John Swinburn

For as long as I can remember, I periodically have experienced the desire to abandon the life I have been living—leave absolutely everything and everyone—and start over as someone new in a new place.  The fundamental problem with that fantasy, of course, is the “everyone” I would leave; among them are people I simply could not bear to hurt. There are other obstacles, of course. I am very reserved in person-to-person relationships, meaning it takes a long time before I become sufficiently comfortable with others to have more than a loose acquaintanceship, much less a real friendship. That trait would make for long stretches of loneliness while adjusting to new places and new people. And I imagine doing what is necessary to change one’s identity, while retaining necessary financial resources, would be difficult, time-consuming, and fraught with other pitfalls I cannot imagine. But those complexities might be worth the trouble, inasmuch as all one’s history—all the emotional baggage—could be left behind. Yet two questions arise from that possibility: First, would leaving that emotional baggage behind really be possible? Second, How difficult might it be to construct and readily remember an entirely new history? Somewhere along the line, I imagine some elements of the elaborate lie required to create a new identity would come to the surface; any trust other people might have developed in the new stranger could be shattered.

According to a questionable statistic I found online, roughly 630,000 people are reported missing each year; about 6,000 of them remain missing. It is impossible to know how many of either group intended to disappear, either temporarily or permanently. And it is equally impossible to know how many of the permanently missing remain alive. But it is reasonable to assume quite a few of them intentionally and successfully disappear, living a new life as a new person. I wonder how they view the transition? Did the circumstances that prompted one’s disappearance evaporate? Is the post-disappearance life significantly better or less stressful than the one left behind? Was severing personal ties and relationships as painfully difficult as I might expect? Getting answers to those and many other questions probably would be hard; someone who abandoned his old life is not likely to want to reveal that he did it, nor to explain or dissect his reasons.

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I could manufacture my disappearance in the form of fiction. It would not be the same as the real-world upheaval of my life, but the accompanying pain would be equally as artificial as the experience.

Despite the fact that there are still remnants of yellow pollen on everything outdoors, being outside is finally more than just tolerable. Sitting outside on the deck yesterday afternoon was delightful. The calls of several birds, the occasional sounds of wind chimes, and the air’s warmth joined forces to create an incredibly pleasing environment. Sitting on comfortable cushioned chairs, sipping on a cold drink, and feeling completely free for awhile of all normal obligations represent the rewards of retirement. I recommend entering it as early as possible.

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There was no aurora in my line of sight last night. I went to bed quite early. The photos I have seen posted online this morning make me wish I had stayed up, but I gather that the colors were visible only through the lens of a phone’s camera. Still, it would have been exciting. My enthusiasm for rarely-seen events in and around our Milky Way Galaxy seems to have waned over the years. There was a time I would have set my alarm to remind me to get up and go outside at 2 a.m. Maybe I have been disappointed at the results when I did that before. Perhaps I tend to let my interest and excitement grow beyond what is reasonable; so, when the “real world” shows itself, I fee let down. Who knows? I imagine the decline in intellectual and emotional interest may be closely aligned with advancing age. Until a year ago, I felt like I was only a fraction of my physical age; today, it’s more like I feel like I am 125% of my actual age. I may need a nap this morning. And, quite possibly, again this afternoon.

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I had a conversation yesterday about writing retreats. Several years ago, I participated in two such retreats. The opportunity to spend a few days in relative seclusion, focusing much of my time almost exclusively on writing, was valuable. I joined a few other people—who also belonged to my local writers’ group—thinking that keeping company with them would help keep me focused on writing. It did not turn out quite that way. Some of us used more of our time than we should have done to socialize. Lesson learned. If I try it again (and, increasingly, I want to), I will strictly limit social time. My success will be measured by my productivity, both in volume of output and in quality of my writing.

I have in mind developing and fleshing out the stories of characters who live in and around a fairly small, semi-rural town. The town, once on the path to fast growth and an appealing standard of living, is decaying, thanks to the sudden departure a few years earlier of the community’s largest employer. A group of locals, mostly long-time residents but with a couple of relative newcomers, gather regularly at a failing bar & grille to discuss their own futures and the town’s potential for rebirth.  Businesses that had blossomed in the town’s heyday—including a bank, a newspaper, a few restaurants, the bar & grille, a grocery store, and a few others—either had shrunk or disappeared.

This description of what I hope to write could go on, of course. But I think I should stop thinking about writing the story and, instead, should record the words and the story sliding out of my brain. Retreats—perhaps a week at a time—could provide the environment for the story to evolve, like the medium in a Petri dish. One of my almost countless flaws, though, is my tendency to get bored with myself. When that happens, the ideas for a story or a book I once thought were worth pursuing lose their appeal. I haven’t decided whether it’s my boredom or my laziness that slows—and then quickly stops—my progress. I would need to get a handle on that flaw and refuse my automatic efforts to replace it with another.

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Humans’ understanding of space—and the stars and planets and the intergalactic debris between them—is infinitesimal. There simply are too many facts and processes and interactions between them for our remarkable (but crudely aboriginal) brains to comprehend. I suspect we know an equally small proportion of what can be known about Earth’s oceans—and the life forms and prehistoric clues to “origin” hidden beneath miles of water. Our brains’ limitations, too, will keep us from knowing more than a tiny fraction of what is knowable. We (I should say they, inasmuch as I am not involved in the endeavor) keep trying, though. The search for knowledge is admirable, if futile. It’s the futility of the undertaking that makes the effort so commendable. To reach the unreachable. The nobility of the idea is breathtaking. Stunning. But delusional. The romantic notion that humans are pursuing—and will continue to pursue—the impossible is a source of pride. Embarrassment, too; depending on one’s perspectives. The strength of that pride, though, usually is sufficient to overwhelm the sense of shame that accompanies attempting the preposterous.

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I woke periodically during the night, each time feeling like I must have been asleep for hours. Invariably, though, only 20 to 30 minutes had passed since my most recent glance at the clock. I thought I had taken quite some time to fall asleep again after noting the time; but it could not have been terribly long—because the 20 or 30 minutes had included the time it took for me to get back to sleep. When I got up at a quarter past four this morning, I felt like the night had been extraordinarily long, but I had gone to bed only a bit more than six hours earlier. Having arisen so early (like in the “old days”), I decided to take advantage of the extra time available to me. The second of two loads of laundry is in the washer and the first one is in the dryer. I’ve finished my first espresso. I’ve scanned the morning news (which was a rehash of yesterday, reminding me of the absurd movie, Groundhog Day). And I’ve devoted dribs and drabs of time to this post. By 7 pm this evening—thanks to my early spurt of energy—I may be ready to go to sleep again.

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Time cannot be recycled. At least that’s my thinking on the matter this morning. Once a moment has passed, it cannot be recovered. It cannot be relived. After it has been experienced, an instance of time cannot be experienced again—not a second, not a minute, not an hour, not a year, not an eternity. That being the case, the idea of time travel is a pointless, wasted concept. Science fiction, in my view, should portray something that could conceivably be possible at some point in the future, given potential advances in science. If the experiences of moments of time are “one and done,” then they have not legitimate place in science fiction. They arguably may have a place in science fantasy, but not science fiction. And science fantasy is whimsical garbage. Sue me; I’m in a judgmental mood this morning. I may become more forgiving of the idea at some point, but I’m relatively sure that point will not take place today. And I’m absolutely certainly it will not take place at some point in the past.

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Poetry is the emotional equivalent of sandpaper. Poetry smooths the rough edges of ideas and words, removing sharp edges that hide truth or understanding. But, like sandpaper, poetry can accentuate those same sharp edges, revealing the pain and discomfort of reality. This morning, I think poetry is too often subjected to unnecessary analysis—it can be categorized, pigeon-holed, examined microscopically, and otherwise dissected and evaluated and criticized. On the other hand, haphazardly stringing words together does not constitute poetry. Poetry weaves words and phrases into either physical or intellectual images (or both) that may evoke different emotions in different people. Poetry encodes insights that might not be understandable in “standard” prose. But beautiful prose can—sometimes inexplicably—carry poetic qualities. I choose not to spend my time and energy trying to classify poetry by type or style or mechanical attribute. Scientific evaluation tends to replace the mysteries of poetry with artificial armatures; the original is a living, breathing life-form, while the examined version is a mannequin.

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For some reason, drinking tomato juice jazzed up with several drops of Tabasco sauce makes me feel virtuous. I might feel both virtuous and dangerous if I added a bit of vodka to the mix, but I’ll be satisfied this morning to leave the vodka for another time.  It’s after 6:30; I’ve let half the day slide by. At least I’ve accomplished something of consequence; clean laundry is naturally consequential.

Pods of bottlenose dolphins, schools of silvery fish changing direction in unison, swarms or blooms or smacks of jellyfish. NBC or YouTubeTV treated us to a brief, soothing, underwater video between newscasts last night, apparently in lieu of pharmaceutical commercials. My attention this morning drifted away from the serenity of last night’s video, focusing instead on the collective nouns assigned to groups of animals. If I can, I will redirect my attention back to the beautiful sights and sounds of those lovely sea creatures. The sight of the translucent bodies and tentacles of jellyfish, as they propel themselves through clear seawater, is mesmerizing. That is true, as well, of the gentle acrobatics of dolphins and the precision with which huge schools of tiny fish collectively decide—at exactly the same instant—to swerve or reverse direction or pause their movement. As impressive as a marching band on an athletic field may be, its collective movements are crude and imprecise in comparison to the magic visible in nature. Simultaneously complex in the extreme and starkly simple, the unified movements of groups of animals swimming or flying or running are stunning. When I allow my attention and my intense admiration to be completely captured by natural phenomena, I experience freedom from stress. Though the absence of anxiety is brief, the sensation is sufficient to renew my strength and replace tension with peace and relaxation. I think I should give myself a daily gift of 30 minutes of meditative seclusion—while, perhaps, watching a calming video like the one I watched last night. Though I talk about meditation, it is mostly just talk; calm, regular practice in lieu of inaction is what I need. Maybe I need to be coached for a while until I succeed in turning intent into habit.

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The Australian Alcohol and Drug Foundation (ADF) describes several drugs/ pharmaceuticals as empathogens, which “increase a person’s feeling of empathy and benevolence towards others, as well as feelings of being socially accepted and connected…and…can increase friendliness and playfulness, but can also cause mood swings, dehydration and depression.” It’s too bad that ecstasy and mephedrone and other “stand-in” empathogens are not better understood and more readily controllable (to ensure their negative effects on the body are eliminated or minimized). My fear of what such drugs might do—both short term and long term—to my body or mind has prevented me from ever trying them. It is unfortunate that (as far as I know) pharmaceutical experimentation with modification of those drugs generally is prohibited; if research on how to eliminate the negative effects of the drugs were actively encouraged, we might be able to medicate our way to an empathetic and truly benevolent society. The very idea, though, would be anathema to über-conservatives and adherents to religious fascism. And other groups, probably.

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Rest is a means of recovery. Rejuvenation. I will accept that as one of many truths.

Video of what appears to have been a tornado on the south side of Hot Springs confirms that last night’s weather was fierce. Claps of thunder shook the ground here in the Village, twenty miles away, but as far as I know we were spared the worst of the storms. But blue flashes of lightning and growls of thunder kept sleep at bay for an hour or more. Heavy rain beat against the siding and the roof as if the downpour was intent on breaking through to the warm bed. This morning, though, grey skies and water-logged trees are the only evidence I can see of last night’s atmospheric assault. And the temperatures have cooled considerably, I think. I wonder whether high winds, strobe-like bolts of lightning, torrential rain, and earth-shaking thunder cause panic in deer, rabbits, skunks, foxes, and the rest of the forest creatures that find themselves unprotected—at the mercy of unknown forces that might seem to turn the animals’ lives upside down? Some people suggest forest creatures are “accustomed” to chaotic weather and, therefore, are not afraid when it strikes. That attitude, I think, has its roots in both ignorance and emotional avoidance. I could be wrong, of course; I have not done any research on these matters because I do not have the energy at the moment and I do not feel up to learning something I would rather not know. If there was any serious damage last night, I am sure I will see photos before the day is out.

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A retired rabbi will deliver the “insight” service at church next Sunday. He is invited to speak at least two or three times a year, I believe. And I always find his comments interesting. His sense of humor, too, often elicits applause and loud laughter.  I have gotten out of the habit of attending church every Sunday, thanks to the exhaustion that has accompanied my chemotherapy. But that fatigue has diminished quite a bit, making attendance far less of a burden. Next Sunday, mi novia will be visiting her mother so if I got to church, I will go to church alone. I am leaning toward attending; I really enjoy the rabbi’s comments.

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Golf is not necessarily a rich person’s pastime, but neither is it readily available to people of limited means. As far as I know, no one in my immediate family (and possibly no one in my extended family) has been a golfer. While my brothers and sisters and I were growing up, my family had limited means…I think. My siblings (there were five of them) may have had a somewhat different experience, though. The first few may have enjoyed the “good life” to a greater extent than did I, but I rather doubt it. Instead of golf clubs, though, some of my siblings were given shotguns. By the time I was born, that phase had passed. I heard stories of white-wing hunting, but I was never given the opportunity. Still, I think hunting was much more in line with my father’s interests than golf would have been. This assumes I knew my father’s interests, which is not an entirely reasonable assumption. Now that I think about it, I  do not remember ever hearing of my sisters having shotguns or going hunting. Perhaps my family, especially early on, accepted gender stereotypes: toy trucks for boys, dolls for girls. I simply do not remember; my childhood remains—for the most part—a mystery to me. I can imagine that I was switched—a few years after birth—for a child with entirely different experiences and memories than mine. With six children in tow, my mother may have gone to a routine doctor’s appointment; when she was ready to leave, she corralled the children and headed home…but she accidentally left her original youngest child in the waiting room, taking me home instead. All babies look the same, so I can easily imagine she did not notice that I was not part of the brood. None of this explains why I was never given a shotgun. Maybe the people who reared me saw traits in me that argued strenuously against equipping me with a weapon. This is all sheer fantasy. Possibly.

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I learned last night that Amna Nawaz had her children’s names tattooed on her wrists. I also learned (or relearned) that, in December 2019, she became the first Asian American and first Muslim to moderate a United States presidential debate when she co-moderated a Democratic Party presidential debate. She is now co-anchor of the PBS Newshour. I watched last night as she, with obvious enjoyment, interviewed Brittney Griner. Griner is a very tall basketball player who spent time as a Russian prisoner. I do not need to know this, but I know it, nevertheless.

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According to India’s largest hospitality education website, “Sauces are made with a liquid base and are often thinner and more pourable, while gravies are made with the drippings from cooked meats and are thicker and more viscous.” The more you know, the better you feel.

Conflict often puts me in competition with myself. That clash takes the form of a struggle between the sometimes irrational desire for more personal possessions and the intense longing for serenity—austere simplicity. I want the luxury of more or better and I want the tranquility of less. The rivalry between two ends of that emotional spectrum describes a kind of hypocrisy; obligations or responsibilities (i.e., ownership) on one end and freedom (i.e., extreme flexibility) on the other. The emotional needs (if that is what they are) associated with the competing urges are incompatible; satisfying either one makes it impossible to satisfy the other. Attempting to mollify them by accepting both fewer possessions and more complexity achieves nothing but permanent dissatisfaction. Hard choices involve rejecting one or the other: either extreme wealth and the responsibilities and commitments that come with it or the freedoms and spartan existence that accompany poverty. I tend not to make the hard choices, as if I believe compromise is possible. I know better, but do not have the discipline to come to grips with reality.

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I am not worried about humankind. The species either will successful overcome existential challenges or it won’t. If humans are unable to meet those challenges, my hope would be for the species’ end to come from a sudden, catastrophic, instantaneous event. But my hope will not have any influence on how quickly or slowly an extinction might take place. And, of course, there is no assurance that extinction will come. “We” may implement solutions to meet any and all challenges. I will have no influence on any such solutions, either. I expect to be gone long before those solutions are employed. In fact, I imagine all living things—human and otherwise—here today will be long gone, too. How many cycles of life and death, I wonder, will take place between now and our eventual success or failure? My curiosity, I am afraid, will not be satisfied. I am resigned to the fact that some form of human frailty or exhaustion will claim my life well in advance of the answer revealing itself. We’re all in the same boat. Unless, of course, the answer is upon us. I’ll wait as long as I can.

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Who is responsible for all the myths we’re told? Who told each of the stories for the first time? Was there meaning in those stories, or were the stories simply diversions from the drudgery of daily life? Mythology is one of dozens of disciplines that did not receive enough attention from me when I my brain was more receptive to learning. Dozens may be an optimistic number; it might be hundreds, or more.

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I expect to participate in a Zoom call with my siblings, et al in a few hours. By then, the plumbers may have come and gone, along with one or two other contractors who will make the house more suitable to human habitation. Could I really ever prefer a life of asceticism? Or am I a romantic delusionist?

What, exactly, is entertainment? That question came to me during my quick skim this morning of a few web sites of popular news media. I noticed, perhaps for the first time, the  juxtaposition on those sites’ pages between what I call hard news and enjoyment—or amusing diversion. With few exceptions, these news media sites seem to intentionally place hard news and amusing diversions in close proximity, with the former usually featured more prominently. But, in what appears to me purposeful placement, the web page designers put diversions—seemingly designed to mitigate anxieties produced by hard news—in close proximity. Articles and video clips involving sports, cooking, games, art, theater, lifestyle, travel, and other analgesic diversions from the frequent unpleasantness of hard news provide relief. That observation—though it might be simply my opinion—led me to think of entertainment as a cleverly-disguised distraction from the pain of daily life. A protective relief valve that serves to reduce blood pressure, lessen fear and anxiety, and otherwise impact the body’s physical response to the environment. In much the same way many prescription pharmaceuticals function, then, entertainment behaves like a drug. Hmm. I suspect physical and behavioral scientists have long viewed entertainment in the same context. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that my eureka moment was based on something I read or heard long, long ago. But thinking through the idea is quite different from simply being fed the concept. And, of course, my assessment of the concept may well be based on faulty logic. But I enjoy allowing my mind to drag me through the rabbit warren, anyway. I think it’s time to establish a Warren Commission.

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I long to return to a place I’ve never been, a place littered with the bones of futile wars and pointless victories. There, beneath rusted swords thick with dust and empty promises, neither victors nor the vanquished triumphed. Tales unburdened by truth are merely shadows under cover of darkness; invisible in the absence of light. That place, that dark and blameless place, hides the collected mistakes of a thousand generations of mindless warriors. The place is not at fault; it is just a repository where malice goes to die.

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Cat hair on my keyboard is intolerable. Cat hair in my mouth is worse. Cat teeth in my flesh falls somewhere along that spectrum.

Torrential rain and hail—that grew from the size of peas to the size of hefty marbles—interrupted the early May serenity yesterday afternoon. Weather reports from across the nation and around the world reinforced my sense that the climate has lost its patience with us. Mother Nature has become belligerent; angry, surly, and lacking in compassion. She has stopped sending strong warnings. In their place, she has begun unleashing raw, unfettered contempt. The mid-March tornado that tore through large swaths of Hot Springs Village was her final threat. Henceforth, her watchword will be rage. She will exact revenge on humans, of course, but her wrath will extend far beyond humanity. Innocent animals, plants, and the very ground on which we tread will become targets for her boiling animosity. After sending us countless advisories, Mother Nature is no longer willing to give us opportunities to redeem ourselves and the planet we call home. Her foul mood has crossed the threshold between vile and vicious. We do not deserve pity, of course, but we want it badly. We long for the sweet taste of mercy, yet the only tastes in our mouths are the remnants of pungent bitterness. All our opportunities to be treated with tenderness have been squandered.

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Our sun is a tiny speck in an endless universe. Stars one million times the size and brightness of our sun are common. Our sun. As if we own it or control it or otherwise have any influence over its behavior. And if we are infinitely small and powerless, all of existence surrounding us is boundlessly vast. And powerful beyond limits. Even with all the remarkable progress we have made as a species over countless millennia, our advances are utterly insignificant in the broader scheme of all existence. Our pride is embarrassingly laughable. Yet it is so infinitesimally valueless that it does not merit even a grin; much less, laughter.

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In light of the vastness of the scope of a universe so huge and timeless, how is it possible for humans to think we can be anything but unimportant? The only answer is that we delude ourselves. We lie to ourselves and to one another. We tell stories that make us feel larger than we are, ignoring the size of the sky above us.

No matter what I might write this morning, the reader will not believe me. Not because I would tell lies, but because the truth I would tell would simply seem  too improbable to be based in fact. My words would strike the reader as utterly too far-fetched. Only a dim-witted, deeply gullible, overly-trusting, incredibly naive person would buy into stories so obviously contrived. Yet what I might write would be based entirely on truth as I understand it—reality scraped clean and polished with dusty, dry remnants of decayed strips of leather. Truth, you see, is awkward and potentially dangerous. A deep breath at the wrong moment can ruin even the most glorious experience. Whether this might be one such experience is a tale yet untold.

My tale begins as I hear the rusted hinges of the Gates of Hell creak. The pre-dawn darkness, though deep and unsettling, is imbued with an eerie, grey glow. Barely visible light with no discernible source filtered through fog as thick as honey. But the fog does not smell like honey; its odor is more like the rotting corpses of flies, with just a hint of sulfur and jasmine. Corroded flecks of metal, cast off by the slow, grinding movement of metallic hinges frozen for hundreds of years, leave copper-colored dust on the ground; like dried orange peel left to wither long before the collapse of Rome.

There is no point, is there? No matter how pure, the truth is unbelievable. I might as well claim to write the autobiography of Jesus or the a book entitled The Life and Times of Socrates, as Told to His Great-Grandfather’s Oldest Aunt. But those, too, are true. They arose from memories contained within the fragments of molecules floating freely through space and time. Facts are subject to manipulation when tiny pieces of the detritus of the universe as it once was collide with shavings from the rubble of what might yet be. These concepts are difficult to fully comprehend, but understanding them is vital to a complete appreciation of truth in all its forms. But, no, you aren’t buying it. This, to you, is merely whimsy. It is irrelevant to “real” experience. As if experience is ever “real.” We manufacture reality from shreds of incomplete thought, never accepting for even a tiny slice of a miniscule component of time that the existence we build is even remotely possible. Have we ever considered that the reality we collectively experience is merely an artificial manifestation of the way blocks of paraffin interact with the atmosphere of Planet Earth? Every single thing we see, think, feel, touch, smell, taste, hear, or otherwise experience could be the product of our own engagement (as chunks of paraffin) with the world around us as we willfully exchange wax for dreams. We believe we can light candles and watch them burn. In fact, though, we are those candles. We unknowingly play a hideous joke on ourselves, not realizing that we mock each other for being so thoroughly taken in by an imaginary universe. What fools!

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I should not have answered the phone late yesterday afternoon, especially given that I could tell it was the oncologist’s office. Magnesium remains low. Potassium is high. “Come on in on Monday.”  I ran out of magnesium pills, but the APRN called in a new prescription; maybe I can pick them up today? Tricked by the universe again.

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If my head were clear earlier in the day, I would visit a pastry shop/bakery to buy sausage rolls. Instead, I have to think what I can eat, instead. Old eggs? Very old eggs? Can eating old eggs make a person sick? Can eating old eggs lead to a person’s death? Put another way (from an ancient memory of mine), is it possible to “die of old eggs?” Soylent green; it’s what’s for breakfast.

The incessant sound of water flowing through the downspout just outside my study grates on my already frayed nerves. Big black crows try to drown the noise with their loud squawks. But to no avail. Like me, the birds seem to be losing patience with the strident commotion. I can imagine, at any moment, the window panes shattering in response to the crush of a murder of birds smashing into the glass. But the birds almost certainly understand—as do I—that breaking the windows’ glass would have no effect on the unrelenting pandemonium caused by flowing water at war with unyielding aluminum. The temporary disruption would only make matters worse. Such chaos might send the crows into a frenzied rage. And I would follow in the paths of their massive wings. Police cars, their sirens blaring and their occupants waving guns, would converge in front of my house. Immediately behind them, a stream of veterinary ambulances would arrive to tend to injured birds. And a team of roofers would soon follow, tasked with removing gutters and downspouts, with the objective of restoring quiet to the cacophony. Depending on how disciplined—or undisciplined—the police officers might be, my life could be hanging on by a thread, thanks to the cops’ unrelenting discharge of their weapons in my direction. Downspouts can be dangerous. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

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While I was experiencing my downspout-inspired mental meltdown, the volume of water flowing through the downspouts dropped considerably, reducing the insufferable noise to tolerable levels. Gazing out at the trees, I wonder just how much water their leaves and branches must hold at this very moment. Though I see no obvious signs of strain, I suspect the branches and twigs and clusters of leaves are under an enormous level of stress. The weight of rainwater must be almost too much for the trees to hold. At any moment, the entire forest could collapse under the load. Squirrels and birds and all manner of other tree-dependent creatures could be crushed under the weight of water-logged leaves and branches. Moments like these cause me to consider the potential benefits of moving to prairies or deserts or other less lethal environments. But everyplace has its challenges. Only the emptiness of space has real appeal. Yet the absence of oxygen and the danger of being struck by asteroids argues against space as a retirement destination.

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Halibut ceviche holds enormous appeal to me. The same is true of shrimp ceviche, tilapia ceviche, and various other kinds of seafood ceviche. “Cooking” various types of seafood in lime juice (that contains diced jalapeños, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cilantro, and such) delivers a wonderful flavor that pleases my palate. Coupled with a nice New Zealand cabernet sauvignon, ceviche can transform a day from adequate to astonishing. I have not had ceviche in far too long. It it time to live again.

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My visit to my oncologist yesterday was generally positive. In addition to getting lab work done, I was infused with a magical elixir that may or may not enjoy success in killing or otherwise keeping at bay cancer cells. And I got the news that I no longer (for now, at least) have to swallow two huge bricks of magnesium every morning. And I do not have to have magnesium in liquid form pumped into my body any longer (for now, at least). And no more need (now, anyway) for rather painful injections of some sort of deadly poison that has a side-effect of keeping my supply of healthy red-blood-cells sufficiently high. But I still have to return next Thursday for more labs to verify the legitimacy of eliminating drugs and drug-like poisons from my body. Hallelujah. For now, at any rate. I do not want to get too enthusiastic, too early.

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I am hungry, again. It’s almost 8:30…almost too late for food. I’ll hurry, though, to avoid fasting for too many hours.

What a surprise it would be if the grey sky suddenly changed from vapor and emptiness into thick sheets of jagged glass and semi-transparent plastic. Watching pieces of the sky crash down, smashing trees into splinters, would be an experience unlike any I have had before. I might actually enjoy watching it, if I were far enough from the action to avoid being torn to bits by sharp fragments. I might be afraid, though. How quickly can one erase fear and replace it with curiosity? Can it be done on command? You tell me; I think you’ve witnessed such magic.

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Another visit to the oncologist today. I am tired of making the trip to see her. I wonder whether, now that I have finished a full course of chemo treatment, I might survive comfortably for a year or more without subjecting myself to immunotherapy “treatments” that offer no guarantees—just hope that may or may not be fully justified. Selfishness, though, is not a sufficiently powerful reason to ignore the doctor’s advice. And it is not the sort of behavior that should be forced upon others, either; especially others who are emotionally invested in a hopeful, positive outcome. Too much sleep, sometimes, is not enough.

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I did not sleep well last night. I think I drifted off to sleep sometime after midnight, roughly two hours after I went to bed. But I woke shortly thereafter and was up and down for much of the rest of the night. Sleep eluded me for most of that time. My mind was occupied with matters I would rather ignore; but my obligations are such that I would be unable to erase them from my thoughts. Damn! When I am awake for so much of the night, my mood becomes surly and generally unpleasant; I cannot stand being around myself when I reach that condition. Negativity and unchecked anger flood my brain. I am immune to reason then. I curse the world around me and blame myself for it. Sometimes I manufacture stories to describe my attitudes in those moments. Describing my experience as akin to feeling corrosive acid flowing through my veins and arteries, with periodic geysers erupting through blood-soaked holes in my skin would be inadequate. Inadequate, at least, to capture the rage I feel. Bah!

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One does not “wake” from a sleepless night, though dreamlike experiences may make one feel as if brief periods of sleep interrupted hours of wakefulness. Dreamlike experiences, though, are not the same as dreams. They mimic dreams to the extent that reality is temporarily paused while the “dreams” take place. But one can feel perspiration-soaked sheets during the pause. And the “dreamer” feels confined by the “dream.” Yet he knows he is in a state of deeply troubling semi-consciousness from which there is no reliable escape—only when the the terror threatens to cut off oxygen to the brain is a brief respite possible. Thrashing wildly, in an effort to avoid the extreme discomfort of sheets wet with sweat, one crashes into solid barriers that do not exist except in the far reaches of the mind. When, finally, one emerges fully awake from the depths of Hell, the deepest form of fatigue sets in. Exhaustion so powerful one willingly would accept death as an alternative experience just to escape the intensity of the profound weariness. Recovering from such a sleepless night can take a week or more. Up to a month—or even longer—if the experience was especially cruel; the most severe incidents can transform the mental breakdown into life-threatening physical damage to the body.

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Every single newspaper article, each and every online news story, all opinion pieces, every radio station’s news readers, and grave-faced television anchors, regardless of channel, carry the same themes. Hopelessness. A bleak future. The collapse of civil society. No way out. If today is bad, tomorrow will be a thousand times worse. And tomorrow will pale in comparison to the day after. Mass-suicide by self-immolation will be the least painful escape from what promises to be the most excruciating experience in all of human history. There is no “good news;” only brief moments in which absolute terror pauses just long enough to enable us to exact unthinkable pain on the deserving throng. We train to inflict the greatest experience of utter despair—and to prolong the ordeal to deliver the maximum measure of agony. Brutality becomes a yardstick; hatred an emotional “high.” All in the name of humanity.

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I could sleep for days, I think, if I could just clear my mind. That would be such a refreshing way to spend the better part of a week. Asleep. My brain functioning only as necessary to keep me reasonably healthy and reliably alive.

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When I return to read this post, will I feel embarrassed by my raw negativity? If, when I return, I feel like I do now, the answer will be clear: No.

Dangerously powerful—or powerfully dangerous—people have the capacity to spread misery worldwide. Rather than acting early to derail the damage those individuals may inflict, though, society tends to take an attitude of “wait and see.” Our failure to take action early can be based on any number of things. Fear of reprisal may deter us. Conflicting thoughts about the morality of preemptive actions might restrain us. Simply realizing that some forms of preemption may be treated as criminal and/or immoral acts could stop us from acting early enough to prevent the possibility of chaos and carnage. No matter the reasons, delay can make avoiding potential misery impossible. Yet preemptive actions taken in the absence of overwhelming evidence of the need to act can lead to equally awful horrors. Evidence, though, no matter how overwhelmingly strong, is not proof—witnessing a man pointing a gun at someone may be evidence of aggression, but viewing that scene does not prove the gun-wielding man will pull the trigger. Political assassinations intended to prevent dictatorships can have unintended consequences far worse than the problems they were intended to solve. Sometimes, though, the risk of doing nothing may be far greater than the risk of taking action. But unexpected outcomes of actions are impossible to anticipate. Taking calculated risks has the potential to exacerbate already bad circumstances, but failing to take them can be worse. Life is an exercise in assumptions and risks and irrevocable actions. Certainty is rarely achievable. We either forge ahead or we don’t. The consequences of either action or inaction will be what they will be.

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I do not know whether my occasional memories of green grape pie are triggered by a specific odor or sound or circumstance. I know only that I have a very distinct memory of my mother serving me a piece of green grape pie. The taste of the grapes combined sweetness and tartness. The memory is the only one I have of that pie. I must have been very young, perhaps as young as four or five; odd that the memory corresponds in my mind with an image of myself as a little boy.

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Time, paused for a while this morning, has recovered from its temporary stillness. Somehow, the clock now asserts that the 9 o’clock hour is here. That could mean only one thing: I need to eat something to avoid starvation.

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I know the trees outside my window are surrounded by fog—not because I can see the fog, but because the trees’ images in my eyes are vague and dreamlike. Invisible vapor conceals parts of what otherwise would be a crisp vision, leaving only that which the fog is willing to reveal.  Except for the relative brightness of the morning behind the low ceiling of the sky, the picture before me could be a model for a midnight scene in a horror film. Behind wisps of fog barely visible among the highest reaches of the tallest trees, pine needles appear dull, almost sage grey. The setting could suit all sorts of tantalizing stories. But, instead, the view is just one monotonous aspect of a dreary, repetitive tale. A cat sitting on my desk, peering out the windows, imagining life beyond the walls of the house that is her permanent prison. An empty glass cup in front of me, dried espresso clinging to its inside surfaces. The scene changes in such miniscule ways that it seems constant from day to day. The piles of envelopes and papers are not the same from week to week, but they repeat the same stories. An automatic payment was made to this utility or that. A hospital seeks my invaluable input in the form of a lengthy questionnaire. Credit card receipts stare at me accusingly, reminders of money that would have better gone unspent. An endless cycle of minor variations on a theme by paper pushers invading my house, my study, my life. And the fog thickens; the view outside now look like a mundane still life behind a sheet of dull grey and off-white paraffin. More and more and more of the same. A road trip—circling through Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas—might cure the incessant sameness. Monstrous expanses of prairies and deserts, fields of maturing grain, skies so wide they make imagining an endless universe easy. One day. If ever the treatments are judged to have worked or to be pointless exercises in wasted time. Suddenly, at 8:22, the fog lifts. Leaves brighten. The segments of the sky visible behind the trees become brilliant blue.

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Soon, the plumber should arrive to take care of a few annoyances. It only took me two years to force myself to find someone. I left a message for a plumber a couple of weeks ago; no return call to date. But yesterday, my call was picked up on the second ring. If all goes according to the promise, a plumber will be here soon. And the day may brighten just a little.

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And so it goes. Another day in another week in the midst of a month as the Earth turns toward what we have collectively decided to call mid-year, more or less.

Somewhere between artist and artisan, value and worth begin to take on different meanings and different forms. Those forms and meanings vary, depending on perspective, but regardless of their differences, they share one distinct commonality: judgment. The creative output of artists is, generally speaking, valued more highly than the work of artisans. Yet a precise and reliable way to measure whether a person is an artist or an artisan does not exist, as far as I know. The clarity of the spectrum upon which both concepts rest is naturally muddled. Absent the blur, a defining point that differentiates one from the other would be easy to see. But, even under a perfectly focused microscope, the mental and visual images of the two can be hazy, running together like watercolors on a soaking wet substrate.  We rely on our eyes and our minds to create sharpness where none exists. We trick ourselves into seeing what we want to see—or what we expect to see. We assign value in circumstances in which value—in a traditional, monetized sense—is irrelevant. And we know it. But we continue to make an attempt to justify the mistake. We elevate opinion to fact…belief to truth. The moment we realize reality depends on context is the point at which we learn vision is unique to the specific sets of eyes through which each of us sees the world.

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I haven’t had a Bloody Mary in a very long time. Nor have I consumed a Screwdriver in quite some time. Those celebratory mixed drinks punctuated special occasions—usually brunch—in my younger years; years when adulthood was still a novelty. Irish Coffee, too, was a much-appreciated specialty drink, though later in the day, for some reason. There were others, of course. Whiskey Sours. Gin Gimlets. Many, many more. Over time, the efforts involved in making the drinks—and cleaning up the bar-ware afterward—began to feel like work. Even though bartenders often did not live up to my expectations, it became much easier to let them do the work; quality took a back seat to convenience. But bar drinks represent a frivolous waste of money; even so, I sometimes allow myself to pretend I enjoy throwing away money unnecessarily. Not often, though. I have retained my miserliness into my early seventies. Nowadays, though, I tend to prefer a nice, dry cabernet sauvignon (or a New Zealand sauvignon blanc). Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic also tends to please my taste buds. But not this early in the morning. Just the thought of the stuff is beginning to make me feel a little queasy.

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Plenty for now.

If Calypso had written complex stories—cobbled together from fragments of confusing and deeply disturbing dreams—they would have only reinforced beliefs held by some people that his mental state was, charitably, unstable. But “if” suggests Calypso had a clear choice. He did not. He was compelled, by the voices that spoke to him in those bizarre dreams, to document the stories that emerged from clusters of those nocturnal experiences. Calypso learned long ago he could not choose what to write; his fingers were driven by those irrepressible voices to attack the keyboard with a vengeance. Scenes from his dreams, often seeming utterly unrelated to one another, required him to imagine ways of connecting them so his stories might make at least a shred of sense. But only Calypso could make sense of the links between dream sequences. Everyone else who read or heard the convoluted, often nonsensical, stories took them as simply more evidence of his madness. When Calypso disappeared, leaving a lengthy written explanation for his reasons for leaving and suggesting he might one day return, his departure added to the assumed evidence of his neurosis or psychosis or whatever it was that caused him to behave so strangely. But his behavior really was not strange; the oddity was  in his stories. People often assumed his behavior was influenced by what he wrote, but that was not the case. In fact, it was quite the opposite; no one, though, could make sense of that concept—and that remains true today.

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Like Calypso, my writing often combines fiction with reality, making almost impossible a clear understanding of its meaning, if indeed it has meaning. Frequently, I write in a style I call stream of semi-consciousness, threading observable circumstances in between vague, dream-like veils that may be entirely fictitious or based in altered reality. Or, perhaps, I am making this up. Maybe I am writing with the objective of confusing the reader into believing I am the manifestation of Calypso. It could be something completely different, of course, but there is no point now in trying to explain; doubts already have been sewn into readers’ minds.

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Sleep remains far more attractive to me than I would like. Though I feel much better than I have in the past three months or so, I have been unable to shake being tired much of the time. Mi novia insists I need to listen to my body, which she says is telling me I need recuperative sleep to recover from the beating my body has taken from chemotherapy drugs and related poisons. On one hand, I find sleep quite pleasant (except when invaded by deeply troubling dreams), but on the other I feel I am sleeping a significant part of my life away. Never before have I slept so many hours every night, only to follow the next day with hours-long naps interrupted by brief periods of being awake. It may be improving, though. My periods of wakefulness may be getting longer.

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We went to dinner last night with a small group from church. Mi novia brought a to-go box home with her; she said I should have the leftovers for breakfast today. And I may well do that. But watermelon sounds more appealing to me right now. If I were more energetic, I might take the whole (but quite small) melon out of the refrigerator and cut it into small, bite-sized chunks. Alas, I am not especially energetic. So I may nuke some of the leftovers; I have enough energy to do that, I think. And, then, I will get dressed. For today, for the first time in a good while, I will go to church. The program today, which will be delivered by a member of the congregation, will be celebration (and warning, I suspect, of what might happen if we continue to ignore Mother Earth) about Earth Day.

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Once a person reaches age 70, he or she should be provided with round-the-clock servants. Said servants could be provided to geezers as part of a national service program, in which youths would serve for a period of three years to repay in part their debts for being born and reared. These kids would not be slaves, of course; they would simply be assistants and helpers. Assuming a person lives to age 91, he or she could provide service opportunities to seven young people during the receipt of service. Quite a good idea, I think. It might require us to work out a few kinks, but nothing is simple, is it?

A few months ago I wrote a poem I entitled Negative Space. Immediately, the morning i wrote it, I posted it here, on this blog. I commented about it, giving myself a combination of accolades and criticisms. Until this morning, I doubt I gave the poem nor the post in which it was embedded another thought after that day last August. I came across the poem while searching for a phrase entirely unrelated to it.  That sort of thing happens with a degree of frequency; while searching for a word or phrase I think I might have used in an earlier blog post, I get sidetracked. Something else I wrote becomes the “shiny object” that draws my attention away from my original query. The experience is not limited to searches of my own writing; a post on Facebook or an article on BBC.com or extracts of a paragraph included in a marketing email I receive that trigger the same sort of diversion. Sometimes, I think it’s my curiosity run amok; other times, I attribute the distraction to flaws in my thought processes. The reality probably includes a bit of both, along with an innate tendency to lose focus. That having been said, I remember a psychology graduate student telling my mother, after the student administered a series of psychological measurements to me, that I had an extraordinary ability to maintain my focus while problem-solving. Apparently, either he was wrong about me or that ability did not survive my maturation.  I vaguely remember that the experience took place when I was in my early teens, when I spent a summer in Austin with my mother while she took  post-graduate course at the University of Texas. I recall very little else from that summer…or most other summers of my youth. More evidence of my uncanny tendency to erase huge swaths of time and experience from my memory. Perhaps my brain is inhabited by microorganisms that feed on physical components of memory—when those creatures consume slivers of my memory, those memories transform into the organisms’ own recollections. Imagine a tiny parasite remembering an outing with my/its friends as we rode bicycles across a bridge in Corpus Christi; the poor beast probably would be convinced he was hallucinating.  Back to the poem: I believe these two mid-poem stanzas reveal much about what we know—and don’t—about life:

Experience often is defined by negative space.
Love by its lack, truth by its omission,
interest where there is none, knowledge by its dearth,
and certainty by decisions left unmade.

The whole of one’s life unlived is a study in negative space.
Romantic relationships that could have been, but were not.
The unmade bed, the garden not planted, the journey not made,
children not conceived, and job offers never received.
What could have been, but was not, is as important
as what was allowed but should have been prevented.

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Curiosity is an attribute I value. But only by encouraging it in oneself—grooming it until it becomes almost an obsession—does it reach its potential. That obsession is missing in me, as I’ve mentioned many times before. I lose interest or, more likely, something else draws my attention with more strength. I let the original curiosity freeze in time; not withering, but not blossoming, either. I wonder whether that process is driven by fear that I will never be able to fully understand the objects of my curiosity…better to stop cultivating interest, than to learn I do not have the capacity to fully comprehend them. Or laziness; unwilling to invest the energy in something whose return on investment may be deeply disappointing. That process may be what keeps me from pursuing writing more seriously. Silently asking myself “what if” my creativity is strong at the outset, but plunges as I forge ahead. Fear of realizing one’s own potential inadequacy is more powerful than others’ critical judgments, I think. But, then, I have never been willing to explore the idea as deeply as would be necessary to truly understand whether it is valid. Worth thinking about, within reason.

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Mi novia and I continue watching an episode or two at a time of Killing Eve. With the exception of the occasional truly deviant episode, the program is fascinating. Last night we watched one of those deviant episodes. I hope the remainder of season 4 is more engaging. I would hate to despise the program after investing so much interest in it.

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Today is Saturday. But it could be any other day of the week and it would matter just as much.

The serenity and silence of a landscape free of all but a tiny tribe of select people. Free, too, of the gossip and cluttered, useless thoughts that seem to sustain human interactions. This quiet, calm, soothing, absolutely tranquil place probably exists only in my mind. But there was a time, when the population of the planet was an infinitesimal fraction of what it is today. When peace prevailed. Human voices were soft, woven into a tapestry of sound that clothed the creatures that roamed Earth with a level of comfort that has long since been lost. Violence between predator and prey interrupted the harmony of life in those times, but that regular brutality provided a natural pause between periods of acute satisfaction—just as death concluded life in an eternal cycle that unendingly refreshed the meaning of experience. Noise has since replaced sound. Growling, hissing masses of selfish, demanding people competing for limited space have replaced little bands of nomadic friends who seek to do no more than put distance between themselves and chaotic madness. Worsening friction has set fire to the edges of what we generously call civilization. Heat, in the form of glowing veins of unquenchable embers beneath our feet, has begun to move from the edges to the center. Fables tell us the phoenix eventually will rise from the ashes, renewing all we have carelessly burned. But the lessons of fables are for naught in the absence of morality.

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Without practical execution, philosophy is wasted. But we take our philosophies too seriously, assuming the sudden emergence from our brains of meaningful revelations is relevant and educational. Time that perhaps should be spent questioning our revelations often is instead spent justifying their legitimacy.

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If I had absolute control over the world, I would be eating tacos right now.

On August 1, 1966, 25-year-old Charles Whitman killed his mother and his wife with knives, then made his way to the University of Texas Tower in Austin, Texas, where he shot and killed three people inside the building. In the space of 96 minutes, he murdered those three people, then killed an additional eleven people, shooting from the Tower deck, and wounded 31 others. One of the injured victims died 35 years later of wounds received that day. Whitman was shot and killed by two Austin police officers, who made their way into and up the Tower. Though an autopsy on Whitman, and subsequent exploratory commission, did not reach a universally-agreed conclusion, evidence suggested a brain tumor pressing against his amygdala may have contributed to Whitman’s actions.  I remember hearing about Whitman’s murder spree as it was taking place. As I recall, one of my sisters, who was attending the University of Texas at the time, was inside the nearby undergraduate library at the time; no one was permitted to leave during Whitman’s rampage. I remember it took what may have been hours from the time my family (we were in Corpus Christi at the time) first heard about the chaos until we were able to talk to my sister by telephone and learn that she was safe. Those grueling hours were among the slowest I have ever experienced.

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Four years later, on August 3, 1970, Hurricane Celia slammed into Corpus Christi. The storm intensified, reaching Category 4 before making landfall that afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. Gusts of 161 miles per hour were recorded by the National Weather Service in Corpus Christi. Maximum gusts of 180 miles per hour were estimated  in nearby Robstown and Aransas Pass. My parents’ house was badly damaged by Celia. The roof was ripped off the house and windows were shattered. When the house began to suffer the worst of the storm, we gathered in a hallway for safety. The wind thrust the pull-down attic stairs in the hallway downward, hitting my eldest sister in the head; she was not badly injured, but I was terrified. I remember screaming at my father, who was surveying damage during the height of the storm, to come back into the hallway and get underneath a mattress we had pulled from an adjacent bedroom. That experience revealed to me that I was susceptible to panic; bravery has never been my strong suit. When the worst of the storm passed, we ventured outside, because the house was uninhabitable. My family went looking for a place to spend the night. We were turned away from an elementary school, where the custodian and his friends/family were taking shelter. We ended up spending the night on the wet pews of a Methodist church.  My father and two of my brothers sold the remains of my parents’ house as scrap.  My memories of the weeks and months after the storm are vague. For a few days, the family split up and stayed with various neighbors. My parents then—sometime later—rented a house just a couple of doors down from the one destroyed by the hurricane.  Within a year or two (I just cannot recall details), they had another house built on the site of the one the hurricane had reduced to rubble. The old house, probably built in the 1940s, was unairconditioned and otherwise rather uncomfortable. The new one was small, but modern and air-tight. I left Corpus Christi in late May 1972, immediately after high school graduation, to pursue my college career at the University of Texas at Austin. That period of my life is little more than a blur. I was shy and lacked social skills. But one memory is clear: I periodically bought carne guisada tacos from a little taqueria on 26th Street. They were my special treat to myself. That, and from Hansel & Gretel restaurant, a pastrami on rye sandwiches slathered with spicy German mustard and washed down with a mug of dark beer.

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I wonder why these memories forced themselves to the surface this morning? It’s not August…there’s no obvious reason they should pop up at this moment. But there they are. And, now, I think I’ll join several men of my church for their regular weekly Thursday breakfast, something I have not done in months and months. I must be improving. Still not at 100%, not by far, but making progress.

According to a 1996 article by Mills, Day, and Parkes in Volume 17, number 3 in the European Journal of Physics, some early hourglasses used silica sand as the granular material to measure time, but more commonly “the material used in most bulbs was powdered marble, tin/lead oxide, or pulverized, burnt eggshell.” My memory tells me the hourglasses I have seen must have used something much finer than silica sand. I recall thinking—as I watched an hourglass measure time—the “grains of sand” inside the glass bulbs were much smaller than even the finest sands I have seen on beaches and sand dunes. Physics contributes to everything we experience in every aspects of our lives, but most of us give that branch of science that that deals with matter, energy, motion, and force no more than a rare, passing thought. Most people, it seems to me, tend to avoid discussions of physics because of the topic’s complexities and mysteries. But, in reality, we avoid the subject because we are too lazy to try to understand. At least that describes me. I want to know, but I do not want to go through the mentally laborious process of learning. That process may involve just two primary actions—observation and thought—but it seems far too sophisticated and troublesome for a limited payout. Yet I suspect there comes a time during the learning process when one experiences an AHA! moment that far exceeds one’s expectations of value. I imagine that moment is a revelation of immense proportions, as if one suddenly understands all there is to know about TRUTH and BEAUTY and LIFE and EXISTENCE and…on and on.

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The beauty of a meadow of colorful wildflowers is not sufficiently appealing to overcome our fears, as we watch incoming ballistic missiles destroy buildings and lives all around us. Somehow, though, we convince ourselves that the terror and wanton destruction caused by missiles—both “theirs” and “ours”—is a reasonable price to pay in an attempt to avoid the horrors of defeat. We convince ourselves—or allow others to convince us—that whatever awaits us on the other side of our defeat is far worse than the miseries of war. Perhaps it is. But we cannot compare the aggression of war with pacificism; they cannot exist at the same time, in the same moment. So we assume knowledge on the basis of ignorance.

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One month devoted to writing a semi-autobiographical work of historical science fiction. Or an unauthorized personal memoir of someone who died during the fifth century of the extended Saturnalian Wars—the conflict that will one day take place in the space between the moons of the Alpha Centauri triplets.  That is the problem, I think. Weaving truth and artificial memories into something that can resist the stain of lies is almost impossible. Science fiction must be realistic to be believable; it must be based on dreams or fantasies so accurate that the experiences are closer to memories than to delusions. But the same is true of real-world fiction. If I write about a fictional woman who becomes Prime Minister of Canada, she must have a reasonable possibility of becoming real. For the story to feel believable, it must be capable of altering the social and political landscapes of Canada, transforming a tale into a CCTV recording than can be replayed and edited, thereby altering reality as the story unfolds. Imagine a best-selling author whose novels bend factual experiences to reflect the ways his imagination sees the world. No, this is not science fiction; it is a psychological thriller based on one man controlling the content of the “news” so that his views of world events are absorbed as “truth” by audiences worldwide. I do not even like to write science fiction. I used to read it, on occasion, but no longer. Today, I merge fantasy with facts, creating a blended universe in my head. I may never write about it, but I know it is there, a story waiting to be told. A real story. A story with themes and messages and a riveting series of plots and subplots that conspire to control the reader’s mind. But I do not write that story. I keep it hidden, waiting for the right time and the right opportunity. This is all bullshit, by the way. That, too, is a problem. Because the bones of the boy who cried wolf can crack and splinter, while powerful canine jaws crush his writhing body.

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Blue skies. Warming temperatures. A potentially lovely day…disguised to mask the veil of pollen that will coat the lungs and make breathing an impossible dream.

Ideas fit quite well inside one’s brain, especially when nestled comfortably against rabbit-fur-soft dreams and fantasies and illusions. When those very same snug and serene ideas slam against the coarse realities of action, though, illusions leave contusions. Actions have sharp edges that can scrape against creativity’s soft, smooth lining. leaving bruises and scabs and—eventually—scars. Life, in  general, is like that. The slightest movement of an eagle’s delicate, lacy feathers enable the raptor to steer through the air with stunning precision. Yet even while the bird engages in airborne ballet, its talons transform its prey—a frightened ball of trembling fur—into blood-soaked carnage. The earth is a rough, brutal place. Humans have taught ourselves to judge the pain and gore of predator-versus-prey terrifying and offensive; as if pain has no rightful place on the planet. Pain is a natural physical and mental experience; its avoidance…an outgrowth of fear…is just as natural. But the complexities of the cycles of life are far too tangled for our primitive minds to fully grasp. We are not far removed from being terrorized by darkness and the oceans. If our species were to survive for another thousand millennia, we might begin to comprehend a tiny fraction of what we do not—and never will—know. By then, we would have lost almost everything we once knew, though, and would have to start over. Clever ideas, battered by forgotten experiences, repeated in a perpetually unsatisfactory cycle. Will we continue to stare, in morbid fascination, as the eagle tears at the flesh of her freshly-incapacitated and soon-to-be dead prey? We do not want to think about these realities. The only other option is ignorance. And we go on making competing choices. Ad infinitum.

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A conflict exists between certain ideas involving “moral behavior.” The conflict makes no sense to me. Some people find the concept of hiring a maid or a housekeeper offensive, as if the act of engaging the services of a person to clean one’s house is equivalent to judging the person so engaged to be inferior to the person who makes the engagement. Why is that idea offensive? Is the idea of engaging an automobile mechanic to repair one’s car equally offensive? I see the two situations as quite similar. Both the service providers (I’ll call them contractors) bring certain skills to circumstances requiring those skills. Why would one be judgmental in hiring a maid, but not as judgmental in hiring a mechanic? Consider the tutor who is contracted to help a parent’s child better understand mathematical theories. By engaging that contractor, is the parent judging the teacher to be inferior?  Of course, I realize the attitude the person hiring the contractor may vary from one type of contractor to another; but why would we differentiate between them? Is the work of a maid/housekeeper any less valuable than the work of a tutor or auto mechanic? Perhaps. If one defines Value as the ratio of Function to Cost, an argument might be made that certain functions have more value, based on what we are required to pay to acquire those functions. But isn’t our willingness to pay more (or less) a matter of judgment? Philosophies often are used to justify thought processes. And value judgments. Is there a legitimate way to remove judgment from the equation? Maybe. Maybe not. Hard to say, without introducing morality into the equation. Value. Morality. Cost. Function. Thinking too hard about such stuff can cause one’s brain to fracture into a million misshaped slivers.

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Time for another fistful of pills. And a Boost ( much to my chagrin). And whatever else I can convince myself is appealing. A cinnamon roll sounds especially appealing. Unfortunately, there are no cinnamon rolls in the house. A damn shame. A damn CRYING shame. I could go for my version of congee, too. But at least one of the ingredients is missing. Ach. I feel a bit better than has been the case of late, but I am tired. Sleepy. I got up too early or went to bed too early or otherwise broke my circadian rhythm into fragments; actually, I shattered it into pieces so small I may find it impossible to put it back together again. But sleeping is becoming more appealing with each passing day. I still cannot control my dreams, but I may keep trying.

The only people with whom I was familiar—from my dream last night—are all dead. My late sister, my late brother, and my mother and father. The dream—the setting, its strange circumstances, and the obvious (to me) messages it contained—confirmed for me that dreams do have meaning. Their meanings may involve difficult-to-unravel labyrinthine complexities, but their significance is nonetheless so utterly obvious that missing them must be intentional. Even the most bizarre such dream situations contain messages that are impossible to overlook in the absence of a real, concerted effort to lock them. Their content is so clear that, even hidden behind a cloudy veil of sleep and confusion, they cannot be dismissed as the random firing of neural impulses. But, then, I suppose it is possible that the obviousness of a dream’s meaning is entirely accidental. Meaning is, after all, the assumed assignment of interpretation. The assumption that an interpretation was assigned might be misguided. Yet the clarity of the assumption, sometimes, is so crystal clear and precise that believing meaning to be accidental or random is beyond reason. The precision of the outcomes of evolution is one such clearly non-accidental circumstance. Yet evidence aggressively asserts otherwise. All arguments are guided by perspectives that may or may not be valid. Whether they are, or not, any or all conclusions reached from those arguments may be completely nonsensical, implausible, and wasteful of mental energy. I try to derail my thoughts about the meaning of my dream with logic and philosophy, but those efforts fail. Yet I keep trying, in the hope that I will succeed in deflecting ideas from lodging in my brain. And what’s the point in that?

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Either I forgot or I blocked the thought; I have an early appointment with my cardiologist’s nurse this morning. I had wished for a nearly healthcare-free week—with just one appointment to see my oncologist—but that apparently was too much to hope for. Looking in the mirror is not enough to remind me of my deterioration. The calendar, too, reminds me that I continue aging at what now seems like an accelerating rate. Do we look ‘in” the mirror or do we look “at” it? If we look “in” it, what do we see? Does the reflection reveal who is behind the glass when we peer “in” it?  When we look “at” it, is the image we see more superficial than the one we see when we look “in” it? I have reached the conclusion that the image I see “on” the mirror is more physically appealing than the one the mirror sees when it looks back at me. The mirror sees me as I am; I see the reverse image when I peer at the mirror. The flaws are doctored by the reflection, though they are not corrected. They simply hide behind reality, although what I call vitreous surgery is inadequate to conceal the grave surface flaws. And the blemishes and ideological deformities and defects underneath are clear, if one looks into the eyes—the watery depths where secrets taunt and tease.

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Putting it off is pointless. I must ready myself for my visit to the cardiologist’s office. Or, I could just stay home. “Sorry, I forgot my cardiovascular system has no interest in being analyzed by you and your kind.” No, I have to do it. The medical-industrial complex might charge me for a non-visit. And we can’t have that now, can we?

I became consciously familiar with the musical group, The Killers, only two or three years ago, but I suspect I had heard of and from them long before that. The band became known to a worldwide audience as early as 2004 (I think it was formed in 2001). The group’s song that originally caught my attention—and which I grew to appreciate very much for its tune and its story-based lyrics—is entitled Quiet Town. Two versions of the tune are embedded below: the first one is a recorded studio version with electrical guitars, etc.; the second one is an acoustic version presented on television on CBS This Morning‘s Saturday Sessions a few years ago. Both versions are poignant and mournful, each with its own distinct personality.

Since first hearing Quiet Town on Sirius XM in my car, I have listened to several other tunes by The Killers. Though Quiet Town is my favorite from the group (of those I have heard so far, anyway), I appreciate a number of their tunes. Lyrics written to reflect a compelling story mean far more to me than those that seem to arise from meaningless rhymes.  And thus begins my Sunday morning.

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Though my mostly-solitary-confinement is largely self-imposed, it nonetheless sometimes feels less like rehabilitation and more like punishment imposed by a spiteful world. I do not wear a mask on those rare occasions when in public places, but I behave like a leper. More accurately, I imagine, I must seem like a nervous visitor to the fringes of a leper colony. Until my white blood cell count dips into the “normal” range and stays there for a while, I think my sense of being at elevated risk for exposure to potentially deadly disease will remain with me. My mental/emotional discomfort tends to be greater when in the presence of dense groups of people (which is not necessarily—but often is—the same as groups of dense people); though I understand exposure to a single virus or bacterium can be just as dangerous. Yet I sometimes take the risk, making the irrational argument to myself that I have some degree of physical control of exposure, simply by adding a few inches of space between other people and me.  Emotions have the capacity to overwhelm one’s intellect, which causes me to question the extent to which intelligence is a strength and emotion is a weakness…or vice versa.

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At what point do miniscule changes in color transform something from one color to another? The gradients between colors are too small to allow us to see that differential. Black is dark white. White is light black. Blue and yellow are simply blatant misrepresentations of green; but if they were more nuanced, they might be the same color. Do the cones in our eyes limit colors we can see, or is color an external characteristic that owes its existence to features of light? Or something else? Why is grey so soothing in certain contexts but so depressing in others? Why, in the absence of sight, are the senses of smell and hearing and touch amplified? Or are they really amplified? Is it, instead, that they are simply more readily noticed without the distractions caused by light? Why does the stroke of another person’s hand on my face feel different from the way my own hand feels? We ask all of these questions, and more, from the earliest moments of our ability to use language, but we forget both the answers and their meaning. Simply livings robs us of awe. But we’d have it no other way.

The Times of London. That’s what I’ve called it for as long as I can remember. That is the title that appears in the list of links on my web-site “launcher,” the page I created as a personal convenience for quick access to media sites long before I moved from Dallas to Hot Springs Village. But I think of London may have been my personal addition to remind me of the newspaper’s geographic base. Today, when I look at the paper’s website, of London appears nowhere that I can find.  Not that it matters, except the addition of that little convenience seems to have convinced me that the paper’s name is longer and more restrictive than its creators and those subsequently responsible for its operations intended. The newspaper was founded in 1785 as the Daily Universal Register. I prefer its more recent title. And, though the paper is now paired with a separate one entitled The Sunday Times (formed as a separate publication in 1822), I consider the pair a single publication. But, when I learned that The Sunday Times supported Leave in the 2016 EU referendum, I was disappointed, inasmuch as I have always considered support for leaving the EU to be evidence of intellectual and moral bankruptcy—though that harsh assessment may be a bit over-the-top and may be informed as much by my own bias as by my fundamental understanding of the reasons for either maintaining EU membership or ending it. I could go on endlessly in an opinionated rant, but I’ll pause for now, opting instead to express my contempt for too-cool temperatures, too-grey skies, and ugly yellow pollen.

+++

Too-cool temperatures, too-grey skies, and ugly yellow pollen are beyond contemptible. They collectively argue—persuasively—for the immediate annihilation of the universe. Let me just leave it at that. I remain tired. Sleepy. Needy of more nap time. Although cancer and drugs and the state of the world may contribute to that depressing state of affairs, there’s more to it than that. My oncologist’s senior nurse practitioner doubled my prescribed daily dosage of sertraline; still just a third of the typical upper limit of the drug’s dosage. Depression. Anxiety. OCD. PTSD. Etc. If any of those ail me, I may be in for an improved outlook on life.

+++

I am not antisocial, but I tend to be a bit reclusive and introverted. Some people might think I am aloof. In some circumstances, I am sure those people are correct in their thinking. But I am not really detached or indifferent; I just prefer social engagements to be of limited size and duration. I can be gregarious when appropriate and/or necessary, but it is an attribute I tend not to cultivate. It is not that I dislike people; it’s more a matter of being far more comfortable in intimate gatherings than in larger groups. And, of course, those intimate gatherings are much more appealing to me when I am in the presence of people whose personalities match or pair well with mine. That’s probably true of almost everyone, though; isn’t it? Most people have a natural inclination toward engaging with other people whose personalities fit well with their own, I think. But it’s not just the fit between personalities; it’s similarity in interests, philosophies, and other traits that make the presence of other people more appealing. Psychologists have long explored the triggers for positive (and negative) social interaction. One day, their theories will become more than merely suggestions; strong evidence eventually will support them.

+++

Time to take my damn pills. Not just take them, but fill week-long pill storage cases with dozens and dozens of pills of all sizes, shapes, colors, and intended purposes. I wonder how my body and my brain might react if I just stopped taking them? I haven’t taken gabapentin for a few weeks now, with no obvious ill-effects. But I have noticed that halving my blood pressure medication has coincided with a significant increase in my BP numbers. I probably should be judicious in self-medicating; or, rather, self-un-medicating. And I will be exercise caution. Because I am cautious by nature. Or can be.

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I think it’s Saturday. I thought yesterday was Saturday. Did I think, yesterday, that today would be Saturday or was I convinced today would be Sunday? Naming time segments—seconds, centuries, minutes, hours, days, Mondays, weeks, years, Wednesdays, 2024, etc.—can cause all manner of confusion.

In the dream, a large, injured shorebird rests against the side of my Dallas garage. A few feet away, another bird of the same type, agitated but apparently uninjured, squawks as if in panic. Neighbors drive by and stop, offering to take the bird to a nearby veterinary clinic. The neighbors, in the next scene in this bizarre dream, return and stop in front of my house to say the veterinarian has treated the big, curly, furry dog. Then the dog is put in the back yard, where a miniature version of the animal—an obnoxiously loud puppy—refuses to be silent to give the big dog a rest, for even a second. Members of my immediate family suddenly appear in the garage and grab some pieces of bone-dry but unfired pieces of decorative pottery. This upsets me to the extent that I grab the pieces from them and smash the glaze-ready pieces against the concrete garage floor. I leave the garage, jump on a motorcycle, and chase a couple who are riding another motorcycle. I enter a curve far too fast, losing control and smashing into a white open-slat fence. The newly-planted vegetable garden inside the fence is ruined. I am embarrassed by my behavior, but my embarrassment means nothing to the several families who had just installed the garden. The people wanted me jailed, or worse. But the scene shifts again; I am holding an iPad against the brick wall of a house, while some of the family members scroll through photographs of what appears to be a boat race, on the device. As with almost all my dreams, there was much more. But the links between elements of the dream are so odd and confusing and complex that I could not begin to recall them all. And so I awoke. Late. Very late. Long after first awaking in darkness. My recollection embarrasses me, as much because I threw an irrational tantrum as because I did not think an injured shorebird transforming into an injured dog was especially unusual. Perhaps I have lost my mind, after all. And if that is the case, where do I go to look for it?

+++

Sleep remains far too attractive to me, around the clock. Perhaps that’s a sign that the chemotherapy drugs still have not worn off. My blood magnesium level remains well below normal, though a bit higher than it was a week ago. And the lab data show I am anemic. But I’m told improvement has been made; and will continue, if circumstances continue to go in the same direction. I do not remember when all…or most…of my blood chemistry levels were in the normal range. Many of them are either low or high. If I had the energy and the inclination, I could review historical data on my patient portal to learn whether the abnormalities began in tandem with the chemo treatments. But, inasmuch as I do not fully understand the interactions/correlations between blood components and chemo treatments, I am not sure what those historical data would tell me. Probably nothing of any substance. At least nothing I can rely on. I could ask the oncology team, and perhaps I will, but I’ll wait until my interest in knowing is sufficiently high to help me remember what I learn.

+++

I should have taken my fistful of pills more than two hours ago. Before I take the antibiotic, though, I must have something to eat (lest the drug upset my stomach, per my PCP). And I’m not hungry. I wonder whether a demi tasse cup of espresso counts as breakfast? If not, I can plan on eating strawberries, grapes, blueberries, pineapple chunks, and some yoghurt. Perhaps some Boost. Avocado toast? I won’t starve. I haven’t yet.

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Today’s New York Times Word of the Day is MEDIOCRE. Is it coincidence, or does it have deep meaning with respect to my physical or mental condition? Or both? The NYT should explain before tossing a word out to the nervous masses.

I call it slow-motion impulse buying. It is a protracted process whereby an inevitable but utterly unnecessary purchase takes place following a period of weeks…months, sometimes…of ongoing self-persuasion and justification. So it was with my purchase of a 2010 year-old Honda Pilot, which I sold barely a year later. Several years afterward, the same process led to delivery of a pricey treadmill, its presence in my study coinciding with a recurrence of lung cancer and my inability to devote any appreciable effort to putting the device to use. If I were to devote enough thought to my history of slow-motion impulse buying, I am sure I could re-create a long list of embarrassing purchases that should have been avoided. For years, I have blamed my tendency to confuse want with need for my propensity to engage in such irrational behavior. But more recently I have begun to realize my desire to purchase an item is not strictly avarice or self-indulgence. It is not the acquisition of the item, itself, that prompts me to engage in a lengthy period of internal justification—it is my pipe-dream that the item will somehow allow me to change (or change certain aspects of me) into someone I would rather be. I take time to successfully delude myself into believing I will become a different person…if only I make this one purchase that will somehow transform me; either in my own eyes or in the eyes of others. But when the conversion fails to materialize, I look at myself in the mirror and see an unwelcome reflection; a weak and credulous sucker, an unsophisticated gullible mark who is too easily taken in by marketers who know how to appeal to people who buy into artificial images of who they could become. Of course, I also reckon I might be too hard on myself—I want that to be the case. But that self-forgiveness might be exactly the wrong response—self-pity tends to give rise more of the same. So, what is the solution? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Asceticism.

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I have a growing dislike of squirrels. Despite our efforts to dissuade them from emptying our bird feeders, the furry rat-beasts devour pound after pound of seed. Even the “spicy” seeds that used to keep the monsters at bay seem to no longer be effective. The birds liked the spicy stuff; the squirrels avoided it like the plague. But, now, the rodents gorge themselves on hot and spicy birdseed. I am considering the possibility of getting an air rifle. I would sit outside, on the deck, and wait for the demons to attack the feeders. I would aim the rifle at the creatures and fire away. I realize such behavior is inexcusable. But 357-magnum pistols make too much noise. And flame-throwers would endanger both the house and the forest. Shotguns, too, are loud and tend to attract angry police officers. Frankly, I am surprised the birds have not joined in the efforts to keep the squirrels away. They are faster and better beings than squirrels, as we all know. But, since our avian friends seem to be unwilling to fight the gluttonous varmints, perhaps it’s time to pull out all the stops.  I plan to publish an online notice on NextNoxiousNeighbor, offering temporary quarters to feral cats, ravenous foxes, and squirrel-hating raptors. That might do the trick.

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We began watching Killing Eve, the British spy thriller series,  last night. As usual, I made a very early night of it, but the beginning of season 1 was sufficiently interesting to make me want to continue watching…eventually. For some reason, I find it almost impossible to watch television (or films) during the day, so the times available for viewing are limited. I suspect my mother’s irrational addiction to daytime soap operas (which surprised me no end, inasmuch as she was a very intelligent woman) has something to do with my aversion to daytime TV. At any rate, Killing Eve is on my list of shows to eventually wade through. I have several dozen others of interest on my list, as well. At the rate I’m going, I may finish my list, in its present form, on my 137th birthday. We shall see.  Speaking of soap operas, The Resident is a nighttime soap opera. I laugh at its blatant disregard for reality (examples: doctors checking on emergency generators in the basement…presumably while janitorial staff fill in for them in operating rooms; first-year residents shouting at doctors that “this patient needs blood…NOW…or he could die!”). I do not watch the program with any regularity, but when I join mi novia on the loveseat while it’s on, I enjoy mocking its ridiculousness. But so many patients have ailments similar to mine…and those patients tend to die…that I think I may need to keep a copy of Merck Manual, Professional Edition readily available to consult in a pinch. For some reason, though, I seem to have lost interest in spending much time watching the big screen in the TV room.  I sleep, instead. And I dream. Last night, I dreamed I was planning on building a set of picnic tables and benches; the dream was set in a place like my Dallas backyard. My niece’s Paraguayan husband and I borrowed a pickup truck to search for lumber in an apartment complex under construction, where he stopped to teach some construction workers how to use markings on a tape measure. There was more. Much more. But it was too convoluted to attempt to document. There was coffee involved; different strengths for different members of my family. And a convenience store…where I accused the owner of overcharging for candy, clearly marked at 10¢ but for which he asked for 50¢ in payment. There may have been trouble brewing.

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Damn. I am ready for another nap. But so pleased I wrote so much, even though it is largely irrelevant.