Six Exits

 Traveling on Interstates 39 and 55 I began to see exits that read like peoples names.

It has seemed like I should do something with them. Screenplay?

Will I have to murder any of them? Did the butler do it? Is there any mystery left at all?

Henry Streator

Raymond Hillsboro

Gillespie Litchfield

Shirley McLean (not an actual sign

Herculaneum McNutt (St.

Antonia Barnhart

Alton Greenville

Raymond Taylor (ville 

Pawnee Auburn

Perhaps this will suffice as 'doing something' with the vision. 

Yes, I was driving and leveling the camera on the dash for quick bursts.

Gardun of Edun

 Announcing 

The Gardun of Edun  

Dinner Theater

Three Shows Daily

Friday, Saturday, & Sunday

Complete Gift Shop

Shirts, hats, mugs, and 

palm fronds autographed

by Adam and Eve.

Apple Juggling Seminar

with God and the Serpent

during intermission on

Fridays and Saturdays only.

Family photos at a facade 

of The Tree of Knowledge 

of Good and Evil located

in the Gift Shop.

Parking available 

for passenger cars 

and tour busses.

Group rates available.

* * * * * * * * * *

IMPORTANT

Entrance to the Garden itself ONLY

if you are able to strip yourself of 

the need to know. Clothing optional. 

No photos inside.

You will be escorted out, incrementally, by the frequency 

and intensity of your own judgments. Do Not Judge.

* asterisk

We use “un” in garden and eden, instead of “en” to 

indicate that the perfection of the garden has never 

wavered inasmuch as it is:

UNspoken 

UNmeasured

UNlabeled

UNmentioned

UNjudged

Judge less. Do your best.

…

The Gardun of Edun is located

in the East Wing of the

Alphabet Zoupe Memorial Library

And will be fully operational by 

Hobo Daze - April 12th, 2024

…

(c) David L White 4/4/24

Thinking Threads

 I think we're taking the zoupa.musings moniker off the wall 1/1/24

That, along with the admonition to: Stir Your Soup, never got the ligaments I was looking for.

So, zoupa.musings might be replaced with 

Verandananda.SwamiVeeda

vernadananda.swamiveeda

 - OR - 

maybe just go for the throat

gigahug.com

I do not know if I can have a domain name as a username. ah. no. not without written permission.

Perhaps gigahug.dot.com

I wish to impress, or reiterate, the power of words, in order to prompt the feel-good stuff.

One Day Monday

 January First 2024

1+1+20+2+4 =  1. A one day on a Monday at the start of a brand new - please stay tuned - TBD whatever.

a work in progress ....

Today we are announcing The AZML Soup Kitchen; a more public facing enclave. The invitation is out. Come up! Join us on the porch and share some stories with your bread and butter. Always simmering is a perpetual broth made with water from the Fountain of Youth. The fountain, as long been suspected, is simply a spring in the aquifer. 

Just add a cup of dry noodle letters, and we'll marinate them in meaning, baste them in bullshit

Swami Veeda announces the AZML Soup Kitchen. It's really the employee cafeteria, but the 'test kitchen' has long been a fixture in the Alphabet Zoupe Memorial Library. 

Swami V'da, (Verandananda) gets a phonetic upgrade to Veeda. 

Something flashed by the windshield and I pumped the brakes. My art made a little screech as I began work on my first art note doodle commission. 

We imagine rotating the bauble a bit,

In the beginning was the word, and the word was made of letters, arranged in a ladle, laid in the Alphabet Zoupe, kettle of creation. Alphabet Soup.

These are no longer dry noodles, but marinated in meaning, and boiled in beliefs, and saturated with stories of the supernatural.

And the ladle is a magic wand. I create as I speak. Abracadabra. Because I said so. 

This is what it looks like from my seat at the table.

My first commision

 December 2023: Susan likes my art enough to ask me to make her some notes. I'm touched. 

We set few parameters. Few. Yaay.

...

I might have ADHD. I might also think it's too late to bother. It's not getting in the way. And then, Erica offered a term she had recently encountered. 

Multipotentialite

https://puttylike.com/living-the-good-life-as-a-multipotentialite-with-adhd/

...

On another note I still have stuff. What to do?

A free issue of PandaLoon requires a #10 SASE.

David L White

PO Box 142

Greendale, WI 53129

PandaLoon, a 4x7”, 16 page, pocket poetry chapbook.
Good while supplies last. Ask first DoHappyBetter@gmail.com

Bejewled Chess

 When the bejeweled people required my birthdate in order to continue playing, I went to the AppStore and almost cried, looking for some other way to waste my time.

I had not played chess since I was 12 or 13 years old. I downloaded a game and won the very first match at level one in less than a half hour.

White wins.

So much winning.

Ultra-processed people

 It's a food science book. I will not finish it. I will look for
quotes, reviews, and youtube of Chris Van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People.

I spit these mashed potatoes out after the first forking. Glack. AND THEN I found the big label on the bottom of the package.

Mashed potatoes ... right!

The Knews #32 1999

Here I am, sweating over new layout software, putting together another zine, (a mini, printed, publication, for the 2023 50th Annual Hobo Daze, and by golly it looks like I've said it all before. 

Getting ready for the Zine Fest meant that I had to have product ready. Things came up. Issue #32 for instance. I reread it.  Flashes of brilliance. I've said it all before. This poking around can get a guy in trouble.

There is news since then. I'd like to make it looks all newsy but ... not now.

. At the 22-23 Council of Fires, the Muses presented us with the Crystal Ladle. By us I mean, me, myself, I, my higher selves, elves, and a host of imaginary friends; some completely fictional.

. The Muses and I brainstormed the idea of sharing The Soup. We will be looking at some words and phrases and redefining meaning. Deformulation, also known as reverse engineering, is the process of breaking down and separating the food product into .... blah blah blah.

. Actually, the Council of Fires was more like a hostage situation where the Muses kept splooching me into an ever increasing hot bath in the Mother of All Cauldrons. I did NOT sign the NDA. I can speak freely of abuses of the Muses. Anyway .... the news.

. Stir Your Soup is the name of a program being launched in conjunction with Zoupa Musings at davidlwhite.substack.com 

. Yum is the newly adopted mantra for the AZML Test Kitchen.

. The Hobo Daze Parade is a officially a metaphorical labyrinth in the stacks at the library.

. The Hobos have camped out in the kitchen.

The Hobos voted to let go of the 'Day' concept and wander into the moment. The Hobos also offered to commemorate April 12th at 11 AM at 'the river' as the official date.

"Since we have longed to get 'out of time' as a foundational principle, we find it best to let the day go. Get into the moment as often as you are able. Rain checks are no longer needed. Dinner on your own.

. Chatter at The Platter has it that Alphabet Zoupe is made with water from the Fountain of Youth. Back in the day it was made with the good stuff, like Coca-Cola did ... real sugar ... and cocaine. Ha!

And, the recipe to make you own Fountain of Youth water is to simply declare it, on a piece of masking tape or other label, taped to the side of a glass jar of clean water that you drink from and refill frequently. This is a habit and practice.

If you would like a print copy of the new zine when it is ready, please email DoHappyBetter@gmail.com with 50 Zine in the Subject line.

There is something about real connection with print. 

The Way Mine

Words sparingly like spice oil 

pictures paint the cook book

sometimes when we find each other

we sit and stare and look

though I'm ever skin and bone 

I am still amazed

I can spit and wink and grin

and listen, listen ... out comes praise.

Trucking the overburden

 I have loved quotations and/or memes, mostly of the psycho spiritual variety, all of my life. And, ever since Facebook groups, I have been collecting them and making screenshots. I have over 10,000. I’m running out of drive space. 

And the sad thing is they’re not categorized or searchable. All of a sudden it feels like a waste. Especially when hundreds of people are already doing this. I have to look up Emerson anyway every time.

Some I’ve collected are here and Pinterest and here finally links to some of my favorite authors.

Finally I see a glimpse in the mirror ball and hope to free up some space in the spiritual junk drawer.

There are gemstones in the mountains. I need to truck off the overburden and drill down.

Sample only! 10,000 memes - non-searchable and uncategorized.

Chatter quotes and reviews

Chatter, 

The Voice in Our Head,
Why it Matters,
and How to Harness It 

by Ethan Kross,  Psychologist, Neuroscientist - 2021

Quotes - Amazon Reviews

 Well. Wow.  The voice in our head.
A fine companion to my lifelong metaphor Alphabet Zoupe.

Not too much science. A little 'how to' be more alert to hearing yourself.
And a few tips on how to stir your soup.

Opus Zoupa

Facebook, in all its kind heartedness that goes into the algorithms, which are designed not much differently than when I choose pie over cake, finally delivered up Rupert Spira, Neville Goddard, Anthony DeMello*, and Jane Roberts with her channeling of the Seth Material.

Seth resonated radiantly with me. The first thing that jumped out is that you, or we, create our own reality. I soon realized I’ve been saying a very similar thing with my own metaphor of Alphabet Soup 

since 1974.

Soup turned to Zoupe which turned to Zoupa; the present form. And Zoupa simply means: add more joy. And if joy is overly two dimensional you may spice it up with exuberance. Be passionate on purpose. I find it exhilarating.

Let’s not spend a lot of time talking about theoretical passion. Let’s just do the bio chemical uplift. Two minutes. Joy breathing.

We create our own reality. And if you lean towards “NO" then we are in the notes section of the library. If you lean towards “YES" then things begin to look like Yes.

That might be it for the moment.

*Anthony DeMello, or his foundation, has recently released his latest compilation titled: Stop Fixing Yourself. Lovely. I got it immediately. No need even to read the book. The title alone shines enough light for me to see my way.

.........

The Knews Review

 Before Facebook began putting holes in my cheese brain, some of the most fun I ever had, was prepping, printing, and mailing out a tabloid newsletter zine. 

Lately some of 'the bigs' are selling their entire life catalog for $500 million. I figured I'd better get my notes together. 

These mastheads represent some of my 'family' Christmas letters, three times a year for 20 years - sixty-six issues from '88 to '08. 

Also, I find it startling to discover that the publication I fondly remember as ‘The Knews Review’ is not represented here. Perhaps I fell for a fiction. Apparently I name each issue on a whim. Further though, this blog, the recent entry of Zoupa to the AZML stable, and Substack, the emailer, is of a piece that calls for more creativity. More play.

And, by play, I mean to get lost in a challenge and reward of exploration and discovery, to travel beyond your usual borders, encounter the unknown, and return with personal souvenirs.

It's good for you. Think of it as rest and rejuvenation.

All my love

My dear dear, Honduras '99, AZML #33.

AZML #33 was the middle edition of 20 year run of personal newsletters.

I absolutely loved designing and printing this little variety show.

I especially loved creating the little fake stamps with Mr. and Mrs. Yours Truly along with our pet Olmec head. Yes. Honduras on church mission after Hurricane Mitch. After a week digging the clay we were treated to an overnight stop in Copan Ruinas. As we stepped off the bus in the little two square I was sure I had been there before. Not deja vu but, welcome home.

It was a fun issue of The Knews and 1999 was an interesting year.

I’ll post the rest in a little while.