John Swinburn

Enjoying Ahi Tuna Tacos and Brewpub Beer at Corazὀn de Malta

Until I spent a week drinking my espresso every morning at my brother’s house in Mexico, I was satisfied with my French roast coffee. This morning, the difference between the two is so obvious and the flavor of the espresso is so enormously better, I do not know whether I will ever again be satisfied with my comparatively weak French roast. Vacations are fine, but they can expose us to circumstances that cannot be satisfactorily replicated in the “real world.” The incredibly lush, brilliantly colorful, vibrant flora on the terrace is stunning. Enormous volumes of lemons, limes, and kumquats hang from trees all around the house. Stalks of bananas, which must weigh fifty pounds or more, put a strain on their parent trees. Morning breakfasts of fresh papaya, cantaloupe, mango, and watermelon  suggest this place is, indeed, paradise. And the much cooler, more comfortable, and far less humid weather is far better suited to my body than the intense heat and fierce humidity of the Arkansas summer. The absence of chiggers around Lake Chapala is a gift of enormous proportions. (But the tiny bo-bos that fly in enormous swarms, even though they do not bite, are annoying in the extreme and mosquitos seem to have taken up residence in areas previously mosquito-free.) Everyplace has its negatives, of course. But the positives outweigh negatives in so very many ways. Already, I miss my morning espresso on the terrace. And I miss having drinks on the terrace in the evening. And the brew-pub quite close by, Corazón de Malta, could easily become a place I might hang out every afternoon, after a delightful lunch. Ach… Well, my brother and his wife have extended an open invitation to us to visit whenever we like; I will have to control my urge to make a monthly habit of invading their home.

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So much has happened in the last ten days. One day soon I will make a record of our joys and sorrows during that period. But for now, we are back home, where we will have to adjust to the world around us. Friends, I hope, will help in that endeavor.

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I have to immerse myself back into daily life—but slowly—so I can adjust to a different pace and a radically different environment. I fully understand why people retire to the areas around Lake Chapala. In spite of the challenges of sometimes unreliable electricity or internet and regardless of the need to adjust one’s expectations, the place emphasizes how a slower pace and a less intense approach to day-to-day living can leave one soaked in happiness. Acceptance, tolerance, and appreciation of the vagaries of life are among the results of being in such a delightful place.

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Already 8:30 here in Hot Springs Village. I will spend the day at home. Mi novia will visit her doctor’s office in the hope of getting relief from a new sore throat; fortunately, it happened after getting home, though a sore throat is never good fortune. I think I may need more sleep to adapt to the faster pace of life here.  But not yet. Napping should be reserved for the afternoon, unless one opts for a nap at any other time of day. Where is home? Home, I think, is where one feels most comfortable.

A high-speed taxi in the early morning darkness of a large, frenzied city waking as if fueled by high-test caffeine is a scary place to be. The car’s destination, an airport jammed with agitated pre-dawn travelers, shreds serenity with the sharp claws of urgency; checking bags, securing paper boarding passes in case the phone app jams, trudging—shoeless—through security checkpoints, chaotic clots of people wanting fast-serve breakfast, despite its astronomic prices. The frenzy doesn’t stop there. When the plane boards, assuming it does, thoughts will turn to the tight connection to the next flight. High anxiety is the price of air travel. High, high, high anxiety.

When we reach the destination, an agenda to complete and distribute, an article to write, a cat to retrieve from boarding, clothes to wash. The price of a week in a peaceful paradise and a weekend of gathering and bittersweet recollections.

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Three nights in a spectacularly comfortable motel bed softened the experience. I want that bed.

Recent days have taught me more than I might want to know, but any knowledge—welcome or not—is fuel for both intellectual and emotional development. When I have time to process what I have recently learned, I will make an effort to document the lessons learned. In the meantime, I will attempt to understand what has taken place in the sea of thought in which I swim.

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As I sat at a boarding gate in the Guadalajara airport recently, I watched a patchwork of people waiting to travel. Young, old, and in between, each had unique reasons to fly. The mixture of languages they spoke—mostly Spanish with an assortment of English, Croation, Dutch, and various others—blurred into an unintelligible hum. Yet that cacophony was precise in its meaning: the unintelligible noise was the expression of thoughts that mattered to them.

Several hours later, in the darkness of a confusing San Antonio night,  the abrupt, jarring stop of a rented automobile as it slammed into a concrete curb—unleashed fear, anger, embarrassment, and a thousand regrets. The rubber of the destroyed tire and the metal of the undercarriage grated against the pavement as I manuevered the car to the parking lot next door—the intended, but obviously missed, target. The next morning, my rage at myself tempered just a bit, I allowed happiness to drown some of the sorrow as a gathering of family began to unfold. The reality that none of us are are ever fully in control began to sink in, as I learned of others’ unavoidable obstacles that prevented well-laid plans from unfolding as expected.

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When new expectations took an unexpected twist, the intersection of joy and sadness revealed, again, the impossibility of real control over events, time, and context. The world will turn as it will, regardless of plans…which always fail to take into account the randomness that intercedes on behalf of chaos. But chaos is not bad, only unpredictable. Some chaotic circumstances hide beauty beneath a translucent veil. The rest of these chaotic circumstances have yet to play out. Until then, we keep planning and forging ahead, hoping for the best, which sometimes comes and sometimes redefine goodness and sorrow.

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If the universe cooperates, I will continue to document our experiences, in due time, but in more coherent fashion. I have my reasons for overlaying experience with a thick blanket of confusion; confusion has been a guiding principle for awhile.

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Today is Sunday. At least that’s what we call it. For now.

Powerful reasons exist for vacations lasting at least two weeks. Fourteen days, at a minimum, are necessary to sufficiently clear one’s head to enable recovery from even the modest pressures of the daily grind. Limiting vacations to less than two weeks is like stopping a two-month course of chemotherapy after 28 days; the benefits achieved may be beneficial in the short term,  but inadequate to conquer the disease.

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The sounds of a bubbling fountain can soothe the mind. Rain on the roof, wind in the trees, and the gentle notes of a wind chime can do the same. Meditation, perhaps, is a purposeful means of accomplishing the same result. The object, the aim, is to become familiar with serenity…to feel the calmness that accompanies that familiarity. But then, suddenly, a barking dog insists that serenity is an illusion, a retreat from reality. Yet a dog’s expression of angst provides the contrast necessary to understand the nature of serenity. An exploding fire-cracker, the sounds of construction machinery, and a million other noises or vibrations can do the same. If we consider them in that context, we may come to appreciate them for the lessons they teach. Maybe.

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Our bodies were never meant to last a thousand years. Actually, there is no meaning…not legitimate, anyway…inherent in the time our bodies survive the cycles of life. What is, is. That is hard for many people to accept. That is too bad; coming to grips with the concept that all life is fundamentally meaningless is helpful when faced with the pain of meaningless…or senseless…loss.

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Happiness and sadness are woven into the fabric of life. The fabric looks and feels differently, depending on the looseness of the weave, the threads used, and the kind of loom emplyed in the process.

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I write drivel, sometimes, just to explore how my brain functions. Other times, the drivel is a natural byproduct of what’s up there in that cloudy grey matter.

Across the wide lake, the homes and businesses are almost too far away to see. But they are there. Barely visible, the places where people live and work exist in secret…oh, they do not intentionally hide their day-by-day existence, but distance conceals details that might offer clues to the lives of strangers. Distance is not the only veil. The houses up the street or even next door are full of secrets. What do the occupants do to make a living? Are they retired? Are they key members of a violent cartel, hiding in plain sight under the cover of legitimate businesses? We know almost nothing of the strangers across the lake. We know little more of next door neighbors. They could be retired instruments of foreign governments, having set aside espionage in favor of gardening and book clubs and meeting with other retirees, once a week, for coffee. But those people across the lake…or across national borders or across oceans…we rarely give them a thought. We know nothing of their personal challenges…their poverty or the diseases that wreck their lives and stress their friends and families to the breaking point. If we think about their lives, realizing they are just people like us, condemned to the rules of the societies in which they live, perhaps we will become more compassionate, despite our inability to influence the way the world treats them. Do any of those people think of us in the same way? Does their compassion extend to us? We can answer by looking within.

Art can be spectacularly beautiful, but even the most skilled, talented, visionary artist who specializes in realism cannot replicate the beauty of nature. Slivers of orange and pink and silver and grey woven among cottony white billows in the sky are not static. They transform as slowly as time and just as quickly. Watching the shapes in the sky morph from crisp, immaculately defined images into shadows that hide the secrets above them is a mesmerizing experience.

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Lush. Verdant. Brilliantly colorful. Words are inadequate to describe what the eyes behold. Watching the day unfold is a pleasure that makes me immensely grateful for my eyesight.

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Permitting oneself to appreciate the gifts of living is a far greater pleasure than refining complaints into sharp daggers of disappointment.

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So many secrets to share with someone willing to be amazed by the complex simplicity of raw, incomplete perfection…even with its flaws and the cracks in its deep, deep veneer.

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I don’t want to call myself a perfectionist because perfection is imperfection.

~ Ne-Yo ~

Cryptic messages filter through my mind, challenging me to interpret them. Every interpretation is right, but only in certain situations. If I wish the interpretations to be valid, I must insert myself into the correspondingly correct situations. This process is like a life-puzzle, complete with hourglass timer that cannot run out before the puzzle is solved, lest the game be eternally lost. Frightening, but untrue, of course. Games are the work of the devil, I sometimes think, except I do not believe in such nonsense as devils and their ilk. But I believe in bats. I matched wits with a bat last night. I finally won, but I wonder…does the bat feel the same? It is free now, after all, but so am I. Perhaps the game ended in a happy draw. You may think I am crazy, but so are you. We belong to the same tribe, bat enthusiasts and believers in the power of the embrace, the solution to every difficulty confronting us. Monday. The bells ring in the day and urge me to stop my one-finger diatribe. I consent to the request.

Paradise has different meanings for different people. For some, slot machines and the never-ending shrieks of the newly wealthy constitutes paradise. For others, it is white sand beaches littered with bikini-clad women. Others find paradise in ski resorts covered in new powder, with cozy, fire-warmed lodges providing refuge from the cold. Paradise has as many meanings as there are people who dream of it. For me, paradise is contextual, depending on my moods, the circumstances in which I find myself, and the people in my emotional sphere. A cool, lush, semi-tropical environment with a private refuge in which I can relax, unwind, and forget the rest of the world might be paradise–in the company of people I love…that can be paradise for me. Good wine, strong espresso, an occasional shot of mescal, fresh fruit, and excellent food amplify the sense of paradise in that setting. Beautiful flowers, colorful birds that sing songs I have not heard in a long time…the elements of paradise join together to define that special experience.

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Today is Sunday. A cool morning promises a beautiful day. Beauty can exist when skies are clear, when clouds and rain blot out most of the sun’s light, and every other meteorological state. Life is good when one sits at the doorstep of paradise.

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Onward to capture the magic of paradise.

Forgiveness struggles to survive in an environment in which anger is more highly valued than understanding.  Still, it survives, even growing stronger. Anger, though, withers into rancid dust, eventually lost to the winds of time.

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November 18. 2023 will mark the 140th anniversary of time zones in the U.S. Before that date in 1883, there were roughly 144 local time zones in the USA. Even today, though, universal agreement about time eludes us.

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Enough for now.

My foray into good news this morning led me, first, to a story of a 15-year-old lion returned to his natural habitat after being abandoned in a private zoo in Armenia for five years.  I then read about a way to reuse decommissioned wind turbine blades, rather than incinerating them or putting them in a landfill. From there, I renewed my long-lost acquaintance with the concept of brocken spectres, thanks to a fascinating article about a UK photo contest. As I explored brocken spectres, I wandered off to explore glories. My wandering did not end there, but I’ll leave the rest to another time when I have no demands on my time. This kind of exercise is akin to a treasure hunt in which each find leads to another search for yet another find. It feeds my need to accommodate my occasionally VERY short attention span—I get bored or disillusioned easily. But when I enter a rabbit warren with so many interconnected passages and rooms and options to follow, I can get lost for hours, exploring topics that are completely or only tangentially unrelated. The result? Temporary enthusiasm about information that has little or no practical value to me, but that causes interest and excitement for a time. I’ll probably check in with the largely negative news  services in a while, but for now I am satisfied to start the morning on an upbeat note.

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The upbeat mood does not diminish yet, even though I just learned that a prolific writer of mysteries—a man who encouraged others to write—and who matter-of-factly proclaimed his atheism to me when I first attended the Unitarian Universalist Village Church, has died. John Achor retired at the rank of Lt. Colonel after twenty years as an Air Force pilot, accumulating more than 4,000 flying hours. I knew John for only a few years, but I grew to like and admire him soon after we met. After he and his wife moved to Nebraska, we kept in touch occasionally. I followed his writing of mystery novels, including One Two Kill a Few, Three Four Kill Some More, Five Six Deadly Mix, Assault on the President, and Assault on Reason. There were more, I think. RIP, John Achor. John was 89. He lived a long and interesting life.

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A recent accidental discovery sparked my interest in an utterly useless pursuit—making huge soap bubbles. I watched a video of a teacher showing his students how to make enormous soap bubbles, using sticks and string dipped into very soapy water. The teacher and his students created what I call bubble-launching devices that, when held up on a windy day, caused monstrous soap bubbles to form. Some of the bubbles broke free of their launching devices, giant bubbles three times the size of the people creating them, sailing into the air. It is child’s play. I would rather play with sticks and strings and bubbles than toy guns. In fact, I’d rather do that than a lot of other things. When we return from our upcoming travels, I might give it a try. But I may have to wait until Spring, which I consider the best season to make giant bubbles and marvel at their size.

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Depending on a variety of factors, I may take a fairly lengthy—several-days-long—break from this blog during an upcoming trip. Or I may not. Time will tell, as it always does.

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Hmm. Seems I forgot to post this after I wrote that last bit. It’s a minute after 7 now, time for my shower and shave.

Despite my frequent admonition to myself to steer clear of the “news” every morning, I find myself indulging that bad habit almost every day. Today, as I began scanning the headlines, I felt my blood pressure rise, my jaws tighten, and my gut churn. That depressing daily routine hit me especially hard this morning. Instead of accepting the emotional punches as usual, though, I closed the tabs for CNN, AP, NPR, and the rest. I opened Google and typed in “I just want some good news.” Among the numerous hits: positive.news. For a while, at least, the hideousness of life on planet Earth morphed into something hopeful, positive, energizing…an anecdote to the poison most media outlets feed me—with my willing consent—almost every day. In a report entitled “This city turns sewage into drinking water in 24 hours. The concept is catching on,” I learned about the remarkable experience of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. Since the late 1960s, the city has employed direct potable reuse (DPR), a process by which completely safe drinking water is produced directly from sewage. Another article describes the “Closed for Maintenance” program of the Faroe Islands, when the islands are closed to “normal” tourism, allowing only those willing to be involved in “repairing paths, building cairns, making signs, gates and ladders and creating easier and safer ways to navigate between towns and villages.” The program is so popular that only 3 percent of those who apply to participate are accepted. Other places around the globe have begun to implement similar programs, using tourism itself to help rebuild and maintain tourist attractions.  In another report, dated September 7, I learned that “2,000 captive southern white rhinos are to be released into the wild after conservationists snapped up the world’s largest private rhino farm.” These represent just a tiny sample of the interesting, uplifting, positive news stories I found this morning—but only after intentionally seeking them out. Obviously, they do not negate the ugly and depressing news that dominates the media most of us consume regularly, but they gave me a little respite from that emotionally damaging informational landscape. For a while, at least.

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I spent something like a combined four hours yesterday and the day before, watching and listening to an AARP safe driving program aimed at doddering geezers…or, to put a more positive spin on it, older drivers. My participation in the online program came about because, when I received the receipt for my monthly auto insurance premium, I noticed it has increased rather significantly, thanks at least in part to the expiration of the discount I earned from participating in a similar online program a few years ago. Though most—maybe all—of the program was identical to the one in which I participated before, it included some tidbits that were either new or that I had forgotten. No doubt about it, the four hours was generally boring in the extreme and delivered at a pace designed for people very slow on the uptake of information. Despite that, though, it offered several bits of information and advice that I think will have a positive impact on the way I drive and/or react to situations when I am behind the wheel. Though I wish it had been delivered in a quarter of the time and I could have done without the sometimes patronizing tone of delivery, I think it was worth the $20.21 I spent on it. I will save far more than that on my insurance premiums…I think.

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I recently overheard someone talk about participating in online guided meditation. My interest in meditation, right now this morning, revolves around my desire to loosen the extreme tightness and pain in my neck and shoulders. A firm but gentle massage might accomplish the same thing. Maybe a heating pad would do the trick. Or a hot shower, water beating down on me for several minutes. Or morphine. Last night, we watched Hacksaw Ridge; morphine provided instant relief to severely injured soldiers whose bodies had been badly mangled by bullets or grenades or bayonets. The film was gritty and bloody in the extreme, but quite well done. It was based on the true story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who saved something like 75 soldiers’ lives on the battlefield through his remarkable bravery and unwavering dedication as a medic.

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Okay. I am ready to return to the real world. Perhaps.

A week or two ago I spent about 20 minutes watching the beginning of a Netflix documentary entitled, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. Those introductory 20 minutes fascinated me, and I promised myself I would  continue watching, but as often is the case, my promise to myself has thus far remained unfulfilled. This morning, as I skimmed the NPR website, I stopped at a piece that focused on the film. Though I did not listen to the accompanying audio, I read the article with interest. I have no illusions that I will live to be 100, nor is that an especially appealing possibility, but the idea of living a simpler, healthier, more fulfilling life is more than a little attractive. The attractiveness of the possibility was enhanced by those 20 minutes of watching the documentary (produced by Dan Buettner, who also has published a companion book), as well as the NPR piece by Allison Aubrey. As I read the article, and considered Aubrey’s “ways to swap old habits for new ones, based on the blue zone revelations,” I found myself joining her in thinking about the people who live in those “blue zones” and, as she puts it, “pining for their way of life.” My 20 minute introduction to Buettner’s documentary, by the way, took place while walking on my treadmill. That fact is awash in competing symbolism. As I approach my seventieth birthday, I wonder whether the symbols are metaphors for scales, and whether they are balanced, or tipping one way or the other.

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In this country—and others where materialism is akin to the fervor of fanatic religious worship—we are trained to equate happiness with possessions and instant gratification. Belief that money, luxury, and immediate & perpetual access to leisure are ingrained in us. Media, manipulated and managed by commercial interests whose worth is measured entirely in money and control, teach us to hunger for what we do not have. We are inculcated with the promise that attaining more and more and more will bring about happiness, success, and eternal joy. And we are taught to believe what we get—when we put our hands on those shiny somethings—is, indeed, happiness. I am certain that is not happiness. Instead, it is in fact a deadened emptiness in which despair is controlled by the emotional equivalent of morphine. Even the material evidence of human relationships—sentimental objects that connect us to the memories of people we have loved and lost, for example—constitute anesthetic replacements for something missing in our lives. Not so much the relationships that are no longer possible, but the possibilities we overlooked or disregarded when there was still time to embrace moments that truly mattered. I do not know how to undo the damage done by a society so deeply flawed that gratitude for one another is eclipsed by a craving for what merchants tell us we should want. I am angry and sad; despondent that so much time and so many lives have been and continue to be wasted.  What is gone is gone forever. What we never knew we could have is too far away to reach, now, and getting further and further away.

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This morning I understand why mi novia says I sometimes exhibit signs of depression. This morning, I feel those signs smothering me. Trying to stop me from breathing. An incomparable sadness that springs from nothing in particular, but literally everything in and around me. It will dissipate; it always does. But it always returns, sometimes with no warning and with no trigger and without regard to what is or is not happening in my life. Just a mysterious predator of some sort that hides in plain sight and slams me into a metaphorical wall. I think I cause it myself. There is a song that includes a lyric, “you can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness.” That is true, I think. Without realizing it, that bizarre addiction can take hold. But as I write these words, the gloom has already begun to lift. The morning is no longer a would-be assassin. It comes and goes with amazing speed. Except when it arrives and departs with the speed of cold molasses.

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The upside of a grey day is the water that may come with it. There’s always something light on the other side of dark.

Soft, smooth, silky rope binding one’s body to a cozy chair—despite a sensation of luxury—is like a prison, albeit a momentarily pleasant prison. But prisons, even those resembling spas, restrict freedom. Living a life of luxury, with every desire but one—freedom—readily satisfied cannot disguise the realities of confinement. The most comfortable cage is still a cage. The most painful cages are those we construct around ourselves, preventing us from free movement. We think we always will retain the keys to those self-built cages until, one day, we realize the keys have disappeared and the locks have been welded; permanently sealed. Some of us find ourselves imprisoned early. Others remain free well into old age, before willingly locking themselves away. A few sprint away before the cell slams shut. The sprinters sometimes try to warn the rest of us, but we are too enamored of silk to pay heed. We hear the key turn in the lock’s cylinder, but pretend the sound is music, rather than an emergency siren urging us to get out while we still can.

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Mortgages regularly are sold. Both buyers and sellers tend to say the sale of mortgages amounts to the mortgage being “serviced” by a different institution. That is, your mortgage payment will go to someone else. Our mortgage recently has been acquired by a different institution. Nothing will change, the notification said; your automatic payment will simply be paid to a different bank. Except, I noticed a few days ago, the payment taken out by the new mortgage holder is well more than $200 greater than before. Today, I will attempt to contact the new mortgage holder to find out what gives. I suspect I will be told the escrow has been adjusted to reflect actual costs. In which case I will insist on evidence to support the contention. And I will ask why I was not notified in advance of the larger withdrawal. Fortunately, the money was available to be withdrawn; but I suspect many people live considerably closer to the financial edge. I prefer outright ownership, without a mortgage holder. I realize, of course, mortgages offer considerable financial flexibility, even if one is able to pay cash for one’s home. But, still…life as a recluse, without engagement with heartless institutions, holds substantial appeal.

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Imagine life, two hundred years ago. When night falls, the cloudless sky is dark, except for millions of tiny white dots. The only sounds are the rustling of leaves in the trees, an occasional bird call…the distant howl of a wolf or coyote. And, perhaps, the crackle of the fire as logs transform into heat and smoke and ashes. Darkness signals time for sleep. Needed rest after a day’s work; work necessary to survive another day. Survival was not an abstract concept; it was, instead, a precise, defined objective.

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I am ready to turn away from this blog for now. I cannot express thoughts that have no associated words. Gibberish is inadequate. Language does not tell the full story.

If the opposite of heat was eleven and papaya was a synonym for alligator, the rest of our words might be equally carnivorous. Clocks and California could be used interchangeably. I once saw an episode of an old black & white television series in which a man was confounded when everyone around him began using gibberish words in sentences. Dinosaur was used in place of lunch; a boy asked the man where the boy could take his girlfriend for dinosaur. The man got angry at the boy. But then the man’s wife began substituting nonsense for meaningful words. And then everyone in his sphere did the same. But they all understood the language. The man did not. He lost his mind. I may have done the same. Shall we go out for gangster after today’s calcium service?

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If the reports from Statcounter are correct and reliable, someone (likely bots) based in China regularly visits this blog, usually but not exclusively during late night and early morning hours. The visits appear to be launched from China Unicom, a Chinese state-owned telecommunications operator, the third-largest wireless network operator in China. Recently, these Chinese visits—which have no referring link, suggesting to me they probably are bots—have not had, on  Statcounter, a live hyperlink to a specific post. They indicate which post was visited, but there is no live link to that post. That is a change from previous Chinese visits (of which there are many, many, many). I wish I knew why visits to this blog by Chinese bots are so common. But I do not know. So I will stop rambling on about it. For now.

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Nuclear weapons have long constituted tragic reality. To date, that tragedy has played out on relatively rare occasions. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people. A 1986 paper copyrighted by the National Academy of Sciences, entitled Casualties Due to the Blast, Heat, and Radioactive Fallout from Various Hypothetical Nuclear Attacks on the United States, offers estimates of the numbers of deaths and other casualties under various scenarios. One table included in the paper estimates that deaths would range between 3 million and 56 million. The authors of the paper “examined three different hypothetical ‘limited‘ nuclear attacks on the United States, each involving a 1-megaton (Mt) airburst over approximately 100 targets of three different types.” The three types of targets the authors examined were: 1) the city centers of the 100 largest U.S. urban areas; 2) 101 industries rated as the highest-priority targets for an attack on U.S. military-industrial capability; and 3) 99 key strategic nuclear targets.  The authors, in the conclusion of their paper, suggested a ‘limited’ attack on the USA (or by the USA on what was then the Soviet Union) probably would escalate considerably. Mutual (and global) assured annihilation, one might assume, would be the outcome. Tragic reality, indeed. The mere idea that nuclear weaponry, in an environment when multiple opposing superpowers possess nuclear capabilities, could ever be a deterrent is madness. Madness is not impossible, of course. We see it live, online and in on television news broadcasts, every day.

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The temperature outside, as of 6:29 a.m., is 57°F. That is dangerously close to cold! How in the hell did that happen? Just days ago the daytime high was in the 90s; even higher, I think. Suddenly, the temperature plunged into the 50s! If the meteorologists responsible for predicting the future are right, the temperature will climb by almost 30 degrees before it reaches today’s peak.  I will not complain about the cold. I will not complain about the warmth. Not today, anyway.

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Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

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Calcium. It’s what’s for dinosaur.

Planet Earth is in full-scale revolt. A deadly earthquake in Morocco. A category 5 hurricane roaring through the Atlantic toward the North American coastline. A pair (at least) of smaller earthquakes off the coast of Jalisco in Mexico. Temperatures raging near or past the century mark around the globe. Wildfires devastating enormous swaths of forests and fields around the world. Floods and mudslides drowning and burying towns and villages here, there, and yon. And then there is the purely human element: politics, greed, and unchecked hunger for power, the consequences thereof be damned. All of existence leaves me somewhat disappointed this morning.

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Until this morning, I had not heard of RoseAnn V. Shawiak, nor of the poem she wrote, Intense Serenity. The two-word phrase came to mind as I contemplated what I frequently seek when I am alone, especially during the wee hours inching toward dawn. Before deciding to proclaim the phrase was mine, I searched for it online. Shawiak’s poem was not the only occurrence of the phrase. The words were used in a song title. They were used to describe a filmmaker. Artwork attached to a canvas was so named. And a natural healing business in St. George, Utah goes by that name. Regardless of its commonality with so many disparate applications, I still maintain the phrase as uniquely mine. No one else feels exactly as I feel; no other words describe the state of mind I seek to enter. Others’ uses of the words are perfectly fine; but they do not correlate with the unparalleled, perfect merger between emotion and intellect, that nearly unattainable state of supreme understanding of a single moment that comes and goes at precisely the same instant. I seek that understanding, when I am alone in the pre-dawn darkness. I attempt to capture what it means to feel and fully absorb the explosive stillness that surrounds that incredibly fleeting moment when tranquility overwhelms and encompasses…and tames…ferocity. That flash of time during which a black hole and a supernova are one and the same. It is and will always be an unsuccessful pursuit. I know that. Yet unless I continue to try to catch it and experience it, I cannot know with certainty whether it exists. I confuse myself, though, because I cannot decide whether it is a moment I am after or it is the experience within that moment. Or, perhaps, both. The phrase, by the way, is not mine in the generic sense; it is mine only in the sense of my understanding of what it may mean.

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Wretched dream! I somehow stepped out of a small room and onto the top open shelf of the kitchen of long-ago acquaintances. I carefully avoided knocking dishes and dishtowels off the shelf and attempted to step down onto the white tile countertop, but the counter kept moving just enough that I could not keep my balance without grabbing at cups and saucers next to me. My acquaintances seemed to ignore my plight, focusing their attention instead on some unknown party’s interference with scheduling a course. That is all there was to the dream, but it seemed to go on and on and on, as if it were replaying; but it was not replaying, it was simply extending itself over a very long time. Achh!

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Today is Saturday. The only thing on my calendar is “thaw something for dinner.” So much excitement. Intense serenity does not compare to that.

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Today is my late brother’s birthday. He would have turned 75 today. Soon, we will spread his ashes where he wanted them to be spread.

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Nine years ago today, I posted the following as part of my “thoughts for the day” ritual:

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.  Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.  The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

Dōgen Zenji,
13th Century Japanese Zen Buddhist Teacher/Master

Thunder! Like a series of distant explosions, their immediate bursts of sound followed by hollow echoes and low groans. I imagine thunder as the menacing snarls and growls of angry clouds, threatening to rip the firmament to shreds. If the early morning sky were not so dark, I might see the dark grey clouds as an enormous face, its arched eyebrows, pinched nose, and slightly open mouth—with bared teeth—glaring at me, poised to strike.  The forecast calls for a bit of rain this morning, followed by a sunny afternoon with a high temperature of about 90°F. Daytime highs will drop as the week progresses, with a predicted high of only 70°F on Thursday.

Ah, there goes the thunder again, this time rolling on and on and on. Rain drops have begun to hit the window panes, signaling the arrival of a bit of a squall. I love to hear evidence of weather, even though I am indoors and cannot feel the rain nor the wind nor the slight drop in temperature as the wind picks up. Something inside me gets a boost of energy from the sound. A glossy magazine sitting on my desk reflects flashes of lightning. The power of those fierce bolts of raw electricity is awe-inspiring.  Weather is a beautiful pattern of inconsistency. Wet weather, dry weather, dark weather, light weather, windy weather, calm weather, hot weather, cold weather. Riveting opposites that insist on telling us stories of beautiful smiles and hideous scowls. I cannot adequately express how I am so completely enamored of the full spectrum of weather. Ach! A powerful flash of lightning and a loud crack of thunder at almost the same time! If I had been asleep, it would have jolted me awake.

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In June 1982, British Airways Flight 009, a Boeing 747-200, experienced the failure of all four engines as its pilots unknowingly steered it into a cloud of volcanic ash from Mount Galunggung, roughly 110 miles southeast of Jakarta. I read about the incident (the plane landed safely in Jakarta after a harrowing, record-breaking glide toward the airport) as I was following links to read about the phenomenon call St. Elmo’s Fire, also called witchfire or witch’s fire. St. Elmo’s Fire is “a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object such as a mast, spire, chimney, or animal horn.” So says Wikipedia. It is a little embarrassing to rely on Wikipedia to quickly learn the basics of almost any topic because it feels a little like reading the CliffNotes summary of War and Peace instead of reading the actual book. By the way, the flight crew of British Airways Flight 009 saw the St. Elmo’s Fire effect on the windscreen; twice, if I remember correctly.

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Suddenly, early this morning, my sleep was interrupted. Phaedra’s feet on my back jarred me awake. She ran down my leg and jumped off the bed onto the floor. I looked at the clock. It was 4:15. Pretty normal. She, too, is an early-riser. Although, that description may be misleading. She sleeps so much during the day, between burst of energy that propel her throughout the house like a ball slammed hard by a professional squash player, that she might better be described as a night-owl. Whatever she is called, she is consistent in her early morning insistence on being fed, even when her bowl has plenty of dry food. She prefers canned; filets or strips, and NOT paté. But, back to my point: she woke me from a relatively light sleep. I was about ready to get up, anyway.

Speaking of Phaedra, around 5:40 and she was yowling to be released from her temporary prison, the laundry/dining room (for her)/bedroom (for her). I had no intention of letting her out right then, because she would have run at full speed through the house, slamming against walls, swatting at her toys, leaping onto kitchen cabinets, and otherwise attempting to playfully terrorize the other occupants of the house who are not cats. I could hold out until her yowling stopped. I thought.

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With a cup of coffee in me, I was adequately fueled for a while. My brain was functioning at 23%, a full 3% greater than normal. I once reached 27%, but that lasted only a few hours after I reached my twenty-seventh birthday. Since then, I slipped back down to an average of 20%, just enough to keep me docile and out of prison.  The higher my brain functioning goes, the more dangerous I become; anyone with even a fraction of a brain knows the only acceptable use for politicians is as fertilizer for heirloom tomatoes and acts accordingly. So it’s better for the politicians, at least, to keep my brain functioning in the lower range. Otherwise…prison, you know. No, not really. I don’t think I would do anything so brutal and horrible and so completely illegal, unless I had absolutely rock-solid assurances I would not be caught and prosecuted. Dammit, Phaedra! Her yowling was getting far too loud. She would wake mi novia if she kept it up. I could not have that. I needed my early morning solitude. But Phaedra already plundered that, with her incessant howls—noisy complaints suggesting I was a monster for keeping her in a four by ten foot room with nothing but food, water, a comfortable bed, and toys to keep her content. All right! I let her out. But I warned you, didn’t I, that her energy would transform the house into a feline squash court? The warning may not have been explicit, but I assumed it was sufficient to make the point without stating it; my implicit warnings may be a little too nuanced. I’ll work on that.

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Even unrestrained by incarceration, Phaedra expresses herself with plaintive meows. She is free to wander the house, yet she complains that is not enough; she wants attention. Not the kind involving gentle petting; no, she wants to play games in which she pretends to want to be picked up but, instead, sprints away before I can accommodate what I thought was her desire for human contact. And, then, she swats at colorful little balls whose internal bells ring as they roll on the floor, with her in hot pursuit. Is this how it goes with me? All Phaedra, all the time? It’s like parents and grandparents who cannot talk about anything but their little darlings. And like pet owners who think others are as completely taken by their furry little companions as they are. Aaaarrrgghh! I could stand it! I will not become one of them! Enough about Phaedra! Let me turn my attention to something else; something more interesting and less saccharine.

I’m re-ordering the paragraphs I’ve written. Disregard any out-of-sequence comments, please.

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Today is my SIL’s birthday. A significant milestone. One I will reach shortly, as well. And it’s the birthday of a high-school acquaintance, as well. And a friend from Dallas is celebrating her birthday, too. So is a friend from church. September 8 is a popular birth date, though probably not any more popular than any other dates. I just happen to have more birthday connections today than on the average day. Tomorrow would have been my late brother’s 75th birthday. In the coming weeks, mi novia and I will join other members of my family to scatter his ashes, long after his death early last year, in a place he loved. That sad gathering will represent the closest we have had to a family reunion in a very long time. As time slips from our fingers, we begin to realize it is possible that certain events may be the last one’s we will experience together. History has proven that to be true, of course. But only after feeling the lessons of history in one’s bones do those lessons become so thoroughly personal.

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It’s a tad after 7. I could go on forever, but I won’t. Nothing I write is of any real consequence, not even to me. It is just a record of how my mind was working at a single moment in time. Everything we experience is temporary. Every single thing. Nothing lasts forever. Even the remnants of history—ancient ruins with broken columns and evidence of the art that pleased our ancestral gatherings—will disappear, in spite of our efforts to preserve them. Careers, jobs, physical or intellectual accomplishments. They all dissolve, some sooner than others. We put so much meaning into life, yet life leaves us; empty, used up, and ultimately forgotten.

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Time for me to watch dim, grey light fill the sky and to listen to thunder speak to me. Another day.

I am weary. Not so much physically tired, but mentally exhausted, as if my brain can no longer deal with a tangled mass of pressures, obligations, expectations, commitments, responsibilities, and more. Drained, like a battery left in a device whose on-off switch was left in the on position for too long. At some point, the loss of charge can be so great the battery cannot be recharged; that is the danger of failing to replenish the energy supply while there is still enough power left for recovery. Weariness does not necessarily arise from a few intense intellectually or emotionally draining engagements; a substantial—seemingly endless—number of less taxing burdens can lead to bone-deep weariness, as well. “Time away” is meant to relieve the stresses of day-to-day life by placing those strains on hold for a time, but sometimes the preparations for and execution of that withdrawal from one’s hum-drum daily life can, instead, amplify the number and intensity of the burdens. Even after the burst of those preparatory stresses diminishes, the return to the obligations of day-to-day life can rekindle the flames that made the “time away” so inviting. Returning to work from a vacation can be like stepping from a cool stream into a pot of boiling water. Today, the activities and obligations associated with day-to-day life and retirement are stand-ins for work. An extended period of days-long restorative sleep, absent the arthritic pain that accompanies waking from hours of motionless rest, could be the solution. Awakening from a medically-induced coma might erase the weariness. But every solution comes with potential problems of its own. Perfection does not exist in anything. Every aspect of existence is flawed in one way or another. Perhaps the flaws may provide the contrasts we need to appreciate experiences in which flaws are at least temporarily eliminated. “Pleasure with pain for leaven.” Or something like that.

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How long, I wonder, might it take to cure addictions to news, social media, email, text messages, telephone calls, and other forms of communication in which our brains are bombarded with data? How many days before the longing for “input” would decline enough to make its absence tolerable? How much longer before that craving to completely disappear? That appetite for data probably contributes to mental weariness; more likely, satisfying that appetite probably exacerbates fatigue and exhaustion.

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Lonesome. Lonesome. I know what it means. Here all by my lonesome, dreaming empty dreams. Weary. Weary at the close of day, wondering if tomorrow brings me joy or sorrow.

~ Leon Redbone ~

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When I woke this morning, I had planned to join a group of men from church for our regular Thursday morning breakfast. But almost immediately upon waking, my intent weakened. I am not sure, now, whether I will go or not. I am leaning toward staying home. I stayed home all day yesterday. Today, though, I may stay home and practice intentional relaxation. Not meditation, necessarily, but simple rest. Enjoyable conversation, avoiding the troublesome news that floods the airways, and pleasant engagement. That would be nice. Smiles. Laughter. Nothing hard or taxing or bitter or otherwise stressful.  Wishful thinking.

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I’ll see what the day brings.

One thousand years once seemed an inconceivably long time. So did one hundred years. But after living fifty years, one hundred years seemed considerably shorter. And one thousand years seemed substantially less than forever. With each passing decade, time feels like it is shrinking. Consider that, at one year of age, one thousand years is one thousand times one’s age. Just nine years later, that vast stretch of time dwindles to just one hundred times one’s age. And when the ten-year-old child is twice that age, one millennium is just fifty times as long. Math continues to shorten eternity, enabling that one-time child to understand how close he is to his ancestors who lived one thousand years ago. Just as the past seems to grow closer, so does the future. As we age, we can begin to think about the people who will follow us one thousand years hence (assuming humankind will last that long). We can imagine those descendants, one thousand years hence, beginning their journeys to understand time…and realizing they are as close to yesterday as we are to tomorrow.

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Wuhan

Zibo

One of the online “newspapers” I read or skim on occasion—ChinaDaily.com.cn—is fascinating in that it presents a broad spectrum of China, not just the centuries-old traditions or the cutting edge developments. This morning, I read an article (appearing more like an ad than an article) about the Hilton Garden Inn Zibo Zhangdian (pictured), which is located in downtown Zibo, Shandong province. The article mentions the Hilton strategy in China of  developing hotel properties in cities along high-speed railway lines. Apparently, China has developed (and continues to develop) high-speed rail throughout the country.  Most of the news about large Chinese cities focuses on Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Chengdu, all cities with populations greater than 10 million. According to Google Generative AI, the population of Zibo is roughly 4,702,000, making the city the 100th largest city in China (but Wikipedia says only 28 cities in China have populations that large; and Zibo’s population is shown on Wiki as only 2.6 million, number 45 on the list of the largest cities in China—still, only three US cities, with the addition of Chicago, match or exceed that number). Only two cities in the USA have populations greater than 4 million: New York City and Los Angeles.  The photo of Wuhan, the tenth largest city in China with a population of roughly 7.9 million, suggests yet another highly developed, modern, densely populated city about which most Americans know essentially nothing (except for the blame for COVID-10 placed by many in the media and elsewhere on a lab there). 

Dongguan

The poorest large city in China, Dongguan with 8.3 million people is, despite the poverty, a growing, fiercely modern city. The city’s population is said to be dominated by low-wage-earning migrant factory workers and tourism is virtually unheard-of there, but Dongguan is a huge manufacturing center, ranked fourth in the country for its volume of exports. When I read about how populous, how large, and how advanced China has become, my curiosity spikes. The country I remember hearing, in my youth, was a backward, stunted, horrible place second or third only to the bowels of Hell in its universal misery, has advanced. Or, and perhaps more likely, the country was depicted that way as part of an intentional propaganda campaign propagated by western leaders as a means of lessening turmoil domestically and enhancing governmental ability to control. Keeping a leash on the population, in other words. Youth today are exposed to both more propaganda and more truth than I was as a child. And a young adult. And a middle-aged man. And an aging relic.

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The early morning remains in darkness much longer these days, compared to the Summer Solstice (June 21 this year and June 20 in 2024 in the northern hemisphere). December 21 will be this year’s shortest day in the northern hemisphere, the Winter Solstice, when sunrise will occur at 7:15 a.m. Today, by comparison, the sun will rise just 9 minutes from the time I type this, at 6:48 a.m. Just nine minutes can make an enormous difference in the amount of light in the sky.

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If time, instead of a concept, were a physical thing, I wonder which it would be: a solid, a liquid, or a gas? Or would it be something entirely different, something we have never before encountered? Yes, the questions are absurd. But we need to ask absurd questions, the kind of questions that very young children—unafraid of being labeled stupid or worse—ask. I think fear of revealing our ignorance about things we “ought” to know sometimes keeps us from attaining a level of understanding that could improve our lives. Asking “stupid” questions puts us at risk for being mocked, laughed at, and dismissed as perpetually gullible and confused. I hate that. And I hate that I have been guilty, more often than I want to admit, of being the one who laughed. Even after I learned the meaning of “if the shoe were on the other foot…,” I allowed myself the pleasure of cruelty. Cruelty takes many forms, of course, from physical torture to inconsiderate, rude, or otherwise appalling verbal abuse. But I digress…I may come back to my shame and guilt for having been someone I am embarrassed for being… Absurd questions can trigger more questions, which can spark creative ideas that lead to greater and greater insights about matters that might have once seemed impossibly mysterious.  Yes, it’s a long sentence and quite a mouthful. I think in long, convoluted, tortuous spirals; mental gymnastics. I am better at mental gymnastics than I am at physical gymnastics, but in mental gymnastics I sometimes stumble or lose my grip on the rope or make a misstep on the highwire and plunge to the ground below. Or, if I’m lucky, into a net provided by some gentle, generous soul whose compassion exceeds my own. The air we breathe is composed of roughly 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. It has trace amounts of other gases, as well, including carbon dioxide, neon, and hydrogen. I do not know that from personal experience measuring the content of air; I “know” that because that is what I have learned from sources I trust. Of course, I trusted the sources that told me all Chinese people lived colorless lives in abject poverty in bleak cities or in country-sides littered with failed crops and poisoned water. Question everything. And then question the answers. And then ask the stupid questions. The absurd questions. And then breathe in, deeply, and experience what time feels like as it fills your chest cavity and then exits when you exhale.

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My visit to my oncologist’s office yesterday yielded comforting news. The results of some Google searches suggested that the results of a recent blood test might indicate the return of my cancer. My CEA  results, a bit higher than normal the last two times it was measured (5.1 and 8.8) skyrocketed recently, to 24.5. The APRN told me not to worry; her communications with the oncologist confirmed that the blood test might be concerning if I had not just had a CT scan that revealed absolutely nothing of concern. I’m taking them at their word. As a result of the good news (as well as the simple passage of time), I am going to have my chemo port removed from my chest sometime soon. I think it’s safe to say now—just a month or so shy of five years since I learned the cancer diagnosis, on November 2, 2018—I truly am cancer-free. Hallelujah! And knock on some virtual wood. And the real thing.

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Damn! It’s almost 7:30. I should finish blogging before wandering off in search of breakfast-worthy foodstuff. I’ll finish now, so I can continue the search and satisfy my hunger.

Whether these few words I am typing become a full-fledged post will depend on what I learn from my visit downtown this morning. In the meantime, I will attempt to more completely awaken. The hour I spent out of bed, fully awake, during the night, followed by the nearly two hours I spent wishing I could sleep, left me quite tired. Not sleepy, but tired. Coffee helps. A little.

New information…new knowledge…can be uplifting. It can cause a bubble of depression to burst, allowing fresh air to renew and rejuvenate one’s mood. Yet learning new things is not guaranteed to improve one’s state of mind. Reality can bring with it pain and trouble and seemingly endless periods of deep distress. But this is nothing new, is it? Everyone should know that joy and despair are the proceeds and prices of living. I learned something new this morning, thanks to the NPR website. Though I do not listen to NPR as often as I used to (usually, I listen in the car, but rarely at home), I try to catch up online. For example, this morning my new knowledge revolved, mostly, around art:

Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning “remember you must die.” In the art world, “a memento mori is an artwork designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the shortness and fragility of human life.” Pablo Picasso’s Goat’s Skull, Bottle and Candle exemplifies momento mori art, according to one of the NPR pieces I read.

Anamorphic art is artwork that appears quite different as the viewer moves around the piece of art. The artist uses “a perspective technique that makes a distorted image of an image.” From one perspective, for example, a painting may look like a chaotic series of splashes of random color, but from another perspective may be a beautifully precise image of a portrait or a landscape or a still life…etc.

I was pleased not just to learn but to have affirmed some of my approaches to viewing works of art. Another NPR piece, How to make a meaningful connection with a work of art, offers advice on “how to view art like an expert.” Though I am no expert, I often use several of the techniques suggested in the NPR Life Kit feature. And I learned of some I have not used before.

Vanitas is defined by the Tate as “A still life artwork which includes various symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures.” Reminding us that, regardless of its religious value to the non-religious, the Bible is the source of many ideas or concepts in our world today.  Originally from the opening lines of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible (‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’), the term is closely related to momento mori. Fascinating stuff. Mi novia sometimes expresses regret that she did not pursue education and a career in art history; I tell her it is not too late to learn.

Even heartbreaking news brings new information. News about the cause of Jimmy Buffett’s death (a rare form of skin cancer, Merkel cell carcinoma) reminded me that a talented artist died, but it also introduced me to a packet of knowledge about something to which I had not previously been exposed. And that exposure to new knowledge, that flash of illumination, triggered a brief moment of contentment that I had absorbed something new. I may not retain that knowledge for long, but while it is there and readily accessible, it is a new part of me that was not there before.

It’s a damn good thing that knowledge does not have physical weight, nor does it deliver calories. If it did, we would all be enormously heavy. And we could tell the voracious readers and scientific researchers and adventurers simply by their massive weight. Fortunately, all of us can indulge in consumption without weight gain, simply by consuming and processing information.

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I wrote, not many years ago: Everything happening around us is a story waiting to be told. As far as I know, the sentence is original to me. Whether or not that is the case, I believe it is as true as any truth can be. Experiencing boredom on a train trip across miles and miles of empty prairie is a story rich in potential. Staring into the bloom of a freshly-opened flower can open the floodgates of a massive rush of imaginative ideas. All of that ideas can be traced back to that flower and the secrets it unleashed simply by being observed.  I think I am creative enough and a sufficiently capable writer to produce interesting, readable material (this blog serving as evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). But my attention span is shorter than I would like and that I would need to write what I otherwise would be capable of writing. Everything, while a story waiting to be told, cannot become a story unless it gets the amount of attention it deserves. Usually, I cannot (or I do not have the discipline to) give it that attention. The same “everything,” though, can have its story told by someone else. But that other story will not be the one I would have told. Unless I write it, my story will not be told. The same is true of everyone else. We all are bursting at the seams with stories, but we are either too lazy or too undisciplined or too afraid to tell them. The stories we are afraid to tell can be the most riveting and the most emotionally draining.

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I used to be a pretty decent proofreader, but not of my own work. My proofreading skills (and my interest in proofreading) have diminished over the years. But I have never been a good proofreader of my own stuff. I assume my brain and my fingers have done what I intended, so why would I proof my work? My answer, of course, is that when I subsequently read something I wrote, I find typographical errors, malapropisms, and other unintentional but rather embarrassing mistakes. I know the difference between their and there and they’re; I know the difference between hear and here; I know the appropriate tenses to use; I am reasonably knowledgeable of vocabulary. Regardless, I screw up. But my brain tells me, “no, don’t worry, I’m good and I’ll make sure your fingers do the work you intend.” In other words, I mislead myself. Some days, when I read something I wrote weeks or months or years ago, I wonder whether “mislead” is the right word. Perhaps “lie to” is more appropriate. All of this is to acknowledge that this post and all my posts may be laced with errors that would be caught and corrected by a good proofreader. But I write early in the day and I have no interest in waiting for a proofreader to give me to go-ahead to hit “publish.” So, I hope readers will forgive me for my sometimes often sloppy writing.

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I dreamed last night I accidentally shaved off my beard. In the dream, I was having a conversation with mi novia while I was shaving and was not paying attention to what I was doing. Suddenly, I realized I had shaved the entire middle portion of my beard. I had no real choice but to finish removing it. Oh, I could have left it, but it would have looked exactly like it was; a mistake caused by inattention. What, I wonder, is that telling me? Is it a lesson, or merely a series of random imaginary experiences related to nothing but misfiring neurons?

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I am ravenously hungry, despite having eaten two Delta-style chicken tamales for dinner last night. Delta-style tamales, in my vernacular, are tamales made with cornmeal instead of masa harina. I much prefer masa-based surroundings for my fillings. I told mi novia last night I have wanted, for years, to make lamb vindaloo tamales but I have never done it. On February 1, 2020, I posted a recipe for the dish that I dreamed up (probably by adapting other recipes…I am not enough of a chef to do it without help). Still, I have not made it. I’ll post is again to see if this will prompt me to action or, perhaps, an adventurous friend will do it and invite me to try them:

Lamb Vindaloo Tamales

Ingredients
• 3 lb boneless lamb shoulder, cut into roughly 2-in chunks
• 4 oz red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 2 tsp sea salt flakes
• 1lb potatoes, peeled and cut into roughly 1-inch pieces

For the sauce
• 4 oz sunflower oil
• 4 onions, 3 finely sliced and 1 chopped
• 6 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 3 jalapeño or hot Asian red chile (do not deseed), roughly chopped
• 1oz fresh root ginger, peeled, roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp English mustard powder
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp ground coriander
• 1 tbsp ground paprika
• 2 tsp ground turmeric
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp sea salt flakes
• 2 bay leaves

Preparation method

1. 1. Trim the lamb, discarding any really hard lumps of fat and sinew. Mix the vinegar, vegetable oil and salt in bowl until well combined. Add the lamb and turn to coat in the marinade. Cover and chill in the fridge for two hours.
   2. Preheat the oven to 350.
   3. For the sauce, heat three tablespoons of the sunflower oil in a large heavy-based frying pan and cook the sliced onions very gently over a medium-low heat for 15 minutes until softened and lightly browned, stirring occasionally.
   4. While the sliced onions are cooking, put the remaining chopped onion, garlic, chiles, ginger, mustard powder, cumin, coriander, paprika, turmeric, cayenne pepper and cinnamon in a food processor and blend to a purée.
   5. Stir the purée into the fried onions. Add two tablespoons of oil and cook together for five minutes, or until thickened and beginning to color. Remove the mixture from the pan and place into a casserole dish.
   6. Drain the lamb in a colander and reserve the marinade. Return the frying pan to the heat and add two tablespoons of the remaining oil. Fry the lamb in four or five batches over a medium-high heat, turning occasionally until lightly browned. Add a little extra oil if necessary. Add the lamb to the casserole.
   7. Pour the reserved marinade and 2- 1/4 cup water into the casserole dish. Add the salt and bay leaves and bring to a simmer. Cover the surface of the curry with a piece of greaseproof paper (parchment), then cover with a lid. Cook in the oven for 45 minutes.
   8. Remove the casserole from the oven and stir the potato chunks into the curry, re-cover with the greaseproof paper and the lid and continue to cook for a further hour or until the lamb and potatoes are very tender. The consistency of the vindaloo matters with tamales; cook until much of the liquid has dissipated and the meat and potato mix is quite thick. Season, to taste, with salt.
   9. Prepare masa using the traditional means.
   10. FILL, FOLD AND STEAM THE TAMALES Select 30 of the largest husks without tears or large holes. Arrange 1 husk on a work surface with the narrow end pointing away from you. On the wide end, spread 3 tablespoons of the Tamale Dough in a 5-by-3-inch rectangle, leaving a 1/2-inch border of husk at the bottom. Spoon 2 tablespoons of the cooled vindaloo filling in the center of the Tamale Dough. Fold in the long sides of the husk, overlapping them to enclose the filling. Fold the narrow end toward you, over the tamale; it will be open at the wide end. Stand the tamale, open end up, in a very large steamer insert. Repeat with the remaining corn husks, Tamale Dough and filling.

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Yesterday’s church service in the sanctuary and subsequent conversation in the community hall were interesting and uplifting. I had the honor of announcing two recipients of the church’s highest honor. I wish I could have announced two additional people; perhaps the awards committee will select them, both very deserving, next year. I remain stunned and grateful that I stumbled into this church several years ago. It is so different from what I know of traditional churches that I hesitate to call it by that name. But the minister insists it is, indeed, a church. I will not taunt him by arguing. Whatever it is, it is important to me.

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I am sure I will not have lamb vindaloo tamales this morning, so I will wander off into the kitchen and find something else to eat. I’m grateful that I live when, where, and how I do. I am one of the fortunate ones; too many others on this planet cannot say the same.

Perhaps the days are coming when people can choose to transform from purely human to human-machine hybrids. Imagine being able to choose to have a device implanted in your body that would enable you—instantly—to fluently speak another language. Complete with an accent of choice, if desired. But maybe that capability, when it arrives, will be superfluous, thanks to the amalgamation of all the world’s dialects into a single language. Just as individual languages and their multiple dialects evolved over time, the possibility exists that the reverse process could occur. The timeframe for such consolidation might take thousands of years; but considering the pace of change humans have experienced in just the last two centuries, it could be profoundly faster.

For years, I have imagined an electrochemical process that would accomplish one’s objective of fluency in one or more additional languages. In my mind, a combination of one or more injections and electrical stimulations would alter the language centers of one’s brain to mimic precisely the areas of the brains of native speakers that control speech and vocabulary, including the muscles in the tongue and throat. Today, though, the idea of combining injections and electrical stimulations seems primitive. Perhaps the implanted device would mimic the most successful methods of language instruction (far superior to those in use today), but at an extraordinarily accelerated pace. If such a device were to exist in today’s world, it might adapt Babbel or Pimsleur in some fashion, but at a speed that would be effectively instantaneous.

Language is just one aspect of the human experience that conceivably could be transformed through technological innovations—either altering the speed of change or enabling change through human-machine hybridization. The idea of the “bionic human” is far from new. The oldest known prosthetic is  called the “Greville Chester toe,” crafted from a kind of papier-mâché made from glue, linen, and plaster, labeled cartonnage. Since then (and perhaps before), hundreds of parts or devices have been fashioned to repair or improve human abilities.

I could drone on for hours about such stuff, even though my knowledge of the matter is severely limited. But my imagination seems, to me, almost boundless. The chief problem with ideas that emerge from my fantasies limits their application: I am utterly lacking in the ability to transform the ideas into applications. Dreamers who can do nothing but dream are not creators; they are fiction factories. Bah!

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Time for me to stop dreaming and, instead, prepare for the day. Get dressed, John, and face the reality that you have an obligation to go to church. That does not excite me nearly as much as the idea of suddenly being able to fluently speak dozens of languages.  And off I go.

Drifting in and out of an uncomfortable—sometimes pain-filled—consciousness is not conducive to rest, much less restorative sleep. A combination of insomnia, arthritis pain, and cycling between feeling either too warm or too cool makes for a disagreeable night. But, unless medical tests suggest otherwise, the unpleasantness does not signal one is on a path toward finality. Finality. Such an odd euphemism for death. Who uses that term to express a thought one would rather not express? Probably very few. There are many ways to communicate without stating the obvious. Whatever word is used, when it is spoken aloud, the speaker’s head tends to tilt downward slightly and the volume of her voice diminishes, almost to a whisper. Finality. The word just appears; an awkward attempt to say something she is loath to declare.

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Worry, in the words of an anonymous someone, is a hot coal of suffering. Whatever supplies sufficient heat to ignite the coal is the trigger. That catalyst might be social media, results of a medical test, a meteorological forecast warning of a hurricane, or a thousand other things that promote fear. Worry is the manifestation of fear. Worry and anxiety are synonymous. Thoughts or events—whether internal or external—that promote worry sometimes can be controlled by releasing the hot coal of suffering. Taking a break from social media. Reminding oneself that googling the results of a medical test probably is unwise and often yields correct but frequently misleading information. Focusing on the positive actions one can take to ensure one’s person and one’s property are as protected as possible. Anti-anxiety drugs. Meditation. Meditation is self-control. It can provide serenity, or something like it, in the face of confusion and chaos. Some—perhaps many—eastern concepts, once considered by the western world to be magical thinking, are now recognized in the west as valid and demonstrably effective at changing a person’s emotional and physical experiences. The tightness in the gut, the tense muscles, the tension in one’s mind…those signs of worry and many more can be erased or at least lessened by employing meditation. Doing it “right,” though, may involve study and practice that can, if one allows it, bring about even more worry—the knees that scream in pain as one sits on or attempts to rise from a meditation cushion, the inflexible joints that refuse to permit a meditation “pose,” the inability to maintain mental focus while attempting to meditate, etc. Despite the potential difficulties, though, meditation can transform worry into an external object that one observes, rather than an internal web that enshrouds every cell of the body.

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Sad and troubling and frightening news seems to surround us. Jimmy Buffett died. The water crises we knew were “coming” have arrived, and they are and will be more horrific than we might have imagined. War clearly remains a powerful option for people lacking the creativity and will to avoid creating unnecessary pain and destruction. Police shootings. Drought-fueled wildfires. Starvation. Famine. Immorality enshrined in politics. Bigotry serving as the foundation of some religions. It is not all “news,” though. Some of it is simply the weaponization of natural, normal, human experience. Where does “news” end and “propaganda” begin? Propaganda is meant to either instill fear in, or to solicit support from those, who consume it.  One one hand, propaganda stifles free thought, but on the other its use to bring safety and happiness to its consumers often is necessary and admirable. But it remains a lie; or, at least, a technique for manipulation. I am ambivalent about propaganda. “Manipulation should be used only for good causes.” That is a frightening assertion.

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Musing about what I must do in the days and weeks and months ahead. I should commit my to-do list to my calendar, treating every items as an obligation. But I recoil at too much structure. And, unfortunately, I do the same at too little. The “middle,” though, is the same as “average.” Who wants to be just “average?” Most people strive to climb beyond “adequate,” hoping to achieve something more exclusive. We’re all fundamentally average, though. We are like individual ants in a massive colony, all contributing something but none so vital that our absence will be disruptive. Average. The average ant is not indispensable. Except, perhaps, to a tiny tribe whose lives will go on even in the absence of an average member. I look up at the leaves of  huge tree. Every leaf is average. Every leaf eventually will fall. It will be replaced by a newer, more flexible, greener, softer one. Individually, the leaves are not vital to the life of the tree. Collectively, though, they absorb necessary nutrients supplied by the sun. There must be a lesson here. I want there to be a lesson here. But what if what is simply is? No lesson, just plain old reality.

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It is hard to believe I am finishing this post at almost a quarter past nine in the morning. Something seems amiss. And perhaps something is. What is, is.

Last night, sitting on the deck in darkness, drinking wine, we heard the distinctive sound. Mi novia launched the Merlin app on her phone. The phone listened and informed her of the bird’s identity: a Great Horned Owl.  We have not seen the bird…well, maybe we have. Sometimes, especially in the evening hours, a large unidentified bird swoops down close to us, but its sudden appearance and its speed make impossible even a cursory guess as to its identity. We have heard it, though. Many times. This time, though, technology at the ready, we could tell who was producing those soft but piercing sounds. It is hard—perhaps impossible—to adequately describe a sound so that the listener (to the description, not the sound) can accurately imagine the noise. But that is another post. Identifying the Great Horned Owl as the bird responsible for the sound that we had earlier correctly identified as an owl, but not what kind, added to our recently-developed “current-location life list” of birds seen and/or heard. The list would be considerably longer if experiences in other places at other times were included; but, then, the “current-location” modifier would be invalid. At any rate, the “current-location life list” now includes the following:

• White-breasted nuthatch
• American crow
• Blue jay
• Carolina wren
• Red-eyed vireo
• Summer tanager
• Ruby-throated hummingbird
• Tufted titmouse
• Carolina chickadee
• Pine warbler
• White-eyed vireo
• Pileated woodpecker
• Mallard
• Downy woodpecker
• Red-bellied woodpecker
• Great Horned Owl

I do not know why each word in the owl’s name is capitalized; that is the way I see it in print, so that is the way I show it here.

If I were to add to my “life-list” experience by documenting all of the mammals—and all the reptiles—I have seen in my lifetime, I suspect I would surprise myself with the size and the diversity of the list. Add insects and the list would be overwhelmingly long; I doubt I would have enough strength in my fingers to type the entire list.

We share the planet with so many types of other creatures. It boggles the mind. With the remarkable diversity of life on Earth, I can only begin to imagine the possible diversity of life in our own galaxy. Or the entire universe. Stunning. Mind-boggling. Breath-taking.

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This morning, I return to my oncologist’s radiology lab to have a follow-up CT scan. The procedure this time requires me to drink a large bottle of mocha-flavored barium in advance of the scan; half two hours beforehand and half one hour before. I just finished the first roughly eight ounces of delicious, filling barium. In half an hour, I’ll drink the other. I am not quite sure why I was asked to drink the barium (though I have done it before, I did not ask), inasmuch as the cancer I hope I have defeated was in my lung, not my gastrointestinal track. Perhaps I’ll ask the technician this morning. But he/she may not know. So I’ll ask the oncologist next week, when I go in for the follow-up visit to learn the results of the CT scan. Though almost five years have passed since my lung cancer surgery, I get a bit on edge sometimes, thinking about the possibility of a recurrence. My intent always is not to worry when there is nothing I can do about the situation—either I remain cancer-free or it returns—but remaining worry-free about the issue is close to impossible. I do not worry a lot; but on occasion I worry. Worry seems to blossom in connection with follow-up visits involving tests. That is natural, I suppose.

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Phaedra is yowling. She is locked away in the laundry room, where I feed her and where I lock her away in the mornings so she does not wander the house making noise. At least the sounds are muted behind the door. But when they become loud enough, I tend to let her out. I realize, of course, by letting her out when the sound becomes almost deafening, I am teaching her how to get free from her prison cell. I know it, but I continue doing it, nonetheless. Insanity, personified. Right here. In my head.

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Joy. Does everyone feel joy? Would they all admit it, if they did? I am thinking of a guy— a high-school dropout who has reached early middle-age and is employed as a laborer in a rural area. Even if he experiences joy, would he admit it? Is admitting feelings of joy something only “wussies” do? That’s the sense I get, though I may be entirely wrong. I try to keep my biases out of certain of my writings, but I just cannot control them sometimes. Ach! Time is scooting past apace. I have to stop and drink my second glass of delicious mocha-flavored barium, then take a shower. I might as well end this post now. And so I do.

Meditation requires the temporary abandonment of impatience, which can be quite difficult. But is it really necessary to abandon impatience? These comments, posted by someone having a difficult time with impatience when meditating, were extracted from a thread on Reddit, and they merit consideration:

QUESTION:  I do a basic meditation where my breath is my focus. I watch my thoughts, feelings, and senses, observing them, and always coming back to the breath….But I’m having a hard time because I’m feeling impatient. I’ll open my eyes and glance at the timer I have set and I just can’t seem to want to sit longer than 10 minutes. I’d like to go further. Does anyone have any advice for dealing with feeling impatient during their session?

RESPONSE 1: Try observing your feelings of not wanting to sit any longer same way as you observe all your other feelings. Accept all feelings but do not react. Just observe. Welcome all feelings but don’t engage with them. Just let them be. Let them come and go as they want.

RESPONSE 2: It’s good. You recognize your impatience. This is the core of the work. When you get the fortitude to sit longer, even with impatience gnawing away at you, this is a break through. This is the core of the practice. As long as you do sessions of sitting observation, this will happen. Every time you persist through the rancor of the impatient mind, your perseverance will be rewarded. It accumulated over time. So just sit a little each day and see impatience and be with it, and change will come.

Considering these issues suggests that meditation is, indeed, a practice. It is a practice unique to each person. Yet its uniqueness does not preclude borrowing ideas from other “practitioners” whose experience might be beneficial to one’s own.

According to the Mayo Clinic, “Meditation originally was meant to help deepen understanding of the sacred and mystical forces of life. These days, meditation is commonly used for relaxation and stress reduction. Meditation is considered a type of mind-body complementary medicine. Meditation can produce a deep state of relaxation and a tranquil mind.” The idea that one can, through meditation, achieve a “deep state of relaxation and a tranquil mind” is exceptionally appealing, especially to someone who feels almost permanently tense and whose thoughts produce an almost perpetual sense of emotional turbulence.

It occurs to me that meditation has the potential for being most beneficial to people who need it the most, yet those people are apt to find the practice quite difficult. And some of them may be apt to reject the basic premise of the practice because their tension is so engrained in them. Meditation is entirely voluntary; only when one is willing to explore the possibility that it can, indeed, help unwind the tightly-wound springs that produce stress does its potential have a chance of being achieved. A willingness, though, must transform into a commitment if meditation is to be successful. That sounds difficult, though; meditation should relieve stress, not add to it. Like life itself, meditation is both simple and complex. Its many styles and forms seem labyrinthine, but that intricacy may be precisely where the power of meditation rests. Simplicity first, though. I think.

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After darkness feel last night, we paused our latest binge (now on season two of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and drove to the Coronado Center parking lot on the edge of Lake Coronado. We were among a few others who drove to that spot, got out of their cars, and stared in awe at the super blue moon. If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have brought a pair of binoculars, so we could have seen it with even more clarity. But even without binoculars, the experience was beautiful. The next opportunity to see that rarity will occur August 21, 2032, nine years from now. I am glad we saw this one. And I hope to see the next. In a fit of wild optimism, I added that event to my Google calendar. When I added that one-time event, I noticed that the calendar for that week also includes some recurring events that were added to individual calendars (which we share) some time ago: My Thursday church men’s group breakfast at Debra’s restaurant, mi novia’s Monday Mah Jongg at the church, and a flurry of exercise classes that my SIL attends. We’re all wild optimists.

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A dream I had last night featured my late sister and my oldest brother and his wife. The dream mixed elements of my first association management job with my “current” employment, as well as pieces that somehow involved a member of my church. The location was, I think, my parents’ house, the one destroyed by Hurricane Celia on August 3, 1970. My employment had a connection with that first job: a surface preparation handbook, which in my dream I thought was published by the Steel Structures Painting Council. While my sister was out for a walk, I asked my brother and his wife to help me find a copy of the book. I then asked the church member, who in my dream I thought was a temporary employee from an employment agency, to help me find the book. If only I could find that book, I could use it in some way in a course I was planning to offer. Utter chaos, that dream, with unconnected threads/shreds of various parts of my life woven together into an irrational fabric.

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Yesterday’s Costco run was transformative. That is, expensive. A leg of lamb, a brisket, several bottles of wine, a couple of bottles of gin, and various other wants and needs combined to make the shopping trip among the most financially demanding in my memory. But it yielded such treasures! I spent part of yesterday afternoon reading recipes for crying leg of lamb. And I refreshed my memory about my favorite ways to prepare brisket for smoking. I do not live to eat, but I can get great pleasure from preparing meals (sometimes) and from consuming foods that bring joy to my palate. I feel so incredibly fortunate we are able to occasionally indulge ourselves in this way. That gratitude is coupled with concern for others who cannot. Guilt creeps in. I have been told I have issues with guilt (in other areas of my emotional life); and I do. It is difficult to differentiate between legitimate guilt and undeserved attacks on oneself. Holy shit! How did a wonderful spending spree so savagely turn on me?!

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Time to prepare for the day. Comb my teeth, brush my hair, take off the morning leisure-wear, don attire more suitable for public display, and otherwise get ready to meet people outside the tiny but fabulous sphere in my house.

Bad habits are hard to break. They covertly find ways to circumvent obstacles placed before them, hiding their work-arounds behind opaque veils. At some point, though, their evasions  come to light, angering and embarrassing the habit-holder who discovers he has failed in his efforts to quell undesirable behavior. Eventually, if the habit-holder persists, victory can be his. Victory may not be the right word for it, though; truce may more accurately describe his cessation of the bad habit. Frequently, the habit does not die—its corpse is not buried, never to rise again. Instead, the habit simply is incapacitated, as if in a coma. When circumstances are favorable, the habit may unexpectedly awake from its coma, sometimes stronger and more aggressive, thanks to its restorative “nap.”

Working people have a lot of bad habits, but the worst of these is work.

~ Clarence Darrow ~

Paying heed to Darrow’s insight, I retired early, at age 58. Had I been considerably brighter than I am, I would have realized much earlier what a terribly bad habit work had become. Work was doing its best to shorten my life. It had already shortened my temper and my patience. But I “saw the light” and, finally, responded accordingly. The fear of what might happen if I stopped working was less than the fear of what might happen if I continued. Okay. My tongue is firmly planted in my cheek; I will continue, but in a more serious manner.

I remember the many times I tried to quit smoking. Over and over I tried to conquer the habit—addiction, really—only to fail when I allowed myself to give nicotine the upper hand. The odor and taste I now find utterly revolting tricked me, repeatedly. Nicotine assured me that only by taking a drag off a cigarette could I experience that brief moment of bliss I had come to associate with smoking. “Nothing else can do this for you,” it whispered. The one solution that worked, but only in specific situations, was absurd. I sat at a table in a tiny room, drawing long drags off my cigarettes; wires were attached to my hands. Every time I took a drag, electrical currents were sent through the wires, giving me an unpleasant jolt. Problem solved! At that moment and to this day, I knew I would never again smoke a cigarette while confined, with wires attached to my hands, in a tiny, smoke-filled room.  Years later, the ultimate solution came from fear and determination. After I had to have double bypass surgery, my surgeon told me if I continued to be a smoker, I probably would die within two years. The habit/addiction had met its match. Though I had some help, with medication, my fear and determination finally won out. But after so many previous failed attempts, I knew the tricks my habit would play to overcome the obstacles I placed before them: the key to keeping them in place would be to avoid even a single drag. For all time. The addiction had been overcome. But if the habit’s tricks were allowed to jump over or through the fence, there would be no guarantee…I could never permit the habit an opening. Overcoming bad habits can be an incredibly difficult struggle, made even more challenging when paired with physical or psychological addiction. It is most definitely worth the struggle.

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A run to Costco  is on the agenda for today. I have other things to accomplish, too. And… Oh, there is so much more on my mind this morning, but I do not have adequate motivation to write about it. Trust me, it is better that I let my fingers rest.