We'll Pump You Up!

I was pretty much occupied with going to Durham as one of the guinea pigs in a research project conducted by a research physician who works for both Duke University Hospital and the VA Hospital in the rheumatology arena. The professional young doctor doing the research and I were in each other's company for about an hour off and on yesterday, and as part of her efforts to relax me and make easy conversation while she was cutting on me, she told me why she chose to do research over being a family doctor.

Her decision not to become a family doctor certainly wasn't because she doesn't have a great bedside manner. She seemed to know automagically that I would wanna know all the details of what was going to happen, and because she didn't have a hundred patients waiting to see her like a doctor serving the public would, she took her time and explained the entire process to me in layman's terms. She seemed very sincere about wanting to know if I had any questions.

I trusted her as a person on first sight over at the VA when I had my first appointment there in the rheumatology section. I wasn't as sure about trusting her as a physician doing research. I don't think it would have mattered if it had been another doctor, it wasn't about personality, I just didn't like the idea of being used to test out new medicines. It turned out that wasn't what her research was about.

Her research was about rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes. I probably still don't understand the specificity of it, but I wasn't gonna have to take no strange, unproven drugs. The VA rheumatologist, who was my assigned doctor there in Durham, first solicited me in her behalf (as I understand it), briefly told me what her research was about, but that's not what I heard him say. Then, the research doctor herself came in during my appointment with him, and asked me in person if I would volunteer to participate in her research. That was the only time I actually saw her previous to yesterday.

To expose what a confused state I was in, I remembered her being taller than me at our initial encounter. Yesterday, I realized she is an average female height. I also thought she was gonna take bone marrow for the biopsy instead of muscle tissue. It wasn't true, but that's what I heard. I hadn't been aware I had been diagnosed with an incurable disease, and here were two doctors chatting it up as an accepted fact. Whoa! Time out!

After I got home from my first appointment last August, my case doctor called me at home to see how things were going, and he asked me again if I'd do the research program. I turned him down again. I didn't understand, and I gotta possess that understanding or I'll feign dissembling just to heel the tack. Don't ask me why. I'll write a bunch of fairly interesting word salad and you won't be any closer to the truth than I was.

I've written about this before, so I'll try not to contradict my former opinions, but shit happens and things change. I did change my mind about doing the research program, but it was more about being selfish than a martyr for the good of mankind. I tried to work it up to appear that way, but the whole idea didn't have legs.

I took what i thought they had told me and put it together with some information I read about in the news online, and made that into her doing some research involving stem cells. Why would I not? I am is a desperate man, and in denial to beat the band. I go for the stem cell possibilities and everything it stands for hook, line, and sinker. The stem cell research can't possibly live up to my expectations of it. That's the real reason I got back in touch with my doctor about approaching the research physician to see if I was still an viable candidate. She called me fairly quick, elegantly displayed her lady-like virtues, and seemed really grateful that I'd reconsidered. I was totally out-classed by this sophisticate person. I capitulated like a grateful, starving animal for her unaffected kindness. How could I have ever said, "No"?

This research doctor's second explanation, when she called me to say I'd be a great candidate for her research, made sense to me. She wasn't doing stem cell research, but it was about diabetes as it's associated with rheumatoid arthritis, and she was having a hard time finding people who have been diagnosed with RA, but don't have diabetes, enough to get a quorum. Finding people to serve as control group was less difficult she told me, but finding diagnosed arthritics who don't have diabetes is like a needle in a haystack thing.

I think my first refusal to participate in the research was a symptom of my denying that I've been diagnosed with an incurable disease. Even though I have experienced some of the worst physical pain ever in my life, I have refused to consider that I was gonna be dealing with this disease until I croak. I'm not gonna get over it. It might not deliver the killing blow, but it's not going away. Who needs that?

The turning point in changing my mind was when I realized that anything this person could do to help people like me who have the disease, is something I oughta volunteer to be a part of. Realizing she was doing the research directly involving rheumatoid arthritis has gotta be a good thing, right? Who am I?

Tomorrow, I go back to Durham for the next phase of the research. They gonna stick an IV in my small-veined arms and drip some glucose in me to see how I react I guess. I've already been told that they can't use the veins that stand out on the backs of my hands, but have to go in the veins located inside at my elbow. They hardly ever get the needle in the first vein they pick the first time they try. It's not going to be a small needle either. The technician and the doctor (who unfortunately won't be there tomorrow) had a five-minute discussion about it right in front of me. They didn't ask my opinion about needle sizes. I sorta had one, but they never asked.

The physician told me that the part of the process in which I might feel "discomfort" was over after she cut a hole in my leg and took out some muscle tissue. But, for me it ain't over until it's over. After they take that IV out tomorrow, I'll know whether or not I agree with her. She asked me yesterday to assess whether the process was better or worse than I had expected before it began, and I couldn't really answer. I don't experience things in real time. We've been e-mailing schedules and directions, so I'll probably write her next week to tell her what I concluded.

After my appointment tomorrow I have to wear a motion sensor for twelve hours a day for five days and send it back to her by prepaid mail. It just records any movements I make during the day like a pedometer works. Then, when I send that little machine back to in the mail, my part in the research will be over, and I'll be paid $200 eventually, so it's not like I'm a martyr yet. Despite the fact that I might have done it for noble purposes alone, it would be stupid to act like I can afford to pay my expenses out of pocket from my Social Security check alone. Finding that I can still negotiate the logistics of a trip like this at seventy years old is good for my ego.

Payback Is A Mofo

You realize, of course, good sir, that the Senator from Pennsylvania who got the red ass and drug up to became a Democrat from listening to you and Rush and Palin's weird-ass Neo-Con lip-flapping, means the end of the road for sanctimonious professions of false patriotism and using "Jesus!" as the battle cry for out-and-out Fascism.

The new/old immigrants, whose Code Of Honor uses the virtues of machismo as their highest standard for acceptable masculine behavior, are gonna spell out the end of the road for the fey conservative wimps who have been fictitiously playing with fire by sneaking around the public bathrooms of Minnesota's finest airports. LOL

Isn't that adorable? The Neo-Cons have been rattling their swords and flapping their aquiline wings and putting on pretentious airs by killing hordes of practically defenseless people to fight the evil Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Meanwhile, Senor Machismo (famous for his treatment of the opposite sex) has been hiding out in the woodpiles of the lower 48, and has obscenely, and now more boldly, snuck in the back door and is inside the house of the wounded majority as the God's Own Truth. '-)

Dragons As Hurricanes

I've never been through Albuquerque, New Mexico when they won't some black clouds hanging over that mountain range just east of town. The dragon that hangs out there gnows me in a condescending dismissive sort of way. It's not necessarily a blessing. I musta hitched through Albuquerque a hundred times. It apparently keeps an eye on the neighborhood without me knowing how. Candidly, I don't recall having ever made myself into a dragon. I think it may be outta my league.

Once, when I was hitch-hiking just west of Fort Worth down in Texas, this Albuquerque dragon came all the way south to where I was hitching out on the edge of a small town, ostensibly to let me know whose stomping grounds I was entering. I saw it coming across the lower Panhandle for near half a day. I knew it was coming to haunt me. I also knew I wasn't gonna get a ride to get away from it. When it came down right on top of me, it forced me to hide under a leaky overpass bridge where i lost my only pair of glasses, and then it went back to Albuquerque to snooze. Dragons can be assholes. Who will tell them "NO!"

Now, if some demiurge could make a dragon like the one in Albuquerque crawl on it's belly, after it's experienced the freedom to FLY around scaring hell outta homeless people on the open plains around Albuquerque, for millennia perhaps... THAT... would be a curse worth puling about.

Still, I'd hate it for the dragon. Even as scared of them as I am is, they also bring much needed rain. The blessing of heaven. The Southeastern U.S. would dry up and blow away without the tropical storms and hurricanes. How could competent people know a dragon was on it's way to where they lived year around, and not run like hell for their lives?

The Palm Of The World's Most Powerful Man

The picture of the palm is supposed to be that of Obama I got from a Russian site. What's interesting about it to me is the over-sized omen of impetuosity. His mouth is faster than his good sense. He's already made some policy mistakes he had to back down from. So far this trait hasn't cost him anything big, but there is a big gap between his life line and his head line, and more than likely, divine intervention notwithstanding, that gap ain't going away. This guy is a Leo trying to come across as his opposite sign Aquarius. His leadership might be spotty and inconvenient.

Buying a new TV with a digital tuner installed on the motherboard won't help lousy over-the-air digital reception. The people got screwed by the government by the change to digital. They gotta buy the same thing they were getting free, and despite their being forced to pay for it or do without, they still have to suffer through all the commercial spam. Have you ever gotten the feeling in between the highly touted commercial-free programs on PBS that you're being played with by all the rich organizations and foundations that sponsor it's supposedly public-funded programming. It's the American Way!

I studied the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching for three decades on a daily basis. To say I was obsessed might be putting it mildly. There are several instructive sayings in this book qua Book of Changes about how to get money from the populace without having them jump the broom with some sort of Bastille Day as an irate response to your thievery. Wise men don't deny it's out and out thievery. It's just a matter of whether or when you get caught red-handed at it. A little something called political expediency. The road to hell that's paved with good intentions?

I missed out by probably 5-10 years being raised in a television dominated culture. The generations who were around before television sets were in practically every home listened to radio programs just as avidly. It was the only media that connected us to the "outside world" in real-time. Radio provided us with an audio delusion we used to make up pictures in our minds. Radio was one step away from having to make up audio and video like with books. In my parent's house, our radio listening was restricted, but we could read books any time we liked.

When I joined the Navy at the age of eighteen years old there was only one television broadcast station within reach of my hometown, and very few people owned television sets with antennas that would receive the broadcasts of that one station. It was a miracle just like all the other miracles that constantly bombard us with "a better way."

The "better way" of television lay in it's ability to get more money from the populace. I don't know the real story, but the present economic situation seems to be about people not spending their money and keeping it in circulation. They get it outta the banks who then have no money to loan to entrepreneurs who come up with successful ways of getting the masses or great unwashed to spend the money they ain't earned yet.

That's the kind of money I like spending foolishly the best. Future money. Money I haven't even gotten outta bed for yet. I love living in the Land Of Yet. I'm truly a Yeti, heart and soul. Credit cards came into being during my life time, and they might be gone before I'm dead. I'm just happy I misused them as if the world owed me a living while they were still a fad. It's worked out for me like it has, but I may change yet.

Debit cards appear to be the coming way of doing things. You gotta have the money in the bank before the services you intend to buy get delivered hat-in-hand. I can use my debit card just like I used to use credit cards, but having to have the money up front keeps me honest. I just hate that. Don't you?

Having to pay as you go is the opposite of belonging to a labor union. The union guarantees you as job as long as there is one, and to protect the job so you don't have to be good at it to make a living. That's what happened to Detroit. Everybody became more incendiary about the money and left making the product to people who only worked to pay their bills.

One of the best things to come along after I had wasted my chance to get a college degree was learning how to weld at a very high level of mastery. I had to prove I could do it before getting hired on any of the job sites I went to. After I got the job I had to keep it by dint of those very same skills. Eventually, when I got older and blinder and more arrogant I couldn't make a living that way any more, but for the time that I did I seem smugly pleased with myself.

Does it really matter how a person becomes smugly pleased with how they're doing what they do? When it got to the point with my pipe-welding that I couldn't satisfactorily please the hand that fed me I got un-smug damned fast. At least about welding. '-)

Thoughtlessly Or Thoughtfully Ignored?

I don't take The Word literally, but I do appear to take each word literally. For me it's a simple matter of curiosity. Paradoxically, in order to accommodate my initially unlimited curiosity, at times, I have to resort to returning to being what I'm curious about. It might have been due to this need that I became fairly obsessed about the abstract concept of Being.

I did take the low road of my own volition. I didn't have to. Ever. I got my ways, and I'm a lucky man by fate. My astrological natal chart reveals the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in an agreeable sign that inhabits the Fifth House of love. The fact that this lovely conjunction of benefics happens in the sign Pisces where the planet Jupiter formerly co-ruled and Pisces is where the most positive aspects of the planet Venus are exalted. It's called the luckiest configuration in astrology. It's true, but in my chart that luck is compromised by an aspect of opposition with Pisces' ruling planet, Neptune.

In astrology, the Sun and the seven planets that can be seen with the naked eye (Snow White, and the Seven Dwarfs) have mythical roles that probably go way back into the mystical annals of oral tradition. In my opinion, in regard to now and then, only the metaphors and possibly the culturallanguages themselves have changed or been lost altogether. Homo sapiens still can't visually perceive any further than the Sun and the first seven planets orbiting it without their tools and technology. When is enough enow as an individual?

Any personal reckoning system one might find themselves left with that requires tools to extend the five senses or less is not a useful contingency plan. Granted, in the light of nuclear weaponry, any survival plan is probably gonna require the cooperation of others for anybody that ain't dead yet.

If there isn't any such thing as a daemon or genie or docetic god that can't become human, but can't get over it's obsession to serve as a weak and futile effort to try endlessly, then homo sapiens would invent them. They'd work too. Think back. We made everything else on our way through evolution, why not docetic spirits that will do the legwork of genies just to bargain for our souls, which are not ours as a possession with which we can negotiate. We do that anyway too.

Docetic spirits can't become human because they got no soul. I'm just writing this down. I'm following my own Twittering. It's the damnedest thing. I finally get some clear-mindedness about what a soul IS, and a couple of days later, I'm writing that docetic spirits can't become human (which is old news), but to find myself writing that docetic spirits can't be-co-me humans BECAUSE they have no soul is a new kid on the block.

This may be why I'm still reading Sartre when I first go to bed at night. I don't do it as often as I did when my bed was in the other room. If I'd had a TV to watch in that room I had my bed in I'd probably have never read Being and Nothingness. But I didn't and I did. Since I did, there's no push to get through to the end of it just to say I'd done it. The feat of doing it was sort of athletic. It took the same sort of discipline.

Several articles I read about reading Sartre advised there readers to push on through reading the book even though you might not feel emotionally met by understanding what th' hell this man is writing about. The reason those authors, to the man, recommended pushing through was to go back to the Introductory chapter and read it again, in order to find out what you had just read by reading all 800 pages.

I got the inescapable feeling while I was reading the English translation of Sartre's Being and Nothingness, that Sartre was teaching me how to read what he wrote as I progressed through my slow reading of the entire tome. I don't know if he designed it that way. The transliteration affect of translating between two modern languages shouldn't be that big of a jump to carry the theme. Not like it would be from an extinct ancient language to a modern language.

I don't know and don't wanna know how competent a job of translating Sartre the woman did who did the work. I don't know the history of how she did it or whether she struggled or whether she collaborated with Sartre or got his blessing or plagiarized. I don't care. I et wot wuz sot before me.

I figure she probably played a significant role in what I took to mean what as I proceeded nightly for a paragraph or two or a page or two or maybe even a whole chapter in one session.

The real reason I continued reading, I believe, was that Sartre (through his translator) was philosophizing about two topics I haven't been able to fathom by reading anybody else with the required interest. I get the feeling that I've attempted to plough through other philosopher's writings (usually translated), and just run outta steam.

Maybe I had a real yearning to understand existentialism. Reading Sartre was far from my first exposure to the philosophical ideas that get grouped under this heading. I read some of the books and plays by the leading exponents, but much of it was required reading in the drama department and English lit classes I had to make a passing grade in. I was assigned roles in some of the plays. I had to memorize lines.

I'm thinking that maybe this earlier exposure to this type of material all those years ago fertilized the ground for my reading Sartre. That, and my curiosity. I'm curious about what consciousness is, but understanding Being has become a weak obsession, and Sartre does his very best to say what he thinks being AND nothingness is all about.

Part of what I may have comprehended from reading Sartre's writings is that it's impossible to have being without nothingness. Nothingness is like the river Jordan. You gotta get across it to get to the other side. Nothingness is created by negation. Being is instituted or constituted on the other side of that created nothingness, and if the denial that created the nothingness is interrupted or thoughtlessly ignored, you lose consciousness,.

Lose consciousness _to what_ can be an interesting speculation. The practice of meditation amounts to thoughtfully ignoring the process of denial necessary to create a ground for consciousness, but not going to sleep. It's a form of lucid dreaming, but approached from beta wakefulness instead of thoughtlessly letting denial of the plenitude me-ander away, and going to sleep. It takes two bowls...

Here is the first description of what Existentialism is I've run across:

To us, existence comes first. The essence comes later. Indeed, the essence is whatever we decide it is going to be. So, from our point of view things are just the opposite of what they would be for people who believed in God. Now it is "existence precedes essence." Hence, "Existentialism."

http://www.friesian.com/existent.htm

The fact that i found this definition on the internet says enough about whether it's a competent definition by a qualified person. Who knows? On the other hand the ideas I garner from reading about existentialism leads me to believe essence comes before ex-is-tense due to the fact that nothing has to be instituted before an exit from is-ness can be generated by denial.

An Idiot's Response To A Twice-told Tale

She writes, "You also do not know what gnosis is or how it is that it arises. But you do not see the problem in making a conclusion about those things you have no knowledge of." But, she's not writing that to me. She has, in her own inimitable, condescending manner.

I guess I'll never know why she betrays her own lies by projecting them upon the other. It makes me wonder what might happen for her is she were to realize that neither she nor the person she accused (in her statement above) gnows what gnosis is or how it arrives.

This is the sa-me dilemma I find myself caught up in at ti-me-s. In other parts of her writing she infers that she knows what gnosis is, but won't describe what happened because irreverent.. or something... and yet she tells the truth by projecting it upon the other.

Consistently. Persistently. All kinds of other people she accuses them of the sa-me thing. She claims in writing that they don't know what she implies by her written statements, but then by projection admits she don't know what she accuses them of not gnowing either.

If I behaved the way she portends as truth, I might at least attempt to cover it up by writing about the weather instead of accusing other people of being something I am not myself, but pretend to be as if nobody gnows the difference.

This Spring weather is very unpredictable. Yesterday it was warm. Almost 80° Fahrenheit (26° Celsius). Today it's barely 60° with a cool, northerly breeze, and the forecast for the next week is supposed to have temperatures up in the mid-80's. Even coolish, today is nice, but I'm really looking forward to not having to put on a jacket to feel comfortable.

I'm very excited about finding some fig leaves pushing up from the roots of the commercially grown fig tree I planted a year or so ago. The branches that originally had leaves on them looked dead after the winter season, and I didn't know whether or not the roots had died along with it. The leaves don't look wimpy either. They look like they're surging with life and can't wait to reach for the sky. I don't wanna get too enthusiastic. I've had bad luck (brown thumb?) with trying to get another fig tree growing.

I just talked to this doctor from Duke Hospital about being a guinea pig for her research again. It's not stem cell research, but about the likelihood of people with rheumatoid arthritis getting diabetes. My refusing to participate in the first place might have caused her to double the payment for my expenses, and that's always good, but it's only $200 for driving 200 miles round-trip twice.

I accepted her offer mostly because I want to know the information gained from her tests. Like if I'm prone to get diabetes for any reason at all, I want as much advanced warning as I can get. Another reason is that she's the head doctor of the rheumatology department at the VA Hospital and works for Duke University Hospital too, and if she does get involved in any stem cell research in the future, and I'm still alive, she'll be accustomed to my face.

Despite the fact that the ambient temperature in the shade is barely sixty, in the Sun and on the lee side of the wind, God smiles mercifully upon my collective soul. Well, 90% of my fat ol' nakid body too. I'm laying outside in the Sun and my exposed skin is making vitamin D by the tens of thousands of IUs. I be a sun-worshiping fool.

I'm Pulling It Outta Mah Ass

I'm alone so much sometime I forget how to talk. That's why I'm taking my singing more seriously these days. One of the most helpful things I learned from taking bel canto voice lessons was that only the vowels can actually be sung. The consonants are used to shape the sung vowels.

Lately, I've been realizing that what I haven't done with my singing scales and such is to sing the vowels in such a way as to find the pure tone of each vowel, and attempt to create a model vowel sound that I can practice in an attempt to make it my own.

I don't know the truth of the matter. There is one method of singing the scales with each of the vowels by placing an "h" in front of them. Hay, hay, hay. Hee, hee, hee. Hi, hi, hi. Ho, ho, ho. Hoo, hoo, who, yoohoo... There are times when I'm doing this "H" thing that I hear the pure sound of the vowel, and try to practice it for as long as I can hang on to my memory of it in order to recognize myself doing it anytime I do. Maybe because it's the easiest way to pronounce it when I do it pretty fast.

There is another indicator that can tell me when I'm getting it right. By that I mean to say that I'm able to hear the model vowel sound most clearly. That has to do with being conscious of the perineum when I practice these scales using the various forms of the vowels.

When I took the private voice lessons down in Key West and sang in the Community College choir and glee club, my voice teacher and the other staff members would always advise us to "sing from our lower belly" rather than from our solar plexus or from our chest.

An old family friend who went back to college in her late forties and got her Masters in Voice and Performance told me there was a secret about this singing from the lower belly thing. That is, to really reach for the power of the voice you have to reach much deeper than the lower belly. She wouldn't get specific. Now I think I know why. It's a lot better for me to figure it out for myself. I'm absolutely sure she realized I'd eventually find it.

She's right, I have found it, sorta, but I'd be a fool to imply I've gained command of it. I'm exploring, and practicing more, and hoping with only hope left that practice will make the right spot easier to find. The feeling of being emotionally met goes away if I don't concentrate on both singing and visualizing the perineum as the source of the sound I'm making simultaneously. I seem to be able to get "locked in" to doing it correctly for a while, but it's really difficult to keep all those balls in the air as the sa-me ti-me.

I used what she told me and the information from an article I read about the perineum existing as "the holiest spot" in the human body. I came to realize that the perineum is where each breath we take originates. So, quite naturally it follows that each sound we utter originates at the perineum, and that's why it's considered the holy spot some claim it to be.

Taking this idea to the physical level I practice singing the vowel scales I've described above and feeling for any possible activity or sign that the intonement of each of the vowel sounds seem to begin there in my perineum.

The answer is yes, at least as far as I can discern it's the same spot I have to search for each time I look for it while I practicing certain breathing exercises. The difficult part for me is to remember to practice singing with that in mind. I need to form a habit of it and develop some attitude of sticktoitiveness.

This is a tricky business and subtle as all get out. I have been attempting to encounter this holy spot through the breathing exercises I employ, and when I can align my breathing just right with it's flow of movement and rest I get very excited. About what I can only speculate.

If and when I can successfully remember to mentally engage my perineum through visualization, and keep the holy spot in focus while I sing the vowel scales, and if I can endure in my efforts long enough to temporarily kick back and get a flow going, I can recognize the old, old symptoms of ecstagony, and then imbecilically yearn for it like a moth to flame.

It Was Seventy Years Ago Today

What I'm trying to describe in regard to what I call "my remembering vision" is the linear history of my genetic heritage. The describer I call me has basically moved from one genetic invention to the next. I have written many times that I "made myself into" a succession of physical entities over a ti-me period of billions of Earth years, but time didn't get invented until we made ourselves into homo sapiens.

You gotta have a language for time to take it's place in matter. Ti-me is all about divide and conquer. In my imagination I see it as a progression started out with two halves of something and then dividing that further into fourths, eighths, sixteens, etc, and eventually the 360 degrees in a circle.

Maybe that's how things work by practicing meditation. Except that when meditating it's unconquering thangs by unity. "Thangs" being the same thing as things, but with a twang to show my humble, dirt po' bejinning and where I'm returning to more swiftly than I like to contemplate and dwell on.

There is a visualization ritual associated with the practice of astrology where the individuated particles of cosmic dust returns to the cosmic soup and the nothingness that allowed them to separate itself one from the other dissipates and London Bridge comes tumbling down... my fair lady.

The London Bridge nursery rhyme has pretty much the sa-me meaning (me-and-thee-ing) as the one about the walls of Jericho, Humpty Dumpty, and the Tower of Babble (Babel). One ritual for dividing to conquer, and another ritual for re-uniting the separated parts in a whole again. Atonement. A shamed man (shaman) needs to have both rituals down pat. A convincing pair of death rattles can dissipate even the most stubborn resistance to change.

Remembering in one visionary event the occasion of every life form you've been or made yourself into gives one a more robust and far reaching perspective of what's wot. What was revealed in vision was the contents of the memory associated with the pearl (soul) when I was thirty years old.

Despite all the plants and animals the pearl has made itself into using the curiosity, volition, and it's accumulated memores (blueprints [like DNA]) it arrived on Earth with, until it organized the whole of what it had made conscious, but without having developed a state of consciousness (conscious of being conscious) in order to step aside and see the treasures they had abstractly stored in the more of their me than the other can see in heaven.

For me this vision was a linear deal. It happened forty years ago today when I turned thirty years old. Well, at least I know that I was thirty years old at the time. I didn't make a bookmark of the exact date it happened to me. I won't be seventy years old until just after sunset. I don't actually celebrate a birthday. I celebrate a birthnight. I lost my birthright about the same time of my life.

It's almost lunch and I still haven't heard from the VA doctor I left a message with. He may never call. Why would he? He thinks he gave me every chance in the world to get in on the stem cell research, but I didn't realize the research was about using one's own stem cells to cure rheumatoid arthritis. What really gripes me is that the methotrexate will probable preclude me from being considered for any other cure that involves stem cells, because the methotrexate appears to contaminate the stem cells in my bone marrow itself. What a drag, man.

One of the more subtle feats of understanding I've ever accomplished is to have finally grokked why the perineum is considered by some as the holiest spot in the human body. It's in that part of the body where the decision to draw each breath is taken. It's where the opera singers reach for the high c notes they sing. Each note they intone happens from that holy spot. It's where the bubbles that burst into the open in the brain originate. In the Book of Changes it is written, "To know the seed is divine in deed."

Almost Fourscore And Ten

I've known a lot of the so-called New Age people. They sort of adopted me because I was generally ten years older than the usually well-heeled hippies. Not well-heeled by their definition, but in comparison to how I was living it was lots easier for them to get by. It was easy for me to move around in that world too, although I was more the age of a beatnik than a hippie. The New Agers are/were just homo sapiens with a special (to them) way of trying to feel human. In my opinion most of them got over it soon enow. 

I don't know how to explain it, but back when I was living as a vagabond I had no steady source of income, but when I stayed in one place for a while, I usually left there with people owing me rather than the other way around. I do understand it as much as my memory of those times will allow me, but I find it difficult, and sometimes disturbing to describe. I never stole nothing from nobody generally. Not for a profit anyway. I didn't have to. Many people think it's better to give than receive. My gift to them is to demonstrate how easy that is by being a good receiver.

It wasn't so much that I'm all that honest, but I have a knack for knowing how to get money and supplies from corporate America and the government too. Again without stealing it, but if I were to steal it would be from the latter. I just didn't have any place to stash something I stole. I ain't that street smart in a hustling sort of way to be able to sell stolen goods without bearing shame.

I can just do without better than many people. I go round saying I know what's important to me, and it's not about a cash flow problem. It's about food, water, and a place to get in out of the weather when possible. I got that now and it's enough. I get the feeling that many people wouldn't be happy on what i get by on, but there's nothing I can do about that.

The Enneagram system for thinking about things intimated that in their way of thinking my chief feature is avarice. Greed. Miserly:

miserly
adjective
1 his miserly uncle mean, niggardly, close-fisted, parsimonious, penny-pinching, cheeseparing, Scroogelike; informal tightfisted, stingy, tight, mingy, money-grubbing, cheap; formal penurious.

Ostensibly, although I accepted the Enneagram archetype as being relevant in other ways, I haven't exactly come to grips with this characterization yet. All of the other archetypes have negative attributes. Some would be worse for me than avarice. But, contemplating what it might signify in my life has be a small revelation. I don't think I could have lived on the road as a vagabond if I wasn't this way, and yet, paradoxically, it's the very reason I failed at two marriages.

I have continuously wondered how I could live on next to nothing and think that made me special in some way. I do it now. It bothers me some that my attitude is an embarrassment to my family. Especially my brothers, but I come by it natural, and they've never known me to be any other way except when I was married. They say I was different then, and for the better.

A Deadly Double-Bind

I guess there are blessings and curses about nearly every aspect of life. I think I just blew the chance to get in on a stem cell research project because I didn't volunteer for it before I started take the prescription drug methotrexate. The doctors didn't really tell me that what they were doing was stem cell research.

They may not be doing stem cell research, but I'm pretty sure they are. I'm just guessing that's from what was going on from my first visit to the specialists to my last visit to the same doctor. I read about some stem cell research some other doctors were doing in which they got the stem cells from the bone marrow of the patient. The research program I had a chance to get into was about taking some bone marrow from my bones. They did tell me that much, but I didn't have enough background information to make the intuitive leap.

Today I decided to do a little more research on methotrexate. Specifically the side effects. One aspect of the side effects got my attention. It was a warning about men using methotrexate that their babies might be deformed because of the way the drug works on a man's body. It was while I was reading about that that I read that methotrexate affects the bone marrow in some way.

The last doctor's visit he told me that I would be on methotrexate for the rest of my life. That was surprising because I had asked him on my first visit if that would be the case. He told me then that there was a chance I might not be on the drug all my life. I felt good about the possibility might not be on this or any other drug for the rest of my life, but all that's changed now. Not only am I gonna be on it the rest of my life, but it's gonna be the death of me besides. Double bind. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

When I got home from my first visit the doctor called me at home and again asked me if I had changed my mind about volunteering for the research program, and I said no. He asked me twice. I said no, but I didn't really know what I was saying no to. As far as I was concerned they wanted a guinea pig for something I didn't understand, and they sort of acted like it was none of my business.

The sequence of events about how this happened is messed up, and if I were to do the right thing I'd rewrite it in a more sensible fashion, but I'm not.

I called the VA Hospital in Durham yesterday and talked to one of the administrators of the rheumatology department and explained that I'd changed my mind, and now I wanted to volunteer, but after reading about the side effects of methotrexate and how it affects the bone marrow I realize that they want be able to get unaffected stems cells from my bone marrow or probably anywhere else in my body because this drug is so pervasive.

I'm just realizing the implications of this. My stem cells are screwed because of the methotrexate. No matter what discoveries they make about the miracles possible with stem cells I'll never be able to participate. I'll die a horrible death from kidney damage from the drug. Oh, I didn't mention that kidney failure is one of the side effects of methotrexate. Surprise, surprise... why am I always the last to know.

Long Tiring Day

I've done more work than I like to do today. I moved my bed back into my old bedroom a couple of days ago, and today I moved my computer station and TV back upstairs again. First, however, I had to finish installing the sub-flooring I've been working. I've been moving stuff downstairs in order to work up stairs, and now I'm moving it all back upstairs again. I still haven't finished putting all the sub-flooring down because I have to rework the space that ain't done yet.

When Ben and I built those outside decks outside the first floor and on the second floor we connected them with a set of stairs that have sixteen steps. The upper deck just outside the room I'm now sitting in is more of a landing for the stairs from the lower deck to connect to, but there is enough room to move around easily and set a couple of chairs out there.

I particularly like going out on the second floor deck at night. I feel very secure to be sitting twenty feet above the ground. I can turn the outside light on from inside my new/old bedroom, take a look outside to make sure there ain't no snakes or bears waiting for me out on the deck, then turn the light back off again and sit outside listening to the sounds of the night.

It's gonna take a few weeks to get things back to normal. I got plenty of aerobic exercise today climbing up and down those sixteen steps repeatedly. Eventually I'll have the stuff I like to have around me in reaching distance from where I sit to write upstairs, and the things I use less frequently downstairs.

That's What God Is Like

It pleases me to witness the proof that other people have realized that a genius is a person who has a genie at their disposable. This woman explains why such is so:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Toward the end of this video Elizabeth Gilbert tells a story about what sometimes what happens with some professional African dancers called The Moonlight Dancers. Occasionally, after having performed their show many times during their yearly tour, one of the performers becomes transcendent, steps through some invisible portal, and their individual performance is no long merely human. It becomes imbued with divinity. When that happened the people would cry out "Allah, Allah, Allah, that's God! That's what God is like." Eventually, in Spain during the bull fights when the matador dodged being gored in some spectacular way by the bull the crowd shouts, "Ole!, Ole!, Ole!" in a similar way, to signify that's what God is like. An adroit dancer, like Krishna of the Hindoos. God can't become human so he uses humans to dance his cosmic dance.

Ms. Gilbert also points out that after any performer offers their audience a glimpse of god, and the next day the performer no longer ex-is-ts as a glimpse of God, that there is a painful period of reconciliation with realizing that the spirit that animated the dancer into a divine dance is fickle, and is not always there at one's beck and call. She points out in the video with poignant examples that an unsuccessful reconciliation with God's departure "has been the ruin of many a po' boy...".

People flock to places where they think they might see what God is like. That's my new working hypotheses. I don't know if it's relevant to what matters or not. Why would it matter? Everybody reads what they would have meant if they wrote what I write.

The image I have in my mind when I write this is the basketball player Michael Jordan. He could perform like God would at times. When he was on a roll he couldn't miss. The accolades he earned seem similar to another performer I never saw do his stuff except on TV, the Russian ballet dancer, Mikhail Baryshnikov.

People who enter a transcendent state become so charismatic they can't be ignored. Their inspiration gets them over their personal limitations and they become like Gods. There is no area or aspect in life where this can't happen or where it doesn't happen. This phenomena confirms for me that God is docetic and it moves. It surpasses by abandonment everything it attempts to become ('Why hast thou forsaken me?'). God is indwelling when anyone is being better than the best they can be.

I've written about being a student of charisma for a long time. Long before I began writing online. Finding out how easily I can be swayed by charismatic people drove me to find out why I'm too easily charmed by charisma as my life long goal. This quest has provided me with many strange bedfellows, because when I didn't know anything, something or anything might be it.

Watching Ms. Gilbert's video and hearing her describe the incident of how the African dancer became transcendent, and with that incident resulting in how one gains a glimpse of God, is somewhat like the missing link in describing my long quest. Namely, one of the main points to what I seek understanding about is to simply comprehend that God can only be seen in glimpses. It figures. Why am I always the last to know?

Here is a link to a bunch of paintings by a Russian artist. The islands in the sky in these pictures is like what i experienced in a very vivid dream once where people were sitting in a outside bleachers looking over the edge of the land. People would walk to the edge of where the land dropped off into space like in some of the pictures at this site, and jump off in a very deliberate manner.

http://englishrussia.com/?p=2546#more-2546

The Depth Of Comprehension While Multitasking

Stumblingly written in an unrequested post to a bunch of people I've never experienced in person before in my entire life:

"With the question for me being: Is the Monarch migration a similar same pattern humans facilitate with Earth just being one of the traditional stops (like Cuba and the Gulf coast states) on their way back "home" (Mexico)?" 

Is the entire process I experienced in my remembering vision like just one of the layover stops for the Monarch butterfly? They leave their winter home to migrate north for the summer season and then return for their long hibernation in cycles and phases of multiple lifetimes in just one phase of their yearly cycle?

The vision I experienced when I was thirty years old was most specifically about these sorts of cycles. I witnessed and simultaneously participated in a process that started out with my arrival on Earth as a non-material pearl-like entity that brought three characteristics with it; curiosity, volition (will), and memory.

This pearl-like entity is verbally indefinable, but it behaves much like how it's been described that "black holes" behave in the sense that they have gravity traction machines that pull the objects around them in the universe into themselves where they're compressed into shadowy wisps of bare somethingness. At least that's somewhat how the mathematicians use words to describe what their numbers say black holes do.

They write of an "event horizon" which apparently surrounds the compression deal of which it is written that once the gravity machine pulls the objects in space past this imaginary line or demarcation they can't go home again. They can't escape the compression process where the life is squeezed outta them until the Prince on the white horse arrives and kisses the breath of life back into them.

When questioned, I've never met anybody who recognized the metaphor of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as representing the Sun and the seven planets visible to the unaided eye. It's a story designed to depict a cycle or process that helps the reader or listener to understand that they're part of a larger movement, and just because they change from one form involving this cycle to another form within the sa-me cycle that what they experience as "me" never loses it's integrity.

Granted, the entity who arrived on Earth and created the life forms scattered about it in their attempt to return to the open spaces of the universe and it's essential nature of volition, curiosity, and memory is like just one of the Monarch butterflies and their endless migration to and from the far reaches of the northern climes, they perform that ritual as part of a larger pattern involving a multiplicity they cannot individually gnow the end of.

Each pearl brought it's own memory with it. The one that you are did too. Even if you only remember what you as this entity has done since you arrived, and that's a rare bird if you do experience this gnosis, there is still the mystery of the contents of that memory you brought to the big Earth dance with you from the bejinning.

When I write about my remembering vision I'm writing about what happens to that essence that arrived here pretty much like a neutrino from a solar flare my get here except that neutrinos don't stop (according to that tale), but keep right on going unimpeded by having encountered the Earth. The non-materialistic pearl-like essence that eventually become human beings get stuck on the surface of the Earth and have to deal with the fact that their flight ain't so fancy no more.

I just sprung a leak by allowing the woman who was the class secretary of my high school graduating class know that it was me that's writing this blog. Obviously "felix manos peregrino" is not my legal nayme. I think I'm using the fact now that somebody from what's become my hometown knows who they think is writing this nonsense.

It doesn't matter if any of my old class mates do read what I write and realize I'm not who they made me into for their own sakes, but I am is not who it thought it was back when I made them into my idea of what they are.

Several times this morning I've stopped to ponder how that's gonna affect what I write here. True, I exposed this farce on purpose with the very idea that it might change how I write. If they do read what I write and wanna tell me what a crazy liar I am they'll have to get in touch with Judy to get my e-mail address. I still ain't changing the Comments setting.

I disclaim knowing the truth about anything. The real truth only happens in the eternal now. You gotta be there to participate where there are two or more together in kind. I use this blog to capture drifting thoughts with woids. I can't determine their veracity or no and get the picture of what I attempt to describe simultaneously. Multitasking or the lack of it with me has been the bane of my existence. '-)

Woids Are Woeful To The Id

I am so hoping the Sun will finally come out for a while today. The ambient temperature has not been shivering cold, but it's not been warm enough to go 'round naked either. It has rained every day for the last week. Why is God angry? It's gotta be personal. Every person I meet acts like it's my fault the clouds have come and hidden God from them? Is a sacrifice needed? Who? Not me, bitch. I paid my dues. I'm going out with a bang, not a whimper.

I didn't mean to speak up at the reunion and make a smart ass remark, but things could not have been productive if I hadn't. At least I wasn't drunk this time. I didn't even have a single drink of alcohol. On the other hand, I wouldn't swear on a stack of Bibles that my state of being was unaltered. They couldn't pass my verbal contributions off as merely irritating. I took the essence of the moment and gave it physical manifestation through the agency of my voice, and made a mere meeting into a joyful occasion.

That's what rabble rousers who are poets do. I talked to a goodly number of my old class mates, but I only spoke two sentences to the group as a whole, and with that they forgave me. I deliberately re-instituted my inside way with them. They've just waiting for me to say something/anything again. Why would they not? They're my heart, but I'm their mind.

The thing is that I am what I am... IS... when I do what it's my job to do. I can't ignore my talents and dumb down to act as if I didn't know. That's what blasphemy of the spirit IS. Frankly, I don't even suspect that I can do anything about that at this juncture. When push comes to shove, I'm gonna say something. It's my nature. The urge to do it is eventually over-powering even if the result is only the widow's mite.

My reasoning about this is that if I do what I gotta do, gracefully and with some appreciable amount of couth and regal dismissiveness as possible. When I've covered my bases in that regard, however, the only option I seem to have centers around what I actually proclaim, when I do what I gotta do. Seeing the world I live in on an ongoing basis as plausible, but unconvincing is not easy for me. It resolves each time to movement and rest.

I do the same thing over and again when I perform the rituals for movement and rest. I count the inhales and exhales of my breathing. I'm addressing the counting moreso than the sitting and the walking. What I mean is that I meditate in two ways. I meditate in the classical way of sitting very still and entering what amounts to some hopefully lucid sleep paralysis, and I practice me-dic-tat-ing while I take my daily constitutional.

Meditation is a practice oriented behavior. As far as I'm concerned it's not one whit different than practicing the doing of any repetitious, but stately ritual. Most recognizable by many as being the same sort of thing to do in order to get the commonly understood results of playing a musical instrument or some particular sport. With the question being: What and how do I practice to get the results I suspect other people of getting, because I want those results for myself too. It makes the girls go all daring and damp. Why else would one wanna go out of their way to get that sort of attention?

In my opinion, it's to capture the overview of a common and unrecognized unity in all gatherings of me and thee. It's the kind of activity and behavior that sends mother's running to collect their children and sot them down before the actor/s of such practice results, and say to them, "Look chile, LOOK! That's how God IS! Remember it, and try to re-cognate it everywhere you perceive it in any way for the rest of your lives!"

Okay, there's gotta be a better description of what I'm attempting to clarify. It might go better if I tried to use the concept of time and timing. Events happen in cycles and phases in the real world. Granted, what we recognize about cycles and phases are exactly and only what we filter for. The phases of the Moon are man-made. The participants in how the phases of the Moon are articulated are the Moon, the Sun, and their mutual relationship to the Earth.

None of the participants: the Sun, the Moon, and/or the Earth know they're doing what we say they're doing or even that they have been assigned the various nay-me-s (names) we address them as possessing. They do what they do and we watch. Then, we give the chosen objects the attributes of humans to make us think that have the same reason for being as we have decided humans have. "Aye, matey, and thar be the rub."

Some call anthropomorphizing an object giving it an identity as a necessary step we use to put physical objects in their place in our reckoning systems. In other words, we use abstract constructs that really aren't there to re-me objects that really are there. Paradoxical... eh? Thangs are what they're not, and they're not what they are.

What I'm attempting to say here is that there's a lotta wiggle room when it comes to communicating. Homo sapiens have a species flaw. They can't know their own possibilities in real time. They can create a persona that is created from the gitgo with the possibility of re-cognating certain events within certain pre-established parameters, but that can't happen when you're a stranger in a strange land. Nobody knows your rules of conscience, and you don't know their rules of conscience, and yet both sides expect the other to not only know what the culture's general rules of conscience are, say, for the sake of socializing, but we expect each other to obey our subjective rules of conscience as if they were ours too, and we can't. That's the flaw in a nutshell.

It's not that we can't see other people's possibles, even if they can't, but when we go to tell them of what we can see plain as day, they only hear what they "think" we're saying, and it usually don't have anything to do with learning what we see that is entirely possible for them.

There is a way, but it's an even greater paradox, and impossible to conceive of for some, no matter what. It is possible for each of us to recognize that what we see in the other as their possibilities... as our own. We have to listen to what we accuse the other of being like, because the only thing we can accuse them of being like is us.

The advice we give to other people is what we should be taking as advice to ourselves. Since it's a paradox, and all paradoxes are basically that we are what we're not, and we're not what we are, then we each have to turn the tables on ourselves to understand what our possibles are in damned-near-real-time. Now, if you can comprehend the reasons for giving other people advice before we actually utter the words (woids/woe-ids/woe-to-the-Id-s), we can recognize our possibles as second nature. Not as fast as real time, but the best of all possible worlds.

Saying Goodbye

I just returned from having lunch with my high school classmates. I didn't go to the last reunion. I've only seen a few of these people who live here locally like me in thirty years. I was surprised that a big crowd showed up. All of us seemed to be in the same predicament. We had to look at the name tags to know who each other were. We were teenagers together back when teenagers became a special breed.

Adults were so fascinated by the advent of television that they paid less attention to what their children were doing, and we all watched Rebel Without A Cause, became James Dean with ducktail haircuts, and defiantly drank beer and bragged about sexual encounters that never happened. Candidly, the '57 Chevy was more prominently remembered than the Class of '57. Seems like the most prominent people to come out of our era graduated in the years before '57 or the years after. By comparison, we seemed like a bunch of bums more interested in having a good time than trying to own the world.

Well, that's what I thought back then, but at this reunion of the same people fifty odd years later, I realize that I'm the only bum amongst the entire crowd. Many of them have had very successful lives and are dying to tell you every last detail. No blame. They seem puzzled I have chosen to live like they have. I don't actually have a believable answer. I get told I've tried to figure that out more persistently than most. What I'm beginning to understand is that I'm already past the place where anybody can legitimately question whatever I chose to say is true, so I say anything to check it out. They don't know, and soon enough, they don't care, and enter whatever walking trance they're capable of.

There was this one guy who has piqued my curiosity over the years in the sense that I wondered what became of him. I wasn't particularly looking for him at the luncheon, but I was invited to sit at the only seat left at this one table, and it turned out that he was sitting right beside me. I didn't recognize him until I saw his name tag. He became a banker. He hasn't retired yet. He got fired up about professional hockey and became a big fan of the Hurricanes.

Another guy became a veterinarian. He seemed to have gone out of his way to make sure he spoke to me when I arrived, and then approached me to talk about how much he appreciated how my father had helped him during high school. I felt like I had to apologize to him for being curt with him the last time we saw each other. Practically everyone who spoke to me mentioned my father and how they had interacted.

I took this veterinarian and another guy who had been one of my father's favorite students as a case study to see if what I've whined about for a long time made any sense to anybody but me. The other guy was even the President of the FFA club all the way through school.

I told them that I'd always been jealous of how much time my father spent with them instead of spending it with me. I felt astonished that they both immediately agreed with me that I might have good cause, and admitted that my father spent a lot of time with them to make them feel special. Since they went for that, I told that I had other bad feeling from in the past that my parents both took their teaching jobs home with them, and treated me more as a student than their oldest son. They agreed that sounded about right, and I stopped there not wanting to push my luck.

Going to this reunion was a lot different that the Class of '57 reunion I went to as a guest of a former classmate at the school I attended before we moved here when I was in the sixth grade. I didn't go to high school with those people, and even though a couple of them remembered something about me, what they actually remembered was my father being a teacher there. I didn't like being there. It was a mistake to go. In doing it I realized that my friendship with the guy back then was one-sided. He barely remembered me at all, and was kind of snotty about even that.

Despite my initial misgivings I had a good time gathering with my old classmates. They didn't wanna relive the past except when we were children together. I have written about how my father treated me like a dumb fuck when I was a kid and accused me many times of not having the mental resources my classmates had, but apparently that's not what they thought. Why am I always the last to know?

It's Me, Oh Lord, Standing...

It's not that I'm cold-blooded. That would require too much focus. There are just times when I'm not emotionally invested in activities other people appear to be frightened by, and I don't understand why they're not just as detached as I am is. I know the end game. I never asked to, but I just do. I take things for granted. This is the way things are... so, this must be the way things are supposed to be. Selah

Being this way is not something that happened over time. It's not something I worked at to learn to do. I never had no mentors to show me how to be this way. It's the way I was born. I remember backing off as little boy and watching the other kids go nuts about things that I wasn't even interested in. I had other fish to fry. Sometime i think it's funny to catch people by surprise and cause them to react predictably to situations I bring into being. I don't even know it's not nice when I do that... until later.

That's why when I bought those audio tapes about what the Enneagrams are to have something to listen to while I was driving a semi truck up and down and across America, I never expected to actually learn anything new, but I did. I found the keystone to what holds my world together.

66 Jesus said, "Show me the stone that the builders rejected: that is the keystone."

http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm

There were six audio tapes in the package I bought at Barnes & Nobles in some weird town up in Connecticut. I wasn't familiar with the Enneagrams, but I was familiar with the guy they were associated with, and I couldn't find any other tapes that seemed interesting, so I bought 'em. I'm saying that the event was serendipitous and not intentional. Not as far as I was consciously concerned.

The tapes were promoted as a Workshop in Enneagrams. The woman who recorded them explained the whole deal, and damned pleasantly too. That was important for me being out on the road in a big truck driving to nowhere by instruction from the computerized truck. I was just along for the ride as far as decision making was concerned, and that's why I needed the audio tapes to focus on.

I listened to books-on-tape when I could get them. I didn't find many audio books that appealed to me at the truck stops. I was a bookworm as a boy, and that whittled down the topics I find myself interested in as an adult.

The audio books were the only human-like interaction I could relate to. I hated listening to the chatter on the CB. I couldn't talk that way and maintain a sense of integrity and self-respect. I was afraid I might get stuck there and never be able to have a conversation with myself ever again.

The woman's voice on the Enneagram tapes was part of my fascination with them. I grew to love her sight unseen. I listened to the tapes as if a man possessed, and I deliberately sought the obsessive way I listened zealously. I've been alone with myself for most of my life. I know exactly how to give myself permission to cop whatever attitude or posture that suits my fancy. Why would I not? Nobody knows.

The anonymous occupants of the other vehicles on the road with me certainly didn't know what I was doing or who I became or pretended to be in order to listen to whatever for any reason that crossed my mind as extemporaneously intriguing. I must have listened to those six audio tapes 50+ times apiece. Over and over. Repetitively. Redundantly.

That's why I put the Gospel of Thomas saying at the top of this ridiculous rap. The term "keystone" is one of the words and expressions I've made myself familiar with by participating in an e-mail discussion group that sends out each of the 114 sayings once or twice a month... again and again... for discussion and comment. When they reach the 114th saying, they start again with the first. Maybe when I become so familiar with the sayings that I become contemptuous of them, then, and only then, will enough be enow.

The keystone I found by listening to the Enneagram tapes repetitively for a long time was that a person like me is most likely not to experience what happens in real time until later on, when they get off by themselves. Contrarily (and most significantly to me), if they don't get off by themselves to experience what happened in real time to milk it for it's true worth... then they kind of go batty... and their frenetic behavior equates to the seemingly erratic flight of a bat changing direction constantly to catch as many bugs as they can eat.

Realizing there may be a purpose in displaying such weird, freakish behavior takes being alone a lot and not listening to nobody else's projections about what they would be doing if they were you. They're not, but it's not them that's gotta realize they're projecting the kind of person they "think" they'd be if they acted like you for their reasons. It's you that's 'standing in the need of prayer.

"It's me...
It's me, oh Lord.
Standing in the need of prayer.
It's not my momma nor my poppa,
but it's me, oh Lord!
I'm standing in the need of prayer."

~ Traditional Hymn

Up until I got obsessed with getting what there was to be gotten from the Enneagram tapes I didn't realize how central a role my need to get off by myself and review what I had deliberately not taken for real when it was real in the specious present.

What I'm trying to describe is that I didn't know I was doing that... in the first place..., and subsequently... I didn't know I needed to rectify that deliberate ignorance via contemplation of my life. Later, I realized that it I began experiencing what happens in real time when it actually happened, I wouldn't have to get off by myself to rectify a lousy strategy.

That's why I self-diagnose myself as autistic. All kinds of intriguing events can be transpiring around me that the other people around me are acting like their pants are on fire, and I'm thinking about a difficult clue in a crossword puzzle I carry around in my mind's eye to amuse myself with while Rome burns.

Most of the social and/or cultural faux pas' I commit by mishap in this way are overlooked by many people because they're too busy making their own mistakes. Either that or felicitously covering them up. Other times my uninvested detachment, and the inevitable sorry end that accompanies it, is not so forgivable nor passed over but called out.

Worse, when the wounded party's unreciprocated raw feelings come openly to fore, and when I finally get the picture in my solitude when it's obviously too late for recompense, only then, in that sad moment, do I realize that I had really hurt someone's feelings (and more) by not registering or openly recognizing the pain I'd thoughtlessly inflicted without feeling. I can't be trusted. Not even by myself. I live in a limbo of the other's fear and loathing, and their gratitude for being dealt with forthrightly. What a drag, man.

Figuratively Speaking, A Departure From Commonality

The quote below was taken from the video I linked in my previous entry.

"The difference between monads and souls is that in the latter the degree of perception is more distinct and that souls are accompanied by memory. "

The author of this statement appears to be the same person who made the video. He was explaining Leibniz's theory of monadology as he understood it. Leibniz has been quite dead for a couple of hundred years or so. He's not objecting. I'm only familiar with Leibniz's name being tossed around with other famous dead philosopher guys. The content of the video is as much as I've been exposed to about Leibniz's point of view, and only now because I've been exploring different views on monadology.

Despite my ignorance of Leibniz's philosophy in general and particular, the last part of the statement/quote is what struck me subjectively, "that souls are accompanied by memory. " I collect figurative quotes about what a soul is. I've never been absolutely sure what people are talking about when they talk about souls.

It's my own indecisiveness that drives me nuts about this. A nutty thing for me to do in this regard would be to nail some poor "soul" to the cross and demand to know they identity. Grilling someone to the third degree about some statement they only made to impress their current girlfriend is no way "to win friends and influence people".

If I could just find a suitable definition for the term "soul" I might abandon my envious attitude toward people who are happy with what they've got. Bastards! Bitches! All assholes. Why am I always the last to know?

The introductory quote, whether by the video author or Leibniz himself doesn't really matter to me. What does matter to me is how I've described what accompanied me here in the non-ex-is-tense of what I've been calling the pearl, but seem fond now of thinking of it as a teeny tiny black hole.

According to what I'm getting from all these videos about Leibniz I've been watching this pearl-like black hole thing-a-ma-bob possesses memory, and thus is not a monad. Monads are just like they're spelled. Singularities.

I've written a lot about memores, but I've never actually thought of them as extensions of a self-integrating monad. Me-mores are an extension of a monad. There is more to me than the other can see. There are two other extensions in the stories I've told about my remembering vision. There could be more. Three is enough.

The three parts/extensions accompanying the nomadic monad is memory, curiosity, and volition. That's the figurative makeup of a soul. Well, at least for a day or two...

The Genies Of Genius

"Leibniz says that monads are spiritual particles and are not perceived by consciousness, but by apperception."

I cranked up this text editor I use as a word processor and typed the above statement while watching a video on Monadology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFzV5Dan09o

The term "apperception" has intrigued me for a decade or so. I've only seen it used by others 4-5 times that I'm aware of. The first time I encountered this term was when I was subscribed to some discussion group and a guy from India used the word. I couldn't find it in my unabridged dictionary, and when I searched for it on the internet I only found a vague reference to something I wasn't familiar with.

The next time I saw this word used was in an article about expertise in the magazine Scientific American where it was used to describe how a person operating a system of expertise fetched information from a database created as a container for information about the specific area of expertise, in the article's case it used what needed to be there for a person to become recognized as a Grandmaster level chess player.

The person aspiring to become a Grandmaster in chess has to memorize all the winning games for the last century or so and and the strategies involved that lead to winning the big dance in chess each year. This is said to be a form of visualization very similar to what needs to be there to envision an imaginary careactor like the Hindu Goddess Kali with eight arms and a necklace of human skulls draped around her neck.

I don't know the game of chess. I barely know which way the pieces can be moved. I've never even learned a simple opening gambit. I imagine, however, that most anybody might agree that learning to institute an imaginary image of an eight-armed woman could get tedious. I don't know of any actual examples of living people with eight arms to serve as a model for "getting the picture".

An easier example would be the training received by many medical professionals in modern times. They establish a database of what the human body is like in their mind's eye through all the courses on anatomy and such. It's not a joke. They have to prove they can "see" all the body parts and the names of them in a foreign language.

Both the medical doctors and the Hindu followers of the Goddess Kali create living databases of the object of their visualizations. It's a very complicated process. The databases have to come alive in their adherent's psyche or they never get certified by their tor-mentors. '-)

Take the Grandmaster initiate in chess for instance. They can memorize all the chess moves that have ever been recorded, but if what they memorized can't provide them with the correct move when it's their time to move, then they never make the grade. They don't get certified by the real Grandmasters as being one of their own.

It's the same deal with doctors. They use the database they established in medical school and residency to make a diagnosis of the situation's needs. If they're right, and what they diagnose can be remedied, They make the brass bell on the cash register ring, and their jealous colleagues green with envy.

Diagnosing the winning move and exercising it is what systems of expertise are all about. It's not all fun and games. No matter how good at diagnosing an illness a doctor is his patient and even the physician himself can't fix what they find wrong.

That's why there is a need for a system of expertise to use as a vehicle to higher ground. The student of the Goddess Kali has to memorize every single feature of a specific statue of her. He has to create the same eyemage of the Pygmalion statue of her in his mind's eye down to the last detail. He has to answer to a person who has already done that, and it's a risky business.

The reason it's a risky business is that once that image of Kali has been me-mored and be-co-me-d with the adherent, then she comes alive and has a life of her own within the mind of her devotee, and she's not wearing a necklace of human skulls around her neck for nothing. When you confront an accomplished devotee of Kali, you have encountered Kali herself. Her response to an insult might cost you your life.

Reaching for and using the contents of an established database of expertise to make a diagnosis of whatever sort of expertise you've acquired is called apperception. It is a term coined by Leibniz to indicate the behavior of a genius who calls upon his genie to provide him with the desired results.

What? You didn't know genies and pearls are goddesses too? Fie!

Pretending To Pretend

I write about being autistic sometime. It exhibits itself in ways I can't always explain. Many time it emerges as a certain type of selfishness, but it's not an accidental thing that merely occurs occasionally. Some might say it's more pathological than that, but that's just another opinion. I don't like remembering my first marriage very much. I was twenty-three years old when the ceremony happened, and my autism showed up often under the stress I hadn't anticipated marriage might bring.

I didn't seem to consider what that girl/woman may have thought about how I conducted my affairs. Which were actually "our affairs" because we really did get married. She and her family insisted on doing it in the church she attended from birth until she married me. It wasn't all that long before it became acutely embarrassing for her to show up with me in tow after that. It was a fundamentalist type church with very strict rules. I seem convinced that she wanted to marry her to take her away from that world. If that's true, then naturally, again, I failed that good woman.

Of all the conflicting aspects that occur in my astrological natal chart, the weirdest one is the opposition of the Sun to the eastern horizon when I was born. I can't think of a better way of describing how paradoxical this situation is than to quote some lyrics from the hit song The Pretender sung by some beach music group, maybe The Drifters, "I am a great pretender. Pretending that you're still around. I pretend to be what I'm not, you see, I'm wearing my heart like a crown. Pretending that you're still around."

That's one of the songs from my youth that keeps playing in mah haid, I've always known I am is pretending to be this or that. I know ten ways to skin a cat.

"I pretend to be what I'm not, you see..."

I think that one sentence/lyric has haunted my life. I can't think of a better way of expressing a facticity I can't get around. I can't pretend I'm not pretending that pretense is what I do best. I can't pretend that the rest of the world isn't pretending right along with me.

I know how people oughta act when they find out that everything I've represented myself to them as has been a sham. I know how I act when I run across somebody just like me, in this regard. Regarding my disgusting indulgence in pretense, at times, which really amounts to every chance I get. Nobody knows.

People in general and in particular only see what they would be doing if they acted like they think I'm acting. It never seems to cross their mind that I'm not. Not, that is, doing what they would be doing if they were me. They're pretending to be me. What? You don't think I know one when I see one? I am is the great pretender. Every pretender is just a variation on the the-me of the original me.

I lived with that woman for nearly eight years (off and on) and she thought I was as innocent as a newborn for all that time and more. I'm glad I wasn't around when London Bridge came tumbling down, and she saw me for what I really am. I took the best of two women's lives. The world is lucky I feel guilty about it.

To this day I don't think either of the two women I was married to for about the same amount of time regret having spent that time with me. They could have been smarter than they were about fooling themselves about me. Neither of them put up much of a struggle about living together. They were probably more proactive in getting the marriage to happen than me.

Only the first one really thought our marriage was forever. It flabbergasted me that she felt that way. I didn't figure it out until the chance was gone. I didn't really think that was possible for anybody to make a decision like that and be prepared to abide by it. If I couldn't consider it because I know how I am, how could anybody else?

That's the deal with the autism. Sometime people are just dead to me. If they're real troublesome, I just write them off. My ability to shut people out of my life allows me to focus on troublesome things for as long as it takes. Don't tread on me.

Some people don't think it's healthy for me to isolate myself instantly by whatever means it takes for long periods of time. I have, what for me, is a good reason for adopting these odd strategies. I have to be alone to contemplate reality. I don't experience what most people think of as reality in real time. Only later when I'm alone.

Then, I bring the entire period of what has happened before me as if in real time and analyze it frame by frame. I have to be alone because I don't like the results I have to deal with when I allow someone to watch my rituals. I've just become familiar with the concept of time-shifting.

Ostensibly, I've been aware of the concept of time distortion for a distortedly long ti-me. I initially became aware of it when I took Harry Aaron's courses in his school of hypnosis. Harry demonstrated this by choosing this beautiful strawberry blonde student to show the rest of the class how it worked. He also asked for two different people who had watches to time what was going to happen.

Before he helped her attain a somnambulistic trance to show how time distortion works, he asked her if she had seen the four hour long movie Gone With The Wind. She had seen it several times. All the better.

Harry helped her get to that deep state in hypnosis called somnambulism. After demonstrating to her and to us that she was indeed in a very deep state of hypnosis, he told her that she was going to the movie theater to see GWTW. He instructed her to purchase a ticket and find a comfortable seat in the theater.

Next, he told her that when the movie started she was to let him know by raising her thumb on her right hand, and when the movie was over she would lower that thumb to let him know when the movie was finished.

It wasn't long before she raised the thumb on her right hand to indicate that the long movie had started. The amazing thing was that her thumb only seemed to be held up for a few seconds when she put it back down again. Harry then woke her out of her trance in order to ask her questions about the movie.

She enthusiastically recalled details of the movie as though she had just seen it. Several of the class mates asked her questions about what she experienced, and she didn't seem to understand why they might doubt that, as far as she was concerned, she had just seen a four hour movie from start to finish. What she didn't understand was that it only took seven seconds on both timer's watches for that to happen in real time. Time distortion. Ya gotta love it.

Proud As A Peacock

This photo really impressed me. How could something make itself into this? In my opinion, each of us has. The force that created us as humans could make itself into a peacock like this as easy as pie.

I know this might seem crazy to some. Why would it not? How could I possibly remember making myself into something as beautiful and symmetric as this former dinosaur is. I remember making myself into a peacock the same way I remember making myself into all the things I've ever made myself into. Bit by bit. Atom by atom. Step-by-step. Like a child creating itself inside a womb. Like a peacock inside an egg. Making myself into a somethingness without even a nayme.

So, even if you were to accept that each of us make ourselves into the living beings of the Earth, only to reject those things as useless because it doesn't perform the task we asked of it. The same task we ask of all the things we've made ourselves into. Will this creature/body get us back into the open spaces of the universe like we were before we got tricked into coming to Earth where we were made captive. All the art we create is just the next hopeful design.

I was just as moved when I saw a documentary on PBS about the life span of Monarch butterflies. It wasn't the individual beauty of solitary Monarchs as much as it is the beauty of their gathering in Mexico. I've never seen that except by film. I have seen them gather on the coast line of the Gulf of Mexico near Ocean Spring, Mississippi.

I didn't know why the Monarchs gathered there. Literally, just yards away from the salt water of the Gulf. After I saw the documentary last year I realized they were probably just resting up to fly over the Gulf of Mexico to their winter home in Mexico, or they could have just flown across it on their way north to their nesting grounds in North America, especially Canada.

The part about their migration that fascinated me the most was that the Monarchs stop twice on their way north and go through the whole process of laying eggs and becoming worms and then butterflies again before they continue north. Twice, they do that, before they get to their final destination, but they fly back to Mexico in one incarnation. Is this just one entity that does this? Is it the same entity that lays the eggs that continues on the flight north?

Is Earth just a stopping place for humans just like Mississippi and the other stopovers are for Monarch butterflies? Do we stop here to take on an intermediate form while we rest up for the rest of some flight that this Earthly stopover is just part of some larger cycle?

What's Not To Like About Death?

"Doceticism was the opposite direction of be-co-me-ing immortal in some man-made heavenly kingdom that conventional Christianity appears to invest in by proxy. Paradoxically, it's the self-appointed "immortals" in this graven image of heaven that are being punished. The only chance they have of escaping is by becoming human so that they can finally die when the body dies. Fat chance... eh?"

I wrote the paragraph above earlier today. I only know what I intended to say. Whether that's what I said or not is blowing in the wind. I never thought about docetic spirits in that way before. I have thought about how that associates with other descriptions from other cultures that could mean the same as one another.

I'm pretty sure the docetic spirit I invoke is me. It's me that's trying to become human and not getting no satisfaction for my efforts. It's been going on for a very long time. For all time when the fact that time is man-made. There was no such a thing as ti-me until we finally evolved into homo sapiens and invented words. Words can lead you astray. That's why a soul needs a tie-to-me (time).

If it's me that is the docetic spirit trying to become human, then it's gotta be me that is the object of the desired union, namely, the tie-to-me. How is time the tie to me? Is it the me as docetic spirit that makes humanity possible through evolution?

I've already claimed it's true as a result of what I saw/experienced in my remembering vision. I arrived on Earth and started imitating other creatures like myself, and by doing that we populated the Earth with all our rejects. The creatures we made ourselves into that didn't get the job done. Making ourselves into homo sapiens might be our last hope, but there's a history that strongly suggests this species will become a reject too.

These are strange times. The economic crisis seems to be bringing humans back to square one. There isn't enough raw material on earth to put a chicken in every pot. There isn't enough fuel for every family to have two or three automobiles and cheap gas too. There's no profit in that. The overlords won't let that happen. Somebody has to suffer or there'll be no reason to wanna move up outta the slums. If everybody is happy with the status quo, the fat cats don't make no money on their venture capitol. Something has to be done to make the natives restless.

Having a war in order to tear young boys away from their mothers to volunteer to be cannon fodder is probably the most reliable way to get people off they tootsies, but even war doesn't kill people at the rate it needs to in order to save the planet from over-population. Global warming may help, but humans have lived through worse. Divine intervention may be about the only true way to get things done. Plagues used to work.

There isn't enough clean water to wash all our dirty clothes. We will have to learn to live in our own shit. People have to die faster, not slower if mankind is to survive at all. I'm not all that sure mankind is meant to. Whatever the new species that takes over the world is like one thing is for sure, to prevail this new species will have to eat humans for food. At the rate humans are using the planet up, humans will be the only animals left to eat as food.

That's so stupid. The Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals kills 95% of the animals they save from you. America has to learn to eat dog meat just like other cultures do. My brother's female dog had nine puppies. Our entire family could be eating them dogs one at a time just like we do the cows and pigs. I'd have to be mighty hungry, but my body don't play them moral and ethical games. It's an animal.

Outta Town For The Fun Of It

It's been a strange day. I decided to drive up to Raleigh to the Apple Store and purchase the newest Mac OS called Leopard. I wouldn't have done it except I wanna get me a SSD to get around this HD bottleneck, and it's the fastest, simplest way to get it done on my Mac Mini. I'm trying to give myself a little boost to help me stay patient while I wait for Snow Leopard to come out. I'll have to buy a new computer when it does. The longer I put buying into it off, the more I'll know if I wanna do it.

To put an SSD in the Mini I'll have to crack the shell. If I'm gonna crack the shell, then I might as well max out the DRAM memory at 2 Gigs. Presently I only have 512 megs. Between installing the SSD that's faster than any rotating hard drive available, and quadrupling the RAM memory my little Mini should seem like a new computer to me.

I'm fairly happy with the way things are. The Mac Mini is actually all the computer I need for what I do with a computer. The motherboard video is notoriously slow. Apple changed to Nvidia for the video system in it's newer computers. But, the biggest holdup on this computer is the lack of memory and the slow response of the hard drive. The hard drive in the Mini is the same as comes in the laptops. Only 5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm on a regular desktop. I'm pretty sure the speed of the SSD and the additional RAM will more than hold me over until Snow Leopard comes on the market, and the first few patches to do things right.

I bought another keyboard. Apple came out with the same size keyboard as the bluetooth keyboard I use, but it's tethered with USB instead. I like wired peripherals. I've grown less and less impressed by wifi. It has the same problems the new over-the-air digital TV does in bad weather. It breaks up and the reception is lousy.

When I got to the Apple Store I changed my mind about getting the small USB keyboard. There are features on the full-sized keyboard I don't wanna do without. I'm keeping the bluetooth keyboard, It works with any device that has bluetooth installed. Even the iPhone I reckon.

One of the things I didn't like about the regular keyboard is that the number key pad is on the right side of the keyboard, and it makes me have to extend my hand out to operate the mouse. I've had to switch the mouse to my left hand, because the index finger has just died. Between overdoing it clicking the mouse and the rheumatoid arthritis I can't bend it to click the mouse any more, and doing is very painful.

So, I started using the mouse with my left hand, and that puts the mouse on the left side of the keyboard where the numbers key pad doesn't interfere. I especially like that the full-sized USB keyboard has two delete buttons that delete both ways. That's damned convenient as clumsily as I type.

Part of the reason I went north to the capital to day was just to get outta town. I need new sensory stimulus or I begin to get drifty. One of the old habits I have that I'm convinced helps me from getting drifty is working crossword puzzles. I go to Barnes and Nobles and buy books of them at a time.

The major newspapers all have puzzle editors who create books of expert level Sunday sized puzzles. I'm picky about puzzle editors. One book of 50 of them cost $10-12. I did the NYT puzzle books for a long time, but I like the LA Times editors better now. They're very clever and entertaining in an odd way that makes me laugh sometime.

Just about every time I sit down to these expert level puzzles I get a little angry that the answers don't come so easy. But, if I buy easier puzzles, I get even angrier for not challenging myself. They force me to run word searches through my entire memory system looking for the correct words for their scanty clues. I run into words just about every day that I would probably have lost from disuse. It makes me remember words I haven't run into since childhood sometimes.

I'm looking forward to the Final Four games tomorrow. I've been a Carolina fan since the Dixie Classics. The pundits think they got a real good chance of winning the Big Dance. I'll be watching to see if they do.

Anarchy Versus Fascism?

Am I an anarchist? David came by today and we had a long talk. He's a conservative and holds the opinion that in any situation somebody has got to be in change. I truly disagree. I don't believe that someone has to be in charge. I believe there are people who feel like THEY need to be in charge, and their polar opposites who want a leader to make the decisions they wish to avoid. I suspect that may be the two elements that cause some people to reach for fascism. My definition for fascism is simple. People who wanna govern and be governed by a strong man.

I don't think that dynamic can be changed in people that have that leaning. Neither the conservatives nor the liberals. Maybe if they were waterboarded or otherwise tortured. Even then, however, I think once the ordeal was put behind them they would revert to their former attitudes without intending to at all. Opposites attract. I hang around with a lot of conservatives. I'm not the slightest bit concerned that being around them will rub off on me. They seem grateful. LOL

When I created my profile for twitter it ask for my interests. I wrote that I study charismatics. Any kind. That's about as truthful and honest as I can be. Even then i have reservations about how much that means to me. I am intrigued by how charisma moves in people, and how sometime it just ain't there.

My last intrigue with it was the way this woman described how some dancers in Africa went round to these rural villages and would put on a show and pass the hat for donations. The dancers danced all night and then early in the morning just before dawn one of the dancers went into a trance and began dancing in a divine flow. The women of the village woke their children up to come watch the inspired dancer, and told their children, "Look, look at that man dance. He acts like God does. That's how God acts."

I might say, in the mood I am today, "Look, look that's anarchy. That's how anarchical people can act like God does."

Okay, I don't actually know what an anarchist is. I've heard they're against having laws. If that's true, then I'm probably not an anarchist because I believe in equality between all men before the same laws. It's not perfect. I don't actually believe there is equality before the law either here in the United States or anywhere else. It's an ideal that some people strive for, and I guess I stand for that. The persevering effort to treat people equally before the law. Especially me. '-)

Twitter And Eyewitness News

I'm missing out. The digital world has passed me by. I'm no longer in the flow of what's happening. The e-mail format is only viable as an enterprise agenda oriented sort of thing. Twitter is something I've just bought into and I'm just beginning to see the possibilities of that. I was a little intrigued by reading the tweets of the people on the scene of a bank in England being attacked by angry depositors and rabble rousers. Tonight on the news the attack on the bank was a big item.

Since I've only signed up for Twitter a couple of days I don't know how this technology will be used, but combining with GPS devices will make clandestine meetings easier, if that's possible. I've never owned a GPS device. I don't travel anymore. Some people appear to have treasure hunts with them they claim to be lots of fun.

The gadget technology seems to be headed more and more to hand-held devices that have everything but the kitchen sink in them, and that's the way the digital world for the consumer will be like. I didn't think the world could be more mobile than it is, but it seems to be headed that way. I foresee a problem with that. People don't really get to know each other face to face as well anymore. The clues one needs to feel safe with people they don't know that well aren't there anymore. On the other hand, they may not have been all that necessary to begin with.

Necessary for what might be a pertinent questions. I have to ask myself if the old rituals performed to be able to tell if a person you have met is someone you can relax around have worked all that well. The murder rate doesn't go down, and in fact it's climbing. Another thing to factor in is that most murders are committed by the very people we supposedly know the best. Friends and family. If you're gonna get murdered, it's the people you think you know best that's gonna put you six foot under.