It was over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit right where I'm sitting most of yesterday. My old window unit air conditioner finally gave up the ghost when I tried to turn it on to cool the joint down. At least I had a couple of fans that still work. It's supposed to be cooler today with less humidity.
I went out and bought a new TV. The cheapest 32" they had at Wal-Mart. With taxes it cost $403. Its still the best one I've ever owned, and only the second new one I've ever bought. I'm learning to work the menu. Just this morning I learned to turn on the Daylight Savings Time feature to get the Time to show up correctly.
I could have gotten by with a smaller set than the 32" I bought. It's huge from where I'm sitting here at my computer. I didn't realize it would seem that big until I got it home and hooked up. Watching from my bed that's located just behind me, however, it's lots better than what I was using. It's more than twice as big as the old 15" computer monitor I have used in the past, and then with a digital converter box. Now, if I could afford to buy the satellite service and get more than the old network channels over-the-air with my ragged, used antenna, I'd feel like a real American.
It is directly because I bought the TV before I realized my ten year old a/c was finally dead, that I can't afford another A/C. I guess I'm gonna hafta find creative ways to stay cool. The warnings about how high temperatures affect old people and children more than those in between. I can tell the exact way it affects me. It's like I've been wearing a safety hat all day at work, and the residual feeling that continues for a while after I take it off. The top of my skull feels unaffected, sorta open and without pressure. It's like I have a sweat band around my head that's a little tight, but I'm not wearing anything on my head. I feel my brain inside my skull.
I had a heat stroke when I was a kid while I was plowing cotton with a mule. I don't know the truth of it, but I've heard that if you ever have a serious heat stroke, then you're susceptible to more heat strokes later. My father and younger brothers found me passed out unconscious at mid-day when they returned to where they left me working. Doctor Nance, our family doctor, and one of my favorite people on earth while he was still alive, told me I was lucky to be alive. I've never been convinced he was right.
It didn't hurt. I wasn't aware that I'd lost consciousness and fell over the plow round. The mule drug me to the end of the field where it could find some shade. I guess I could think the mule did it to save my life, but I don't. It saved it's own life. No blame. The one thing that came out of that experience though, is that now, as an old man who is vulnerable to the extreme heat of the long summer days in the South, if I wanna commit suicide, all I have to do is close all the doors and windows, shut down the fans, and I'll wake up dead.
As I wrote not long ago, I have thought of killing myself everyday since I was nineteen years old when realized in real time that one day I would croak, no if, ands, or buts about it. I was in the Navy, and had made one round trip to the Orient on the ship whose deck I was standing on when I had this profound experience. I was standing on the leeward side of this 5" twin gun mount just looking across the bay to the outline of the city of San Diego, California one misty afternoon when it happened.
The images that accompanied this event are not as clear to me now, fifty years later. I do remember that instead of seeking out a religious professional to cope with my extreme sorrow, I went down to Tijuana twelve miles away to the brothels, and got drunk and had sex with as many prostitutes in Boy's Town as I could afford for at least a couple of weeks.
Ridiculously, and in youthful ignorance, I tried to get somebody pregnant so I would leave some heir to show I have visited Earth. I didn't know how to seduce women for that purpose yet, but I eventually learned. This fool became the person who got a vasectomy to prevent that very thang from happening, but it was too late.
There is no other real reason to remain on Earth/Lesbos than to just leave your mark with it's true natives. Thanks to my remembering vision that happened ten years later at the age of thirty, I know there are more interesting places to live than on Earth. The squeamish paradox of having to be here is agonizing.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
