John Swinburn

I finally solved the most recent problem with my blog’s administrative interface, at least for the moment. There’s much more to learn about how to avoid such problems in the future and what to do to limit the potential for technical issues beyond my capabilities to address them. For now, though, I can return to my comfortable morning routine.

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The concept in my mind is not yet fully-formed, but it seems to mature a bit more every time I give myself the opportunity to think more deeply about it. In my mind’s eye, I envision that every moment of our lives—every thought and every experience—is transformed and recorded in our brains as invisibly thin—incredibly small—waves or wafers of mental energy. Some of those waves remain for a time in our brains, as memories. The vast majority, though, simply drift into the air and the space around us. They remain, afloat and intact, for all time; they are pure energy, which as we know cannot be created or destroyed. The enormity of the universe is such that it can hold all of these miniscule waves that emanate from every person who has ever lived and all those who will live in the future. When humankind discovers a way to recapture, harness, organize, and recycle the thoughts and experiences recorded on those waves or wafers—and we will—we will be able to experience, again, every experience we have ever had. And will be able to experience others’ experiences. So, for example, you will be able to engage with and live through the experiences of your great-great-great-great grandparents and their great-great-great-great grandparents…and everyone else. This concept, I suspect, long ago evolved into the idea of “heaven.” A place where people can be reunited with their dead relatives, free of the challenges presented by life as we have known it since we became sentient creatures. Over time, this simple but amazing possibility was transformed by creative thinkers into the source of all manner of religious mysteries. In reality, though, it may be a simple fact that is explainable by physics and scientific understanding. I can imagine how, as humans gain more complete knowledge of these waves or wafers and how they function (and how they can be manipulated and controlled), privacy will become an anachronism. The unexpected consequences of being able to actually “remember” conversations that too place between people hundreds or thousands of years ago probably will be beyond our wildest dreams. Imagine how stunned one might feel to experience the world through the eyes (or replayed experiences) of the first humans to wander the savannas of Africa. If we could physically see even shadows of these tiny wafers, they would fill the sky; it would be like watching millions of “live” recordings, at once, of time gone by. The circuits in our brains might be unable to process the experience. Perhaps that is why we have not had it just yet.

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The second month of the calendar year has whizzed by me, leaving little but vague memories suggesting I was at least semi-conscious during several of the most recent 59 days. My memories of the past two months are only slightly more vivid than my memories of the time span that began in December 2023 with the preliminary diagnosis that my lung cancer had returned. Recollections of occasional travels during 2024 are nonexistent because travel came to a halt even before the diagnosis was confirmed. No long road trips, no weekend excursions, no day trips; the longest rides were rare drives to and from Little Rock. Over the course of the year, up to and including the present, the vast majority of my time has been spent at home, interrupted primarily for medical visits and an occasional meal “out.” I have gotten used to being a confirmed home-body; most of the time, I do not mind living as a recluse with mi novia, my willing partner. From time to time, though, I get cabin fever; I desperately want to get away from the house, from the Village, from this state, from this country. Lately, I have longed to be someplace fare away—Canada or Norway or Sweden or… Not to travel to one of those places, but to be there. Living in an increasingly stifling and deeply worrisome political and social hellscape often fills me with almost-crippling anxiety and stress—so much so that I feel a deep desire to be in a place of soothing escape. A quiet reserve where serenity will let me leave thoughts of the state of the world behind. Yesterday’s appalling event at the White House, when this country’s so-called “leaders” embarrassed themselves and the nation by ganging up on the leader of Ukraine, increased my desire to be isolated from those imbecilic gangsters and their remarkably stupid, gullible, heartless cult followers. There are times I cannot force myself to see them simply as people who have philosophies that differ from mine; instead, I see them as thoroughly contemptible bastards whose collective demise would dramatically improve life of Earth.

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Before it was taken over by its current lunatic overlords, the National Institutes of Health published an abstract of an article about the relationship between hair and fingernails. Here is an interesting quote from the abstract: “Hair and nails are predominantly epithelial structures derived from primitive epidermis and made up of keratinous fibrils embedded in a sulfur-rich matrix.” I have known for quite some time that hair and nails are related, but I have never understood exactly why humans do not have hair growing at the tips of their fingers, nor do we have hard, barely-flexible keratinous fibrils growing out of the tops of our heads (and other parts of the body). I still do not understand. Fortunately, I do not need to appreciate the “whys” of those facts; I can live a moderately satisfying life in the absence of such knowledge.

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Last night, we watched “To Catch a Killer” on Netflix, a police drama about the search for a serial killer, set in Baltimore. The fairly brief part of the film in which the killer discussed the sources of his deviance made me feel some empathy for the guy; I understood his alienation from the “noise” of society in general. But that’s a far cry from understanding or tolerating the senseless killing of random strangers. Had he gone after specific people who are regularly in our national news lately, I might have had more compassion for the guy. The night before, we watched “Stolen,” a Swedish film dealing with the brutality heaped upon the Sámi people (reindeer herders). It was filmed in far north Sweden. Based on a history of real events (but clearly a piece of fiction, the film was definitely worth watching.

Blog admin still not functioning properly, but I have nothing better to do…just waiting for the next chemo session and PET-scan.

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I frequently think about—and perhaps mention too often in my writing—the significance of context in how we perceive the world around us and the way it affects us. Context is especially influential when we form judgments about the importance of specific circumstances or events. When those situations have particularly positive or negative effects on ourselves or others in our familial or social circles, we tend to judge them more important than were they impactful to others. UNLESS their impacts have equally powerful influences on our own circles as well as the broader public. A  tornado that destroys the home in which one lives is viewed as more important than one that wrecks a neighborhood in a town two states away. But if that tornado damages our home and destroys dozens of homes within a tight radius of ours, we tend to view the devastation as equally important…or nearly so. A death in the family is considered more important than the death of a famous actor. But the death of the leader of one’s country is viewed as extremely important for the wider society.  Yet the death of the president of a different, smaller, or lesser-known country may be concerning, but not especially important to one’s own world experience. None of this is news, of course, but thinking about the extent to which context matters fascinates me. Winning a multi-million-dollar lottery at a time in one’s life when one expects to live for 40 more years is apt to be viewed as far more important than winning the same sum after being given a terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in the immediate near-term. Context makes an enormous difference.

Still no fix…but here is what I have been unable to easily post thus far…

February 27, 2025

Exploring one’s creativity can be immensely rewarding, but unless it is accompanied by the ability to adequately express it physically—through writing, sculpture, art, dance, music, and so on — the exploration can be enormously frustrating. The argument against that assertion seems always to involve the meaning, or relevance of, “adequately.” Some obviously creative people insist that neither the ingenuity of creative efforts nor the quality of their products are relevant; that only the expression of creativity matters. That may be true to some extent, but if one’s ability to translate creative ideas into satisfying expressions is lacking, the joy of creativity cannot be fully realized. Someone who conceives of a compelling idea for a story, but who cannot tell it, may experience the reward of inventiveness, but not the delight of sharing it in a way that fully reveals the imaginativeness of the idea. In my view, to truly appreciate and enjoy one’s own creativity, a person must both conceive ideas and be capable of expressing them in forms that enable others to “see” the idea in ways that mirror the person who conceives them. In my mind’s eye, I may envision an extraordinarily creative piece of sculpture—something truly unique—but if the product of my efforts to physically create it looks nothing like my vision, my creative effort is incomplete…inadequate.

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I have not been to Santa Fe, New Mexico in several years, but I suspect I would like it just as much today as I have every other time I have visited. On a couple of occasions, I stayed in very nice, historic hotels: La Fonda on the Plaza and the Hotel St. Francis. Though they were nice, I was just as happy when I stayed in 1940s-style adobe motor courts. One of those old motels was unique in that it had several very well preserved original glass-block walls separating the bathroom from the bedroom and the wall tiles in the bathroom were shiny black ceramic subway-style tiles. During one of the trips, I bought a pocket-knife at a little shop on the plaza. It was a stainless-steel stockman 3-blade knife with a turquoise inlaid handle. Though I have long since lost the knife, I remember how much I liked it. I kept that knife (and others since) with me almost all the time, in my jeans’ watch pocket. It took me a while to finally learn that my knives tended to fall out of that little pocket; I’ve lost several knives over the years, including most recently another stockman 3-blade knife, a Case. The reason I am thinking about Santa Fe this morning is that I read that Gene Hackman, his wife, and their dog recently were found dead in their home in or near Santa Fe. A woman with whom I used to work recently retired and moved with her husband to Santa Fe, where they had a townhome built. The photos she posts on Facebook remind me how beautiful the city is; the look and feel of Santa Fe is unique. Unfortunately, my experience driving through Colorado a couple of years ago revealed that I cannot tolerate such altitudes any longer. Mi novia insisted that I be taken to the hospital by ambulance after I fainted in the motel room the night before and mumbled incoherently the remainder of the night. The hospital staff diagnosed my problem as altitude sickness. They advised us to get to lower altitudes as quickly as we could.

February 26, 2025

My efforts to have my blog admin repaired have thus far been for naught. This morning, I was able to post a short explanation…using my phone after disabling my WiFi… but it’s too tedious to try to post real, thoughtful (or deviant and thoughtless) concepts. So, for now, this will have to do.

Speaking of my “phone:” That term is an anachronism, a relic of a brief but extremely consequential fragment of time. It seems the best we have been able to do to modernize what we call the original device is to “update” the single word to a mindless phrase: “smart phone.” Our failure to more creatively adjust our language in response to change is a sign, I am afraid, of unimaginative cultural dementia. Calling it something clunky and cumbersome—like “sight, sound, and information pipe” (call it a SSIP)—would be more appropriate, I think.  However, as I give the matter more thought, I have to acknowledge that “information” might be misleading; “disinformation” or “propaganda” might be more accurate. Yet those words all suggest limits that do not necessarily exist with the devices in use today. We might call the devices something simpler, yet considerably broader and more descriptive; maybe “tether” better describes the functions they perform. They tether us to one another. They tether us to information (and disinformation) resources. They can behave like audio/visual tethers that allow us to eavesdrop, spy on, stalk, and otherwise surreptitiously infringe on the privacy of people and places. And there is so much more. They are computers. They are simple calculators. They take photographs. They record voices. They record and play back music. They listen to birds and identify their calls. They transmit questions and commands. They translate languages. They can be used to facilitate social uprisings. In many respects, they duplicate the capabilities of their users. They can replace and, in many cases. replace the capabilities of their users. And, perhaps, not just the capabilities…but the users themselves. They sow chaos, but in gentle ways almost impossible to detect until the damage is done.

Like the original telephones before them—and like radios and televisions and computers and automobiles and airplanes and incandescent lighting and thousands of other evolutionary and revolutionary advancements, “smart phones” by whatever names you call them will become obsolete in due course. Their functions will be either absorbed by something else or will become anachronistic and descriptions of their once-vital duties left to museums to explain. Artificial intelligence (AI) is, at the moment, the “next new thing” to invade our lives. Perhaps AI will be the first iteration of a full replacement for all our functions. When the abilities of chips and machines have far eclipsed humans’ capabilities, perhaps humanity will finally have become its own anachronism.  Someday, someone or something may watch the last useful human take the last breath, a crucial step in repeating the processes that will lead to the last act of whoever or whatever replaces us.

February 24, 2025

The phrase, “Think outside the box,” is trite; speaking the words is a waste of air. Thinking of those words dulls the mind, the way sandpaper erases the cutting edge of a surgically sharp steel knife. Creativity does not necessarily involve replacing tried and true answers to old problems with new and novel approaches. Instead, creativity may flourish simply by redefining old problems—treating them as solutions to questions that have yet to be posed. Wheat, for example, often is viewed as a solution to hunger; but what if, instead, we considered hunger to be a solution to an overabundance of wheat?  How would our behaviors change in response to that alternative way of defining problems and solutions? The “box” establishes artificial parameters that may need to be taken down to allow answers to flow into the limited space it once defined; the answers are not “outside” the box…they exist in the creative merger between confinement and freedom.

Once again, I do not have access to my blog, nor to administrative control over its content. Consequently, I am forced to exercise my fingers by engaging with Microsoft Words, rather than with WordPress. The principal difference between the two is that WordPress allows me to share the fruit of my fingers with the wider world, where Microsoft Word imposes far stricter limits on access to the ideas I attempt to document. My ideas can be too flexible; they can look and feel like chaotic pieces of burning and melting rubber whose fleeting shape can never be replicated. Just as their shapes cannot be recovered, neither can their purposes be firmly defined nor captured. Their unstable forms are forever changing; never are they what never were…for long.

February 23, 2025

When I attempted to gain administrative access to my blog this morning, I was denied access. I could not view the site, either; access was denied again. After a few feeble, uninformed efforts to identify and correct the problem, I gave up. Something is obviously amiss with my site—or with the host site—that I cannot control. Later today, perhaps, when I have more patience and more energy, I will contact the host company for assistance. I should have done this long ago, but procrastination interfered with my intentions. Now, I feel powerless to express my thoughts to the wider world…that is, a very small number of intentional or accidental visitors. As I sit here, in this powerless state, I realize the world is continuing to function as it otherwise would. My inability to blog has no appreciable impact on anyone…except me. Even its impact on me is questionable. I make this out to be more important to me than it really is. Or do I? Perhaps blogging is my one crucial outlet. Without it, I may not be capable of rational thought. Or, perhaps, I may not be capable of rational thought with or without having the ability to blog. I am stuck in a place in which I cannot function, but where my functionality, or lack thereof, is irrelevant. Here, in this infinite limbo, I cannot move in any direction: not forward, not backward, not in any other direction in which there is even the tiniest shred of the possibility of escape. This perpetual state of waiting for eternity to end is increasingly maddening and all-consuming. The overwhelming sense of claustrophobic rage and fear has no limits; it grows exponentially with each passing second…as if time could pass in this never-ending state of smothering loss that multiplies itself a thousand times over with every imaginary moment that grows a million shades darker with each blink of my eyes.

Glancing through the top of the windows in my study, I see the sky adjusting its colors. From bright blue to faded white, the invisible cosmos transforms itself while I watch. At night, I see faint pinpoints of light, but when the sun’s power overwhelms the darkness, those microscopic dots vanish. In reality, they are not microscopic dots; they are enormous fireballs—a thousand times larger than the sun and millions of degrees hotter—that could incinerate our galaxy if they moved just a celestial inch closer. But I do not worry about that. Because beneath the clouds I see flocks of birds whose tail feathers are as long as time is shallow. Their brilliant cobalt blue and incandescent white feathers stand out against limitless space, making me wonder whether negative space defines positive space or whether the reverse is true. Or, is it possible that space is neutral? Is the granite figure remaining, after a mountain has been carved away, the object of our attention, or is it the missing stone that causes us to stare in wonder at the emptiness that once was solid rock?

My blog admin is broken. I hope to have it repaired soon. In the interim, I will not blog…but I will continue to write…just not here.

We experience the stages of our existence at the mercy of a mercurial universe, one that vacillates between unexpected kindness and capricious cruelty. Ascribing human attributes to the cosmos seems absurd—and it is, as I begin to understand that my appreciation of the relationship is backwards. The cosmos does not possess human characteristics; rather, humans demonstrate features of the universe of which we are a part. Humans, though, attribute our own motives or emotions to the cosmos, whereas no such cause-and-effect forces power the universe. We seem to believe the world around us is driven by psychic intention, whereas the reality is that volcanoes, ice ages, tornadoes, tsunamis, terminal disease, and an endless list of other calamities have no intrinsic purpose; they are the results of unplanned and inexplicable randomness. Our powers are limited to our perceptions. They stop there.

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After I acquiesced to my body’s insistence that I take another “nap,” I woke a couple of hours ago from almost 12 hours of sleep. I had only been awake from my most recent earlier nap for a couple of hours, but that restless snooze apparently was not enough. Even now, I am not sure 12 hours did the trick. I’ll find out soon enough, I guess. COVID packs quite a punch. Mi novia‘s doctor willingly prescribed, by telephone, paxlovid for her, as did mine. Unfortunately, the pharmacy had only enough for one prescription, so they advised us to share it until the pharmacy can deliver the second prescription on Monday morning. Thanks to the goodness of a very generous man, the one available prescription was delivered to our door yesterday afternoon.

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I reported my COVID to the APRN at my oncologist’s office. She postponed my next chemotherapy session for another week; now set for March 3 and my PET-scan also has been postponed for a third time, now on for March 5. Time is a limited commodity. I would rather not run out of it.

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The thought of meat of any kind is beyond unappealing now. I have no idea why; I just know I have no interest whatsoever in meat. Yet “they” want me to east meat because it is, they say, the quickest and best way to get protein, which I need to improve my red blood cell count and various other health-related measurements. Instead, I try to make up for meat by eating hummus. And nuts. What I really want, though, is fruit. Peaches. Pears. Grapes. Citrus of all kinds. Watermelon. Strawberries. Plums. Papayas. Blueberries. Raspberries. Blackberries. Mangoes. I’ve tired of things I once craved, including—at least temporarily—oatmeal raisin cookies.  Even ice cream does not sound interesting. But very tart lemon sherbet does…old-fashioned homemade lemon sherbet. Or sorbet. My stomach is growling again. Or braying. It sounds more like braying. That’s a new sound for my stomach to make. Fortunately, it has not been honking like geese or making pig-noises…oinks, I guess you’d call such sounds, though I can honestly say I’ve never heard a real animal of any kind make a sound I would describe as an oink.

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I dreamed I had quit a job as a police officer and accepted one as a sheriff’s deputy. It was quite an involved dream. One especially frightening scene took place while I was on a walking patrol in a poverty-stricken rural area with a seasoned, very tall deputy. Just after he advised me to carry a “poking stick,” I encountered a copperhead snake. I grabbed it behind the head and squeezed as hard as I could, but it kept slithering out of my grip and attempted to strike me. I think it may have sunk its fangs into my hand once and released venom. There was more, but I do not remember just what.

We now can describe the symptoms of COVID-19 from first-hand experience. In our case they are quite similar to the symptoms of a severe cold—chest congestion, sore throat, coughing, headache, chills, body aches, nasal congestion, and general malaise, among others. Two recently-purchased COVID-19 tests verified the diagnosis mi novia had suspected. Local authorities correctly continue their strong warnings to stay off the roads due to black ice, so getting out to buy medicines is out of the question…I am not sure whether any over-the-counter medications would have much of an effect on calming the symptoms, anyway. Fortunately, the fact that we’ve both been vaccinated, along with getting available boosters, probably keeps the symptoms far less threatening and dangerous than they might be in the absence of vaccinations. Ah, but give it time; Kennedy and his lunatic pseudo-scientist friends probably will make vaccines illegal…and getting a vaccination will become a felony punishable by death. In the interim, we will do our best to suffer through the symptoms until they pass. According to a Google search AI overview, the duration of symptoms vary depending on the severity of the infection: 1-2 weeks for mild cases, 2-4 weeks for moderate cases, and weeks or months for severe cases. I am hoping for mild…which would mean just another week-plus of dealing with these damn symptoms.  Until learning that the COVID test was positive, I was not especially concerned about the likelihood that my immune system has been compromised by my chemotherapy. That possibility suddenly gave me a reason to be conscious of a sinister new worry. But the symptoms have been apparent for several days, so I figure my compromised immune system would have opened me up to the worst of it by now. Whether that is just my self-protective attitude rising to the occasion or a legitimate obstacle to worst-case disease, I’ll take it. Who needs to worry about something that’s already happened, that cannot be undone? Not me, if I can help it.

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Nightmares. They lately have become more common intrusions into my sleep. Frequently, they have involved getting separated from friends and/or family, then realizing we were planning to meet somewhere miles away…but some of us had no transportation to get there. And “there” was an unknown place…a town that had once been small but had grown into a monstrous metropolis jammed with drunken revelers. None of us had an address to look for, only a town name. In one case, it was a place to which my late sister said she would walk, but I realized it was at least 15 mile away and she was in no condition to walk that far. I wonder how many versions of this dream I have had? I have awakened several times in a state of intense worry; even after shaking off the fact that it was “just a dream,” the artificial experience was enough to keep me on edge for hours.

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Nationalism is a disease. I’m convinced of it. It is a mental disorder in which the sufferer is inexplicably enamored with a geographically concentrated group of people whose characteristics normally would spark disdain or worse…but who, instead, engender respect and appreciation. Moreover, sufferers view opponents of those normally unappealing people as broken; enemies who must be subjugated and forced to worship them. I am not doing a good job of describing either group. I know who they are, though. And I am ready to expose them for what they are, when the time is right.

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It’s almost 7. Where has the day gone?

Yesterday, my cold made me feel miserable all day and all night. If not for the rough, raw, sandpaper-like scratching inside my throat, the day might have been a tad more tolerable; even then, though, I would have had to deal with high-volume sinus drainage and a troubling cough. I have no way of knowing how much volume of sinus drainage, but I would not be surprised to learn it has amounted to multiple liters by now. And the headache. I could go on, but that would be just another recap of complaints I’ve already written more than enough about. So I will stop writing. But not until I mention the surface pain on my back—the lightest touch causes minor (but still annoying) pain; the kind of skin pain that accompanies a fever. None of these symptoms are life threatening, unless they are caused by pneumonia. I’ll assume that is not the case. For now.

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If I felt much, much better than I do, I would try to write something interesting and thought-provoking. But, because I don’t, I won’t. And I can’t.

It was worth a shot, I thought. I decided to give it a try; open a website operated by a Canadian media company, in an attempt to avoid the constant barrage of desperately-negative news from U.S. media companies. Almost immediately, my decision seemed to have paid off: a link to a Globe & Mail article entitled, “The tried and tested way to stay happy: small doses of spontaneity.” But when I clicked on the link, my heart sunk. Instead of the text of the article, I got this message: Join a national community of curious and ambitious Canadians. Just $0.99 per week for your first 24 weeks. So, you CAN buy happiness…and at a discount, no less. But, after having taken advantage of similar offers from the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and others, I decided I already had taken enough advantage of several deals from generous media companies. But I noticed several other interesting links that merit exploration, including Happy Enough, which is a soon-to-come podcast from the Globe & Mail about happiness. Hell, it might well be worth the $0.99 per week for 24 weeks to look into the article behind the paywall. And, when I searched the newspaper’s website, I found 492 links to articles in which happiness was a primary topic. Hmm. I’ll have to think about it a bit longer, but I’m beginning to lean toward making the investment—or simply spending the money, if that’s what it is—if it offers a chance at happiness in a very sad world. A “trite” aphorism contained in a letter-to-the-editor, though, gave me pause in my consideration of where to look for happiness: ‘Success is getting what you want, and happiness is wanting what you get.’ I’m much more interested in happiness than in success.

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Last night, shortly before 9 PM, I was awakened by the sound of my phone ringing on my bedside nightstand (yes, still sleeping around the clock). The caller was the technician who handles my PET-scans, telling me the clinic would be closed today, due to ice and sleet and snow, so my scheduled PET-scan would be delayed again. As much as I want to get the scan done and learn the results, I had been hoping for a cancellation; I hate driving on black-ice. So, the news was good. The technician said he could reschedule my scan while we were on the phone, but I opted to wait (I was groggy and worried I might not get the information right for my calendar). I’ll reschedule soon, hoping I can get it done next week. In the meantime, I will go back to bed shortly in an attempt to recover some of my interrupted sleep. I woke this morning at just before 4 AM; already, I am so tired I am having a tough time keeping my eyes open. The outdoor temperature when I woke was 14°F; it has warmed by one degree since then to a balmy 15°F, The next few days are expected to be monstrously cold. Thanks to last night’s ice and snow, and temperatures that will remain below freezing, the roads will be treacherous, and I will plan on remaining indoors.

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My cold and bad sore throat continue to make me feel a little worse than rotten. Time for me to suck on a cough drop that contains “anesthetics” to make the pain in my throat a little more tolerable. I haven’t had such a bad cold in at least the last two or three years. Perhaps I should drink a little whiskey, too. But maybe I’ll wait until after sunrise.

There was a time not so very long ago that I thought of “preppers” as “nut-case conspiracy theorists” with irrational action plans. I still think some preppers are just that. But I am developing a growing regard for people who pay careful attention to potential social and political upheavals and who prepare to withstand their impact. Watching Trump and his acolytes chaotically deconstruct social and political systems that evolved over hundreds of years is terrifying. I seriously doubt his objectives have anything to do with saving money or creating efficiency; instead, I think he is setting the stage for an irreversible fascist regime that will outlast him and every member of his cult of followers. In other words, he is creating a Trumpian legacy that cannot be overturned without engaging in unspeakable violence. “Preppers” are readying themselves to respond to this horrific regime—by putting distance between themselves and the worst aspects of social collapse. They have sought and outfitted “hiding places” too remote for fascist thugs to pay attention. They amass stores of food, water, fuel, clothing, weapons, and an array of other items that will become necessities for survival when society as we know it begins to rot. The “preppers” probably are not planning to share their resources with the rest of us, who labeled them as “nut-case conspiracy theorists.” By the time it gets to the point when society’s degradation makes it necessary for us to “take cover” and fight for our lives, social cohesion will have evolved into intense distrust.

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When I checked out from my magnesium treatment yesterday afternoon, the oncology center staff surprised me by telling me I have another appointment this morning. But after last night’s battles with a stopped up chest, aching muscles, clogged sinuses, splitting headache, and too much sleeplessness, I have decided to call and cancel. My PET-scan is scheduled for tomorrow, but the weather forecast may cause that appointment to be cancelled, as well. My forecast for today is sleep…attempted sleep, at least…for as long as I can shut the world out of my mind. I finally gathered enough energy this morning around 6 to force myself out of bed. I need to be awake between 8 and 8:30 so I can cancel my early-bird appointment; once that’s done, though, I will do my best to plunge into a deep and restful sleep.

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Birds have disappeared from the trees outside my windows. I have no idea where they have gone; only that they are nowhere to be seen or heard among the branches where they usually frolic. It’s not just the birds that have suddenly become invisible. Squirrels and chipmunks and their larger mammal companions seems to have fled…or, at least, hidden themselves in plain sight. I suspect animals’ behavior responds to their uncanny ability to “feel” or “sense” or otherwise experience significant changes in the weather. Our cat’s behavior changes in advance of rainstorms, for example. Long before we have any sense of a change, the cat begins to pace, zoom around the house, and exhibit signs of fear or nervousness. The weather forecast for today and tomorrow and the rest of the week calls for snow, ice, sleet, and frigid temperatures. Unless the forest creatures and domestic pets can understand English, I think they have some way of knowing in advance that the weather is about to change…significantly. Perhaps the atmosphere can communicate directly with cats and dogs; in a language you and I cannot hear but that enables them to clearly articulate what to expect, weather-wise.  Ah! I just saw a bird zip between some trees. I have no idea what that means in the context of what I’ve just written.

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Food holds no interest for me this morning. None whatsoever. Though I suspect I could be enticed to eat a perfectly ripe watermelon or a ruby red grapefruit. Oh, and an avocado.

Harmony. Yin Yang. Peace. On occasion, I superficially explore various elements of Buddhism. My intent, in examining concepts and practices of Buddhism, is to develop an understanding of a philosophical framework that seems—on first blush—to be the very core of simplicity. Quickly, though, when I devote time and energy to learning, I find that Buddhism is quite complex; so complex, in fact, that I sometimes lose interest because its complexity strikes me as unnecessary and artificial. But my sense of necessity, or the lack thereof, is driven by my own lifetime experiences…the very experiences I hope to hold at bay while exploring attitudes and ideas that are foreign to me. I find that many people selectively embrace minor elements of Buddhism, leaving the rest to dedicated practitioners. To me, that seems a waste of energy, because I think all the convoluted intricacies of the practice—the aspects that seem far too complex to understand—must necessarily be understood if the depth and breadth of the practice can be truly understood. I describe myself, of course; I am unwilling to invest the time and energy to learn how a thousand intersecting layers interact with one another to form a “simple” whole. Perhaps if I were to force myself to explore more deeply, I would discover the value of devoting my time to the exploration. But I may be inherently too lazy or too mentally limited to reach that point. Yet there’s something about Buddhism—mandalas, for example—that seems to offer ways to better understand, and see beyond, chaos. Mandalas may serve as instruments to help focus thoughts and clear away debris that impedes understanding. But, in reality, I do not know and probably never will.

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Last night, when I went to bed, my throat felt slightly scratchy. During the course of the night, other minor symptoms of a nascent cold—coughing, headache, sinus drainage, etc.—began to present themselves, frequently interrupting my sleep. This morning, the symptoms do not seem to have gotten worse, but neither have they begun to lessen. I feel like I am on a precipice; if I lean one way, the cold will pass silently, but if I lean the other, I will plunge headlong into a two-week period of headaches, chest discomfort, coughing, sneezing, and otherwise unpleasant experiences. I got up once during the night, in search of Motrin for my headache and cold medicine for the other symptoms. I found the Motrin, but gave up looking for the cold medicine. Perhaps I can find it this morning, after the sun rises; if, that is, it is available to be found. Or, when I go to town this afternoon for the infusion to boost the level of magnesium in my blood, maybe I will stop at a drug store for cold medicine and an assortment of other drugs that could envelope me in soft, hazy comfort.

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Weather forecasters predict that by Wednesday afternoon, when my PET-scan is scheduled, the expected sleet and snow of Tuesday will have ended. But the temperatures will remain below freezing, making the roads slick and icy—obviously hazardous. The scan already has been delayed a week and I have no interest in any further delays. So, unless conditions appear especially treacherous shortly after mid-day on Wednesday, I will battle the uncooperative roadways…assuming, of course, the procedure has not been cancelled by the time I am ready to leave. I have a history of dealing with adverse weather (i.e., icy road conditions, heavy rain, etc. ) when trying to get to the oncologist’s office. I wonder about the significance of that history?

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Torturous dreams, in which I am faced with severe consequences as a result of my procrastination, lately have all too commonly infected my sleep with intense worry. The circumstances vary from dream to dream, but aside from the core theme, there is another commonality: the setting of every dream involves one of the people with whom I worked at my first association job. Last night, the organization’s CEO showed up at the office late one morning, driving a huge white Cadillac which replaced his old Mercury station wagon. I suddenly realized I had not finished a project he expected me to have completed; I panicked. Similar situations have invaded my subconscious during other dream states. I tend not to be completely irresponsible about letting obligations slide…except in those damnable dreams.

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We are memories; our echoes ricochet off granite canyon walls. Every drop of rain that fell searched for a way to return to its ancestral home. Waters that carved deep scars into steep cliffs have long since replenished oceans of the world. River beds are empty. Trees slowly heal from wounds inflicted by bolts of angry lightning. Thunder rousts massive boulders from mountain peaks. Truth is neither sentimental nor cruel; no opposite confronts it.

Shadows are obstacles created by light. When light is extinguished, its companion shadows die with it. In the absence of light and shadows, darkness fills space with empty obscurity. Empty obscurity asserts it strength by simply existing; a dark, vacant space with the power to consume time in the same way a black dwarf star consumes light.

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I have watery eyes, a runny nose, a growling stomach, and a growing sense that these conditions may be permanent. They are not intolerable—more like perpetually annoying, after being present so long—but are sufficiently irritating to put me and keep me in a bad mood. While once I would have complained loudly about willfully stupid people, these afflictions are causing me to consider excruciatingly painful ways of ridding the planet of them. I could get used to perennially low levels of minor aches, if they were the price of revenge justice.

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In my opinion, Trump and his minions are engaged in a campaign of manipulative psychological torment. Their crusade, I believe, is based on reliable principles involving torture, terror, and an overwhelming volume of non-stop chaos. The checks and balances we once believed would protect our so-called democratic society from a zealous, autocratic ruler have proven useless. Only a near-universal rage, supported by the near-universal actions of an intolerant public (all willing to risk prison and death), has a chance of overcoming the attack on democracy. The realization of the seriousness of the matter, though, will come too late for even the strongest replies to do any lasting good.

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When the expanding universe reaches its own limits, it will instantly implode with the same force, at the same speed, and within the same timeframe that the Big Bang took place. That prediction is somewhat different from the Big Crunch theory, which seems to suppose the universe will collapse somewhat slowly. There will be no warning, nor will there be any evidence of either the Big Bang or the Big Crunch.  In the final tiny fraction of a second, the universe will become an enormous fireball with a near-infinite temperature. Then, suddenly, at the absolute end, time and space will cease to exist. The question remains, though: what will replace time and space?

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It is entirely possible that, if there is a being who many call God, the being is so small as to be barely visible through the most powerful electron microscope. Nothing can be smaller than God; if a person believed anything could be smaller than God, that person’s burning flesh would light the sky from the most distant galaxy to the nearest sunrise. On a clear night, one can see the tiny remaining sparks of the last person whose conflagration lit the universe. Stars, we call them. They are not the impossibly distant hot gaseous masses the astronomers would have us believe, though. They are the dying embers of the last person to question God’s infinitely small size. Alternatively, maybe God is a single piece of pink granite, a remnant from a quarry that served as the source of a public building’s foundation. Captured within that hard stone could be a being whose powers exceed all other powers, combined, in the known universe…except the power to escape the crystals that keep God inside that stone.  Or, God may be a figment of a collection of hopeful, gullible imaginations, too afraid of the unknown to let it remain an inexplicable mystery. I have to admit, too, that God may be an old white bearded man who possess extraordinary magical powers. Or a blonde woman with the tail of a fish and the power to control everything that merits her control. Or a black woman who wears colorful scarves and beads and sings new-age gospel music to wake the birds each morning. The other possibilities are too preposterous to consider.

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He spied a weed in the middle of an acres of roses, so he mowed the entire field down to bare soil and soaked the ground with gasoline.

Glancing around my desk, hoping for inspiration, my mind remains vacant. Nothing provokes thought. Ideas flash through my brain, gone before they have time to settle and take shape. I try to force myself to focus on something…anything…that will trigger a chain reaction of thoughts. The attempt falls flat. No matter what I try, the results are the same— like harmless wires connected to a dead circuit, my mind remains dormant, as if my energy flows elsewhere. If it flows at all.

I closed my eyes and drifted into a light sleep while trying to conjure thoughts that might awaken my fingers. When I woke, several minutes had passed. But my fingers’ awkward coma persisted. In spite of many hours of sleep, my energy was not renewed last night. I will give up this fruitless endeavor and will attempt to sleep a little more.

Without referencing a source (other than the author, identified as Amy Morin, giving an expert opinion), an online article in Inc. claims, “Most modern-day psychologists agree there are five major personality types.” The five types, comprising the “five factor model,” according to the article, are: Conscientiousness; Extroversion; Agreeableness; Openness to Experience; and Neuroticism. Everyone possesses some degree of each, the article claims. As I understand the model, each personality type exists side-by-side on a single ribbon, with the width of each strip of the ribbon having varying degrees of influence on one’s behaviors. My college-level psychology courses, as I recall, measured and defined personality on a different scale: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI identifies sixteen personality types, categorized into two groups: introverts and extroverts. Those groups are further differentiated on the basis of combining four preference scales: introversion/extraversion (E/I); sensing/intuition (S/N); thinking/feeling (T/F); and judging/perceiving (J/P). My recollection of where my personality fell within the sixteen types is cloudy, perhaps because my type was inconsistent from one MBTI measurement to the next—and my type was measured several times during the course of my college career. However, I think the most common “learning style” was classified as INFJ, or Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging. Though I remember being modestly satisfied with the way my personality was classified, I recall wondering whether the label was truly correct. And I remember wanting to change it, but nothing else quite fit, either. Despite my misgivings about the legitimacy of the MBTI scales, I was extremely interested in learning where people around me fit into the scheme. My interest in others’ core personalities remains quite strong for some reason, even today. When conversations with friends turns to the broad subject of relationships between people, the phrase “my people” often comes into play. I would be fascinated to learn the MBTI identifiers for people with whom I feel close or comfortable. I would be equally as interested to know where other people—people I find offensive or distasteful—fall on the scale. Given my creeping skepticism about the validity of personality measures, though, I wonder whether I would trust such information. My confidence in personality measures is similar to my doubt about superstitions; I don’t wholeheartedly believe in them, but just in case there’s a kernel of truth buried beneath their absurdity, exploring them may be worth my time.

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Nearly four months have passed since Hurricane Helene emerged from the Gulf of Mexico, ripping into Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, etc. Approximately 220 people died as a result of the hurricane and a still-changing number of people remain missing. The number of people left homeless in the immediate aftermath of the storm was enormous. The number of people who remain homeless is hard to know; but there is no question that figure remains quite high. But the passage of time begins to scour our brains, leaving them clean and receptive to the next unthinkable catastrophe. Those of us who felt grief and sympathy and compassion for the dead, injured, and missing when the storm’s brutality was fresh have had to return to our mundane lives. Unless the impact of such a disaster is immediate and personal, our minds cannot sustain the onslaught of emotional pain for very long. We have to move on. Yet reducing painful memories of unimaginable devastation to mere regrets seems cold and callous. Donations of cash and food and clothing may have eased our pain, but we are left to wonder whether those offerings did much good for the people who suffered through the brunt of the calamity and the chaos it left behind. But, still, we have to return to our lives. How many people in the ravaged areas have nothing to which to return? I wonder how different is the experience of losing everything to a natural disaster, versus losing it all to intentional warfare? Does one’s mind respond differently to wind and wave damage than to mortar and bomb damage? Are capricious acts of Nature easier to accept than are intentional attacks intended to kill and maim and leave entire countries in ruin?

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The inconvenience of going in this morning for an infusion of magnesium should feel like a welcome opportunity to get out of the house, when compared to the hellish conditions of people enduring starvation or life without a roof over their heads. But that comparison is far too absurd to allow the mind to process the starkness between the two experiences. We grasp at almost anything to avoid the hideousness of circumstances that have no reasonable or defensible justification. It is impossible for me to compare such utterly incomparable situations.

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Time to face up to the world around me.

Some people, as they age, become increasingly attractive—even beautiful. The smooth wrinkles etched above their eyes are comparable to the work of a brilliant creative artist—someone who transforms a damaged limb from a wind-ravaged tree into a stunning piece of sculpture. Fine lines gently carved into their aging skin display a patina of tender wisdom borne of knowledge. Time softens the rough and ragged edges of youth, expressing the enlightenment that comes from hard-earned experience. Their evolution can be likened to the rebirth of dead cedars, whose rough bark and sharp splinters are converted by waves and wind and salt into smooth, grey driftwood.  But not everyone becomes more visually or emotionally or intellectually attractive. Some of the rest simply wither; their lengthy life experiences are expressed not as a patina, but as a rash. They portray the definition of decay. And then there’s the remainder of us. We simply disappear into the great unassuming, unimpressive, unwashed masses. Whatever we learn, we learn incompletely. We discover tomorrow is too late. We make our  marks with water-soluble invisible ink.

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A photograph of a broad expanse of prairie beneath of sky full of clouds was among the images displayed by the screen-saver on television. There is no telling when the picture was taken, but for many reasons I believe it was captures at least a few years ago. As I stared at the screen, I wondered about the droplets of water in the sky full of clouds: where are they now? From there, I honed in on a particular cloud; then on a particular droplet of water in that cloud. Where is it today, I asked myself. And that question launched a cascade of additional questions about the water droplets and the molecules of air surrounding them. By the time I realized how deeply I was engaged by those unanswerable questions, the screen-saver image had changed several times. Was the time I spent thinking about those droplets of water wasted? Or does thinking about such matters have any value? If it does, what is the measure of that value? And if it has value only as mindless entertainment, what is the point of such unproductive pointlessness?

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Mundane matters occupy my time. A series of phone calls from my oncologist’s office yesterday reminded me that confusion and chaos can infect even highly-structured, rigid environments. First, I got a call to ask me to come in next Monday for another injection to increase my red-blood-cell count. Then, another call asked me to plan to go in for magnesium infusions for each of the next three in-office days. Finally, I got another call saying to cancel today’s visit…for some reason I do not recall…but to go in tomorrow (to a different location than usual) and Monday. Should I be concerned about the apparent confusion? I don’t think so. At this late date, it’s probably too late to be concerned, anyway.

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We thought one of our favorite series on Netflix, “Wrong Side of the Tracks,” had only three seasons. But a few days ago we discovered season four has become available. If I had more energy, we probably would have binge-watched the fourth season, but I have been unable to stay alert for more than two episodes at a time. This (I think final) season has eight episodes, so we have four more to go. The series is set in a fictional neighborhood in Madrid, Spain (filmed in Spanish…we watch with subtitles). Two of our favorite Spanish actors, José Coronado and Luis Zahera, star in the series. I recommend it…highly.

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I could write a lot more about the state of my health, but I am more than a little tired of dealing with it. So I won’t. For now. If I had access to pills that would give me selective, health-focused amnesia, I would down two or three or a bottle.

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Morally ambiguous is a term I find intriguing. It sounds less sinister than amoral or immoral, and so much more honest than moral. I do not believe in the death penalty, except in cases in which I am carrying the executioner’s axe. How about: I am the only person I would trust to carry the executioner’s axe? Are those morally ambiguous enough?

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It’s safe to say I am not in peak form this morning. It would be safer to say I should not have permitted myself to get access to the keyboard.

Watching dense smoke flow—like a waterfall—gently down from the ember of a cone of incense intrigues me. The explanation for the direction of flow, counter to what would normally be expected, is a matter of simple physics; but it appears almost magical. I have never had a backflow incense burner, but when I see them on display in shops I invariably stop and stare at them. The ember of the cone of incense and the smoke flowing in the “wrong” direction captivate me, yet something almost always seems not quite right. This morning, as I was skimming a website that sells incense, I realized what struck me as out of place: the incense cone, the ember, and the smoke appear “natural,” but the holders tend to be artificial. Plastic. That juxtaposition interrupts and damages what could otherwise be a sensation of calmness; like viewing beautiful ornamental glass spheres become cheap rubber balloons that pop when hit by a dart. My willingness to be persuaded that I am viewing something almost mystical was suddenly shattered when I realized the experience involves blatantly misleading trickery. Those gentle, magical rivers of smoke flow over molded petroleum products…poorly made in an attempt to look like stone. That realization was like learning the man I thought was Santa Claus had been mortally wounded in a shootout with police over a fentanyl bust gone horribly wrong. Imagine learning that a set of remarkably beautiful stained glass church windows you have admired all your life are, in fact, cheap and brittle colored plastic film. Your world is suddenly turned upside down; nothing you believed can be trusted anymore. You want nothing more than to forget everything  and everyone you ever knew—just disappear from the face of the Earth.

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Distant thunder just interrupted my coal-black reverie. Temperatures are in the mid-thirties at the moment, on their way to barely reaching the mid-forties by 2:00 P.M. Lightning flashed in front of my windows, followed two or three seconds later by growling thunder. The day’s weather will be belligerent again…threatening, in fact. Like a prison inmate, recently released on parole, with no job, no home, no money, and no friends…his only comfort a bottle of cheap whiskey. He could earn a pretty penny, though, if he would just agree to perform a long string of public service assassinations disguised to look like natural causes.

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We are being watched. Even in small towns. In laundromats. In convenience stores. As we use crosswalks to make our way to the other side of dangerous intersections. Quite possibly in our own homes, where Mark’s and Elon’s eyes and the eyes of dozens of others are glued to monitors that track our every movement. Privacy is a fantasy, thanks to Alexa and Siri and the WIFI-driven cameras and microphones hidden in your refrigerators and clothes dryers and shower stalls and doctors’ examination rooms. Malevolent technicians control every device you have come to depend on; your smart-watch, your tablet, your phone, your television, the lights in your home, your automobile…the list is endless. If you ever wonder why a subject suddenly popped into your mind…it was placed there by the technicians or their AI counterparts. And it can be removed…as can anything else in your mind. It’s time we all become conspiracy theorists, assigning blame for all the world’s ills to Atheists and Catholics and Muslims and Southern Baptists and others whose own conspiracy theories paint targets on the backs of the rest of us. Paranoia will no longer be classified as an illness but, instead, as a great gift of foresight…because people with paranoia will have cameras and microphones implanted in their eyes and ears. If you do not believe these are factual statements, look over your left shoulder, where a microscopic camera will record the terror on your face as you spy the reflection of its lens. Do not worry, though. Bird-flu might rob us of chicken eggs, but the transition to platypus eggs will be easy…and worth the fear of cameras.

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Assuming she does not think what I’ve written here today indicates I am dangerous, my sister will come visit soon. As we grow older, I think people naturally gravitate back toward family, even if age disparities in the past made familial connections somewhat more tenuous that in families in which children were spaced quite closely together. The temporal space between the kids in families like mine ensure that all of us have memories that might as well come from different eras. Or, in my case, memories that somehow have largely disappeared over the years. So, gathering with one’s siblings is like making connections with bygone moments some family members did not experience. Hmm. Hard to explain, now that I am attempting to present myself as a moderately sane person.

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When I become emperor of this great domain, I will issue decrees that will cause enormous consternation to those who are causing us anxiety now. Where does one find suitable parolees on wet winter mornings? Would that life were so simple.

I was looking forward to learning the results of my upcoming PET-scan…until I got a call from my oncologist’s office, postponing the scan for a week. The caller told me an injection I had recently was too close in time to the scheduled PET-scan, so the scan would have to wait. And so I will wait until next week. After I learned of the scheduling change, I received a long-awaited call from an ENT doctor’s office, referred by my oncologist, to set up an appointment to explore the causes and treatment of my constant nasal drip and nose bleeds. As luck would have it, I overscheduled the ENT appointment for the same time as my PET-scan. Once I realized my goof, I called the ENT to apologize and plead for another appointment. The doctor agreed to set an appointment for me on a day he reserves only for surgery, with an admonition that I might need to be patient in the event a surgery takes longer than expected. He altered his schedule because of the oncologist’s referral. I can expect to feel acutely guilty when I get impatient at having to wait for someone else’s surgery to be competed.

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Again, I hear the rain running off the roof into the gutters. And I hear a distant, high-pitched buzz emanating from inside my head. I wonder whether the buzz is really a sound, or simply a symptom of tinnitus? The same question comes to mind when I hear the “thump, thump, thump” beat of blood flowing through the veins and arteries near my ears…are the sounds real or simply manifestations of imaginary noise manipulating my brain to believe I hear sound? I have begun to question reality—or what I perceive as reality—in many ways, not just the phantom sounds I hear. The fleeting sharp pains I feel in various parts of my body, just under the skin, may not be real. They are not sufficiently bothersome, nor frequent, to mention to doctors. I have done that before. Usually, it leads to unnecessary investigations that lead nowhere or to dismissal; as if my hypochondria is acting up again. The sounds and pains are not terribly troubling (the sounds, though, more so than the pains), but I hate not knowing whether I am having actual experiences or engaging with phantoms. I just now noticed the sound of rain has stopped; did I actually hear the sound of rain before, or was it yet another illusory sensation?

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When describing the actions of someone who is seeking the approval of another person, the term “curry favor” may be used. When discussing food that has unique sensory characteristics, the term “curry flavor” might be used to describe one of its attributes.  How can we justify differentiating between two terms with such disparate meanings with a single letter? A proper language czar would not permit the use of such potentially confusing expressions; such a czar would require a minimum of four letters’ difference between any such word combinations.

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This post represents the 5,500^th post I have written for this blog. That includes 4,935 published; the remainder are drafts that very likely will never see the light of day. Many of the published posts also should never have been let loose on the world, but most of the world has not had the misfortunate of stumbling upon them…so the harm done is minor. Counting the posts on this (or almost any other) blog is an exercise in pointlessness in much the same way that clipping and collecting the letter “n” from newspaper articles has no value or purpose. Yet some people are driven to pursue an unattainable satisfaction from engaging in such mindless pursuits. Those people apparently believe there is some end to the means. When asked to articulate just what that end is, though, they struggle to put it into words. The satisfaction they seek is never realized, but they nonetheless tell themselves “it” must be “out there, somewhere.” They say “out there” because they have long sense given up looking for it in themselves. I imagine hoarders hoard for the same reason. Something about the hunt must propel them forward. The acquisition of one or more types of “things” must provide a sense they are on the right track. The same probably is true of bloggers and “n” collectors. Despite my recognition that my blog posts are by and large (perhaps entirely) without value, I cannot bring myself to discarding them…just in case there’s a gem hidden amidst the umpteen thousands of letters. Yet I have not taken steps to effectively back up these 5,500 posts, so they could be gone in a microsecond. I probably would survive the trauma.

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If I were to build a house today, it would be a smallish one. But it would have something I’ve never thought about including in my house plans until this morning: a sanctuary. Not a religious sanctuary, but it probably would look like one. Churches have a long history of perfecting sanctuaries, creating spaces with high ceilings, stone walls, beautiful stained glass windows, and a peaceful, quiet environment. My sanctuary would be small but grand. And it would be furnished with comfortable seating…including a couch or two suitable for napping. I might like to listen to the echo of Gregorian-style chants as I relaxed and sent troubling thoughts away. A place to connect with who I am and who I want to be. A place welcoming to like minds. And peace, as deep as the deepest ocean.

I’ve said it before: Time makes a sound as it rushes past our ears. But I’ve also maintained that the sound is so low it cannot be heard, except by Time itself. The sound made by Time is, to our ears, identical to silence. I wish I could rest on an extraordinarily—perfectly—comfortable bed in an absolutely dark room and hear only the sound made by Time. The sound of bed sheets crinkling would not disturb me—nor would the blood coursing through my veins nor the inaudible hiss of my breath—because the impossibly low volume of the sound of Time would overwhelm all other sounds. Yet, because the sound of Time is so incomprehensibly low, I would not hear it. A shroud of silence would surround me. And that shroud would muffle all my other senses to the extent that they would effectively disappear. I would feel nothing, see nothing, taste nothing, smell nothing…my thoughts, too, would become absolutely dormant. I would become nonresponsive to my sensory environment, mirroring the experience of death. But, of course, one cannot “experience” death; my inability to express or explain the complete absence of experience would contradict my existence. I would not know it, though, because knowledge requires the ability to think and to experience one’s existence, which I could not do. Nor would I be able to remember…even if I were removed from that state of non-existence…because memories (and even dreams) require experiences to serve as their foundations. Now, I wonder, if we had no means to measure its presence or its passing, would Time exist? Is Time an imaginary boundary that exists only in the dark corners of our mind?

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You may have guessed I have lost my mind. I think I’ll find it in the Chinese leftovers from yesterday’s lunch. Yes, an inauthentic Chinese breakfast, modified for the Arkansan palate and the tastes of a man whose renunciation of his Texas birthright citizenship grows more appealing with each passing legal assault on human rights. First, I’ll take in breakfast, then I’ll go engage in conversation with a doctor who deals in curative radio waves. I need more sleep, though, so perhaps I will fall asleep in the car on the way to the radio station.

Several years ago, I made a brief trip to Beijing, China to attend a conference for one of my client associations. My stay in Beijing was short, but interesting. On the way home, I had a one-night layover and stayed in the Hilton Tokyo Narita Airport. The morning of my continuing flight, I had a fairly typical Japanese breakfast in the hotel; rice, broiled salmon, miso soup, cucumber, and some colorful splashes of edible somethings (I do not remember what). I’m relatively sure I drank tea with my food. There was something inherently peaceful about that meal—something quiet and calming and so very soothing. The size of the meal was very small, but utterly satisfying. I’ve written about this experience before, I’m afraid; forgive me. Something about it changed my thinking about Japanese culture. The gentleness. The civility. The attention paid to good manners and person-to-person tenderness. The apparent absence of harshness…compared to day-by-day interactions in the United States. Much of what I’ve read about Japan, since then, has enhanced my appreciative perspective on what strikes me as highly honorable Japanese culture. All of that from a one-night stay at an airport hotel…and a little reading. Admittedly, my exposure to Japanese culture has been far too limited to make informed judgments about it. But even with my limited experience, I felt—and still feel—a kinship of sorts with what I perceived as a cultural gentleness; I think the term in Japanese is Yasashi-sa. I read somewhere that Yasashi-sa describes both a behavior and a state of being. If such a state of being ever graced the American cultural and psychological landscape, it has long since been so completely eroded and crushed into powdered rock that it is unrecoverable. Our culture is too deeply imbued with harshness and meanness to retrieve what may have once been gentleness. That notwithstanding, on those exceedingly rare occasions when I prepare a Japanese breakfast, I think I hear a soothing, pleasing echo of Yasashi-sa.

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The clock on my computer registered 4:01 a.m. a few minutes ago. I could not stay in bed past 2:45 this morning, thanks to getting so much sleep over the past few days, but I already feel a growing sleepy fatigue that may allow me to drift off again if I try. Several times during the last couple of days I have awakened in confusion, not sure what part of the day I am encountering…morning, afternoon, dead of night? That is what happens, I suppose, when one sleeps through multiple “normal” sleep cycles. Time becomes a confusing elastic cage that hides clues about hours of the day and days of the week. I imagine even longer sleep cycles could introduce chaos to uncertainty about weeks of the month or months of the year.

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The Super Bowl is to take place today. I watched the game a few years ago and was surprised that I actually enjoyed it. I have no interest in becoming a fan, so I will not watch it again. Instead, I will challenge humans’ common belief/assumption that life requires oxygen and water. Perhaps water and oxygen are required of life as we know it, but does the possibility exist that life might take a completely different form, one that requires neither of those substances? My answer is “YES.” The mere fact that we have not been exposed to life that does not require them does not prove that they are required for life to exist. Yet even the definitions we use to explain what life is presume that our assumptions are correct…that oxygen and water are necessary for life to exist. Why, I wonder, are we so damn certain about something so fundamentally unknowable in the context of our current experience? Our uncertainty extends to almost everything else (if we’re honest about it), but LIFE…we are POSITIVE that is an exception to our general uncertainties. What if we discovered, on a distant planet, that life existed there only in the presence of molybdenum and lead, super-heated to temperatures of at least 13,649°F? Would we even recognize life in that form? Would the circumstances permit us to understand such a completely different form of life? Or would we insist on calling it something else? So many questions remain unanswered. So many have not even been asked.

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This week’s schedule: a visit with the radiologist tomorrow morning, a blood draw and one-week-in injection tomorrow afternoon, and a PET-scan on Thursday afternoon. The costs associated with these treatments and tests are beyond obscenely expensive. If I had no insurance, I would long since have been bankrupted and living in extreme poverty. I pity people who need care and cannot afford it.

Quick and easily attainable proficiency in multiple languages would give me options I can only dream about in the present stage of my life. I harbor envy, jealousy, and resentment toward people who quickly and painlessly pick up languages beyond their native tongues. To be honest, it is not the individuals’ capabilities I begrudge. It’s their good fortune I envy; to have been reared in an environment conducive to becoming a polyglot and to have been encouraged to learn multiple languages. Forty years ago, had I been able to quickly acquire fluency in several Scandinavian languages, I could have planted myself in Sweden or Finland or Iceland. With those language skills, I would have been able to adjust very quickly to the lifestyle differences between the Nordic countries and “home.” I would have been able to enjoy cultures in which civility and general human decency are more highly valued than in my home culture. And I could have gotten used to the weather; I’m sure of it. For many years, I have played with a fantasy in which a person’s speech capabilities could be dramatically expanded with a precise combination of electrical stimulation of the brain and infusion of targeted pharmaceuticals and/or other chemicals. In my vision, a complex assortment of electrical “shocks” and chemical reactions within brain and muscle tissues would artificially implant and appropriately “order” information in the brain and “train” the tongue and mouth to create the sounds necessary to convert the information into language. For example, when I think of the word “rabbit” in my native English, I could speak the Swedish word “kanin.” Or, when I hear the Swedish word “varg,” my English mind would understand it as “wolf” in English. Better still (when the complexities are all ironed out), there would be no translation; it would be pure, unadulterated fluency. I am convinced that this vision of mine will eventually be realized, provided governments do not prohibit scientists or linguists or whoever from conducting intensive research into such possibilities.

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Among the many reasons I tend to delve into hundreds (or thousands) of subjects only “skin deep” may have to do with my lack of confidence in my ability to fully grasp the full breadth and depth of most subjects. I develop an interest, then start to explore it, but soon come to the conclusion that I do not have the intellectual capacity to master a deeper understanding. I tell myself I simply lose interest, but that’s probably not true…more likely, it is because I am resigned to my mental limitations. Either I know, deep in my core, I do not have the ability to comprehend, or I do not want to damage my ego by trying and failing…because I do not have the ability to comprehend.  Had I attempted to get beyond those obstacles many years ago, I might have overcome them. But at this late stage in life, neither my energy nor my thirst for knowledge is up to the task. Wisdom comes far too late to do much good.

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During the very brief period between sleep and sleep last evening, we began watching a brand new Netflix series entitled The Åre Murders. The promotion teasers appropriately label the Swedish-made series’ genre as Nordic noir. I think we viewed three out of five episodes; it was sufficiently intriguing that I could have watched the remaining two last night, except for feeling ill and exhausted. I’ve been too tired or too distracted to watch much television lately; my eyelids droop and my mind wanders off into elaborate daydreams, making it impossible to follow the action on the screen. But last night was different—for as long as it lasted. Now, if I can just hold on to my interest in the show for the two remaining episodes, I will be able to claim that I watched an entire program.

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Even though I slept almost the entire day yesterday, I already feel my limited energy getting spongy like a leaky balloon. I got up around 3:30. It’s not quite 6 now, but I feel sure I will be able to sleep if I recline on the sofa and daydream about impossible things.

Governments naturally operate in ways that will ensure their own longevity. Dictatorial regimes employ tactics involving fear, force, and psychological pressure to maintain their control. Less oppressive reigns use similar schemes, but the pressures they tend to use often are disguised behind artificially compassionate façades. In most—if not all— cases, deceit ensures that the governed are carefully kept in states of powerless confusion. Keeping people worried, uninformed, and distracted is vital to maintaining lasting control.

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If the proponents of “Christian Nationalism” were honest, they would acknowledge that they are, in fact, supporters of “Fascist Christianity.” Whatever that malignancy is called, it is rooted in a desire for crippling power and a complete abandonment of morality and human decency. These are your neighbors and, possibly, your friends.

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Revolution has become much more difficult in the age of ubiquitous social media. Secrets are impossible to keep. Enemies of state control of every aspect of citizens’ lives cannot rely on social media to keep their identities or their plans from “the authorities.” They must resort either to old-fashioned “resistance” tactics or innovative ways to distribute information and enlist support for their causes. Looking back to our days of innocence, we trusted government with enormous power to control our lives…assuming people in government would not take malevolent advantage of their power. Today, that power enables them to watch almost every move we make and to intercept and crush messages that might lead us to greater freedom.

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The effects of Monday’s chemotherapy session, coupled with a sense that I am powerless to stop the dissolution of democracy, leave me feeling uncomfortable, exhausted, and enraged. I tried to expunge this rage from my brain through silent meditation, but the attempt morphed into visions of Buddha beheading thousands of fanatical right-wing deviants in a festival of flowing blood. The muscles in my gut ache, as if I had been doing sit-ups for hours. Anti-nausea medication is, apparently, keeping me just barely away from the threshold of being sick, but close enough to be unsure if it’s just a prelude of what’s to come. Sleep is the only reliable way to keep this sensation at bay.

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My PET-scan has been scheduled for late next Thursday afternoon. Nothing on the books beyond that, so I do not know when I’ll get the results and discuss next steps with the doctor. I’ll find out, eventually. And then I’ll know more than I know today.

When you quiet your mind, you can enter a world of clarity, peace and understanding.

~ Alice Coltrane ~

News of madness and horror in every facet of human life invades my consciousness, too often aided and abetted by my own failure to block access. My desire to achieve a sense of peace and contentment is rarely met. I cannot seem to empty my mind of troubling thoughts and visions of physical and emotional violence done to undeserving victims by merciless demons in human form. The very idea that I would desire serenity for myself, while knowing that others suffer excruciating torment, seems shameful. But I try to exculpate myself by telling myself I can do nothing to alleviate the torture unless I can focus my attention outside my own experience. That attempt usually fails; simply adds to the sense of guilt. Yet allowing one’s own mind to be scrambled by the surrounding chaos virtually assures incompetence. I suspect that only by freeing one’s head of distractions—both positive and negative—can a person realistically expect to achieve any clarity about what an individual can do to solve difficult problems. For that reason, I often think about embracing meditation; but rarely do anything consequential in response. When I commit to the focus required of successful meditation (focus may seem contrary to the concept, but it is not…in my mind), I sometimes enjoy brief periods of relief. But my commitment invariably is shattered by my own self-intrusive thoughts. Perhaps I allow myself to be “bullied” by schedules over which I think I have little control: doctor visits, tests, procedures, competing events or commitments, etc. In reality, though, I do have sufficient control over my schedules to carve out time to devote exclusively to solo meditation. It’s simply a matter of discipline and true commitment. I could, for example, exchange my early morning blogging for an early morning meditation practice. Real commitment. That’s all it would take. Now, do I have the mental strength to require that of myself?

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On rare occasions, I am asked about my process of writing. I cannot claim I have a “process.” Some days, I sit at my computer and just give my fingers the freedom to do what they seem to want; it’s almost like my mind has already made up what it wishes to allow my fingers to do. Other days, I stare at the blank screen for a long time, hoping that one of a thousand thoughts in my head commands my focused attention. Still others, I write a sentence or two about something, then move on and write a bit about something else; then do it all again…several times—only then do I expand a bit on one of more of those sentences. Were I a true author—a writer who craves his work to be published and read—I would develop a writing process of my own. A style that would help mold my writing into cohesive literature readily identifiable as a product of my unique mind. I used to dream of becoming an author, but that shiny object has lost its luster in the face of knowledge that authors are not special, they’re just a little different. I wanted to be special, I guess. Now, I just want to express what’s going on in my mind, even if that means coaxing uncooperative sentences and meaningless drivel in paragraph form from a place of emptiness.

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After a delightful early dinner with a friend—who delivered the meal—my energy faded quickly. Once again, I was in bed around 7:30, but sleep did not come for quite some time. When finally it arrived, it stayed only briefly before I was wide awake, but too tired to get up. Eventually, I got back to sleep in hour-long segments until around 4:30, just half an hour before I started writing this post. I sense a long, mentally demanding day on the horizon; one that requires me to be awake, but one that could be much more appealing if I could be asleep.

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Cancer is just part of my experience. It does not, has not, nor will it ever, define me. But the response to my experience may give the appearance that it defines me. Much of what I have written during the past year (and then some) has dealt with the recurrence of my cancer and the treatments I have undergone (and am undergoing) in efforts to control it. From my perspective, cancer is just a big, unpleasant obstacle to allowing me to continue along the path of self-definition. That may be a strange idea…that a person as old as I still hasn’t finished the process of defining himself. It probably is not as strange as many might think, though. I think some people (maybe many people) reach a point—in middle age, perhaps—at which they unwittingly decide “I’m done…this is who I am.” Later, though, they look at who they earlier thought was an end-product and realize the process remains incomplete. They may look back years—or just months or weeks—and slowly come to the conclusion that more growth and change has long been in store. Now, they consider, the time left to cultivate that development is getting short. So they embark, knowingly or not, on a journey to make up for lost time. What they are trying to achieve is hard to articulate, but I suspect it is different for everyone. It could be building or leaving a legacy of personality, a “mark on the world,” or a hundred other things. Whatever it is, it is different from (and better than), what they had thought was finished. And, of course, they may not know…not really…what it is they hope to achieve. Just…something unique and notable. I wonder how many succeed in identifying and then attaining that goal?

I believe I have conceived of a good solution for men whose bodies, like mine, are not suitable for wearing jeans as they are now configured. In my case, because my gut STILL has greater circumference than my hips, a belt—even a relatively tightly-cinched belt—will not hold the pants up. Unless the hands are at the ready, the jeans can suddenly fall to the floor, causing considerable embarrassment. The tightness required to make a belt actually work is so great that the belt and its buckle dig into the flesh and painfully compress one’s internal organs. My solution seems simple: a onesies-inspired piece of clothing that marries jeans (or any pants, for that matter) to a shirt. The links between the two elements of clothing would be concealed through design, with one’s shoulders bearing the weight of the jeans by way of the connection between them. The specifics of the design will require someone with far more expertise than I, but I think I could work with a good clothing designer to come up with a prototype. An expert clothier/needleworker would be required to assemble the mock-up. Once viewed and experienced in the real world, I feel confident it would become the clothing of choice for men (and women) whose bodies do not comport with current fashion design.

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My almost-10-year-old car has only a touch more than 120,000 miles on it. Well-maintained and serviced (and it is), it should easily last another 120,000 miles. The second 120,000 miles probably would take more than 10 years; most likely a good bit longer than I will last, considering the condition of my health. Whenever I allow myself to entertain ideas about replacing it, I remind myself of these points. And I contemplate the costs of buying another car, versus keeping the one I have; buying would be FAR more expensive. The only potentially compelling argument in favor of replacement involves improvements in, or new, safety features. A not-so-compelling argument is my desire for the smoothest, quietest, most luxurious ride I can afford. That argument might hold more sway if I had reasonable expectations of taking my car on long road trips. But any such expectations are not particularly reasonable; more like fantasies. So, for now, I continue to be ready to fight sudden bouts of new-car-fever. Only time will tell whether I win the battle. I hope a long time passes before I have to say I lost. But I’m too wise to make promises; I know too much about my fickleness and hypocrisy.

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Morality is not always a simple matter. For those of us who believe an individual’s murder is an immoral act, for example, we tend to believe the murderer should be stopped and/or punished in some way. But what if we could save the life of one innocent person—and perhaps two or three more—by taking the lives of ten proven serial killers? Would saving the lives of the killers, and allowing the innocent to die, be a moral act? Or would we be more moral by saving the individual and allowing the ten killers to be executed? What if we did not just allow the executions, but performed them ourselves? Morality is an incredibly complex concept that is defined as much (or more) by elaborate sets of circumstances as by rigid, black and white rules. If one agrees with that, then, morality is situational. And if morality is situational, are ethics…based on morality…also situational? Such ruminations can challenge life-long assumptions and beliefs. At the very least, pondering the morality of unthinkable acts that, from a specific perspective,  may be the only “right” things to do can cause one to doubt the certainty of morality and immorality. Doubting and questioning one’s own moral core can be among the most disturbing things to cross our minds. We want absolutes; absolutes are illusions in an environment in which reality is circumstantial.

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Gratitude and condemnation can live side-by-side in a world full of goodness and injustice. Too much of either one can knock a person off-balance, altering perspective so much that it is impossible to have a clear view of what is real and what is a self-fulfilling attitude of joy or sorrow. Though it might seem counter to common sense to hold on to enough condemnation to balance joy, that may be the only way to retain even a shred of sanity in the face of a flood of injustice.

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Early to bed, early to rise. Even though I was in bed for eight hours—and slept moderately well for five or six of them—I can feel my energy draining from my body this morning. The thick grey layer of fog outside my window is blocking the sun and keeping the the sky from any morning brightness. That’s an ideal visual environment for sleeping; a pleasant dimness that wraps around one like a protective blanket. Just enough light to prove, when opening the eyes, that one is awake and alive.

Moments with the scourges of illness, injury, clouded vision, labored breathing, or physical or emotional pain visit us during the course of a lifetime. If we are fortunate, those visits are brief. But, finally, advanced age takes its toll in the form of weakness and  lingering reminders of the decay brought on by a lifetime of warfare against the inevitable end.

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Both Canada and Mexico apparently have agreed to bend to some demands from a criminal enterprise. The lesson we have learned from that is that extortion works to achieve a malevolent objective. Whether extorting friend or foe, making threats can elicit behaviors we want. The recent educational example is what I would call a protection scheme—in which we demand material benefits at the victim’s expense that, if not delivered, will result in the imposition of painful experiences for the victim.  This important lesson will become part of our K-12 curricula in the new Criminality Class, which replaces Civics Class. Speaking of education, we still expect Voting 101, which has been discontinued, to be replaced by a class on Submission to Unjust Authority. However, there is some dispute among different factions, with some calling for Permanent Anesthesia 101, instead, to take the place of the class on Voting. Others insist on Early Death by Natural Causes as the replacement, and still others favor Modern Rebellion. Time, the speed of which has slowed dramatically of late, will tell.

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On a whim, the first thing I did this morning was order, online, a belt and two shirts. My most recent acquisition of jean fit me a bit better than the ones I ordered earlier, but they still tend to fall to the floor at inappropriate times, without a belt. A still smaller pair of jeans would not solve the problem because my hips apparently are still narrower than my gut and even smaller jeans would not allow me to button them. A belt, though, can be cinched tight enough to keep them from dropping. If, that is, there are enough holes in the belt. I have run out of holes in the other belts in my closet. The shirts were just more mere whimsy. Why not? They were cheap.

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It seems my oncologist is weaning me off chemotherapy chemicals, but that’s probably not really the case. When I started radiation, she paused one of the two major drugs, which is still paused several weeks after my radiation has been complete. Yesterday, she reduced the dosage of the other major drug. I expect to have my PET-scan “soon,” so I will learn something more. In the interim, I will return for injections (my red blood cell count and platelet count are still too low) and a lab blood draw. Actually, my oncologist explained why she is doing what she is doing, but I do not remember details.

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Owls are making quite the racket outside my window this morning. I wish I could see them, but darkness prevents it. Darkness gets in the way of so many things. Without light, it is hard, if not impossible, to drive safely. Even walking in the darkness is unsafe. So very many other things are intensely unadvisable in darkness: plowing fields, diving off of cliffs, swimming in snake-infested waters (unsafe in daylight, as well), welding, etc.

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This damn blog let me write considerably more, but then froze. The paragraph above was twice as long and I’d written yet another paragraph. I’m too angry at the blog host to try again, so I am giving up for now.

I have a lot of rage about things that didn’t happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world – and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.

~ Dennis Lehane ~

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My inexpensive espresso machine has never produced an end-product that is as hot as it should be. Lately, I’ve felt a distinct decline in the temperature of my morning elixir—enough to cause me to consider replacing the machine. I crave espresso from a high-end espresso maker—the kind that involves using fresh roasted beans, ground to a powdery consistency. But I have become increasingly lazy and impatient with advancing age, so at present I settle for a machine that uses pre-filled aluminum pods. No matter how much I might enjoy the time-consuming product of an upscale machine, I am satisfied with the rich flavor supplied by the rather pricey pods. Just as importantly, if not more so, the extraordinary speed of my little machine meets my need for almost instant gratification. So…I may look into a replacement; a machine that uses the same pods I use now. I am pleased with everything about my morning espresso except its temperature. And, of course, I could survive without replacing my machine. But I am greedy and needy and innately lazy.

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I have twice postponed a procedure that is said to correct the epithelial basement membrane dystrophy condition that negatively affects my vision, especially in my left eye (which would be the first one to be addressed). My reasons for delaying the procedure are complex; and probably understandable only by me, so I will not attempt to explain. In years past, I opted to decline other opportunities to correct physical flaws; the deviated septum in my nose and the attention-grabbing diastema between my two upper front teeth. And, of course, long ago I could have corrected my obesity, rather than waiting for cancer and its treatment to partially do the job for me. As I consider the fact that I have refused to take actions to correct troublesome aspects of my physical self, I suspect there is a mental or emotional aspect to my decisions. Well, of course there is, but I am not clear about exactly what that aspect might be. I have suspicions, but my brain refuses to sufficiently focus on them with enough intensity to verify them. It’s well past time to give the matter significant thought; yet I do.

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Assuming the results of today’s lab tests reveal my red blood cell count is sufficient, last week’s chemotherapy session—which was delayed—will take place today. The delay gave me an additional week of feeling a little closer to “normal,” which I appreciated. Getting out of the house for a restaurant meal was a nice change, for example. But I wonder how much of a negative impact, if any, such a delay in treatment might have on its effectiveness. I think I’ve posed that question before to the oncology nurse who shares treatment responsibilities with my oncologist, who said it does not. I still wonder. I may learn today a more specific timeline than “soon” for my next PET-scan. I am anxious to get the results of the scan; more importantly, I want to know details about the meaning of the results. Time will answer my questions.

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The power of the U.S. presidency should be curtailed…dramatically. Assumptions that the checks and balances available through Congress will constraint the abuse of power have proven to be wrong. This Congress will not place any restraints on the president’s power; even if it tried, its members do not have the courage to override presidential vetoes of legislation limiting those powers. A popular uprising—complete with pitchforks and rage—may be the only remaining option. The problem with such an option, of course, is that nearly half the population support illegal and immoral actions by the president. That part of the populace would support wholesale slaughter of his opponents in the streets. Ach!

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We have allowed poison and rabies to take up residence in the White House.

I daydream about a small rural cottage, made of stone, situated high on an ocean-view ridge where a forest intersects with natural pastures.  The cottage is warm and comfortable. It is hidden by topography from the few people who might have reason to be in its vicinity. Even if those people knew of the place, they would respect my privacy. In that cottage, I would allow myself to think and to imagine and to dream—to lose myself in ideas that can be fully explored only in quiet solitude. Reality complicates my daydream when, to my chagrin, I allow practical thoughts to intrude: How do I get food and fresh water, what about electricity and internet access, how long can I stay? Absent those irritating practical interruptions, my daydream might be precisely what I want and need to distance myself from the pain and disappointments of the real world. How, I wonder, can I prevent practical matters from invading my thoughts? The more I consider this dilemma, the clearer it becomes: if I cannot spend time in my imaginary cottage, I will spend time in a fantasy world in which my imaginary cottage is real; and practicality is an unwelcome and unnecessary obstacle.

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A powerful longing for peace and serenity admittedly is at odds with smoldering embers of anger that periodically erupt into volcanic rage. Yet those contradictory emotions are intertwined with one another, separated only by immeasurably thin threads of rationality. But those threads of rationality—always subject to immense strain—sometimes snap, enabling competing temperaments to blend into emotions no words can adequately express. At their extreme, those indescribable emotions enable a loving father to put himself at great risk to rescue his daughter from the grip of a would-be rapist; and, then, to hack the assailant to death with a machete. Those blended emotions, though, only rarely reach that extreme. Along the spectrum of their intensity, they can unleash levels of anger ranging from harsh words to unspeakable physical violence. Most people are innately limited in the degree to which they approach the extreme. Yet almost everyone is capable of bypassing those limits in certain demanding circumstances. At least that’s my take on the human condition.

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Is the world unraveling? Are we witnessing (and complicit in allowing) the fall of an empire of which we are a part? If the empire is falling, can we say with certainty its dissolution is a bad thing? My answers to those questions are irrelevant because I am not qualified/equipped to answer them. But I have opinions. And I have experience with the neck-deep propaganda advanced by the defenders and enemies of the empire. And I have limited experience which allows me to compare some of the propaganda with reality; my opinion is that reality is more believable. China is far more advanced, for example, than Western political zealots would have us believe. The people of China, from what I’ve seen, are much better off than those zealots tell us. That’s true of many other places, as well. The world outside our borders is more sophisticated, more interesting, more educational, more intriguing, and more attractive than we are taught/led to believe.  Which of the remaining empires will fill the void we leave—if, indeed, we leave a void to fill? Should a void be filled…or should it be left open and unsullied by thought manipulation and indoctrination? I feel deeply skeptical this morning. Nothing is as I once thought. A look in the mirror tells me I am not who I once claimed to be.

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My mood has shifted from sad to surly…with a bit of somber sorrow thrown in. It will be best if I crawl back under the covers and hide from the light.