John Swinburn

I quickly skimmed an online, paid click-bait article this morning; it claimed many “historical” figures may not have been real. Jesus. William Shakespeare. Robin Hood. Confucius. Sun Tzu. Odysseus. Pythagoras. Moses. Muhammad. Etc. Etc. Etc. The brevity of my review was all I needed to dismiss the article. Whether the historical figures were real or not, the click-bait article did not offer enough documentation to convince me either way.

I am inherently skeptical; my skepticism applies to tantalizing claims without evidence to support them.

Which leads me to this: how sure are we (that is, how certain are scientists and medical professionals) that all the potentially dangerous interactions between the almost limitless number of drugs available to us have been identified? Can we be absolutely sure that Metformin is safe to take concurrently with metoprolol? Considering the sheer number of medications available for virtually every ailment, I find it difficult to imagine how each and every drug could have been evaluated for both effectiveness and safety when used in concert with every other drug. The difficulty increases exponentially when considering the fact that some people may take dozens of different drugs every day, each of which may constitute slightly different formulations determined by its source pharmaceutical company. Even those drugs that have been thoroughly evaluated…were the evaluations truly comprehensive? Was every possible mix—taking into account dosages, formulations, different drug combinations, etc., etc.—examined and evaluated in detail—in studies involving actual humans? And what about differences between people…were they taken into account? Black, White, Hispanic, young, old, male, female, afflicted with various diseases or ailments or as healthy as a horse? The older I get and the more medications doctors tell me they want me to take, the more skeptical I become. I feel like ceasing all medications; and watching myself closely to try to determine how the lack of drugs might be impacting my health or my reactions to my own body—suddenly free of dozens of chemical combinations. My tissues could be so startled that they might spontaneously combust. I just wonder.

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If you and I were to think reciprocal thoughts about one another at the same time, would that be coincidence or…something else? How do brainwaves between people somehow get into a rhythm of sorts, creating the sense that the people are thinking the same thoughts. On the one hand, I think such situations are purely coincidental; just neural accidents prodded along through shared experiences. On the other hand, though, I think it may be possible that thoughts consist of something like radio waves…and that those radio waves can interact with one another as they flow through the ether. While I do not necessarily “believe” in the brain wave/radio wave theory, I am willing to consider that it is possible. Of course, the “brain waves” may not be the sole transmitter of thoughts; our internal physiological responses to thoughts might trigger almost (but not entirely) indetectable pheromones…or whatever…that spur similar physiological reactions in certain other people around us. Behavioral or physical “oddities” may tend to spark responses that give birth to theories involving the occult or the supernatural. Sometimes, otherworldly explanations seem to be the only legitimate rationales that might explain the inexplicable. But I think even those obviously metaphysical explanations probably have their roots in reality as we know it (but don’t yet “know” it). I doubt that it’s magic, in other words; it is an expression of poorly or only vaguely understood aspects of physics and chemistry and “radio waves” without the radio. We may send messages to one another, either purposely or inadvertently, in dozens of different ways: aromas, visual signals, bodily demeanor, etc., etc. And, of course, with radio waves. Or furtive glances. Or accidental brushes of an arms against an arm. Or changes in one’s skin; a blush, for example, or nervous perspiration. Something to think about when other topics are too mundane or too frightening to allow them into one’s internal sanctuary.

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I have allowed my discipline to slip out the back door. Seems it wandered away and has not found its way home yet. The result, as I would expect, has been a slight reversal in the direction my weight is taking. I may chain myself to a column off the back deck, thereby bypassing discipline and getting right to the necessary but somewhat unpleasant part of my task: starvation and its attendant impact on my waistline.

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The day is unfolding before my eyes. But I woke far too early, so I will try to take an early morning nap.

Nothing comes to mind. Nothing compels me to write. I cannot grab hold of a topic to trigger this morning’s blog post. I tried the news, but it was either dull or disturbing; not a single topic lit an ember in me that might grow into at least of few flames. So here I sit, feeling ill-at-ease with myself. I do not know this man who sits before the computer screen, looking blankly at the white glow of an empty computer screen. He is not someone I’ve met before. No, he is a stranger, an intruder who mistakenly entered my context.

Apparently, I do not care that an intruder is in my space. I feel surly and annoyed, but not sufficiently angry to strike out at the stranger in my place. But I will say unpleasant things to him. And I will invite him to get out of my house, out of my space, out of my life. I have no room in my life for an empty-headed clone. Even when I tell him, he looks back at me with a vacant stare, as if he does not hear a word I say. By the way, I say the words silently, lest mi novia hears me, confirming for her that I have lost my mind.

Something is finally creeping into my consciousness. But it, too, surprises me with its oddity. I feel my own consciousness, but I feel it as if I were experiencing it from considerable vertical distance. Looking down at my emotional state, as it were. And I see the stringy remnants of emotions, the bulk of their constituent parts dry and shriveled and looking for all the world like shards of over-dry beef jerky. Judging from the volume of remains I see below me, there was a massive amount of emotion down there, but it has withered into callous disregard. Uncaring. As if nothing matters. Perhaps nothing matters. And that is the hideous message arising from my empty page and empty mind this morning.

That can’t be right, can it? Life is just behaving like a tease, right? Or is it Eternity that is behaving so badly? It is impossible to tell, because neither can be fully understood; they represent complexity far beyond the scope of physics or psychology. As expansive and powerful as our minds might be, they are simply incapable of understanding the complexity of Everything. And Everything truly is complex; I would equate it to trillions and trillions and trillions of layers of parallel cells interspersed with trillions and trillions and trillions of layers of perpendicular cells interspersed with equal numbers of cells at 1 degree increments of offset. And multiple that by an exponent a billion times larger than the largest known number, multiplied a hundred-billion-fold. And that’s just a start.

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I loathe being at a loss—not for words, but for ideas! Something to think about, whether deeply or in passing. When the ideas simply are not there, I feel blank. I sense my value is considerably less than a torn piece of wet cardboard. That is unpleasant. Being at a loss for words is troubling, too, of course. Words probably constitute 99 percent of whatever value I might have as a human being. Touch might represent another half a percent. And fractional slivers, barely measurable, could be constituted by unknown “other” stuff. I am not alone in where my value is stored. Almost everyone else is in a similar situation. What we say matters enormously. Even when we say virtually nothing. When our silence suggests we do not acknowledge jour own emotions. Ach, it’s a long, convoluted thought process that got me here, which is essentially nowhere.

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I strung beads yesterday. The physical result of my bead-stringing is nothing to celebrate; even with all the colors, it is rather bland. But the mental result is…curious. I expected stringing beads to be like an injection of morphine—that it would eliminate or mask the pain and leave me mellow in the extreme. It did neither. I finished stringing beads and was disappointed in myself for thinking the end product was not sufficiently attractive. And for feeling tense, as if I were ready to spring. But that pent-up energy fizzled, too. My mind never “cleared,” either. Every bead I added to the string seemed to represent another nagging thought that had been buried beneath the surface of my brain…but that now was exposed and becoming more energetic.

I may try it again today. Perhaps I should begin the process is a somewhat different frame of mind.

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We’ve been watching a series, Blood, on Acorn TV. The series has grown on me. Initially, I was not impressed, but by the second or third episode of the first season, it has me. It is set in a semi-rural village in Ireland, with a family whose patriarch has his demons (and, it turns out, so do most of the rest). Like so many other stories, there is a significant amount of “stuff” that’s truly improbable. But I can forgive that. Fantasy, after all, is imagination. This series is not fantasy, by the way. It is drama, with more than a little intrigue and action thrown in.

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There’s something under my skin that just won’t let me keep writing this morning. I hope whatever it is disappears during the course of the rest of the day.

Temperatures in Tampere, Finland—roughly 180km (112 miles) north of Helsinki—had been forecast to reach 30°C (86°F) today, according to an online report in the Helsinki Times. That temperature compares to “normal” highs in June of 18°C (65°F); the normal high during July, the hottest month of the year in Finland, is 21°C (70°F).  As I write this (at about 1:00 pm in Tampere), the temperature reported online is 25°C (77°F); the predicted high, according to weather.com, will be reached in about five hours, when thermometers are expected to register 27°C (80°F). Regardless of the actual peak temperature today, Tampere will be considerably warmer than “normal” today. If I were ask a U.S. nationalist to comment about the high temperature, I would expect the response to be something like, “Who cares?” Because, you know, only the USA matters; Americans, who live in the center of the universe, where we rightfully dismiss as irrelevant anyone anywhere else. I hope the casual reader realizes the sarcasm that soaks that sentence.

If all internal combustion engines and other producers of gases and particulate matter harmful to the atmosphere were to be permanently silenced today, I wonder whether the planet’s climate would recover by the end of this century? I will never have the definitive answer to my question, of course. I think one likely result of the cessation of those devices would be mass starvation. We have grown dependent on machinery for survival. Perhaps Ted Kacsynski had some good points…well of course he did? But his methods of expressing his arguments were utterly inappropriate. Yet even if he had used his obviously superior intellect to craft persuasive messages about the dangers of modern technology and societal “advances,” he would have found a largely unreceptive audience. Life today is too easy to accept that life today is too easy. Let me emphasize that:

Life today is too easy to accept that life today is too easy.

Is that message as clear as I would like it to be? I do not know. And maybe I do not care. At least not much. Not enough, anyway, to do anything about it. We shall continue kicking the ball down the road to the next generation and the next and the next until…lo and behold, the ball will burst and shrivel into dust. And that will be that. I’m nothing if I’m not a non-optimist, eh? Unravel that unnecessarily convoluted message.

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True artists, I think, have a vision of the products that will result from their efforts. A sculptor envisions the finished statue when he begins working on it. A painter sees the canvas as it will appear when her work with the oils and brushes and palate knives is complete. A composer hears the melody before the first note is committed to the music.

Or maybe not. Perhaps, even though I do not have a clear idea in my mind of the completed story or article or poem before I begin to write, I can still call myself an artist. Even though I do not have an image of the finished product in mind when I start stringing a set of beads, I am still being creative. Hmm. Does being creative necessarily equate to being an artist? I think that depends on how one defines the term, “artist.” And, looking back at the way I began documenting my thoughts, exactly what I mean by “true artist.” If one is an artist, but not a true artist, is one an artificial artist. How does one become a  true artist? Or does one not become a true artist but, instead, is either born a true artist or not. Certainly, some people are imbued with innate creativity and attendant capabilities that can be cultivated and perfected through experience and practice. Others, though, may not be innately talented but, with sufficient time and effort, can perfect artistic capabilities. Some people might call the latter artists mere technicians. I am thinking here of people who groom themselves to replicate the skills of true artists, but who do not possess the core qualities that one finds in actual, born artists.

As is the case with most subjects, given enough time to mull over the matter, I could forcefully argue (in writing, but probably not so much orally) every perspective. I view that capability as both a talent and a curse; it is a curse because I can never be fully, completely, entirely certain of which argument represents my true feelings. “I see your point of view” is both a good way to subsequently introduce one’s disagreement with someone else’s perspective and a way to see the possibilities in another’s ideas and the flaws in one’s own viewpoints. Ach! Looking at an issue from various angles tends to expose the arrogance of one’s own forceful certainty.

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A kiss, even an innocent “peck,” can either conceal or reveal the underlying passions that drive the urge to make a connection. Context is the key, as so often it is.  Context is crucial, for example, in examining the facts surrounding a shooting or stabbing or other kind of violent encounter. Was the act prompted by rage? By fear? By raw, calm, deliberate hatred? Was the act planned, or did it erupt suddenly in response to the circumstances surrounding it? Why am I comparing a kiss with an assault? A kiss was just a convenient place to start. It could just as easily have been a handshake; a limp handshake versus a firm grip can be interpreted differently, depending on the circumstances. Context. I have an unquenchable fascination with context. And the innumerable points along a spectrum of almost any kind; from love to hatred and from agony to joy and from fascination to boredom…and on and on. Casual joviality can disguise passionate interest. Or it could mask disdain. A smile is not just a smile. A smile is the fruit of its context; the true story of a smile can be found in exploring the context that produced it.

These are the kinds of things that  swirl in my mind at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. or…almost all the time. I sometimes attribute the oddities of my thoughts to my tendency to store away random “stuff” in my mind and then, later, to write about it. But more often, I think as I write; or vice versa. I am not sure whether writing is what is what produces my thoughts or whether my thoughts trigger me to write about them. It should be easy to distinguish between which comes first, but I do not find it so easy; it’s as if writing and thinking are one in the same. Which is why I often say I think through my fingers.

Several years ago, I got involved in some joint writing exercises with a woman I first met online (I do not recall just how). In one such exercise, we each added a sentence to a sentence written by the other. In this particular instance, the story involved two strangers (a man and a woman) meeting on a train. The female writer’s approach to the interactions between the two strangers was slow and deliberate. Mine was fast and reckless. The radically different perspectives sank the story long before it was ever written. Despite the fact that our writing exercise went up in flames, we met later a few times in person. My late wife and I visited with her in New York twice…or was it three times? Our writing relationship, like our face-to-face relationship, was platonic. But I remember thinking (and still think) a long-distance, electronic-communications-supported relationship can become romantic. In fact, there are books and stories and films about such romantic relationships. Yet I never found those stories believable; not in the least. But someone close to me met a man online who became her second husband. I cling to my disbelief despite evidence to the contrary. I realize, of course, that acknowledging the incorrectness of my belief while holding it close and asserting its rectitude, may be a sign of insanity. But not necessarily. I’d like to think it is just a simple flaw in my neural circuits; a flaw that can be repaired with a little emotional glue or years of therapy.

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In two hours, I will join a group of aging Unitarian Universalist men for random conversations over a meal. This gathering, which will take place in the back room of a homely little diner, is a weekly affair, though I miss it rather often. Twice, in my absence, the group provided fodder for the church minister’s sermons and/or interactions with members of the church’s congregation. I have wondered, since hearing of those incidents, whether my absence was the key to the production of that fodder. I doubt it, actually. I rarely say much during these gatherings. I am more of a listener than a talker. I absorb what I hear. I speak only to engage in polite conversation and when I have something of consequence to say, which is extremely rare. Most of my thoughts, if I shared them, would bore the others. Though I am comfortable with my day-to-day life and find it interesting and exciting most of the time, others might find it deadly dull. So I tend not to talk much. Plus, of course, I am inherently a little shy. I have overcome most of the limitation of the shyness of my childhood and young adulthood, but I remain fairly quiet except in the company of people close to me. Why am I writing this? I have no idea. My fingers are doing the work and I am simply letting them do what they will.

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It is past time for me to shower and shave and otherwise prepare for the day. If I could do something to keep my hair from looking oily and unkempt without daily shampooing, I probably would shower only once every two or three days, which is the frequency recommended by some physicians who decry the damage done to the skin by daily showering. But my hair, if not washed every day, can make me look dirty, homeless, and drunk. I do not relish meeting with people who assume, incorrectly, that I am drunk at 8:30 in the morning. I would not relish meeting with people who correctly assumed I was drunk at 8:30 in the morning, either. Fortunately, I have not been drunk at 8:30 in the morning since the time, when I was about 26 years old, I flew home to Houston from Chicago after working at a multi-day conference. A group of the staff responsible for the conference took an early morning flight home. All of us started drinking bloody marys before boarding and continued during the flight. I am sure the flight attendants happily would have ejected at thirty thousand feet, mid-flight.

The diner does not serve alcohol, so there’s no danger of inebriation this morning. That notwithstanding, I will entitle this post Memorable Inebriation.

There was a time, no so long ago, when self-identification as a Democrat or Republican announced a person’s philosophical position on issues surrounding a party’s political platform. Claiming adherence to one party’s philosophies did not equate with loathing people whose political perspectives were aligned with the other main party. Today, though, party affiliation carries with it an almost automatic byproduct: hatred of people whose world views or philosophies differ from one’s own. For that reason, I find it difficult to be enthusiastic about announcing that “I am a Democrat.” Increasingly, I view that self-identification difficult; and sometimes offensive. I do not hesitate to express my support for certain aspects of what I believe are still Democratic Party principles, but I can no longer say I am fully supportive of the Democratic Party. That does not mean the Republican Party holds any appeal for me; it certainly does not. But both parties have become firmly entrenched in unyielding, unbending positions that do not lend themselves to certainty. Yet both Democrats and Republicans tend to be steadfast in their certainty that they are “in the right.” And both continue to migrate further and further toward their respective ends of the spectrum of beliefs. Little room exists for flexibility, compromise, or acknowledgement that pursuing ideals does not always require setting fire to those who do not share them.

I am a left-leaning centrist. While I rarely agree with political or social or religious positions taken by Republicans, I try to understand why they take those positions. I try to avoid assuming Republicans hold certain positions because Republicans are fundamentally “evil” or “mean-spirited” or otherwise “bad.” I try, but sometimes I fail. I can be just as obnoxious in my certainty as the next person; but I try to reflect on my certainty and I try to moderate it by attempting to look at issues from both sides, to the extent I can. It is not just Republicans who can be obnoxious in their certitude; Democrats can be equally as biased and unwilling to concede the possibility that the “correct” position may not always equate with the “Democratic” position.

In today’s political environment, I would be embarrassed to claim membership in either Republican or Democratic organizations. I have been (and may still be…not sure whether my dues are current) a member of the Democratic Party of Hot Springs Village. Though I subscribe to many of the principles promoted by the organization, I am no longer willing to accept that a principle is “right” simply because it is held by the party. Compromise and flexibility are absolutely necessary; when any organization refuses to entertain the possibility that its opponents’ positions may have a legitimate basis upon which to exist, that organization loses me. Republican organizations are just as guilty, of course. When a person refuses to accept even the possibility that an opposing position may have any merit whatsoever, compromise is impossible. Listening to the voices of our elected officials and their rabid supporters, it is no wonder we have been, and remain, at loggerheads.

Abortion. Gun regulations. Religious freedom. School curricula. And on and on. Though I hold very strong beliefs on each of these issues, I think having an open mind to opposing beliefs is absolutely vital if we have any hope of civil conversations and, ultimately, compromise. Compromise may leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but a bitter taste is preferable to having my tongue torn from my mouth.

Will I behave in accordance with my stated assertion that I am a centrist? I hope so, but I doubt I will be consistent about it. Therein lies the problem. We all recognize the dangers of certainty and inflexibility, but we do not have the discipline to practice what we preach.

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Sometimes, I believe this world has no place for someone like me. Or, perhaps, I have no place in my mind to accept this world as it is and I do not have the inclination or the power to try to change the world. And so I sit back and fidget and complain and scowl at the unfairness of it all. Maybe my mood is what it is because I have a dental appointment today. Or because I am sliding, unwillingly, into a position of responsibility that demands certainty from me; and I innately see several sides to almost every issue—a viewpoint unsuited to certainty. Ach! I wanted retirement to be joy and comfort, 24/7. It is not that.

I feed my imagination by subscribing to Family Handyman magazine. When I flip through the pages of the magazine, I dream of producing a wooden sauna or laying a winding, flower-lined brick walkway or building a cavernous workshop filled with woodworking and metal-crafting tools and equipment. Such projects require investments of money, of course, but more importantly they require investments of talent and strength and stamina. I might be able to come up with the money, but my handyman talents—which have never been especially well-developed—have largely dissolved with the passage of time. And my stamina has diminished with my body’s age and lack of use and practice. But I dream, anyway. I imagine having the tools and talent and strength to do the work of a thirty-year-old home-improvement hobbyist. Dreams do not die. Capabilities seem to do just that. Or, if they do not die, they wither into frail shadows of their former selves. Others’ obvious doubts about my capabilities, over time, contributed significantly to my loss of what modest abilities I might once have had. I have been discouraged from attempting to undertake projects by people who hold serious reservations about my skills. I think those doubts may have arisen from concerns that my efforts might result in failure. But mistakes are intrinsic to learning. And failures can lead to corrective actions that, in turn, lead to success. Perhaps the admonitions that I should not even try—leave projects to people who know what they are doing—were the product of impatience; an acceptable end result will come faster by engaging people who already have practiced the skills necessary for success. Or, perhaps others’ urgings to “leave it to ‘professionals’ who know what they are doing” evolved from concerns about my obvious frustrations when I failed in my attempts—better for me to remain calms than to watch me melt down in my irritations with myself.  It got to the point over the years that I no longer even tried. Now, I need very little prodding to let someone else—someone stronger, far more practiced, and much more patient than I—do the work. And, in general, someone younger. Advancing age can rob a person of more than youth.

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Assertiveness is an attribute that can grow into intractable, toxic aggressiveness. It is one of those traits that sometimes is taught to people who are viewed as too conforming, too obedient, too willing to relent to others’ wishes or demands. But that training can backfire; a person’s behavior can sprint past the “ideal” point on the spectrum between docility and  bellicoseness. Training, by the way, need not be formal education; it can occur in the form of experience or observation. With that consideration as a foundation, perhaps we should watch ourselves as closely as—or more closely than—we watch others. That admonition, of course, is directed at myself; the person I should know better than I know anyone else, but who remains something of a mystery to me.

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Someone threw a stone through our church’s front glass door on Saturday evening. And I understand that someone, perhaps the same someone, broke the glass door of another church in the Village over the weekend. My anger at learning of the attack on our church remains at the level of ‘simmering’ rage. Upon learning of the vandalism, my thoughts immediately went to the CNN headline I wrote about on Sunday morning and the concerns I felt—and continue to feel—about attacks on churches and church-goers. During a conversation with the minister of my church he noted that, despite the media focus on the dangers faced by people in church on Sunday mornings, being in churches is far safer that driving to them.

And now, a few words about violence from people who have given the matter some thought:

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

~ Isaac Asimov ~

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It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

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People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

~ George Orwell ~

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Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!

~ Albert Einstein ~

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Instead of a man of peace and love, I have become a man of violence and revenge.

~ Hiawatha ~

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Violence is the language of the unheard.

~ Martin Luther King III ~

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Violence is the repartee of the illiterate.

~ Alan Brien ~

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I have noticed that men outnumber women by a large margin with respect to their selection for presentation of online quotations. That tells me something important: women’s voices are not heard often enough. The world would be a far better place, I think, if women’s perspectives were given more prominence.

Enough for now. I’m getting angry with the world. I should settle down and spend a few minutes outdoors, where the world’s noises are more conducive to tenderness than are the noises captured by the internet’s news organizations.

Planet Earth is a dangerous place. Its dangers are both natural and unnatural. Temporary and eternal. Shying away from danger is understandable, but timidity carries with it unexpected perils. The choices between fear and bravery sometimes blend into indistinguishable options—not really choices at all. Rather, they merely may be different paths leading to the same endpoint. Alternatives between known and unknown risks. Even known risks often come with unintended consequences, though, so “known” risks may not be entirely understood. Nothing is reliably predictable. So, is avoidance of potential dangers a pointless undertaking? No. But understanding that taking a potentially less dangerous path offers no guarantees tends to lessen one’s fears of danger.

Fear takes no more than two forms: apprehension about the prospect of emotional pain or dread of physical pain. That is all. Fear is nothing more than a warning against exposure to one (or both) of those two kinds of pain. People who claim to be “fearless” are simply more pain tolerant than others in their spheres. Or, at least, they claim to be more pain tolerant than others. Yet that very claim may be based on their fear that admitting their emotional unsteadiness could reveal a kind of fear they believe would expose them for what they are, deep inside. Shivering, quivering, shaking, quaking braggards. A little like the rest of us, in other words. But all of us somehow manage to suppress much of our fear; enough, at least, to enable us to go about our daily lives, for a time, on this dangerous planet.

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Dreamless sleep must be akin to being under anesthesia; unconscious and unaware, as if one did not exist during the time of sleep. That is true, too, of anesthesia. I suspect death is an advanced, but eternal, version of that state of unconscious unawareness. The difference, of course, is that during dreamless sleep and anesthesia, one’s body continues to react to external stimuli; and its cells and organs are alive and performing their natural functions. In death, those functions cease. As expressed by Epicurus, “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And once it does come, we no longer exist.” From this doctrine arose the epitaph: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo (I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care). Our existence is proof that we are not dead. Our death is proof that we do not exist. Of course, the definition of “existence” may be open to debate; but I’ll leave that to the philosophers to decide—not that the pronouncements of philosophers carry any more weight than our own.

John Donne’s consideration of death gives us thoughts to ponder:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

And so I ponder, for just long enough to realize the exercise of pondering is, itself, pointless. Death does not die, John Donne’s assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. But there I go, pondering the imponderable. A wasteful pastime that has as much value as an invisible penny in an invisible jar filled with invisible water.

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Philosophical discussions can be incredibly alluring. But the value of such discussions is quite hard to measure, even in the face of a clear mathematical formula: VALUE = FUNCTION/COST. The difficulty, of course, begins with attempting to quantify function and it continues with the effort to do the same with cost. Neither function nor cost rely on monetary measures, but agreement on nonmonetary measures is almost impossible to achieve. Thinking, itself, can be a fruitless endeavor. Or an endeavor whose outcomes are so esoteric as to be essentially meaningless. When one reaches these conclusions about life, raw physical pleasures become the only desirable refuges from the drudgery of living in a society gone stark-raving mad.

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When I awoke, almost three hours ago, I was not sure what was on my mind. I remain unsure. I do recall an odd dream, though. Even though, yesterday, I cleaned and refilled the bird feeder outside my office window, I have seen no birds feeding there this morning. I am disappointed that the birds apparently have abandoned me. Disillusionment surrounds me, like a shroud. Today is Monday; shrouds should take the day off.

The bold headline on CNN.com this morning grabbed my attention: One of the most dangerous hours in America is now 11 o’clock on Sunday morning. The story (littered with typos…but that’s another story…) addressed how lay and religious leaders are responding to the many instances of deadly violence at churches, synagogues,  and mosques. Many houses of worship have begun hiring armed security and/or have started recruiting armed volunteers to try to protect congregations from violent visitors. Those efforts to protect worshippers, the article notes, place religious leaders in delicate positions. Hardening religious venues against people who would do violence has the potential of interfering with the fundamental role of religious venues: to welcome everyone, including people who desperately need the kind of support houses of worship can provide. The article notes that “Houses of faith are one of the few public communal spaces in the country that were created to embrace all comers, including broken or disturbed people on the fringes of society.”

I suppose the reason I found the article so compelling is the fact that I am a leader of my church and soon will begin a one-year term as its chief lay leader. Our church created a safety and security team within the past couple of years to deal with the potential for disruptions and violence. The possibility that violent attacks could occur in or around our building has been on our minds for a while now. But I am becoming more acutely aware of that potential reality of late. And the CNN article emphasized that such violence is a very real possibility. There is a fine line between protecting the congregation and making the church seem like a fortress or a prison. That fine line merits constant vigilance; calling for conversations about what is the “best,” most effective way to ensure the safety of members and visitors while ensuring the church is truly a welcoming place. Those conversations will be top of mind for me as time goes by. I wish it were not so; but there it is.

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Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” is dead (of suicide, one report I read said). Kaczynski was both brilliant and broken. His loathing of what, in his mind, technology was doing to society may not have been too far-fetched. But he took his views about the “evils” of technology too far. Even so, his assessment of the dangers of modern society struck a chord with an unknown number of followers. What his adherents seem to have dismissed was the fact that his hatred of technology and modern society in general arose from his desire for vengeance, not because he wanted to protect people from the damage modern technology might do. Somewhere between his pursuit of “vengeance” and his assessment of the dangers posed by modern society, there may have been some kernels of truth. It is too bad, I think, his brilliance could not be harnessed and his mental derangement could not be squelched. He might have made invaluable contributions to the world we live in, if only he had been able to articulate his concerns in ways that did not erase the potential value of his messages.

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Some of my dreams tend to plague me for days, weeks, even months after I have them. What I remember from last night’s dream experience is one of those I expect will haunt me. It was not especially troubling. But it was strangely pedestrian. When I awoke, it seemed like the dream was attempting to illustrate something (I do not know what) about myself that revealed irreparable character flaws. The flaws were, in my conscious state of reflection, impossible to define; yet they were obvious in their vagueness. Strange and troubling. And that troubling nature of the dream will be with me for a long while, I am afraid. Even if I could explain the dream (which I cannot), I would not, because it would be too emotional. I sometimes hate being unable to simply “turn off” thoughts and memories.

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If I could go somewhere free of governments, I would go. But I would require control over my environments; my circumstances would be subject to my wishes, alone. What that means, of course, is that I want to be my own government. And I want my government to be the only government. World domination is what I want. But I want it in a tiny little world visible only to me. Is that really what I want? I doubt it. But I won’t know for certain until I have experienced absolute power. Only then will I be able to express, with certainty, what I really require and desire and need.

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A light fog enshrouds the trees across the street from me. That must mean something. I just do not know what. Okay, I’ll get on with the day. More coffee. A shave. A shower. A glance toward the future. And a quick look at the past. And, of course, dedicated attention to the present.

Four Columbian children were found yesterday, forty days after they survived a plane crash that killed their mother and two others. The fierce, unimaginable trauma visited upon those children during their ordeal may one day be revealed in their own words. Though I cannot claim to have been through any experiences as horrendous as theirs, I think I might have a sense of how they experienced time during what must have seemed like an endless nightmare.

Eight days before my wife died, I began my blog with these words:

Some hours and minutes speed by, while others have the earmarks of extraordinarily slow motion, inching along as if time were trapped in a viscous jelly. The difference between the two sensations of time is impossible for me to capture in words. Only by imagining how it might feel—to quickly empty the air from one’s lungs and then slowly fill them again with congealed air—can one get a sense of how such days unfold. The excruciating, impossibly slow moments feel like one must gasp for oxygen. When moments alternate between the fiction of warp speed and the reality of geologic time, the experience defines fatigue in physical terms.

Later in the day, a few hours after I wrote the post that began with those words, my wife was moved from her hospital room to another floor of the hospital, the floor dedicated to in-patient hospice care. My memories of that day, and subsequent days, are hazy. Only by reading what I wrote can I reconstruct—and, then, only partially—what I experienced in the days that followed. I suspect the children rescued from the Columbian jungle will experience similar difficulty in recalling exactly what they went through. Their experiences, though, lasted longer than mine. Though, as I think back on it, mine lasted just as long as my wife’s experiences lasted; roughly five months. And though my experiences were agonizingly painful, they could not compare to what my wife must have gone through during that time. I suspect the children must have relived—over and over and over again—the experience of the plane crash and their mother’s resulting death. And they will relive those forty horrible, terrifying days for the rest of their lives. I’ve read that children tend to blame themselves for the traumas they experience; like erroneously taking responsibility for parental divorce, familial infighting, and other kinds of anguish, those kids may harbor guilt for the death of their mother, even though they were not even remotely to blame. I hope they will be given counseling and other forms of mental health treatments; treatments that might enable them to successfully deal with the experience and overcome feelings of unearned guilt.

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Even “good” news like the rescue of those Columbian children can tear one’s emotions to shreds. Such news can begin an otherwise decent day with an excruciating sense that randomness can override what might seem the natural, positive order of life. “There but for the grace of God go I…” I remember my mother speaking those words on more than one occasion, expressing both gratitude and compassion in the same sentence. She was not an especially religious person—perhaps just as areligious as I—but those words seemed better than others to express gratitude for being spared by “the universe” for experiencing unendurable pain. It’s odd, I think, that memories sometimes emerge from the depths of one’s psyche, correlating current experiences with moments one assumes have long-since been forgotten.

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After reading about those “fortunate” Columbian children this morning, I explored ideas about trauma expressed by other people…some of whom I know of, others I do not. This quotation gives me reason to be concerned about what will happen to those kids’ psychological lives in the months and years ahead:

The effects of unresolved trauma can be devastating. It can affect our habits and outlook on life, leading to addictions and poor decision-making. It can take a toll on our family life and interpersonal relationships. It can trigger real physical pain, symptoms, and disease. And it can lead to a range of self-destructive behaviors.

   ~ Peter A. Levine ~

I should not have done the research. Levine’s words do not leave me with hopeful feelings. Perhaps I should look for something else that might improve my outlook.

+++

I have to shake this. I brought it on myself by succumbing to emotional triggers. Yet wanting to shake it seems wrong, in some ways. I deserve this emotional turmoil; I could have shut it off by reading something else. Something uplifting. It’s almost as if I meant to wreck my mood. The lyrics to a song come to mind: “You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness.” And I suppose it’s true.

An inverse relationship exists between the power of the individual and the population of the planet. In other words, as Earth’s population increases, the influence of the individual naturally shrinks. That reduction in individuals’ ability to exercise control or command leverage, though, tends to be mitigated through political manipulation. Obviously, political manipulation does not strengthen the power of all members of a population diluted by sheer numbers; only individuals capable of employing persuasive tactics—and willing to put them to use—can consolidate and amplify their power. Persuasive tactics need not be gentle; forceful methods of securing “consent” from the less powerful are, perhaps, at least as common as genial coaxing. The means of accumulating and retaining power involves a balance between influence and coercion. When coercive methods of holding onto power become intolerable to those whose “natural” power has been usurped by others skilled in manipulation, manipulators may lose control. Whether through force or other, less violent, means, the downtrodden may rise up to retrieve and retain the powers taken from them. If I could accurately predict how and when intolerance triggers irreversible reactions, I might be in a position to make extremely lucrative wagers. But who are the bookies who would take my bets…and pay when the odds come down clearly in my favor?

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Today is my sister’s birthday. Yesterday was mi novia‘s birthday. A brother’s birthday will be three days hence, on Monday. Considering the number of people on the planet, having people in one’s close spheres with temporally close birthdays is not unusual. Still, it’s a little surprising to me. I suppose I am easily surprised, even when there is nothing surprising about the circumstances that surprise me. Another word for that kind of illogical surprise is gullibility. But gullible and surprised have very different meanings. I wonder whether my mind is twisting language and reality into unrelated pretzel shapes? Would a psychiatrist or psychologist, confronted with the way my mind works, assign uncomplimentary labels to my thought processes? At what point could I be involuntarily committed to a hospital’s psychiatric ward, simply for engaging in pretzel logic? How many people in years past—and even in modern times, today—have been robbed of their freedom simply because their minds do not function in ways the rest of society believes are “normal?” At what point is deviance from “normal” sufficiently “abnormal” to warrant assignment of “deviant” labels that can then be used justify “soft” incarceration? And what in the name of all that’s holy or logical or relevant does veering into a discussion about deviance have to do with birthdays? There must be something. There must be a reason my mind connected birthdays with social classifications of deviance. But…maybe not.

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I woke at 1:00 a.m. with an upset stomach. I returned to bed after 20 minutes or so, but did not get back to sleep for at least a couple of hours, and then only in fits and starts. I awoke and got up, afterward, just as the sky was showing definite signs of daylight. I do not like waking in daylight; when that happens, I wonder what I missed in the pre-dawn darkness. I can never know what I missed, because I missed seeing whatever it was. I did not have an experience that I would have had, if only I had arisen before the sun began filling the sky with light. Those moments can never be recovered. Once they are gone—and once it’s clear I missed those pre-dawn minutes or hours—I realize I missed once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. That realization is a punch in the gut; it’s like sleeping through the moon landing and learning no one recorded the historic moment. But I did wake up during the night and I did experience an upset stomach; so, at least I have that memory to hold onto, if nothing else.

+++

Once again, immediately after deciding I feel settled where I am and do not need to consider moving somewhere else, I feel intensely restless. Lexington, Kentucky. Santa Fe, New Mexico. Grand Island, Nebraska. Jackson, Mississippi. Holden Beach, North Carolina. Lynx, Ontario. Somewhere else. Just “away.” There are thousands of other possibilities. How can I stifle these recurring urges to go? And do I really want to stifle them? Or do I want to indulge them…explore what it is that keeps me longing to be in another place, a place no one knows me? I should retreat into my office and write myself into my imaginary town of Struggles. That would give me the opportunity to experience all the places I think I might want to go; all in my mind.

+++

I will see what I will see.

Today is mi novia’s birthday, which of course calls for celebration. The nature of one’s birthday changes over the years. As a child, birthdays are exciting milestones on what seems like an endless march toward adulthood—which is impossibly far away. Over time, though, the temporal distance between the annual anniversaries seems to diminish exponentially (is it possible to “diminish exponentially”?). Birthday celebrations thrill children. Birthday celebrations cause adults to cringe for a few years, but over time the landmark events simply pass with little notice. “Milestone” birthdays lose their status as victories as one ages. Milestones become millstones. Then, later, when the luster of  accomplishment disappears and the ragged face of decay smooths into the silkiness of experience, birthdays have little impact on one’s world-view. Still, whatever the state of individual evolution, every birthday merits a tip of the hat…an acknowledgement of another marker of one’s experience in life.

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She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre ~

Every now and again I question whether all governments—the world over—are guilty of deliberately misleading their constituents. My answer? Most definitely. They are misleading us on a grand scale. No matter how “free” the society, carefully crafted messages are delivered to the media, and then to the people, in a coordinated effort to mold public opinion. In the USA, we are essentially instructed to dislike, loathe, mistrust, and otherwise think badly about Russia, China, and their respective allies. In Russia, the citizens are programmed to think of us as the bad guys. The same is true in China. Coordination between allied governments reinforces the messages each of the respective citizenries receive; the information we get manipulates the opinions we form.

Unless one reads the news (and listens to the news pundits) in a very critical, extremely attentive, frame of mind, the propaganda fed to us through a “free press” can seem unbiased and purely “informational.” But on careful consideration, it becomes apparent that the media, whether knowingly or not, plays into the more or less sinister intent of the powers that be…contriving to keep “the people” sufficiently docile and supportive of the government and the society it ostensibly supports and protects.

Regardless of how we answer, we should ask—and be serious about getting to a real, believable answer—these kinds of questions:

• Is Vladimir Putin really as sinister as the US government and media suggests?
• Was Hugo Chavez truly the ruthless dictator described by media reporting and US governmental assertions?
• Is the power struggle between the USA, Russia, and China real? If so, what is the REAL reason for the ongoing tension?
• Are Scandinavian countries really light years ahead of the USA (and much of Europe) in terms of access to affordable health care?
• What, if any, are the truly attractive aspects of the brands of socialism or communism practiced by Russia and China and their allies?
• What fundamental assumptions do I have about various countries and systems of government that may not be factual but, instead, were fed to me in an attempt to mold the way I think about the world around me?

I know. Paranoid much? No, I do not think it paranoid to question the motives of governments and the media’s role in either deliberately or unknowingly supporting those motives. I just wish I knew of ways to dig beneath the surface and get to the real answers. But I think that would require more resources and more stamina than are available to me. So I will just have to sit back and question everything; let my skepticism run rampant.

+++

The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.

~ Mary Catherine Bateson ~

+++

The Canadian wildfires concern me. Not just because of the smoke and smog enveloping much of the east coast of the US (and threatening to move south). I worry about the devastation of Canadian forests. And I wonder why the news media in both the US and Canada are focusing almost exclusively on the negative effects of the fires on air quality? Does the destruction of forest land and the potential incineration of entire towns in Quebec not merit equal consideration? Another example of government and media manipulation…or it could be simple paranoia on my part.

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Time to relinquish control of this keyboard.

Yesterday’s lunch was excellent; lobster ravioli alongside baked carrot strips, strips of red bell pepper, green beans, and onion. That should have been sufficiently nutritious and satisfying to last the rest of the day. But, no, I had a rather large dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, brought home from an Italian restaurant nearby. Those meals, coupled with a few cocktails (gin & tonic) and a medical gummy should have masked the pain I felt (and feel) in my right shoulder and the right side of my neck. But now that I think more clearly on the matter, perhaps the shoulder and neck pain arose from an unusual movement I made with my body (what that “unusual” movement might be is open to speculation). The purpose of the drive to Little Rock was to visit my financial advisor. That part of the trip took only 15 minutes or so. So we went to lunch at Brave New Restaurant, a place a friend had raved to me about, a few years ago. And I picked up two pairs of slacks from Men’s Wearhouse. So the journey to Little Rock was productive and enjoyable. When we got home, I invited a friend to come over for conversation and libations. A bit later, another friend joined us, with her dog, on the deck, where the idea of Italian food for dinner came up. One friend had committed to her family that she would pick up a take-out Italian dinner for them. The rest of us liked the idea and asked that the call-in order include our desired dishes. The four of us then scattered like a flock of scared, but hungry, sheep. This entire paragraph constitutes a convoluted background statement to my assertion that I consumed far too many carbohydrates yesterday, as this morning’s weight and level of blood glucose articulately attest.

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If all goes according to plan, my immediate family of blood relatives will join me on a Zoom video call this afternoon. I have intended to organize a Zoom call for weeks…months…finally, I did it, thanks to a prompt from my oldest brother. I do not know why I do not set up these calls more frequently. There’s really nothing to it—just quickly schedule the call, then send an email with a link to join the call. But apparently, just knowing about what is involved in that long and laborious process is enough to dissuade me from even starting it. Slob. Lout.

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My neck is conspiring with my shoulder, the conspiracy consisting of the imposition of constant, pulsating pain. Regardless of how I hold my head  or bend my neck or otherwise attempt contortions to mitigate the pain. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most severe, I would give my level of pain a 4.  But for me, a 4 represents life-threatening intensity. To put my pain in perspective, it is equivalent to that caused by a hangnail. Actually, it is not the intensity of the pain that is so troubling, it is the consistent inconsistency and the attendant variations in intensity. It is unpredictable, in other words. In a predictable sort of way.

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Last night, we watched To Leslie, a well-acted tale of a west Texas woman who won a lottery, lost her winnings, plunged into poverty and unemployment, then attempted to claw her way back out again. That followed a few evenings when we watched a limited series, Florida Man, and a few episodes of Black Mirror. Before that, we watched six episodes of Rough Diamonds.  None of these programs grabbed me. They were adequately entertaining, but they did not really capture my imagination; they were, instead, workable diversions that occupied a little time. I am ready for a superb, long-lasting series, whose every episode will leave me thirsting for more.

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Everything starts over, beginning now.

Yesterday afternoon, we protected ourselves from the blazing heat by sitting under the fan on the deck. Temperatures hovered around 87°F, but the covered deck and the breeze of the fan made the oppressive heat barely tolerable. Late in the day, when the light in the sky began to dim as the sun slipped toward the horizon, distant thunder interrupted the steamy solitude of the forest. As a gentle rain began to fall, the heat of the afternoon made the humid air grew even more dense. But, soon, cool breezes started rustling the leaves in the trees. The temperature dropped sharply. I think it had dropped as far as it would go when I checked the temperature again; 68°F. The sound of rain on the roof and in the leaves of the trees, coupled with the cool breeze, transformed the experience. Though the heat of the day at its peak was tolerable under the fan, when the air temperature dropped to the upper 60s, the comfort of sitting on the deck reached perfection. Visits by hummingbirds and woodpeckers and an assortment of other birds add magic to the experience of sitting outside when the weather reaches that point at which it could be no better. Any adjustment in temperature or wind speed or humidity or cloud cover could only diminish the circumstances.

Have no fear of perfection—you’ll never reach it.

~ Salvador Dali ~

Of course, adjustments invariably occur, so perfection passes. But my recollection of how I felt is what reminds me of what “ideal” means to me. Somewhere on this planet, there is a place where the weather consistently replicates my brief encounter with Nature yesterday. Somewhere, the temperature is always just right, the breeze is never too strong or too weak, filtered sunlight ensures visual clarity when looking at beautiful trees or brilliantly-colored birds or striking masses of clouds in the sky. But wherever that place is, the perfection is superficial; high prices, enraged residents, unfriendly neighbors, mosquitoes, snakes, scorpions, chiggers, hungry tigers, rampaging elephants, militias armed with high-powered rifles and low IQs, and a thousand other kinds of unpleasantness interfere with what could have been the ideal environment. So, we have to establish priorities. Our aims and objectives must combine the most appealing positives with the least offensive negatives; “tolerable” becomes the sought-after ideal. Yet many of us have few, if any, choices. Those unfortunates who have little control over their circumstances must learn to live with a deeply unpleasant imbalance: negatives that greatly outweigh the positives. Those of us who are lucky enough to have much greater control over our circumstances should exercise that power to the greatest extent possible; to do otherwise would be a travesty. We should examine all the positives and all the negatives, assigning priorities for both desirable and undesirable attributes of the lives we want to lead. Once the priorities have been firmly established, we should pursue them with dogged determination. But we should acknowledge, as well, that some of our priorities could well conflict with others; and with others’ likes and loathing. Wait. This is getting too complex. Perhaps it’s best to just “deal with the hand you’re dealt.” No, that discounts and discards the options available to us. Somewhere in the mass of wishes and dreams and things and people to avoid and concerns about how others feel and a thousand other influences on our lives, there is a constantly-transforming target that we seem to want to chase. The target—the environment we crave—changes with the same frequency as we take breaths. Desire is malleable, flexible. Ach. We cannot reach that place of perfection because the definition of perfection is fluid, like water in a river’s rapids. It moves within itself and slips through the fingers when one attempts to grasp it.

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I have an appointment with a financial advisor in Little Rock this morning. As much as I would like not to worry about money and what to do with it to preserve it so it lasts as long as I do, I must devote some attention to the process. Hence the visit in Little Rock. I had an advisor in the Village, but I was not impressed with her, nor with her company. I returned to an old standby, a company with which I’ve had a variety of relatively superficial dealings over the years. I hope the superficial dealings transform into deeper engagements; I want to feel confident that I can rely on the advise I receive. It’s a bit late to be coming around to this, given my advanced and advancing age. But maybe it’s better late than never. We shall see.

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I change my mind with incredible frequency. I suspect I have decided, with certainty, at least ten times in the last two days where I might want to live. Here. There. Over there. Close. Far. More distant. Nearer. Far, far, far away. In a small house. In a cavernous castle. In a cave. On a hillside in Chile. On the outskirts of a small town in Nebraska. On the Gulf Coast. In France…maybe Arles. In a small motor home. In a converted Greyhound bus. On a houseboat. On a thousand-acre farm. Finland. Reykjavik, Iceland. Tacoma. Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Schenectady, New York. Yellow Springs, Ohio. Santa Fe, New Mexico. Hawaii. Aix-en-Provence. The far northern reaches of Canada. None of my wishes and desires will matter if I am crushed by a meteor this morning. It’s all pointless daydreaming. I have better things to do. Probably.

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If I lived far from civilization, I think I would experiment with tattoos and complex jewelry. I would create long, colorful strings of beads—metal, wood, stone, plastic, etc.—and hang them from my left ear. The strings would be long enough to drape over my shoulders and wrap around my neck. Colorful, glistening beads. As for tattoos, I am not sure yet. Perhaps an extremely detailed, very colorful dragon wrapped around my torso and one arm and one leg. Or a monstrous scorpion on my left shoulder. Or, perhaps, a phrase taken from a book by John Steinbeck. Mi novia would want a say in my tattoo, I suspect. And maybe she would like to have input into my lengthy earring.  But why wait until I live far from civilization? Why not just do it? Here. Now. Hmmm.

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Time to shower and shave and prepare for my trip to Little Rock. Join me?

No “standard” exists for the size of urban residential lots. I thought one did, in fact, exist. And perhaps one did, at one time, but no longer. And I doubt the “standard” was geographically widespread. My assumption, based on the most common sizes I remember seeing on Zillow.com, is that the typical urban lot is a quarter of an acre, or 10,890 square feet. But an article comparing Jacksonville, Florida lot sizes with lot sizes in Austin, Texas, suggests otherwise. In Jacksonville, the decade for “large” lots was the 1970s, when the median lot size was more than 11,000 square feet. Recently, the median lot size there fell to 7,700 square feet, while the medium size of a home grew from 1,800 square feet in the 1970s to 2,300 square feet today. Austin’s real estate plat configurations changed in much the same ways during the same periods. Charlotte, North Carolina had an enormous median lot size back in the 1970s at 59,000 square feet; more recently, the size has shrunk to about 7,500 square feet. Even that big lot size is not really huge, at least in my opinion; it’s only a tad over 1.35 acres.

Given my thirst for space/distance between my neighbors and my home, 1.35 acres is on the very small side.  Multiply that number by 100—or 300—and the amount of space would be getting closer to…what?  Ideal? Adequate? I can live with what I have, of course. Roughly half an acre. But that half-acre is artificially enlarged by the fact that there are no houses close to me. I cannot count on that emptiness, though. I might buy up all the lots surrounding me, except for the fact that every unimproved lot would require payment of a monthly assessment, at present, of $46. “Ownership” is simply a code word that means “control” or “privacy.” And people must pay for control or privacy these days. Or submit to the vagaries of the world around us.

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I started this blog very, very late this morning. I’m ending it very, very early (considering how late I started it). Apparently, I have little to say this morning. I have plenty to think, but little to say about it. That’s often a wise approach to the day, though I too frequently disregard wisdom in favor of decompression.

I wonder how common it is for people to ask themselves whether they made any significant contributions to humankind during the course of their lives? The answer could ruin an otherwise perfectly acceptable life-long mood. But the ruinous nature of the response depends not only on what one did (or did not) accomplish, but on one’s desires or expectations about one’s “legacy.” If I have been under no illusion that my life “matters,” confirmation that it did not would be of no particular concern. But if I believe everyone has the obligation to make lasting contributions of one kind or another, failure to do so could be devastating. On the other hand, if I had created a successful vaccination against cancer, I might consider it a big deal, whether or not I believe everyone should leave a positive legacy. I have explored some of these questions before and have had conversations about the questions and some of the answers. Invariably, even in the absence of any tangible contributions to humankind, someone will have said something to the effect that, “You may never know how much of a positive influence you might have had on some people in your live…” That’s the “fix” for someone who feels like he is a failure because he has done nothing of consequence. Hmm. But, then, it might be true, yes? Anything is possible.

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Given the choice between: 1) detonating an explosion to bring down an old building and 2) creating an extremely intricate silver and gold wire sculpture, which would I choose? Those options are absurd; they make no sense. But sometimes we are faced with nonsensical options; do you prefer butter with your television viewing or do you hear the sound of raindrops hitting the big time? Incongruity frustrates us, but it can make us laugh. Or it can exacerbate our disappointments, turning moderate annoyance to white-hot rage. The effects of incompatible ideas running headlong into one another are difficult to accurately predict. People who understand those difficulties avoid betting the horses or sitting at the blackjack table. People who think all predictions must eventually come true tend to join Gamblers Anonymous when it’s too late—when everything worth losing has been lost.

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Let me look through the lens of a kaleidoscope and I will be lost almost instantly. Peering into that lens, I enter a chaotic world of brilliantly colored, rapidly changing geometric shapes and designs. Regardless what was on my mind the instant before my eyes land on that psychedelic mindscape, nothing but colors and shapes matter as soon as I plunge into that calamity of color. If ever I get news that a nuclear blast is about to annihilate planet Earth, staring into a kaleidoscope’s lens will be sufficiently distracting to me to keep me happy and curious until the end. Adults should not be so easily amused by kaleidoscopes, though I am not sure why I think that. I suspect it is for the same reason that adults have no business being awestruck by spectacular sunrises or sunsets. We’re just too mature for such childishness. Adults should be content to wallow in worry about taxes, healthcare, and the likelihood that all the world’s children will grow up to be chain-smoking welfare cheats.

At what point does childhood end and adulthood begin? Where is the razor-sharp line that separates unmitigated joy from shrugging acceptance? My immediate answer is that there is no such line and there never was…but then I realize there must be such a line, at least for some people. They are the people who seem to have made an abrupt transition from carefree child to über-responsible adult in the time it takes for a hummingbird’s heart to beat. I think something awful must trigger that instantaneous transformation. Something so overwhelmingly distressing or painful or depressing that all the light in the universe suddenly went dark and dull. Just…BAM! From cheerful giggles to mournful wails and endless sobs, in the blink of an eye.

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I do not remember how old I was when my oldest brother gave me a book full of images of M.C. Escher’s art. I think it must have been sometime around the time Escher died. Maurits Cornelis Escher died within weeks of my high school graduation. When I received the book is immaterial. I was  immediately taken with Escher’s unique way of looking at the world…and representing the world uniquely with his extraordinary graphic art. Escher blended imagination with reality and he mixed architecture with conjecture. His mind allowed him to see what others do not see. His hands (at the urging of his mind) presented what he saw in ways that allowed the rest of us a glimpse into his creativity. Escher’s art proved that the impossible is readily achievable; all it takes is the willing suspension of dead-certain practicality. I think I still have that thin, brown, hard-cover book. I hope I do. I feel a need to take a good look at how easily one can accomplish the impossible.

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Time moves far faster than a clock’s hands. That is very difficult to understand.

I found this thought-provoking:

If you would know a mystic, do not confine your search to monasteries and temples, but look also on the highways and byways, in towns, hamlets, and in the hustle and bustle of the great cosmopolitan centers of the world. When you find someone who is industrious, studious, compassionate, loved by friends, and neighbors, tolerant in religious views, and who can point out to you the magnificence and efficacy of God in the simplest of things, you have found a mystic. With these qualities, whether one is attired in sacerdotal robe or in the overalls of a mechanic, one is none the less a mystic.

~ Ralph M. Lewis, from The Sanctuary of Self ~

As I read this passage, it occurred to me that “God” in this context could range from the Christian or Jewish or Islamic version of a supernatural deity to—more in line with my thinking—the mere existence of the astounding complexity of every aspect of the cosmos and its contents. And, of course, many other interpretations could fit. God, then, could constitute one or more “beings” or some variation on recognition of the astonishing, awe-inspiring, incredibly complex puzzle that constitutes everything. But who or what God is does not really matter, does it? Yet why do I want to consider the possibility that “mystics” are among us. It depends on what constitutes a mystic. You or I could be one. All the people we admire could be mystics. And even those we loathe. Yes, it is possible to loathe someone who is “industrious, studious, compassionate, loved by friends, and neighbors, tolerant in religious views, and who can point out to you the magnificence and efficacy of God in the simplest of things.” But if we do, that loathing is not caused by an external reality; it is created in ourselves through fear or envy or some other human emotion, an emotion that feeds our ego and stokes the fires of hatred in our hearts.

I have not read The Sanctuary of Self; I was drawn only to a few meaningful passages I found in front of me. I do not know enough about the book to say precisely what it is about, beyond the apparently obvious. But the quotation and the title of the book both appeal to me in odd ways. That is, emotion is what attracts me to them; logic has no bearing on how I feel about them.

On one hand, I am thoroughly atheist, through and through. Though I admit the possibility, I am close to certain that “beings” such as those presented in the Bible or Quoran or Torah do not and did not exist. On the other, the amazing complexity of all existence is more than sufficient to inspire in me awe, wonder, worship…appreciation at the very highest level. The relationships between humans and between all other living creatures and the environment in which we exist summons, in me, reverence.

Conversations between mature adults, in which they explain their beliefs (or lack thereof) may be insightful—offering insights about one another—I doubt those conversations change attitudes, ideas, or positions. Beliefs about the nature of existence form early and coalesce into almost inalterable ideas by the time one exits one’s teens. At least my concepts of the universe and the cosmos and all “creation” had long since solidified by my early teens. My point, here, is this: at a certain point in life, probably very early on, one’s only sounding board about one’s belief’s is oneself. Others’ insights might be interesting, but they essentially are irrelevant to one’s own ideas and experiences. And that’s where “sanctuary of self” and “mystics” fit in. Sometimes, the only sanctuary available to us are ourselves. And we might find it is possible others may be mystics—but it is certain we can be and should be our own mystics. Especially for atheists and doubters, the only sanctuaries, sometimes, are ourselves.

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We recently visited with friends who are in the process of selling their house and moving on to their next adventures, the destination and content of which remains uncertain. During our conversation, Hawaii came up as an attractive option. The state’s politics, climate, natural beauty, diversity, and a host of other factors are clearly in its favor (for people of our political persuasion, anyway). The cost of living, not so much. That’s an obstacle that could be overcome if approached creatively. One of the couple is, like me, enamored of the concept of co-housing. If enough people—and the number might not have to be very big—got on board with the idea, they might collectively be able to amass enough money to create a “community.” Without breaking their respective banks, so to speak. The right plot of land, the right design, and the right people could make Hawaii a truly appealing destination. Maybe.

The appeal of Hawaii came to mind this morning as I read an AP article about the state’s laws regarding guns. A new law allows more people to carry concealed weapons, but simultaneously prohibit people from taking guns to a wide range of places, including beaches, hospitals, stadiums, bars that serve alcohol and movie theaters. If a private business allows firearms, it must post a sign to that effect. I do not know enough about the law to know whether I would support or oppose it; it depends on who can carry concealed weapons and why they are permitted. Whether I support or oppose it, though, is immaterial; it is what it is.

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Even in the laid-back environment of Hot Springs Village, even in the deep, dark woods, the world sometimes can seem intrusive and hostile. Those are times a person needs the world to empty out, leaving him safe and alone. Those are the times I feel strongest that I need to go away somewhere, by myself, and spend a day or a week thinking and writing. It doesn’t last long, the sense of urgency that I need to be away from all people. But while it does, that feeling tugs at me hard. As I think about my occasional hunger for solitude, I wonder what that craving for being alone means? The feeling that I need to find a safe retreat from the world is not new; it has come and gone, with about the same frequency, since I was in college. Maybe, in the deepest recesses of my mind, I think I will one day find an “answer” by reaching far, far inside myself during a time of total solitude. An answer to who I am, really, at the cellular level. That is an absurd idea, but in absurdity may be precisely the place where the answer rests.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

~ Aristotle ~

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When I went in on Thursday to get a “loaner” hearing aid to see what it might do for me, it was unavailable because the supplier’s internet was down. The hearing aid had to have its software updated before use, which was impossible without internet access. So, I did not test the hearing aid. I am growing more skeptical by the minute of audiologists who sell hearing aids. I have decided to have my hearing tested by an ENT doctor, if possible. Ach! It’s the little things that can drive a person stark-raving mad. Having experienced many little things, I know this.

Today began with uplifting news for a change. I learned that the Edith Kanakaʻole Quarter is now in circulation, a continuation in the American Women Quarters^TM Program. Not only did I learn about the new quarter, I learned a little about “Aunty Edith” and the reason she is so admired in her native Hawaii and beyond.

I learned that Dev Shah won the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee (and its $50,000 prize), after competing in two of the events, previously. And I learned that Marie C. Bolden, a Black girl, won the first national spelling bee 115 years ago, in 1908.

News that the Senate passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling boosted my mood temporarily too. I like having a bit more confidence that I will continue receiving my Social Security payments and that my retirement funds probably will not lose massive amounts of their value in the aftermath of an economic bloodbath.

Though encountering uplifting news certainly is a good thing, discovering that the good news is tinged with disheartening information or realization is not surprising. In Aunty Edith’s case, the mere fact that a Hawaiian woman’s selection merits special attention verifies that bias, bigotry, racism, and a host of other unpleasant attributes require ongoing efforts to erase them.

The racist reactions to Marie Bolden’s 1908 spelling bee win amplified and shone a light on the brutal verbal attacks that being Black called forth—and continues to do so today. I know nothing about Dev Shah’s parents or grandparents, but I suspect Dev’s cultural ancestry is Indian or Pakistani. I have noticed many recent National Spelling Bees have been won by people whose names suggest (to me, at least) they are of Asian descent.  That observation suggests to me either that Asian parents tend to be more supportive of their childrens’ intellectual development or non-Asian parents are under-supportive. There could be many other reasons, of course, related not to support or intellect but to cultural differences…or other factors. I would like to know, with some confidence, what causes…wait, I seem to have great acumen at snatching negativity from the jaws of joy.

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Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

~ Marcel Proust ~

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Finally, a deal to raise the debt ceiling. I will worry, even after Senate approval, until Biden signs the bill. And then I will grind my teeth as I think of the fact that the deal is yet another temporary “compromise” to temporarily solving a problem that should be eliminated. Philosophical differences must be confronted, acknowledged, and addressed if this Congress and those in the future are to effectively solve ANY problem. Compromise usually necessitates give and take on both sides of an issue. Everyone might have to swallow a bitter pill in order to reach a satisfactory resolution to problems that look very different, depending on one’s perspective.

The outrage at the debt ceiling compromise by those on the left and those on the right tells me the problems will not be solved until some grown-up leaders get involved at both ends of the political spectrum. Adults who hold strong positions that conflict with the positions of other adults realize they either must concede some of their ideals or risk dying in bloody battles. But lately I have seen evidence that too many people may be willing to die for meaningless ideals. “I will not accept apple pie for dessert. It’s either cherry pie or we fight to our deaths.” Moronicatude is a neologism I coined for such idiocy.

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The good news continues, though. When I look outside at my back deck and into the forest beyond, I feel a wave of satisfaction wash over me. The new deck furniture—two swivel rockers, a loveseat, and a coffee table—is comfortable. The newly washed and sealed wood of the deck looks well-used but is solid. The hanging ferns and wind chimes and various other decorations are pretty. The stained glass windows we hung from the end of the deck add something beautiful that words cannot describe. It’s a place where I feel good. I can sit there, sipping coffee or a soda or just water, and feel in touch with the universe around me. Sometime soon, I will buy another notebook computer to replace the one that threatens to crash and burn at any moment (and which I replaced with a desktop computer); then, I will be able to write my blog while outdoors, rather than inside, looking out a window. Mi novia has suggested I do that—more than once. Perhaps I should react more quickly to her ideas, inasmuch that many of them are quite good ones.  Oh, I should say this…looking out the window is not at all bad…but feeling the early morning air touch my skin and smelling the forest and hearing the birds sing fills me with appreciation.

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Yesterday afternoon, I attacked a sinus headache with acetaminophen and a nap. My timing was not good, in that I was asleep during a time when a friend might have come by to share cake and conversation. Today, I will preempt the sinus headache with an allergy tablet and large volumes of water. I hope yesterday’s wished-for event will take place today. This paragraph is, obviously, a message to my friend. 😉

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And there you go. It’s just ten minutes after 6 and I’ve finished my post for the day, I’ve emptied my coffee cup, and I’ve managed to maintain a reasonably positive outlook for the first two hours of the day. Life is good. And you are, too. Yes, you. And You. And so on.

The 2023 hurricane season begins today, June 1. The names awaiting assignment to potentially deadly storms for the season are: Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harold, Idalia, Jose, Katia, Lee, Margot, Nigel, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince and Whitney. I know of only three storms that bear my name, John. The first was a Pacific storm in 1994; the second, another Pacific storm, struck the  southern tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula on September 1, 20006, causing only minor damage. The third was yet another Pacific storm. It skirted Baja California, but did not make landfall. The storms do not “bear my name,” actually. They bear the same name assigned to me at birth. What, I wonder, does the 2023 hurricane season hold in store for the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf coasts? How many ships will be lashed by the fierce winds of tropical storms and  hurricanes between now and November 30? Who will write music and lyrics honoring the seafaring victims of this year’s storms, now that Gordon Lightfoot has died? I wonder whether any songs have been written in honor of people killed by the brutal onslaught of hurricane wind and water? Just curious, though the thought that people may have died—but no songs were written about them—makes me feel a bit melancholy.

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June is Pride month, too.  Until recently, I thought the United States had largely gotten beyond the bigotry associated with homophobia, etc. But the progress made in the recent past is under increasing pressure intended to reverse the advances. Bigots are coming out of the woodwork, emboldened by Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and their ilk. For that reason, alone, those of us who are allies of the LGBTQ+ communities must be prepared to fight people who want to turn the clock back to times when gays, et al were forced to conceal their sexual orientations and other attributes viewed by bigots as “dangerous” or “immoral.” Will humanity ever evolve to a point at which bigotry dissolves into the hideousness of history, with no chance prejudice and intolerance will again rear its ugly head? I am afraid not.

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If not for the inconvenience of chaotic—and possibly distant—parking, I might have a good time attending an Arkansas Travelers baseball game. And I might enjoy going to Centerville Speedway some Friday night to watch racing…stock cars, modified stock cars, street racers, etc. I seriously doubt I would find either event truly riveting—at least not sufficiently joyful to warrant changing my attitude and giving me the urge to participate in spectator sports with any frequency or regularity. But I imagine this unanticipated interest will be short-lived.  Both events would, under normal conditions, be of absolutely no interest to me. But I suppose conditions these days are abnormal; certain elements of my personality are subject to momentary deviance.

That having been said, I sometimes long for a place to go, habitually and often, with people who—without becoming addicted—want a place where audience energy is palpable but not intolerably frenetic. After watching the event(s), I can imagine moving on to a welcoming, comfortable tavern where the group can have decent (but not snobbishly expensive) wine, good local draft beer, non-alcoholic drinks, and various types of bar food…burgers, pizza slices, fries, fried green olives, steak tartare, fried green tomatoes, jalapeños stuffed with shrimp and cheese, assorted mixed nuts, etc., etc. Food and drink tend to melt away social trepidation and misanthropy.

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There is a certain kind of joy in accomplishing something with one’s hands that cannot be replicated in any other way. Intellectual accomplishments usually cannot match the satisfaction of “building” something. Painting, sculpting, metal art, working with glass, model-building, jewelry making, and on and on get in a person’s blood; they become his salvation in a brutal, unforgiving world. But for someone like me, whose attention span seems to get shorter with every passing hour, even salvation is not enough to keep interest in the endeavor high. Writing, a poor cousin to creative handmaking, is my refuge. Yet as I type, hoping my “creative outlet” will keep me occupied, I remember this: I have forgotten how to write—I just process words through my fingers. Characters, words, sentences, and language at large simply spill from my hands’ tentacles onto a keyboard and subsequently onto a screen. Language, sentence structure, etc. by default. Ideas and concepts may (or may not) be buried beneath the sea of alphabetical characters.  But sculpting and welding and plasma cutting and painting and sewing and chiseling stone and making statues out of bronze and porcelain and clay are sure to increase the trickle of creativity to a powerful flow. At least for a minute.

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It is time for me to shower, shave, and get dressed. All in preparation for another visit to the audiologist to try out a hearing aid. I will not be persuaded to buy one today. I am certain of that. I have decided to have someone who does not sell the devices test my hearing. Not that I am a skeptic, of course…well, of course I am skeptical.

Perhaps this afternoon will present another opportunity to engage in conversation and otherwise enjoy the company of a friend. We shall see.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

~ Muhammad Ali ~

I remember a time when I found Muhammad Ali (formerly known as Cassius Clay) insufferably arrogant. And I still think the man was arrogant in many respects. But as proud and loud as he was, he was an extraordinary boxer, an excellent self-marketer, and—from time to time—an extraordinary philosopher. Actually, a number of wise, insightful quotations are attributed to him and I have no reason to believe otherwise. Despite the fact that involvement in boxing—a barbaric sport—is awfully dangerous and potentially fatal, I think he pursued it because it represented for him the most likely way forward toward the kind of success he sought.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

~ Muhammad Ali ~

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“How would it look if I …” Though I criticize others who give more credence to optics than to reason, my hypocrisy is on full display when I do. I am just as guilty as anyone else when it comes to worry about what others might think. That fact, alone, embarrasses me. The fact that my worry about what what others might think might arise from “how it would look” is doubly disturbing. When I consider a person who is deliberately addressing optics, I think of a politician and the politician’s staff members as they consider how something might be received, rather than what that something might achieve. Putting myself in the same genus with them is quite shaming and hurtful. It makes the phrase “less than human” come to life.

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Two nights ago, we enjoyed a wonderful evening with our “wine group” friends, some of whom also are “church friends.” One of them hosted us at his house with ribs from his smoker; some of the best I have ever had. The others brought salads, beans, dessert, wine, and various other goodies. Our contribution was wine and stuffed celery. People assume the celery is stuffed with pimento cheese, but mine was different: cream cheese, sharp cheddar, lemon juice, cumin, chile powder, and a little Pace Picante Sauce.  The fact that there was so much else to eat may have been the reason so much was left over; but I think stuffed celery is now considered an appetizer from the 1970s or 1980s. I cannot help it; those were the years when I was coming into my own. “Coming into my own?” According to thefreedictionary.com, it means: “reach a new level of maturity, independence, or success.” But I digress!

Sitting among a group of good, friendly, reasonable, thinking people was such a good feeling. Everyone could be themselves, with no fear of offending anyone else. I may be the only one who actively considers such a concern: worrying that what I do or say may offend. The only people I would not worry about offending are people I actively dislike. Or loathe. Not, it’s not more digression; well, maybe a little. At any rate, I felt so fortunate to be among kindred spirits. Grateful to be protected by a refuge of progressive thought in a political (and even social) environment of deliberate, aggressive, unapologetic regression. And grateful for many other aspects of my life. Appreciative of the people who made life worth living in years gone by and those who do the same today.

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As we sat watching the latest episodes of Happy Valley last night, we heard a loud “boom.” I thought it sounded like a car crash, perhaps half a mile from us. Mi novia went online to learn what others nearby might have heard. Online, she read reports from all over Arkansas. Some people suggested it was a sonic boom, caused by a space capsule racing through the atmosphere as it plunged downward toward a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico. This morning, the only things I found about the sound were these:

• • • • A Facebook post made by a meteorologist,  who said it was the SpaceX capsule
      • A headline story online from The Manila Times, saying:
        • A private flight carrying two Saudi astronauts and other passengers returned to Earth on Tuesday night after a nine-day trip to the International Space Station. The SpaceX capsule carrying the four parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico, just off the Florida panhandle, 12 hours after undocking from the orbiting laboratory.

And so there you go. Our entertainment was interrupted by subtle evidence of a once-in-a-lifetime event that we did not learn much about until this morning (and not much so far this morning).

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Today is the very last time we can experience May 31, 2023. There will never be another one.  Six hours and thirteen minutes into this 24-hour span as I write this, less than three quarters of the day remain to be experienced. Never again will I be able to capture this moment. I’ve already squandered most of a quarter of the day. Only time—roughly eighteen hours of it—will tell whether I do the same to the rest or whether I put at least part of it to constructive, progressive, positive use.

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June, which begins in about seventeen hours and forty-five minutes, is a month flush with birthdays. Mi novia, my sister, a brother, and several friends celebrate their birthdays in the coming month. And I will celebrate the fact they have birthdays to celebrate. Although, for the first time I can remember, I wonder why we celebrate birthdays? Yes, I understand it is a milestone, but isn’t ten days after; a birthday also a milestone? I think so. And, anyway, why do we need milestones to warrant celebration? Why shouldn’t we celebrate the mere fact of all existence…every day??! We should! And I think we do, each of us in our unique ways. We may not even recognize that we are celebrating our existence in this universe and the universe’s existence in our fields of vision, speech, touch, smell, and hearing. Now, if only we would waken every day and express gratitude for (not to) everyone and everything. Time flies. We have only seventeen hours and thirty-three minutes left until June begins. I must prepare for it!

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The world in which I live would have been a completely different environment if evolution has gone in a slightly different direction a few millennia ago. What if, for example, the brains of sheep had evolved so that their intelligence (in human terms) was greater than humans? And, assuming that had happened, assume they developed the capabilities to work with the same tools humans use, just modified to conform to the anatomy of sheep. We might be sharing the Earth with a species that possesses capabilities that equal or exceed our own. They might drive their versions of “cars.” They could practice law and medicine. They could, through intense lobbying, get their most astute and persuasive members appointed to important governmental posts. Including, let’s say, executive positions in the Department of Agriculture and the State Department. Any mention of leg of lamb or lambchops would be considered hate speech. Sheep probably would run for elected office in key political districts, garnering ever greater political power with every office. Shepherds would be out of work; in an environment in which any human control over the genus Ovis is prohibited by law. These are absurd thoughts, indeed. Yet here they are, ideas emerging from a nearly seventy-year-old brain; a mind afflicted with all manner of innocuous deviance.

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My hands are riddled with claw and teeth marks. I blame the cat, but part of the problem has to do with my way of playing with—roughhousing with—the cat. She’s still a kitten, really, and still learning how to play without causing damage. I should be concerned, though, that my rough way of playing might be teaching her to be more aggressive, more willing to draw blood, and more willing to attack. So, watch it, John. She can take you out with just one swipe of her razor-sharp claws.

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Another day has begun. It has long been light outside. The air seems still and heavy, though I have yet to go outside. I think I shall, in a minute. A fresh cup of coffee and a deep breath of swamp-wet air is just what I need. Best of the day to ya!

Politicians are carriers of infectious psychiatric pathology. They harbor ideas and attitudes that cause stress in their constituents. It is informative to note that carriers need not suffer from the infection themselves; politicians, therefore, may not suffer the miseries they inflict on the electorate. If I had my way, they would. They would contract the diseases they carry. Gut-wrenching stress. Constant worry. Financial concerns. And much, much worse. If I could exert as much control over politicians as they exercise over the rest of us, politicians would dread me. With good reason. Alas, my power is limited to my ability to cast my vote. Unlike politicians, whose relatively small numbers give their votes considerably greater power than the ballots I cast, my power is massively diluted; my votes are weak and essentially powerless. But, by combining mine with the votes cast by like-minded people, my vote can take on more significance and far greater raw power. The trick, of course, is to find people who share my perspectives. And to secure the sanctity of our collective ballots. No mean fete when politicians manipulate votes the same way they manipulate voters. As much as I abhor violent insurrection, I sometimes find myself viewing insurrection through more favorable eyes. Hmmm.

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I watch the sky with suspicion. Do meteorologists have more control over the weather than they let on? Can they schedule rain, snow, rapid increases or decreases in temperature, and other meteorological events with precision? Watching television weather forecasters, one might be inclined to dismiss the idea as the product of an unhinged mind. But bumbling forecasts that are far off the mark are intentionally misleading in more ways than one. Meteorologists occasionally bungle their forecasts as a means of persuading audiences of the legitimacy of meteorology. If meteorologists were to reveal their true capabilities, the rest of us would label them magicians. The rest of us would be stunningly wrong. Meteorologists are not magicians; they are weather gods who possess the power to harness Nature. Watch them carefully. Their holy, supernatural powers are not limited to doing “good.” No, they not only provide gentle rains and soft winds that give crops needed nutrients and healing kinetic motion. They schedule tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, hail, fierce straight-line winds, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and all manner of other catastrophic events. So, beware. Listen carefully to weather forecasters’ clues. Paying close attention may enable us to re-take the power long-ago snatched from us by Zeus. 😉

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Time is not “universal.” Even “galactic time” relies on moments that differ remarkably from “solar” or “lunar” time. Time, then, is contextual. It depends on its environment. A day on Earth is not the same as a day on Jupiter. And a day defined by the Milky Way galaxy is not the same as a day defined by the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. Yet we go about our lives under the mistaken assumption that time is universal. If we adopted time as dictated by movements within the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, we would age far slower. Or much faster. Or, perhaps, the physical manifestations of age would differ radically from the way they present themselves in our experience. We might get grey hair, crepe-paper skin, and a stooped walk before our first “birthday.” Would we continue to celebrate birthdays if time did not cooperate the way it does now? And how would we define “now,” given the huge variations between time as we experience it today and the way we might experience it under different conditions? “Today” would have a different feel to it, too, as would “yesterday” and “tomorrow.” While this string of ideas may have no obvious utility, I think they have value; if for no other reason than to stimulate parts of the brain that rarely have the opportunity to express themselves.

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I am not motivated to write this morning. The words I have placed on the screen thus far are just placeholders for words that might convey ideas of considerably more value. I am extremely tired. I will nap now and hope to awaken in time to do some modest amount of work around the house. But if not, the work might get done by others whose motives to do the work are governed by their desire for need for money. Off I go to sleep.

News about yesterday’s partial collapse of a six-story apartment building in Davenport, Iowa caused me to have concern about the people affected by the collapse and sparked memories of our road trip last September. As we drove along the Great River Road National Scenic Byway in Davenport, we were surprised to come upon a moored Viking River Cruises ship, disgorging passengers—for a tour of Davenport and environs, I suppose.  It feels a little odd for fond memories to collide with compassion and care; I suppose it’s natural, though. I liked what I saw of Davenport, a town of around 100,000. And, as we ventured north to Decorah, a smaller town that appealed to me even more, I found myself remembering how enamored I had been with Iowa and northern Illinois and Wisconsin when I lived for a few years in Chicago. The stops in small-town Iowa and, later, the drive through western and central Wisconsin, rekindled my deep appreciation for that part of the country. As we made our way from the mid-west to New York State, my love of road trips continued to intensify. I discovered that, if my immediate reaction to places along the way was any indication, I could happily settle—at least during spring, summer, and fall—in the north-central and north-eastern tier of states. The look and feel of that part of the country is somehow radically different from the south and southwest and west coast, though I would be hard-pressed to express just how the regions are so different…without going into excruciating detail that might initially seem irrelevant. I loved living in Chicago, though I cannot say I ever felt completely “at home” there. But I was happy to live in Chicago with my late wife and to spend weekends exploring the rural countryside west, north, and east of the city. I miss that time of my life. But I know “you can never go ‘home’ again,” even when you never felt that anywhere was truly ‘home.’

I sometimes find myself pitying people who never wandered more than a very short distance from their birthplace. But, then, I think those people may have a far better, deeper, and more accurate sense of “home” than I could ever hope to have. Hmmm.

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I woke, sometime before 4 this morning, to the sound of Phaedra meowing at the foot of the bed. She yowled as I went to pee and the noise continued as I went into the closet to throw on a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. She followed me into the kitchen, the volume of her howling growing with every step. I tricked her into going into the laundry room, when I closed the door and left her complaining as I went back to the kitchen. I took my morning pills, checked my blood sugar, prepared the cat’s early breakfast, and made coffee. Soon after I left her with her bowl of food, she came looking for me in my study. I assume she had already finished eating. When I refused to devote my undivided attention to her, she left my office in a huff and deposited herself on the front entry mat, just outside my study door. And there she sleeps, even now; sated and angry and apparently ready for her postprandial nap. Before Phaedra, my morning preparations took far less time; back then, I slipped into the kitchen, quickly did my healthcare monitoring duties, and headed to my study. Ten minutes, tops. Nowadays, though, even when I trick the feline into staying out of my way by locking her in the laundry room while I prepare her food, what used to take ten minutes takes at least fifteen…more likely, close to twenty or twenty-five. Getting up by 4 is no longer quite as early as it once was because Phaedra demands my focus and distracts me from giving my undivided attention to my coveted morning routine. I willingly give in to Phaedra’s demands, though, despite feeling annoyed sometimes by her insistence that I give myself over to her whims.

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Later, after I have embraced the morning light (now appearing outside my window) and have otherwise grown accustomed to the start of the day, I will change into “work” clothes and go about finally doing some touch-up painting around the house, along with a few other long-delayed chores. “Work” clothes—shirts and pants and sneakers that will be undamaged if subjected to paint, dirt, sweat, and other forms of wardrobe punishment—put me at ease. I am always a little anxious while wearing clothes that could be ruined simply by accompanying me as I experience a normal day. I feel more at ease in clean “rags” than in freshly-pressed shirts, slacks, and polished shoes. That is not to say I do not enjoy getting “dressed up” from time to time. But that enjoyment is purposely kept to a minimum.

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To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

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“...simply not to allow yourself to get lost…” That seems such a dismissive way of looking at how to avoid allowing regrets to commandeer one’s emotions. If it were “simple,” regrets would not be so damn difficult to overcome or set aside. Yet the advice given by Thich Nhat Hanh is probably solid. It is just not as easy as he made it sound. An impartial “object of inquiry” does not soften memories of the past, nor does it provide forgiveness for one’s acts or omissions. That is up to oneself to do on one’s own terms. A dispassionate, rather sterile personal assessment may give a person insights into himself, but it does not necessarily provide a “cure.” My skepticism notwithstanding, Thich Nhat Hanh’s advice deserves attention and observation and, whenever possible, adoption. If nothing else, it may suggest pathways that may be invisible without that mindful concentration.

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I have never been to Washington Island, Wisconsin. In fact, I am not sure I knew much—if anything—about the place until this morning. My brief exploration of the place has convinced me that I might enjoy having a look around, though. Once there (by way of car ferry), there appears to be quite a bit to explore, from lavender farms to restaurants to Stavkirke, described as “more than a beautifully designed and expertly crafted Norwegian church in the woods of Washington Island. It’s a tribute to a people, to a heritage, to a way of life that, though waning in the modern age, persists in small pockets all across rural America.” Well that sounds appealing. And there’s more. But one of the most appealing aspects of Washington Island is that it is home to only about 600 people. Yet those few hundred people must host hundreds and  hundreds of tourists to support restaurants, pubs, and more.

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Phaedra just succeeded in breaking my new and rather expensive stapler. She jumped on top of my two-drawer file cabinet, with the intent of jumping behind it. I grabbed her just in time, but she fought me and, in the process, knocked the stapler sitting atop the cabinet to the floor. A spring is now missing…possibly on the floor…but the likelihood of finding it is slim, thanks to its small size. Even if I find it, I will have no idea how to reattach it to the stapler to make the thing work. I am giving thought to how to skin, filet, and feed Phaedra to the local population of hawks, coyotes, foxes, and such. Grrr! With that, I am finished with today’s blog. Phaedra’s curiosity seems to have killed my interest in touch-up painting. Damn it!

Just as I was beginning to give more credence to the lessons I have been trying to learn this morning…

A cone of patchouli incense. A desire to feel the comforting embrace of universal peace. A seemingly endless supply of low-level anxiety. A sense of the presence of perpetual background noise, like radio static. This chaotic mix defines a tiny corner of my day—and a big slice of my time in this non-urban, non-rural community.

What is this place, after all? It is not a town. Despite its name, it is not a village. It certainly is not a city. I live in an unincorporated area where, in a futile attempt to keep the riff-raff out, porous gates stand guard. Gates offer irrefutable evidence that residents live in fear. But, then, locks on car doors and deadbolts at the entry to one’s home do the same thing. Locking the doors, latching the windows, and posting signs that say “this property is protected by a security system;” all these actions tell the story of where we are on the spectrum between fear and freedom. Freedom is a mythological state of being that few people have ever experienced. While we may not live in abject terror, our anxieties are on full display whenever we lock a door, check a back pockets for assurance the wallet is still there, or cling to a purse in preparation for tearing it out of the hands of a prospective purse-snatcher. We do not like to admit it, but we are, perpetually, afraid. We live in fear, albeit mostly a low-level fear.

The patchouli is not smothering the anxiety. Maybe it is keeping it to tolerable levels. Or, more likely, the incense is doing nothing; it can do nothing without my cooperation and active support. I cannot decide whether I am resisting or cooperating. I want to feel peace and freedom, but I do not want to mislead myself—or be misled—on the path to reach them. Suspicion is a byproduct of anxiety. Paranoia is a byproduct of a deeper level of fear. Further out, toward the end of the spectrum, insanity—with its potential for unpredictable (and potentially horrible) behavior—springs from fear on steroids: terror.

I consider these matters as if I were a detached observer. I look at them from the perspective of a distant witness, not as if I were in the midst of the confusion. Yet, even from a distance, I see myself—as clear as if I had the eyes of an eagle—right there in the middle of it. The mind’s eye has a range of vision, by the way: dull, dim, and fuzzy on one end and spectacularly bright and clear and precise on the other. In between, our vision (like our memory) is unreliable; it oscillates between clarity and confusion.

Peace. Universal peace. Those of us who can even conceive of it, much less actually believe it is achievable, live in a fantasy world. We are much more comfortable living in an imaginary place than in the real world. Our dreams frequently give imaginary substance to our desires. We might feel universal peace, but that sensation arises from our expectations about what universal peace might feel like—not from any real evidence of the sensations or emotions the experience might actually produce.

The bottom line: no matter how “grounded” a person might be, he or she lives in a dream world created by his/her perspectives. Having never been one others are apt to label as “grounded,” I have no legitimate credentials to make any claims about where—whether in a fantasy world or in the real world—a grounded person might live.

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Our new deck seating is operational and in use. I like it. I will like it even more when we secure an outdoor rug to put under it and some small end tables to place next to the two swivel rockers. In the interim, though, I will enjoy it “as is.” I may go out in a few minutes to sit and listen to, and watch, the birds. But, at 55°F, it’s still a touch cool for the way I am dressed (shorts, t-shirt, and flip-flops). What the hell. I’ll do it, anyway, at least for a minute or two. Just to say I did it. But, first, the blog insists on being put to bed.

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Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Though the “official” Memorial Day “holiday” is still two days away, I am thinking about it now. A post I wrote eight years ago still represents my thinking about Memorial Day:

Memorial Day is dedicated to the men and women who lost their lives in defense of the USA, it is not a celebratory welcoming of summer.

It doesn’t matter your politics, we owe a debt of gratitude to those people who did as they were asked. They may not have agreed with the politics of the wars they fought, but most did. Regardless, they followed orders and did their duty. Well over one million men and women have died while fighting, or supporting, wars in which the USA has been engaged. I offer my respect and admiration for them; I only hope their sacrifices lead, eventually, to peace and to an environment in which war is recognized as the ultimate insanity.

An experience eight years ago prompted me to write that little diatribe. I had read an article by a veteran who said he cringed when he heard people say “Happy Memorial Day!” “Happy” is not a word we should associate with the day, or the three-day-holiday linked with the day intended to recognize and mourn the ultimate sacrifices made by people “in uniform.” I think a specific day—or week or month or eternity—should be formally recognized as a moment during which people responsible for starting or prolonging wars are shamed for their roles in attempting to destroy civility and civilization.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?

~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

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This morning, as I read about Ken Paxton’s potential impeachment as Texas’ attorney general, I wondered just how corrupt a person has to be to suffer the rancor of Texas’ Republican legislators. I have nothing but contempt for Ken Paxton, however I cannot bring myself to express admiration to the politicians leading the charge to impeach him. While they may not be as corrupt as Paxton, their political philosophies are brutal, dangerous, and should be rebuffed at every opportunity. “If only” the populace of Texas would rally ’round human decency, compassion, and democratic ideals, the cesspool that is the Texas legislature would be emptied and turned into an institution that actually serves the people of the state. But reality suggests the decay has not even reached its peak. Ach!

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Ten lighthouses are available from the General Services Administration. Several of them will be offered first, free of charge, to Federal, state, and local governments and non-profit entities. If they are taken, they will be offered at auction. I would love to own a lighthouse. Perhaps I should form a nonprofit, the sole objective of which would be to acquire and restore lighthouses—some of which would be intended for residential use. The prospect of buying, restoring, and living in a lighthouse has always been appealing to me. An incredibly powerful emotion draws me to those lights, like a moth to a flame. [WARNING: There are more clichés where that came from.]  Lighthouses have always represented a satisfyingly lonely isolation from the rest of the world. Living in one, while probably hard on my knees as I ascend and descend the stairs to the top, would make me feel like I am not just close to, but part of, the natural environment. Lighthouses belong to Nature just as much as—or more than—they belong to humans. They serve as the anthropomorphic intermediary between rough seas and rocky shorelines. Obviously, I have a romantic perspective on lighthouses. I realize, of course, they can be cold, dirty, spider-infested, money-consuming, and more; plus, they can be dangerous during severe weather. Nonetheless, lighthouses occupy space in some of my many, many fantasies.

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Niksen is a Dutch wellness trend that means “doing nothing.” I learned about niksen by reading a current article on BBC.com and an April 2019 article in the New York Times. Practicing niksen is said to relieve stress. Despite the fact that I am retired, modestly solvent, and generally unafraid for my safety, I feel considerably more stress than I would like. Perhaps I need more frequent and focused niksen as a safety-valve to relieve pressure and its attendant stresses. The Dutch are fortunate in that their government and their social structures facilitate the practice of niksen, in that the Dutch population largely has substantial free time, away from work. (So do I, but I haven’t practiced enough niksen thus far, I suppose.) Worth thinking about, methinks.

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I took a bit of a break from writing. During that break, my thoughts wandered into places I wish they would not go. My flippant mood transformed during my pause in blogging; melancholy took the place of glibness. Well, that’s life. My writing now ends.

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Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain.

~ Isaiah 10:4 ~

The urge to be creative rises and falls in an unpredictable pattern. A relatively recent spike in that urge in me—rekindled by viewing several finished products on walls—honed in on stained glass. As I skimmed a craft catalogue—my growing current interest in intricate metal work (e.g., jewelry and abstract art)—burst into being. My years-long fling with mask-making remains—and it may erupt into a love affair at any moment—but I have been dissuaded to pursue it for various reasons. I still have my easel in my office, along with plenty of acrylics and oil paints and several canvases, so I may paint again. The life cycles of all these urges vary in erratic ways. My intentions to start or to return to a creative outlet may last a day or a month or a year. The embers of one may hide, buried in ash, for years. Eventually, they all reappear for a time before they slip back beneath the rocks from whence they came. Everything except writing. But writing is creative in a way and that satisfies the intellectual circuits of one’s brain, whereas creativity that yields a physical “product” answers the need to see and touch and possibly hold the tangible output of a person’s vision. Surprisingly, despite the fact that for years I have craved expressing the kind of creativity that produces physical articles, I have never latched on to one and kept at it. As I think about why I abandoned some of my creative pursuits (or stopped engaging in them for a very, very long time), I think the most significant reason is my dissatisfaction with the products I have created. I want to make clay masks, but I want the make good clay masks. I want to create abstract oil and acrylic pieces of two-dimensional art, but I want them to be good. I want to work with stained glass, but I want to immediately produce, physically, what my mind’s eye sees—something that would be good, if only I could translate into reality the fantasy inside my head. Any thinking person could immediately identify the problem here: getting good at anything requires practice. The Mona Lisa did not emerge, in finished form, from Leonardo da Vinci’s first brush with painting. (Author’s Note: That was meant to be something of a pun…but not much of one.) My lack of patience is legendary, at least in my mind. I try to hide my intractable impatience whenever I can, because it tends to annoy people around me. Of course, it may not be just your ordinary impatience; it could well be attention deficit disorder (ADD). Whatever it is, it is the primary stumbling block for me. I think. And despite the fact that I know it and that I wish I could conquer it, my interest in producing tolerably decent “artsy” products is insufficient to merit the effort. In other words, I want to be good, but my desire is not great enough to convince me to engage in the process of getting good. To use a favorite aphorism (one I have not used for far too long), “The game is not worth the candle.” In the original French: Le jeu n’en vaut pas la chandelle. It originated in the sixteenth century, as I am sure I must have written at some time in the past, to refer to an evening card game’s winnings that were so low they were not worth the wax burned in the candle providing light to the players.

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One unassembled chair arrived yesterday. Sometime soon, we hope, three additional chairs, a loveseat, and a low table will join what would now be the solo seating spot. We bought the set to serve as a comfortable and inviting seating area on our deck. The very heavy, circular wrought-iron and its four very heavy, wrought-iron chairs will take up residence at the opposite end of the deck from where they were, outside our bedroom. A few more decorative items to hang from the deck’s header, along with an attractive outdoor rug, will complete the setting. Or, if not complete, get close to it. Hummingbird feeders must be put up (late, I know), too, joining the birdseed feeders. The grill, smoker, and deck box must be properly situated, somewhere, as well. I’m sure it will work out fine. One way or the other, the deck will become an ever-more-inviting refuge. We will be awash in outdoor seating areas (if we include the area away from the house, where the forest floor is littered with a few strategically-placed and very thick slab flagstones). Now, if only I could keep at bay snakes, chiggers, and extremes of temperature, the place will be perfect. Even though I’ve committed to stay where we are, I cannot say with even the remotest certainty that I will remain even moderately as committed in a month or three months or a year. We shall see. I’ll keep searching for that place that will satisfy everything we have ever dreamed of. The moment I find it, my commitment will dissolve. I am not going to hold my breath waiting for that instant.

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Today promises to be a pleasant one, if our plans pan out. We expect a good friend to join us today for an extended period of leisure, conversation, and the kind of utter relaxation and comfort available only  in the presence of fast friends. I look at the calendar and see absolutely NO commitments…and the same tomorrow! And the only thing on Sunday is church (which, realistically, absorbs a considerable portion of the day, when one considers the frequent post-service conversation, lunch, and obligatory (for some) nap).  So, we have a few days of actual “vacation” from the day-to-day obligations that devour a person’s time the way a starving wolf consumes an unfortunately slow rabbit.

But we’re not talking rabbits and wolves, here. We’re talking close friends enjoying one another’s company. And that is a good thing.

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.

~ Jim Morrison ~

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Last night, we spent some time with other friends at the World Tour of Wines (or whatever it’s called), where we drank some pretty nice wines and ate some very nice food. The starter was fried pizza dough, dusted with shredded parmesan and basil and served with a homemade marinara sauce. An arugula salad with a wonderful bacon-infused tangy dressing was next. And a nice chicken breast with a white sauce, served over a few spears of asparagus. To top it off, cannoli stuffed with two different fillings. Of the six other people at our table, three are members of our church. The other three have known our church friends for many years, I believe. It is nice to be involved with a group of people like them—long-time close friends whose bonds go back much longer than we have known them.  Though we are not extremely close to the others, we feel extremely comfortable in their presence. They are people with whom we would happily enjoy socializing over food, wine, and conversation. Some days, I think there are many such people within my “sphere;” other times, I think the number is miniscule. It depends on my then-current definition of friends and where I find myself on a scale the ranges from “fiercely, furiously, dangerously loathing of” to “passionately, everlastingly, hopelessly in love with” on the other. I do not hang around with people on the “loathing” side of the scale, but I know of such people. The older I get, the quite modestly larger the numbers near the other end of the scale get. I’ve spend most of my life being something of a reclusive hermit who craves solitude but who is firmly attached to (i.e., in love with) a tiny number of people. The tiny number is what I refer to; it has grown…a little. Surprisingly (to me), the number increased significantly when I encountered Unitarian Universalists. Hmm. What could that mean?

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Yesterday, I came across a house for sale, online, that I found extremely appealing. It was built just last year, but from a design produced for Joseph Eichler’s company, which developed mid-century modern subdivisions in California between the late 1940 and mid 1960s. The design of the house, in Palm Desert, California, is beautiful. It screams “mid-century modern” for every peak and valley in its roof. But I cannot fathom why the builder/developer placed it on a lot that backs up to a large area of bland commercial establishments. Places like Red Lobster and Home Depot and so forth. I was a little put off by the price, too: I think it was $1.5 million, or thereabouts. But it has a pool, so I understand the price tag; the pool probably accounted for half the price. 😉

A little later, after I drooled over the Eichler-designed house, I came across another very nice house for sale, this one in New Caanan, Connecticut. The house, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in the mid 1960s, I think, is beyond beautiful. It, too, has a pool. But the opulence of the pool was nothing compared to the rest of the property. But it is an “old” house, so it probably needs more upkeep than a newer place. That notwithstanding, its $8 million price tag probably is fair, if a tad steep. After looking at pictures of the Wright house, glancing around my house made me feel sad and impoverished. Of course, I am not impoverished (though not rich by any stretch), just sad. I’ll get over it. I would like to have an architect design a house for me, incorporating my ideas and enhancing and improving them. And, then, I would want an exceptionally competent contractor to take care of construction, etc. I want it to be move-in ready when I see it. Actually, I’d like it to be fully-furnished in the finest furnishings. I would sell everything I own. An estate sale might be the way to go. Where, I wonder, would I have this house built? Not in Florida. Not in Texas. Not necessarily in the USA. Sighhhh.

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Mi novia want to name another cat; she suggests the name, Mandu. “Cat Manduuuuu,” she calls out, demonstrating the way a cat’s name can change a person’s behaviors and attitudes.

I need more coffee and something nutritional and tasty. Want. I most certainly do not need either of them. But I shall wander into the kitchen in an effort to satisfy my desire.

If I were to write what is on my mind this morning, the smoldering screed produced by my fingers on the keyboard would almost certainly erupt in a mighty explosion, spreading a fiery tornadic wind throughout the cosmos. Planets would be incinerated by the heat of my rage.  Distant stars, already white-hot on their own, would be incinerated by the intensity of my fury. Ashes a thousand light-years deep would bury the scorched remains of the ravaged universe.

That being said, maybe I should refrain from sharing what is on my mind. If I remain quiet, perhaps only the politicians and those who fervently support them, will burst into unquenchable flames. I think I should stay silent and hope the lot of them will demonstrate the real potential for spontaneous combustion.

No. Instead I should allow my anger to subside. I do not wish either the politicians, their supporters, or the universe that strangely allows them to walk the Earth, to burn. No, what I wish is for compassion, empathy, reason, and at least minimal levels of intelligence to return to the social and political realms.

I write this well after 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday night. Normally, I would be sleeping—or trying to sleep—by now. But I feel moderately wired at the moment; maybe even considerably wired. There’s no obvious reason for the fact that my nervous system seems to be pumping high-voltage electrical currents through my body. But my brain needs no reason for feeling like I’m clinging to a bolt of lightning as it races toward the ground at double the velocity of the Big Bang. My mind simply decides to ramp up, without limits. Something is keeping me awake, alert—skipping across rocks infused with nuclear energy. This energy gravitates toward explosive ideas, causing dismay and confusion among mid-level executives, high school cheerleaders, and professional hoboes living in boxcars outfitted with chic furnishings purloined from Ikea and Walmart.

Suddenly, at 1:00 a.m., I wake, discovering my computer screen filled with the letter “k.” My intended pause for reflection lasted considerably longer than I intended. The middle finger of my right hand apparently rested, quite heavily, on that letter. I scrolled down until I found the last “k” and I deleted all of them, all the way up to where I finished the sentence that ended with “Walmart.” And, now, I am going to bed. With a bit of good fortune, I will be able to sleep. Perhaps my brief attempt at blogging and my somewhat longer nap have zapped the unusually sharp spike in mental electricity.

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It is now morning. The cat, Phaedra, woke me.  Sitting atop mi novia, who was trying to finish sleeping, the feline meowed. She glared at me, her piercing stare no doubt intended to shame me into getting up to feed her. Though she claimed she was starving, I discovered considerable amounts of uneaten dry food in her bowl. She is spoiled. She wanted canned food. I chose a seafood pâté for her, as if the choice of canned food mattered. Any processed flesh from a creature that had once been a living being would have suited her just fine. Barbarian!

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We finished watching Rough Diamonds, a Belgian series from Netflix, last night. Netflix describes is thusly: When a prodigal son sends his family’s empire into crushing debt, his estranged brother returns to Antwerp’s diamond district to pick up the pieces. The description does not mention that the family is Jewish Ultra-Orthodox; the family’s religious beliefs and traditions matter to the story line and to the tensions between their thoughts and their actions. I finally found the series moderately engaging after episode four of eight. If I had been more energetic and mentally curious, I might have found something more riveting to watch before we finished the first episode. But I was, and continue to be, a tad lazy.

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My last remaining loop earring bit the dust two weeks ago or more, forcing me to wear a diamond (or diamond-lookalike) stud in its place. Finally, we went looking for another pair identical to the inoperable loop. We found a pair, just one, at Dillard’s. The last pair I bought, at the same store, cost $12. This one cost $16. I think the previous purchase was made about three or four years ago. The price increased by more than 33 percent in that short span of time. If a $25,000 car increased at the same rate over the same span of time, its price would have reached $33,250. I wonder whether that “what if” actually reflects reality? I do not have a solid grounding in economic theory, so I cannot quite grasp the reasons prices rise over time. If prices were stable, wages could be stable as well. But we do not want wages to be stable; we want them to grow at a rate faster than the prices of products we buy. Because we want to amass wealth. And we want more stuff. We would be delighted if prices dropped and wages rose, simultaneously. Except we do not really want “wages.” We want access to limitless cash. We hunger for massive wealth. We crave winning the PowerBall lottery. Yet people who win big seem, quite often, to go bankrupt and/or plunge into a bottomless pit of depression following their spectacular windfalls. Money is not the answer to all our problems. We know it. But we discard that knowledge with astonishing regularity, allowing greed to overtake and overpower our ability to be satisfied with what we have. This philosophical diversion arose from musings about an earring. I do not understand this man who inhabits my body; I sometimes think his brain is unhinged from the real world.

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Speaking of economics, when I took a couple of economics courses in college, I was introduced to the concept of opportunity costs. Opportunity costs represent the loss of potential gains from other opportunities when an alternative is chosen. For example, if I chose to stuff my money in a mattress rather than put it in an interest-bearing savings account, the opportunity cost would be the interest I failed to earn by choosing the mattress over the bank account. Opportunity costs are not limited to monetary considerations. Accepting a job in an urban environment in southern California instead of accepting one in a small village in the south of France presents an assortment of opportunity costs; as would be the case if the other offer had been accepted. Cost-benefit analyses, I think, involve considerations of opportunity costs, though I do not remember the two concepts running through my mind in parallel while studying them. I have forgotten so much of what I “learned” in years past. Saying I “learned” is misleading. I did not learn it; I was exposed to information I did not retain. But wait! If I forgot something, but it comes back when prompted by triggers of some sort (reading an article that sparks memories of opportunity costs, for example), I suppose I learned it; my knowledge was simply buried under the weight of time and interceding experiences. If I were more curious, I would research this issue to answer my questions about learning and memory and what constitutes the partial erasure (or burial) of memories. But I am not sufficiently curious. Or I am not sufficiently patient. Or something like that. It may be that my attention span is shorter than my pinky finger. That reminds me of the lyrics to You Can Call Me Al, by Paul Simon: “Why am I short of attention? Got a short little span of attention.” That recollection reminds me of another snippet of lyrics from the same song: “Why am I soft in the middle, now?” Hmm. Yes, why am I so damn soft in the middle, I wonder? Could it be my lifestyle?

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The idea of living in a commune of sorts appeals to me. I would want the commune to offer plenty of space between me and my communal partners, though—I need my privacy and my space. But being surrounded by people I like and admire and with whom I have important commonalities (and intriguing differences) would be quite nice. We could have meals together with some frequency…not every meal, though. And we would spend some time together most days, perhaps sitting in front of a roaring fire (or soaking in the communal pool) sipping wine and exchanging thoughts and ideas and dreams.

It could be a small commune. Perhaps ten people. Maybe even fewer. Or the commune could be larger, but smaller clusters of members would live in relatively close proximity to one another, yet more distant from others. I think the larger commune would have to be at least several hundred acres in size. Maybe even bigger. And members of the smaller clusters would each live in private homes that sit on an acre or more, surrounding a central, communal gathering place complete with kitchen, dining area, swimming pool, hot tubs, etc., etc.

What was I thinking earlier about greed and being satisfied with what we have, not forever longing for what we don’t? I must train myself to be satisfied, grateful, and content. Actually, I think I am all of the above, but I slip into occasional (frequent?) greed mode. I would like to eliminate that aspect of my personality; my desire for “things” I do not have. But other desires can be enervating; they can breathe life into a person and spark pleasant emotional experiences.

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Okay. It’s 7:30. I have better things to do than write about what’s on my mind. Don’t I?