John Swinburn

Governance these days relies less on persuasive guidance and more on raw power. The strength of authority that accompanies a politician’s position is far more important than leadership finesse. Whereas a politician’s  ability to rally her supporters once was the test of her leadership capabilities, her capacity to instill compliance through fear is today’s measure of political promise. The transformation has relied not so much on changes in the politician as on changes in her constituency. We have changed. We have accepted and embraced the legitimacy of dictatorial control. Until we make clear our unyielding rejection of dictatorship, we will risk behaving as if we were subjects in an absolute monarchy rather than people with inalienable rights. Until that time, our obedience will be equivalent to our wholehearted support. In the meantime, we watch political races in which two or more candidates seeks public support for their election to positions of near-absolute power. And we willingly give that support to the candidate whose exercise of control seems, to us, most tolerable.

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I woke late this morning, around 6:30. Such a late start tends to trigger my sense of dissatisfaction with the day, though by summoning the right attitude and the stamina to keep it alive, I can counter that dissatisfaction. The question of whether I will succeed in countering it will be answered as the day progresses. The only obstacle to my freedom today is my scheduled appointment with an advanced practice nurse, who will evaluate the extent to which her prescribed treatments have improved my ability to breathe. I think they have, finally, made progress.  Here it is, only four years post-lobectomy, and I think I may finally have achieved some degree of bronchonormalcy (that’s my very own word; a personal neologism). That’s enough to improve even the greyest of grey days, isn’t it?

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Sunlight, filtered through diminishing leaf-cover, offers intriguing sights. For example, as I look out my window, I see just a few branches of an otherwise drab-looking azalea bush bathed in bright light. The sight reminds me of an actor on stage, the spotlight trained on him leaving everyone else on stage almost invisible, looking otherworldly. As if a spotlight from the heavens above had found this one person who merited special attention from the sun gods. If we can imagine such absurdities, we can persuade ourselves to believe them. And therein is one of our collective problems; we manufacture delicate castles in our heads and spend the rest of our lives attempting to climb up and down nonexistent staircases.

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And off I go, drawing my sword in defiance as I plunge into a day riddled with challenges I have not yet imagined. If all goes well, as I expect it will, I shall return.

This morning, I have an appointment with my oncologist’s office to have blood work done in advance of my next follow-up visit, a week from today. The follow-up visit will include a CT scan, another routine follow-up intended to catch any evidence that might suggest a return of cancer. Later today, I will visit my primary care doctor’s office, where I have an appointment with one of his senior nurses. The purpose of my visit is to get a referral to an orthopedist or other specialist who might be able to address my increasingly widespread and painful experiences with joint and muscle pain. While I am there, I may ask for a referral to a psychologist or counselor; someone who might be able to address symptoms mi novia suggests may be depression. I am weary of visits to doctors and hospitals and clinics and anyone and anyplace dedicated to healthcare. I am tired of watching and listening to healthcare professionals as they attempt to derail the human body’s natural decline; tired of wishing for magical treatments that will return my body to the way it felt and behaved ten or twenty or thirty years ago.

When I was diagnosed with cancer around Thanksgiving 2018, I considered refusing treatment (for many reasons I won’t go into now). Had I decided against it, my oncologist said at the time, I might have lasted two years, the last few months of which probably would be a period of severe decline and considerable pain. I decided not to put myself through it. More importantly, I decided not to put my wife through it. Less than eighteen months later, though, she went through the kind of hell I opted out of by accepting treatment. Had she been given the option of not going through that hellacious period, I am sure she would have accepted that option. I often think about what I could have done differently during her “treatment” and decline that might have made her last few months of life more comfortable and more tolerable. I’ll never be able to forgive myself for failing to adequately explore other options than letting her languish in treatment facilities that did nothing of any substance to help her and, instead, confined her to a bed and to a wheelchair in an environment that robbed her of any semblance of emotional comfort.

Emotional pain can make anesthesia seem so attractive. Perhaps  many people who get addicted to drugs and/or alcohol slip into their addictions while attempting to find relief from that pain. The attraction of something that might help deaden the pain is strong. Whether a person knows it at the outset or not, a retreat from emotional pain by way of chemicals of one kind or another is a pointless endeavor. It is my understanding that the duration of periods in which the pain is effectively deadened grow shorter and shorter. That decline in effectiveness or in the length of time the pain is addressed probably is responsible for addiction; a downward spiral with no end.

I heard a brief conversation yesterday about the “death with dignity” laws in Oregon, Washington, and California. Laws that prevent the State from infringing on individuals’ rights to decide how and when their death will occur seem, to me, a return to the natural order of things. Prolonging life by giving precedence to quantity of time versus quality of time should prohibited unless demanded by the person most dramatically impacted by the decision. That’s my moral position.

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I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.

~ Stephen Hawking ~

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The tendency of late among some liberals/progressives is to urge others of the same social and political stripes to treat conservatives with a modicum of respect, hiding liberal contempt for conservative philosophies. And when I say “a modicum,” I mean a tiny shred. And that scrap is small, indeed. In fact, the respect contained within that miniscule bit is artificial; it is an imitation of actual appreciation and honor, designed to tone down conservative loathing for progressive initiatives. The bottom line is that many—perhaps most—progressives dismiss virtually every utterance and every idea offered by conservatives as contemptible efforts to place rich conservatives in positions of power over destitute progressives. There is no “respect” of any kind hiding behind liberal tolerance of conservatives. Mockery and derision, instead, is the attitude behind the masks.

Until progressives willingly and honestly attempt to understand the reasoning behind conservative concepts, moderation and compromise will have no chance of success. The same is true of conservative treatment of progressive concepts, I suspect, but I cannot make that assertion from a perspective based on experience. Listening to progressive comments, though, and “reading” between the lines, I can say with near certainty that many/most progressives have no respect whatsoever for conservative philosophies, nor for the people who hold them. That attitude is a nonstarter with regard to achieving even a remote possibility of bipartisanship. One response, from progressives, to my assertion is that conservatives will not be given respect until they give respect to progressive philosophies. And that attitude is understandable. But if neither side is willing to acknowledge the possibility that the other side makes any valid points, all efforts to reach any substantive agreements are wasted. One side needs to make the first overtures. As a progressive/liberal, I think it behoove my side to retreat from its position that “all progressive ideas are good and all conservative ideas are bad.” In fact, I think both sides should actively seek out those opponents’ positions that they might be able to support.

Unfortunately, I think the divisiveness strangling our democracy will continue its choke-hold on us until we are too weak to fight the disease of incivility. Damn. Is it just human nature that causes us to believe that anyone with different ideas is our enemy? If not human nature, what is it?

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I hope my experience with this Monday becomes brighter and more appealing as the day unfolds.  I’ll do what I can to make it so.

Finally, after weeks of living in fear that we had experienced the very last rainfall—weeks when the soil dried, then hardened into dusty rock. Weeks of watching robust shrubs wither. Weeks of fearing the air would become so parched it would crack into tiny, sharp fragments capable of shredding my lungs with each breath. Finally, though, it ended. Or, at least, it paused. As I sit here this morning, loud claps of thunder punctuate the constant sound of drops of water slamming against the window and the noise of rain pouring down on the roof. It is too early to tell whether this morning’s deluge is breaking the drought. But it is not too early to express gratitude for the rain and to celebrate the fact that millions—maybe billions—of plants have been given an opportunity to recover and perhaps survive, after a long, miserable period in which terminal dehydration became a very real worry. For now, though, the worry can be tucked safely at the back of mind.

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I know a woman in Chicago who is passionate about water and humans’ cavalier attitude toward it. Every chance she gets, it seems, she preaches about the effects of wasting water. My late wife became friends with this woman when both of them were in graduate school in Austin. While my wife was pursuing a doctorate in educational psychology, this woman was wrapping up a master’s degree in public policy administration. Perhaps one of her projects during graduate school focused on public policies relevant to water. Or perhaps her knowledge about the shrinkage in supplies of potable water grew naturally from her voracious reading. I don’t know. I know only that she speaks passionately about wasting water and about the inevitability of water crises owing to that wastage, among other factors. I write about this woman as if I know what she thinks today; I have not spoken with her in years, though I do follow her on Facebook, so I think my description of her passion about water is reasonably close to accurate.

I share the woman’s opinions about water; humans continue to behave stupidly, believing they can put off until another day finding solutions to water shortages. “Another day” has long since come and gone; witness the dramatic shrinkage of Lake Mead. Satellite images from 2000 and 2021 illustrate the enormous loss of water in the lake in just nineteen years. A satellite image from earlier this year shows an even more rapid shrinkage. Research into developing practical technologies that will perform very large scale desalination on a very short timeline is critical; I am of the opinion that funding and prioritizing a project on the scale of the Manhattan Project is called for to develop such technologies. Of course, we should explore and understand the unintended consequences of such a major effort, too. Our extraction and conversion of sea water into drinking water might well do irrevocable harm to the planet’s oceans. Storing or otherwise disposing of the extracted salt could create problems of its own.

Life is full of difficult options and unintended consequences. A successful desalination project could have unintended household consequences. The ready availability of an endless supply of water could change humans’ habits and possessions and avocations: long, luxurious showers; elaborate lawns filled with thirsty grasses; even more golf courses; leaving the water running while brushing one’s teeth; complete abandonment of conservation measures; a monstrous spike in the number of private swimming pools. The list could go on interminably. My point: we must be careful. But even while exercising care we have the ability to make tragic mistakes. We’ve proven that time and time again by engaging in war. War is the single most absurd, wasteful, entirely indefensible human activity ever undertaken. I would write more about that. But I’ll spare myself, and you, that unpleasantness. For now.

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Am I alone, I wonder, in finding myself inexplicably attracted to random strangers?

Not overwhelmingly attracted. But oddly and strongly attracted, I think. There’s something about certain people—usually random people I’ve never seen before and will never see again—that draws my attention. Either I stare at them or, if they notice my uninvited stare, I sneak furtive glances at them. I used to think the cause of my extreme interest was based in a sense that I might know the person or the person might remind me of someone I know. After giving the matter considerable thought, I have decided that’s not it, though. Many of my attractive strangers look nothing like anyone I can think of; these attractive strangers just possess a magnetism that I am powerless to fight. I just have to give in and let my visual curiosity run its course.

When I say I am attracted to these random strangers, I do not mean I have a desire to engage with them in some way. I mean only that I want to look at them. I want the freedom to stare at them, unimpeded by the judgment of other people who notice my gaze and find my obvious interest inappropriate. And I should acknowledge that a few of these random strangers are not strangers at all; they are people I know from various settings in which we both are involved.  A couple of people from my church fall into this category.

Thus far, I have not mentioned the gender of these random strangers. Most of them are women, but occasionally I see a male who for some reason I find visually appealing. And not necessarily physically attractive; that is true of both males and females. Their visual appeal is not necessarily connected to what I would call socially-engineered attractiveness (that is, they do not necessarily fit the mold of “movie star” beauty).

At some point, I think I mused about the similarity between my randomly attractive strangers and certain bronze or stone statues. There’s just something about certain statuary that is so intriguing that I cannot keep my eyes off of the art. Am I alone in this situation, this experience in which I find that random people require my eyes to follow them?

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The rain continues. Sweet, soft, nourishing rain. I think I could be persuaded to worship a rain god. And, at the right time, a sun god. If conditions were right, I might be converted to naturalistic pantheism. For now, I’ll stop and contemplate this moment; I will appreciate it for all it has done and will do for me.

For years, I have wondered why so much of the agricultural land I drive through on the side of the highway is devoted to corn and soybeans, as opposed to crops geared toward feeding humans. This morning, by chance, I stumbled upon several online articles that address some of the the reasons. And I discovered conflicting information, presented as factual data, that illustrates the difficulty in finding reliable interpretations of information. It is not necessarily the information that may not be completely reliable; it’s the way it is presented and the context within which it is assessed. I will not go into much more on that topic; lying with statistics has become an artform littered with mathematical proof.

Back to my curiosity; why do I see so much land devoted to corn and soybeans? Well, according to some ostensibly reliable data from 2017 and 2018, the demand for corn and soy is enormous. And decisions about crops and crop rotation are highly influenced by food and farm policies. An article from 2017, referring back to another one from 2013, credits Scientific American with the following quotation:

Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol) and as animal feed (roughly 36 percent of U.S. corn, plus distillers grains left over from ethanol production, is fed to cattle, pigs and chickens). Much of the rest is exported.  Only a tiny fraction of the national corn crop is directly used for food for Americans, much of that for high-fructose corn syrup.

I could argue that farmers should switch from grains to vegetables, thereby providing a larger, more stable supply of vegetables than the major supplier states (e.g., California, Arizona, and Florida) can provide by themselves. But, unless demand for vegetables is not being met under the current system of supply and distribution, such an switch could upset profitability for current suppliers. And a reduction in supplies of corn and soy could disrupt the current supply change for those commodities.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

~ Anne Lamott ~

Personal experience in buying fruits and vegetables from Mexico and Guatemala and Canada and on and on suggests, though, the current supply chain in this country is not adequate. Or, perhaps, the current supply chain may be unable to compete on the basis of costs with international suppliers. The possibilities are endless. And, my ignorance of agricultural policies, general economics, and a  host of other factors contributes to my inability to come up with “answers.”

Yet I continue to have questions. For example, why are Americans in love with their unproductive lawns? Why do we not devote our efforts in “yard work” to “gardening,” instead? Why do we not grow more of our own vegetables? Well, again, if we did, the farmers in California and Arizona and Florida might discover the supply of their crops far outstrips the demand.

The complexities of the food supply are fare more involved than most of us understand, I think. But if our food supplies were to experience major disruptions, I suspect our understanding would expand exponentially. And the number of vegetable gardens would grow like kudzu. This is one of those topics that continues to press on my mind, urging me to explore it in more depth and, perhaps, prompting me to seek solutions. Later, perhaps.  When it may be too late.

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Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining.

~ Desmond Tutu ~

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Some days, I feel completely inept. I have no skills, no capabilities, no knowledge about which I can be especially proud. I would like to think I am recovering from a lifetime of misleading myself, but I am afraid I’m giving myself reason to be skeptical of both my motives and my moods.

Emptiness. That’s what my sleep has been of late. No dreams. Just an absence of consciousness. A state of being in which I am utterly unaware of myself and my context. Although, somewhere in my brain and in every organ in my body, automatic responses to the external and internal environments take place all through the night. The same thing happens during the day, when I am fully awake and alert. But I also am unaware of those automatic responses during my waking hours. Unless, of course, I direct my attention to them: breathing, blinking, thinking, wishing, experiencing aromas and tastes and sounds. We are complex beings. But not as complex as the remarkably intricate nature of the interactions between and the interdependencies of all lives on the planet.  THAT is stunning in its remarkably convoluted, yet astonishingly beautiful, complexity.

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A BBC.com video short describes Vanuatu as one of the happiest nations on Earth. Vanuatu is a South Pacific Ocean nation made up of roughly 80 islands. One of the people interviewed for the video suggests that the people of the nation do not depend on money; he says people of other nations tend to rely on money to stoke their sense of happiness, but a genuine respect for and engagement with the environment and other people drive the emotional sense of comfort and joy for the the people of Vanuatu. The picture painted by the BBC.com video suggests that Vanuatu is such a happy place because life in the island nation is simpler than in the rest of the world. And that simplicity is based largely on a purity of attitude unique to the islands’ culture. A willingness to accept each day as it comes—and to consider each day a gift—paves the way to living a happy life in a happy society. That is how I perceived the message from the video.

If one reads the description of the nation produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in its World Facebook, one would view the country from an entirely different perspective. Though absent much judgmental language, the country described in the CIA’s World Factbook suggests a very different place; a rather delicate nation beset by significant problems involving political factions, resource scarcity, and various other challenges. The following sentences are extracts from the CIA’s description of the country:

Linguistic divisions have lessened over time but highly fractious political parties have led to weak coalition governments that require support from both Anglophone and Francophone parties. Since 2008, prime ministers have been ousted through no-confidence motions or temporary procedural issues 10 times.

…and…

Economic development is hindered by dependence on relatively few commodity exports, vulnerability to natural disasters, and long distances from main markets and between constituent islands. In response to foreign concerns, the government has promised to tighten regulation of its offshore financial center.

Does the CIA’s description of an economically stunted and politically contentious environment comport with the BBC’s description of one of the world’s happiest nations? I suspect a deeper, more intense, and purely objective exploration of both the culture of Vanuatu and the nature of happiness would be required to answer that question. My guess is that neither the rosy image offered by the BBC nor the starkness suggested by the CIA is the “true” Vanuatu. And, in my innate skepticism, I suspect both images were created with purpose; the CIA has a vested interest in describing Vanuatu in one way, the BBC has a vested interest in describing it in another, somewhat conflicting way. And I have to sort through a carefully crafted series of mixed messages—both subjective and objective—to reach my own conclusion about the place. Unless, of course, I am content to let my assessment of the country mirror either the BBC or the CIA perspective. I am not content to let someone else decide what I should think, so I sort through messages of questionable reliability and come to my own conclusion: the culture of Vanuatu encourages an appreciation of the largesse offered by the nation’s history and its resources. But like everyplace on Earth, the country is constantly teetering on the edge of an abyss. The people of Vanuatu apparently have come to terms with their circumstances so, for the moment, they are living in a state of fragile contentment.

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He feels every emotion as if it were amplified a thousand-fold. Disinterest becomes loathing. Liking becomes passionate love. Curiosity becomes unregulated attraction; unchecked fascination.  Following on Facebook morphs into stalking in real life; watching, listening, longing to see and hear and feel.

But is that him, or are those emotions the expressions of a character struggling to escape the confines of his brain and make its way through his fingers to the screen in front of him? The questions become: Who is he? Where is he? Why is he so distant, yet so very close?

Finally, are these questions real, or are they ghosts of sentences long since erased and discarded? Sentenced to erasure… Hmm, riddles designed to engage the brain and lead to more, deeper, more engaging questions.

Last night’s thunder was just a tease. It brought a moment of rain, but left the ground thirsty for more. We assume weather patterns will repeat themselves; we are certain we can always rely on October rain until October rain gives way to October drought.  That is the problem with reliable certainty; certainty is a fiction written in disappearing ink.

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Had I waited a little longer to put my house on the market, I might have found myself in a bind. Mortgage rates rising to roughly 7%, fears of unchecked inflation, and myriad other social and economic and factors ripped into a frenzied housing market, sucking the artificial wind out of its synthetic sails. For several months before I finally put my house up for sale, I was afraid the market might suffer an enormous “correction,” leaving me with a mortgage on the “new: house and rapidly-dwindling demand and a declining market value on the “old” one. Fortunately, my insistence that I put the old house on the market “right now” came at just the right time. Had I waited even two or three weeks, evidence of an impending market correction might have deterred prospective buyers from looking. And the price the Realtor recommended I ask for the house probably would have been unreachable. Thanks to the timing of putting the new house on the market, I dodged a bullet, as the old aphorism goes. Given today’s market, though, I am in a corner of my own making; I am tethered to a house and a mortgage that took the place of the freedom I might have enjoyed had I opted for a nomadic lifestyle. Yet living a peripatetic life would present challenges of its own; substituting a forced itinerant lifestyle for the comfort of a dependable home base.

The lesson I feel I am learning from my experience is this: try not to second-guess myself on irrevocable decisions. There’s no point in bemoaning decisions that cannot be unmade, nor wondering “what if” when it is impossible to revise one’s own history. It is healthier and less stressful to simply accept that my situation is what it is; accept it and move on. Make the best of reality as it is. I’m working on that.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

~ Carl Rogers ~

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As I ponder my circumstances, it occurs to me that my “problems” are simply “circumstances.” Whereas I stew over home ownership issues, other people whose living arrangements have always involved renting instead of buying face a completely different set of challenges. Though renting/leasing may attach one to a shorter period of obligation, it exposes a person to the vagaries of rental rates and the potential for dislocations when properties are sold or repurposed. Trade-offs exist with every decision. The perfect life or lifestyle is an unreachable fantasy.  Quoting someone who is working to learn the lessons of life,  “It is healthier and less stressful to simply accept that my situation is what it is; accept it and move on. Make the best of reality as it is.”

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Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

~ Carl Jung ~

I finished my bachelor’s degree in about three and one-half years, graduating without fanfare and without ceremony in December 1975.  Although I think graduation ceremonies were available for mid-year graduates who completed their degree requirements outside the normal May-June cycle, I chose to forego the celebratory formalities of graduation. No one I knew was graduating at the same time; no one I knew would have been interested in attending my ceremonies, anyway. And though I am sure my parents would have attended, had I participated in the rituals of graduation, those rituals held no substantive meaning to me, so I opted to forego the rites.

The circuitous reason my college graduation is on my mind is that I heard a Janis Ian song, At Seventeen, a day or two ago. That song was released in the middle of 1975, just a few months before my college graduation. Despite the fact that the song expressed the story of a seventeen-year-old high school girl, its underlying theme of social isolation felt deeply personal and relevant to me—a nineteen-year-old boy who had become increasingly isolated and socially awkward during his high school and college years. My memories of high school and college, though indistinct and incomplete, confirm that I was felt that I was not noticed much; and when I was, the acknowledgement came in the form of mockery and teasing. At least that is how I perceived the experience. I was a loner, though not entirely by choice. I simply did not know how to overcome the shyness that grew like kudzu within me as I stumbled through my middle to late teenage years. Listening to the Janis Ian song brought back memories of how completely isolated I felt during the few years I lived in Austin, Texas, attending university there. I know from personal experience that one can feel lonely and so very remote from one’s peers in a setting with roughly forty thousand other students.

I learned, from reading psychology books and articles and from lectures in psychology classes, that feeling alone in the presence of others is also a common symptom of depression or social anxiety. Learning what to call it, though, did not translate into understanding how to combat my deepening sense of social isolation. No, I think I knew of ways that might have enabled me to make connections with other people; but I was too unsure of myself to put myself in situations that I thought could have been even more painful. I did not know how to engage with more gregarious people; I tended to gravitate toward the few people I encountered who, like me, considered themselves social outcasts. I resented my high school classmates who were popular, thanks in part to their involvement in school and extracurricular activities like sports, sponsored “clubs” like the Spanish Club and the Astronomy Club, etc., etc. I did not participate in those activities; I was not invited to join them and I did not know how to ask without putting myself at risk of rejection. My resentment followed me to college, where I honed my distaste for fraternities and sororities and college sports. My animus toward college football grew into intense loathing when I found myself in an elevator in Jester West Hall with several members of the University of Texas football team; they pretended they did not see me, but swatted me around the elevator as if I were a fly. Had I been armed with a gun during that experience, I feel certain I would have turned a group of football bullies into corpses.

Over time—a long, long time—I taught myself to mask my social timidity. I learned how to pretend that I was comfortable in social settings. I overcame my natural shyness to the point that I can, in certain settings, make myself appear to be a gregarious extrovert. My first job in association management required me to engage, personally and directly, with large numbers of people. That experience helped me overcome the appearance of shyness. But even today, what may appear to be easy banter with strangers and casual acquaintances, my initial engagement with others conceals discomfort. Though my discomfort is not as intense as it once was, it exists beneath a veneer of easy warmth. Even after the initial discomfort has worn away and after strangers finally become friends, it seems I worry that my new friends’ behavior toward me might be artificial, like my initial warmth is a disguise for my unease.  Even today, if a friend behaves in a way that I perceive as contrary to the way “real friends” behave toward one another, I am quick to react. I erect shields around me in an attempt to keep the emotional pain at bay. And I recall the lyrics of At Seventeen, including these…To those of us who knew the pain, Of valentines that never came, And those whose names were never called, When choosing sides for basketball…

But those feelings of emotional fragility have sufficiently diminished to enable me to feel more— or less “normal” in many settings that once were very difficult. Yet the lyrics of a song can spark a firestorm of memories that reveal that extremely sensitive kid—the guy who mastered the art of deception.

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Not just beautiful, though — the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me.

~ Haruki Murakami ~

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My decision to go to bed early last night was deliberate; I made that call long before I crawled between the sheets and quickly fell asleep. A few hours after that early bedtime, I woke. I considered getting up and plunging into the day, but I discovered it was only a little after 1:30, so I persuaded myself to try to get some more sleep. I did sleep a bit more, but it was restive. Slipping in and out of wakefulness, the night seemed to drag on. But three hours later I finally decided I could not stay asleep. I caught brief naps, but they would not allow me to remain comfortably distant from intrusive thoughts and painful, aching joints. So, just a few minutes before 4:30 I slipped out of bed; awake and willing to explore what the day has in store for me.

Clean dishes, still drying on the kitchen counter next to the sink hours after they had been washed, begged me to finish drying them and to put them away. With that task finished, I made coffee. A cup of rapidly-cooling coffee sits on a coaster on my desk, just above my computer mouse pad. I can tell already, after taking a couple of sips of now-lukewarm coffee, that neither the heat nor the caffeine in the cup will be sufficient to jump-start my thought processes. I will slog through the next little while without the aid of a proper cup of coffee. But after I manage to adapt to the dwindling heat of anemic coffee, I will reward myself with a new cup; this one just hot enough and flavorful enough to awaken me from this languid state of consciousness. I will not let the new cup sit and cool; as I drink the hot coffee, I will feel a strong dose of pure energy course through my veins, as if the caffeine in the coffee has been injected directly into my bloodstream.

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Darkness prevails at this hour. This early morning retains its connection with the darkest, blackest night. I look out the window and see nothing but empty blackness. And I see the reflection in the window panes of the lamp on my desk. No movement, just blackness. Occasionally, though, either I see something move outside my window or my imagination is playing with me. Something out there may be watching me. A deer, perhaps. Or a fox. or a racoon. Or a human. A human who does not belong out there. It’s only my imagination, right? There’s nobody out there at a quarter after six in the morning. No matter the time, no one belongs outside my windows. And there is no one there. Right? No one peering in at me, watching me type; watching me peer out the windows.

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I surprised myself this morning by deciding to read an article I normally would have ignored and then dismissed as hype. The article contained excerpts of an interview with William Shatner in which he discussed his experiences surrounding his trip as a passenger on a suborbital space tourism flight. The flight was orchestrated by Jeff Bezos, the obscenely wealthy CEO of Amazon and god-knows-how many-other-companies. Normally, I would have skimmed the headline of the article and dismissed it as promotion and propaganda from a self-important actor. But, instead, I read the article. And it had an emotional impact on me. Shatner recalled that, after he returned to Earth from the space flight, he cried. He said it took him hours to realize why he cried: “I realized I was in grief for the Earth,” he said. Looking out the windows of the spacecraft, Shatner saw the utter blackness—the emptiness of space—in one direction and the glow of life—Planet Earth—in the other. He cried, knowing what humankind is doing to its only home planet.

Maybe it was hype. Maybe Shatner spoke those words and wrote that book to advance both his financial fortune and his fame. That notwithstanding, I thought his description of the experience was moving. And it emphasized to me the fact that we are too late in recognizing what we have done to this planet. Ach.

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Poverty is a ruinous circumstance. Nobody deserves to live in poverty.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

~ John Ruskin ~

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For every possession, there is another place. Another placeholder that can be misremembered or forgotten. Another “thing” whose location must be recalled if the “thing” is to be put to use. Possessions are both anchor and water into which the anchor drags us. We drown in overabundance. We confuse ourselves by overloading our memories with unnecessary rubbish that sullies what should be bright spots; the rubbish causes blemishes on the bright spots. Ashen residue of smoldering rubbish. Nothing matters much anymore because we possess too much. We cannot spread our gratitude equally among all our possessions, so we pretend everything either is equally and absurdly important or base and with no value whatsoever. We tell stories about value and meaning, but even the stories are too plentiful, too copious to retain their significance.

I doubt most of us have sufficient discipline to be ascetics for long. An ascetic is one who pursues contemplative ideals and practices extreme self-denial or self-mortification for personal, “spiritual” reasons. Many dictionaries insist ascetics behave the way they do for religious reasons; some ascetics may be driven by religion, but I believe most are motivated by non-religious spiritualism that defies definition. One either understands the concept or claims it’s religion masquerading as deep intellectual exploration.

People who addictively collect unnecessary luxuries are hedonists , but most of them would reject the title. They do not like be labeled with terms that might challenge their compassion; even while surrounding themselves with the accouterments of royalty (while commoners suffer the absence of food and water), they identify as caring, giving people. The extent of their blindness is staggering. Could it be that the owner of a spotless automotive garage filled with expensive collectible automobiles sees no disconnect between that luxury and the family of six living in the shack behind the garage; the one-room shack with no plumbing and no electricity?

I am conflicted between, on one hand, wanting to understand and appreciate deep minimalism and, on the other, hoping that everything I desire will magically appear at my fingertips or in my possession. It is a shameful conflict; one between greed and indifference. It is shameful, too, because desiring an absence of desire is tantamount to declaring war against the aggressors who oppose one’s pacifism.  Hypocrisy woven into the fabric of one’s trustworthiness. Or vice versa.

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I put off seeing a doctor for so long that, if I were to see the doctor now it would seem silly. Why didn’t I just wait until the annual physical, I can imagine the doctor saying. But that’s the way it is with me. I delay seeing a doctor, expecting my physical complaint to diminish of its own accord over time. No point in seeing a doctor, I reason, because my complaint is not sufficiently precise to enable a doctor to use it as a clue as to its etiology. On a couple of occasions, though, I’ve discovered that what I thought was the underlying cause had nothing to do with the symptoms. So, I should put my health in the hands of people who are trained professionally to determine causes and to prescribe cures or, at least, symptom relief.

It is impossible to compare one’s own level of pain with the levels experienced by others. It would be rather like attempting to understand how someone else perceives the color blue. We can pretend we know what blue is like to someone else, but it’s entirely possible that the way I experience blue is the way another person experiences green. That’s true of pain, as well. It could be that you experience pain the way I experience pleasure and vice versa. My reaction to pain and your reaction to pleasure may look exactly alike; how would we know that the experiences are so dramatically different?  Perhaps it’s easier to understand the concept with a hypothetical example: imagine that you experience an orgasm the way I experience a thorn puncturing the sole of my foot. And vice versa. I know, it’s hard to imagine. Try to do it anyway. Okay, let’s try another one. Imagine a child enjoying an ice cream cone. Now, imagine that the child’s enjoyment of that ice cream cone was identical to your experience of having molten lead poured into your mouth. Each of us may measure life’s experiences using very different scales. Still, I should call my doctor to see if there’s something he or his staff might be able to do for me to relieve the pain.

+++

Time to solve the world’s most vexing mysteries.

The forest beyond my window may be full of night creatures—deer, racoons, skunks, coyotes, foxes, and so on—but the pre-dawn darkness holds fast to the mysteries of the night, refusing to visually reveal those beasts.

By lighting a cone of incense in the dim light of my study, I attempt to create an enforced tranquility. The blanket of darkness, still thick and happily sullen, cooperates fully with my efforts. Here, where I am utterly alone, I am out of reach of the turbulence of daylight, with human voices and the hum of machinery and the sounds of delivery trucks in the distance, straining as they climb steep hills. My isolation in this room, where the odor of incense is strong and calming, imposes on me what I know to be a temporary serenity.

In this room—at this hour, in the early morning darkness—I can pretend only I exist in the world. I can imagine that I need not be concerned with the effects on other people of my actions or my absence. The peace extracted from the emptiness is mine to do with what I wish. This refuge I create with the juxtaposition of the odor of incense and the illumination of dim light in a small room with a small desk belongs only to me. Not just the physical me; the man sitting at this desk. This refuge belongs to the mind that inhabits this body.  It is the refuge of aloneness. The refuge of selfish solitude. The refuge of withdrawal.

For years, a strange, long-standing fantasy has occasionally resurrected itself in the deep recesses of my brain. The fantasy is always there, just beneath the surface; sometimes it  emerges  like a whale suddenly breaching from that serenity.  That fantasy breached this morning, even before I woke and got out of bed. There it was, in my mind’s eye. The fantasy is that I have entered a monastic order, a context that requires a vow of solitude and silence. This monastery, a complex of old but elaborate stone buildings, is in a rural setting within walking distance to a village.

My fantasy is half dream and half vision. It is an impossibility that refuses to succumb to practical reality. There is no religious aspect to the monastery, nor to the vows of silence and solitude. Yet the commitment to respect and adhere to the vows is deep and somber, as if it were embedded in the core of my being; living in accord with the vows is the price that must be paid for the gift of life. The “gift of life” aspect is difficult to grasp, because it sounds and feels religious. But it is not. It is transactional, like exchanging money for goods. A simple expression of the free market. Yet so, so, so much more meaningful. Sufficiently powerful that it can behave like a monstrously potent emotional windstorm that scours one’s attitudes and ideas, taking them down to their foundations. I can envision those storms, but I cannot adequately describe them; they are overwhelmingly powerful and unwilling to be pinned down to fit a description.

Some of the dialogue from a program I watched last night was especially thought-provoking. A conversation took place between two characters, in which they discussed a third character. The conversation revolved around the third character’s lifelong efforts to forgive himself for the way he had treated a fourth character, who was presumed to have died years before.  Forgiving oneself. It is an impossibility. Only the person who was “wronged” can forgive. If that person is no longer living, forgiveness is eternally inaccessible.

+++

A couple of articles on the China Daily website have caught my attention. The articles revolve around the dramatic growth in China of new energy vehicles (NEVs) within the past year. If my reading of the articles is correct, NEVs are electric-powered vehicles that operate on extremely energy-efficient batteries. One of the photos accompanying one of the articles shows a driverless electric tractor that was on display during the 19th China-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Expo. While a couple of articles are insufficient to confirm a trend, I suspect there is, indeed, a trend among Chinese companies to develop and sell an extensive array of NEVs. Driverless tractors, passenger cars, fork-lifts…who knows what else? The development of NEV technologies seems to be driven in part by government investing and governmental policies and regulations designed to benefit companies that advance NEV technology development. To my knowledge, if that sort of government investing, etc. is taking place in the “west,” the level of investment is small in comparison to the Chinese market. I imagine we soon will depend almost entirely on Chinese products and technologies to power our own NEVs.

In reading the articles, I learned of some Chinese auto brands: Neta, Hozon Auto, and Wuling. Learning of those manufacturers prompted me to explore what others exist. From what I found, the major Chinese automakers are: SAIC Motor, Dongfeng, FAW, Chang’an, Geely, Beijing Automotive Group, Brilliance Automotive, BYD, Chery, Guangzhou Automobile Group, Great Wall and Jianghuai (JAC). I can imagine that, ten or fifteen or twenty years from now. American highways will be full of Chinese cars, the same as our highways today are full of Japanese and Korean cars.

If not for the potentially negative geopolitical aspects and ramifications of advances in Chinese automotive research and development, I would be pulling for the Chinese automakers. Simply because I an intrigued by technological ingenuity. If, in some blast of magic, planet Earth’s unique populations and their respective world governments would join forces, I would get behind all of it in a big way.

+++

It is Sunday. I must shave and shower and prepare for church. Back to the routine.

People can be magnificent, giving, caring creatures. But they can be monsters, as well. There’s a battle going on, an undeclared war between humanity as we wish it to be and humanity as it is. We’re soldiers in that war, fighting against an enemy we cannot readily recognize. We are not sure which side we’re on, nor how to identify who is with us and who is against us. The battle is chaotic, confusing, complex. The battlefield is hidden by smoke. We cannot hear gunshots from rifles and pistols, thanks to the explosive percussion of cannons that have rendered us deaf. So we fire our weapons indiscriminately, hoping the damage they do will inflict more pain on the enemy, whoever that is, than on ourselves.

+++

Hard to believe. The second Saturday in October already is upon us. If I lived near the Great River Road in Iowa or Wisconsin, day trips into the countryside would yield autumn experiences; Roadside stands selling pumpkins and small bales of hay. Leaves turning yellow and gold and orange and red. Country markets where caramel apples and winter vegetables beckon travelers in to spend their money. The smell of wood smoke, conjuring images of families sitting around the fireplace, relating their days’ experiences. But I do not live anywhere near the Great River Road. I am distant from Iowa and Wisconsin. I rely on semi-rural Arkansas to to provide an almost real autumn experience. Colorful printed flags on display, in place of changing leaves and actual pumpkins. The smell of asphalt as local roads are skim-coated, readying the roads for the onslaught of winter, whatever winter in an era of climate change may bring.

+++

I feel a need to escape. Escape from this time and place to a more hospitable moment, when humankind was kinder. Less judgmental. Not so greedy. Compassionate. Friendlier. I know, I know. There was never such a time. Humans have never been better than they are today. Selfishness has defined the species from the moment the transition from homo erectus to homo sapiens was complete. Though I wasn’t there, I suspect selfishness was an embedded characteristic even of homo erectus. I cannot imagine selfishness growing into such a powerful force of nature just in the time our species has existed. Selfishness of that depth and breadth and unfathomable weight must have taker much longer to develop. At least that’s what I think.

+++

The words immediately struck me: “…kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king.”  The attribution for those words, which may or may not be valid, was reported as Revelation of Lao Tsu – The Tao. Ultimately, as I think about those words, it becomes clear to me: neither the originator of those words or the concept behind them matter. Nor do the words, in and of themselves, matter. What matters is the mental, intellectual, or emotional outcome that arises from the person who hears or reads or simply thinks about the words. And, if their impact goes so far, the physical expression that emerges as a consequence of exposure to, or thoughts about, the words.

The words that preceded the ones I quoted above are these:

When you realize where you came from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused…

and then the words that captured my imagination:

kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king.”

…where you came from… Aha! That gets at the issue. Where is not a place, but a source. The source of the words purports to deliver the source for all…

Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source.

If I contemplated for long enough, I am sure I would dream up dozens of sources: the universe, light from distant galaxies, God (or some semblance of such an entity), the visual “screams” of stars exploding and disappearing into the inky blackness of space, and dozens of additional possibilities. Perhaps, though, there is no true source beyond one’s own mind. Our common source either is everything or nothing. Whatever fills the empty spaces inside our heads—those place-holders are the hiding places for the sources of everything, except for the place-holders themselves. Contemplation consumes one’s intellectual purity, leaving behind an impure mixture of recollection and wishes. And that, as they say, is that. The residue of an inexplicably impossible-to-comprehend experience and thought process.

+++

I woke up so very late this morning; it was after 7:15. For that reason, I feel I’ve wasted a good part of the day, the part of day that begins in darkness. I’ve used time in daylight to perform the functions usually reserved for pre-daylight hours, thus using up daylight hours that could have been devoted to pre-daylight thinking. It’s a shame.  A crying shame.

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

~ Thomas Paine ~

“…mentally faithful to himself.” Hmm. The idea of professing to believe what I do not believe is odd. Although I might do it in jest, I cannot imagine doing it (at least not in a way that others would find believable). I cannot imagine being a politician who speaks fervently in support of or in opposition to a bill, while privately having a diametrically opposed position. But it happens. All the time. So, is it the politicians? Is it the circumstance? Is it simple political expediency? Whatever it is…it smells bad and I can only imagine it tastes worse.

+++

When Maren Grøthe was elected to Norway’s Storting, the country’s national assembly, she became Norway’s youngest national politician in history, at twenty years old. Her youth—though she is the youngest member of the Storting in the country’s history—is not as big a deviation from “average” as it would be in the U.S. The average age of members of the Storting is 46, while the average age in the U.S. Senate is 64 and in the U.S. House of Representatives, 58.

Source: BBC.com

Though I am firmly ensconced in geezerhood, I favor the cleansing of both houses of the U.S. Congress through the introduction of a much younger collection of representatives. Young people, I think, are less likely to accept “that’s just the way things are” as a rationale for maintaining an unworkable status quo. That having been said, wisdom accrues from personal experience, so the presence of more advanced age and experience in those deliberative bodies is equally as important. But the current advanced average age of the U.S. Senate (one year shy of traditional “retirement age”) should be lowered considerably if that legislative body is to be truly representative of issues important to both current generations and those to come. Young people are more flexible, more adaptable, and more likely to consider compromises, regardless of whether a meeting of the minds might clash with the official philosophies or platforms of one party or the other.

As I read the article from which the information above was extracted, the following information caught my attention:

“They [the researchers at Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)] argue that while political parties do not typically have a youth strategy, youth organisations – particularly on the Republican side – have garnered more visibility and funding.”

My concern is that, if young Republicans are getting more visibility and funding, Democrats will face increasingly steep and powerful opposition in coming years. If Democrats expect to maintain a strong presence in political discourse, a much more organized and better-funded approach to youth involvement is and will continue to be critical. If I had my way, “civics” classes would begin very early (perhaps fifth or sixth grades) and continue through high school. By the time children would complete high school, they would have a comprehensive grasp of the legislative process and would understand the importance of the concept that “all politics is local.” Democrats would be well-advised to recruit young, extremely intelligent, intellectually flexible people to run in both local/regional and national elections. Young people, before they have been subjected to so much propaganda and such intense indoctrination in the “ways of the old guard,” could reshape politics on a global scale.

+++

My convoluted thinking—after I read and mulled over and wrote about the article mentioned above—led me to a consideration of civilian versus military power structures and thought processes. That consideration led me to reach the following, perhaps obvious, conclusion: the military mindset is not compatible with democracy. While I think I understand the fundamental importance of adherence to the chain of command in a military context, I think the rigidity of military discipline may be the weakest link in a democracy. Democracy is “a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system,” according to a definition advanced by dictionary.com. In a military setting, the power is vested in a chain of command created and maintained through rigid discipline and unwavering adherence to “rules” that govern virtually all aspects of behavior. Theoretically, participants in a democracy can reject politically-based mandates by recalling and/or replacing incumbents. Rank and file members of the military do not have the luxury of control that their civilian counterparts enjoy. Members of the military cannot lawfully decide, collectively, to reject orders given to them by their superior officers; such rejection would be considered mutiny, a crime for which punishment may well seem excessive, as well as “cruel and unusual.”

Yet the incompatibility of military and civilian philosophies is what allows the supremacy of civilian rule. As long as military leaders at every level understand and agree to be bound by recognition that civilian authority reigns supreme, the model may work. Because militaries are equipped with weapons that are far more powerful than those available to their civilian counterparts, the ultimate supremacy of civilian rule must be inculcated into the heads of members of the military at every level. Especially, the top levels, where orders could be catastrophic to civilian rule. Yet, as long as the military accepts its role as “defender of democracy” as opposed to blind obedience to authoritarian rule, military “protection” of civilian rule may be the glue that holds opposing factions together.

+++

The problem with entrusting young people to properly use the political process to control the direction countries take is this: their youth. I know, I argued in favor of “cleansing” both houses of Congress through the injection of youth. I did not say, though, I favor giving over absolute control to young members of Congress.  Youth, by its very nature, prevents the young from having experiences they might have as they age. Those experiences can help shape one’s thought processes and one’s understanding of the world around them. Wisdom, in other words. Some members of Congress, with sufficient age-based “power” to facilitate or to suppress legislative initiatives must remain, if for no other reason to serve as tethers and to rein-in the power and potentially catastrophically consequences of youthful exuberance.  I am arguing both for and against myself; I know that. Perhaps there is not solution but to place one’s blind, but watchful, trust in the young—being ready at a moment’s notice to exercise the power of age and experience to protect civilization from the bumbling mistakes of youth.

Ultimately, of course, it’s not age that dictates the success or failure of political engagement. It is intelligence and wisdom. When we vote to put people in the House of Representatives or the Senate, we ought not to spend so much time trying to ensure that we are voting for people who mirror our philosophies and our intelligence. We should focus, almost exclusively, on voting for people who are more intelligent than we are. And we should vote for people whose philosophies align with our fundamental humanitarian principles; not necessarily people whose votes always will correspond to the way we would vote.

+++

The town of San Miguel Totolapan in the Mexican state of Guerrero suffered a massive attack on Wednesday afternoon. The mayor of the town and 17 others were killed; at least three others were injured in the attack, which has been attributed to Los Tequileros, a criminal gang. Though a motive for the attack has not been suggested in public media reports, the history of drug gang violence suggests that the attack was designed to frighten the remaining (and future) local politicians into compliance with demands for protection for the gang’s drug runners.

I think criminal gangs may have more in common with the military that we would like to think. They seem to operate on a rigid chain of command structure that requires absolute loyalty to the leader of the gang and willing adherence to the commands issued by leaders at every level of the gang’s organization. I have no solutions; only subjective opinions and observations.

+++

There’s so much more on my mind this morning, but transcribing my thoughts and laying them out here for the world to see might cause more trouble than my thoughts are worth. So I will leave them to fester inside my head.

I grew up in reasonably close proximity to farm fields, but I never got close enough to learn anything of consequence about them. I recall—but only vaguely—when the stubble remaining in the fields was set ablaze after harvest. Heavy smoke poured from the fire-line. The dry organic fuel was at ground level and limited in volume, so even when the smoldering embers of parched brush burst into flames, the fire was short-lived and never high enough to ignite the surrounding vegetation.

At least that’s what I believe I remember.  I may be making it up, though, so if I were a person reading this paragraph, I would take the statements of “fact” with a grain of salt. I know that’s how I’m taking the words I write. With some skepticism. Born of experience with memories that arise not from experience but from stories others tell.

These ideas emerged response to my experience of driving through thick, smoky hazes on rural highways as the recently-harvested fields were set ablaze; readying the ground for the next crop. Mile after mile of fields of corn and soybeans and cotton smoldered and burned, reducing visibility and filling the skies with smoky agricultural pollution. As I drove down those roads—roads I grew up calling Farm-to-Market roads—I questioned whether the memories I felt welling up in my head were real or artificial. No, I decided, many of them must have been artificial. My memories of rural south Texas could not be quite as vivid as those I was experiencing.

The realization that at least some of my memories were “planted” in my head—inadvertently, I assume—causes me to question whether other memories were planted, as well. Perhaps my entire life, at least the snippets about it I think I recall, could have been programmed into my memory. The person I believe to be me might have been created in someone else’s head. In fact, the thoughts I’m thinking right now could have been slipped into my consciousness on a bio-magnetic card; a cross between a silicon chip and a self-replicating virus that configures tiny pathways in the hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdala. No? Well, it is within the realm of possibility, is it not? Hasn’t science successfully blurred the lines between fact and fantasy enough in days past to convince us that hybrid biomechanical forms are not only possible, but inevitable? Might a deep dive into my genealogy reveal both human royalty and sweet corn-soy hybrids among my ancestors?

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

~ Salvador Dali ~

Science fiction is a genre of stunning possibilities. I think scientific breakthroughs follow on the heels of explosive literary creativity (or, at least, creatively-told stories). Stories provide the fuel for scientific exploration; without dreams, in the form of science fiction, humankind might not have evolved into the troublesome clot of mistakes we have become.

+++

Several years ago, I read Celeste Ng’s debut novel, Everything I Never Told You. I remember only microscopic bits and pieces of the novel, but I do recall how extremely impressed I was with Ng’s writing. This morning, I read a short review of Ng’s latest book, Our Missing Hearts. And I skimmed a review/synopsis of another of her books, the New York Times bestseller, Little Fires Everywhere. Based on my miniscule history of reading Ng’s work, coupled with my limited exposure to “selling words” relating to her other books, I know now I want to read more of her writing. But I’d rather “have read” her work than go through the process of actually reading it. One day, that possibility will come to pass. If I live long enough, I one day will be able to select literary experiences from an enormous menu of choices. After paying the requisite fee for what I’ll call “intellectual absorption,” the full text of literary works (along with the imagined experiences that text triggers) will flood into my brain. In a matter of microseconds, I will have “read” the literary work. Moreover, I will feel like I actually experienced the story. This artificially-created experience will feel just as real as any true experience I have ever had. But this experience will take place only at brain level; physically, otherwise, I will not have experienced the story. Yet my recollection of the experience will be just as vivid, just as real, as any experience I have ever had.

This just barely touches on what will be available to me in the time to come. I will be able to craft experiences based on a combination of actual interactions and pure fantasies. For example, I could retrieve from my memory innocuous snippets of an interaction with someone I find intriguing but who I know only in passing. That snippet could, thanks to the amazing power of “intellectual absorption,” morph into thorough engagement with the person. On my end of the interaction, I would experience deep involvement with the person. But that interaction would not cross over into that person’s experiences. Except that it COULD! Because my transformation could lead to actual interactions, which would of course change that person’s experiences. And those experiences would involve me. So, my selection of an innocuous snippet of an interaction could evolve from an imaginary exchange into an experience that could be recorded as audio and video reality.

There’s more. Much more. But I cannot write about it because to do so would cross the line between reality and fantasy. I would risk entering a level of  “intellectual absorption” from which it might be impossible to return. And then where would we be? Exactly.

+++

More coffee. That is what I crave. Among other things.

Which is stronger: an oak tree or a single reed of bamboo? I suppose the question requires amplification; and explanation of qualifiers, if any. Amplification of matters such as both absolute and relative ages of the oak and bamboo. And revelation about the strength x weight relationships. And a host of other factors. Yet the question did not interject those elements of analysis. The question was simple. Which is stronger. A simple question. Yet one that cannot be answered in simple terms without introducing massive complexity to the question, first. There are no simple questions. And no simple answers.

+++

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

Khalil Gibran

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This morning’s news triggered a memory from my childhood. News about Hurricane Orelene hitting Mexico’s Pacific coast southeast of Mazatlán brought back a recollection involving my childhood friend, Steve Scaff. At least once, and perhaps several times, Steve and his family vacationed in Mazatlán, where Steve’s addiction to surfing really took hold. Apparently, surfing along the Texas coast off of Padre Island or Mustang Island was barely “okay.” Surfing in the Pacific off of Mazatlán was superior in every way. According to Steve. I’ve never been to Mazatlán. And I haven’t seen Steve in more than fifty years. Only once during that long absence have I spoken to him; by phone, ten or fifteen years years ago, when I learned that striking up a phone conversation after so very long emphasized the impermanence of childhood friendship. But I remember Steve’s tales of surfing at Mazatlán.

Hmm. Childhood vacations. I have no recollection of vacations as a child. If my family took vacations, they did so after I was born. Or else my memory of those times has been erased. I suspect there were no vacations after I was born. The sixth of six kids has no legitimate expectation that his family will take a vacation; all the money that would have paid for a vacation went, instead, to buy groceries to feed those ravenous little mouths.

+++

Once again, Americans should prepare for significantly rising gas prices. OPEC, meeting today, is expected to cut production. I imagine the meeting might already have taken place, considering time zones. If that happens, it suggests to me that OPEC ministers would rather deal with U.S. Republican politicians than with Democrats. Taking actions that would have the effect of raising gas prices a few weeks before the mid-term elections would, if those cuts materialize, be the next closest thing to proof that OPEC ministers are doing what they can to impact the elections. Rising gas prices hurt Democrats (since they are “in power”). I don’t like it. So I plan to will a different OPEC outcome. If OPEC does not dramatically cut production, you can thank me and my application of psychic pressure.

+++

I have more words to spill, but not enough motive to spill them. So I will stop for the moment and crawl into the day.

News of the ongoing aftermath of Hurricane Ian is troubling. So is news of the worsening drought that threatens to do immense—and possibly catastrophic—damage to agricultural concerns in the western U.S. and to potable water supplies throughout the west, southwest, and scattered other parts of this country. Looking ahead to the coming months and the inevitable calamities brought on by frigid winter storms, I wonder whether humankind might finally begin to understand, too late, the fragility of our planet. I doubt it. Only when circumstances are so inarguably grim that the collapse of civilization is hours away will we collectively recoil in horror at what we have done to our home. It will be too late then, too, but by then the certainty of our fate will be undeniable. Today, too many of us still cannot quite grasp the reality of what we have done and are doing. Testing of nuclear-capable-missiles by North Korea and saber-rattling by Vladimir Putin dozens of military threats and counter-threats should give us sufficient warning of the potential that we are on the verge of irreversible cataclysmic erasure. But we’ve grown used to such stuff. We have recovered from all the previous instances in which we were micro-seconds away from annihilation; we seem to believe we can rely on history to announce our salvation from another near-miss. One day, maybe today, we will be shocked to watch as  extinction plays out in real-time before us. On that day, a few people will have fleeting thoughts about the effects on the planet of human extinction; the rest will stare in selfish horror at the utter carnage leading to the elimination of their tiny part of the universe.

But it may not play out that way. It may be a much slower, more agonizing experience. Starvation. Dehydration. Over-exposure to “the elements.” Who knows? And I’ll admit that we may have another one or two…or several…lucky breaks, permitting us to escape the certainty of human annihilation again. Briefly. Yet one day will be the very last day that the plague of locusts in human form decimate this miniscule dot in an incomprehensibly large and ever-expanding universe.

And a cheerful good day to you!

+++

Watching Fox News is always an upsetting experience, but on occasion I do it anyway because I want to know what right-wingnuts are saying and hearing. Rarely, I encounter something I think I should have heard or seen on reliably nonpartisan media but did not. That was the case this morning when I watched a segment in which a deeply-biased Fox reporter feigned shock when she played a video clip of Biden scanning the audience and calling for a dead Congressional Representative. Rep. Jackie Walorski died in a car wreck last month, yet on Wednesday President Biden wondered aloud where she was as he spoke at a White House conference on hunger. Some people say he might have been referring to a different Jackie, but after reading and watching other conservative media “gotcha” pieces, I am convinced Biden simply had a senior moment. And I’m convinced left-wing and reliably partisan media deliberately opted not to make mention of the incident. Because they, too, are biased. Just in the other direction. I would rather not have seen Biden’s faux pas, but I’m of the opinion that it’s better to acknowledge it than to deny or try to excuse it. There’s no legitimate counter to the Fox News absurd contention that Biden’s gaffe is evidence of dementia. Actually, it may not be absurd. Regardless, trying to downplay it by not reporting it is, in my view, the kind of mistake that fuels right-wingers’ claims that the mainstream media is under the thumb of liberals and, therefore, is not to be trusted. That’s the sort of thing that helps right-wing media boost its approval ratings, even in the face of blatant lies; because right-wing media can use such failures by other media to solidify the right’s claims about medial bias.

+++

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

~ George Eliot ~

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Most of what is on my mind right now is personal. Not political, social, environmental, etc. The issues and topics swirling around in my head are, by and large, purely personal and quite possibly imaginary. But I am not going to post my thoughts about those matters; not here. I have done that too much in days past. I think my tendency to unload my thoughts on these pages has misled some readers into thinking I may be perpetually depressed or constantly in the throes of troubling matters that have the potential of pushing me into the abyss. My apologies if I’ve overstated things. It may be a simple matter of my tendency toward drama. I may over-emphasize emotionally difficult experiences or, more likely, I may overreact to experiences I do not “report on” that trigger emotions that may seem related to unrelated matters.  This could get extremely convoluted and complex, so I’ll just stop here. Bottom line is  that I’m not planning to step in front of a bus in the immediate future. If that changes, I’ll try to announce it here first.

+++

The day has long since exposed itself as a carrier of light. I will use the light to illuminate my part of the day.

Long for me as I for you, forgetting, what will be inevitable, the long black aftermath of pain.

~ Malcolm Lowry ~

+++

The demons remain. Perhaps they always will. There is considerable literature out in the world that counsels people to forgive themselves for whatever “sins” they think they have committed. Absent that self-forgiveness, the self-help gurus assert, one can never be truly happy with oneself. But what if true happiness is undeserved because the sins we committed are too grave to be subject to self-forgiveness?  How do we know? If we permit ourselves forgiveness, despite believing forgiveness is undeserved, will true happiness follow? Or will that ill-gained peace of mind one day dissolve into a rank, sticky muck, leaving us with what amounts to eternal damnation for as long as we live? These are rhetorical questions that will never yield satisfactory answers in response because there are no answers; certainly no satisfactory answers. But if I could take a pill that would deliver permanent answers and self-forgiveness, I would take it.

+++

Imagine a single moment—a second or ten seconds, no more than a minute—when every human on Earth is honest. During that brief instance, no lies would cross the lips of any human on the planet. No corrupt deals would be sealed. No cheating. No screaming in anger at another person; because anger erupts, either directly or indirectly, from some form of dishonesty. Just a tiny snippet of time in which decency prevailed. And decency would prevail during that moment because a moment in which everyone is honest about everything cause decency to spreads like a wildfire fueled by gasoline sprayed from high-power nozzles.

Hell, it’s hard to imagine this scenario because it’s such on obviously unreachable, utterly impossible fantasy.  It’s a fairytale told by a skeptic who is in no mood to tell fairytales. So the story flexes and bends and crawls under a few poorly-lit bridges until it comes to a squadron of beavers busily building a brightly-lit bridge over Río Decencia. And that’s where the story falls to pieces. There is no Río Decencia. It’s a lie, told by un engañador profesional. A professional deceiver. A liar by trade. The squadron of beavers will not permit the spread of such deceitful, hateful, decidedly unhelpful stories. Those are the kinds of stories that could cause the beavers’ bridges to weaken during the rainy season, subjecting them to hydraulic forces so massive that even the best beaver bridge could not hold back the flood. So, the beavers un-tell the story, alphabetical character by alphabetical character. Words dissolve into piles of letters. Sentences collapse into chaotic strings of what once were words but, now, are nothing more than collections of symbols representing noises. Paragraphs disintegrate, the fictional stream that fills the non-existent channel of Río Decencia full of the shredded dreams and visions of  imaginary beings.

It’s all vapor. Or vapour, if you prefer. It depends, I suppose, on your passion for things Canadian. Or British. Or related items. But the emptiness of what could have been a package unrelentingly stuffed with  deep meaning lingers beyond it natural dissipation. That emptiness withstands the passage of time and the dissolution of meaning; when everything becomes pointless. When the continuing existence of the planet no longer matters. In the least. A dystopian forecast, to be sure. There’s quite a measure of certainty hidden under that unlikely optimism. Facetious; that’s the word you’re looking for.

+++

The world inside my head, sometimes, is more livable than the one I see outside myself. That world can be unpleasant and unforgiving. That world can lack empathy or compassion or common decency. It can be brutal and unmoved by the pain sprawled in and around it. But, protected inside my skull, after I shut my eyes and ears and disable the interpretive engine that forces me to contend with the external world, I can live out moments, at least, in peace so gentle and soothing they make me forget the ugliness on the other side of my eyelids, the hideousness staring back at me from the computer screen. Or is that the mirror?

+++

The hypocrisy of some of the followers of religions is beyond difficult to believe. It is astounding. How a person can assert his or her devotion to God or Allah or whoever/ whatever while simultaneously engaging in behavior that is so utterly at odds with the teaching of the religion? I suppose it’s easy; as easy as lying about anything or excusing anything or otherwise defending anything that crosses the line between moral and immoral. And, of course, the simplicity of crossing that line becomes even less difficult when one can move the line at will, defining what is moral (or immoral) as whatever serves one’s purposes at the moment.

One need not claim devotion to a religion or a deity (or a collection of deities) to be hypocritical. One need not assert a belief system of any kind. If one lives in a society—which is tantamount to accepting the rules for living in that society—and breaks that society’s rules, one is a hypocrite. And, therefore, one cannot be trusted; not just in areas of life with which the infraction is involved, but in all aspects of one’s life. One is not “somewhat hypocritical.” One either is or is not a hypocrite. And who among us is not. If that is the case, though, how do we judge a person? Judgement must rely on some measure or degree of “badness.” So, then, is hypocrisy measured on a scale of “not hypocritical in the least” to “hypocritical at all times in every facet of life?” I don’t know. But I suspect hypocrisy is measured on a scale of severity, coupled with a mitigating scale of some more positive trait: Philanthropy. Generosity. Compassion. Though how those are compatible, to any degree, with Hypocrisy, I do not quite understand. I suppose it’s just more evidence (if any more were necessary) of the complexity of humanity or humankind. Or both. Because, who can satisfactorily define the difference between the two? Or their precise similarities?

+++

There’s always at least a fragment of me that wants to stay where I am. It’s the piece of me that demands consistency and familiarity with my surroundings. Most of the time, it’s a fairly big piece of me. But when it shrinks to the point of being almost microscopic, I grow restless and impatient and ready to explore. And that can be a difficult position. Because few of us can just drop everything and examine new possibilities. New places, new roles to play, new opportunities. New risks. Yet when I feel the wind at my back, pushing me toward the door, I have to put my foot down and refuse to move. Because it’s not the place I want to leave. I want to leave myself behind, but that cannot happen because no matter where you go, you carry  yourself with you. And even if you rebuild yourself from the ground up, you’re still there; just a new look make from the same parts.

+++

Off I go to face the day, regardless of the weather.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

~ Hermann Hesse ~

As I walked into my study this morning, I detected the lingering scent of patchouli incense—evidence of my efforts, yesterday and many days before, to return to a time and place I never experienced. The closest I came to immersion in such a place at that long-gone time must have been in my last year or two of high school or my early college years, when I returned home to spend time with friends who were a few years older than I. And there was once, during a seasonal break from college, when I worked during the summer in San Antonio, that I drove back to Austin. A friend there introduced me to the bong and the effects of its illegal contents. It was a one-time experience, as I had to drive back to San Antonio and I think he moved on to school in Chicago. I suspect patchouli was the aroma of choice when he and his girlfriend, who had a child in Chicago, filled their apartment with odors reminiscent of a hippie head shop.

Patchouli has a somewhat conflicted past. It is an aroma either loved or loathed, it seems, with little room for olfactory concession The smell of patchouli has long been associated with hippie head shops, though it finds its way into high society from time to time. An online article promoting an August, 2019 evening seminar entitled Smell & Tell: The Aromatic Allure of Patchouli offered by the Ann Arbor District Library says this about patchouli: “Patchouli is not all hippie stank. Jackie O’s signature fragrance was patchouli. Aristotle Onassis gave her a bottle of Lovely Patchouli 55 by Krigler on the same day he put a 40-karat diamond engagement ring on her finger, and it became her signature fragrance.” For me, the allure of patchouli is neither its association with head shops nor Jacki O’s attachment to the smell; it is an odd combination of how the scent is suggestive of both the two distinct social strata, refined in my youth to fit my personal illusions and delusions and flights of fancy.

At any rate, I sensed the scent of patchouli as I neared my study. That hint of odor was enough to prompt me to light another cone of the stuff, turning my little study into a den of memory-laden fantasy. So, here I am, pretending to be younger. Pretending that I have my whole life ahead of me. Pretending that I live in a time and place that never were, nor ever will be. Often, that is what writing is about for me. It’s like reading a good book, but instead of the author taking me to places and times I find exciting or intriguing or chilling, it’s my own imagination doing the work. And it can be more realistic than translating someone else’s words into visions that fit nicely into one’s brain. I suspect no reader has ever had the same experience in reading the words of a novelist or short-story writer as that writer had when writing those words. “Suspect” is a weak, wishy-washy word; if I were writing this (and I am), I would replace “suspect” with “seriously doubt, almost to the point of certainty.”  There. That more closely represents my thoughts on the matter.

We do not remember days, we remember moments.

~ Cesare Pavese ~

Until this morning, though, I had never associated Jackie O with the scent of patchouli. I wonder what Lovely Patchouli 55 by Krigler  smells like? I doubt I’ll ever know, given that I’ve never been seduced by a woman wearing the stuff and it’s bloody unlikely I will pay the $455 for a 50 ml (about 1.7 ounces) bottle, offered online by Krigler. I suspect the aroma of my massive supplies of patchouli incense (I bought a box of four 10-cone packs for $9.90) is close enough that I just could not justify the additional $445.10. Although, the descriptive language, on the Krigler website, used in an attempt to describe the scent and the allure of the stuff is powerful: “Magnetically stimulating with an artistic embellishment of bewitching patchouli rising above a strong amber base. Offering the provocative warmth of leather and bergamot.” Until moments ago, I did not recognize the word ‘bergamot.’ Mother Google explained to me that bergamot is also known as citrus bergamia, or bergamot organge. It’s a citrusy smell. Hmmm. I do not detect a distinct citrusy smell in my patchouli; perhaps it’s because of my perpetually stuffy nose.

+++

It took me 742 words to describe my experience entering my study this morning. I sense my verbosity is being fed with an unrestricted menu of letters, syllables, words, sentences, and paragraphs. Obviously, I need to go on a diet; no more than fifteen words per sentence, a maximum of three sentences per paragraph, and no more than one hundred words per topic. I would commit to following that dietary advice, except that I’d probably die of digestive asphyxiation (also known, more commonly, as starvation). So, what’s the point of trying? Absurd. Just give it up, John. Get used to the idea that you’re trying to emulate writers who can produced thousand-word sentences and million-word epics. Hah! I do not even proofread my blog posts (quite evident, I’m sure, to anyone who reads this drivel). C’est la vie.

+++

A stadium with a capacity of 38,000, for which 42,000 tickets were sold. The current death toll from Indonesia’s Kanjuruhan Stadium tragedy earlier today stands at 131, dwarfing the Hillsoborough disaster in England in 1989, when 92 Liverpool spectactors were crushed to death. The Hillsborough tragedy was one of the triggers for what was then called the Crowd Management Seminar (by what is now the International Association of Venue Managers). Several years later, when I successfully promoted the idea of a magazine called Crowd Management, the Hillsborough tragedy—along with deaths and injuries at rock concerts, sporting events, etc.—served as justification for the publication. Unfortunately, the board of the association refused to let the magazine continue after one year because it did not meet the board’s financial expectations. That still rankles me. Ach! It’s hard to believe 131 people can die as a result of sports-fueled madness. But it happened. And it continues to happen over time because people allow their fervor over sports to take over their human decency.

+++

Stories inside my head are bubbling and brewing and they are aching to escape the confines of my skull. But my fingers and my attention span are refusing to accommodate them, instead suggesting brief blurbs about what’s on my mind at any given moment. That is intolerable. I must give myself an ultimatum; either perform or keep away from the keyboard.

+++

Faint sounds in the distance. Whispers? Dogs barking? Animals rustling through the underbrush? Birds shuffling through leaves of the trees, far enough above me to be invisible? If I devote my attention to sounds too distant or indistinct to hear clearly, my mind clears of the troubling and mundane, focusing instead on the occasional beauty of noise.

~ John Swinburn ~

Eight years ago yesterday, I wrote the sentences above. I posted that paragraph, without explanation, in my blog. Here.

Eight years later, I recall writing the post. I recall my frame of mind. I remember how I was able to find peace, albeit briefly, by focusing on sounds; unintelligible noise. Maybe that is what I need, now. Perhaps I should find a place where I can listen, intently, to noise too distant and too indistinct to be meaningful. With just enough volume to drown out the world, but not enough to do permanent damage to my ears or my psyche. Eight years ago, I think there was something mystical about the thoughts behind that post. Today, I think the mystery has been worn away by experience; today, mystery has been replaced by practicality. It amounts to preserving one’s sanity by filtering out the “bad,” deliberate, angry noise and replacing it with comforting, instinctive, joyous noise.

+++

Memories: sharp or blunt. Heavy or weightless. Dark or brightly lit. Merciful or vindictive. Yes, vindictive. Those are the sharp, heavy, dark memories with sufficient emotional weaponry to do massive damage to one’s mental well-being; and they have the motives to carry out the carnage. There must be a name for those memories. Psychologists must have identified them and named them. But I have neither the patience nor the toughness of spirit necessary to look for the name and its genesis. So I’ll just satisfy myself with the belief that I am not sitting alone in the universe; alone with unnamed vindictive memories that want to tear me apart.

The ferocity of memories has no relationship to the “size” of the memory. An instance as fleeting as a sideways glance can produce a much larger than life recollection, a memory that seems to find nourishment in simply “showing up.” These malignant memories grow more and more intent on filling one’s head until, one day, they accomplish with a flash of insignificant memory what should require a year’s worth of experience. And the context of memory—whether memorable or not—has no bearing on its power.

The thing is, vindictive memories only come when they are deserved. Other damaging memories can simply stumble through the wrong door. Vindictive memories are stalkers. They watch every door and every window, choosing the weakest and least visible to the outside world as the point of entry. They pry open windows and pick the locks in doors. Once they are inside and the point of entry has been sealed, getting them to leave may require removal of the host.

+++

This morning, I clicked on the link to FoxNews, as I do from time to time to keep up with the right-wing fringe. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was quoted as warning potential looters that “We’re a Second Amendment State,” inviting his citizens to kill people who, days after the storm has passed, may be desperate for food or water.  I am not a proponent of looting; far from it—I’m sometimes in favor of inflicting some corporal punishment on thieves— but I do not support the idea of killing people for property crimes. Or, for that matter, even suggesting the idea has legitimacy or merit.

Okay, so the FoxNews website is chock-full of pure propaganda, masquerading as news. Only an idiot would be blind to the obvious bigotry and bias demonstrated by FoxNews. I feel the same about CNN. It is so obviously biased in the other direction that it’s almost embarrassing to view the company’s website. But the people who believe CNN‘s left-slanted news are equally as idiotic. Wait, though. I feel confident some of my friends, who buy the propaganda fed through CNN’s newsfeed, are not idiots; not in the least. They are thoughtful, intelligent people. Which leads me to wonder: is it possible that my instant judgment of FoxNews viewers  is premature? Should I wait to judge them until I have a conversation with them? Yes. If I were a better person, I would insist on it. But I’ll have to work on that major personality flaw. Later. After the others. And that may take an eon or two.

+++

A while ago, I thought and wrote about the calming effects of sounds. Since then, I’ve wondered how much of an impact distance has on the effects of sounds. I’ve concluded that distance, or the illusion of distance, is crucial to the effectiveness of noise to be calming. Nearby noises, or noises that mimic nearby sounds, are irritating. Distant, indistinguishable sounds tend to be soothing. That’s just me, though. I think distance and distant sounds both can be soothing, calming, relaxing. The distance of the open road is a soothing distance. The sounds of tires rolling over pavement is a hypnotic noise.  I’ll mull on that for a while.

+++

It’s 6:23 and I’ve been up since a few minutes past 4. I’m sleepy. And tired. But I’m up for the day. Yet, maybe I’ll try to rest for a bit…

Florida needs significant emergency aid to begin recovering from Hurricane Ian. I am confident aid will come, soon, from the federal government. I wish there could be a way to ensure that DeSantis does not get credit for the assistance the feds will provide. Regardless, the assistance must be given right away. Recovery from a storm as monstrous and powerful as Ian will take a very long time and a very large infusion of financial aid. Even if DeSantis screws up and does not follow the bureaucratic process of requesting federal aid, Biden must order the aid to be deployed; he cannot allow the speed of assistance (or lack thereof) to be influenced by political grandstanding. I hate that I have to be concerned that our political leaders might be so despicable and grotesque as to play political football with people in crisis. But I am. More about DeSantis than Biden, but I am not so naïve as to think Democrats cannot be just as malevolent. I just hope both ends of the political spectrum surprise me by coming together to address a critical, common need.

+++

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

~ William Shakespeare ~

+++

I have not made a habit of watching The Daily Show; I do not have cable, so it would have been impossible lately, even if I wanted to watch it. But when I was able to watch it when Jon Stewart hosted, I liked it. And when I watched it with Trevor Noah as host, I liked it.  Trevor Noah has announced his departure, which will come at an unannounced time in what I understand is the not-too-distant future, recently. I wonder whether the show will continue and, if so, who will host?

+++

Occam’s Razor. Or Ockham’s Razor. Or Ocham’s Razor. The principle of parsimony. The law of parsimony. Whatever one calls it, it is the principle that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Translated into less abstract form: the simplest explanation of a phenomenon is that, when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions. In the vulgar vernacular, “keep it simple, stupid.” KISS. I try to adhere to the principle, but it is so easy to drift into convoluted explanations whose very complexity distracts from the phenomenon one is attempting to explain. The same is true of my writing. While there is nothing wrong with my tendency to write long, elaborate, sometimes overly involved sentences, the longer the sentence, the more likely the receiver of the information presented in that sentence will fail to fully understand the message sent and may, in fact, completely misinterpret the message. It might be best to avoid such lengthy communications when involved in a heated argument with one’s enemy, the outcome of said argument which could lead to nuclear holocaust.

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

~ Dōgen Zenji,  Zen Buddhist Teacher/Master ~

+++

I am in the mood for seafood. Fresh-caught halibut, preferably. Fish that was swimming happily until hours before it was put on a plate in front of me. And then, as I consider this, I feel guilt; responsibility for causing the death of a living creature. But, micro-seconds later, I try to dismiss the guilt by envisioning the natural order in front of me, as a lion takes down a zebra and drags the corpse of the dead animal back to the lion’s den for a family feast. At what point on the food chain does killing and consuming the remains of dead animals become morally repugnant? Or, going in the other direction, at what point does the horror of living creatures killing other living creatures become an acceptable and fascinating fact of nature? One does not assign the label “immoral” to bears catching salmon in their teeth in the rapids of a river. One does not call the eagle that swoops down to catch a mouse in its claws a murderer. Does the fact that the bear and the eagle are killing for food absolve them of “sin?” And, so, if I were to catch the halibut, it’s okay for me to arrange for its demise? And, if I were to pay a grocery store for a chicken that I will eat, is that acceptable? Or, because my mind and body are both capable of surviving without killing of animals for food, does my consumption of the chicken or the halibut validate assigning a label of “morally repugnant” to me? The morality of survival, at one end of the spectrum, versus decadence at the other end, is a complex matter. One which tends to arouse emotions much more quickly than it sparks dispassionate debate. I do not attach derogatory labels to vegetarians or vegans, but some of them tend to attach extremely derogatory labels to human omnivores. I feel a hint of bias rising up in me, so I should back away from an argument I am having with myself. This topic merits serious discussion: not for the purpose of changing my behavior or for someone else changing theirs, but for the purpose of enhancing my understanding of the world in which I live. I would like to have a conversation about this very wide-ranging topic with people who may feel passionately about it but who can discuss it without letting that passion consume the conversation, burning it to embers and then ashes. Were that to happen, the value of the conversation would be no more than smoke.

+++

The wishes and dreams that feed on the soul are relentless, obdurately ravenous beasts that will stop at nothing until their hunger is sated; when the flesh is gone and all that remains is gristle and bone.

~ John Swinburn ~

It’s late. Time to engage with the day, with the objective of extracting from it every ounce of happiness it can provide. I wish good luck, to you and to me, in the pursuit of joy, today and every day.

When I woke up this morning, my body acted as if it was supposed to repeat my experience from yesterday. Almost all of my body was sore; elbows, wrists, neck, knees, ankles, lower back, hands, shoulders, clavicles, etc., etc. I suppose “joints” might have been the better word, but “body” feels more representative of the experience. My body felt angry and oppressed, as if I had been tortured while under anesthesia and awakened to relive the experience of anguish: severe bodily torment. It’s too early to say with certainty whether the same sensations will remain with me today, but based solely on how I feel at the moment, I think it would be safe to bet that, physically, today’s pains will mimic yesterday’s. That, I must say, is a drag. A drag multiplied exponentially and increased several-fold. That confident statement notwithstanding, I hope to be compelled to issue a retraction later in the day. I should make note that these aches and pains are, with very little doubt, simply manifestations of the degradation of my increasingly old body.

In less than a month, I will be eligible to celebrate the transition from one age marker to the next. The obligatory recognition of a milestone in one’s evolution: a birthday. I wonder whether all societies observe birthdays with such…anticipation and celebration…and dread…as does ours? Do the more “primitive” tribes hidden in the African jungles or Amazonian forests treat birthdays with such reverence? I checked, though I did not attempt to explore beyond a single country (neither in Africa nor South America): Bhutan. Bhutanese tradition does not celebrate birthdays, but younger people in today’s Bhutanese society (especially in larger towns and cities) are moving toward acknowledging birthdays. According to one article I read, the Bhutanese acknowledge that everyone turn 1 year older on 1st January every year, thus celebrating their birthdays on New Year’s Day! The same article calls Bhutan the “happiest country in the world.” It goes on to say  the country’s people believe “leading a happy life is much more important than how many years you’ve been alive on this planet.”  Before I get too wrapped up in that idea, I should consider another assertion I found online: “Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays.” Yes, that is true, as well. I cannot affirm nor dispute that Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the world’s happiest people; I won’t even try. Simple association is not sufficient to impute causation. I think I remember that statement, presented as fact, from a college sociology course. But the study of sociology has changed, I think, since that time long ago. I suspect the subject of cultural differences in recognizing and celebrating birthdays was addressed in a sociology class along the way; but I do not remember that discussion. I do remember, albeit vaguely, talking in sociology classes about various age-related events, such as the “sweet sixteen” parties for girls in the U.S. and Canada (and maybe other places) and the “quinceañeras.” Other cultures/religions celebrate the attainment of specific ages. The bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah in Jewish culture celebrates the thirteenth and twelfth or thirteenth birthdays, respectively, of boys and girls. In Japan, the Coming of Age Day is commonly celebrated when a person reaches his or her twentieth birthday. If I kept looking, I probably could find dozens of other unique traditions. And only a few that do not give some sort of special recognition to birthdays in general or attainment of specific ages in particular. Not that it matters…not in the grand scheme of human evolution. So I’ll leave it at that.

We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

+++

An acquaintance of mine wrote a book a few years ago (not published and, as far as I know, not intended for publication) based on the premise (among several others) that “the elderly” maintain powerful libidos, almost equivalent to the horniness of hormone-driven teenagers, well into their nineties and beyond. Well, that’s the premise of the book from my perspective/reading; I cannot say whether the author shares that perspective with me. Regardless of the presumption, the book was well-written and entertaining (the author let me borrow a copy). And, inasmuch as it was written by an almost seventy-something woman, I suspect it was written from at least some degree of personal experience (I say that, knowing the writer and her propensity to talk freely about what would cause many other people to blush and turn away). I found it interesting that the connections in the book always were between oldsters; never did an elderly person consort with someone younger (if my memory serves…).

We must dare to think ‘unthinkable’ thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world.

~ J. William Fulbright ~

I hate the word “elderly.” It conveys physical feebleness and mental fragility. And it suggests an inability to take care of oneself. Admittedly, it is not uncommon for older people to need assistance in their day-to-day lives, but it is not universal. There should be another term to describe older people who are reasonably healthy, alert, and possessing of mental acuity. “Geezer” might be a term I would use, but I’ve heard so much negative feedback about that word that I would use it only in the presence of people who are progressive, fun-loving, and non-judgmental. I could come up with dozens of neologisms in response to the need for an appropriate word. Maybe. Or not.

+++

The day is doing its best to get away from me. I will not let it. I will grab it by the ****s and force it to comply with my wishes. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll sit down and work out an acceptable compromise.

Today, my mother’s birthday, I will think about a flower—a yellow rose—that was her favorite. And I will try to remember some of the cherished moments I spent with her before she died thirty-six years ago. Recollections of time spent with loved ones before death took them cannot, in my experience, be limited to memories of that one person who triggered them. One’s mind does not permit memories to be limited exclusively to one person or one moment. The mind is like an hungry animal with an insatiable appetite; always searching through a labyrinth in pursuit of food for thought.

Memories of one person’s death spark memories of others who died. In my case, remembering my mother on her birthday causes memories of my late wife to surface. Remembering my mother does not cause a drowning flood of grief to consume me. But it causes the grief of losing my wife—less than two years ago—to emerge from deep within me. It feels just as fresh and raw and unspeakably painful as it did the day she died. The pain will subside as the day wears on; whenever the pain erupts like a volcano, I know it will ebb over the next few hours or days. But I suspect it will never disappear. It is always there, like a clump of molten rock, in my chest. If I do not devote considerable energy to keeping it from bursting into open flames, it tends to consume me and scorch the earth all around me.  I am sure I am not alone with this perpetual burning ball of memory inside me. I know people survive it every day. I feel confident I will survive it, again, as I have so many days before. And, today, I will insist that it pause for at least a moment, so I can devote some mental energy to honor my mother’s memory.

+++

GoDaddy and Jetpack each claim the problem with my accessing my blog (and subscribers being notified of new posts) rests with the other entity. After spending far too much money on getting a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate for my site, which GoDaddy assured me was the issue, Jetpack identified several additional concerns with the way GoDaddy is handling requests for Jetpack. It’s all far too involved and convoluted for my limited technical knowledge; I wish I could through senior engineers from both companies into a ring, where they would battle it out. The victor would take full responsibility and would be required to correct the problem within one hour or face stunningly horrific consequences. My praise two days ago for GoDaddy‘s responsiveness has been tempered by time and experience. That is, too often, the way of the world.

+++

I would not be surprised at news that Russia has deployed nuclear weapons in its effort to absorb and control Ukraine. Perhaps my expectations are fueled by media suggestions of Putin’s state of mind. Which, of course, must be fueled by manipulative governmental propaganda. Which serves the important purpose of helping to ensure adequate support for the regime that’s responsible for spreading the rumors.

It matters not whether Democrats or Republicans are in control; both parties are conniving, manipulative, and driven by the hunger for control. While I find the rationale the Democrats use to justify their lies and manipulative behavior far more acceptable, I do not excuse their actions. I wonder what U.S. policies would look like if the people crafting them were more committed to their constituents than to their hold on power.

+++

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.

~ William Blum ~

+++

It is the season for pumpkins and leaves changing colors. It is the season for cooler days and crisp Fall nights. It is a time to begin thinking about winter soup recipes and sitting in front of a warm fire, toasting marshmallows. I prefer Fall to Summer, but I prefer Spring to Fall. And I prefer Spring and Fall to winter. I prefer all other seasons to Summer; Summer would not be so bad if it were cooler and more suitable to comfortable outdoor pursuits. I suppose winter would be better were it a bit warmer and if it were not accompanied by ice and snow.

+++

I am glad I am not hunkered down in the Tampa Bay area, waiting on the arrival of Hurricane Ian. Hurricane and their accompanying high tides can be massively ugly. I would be willing to tolerate the heat and humidity of living on the coast if I could find a nice, isolated, very private place; just so long as I could get reliable assurances that hurricanes and storm surge would not be permitted on that part of the coast.

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You’re on my mind this morning. Yes, you are.

The housing market seems to be not nearly as robust as it was just a few months ago, at least not in areas I have been following off and on. Hot Springs Village seems to be losing a little of the crazy levels of demand it was experiencing. But in other places, the housing market seems to changing, rather than slowing. From what I’ve read, housing demand in Fayetteville, Tulsa, and various smaller but in-demand markets in Wisconsin, Michigan, and a few other places I’ve watched from time to time is changing. Buyers are looking for smaller spaces, lawns that are smaller and/or require little upkeep, and—even more than in the past—excellent location. People want to be near amenities like restaurants, grocery stores, bike trails, walking trails, theater, etc., etc. Obviously, that is not true of every location, but the “ideal” location is coming into clearer focus as the market adjusts to changes in the society in which we live.

As for me, I want access to all those delightful amenities. And I have a high preference for the availability of those amenities within walking distance. But I have an equally strong preference for privacy and, to the extent possible within the context of my other desires, isolation. The privacy and isolation I want would be best served in a location where I own a few acres or more, along with a tractor (fully outfitted with all sorts of implements), outbuildings, and where I could easily secure help from young and strong people who respond well to instruction and direction. Of course, this is pure fantasy. If I ever expected to achieve my desired lifestyle, I should have acted on my dreams years ago. But when I could have been acting on my dreams, I was tethered to a desk and to the security that desk afforded. I took risks, but the risks I took were too small and too tentative to achieve anything of consequence. I could have taken greater risks. I think my late wife would have supported me in taking them. But I was lacking in courage.

How the hell did I drift from rambling about the housing market to rambling about my timidity? I know exactly how I did it; I allowed my stream-of-consciousness to steer me down a side channel, away from the main flow. I do that a lot. I recognize it. I permit it. I suppose it allows me to daydream while still anchored to the safety of knowing I am risk-averse and acting accordingly.

I wonder why the idea of taking risks is captivating to people? Why does seeing someone taking risks seem so appealing? Why does it seem that people who take risks are attractive?  There’s something machismo about it, I suppose. But as I think about it, it makes no sense to me; why would putting oneself in either physical or emotional danger be attractive? It’s madness, really. The running of the bulls in Pamplona is idiotic; I once admired people who did it and I wanted to do it myself. Insanity! Yet I have an understanding, somewhere deep inside, of the appeal of putting oneself in danger, with the objective of accomplishing something only a few others—or no one—have done.  I think there’s a short-circuit in our wiring that permits us to seek out the possibility that we will be consumed by the heat as the circuits melt, causing strands of metal to merge into thick bands of hot, congealed copper.

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As far as I know, I had never heard of Hilaree Nelson until this morning. I learned about her while reading a news story on BBC.com. The story reported that she is missing, after apparently skiing (by accident) into a 2,000-foot crevasse only fifteen minutes after she and her climbing partner, Jim Morrison, reached the summit of Mount Manaslu in Nepal. Out of curiosity (because I had not seen any reference to the incident in any U.S. media I had skimmed earlier), I searched for other reports about her apparent disappearance. The earliest report I found was from Men’s Journal, eighteen hours ago. Most other reports were from climbing-related publications: Climbing Magazine, The Himalayan Times, Out There Colorado, Adventure Journal, etc. However, the New York Times, Seattle Times, and The Guardian also had pieces that reported her missing. My point in searching for which media outlets first reported on the matter is difficult to explain; it involves both my skepticism about U.S. media and my vague sense that mainstream media sometimes gets some of the “meat” of its material from highly-focused specialty media. Not that it matters, really. But it sort of matters to me; because I am increasingly distrustful of the integrity of corporate-owned media that seems (to me) to be distancing itself from journalistic excellence, in favor of volume. In some cases, reporting on matters that are not especially relevant to the majority of media consumers is cheaper and easier than investigative reporting on matters of vital importance and urgency. I really am sorry to learn of Ms. Nelson’s apparent demise. Yet, with the exception of the climbing-related publications, I am not sure why her disappearance into a 2,000-foot crevasse is especially newsworthy.

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I think it’s a shame that people are so quick to put you in a box; sometimes it’s as if you do one thing, and that’s all you’re allowed to do.

~ Lewis Hamilton ~

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My road trips this year have taken me more than 8,600 miles so far. And there is more to come. But, for now, I will think about breakfast and what I might eat if I were having a morning meal of sea creatures freshly-caught off the coast of Maryland. Granted, it’s an odd thought but it is just so damned appealing!

Well, the site is up…at least temporarily. Apparently, there is some kind of glitch with a “plugin” that I use to make the site easier for me to manage and for the visitor to comment, “like,” and otherwise engage with the site. For the time being, I will post short bits, at least, as I try to find out how to return the site to full functionality. I must say nice things about the GoDaddy (my site’s host) support team; my contact there this morning got the site back up and gave me access to the admin area very quickly. Now, I am communicating with Jetpack, the plugin folks, to see how I can correct the issue for the long term.

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Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

~ Dorothea Lange ~

We are debating which direction we should head next in our wandering. I’m thinking about heading down to the town where I grew up, Corpus Christi, just to take a look. But I’m curious about the Arkansas delta area. And the tamale trail in eastern Arkansas and western Mississippi is intriguing, as well. Friends have told us interesting things about places to visit in Mississippi. And I would like to spend a little more time around Fayetteville, Arkansas and environs. So many places to go and see; so much money to make the dreams reach fruition. We shall see.

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There is nothing as sweet as a comeback, when you are down and out, about to lose, and out of time.

~ Anne Lamott ~

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My desire to be productive and creative is at odds with my interest in taking a long, leisurely, uninterrupted rest. But both of them compete with my wish to simultaneously be creative and slovenly. If I could will things to be done, I would do it. Today. But my will is not as strong as my lethargy.

I am too tired to think. Too tired to write anything of consequence. Not physically tired. Just worn out, mentally. Tired of trying to understand the world I have created. Too tired to attempt to make sense of chaos. Exhausted from thrashing about in a mire created and cultivated by boors and bigots and barbarians. Certain that I am one of them. Terrified there is nothing I can do about it. Everything I have said and written is tainted by ugly reality. Nothing can be done to recover from a lifetime laced with conscious mistakes. Absolution is out of reach. Eternal grief is the penalty for who I have been and who I am. I am beyond redemption; atonement is a fantasy. I am confident neither life nor death can bring resolution to endless regret. And so I write, in the pointless pursuit of forgiveness that cannot be given by anyone but God, yet knowing there is no God to give it.

I woke several times last night and this morning, once around 2:00 a.m. when I heard an odd repetitive noise I thought was an alarm emanating from my computer. When I got up, I discovered it was a strange car alarm in the parking lot below the motel room. I heard voices coming from the parking lot, too, but could not see anyone when I peered out the window. After that, I woke at least half a dozen times. Suffice it to say I did not get a good night’s sleep. I finally got out of bed around 6.

My insomnia could have arisen from my unhappiness with the dump of a motel that SHOULD have been a nice place—a Hampton by Hilton in Frostburg, Maryland. From the moment we walked in, it was obvious that the property was old and tired, but had been given some superficial “upgrades” to make it more presentable. On the way to the room, I noticed wallpaper in a hallway barely clinging to the wall. Inside the room, we discovered the toilet tank was empty; I took the lid off the tank (revealing a nasty brown and dirty pressure tank) and succeeded in jiggling the apparatus so that water filled the tank. But, each time it flushed, the same process had to be followed to get the tank to fill. And, during the night, we discovered that the tank emptied, requiring more fussing. From there, more and more flaws became apparent. We complained. The offer to “compensate” for the problems was insulting and I told the front desk staff as much. Mi novia was more tactful. We shall see what the bill looks like this morning. But I realize, of course, such an experience is not the end of the world; so, we will chalk it up to road trip experience and move on.

Our trip from Schenectady yesterday took us through Pennsylvania and into Maryland. When we leave here today, we will wander into West Virginia and, perhaps, into Kentucky, as we make our way south and west. We may slide south into Virginia and into North Carolina. There is no plan, as yet. We’re just road-tripping. We drove more than seven hours and covered about 450 miles yesterday. We could have stopped along the way to see some interesting places, such as the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania, but I was not in the proper frame of mind to be a tourist. Nor am I at the moment, for some reason. We shall see.

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The sky outside my window is ominous, dark clouds swirling at high speed. Though it is not raining, the ground is wet from last night, when Nature wrung water from the clouds like wet sponges. I hope the wind and the clouds do not present obstacles today—but, if they do, we shall confront them and deal with them appropriately. Road trips cannot be planned around weather guarantees, for no such assurances exist. One simply must adjust appropriately to experiences as they unfold. And we shall.

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By all these lovely tokens September days are here, With summer’s best of weather And autumn’s best of cheer.

~ Helen Hunt Jackson ~

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Whatever the day offers, I will take and turn it to my benefit. There’s no point in yielding to anything but the best every day has to offer.