I spread some fertilizer around on my plants in the last couple of days. We've been having thunderstorms just about every afternoon and night for about a week now, and I wanted the fertilizer to soak in a little bit without getting washed away. It's worked out just fine. I went outside this morning to look see if there had been enough rain to get the fertilizer broke down into the soil where the feeder roots can get at it, and the soft, slow rain last night did just what i felt like was needed.
My old fig tree is loaded with fruit. I'm eagerly anticipating it getting ripe so that I can go outside and have fresh figs for my breakfast. The commercially grown cutting I planted is still alive, and it has probably ten fat figs on it even though it hasn't grown much since I put it in the ground. A couple of the figs have turned brown, but it's apparently not from ripening. It has something wrong with it. I'm just hoping for it to develop a root mass so it will come back up next year.
I'm copping to the same attitude of patience toward the cutting I did myself. I'm having at least a little success with it. It has a couple of clusters of healthy looking leaves. I'm afraid of killing both these new plants. I may have put too much fertilizer on them. It might seem like I want them to live so fiercely, I'm killing them with kindness.
I go on a blind date to have dinner and become acquainted. The unknown person doesn't quite measure up. I excuse myself politely. Retire to the restroom. Enter an open stall, close the door, sit down on the throne whether I needed to or not, in order to reflect on the situation waiting for me back at the table.
The restroom was empty when I walked in, for which I was grateful, because I wanted some privacy to think about what to do. Suddenly, I heard the restroom door open, and somebody comes into the restroom to use the facilities. I immediately go into suspended animation, and wait for them to leave so that I can finish thinking about what I'm gonna do about the unwanted blind date.
The unseen intruder doesn't leave in the amount of time I figured they'd need to do their business and leave. I sit there frozen in my spot, pensively waiting for them to leave, and suddenly I realized they might have wondered why I'm taking more time than usual to do my business. I begin to suspect they're not leaving because they're curious about what I'm sitting in the stall so long for, and wanna see for themselves what a real nut case looks like.
The blind date at the table outside in the restaurant is also waiting and wondering why I'm taking so long in the restroom. The only reasonable way to resolve the situation is for me to get up and leave the restroom, and man up to the fact that I gotta be honest or nothing. If I do that, however, the person who still hasn't left the restroom yet will get to glare at what they've decided is a pervert.
Double bind. Damned if I do. Damned if I don't.
With the most interesting question being: Why do I have to be alone to think? Furthermore, can I think if I'm not alone? Is it thinking or strategizing I can't do unless I'm completely alone? When I have to think for-myself? Is a state of being-for-myself necessary to think for-myself?
Groups, however, may be necessary for me to attain to a state of being-for-the-other. Like the Biblical rejoinder, "Where there are two or more of us together, I am is there." (Paraphrased).
Part of this must mean that I can't be dead to the world unless I'm alone. Being dead to the world seems to imply that in that particular state-of-being, the world is also dead to me. But, this doesn't make sense. It's like saying I can't go to sleep with other people in the room. Yes I can. I was in the Navy for six years. I always slept with other people in the same room.
I've gone through severe sleep deprivation through no direct fault of my own. It happened because I couldn't find a safe place to close my eyes for a long time. Back in the days when I would go on long hitch-hiking trips around North America, I usually had some sibilance of an idea where I might be going, but I usually didn't have a choice about where people let me out. It's those kinds of places I got let out at sometime where it just didn't appear to be a good place to lay down and sleep the sleep of the dead.
I just had to keep moving and hope I found a better place down the road. It's the story of my life. There were many places I wouldn't even stand in one spot beside the road long enough to stick out my thumb and try to catch a ride outta there. It would have attracted too much attention. I would have stood out just from the obvious fact that I didn't live there, and I carried all I owned in my hands. I just walked, and walked. Already exhausted unto death from sleep deprivation, and still driven by the fear of dying, as yet, to shuffle on down to the next nearest haven.
Muttering like a madman. Walking. Chanting my self-conceived chant over and over, mile after mile:
I dig myself.
I am a beautiful thing.
An addition to the whole
that is Me.
For without my Self,
there would be
nothing else,
without Me,
the whole world
wouldn't be.
...
Sometime I reflect about people who have never created their own chant for-themselves or have ever even been disposed to. Down to the last man/Jack of them, they all think I'm insane. Why would they not? They all think they'd be insane if they lived the irresponsible sort of life I describe. So, if they 'would be' insane, then I 'must be' insane... "all fall down."
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
