John Swinburn

Dim, grey light filters through the trees. The dimness diminishes with each passing minute, replaced by a slightly brighter sky behind the branches. The distant glow above the horizon grows in intensity, offsetting the loss of darkness with a deepening supply of luminescence. Soon, darkness will be hidden, visible only under the leaves and forest debris on the ground. Pine and oak trees will continue to battle with the sky, shading the ground beneath from the sun’s pure white light. But darkness will lose the battle, as it does every day. Will darkness ever prevail? Will the sun ever abandon its effort to bathe the world in light? Deep grey and dark green colors still mix with the blackness of night as dawn claws its way out of the forest. But the forest will remain at the edge of darkness for as long as dense stands of oak and pine stay close to one another, holding development at bay for another little while. Eventually, though, the trees and underbrush will be dispatched to a place where only memory is permitted to thrive.

The image here is only an imaginary expression of something that does not exist. It is your eyes’ deceit; trickery that lures your mind into believing light and darkness have a place on the screen in front of you. You know better. The image burned into your brain is a figment of your imagination; a relic of a time when you had the eyes of an eagle and the resolve of a martyr. Today, of course, you sit in front of a screen, watching evidence of your gullibility put on display for all the world to see. Grey and dim, indeed. Shades of deep, dark green. Darkness giving way to light. It’s all a deception of the highest order. But, still, you stare into the abyss and watch flames consume a lost cargo ship as the water surrounding it boils and thrashes and screams for release.

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A final opportunity delivered to a desperate man standing on the raised railing of a cargo ship under assault by gale force winds and waves as tall as ten story buildings. Perhaps he jumped. Maybe he was pushed. Or, quite possibly, the sea wrapped its watery fingers around him and pulled him from the railing and toward the bottom of an impossibly deep ocean. No one else will ever know, for he may have been alone—or, at least, by himself—on that massive sea-going vessel. The ship subsequently drifted for weeks on calm waters. Finally, though, the corrosive air and water consumed the framework upon which safety had been built and then torn asunder. The ship sank beneath the mysterious waters of an endless body of water, where the boat’s secrets will remain locked in a vault until the vault and its contents are consumed by time.  The desperate man will then be gone forever, as will all evidence of him and the life he lived. Because when time and water erase memories, nothing remains; not even history.

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I successfully returned to bed at 3, after briefly considering abandoning it at that ungodly hour. Instead, though, I went back to sleep and slept until 5:30. Time moves far too fast in the early morning hours. It races by, as if driven by a frenzied witch running late for an appointment with infinity. A witch, incidentally, need not wear a pointy black hat; she can wear a stylish orange fedora to complement the warlock’s beige pork pie hat. His hat is woven from the dried skin of the enemy; “the enemy” is a catch-all term for everyone else who is not “us.” The warlock employs an army of milliners who craft pork pie hats, as well as stovepipe hats, the kind Abraham Lincoln wore. Lincoln was the only person I know of who wore tall, stovepipe hats; the presidential dress-code never caught on with the riff-raff among us. We always chose fedoras or newsboy caps. As well we should.

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And the morning continues to unfold. I will watch it. And I will take  my car in for an oil change and tire rotation, preparation for a long, long, long road trip. Now, in the interim, I will explore answers to the mysteries of the lesser light.

Distant thunder. The sound is far enough from me, and faint enough, that it may be my imagination rattling around in my head. But I think it’s thunder. Thunder, a thousand miles away, clutching at the clouds that bind it to a continent on which English is not the chosen language. That’s what creates distant thunder; clouds ramming into one another over foreign lands so far away they look like paintings. Wee-hour imaginings; that’s what’s responsible for these clutches of words, these syllables gathered together in random fashion, with just enough meaning to keep them from separating into noisy partial-word sounds.

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Sunlight will remain at bay for hours. Until then, I will sit in a room illuminated by an artificial sun, a sun misshapen into a tube with designs etched on its sides.

Light, to my way of thinking, is the visual manifestation of heat in a precisely defined and limited space. Light is an interesting phenomenon. It is neither a physical “thing” nor an imaginary spirit. Light bathes us in vision; without light, we would be blind. Yet light is not the same as our eyes; without our eyes, we would be blind, but eyes and light are radically different from one another.

Eyes are physical things, whereas light is more an event than a thing. More an occurrence than an item we can grasp in our hands. Darkness, like light, has no physical properties one can hold in our hands. Yet, when circumstances cooperate, we can feel darkness. We sometimes can differentiate between darkness and light without the aid of our eyes. When darkness replaces light, shining on our skin, we can feel heat dissipate. Or, maybe we feel light loosen its grip. Or, by contrast, perhaps we feel the grip of darkness tighten.

If light and darkness are phenomena, then greed and altruism, too, are phenomena. All phenomena are related to one another, in one form or another, if for no other reason than their manner of being. We can stretch that elastic relationship just enough to assert that darkness and altruism are related, just as are greed and light. Perhaps the relationships are inverse. Yet maybe they are not. Maybe, despite all we’ve been taught for all these long centuries, altruism and darkness are simply mirror images of one another. Maybe, in fact, altruism behaves as if it were light—simply to ensure its visibility in that mirror. And light acts like greed to force us to turn our eyes away from the negativity inherent in the inverse of giving.

I read yesterday, while skimming an article asserting the legitimacy of “woo-woo” thinking, that nothing exists until it is noticed. So, planet Earth did not exist until the first living cells were able to react to—that is, notice—their environment. But the article went further; it suggested that a tree in a forest or a pipe wrench sitting on a work bench do not exist until noticed by humans. I suppose a raccoon that climbs the tree or a monkey that picks up the pipe wrench are products of an overactive environmental imagination. Seriously, the assertions are absurd on one hand, but they are meritorious of deep, nonjudgmental thinking on the other. Looking at the world around us in ways utterly foreign to our experience is a valuable exercise. It awakens us from a stupor and thrusts us into a experience of enlightenment unlike anything we have ever before encountered. We must simply allow ourselves to be drawn into a prism, from which we can peer outward at the way it refracts life. That’s all it takes. But that transformation is equivalent to a butterfly emerging from a cocoon captured in amber one million years ago. The emergence is next to impossible, except when one allows one’s imagination total freedom, in which case the transition is supremely simple and flawless. Back to the “woo-woo” thinking, though: nothing exists until it interacts or engages in some way with entities around it. Maybe there’s something to it. Maybe I do not exist in your eyes, and vice versa, until we engage. Until we notice one another—with profound appreciation—we do not realize how fulfilling our interactions with one another might be. We may as well not exist until we devote the time and expend the energy to know one another. To. Notice. One. Another. I notice everyone. If I stare at you, it is because I want you to exist; more than simply in my imagination.

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Yesterday was lost. Lost to sleep for much of the day. Lost to a malaise; not one foretelling the onset of disease but, instead, a slowly-disappearing reaction to consuming too many almonds the night before. I know better. Yet I allow myself to over-indulge. And, when I do, I pay the price. The price, yesterday, was a general sense of discomfort and a desire to sleep my way through a painful, aching gut. It may take another day or two to fully resolve itself. In the meantime, my efforts to satisfy my hunger probably will gravitate toward jello and other soft foods. Maybe pasta, flavored with pizza sauce (because, to my knowledge, there is no canned/jarred pasta sauce in the house and I am not in the mood to create a sauce from scratch. Sauce intended for pizza—thicker and sweeter and richer than I’d like, but acceptable, anyway, as a stand-in—thinned with a little water and improved with some Italian spices and crushed red peppers may do the trick. For breakfast. Or lunch. Or whatever. I was sufficiently hungry last night to consume an entire can of Campbell’s tomato soup. Though not overwhelmingly hungry right now (at 2:23 a.m.), I could eat. I could eat quite a lot, if I did not have to prepare it. If I had a servant, I would be considerably heavier and more solid.

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I slept yesterday afternoon without noticing the rain and thunder. Only after I woke did I learn that the sky had opened, drenching the ground and producing growls and cracks and other fierce noises that would, under normal circumstances, wake me. My sleep must have been deeper than I thought, though. I heard nothing. I was deep in sleep while Mother Nature disturbed the peace of almost everyone in the Village but me. That is a rarity. Thunder tends to enter my body as if the sound belonged to me; and, normally, I react to the sound as if it were attempting to escape from me. I tend to cling to it the way I envision a drowning man clings to a life raft. But not yesterday. Not when I was fighting to recover from whatever it was that attempted to knock me down and out.

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The time is 3:24 a.m., nearly two hours later than it was when I awoke and climbed out of bed. The first cup of coffee is history and the second is disappearing fast. I think I’ll hard-boil some eggs. Deviled eggs for breakfast is beginning to sound alluring in the extreme. And so it came to pass that the man created deviled eggs. And they will be good. I will notice them. And they will return the favor, caressing my tongue and thus releasing flavors so rich and fulfilling that anyone reading these words will feel the experience.

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It’s Tuesday. One of roughly Tuesdays (more or less) so far. Others have experienced more Tuesdays or fewer. But I have experienced as many as I possibly could up until this point. If the universe is willing, I will experience many more Tuesdays. And there you are.

Sadness—deep, intractable, incurable heartache or grief or overwhelming sorrow—provides an endless supply of content for writers. That reality gives rise to the question as to whether sadness propels people to become writers or whether writing is symptomatic of a profound, underlying sadness. Does the fact that even comedy, beneath its slick, laugh-stoked exterior, is soaked in sadness have any bearing on the discussion? Probably not. A thousand arguments can be made to refute the connection between writing and sadness. But a thousand more substantiate the link between the two; while no causal relationship can be verified, neither can it be discounted. No one can know with certainty, no matter how much knowledge one has stored in the recesses of one’s mind.

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Once again, I have been up for hours. This morning, I woke “for the duration” at 4. Earlier, I had forced myself back to bed around 12:30. But I could not do it again at 4. Even after being up for almost two and a half hours, I have been unable to write anything I am willing to show to the denizens of planet Earth who stumble upon this blog. Not that I would know they saw it. They would not leave comments to show that they saw what I wrote. They would simply look dismissively at my words and would then move on to more interesting places on the internet.

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I give up. There’s no point in continuing this charade. I cannot write this morning, no matter how much I might want to. I am unwilling to record most of this morning’s thoughts here because I might be asked to explain the source of my ennui; I have no explanation to give. Depression? Anxiety? Simple fatigue? Who knows? Enough for now. Perhaps I will tumble out of the doldrums at any moment.

The computer claims the outside temperature is 66°F right now; that would be delightful, except that the humidity is 92%. A few moments ago, I went outside to experience 66°F at 92% humidity. I expected the experience to be somewhat disappointing; I thought the high humidity would mask the comfort of the temperature. I was wrong. It felt wonderful. Even though there was not even a hint of a breeze, the temperature felt wonderful. I barely even noticed the high humidity. Usually, when the air is dead still, as it is now, temperatures have to be considerably lower than “normal” to feel comfortable. But not so this morning. I encourage everyone who is able to experience 66°F at 92% humidity, when the air is absolutely still, to do just that. Experience it. And talk about it.

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As people age, they tend to repeat themselves. Their conversations sometimes seem to have been recorded on a loop; though the words may be slightly different, the content varies only slightly. These repetitions may occur over the course of a few days or, as time marches on, over the course of a few seconds. Between those extremes, repetitions take place with increasing frequency and with decreasing time between them.  To the mind whose ear is exposed to high-speed repetitions, the exposure can be maddening. But one’s frustration must be tempered with understanding of the reality of what is happening to the brain. Virtually all people go through various degrees of the phenomenon. Understanding and kindness should be one’s reaction, not unchecked frustration. How easy it is, though, to condemn a lack of understanding in others while demonstrating it in oneself.

As I contemplate my experiences listening to a story for the umpteenth time, I wonder whether repetitive telling is an indication of the importance of the story to the teller. Or does it, I wonder, illustrate a limitation on the number and/or depth of topics available in the teller’s brain? Or, maybe, both? These questions are based not only on curiosity born of observing others, but of curiosity and fear that arise from recalling my own behaviors. And, in answer to my own questions, based on my own experience as a story-teller, I think it’s a bit of both. The stories must be important to me and, therefore, telling them to others in my sphere must be important because I want others to understand who I am. Repetitive telling is a measure of their importance. Yet repetition must also be an sign of decay; mental decay reduces the number and depth of topics available for conversation.

This is all supposition, of course, though it may be based in part on past reading about the effects of aging and its impact on both the individual and people in the individual’s sphere. I often wonder whether my curiosity is fueled by my own intellect or by my exposure to others’ thinking? Who knows? I should be satisfied to know I can still think, whether my thoughts are spurred by my own intellect or by others’ thinking. I should be, but I’m not. I want to know more. I want to know so much more than I know. The human brain, I think, has capacities far exceeding any we have measured heretofore. We have not yet unlocked the doors to that vast empty space where knowledge can be kept at the ready. We may never unlock the doors; we may never even find the doors so we can attempt to break them down with brute force. Oh, to be able to live and observe, from a safe and comfortable distance, for the nex thousand years.

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Enough for now. This morning we will go to church.

Today is Saturday and the day holds great promise. Just how or why, I do not know; I just sense this day in early September is likely to be a good, productive, satisfying day. I ask all my readers, both of you, to tell me (by leaving a comment on this blog) why this day holds such positive promise. I hope my friends Lana and Mel recognize that this day will be a highly-productive pre-move day; soon, all the challenges of a 300+ mile move will be behind them—I mention them by name because I am extremely conscious of the stresses and challenges of a residential relocation. I hope everyone else in my limited sphere will find this day one full of not only promise, but extraordinary experience. Your happiness contributes to mine, so my good wishes for you are selfish wishes; but, at least, you may reap some benefits from my selfishness.

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A friend sent me a message yesterday, informing me about a Magnolia Network television series called Van Go. Though I haven’t watched any episodes yet, I did enough research to know I easily could get hooked on the program. Sufficiently so that it could prompt me to commence pursuit of a solid, reliable, easy-on-the-gas van that’s in search of a new life as a rolling home for nomads. I can see it now: a large shop outfitted with all the equipment and tools necessary to convert an old Sprint van into a mobile retreat with all the necessary luxuries (yes…I know) of home.

I probably should finish all the thousands of little projects around the house first. Or, better yet, hire someone to get all the bothersome unfinished items off the to-do list. It might seem odd that I do not have the interest nor the drive to finish the little things, but I want to undertake a monstrous undertaking in the form of a vehicular makeover—converting an unattractive cargo-hauler into a perpetually-mobile vacation “cabin.” I would have had the same passion for completing every detail, personally, if I had been the sole designer/creator/installer/whatever for the house. But handling only some of the aesthetic matters, like painting and hanging towel racks and such become more of a chore than taking a project from the drawing board all the way to a finished piece of what might be called art.  And, of course, there’s the issue of thinking I may have ADHD (you know, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). And, then, there’s the life-long trait toward my innate laziness that reveals itself only mid-project; no matter what the project. And, finally, I need access to/ownership of the necessary tools and equipment and I really need a patient, dedicated person who has used the tools to show me how. I could learn on my own, I suppose, but the risk of cutting of a finger or five while re-learning the proper way to push boards being cut by a table saw is higher than I would like. We’ll see. We always do.

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Yesterday’s ultrasound of my kidneys and bladder revealed only that they are “grossly unremarkable.” Or something like that. Unless the urologist reads something more sinister into the report that appeared in my medical records just a few hours after the procedure, my bladder and my kidneys are in tip-top shape. And well they should be. They seem to be working overtime these days. So much so that I decided to buy an “on-the-road” plastic portable urinal to take with us on our upcoming road trip. During my online exploration of these little containers (they’re nothing more than specially-shaped/formed plastic containers with lids), I discovered that these accouterments are available not only for men, but for women! I asked mi novia if she wanted me to buy one for her while I was at it. She allowed as how she’d rather stop at convenience stores and gas stations. I would, too, if I had the luxury of an enormous bladder and the ability to fight the urge while traveling on long stretches of highway jammed with cars but few pee-stations.

Which brings me to my next rant: we should all just lighten up about public urination. Both men and women should feel absolutely free to pee anywhere and at any time they need to. When possible, of course, they should pee on plants that could benefit from the water, rather than on concrete or asphalt, but the location should be up to the person peeing. Do we get apoplectic when we see a dog lift its leg or squat? Of course not—unless it’s inside on a carpet or throw rug. I do not advocate that we give people that much freedom. But I do advocate for giving people the latitude to pee when and where they need to without being ostracized, arrested, or shunned by the rest of us “more civilized” creatures. Nonsense! While I do not advocate for public pooping, I do advocate in favor of allowing public urination. Yet I really cannot defend how or why I differentiate between the freedom to pee and what I consider legitimate restrictions on poopery—I just do.

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I bought a limited supply of medicinal marijuana yesterday, knowing I might need something to help minimize shoulder and neck pain after a long day’s driving during our upcoming trip. But, as I contemplate the as-yet-indeterminate-route-and-destination(s), I wonder whether we will be traveling through ultra-conservative, unenlightened, harsh, and judgmental states where possession of such stuff might be considered a capital offense. Can I go on record as a strong libertarian with regard to laws restricting or prohibiting possession and/or use of marijuana? I think the government has no business infringing on individuals’ rights to use marijuana (or any other substance), provided the use of such substances does not directly endanger others. I feel the same way about many other restrictions society imposes on people—like public nudity, public urination, prostitution (though I have mixed feelings on that), and various others. With regard to prostitution, my mixed feelings arise from my concerns that a prostitute may not have chosen that path, but instead may have been forced into it due to circumstances out of her (or his, I suppose) control. In which case, I oppose forcing and coercing or otherwise putting her (or him) in the position of having to be a prostitute, instead of wanting to be one. Enough on that for now.

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You probably have not read this far because, I understand, what I write can be too much and too lengthy to be suitable for breakfast-time (or any time) reading. That has not stopped me from writing it, nonetheless. You see, I feel compelled to allow my brain to unwind and express itself through my fingers most mornings. Absent that outlet, my mind might get so wound up that it could snap like the springs on a garage door, making the device over which it has control and responsibility utterly and completely inoperable. That is, I might become a blind zombie, unable to speak, think, or see. And I would not want that.

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I think I mentioned that it’s Saturday, a day of immense opportunity. Take advantage of the exciting opportunities available to you. And tell me about them. And let me tell others about them. So that we all can share in this growing tide of happiness and positive evolution. Good morning!

I hereby divest myself of negativity for as long as my discipline lasts!

This morning, I stumbled across a YouTube video in which a couple shows off their full-time “van-life” van and talks about what they did to convert the 2014 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. Though I dragged myself away from the 25-minute video after only 12 minutes or so, the vehicle and the fantasies (call it vision, if you like) that spurred its conversion got me hooked for a while. The couple that built it planned on being full-time “van-lifers,” though after building their dream van people began clamoring for their help with van conversions. The demand for their time increased exponentially. So, I gather they may not be living on the road full-time; instead, they travel when they want but devote whatever time they deem appropriate and necessary to what is, I suppose, a lucrative little business. I would like to have such a van. I do not necessarily want to build it myself, though. There was a time, when I was younger and more agile and had fewer aches and pains in every damn joint in my body that I would have wanted to do the work. I still do want to the work, actually, but I acknowledge the fact that I am getting rather brittle in my decrepitude. The actual work of van conversions is suited to younger people, though ideas for design that would enhance utility and comfort remain the province of people in their dotage as well as people in the foolishness of youth. What I lack in youth I also lack in extra, uncommitted cash, so, who is best suited to design and convert vans is not really a topic relevant to me. But if I were to win the lottery…

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Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.

~ Ray Bradbury ~

This morning, at a few minutes past 8, I will rush off for my ultrasound appointment. The sonographer will press her sonography stick (or whatever it is called) against my lower abdomen and other parts as he or she conducts an ultrasound examination of my bladder and kidneys. This is a follow-up to my experience with a large kidney stone, removed in February, and the subsequent ultrasound to verify that all was well. It was. And this morning’s ultrasound will, I hope, confirm the same. They want me to have a full bladder for the ultrasound. They may or may not get their wish, inasmuch as the urgency and frequency of my need to pee has grown more demanding with the passage of each day. The age-related decay of one’s physical humanity begins as an annoyance and degrades into a impossibly deep well of full-scale aggravation.

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I feel fortunate, in that mi novia is willing to indulge my wanderlust. When we begin our upcoming road trip, we will leave the house without having any specific destination in mind. We will just go. We may drive toward Traverse City, Michigan. Or Port Townsend, Washington. Or Charleston, South Carolina. Or Oswego, New York. Or Albuquerque, New Mexico. Or a combination thereof. We want to go too many places and our timeline for road-tripping is too short to actually fulfill all our dreams. So we will respond to each day with a decision on which direction we will head. It’s the planning for this trip (or the lack of planning, actually) that makes the idea of a full-equipped “van life” van so appealing. Motels are expensive and the experience of staying in a motel is so similar from place to place that I do not much like the idea of staying in motel after motel. But I’m also cranky and demanding in my old age, so the idea of staying in a B&B with limited privacy (and feeling the need to be very quiet very early in the morning) is unappealing. But it’s better than not traveling at all. Ach! I change my mind so damn frequently about travel and motels and having a van and on and on and on.

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Argentinian Vice President (and former first lady and former president) Cristina Fernández de Kirchner survived an assassination attempt when the gun her attacker attempted to use failed to fire. Attempts, whether successful or not, to assassinate political leaders around the world demonstrate the dangers of politics. Or is it the dangers of governance? Or both? And is there really a difference? Governance is just one manifestation of politics. One cannot govern in the absence of political pressures. However, one can exert political pressures without enduring the burden of governance responsibilities. Yet exerting political pressures is a matter of degrees; assassination is on the extreme edge of such pressure. What one person considers compassion, another person considers weakness. What one person considers fairness, another considers injustice. We might all be better off living in a sealed environment in which politics is prohibited; but governance cannot exist in a political vacuum, so the prohibition of politics would correspond with the chaos of anarchy. There’s no winning a battle with oneself, no matter the strength or weakness of the opponent.

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Politics have no relation to morals.

~ Niccolo Machiavelli ~

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I am not a game player. At least not often. And not many types of games. I play words games, but only with people I find intellectually appealing. I play a few other games–just occasionally and maybe just one game–only with people whose company I like. There’s something about games that makes playing them with people one does not like a terrible struggle. One not worth the effort. That something, I suppose, is a certain level of intimacy. That intimacy is reserved for a limited number of people. Beyond that limited sphere, there’s a sizeable ring of discomfort. And beyond that, a more narrow ring of dislike. And, still further, a wider ring of dismissal or emptiness.

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It’s approaching 6:45. I must shave, shower, and dress (obviously) before I leave for my appointment. I still have time for another cup of coffee and some avocado on toast. A decadent lifestyle, without doubt.

I allowed my laziness to overwhelm my desire to write this morning, hence no early-day blog post. This post, begun shortly before 10:00 a.m., will serve as a stand-in for what would have been a much earlier post.

The fact that I went to breakfast with my church’s “men’s breakfast group” this morning could be used as an excuse, but that would have been a lie. Normally, by the time I left for breakfast, I would have long-since finished writing my post. No, this morning, I was just lazy. Instead of writing, I read an array of Facebook posts, including this one:

If someone is falling behind in life, you don’t have to remind them. Believe me, they already know. If someone is unhealthy, they know. If someone is failing at work, they know. If someone is struggling in their relationships, with money, with self-image… they know. It’s what consumes their thoughts each day. What you need to do for those who are struggling is not to reprimand, but encourage. Tell them what’s good about their lives, show them the potential that you see. Love them where they are. When we can’t see clearly for ourselves, we need others to speak greatness over us. People don’t need you to tell them what’s wrong with their lives, they already know. They need you to reassure them that they can still make it right.

Those are the words of a young (29-year-old) woman by the name of Brianna Wiest. She is a writer, a poet, a thinker. And, I think, wise beyond her years. She is the bestselling author of 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, The Mountain Is You, When You’re Ready, This Is How You Heal, and two poetry collections, Salt Water and Ceremony. No matter how old I get, I will never be as young and productive a writer as is Brianna Wiest. There might have been a time when I would have been bitter about that unchangeable reality. But not now. I have grown old; simultaneously, I have grown appreciative of people who, in their youth, already have outshone me despite my lengthy head start.

In addition to reading the words of Brianna Wiest, I read the words of David Legan, a sometimes-follower of my blog. He commented on yesterday’s post, noting tangentially his disagreement with my words about anger while expressing his appreciation of Bill Morrissey’s lyrics and music. Those lyrics, he suggested, lure one into a sense of comfort until they strike, hard, at one’s heart with their powerful insight into our insignificance. Bill Morrissey’s lyrics remind me of Greg Brown’s lyrics. Both of them were exceptionally skillful storytellers; Brown still is, but Morrissey died young, at age 59.

Emotion, delivered in the form of poetry and lyrics and narrative prose so profound it embraces one with a hug like that of a grizzly bear, is the driving force of knowledge. We learn almost as much from moving, powerful language as we do from experience; maybe even more. Emotion is the foundation for thought—we cannot think until, first, we feel.

Does the final sentence of the paragraph above seem especially arrogant? As if I were asserting as fact what is only my opinion? I make such pronouncements with the expectation that they will trigger appreciation in some people as if I had expressed a profound insight. And I understand—and expect—that some people will dismiss my words as evidence of undeserved hubris. Either is fine with me. I doubt most of what I express as certainty. At the same time, though, I think it’s entirely possible that my words may carry with them, for some people, an intensity of insight rarely encountered in these environs.

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Writing during the hour before noon feels oddly inappropriate. I feel like I’m using someone else’s time to produce words that rightfully belong to someone else. Strange, I know.

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A good friend of mine writes poetry. It is a relatively recent activity for her, I think, but her writing is exceptionally good, as if she has been practicing and refining it for years and years. Her poetry conveys emotions as well as any I have heard or read. A recent poem is, like several others, remarkably good. I think it’s time for her to begin compiling her work with the idea that she is to create a chapbook. I will happily help.

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A mail delivery person, a stand-in for our regular carrier, just drove by at high speed and whirled around in the cul-de-sac, slowing just enough and he changed directions to throw mail into my mailbox before roaring away at even higher speed. I automatically assumed he had thrown an explosive device into the mailbox; either it had a timer set to go off just seconds after his vehicle was at a safe distance or he wanted leave the vicinity before he detonated the bomb. It has not yet exploded, so I will now take the risk of checking the mailbox. If I do not publish a post tomorrow, Friday, you can assume my first assumption was right.

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James Johnston Stewart and John Francis Peppard wrote the song Armed with a Broken Heart. John Gorka is the only artist I have heard perform it. Until I attempted to verify that John Gorka had written the lyrics and tune for the song, I was deeply impressed with John Gorka’s superb song-writing skills. Now, Gorka may well be an exceptional songwriter, but not the writer of that song with which I am so impressed. Gorka does a superb job of performing the song, but he seems to get all the credit for it. Stewart and Peppard deserve a LOT more than they get. So it seems with many songwriters. They do not get recognition for their work; the performers always seem to get the credit. That has bothered me for years. I remember being incensed when I learned that all the accolades I had thrown at Arlo Guthrie for City of New Orleans should have been shared with the songwriter, Steve Goodman. Maybe I’m the guilty party. Maybe everyone but me knows who wrote all those wonderful songs that the non-writing performers get so much credit for. But I doubt it.

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It’s damn near noon. I can’t have a morning blog post get published after noon, so here’s where I draw the line. Enough.

Years ago, I applied for a job based in Zanesville, Ohio. The job sounded both interesting and extremely challenging—had I been offered the job, I would have had to decide whether I could successfully manage a large trade show despite having never managed one before. I was prepared to say “yes,” I could do it. But I was not offered a job. In fact, I was not invited to Zanesville for an interview.  Anticipating that I would be asked to come in, though, I explored a bit about Zanesville. The internet was not as readily available nor was it the vast store of information it is today, but it gave me clues about the town. I learned that the population of the town was roughly twenty-five thousand. The Muskingum River flows through the heart of the town. From all I could tell, the town and the surrounding areas were attractive. I learned enough about the town that I wanted to go see it. Even before I learned I was not selected to be interviewed, I was ready to relocate. Something about the place appealed to me. Alas, the expected invitation never came. I would not be offered a job with Offinger Management Company. Oh, well.

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

~ Saul Bellow ~

This morning, I looked for information about the company. Though I found many links to information about Offinger Management Company, the one that struck me was the one that claimed the company was “permanently closed.” Could that be? Its website cannot be reached. The Google map listing claims it is permanently closed. At 6:25 this morning, I called the phone number listed on the Google map summary of the company (+1-740-452-4541), only to learn that the number is not in service. I do not know what happened to Offinger Management Company. Perhaps it was the same thing that happened to Challenge Management, Inc.—the owner and founder lost interest in the business and most of the people the business served. When I closed Challenge Management, I hoped to stay in touch with some of the people involved with the associations I managed. And I have, although to a much-reduced extent compared to what I envisioned.

Back to Zanesville, though. I’m curious about the town. It is located roughly halfway between Columbus, Ohio and Wheeling, West Virginia; an hour by car to either place. I have been to both municipalities and found them interesting. Wheeling is only an hour away from Pittsburgh; so Zanesville is only about a two-hour drive to Pittsburgh. As I glance at the Google map, my eyes pause as they see Toledo and Detroit and Dayton and Cincinnati, all places I have been, at least briefly. I spent several days in the hospital in Toledo in 1989 or 1990, where I had emergency surgery for what the doctors thought was appendicitis. The pain, as it turned out, was caused by a severe flare-up of Crohn’s disease; the surgeon removed a substantial length of damaged, inflamed intestine. My first major surgery. I’ve always wanted to go back to Toledo, just to look around. Since my hospital stay, I have been back to the area; I spent time in Perrysburg, a suburb southwest of Toledo. It was a business trip, like almost all my travel has been. Now, though, I’d like to travel without obligations and commitments and other things that might distract me from the pleasure of experiencing a new place and new people.

Memories bubble to the surface in response to such minor, accidental recollections. I would like to visit Zanesville. And all along the shores of Lake Eerie. And I’d like to take a train from Sault Ste. Marie north to Hearst. I think that’s the train my late wife and I took during our circle tour around some of the Great Lakes in the late 1980s. We may have stayed overnight in Hearst or, if the train was running to Wawa then, we may have stayed there. In either case, the overnight was in a French-speaking village in Ontario. I would like to do it again. This time, I would write about it. Memorialize it so that, someday, someone might stumble across my blog and find it sufficiently interesting to read about a Canadian rail adventure. God, I could go on for days, resurrecting fragments of past experiences that I should have captured on film or in words. Or both. Now, I have to rely on memories that may not even be mine; they may be snapshots of memories taken through someone else’s eyes and delivered to me as though they were mine. Hmm. What, I wonder, belongs to me, alone, and what is simply a shared recollection triggered by a word or an image online? Hard to tell.

+++

Most people I know avoid angry confrontations when they can. Anger tends to overwhelm our protective defenses against speaking words that should not be spoken, so people try to tend to try to soften anger with understanding. Understanding the genesis of anger helps to lessen its grip. But circumstances can be too unstable for understanding; circumstances sometimes trigger responses over which we have little emotional control.

Perhaps anger simply erases or, at least, dramatically reduces our inhibitions. Regardless of the process, avoiding angry confrontations is preferable to indulging the “high” that accompanies unchecked rage. Yet, from time to time, even the most even-keeled, in-control, gentlest, and most reserved people erupt in fury, steeped in bitter indignation. When that occurs—when these normally calm, even-tempered people respond with uncharacteristic ferocity—the post-eruption emotion is deep embarrassment. Even more than embarrassment, they feel enormous regret that their behavior may have done permanent damage to otherwise strong relationships.

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us – avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

~ Petrarch ~

Collateral damage can be a casualty of blind, unrestrained anger; especially when the rage displayed by one person ignites an equal measure of reactive animosity in another. An almost unbreakable bond can disintegrate like a solid brick wall struck by a cannon-ball; every brick shattered in so many pieces the wall cannot be rebuilt without an ample supply of bricks and freshly-mixed mortar.

Such angry confrontations are, fortunately, rare. But when they occur, they can drench  peace, tranquility, and serenity in the equivalent of gasoline and, then, strike a match. The resulting conflagration leaves scorched earth, blackened forests, and empty landscapes where, before, there were fertile fields, thriving green woodlands, and stunning vistas.

When we talk of anger, we speak of another emotion, fear, dressed in different robes. Anger is born of terror; terror that an irrevocable change in circumstance may be taking place. Anger is the response to that dread. The sooner we understand the origin of anger, the quicker we overcome it. But unless we overcome anger before it explodes, it will forever alter our emotional landscape.

+++

Well, this post certainly has taken on a life of its own. I thought I might jot down a brief paragraph and be done with the day’s blog post. But, no! I had to open the floodgates, allowing the release of what should be a gushing river but, instead, is only a trickle. I’ve not written about all this morning’s memories; some of them are so precious or so painful that my eyes brim and my fingers freeze on the keyboard. I do this to myself. I suppose I deserve it; otherwise, why do I keep dredging up memories that, on the one hand, are delightful and on the other are as sharp and as dangerous as a razor.  It’s nearly 7:15, much later than I had hoped to have finish writing my blog post. Too often, I go past the limits I set for myself. That, alone, is enough…

Love is an immortal force, though there is nothing magical or supernatural about love. Love is not the emotional expression of  god-like experience. Yet love sometimes seems supernatural. It survives even the most monstrous attacks and the most heartless abandonment. Neither age nor death nor the eternal passage of time diminishes love. Love never weakens, nor does it shrivel or decay. Unlike our bodies—the vessels within which love is carried—love does not wither into dust. Like bronze, love endures as long as time itself. Though we may try to extinguish its flames, love survives as a permanent beacon of light and heat. Love is an everlasting source of glowing embers that sometimes flare into conflagrations, providing warmth and illumination during even the darkest, coldest moments. But if love ever were to die, frigid darkness would envelope the length and breadth of time and space. The cold emptiness would smother stars and turn the blazing cauldrons of emerging galaxies into ice as cold and hard as hatred. Yet that can never happen, because love in an immortal force. Treating love as an illusion—a fantasy, a figment of our imaginations—only delays the inevitable realization that love is the foundation upon which all else rests. Love is real; more real than sight and sound and taste and touch and smell. Love binds all our experiences together, making possible all our accomplishments and all our mistakes.

+++

I have so much on my mind this morning my head feels like it might explode. Neither words nor gestures nor telepathic communications can express what’s inside my head. And nothing I can say or do is sufficient to communicate what I think and feel. I am a pressurized cooking vessel—filled with air and water and steel ball-bearings—thrust into a fiercely hot flame. There is no option to remove me from the heat. Or vice versa. When the pressure becomes too great for the hermetically-sealed steel container to withstand, a chaotic explosion will cause scalding-hot water and shrapnel to rain down upon the emptiness around me. Of course my head is not really that air-tight. Nor is it as hard as tempered steel. And it is not filled with ball-bearings. The pressurized cooking vessel is, of course, a metaphor for my skull and the contents are metaphors for my thoughts—air, water, and steel ball-bearings. What the hell good are metaphors? Well, they reduce the immediacy and the intensity of anxiety and depression and despondency. Metaphors are like medicines. Wait. Using metaphors within the confines of similes can cause drug interactions, as if metaphors and similes were Schedule II narcotics and I had taken a cocktail of oxycodone, fentanyl, and tramadol. Yes, I agree. Apparently, the pressure-cooker has gone off the rails. That is to say, misbehavior has become my closest ally; she is my constant companion.

+++

I can stop drinking coffee any time, without any negative effects. Apparently, I am not addicted to caffeine. That notwithstanding, I like to drink coffee. Assuming coffee itself is not bad for me (I only drink ¹/₂ to 3 cups per day, usually toward the lower end of that range), coffee is not one of my bad habits. But I still have not been able to replace coffee in the morning with water. I try to supplement coffee with water, but that effort only lasts a day or two at a time before I forget that I’m trying to drink more water. I wonder whether that would change if I were to cut out coffee entirely? I’ve done it before (but not with the purpose of consuming more water) without any problems. Maybe I’ll try. Perhaps I’ll resurrect my “doing without” experiment, in which I go for a month at a time doing without something I regularly enjoy. In the past, I’ve replaced one thing for another. For example, I’ve replaced coffee with tea in years past. And I replaced meat with vegetables. We’ll see. Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just ignore this entire train of thought and will get on board at a different station, perhaps with a different mode of transportation; possibly a yacht or a barge.

+++

You may think I haven’t noticed, but I have noticed. Oh, yes, I have noticed.

Have you ever had these conversations in your head? The kind of conversations that would never take place in the real world, but which seem perfectly natural and normal in the deep recesses of your brain? I participate in those conversations on a fairly regular basis, engaging in conversations that I doubt would ever happen outside the confines of my brain. I once had a brief conversation with Aesop. You know, of Aesop’s Fables fame. Ah, but that’s enough.

Yesterday, during my explanation of my “faith journey,” I butchered my attempt to speak aloud an inscription I found in a grotto connected to St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Windthorst, Texas. Despite botching the pronunciation, the words seemed right to me:

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.

Translated into English:

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

My fascination with a religious monument I found in a tiny town in a deeply rural Texas landscape still surprises me. I look back at what I wrote on August 1, 2013 and I contemplate what I found so captivating about that Latin phrase. My investigation at the time revealed that the plea in Latin is commonly found in Catholic environments. Though I do not share the religious beliefs of the Catholics responsible for placing the inscription in the grotto, I inexplicably felt a connection with them—without knowing who they were and whether they were still alive. The inscription is part of an outdoor shrine paid for with money sent home  by 64 Windthorst, Texas military service members during World War II.  All 64 service members returned home.

I visited the shrine in July 2013, during a time when my vehement distaste for all things religious was near its peak. Yet I found something about that place and those words captivating. As I skimmed old blog posts, dating back to as early as 2005, I came to the realization that I more than occasionally exposed cracks in the thick veneer of my religion- mocking attitudes. Though I continued to find all manner of reasons to mock religion as the expression of wishes and fantasies,  the genuine tenderness and gratitude I sometimes encountered in religious contexts sometimes impressed me. Even in light of the fact that religious expressions almost always drew upon a deep-seated belief in a “higher power,” the depth of belief was at once moving and embarrassing. Moving because religious expressions seemed to arise from deep and genuine human emotions; embarrassing because those deep human emotions were, in my view, drawn out under false pretenses.

Over time, though, I’ve come to be far more tolerant and accepting of religion. It finally sunk in that my “certainty” that a “higher power” does not exist is no more believable than is others’ certainty that a “higher power” does, indeed, exist. Stalemate. But it need not be a tense, potentially violent stalemate. It can be a civil disagreement. But we both have to agree to the terms: gentleness, willingness to listen, replacement (for a time, at least) of certainty with willingness to accept uncertainty.

I said yesterday I describe myself as a agnatheist. Despite my considerable confidence that religion is simply medieval mythology brought to modern times, I acknowledge the possibility that I am wrong. I cannot use science to prove a negative, so I have to either accept my beliefs or not. But more importantly, it doesn’t matter whether one’s positions on matters religious legitimately can be defended. What matters are the people involved (or not) in matters religious. One ought not to judge a person solely on the basis of his or her beliefs. Beliefs, of course, have to play a part. But they need not be (and should not be) the sole determinants of one’s decision to be friendly with and, possibly, to become friends with, someone whose beliefs differ from one’s own.

My thoughts are wandering all over this morning. That’s not unusual, though. It is just the way my brain attempts to work.

We had dinner with friends last night. They made New Orleans style barbecue shrimp (with fresh Gulf shrimp), bread, and dessert. We provided a salad. Oh, and they even provided a stand-in shirt for me, knowing (as they did) of my propensity for splashing my meals all over the front of my shirt. The stand-in t-shirt could tolerate a bit of barbecue shrimp splash. My newish, unacceptably over-priced button-down could not. At least not without considerable whining and expressions of regret over my willingness to eat barbecue shrimp unless I was wearing a plastic poncho. I appreciated the stand-in shirt. It saved me from having to listen to complaints from that whiney button-down.

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

~ Robert Frost ~

+++

We keep waffling. First, we were going to drive to New York and beyond. Then, we were going to Wisconsin and beyond. Then, to the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest. Then, briefly, to Florida’s Gulf coast. Or was that a dream? At any rate, I know only that we may be leaving sometime in September for destinations unknown. I actually like the spontaneity of waiting until the day of departure—or even a day or two later—to make the decision about one’s destination.

+++

On occasion, someone will say to me some version of the following: “Do you ever regret posting some things? Do you ever wish you could turn back time and snatch the post back before it goes ‘live’ online?”

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

~ Omar Khayyam ~

“Of course not,” I answer. Being a nonbeliever, I have never feared being struck by retaliatory lightning bolts. Perhaps that’s the difference between a believer and a nonbeliever. The believer tries to moderate his behavior just enough to avoid lightning bolts; the nonbeliever may or may not try to moderate his behavior; it’s a matter of mood.

+++

In just a few hours, I will attempt to engage in a conversation of sorts with a small sample of members and friends from my church. I will talk about my “faith journey,” and they will either engage in question & answer with and without me or not. I expect a small turnout and an even smaller post-presentation gathering. That suits me, as I am more comfortable in an intimate setting than on a massive, circular stage that rotates in front of a stadium-sized studio audience. The smaller the audience, the easier it will be for me to dismiss the hecklers.

+++

Daylight has begun to creep around outside my window. I think I should go explore it a bit.

The world around us is in a constant state of change. Even solid granite decays over time. Bars of solid stainless steel decompose, bit by bit, until their transformation is complete. But we do not have the ability to witness change taking place very slowly, so we mistake sluggishness for stagnation; ever-so-gradual change for permanence.

+++

What is usually an open spigot seems to be closed tight at the moment. No words. Nothing. Change is taking place, but it’s so slow it’s imperceptible—except in hindsight, displayed in high-speed playback mode. Only by looking behind us—where we’ve been—can we see that, indeed, we have been following a path. The speed of forward motion accelerates dramatically, though, as we approach the destination we’ve tried to hard to avoid. The future, whatever it holds, is a powerful magnet and we are misshapen scraps of iron.

Suddenly, I wonder about the relationship—if there is one—between gravity and magnetism. My somber mood transforms into emptiness in search of contents. I want to understand gravity and magnetism; not from a theoretical perspective, but from the standpoint of true knowledge; a deeper appreciation of the physical relationships between inanimate objects that hold one another in some sort of magical web of interconnectedness. A magnet and a piece of scrap iron cannot exhibit emotional bonds; but they can illustrate a kind of emotion-free hunger that physical objects can “feel” for one another.

On an unrelated, but tangentially relevant, matter, I learned from my morning perusal of the massive store of information available on the internet that a person can be “touch starved.” People need human to human touch. When the need for touch is not adequately met, touch starvation can result. There’s no definitive way to diagnose touch starvation, but here are some symptoms:

• • feelings of overwhelming loneliness or feeling deprived of affection
  • feelings of depression
  • anxiety
  • stress
  • low relationship satisfaction
  • difficulty sleeping
  • a tendency to avoid secure attachments

+++

As usual, I have put off writing notes for my presentation tomorrow (my Unitarian Universalist “faith journey”). Inasmuch as it’s just a shade over 24 hours away, I’d better get serious about making an outline of what I will say. Otherwise, I will simply talk aimlessly for far too long. So, I’ll have to stop what I’m doing and do something more productive.

I wish I knew the source of this early morning ennui. If I knew the source, I could address it. But I have no idea. I thought I was perfectly happy when I went to bed. Yet I woke in a different frame of mind. This morning feels different; it’s not like most other mornings. Most other mornings are more precise. Their clarity cannot be questioned. But this morning is imprecise. Its clarity has long-since devolved into a vague, clumsy frost. How could it have devolved “long-since?” Long-since implies significant amounts of time. Certainly  more than four or five hours; that’s the length of this morning, so far. It will get longer, though. It always does.

+++

With ennui comes a stillness of epic proportions. Silence so quiet that it has been known to cause madness; and when it doesn’t, it causes happiness. Even when I try to be funny, in an attempt to smother my ennui, I fail. Because, well, pillows do not work on ennui. Everyone knows that. Or if they don’t, they should, for Christ’s sake. The problem, of course, is that we have made a monumental failure of society, this human anthill that’s now drenched in a thick mixture of gasoline and oily sludge. That’s a tad unfair; human society is not yet irretrievably unfixable. We’re not irrevocably broken. Yet that’s just one opinion; others might say we are on our last legs, just microseconds away from utter self-destruction. Waiting to see is really the only option available to us.

+++

An old friend called last night. He’s still young enough to enjoy confronting the challenges of life. I once was that young. I wore my youth on my sleeve; it was even more obvious than my emotions. Listening to my friend talk about his recent and his planned travel adventures, my longing to be on the road welled up inside me almost to the point of bursting out. My desire to be on the road has very little to do with the destination; I do not even need a destination. My desire to be on the road arises from the road itself and what it represents. “Awayness.” “Otherness.” “Somewhereelseness.” An opportunity to wash away the gritty sand of repeated experiences, replacing it with a fine dust born of breathtaking adventures. My friend has mastered the art of embracing adventure. He plunges into adventure the way some Scandinavians plunge into icy water as a means of heightening happiness and engendering a sense of community. But I have gone well beyond the expected terse reply to a question not even yet asked. That’s another of the legendary flaws.

+++

I might do just fine in a mid-sized town or a small city in a midwestern state. Or in a rural community in a southeastern state. Or as a faceless, nameless city dweller in a place too generic to even attempt to name. You would be fine there, too. We can adjust. We can adjust to new environments, new climates, new social structures and strata, new people with new ideas or experiences, new forms of emptiness. You name it, change is survivable. Tolerable. Even likeable, if you play your cards right. You could enjoy living in one of the deep suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama. Places like Hueytown or Mountain Brook or Midfield or Forestdale or Coalburg. I could say the same about urban and suburban New Jersey, in the shadow of New York City. It’s not where you live, but how you live. Though where you live can dramatically affect how you live. So, it’s a symbiotic relationship. But, actually, depending on one’s perspective, it could be a parasitic relationship. That’s too involved to get into here and now.

+++

I will focus some attention this morning on getting my thoughts together for my presentation at church on Sunday. While I want to wing it, I need to create and internalize a basic structure. Otherwise, I could ramble on for days, never noticing the pews emptying and the lights dimming; nor hearing the “click” of doors locking me inside the sanctuary. Seriously, I need to think about what I want to say. Aside from what I want to say, I need to consider what the audience might want to hear. And not hear. What, if anything, in my past could possible hold their attention for 30 or 40 minutes? I can’t even hold my own attention that long. I have nothing of interest that could fill that much time. I’ll be naming each hair on my head and orally relating to the audience the story of its evolution, by the time the clock notifies me that sufficient time has passed that I might legitimately stop speaking.

+++

Enough drivel for now.

Is it hopeful, I wonder, or simply unchecked fantasy? Can one hit “re-set” and revise the direction his life has taken? Is it possible to unmake the mistakes one has made? Or, at least, correct them, thereby recovering lost opportunities? Who know? Some people will swear it is possible. Others will express, bitterly, that making the attempt will lead only to frustration and failure and, ultimately, misery. Who to believe? Ultimately, I think, it comes down to the individual and the suitability of circumstances. When the two mesh just right, the world looks brighter, cleaner, clearer, and far more friendly.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

~ George Eliot ~

Some people are perfectly happy to borrow money to finance their purchases, large and small. Others will do almost anything in their power to avoid getting in debt. The adage, “it takes money to make money,” may have something to do with it; people who are more comfortable with risk—and who are intrigued by the rewards associated with risk and money—may feel more comfortable borrowing money. Unfortunately, perhaps, I am in the latter category, though I have experience as a borrower. As a post-college-graduation young man, I borrowed money via credit cards to enjoy the rewards of immediate gratification; the aftermath of that borrowing spree left me feeling like a prisoner of debt for several years. As a consequence, the only two circumstances in which I was willing to go into debt were to buy a house and to buy a car; although I hated the debt associated with those activities and did all I could to get out from under it as soon as I could.

There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre ~

I do not know where my aversion to debt came from. Perhaps I overheard conversations between my parents as they fretted about money. Maybe I heard about a relative who might have been in constant trouble because of debt; or someone whose life was a chaotic ball of anxiety due to owing more money than he or she could afford to repay. Whatever its source, my distaste for debt has kept me from spending money I did not have. At the same time, I suspect I failed to capture opportunities that could have resulted in substantial financial gain—simply because I was afraid to go into debt to pursue those opportunities. Despite my unwillingness to borrow, I did okay in business. At least okay enough to retire early, though early retirement meant adopting an even more austere lifestyle than I had lived before retirement. Yet that austerity might look to people living a “hand to mouth” existence as a lifestyle of unimaginable luxury. And most people, regardless of their circumstances, would rightfully say my “austerity” did not deprive me of anything I needed or desperately wanted.

But learn that to die is a debt we must all pay.

~ Euripides ~

As I contemplate my antipathy toward debt, it occurs to me that my ability to avoid debt has been a luxury unavailable to others whose circumstances were less fortunate than mine. I have almost always had a choice; I could borrow or not.  Many people have no real options—they either borrow money or do without a necessity: food, shelter, clothing, medical care, etc., etc. When I reflect on that reality, I confuse myself: which emotion should I feel—gratitude because I have a choice about debt or guilt for the same reason? Yet, when I look at the situation from a different perspective, other aspects come into sharp focus. I see that some people use debt as a tool to amass large fortunes. They successfully treat debt as an instrument of calculated risk—they invest in properties or businesses, for example, to create sources of residual income, after repaying the principal and interest on the debt. Those debt-fueled investors have access to more money because they use debt and risk for acquisitions that I cannot touch because I can use only my time and readily available, unpledged assets. None of this really matters now, inasmuch as I am not about to change my world view and my financial practices. Although I have to say the idea of debt today seems less restricting and constraining than it did in years past. Today, unlike in years past, I appreciate the value of properly-assessed debt. Managed appropriately, debt can open doors that otherwise might remain permanently closed. Still, I doubt I’ll begin to use debt to access an embarrassment of riches. There are too many risks connected with debt for a novice like me to safely take them on. I will just watch in wonder from the sidelines.

+++

Today will be a busy day, with meetings, appointments, doctor visits, etc. I’m in the mood to get into my work clothes and tackle a thousand projects around the house. But my mood does not fit the obligations the calendar has thrown at me. Dammit. I hope I feel, tomorrow, as energetic and as enthused about “puttering” as I do this morning. We shall see.

How long does it take between the time one recognizes one’s faults and the moment one’s behavior changes to correct them? The following excerpt from something I posted to an old blog of mine in January 2008 (when 46-inch televisions were considered big deals, I guess) offers a hint:

Wouldn’t the world be a better, more comfortable place for many millions more people if we of the “middle class” would be willing to live much simpler and less video-intensive lives, opting to divert much of our wealth to providing fundamental shelter for people in need? How badly do we need that 46 inch television? How big a difference would the money we spent on it have made to the family living in a dirt-floored shack on the edge of a river in Asia?

What makes me angry, and makes me personally ashamed, is the outpouring of liberal bullshit from people who talk a big game about doing something about conditions throughout the world but who, when it comes to brass tacks, won’t give up their embarrassing riches, not even a little, to share with others. I don’t recall where I first read the term, “an embarrassment of riches,” but ever since I’ve felt that embarrassment whenever I compare my life with people on the verge of oblivion. My extra televisions, my 2-car family, my choices to go out to dinner, etc., are deliberate choices I have made at the expense of people who are desperate for ANYTHING to make their lives better. Where is the “correct” balance between having too little and having too much?

Guilt at the failure to replace one’s gluttony with ascetic philanthropy does little to change the world. Yet that’s the extent of the response taken by many people; guilt at their embarrassment of riches, but enjoyment of that embarrassment, nonetheless. At what point does our willingness to enjoy and appreciate our riches become synonymous with hypocrisy? At what point do we appear, to outsiders, to be sanctimonious and dishonest?

When the guilt becomes too much to take, some people overcome the guilt by donating money or time or both to a “cause” that demonstrates one’s piety. The fact that the respite from gluttony is temporary may not matter; but it might.

Isn’t that a skeptical attitude about philanthropy? Doesn’t that suggest a mistrust of humankind? Or, maybe, it provides the impetus to reject hypocrisy and to promote the sharing of good fortune. We never truly know what motivates people to act or fail to take action. We never fully understand our own motives. We want to believe the best about ourselves, so we latch onto those behaviors that support our positive perspective. Yet we cannot help but notice the discrepancies between actual altruism and philanthropy dressed up to look presentable.

+++

Until I started blogging in 2005, I had not regularly recorded my thoughts and perceptions about the world. So, my understanding of my world-view prior to 2005 is based almost entirely on memory. I have proven, many times over, how utterly unreliable my memory can be; I do not remember events that should have been permanently etched into my psyche. Yet I “remember” experiences that evidence suggests were entirely fabricated in my head. Therefore, anything I “remember” about my youth is subject to understandable skepticism. My recollections about the extent to which my world-view vacillated sharply from day to day are questionable. But, after I began blogging, recollections of the wild discrepancies in my “beliefs” seemed more and more plausible. After all, when I started documenting my inconsistencies, it was difficult to argue that they were simply the products of faulty memories. Hmm. All this makes me wonder about myself and my history. Since I began blogging, I have been—and continue to this day—documenting my intellectual and emotional evolution almost in real time. My far left liberalism has developed and receded and recovered in a predictable, repetitive pattern. My tendency toward centrism has reacted in concert with my liberalism, except that occasionally the pendulum swings surprisingly far to the right during brief convulsive seizures of conservatism.

The wild swings in my attitudes and my understanding of the world reflect the transformations in me that illustrate, on the one hand, my empathy and compassion and, on the other, their polar opposites: mercilessness and animosity.

+++

Some mornings, the dull grey sky looks gentle and alluring. Other mornings, that same sky looks drab and dismissive, as if Nature takes offense at the existence of humankind. I rather doubt my assignment of anthropomorphic attributes to the physical world around me has anything to do with the natural world. It has everything to do with me and the extent to which the connections in my brain either are solid or badly frayed, causing short-circuits and the attendant odors of sizzling electrical wires. But do I smell like an electrical fire? Probably not. But., then, my sense of smell has experienced greater precision and less confusion

The man who writes posts for this blog is temporarily on strike. We have been reassured that the blog’s web host is in talks with strikebreakers at this very moment. While that occurs, though, the “muscles” for both sides are making preparations for an epic battle. This could have avoided…

The very last rain shower lasted less than two minutes. When it was over, the sky above was clear. No clouds. No sign that, just moments before, the air above us had carried sufficient moisture to spawn a tiny bit of rain. We knew it was bound to happen someplace. We were delighted it had happened there, where we were, of course. But watching those last drops fall launched a feeling of dejection in all of us. No matter how much we tried to keep our chins up, we felt nothing as acutely as we felt despair. Because there would be no more rain. Ever. We were witness to the last remaining water, at least that not kept in sealed containers. The final vestige of the final epoch of life on Earth. And we would be the last ones to experience that life. Within days, we would wither. Dehydration would take us. We would die by the dry desert wind.

The preceding paragraph was brought to you by Stegerman’s Instant Isolation ^(TM) Black Tea, “We brew loneliness in every cup. We wring despair out of every drop.”

Some of my fantasies are so crisp and clear I almost can feel myself brushing against the skin of a person’s hand as I pass her on my walk along the water. I can feel and smell ocean breezes. I can hear the sounds of seagulls. The cacophony of bells and horns from boats in the harbor sends chaotic, but gentle, reminders that I am in a seaside community that relies on the water for its identity and its atmosphere of quiet contentment. The smell of the ocean fills my nostrils. I glance at  colorful little houses as I walk along narrow streets. I pinch myself to see whether these sensations are real, only to discover they are not. They are the physical manifestations of desire—transformations of fanciful wishes into experiential conjecture.  I am not wandering the streets of Port Townsend and Sequim and Port Angeles. I am not stopping to soak up the natural beauty of Miller Peninsula State Park. No, I am sitting at my desk, exploring real places that exist only in my fantasies. I should have known; the sensations were crisp and clear, but also vague and distant. Those memories belong to the remnants of a dream, recollections about which are fading fast. I don’t want to lose those synthetic experiences, those artificial physical manifestations of desire; they were too enchanting, too beguiling to let slip away. But they go, in spite of my protestations. Their sharpness morphs into ill-defined images, blurred just enough to make me realize they were the products of my imagination, yet sufficiently embedded in my psyche to make me wonder; was I really there, somehow? Was I transported, in some mystical way, to a place where I have never been, but where I belong? Longing. Delusion. Desire. Imagination. Reverie. Wishes. It’s all part of living vicariously through one’s own fantasies. Where, I wonder, do I belong? Does anyone really “belong” in a place? Or do we fool ourselves into believing there is a place for us? Or, perhaps, we might find there is no place for us. Or is every place waiting for us to adapt to it? Should we simply accept that fantasy is simply an escape from where we are that takes us to a place we think we want to be?

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It is 5:06, more than two and  a half hours after I awoke and got out of bed at an entirely unreasonable hour. Once again, I thought the clock told me the time was 4:30 when I got out of bed and put on my morning leisure clothes; only after I was dressed and had started on my coffee did I bother to look at the clock again. This time while I was wearing glasses. The time: 2:40 a.m. Crap! I hate when I do that. I feel so certain it is considerably later, only to discover my mistake. By then, it’s too late to try to recover and go back to sleep. So, I read the news online. The news from downtown Dallas, Texas is bad: severe flooding overnight on downtown streets and highways/freeways. I wonder whether it’s coming our way? The forecast calls for rain, but does not tell us to prepare for an epic deluge. We shall see.

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Global society today is enmeshed, by and large, in a flood of information that suggests we should eat “natural” foods, which many say will make us healthier and increase our lifespan. Let me be the Devil’s advocate (which means, of course, that I will advocate on behalf of the Devil) and take issue with that assertion. I’ll start by asking what is “natural?” Thirty-thousand years ago, human life expectancy reached about 30 years. “Life expectancy” is  the average lifespan of an entire population, taking into account all mortality figures for that specific group of people. Lifespan is a measure of the actual length of an individual’s life. The two can be dramatically different. So, in the context of human existence 30,000 years ago, “normal” life expectancy was less than half of today’s 72-plus years, worldwide. Now, let me ask another question: what constituted the average human’s diet, 30,000 years ago? Did the average cave dweller eschew meat, avoid oils of all kinds, and otherwise eat like a modern-day health-nut? Probably not. Her diet consisted of available foods; not necessarily desired foods—available foods. Her diet and her lifestyle were dictated by her circumstances. Life expectancy varies in accordance with the contexts in which one’s life is played out. Who is to say that “natural” foods are not high in saturated fats, cholesterol, and various other ingredients that we have decided to label poison? Cavegirl probably did not give a damn about how many calories she consumed when she ate an apple…or the flesh of an antelope. Whatever she ate was natural because she and her fellow cavepeople had not evolved to the point that they could insist on eating non-GMO corn and grass-fed beef (though, admittedly, if she ate beef, it was in all probability grass-fed). Natural foods today may bear little or no resemblance to natural foods of three hundred years ago or thirty thousand years ago. Devils’ advocate be damned, though; I ask myself if I wanted to live to the ripe old age of 40 (at which point I might have died of some sort of diet-triggered disease) or, instead, live to 105 by watching my diet closely. I waffle back and forth, looking for a place to set anchor; it’s not there. Regardless, I will allow myself to drift back to the point of sneering at health-nuts, while secretly adopting some of their practices as my own.

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Enough of this. Today, I go in for an echocardiogram. According to heart.org, an echo (as it is called), “uses sound waves to create pictures of your heart’s chambers, valves, walls and the blood vessels (aorta, arteries, veins) attached to your heart.” I wonder whether they will give me a print of the picture, something I can hang in my office as art? We shall see.

A drive of just over two hours can shake the cobwebs off of impracticality. What once was only a slightly blurry look into a prospective future becomes more sharply focuses as the hours and the miles drift by. Yesterday’s drive to Texarkana in pursuit of an elusive fantasy awakened the realist in me; a refuge two-plus hours away is not a refuge—it is an impractical escape. The acreage was nice, the mobile home was more than adequate, the outbuildings were serviceable and then some—but their distance from where I live is just too great. I knew that going in, didn’t I? Of course I did. But did it stop me from attempting to believe the impossible? Not until I began calculating the financial and temporal costs of the impossible dream. I’m glad I drove to Texarkana. It was a nice escape from the more mundane aspects of life. But a refuge two hours away is a bridge too far; my escape could become just another prison, a structure built from time and distance. Solitary confinement behind the wheel on a highway crowded with people in a hurry either to arrive or to escape.  My dream—the one I thought dead—is on a ventilator, but still clinging to life. Maybe it will survive a little longer.

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Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

~ George Santayana ~

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One week from today, I will deliver my “faith journey,” which will constitute the Insight Service for church. Only a few years ago, the idea that I would ever have embarked upon a “faith journey” would have seemed ludicrous to me. Yet, now, as I consider the ways my world view has bent and twisted and flexed over the years, I realize I have been enmeshed in that odyssey for a very long time. Like the word “religion,” I take issue with many of the emotional elements attached to the word “faith.” But I am more tolerant and more accepting of divergent philosophies than I was in years past. As I contemplate what I will talk about next week, I am finding considerable “material” in blog posts I have written over the years. Reading them in chronological order, I was a bit surprised at how my viewpoints have evolved over time. Maybe, by the time I stand at the lectern to deliver my presentation next Sunday I will have finally come to understand just where my journey has taken, and is taking, me.

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The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

~ George Santayana ~

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When I went searching for words spoken by people in years past—words that mirror my thoughts and philosophies—I came across several quotations attributed to George Santayana. Yet, in reading a number of ideas extracted from his writing, I discovered that his philosophies and mine are not always in alignment. That notwithstanding, I think he was someone with whom I could have enjoyed conversing and with whom I might have liked arguing. Unless he was not as fast on his feet as his words seem to suggest, I am sure he would have trounced me in argument and debate, but he seems like a man who would not rub his opponent’s face in the beating. The quote below, assigning more value to religion than would I, seems a gentle way of both embracing and effacing religion and humanity in a single stroke. I would have selected a dozen more quotations attributed to Santayana, but I do not have the patience to sort through them all.

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

George Santayana

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I want to go walking this morning, but I for some reason I am reticent to go out for fear of encountering another human being (which is highly unlikely) with whom I would have to exchange pleasantries. I am not in the mood to exchange pleasantries. Not just yet. So, I will defer my walk until later. Now, I will go shave. And I will shower, but that may wait for just a while. First, my SIL will come for coffee and a visit with her newish dog. And thus begins the day.

Today, we’ll drive a little less than two and a half hours, to Texarkana, to look at the remnants of…what, my lost dream?

To others, it probably is just two-and-a-half acres, a manufactured house, and some out-buildings. But to me it represents the faded remains of…a fantasy, I guess. I cannot legitimately call it a dream, because dreams are made of achievable goals. This always was an illusion—or maybe a delusion—that was destined to wither into a dusty hologram. I have acknowledged, in writing, the death of my fantasy. I have recognized it as a silly, fruitless vacation from reality.

Yet, in spite of my recognition that it has decayed into a lifeless corpse, my fantasy has been a long-sought detachment. A refuge from a world that seems hell-bent on breaking the spirit of every man, woman, and child by overloading them with modern stresses, stresses that are brutal but that pale in comparison to what faced humanity only three or four generations back.

My fantasy placed me on a remote piece of property—with room to roam—that has a simple abode, an elaborately outfitted shop, and a tractor with a full complement of farm instruments. There, in my private place of psychological withdrawal, I would get to know who I am. I would get to understand my intended relationship with the earth. I would learn the secrets of gardening my way to self-sufficiency. I would work with soil and rock and wood to build practical and abstract monuments—short in stature but grandiose in definition. They would serve as gifts of atonement to Mother Earth for her injuries, the ones we caused and are causing. But they also would serve as recompense to me for all the years of denying myself my single most enduring desire.

It’s like a Catch-22, isn’t it? A fantasy about an unachievable fantasy. A fantasy in which my wishes about my wishes are acknowledged as having been denied, but then are fulfilled only to the extent that I essentially beseech Mother Earth to forgive me for failing to have allowed me to live out a fantasy. It’s how a labyrinthine mind, one whose entire network of tunnels all lead to the same entrance and exit, works.

Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

~ Eugene O’Neill ~

So, this fantasy is a mobile home on 2.54 acres of land, with a shop and storage building and carport. It is about three miles east of the eastern “loop” around Texarkana. How it came to my attention could be explained by relating a long and strange set of circumstances, but I choose not to explain it for now. Suffice it to say I learned that the place is on the market. And its availability coincided with the most recent resurgence (or, I might say, resurrection) of what I thought was a dead dream. Those circumstances colluded to place me in the position of driving 150 miles, seeking evidence that the dream has, indeed, risen.

That peace which is within us, we must experience it. And if we are searching for peace outside we will never find the peace within.

~ Prem Rawat ~

Mi novia probably thinks I am crazy to harbor an absurd fantasy for so long. A fantasy so out of sync with my lifestyle—and so at odd with both physical and mental condition—that it might be used as evidence that my mind has escaped to another planet or, at least, another plane. The variance from my own “normal” may be what I find so appealing. That, and the fact that, with a little open space and the right tools and materials, one can create his own little compound. Once can shut out as much noise as possible while building, in oneself, a resilience to the random sounds that break through his constructed barriers.

I imagine that remoteness and solitude encourage risky expressions of creativity. For example, in an empty place in the country, I might try to build a grandiose garden statute out of wood, whereas the risk of ridicule in a structured semi-urban/semi-rural environment is too great. Ah, this process of exploring a place in the country sounds a little too much like paying for protection from fear—fear of ridicule and mockery. Does superficial humiliation and scorn, based on ignorance or jealousy, have that much power over one’s thoughts and behaviors? Maybe.

Logic tells me I could probably find a similar place closer than two-and-a-half-hours away. And probably at the same or even lower price. But a similar place, closer to me, did not fall in my lap. And, there hasn’t been time, since I was struck by my fantasy’s resurrection, to actively look for such places. Yet, I’ll still drive to Texarkana because…road trip! I will use up a tank of gasoline to pay homage to a fantasy. I’m always dreamed of having a piece of land and a tractor with which to work it. And a place to stay overnight, only a place to rest between periods of working the land. I know, I know. “It’s a lot harder than you think!” I am not delusional to the point I think living and working on a little plot of land is easy. I am not after “easy.” I suppose I am after a corrective resurrection. And I know there is no such thing. So this whole thing is pointless, after all. But Mother Nature keeps whispering to me, telling me to keep looking. I tell her to stop, to leave me in my chaotic little replica of tornadic peace. Nevertheless, she persists.

There’s a Portuguese word, suadade, that translates roughly into “profound  melancholic longing for something or someone that one cares for and/or loves.” That describes my desire for a piece of land and the accouterments necessary to work it the way I would like.

On October 16, 2018—the day I got my very long hair cut very short—I wrote these words:

I do not know precisely why, at this advanced age, I still possess this lust for land and a tractor to work it. I’ve never lived on a farm or ranch, so it’s not nostalgia. I’ve mentioned fernweh before, a German word meaning  longing for a place one has never been. I wonder if there is a term in any language meaning longing for a lifestyle one has never lived. Or something like that.

Another German word, sehnsucht—which means an ardent longing or yearning, almost like an addiction—may better describe the situation. Or maybe not.

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We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

~ John Steinbeck ~

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The morning unfolds as if operating on a precise schedule. Yes, here it is, right on time. It has been daylight for quite some time now, as the clock nears the 7 o’clock announcement.

We are engaged in a great undeclared war, an epic struggle between tolerance and loathing. Between acceptance and repudiation. Between affirmation and wretched denial.

None of us will acknowledge the fight has begun. To the victor will go not only the spoils but the bloodied carcasses of the vanquished and anyone else who stands in the way.

War is hell, as if anyone other than the vanquished know what constitutes hell. The victor, by the way, does not always celebrate victory; and despondency does not invariably accompany defeat. This terminal struggle does not lead to anyone’s success; it leads only to mounting losses, disguised as an acceptable price of the fury of all-out battle.

When all is said and done, we finish the race which everyone loses. No medals nor ribbons will be pinned to the ones who complete the racecourse circuit. We will be dragged from the track, behind enemy lines, and stacked in protective heaps; rotting corpses reminding us of the smells of both victory and defeat.

During the past several months, I have made an on-again, off-again habit of reading a blog that posts, daily, thought-provoking quotations. These quotations—virtually all taken from the theological/mystical writings of people with whom I am either not familiar or only vaguely so—often give me pause and make me ponder their underlying meaning. The true meaning of the words often are carried within a sort of sub rosa context that requires time to fully acquire and understand. A few words extracted from one such quotation seem especially meaningful to me today:

Love and giving should not be likened to suffering and renunciation, quite the reverse: were this the case, it would no longer be a question of love, but of masochistic behavior. True service only gives rise to good feelings, and expects nothing in return.

~ Christian Bernard ~

What I take from this extracted quotation is related, in some ways, to the concept of forgiveness, except forgiveness is a gift one gives oneself. The “love and giving” to which the quotation refers are experiences one offers to others, but which, like forgiveness, also are gifts to oneself.  If I dig deeper into the wisdom that may be buried within the extracted quotation, I begin to sense that a failure or refusal to forgive is just the opposite: it is punishment meted out to oneself and, therefore, akin to hatred and withholding.  An offer of forgiveness or reconciliation, when rebuffed, reveals festering wounds remain in the person who refuses to accept forgiveness. There are no psychic doctors, so one should not attempt to become one. Instead, it is best to simply acknowledge the psychic damage and walk away, hoping the refuser’s wounds eventually will heal or disappear under scar tissue.

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It is not fair, is it, that people who read posts on this blog know so much of what I am thinking, but I know virtually nothing about what is on their minds? No, it is not fair. If the world were fair and just, readers would share their thoughts with me. They would either comment on my posts or communicate with me directly. And a very small number do. But not many. The ones who share with me represent only a very, very small universe—a fraction of the tiny number who read what I write. Some days, when I write something that has especially intense meaning for me, I almost pull back from clicking on the “publish” button out of peremptory resentment that no one will respond. But I click on “publish,” nonetheless, because to do otherwise would negate my insistence that I write this blog for myself, not for an audience. But, then, I wonder whether I am telling myself the truth; whether I lie to myself to avoid the anguish that might accompany thinking how little value my thoughts may have, outside the tiny piece of mental real estate inside my own head.

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I squandered my youth. I wasted time on meaningless moments, leaving insufficient time for experiences that could have provided a foundation for greater satisfaction in adulthood. Most people, I think, are like me. They spend their youth as if it were an endless supply of experiential currency, failing to realize the printing press that spits out high denomination bills makes a finite number of impressions. Only after the printer begins to fail and the ink on the currency begins to fade and the paper starts to wither do people realize they spent their limited supply of youth on frivolous purchases that will not last. Then, when it is too late to recover, they/we strive to recreate experiences that never took place. Fantasy overtakes raw reality and we behave like the fools we are; living our dreams as if they were nightmares.  Don’t get me wrong. I am happy with my life. But like everyone else, I could be much happier had I lived a more judicious youth. Had I done that, all aspects of my adulthood would have been more memorable and less damaging and dangerous. Live and learn—finally, in a time when knowledge has become a commodity emptied of its value. “A pocketful of mumbles; such are promises.”

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Mi novia and I have been adding bits and pieces to our back deck, working toward making it an oasis. I finally repaired the missing wood on my big wall hanging, an image of the Buddha carved out of pieces of wood, and we hung it. On the same wall, a fabric wall hanging promoting “peace” urges us to “chill” as we sit at the expanded-metal table. Various plants—including a Boston fern we thought had died over last winter when we kept it hanging in the garage in a black plastic bag—either hang from hooks or sit on small plant stands…but there’s room for much more. We’ve been talking about getting a water fountain and, perhaps, a Buddha statue to enhance the sense that the deck is a peaceful oasis. Even without these efforts, sitting on the back deck when the weather is tolerable (between cool and warm) is a peaceful, enchanting experience. We are nestled in the trees, living in the forest along with deer and squirrels and raccoons and birds and God knows what else. If only I can continue to focus my mind on that aspect of life—and prevent memories that interfere with my tranquility—I expect I will be fine.

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I may be softening. My hard exterior shell has so many cracks I fear it may begin to fall off in sheets. Depending on one’s perspective, that could be good or that could be bad. Or it could be a little of both. Why, with so many years behind me, am I finally beginning a process that should have taken place when I had my youth? Why, when the time I have left is inadequate to the task of witnessing a complete transformation, do I seem to think it’s worth the effort at this late date? Frankly, I do not know. I have no idea. But soft can feel much less stressful than hard. It can be kinder to one’s own soul. Whatever that is.

The rumble of distant thunder grows louder as the storms approach. What once were indistinct growls become precise and explicit, signs that rain is a near-certainty. Still too dark for me to see whether the blur outside my window is rain or just a foggy mist, I can hear occasional raindrops pelting the roof. So, rain is not just a near-certainty; it is a fact. The weather forecast for today predicts early rain, followed intermittently by periods of  clouds and rain. Temperatures today will not reach 80°F, a most welcome deviation from the semi-constant heat of an ugly summer.

Rain, now coming down in sheets, has dissuaded me from taking my morning walk. But it’s not just the rain that convinces me to stay indoors; flashes of lightning, too, suggest discretion is the better part of valor. I read online news stories this morning that revealed  three people were struck and killed by lightning in Washington, DC, near the White House last week. The results of a study published in the November 2014 issue of Science  prompted researchers to predict the number of lightning strikes will increase by about 12% for every degree of rise in global average air temperature. I wonder whether the three people who died as a result of last week’s DC lightning strikes were as much casualties of global warming as they were victims of random cloud-to-ground (or ground-to-cloud) electrical discharges. Though I do not claim with absolute certainty that global warming caused by human activity is taking place, I’d place bets on it and feel confident of winning. So, I try to steer clear of circumstances in which I might invite electrical impulses to light me up. So, no walkies this morning.

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Several times during the past few days I have seen groups of deer, ranging from two to seven or more (and, occasionally, just one). The deer appear to be growing less afraid of our presence on our isolated little cul-de-sac, but they are by no means tame; they are timid, but appear not to be panic-stricken. And when I can see them, as I look out my windows, grazing on the ground cover in front of the house, I sense they are absolutely comfortable in the presence of this human-made structure in which we live. I wish I could communicate with deer so we could understand one another’s thoughts; it would be insightful to know what they fear and I suspect they might be surprised to know what causes fear to well up in me. Such an absurd fantasy! But is it really absurd? We adults try to insulate ourselves from ridicule by pretending our fantasies are just reenactments of childhood experiences. That’s not true though, is it? No, it is not. We simply hide behind the barriers of adulthood, hoping to protect ourselves from recognition that we are still children at heart.

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I’ve written as much as my fingers can process for the moment. Today, I get another haircut. At the same time, I get my beard trimmed.  During these moments, I ponder life and literature and longing. And off I go.

The American Psychological Association defines anxiety as follows: “… an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure.”

The association clarifies the definition with the addition of these comments: “People with anxiety disorders usually have recurring intrusive thoughts or concerns. They may avoid certain situations out of worry….Anxiety is not the same as fear, but they are often used interchangeably. Anxiety is considered a future-oriented, long-acting response broadly focused on a diffuse threat, whereas fear is an appropriate, present-oriented, and short-lived response to a clearly identifiable and specific threat.

A diffuse threat that triggers a long-acting response.  Hmm. As opposed to a clear, specific, immediate threat. I tend to equate “anxiety” with “dread,” although dread may be laced with a sense of menace and foreboding, anticipating a harsher experience than simple anxiety. Simple anxiety. What is “simple” about anxiety? What is simple about an emotion characterized by tension, worry, and physical manifestations?

I sometimes wonder whether, after I had swallowed a pill prescribed to relieve anxiety, I would suddenly realize how intensely anxious I had been. How tension and physical/ emotional stress had become “normal” to me. Whether, after experiencing relief from the symptoms of anxiety, I would feel giddy; almost deliriously happy to experience “normal” again. That is a silly thought, of course, inasmuch as I cannot be sure whether I am plagued by anxiety or not. Who knows, after all, whether one’s frame of mind is “normal” or, instead, is the textbook example of maladjustment or even worse?

We place too much stock in “normal.” Normal is an illusion useful only in differentiating one form of abnormality from another. There is no such thing as normal, except to the extent that certain degrees of deviation from an expected range are deemed acceptable or “normal;” deviations outside that range are considered abnormal. Yet we readily accept diagnoses of conditions labeled as “abnormal.” Cancer is characterized by “abnormal” levels of cellular division or growth. Except certain types of “abnormal” cellular division actually are “normal” or, at least, not sufficiently uncommon to be labeled cancer (or abnormal). At what point does “normal” worry or mental tension cross the line into abnormal anxiety? “Pre-cancerous” conditions are considered danger signs that abnormal cellular changes are taking place and that, if allowed to continue, they may progress to the point of becoming cancerous. Is there a corresponding term that deals with anxiety? “Pre-anxious” that could mushroom into full-blown anxiety if not treated properly with drugs or therapy or both?

All of the paragraphs leading up to this one have been pointless exercises. This one, too, is meaningless. Irrelevant. A waste of mental energy that could have been better spent on almost anything else.

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Finally, after literally months of low-level research and exploration, I bought a treadmill. It won’t be delivered and installed for another two or three weeks, but at least I know it is on the agenda. Once it’s in place, I won’t need to be concerned about whether the weather will be suitable for a morning walk; I will have greater control over my days. In the interim, I will attempt to keep doing battle with the buzzing bugs and barking dogs and monstrous chiggers that inhabit this part of the world.

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There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

~ Epictetus ~

Though I know little about Epictetus, what little I know is enough to spark my interest. Epictetus was a Greek stoic philosopher who, born into slavery, rose above his station in life through the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation and sharing of wisdom. Epictetus taught that philosophy is more than a simple theoretical discipline; it is a way of life. He believed all external events are beyond our individual control. He counseled those who would listen that we should accept our experiences calmly and without passion; after all, he taught, we have no control over events outside ourselves, thus there is no rational reason we should exercise ourselves over them. Interesting ideas; I wish I could fully embrace them and make them my own.

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My beliefs are not my own. They represent the outcome, after exposure to others’ ideas, of my assessments of others’ opinions. Beliefs are opinions; they have no reliable roots in fact. So, what if my beliefs are “borrowed?” Whose are not? Who has developed a set of beliefs solely on the basis of his own experiences or his own internal intellectual acrobatics? All of this is to say we are an amalgamation of other people, who in turn are fusions of others’ ideas and beliefs and opinions. There is nothing original under the sun. We’re all simply copies; perhaps manipulated and edited and otherwise altered, but copies, nonetheless.

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I am but one among billions and billions of other people. The idea that I could have any unique qualities that set me apart from others is ludicrous. Yet we’re all taught that we are unique. We’re taught that we have something of exclusive value to offer to this world in which we live. I think those teachings are meant to keep us from leaping off cliffs in response to the realization that we have nothing of consequence to offer the rest of our thoroughly common global compatriots.

But that’s not fair, is it? No, some of our characteristics and attributes are rare. But not unique. There are too many of us to allow us to legitimately think for a moment that we are unique. So, we may be rare but we are most definitely not singular.

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As I read about Epictetus this morning, it occurred to me that the multiple “books” his pupil, Arrian of Nicomedia, is said to have written must have been recorded in some form that remains available to us today (including the Discourses of Epictetus). Either that, or else the stories about ancient Greek philosophers are based on delusions. Seriously, I wonder where these so-called original books are located? And in what form are they? Paper? Chiseled stone slabs? From what I’ve read, the Discourses were written in Koine Greek. Where, I wonder, are the originals today? I do not deny faith that they exist, but I would prefer to see evidence with my own eyes. Because I am skeptical; I suppose I think the world around me is attempting to mislead me and to coerce me into believing the unbelievable. Ach! I think it’s time to go outside and howl at dawn’s early light. I’ve been up and out of bed for two hours and fifteen minutes. In that time, I’ve accomplished essentially nothing of any merit. Damn.

…kisses are a better fate than wisdom…

~ E.E. Cummings ~

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Bacalhau is the Portuguese word for cod—as in the fish that is not native to Portuguese waters but is, nonetheless, the most popular fish in Portugal. According to a BBC.com reel, the Portuguese are the world’s biggest consumers of cod/bacalhau, eating an incredible 35 kilograms (roughly 77 pounds) of cod per person per year. António de Oliveira Salazar, dictator of Portugal (as President of the Council of Ministers) from 1932 to 1968, is credited in the BBC.com film for returning cod to affordability (after many years during which it was an expensive fish available only to the monied elite).  Salazar set the price of cod so it would be affordable to the majority of citizens. He took various other actions that resulted, ultimately, in cod becoming the de facto “national fish dish of Portugal.” So there you go. I’ve always love cod, even salted cod (extremely popular in Portugal and in many other countries around the world). I recommend it. For lunch. Today.

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Friends who live in Fort Smith put their house on the market late Friday. By late Saturday, 13 viewings has taken place; more were scheduled for Sunday.  I would not be at all surprised to learn that several offers might have been made before the end of the day on Sunday. The house appears to be in excellent condition; well-maintained, attractive, updated…just generally appealing. And the backyard—with a pavestone patio, a large water feature, Japanese maples, and a lovely moss groundcover—is a sufficient selling point to merit multiple offers. I anxiously await word that an above-asking-price offer has been accepted. Of course, in an ideal world, the sale of the Fort Smith house would then lead to the friends moving to the Village. Alas, they have chosen to go elsewhere. But at least it’s within reasonable driving/visiting distance.

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For years, psychological research has suggested significant differences exist between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives, for example, tend to be motivated by fear to a greater extent than are liberals. Yet conservatives tend to believe they have more self-control than do liberals. Asked to describe themselves, liberals are more likely to describe themselves as compassionate and optimistic, while conservatives are more likely to describe themselves as honorable and religious.

Looking at the results of various psychological studies of liberalism versus conservatism, it would be easy for a liberal to classify the differences as evidence of his superiority over conservatives. The same results, though, might suggest to a conservative to come to the opposite conclusion: that the evidence supports the superiority of conservatives over liberals. While such conflicting perspectives might tend to make one think any assessment of the psychology of liberalism versus conservatism a study in chaos, the reality is that the research seems to grow stronger by the day that liberals’ and conservatives’ brains operate in different ways. With the development of more sophisticated psychological measures (with greater validity and more reliability between them), I suspect the time will come when a simple test or battery of tests will dependably be able to classify the degree to which a person is liberal or conservative. And that classification will translate into high correlations between political perspectives and predictions of voting behavior. Ultimately, if used for the wrong reasons and by the wrong people, such data could be used to manipulate social and economic responses to changing societal conditions. Of course, choosing to classify social and economic responses as “wrong” might depend on one’s level of conservatism versus liberalism. A liberal may say “wrong,” while a conservative may say “right” or “necessary.” Or vice versa. A conservative might say a liberal’s response to changing social conditions is immoral; and a liberal may say the same about a conservative’s response.

Morality, itself, may then be viewed differently, depending on one’s political perspectives and the extent to which one identifies as either liberal or conservative. And that, I suggest, is at the crux of the inability of political parties and their adherents to find opportunities for compromise. Each considers the other “immoral,” therefore any willingness to modify one’s position to enable the sides to come to some sort of agreement is seen as taking a step toward abandoning one’s moral principles. Until and unless the political parties can identify common moral ground with their opponents, the only reasonable response to the dilemma is to abandon all hope of finding any commonality at all between entrenched political positions.

Evidence in support of my “hunches” about political perspectives and morality was found in a study conducted by John Jost, a professor of psychology, politics, and data science at New York University and his colleagues. A news release about the study, from New York University, says the study “suggests that liberalism and conservatism are associated with qualitatively different psychological concerns, notably those linked to morality.” I rest my case.

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I’m aware of being a stranger, an outsider, and that’s always an advantage for an artist. It means I can see from the inside and the outside. I have that double vision.

~ John Hirsch ~

In a few weeks, I will discuss my faith journey with the congregation of my church. My presentation will constitute one of what we call our Insight Services, in which a speaker shares his or her perspectives on a specific topic, religious or not. The concept of faith journey seems rather foreign to me, in that my journey has been not one of faith but of doubt and disbelief. My conversation with the congregation will permit me to explore why I fit with them, in the aggregate, and vice versa.

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The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

~ Dante Alighieri ~

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In my opinion, Fox News is a Republican propaganda machine. Any “news” reported from that network appears to me, at the very least, to have been scrubbed to remove any traces of nonpartisanship. My Democrat neighbor agreed with my assessment of Fox, though she goes a bit deeper into the mire by calling the network “evil.” My neighbor’s agreement with my perspectives ended when I offered my opinions about both CNN and MSNBC; they are just as biased as Fox, only on the opposite side of the political spectrum. I am skeptical of every word spoken by a CNN or MSNBC anchor because their scripts seem pristine, too, with no evidence that they wish to seem unbiased.

Unapologetically raw bias from both ends of the political spectrum. I further disturbed my neighbor when I classified all politicians, from locals vying for votes to become county clerk to candidates for President of the United States, as variants on the same form of vermin. I will admit I went a tad too far there; I feel sure there must be one politician, somewhere, whose aspirations rise from her generous spirit and commitment to the public good. But, generally, they are self-serving rodents trained to please audiences by prevaricating in return for money and votes. I wish I did not feel that way; yet the only memorable news I ever hear about politicians seems to revolve around chronicling their cheating, thieving, devious, demonic practices. So, it’s no wonder I am just as biased against the bastards as they and their mouthpiece “news” agencies are about their opponents.

Philosophically, I tend to lean far to the left of the Democratic Party’s platforms (though I take issue with certain elements, tending to be more centrist and, occasionally, I lean right). Obviously, then, my political philosophies are at odds with almost every shred of Republican ideals. But I find both Democrats and Republicans (I’m referring here to party loyalists who operate and/or oil their parties’ political machinery) offensive, intellectually. Both seem to me insistent on manipulating facts to suit them and, not infrequently, distorting facts or abandoning them altogether in pursuit of morally questionable political goals.

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

~ John Kenneth Galbraith ~

I have dilly-dallied too much this morning. I’m back at the keyboard just about the time I need to leave for church. So much for writing what’s uppermost in my deeply hidden thoughts. I suppose you’ll just have to come query me about what’s on my mind. I’ll be right here.