John Swinburn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Enough drivel for now.

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

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

~ George Eliot ~

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

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre ~

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

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

~ Euripides ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ George Santayana ~

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

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

~ George Santayana ~

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

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

George Santayana

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Eugene O’Neill ~

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

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

~ Prem Rawat ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ John Steinbeck ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Christian Bernard ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Epictetus ~

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

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

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

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

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

…kisses are a better fate than wisdom…

~ E.E. Cummings ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ John Hirsch ~

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

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

~ Dante Alighieri ~

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

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

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

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

~ John Kenneth Galbraith ~

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

The sight of a doe and her fawn was Nature’s attempt to lift my spirits this morning. Thanks, Nature, but I’m not receptive to mood-lighteners this morning. I awoke with a snarl on my lips and it remains there, as if permanently etched on my face. I’m just not in the mood to do anything even remotely positive or productive. I hope this is not the perpetual state of affairs. I can only imagine surliness turning into deeply bored surliness.

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I have come to believe making snap decisions after the age of 65 is unwise in the extreme. As we age, we need time to contemplate and consider the consequences of our decisions; unlike when, in our youth, we felt certain we would survive even deeply bad decisions. The decision to make an offer on a house, for example, should be a days-long process, not a snap judgment. Of course, certain extenuating circumstances (e.g., extremely low interest rates and a severe shortage of housing inventory, far short of demand) make impossible the need to “mull it over.” But, at least, go into even a first-viewing with a maximum price and a desired price in mind. Better yet, check into rentals. Give yourself time to scope out the area and find the most appealing places…only then, find and make an offer on the ideal home. Before that, though, move around from place to place for a while. It’s too easy to fall in love with the “idea” of a place instead of its reality; a few days observing from a tourist’s point of view, looking out the motel window, can be eye-opening. Wandering could result in a decision to rent a place in New York state, replacing the previous decision to buy and settle permanently in Mississippi.

But, back to the need for geezers to make decisions in slow-motion: even the most sophisticated among us can be tricked by the most-practiced fraudster. Yesterday, I saw a house for sale that I wanted. I would have been prepared to drive several hundred miles, today, to see it and put in an offer. It was architecturally clean, with straight lines and simplicity, quite modern it its style. And, it had a pool! The price was stunningly low, under $300K, so I had to explore. After a phone call to a Zillow agent, I learned the listing was a FSBO scam. Absent that advice, I might well have blathered into a situation in which I made down payment or put down earnest money that I could never retrieve. I was too “in love” with the house to acknowledge that the price was just too good to be true. I might have gotten there eventually, but I would have needed time. No quick decisions, geezers, unless absolutely necessary.

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Speaking of buying real estate…it remains on my mind. A small place, just three or five or ten acres, with small, comfortable living quarters. And a barn stocked with a tractor and necessary and desirable attachments to make the tractor highly productive. Haven’t I gotten over this damn fantasy?! Apparently not. From a practical point of view, I recognize the idiocy of the idea. But from an idealistic and delusional perspective, it’s absolutely doable. I’m not even 70 yet! A mini-farm would require of me enough physical labor that I would burn off excess fat and tone up long languishing muscles, both in short order. And my involvement in small-scale agriculture would place me squarely in the midst of people with whom I would have theretofore had virtually no contact. Forced integration. Forced socialization. Forced engagement. Eventually, they tell me, behaving like an extrovert high on speed becomes almost second nature.

Oh, the farm…ette. Farmette. I would have to learn a lot. Boatloads of YouTube videos. Courses at a local junior college. Speaking of courses, one I’d like to take again is general welding. That’s probably not what it was called, but that’s sort of what it was. The instructor gave us some basic instructions on using a MIG-welder, a TIG-welder, an arc-welder, a plasma cutter, and a few other tools and related pieces of equipment.  Then he turned us loose. I had a blast. But I missed a bunch of classes (they were night classes) due to travel for business. Oh, I’d take that class again in a heartbeat; and then I’d hope for anonymous gifts of welding and related equipment…what I’m after would cost tens of thousands of dollars. So would the farmette, by the way. This little fantasy of mine has a financial cost to it. Along with an emotional one. I thought I’d gotten over this, dammit!

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My life is out of control. I do not control it any longer. No one does. It is just a random sequence of random events. Occasionally, I stumble upon a random person who wishes me a good day and then disappears for the rest of time. The others pass by and wave; they, too, disappear. Everyone is gone but me. And I’m not where I can be found.

Is it “natural” for heterosexuals to seek out partners with whom they share living quarters and with whom they conceive children and live rather isolated lives within a nuclear family? Or was that practice embedded in our brains (and, ultimately, in our DNA) through the social and familial pressure created by the industrial revolution?

It seems to me the history of extended families living under one roof (or, at least, within a single compound) argues against the “natural” explanation. Put another—and less convoluted—way: Are nuclear families or extended families more “natural?” Or, perhaps, are agrarian lifestyles better-suited to extended families, while post-agrarian life is a better fit for nuclear families? Taking it a step further, is the adhesion of individuals to the extended family simply a substitute for tribal cohesion? And did that tribal cohesion wither away during the industrial revolution? Regardless, would we all not be safer, with greater cohesive depth, if we took steps to encourage people to live in either extended family units or in co-housing environments in with participants serve as substitute members for an extended family?

Our “natural” propensity to break off of larger family units into tiny clusters of couples seems short-sighted and inefficient. It would make much better sense for groups of couples who are collectively compatible to form substitute extended families and to live together, with the privacy most people crave incorporated into the living arrangements.

I mentioned heterosexual couples only because they are (usually) encouraged to pro-create and become independent operators of their own little familial empires. Homosexual couples can do the same, of course, but involving considerably more red-tape. The same questions apply; would gay couples be safer, with more cohesive depth, is they were part of an artificial extended family? In fact, wouldn’t the world be a safer, more civil place if these artificial extended families included both straight and gay people? And people of different colors? And from different cultural backgrounds? Yes, but… People tend to feel most comfortable, especially early in the life-cycle of social interactions, with other people who are “like” them: same sex, same color, same ethnicity, same sexual orientation, same background, etc. So, at some point in the transition from a society of prominently single-families living in single-family dwellings, that tendency toward “likeness” would have to be overcome. In my view, the discomfort early on would be worth the expansive understanding unlocked and unleashed from the experience. Yet convincing people to abandon the familiar for the unknown is a monumental task. And if it one for which I no longer have sufficient stamina nor passion to undertake. But there was a time when I had both. Yet I sat on my hands and wished I had done something about it, rather than acting on my interest and belief. Another lesson. Yes, I learned that one can be inclined to take action but equally capable of reining in that inclination. Talking the walk, as it were.

People mock me for promoting the concept of co-housing while, at the same time, expressing an overwhelming desire for isolation and privacy. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Private living quarters, separated by both “vacant” space and space with common uses (e.g., kitchen, gathering/game room, etc.), can be sufficiently secluded to provide privacy, while close enough (and properly designed) to ensure a sense of community. A private compound, even a small one, can be designed to provide both privacy and seclusion; public space and places in which one can be (and feel) completely alone.  Admittedly, the people with whom one might share a co-housing arrangement might be better “fits” if compatibility measures were taken beforehand. That could be arranged, I am sure.

But maybe the thing is this: perhaps each of us needs the opportunity at some time in our lives for a re-set; a chance to start over, in some form or fashion, without the baggage of our own histories to weigh us down. Maybe living with other people, and especially a group of “compatible” people, goes against our needs for individualism and independence. Perhaps we might need, at some stage, to break all the ties that bind us and go it alone. That becomes much harder to do when all those ties, twisted together, become a rope with enormous tensile strength.

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A few birds squabble over access to enough seeds to feed several flocks for three generations of the winged creatures. They are like humans: greedy, selfish, short-sighted. For some reason, the idea of sharing is anathema to these birds, these tufted-titmouse birds. The Carolina wrens and Carolina chickadees pop in occasionally when conflicts between the tufted-titbirds cause the latter beasts to launch into mid-air assaults followed by relentless retaliatory strikes. These battles, of course, leave the bird-feeder unguarded, giving the Carolina clans easy access to massive quantities of seeds.

I wonder why the feeders in front of and behind my house are so attractive to State-named birds? Why the Carolina birds? Why not Alabama warblers or Mississippi swallows or Louisiana pigeons (whether those State-named birds exist is immaterial)? I think I’ve seen some Kansas condors nearby, along with New Jersey parakeets. And, of course, you can’t walk outside without being dive-bombed by a Florida sparrow. What would those Carolina birds have been called by birdwatchers who were active in the sixteenth century? My guess is that the terms would have been from an indigenous language no longer spoken around here. Or anywhere.

The importance of bird names pales in comparison to the history of genocide, a societal behavior upon which this country was founded. And, apparently, it was acceptable at the time. Because people who “are not like us and do not speak our language” cannot be decent human beings. No, they must be subject to slaughter and subjugation in the name of all that’s holy. It’s both embarrassing and freeing to recognize and acknowledge that this “greatest country on earth” was crafted out of a combination of stolen mud and indigenous ashes. Our ancestors told a tale of bravery and adventurousness and risk, only slightly altered from the reality of cowardice, fear, and recklessness. And we bought it and continue to buy it today. But, like today, many people who did not participate in the genocide are guilt-free; except their silent complicity permanently stained them with ugly responsibility for the acts of their brethren. It’s hard to tell whether I’m referring to history or to today. Or both.

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Damn. It’s almost 9 o’clock. I have much to do and little inclination to do what must be done. I hope I’m eligible for at least one day of pure, unadulterated sloth. I feel like I need it. Though not as much as my oldest brother. He broke a foot when he slipped on mud while walking his dog. He underwent surgery yesterday, in a clinic in Ajijic, for repairs. Ach! I hope he heals quickly and completely. I’ve worn out my intellectual curiosity and its attendant ability to motivate my fingers to process my thoughts. So, I’ll stop wasting my time talking to myself here. Enough for now. Perhaps for the rest of time. Time, alone, will tell.

It’s past 6:30; I should be up and energetic by now. But I am not energetic. Far from it. I got up around 5:30. Ever since, I have felt spent; weak in body and spirit. I should go for a walk. Oh, there are dozens of things I should do. But I won’t do them. Because we all deserve an occasional day of recovery from fighting the gears of the beastly machine with which we all wrestle and to which we eventually lose. Yet even in this fugue state, I have been able to make it through taking my blood pressure; it’s not abnormally low. I have yet to breathe into the infernal machine, but I will do that before the day gets too assertive. And I will exchange my very comfortable morning clothes (t-shirt, gym shorts, and flip-flops) for the requisite uniform (button-down shirt, moderately uncomfortable “dress” shorts, and tennis shoes. Or fitness shoes. or gym shoes. Or whatever the current term is; I lose track.

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Once upon a time, I considered the possibility of becoming a wealthy tennis player. I encountered insurmountable obstacles when I learned I had no wealth. The lack of tennis skills contributed to the roadblock; I could find no way around that powerful barrier.

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If  you look carefully and with focused intent, you can watch darkness invade daylight. At the far edge of the western sky, you’ll see a tiny smudge of sunlight; right below that, you’ll see an almost imperceptible ribbon of nighttime. That’s where the invasion of darkness begins. If you keep staring at that spot, you’ll soon feel darkness settle down around your shoulders and you’ll sense that light has been sucked out of the sky.  At the same time, and without your consent, darkness brushed away fatigue and guilt and the rest of those loathsome emotions that have plagued you for so very long. You cannot decide whether you love or hate darkness for giving you at least a moment’s break from the experience. The inexplicable pain that no one, not even the doctors or the shamans can understand. Nor can you make the same determination about your relationship with daylight. You are stuck in the middle. A luminescent limbo, as it were.

What is the visual equivalent to a muffled sound? Is it a blurred vision? Sometimes, I think it’s best to ignore convention; leave the socially acceptable behaviors outside the door, alongside your shoes. Get crazy! You can do it. Go ahead; mix it up! Take language for a fanciful ride in an imaginary chariot. Say it. Go ahead and say it: “He watched the sky as  the last shredded pieces of his muffled vision were claimed by the gusty winds.” There, doesn’t that feel better? Perhaps. But it still lacks the meaning we were going for. Let’s try it again: “Out of the corner of his eye, a muffled vision appeared, but just for a moment. It seemed to be a coyote sitting in front of  a campfire. But he couldn’t see it well enough to make out the details. And the sight was so brief he wasn’t sure he actually saw what his eyes claimed they witnessed.” Of course, those are two radically different sentences, aren’t they? Well, of course And the circumstances of the situation changed radically during the intervening few seconds. There is an explanation for everything. Even the way you feel when in my presence; a slight attraction mixed with dread.

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These sentences—entire paragraphs—illustrate what I’m dealing with here. Creative madness whose purpose has long since been scraped clean by the sands of time. So, the purpose is empty; yet to be written and lived? That’s an opportunity! But it can be just as much an insurmountable barrier that blocks every avenue leading to success. Success? What the hell it that? It’s not getting out of this thing alive; none of us can do that. But if not that, what? Oh. Having enough money to pay both the mortgage and the doctor.

Enough! My fingers are no longer tied to my brain. I am typing  words spoken by several other people during incomplete conversations that could not be understood by anyone but the speakers. Have you ever listened, in awe, to a couple of people engage in utterly incoherent conversations that, to them, are perfectly complete and logical? It’s a beautiful thing.

Darkness still drenches the back deck, making it impossible to see whether there is any evidence of what made the very loud racket an hour ago. My guess is that a raccoon got caught up in one of the decorative metal accouterments hanging from the soffit. That would explain the noise. First light may tell. But I suppose the “noise” could have been an outgrowth of a dream. There’s a vague recollection rattling around in my brain that would explain the noise; if only I could remember even a snippet of the dream. But I cannot. So it’s all supposition.

Okay; I’ve returned to this segment of today’s post, after having checked the game camera; nothing. There was nothing to explain the loud banging I thought I heard on the deck. Perhaps it was my imagination, after all.

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This must be the time of broken promises. The pharmacist promised to call; no call. The contractor promised to get back to me by “Monday, at the latest.” No contact. The person who answered the company’s phone promised her boss would call me back “within 30 minutes.” No return call at, roughly, twenty hours later. It’s growing less and less reasonable to depend on promises; they are made at high speed, like cheap water glasses, and broken just as easily. The problem is the lack of consequences. The pharmacist should have lost the ability to fill the prescription. The contractor should have been taken off the list of acceptable contractors. The receptionist and her boss should have to look for new customers. But none of these consequences will flow from the impolite acts; we’re all too busy to look for alternatives, thereby increasing the likelihood that we will be the target of false promises. That may be too late, though. Our willingness to put up with lies, whether intentional lies or not, has transformed us into easy marks. We can be stepped on without ramifications to the one who treads on us like cheap carpet.

One either puts one’s foot down or places it under the massive tire as the semi-truck rolls backward.

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State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.

~ Noam Chomsky ~

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In the end, it’s all temporary. Nothing lasts for more than a a fraction of a tiny piece of a little bitty moment torn from the remains of a broken second. One hundred lifetimes is a slice of time so small it could not be measured by a fractional second hand shared by one hundred billion, billion clocks. Everything is fleeting. And everything is just as important as it is permanent; that is to say, nothing matters as much or as little as our tiny minds believe it matters. We can comprehend nothing so incredibly small nor so unendingly vast.

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My mind is too scattered this morning. I cannot keep thinking. I cannot keep writing. I can’t even start doing either. Look at what a mess I’ve made already. It would only get worse if I kept it up.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

~ Oscar Wilde ~

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Just shy of two months after surgery to remove the cancer-laden lower lobe from my right lung, I wrote the following:

Forgiveness does not excuse a person from having done wrong, nor is it a gift of redemption one gives to someone else. Forgiveness is not extended to another person for the other person’s benefit. It is a gift to oneself to achieve a measure of peace. That’s a lesson I’ve taken the better part of sixty-five years to learn. And I’m still learning it, still trying to internalize it so it becomes second  nature.

The issue of forgiveness keep popping up in my mind for reasons too involved to get into here. But no matter the context, the issue with which I find it most difficult to cope is self-forgiveness. It’s a subject that has long been on my mind; literally for many years. On the one hand, it seems self-serving and undeserved. On the other, if self-forgiveness enables one to improve the lives of others in some  small measure, then maybe it is not so self-serving. But the argument never holds; guilt and shame conspire to douse that phoenix arising from the ashes of doubt.

The sermon delivered by the UU minister this past Sunday dealt with forgiveness, though the topic was “universal salvation.” In my mind, that concept presupposes so many things I cannot bring myself to believe that I could barely wrap my head around the topic, itself. But I’m much more tolerant and far more flexible in my thinking than I was just a few years ago. It’s no long impossible for me to listen to such discussions…universal salvation, heaven, hell, etc., as if the concepts were based in verifiable reality. “What comes after…?” My answer is this: “For the one whose life has ended, nothing. It’s over. Complete. And the real finality will come, as the Jewish saying goes, ‘when one’s name is spoken for the last time.’ Yes, I’ll acknowledge uncertainty about that, but I am far more confident of that ‘fact’ than I am with the idea that there really is a unicorn.”

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I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven and unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business? From that place of meditation, I found the answer-you can finish the business yourself, from within yourself. It’s not only possible, it’s essential.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert ~

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While I “get” the idea that people don’t want to go to their graves not having done something or having done something to redeem themselves with respect to something they did, I…don’t really get it. If the end is, as I think it is, the termination of both physical life and consciousness in any and all forms, it doesn’t matter whether one has absolved themselves of the guilt and the pain. The end comes, regardless. And there are no subsequent “consequences to the actions or inactions in one’s life. When it’s over, it’s over. Except for those left behind. The magnitude of their grief and their regrets and their desire for absolution is beyond measure. The exponential expansion of negative emotions knows no boundaries. In one sense, one can view death as a powerful, life-affirming context within which we live our lives. Death keeps us on our toes. And it thrashes our state of mind repeatedly, shredding our emotional lives into tatters, pieces of which blow away in the slightest emotional storm.

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I will walk a little now.

Too many words, not enough meat. That’s my primary critique of my writing. I recognize my propensity for thinking—and writing—in long, convoluted strings. So I’ll make this post brief. Relatively speaking.

Wordy, yes, but at least consistently wordy. Or should that be persistently wordy? Or both? I use words as though I’m afraid I will one day run out of them—I want to have used as many as I possibly could before that time comes. But not necessarily words from my mouth—those are relatively rare, compared to the ones that spring from the tips of my fingers. I have much greater confidence in my fingers than confidence in my lips. I think my fingers are wired more directly to my brain, whereas the circuitry between my brain and my lips is long, convoluted, and laced with broken connections and shorts. Regardless, though, I usually enjoy writing. Even when I do not enjoy it, I feel compelled to write because writing is sometimes the only way I know to relieve stress that has been compressed almost to the point of explosive release. Not to the point at which I would be a danger to others; only to my own sanity. And so, to avoid madness to the extent I can, I write. All of which is to introduce the milestone.

Two days from now—Wednesday, August 10—will be this blog’s tenth birthday. I’m of a mind to celebrate that milestone now, a few days early. I doubt I will remember to do it on Wednesday because—unlike marriages, college graduations, and citizenship ceremonies— linguistic stamina does not merit much in the way of festivities.

When I go back and re-read the very first thing I posted on this blog, I realize how little progress I’ve made in ten years. Ten years ago, when writing about the reasons I decided to create the blog, I wrote this:

…I have a history of being a hard-nosed guy on the job, someone who frequently confused work performance for success, both personally and with respect to the people around me.  I’ve been very hard on myself for what I perceived as failures and I’ve been even harder on the people around me.  That’s true of my work life and my personal life.

Those are personality flaws…I’ve allowed to grow and have in fact nurtured along.  Those are flaws I’m finally striving to overcome and, to the extent possible, correct.

I could just as well have written that yesterday. But it occurs to me now that I was not sufficiently explicit about what “correct” meant. Did I mean “eliminate” or did I mean “conceal?” I think I meant “eliminate.” Yet I think I’ve gone about the process in a way that doesn’t remove those flaws; it only attempts to hide them behind an obscuring façade. Better than ripping off the disguise and showing the demon behind the mask, I suppose.

This post—today’s, I mean, Monday, August 8—is published post number 4,064. Another 537 unfinished drafts await either completion or erasure or, more likely, eternal limbo.

Well, I said I would make this relatively short. So, I’ll close for now and go for my morning walk, my physical effort to regain my physical and mental stamina.

The fundamental problem with human societies is and always has been rooted in one cold, hard fact. We have been unable to come to agreement on two things: what constitutes morality and how to enforce morality’s control over behavior: both individual behaviors and the collective conduct that emerge from our interactions with one another.

Put another way, we remain feral creatures whose selfishness is always greater than our sense of responsibility. We act as if behaviors that serve us, individually, are more important (and therefore completely excusable) than behaviors that serve the interests of society at large. This is not necessarily true of every individual, but its truth is sufficiently expansive that this fact exercises control over humanity’s inability to come to grips with not only living “in humanity” but its inability to behave humanely.

What is the solution? We’ve tried religion; that didn’t work. Any other ideas?

I spar with the world, but I’m generally quite happy with it. If I had absolute power and control, I might change a few things about it—poverty, war, famine, thirst, sickness, loss, physical and emotional pain, politics, corruption, disease, judgment, etc.—but on balance, it’s still a pretty good place to be. As I said, I spar with it on occasion (at least twice daily), but we rarely land blows on one another as to cause any serious or long-lasting damage. Rare, but it does happen. The world has landed those punches on me; I haven’t been as successful. At any rate, even as I recall those unpleasant punches, I appreciate the other ones, when the world strokes my hand and my heart. The world is in the form of a human being at those moments, of course. Yet while the number of hard punches is far less than the number of strokes, the punches are much heavier and harder. The scale can remain balanced only if the number of hard punches the world lands remains quite low. A single addition could catastrophically upset the balance. There is no way of knowing when or whether the world will land another blow. Nor do we know whether another outpouring of pleasant strokes of the hand and heart could possibly outweigh an additional heavy punch. Eventually, we’ll find out.

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BC. That is shorthand for “Before Covid,” that carefree time when the world was closer to its ideal than is the case today. Among the things I miss about those BC times is the impromptu Sunday lunch gatherings after the service. A small group seemed to form out of nowhere; someone would say “join us for lunch?” This small group murmured its approval; a decision about location was made on the fly, as people headed to their cars. But that was BC. Today, even as the mask veils have been lifted, at least for a time, the impromptu lunches have not returned. The congregation remains friendly, but seems to be not quite as close; not quite as open to informal gatherings, which are increasingly rare. Bear in mind, any who read this, that this is one person’s perspective. It may not be shared by another living human; so keep that in mind.

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Recently, I switched channels from Netflix and Amazon Prime to Hulu to watch the first season of a series entitled Nine Perfect Strangers (now finished…worth watching, if a little odd and somewhat slow-paced). I had watched Hulu programming before, but stopped because of the volume of commercials. Nothing has changed. I felt like I was given 7-minute snippets of the story in return for watching 5-minutes of excruciatingly bad commercials. Regardless, I made it through a season of Nine Perfect Strangers. But, then, I switched back to Netflix. It was like stepping out of a worn and rusted 1956 Studebaker Golden Hawk and into a 2022 Lincoln Navigator.  The former may be sturdier and have more value as an antique, but the latter provides instant gratification in the form of a luxurious interior.

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We have been spoiled. And we’re still being spoiled. There was a time, not so very long ago, that my options for television entertainment were ABC, CBS, or NBC. Today, my options have no bounds. If I wanted to watch a film, uninterrupted, I had to go to a movie theater; now, I simply press buttons to call up the film, then watch as much or as little as I like, at my leisure. Without interruptions. In days past, our options for dining out were severely limited, especially in terms of international foods. An article in The Atlantic reports that restaurants accounted for 25 percent of food spending in the 1950, versus 50 percent in mid-2017.  Too many options. These days, we do not even have to go to a store to buy our groceries or clothing or even an automobile. We can order them all online, from the comfort of our desks or dining room tables. On one hand, I find disgusting the level of sloth resulting from these millions of opportunities for overindulgence. On the other hand, I rely on these luxuries to such an extent that I question where I could live without them. It would be like doing without water, I think. Appalling.

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My lips form words. Your lips form words in reply. I watch your lips respond to the sounds produced by the way mine move. And I watch as you respond to the way I hold my jaw when I curl my tongue and purse my lips to form the sounds that combine to make the word “you.”  Our eyes meet during the back-and-forth vocalization, saying far more than the sounds coming from our lips. Our eyes tell unrelated stories; stories that have nothing to do with the vocalization and everything to do with all the years and years of silence that preceded it.

Before I met you, I was a different person. And you were a different person. Had we met a month earlier or a month later, the outcome could have been utterly different. We would have become different people, but not the same different people we are today. That’s what life is like. It is randomness that’s sometimes exponentially amplified by multiplying its own randomness.

The two preceding paragraphs could have been written with one person in mind or they could apply to a dozen people. Only I know which is true. Except I might fool even myself if I were to allow my mind to wander through its own thickets and find old paths that have never been used as fully as was intended when they were made. What if, the writer in me asks, I were to explore who they might have become, had the clock moved just enough to radically alter circumstances? The same writer answers, “That sounds like a good idea, but not now; at the moment, I’m in a ditch, covered by large, crack pieces of writers’ block. But as soon as I am rescued, taken to hospital, and then can leave my subsequent home at the writers’ rehabilitation center and move back into my own house, I’ll get right on it.”

Not long ago, I started walking again most mornings when temperatures and humidity levels have been low enough for outdoor jaunts to be tolerable. As relatively flat as I thought my new neighborhood was, realty has taught me otherwise. Compared to the old neighborhood in the Village, this one is flat; but compared to my old neighborhood in Dallas, walking this one can be akin to strolling through the Appalachians with a fifty-pound pack strapped to my back.  The relative paucity of truly “flat” areas notwithstanding, I am beginning to enjoy my morning walks, as short as they are. This morning’s stroll was just a tad more than one mile, a laughably short walk to most people, I am sure. To me, though, a mile represents an achievement after being so sedentary for so long. It’s not that I did not want to walk; it’s that I had no stamina and was quickly out of breath after only a relatively few steps. When I began my short walks no long ago, my stamina was as low as it has ever been, but in short order it has improved measurably. I still get winded quickly and easily, but not quite as quickly and easily as had been the case. I am determined to recover as much of my stamina as possible; I have places to go and things to do.

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Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

~ Epicurus ~

At its most fundamental, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature. The concept celebrates the appeal of the old and deeply worn as opposed to the new and untouched. It goes beyond “things,” though. It is embedded, for example, in the emotional appeal of a plain, white, mass-produced ceramic cup—an allure that outweighs the attraction of a one-of-a-kind hand-made mug adorned with brilliantly-colored glazes. One’s fascination with the plain white cup does not mean the hand-made mug is not attractive; it means only that the story behind the plain white cup, even in its mass-produced simplicity, is deeper and more powerful.

Wabi-sabi is on my mind this morning as I contemplate mi novia’s gentle mockery of my insistence on drinking my coffee out of that plain white cup. I choose my plain white Vortex brand cup, mass-produced for the hotel and hospitality industry, despite the fact that I have a collection of more than eighty colorful mugs that represent many places I have visited over the years. I could excuse my selection of the plain white cup by pointing out that the mug collection remains boxed because there’s no wall in the house sufficiently long to hang the mug rack. But that excuse would be false. No, I choose to continue using the white cup because it continues, even after so much time has passed, to take me back to a time in my life when everything was different. I was a different person then. I lived in a different house. My concerns about life were different. So, in my circumstances, the cup celebrates the appeal of another time that deeply etched itself into my psyche. There’s much more, of course; as silly as it may seem, it sometimes helps me get through memories that would otherwise be even more difficult. It represents stability in a time when everything else in life seems unstable.

Wabi-sabi. Beauty in imperfection. Profundity in nature. I suspect wabi-sabi is responsible for the attachment many people have to antiques. Or for the idea of buying and restoring an old car, the model a parent or spouse once drove. Or for holding onto and displaying one’s childhood toys. Or for repairing the broken toaster instead of buying a new one at a fraction of the cost. Or for refusing to have a monstrous old lightning-damaged oak tree cut down and hauled away. Wabi-sabi also can help explain the strong emotional attachment people have to old furniture that has lived long past its usefulness or pots and pans that look decrepit and allow food to stick. Memories are embedded in the stuff; whether they are used or not, their presence is medicinal.

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The words of wise people, when taken alone, can be truly insightful and thought-provoking. Taken in concert with the words of other people we assume were awash in wisdom, they can be both thought-provoking and unsettling; confusing and painful to attempt to understand. Take, for example, the following:

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

~ Benjamin Franklin ~

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Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

~ Albert Einstein ~

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I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death… I think… peace and tranquility will return again.

~ Anne Frank ~

It is for that reason that, as much value as I find in contemplating the words of other people, I am firmly ensconced in the belief that we must think for ourselves. We can listen and learn from others, but we cannot allow them to think for us nor to speak our minds; only we can do that.

I refuse cede my obligation to think to Rachel Maddow, no matter her level of intellect and outright brilliance. Though she and I share many social and political perspectives, I refuse to abdicate my responsibility to think for myself, allowing her to be my mouthpiece. I have perspectives both far more progressive or liberal than hers and far more conservative. Similarly, I will not permit my friends’ and acquaintances’ collective condemnation of every word spoken by Fox News hosts to take up residence in my own brain; the usual stupidity of Fox News hosts notwithstanding. Fox News anchors can occasionally have, or at least espouse, valid points. Automatically accepting the positions taken by Rachel Maddow or automatically rejecting those espoused by Sean Hannity is an unhealthy and unthinking response to propaganda, pure and simple. Such automatic acceptance is evidence that a person is either unable or unwilling to think for himself/herself. Though I personally have been guilty of such automatic acceptance, I find it contemptible and shameful. Whenever I realize I have done what I admonish others to avoid, I suffer deep embarrassment. I wish others would suffer the same when/if they realize they, too, are behaving like faithful servants instead of independent equals.

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Last night’s marathon viewing of Nine Perfect Strangers enhanced my appreciation for the series. The fact that it is on Hulu and, therefore, is laced with an enormous volume of commercials, detracts from the story, though. I understand the need for entertainment companies to earn money and I realize the economic models they follow may require change over time, but interrupting good television/film with commercials is an abomination unto me. If and when Netflix begins showing commercials in the middle of programming, I will seek another source. I would be willing to pay more just so I could avoid watching “Flo” of the Progressive Insurance (that is the advertiser, right?) television commercials grow older and less visually/intellectually appealing by the day.

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It’s damn near 8, time for a shower and a shave. But first, perhaps, some breakfast.

Once again, I awoke in the middle of the night—before 3:30. I knew immediately that I would not be able to quickly fall asleep, though I had done precisely that when I got up at 12:30 and again at 2 to pee. At 3:30, though, I was up for the duration. A few days ago, a friend shared with me an interesting article from The Atlantic about “segmented sleep,” which ostensibly was common until the Industrial Revolution interfered with humans’ “natural” sleep habits. Those natural habits, according to some historians and others intrigued by the sleep patterns of our ancestors, included sleeping in segments. During the night, people would awaken from their slumbers for a while and engage in various activities, then return to bed for their “second sleep” segment that would last until morning. The Industrial Revolution, some of these sleep aficionados claim, demanded well-rested workers who got a full night’s uninterrupted sleep. Perhaps, through my regular bouts of wee-hour insomnia, I am unwittingly attempting to return to my ancestral roots. The difference, thus far, is that I generally eschew the second segment; I’ll have to give it a shot one of these days.

In the meantime, I will continue to use the silence and solitude of the early hours as a refuge from the chaotic swirl of daily life. I will continue to read, or write, or sit in contemplative silence as I explore thoughts that border on the unthinkable; nothing murderous or otherwise violent—fantasies, instead, that belong in the heads of someone younger and less risk-averse.

In the absence of sleep, hunger sometimes creeps into my consciousness. I generally am not one to have “midnight snacks” to satisfy my cravings, but I do tend to focus on reading about and thinking about food when hunger strikes in the deepest, darkest parts of the night. This morning/night was no exception. I read about spicy fried chicken that originates in the Indian state of Kerala. More on that below.

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I lost myself trying to please everyone else. Now I’m losing everyone while I’m finding myself.

~ Buddha Daily ~

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Bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to the east, the Indian state of Kerala is situated on the far southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. I know little about India and even less about its component states. But I know that each state’s unique culinary gifts have adherents worldwide. That is certainly true of Kerala. A food blogger, writing on the TravelTriangle website, is a die-hard fan of the state’s cuisine:

“Inspired by a fusion of Malabari, French, and Arabian influences and enhanced with a touch of Kerala’s unique culture, each dish in the state is an experience in itself that will leave you asking for more!”

Although Kerala’s foods are, traditionally, vegetarian, a distinctly non-vegetarian dish is among its best known culinary secrets. One of the dishes for which Kerala is known throughout Asia (and, it seems, the world) is Kethel’s Chicken Fry, whose origin can be traced to a restaurant that, years after its founding in 1949, remains famous for its spicy fried chicken. The restaurant, oddly named Rahmaniya Hotel , has expanded from its original site to four sites in Kerala: Trivandrum, Kollam , Kochi and Calicut. Locals refer to the place as Kethel’s Fried Chicken, or KFC, but the similarities between Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and the Keralan dish end with the generic main ingredient: chicken. Kethel’s uses only spring chickens. A BBC travel writer describes the dish as follows:

Only the legs and wings, the meatiest pieces of the otherwise small bird, are taken for the fry. The rest is chopped to make a gravy. A fiery masala is hand-pounded then hand ground, and then the chicken pieces are marinated in this special spice mix and deep-fried in coconut oil on a wood-fired stove. The leftover masala is also deep-fried, and when the chicken is served, the delectable bits, called the podi, are placed on top. 

Were I younger and financially flush, I would travel to Kerala to sample its cuisine. I would be especially interested in tasting Kethel’s Chicken Fry.

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At a friend’s recommendation (the same friend who alerted me to the article that addressed the “second sleep”), we began watching Nine Perfect Strangers last night. I found it interesting, despite the fact that I kept drifting off while watching it (a response, perhaps, to my insomnia and my failure to engage in my “second sleep”). I have not yet decided whether I will really like the series or will reject it as presenting an impossible/improbable situation involving almost supernatural powers or witchcraft. But I do not yet know where it’s going, so it is too early to judge. And I was not sufficiently and consistently awake while watching it to make any reliable assessments. So, we will continue watching. I hope I will be less prone to drifting off to light sleep in the process.

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Speaking of food, as I was, I made an interesting meal last night. At least I found it interesting. I seared some small strips of chicken breast meat and then sauteed them briefly with a sauce made from onions, garlic, shallots, dry sherry, spices, and vegetable stock. I made a vegetable side dish consisting of 2-inch pieces of asparagus sauteed with olive oil, garlic, and slices of Kalamata olives and pimento-stuffed green olives. I liked both dishes, though both of them took more time than I would have liked. Despite my lifelong enjoyment of cooking, I am finding the process of preparing meals less than fulfilling, these days. I’d rather have something extremely fast and simple, as opposed to something that takes time and is more complex. Cooking just isn’t as appealing today as it has been. I do not understand quite why that it. It may be the fact that I loathe the layout of and lack of convenient storage in the kitchen. But that does not fully explain my growing disinterest in cooking. The disinterest in cooking has not expanded into a disinterest in eating; if I could, I would eat everything within range of my mouth, I think. It’s all so damn confusing and annoying. Perhaps I need to engage a chef to prepare meals several times a week? Hmm. If I were exceptionally wealthy, maybe I would…

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If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.

~ Tennessee Williams ~

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I have plenty to do this morning, but my motivation is at a low ebb. If the air and the leaves weren’t so dry, I might go outside and build a fire so I could sit and stare at the mesmerizing flames as they lick the air above them. But even that would take work; I probably wouldn’t do it even if the air and the leaves were saturated with humidity.

Hmm. I drifted off for a moment. Maybe I need more coffee. Or more sleep.

I lost the majority of what I wrote this morning. When I attempted to save what I had written, WordPress did not cooperate. Apparently, it had saved a fraction of what I had written…the parts produced below. I am annoyed, but not terribly upset. I hope I have overcome my tendency toward rage over the most mundane obstacles. But I do mourn the loss of my writing; I revealed more about what’s hidden inside my brain than I have done in very, very long time. All my revelations about secretly (or not so much) wanting to pursue a monastic life, if only for a while, are lost, as are my fantasies about traveling to New Brunswick and beyond. All that disappeared into the ether. Such is life.

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According to the Iceland Monitor, a considerable amount of seismic activity has been detected around Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula since noon Saturday, when a recent series of earthquakes began.  More than ten thousand earthquakes have been detected since then.  Laufey Fjóla Hermannsdóttir, who lives in Grindavík, Iceland told the Iceland Monitor that “All drawers and cupboards opened and food items fell to the floor. Decorative statues on shelves and photo frames also fell to the floor and broke. It was a mess.” The article that described the recent spate of earthquakes went on to address responses to, and plans for, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Though the article obviously addressed a serious situation, it did not constitute the major headline.

The biggest Icelandic news, if one judges importance by the size of headline, related to weather. Unlike the weather much of the USA has experienced during the past month, Iceland experienced an unusually cool July. The highest temperature recorded during the months was 60.62° F; the lowest maximum July temperature before this year was in 1989. In that year, Reykjavík had 77 hours of sunshine for the month, against 150 hours in July this year. Speaking of weather: the Icelandic word for weather is veður. If Google Translate is correct, that word is not pronounced the way I might have expected. It sounds a little like VEH’thickhh, to me.

About those ten thousand earthquakes… I have heard absolutely nothing about them from any domestic or global news source. I learned about them only by glancing at my English-language Icelandic news resource. Why, I wonder, does the rest of the world seem to ignore incidents involving 10,000 earthquakes? Incidentally, today’s high in Reykjavík is forecast to reach 50°F; tomorrow’s high is expected to be a scorcher, topping out at 52°F.

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It’s akin to sentimentality, but it’s not quite the same thing. Whatever it is, on occasion— usually in the wee hours (like now, at 4:25 a.m.)—those early morning moments lead to explorations of the past; and questions, like “what was on my mind all those years ago?” One of the benefits of writing a blog with some regularity is that one tends to record, almost in real time, one’s state of mind. Issues that tugged at one’s psyche, for example, or that caused one to ruminate on big, unanswerable questions that stay with us for as long as we remain curious and in awe of all existence. On occasion, looking back at the topics that were top of mind in years past reveals that those same topics remain just as vexing many years later. This morning, I read something I wrote on another of my old blogs, almost eleven years ago:

…I tend to be more than a little aloof in some circumstances. That aloofness tends to make people a little less than enthusiastic about approaching me. Another factor in “aloneness” can be attributed to my desire for private time. Though I’m by no means a loner, I enjoy people (in general) in small doses. I don’t “bond” over the most common bonding factors, either. Sports…not my thing. Politics…I’m deeply liberal on most issues, but tend to get bored talking about politics. Social consciousness…I care deeply, but I have to be in the right mood to converse about those matters.

I could have written those words ten minutes ago and they would be just as current, just as valid, as they were all those years ago. And I could have written the following, extracted from the same blog, written at roughly the same time:

Physics cannot explain all the “BIG” questions to my satisfaction. But I don’t buy the religious explanations, either.

It’s late. I have to sleep. These questions won’t get answered tonight. They won’t get answered in this lifetime.

One would think a person would tire of asking the unanswerable questions. When it becomes evident there is not—and never will be—a satisfactory answer, what’s the point of continuing to ask the question? Indeed. But so many such questions exist; we call them…some of them…rhetorical questions. Yet we ask them not to exaggerate a point or merely for effect. We really wish we had answers. We know we won’t get them, but we wish we would. Therefore, we keep asking them, perhaps in the illogical hope that one day—out of the clear blue—we will stumble upon a legitimate answer. I wonder, though, what we would do if we came upon that answer to those “BIG” questions? Would the answers disappoint us? Who knows? I don’t.