John Swinburn

Perhaps I can change my attitude on the day simply by giving myself the freedom to sleep for a few hours this morning. That might cure whatever psychological beast that troubles me. An alpaca-soft blanket that blocks out the world could do the trick.

I try, but usually fail, to avoid making self-diagnoses based on symptoms I exhibit. The latest diagnosis, the symptoms of which I have recognized for at least a year and a half, is hypersomnia. Until quite recently, I called the malady narcolepsy, but a more focused examination suggests idiopathic hypersomnia is the more appropriate label. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Because we don’t know what causes it, it’s impossible to prevent it.” I know this: sleep is—for me—extremely satisfying. I wish it were not so, but sleep has become an extremely pleasing state of existence for me. If I could sleep around the clock (excluding troublesome dreams from my experience), I think I would be quite happy with my circumstances. Once again, though, I did not sleep well last night. I tossed and turned for a substantial part of the night, failing in my efforts to sink into a deep, satisfying sleep. Damn it. I feel, right now, like I could fall instantly asleep and remain in that state of unconscious bliss for several hours. But that would trigger repercussions that would simply make me increasingly angry. Serenity is what I’m after. Pleasant serenity.

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Someone who calls himself a realist has great self-confidence—when forecasting the weather—in his ability to predict the future. I call him a gambler. What I call him, though, does not matter as much as whether his predictions are reliably correct. When his forecasts are dependably correct, I refrain from applying a label to him, opting instead to apply it to myself.

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The world looks a bit dull and grey this morning, despite light blue skies with whisps of white, hazy clouds. Bright sunlight is visible reflecting off trees in the distance, challenging my perspective on the day. If I had wanted brightness, I would have welcomed it into my visual sphere. But, against my wishes, it shine on green trees, washing away the dull light of morning and leaving a polished, refined shine where I want nothing of the sort. I have no substantive control over my view of the world.

Not many years ago, when I lived in Dallas, the first thing I did every morning was to take an extremely brisk walk—averaging between two and four miles long. When I first started my early morning walks, the distance was considerably less. As time wore on and my endurance grew, the distance increased. After I retired, four miles became my baseline. Some mornings, I demanded at least eight to ten miles from my legs and lungs. But I got lazy, opting on many mornings to shorten my walks or abandon them altogether. I knew, of course, my stamina would decline with the reduction in exercise, but I convinced myself I could recover it in short order when I decided the time was right. I did not know, though, when the time was right. Apparently, the right time was long before I decided to return to my morning habit…after moving to Hot Springs Village, where I replaced my territory of flat walking paths with slopes, inclines, and steep hills. Diagnoses of lung cancer, CPD, and other such maladies in the interim made the return to responsible exercise activities more and more difficult. Yesterday, I started a formal physical therapy regimen again. This time, its primary purposes are to add a little time and a little higher quality to my life. It won’t take long to determine whether I have the discipline and the drive to make it work. And, given what’s “doable” in light of the energy and effort necessary, I will learn whether the process is worth the effort any longer. I have returned to challenge the philosophical assertion I’ve written about so many times before: “Le jeu n’en vaut pas la chandelle.” The game is not worth the candle.

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Two very different environments compete for my desires: a bustling big city, its population and experiences and opportunities for entertainment and education colorful and diverse and; a soothingly quiet, almost empty, countryside that gives me isolation in nature and freedom from intrusive human noise. When I think hard about those competing desires, I have to acknowledge that I actually prefer circumstances that offer incremental opportunities for adjustments. I seek both ends of the spectrum, but I regularly feel the need for temporary check-points between them. Yet, if I could select only two realities, I would pick both ends. And if I had to select just one…it would be one that mimics where I spend most of my time now.  I need quiet more than I need noise…serenity and silence more than energy and excitement. I am more comfortable in nature than in crowds. But choice is important. Freedom—to the extent safe and accessible—to experience the breadth of where I am. And where I want to be.

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Another visit with the oncologist today; labs and an injection to control aspects of my blood supply important to the reasonable health of that crucial system. I have other obligations today, as well. Though I do not have any real interest in fulfilling them, keeping on top of them will make life easier and more physically and mentally comfortable.

An impartial, country-by-country, comparative scan of domestic attitudes about immigration is essentially impossible. First, even the most well-intentioned attempt at impartiality is doomed by innate biases, many of which are invisible except from the outside looking in. Second, efforts to remove biases tend not to eliminate them but, instead, to counter them by endorsing opposing points of view—accidentally or purposefully. Other obstacles to unbiased comparisons arise at every turn. Only by arguing against positions one is attempting to protect, encouraging competing respondents to do the same, then agreeing to reject both sides’ perspectives, can one hope to achieve a true “cleansing” of bias. But by that point, one’s thoughts may be so confused that they are impossible to fully grasp. Getting to that stage probably is the closest one can come to impartiality.

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I am very, very hungry and very, very sleepy. But my hunger and my fatigue can be conquered only by specific (and unexpected) foods and deep (but surprisingly brief) bouts of relaxation. Eating cold applesauce, followed by entering a two hour period of uninterrupted sleep in a dark, quiet room should do the trick. While I am sleeping, my lungs should be supplied with concentrated levels of cool (but not cold) oxygen. Levels of food, sleep, and oxygen should be subject to automatic regulation so that they always stay at levels at or close to “perfect.” I will try to achieve that magic state now, but without the apple sauce; I’ve already had enough of that to keep my stomach from complaining loudly.

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Children should be taught to self-regulate their physical and mental well-being from an early age. We begin to regulate our ability to communicate…with very little external assistance…from the moment our awareness to the external world begins. The same abilities should be fostered in every facet of our experience. Babies should be taught to fly, for example, so they can achieve proficiency by the time they reach four months of age. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. Please. That would be a disappointment of immeasurably proportions.

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The first time I was exposed to the word “transmogrify” took place when I was in college.  It was a beautiful moment. I have not had a truly legitimate excuse to use the term since then, except to prove I could misspell it in more than one way. I did that while skipping rocks.

Another Monday. It could be a beginning like any other—the start of a new month or a new year. A chance to relinquish responsibilities or accept opportunities.  An occasion to claim victory or surrender to defeat. Or circumstances to simply allow the flood of life to wash over the world and take you with it, wherever it goes. Like every moment in time, today presents more than a million ways to begin a new experience and at least twice that number to abandon old ones.  Unchosen paths correspond with missed opportunities. Missed opportunities leave us with options no longer available…giving us chances to try them later or to reflect on losses we can never recover. Viewed another way, a Monday might coincide with an offer of a gift of tangerines that, if taken, retracts an offer of grapefruit and the provision of  a glass of tangerine juice. But if the offer of tangerines is accepted, apple cider and acorns may accompany it. If you’re after acorns, you may have to accept that you will never have access to watermelons. Every day’s complexities borrow fruits and nuts from someone else’s baskets.

Should we all remain hopeful? The answer is “yes,” but with a caveat: accept death and defeat as temporary obstacles. But be realistic; if you look at our species with a completely open mind, you will find we have been bred to be selfish and dim-witted. Even when our willful stupidity gets in our way and threatens to overtake all our potential, find work-arounds. Cultivate pop-cycles; once they have matured, use their sticks to build birdhouses.

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If, after a brief period being nursed by forest creatures, I wonder whether we humans would adapt to a harsh and demanding environment? Our morals today argue vehemently against conducting the experiment, of course, but I wonder, anyway. Would we develop our own languages, untethered to the noises our ancestors have left with us to serve as modes of communications? Had we been left free to evolve, would we have adapted to life in the water…able to freely live above, in, and below the water? If the planet continues to claim more of it landmasses for the sea, will our successors have lungs and gills and a taste for reading languages now used only by whales and wolves? Who will be first to replace a human’s spine with a salmon’s? Or vice versa?

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The enormity of change wrought by one’s personal experiences are not directly comparable to transformations caused by cosmic events, but correlations exist between them. For example, witnessing a simultaneous, massive, multi-fatality, high-speed wreck involving two hundred vehicles on an interstate highway arguably would not equate to watching a collision between planets Saturn and one the size of Earth. The larger, more distant event may visually appear less spectacular…but its affects probably would far exceed the one nearer to one’s eyes. Power and distance and the relative masses of involved objects influence the way we perceive—and actually process—disruptions in our experiences. Conversely, though, smaller and temporally less intrusive events that logic argues should have less influence on our experiences can overwhelm the more enormous ones. Time, speed, and our scope of understanding of events (and their relationship to one another) collaborate to influence the way we process events around us. My appreciation of the physics of all these factors, coupled with my admittedly limited understanding of all of them, conspire to provide obstacles to my understanding of “truth.” If I could better understand life and death, I might have a more thorough grasp of how to measure their size and distance in comparison with (and in contrast to)  one another. Clearly, life—my life, at least—is too short and the speed with which I collect and absorb facts too slow to reach that understanding.

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Time infatuates me. On one hand, the limited time available to enable me to learn is frustrating. On the other, time seems to recycle itself and to repair everything we break—machinery we make, coastlines we fill with debris, and choking mixtures of petroleum and dust, ruining the air we use so unwisely. Though I condemn our abuse of the planet and all our the time we waste by destroying it, I believe the destruction we leave behind eventually will be recovered and renewed by the very Earth we despoil so wantonly. So, I am not particularly worried about what we are doing to the planet; we’re doing it to ourselves and to some extent to future generations. But the planet and its creatures…except people…will emerge stronger than we are. So what if it takes 20 million years? Why are we in such a worry—and in such a hurry—to achieve perfection? All of us, every creature of every kind, lives for a while and then dies, so we have time to repair the damage we cause and to let the planet repair what we have done to it. And to each other. Oh, I get angry about it…perpetually…but then I realize how worthless anger is. Now, if I could just hang on to that realization and let it guide me and my behavior…

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I sit here at my desk, short of breath, yet taking deep breaths of the serene but worthless rage of understanding—that pointless self-assessment that might have had an impact on me had I conducted the evaluation half a lifetime ago. I see myself as a little above average, intellectually, yet willfully stupid in almost every way. If only I had changed course ages ago, abandoning efforts to prove my intellectual wherewithal and, instead, embracing the reality that I have everything to learn.

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I wrote my most recent post on April 30. From that point, my physical condition took a steep dive. I was taken by ambulance to the Emergency Room of CHI St. Vincent Hospital on May 2, where I was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit ICU); I stayed there for several days. During the early part of that stay, mi novia received a late night call, informing her that I had gone into Ventricular Tachycardia (V-tach), a rapid heart rhythm that can lead to cardiac arrest. She was told the ER staff might need to use “paddles” on me to put my heart back in normal rhythm. Fortunately, that was not necessary.  A few days later, I was transferred out of ICU to a regular patient floor. And from there, days latter, I was transferred to another hospital’s physical therapy unit for in-patient therapy. I was released to go home from that unit on May 15. My memories of the entire hospital experience are fuzzy; some are quite unpleasant. Follow-up visits to my family practitioner, a pulmonary specialist, , home health care specialist, and my oncologist have focused on  “what’s next.” I can summarize yesterday’s visit with my oncologist with the following quotation extracted from her written post-visit report: if [he experiences] continued decline, [he says he] would consider hospice care.

I will henceforth visit my oncologist weekly, until reasons to take a definitive course of action emerge. It will be my decision, with input from others, to determine the point at which efforts to prolong my life exceed the value of enhancing its remaining quality. My experiences during these two weeks of hospitalization helped me understand the options. The choices between treatment and palliative care are complex. In my case, the time and circumstances involved in tolerability are as yet unclear. Time will tell.

This morning’s espresso seems unusually harsh and hostile and bitter, as if it harbors an especially sour attitude. Of course, the bitterness may be less attributable to the espresso than to me. One’s frame of mind often colors one’s perceptions to a greater extent than does physical experience. In other words, a  person can paint a psychological landscape more vivid and more impactful than reality. I could spend hours exploring the thought processes that led to my present state of mind, but that would necessarily involve an imperfect reconstruction of dreams…with no assurances that the investigation would bear fruit. A cursory reflection on the dreams I remember from last night reveals that I told my late sister, who was sitting beside me in a car, that I have a highly negative reaction to being tickled. And I remember being involved in a major remodel of an old office building’s lobby and a private suit of offices. In the same dream, I made a left turn against a red light while driving a fire truck and, later, barely avoided being crushed when an enormous pine tree next to me was felled by an arborist. Despite the nonsensical nature of those fragments of my dream life, something powerful and meaningful and realistic enough to impact my mood was triggered by my dreams. Maybe. But, perhaps the spark that ignited my reaction to the morning espresso had nothing whatsoever to do with my dreams. I may never know what caused the chaos in my gustatory experience that took place a while ago. That unknown “something” may remain a mystery for all time. We rarely think about all of the questions we have had that never get reasonable or reliable answers…or any answers at all. Our entire lives are riddled with such learning opportunities that we miss. And that same lifespan is filled by receiving and accepting incorrect answers to important questions, thereby forming faulty foundations upon which we build our entire lives. How interesting…that an “off-taste” from a demi-tasse cup might lead to a misguided lifetime based on fallacy.

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One more episode of The Glass Dome (Nordic noir) to go. Whether the limited series will have another season (beyond this first one) is an unanswered question. This Swedish language film was filmed, in part, at UCSD’s Geisel Library in La Jolla, California. Another example of misleading an audience that assumes it was filmed in Sweden. Why not film it in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo? I do not like the main character, a Swedish criminologist who was abducted as a child. That may have been the intent of the screen writer, the director, and the actor who played her (Léonie Vincent); if so, they did a fine job with her character. The film is at once too slow, inadequate in its explanation of the main character’s flaws, and almost riveting in its storyline. We’ve watched five of its six episodes (on Netflix).

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For some reason, humans seem to understand and accept that all of us will die, yet we cannot comprehend the possibility that, at some point, all remaining humans will die at once. That, we seem to believe/feel, is unthinkable. Yet we collectively assert that the future is not guaranteed. The competing logic of those ideas is obvious, yet I rarely (if ever) hear it discussed or read about it. Are we either hopeful pessimists or despairing optimists? Or does some other descriptor better fit the manic-depressive brainstorm in which we engage?

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Mars, Inc. has relented and will now add “alpha male” M&Ms to its assortment of candies. They’re all-white and extra bitter. They melt down when mixed with multi-colored M&Ms. They have no nuts.

~ Variation on a meme posted by an old high school acquaintance ~

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

~ Anne Frank ~

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I did not bargain for permanent hair loss, but I think that’s what I got. Not total hair loss; most of it, though. The stuff that grew back is a mix of fine, patchy white whisps combined with a thin but wiry grey fur-like substance that refuses to respond to a comb. I was banking on just a single round of chemo that caused temporary hair loss; instead, I went through several rounds of powerful, hair-depleting chemicals, followed by a new regimen that mimics that side-effect. The old-man hair, coupled with baggy skin and incorrigible wrinkles, converted me from someone who looked younger than his age to a man who appears to have celebrated two or three centennials. And I no longer have eyelashes. My beard, which seemed never to have advanced far beyond the teenager’s prepubescent stage, now grows so slowly that I shave only occasionally…more than once a quarter, but not by much. Thinner eyebrows, too. And under my arms, where once there were mats of unruly hair, there is nothing remaining but long, old-man wrinkles. The same is true of other spots where hair used to grow. When I compare photographs of me from just a few years ago to recent images, they look like snapshots of different people: one an obese man with a full head of hair and the other a scrawny, nearly-bald, shriveled geezer with evidence that his muscles have been depleted, along with his fat (but the former at a considerably faster rate). I’m not complaining (well, actually, I guess I am, but it’s more of a gripe than an angry grievance), but it gives me something to bitch about. One day, though, my “standard” hair may grow back and I may recover from my body’s attempts to murder me. The only way to find out if that will happen is to wait and see.

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Science fiction does not describe the genre of the dream. Only after thinking about it for quite a long while did a more accurate term emerge from my mental confusion: dimensional fiction. The setting for most of the experience seemed to be a vast—horizon to horizon—field of fresh, untouched snow. During the course of the dream, I discovered what I thought was a perfectly level landscape actually was gently sloped upward toward the distant horizon, where I spied a brown bear. When we—someone else was with me, I don’t know who—finally reached that remote place, we discovered the enormous snow field abruptly ended at a sheer cliff. The land below the cliff—and as far as we could see toward the horizon—was littered with tiny images of farms, villages, and roads. Our view of that scene was like the view from an airplane; our altitude above the land made the scene look small. After we came to the cliff, we followed it to the left for quite a distance until we came to two doors. A man from the valley met us there and demonstrated the way in which the door transformed him as he walked through it; he changed from a valley dweller to one of us: a snow searcher. In fact, he did not change; only his clothing changed. The other door, he explained, would make the change permanent. If a valley dweller walked through it, she permanently would become a snow searcher. If a snow searcher walked through it, he would irreversibly become a valley dweller. Those were the only two options, he explained. “We are two-dimensional,” he said. “The so-called third dimension is just a mind game.”

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We build prisons to protect us from who we might become. Or who we were. Or who we are. Even after all the years of putting people in chains or cages, we still cannot decide whether we are administering punishment or revenge. Clearly, we have given up on rehabilitation or “correction,” although we refuse to publicly admit it. Yet we blame prison administrators and guards for failing to return inmates to the streets as productive, law-abiding members of society. Responsibility for those failures, though, rests with us; with society that refuses to accept people who have spent time imprisoned for their crimes. And with employers who refuse to give people we have locked away for their crimes the opportunity to earn an honest living. When we berate employers for failing to “do their part” in helping re-adapt to society, we forget to ask ourselves whether we would employ those “criminals.” Or, if we ask, do we answer honestly or do we accept the reality that we are afraid; that the risk is too much for us to handle?

Many matters that once seemed important to me have lost their appeal. No, that is not true. They probably lost nothing—the changes took place in me. I question what happened to make their importance wane. Did the shrinking gravity I felt for matters I once deemed important coincide with personal maturation? Or was it something entirely different? Perhaps, over time, I thought more deeply about them; realizing I had elevated their value. Maybe, instead, the importance of other matters grew to such an extent that the issues I believed important diminished by comparison. If I were to offer examples, you might better understand what is on my mind. But my explanations might necessarily be so long, convoluted, and possibly awkward or uncomfortable that I choose to leave the topic; hidden behind a thick, grey, protective curtain.

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I frequently rely on The Weather Network app on my computer for a daily forecast. Today, I noticed a button beneath the forecast, labeled “Suggest an Outfit for Me.” On a whim, I pressed it. Among the recommendations:

• Top: A light, breathable short-sleeve shirt or a tank top to keep you cool.
• Bottoms: Comfortable shorts or a flowy skirt to enjoy the warm weather.

I do not believe I have ever owned a tank top. I am certain I have never owned a flowy skirt. Not that I couldn’t, of course. But I think The Weather Network must have mistaken me for someone else. Then, again, maybe the app meant for me to wear what’s commonly and crassly known as a wife-beater undershirt and a kilt. Yet, again, I have never owned those items of clothing. I may just stick to wearing a cape and alligator leggings.

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My “stomach” is making intermittent sounds like a sick cat and a clogged sink drain. Coinciding with those noises, I feel emphatic gut pains. This is not really “new,” but it’s not a continuing matter; more like a weekly reminder that my innards are responding unhappily to the presence of toxic chemicals delivered to my bloodstream. And then distributed into my abdomen for some reason. Doctors know that many chemo drugs have such side-effects. I wonder whether researchers spend any appreciable amounts of time attempting to remove the components of those drugs that cause such discomfort? (While, of course, retaining their cancer-slowing and/or cancer-killing properties.)  I feel rather bloated, too, as if large balloons in my body are about to reach the point of popping. That could ruin a person’s day. A dictatorship, though, could destroy a country’s history and ruin its citizens’ present and future.  A massive popular uprising could…well, you know.

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How much of what we are told about China and Russia is true? And how much of what we “know” about the USA is pure propaganda? I have many, many doubts about the legitimacy of virtually all sources of “news.” While some news media do their best to present facts, too many accept fundamental premises delivered by both international and domestic governments. To challenge them…especially domestic sources…is considered unpatriotic. In truth, though, I believe challenging them is an obligation.

Yesterday came on the heels of the night before, when I had trouble sleeping. During yesterday’s daylight hours, I made up for the previous night’s insomnia. I napped a number of times during the day, for several hours at a time. After watching a short mini-series on television—the title and plot I cannot remember this morning—I went to bed early. I slept most of the night, though I woke around 3 a.m.; when I considered getting up to start the day, but did not. Finally, after 6 a.m., I got up; still tired and longing for more time in the bed that imitates a perfect cocoon. The chemo from last Wednesday may finally be taking hold of my my energy—shaking it out of me and replacing it with mind-numbing anesthetics.

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What would life be like if humans were taken as pets by creatures far larger and more powerful, yet gentle and caring and appreciative of our presence and the emotional support we would provide? How would we view the world around us? How would we see ourselves? If we depended exclusively on our “masters” to provide food and water and other such needs, I suspect we might constantly worry that our “owners” could turn on us at any moment—leaving us to starve or slowly die from dehydration. We cannot know with any certainty whether our pets have such worries, but I think we should assume they do. And we should do what we can to reassure them we would never abandon our responsibilities for providing to them their basic necessities. I think dogs are the common pet animals most likely to worry about such possibilities. Cats…not so much. Cats tend to be blackmailers. Extortionists. They pretend, on occasion, to value our companionship…provided we do as they demand. But if we do not meet their expectations, they have no compunction about abandoning us and seeking to control others…others who might be more malleable and easier to control. Fish, though…I think they are like zombies, their sole demands involving food and the ability to frighten other living creatures. Rabbits are just little balls of fear…not fur, fear. They can be nice to look at, but we frighten them by our mere existence.  The same way crocodiles showing up in our kitchens after watching films set in Africa frighten us.

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Rigidly enforced rules can help ensure compliance with critical processes. But complex requirements can add laborious steps to already demanding activities. And the stipulations they impose can be so overwhelming that, in frustration, such processes are abandoned or sabotaged. The simplest solution to such circumstances—yet often the one involving the greatest investment of time—is to ensure that everyone affected by them is fully informed about the reasons for the rules and their rigid enforcement. Equally as important is to ensure widespread understanding that they were not selected from among several arbitrary options. Instead, the message should be conveyed that they were carefully chosen to accomplish vital outcomes in the least onerous ways. Simplicity, though, can seem to mimic the most intricate and convoluted. Explanations must not come across as deceptive rationales for indefensible decisions.

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I am relatively sure I will have another piece of apple pie soon, after which I will fall fast asleep in my cocoon.

Friends called yesterday afternoon and dropped by for a visit, bringing with them one of the best apple pies I have ever tasted. The pie is from a shop called Gooseberry Handmade Pies (I think…I’m not looking at the pie box right now), located in the northwest Arkansas cluster of towns around Rogers, Bentonville, etc. While the pie was extraordinary, the casual visit with friends was the highlight of the afternoon. There’s something incredibly satisfying about free-ranging conversations—while enjoying a tasty baked treat—with good friends. It’s hard to top. For some reason, the experience brings me back to memories of encounters I may never have had; as if I were living in the “old days,” times that were simpler and less stressful. It is especially enjoyable when one’s circle of close friends is small by design. I think keeping those numbers small tends to amplify the value and enjoyment of relationships.

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It is a rare musical that I find both interesting and entertaining. Musicals, as a film genre, generally leave me cold and entirely unimpressed. But Emilia Pérez, which we watched last night, was among those uncommon exceptions. Described as a “Spanish-language French musical crime film,” it is, in my opinion, an exceedingly rare musical in which the transformations between more or less realistic dialogue and dreamy dancing and singing by the stars and the large supporting cast adds to the story. My immediate reaction to the first few minutes of the film bordered on contempt, but that disapproval quickly changed to appreciation and interest. I would recommend Emilia Pérez with one caveat: if you, like me, generally avoid musicals, watch it for at least ten minutes before abandoning it. Give it a little time; it might well grow on you. Another film we recently watched did not impress me in the least. iHostage struck me as a basically pointless, unnecessary, so-called drama/crime film based on an actual situation in 2022 in which “a Dutch man storms an Apple Store in Amsterdam and demands a ransom of over $200 million in crypto.” It barely kept my interest while watching, only because I was waiting to learn something. Waiting was time lost.

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Almost three days have passed since my most recent chemotherapy treatment. The drugs used during the regimen that ended in early March started to zap all my energy, beginning by the end of the third day. I hope this new combination of drugs will not have quite such an impact. The timing of the new treatments is different. Whereas the prior treatments all were timed three weeks apart, the new ones are to be administered two weeks in a row, then skipped for a week, then renewed again for two weeks, then the cycle is repeated. Of course, I will have blood draws every week. But it seems my schedule will permit me to have appointments here in the Village, as opposed to driving into Hot Springs. Small adjustments can make significant differences in recapturing bits of time devoted to this damn disease.

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Some days, otherwise uneventful and lacking any easily identifiable stresses, inexplicably fill one’s mind with vague but powerful sadness. No matter hard one tries, the source of the melancholy remains elusive—hidden from the conscious mind. There must be something in the subconscious that sparks such an emotional black hole, but what that is is kept out of reach. Its effects, though, seem to seep through every cell in the body, dulling what in other circumstances might be happy thoughts. Instead, that something infuses the mind with a foggy mist of feelings that seem like a mix of grief, despair, and a dozen other unpleasant emotions. The subconscious mind refuses to reveal the triggers. I think that refusal may be intended as punishment for thoughts or actions for which atonement has never been made. That suggests something mysterious and even supernatural; but that’s not it. The mind is more complex than that. I think the punishment may be one’s own reaction to breaking one’s own deeply embedded personal moral code. Punishment may not be the right word; the refusal to reveal triggers simply may be an automatic reaction that we do not understand. We assign motives to actions, or reactions, we cannot comprehend.

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Sleep eluded me for too much of the night last night. Though I was tired and went to bed early, I had not been able to sleep by midnight. I finally nodded off shortly thereafter, but woke again around 1:30 a.m. and to up. Half an hour later I returned to bed; when I woke from a light sleep at 3:45, I decided to try to go to sleep again. I succeeded until 5:30 or thereabouts, when I got up for the day. I felt relatively good and moderately energetic. But now, at 7:45, I am quite tired again. I have complained for months that I was sleeping far too much; maybe I’m making up for it now.

At some point in the extremely distant past, planet Earth was entirely whole—an original fireball slowly cooling and transforming energy into mass. During the intervening millennia, though, the character of the spinning sphere changed dramatically. But we can only make educated guesses about the appearance of the surface of Earth during much of that enormous stretch of time. Today, though, we can watch the ongoing metamorphosis as it happens. Powerful storms erode river channels and seacoasts. Earthquakes and volcanoes alter the crust. Sea currents modify the temperature of the atmosphere as they squirm through all the planet’s vast oceans; which, in turn, alter both marine life habitat and climate’s impacts on surface-dwellers. The list goes on and one. If we pay close attention, we can watch it happen.

On a local and more personal scale, we can watch smaller changes take place as people around us grow old and as those we know die. And as families and friends disperse around the surface of the globe in pursuit of…something different, something better. Our personal lives change with those directly impactful and more rapid transformations. The planet itself mutates on a far greater scale, though, on an almost unimaginably long scale of time. But during the last few centuries, the pace of planetary change has increased and accelerates with each passing day. Thanks in large part to the presence of humans and their activities, many of the actions undertaken without first exploring how profound and how permanent those activities irreversibly affect the planet.

Ultimately, though, change is inevitable. Our only home planet eventually will “wear out” and every human being and all other creatures living on it will die. While those unavoidable changes may cause regret and pain, there’s nothing we can do at this stage to change the final course of cosmic evolution. Neither on a universal scale nor on a personal level.  We might be capable of prolonging lives, but not Life. We might be able to slow the dissolution of Earth, but we cannot stop it. Although thinking of those realities may cause deep sadness, once accepted a sense of peaceful acceptance replaces the sorrow.

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I sometimes wonder whether, when I write, I make assertions about “how the world works” in an attempt to inform others or to convince myself. Some of the statements I make suggest my level of certainty is somewhat higher than I present. In reality, some go far beyond “somewhat” to “massively.” So much of our collective so-called understanding of every aspect of the universe—from the tiniest, most mundane pieces to the all-encompassing parts—is based on hopeful (and possibly reasonable) interpretations of scientific data or belief in supernatural forces, no matter how utterly outlandish. But even those supposedly supernatural forces that I mock could conceivably be real. I might be the sucker; but I think not. The older I get, the more “slack” I seem to give to some people who hold fantastical beliefs and adherence to ideas that I find silly and completely implausible. It’s not their beliefs that I tolerate (but do not accept). Instead, it’s the people I both tolerate and accept. Even so, I too often find myself laughing inwardly at otherwise intelligent people embracing beliefs I believe are ridiculous. To be fair, though, people who hold steadfastly to those beliefs probably think the same about my position. We’re all free-thinkers; but both schools of thought carry the price of, possibly, being wrong.

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Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

---

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

~ George Santayana ~

I visited two different mental health counselors a few years ago, in the hope the conversations would help enable me to cope with or shed—or, at a minimum, reduce the intensity of— feelings of deep emotional turmoil. After just three or four sessions with the two of them, my level of confidence in their ability to help guide me through my mental struggles dissolved into a strong sense that I was wasting my time with them. They were nice people who wanted to be helpful, I think, but their approaches quickly seemed ineffective and inappropriate. I struggled to find reasons to believe I would ever develop a sense of trust of the first one. The second one talked about herself in an attempt to illustrate that she understood the issues I was facing; she did not. My chief reason for selecting the two of them was that they accepted Medicare clients; they were among the very small number of counselors I found that both accepted Medicare clients and could accept any more such clients. So I abandoned my search and persuaded myself I was perfectly capable of dealing with my own emotional warfare with myself. For a while, I think I was successful in hiding them from myself. But over time they periodically stepped out of their hiding places and into the open where, again, I tried to resolve them in the same ineffective ways I had tried before. These latter attempts, though, I kept (and keep) to myself. Failure invites well-meaning but unqualified would-be psychologists to offer advice that feels embarrassing and patronizing to the recipient. Perhaps I should abandon my preoccupation with finding counselors whose bills will be paid by Medicare. I ask myself whether I would stop trying to deal with cancer if I had to pay all the stunningly high…almost obscenely high…medical bills associated with the battle. That question is harder to answer than it should be; terminal cancer has little chance  of being reversed. Maybe some forms of guilt and one’s emotional reactions to them cannot be “cured,” either. Maybe guilt and emotional upheaval simply are the legitimate prices one must pay for being the person one has allowed oneself to become. The same thoughts may have a great deal of relevance to criminal justice, as well. “Commit the crime, do the time.” Yet our society is leaning further and further  to the side of favoring rehabilitation, rather than revenge. Philosophies are not jut mental exercises; they result in real responses to the physical world. If for no other reason, an intense study of one’s own philosophies merit close examination.

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My hopes, that yesterday’s chemo treatment would include steroids, were dashed. Past chemo treatments included steroids, which gave me a few days of energy after the treatments…and before the side-effects involving intensive tiredness kicked in. Not so, this go-round. The port in my chest received only re-hydrating fluid, an anti-nausea drug, and two new (to me) drugs intended to slow the growth of cancer cells. Prior cancer drugs were expected to kill cancer  cells; when I return for next week’s lab draws and infusions (a change in frequency of treatments), I’ll inquire about the reasons the “slow-the-growth” drugs are to be used, rather than some forms of “kill-the-cells” drugs. This morning, I read about a MDA patient who achieved complete remission of his Stage 4 lung cancer after surgery (which I  had), followed by a pill regimen involving “alectinib.” Though I think it’s highly likely that my oncologist has already considered that drug, it can’t hurt to ask.

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Despite my understanding that this morning’s Annual Physical lab draws require me to ingest “nil per os (NPO) or nothing by mouth” beforehand, I have been unable to exercise sufficient discipline. I’ve had a few sips of water, regardless of the implicit instructions. Had I adhered strictly to the rigid NPO expectations, I might have become weak with dehydration during  the two hours I have yet to wait for the procedure. And I plan to attend the church’s board meeting this afternoon—or, at least, to participate by Zoom—if my fatigue holds off long enough. Without water and without the steroid, I would expect a much earlier decline in energy; maybe a touch of water will postpone that decline.

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I feel rain approaching. It’s miles away for now, but I sense that it’s heading my direction. Purposeful rain driven by the winds of intention. Get out your umbrellas and your perfectly-made counterfeit passports…dozens of them.

During a fairly brief period twenty to thirty years ago…or thereabouts…residential trash compactors were much more popular than they are today. I am unaware that anyone I know uses—much less owns—a trash compactor today. But I checked. The machines are still manufactured and marketed, albeit not as aggressively as during their heyday. According to various online sources, the appeal of those kitchen appliances declined in the face of the sustained surge of recycling. Others assert their loss of popularity is due to the fact (or assertion) that the demand for the products was created artificially…and when the marketing that created the demand waned, so did the demand itself. There are other explanations for the creeping disappearance of the machines in modern kitchens. I suspect that many of the suggested reasons played a part. Personally, I do not think there was ever much of a “need” for trash compactors in the home. But that’s true of so many things scattered around our houses and our lives. “Need,” though, is seldom the justification for purchases for the home; “want” is the culprit that more frequently drives our purchase decisions. Yet we avoid recognizing the close relationship between want and greed; we tend to equate want with need. I am among the throngs of those who are guilty of using those facts to justify purchases that are otherwise indefensible. Without unnecessary spending, we’re told, the global economy would collapse into rubble and societies and cultures soon would follow. In other words, greed provides the fuel necessary to power the world’s economic engine. But is that true? Might meeting simple demand (and filling that “need”),  be enough to keep a more sustainable form of economy alive, absent such heavy reliance on “want”?

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Yesterday, one of my brothers sent me an email pointing out Joseph Priestley’s role in the Unitarian religion. That message prompted me to refresh my memory of Priestley’s several contributions to our understanding, today, of the world around us. For example, I had forgotten (if I had ever really known) that Priestley discovered oxygen (which he initially called “dephlogisticated air”). And he discovered a method of producing carbonated water. I was familiar, to a limited extent, with his role in the evolution of Unitarianism (belief in a single, unified God, versus the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Once I began searching for more details about Priestley and his contributions to philosophy, science, and religion, I found it hard to extract myself from the rabbit hole I entered. An endless series of tunnels filled with bits and pieces of information about an historical figure I has spent almost no time learning about…until then. Such a small nudge, yet enough to send me on an hours-long expedition into a subject that had been of relatively little interest in the past. Intriguing how the mind works.

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In a way similar to how the military addressed the “Indian problem” in the 19th century and Sherman’s scorched earth policy in his March to the Sea during the Civil War served his intentions, today’s powers-that-be could address the “undocumented migrant problem.” In  the 19th century, the military killed buffaloes as a means of starving native peoples into submission. That was Sherman’s plan, as well; to burn crops and destroy civilian and industrial property to force surrender. Today’s forces of evil could follow the same concept; torch the fields the migrants (and the rest of us) depend on for income and food on the table. If it worked, the migrant field-workers would flee and, unfortunately, much of this country’s population might starve. What’s one sad side-effect when such an unconscionable act could quickly achieve such a brutal, inhuman objective? Our ancestors and current administration leaders seem to share almost unthinkable depths of immorality and unadulterated depravity. I almost feel guilty for wishing the perpetrators of today’s heinous cruelty could be used…oh, never mind.

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My appointment for today’s chemo was moved from the morning to the afternoon; delivery of the necessary chemotherapy drugs has been delayed until just before noon. I hope this round of treatment will include steroids that will keep me from feeling the effects of chemo for a day or two (or more…?). My oncologist will no doubt want to hear details of my derailed treatment at M.D. Anderson; I would rather simply give her direct access to my medical records at MDA…I think I may be able to do just that. We shall see.

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There is so much on my mind this morning…I could spend days transferring all of it to the screen, but that would be a largely pointless endeavor. I would rather simply erase the more unpleasant thoughts and replace them with more appealing ideas. One day, that capability will be available to humans. If the species lasts that long. I would be happy, though, with a Cliff Notes version of the Encyclopedia of Troublesome Thoughts.

The drive between Texarkana and Houston is considerably more peaceful than the one between Dallas and Houston; at least as I remember the latter journey. Although several years have passed since I my most recent trip from Dallas to Houston, I remember it as crowded and chaotic, with occasional more serene stretches. I can only imagine the traffic on I-45 has grown even heavier and more stressful since the last time I made the trip. The road construction between Texarkana and Houston, though—Highway 59—promises a future with more cars, fewer wildflowers, less space between vehicles, and even greater speed. When the transition from what is now Highway 59 to what will be Interstate 69 is finished, drivers can expect much denser commercial activity and fewer opportunities to enjoy long stretches of relatively empty land. Progress. The untold billions spent to upgrade roads, which encourages more traffic, inspires more commercial development spread over wider and wider areas. With that growing development, the grief that accompanies human density expands along with it. The money spent on highways would be better spent on high-speed intercity transit, significantly upgraded intra-urban transportation systems, and encouraging greater population density in cities (thereby reducing urban sprawl).  That’s my opinion, of course. And I think it’s the right opinion to hold! There have been many times over the years—beginning when I was taking college sociology classes and continuing ever since—that I have wished I had pursued a career in regional planning. (If I had pursued all my career interests, I would still be in school, going for my umpteenth advanced degree.) If only…I could have made a difference, perhaps.

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My little cup of espresso is empty for the second time this morning. Time flew by after I woke just before 4:00 a.m. (but quickly went back to sleep). More than two hours later…nearly three… I finally got out of bed to feed the howling cat whose bowl was empty. Against my better judgment and against promises I made to my self, I then scanned the news. That mistake dimmed the brilliance of the bright blue sky outside my windows. After silently bemoaning unchecked population growth and its concomitant density, I recorded my thoughts on the matter. And then I looked at the sky again. I decided I would not let my depressed view of the world get in the way of my enjoyment of the almost hidden brilliant blue sky and the fresh, bright green of the leaves that nearly fill my line of sight, but allow enough of the sky through to boost my mood. Yes, that’s an overly-long sentence. So is a sentence of nine lifetimes without parole. But that comparison is nonsensical, isn’t it?

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Tomorrow, I will start a new chemo regimen with two drugs meant to slow the growth of cancer cells. Earlier drugs were intended to kill such cells. I’ll have to ask my oncologist about that not-so-subtle difference. If these new drugs have similar side-effects as the earlier ones, they will exacerbate my fatigue, cause various other unpleasant side-effects, and generally suppress my normally good mood for awhile. But a whole new papaya awaits me, so eating that may overwhelm the mood suppression. And now that I can again take a drug that battles heartburn/GERD, I can use lime juice to enhance papaya’s already wonderful flavor. I am a lucky man, indeed!

A person can disagree vehemently with another’s core philosophies, yet still have respect for that individual. Such has been my experience with regard to Pope Francis, who died this morning. He believed deeply in a “creator;” I do not. He did not support full equality for women (as evidenced by his refusal to permit women to be priests); I do. He was unequivocal in his opposition to abortion; I believe women should have the ultimate say over their own bodies. Despite those stark differences, I respected him for his intellect and his support for other philosophies that were far more progressive. And I respected him for his willingness to speak out against philosophies and actions that fly in the face of what I consider fundamental human rights and basic morality. With his death, the process of selecting a new pope will take place; having recently watched a film (The Conclave) that presents a fictionalized and dramatized account of that procedure, I will be interested to follow how that practice plays out in the real world.

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Last night, as we watched the final episodes of Bosch: Legacy on Amazon Prime, I felt like I was subjected to what I considered the outcome of economic intimidation carried out through political bullying. Two automobile commercials, in particular, seemed to be willingly responsive to the bullying tactics of the current administration. Ford and Hyundai ads made reference to being “made in the USA” and one of them stressed keeping prices stable, seemingly even in light of pressures that normally would have caused prices to rise. Had that ad been presented another way, it might be interpreted as a protest to tariffs. But it seemed to me to be a self-congratulatory pat on the back for “patriotically” supporting recent US policies.  I will admit I could have misinterpreted the ads in light of my bias against recent actions of the current administration. But I doubt it.

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I don’t know which is worse: my preoccupation with the decline of the US into a loathsome totalitarian regime or my preoccupation with my cancer. I suppose focusing on my own health issue is worse because it is tightly focused and self-serving; only a tiny group is affected by it. Preoccupation with a political transformation that will negatively impact people worldwide is understandable and, potentially, more impactful.

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Hot Springs Village seems to have been on the outer fringes of last night’s fast-moving storms that spawned high winds, heavy rains, and a few tornadoes. But the tornado warnings caused us to spend some time in the laundry room with the cat. The storms washed the clouds from the sky and lowered the temperatures considerably; when I got up this morning, the house felt quite chilly. It’s still uncomfortably cool, and the outside temperature is 50°F. I am tempted to turn on the heat (we’ve had the air conditioner on for several days), but the outside temperatures are expected to reach into the low to mid-70s later today. Perhaps I should take advantage of the fireplace, instead. Or I might be more comfortable if I were to don a down vest now and remove it when I feel uncomfortably warm. Early Spring can be a time of difficult adjustment.

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Yesterday afternoon, a good friend delivered to us an Easter basket full of marvelous goodies. The ears of two chocolate bunnies were already missing this morning. And several small smoked snack sausages, along with little bags of snack chips disappeared last night. I think the gift may have been a not-so-subtle message that my loss of weight is unpleasantly noticeable. No, not really; it’s an expression of friendship and love. A deeply appreciated expression.

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If I could locate the source of the rat-a-tat-tat sound I hear outside, I might see a woodpecker making the last few stabs at a huge tree before the leafy monster crashes to the ground (I hope it hits the ground and not the house).

Ah, today is Easter Sunday. There will be fewer eggs hidden in gardens this year. And those that are found will be dull white or brown—who can afford eggs or the imported dye to color them…both marked up by 140% to cover tariffs?  Chocolate bunnies, too, may be hard to find because the costs to import fine Swiss chocolate may have risen to astronomical heights. Easter dresses, made of cloth woven in China and Vietnam and Cambodia, will be available only to the children of billionaires and members of Congress. Churches around the U.S. will be surveilled by teams from DHS and ICE today. Those teams will target random church-going people with and without paperwork that proves their rights to be in this country. Professors, factory workers, farm hands, career military officers, postal carriers, and Democratic governors will be detained and shipped to Salvador super-prisons. Left-leaning dogs and Social Democratic horses will be rounded up like DEI-supporting college presidents and shipped to Guantánamo. Christian soldiers hired by right-wing Baptist preachers will march onward to capture Greenland and Canada and the Panama Canal. What a day is this Easter Sunday!

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My oncologist called me yesterday afternoon to change the schedule for beginning my new chemotherapy regimen. Tomorrow I will go in for labs; chemo infusion will begin on Wednesday.  I could tell from the caller-ID that she was in her office, which is closed on the weekends. I imagine she was catching up from the previous week, when her APRN (who shares her patient load) was off on vacation.  Ever since she became my oncologist, about six years ago, I have been reassured by her frequent personal involvement in dealing with my treatment and in interactions with me. Though she has a large staff who handle most aspects of the treatment she plans—including scheduling, administering chemo drugs, taking and recording vitals, communicating with patients, etc.—she stays directly involved with her patients. When she discovered the recurrence of lung cancer about sixteen months ago, she and her APRN gave me their cell phone numbers. Only one other doctor, the surgeon who performed the lobectomy to remove my original tumor, has ever shared a cell number with me. I have confidence in her for all those reasons and because of her extensive training, experience, and involvement in and publication of research findings. But, of course, positive patient ratings (hers are quite good) do not guarantee competence. At some point, though, a patient must “go with his gut.” Her honesty with me helped me make the determination that her  recommendation by my former primary care doctor was a good one. When my cancer recurred, and after her extensive review of all test results, she told me a cure was unlikely; her objective would be to lengthen my life span. One of the oncologists I met at M.D. Anderson said as much when he told me there were few remaining options beyond the standard treatments she had used. The clinical trial physician’s comments about the experimental treatment to be administered in the study suggested the same. I took the MDA doctors’ comments as confirmation that my oncologist is competent. Considering the fact that my oncologist suggested I consider exploring clinical trials at MDA, I feel comfortable that she is giving me good advice.

Despite the likelihood that cancer probably will kill me at some point in the future (the timing of which no one is willing to guess), I might instead be run over by a Tesla truck or struck by an experimental aircraft or die of starvation in a Salvadoran prison or succumb to some other accident or disease or deadly misfortune beforehand. I will try to avoid spending time in the vicinity of Tesla trucks and experimental aircraft, of course. And I hope to evade would-be captors who desire to send me to El Salvador. I would rather not contract yet another disease, either; nor allow cancer to slowly consume what’s left of my shrinking body.

Given the annoying but tolerable discomfort so far of chemo side-effects and the likelihood that other treatments will cause similar unpleasantness, I think at some point I will decide whether the treatment or the disease is more difficult. I’m sure I’ve written before about that likelihood. It seems always to be at the back of my mind…when it’s not right in front. I knew going into the clinical trial that chances were that it would have no positive impact on me. Yet, now that the particular trial is no longer an option for me, I feel that my ineligibility has taken away a remote—but real—opportunity to defeat the odds. My thoughts are irrational and at odds with one another.

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My computer screen, without being asked, is telling me to expect rain in about 3 hours. About that time, you will be expected to enter the Christian Nationalist Church of Holy Abundance and Perpetual Financial Salvation. So, at 9:30 a.m. have your domestic servants provide you with umbrellas, raincoats, galoshes, and a Bloody Mary or two to protect you from the drizzle and the drivel. But I shall stay indoors while the rain pours from the sky; no need for protective gear for me. I shall engage in my own manner of contemplation.

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This entire post probably replicates things I have written previously. I will try not to continue this monotonous repetition of boring and repetitious writing. I’m sure I have said that before, too. I wish I could just let it alone; and go on as if nothing worthy of worry were on my mind. And I can. It’s just a matter of mental discipline. Perhaps if I spent more time playing Words with Friends or attempting to solve crossword puzzles or learning to identify species of trees by their leaves or bark…

Some time after returning home yesterday afternoon, a good friend texted to inquire how thing went during our trip to M.D. Anderson in Houston. I responded that it was a long week and I was tired; too tired to talk. And that was true. The underlying reason, though, was more than physical fatigue; I was mentally exhausted from the experience.

On the day I was to formally begin the first day of the clinical trial, my schedule for taking the experimental drug and undergoing chemo with a drug already approved for chemotherapy was delayed. A blood test to determine whether my platelet count remained high enough to be eligible for the study had fallen below the required level. But a re-test showed that my platelet count was high enough. Whew! Back on track.

However, another issue had arisen. The size of the cancerous “lesions” in my chest had been determined to be below the study sponsor’s requirements. The MDA clinical trial staff requested a review, by radiologists, of scan results; the intent was to measure the size of the lesions by examining the lesions from different perspectives. After waiting nearly six hours—with no interim updates—to learn the results, we were told the processes intended for the day could not begin so late in the day and were told we could return to our hotel, which we did. The idea was that the previous day’s planned processes could begin the next day, if the obstacle could be overcome.

Later in the afternoon, I got a call from the leader of the targeted therapy center. The doctor, who had told me earlier in the day about the obstacle presented by the inadequate size of the lesions, called me. He said the entire team had tried to determine legitimate ways that I could qualify, but it appeared that none could be found. Therefore, I could not qualify for the study. He truly had wanted me to be included in the study. The overall study is to involve 153 participants and he had just lost one. During my first visit with him, he explained that the study had very rigid requirements and that it was possible, at any time during the study, circumstances might cause participants to be eliminated.

One serendipitous experience, though, took place on that unfortunate “bad news” day when I got the bad news. We stumbled on a friend from church, who is undergoing follow-up treatment for surgery that removed a malignant tumor from her nasal cavity. She was sitting in a public lounging area, waiting for her next appointment when we saw her. Seeing her and visiting with her for a while helped ease the tension of the day.

I was genuinely and deeply disappointed when I got the news about my involvement in the clinical trial, of course. And I remain rather stunned by the turn of events. But I knew from the beginning that things could go wrong. I am not angry; just sad. But not completely despondent. I sent my Hot Spring oncologist a text, explaining the situation and asking her whether I could commence the therapy she had planned before my involvement in the MDA clinical trial. Coincidentally, I already have an appointment scheduled for this coming Monday for a routine follow-up. She replied that she would make arrangements for me to start the therapy Monday. So, the battle continues—same war, new weapon!

Life is one long process of getting tired.

Samuel Butler

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After all these years, I still am not sure what I want to be when I grow up. Or should the question be “who I want to be?”  “What” suggests a search for a career or profession. “Who” asks a much deeper question, inquiring about the kind of person I hope to become. Forgive me if I’ve addressed this question before…maybe many times before. It is a rather important question asked repeatedly over a timeframe approaching a lifetime, but never fully—or satisfactorily—answered. The question is relevant not only to the future. It applies to now. Today. And in the past. And not only to “the kind of person I hope to become,” but to who I was and who I am. Do we change over time from the person we once were into a significantly different person? That question has rattled around in my head for what seems like an eternity. At some point, the question will become irrelevant. It may already be irrelevant, but for different reasons.

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My hands have appeared soft and plump for most of my life, but they have changed remarkably in the last eighteen months. Tendons and blood vessels, once invisible beneath my skin, now show clearly; a network of bulging blue veins are prominent on the tops of my hands. And tendons (or, maybe, bones) interrupt the once-smooth surfaces, jostling with the blood vessels for space. In other words, my hands look like they belong to an old man; I can’t argue that they do not. The skin of my face and neck has spent the majority of my life looking younger than my years. But like my hands, those physical attributes have changed. Weight loss—and, I suspect, daily consumption of prescription medications  augmented with a variety of chemotherapy drugs—has left the skin on my face and neck loose and wrinkled. My arms and legs, too, are draped in skin that looks like crepe. That largest of my organs emphasizes that my youth has drained from my body, leaving me an “ego in a bag of skin,” to use a phrase written by Alan Watts.

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The time will soon come to eat some breakfast: leftover salmon (delivered last night by a wonderful friend) and some papaya (left by another wonderful person, as I wrote yesterday). Perhaps the two dishes will improve my platelet count enough to ensure my continued participation in the clinical trial. So early in the process, yet the formal trial has not even begun. But I am already tired of it. I told mi novia yesterday I have felt fatigued and weak for eighteen months. Not utterly worn out, but approaching that sense of depletion. I had expected the cancer treatment to have had some positive effects by now; at least enough to trick my body into thinking I was making progress. More than a month has passed since my most recent chemo treatment, with no noticeable change. That’s not saying much, I guess, in that most treatments were given a three-week intervals.

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If I did not wake up tired, I would feel something was amiss.

The prospect of one-finger typing—along with demanding days at M.D. Anderson and sixteen-plus hours on the road—have kept me away from blogging for a few days. Finally, well into this bright Sunday afternoon, I am fulfilling my self-imposed obligation. The last appointment of my most recent visit to MDA revealed my platelet count was just one “point” beyond the cut-off eligibility for continued participation in the clinical trial. If my platelet count slips just a single point, my participation in the study will be terminated. So, following the advice of the nurse who gave me the news, I am eating foods that “may” increase my platelet count. Those foods include papaya, one of my favor fruits, and lean red meat. When she heard the news, my very helpful sister-in-law ventured out to find an enormous papaya. It was waiting for us on our return, along with some other delightful fruits. And she picked up Phaedra from the temporary imprisonment facility where we left the beast. She delivered Phaedra back home, where the cat was waiting to demonstrate her skills at clawing throw rugs, even after having had her nails trimmed. Our stay at home will be quite brief, which will be the case for each of the next few weeks. Including driving to and from Houston, most days will be spent in connection with the clinical trial. Lots of 8-hour trips…but we’ve decided to split them in two and spend the night half way there and back, plus two or three nights in Houston, where they schedule my days to begin at 7:00 a.m. Our timing of arrival and departure has allowed us to avoid the worst of Houston’s traffic, so far; knock on wood that the good fortune continues.

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Because measles vaccinations do more damage to children than do crocodiles to penguins in the Arctic, measles vaccinations should be optional. That’s the kind of logic that supports two things: requiring measles vaccinations  and; mandatory parental licensure.

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Last night, I had a long and puzzling dream; far too tangled to enable me to recap. But I remember parts of it quite clearly: 1) receiving a large, square-shaped piece of artistic molded glass—a gift from a friend during a theatrical festival in Fort Worth, Texas; 2) waking home, lugging the glass gift, from the festival…but in Chicago; 3) being mugged, twice, first by a single felonious criminal and second by a gang of five bullies/gangsters; 3) finally convincing the gang not to beat me senseless, after telling the first criminal he was weak and stupid for trying to show his strength by beating up a 71-year-old geezer; 4) sitting in the roof-top lobby of the apartment building I once occupied in Chicago (but the lobby was not on the roof at the time), explaining what had happed to me to a group of elderly women who had been on a Lake Michigan Cruise; and 5) asking one of the women to call my family to pick me up. That’s the straightforward part. The rest is convoluted in the extreme. It included my oldest brother, who had come to retrieve me, denying to the women that his year in India had anything to do with his dismissal of religion. Somewhere else in the dream I was with a friend and a friend of his; we were touring a hospital. The friend of my friend worked there. He opened a door into an operating room, but quickly closed it because it was in use. An angry surgery ran out of the room and down to a valve in the wall, which he turned to restart the flow of oxygen. He then said all hospital staff receive email notifications when each specific operating room was in use. The notification system had cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said. I suggested it might be cheaper and more reliable to simply hand a notice on the outside of operating room doors when in use, saying “DO NOT ENTER: SURGERY IN PROGRESS.” The sequence of events was mixed up. I was mixed up, too.

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The wind is tearing at trees as if they were enemies. The only way to “see” wind from inside the house is to watch trees bend to its force. One can feel the physical force of wind by stepping outside into it.  And one can infer that wind is the cause of the horizontal motion of dust scraps of paper and other such light-weight matter—so, I suppose that is similar to “seeing” wind by watching trees bend. Claims of precision sometimes are misleading.

The lights of Houston, both downtown and the western edges of the city to the horizon, are attractive…but a clear, dark view of the absense of evidence of civilization would be more appealing.

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My “workday” is just under one and one-half hours away. The first obligation begins at 7:00 a.m. and continues throughout the day. Nuclear medicine activities, blood/specimen draws, CT scans, and a barrage of other tests, evaluations, measurements, and invasive processes will command my day. I feel almost like a lab specimen… perhaps exactly like a lab specimen.

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I’ve forgotten how to pack for travel. It has been 14 years since I seemed to spend almost all my time in airports and hotels. I am reminded that some of the tips and tricks of the frequent traveler have slipped my mind. Always make sure your travel gear includes toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, shaving cream, and a razor. But my chemo has made the razor unnecessary.

###

Time to go. One-finger typing is a challenge to me.

Crushing disappointment, arising from a collision between unwarranted euphoria and shattered expectations, leaves the victim of that horrific experience feeling empty and immeasurably sad. Such is the situation when the victim dreams that his hopes are on the verge of being met—but is stunned when he confronts an utterly different, deeply painful, reality. He immediately realizes he has no more control over the actions of characters in his dreams than in their actions in the real world. His dream seems to cross the line between fantasy and nightmare. But the horrors that accompany nightmares is missing; in its place, despondency settles in every cell of his body. He is not suicidal, but he no longer values his own life the way he did before. Before an imaginary, artificial experience. Dreams have the capacity to upend one’s life. And they have elements of actuality embedded in them. The dreamer may not have any control over his unconscious experiences. He simply feels them wash over him; they take control of his reactive emotions. And they take up permanent residence in his brain, where they build a home with impenetrable walls, guarded by malevolent sentries.

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The screening, Part 2, of the clinical trials continues this week. If it were local, I would have to contribute only one day to it. But distance and scheduling require considerably more time. That’s the way the ball crumbles or the cookie bounces.

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I can barely tolerate newscasts. They duplicate one another in some form, suggesting they use a single source as a model. If we would take the time to explore them in depth, I think we would find that only six pieces of “news” (maximum) are delivered to us daily, but the formats of their delivery represent at least sixty ways of reporting them. We are fooled into thinking there’s more to know than is truly the case. Most “newsworthy” items are kept confidential, available only to a select few authoritarian regimes. I once would have said such an assertion was complete BS, but today I am not entirely sure. It’s entirely possible that a cabal of power-hungry political beasts have absolute control over information delivered to us in the comfort of our own homes. On one hand, I don’t want to be a mindless conspiracy theorist; on the other, I don’t want to fall victim to the dictatorial mindsets of a power-hungry cabal. This all would be funny if it were not so disturbingly possible.

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Most of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, according to something I read within the last few days. If that is true, tariffs probably will dramatically reduce the supply of seafood and/or will make seafood quite expensive; unaffordable to most of us. Well, we have been overfishing the world’s oceans for far too long, so perhaps there’s a silver lining to the blanket of tariffs being used to smother global commerce. In place of seafood, we can dine on insects, which remain plentiful. Chigger chowder and mosquito meringue pie might make a magnificent meal. Remember, though, buffalo used to be plentiful; so we need to be conscious of what our appetites for insects do to the insect population.

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If every job function were assigned a measure of value and all positions involving various job functions were given calculated measures of their collective value, we might be able to classify all employment job functions according to their relative importance. For example, we could determine how vegetable harvesters compare in value and importance to grocery store cashiers. And how trash collection crew members compare to personal injury lawyers. And how chemists compare to sculptors. And so on. But an objective process (to the extent possible) to measure values would no doubt lead to arguments, hurt feelings, pleasant surprises, and rage. Assume, for example, the relative importance/value of a cannery worker is found to be greater than that of a plastic surgeon, not accounting for the demand for each position. The surgeon might be enraged, embarrassed, and argumentative; the cannery worker might be thrilled, proud, and assertive. A job analysis project across every position in a culture could change the dynamics of the workplace and of society at large. If grocery store cashiers were found to be less valuable than migrant farm workers, the cashiers might find their salaries slashed, while the farm workers might see their compensation enhanced significantly. The importance of candy makers might be devalued, while beef feed lot workers could be determined to have substantially greater value. Decisions would have to be reached with respect to people who create or manufacture products versus those who market and sell products…that process might be intriguing and dynamic. With proper weighting of the value of every aspect of a job function, the collective “scores” might turn the workplace and every place that engages with it upside down.  During the evaluation process to determine the relative rank of importance of all jobs, psychological counseling would skyrocket in value, I believe.

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Staring into the clear, dark night sky from a remote spot—someplace far from evidence of civilization—is a breathtaking experience. It is an encounter with the unknown, stunning in its unlimited vastness and terrifying in the realization that it is unknowable. Distances in the night sky are incalculable. The tiny stars we see, we are told, may be—or may have been—thousands of times larger than our sun. Their light may have taken hundreds or thousands of years to reach us; more than enough time for the stars to have shriveled into empty nothingness.

The same sense of awe accompanies us when we stand at the edge of an ocean. Distances across the waves are more understandable than the space between the stars but, like the sky, the secrets of almost impossibly deep water are beyond our understanding. Neither deep space nor deep water permit us to breathe without relying on clunky apparatus, as if warning us not to venture too far into the unknown. Yet our curiosity about worlds beyond readily accessible boundaries keeps pushing us to move deeper into the stunning and terrifying unexplored. Perhaps the most frightful aspect of exploration into the unknown and unknowable is its inherent loneliness. We are compelled to pursue human companionship, but it distracts us from giving sufficient focus to absorbing and trying to understand secrets beyond our realm of comfort. And so we must go it alone; we must make difficult choices.

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This week, next week, the following week, and the week after that…I am obligated to visit Houston for a day at a time for all of them. And for each day, around 17 additional hours will be spent in making the round-trip to and from Houston. This week will be the official “screening” process (though I’ve already signed the consent form and been “accepted”). This first full month of involvement in a clinical trial increasingly sounds overwhelming. That’s life in the real world, I suppose; waging peace.

Some mornings I go to the FOX News website to see what the conservative network is reporting. My intents are: to learn the perspectives and philosophies of people who think differently and; to try to find common ground that could lead to a less adversarial outlook. No matter how I approach those objectives, though, I leave with a high degree of confidence that the network is no more than a conservative propaganda factory, with the occasional innocuous story thrown in occasionally for “balance.” CNN and MsNBC are similarly biased, but from the other end of the political spectrum.  I watch the two of them to learn about the left-leaning propaganda they report as factual. I watch or listen to NPR and NBC and PBS, as well, to minimize blatant bias, knowing that they, too, put a slant on their reporting. It’s hard to find believable sources of news that has no inherent bias. Even much of other countries’ English language media seems tainted by a tilt in one direction or the other. For example, if the tilt is to the left, the right-leaning guest commentators that ostensibly are to provide “balance” are weaker, either intellectually or with regard to the believability of their delivery. The same is true in the other direction. Both ends of the media political spectrum gleefully call out the biases of their opposition—but they refuse to admit to their own. And I think the vast majority of their respective supportive audience members cling to the assertion that “we are right, true, an pure and the opposition is a prevarication factory.” I think I woke with my cynicism in full bloom.

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Depending on perspective, many of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service (NWS) offices either are badly understaffed or, like the rest of the Federal government, are drains on the American taxpayer, places where waste long has been supported and encouraged. Of course, the perspective one adopts often depends on seasonal weather—when parts of the country are at risk for hurricanes and tornadoes. A person is more likely to rely on the NWS for information during such times than to wait patiently to learn what Elon Musk says in defense of round-after-round of reductions in force.

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I am in favor of establishing a national Pest & Insect Eradication Service (PIES). During the first two years of its existence, PIES would be funded entirely with funds reappropriated by Congress. Subsequently, its continued existence would depend on its own performance and its revenue. For example, the Nasty-Assed Mosquito Eradication Division (NAMED) might require achieving a 50% reduction in the mosquito population from year to year to qualify for funding. During its first two years, PIES might disburse funds for NAMED to establish a program which would pay citizens a bounty for each dead mosquito they brought to a NAMED regional office. The same concepts would be used to attack the chigger population (Filthy Annoying Chigger Eradication Division, or FACED), the Dangerous and Appalling Rodent Eradication Division (DARED), the Feculent & Loathsome Insect Elimination Service (FLIES), and other such pests and insects.  The more I consider it, the more I think we ought not to require the pests to be dead; we could simply sentence them to Disgusting Rodent & Insect Prisons (DRIPs) in third-world countries, which would welcome the revenue they would receive by housing  convicted Pest/Insect Terrorists (PITs). The PIES program, if properly managed, could be beautiful! All Americans would benefit greatly from the Reduction in Pests (RIP) concept. The first two years of financing PIES, by the way, would come from funds redirected from FEMA and the NWS. This is all utter nonsense, of course. Sometimes, absurdity is the only experience that will secure another day to fight battles that have no point and no purpose but that must be fought, anyway.

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Nuclear winter may follow natural spring. I hope not, but I have lost my confidence that sane people with influence over, or control of, decisions about whether to engage will stand in the way of calamity. And it may not be nuclear; it could be semi-traditional. I hate that there is a “traditional” way to be embroiled in war—a horribly violent way of securing domination over another country. Is war really a natural byproduct of civilization? I have always hoped civility would be civilization’s product.

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Today’s high temperature in Hot Springs is not expected to surpass 46°F. I understand that Amarillo, Texas yesterday had an April 5 snowfall that broke a 130-year-old record. I might not be surprised to learn that a massive iceberg, having found its way into the Gulf of Mexico, slammed into the coast of Texas, ripping open Earth’s crust as it moved inland. The subsequent volcanic eruptions and spitting and hissing flows of lava would heat the air that comes in contact with the iceberg. The clash of atmospheric conditions might create ideal conditions for the formation of bipolar tornadoes; molten rock swirling at high speed in the center and sheets of thick ice spinning around the red-hot core.

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I dreamed I had been taking a college class that covered seven or eight subjects but had not even glanced at any of the assigned readings. On the day of the final exams, I was worried that I would fail every exam. The exam was “open-book,” but only books distributed by the professor (who, it happens, was my boss at my first association job…who has also been in other of my recent dreams). Somehow, accidentally picked up materials that were prohibited during the exams. At least one other student and the professor implied that my mistake was intentional…cheating. I wanted nothing more than to complete my exam—knowing I would  fail—and get out of the room and away from the situation. End of dream.

At what point would insurrection be an acceptable response to a totalitarian regime? And who would need to accept that response to legitimize it? I think about such things far more frequently than I would like. Today’s world makes thinking about such matters compelling. When the idea of being killed or imprisoned for participating in an insurrection becomes more than an imaginary fear, choosing to act in response to the boundary between freedom and bondage becomes deadly serious.

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We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

~ William Inge ~

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After days of frustration and changes in plans to address the causes of those frustrations, I may have finally addressed the primary cause of one of the matters that have disturbed me.  Unless things change (as they are wont to do), I will not need to be in Houston earlier than planned, simply to have someone determine whether my chest port (from which blood is drawn and chemotherapy drugs are infused) will work. The story is too long and boring to explain in detail; it is enough to say I have received assurances that the staff at M.D. Anderson (MDA) that my port will work just fine. MDA technicians and nurses should be able to access it without any problem. The other concern, just how [and the extent to which] I will be reimbursed for my travel and lodging, has not yet been clarified. It’s looking like next week’s visit to Houston will still be considered a “screening” visit, which is not reimbursed. Oh, well. I can use some of the little remaining in my retirement accounts (after 47’s brutal attack on the mental, physical, and financial well-being of everyone but the richest Americans) to cover the expenses of the visit. It is comforting to know that crickets and kittens and camels share my perspective on the nature of the current leader of the free world. Tongue-partially-in-cheek.

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The Japanese language includes words that are not directly translatable into English. Other languages, too, contain such words that speakers of English cannot utter with a single English word. Japanese comes to mind because I frequently encounter such Japanese words: kyoikumama [a mother who pushes her children to achieve academically]; tsundoku [buying a book and leaving it unread, usually surrounded by a lot of other unread books]; komorebi [sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees, creating a dappled appearance; sokaiya [a man with a few shares in several companies who extorts money by threatening to come to the shareholders’ meetings and cause trouble]; and many more. A few other non-English words that have no words of direct translation include: utepils [Norwegian for sitting outside on a sunny day and enjoying a beer]; culacinno [Italian for the ring left on a table from a moist glass]; gökotta [Swedish for waking up early to hear the first birds sing]; and gluggaveður [Icelandic for weather that looks beautiful but is unpleasant to be in]. I have come across these foreign language words online, so I cannot be sure they are real. Whether they are or not, though, I like the idea of single words whose meanings encompass broad concepts or emotions.

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Another night of angrily emphatic bone-jarring thunder and jagged flashes of blue lightning that illuminated the sky. I write in the past tense, as if the storms have come and gone. In fact, they continue to roar through before 5 A.M., proving forecasts of a day or two ago wrong. The NOAA weather radio howled warnings of tornadoes and flash floods more than once during the night. Spring weather has intensified during the eleven years I have lived in Hot Springs Village. Just last year, a tornado tore through the Village, uprooting huge pine trees, splitting the trunks  of massive oak trees, and otherwise leaving arboreal carnage all along its path. We were fortunate, in that the worst of the wind damage only took down two big pines near the house. Roughly the distance of a city block away, long and wide swaths of forest were leveled. Streets were blocked, power line downed, and houses damaged along the miles-long route of the tornado. Mother Nature seems to be responding to our arrogance…our assumption that we are stronger than our environment.