John Swinburn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

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Calcium. It’s what’s for dinosaur.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Leon Redbone ~

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

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I’ll see what the day brings.

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

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Wuhan

Zibo

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

Dongguan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lamb Vindaloo Tamales

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

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

Preparation method

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Clarence Darrow ~

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

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

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

I had almost forgotten about this morning’s scheduled bloodwork. Age and past illness and mortality once again conspire to intrude on my obliviousness to the inevitability of reality. As if that is not enough, my own thought processes are battling with one another over being too serious versus not serious enough; too carefree versus too bureaucratically rigid.

Sometimes, it behooves me to restrict my fingers’ movement; to remain silent rather than ventilate by giving them free rein. Now is such a moment. And so off I go to prepare for a day that has the potential to be either pleasant or not, as do all days.

Negative Space

The absence of compassion acts like the negative space
used by an artist who unveils images to the viewer by
painting around emptiness, drawing the eye to what
is not there, revealing what is, by what is missing.

Compassion is best understood in its absence,
when someone else’s indifference takes its place.
When being alive feels as though rivers of
shattered glass flow through one’s veins,
opening invisible wounds that one knows
must be there, hiding beneath stoicism.

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

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

Negative space, with carefully crafted emptiness, expresses what is.
Perhaps, then, carefully crafted fullness expresses what is not.
That calls into question whether reality is simply an
expression of the absence of fantasy—or vice versa.

+++
Jennifer Warnes was 45 years old when she released her album, The Hunter. I am especially enamored of two songs on that album:  Way Down Deep and Rock Me Gently. Another of her songs (actually, her cover of a Leonard Cohen song) on a different album (but I do not recall which one), First We Take Manhattan, is another favorite. I know Warnes was 45 when she released The Hunter because I stumbled upon her current age (76) this morning. I was surprised to learn she has aged so much since 1992, when she released that album, because I know I have not! When I thought of her this morning, I thought of her as the relatively young woman (okay, middle-aged) who released that album. Warnes collaborated with Leonard Cohen quite a lot and was featured on several of his albums as a backup singer and/or an accompanying singer. I knew that, but I mention it here because I do not know whether you knew and, if you did not, I figured you would want to know.

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I have written only a few poems I think are worthy of being read in a public setting. Actually, I may be giving myself more credit than is due; perhaps they are better suited to private readings. The poem above, Negative Space, is not one of them. I wrote it this morning.  I am moderately satisfied with the first two or three stanzas, but it goes downhill from there. I suppose I will eventually return to it and rewrite it (probably discarding the remaining stanzas in total), but I do not know whether it will ever be one of those I feel relatively good about. Yet I still occasionally write poetry because writing poetry sometimes helps me think through either intellectual or emotional obstacles of one sort of another. Or, in some cases, it allows me to express—far better than non-fiction prose or plain fiction—abstract ideas that I can express only within the emotional framework of a poem. But that may not be entirely true. In fact, I do not know what is true and what is not. I may have been deluding myself my entire life. Not “may have been.” No, it is definite. My Birkman Report (the summary of my Birkman & Associates psychological measurement [The Birkman Method]) says about me, when I am under pressure: “tells stories and believes them.” I have mentioned my Birkman Report twice before on this blog: the first time was on November 19, 2014 and the second was on November 10, 2018. As usual, I have wandered far, far away from the topic that began this paragraph. I doubt there is any question that I suffer with (or through) ADD or something like it. But that self-diagnosis has never been confirmed by a qualified psychologist or psychiatrist. Nor will it be confirmed by one of those folks; I have no compelling reason to seek out a diagnosis of what could be dozens of disorders and other sorts of deviance.

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Meteorologists are not inveterate liars, despite the fact that their assertions often prove to be fundamentally flawed. From time to time, in fact, they are dead-on. But their earlier promise of considerably cooler temperatures this week seems to be falling apart. Instead of highs in the low to mid-80s, they’re now saying high-80s to low-90s. That is unacceptable. I hereby demand they revert their predictions to mirror their earlier forecasts!

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It’s just after 7, time to put this post to rest. Today is house-cleaning day, which means either I will clean house or will feel guilt for having opted to do something else, instead. That’s probably the wrong attitude to have. I should try to fill that negative space in my head with positive thoughts.

Opinion: The light that illuminates the world tends, for soulmates, to be refracted through the same prism.

A soulmate is “a person with whom one has a strong affinity, shared values and tastes...” or “a person who shares a deep understanding or bond with another…” Both dictionary definitions note the connection between oneself and that person may especially apply to one’s lover or spouse, though implicit in the way a romantic connection is mentioned is a suggestion that soulmates are not necessarily romantically involved.  Best friends, for example, may be soulmates; so say a number of sources accessed through the internet. Some of those sources make unyielding assertions about the nature of the relationships between soulmates, as if there can be no argument with their assessments about those relationships. When encountering such arrogant certainty, skepticism or doubt may be the best reaction. The definitions of the term, as I see them, set parameters of meaning that individuals may then refine in ways that best suit their perspectives. Long-lasting relationships between spouses or partners, in which both share most of their fundamental philosophies and values, may be seen as examples of the relationship between soulmates. The same applies to long-term friendships. The people involved in those relationships need not be in lock-step with one another on all matters, but hold enough shared worldviews to cement the connection. The modifier, long-term, may not be necessary, though, for a soulmate relationship. Time may not play a crucial part in determining a soulmate relationship, though, nor is a time a guarantor that a soulmate relationship will survive, because people change. For some reason, that brings to mind a pithy sentence I recall from management courses I took years ago, referring to staffing issues: If you can’t change people, you have to change people. That has nothing to do with soulmates…does it?

Psychologists and psychics seem to have different understandings of soulmates. From what I have read, psychologists tend to view the soulmate relationship in a more measurable, clinical way, whereas psychics see it as an expression of karma, or something like it. I have seen the term twin-flame used in connection with who otherwise might be called a soulmate; the explanations seem to be overtly spiritual, as if destiny plays a part. I wonder whether both terms describe more wishful than factual relationships. I sometimes use soulmate as if it legitimately describes a deep relationship, but the idea may be more romantic than real. It’s a matter of semantics, I suppose, as so many things are.

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I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

~ Zhuangzi ~

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About a week ago, I read a transcript on the National Public Radio (NPR) website of an interview on All Things Considered. The interview was between NPR’s Rachel Martin and Vanessa Zoltan. Zoltan is a humanist chaplain who describes herself as an “atheist chaplain.” The title of the piece is Why this chaplain sees her atheism as a gift. All four of Zoltan’s grandparents were Nazi concentration camp survivors. Zoltan’s parents’ religious philosophies emerged from the impact their experiences during the Holocaust. Zoltan explained that “…every law I was taught, as to how to walk through the world, was through the orientation of the Holocaust.” She went on to describe how that influenced her thinking. The following comments, extracted from Zolan’s interview, struck a chord with me:

Like, you don’t get in lines, you know, our people have stood in enough lines. You always get involved if you see anything—that you don’t understand that’s going on with a neighbor, you get involved…we were taught to sort of look at our friends and wonder whether or not they would hide us if we ever needed to be hidden…

My dad wasn’t just raised with these stories, it’s very real for him that at any moment you can have to leave your country. And this is the lived truth of probably half the globe, right? That at any moment you might have to leave. And so you keep your eye out for who could help you.

I sometimes wonder whether those of us without Zoltan’s direct link to ugly historical experiences can truly understand how very realistic those possibilities remain, even today. The people fleeing from Syria and Honduras and Nicaragua…and on and on…understand how social upheaval and the dissolution of compassion can happen at any time and in any place. Until not terribly long ago, I felt the likelihood of the need to flee the disintegration of the relative peace in the USA was extremely low. I almost felt “it can’t happen here,” though I knew it was a possibility, albeit a remote one. Today, as I observe growing tensions both domestically and internationally, I realize the remoteness of the possibility shrinks every day. I can happen here.

The rest of Part I of the interview with Zoltan left me feeling more firmly ensconced in my own atheism. In expounding on her decision to be and remain atheist, but keeping some Jewish traditions, she explains her atheism this way:

I want to marvel at the fact that lions exist and despair at the fact that they’re dying from being overheated because we’ve ruined this planet and not leave myself the option to put a silver lining on it.

The second part of the interview is scheduled for today, Sunday August 27.  I look forward to reading and/or hearing how Zoltan, according to Rachel Martin, “had to find a different kind of spiritual center. And she found it in literature — specifically Jane Eyre.”

+++

I type my thoughts far more frequently than I speak them. My thoughts flow more easily through my fingers than from my mouth. I often wish I could be a more eloquent speaker, someone who can think on his feet. Wishing is a waste of time, though. Dreaming is far better.

+++

The day is here. The sky is filled with early morning light. Today will be quite warm, but not as hot as yesterday. Tomorrow morning will be comfortable. I think. I hope. I dream.

A collection of a few pocket knives hidden away in a seldom opened drawer tells the same story as a larger collection of unicorn figurines stored in boxes. The story is repeated by an even larger collection of wine glasses, water goblets, shot glasses, and assorted other pieces of fine crystal and cheap glass. Accumulations of “prized” possessions—some with monetary value, but more with only sentimental worth—just take up space and act like anchors, tying their possessors to places or memories that might better be left or forgotten. In time, the commonalities of the objects in the collections will dissolve; the commonalities exist primarily in perception, not necessarily in fact. The knives are unrelated to one another; they are part of a “collection” only to the extent that they are all knives and they all belong to one person. Unicorns belong together only because they share an identity as unicorns and they were consolidated into a collection only because someone decided to do so. The same is true of the crystal and glass. When the collector disappears, the collections probably will disappear, as well. Individual pieces will be discarded or go to different people or be lost to time and disinterest. Someone may evaluate both the monetary value and sentimental value of the objects and may decide neither are sufficient to merit expending the energy to keep them together.

People accumulate material possessions that do not belong to collections, too. Paintings. Kitchen gadgets. Clothing. Knick-knacks. Bottles of wine. A million and one things that, if they suddenly were to disappear, would have no appreciable positive impact on quality of life. Indeed, amassing “stuff” makes changes in one’s life more difficult to accomplish. I read yesterday of a man who seeks out unknown indigenous peoples in the Amazon. The article’s author remarked on the freedoms those people enjoy. To survive, they need only “fire, a couple of hammocks, a blunt machete.” And the man who seeks those people out to protect them from being consumed by the modern world said, comparing modern civilization to the two remaining men from a tiny indigenous tribe: “We need a home, we need a car, we need a bunch of crap. Then you meet these two guys, living happily with nothing, no clothes, no supermarket, no water or electricity bill.”

There must be a happy medium between an ascetic, bare, minimalist lifestyle and unrestrained materialism. I think that happiness is closer to the former than to the latter. Unrestrained materialism, I think, is a sickness that robs us of genuine happiness, replacing it with an artificial sense of well-being that frequently is brittle, fragile, and broken. But where do we find that balance between comfort and unsatisfying greed? Is it that the more creature comforts we have, the more distant real contentment becomes? That question has remained with me for a very long time. No reliable, satisfactory answer has emerged. My opinions change with the seasons or the sunrise. Perhaps the true answer involves both physical and emotional comfort; or, maybe, the absence or minimalization of both kinds of pain. And, of course, satisfaction does not rest exclusively with one’s own experiences; others matter to us. Their experiences are closely tied to our own. The complexity of existence makes real knowledge hard—or impossible—to attain.

+++

So much more to say. But it will wait.

We know less today than we will know tomorrow, but there are never enough tomorrows to learn all we do not know today. That fact can be cause either for complaint or for celebration. It is a choice we make, based either on our outlook or on our circumstances—or both. When that boundless knowledge we pursue is sought purely for the sake of expanding knowledge and the wonder that accompanies it, we can choose to acknowledge the beauty of all we learn or we can opt, instead, to complain that we will never know all we want to know. When we are chasing knowledge to solve life or death problems—a cure for a deadly disease, for example—celebration erupts when we find it. But even dead-end explorations can bring us one step closer by reducing what we need to know to achieve our aims. Pessimism and optimism accompany us wherever we go.

+++

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

~ Mahatma Gandhi ~

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Argentina and New Zealand. With a bit of Italy thrown in. And an American diversion. That describes last night’s “World Tour of Wines” dinner. Wines from all three countries were featured, along with dishes created with either Argentinian or New Zealand influences. The evening was fun, lively, and informative. Aside from enjoying the food and wine, we learned that one of the hosts of the event, a friend we have known for several years, will be signing the Star-Spangled Banner at the September 5 Arkansas Travelers minor league baseball game in Little Rock. When we learned that he would be signing, and that September 5 is his birthday (a major milestone birthday, at that), the group (six last night, but usually eight) spontaneously decided to go to the game. If all goes as we hope, we will find a limo or other group transportation option to take all eight of us there and return us after the game. None of us want to be the designated driver; hence the idea of a limo. Our friend told us he has been taking American Sign Language (ASL) classes in Little Rock for three years, simply out of interest in learning. The idea of watching a game between the Arkansas Travelers and the Amarillo Sod Poodles, as well as watching a friend sign the Star-Spangled Banner is appealing to me, even though I am not a baseball fan. I enjoyed watching a live game years ago, though; this should be fun. I hope it all pans out.

+++

An unknown friend delivered a gift for me before the church board meeting yesterday; it was on the board meeting conference table when I arrived. The gift included a spray bottle of cat-deterrent and a role of tape. Whoever it was knows that Phaedra’s annoying habit of clawing rugs (and leather furniture) triggers an anger response in me. Whoever you are, if you are reading this, thank you very much! You may well have saved one of this cat’s nine lives.

+++

Left front wheel bearings. $425, more or less, for parts and labor, plus tax. I hope yesterday’s diagnosis was correct. I’ll find out today. I questioned whether I should have the right wheel bearings replaced at the same time, since they have been in service for 113,900+ miles, the same as the left bearings. I was advised by the mechanic that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” At that price, I won’t. But if the right bearings fail in the near future, I’ll begin to have serious thoughts about whether I want to deal with an aging vehicle that may begin to experience more and more frequent needs for normal wear-and-tear maintenance. The costs of repair will not compare with the costs of a replacement vehicle, but increasing inconvenience and uncertain reliability would make replacement more attractive. We shall see.

+++

Knees, hips, and other body parts subject to failure may at some point become the objects of consideration for replacement. Unfortunately, unlike automobiles, today there is no option for whole-body replacement. If such an option were available, I might give it serious consideration. I would find appealing the possibility of replacing mine with the body of a healthy, well-toned, strong, and handsome 35-year-old. But I would insist on keeping the contents of my brain, though since I’m going through the process of replacement I might ask for some personality tune-ups. I’d have a checklist to give the physicians (or technicians…whoever does the work); more easy-going, more patient, more consistently generous, etc., etc.

+++

Last night’s dream requires some analysis. Private, personal, absolutely confidential analysis. I will document it, to the extent I can remember it, in a document I keep password protected and saved under an innocuous name that does not reveal anything of the subject of the dream. Usually, people seem not to want to hear about another person’s dreams. That is a good thing.

+++

It’s very, very late. After 8, now. The morning thus far has been long and convoluted. Perhaps it will smooth out from here on.

When the forest looks bleak and drab, something obviously is amiss with the world. The problem, of course, is that there is no sure way to determine what causes that hazy, muddy, muted dimness. It is the same sky, the same trunks and branches and leaves, and the same air surrounding the trees. But in the midst of that sameness there exists a darkness that is immune to light. There is no reflection; instead, light is absorbed in some way. As if it is eaten; consumed by the very objects it attempts to illuminate. Illumination fails to illuminate.

+++

Depression. Anxiety. Whatever. Perhaps a quadruple dose of Zoloft would help. Or a couple of 30 mg gummies. Or getting away from everything and everyone for a week or four, spending the entire time in dreamless sleep. Maybe a medically-induced coma. A mood reset; something to overcome the dull, grey, overwhelming dreariness.

+++

I barely have enough mental energy to record my reactions to last night’s Republican debate, but I will do what I can:

• Nikki Haley outperformed everyone else on stage
• Ron DeSantis was dull and artificial
• Asa Hutchinson’s listlessness put the nail in the coffin of his candidacy
• Vivek Ramaswamy’s arrogant showmanship merits deep disdain
• Chris Christie has no chance of competing against the felon
• Mike Pence belongs in an evangelical religious cage
• Doug Burgum does not matter
• Tim Scott matters only slightly more than Burgum

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Anger is energizing. The opposite of anger is depression, which is anger turned inward.

~ Gloria Steinem ~

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Mirrors are tools of vanity. I thought those words were original to me, but when I searched for them with Google, I found them buried in the website for a shul/synagogue in Miami, Florida. That was the only “hit” for the sentence. I wonder if there is any meaning in that coincidence; which would mean the discovery is not a coincidence at all, wouldn’t it? Meaning. There is no meaning in anything. Things and situation and circumstances just are. No causation, no correlation, no explanation. But those assertions may simply be the results of distemper. Once serenity returns, all will be well. Meaning will again exist in the real world.

“Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!” That famous quotation was uttered in August 1864, long before torpedoes as we now know them were created. At the time, mines were known as torpedoes. One of the squadron of ships David Glasgow Farragut commanded was struck by a mine during the battle of Mobile Bay. Farragut, the U.S. Navy’s first full admiral, issued the famous order in spite of (or because of) that attack as he noticed the hesitation of his crew aboard his flagship vessel, the Hartford.   According to the U.S. Navy’s website, Farragut’s loyalty was questioned when the Civil War erupted, despite his lengthy Naval career and his criticism that secession was treason. Apparently, the concerns about his loyalty disappeared after his success in Mobile Bay.  The Navy’s website indicates Farragut did not opt to discipline with corporal punishment. The website says his choice “…not to discipline with the lash despite its popularity among other captains…also proved that tolerance, kindness and moral courage are not disadvantages, but rather strengths to naval leadership.”

Whether the Navy’s reporting about Farragut’s character and his leadership is accurate, I do not know. Because of what I have experienced during almost seventy years of learning and “being taught” about history, only to subsequently learn that more than a little of the country’s history has been whitewashed, my skepticism is always alive and well. If nothing else, though, the fact that current Naval press officers and historians assert that human decency is a strength is naval leadership gives me hope. By the way, Farragut’s father was Jordi Farragut Mesquida, who was born in Minorca, Spain; a subheading of the article that supplied the information I relate here (Navy’s First Admiral Was Hispanic Hero) celebrates that fact. Incremental growth in the incorporation of progressive philosophies in military institutions is better than no growth.

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We have our tickets for the Peter Mayer concert in St. Paul, Minnesota. And we registered for a 2-hour kirtan workshop on September 2. If we were not going to Mexico to visit my brother and his wife, we might have instead gone to Santa Fe to hear Peter perform at a house concert; that would have been extraordinary, I think. But we’re happily planning both our trip up the Great River Road to Minnesota and our journey to Mexico. We’re fortunate, indeed. The term, kirtan, is new to me. According to Wikipedia, “With roots in the Vedic anukirtana tradition, a kirtan is a call-and-response style song or chant, set to music, wherein multiple singers recite or describe a legend, or express loving devotion to a deity, or discuss spiritual ideas.” A promotion of the workshop describes the practice like this: Chanting in kirtan uplifts your spirits, creating a joyful and blissful atmosphere. The rhythmic chanting and devotional mantras help release endorphins, reducing stress and anxiety. I have not gone all “woo-woo,” but I continue to enjoy having new experiences. I tend to think the experience of kirtin, as well as others (like meditation) that can help a person achieve, at least temporarily, a greater level of calmness is primarily a physiological practice; more so, I think, than what many call “spiritual.” Whatever contributes to the core substance of the experience, I imagine it will be interesting.

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Yesterday, I got a pedicure, which left my feet and toes feeling quite happy. Today I will get a haircut, which will improve my mood when I look in the mirror. Tomorrow will be considerably busier: my geezer breakfast, a morning appointment with a mechanic to explore the cause of my car’s odd noises, a church board meeting, and a “World Tour of Wines” dinner in the evening. I am confident the evening dinner will again be a bright spot that will again elevate my mood. My phone just “dinged,” notifying me that my new morning news summary email link from Associated Press is available. Rituals, all, I suppose. Rituals tend to either annoy me or please me; I am not quite sure why, but I am exploring possible reasons. It’s probably my own psyche, rather than the rituals, that prompt my reactions to the experiences.

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Early one morning four days ago, just after the sun began to illuminate the forest, I sat on my deck and listened to a cacophony of bird sounds; calls and songs and so on. I recognized and could identify some of them, but not all. So I opened my phone’s Cornell Lab Merlin app, which listens to bird sounds and identifies them. Usually, the app identifies four or five birds. Saturday, though, it identified quite a more:

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

I saw many of the birds, as well as hearing them. There’s something almost magical about seeing and hearing so many types of birds. One of the pileated woodpecker’s calls/songs is easily recognizable; it sounds to me like a laughing hyena. But even without its call/song, I usually can tell one is nearby when I hear its exceptional loud “pecking” against a tree. I am by no means an accomplished “birder” and I have no desire to invest the time and discipline in becoming one. But birds in the wild can mesmerize me. Their sightings and hearing their sounds tend to make me feel lighter and more at peace.

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It’s almost 7:30! I’ve been up 2 hours and a bit, but it seems to me more like 30 minutes. Time on speed…ach, there’s not enough time to allow any of it to go to waste.

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I have successfully minimized my use of the word “shard” in 2023; only four posts, before today, this year. I am not sure why the word seems to fit so perfectly in so much of what I write; it describes, as well as any word can, pieces of something. I can use pieces or scraps or particles or fragments or remnants or…plenty of other words…but shard suggests, to me, a shattered piece with sharp edges. Describing what’s left after breaking a sheet of glass as particles or fragments or scraps just does not spur the imagination’s creative visions quite as well.

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Okay. Enough of this. I must shower, shave, and otherwise strip away the comfortable layers of laziness that embrace me. Oh, and I need to go online and order a swimsuit. 🙂

I sometimes feel like the world is decaying and crumbling around me—even when, at the same time, I recognize how incredibly fortunate I am in so many ways. I find it hard to square those two competing sensations. It is unexpectedly difficult to acknowledge that horror and happiness can coexist, often at the same time and in the same place—despite the fact that those opposing circumstances are as common as air and water. Guilt plays a part in the dilemma; how can I be satisfied, content, even deliriously happy when people the world over are dealing with painful struggles that threaten their very survival? Of course I realize the simple absurdity of feeling guilt just for feeling good. Yet that simple absurdity, coupled with compassion and fundamental humanity, may be what drives people to try to relieve others’ pain. Every time I read or listen to the NPR special series called My Unsung Hero from Hidden Brain: Stories of People Whose Kindness Left a Lasting Impression, I think about the conflicts between pleasure and pain, joy and misery. This morning, I read an Unsung Hero story about a woman who fell and injured herself on a Washington, DC street as she was on her way to an important meeting. Two strangers came to her aid, tended her bleeding scrapes and cuts, and helped her move on so she could make her meeting. Guilt probably did not play a role in those strangers’ responses to the woman’s injury. But compassion did. And empathy. And the fundamental humanitarian motive that drives us to care about others in need. But as I think about those things that move us to action, I wonder why that desire to help sometimes seems so random. Why do we (some of us, anyway) feel empathy for a stranger who trips on a curb, but that compassion is often absent when we consider families doing their best to escape living hell by crossing the border into this country? One could easily identify a thousand pairs of scenarios that illustrate both empathy and indifference exhibited by the same person for circumstances in which suffering is similar. The question is, of course, rhetorical. I can answer it in a thousand ways. But none of those ways truly get to the heart of the matter. The bottom line is that we just do not know. We guess. We have hunches. We might think we know, but we do not. If we knew, we would correct the discrepancy. Wouldn’t we?

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Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem from a disdain that suffering is happening at all.

~ Clint Smith ~

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Here is where the concepts imbedded in my writing in the paragraph above clashes with my own behavior: I scheduled myself for a pedicure this afternoon. I could have, instead, arranged for the money I will spend on the pedicure to be donated for food for the hungry. But if I allow myself to feel guilt for such things, I should insist on feeling guilty for spending money on every indulgence. Better yet, I should simply not engage in behaviors that beckon guilt. If only we all were “saints,” yes? But we are not. We defend personal indulgences in myriad ways, often suggesting that only by pampering ourselves are we able to muster the strength to do the occasional “saintly” thing. It is absurd to think we can be “saints,” but if we completely abandon guilt by abandoning ourselves, we have done good for no one. Not others, nor ourselves. Where is that perfect balance?

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I have long since abandoned most television. I do not have access to television channels that will air the Republican debates tomorrow evening (but I am pretty sure I can watch online). Though I do not intend to vote for any of the Republican contenders, I do want to know what they say they would do if they were chosen to be the Republican candidate for President.  I suspect the Republican hopeful whose approaches to governance and philosophies I will find least offensive is Asa Hutchinson. But I want to hear from the others. I’d rather watch on a big screen than on my computer monitor, but I’m unwilling at the moment to subscribe to “cable” television and I do not want to go somewhere else to watch. So, I’ll satisfy myself to tune in to Fox News tomorrow evening. This morning, when skimming the news channel websites, I stopped at Fox to see what that propaganda machine is saying; it is far worse than CNN, but that is only because Fox has an ultraconservative slant on “information.” CNN‘s attempt to deliver “information” is just the other side of the mirror. Both are contemptible for claiming to be news channels. Yet, still, I visit them to see what ugly misinformation the two ends of the political spectrum are spewing. Chill, John. Chill. Yesterday afternoon’s conversation about meditation should guide me toward doing more of it.

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Breathe. Breathe.

Painting by Éric Le Pape

The world confuses me. In one moment, the ugliness of war and humankind’s degradation of the planet appall me and make me ashamed to be a member of the human race; the next, I am in love with the magic of life and the stunningly gorgeous experiences that surround me. Even in the midst of the offensiveness found on Facebook and Fox News and the horrors embraced by the Proud Boys and all the other hideous aspects of the deranged fringes of society, there is incredible beauty. This morning, among all the monstrous negativity on Facebook, I came across this painting by Éric Le Pape. The moment I saw it, I was completely taken by it. So much so, in fact, that I had to know more about the artist and his other work. I found the English language version of his website, where I spent quite some time reading about his paintings and watching and listening to a video in which he discussed his life and work and the influences on his paintings. As I thought about how his paintings made me feel, I reflected on several other pieces of art I had seen recently that affected me in much the same way. Another Facebook group page, entitled A Celebration of Female Artists, contains dozens (or hundreds, perhaps) of pieces of art that I find extremely appealing. I love a watercolor painting entitled Syrener (lilacs) by a Swedish artist who died in the mid-1940s, Hilma af Klint. The site has many more that capture my imagination.

Perhaps art can drown the sorrow that attempts to drown me. Or, at least, maybe art can temporarily stifle the ability of the ugliness of the world to bury me. Or it is possible that art can divert my attention away from circumstances that simply are  too painful to face without dissolving in tears or erupting in rage. Who know? I can only guess.

In the midst of Nature’s reminders that we may be overstaying our welcome, art and other human expressions keep reminding us of our ability to produce beauty. That may be it.

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The planet seems to be rebelling against us. Dangerously high, sweltering temperatures throughout the western and southwestern U.S. Out-of-control fires in Hawaii, Canada, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and elsewhere. Extremes of tropical weather flooding parts of Baja California, Mexico, as well as the U.S. west coast (along with a modest earthquake yesterday, a reminder that Nature has multiple options available to her). More tropical storms and hurricanes brewing in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Melting glaciers. Rising sea levels. And that is just a small sample of Nature’s apparent revenge against abuse by Earth’s residents: renters, not owners, who have been ignoring the implicit provisions of the rental and use agreements that govern humanity’s unfettered access to the planet. Our landlord seems to have lost patience with her tenants’ abuse and misuse of her property. She threatened us with eviction if we did not comply with the terms of our mutual agreement. Apparently, she meant business; even if she has to burn us out or drown us, she is willing to re-take possession by any means necessary. Once we are gone, she can rebuild.

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One of my nephews, who lives in Long Beach, California, reported by text last night at midnight that the weather delivered by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Hilary “never got so bad that I even bothered to close the windows or the front door and instead enjoyed the breeze.” He noted that the “official word” was that the storm would not end for the LA area for another eight hours, but he was confident it was finished in his area. I hope he is right. A few hours earlier, in a series of back and forth texts, he reported that he was fully prepared for the storm; he had done all the right things: stocked up on food and water, filled his car with gas, etc. He even has a portable stove in the event he loses power. As long as he is right about the worst of the storm being behind him, all’s well with the world. Well, for him, anyway. Images of flooded roadways and angry, over-filled flood channels suggest some areas and the people in them continue to face severe threats.

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Thanks to One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning® of Hot Springs, we slept in comfort last night. The “fix” to our air conditioner is temporary, but a technician is to return today (I hope) to replace two parts in the system’s components that reside in the crawl space beneath the house. Though the cost was significant, it was not (in my opinion) unreasonable for a Sunday service call. And the guy who came to do the work was very nice and accommodating. He could have left the system inoperable until he could return with replacement parts; but he performed a “work-around” so we could remain home in comfort. And multiple friends offered to let us stay with them until repairs could be made, too. We are fortunate beyond measure.

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Enough pondering for the moment. Time to face the day, whatever it brings.

Our air conditioner stopped working sometime during the night. The temperature in the house as of 4:00 a.m. was 81°F. No doubt the temperature indoors will continue to rise after daybreak. Today’s high temperature outdoors is predicted to reach 104°F. The forecast calls for temperatures over 100°F for the remainder of the week, through Friday, reaching a peak of 108°F on Thursday.  We will, of course, call for emergency weekend service; I expect we will be among dozens, perhaps hundreds, of others who will attempt to be high on the list of priorities for HVAC companies’ service calls. Fortunately, we can make arrangements to stay elsewhere while waiting for the air conditioner to be repaired (though I am not quite sure what to do with the cat…perhaps boarding at a local veterinary clinic), if necessary. The discomfort of the extreme heat amounts to more than an inconvenience for others, though; it constitutes a danger that could rise to the level of life or death circumstances. That is true for at-risk people whose air conditioning systems fail. And it is true for people who live without air conditioning in their homes. It is true, as well, for people who have no homes; people who spend their days and nights on the street. Yet another spectrum…or, more properly, additional spectra. Discomfort, ranging from modest to severe. And dangers, heat-related illnesses ranging from heat cramps to heat exhaustion to heat syncope to heat stroke and, finally, heat-induced mortality—death. Social safety nets—dismissed by ultra-conservatives as wasteful give-aways that encourage lazy people to rely on the State, rather than take care of themselves—are intended to deal with such urgent issues and with emergencies that require immediate action. I wonder how the safety nets in Arkansas compare to the ones in California or Massachusetts or Wyoming? Should a person’s place of residence (or simply the place a person happens to be at any given moment) dictate the level of care to be expected? In an ideal world, it would not matter what city or county or state—or country—a person is in; society should look after people who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances. I am willing to risk over-serving a few so-called “undeserving freeloaders” if that is what it takes to ensure being ready to serve people who, through no fault of their own, cannot take care of themselves. But that is not the world we live in. We could make it into that world, though, if we tried hard enough. Yeah. Tilting at windmills.

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I just wrote my President’s Message for the September issue of the church newsletter. Based on information gathered about the percentage of recipients who open the newsletter email and the much lower percentage of recipients who click on links (which allows them to open the remainder of each article), I question the investment of time and energy into the process. While a need exists to inform stakeholders about the church and its activities, a newsletter format may no longer be the approach to take. We may need to explore alternatives to keeping stakeholders informed. When I retired from association management, I thought I had left such concerns far behind me. Hah! Was I ever fooled?!

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My concerns about my own comfort are beginning to take precedence over my interest in writing. So, I will end this post here.