John Swinburn

Another one of those odd nearly-sleepless nights. Here is it, barely past 4, and I’ve been awake for almost three hours and out of bed for a bit more than an hour. No matter how I tried to settle my mind, thoughts roared through it like a runaway train full of terrified passengers.

I was not terrified, though. I was resigned to the fact that, eventually, the train would derail—probably as it crossed a trestle high above a raging river—and that would be that. No one knew the train was out of control. No one knew there was a trestle over that canyon. In fact, no one knew about that canyon. The wreckage of the train would not be discovered for years. Perhaps decades. All the once-terrified passengers who perished in the fiery crash were anonymous. And the engineer—me—had failed to mention to anyone that he was going for a joy ride.

That is how the mind works at 4 a.m. It fabricates impossibilities and weaves them into ugly, imperfect, unreliable cloth. The kind of cloth that, if used to make clothing, would not hold threads at the seams—the garments would fall away at the most inopportune times, like crossing in front of cars at a busy intersection at rush hour on the way to an important, life-changing job interview. Imagine the distress a person might feel if he were to be suddenly, unintentionally, and irreparably nude just moments before a crucial life event. See. That’s how the mind works in the pre-dawn darkness after a mostly sleepless night. Ach!

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

~ Frederic Chopin ~

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Among the thoughts that kept me from getting back to sleep when I woke around 1 a.m. has to do with the separation of church and state. Though I have long been a fierce advocate of that separation—requiring an unbreachable wall—I suddenly questioned the legitimacy of that position. It occurred to me that religion and government/politics both rely on adherents’/constituents collective agreement about values. Though “the church” should not interfere in the mechanics of government (and vice versa), there can be no absolute distinction between the tenets of the two. The dividing line is naturally blurred. When the values that undergird either politics or religion begin to shift, the adherents of one or the other (or both) experience discomfort. That discomfort can lead to calls to install doors in the wall—or demands that it be torn down. Depending on which side of the wall a person believes best reflects his values, he will naturally demand that side assume superiority. The solution, if there is one, would be to engage the uncomfortable parties in a deep discussion of values, with the objective of memorializing (on both sides) the ones that are shared; those values would be used to reconstruct the wall. Where differences exist, they would fall on one side or the other; neither side would meddle in the affairs of the other. Perhaps it is not that simple. But that’s where my mind went. Though I still favor separation of church and state to the extent possible and reasonable, I think we should recognize that the two cannot be inextricably separated because both share values that are common to the societies in which they function.

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It is now 4:43 a.m. I have written a little, sipped my now cold coffee, and wondered why I think my deep night thoughts are worthy of documenting. I have no answer to that, other than to say all thoughts are worth documenting…if for no other reason than to reexamine, later, to find clues as to what led to one’s madness.

When I have projects to accomplish around the house, I need a clear calendar if I want to succeed in getting them done. For some reason, if I have to interrupt work on my projects, I rarely can get back on track with them until I have a clear day. An empty calendar. If not for a follow-up appointment with a dermatological nurse practitioner this morning, I would spend the entire day getting little tasks done around the house. But before I visit her, I will have to shower. When I shower, I feel my cleanliness should last for more than a couple of hours. Getting back to spackling or painting or sanding or otherwise doing things that might involve dust or sweat or both, after a shower, seems counterintuitive. Why get clean if, almost immediately, I will get dirty again? I try to overcome that absurdity, but rarely do I succeed. I tend to find reasons to avoid the dirty work because…well, because. I want to do the work. It is satisfying work. The results will be gratifying. But, hey, I took a shower! Damn. The logic is perhaps flawed, but it is mine so I will own it.  One possibility, of course, is for me to do a bit of the work before I shower, thereby accomplishing some of my project objectives and also meeting my skin-care obligations. Maybe. But I only have about four hours until my appointment. Giving myself one hour to shower, shave, get dressed, feed the cat, have some breakfast, etc. leaves me only three hours. Half an hour of pre-work preparation and I only have two and a half hours to actually do some project work. But part of those two and a half hours will involve post-work clean-up, so the time actually available to do the work begins to look like a tad less than two hours. With that kind of limited time available, what’s the point of even starting on the projects? Exactly! So, I may look for other things to occupy my time today—things for which cleanliness is appropriate.  Ideas?

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I got word last night that the church door that would not lock will now lock, thanks to the persistence of the woman who recently agreed to take on the responsibility for managing church building matters. She actually took the locking mechanism apart and corrected the problem. While it is probably a temporary fix, it is a very welcome temporary fix. She had already arranged for a visit by a door specialist, which she will not cancel because all the doors could use some professional assessment. But the specialist’s skills will not be needed to get the door to lock…because she did it! I am a little displeased with myself that something as mundane as locking a door can brighten my day. I think I may need to explore getting a life.

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The day’s light has yet to show itself, but I have written as much as I can without expressing thoughts best kept to myself.

As I emerged from sleep early this morning, an assertion about the contradictory nature of “hope,” made by Pema Chödrön came to mind. I did not recall her specific words, so I went in search of them. I found that they came from her book entitled, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.

That contention seems to go against the core premise of something drilled into our minds from a very early age. Never give up hope. Yet hope is the enemy of contentment. The antithesis of satisfaction with now. The denial of acceptance that the reality of each moment is all we have; and all we ever have. Fond memories and dreams of a better future may give us temporary solace, but they also stand in the way of understanding the paramount importance of being “in the moment.” That is not to say that past experiences and optimism about experiences to come have no legitimate place in the human experience. But there is a time to accept oneself and one’s station in time and place: this moment. Even that idea is paradoxical; we do not need to approve of our mistakes and their consequences, but we need to accept that both led us to this moment. As have our past accomplishments and all the coincidences surrounding them. Appreciating ourselves and our circumstances, come what may, allows us to “relax with where we are or who we are.” The emotional conflicts that surround those concepts make difficult the process of accepting without forgiving. Perhaps that dilemma is an ever-present tension eased only by giving up hope.

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Seventy degrees at 5:30  in the morning, in the waning days of July. I am grateful for that cool comfort. In a few moments, I will step out onto my deck and gaze at the forest. I may see and hear birds. If a breeze rustles the leaves of the trees, I will hear them, too. I wonder whether leaves are “conscious” of the noises they make as they rub against one another and against the bark of the trees on which they reside? Their consciousness, if it exists, must be radically different from the consciousness we experience; the consciousness we try (but usually fail) to understand. I have the same questions about soil and rocks and molecules of air. As days grow increasingly warm—or cool—do inanimate objects experience something akin to what humans feel? I understand, of course, that those objects do not have neurons that conduct impulses in the same way that animals do. But are those things “aware,” but in a different way? I keep coming back to questions that argue against almost everything science tells us: are we certain we know what “life” really is? Is it even remotely possible that humans are fundamentally like lab rats; being observed and studied by the very subjects of our own explorations? I rather doubt it. But I am willing to acknowledge possibilities that fly in the face of everything we “know.” We may know nothing; we may exist only in the imagination of a universe too immense to be understood, even by itself.

The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.

~ Thomas Wolfe ~

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After a brief break to refresh my coffee—which cooled during my reverie—I am back with thoughts more mundane than mystical. I wonder whether I have ever unknowingly made a stranger feel loved, simply because I extended a kindness that, in other circumstances, I would have wanted a stranger to give to me? I want to believe I have. I want to believe I am the sort of person who, without thinking, usually is kind and considerate. But I remember too many occasions when I failed to seize the opportunity to improve someone else’s moments. And I wonder what other people really think of me. Olin Miller is credited with having said, in 1936, “You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.” I will accept that most people seldom think of me. But I wonder, still, what they think when—on those rare occasions—they do think of me. Is that thought evidence of curiosity or is it the outgrowth of low self-esteem; or a lack of confidence? That sort of concern is fundamentally useless. Yet it remains a strong driver of behavior; not just mine, but, I suspect, a large percentage of the human population. I could be wrong, of course. Most people may not give a moment’s thought to what others think of them. Hmm. No, I am afraid vanity argues forcefully against the idea that people do not care how others perceive them. Vanity. Self-esteem. Or is it narcissism? Or egotism? When such matters weigh on my mind, I ultimately reach the conclusion that the opinions of only a relatively few people truly matter deeply to me. I might prefer for many others to hold me in at least moderate regard, but if they did not I would not lose sleep over it. And I truly do not give a damn what the rest of humanity thinks of me. Or that the rest of humanity does not even know or care that I exist and, therefore, never thinks of me. Or does it actually matter to me, way back in the deepest recesses of my brain? Either way, I wonder whether I am more like other people or more different from them? Not that it matters, in the full breadth and height and depth of existence.

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Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretense to make it live.

~ Joseph Conrad ~

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Somehow, time accelerated this morning beyond its usual capacity to thrust me into the day. The clock tells me 7:00 has disappeared into the ether of history, which virtually assures that seven o’clock will be remembered for attributes it never had—thanks to the human mind’s ability to manufacture reality from moments lost to time. More coffee, first, then an attempt to force myself to do work I wish had already been done.

Humans define life in ways that correspond to the ways in which we perceive the universe around us. One generally accepted definition is: a process that takes place in highly organized organic structures and is characterized by being preprogrammed, interactive, adaptative and evolutionary. Another is: a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings. Humans tend to regard the universe itself—including stars, planets, asteroids, light, heat, etc., etc.—as separate from life. We regard certain circumstances that occur in various places in the universe as capable of sustaining life, but we do not consider the universe itself as a life form. Yet some of the language used to describe processes that take place in the universe suggest otherwise. Stars and planets are born and they die. Perhaps the descriptors we use to describe processes in the universe mirror terms we use in connection with life only because they help us understand the world in ways that relate to our experience in that world. Or perhaps, despite our embrace of science, we still cling to an ancient sense of the mysteries of…everything. Or maybe, though we are loathe to admit it, we actually consider the universe and all its innumerable processes a life form of its own. We do not know and almost certainly never will. But such thoughts are worth turning over in our minds on cool summer mornings.

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I have such unusual thoughts, in spite of the horrendous headache that makes me wish I were still asleep. If I had been as alert when I got dressed as I am now, I would have taken acetaminophen or some other product that claims an ability to quench pain. Now, as I sit at my computer on the other end of the house from my bedroom, the effort required to trudge back seems too great and the distance too far to warrant making the endeavor worthwhile. But calming the shrieking nerve endings that seem to pound incessantly against the back of my eyeballs is quite an attractive prospect. Once I finish my coffee, I may make the trip back. One way or another, I must end this fierce headache, and soon. I cannot imagine enjoying church while feeling this way. And I will be unable to continue the tasks I began to undertake yesterday if this beast of a headache keeps up. I will not wait to finish my coffee; I will take a break now and make my way back to find painkillers.

One benefit of a dangerous drug like fentanyl is its near-instantaneous effectiveness. If I had been given an intravenous injection of fentanyl rather than just now swallowing a couple of acetaminophen and a sinus medication, my pain probably would have suddenly disappeared. I have had such an experience with fentanyl. Roughly a year ago, when I was in pain severe enough to merit calling an ambulance (the pain was caused, I later learned, by an inflamed pancreas), I was given an injection of fentanyl after being put in the ambulance but before it left my house for the hospital. The pain disappeared before the ambulance began to move. I suggested to the EMT who rode in back with me that I was suddenly fine and did not need to go to the hospital, after all. She disagreed, of course.  This morning’s headache is not nearly as debilitating as was last year’s inflamed pancreas, but I do wish I had access to something that worked as well and as quickly as fentanyl. Acetaminophen is a very poor substitute, in terms of quickly and completely eliminating pain.

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If I do not hurry and go outside soon, I will miss the opportunity to soak in the cool morning air. For that reason, along with the mental stagnation brought on by this damned headache, I will conclude this attempt to think with my fingers. Perhaps the cool temperatures will sooth me.

Some of the “words of wisdom” one encounters along the way are thought-provoking in ways that challenge one’s own beliefs. A skeptic’s worldview, while often seen through a  scratched grey film, can offset the optimist’s outlook by causing us to think. One need not agree with the skeptic to learn from him.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

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The time has long since come and gone when humans should have abandoned their arguments about the causes of global climate change, instead directing their energies toward mitigating its effects. But we tend to get caught up in drawing useless lines in the sand as we engage in wasteful, argumentative, and utterly unproductive debates. In my opinion, we have waited far too long to be able to do anything of consequence to stop, slow, or reverse the effects of climate change. Yet to do nothing, assuming anything we try will be fruitless, is idiotic. Massive, enormously large-scale efforts should be tried. Before knee-jerk reactions that could have monstrously harmful unintended consequences, though, we should ask the best and brightest scientists to consider the ramifications of the various options. Banning the production and use of plastics, for instance, might dramatically reduce plastics pollution in our oceans, but it might also result in a large spike in unemployment, a dramatic cut in production of important materials and products, and various other impacts. We should quickly assess, to the best of our capabilities, the direct and indirect consequences of actions we take. Only then should we demand compliance with critical action. Despite my sense that such efforts ultimately will prove futile and pointless, I think it would be idiotic to give in without a fight. But we’ve allowed the situation to become both urgent and critical when we could have acted to address the matter without so many unintended consequences of action. Now, the unintended consequences of either action or inaction must be addressed. The longer we remain stupid, the harder it becomes to get smart.

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Temperatures in the upper 60s and lower 70s make for an ideal deck-sitting situation. Consequently, I plan to do just that before I delve into the day. But, first, I will continue expressing my mind’s fragmented functioning.

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I slept with Phaedra last night. Or, rather, she slept with me. She usually prefers sleeping in the tomato-bisque-colored chair, but last night the large expanse of a king-sized bed was more appealing. She was quiet and peaceful until 4:30, when she decided I should wake up and do her bidding. I dutifully complied. And then I washed dishes I should have washed last night. Later this morning, I will clean the smoker—which I should have done yesterday, as well—and will then clean myself. A shower sounds extremely appealing at the moment. And shaving will put icing on the cake. Then, I will get to work piddling around the house to do various tasks I’ve been putting off for months. Because I will no doubt sweat profusely in the process, I will shower again later in the day so the clean sheets are not sullied by my unclean body; but before bed, I will wash and dry the sheets. Housework is never completed.

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Early yesterday morning, I smoked a batch of thick pork chops. A heavy overcast kept much of the normal morning light at bay, but even in semi-darkness I succeeded in filling the smoker with apple wood chips. Following a recipe I found online, I prepared a buttery, gingery brown-sugar rub and slathered it on the chops. I smoked them for a couple of hours until the internal temperature of the meat reached about 145°F. I then wrapped pairs of them in foil and put each pair in a zip bag. We now have the main courses for four meals; all that’s needed now is to thaw a pair of chops, sear and warm each pair briefly on a very hot grill, and plate them. Well, there’s more to it, actually. Before I sear them, I will prepare a peach-bourbon sauce (with a little dijon mustard, vinegar, and brown sugar) to complete the process. I can hardly wait to see how they turn out. First, I must buy peaches. Then, I must wait for mi novia to return home. I should have waited to begin the process. I now have to wait longer than I’d like to try them.

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I probably did not adequately thank the two people who came to the rescue yesterday when an entry door of our church could not be locked. Both of them no doubt had more pressing personal matters to attend to, but instead they opted to give priority to the needs of the church. Their willingness to step in to help, interrupting their personal agendas,  illustrates of one of the attributes of members of the congregation that make the church so appealing to me.  By the time I learned of the uncooperative door, one of the rescuers had already disassembled a faulty lock and had called for a professional to come work on it. Later, when I sat waiting for the professional to arrive and discovered my phone was almost out of power, I asked a friend and fellow board member to come sit in for me while I ran home to get my charger. Fortunately, she also came with a willingness to jump in and do more than asked. Though both of them went “0ver and above” in service to the church, their efforts were not uncommon; many others in the church respond the same way when needs arise. There was a time I would not have felt comfortable asking people in my sphere for help, but since coming into this congregation, I have come to better understand the true meaning of community. The reality of people readily willing to give up their time and talents in support of friends and acquaintances in need remains almost magical to me. But I am gradually coming to realize that magic is a natural component of compassion.

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More coffee half an hour of meditative relaxation on the deck will smooth the way for a good day, I hope. I wish. I think.

Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly is in the news of late in light of concerns about the degree to which AI might interfere with the daily lives of people on Planet Earth. Generative tools that can produce voices, images, sounds, and other aspects of “reality” concern lawmakers, scientists, ethicists, and to an increasing degree, the general public. Extremely life-like, three-dimensional, utterly believable videos could appear to show public figures admitting to horrendous crimes. Worse, the same sorts of realistic videos could show governors and senators and Hollywood stars engaging in sex with children or animals or each other. But those kinds of AI-aided products probably would—today—require human intervention. AI has not developed quite far enough to enable computers to “think” of such ugliness on their own. Or has it? Has AI already crossed the threshold into competition or conflict with human coders and programmers? Until yesterday afternoon, I would have said we are a long way from having to worry about science fiction mutating into reality. An experience yesterday revealed just how incredibly capable AI has become. My understanding of that remarkable capability came very late; computer gamers have long been exposed to AI’s stunning abilities. Knowing only a little about the amazing capabilities of AI in virtual reality (VR) games, I can easily imagine AI being released “into the wild” with instructions to pursue nefarious objectives.

My introduction to VR yesterday afternoon took place in the home of a couple; good friends. He, an aficionado of VR games, was introduced to the entertainment genre by wife’s son. She seems to enjoy VR games, but is not as much of a fan as he. From the moment I put on the VR goggles, I knew I was in for an extraordinary experience. I controlled much of what I saw by moving my eyes and my head. But my control did not extend to defending myself against an attack by a monstrous white shark. I could dodge it a bit, but I had no control over its movements. AI controlled them; and AI’s control of its movements were made, in part, in response to movements I made. Another experience, in which I was riding in a roller-coaster car and shooting lasers at clowns and zombies, was even more realistic. My understanding of VR is that the latest VR equipment and games have evolved so that the imagery and motions are even clearer, crisper, and more realistic than what I saw. My brief introduction to VR games very likely was the beginning of what I expect will be an ongoing fascination and a desire to have other VR experiences. But it also clarified for me just how advanced AI has gotten; and I am sure AI in VR games is not nearly as sophisticated as state-of-the art AI. The AI that may have the potential of upending society. If nothing else, my experience yesterday opened me up to an exciting opportunity to explore what seems to be pure magic; or, in the wrong initiators’ hands, hell on Earth.

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Ach! It’s late. I’m off to pick up an order of groceries. The day rushes by at the speed of thought!

Yesterday, my eldest brother sent me a link to some philosophical gems left by the Chilean writer, Roberto Bolaño, who died twenty years ago. It took me a while to process Ten Ideas by Roberto Bolaño (though I admit to remaining a bit puzzled by some of them), but they were sufficiently intriguing to prompt me to explore a bit more about him. One of the pieces I read, lamenting the fact that no one has written his biography yet, twenty years after his death, offered this interesting observation: “Bolaño wrote often of the role of courage—and its dark sibling, cowardice—in the lives of writers.”  Bolaño’s  last novel, published posthumously in 2004, entitled  2666, is described as a fragmentary novel which, according to Wikipedia, is “a novel made of fragments, vignettes, segments, documents or chapters that can be read in isolation and/or as part of the greater whole of the book.” The idea of a fragmentary novel appeals to me. I can imagine adapting an assortment of my writing into such a beast, though the product probably would be rightfully regarded as an incoherent mass of competing ideas. But, back to Bolaño’s writing: I have read nothing of his work, but what I know of 2666 appeals to me. Again according to Wikipedia, “2666 explores 20th-century degeneration through a wide array of characters, locations, time periods, and stories within stories.” The English translation of the book, though, is roughly 900 pages (compared to 1100 pages in Spanish). I can get thoroughly wrapped up in learning about people whose literary lives parallel the literary life I might wish I had. But my self-diagnosed ADHD (or simple laziness or lack of discipline) makes a 900-page book seem an almost insurmountable challenge. I know I have the capacity to write such a voluminous monster (I have proven it with this blog), but I can do it only in small fragments.  Reading such a lengthy literary product requires me to take the same approach: just a little bit at a time. And my memory of books (and films, etc.) is terrible; so I would forget the contents of the first ten pages by the time I reached page 90.

Reading about Roberto Bolaño led me to take a few detours, including one in which I read a good bit about Karl Marx. Marx was a philosopher, sociologist, economist, and political theorist, among his other roles. His best known literary works, Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, presented his political and economic theories, which have since driven countless political movements, including several that thrive today. Too many people, I think, consider Marx a dangerous revolutionary (well, he did call for a workers’ revolution…), without thinking deeply about and analyzing (without bias) the theories that underlie his calls for action. I cannot claim to be intimately familiar with Marx and his works, but I know enough to believe him to have been a remarkably intelligent, perceptive, and socially aware man.  I could go on for days, writing about ideas and people I know very little about; but I won’t.

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The problem with societal stagnation is the fact that people tend to believe they have no power to change economic, political, and social systems. And they are right, in the absence of one or more charismatic leaders who can attract and maintain a large, committed following; people willing to seize the political control that will enable them to enact change. Unlike Marx (I think), I have very little confidence in the average citizen’s ability to think and to understand social philosophy. Wait. I said I would not go on writing about such stuff.

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I walked outside just now. Though the temperature is a bit warmer than I would like, the breeze and the sounds of leaves rustling in the wind were pleasing to me. If not for chiggers and snakes, I might go walking in the woods, stopping occasionally to soak in the quiet serenity and enormous power of nature. Standing on the driveway, though, cleared my head and prepared me to engage with the day. I might once have said “conquer the day,” but I know that grandiose assertion is utterly absurd. All I can and should do is participate. The desire to control is an emotional characteristic that leaves one wanting more; feeling insufficiently in control. Real control is embedded in a person’s ability to engage; and to decide whether to accept the control others with to impose.

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I am alone now and will be alone for several days to come. Mi novia has gone for awhile to pursue her own interests and obligations, leaving me in solitude. This aloneness is oddly comfortable; if Phaedra (the cat) went off on vacation, I could abandon all my obligations and simply be. I can do that anyway, with only an infrequent interruption to feed and water Phaedra. I have mixed feelings about solitude, though. While I crave it and need it and enjoy the freedom of aloneness, it can be too constant and too lengthy. As much as I must have solitude, I want periodic injections of social interaction. A few hours of conversation on the deck (or inside, if the heat is too much), offset by many more hours of quiet aloneness, may be ideal. This morning, I am off to breakfast and coffee with my men’s group from church. When I return, the solitude will return with me. But my mood changes rather frequently. I might want solitude now, but I may not want it to last for long—provided I know it will return. I cannot read my own mind sometimes. Ah, well, such is life. Time to get dressed and wander off for coffee.

When the color of the sky appears (to me) matte silver, I attribute its unusual character to a rare interaction between my eyes and my brain. Though I have never in those moments asked anyone else to describe the color of the sky to me, I am confident their descriptions would not include matte silver. Tarnished white, perhaps, but not matte silver. Grey, but not matte silver. The enormous differences in perceptions between individuals still surprise me, even though I have witnessed those massive variations all my life. It is possible, of course, that individuals’ rods and cones are responsible for the discrepancies in this particular incidence of visual perception, but I doubt it. Instead, I am relatively sure a person’s state of mind at the moment of seeing is largely responsible. The brain interprets the same visual signals in different ways, depending on circumstances involving other receptors of external stimuli. Anger, sadness, joy, worry, and all the complex threads that weave those emotions and dozens of others together color our perceptions—pardon the pun. I remember, when I was a child, posing questions about color perception to anyone who would listen: “What if the color you and I both call “red” looks different to the two of us? What if my “green” is the way you see “red” and vice versa?” What if, indeed. A child’s expression of wondrous curiosity.  The questions usually were dismissed as simple uninformed inquisitiveness. But I still have the same kinds of curiosity I did when I was younger; the questions may have changed, but their impetus has not. I still question the “known” and the “fully understood,” because I believe our knowledge of virtually all aspects of the world in which we live continues to unfold. Knowledge is simply theory that has not yet met a successful challenger. My suspicion about certainty is not new. About four years ago, I wrote:

Once a mind is made up, irrevocably, it becomes unbending and brittle. It becomes subject to irreversible rupture when irrefutable, contrary facts present themselves. When evidence—that an immutable decision was based on fallacy—is impossible to ignore, the mind shatters into  shards of sacrosanct debris, scraps of certainty strewn across the mindscape.

I still believe those assertions…but they are subject to change when presented with evidence that suggests my belief is based on faulty information or faulty reliance on broken logic.

Other perceptions and beliefs, outside my interpretation of the measurable physical world, are just as subject to change. When my mental filters are cleaned; or “facts” are refuted or clarified; or when the fractured links in my chains of logic are repaired, my beliefs about the world adapt to the new realities facing me. But I probably am just like so many millions of others who, once committed to “facts” or ideas, refuse to allow certain opinions to bend, much less break into pieces. For example, I am confident my liberal world-view is based on the “correct” interpretation of all the inputs my brain processes. I tend to view information that might challenge that world-view as false, bogus, intentionally misleading, or otherwise “wrong.” Right-leaning people, I suspect, are just as confident their understanding of the world is just as “right.” Neither of us are as willing to question our ideas as we perhaps should be. Yet if both of us would listen to the other, without judging, we might discover slices of information that puts part of our world-views in danger of collapse. But because that would be emotionally catastrophic, we refuse to even listen. We cling to certainty with clenched iron fists. We refuse to consider, even for a second, that our respective world-views might be distorted by lenses that have been tinted or scratched or, in the extreme, cracked.

I want to be open-minded about everything. But is that possible? Do I really want to consider the absurdity that Earth is flat? Apparently not. Certainty is not entirely dangerous. But where is the dividing line? At what point does my liberal world-view cross into uncertainty or even further into doubt? And where do my conservative counterparts discover their own doubts? Neither of us want to entertain the possibility that we could be mistaken in our firm beliefs.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

~ Voltaire ~

Today, I will give more thought to my unshakable beliefs; my certainty about matters that cannot be supported by available facts. And perhaps I will open my mind just a little more. Or discover my pride in my open-mindedness is badly misplaced.

This is published post number 4401. For some reason, the frenzied excitement I expected to feel with this post—or the previous one—did not materialize. Perhaps my sedate reaction to the milestone of yesterday’s post can be explained by its content; yesterday’s post and the one before were exceptionally short (especially compared to some of my other recent posts) and dull in the extreme. My brain simply would not willingly get in synch with anything but its own slow, irrelevant, molasses-like drip, drip, drip of creativity. It felt for all the world like it had been harnessed by a steady stream of barbiturates, despite the fact that no barbiturates were consumed in the writing of those posts. That is to say, my thought processes have been horribly, horrendously, awfully, unacceptably, monstrously, amazingly slow. Bah!

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My attempt to infuse the morning with good cheer, hope, a sprinkling of elation, and a touch of pure happiness has floundered.  Record high temperature records in Phoenix, state-sponsored terrorism in and near the Rio Grande in Texas (courtesy of Greg Abbott), the broiling of Europe, devastating floods in the northeastern U.S., and a string of similar blasts of bad news chased joy out the front door and into the forest. Joy is hiding behind towering pine and oak trees in the distance. I would go after it, but I am afraid I might be overcome by heat exhaustion. Or a copperhead snake could inject venom into my foot or calf or hand. Or I might simply trip on a vine, plunging into poison ivy  so thick and lush it could cover me from head to toe in an instant.

The pleasure delivered by the events of the last few days has melted, leaving only its dried and brittle remains as evidence of the euphoria that enveloped the weekend. But, though it’s gone, the memory remains. The challenge is to retain that memory; to keep it polished and gleaming so it will serve as a reminder that bliss has a place on the planet. Quite the challenge, given the circumstances that swallow us as if we were a snack and the circumstances a ravenous python. On we go, though.

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One’s interpretation of the world in which he lives depends, in large part, on his perspective. Where is he in relation to what he sees? He sees reality, but reality is shaped by context, as the image demonstrates. Every “shadow” is a legitimate expression of reality, yet every one is dramatically different. This image captivates me because it shows so clearly how different contexts can dramatically change the way one sees the world. The three dark shadows offer unique perspectives about the shape that is casting those shadows, yet the shape itself is an amalgamation of each of the shapes illustrated by the shadows, as well as a completely different shape of its own. Life is far more complex than the image. Image, for example, how the view might seem from behind each of the shadows, assuming the shadow was translucent or transparent. And how would the view appear if one looked at the image from the “corner” of the shadow box; an entirely different set of images, all appearing very different from anything we see in the view as presented. A lot like reality, in other words.

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A dry spell. Or, rather, a drought that leaves the air and the ground as dry and parched as Death Valley. I refer not to the soil, but to my creativity. I feel the same emptiness I have felt for the last two days. Nothing of consequence to write about; nothing of consequence to think; nothing that has the potential for triggering even a slight uptick in my mood. This barren, dry, dehydrated, dusty emptiness leaves me angry at myself for allowing my creativity to wither. Anger is not really it, though. It’s disappointment. Humiliation. Embarrassed acknowledgement that I am not in control of my own internal emotional environment. It is odd that a person can be on such an extraordinary “high,” only to take a single step off a cliff into an almost bottomless canyon. Manic depression. Naturally, that word pair prompts me to think about Jim Hendrix and his music. All Along the Watchtower. The Wind Cries Mary. Hey Joe. Purple Haze.  If nothing else, remembering those tunes and the lyrics I used to sing under my breath is beginning to suffocate the dreariness.  After all the jacks are in their boxes.  I remember how I was struck by the cleverness of that phrase.

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness
Staggering on down the street
Footprints dressed in red
And the wind whispers
“Mary”
A broom is drearily sweeping
Up the broken pieces
Of yesterday’s life
Somewhere, a queen is weeping
Somewhere
A king has no wife
And the wind, it cries
“Mary“

And thus ends the worst of the mood’s downward swing. I think I need to upgrade my computer’s sound, though. Listening to Jimi Hendix over lousy speakers does not have anything like the impact as hearing the same music through a perfect, rich, balanced, WONDERFUL amplifier and speakers designed to maximize the experience.

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Spencer Tunick, the American photographer known for his photographs of crowds of nudes, recently engaged hundreds of Finnish volunteers in a series of nude shots. According to an article in the Helsinki Times, “as the clock struck 3:00 am on Saturday, nearly a thousand naked participants flocked to the designated locations” to be photographed by Tunick. The human form, with all its beauty and its flaws, fascinates me. And what fascinates me more than the form itself is the fact that the shock of nudity disappears when individual nudity is multiplied many times over. It fascinates me that there is nothing titillating about naked crowds, yet if each person from a crowd shot were extracted from the photo and presented individually, one’s emotions would tend to change. Nudity is absolutely natural. But we treat it as an aberration; something unnatural and, to far too many, immoral. And—something that causes me to get deeply irritated—too many people express disgust or disapproval if the nude body they see is not “ideal.” Too old, too fat, too blemished by experience or lifestyle or too different from that very unusual “perfect” body presented by marketers as that shape and size we all should strive to achieve.

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Perhaps I haven’t fallen entirely into a deep pit in which creativity does not exist. Maybe I am here, just looking at it from a different angle.  Look at things from my perspective, won’t you?

Once again, I slept late, thanks in no small part to regular meows and tail-chasings. That is to say, I was awake far too much and slept too little. And too late. Such is life. The day commences at its own pace, regardless of how I might feel about it.

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The weekend just ended was nothing short of spectacular. Saturday began with a brunch with Peter Mayer, our church minister, the immediate past president of our church (who sponsored Mayer), and me. Then, an outstanding concert performance by Peter. That evening, a group of church leaders and hosts went to dinner with Peter. Sunday morning, the pairing of Peter’s music with the minister’s delivery produced deeply meaningful messages. After the morning program, a group of church friends took Peter to lunch. And then, more personal, mi novia and my sister-in-law sat on the back deck, enjoying the forest, even in the heat and humidity.  It’s rare that an emotional “high” lasts as long as it did…has…but I wish for more frequent long-lasting euphoria.

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Jumbled thoughts do not make for coherent writing. Competing emotions, intellectual uncertainty, and a frothy mixture of resignation, exhilaration, fear, and jubilation suggest, strongly, that I should give up attempting to write this morning. And I will, for the second time in a rare doubling, listen to what I have to say to myself.

Daylight fills the forest outside. Here and there, branches and leaves highlighted by the sun’s rays appear to have sunlight aimed directly at them, accentuating a thousand different shades of bright yellows and greens and golds and browns. The surrounding, almost identical, foliage seems dull in comparison. But, ignoring the illuminated contrasts, the comparatively drab leaves are, themselves, bright. The forest is a study in contrasts that, unless one forces his attention on the full spectrum of hues and shades, appears a uniformly mottled green.

Looking intently at the world outside my windows—and giving my undivided attention to every image before my eyes—causes a deep sense of appreciation to build inside me. If I look at the forest long enough and think deeply enough about how fortunate I am to see what is before me, I understand, viscerally, what “awe-inspiring” means. Wonder washes over me like a wave.

The experience of deep, life-altering sorrow can enable a person to develop a capability of providing solace to others who suffer emotional wounds of the same level. But that capability does not arise in everyone who goes through grief of similar magnitude. Whether the capacity to offer solace after experiencing one’s own anguish can be learned or is tied to one’s innate personality is not clear to me, but I tend to think the latter is more likely. While learning to be compassionate probably is possible, I suspect compassion is more easily developed—and comes more naturally—to people born with certain mental attributes. And those not born with those attributes (or who do not develop them in early infancy), while perhaps able to learn compassion, do not seem to be as comfortable with the trait.  Psychological literature probably is rife with arguments for and against my “gut feel” on the topic. To my knowledge, though, no one has been able to measure or demonstrate, with near-certainty, the original source of compassion. But I have witnessed people who seem moderately compassionate develop extraordinary compassion after they experience the wrenching pain of irrevocable loss. And I have seen people who seem unmoved by suffering in others, even after experiencing, themselves, horrendous loss. Perhaps there is no correlation; maybe it have been a matter of simple coincidence. But I think not. I believe there’s something innate, or that evolves very early in childhood, that corresponds to later compassion; or something like disregard for suffering.

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This afternoon, a well-known (at least in certain circles) singer/songwriter will perform during a special concert in our church. I have been asked to introduce him and to explain how his performance came to be arranged. His presence today was not my doing; I had no part in making the arrangements. But I did see and hear him perform a few months ago and I was extremely impressed. I look forward to his performance today. I’m a tad nervous about introducing him, though, because it seems I will not be standing behind a lectern as usual, where I can keep notes hidden from the audience’s view. Instead, I will be in full view of the audience. My reliance on notes will be obvious. I wish I had the ability to ad lib or memorize my intended lines. It’s a bit late for either, though, so I will just have to stumble my way through it. With a bit of good fortune, I will not bungle it. As mi novia says, though, I am not expected to be a professional speaker; I am just some guy who’s responsible for making a few introductory comments. The audience will be there to see and hear him, not me. Unless I make serious missteps, no one will remember my words. But, still, I would like to give the performer a smooth, seamless, unobtrusive introduction. Before the concert, I will join the performer (Peter Mayer) and a few other people from church for brunch. Then, after his performance, a small group of church leaders will take him to dinner this evening. Assuming my introduction is not a massive, memorable, and embarrassing failure, dinner should be enjoyable. Time will tell, as always.

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I was spurred to write about compassion this morning by happening upon something I wrote a year or so ago. I had mentioned, in my blog, a book entitled The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich. Solace and compassion go hand in hand, in my mind. I knew very little about Ehrlich. The fact that she had been married to the late Neil Conan may have been nestled somewhere deep in my memory, but if so, it was buried quite deep. When I read that he had been her husband, I was surprised. And when I then read that Neil Conan earlier had been married to Liane Hansen, I was even more surprised. It occurred to me that literary and NPR “types” tend to have relatively tight circles. And that’s what I have to say about that.

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The older I get, the more nervous and anxiety-ridden I get. I don’t know how to fix that.

~ Vince Gilligan ~

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When Phaedra enters my study, she stops, looks up at me, and meows. I wish I understood what she is saying to me. Or maybe I don’t. She could be expressing unmitigated loathing for me. Well, some days the feeling is mutual; when I see her clawing a white leather sofa, I tend to get cranky in the extreme.

An experiment: Place a freshly-sawn two-hundred-pound piece of an oak tree trunk on the granite floor of a well-constructed stone building. Place a newly-dead corpse of a two-hundred-pound human next to the hunk of wood. Finally, place a two-hundred-pound sack of new-cut grass next to the other items. Seal the room—tightly—and leave it for two hundred years. Upon re-entering the room two hundred years later, which of the three items would most closely resemble the appearance it had when left in the room? I do not know with certainty, but my guess is that the hunk of oak would remain largely as it was when it was left. The other two? I suspect the human body would have deteriorated considerably, its store of water largely absorbed into the room’s air. The sack of grass clippings leaves me stumped. Perhaps they would have withered, but would the blades of grass retain their shape, albeit with considerably less volume? I don’t know. And I do not have the time to find out. But my curiosity remains. If I am right about the varying degrees of decline and decay, today’s forests are poised to outlast today’s human population; assuming humans do not burn them, pave over them, or otherwise decimate the natural world in which we live. But we know we already are doing just that. Any prediction as to what the world will look like in two hundred years is no more than vapor, changeable at the whim of nature or the destructive tendencies of humankind. Still, if we were to leave everything to decompose at its own pace, without external influence, how would the world look? It’s too bad we cannot come back and have a look. All we can do is imagine and wonder.

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I have never understood why some people are so thoroughly fascinated by jewelry. The appearance of cut diamonds of varying carets are interesting to me—briefly—but they do not hold me in rapt awe at their overwhelming beauty. Because their beauty does not overwhelm me. I prefer to look at oil paintings created by people who possess extraordinary talents. I would rather spend my time gazing at sunsets and mountains and valleys etched deep into solid rock by the flow of water over millions of years. My interests, though, are not “correct.” They are simply mine. And people who love the look of diamonds have their own unique and—to my way of looking at the world—somewhat deranged perspectives. There was a time when I found the intense fondness for jewelry a bit annoying; I do not know why. Now, though, it does not bother me; it just perplexes me. That having been said, I have been won over by certain pieces of jewelry. For reasons I cannot understand, I find certain pieces of jewelry quite beautiful or, at least, extremely interesting and attractive. But diamonds? Meh, pretty much. Except for the occasional diamond whose sparkles captivate me. I would not wear it on my finger or dangling from my ear, though. Probably.

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The rumble of thunder is not what woke me this morning. It was the meowing of Phaedra. If I am not up before 5:30 (I usually am), she announces my lethargy to anyone who will listen. Her point is not to shame me, I am sure, but to encourage me to get up and serve her breakfast. This morning, she roused me from a rather horrid dream in which I was lost in a filthy slum-like environment. I was trying to find my way out, but I had no idea where I was trying to go. And it was pitch-dark; the only lights came from cars’ headlights, which shone only briefly before leaving me blind and feeling my way around. I was surrounded by people who either did not or would not speak a language I could understand. Many of the people in my proximity threatened me. Or, at least, I felt threatened by them, whether they intended to threaten me or not. I was glad to wake up. Three hours earlier, I was awake for at least half an hour and probably closer to an hour. Then, I wanted desperately to get back to sleep. But sleep, when it came, was ugly and stressful. I suspect I will find a reason to drift off to sleep sometime during the day today. Or early this evening. Thunder can lull me to sleep. I might consider allowing it to do just that, right now. Probably not, though.

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If you could read my mind this morning…I would urge that you maintain my thoughts in absolute secrecy. They would have to be kept in the most strict confidence, just between you and me…

The commencement of the Anthropocene epoch, the third epoch of Quaternary Period, coincided roughly with my birth, though I take no credit for starting this new era. That having been said, I join eight billion other humans in taking responsibility for this new geological period, which marks the end of the Holocene epoch. The location of the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point that is proposed to mark the new epoch with a golden spike is in sediment cored from the bed of Crawford Lake—in Ontario, Canada—that reveals the geochemical traces of nuclear bomb tests, specifically plutonium—the radioactive element detected worldwide in coral reefs, ice cores, peat bogs, etc. The Anthropocene epoch is, for now, a proposal; I have no clear sense of how an “official” decision comes about as to the termination of the Holocene and the commencement of the Anthropocene. Regardless, though, I feel responsible in part for an epoch that quite possibly marks the end of the natural purity of our planet. We all can take credit, if that’s the right word, for the decay of natural evolution and its replacement by something yet to be named.

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According to an article in the Helsinki Times, a survey conducted by the Finnish Breweries Association and the Beverage Industry Association concluded that beer is considered the best summertime brewery beverage in Finland, with light lager being the top choice for a summer beer. Mineral water takes second place as the best summer drink, with the popularity of the third place choice, hard seltzers, rapidly growing. Yesterday, I drank most of a glass of a draft beer, Bubba Brew’s Brewing Company Skull Crusher IPA, which I ordered to accompany my hamburger at the Copper Penny Pub. I was surprised that the beer, which I once regularly enjoyed when it was available, seemed too strong and bitter for my taste. The strength and bitterness, coupled with its distinct flavor, were the main attractions of the beer; but not last night. And maybe not now and not tomorrow. Perhaps I have joined the throngs of beer-drinking Finns who prefer a light lager, especially in the heat of summer. I realized, as I was drinking the beer (which I did not finish because it was not especially to my liking) that I have not had beer in quite a long time; many, many months, at least, and possibly a year or two or even more. Even at this advanced age, my taste may be changing. Perhaps I am beginning my second early-twenties period, when I drank copious amounts of light lagers. But I doubt it. I am not sure I want to drink much light lager, either. My tastes have matured. Give me gin & tonic or a martini or let me sip a shot of single malt Scotch or a nice bit of whisky. Or various other flavorful adult beverages.

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The price of tomatoes in India has gotten out of hand. They are so expensive that many cooks and chefs are modifying dishes that require tomatoes. But while various ingredients often can be substituted for one another, nothing can replace tomatoes. The problem in India, as I understand it, is that weather extremes (primarily flooding) has decimated the tomato crops, dramatically reducing the supply of the culinary staple. I do not know whether climate change due to global warming can legitimately be blamed for the weather, but I’m willing to bet it plays a large part in the situation. Damn it. I can only imagine what life might be like without tomatoes; I hope I never find out whether my imagination is actually attuned to that ugly reality.

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I almost bought an ironing board yesterday. Fortunately, mi novia showed me that we do, indeed, have an ironing board, so I did not need to buy one. I do not really want an ironing board. Instead, I’d rather have shirts that are wrinkle-free; no need to iron them. And shorts, too, made of fabrics created to shed wrinkles like trees shed leaves in autumn. I have a few shirts that do not require ironing. They do not look quite as crisp and sharp as freshly-starched and ironed shirts, but their softness appeals to me more than the rigidity of 100% cotton made perfectly flat by Faultless brand spray starch. I wish I did not mind wearing shirts that look like they just came out of five days wadded in the clothes dryer. But I do. It’s just a matter of vanity. We are taught to be vain. We are coached to believe that shirts should look freshly-pressed. Our minds are guided to join in the group-think that lauds the absence of wrinkles and condemns their abundance. Society. We are part of it, no matter how much we might wish we were not.

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I hear the howling meows of a cat. Phaedra has been fed and watered. She has been given free access to most areas of the house (excluding certain closets). Why is she not happy? But maybe she is. Perhaps the meows are saying something unrelated to feline happiness. I am not a cat whisperer. Not in the least. If I could be fluent in the feline language, I would be. But I cannot. So I have to continue attempting to understand the perpetually misunderstood.  And, now, I need more coffee. And I must get dressed to attend the men’s group breakfast.

Watching a soundless video of the Fagradalsfjal volcano in Iceland, which has been erupting for the past three days, inspires awe. The beauty of orange and white-hot molten lava, spraying into the air and splashing down on the mountainous terrain, is stunning. But I suspect watching, live from a point near the caldera, and hearing the deafening explosions of an erupting mountain as belches fire and smoke, would be both breathtaking and terrifying. Nothing compares to reality. That is not to say I would always prefer “being there” to watching “there” on video. Feeling comfortable and safe, versus feeling miserable and threatened, has a lot to be said for it.

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I now am president of my church’s board of directors. Within minutes—literally—of my first public appearance in that role, I was inundated with questions, comments, and complaints that merited the attention of someone who, at least in terms of title, could do something about it. None of the questions, comments, and complaints were frivolous; all really did deserve attention. And though none of the matters constituted an emergency, some of them require more urgent attention than others. I view the role of president as an opportunity to serve the congregation; even when nearly overwhelmed by all the “stuff” needed attention, I think I will feel grateful for the chance to respond to the wants and needs of the congregation. It’s nice to be “needed.” Even when “need” is a considerably stronger word than is called for. (Do you not know not to end a sentence with a preposition, John? And can you confuse the meaning of a sentence by using negatives in self-negating pairs?) Fortunately, the responses do not all fall to me. The other members of the board, committees, and congregants at large have an important role to play. And that is good.

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We have been watching, on Amazon Prime, a television series that first aired in 2014.   The series, called Mozart in the Jungle, revolves around the transition from an “old” orchestra director (Malcolm McDowell) to a much younger, more energetic, and extremely creative Mexican musician/director (Gael Garcia Bernal). Bernadette Peters has an important role, as well, along with several others who play key characters. The show is labeled a comedy. I thought I was tired of comedies, but I’ve discovered I’m tired only of absurd or slapstick comedies. We’re on season two (I think) of four seasons. Based on what we’ve seen so far, I am sure I will reserve a high rating for the series.

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Obscene atmospheric heat is returning. Meteorologists predict we will experience heat index values of 108°F today between noon and 8 PM, during which a heat advisory is in effect. Rivers of hot, humid air are flooding much of the country, following on the heals of tragically historic downpours in the northeastern states. The damage is done. Whether it can be reversed or, at least, slowed is debatable. What should not be debatable is that human activities are sufficiently responsible as to warrant widespread action. But what “should not be” actually is; large numbers of brainwashed people accept that violent spikes in temperatures and unprecedented weather events simply represent natural fluctuations in climate. Climate change, they claim, is an act of God, not caused by humans. An angry, diabolical, deranged, fierce, punishing God, I guess.

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This morning, I cannot focus on any one topic. My mind is flitting about like a butterfly on speed. Though I am sitting at my desk, I feel like it is taking all my energy to enable me to stay here; if I were to cut the straps of control, I think I might fly out of the chair and bounce off the walls and the ceiling. The power to propel me thusly, though, does not reside in my body. It must be driven entirely by my mind. A mind drenched in a special kind of adrenaline that accelerates only thinking, not action. A mind spinning, almost out of control, and ricocheting off of everything it touches. I guess the best term to describe my state of mind at this moment is this: keyed up. It’s as if I am ready to burst with energy. But I know the energy burst would last only a fraction of a second, burning itself out with remarkable speed. Next.

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Once upon a time, I considered myself somewhat reclusive. I suppose I am, even today. But not deeply reclusive. Not as reclusive as I once was. And not continuously reclusive. Just periodically reclusive. And not thoroughly reclusive. Only slightly reclusive. To the degree that there are times when I want to be reclusive with someone else to keep me company. So, what term applies? Reclusive seems a bit much. I can think of no other word that means “slightly, periodically reclusive, but reluctantly willing to be in or near the spotlight for very brief periods.”

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I am a much better listener than talker. My tongue frequently gets tied when I speak. Or my brain locks up while attempting to process thoughts. Rather than relying on my lips and tongue, I count on my fingers to speak for me. That presents a problem when communication calls for giving a speech. The boredom of watching someone type probably surpasses the boredom of listening to someone speak, even when the speaker drones on and on. I simply cannot imagine sitting behind a lectern on a podium, on a raised chair, typing comments to an audience. The boredom of that scenario would be exceeded only by standing behind the lectern, reading—in an excruciating monotone—a prepared speech.  So, the answer is to untie my tongue and learn to think aloud. I used to do that quite often. I suppose I am just a little rusty. Or, perhaps, corroded to the point of needing a hammer to break away layer upon layer of decay.

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It’s just now 7 o’clock. Time for more coffee and a bit of time on the deck before the temperature and humidity conspire to make sitting outdoors insufficiently comfortable.

Neither of the terms midwife and doula have satisfactory gender-neutral counterparts or synonyms. The same is true of handyman, though one could argue that helper and jack-of-all-trades are gender-neutral. But the “jack” in jack-of-all-trades seems rather gender-specific (masculine) to me. Over time, American society has successfully extracted gender from various terms describing people who perform certain types of work, for example mailman or postman⇒postal carrier or mail carrier; headmaster (or headmistress)⇒head teacher; stewardess (or steward)⇒flight attendant; barmaid⇒bartender; etc. Expressing an obviously male-biased perspective, I wonder whether the energies we have put forth in acknowledging that vocations are not gender-specific is always worth the effort. We once called (and often still do) females who perform on stage and in film actresses. Their male counterparts were actors. Today, we try to avoid assigning gender stereotypes by calling those people, regardless of their gender, actors or performers. Back to the terms in the first sentence above: do we need gender-neutral terms for midwife or doula? And do we need terms for men who function in the same capacity? Would midhusband, for example, make any sense? I do not object in the least to using gender-neutral terms, provided they roll off the tongue with reasonable ease. But I wonder whether energies directed toward making ours a more egalitarian society might be put to better use in other ways. I have no specific suggestions; I just wonder. I am 110% and then some in favor of absolute equality, but I question whether replacing terms that may once have suggested a role performed by a male (or female) is especially important. It is easier for me to ask “who is the actress who starred in that film?” than to ask “who is the female actor who starred in that film?” My preference for ease may be sheer laziness; or it may be unintentional chauvinism. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being most important, this issue probably bounces between 2 and 4; at least in my mind.

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The cover of the latest issue of Family Handyman magazine (that periodical could use an identity makeover, perhaps, to erase its overt preference for masculine helpers) includes a photograph of a dog crate. Inside the magazine, one can find plans for making it. I do not have a dog. Even if I did, I doubt I would need a dog crate. But the image of the crate and the plans inside the magazine tempt me to make one. Or, at least, to adapt the plans to make something else that features the same dark grey wood frame, set off by shiny copper tubing (which, in reality, is reminiscent of a jail cell). Fortunately, I do not have the tools to make such a product. If I did, though, I wonder whether I would try hard to justify in my mind creating something resembling the photograph on the magazine cover? In the past, covers of the magazine have featured lawn furniture, storage sheds, bathroom vanities, and various other projects. If I had the space and the tools, I might have built a storage shed or remodeled a bathroom; I would hot have built lawn furniture, though. I suppose certain images trigger the release of desires in my brain that are just waiting for something to set them off.

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Ten, maybe twenty, years. That’s how long I give planet Earth before it rebels against humankind in earnest. And I may be too optimistic; March of 2024 could mark the beginning of the planetary revolution against its wannabe masters. Or even later this year. Perhaps the floods in the northeastern U.S. signal the beginning of the full-scale terrestrial rebellion. I realize I may be assigning unrealistic anthropomorphic characteristics to the planet, but that is only for effect. In fact, I think many of the planet’s systems are under so much human-caused stress that a natural reactive process is taking place that will, coincidentally (and not necessarily intentionally), address the infection. We humans are, indeed, part of the natural environment; but like viruses that run amok or cells that grow out of control in certain cancers, we are attacking our own host. If we do not stop, the host will either die or it will overwhelm and reject the deviant cells that have turned against it. The time to avoid the unavoidable may already have passed. But efforts to rob the viruses and aberrant cells of fuel are worth trying; that can do no more harm than we are doing now. I do wish I return to life one hundred years from now, just to see what we have done; and/or to see what a rebellious planet Earth accomplished after the tipping point was reached.

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It is time for me to take out the trash, shave, take a shower, and ready myself for the day. I must still have hope. Otherwise, I would simply watch the world around me decay and ready itself for battle with its own cancerous invaders.

I spent ten or fifteen minutes this morning reading about life in and around a Buddhist monastery in West Orange, New Jersey. As I absorbed the story, written by Rachel Martin, thoughts in my head returned to some of my earlier contemplations about Buddhism. But those earlier contemplations revolved more around monasticism in general than about Buddhist monasticism in particular. Off and on for at least twenty years, perhaps more, I  have considered visiting a monastery for a period of time—long enough, at least, to clear my head of the clutter that seems always to keep me from the serenity that has long eluded me. Each time that idea has come to me, I have let it stew for a bit; wondering whether it would take hold long enough to spur me to action. And each time I have allowed myself the luxury—and accepted the penalty—of insufficient self-discipline. I want to explore it, but I fear the allure of monasticism might be so strong that I cannot resist it; it might tear me away from a way of living and thinking that now has taken almost seventy years to develop.

When I allow myself enough time and freedom to think about the appeal of a monastic life, I wonder about what motivates my thinking: is my inclination toward monasticism a search for serenity or is it an effort to run away from chaos? In other words, is it interest that drives me, or is it fear? And when I experience fear of the allure of monasticism, is that a way for me to override its growing appeal? More fundamental, though, is this question: why have asceticism and monasticism and other expressions of simplicity always so powerfully appealed to me? And why have I always lived my life in ways that seem diametrically opposed to the way I perceive that simplicity? I “own” things. I listen to music. I imbibe in alcohol. I sometimes revel in drowning in the flood of millions of inputs: sounds, sights, emotions, sensations, etc., etc., etc. Why does the absence of that almost overwhelming sense of absorbing all of life’s experiences draw me toward… emptiness?

In reading the article, I thought of the hundreds—or more—of increasingly commercialized opportunities to experience the “quietude of Buddhist retreats.” My thoughts about them have become increasingly negative over the years because I question their legitimacy; are they really “pure” opportunities to understand and pursue and experience serenity, or are they simply ways to enrich the organizers of the events? The latter; that’s the conclusion I usually reach. Yet, still, I continue thinking about them; about finding one that might really connect me with an understanding that, heretofore, has eluded me.

A friend in Dallas once expressed an interest in participating in a Buddhist retreat in east Texas; she invited me to join her. For all sorts of practical reasons, we never followed up on it together. I have no idea whether she ever did; I should contact her to ask. And, if she did, what was the experience like? I know she continues to live the same lifestyle she did when I lived in Dallas; awash in materialism and worldly experiences—so, even if she attended, it did not transform her in the way I might wish I would like to be transformed. All of this, of course, is just musing and pondering. But it is musing and pondering that will remain with me, I am sure. Because there’s something about my inclination toward monasticism and my search for simplicity and welcome emptiness that has enormous appeal. Yet, as I think about it, my “wanting” it may be evidence that it does not hold the keys to serenity I have always believed it might. Curious, that one’s mind can identify opposites that are at once answers and questions, but in fact are neither.

+++

Thus completes a few of my morning thoughts. Or, at least, puts a few of them on “pause” for a while. Now, onward toward the day.

The muscles in my neck and shoulders feel like they are being stretched and twisted and pulled tight, as if badly frayed lengths of thick wire rope were clawing at me from the inside.  Maybe those pieces of wire rope are my muscles. Maybe I feel broken strands of steel wire stabbing and scraping me as the muscles response to my attempts to move.

Those muscles, pulling and stretching and writhing, cause my head to ache; a dull throbbing accompanied by a sharp pain, as if a thin slice of steel positioned between the lobes of my brain is twisting in an attempt to separate them from one another. In my mind’s eye, I see an oyster being pried open with a shucking knife. I wonder whether the oyster feels the same pain I do? Is the mollusk in agony as its shell is split in two, revealing the pearly lining that attempts to protect its soft inner self?

+++

I have to shower now. And then go to church, where I hope I will find that the HVAC system was properly set to cool the community hall and sanctuary for the service in a few hours time. If not, I will try to figure out how to make it work. Already I have regrets; not about my role, but about a role not adequately filled.  Enough. It’s a shade after 6; I have to move.  Dammit.

For at least three days running, thunderstorms with heavy downpours came through late in the day. Sitting out of the deck during those evenings, feeling the growls of rolling thunder, is magical. Watching bolts of lightning strike somewhere nearby, followed by explosive, bone-jarring claps of thunder, delights me. I feel both fortunate control my circumstances, enabling me to see and feel the weather burst into existence around me. But the vastness of the sounds and the massive power contained in every flash of lightning makes me feel tiny and insignificant. Seesawing back and forth between a sense of control and a feeling of absolute powerlessness is frightening, but it makes me giddy, as well. I am passionately in love with the extremes of weather and permanently timid in their presence.

+++

I very rarely go to my Twitter account because…well…I probably have never learned how to configure my feed to satisfy my interests. Now, suddenly, Meta introduces Threads. The idea that Twitter‘s owner, Elon Musk, must face another threat to a business that appears to be succumbing to Musk’s self-defeating decisions has some appeal. But will Threads have an appeal to me that has, thus far, eluded Twitter? That remains to be seen. First, I have to develop sufficient interest to download the app; that may be a few hours—or a few months—from now. We shall see; we shall.

+++

In a shade more than four hours from now, I will host a retreat at my house for the board of my church. This will be the first church board meeting over which I will preside. But it will be quite different from typical board meetings, in that it will be more of a blue-sky planning session than a formal meeting…but it will have a few more formal elements. Tomorrow, I will deliver comments about the challenges of change and about the ideas that successfully emerged from today’s meeting. Yesterday, I accompanied friends and fellow board members to deliver a check to the recipient organization of last month’s Share the Plate collections. In a matter of days, I have become immersed in church-related activities. It is part coincidence and part preview of the days and months to come. In my new role as president, I will be devoting more of my time to the church than has been the case in the recent past. I anticipated that. But expectations and reality sometimes look very different.

+++

The Dutch government has collapsed, leading to the requirement for new elections in the coming months. The problem revolved around the inability of the four-party coalition government to reach agreement over immigration policies. Globally, immigration issues increasingly are creating friction between groups that view migrants from widely different perspectives. On one side of the issue, the primary emotional driver of the controversy is compassion toward the migrants and the problems they face that prompted their need/desire to migrate. The other side is more fearful of the problems that migrants bring; its compassion seems focused more on the people who will be affected by incoming migrants, rather than the migrants themselves. Because my philosophy is more closely aligned with the first position, I am concerned about migrants’ problems. But I understand the fears and more positive motives of people who disagree. If leaders who command the respect of their respective followers would truly attempt to reach compromise, the urgency of the issue would diminish considerably. Yet solutions are needed…urgently. Issues like those that brought down the Dutch government are playing out all across Europe (and, by the way, the USA). Solutions really are needed…urgently. I say again, solutions really are needed…urgently. Compromises, therefore, must be made. Hard and fast positions lead to failure. Flexibility leads to acceptable solutions.

+++

I have bounced around quite enough. Now it’s time to get serious about the day. I wish you were here.

An obligatory year or two of service to one’s country or community; that concept, which I once fiercely eschewed, long ago took permanent root in my brain. The service need not be in the military (and, in fact, I have major “issues” with our country’s military-industrial complex), but demanding military-style discipline of people compelled to serve might be a positive aspect of whatever service is undertaken. Compulsory “volunteerism” might place young people in service in healthcare, in community maintenance or rehabilitation, or in dozens of other activities to improve the lives of everyone touched by the “volunteers.” Including improving the lives of the volunteers themselves. I did not serve in the military, nor did I embark on a dedicated year or two of service, but I wish I had. I think such service would instill pride and a sense of responsibility for one’s community. Reducing the allure of individualism, and replacing it with the satisfaction of communalism, would greatly improve life on this planet, I think.

+++

Today, and the following four days, will be busy for me. They will not be as busy as my days were when I worked, but they will be in stark contrast to what I envisioned retirement would be like…before I retired. Being retired is akin to having a target painted on one’s back; retirees become objects of interest to others (mostly other retirees) who thirst for the retiree’s engagement. That has a long list of pros and cons attached to it. The most obvious con to me, at this very moment, is the necessary deferral of deep and abiding relaxation. But the pros can, from time to time, overcome one’s bitterness at almost being forced to delay or eliminate time in which pure, unmitigated relaxation can take place. Such is life. Relaxation is gratifying, but the sense of accomplishment attached to helping others often…usually?…overrides the negatives. So I say today. Tomorrow, of course, is an entirely different day.

+++

Big cities—crowded with people who live in densely populated residential areas and commercial jungles—get the labels: smelly, dirty, crime-ridden cesspools of deviant and dangerous behaviors. But ugly horrors happen everywhere. Even in small towns surrounded by acres and acres of corn fields or soybeans or pastures filled with grazing cattle. Places like Fairfield, Iowa. Mi novia and I visited Fairfield almost two years ago during our since-abandoned search for the ideal “Mayberry,” where life would be slow, simple, and immensely rewarding. A fantasy, of course. A few months after we left Fairfield, we learned that a high-school Spanish teacher had been murdered. Two of her students were charged with beating her to death with a baseball bat—big-city horror in a town of only 9,400. Nearly two years later, one of the two students who pleaded guilty to the crime was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole after 35 years of confinement. The other teen is to be sentenced later. The deformation or dissolution of individuals’ humanity can take place anywhere. Next-door neighbors could become the stuff of nightmares. As hard as it is to believe—and harder, still, to accept—monstrosities could be committed by people who live in the same house. Even more horrifying is the possibility that psychotic breaks could occur in oneself. Somehow, society must explore preemptive or anticipatory “treatment” to stem the potential for such hideous behaviors. Is the possibility of keeping those big-city behaviors from infecting small towns just another fantasy?

+++

A foggy haze hangs over the tops of the trees I see outside the windows in my study. The temperature, just 70°F, would seem considerably cooler if the relative humidity were dramatically lower. As it is, walking outdoors is a bit like swimming. And inhaling water, instead of air. But I look forward to finishing this post, late as it is, and sitting outdoors for at least a few minutes before I get ready to go off on a working adventure with mi novia and some friends. And now I think I have finished this post. It’s too close to 8:00 for my comfort. Time to go about other parts of my morning routine.

I got up about an  hour and a half ago. It is hard for me to believe that much time has passed; I must have been in something of a daze for part of that period. I wonder whether it is possible for people (me) to slip into a coma of sorts without realizing it, then to return to current reality, not knowing of the departure from the present?

+++

Another set of odd dreams. First, I was listening to a presentation in a huge auditorium—located, I think, in Austin, Texas—when the event broke for lunch. I walked out with some other participants, hanging my coat, outside the doors, to retrieve later. I went through a confusing buffet line and took what was offered, then went to a confusing payment line, where I paid an exorbitant amount for my meal. When I asked for a receipt, the cashier dismissed me, telling me he would not give me one. I cursed at him and walked away, finding a spot where I could sit to eat my meal. After the meal, I walked outside and wandered down a very busy street, just taking in the sights (during all of this, I listened to voice messages on my telephone, including one asking me to return a cash donation given to my employer as an encouragement of some kind). I crossed the busy street and, on my way back to the auditorium, I realized I was not wearing a shirt. I had no idea where I might have lost it and knew there was no point in looking. There were many shops along the street, though, so I decided to buy a shirt before returning to the presentation. I entered a store, where the clerk showed me a few shirts that were too small; and they were expensive: $250 and up. I decided to leave and look elsewhere. But as I was crossing a side street, I discovered I somehow had left with one of the shirts I tried on at the store; it was wrapped around a briefcase I carried. I put it on and, when I got back to the auditorium entrance, I retrieved my coat. And the dream ended shortly after I walked back inside the auditorium.

In a separate (I think) dream, a woman was attempting to stay submerged in a very deep pool (or ocean…not sure), holding her breath, for an extended period. By the time I arrived, she had been under water for almost fourteen minutes. I decided to see how far I could dive and how long I could hold my breath. After jumping in the water, I discovered that I could sink quickly by expelling all the air in my lungs. And, once reaching the bottom, I could comfortably  sit, not breathing, for quite some time. I finally surfaced after six or seven minutes, but I wanted to try again in the hope of equaling the fourteen minute record held by the woman. And that is as far as my memory of that dream goes.

There was more to each of the two dreams, I am sure. For example, I think I knew quite a lot about the several voice messages I received. And I think I might have known what the auditorium presentation was about, but I do not remember now. If I could record my dreams and play them back as if they were films, I could learn a lot about how my brain works. But that might be quite disturbing to me; and to anyone else watching the film.

+++

Method acting. I must remind myself just what that is. I’ve heard the expression for as long as I can remember, but I do not believe I have ever fully understood it or, if I have, remembered what I knew. There’s so much about life that echoes my experience with method acting. I have been exposed to it, but I do not know whether I’ve every completely comprehended that to which I was exposed. Maybe it’s my failing memory. Or maybe it’s my intellectual inadequacy. It could be something else entirely. I just do not know. I wish I did. But what would I do with the knowledge? Would I put it to use, or would it be another useless example of knowledge for the sake of knowledge? Is there such a thing, though? Is not all knowledge bursting with possibilities? If only we knew how to put it to practical use, we might solve problems of humankind that seem, today, utterly unsolvable. If only I knew more than I do… If only I had the discipline to explore my curiosities with greater energy and longer periods of intense interest. Ach!

+++

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

~ Langston Hughes ~

Reading an article that discussed a neurology professor’s discovery—that a man’s “out of body” experience could be traced to the anterior precuneus—caused me to remember a periodic mental/emotional experience I had when I was much younger; twenty-five or so, possibly even a few years younger. I can describe the experience only as an overwhelming sense of amazement that my body actually belonged to me. I remember looking at my hands and thinking to myself that those hands were mine to do with whatever I wished. If I wanted, I could cut into them with a knife or plunge them into a bucket of icy water or make a fist with them. They were mine—they were part of me. Obviously, I knew all along they were mine; but these sensations amplified that understanding to a reverential level. Memories of those strange sensations—of awe at my ownership of my self, my body, me—came flooding back when I read the article. Recollections of those odd, mystical experiences collided with the factual explanations I subsequently found in other sources as I explored what might have been responsible for my youthful fascination with the fact that my body was my own. For example, this complex definition of the precuneus, which I found on sciencebeta.com:

“The precuneus is bounded anteriorly by the marginal branch of the cingulate sulcus, posteriorly by the parietooccipital sulcus, and inferiorly by the subparietal sulcus. It is involved with episodic memory, visuospatial processing, reflections upon self, and aspects of consciousness.”

Another resource, this one from the August, 2012 issue of Nature, offers an explanation of humans’ sense of self:

Human adults experience a ‘real me’ that ‘resides’ in ‘my’ body and is the subject of (or ‘I’) of experience and thought. This aspect of self-consciousness, namely the feeling that conscious experiences are bound to the self and are experiences of a unitary entity (‘I’), is often considered to be one of the most astonishing features of the human mind.

At this very moment, as I write this, I have an overwhelming sense of regret that I did not pursue a career in the scientific exploration of human experience—looking into how and why we are what and who we are. Both on a macro level and on a deeply personal micro level. I wish I knew more than I know, more than I can ever hope to know, now that I am nearing the seventh decade of my life. But I know, too, that this feeling of remorse will dissipate quickly when I remember I have never been sufficiently focused on anything for long enough to develop even modest ‘expertise.’ My regret almost certainly is more a brief wistfulness than a permanent anguish. But, still, I wish I had written about and described the sensation of incredulous surprise that my hands and arms and legs and eyes—all of me—belonged to me and only me. The intervening years almost surely have deformed or otherwise distorted my memories…if only I had documented who ‘I’ was when I confronted this odd sense of self-ownership…

+++

We were invited to dinner last night by a couple who participate in our “wine group” and attend our church. The other members of the “wine group,” one of whom also attends our church, as well as another couple from our hosts’ neighborhood were there. Our hosts supplied fried chicken, wine, and various other components of the meal; the rest of us contributed food, too, and we took a couple of bottles of wine. The evening—relaxed, enjoyable, and entertaining—was the latest in a number of get-togethers involving most of these folks. It occurred to me that I have enjoyed their company for several years now, probably from about 2017 or 2018. Though we do not get together often, when we do it is natural; I appreciate the opportunity. Until I moved to the Village in 2014, my late wife and I had very little social life involving others; we were too busy with our company and too tired after long work-days and too many working weekends to socialize much. I thought I was not especially social—and in fact I was not and am not. But I have learned to enjoy spending social time, on occasion, with others. Though I am by no means a gregarious person, I am becoming increasingly more comfortable in social situations. That evolutionary development has taken a rather long time to unfold; almost seventy years now. Still, I must feed my introversion through solitude. I desire to spend a lot of time with a very few people in my sphere of friends and acquaintances. And, of course, those people have other demands on their time and probably do not have as much interest as I in “hanging out” with me as I do with them. That is reality, isn’t it? The world does not revolve around any one person. It never has. It never will. That reality is not as easily accepted as might be desired. Such is the way of the world.

+++

Two quotes I encountered as I read this morning stick with me now, quite some time since I read them:

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

~ Marcus Aurelius ~

Indifference pretends to create peace, but it is based on not caring, a silent resignation. It is a movement away, a separation fed by a subtle fear of the heart. We pull back, believing that what happens to others is not our concern. Our courage leaves us. Indifference is a misguided way of defending ourselves.

~~ Jack Kornfield ~

And with that, I will wander off into the day, my interests fueled by my experiences.

I spent the morning of the Fourth of July last year—2022—in the emergency room of  St. Anthony’s Summit Hospital in Frisco, Colorado, a town adjacent to Silverthorne, Colorado. In hindsight, we probably should not have been in the midst of a highway road trip on such a heavily-traveled holiday. But we were. Fortunately for me, mi novia was equipped to deal with bad roads, heavy rain, and her traveling companion’s hallucinations, stubbornness, and altitude sickness. It’s hard to believe that experience was one year ago. Time sprints, flies, and then transforms into history in the blink of an eye.

+++

Blind devotion to one’s country defines nationalism, not patriotism. Patriotism attaches to the foundational ideals upon which one’s country is based. It recognizes and encourages efforts to celebrate and realize those principles. Ample room exists in patriotism to acknowledge both historical and current flaws. Patriotism is burnished with the expectation that the lessons of history will be learned—that the flaws will be overcome and corrected on the march toward achieving the dreams upon which the country was founded. Patriotism is honest. Nationalism is dishonest; delusional and brutal and rigid and inflexibly stupid.

+++

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

    ~ Hippocrates ~

---

Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.

    ~ Robert Redford ~

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One should eat to live, not live to eat.

    ~ Moliere ~

There is space in my mind for competing perspectives. The problem with that approach is that life becomes increasingly difficult with each new idea and its accompanying arguments. I can agree with diametrically opposed positions on matters both frivolous and crucial. And I can argue, fiercely, against them.  That ability to see matters from different angles tends to make it impossible for me to decide where I stand on some issues. Am I pro or con? Do I agree or disagree? How can I be and do both? Well, the truth is this: if I successfully eliminate my personal bias, I can listen better. And listening tends to make clear the reality that opposing perspectives often include at least kernels of truth. There is not obvious “right” or “wrong” in most cases. The image here illustrates my point better than my words can do. Reality is shaped by its context. Truth need not be the opposite of falsehood. Certainty tends to dismiss inconvenient perspectives, thereby hiding or at least shading different viewpoints.

+++

I look down at a colorful grocery store advertisement that came in the day’s mail. There is nothing special about it until I take off my glasses. Then, my blurred vision turns a sheet with photos of vegetables and meat and packaged cookies into beautiful, alluring, impressionistic abstract art. The same thing can happen if I stare vacantly at the forest in front of me; my eyes stop trying to focus and, instead, they let the images in front of me dissolve into brush strokes—a hundred shades of green and brown and yellow and blue compete for prominence on a blurry grey canvas. I wonder whether impressionist painters simply re-create the images they see when the world in front of their eyes goes out of focus. “Simply.” It is not simple. At least not for me. I have tried. The results look very much like the outcome of earnest efforts by a child, painting with his fingers.

I have given up trying to create wall-worthy paintings. Though I may dabble occasionally, my technical proficiency with a paintbrush is nonexistent. I do not expect the canvas to reflect what my mind imagines. If I had the patience, art classes might enable me to paint a little better, but because I feel confident I will never be as good as I wish I were, I am unwilling to spend the time. My lack of patience may be the reason I have never gotten especially good at anything; I quit trying out of frustration that I am not progressing rapidly enough. That is childish. I have never really grown up. I am a brat in an old man’s body. But that kid can conjure some pretty amazing art in his mind; unfortunately, those images will never make their way to canvas, at least not as intended. Or to ceramic or carved wood or sculpted stone figures. The only real downside to that reality is that I cannot share the images I see in my mind. Others cannot see the abstractions I see. But I suspect others create mental abstractions of their own. Whether they are willing to admit it, though…who knows?

+++

After yesterday afternoon’s ferocious wind and rain during an intense thunderstorm, the serenity of the forest seemed utterly unreal. How could those trees, whose trunks and branches seemed to be made of flexible rubber when subjected to the wind, be standing quiet and still—utterly immobile—afterward? I think it’s time to go outside, where the temperature is reported by my computer to be 70°F. Yes. More hot coffee and time to sit and ponder and mull and cogitate for a bit.

The activities of yesterday morning, into mid-day and beyond, ultimately led to an afternoon nap. That capped off a very pleasant day, but one which conflicted mightily with a pledge mi novia and I made earlier: to return to our healthier diet and lifestyle of a few months ago.  After church, we had a big, boozy Mexican lunch, along with lengthy conversation, with friends.  Though one big, caloric, carb-laden meal should have been enough, I ate a protein-only meal later in the day.

It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and the broken promises.

~ Chief Joseph ~

With that quotation, I am attempting to shame myself back into submission to my better judgment. I would use a whip, if that would help.

+++

Some memories play back like two-dimensional film. Others evoke all the senses involved in the original experience; those memories can recall the stress of the original experience, as well. I remember far too well the stresses of simultaneously dealing with multiple boards of directors, thousands of association members, human resource matters, sometimes tight financial circumstances, and access to healthcare. I am convinced those aggravations, often intensified after four or five consecutive seven-day weeks, contributed significantly to flare-ups of the symptoms of Crohn’s disease. Though stress may no longer be considered, in the medical community, the primary trigger of the condition, my body’s reactions to stress say otherwise.

I know now I might have been happier had I realized how decidedly unimportant my responsibilities were. Had I known, early on, that no one—including me—is “the indispensable person,” I would have lightened up much, much earlier. If I had shirked every responsibility, little of the world would have changed. No wars would be fought. No invasions would be launched. The time between now and the end of time would remain the same. Granted, a few people might have been inconvenienced when I abandoned my responsibilities, but those scars would have healed long ago.

I usually prefer the memories that invoke all the senses. But when the tension in my body is so high I can hear the bones in my body begin to crack, I default to favoring flat images that captured a microsecond in time.

+++

Why, I wonder, is it so hard to just acknowledge one’s blunders and move on? Why, when a person makes a simple mistake that anyone else easily could have made, does he insist on labeling himself incompetent, inadequate, and essentially useless? The reason, I am told, might be an affliction called perfectionism. Everything has to be just right. Any deviation—no matter how small—from plan or desired outcome is outright failure. That sounds reasonable, so I’ll buy it. The next question, naturally, is this: Can perfectionism be cured?

+++

The time is almost 6:30. I have not been outside yet, but I will in a moment. My computer alleges the temperature outside is a cool 70°F. Assuming that to be the case, I will abandon my fingers, in favor of treating my eyes, ears, nose, and skin to something special.

My left shoulder is bothering me again. The cause could be a pulled muscle, over-stretched tendons, bone-against-bone chafing, simple arthritis, or one or more of dozens of other possibilities. The underlying cause does not matter, except to the extent that the cause might suggest the best approach to muting or eliminating the pain. A comprehensive examination of the most likely culprits probably would require multiple MRIs, X-rays, blood tests, electrical conductance tests, and/or many more medical investigative tools. And the investigative tools’ results would require a detailed, focused, time-consuming evaluations of the tools’ findings. The time required of doctors and other medical professionals in such evaluations simply is not available. Doctors seem to limit the time they spend with each patient to no more than fifteen minutes per visit. Without those limits, my understanding is that many patients would not be seen. The doctors would run out of time before seeing all the people who visit them, hoping at a minimum for relief from troubling symptoms. Or, better yet, a full, immediate, and permanent elimination of those symptoms. So, although I wish my aching shoulder—and every one of the other nagging pains or symptoms I experience—would be thoroughly evaluated during a several-day-long medical assessment, I am resigned to the fact that no such appraisal will take place. I must either tolerate the pain or try medications that are more powerful than aspirin or ibuprofen or acetaminophen. Tramadol, a narcotic used to treat moderate to severe pain, perhaps. I have some left-over Tramadol, which was prescribed in the aftermath of an issue involving a kidney stone. I blame Tramadol, a narcotic I took for the pain, for the suicidal thoughts and bizarre hallucinations that followed. No, now that the memory is becoming clearer, I will pass on the Tramadol. I’ll save it, along with miscellaneous other prescribed narcotics, in case I ever reach the point of needing to permanently end the excruciating pain of deep and irreversible decline. Still, I want something to eliminate, or at least soften, the painful ache. A rheumatologist told me, several months ago, the cause of my pain was “nonspecific” and most likely chronic—permanent and not subject to cure. And, unfortunately, she said the pain probably would persist, regardless of drugs I might take to lessen it. Medical marijuana gummies may help, but I am not sure, as I cannot remember whether the pain continued in the past, after consuming a gummy. Even if they work to make the pain tolerable, they also work to dramatically reduce my inhibitions and increase my silliness. Plus, driving after consuming a gummy is out of the question. Perhaps I can simply “lean into the pain,” thereby taking control of it, rather than vice versa. Meditate, instead of medicate, as it were. Something. Whatever. If I could just get my mind off my shoulder, perhaps I could train my pain receptors to effectively “sleep” through the discomfort. One thing is certain: writing about the pain does nothing but amplify and exacerbate it. So I’ll stop.

+++

Yesterday, I’m sure for the umpteenth time, I viewed a Google map’s “layered” view of the United States and the water surrounding it. The image shows the contours of the land, as well as the ocean floor. As intriguing as are the images of the land, what truly captures my attention are the contours of the sea floor. The details of the underwater trenches, ridges, mountains, etc. are stunning. They are so detailed that I wonder about their legitimacy. Are the images of the waters surrounding us simply artificial representations of the submerged landscape? Are the ridges and valleys and long cross-hatches visual images from a graphic artist’s imagination, or are the geological/geographical images based on real data? I do not know. And I may not want to know. I think I want to retain the sense of mystery that I have always felt about the enormous bodies of water surrounding Earth’s small-by-comparison land masses. We have only a tiny inkling of what exists just three hundred feet below the surface. And our imaginations may not even be capable of creating in our minds images of what is really down there a mile and more.

+++

I blame last night’s penne arrabiata at Dolce Vita Italian Ristorante for the dramatic spike in my blood glucose this morning—158. I should instead blame myself, of course. I knew I was behaving badly by ordering a plate of pasta, but I did not realize just how much of an effect those carbohydrates would have on my body. Adding wine and gin to the mix amplified the measurement, I am sure. This undesirable jump in the blood measurement number, coupled with the scales telling me I have gained a couple of pounds of late, gives me a clear message: it is past time to invoke my self-discipline again. And so I shall.

+++

Phaedra is not happy at the moment. I shut the door to the laundry room, where she eats, after I fed her this morning. My reason was to give me some peace from hearing her claws scratching at the fibers of expensive rugs. Her howls inform me of her displeasure. I get no pleasure from her discomfort, but I get some serenity, some relief from worry for the rugs.

+++

Riots in France. Another mass shooting, this one in Baltimore. Enraged Supreme Court justices. The horrors of war in Ukraine. Dangerous and potentially deadly roller coasters. Wildfires and their smoky effects across North America. Fireworks. Celebrations of “liberty” in the face of naked oppression. I know I should not read the news during the first few hours of being awake. Yet I do, sometimes, anyway. Is it a macabre fascination with turmoil around the country and the world? Is it an addiction to the idea that I must keep up with world news because…because who knows what?

It occurs to me that this country’s celebration of freedom overlooks the diminution of individuals’ power over their own lives. While we promote our freedoms, they are being chipped away at an accelerating pace. Perhaps we will not notice the effects of  accumulating restrictions on our abilities to think and do what we want. We seem readily willing to cede control over our own destinies to the will of both power-driven majorities or powerful minorities. As individuals, we are expected to align with the “proper” powers-that-be. The beauty and righteousness of community and collective efforts is being hijacked to serve the interests of power-hungry groups, which are manifestations of individualists’ plans to consolidate their powers. They make the people into puppets who think they are in control, all the while ensuring that the strings that manipulate their every deed and every thought are clear of obstacles.

Even locally, we defer decisions regarding acceptable house colors to the Property Owners’ Association (POA)—a collection of people, ostensibly elected by “us”, who subjectively determine which muted, dull, “unoffensive” paint colors are acceptable. And we do the same for the State and for the Nation. We allow people who know virtually nothing about us our our core values to incorporate their values into our systems of governance.

I suspect there one day will be a “grey revolution,” in which older people suddenly say to one another, “This is bullshit! We’re not going to allow this to happen anymore!” The revolution will fail, of course, and the country’s prisons and jails will experience a rapid infusion of geezers. They might then revolt against the younger, stronger guards. The guards will have been successfully indoctrinated into the philosophical brotherhood and sisterhood that believes in crushing dissent, especially among the old and not-so-easily led. 1984 was tame.

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It’s late. I took a respite from writing, only to return here and find myself unable to coax my fingers into cooperating with me. So off I go, in search of clothing suitable for church; not a particularly challenging endeavor.

This afternoon, mi novia and I will host former neighbors, a couple who lived next door to me, for wine. We’ll then go for an earlier dinner to a nearby restaurant. Beforehand, we will take the necessary steps to ensure that we are able to meet our commitment to provide “goodies” for tomorrow morning’s church service. And before any of that, mi novia‘s ex-husband will return her car, which he borrowed a couple of days ago when his went into the shop. An active day today—the first day I am “officially” the president of my church, though only a little of the activity has any bearing on that fact. It is with anticipation, mixed with dread, that I assume that role, which will last one year unless earlier I am ejected or resign in exhaustion. Just another day, this one. Hotter than Hades. Speaking of Hades, I think I might enjoy taking a course in Greek and Roman mythology. I never learned enough about that complex, mysterious expression that interprets the universe in strange and fascinating ways. At least not enough to enable me to engage in a coherent conversation about the gods and other characters underlying mythology. I think I would like to know the stories of Prometheus and Pandora and Apollo and Poseidon and Zeus. I suppose a course is not necessary; if I have sufficient interest, I will simply read and learn. If. If. That’s a poem by Rudyard Kipling. My father kept a copy of that poem on the wall next to his desk. Odd, isn’t it, how the mind ricochets off of itself, causing entirely unrelated thoughts to occupy the same time, space, and intellectual real estate?

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I smoked a slab of baby back ribs yesterday. Four and a half hours in the smoker—two directly on the grate, two wrapped in foil and the final half unwrapped to allow the rub and sauce to become “crusty”—was the right amount of time. They were, by far, my best effort yet at smoking pork ribs. I think the flavor of meat may be enhanced when it is enjoyed infrequently. We do not consume a lot of meat, at least not a lot in comparison to days gone by. Beef, especially, has largely disappeared from our diet, except for the occasional splurge for a nice six-ounce filet mignon. Chicken, too, is a rarity. Pork tends to be the go-to protein of late. And fish. I can imagine being vegetarian if I could depend on a talented vegetarian-focused chef taking charge of all my meals.

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If members of the Supreme Court truly were nonpolitical—and if they made serious efforts to ensure their biases do not influence their decisions—decisions of the court probably would enrage either the right or the left about half the time. The court’s decisions would not give people of either political perspective consistent cause for celebration or mourning. But “lefties” and “righties” fight tooth and nail to have judges who support their causes appointed. And, of course, Congressional majorities makes a game out of going to war when the President represents the opposite party. As a result, the court seesaws between liberalism and conservatism (and their more intense cousins, of late) between new lifetime court appointments. Despite my loathing for that reality, I think limited-term appointments or enabling the public to recall appointed justices (or to elect them, rather than have them appointed) would drastically shorten the time between pendulum swings. Back to the original assertion: “If member of the Supreme Court truly were nonpolitical…” Wouldn’t it be nice. But rulings coming from completely apolitical justices probably would reveal enormous cracks in the practical application of the philosophies underlying our system of government. That’s just my opinion, of course. The depth of my knowledge of the philosophies guiding our system of government is considerably less than would be ideal. Yet my opinions often imply I think my knowledge is as deep as the Mariana Trench. I know better. That notwithstanding, I often pronounce judgments on rulings of the Supreme Court. I am afraid, sometimes, the justices make decisions on knowledge of the same depth as mine.

Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.

~ Paramahansa Yogananda ~

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The beastly heat of recent days apparently will recede, at least temporarily, in the coming days. Beginning the week in the upper 80s or low 90s, the end of the week might see high temperatures near 80°F. But we’re only just now in the early days of July. And August tends to be the hottest month. I may need to evacuate from Arkansas during that month; Wisconsin holds a certain allure for me. Madison and environs, in particular. And the Dells. Hell, I find the entire state appealing.

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A private swimming pool where I could splash about in naked comfort, far from prying eyes that could be damaged by the sight of me, might be the perfect place today. Even a “hot tub” freshly filled (with the heat switched off) might do the trick. I’ll just have to fantasize, I suppose.