA. In actual fact, he served in World War II as an army chaplain, if I’m not mistaken. Or maybe I have the time-line wrong. Either way, those roots of service have had a deep and honored place in my family and in my up-bringing, and have laid their deep imprints in my psyche.

But at the same time I love this quote from the “things my Godfather told me” section of Mayombe.org. This one is from the “being a witchdoctor” entry:

“If you want problems in your life, help people.”

Which is kind of true, from what I’ve seen. But also obviously true is the simple fact that people need help. And I’m not really doing anything. I’m working, but not much and it hasn’t been that hard. My urge towards pushing myself into bigger and bigger challenges is being frustrated by the fact that few are appearing right now. I think what it means economically to be in a recession or a depression is more of a collective mood thing, a morale thing, people withdrawing the expression of certain hopes into their hearts and holding on too tightly. Which is why I like the idea of the open-ended offer for help, no terms or restrictions but what I’m willing or able to do. Which leaves me a wide-open door to walk away from any untenable situations which might present themselves and become more selective about how I conduct myself in such a Quest.

I see myself as a sort of Grail Knight, on some secret inner dork comic book level, who has become - at last - at home in the forest, learning the rules of the animal and vegetable world and of man’s nearest neighbor: the rules of the road. And now I see myself as a new knight without a clear mission, but with a strong yet flexible basic set of operating principles (almost like the human equivalent of an operating system, you could say) with which I meet and engage new opportunities and situations. I’m trying to teach myself how to juggle blind, literally and figuratively. It’s the perfect marriage of action and symbol: a near-religious ritual I perform to ready myself - for something. For some time when I have nothing and everything at once. I know it’s coming and I keep careful vigilance over the fire in my heart. But maybe that’s what Awareness, or self-awareness, is really all about: just holding to that edge, walking the line as Cash put it, staying in that state of alert and compassionate readiness, that state of eternal and joyous becoming which comes, with difficult, eventually.

Need help? Call me. I’m ready (though I have a good Old-Timey song I wrote about not being ready).

I’ve also thought of somehow trying to sort of auction myself or my services off, a la the medieval patronage system. I’m not talking like indentured servitude or some sort of weird slavery thing though. I’m talking about committing myself to some sort of public organization which operates according to a certain set of principles, being part of some bigger effort, getting myself a little more swept up in the wave that’s coming, though when the levee breaks…

I’d also like to go Down South for a while, maybe learn how to be a better bluesman, sit down on the bayou and cry or something like that. I know I can do all of it, live life as its meant to be lived. But it’s lived in time and its almost never an all-or-nothing style situation.

• They should really call it…
• Hollow Earth Radio
• Some asshole calling our customer service line
• Icelandic Teen ‘Scams’ White House Into Talking To Him
• Refusal of the Call