A Wing And A Prayer

❧
Ignoring a topic or subject that has no personal appeal to me or doesn't offer a hint of increased well-being if I am indulges it indicates a terribly bright attitude to adopt in my opinion. The lines of poetry by Thomas Gray back in the Fifteenth Century, "...where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." states the situation perfectly.

The I Ching possibly states that situation in a more subtle way. In the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Emperor's Yellow Book it states that "The Superior man lets many things pass without being duped."

In the Meyer/Patterson translation of The Gospel Of Thomas the same concept reduces to two words:

42 Jesus said, "Be passersby."

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

Of course, interpreting these writings to suit my fancy is what I am is all about. I filter for stuff that supports my own idea of things in order to prevail and remain free to withdraw into my own secret garden and contemplate with the glee of Tom (the baker's son), "Oh, what a good boy am I!"

Isn't this whole train of thought about excusing myself for my arrogant display of ignorance? My greatest gift and well-honed trait of dismissal? I find it very difficult to hide the fact that I've dissed my contemporary's most favorite topics of conversation as if it's boring to me, when it's not necessarily so.

When I first encountered the expression "dissed" I interpreted it to mean that someone had disrespected somebody else, and that deliberate insult threatened reprisal of various levels of punishment. As time wore away the edges of my initial conclusion, it came to be that "dissing" someone is more useful to me if I understand it as inadvertently displaying a dismissive attitude where it's considered rude.

As a matter of statecraft I find myself interested in deceiving people and hiding my dismissive attitude toward their unwashed mental meanderings to be used as an ulterior motive as if a dragon breathing fire or Thor throwing his hammers of lightning in a jealous rage. Same thing.

I absolutely adore shocking people with their own inattentiveness by dismissing their favorite sayings as inelegant at best. Usually revealed after the fact by a certain look on their face or their furious hand up side mah punkin' haid.

If I knew what I was doing I probably wouldn't just be mean to the other just for the hell of it. I get used by a docetic spirit as if I'm it's bitch. I'm innocent, I tell ya'. I'm just God's pawn. Not even an important piece like a bishop or a knight. I can only go forward one step at a time for the most part, and I'm expendable as all get out. I know what it's like to be a throwaway.

Over the last seventy years my own favorite ideas have been dissed by the most savage beasts around. My mentors have been absolutely sublime in their methodical discombobulation of my already frail ego. I can't possibly be that dumb. Why do people think they have to knock some sense into me like I was merely chopped liver? It didn't have to be that harsh. Why am I always the last to know?

Discovering what's wot by being the last to know is no great shakes. It's very embarrassing. Being the butt of some clique's inside joke is a terrible price to pay for just wanting to be around some interesting people for a change. I have always spent much of my time alone, even in a crowd, but when I do turn outward I just hate being treated as a dolt for not seeing their light all along. I hate paying to learn to play.

I hate that my old friend is trying to suffer his child's individuating pain for him. It's just not fair of him as a parent to do that, but things ain't been going right in a lotta different ways for this "good ol' boy" for a couple of decades now, and it's the best-laid plans of mice and men all over again.

He needs another line of work, but he is sixty years old and he trapped himself by hanging with an old industrial age technology after it's fall from grace. Moreover, he is complicit in the fact that he knew all along he was getting left behind, and he sulled up like a mule and got liver-lipped instead of being proactive.

There is nothing nobody can do. That's just his way as a rebellious conservative (not an oxymoron). He refuses to accept fate as kismet and move on. As usual, life will have to crush him in order for him to find another path with heart, that is, if it's not too late. The perversion of it is that he probably likes being crushed by life again and again.

How do I attract these perverts as friends? We're not at all alike in any way. I try to ignore them for their own sake and they keep coming back for more. Why me? I'm as innocent as a lamb. Maybe thats why some of them have been around for forty years. I'm the best model for perfecting themselves as human beings they have found yet. LOL
❦

Bombarded By Artificial Brainwaves

❧
It's very difficult for me to compose words I like when there is somebody else around or even if the TV or radio is making noise, but here I am attempting to write at the same time I have these binaural beat videos playing through the earphones I impulsively bought, but hardly ever used. These videos don't normally last as long as it takes for the brain to entrain on the dominant beat strategy.

One of the features of YouTube I stumbled across is that if I click on one of the videos in my Favorites folder it will automatically play all the videos in that folder. This might work for me by choosing videos I am impressed with for some reason and playing the same videos one after the other on a frequent basis to establish familiarity.

There are enough videos by various composers that use the 528 hz Schumman Resonance as the basis for their video I could create a separate Favorites folder for just that frequency, and then play them repetitively in sequence until I could anticipate the end game in order to participate wisely.

It's not like I have not minimally attempted to create binaural beats myself previously. As much as ten years ago I bought an audio editor that was supposed to be set up to make doing it easy. Now I know that my real problem in making that happen was that I didn't really understand what a binaural beat was until the last couple of days. Why am I always the last to know?

I found this list of purportedly useful frequencies on one of the info pages that comes with YouTube, but forgot to get the link. Forgive me.

The Six Solfeggio Frequencies include:
UT 396 Hz Liberating Guilt and Fear
RE 417 Hz Undoing Situations and Facilitating Change
MI 528 Hz Transformation and Miracles (DNA Repair)
FA 639 Hz Connecting/Relationships
SOL 741 Hz Awakening Intuition
LA 852 Hz Returning to Spiritual Order

I'm not particularly interested in creating my own binaural beats anymore. Whatever interest I originally had in doing that got put on the back burner when I discovered all these videos to play around with. Like currently wearing the earphones to let these tones wash over me while I'm writing to see if it changes anything about my descriptions.

My Favorites folder is now occupied by about six videos that are mostly about the 528 hz Schumann Resonance frequencies. They're not composed by the same people. I'm beginning to recognize whose work impresses me positively and a couple that don't. I don't have any real good reason for choosing these particular videos to play redundantly. I figure it'll all work out. I'll charge it to the ground and let the rain settle it.

I have an old friend who knows he has to let go of his youngest boy child and let him take his own chances to become an adult person with his own identity. My friend seems to be taking it hard, and appears to refuse to allow that what's happening is just nature at work. Being an eaglet is no fun at all if you never take the chance to leap into the open air and fly. Being brow-beaten into playing it safe can have tragic results. I'd rather have died trying than to live in infamy.
❦

A Godless Loner

❧
Computer housekeeping has been a bit of an obsession with me from the gitgo. It was absolutely necessary on my early computers because they didn't have much hard drive space. The first computer I owned, a Mac Classic, was fairly renown for having a 40 megabyte hard drive. Forty megabytes was huge back then. Up until then, both the operating system and all data was placed on 1-2 meg floppy drives.

My brother wrote his first book and stored all of it on floppy disks. There was a whole stack of them in addition to back-up disks. Finally, he was able to buy a huge 80 megabyte external hard drive that he kept the operating system and most of his book on. His Mac was an earlier model that didn't come with a hard drive, only floppies. I remember how overjoyed he was with that first hard drive. It was very large, and in a metal casing that was almost as big as his computer itself.

The iMac I use now came with a 500 gigabyte hard drive. It has 425 gigabytes of open space. I don't have to do any housekeeping to speak of with that much room. The Mac operating system does most of what needs to be done automagically. I feel a little left out of the process, so I piddle around pretending my computer needs me, but it's still the other way around.

The housekeeping I did this morning was to use SuperDuper to back up my internal hard drive to an external drive I bought specifically for that purpose. That's all SuperDuper does. Well, except for the fact that it makes the external hard drive bootable. If the internal hard drive fails the external drive boots the computer and has everything on it but maybe the very latest entries.

I sure hope the internal hard drive doesn't fail. It is written that it's hell to get inside the iMac to replace it. I don't think I would attempt to do it myself. That lack of confidence could cost me mucho dinero, and I'm a miser.

"It takes a worried man to sing a worried song..." ~Kingston Trio

It's taken a very long time for me to grok the notion that I am is a miser. As in greedy. Eat up with avarice. My chief feature and deadliest sin. I had to get around to noticing it in myself before I could perceive it in the other, but when I did I realized I wasn't alone in my depravity. The stuff I studied that helped me to realize myself, in this regard, concluded that the odds ran about one in five people that are pawned by this disintegrating outlook.

The central point for me is that my avarice is so limited to a nay-me-able condition. That condition is and always has been defined rather severely, but when it comes into play so does my greed. I can be quite harsh in my employment of it. I might not kill you for my right to be alone when the ti-me co-me-s.

That's probably why the rheumatoid arthritis suddenly bloomed into abject agony. I probably couldn't kill anybody for interfering in my need to be left alone at certain times in my life. Physically, I mean. I am certainly not physically able to beat anybody up without it hurting me to do it more than it hurt my victim. I have to rest in between typing paragraphs now.

This might be all about my crying "Somebody stop me!" for unending decades to attract sexual partners. I thought there was an unending supply of tolerant do-gooders who just love to spring into action to save me from a most perilous death. That was fairly true as long as I presented a dashing figure with eccentric needs.

"...but, he grew old
this knight so bold,
and 'round his heart
a shadow,
grew as he found
no spot of ground
by the nayme of
Eldorado..."

~ E.A. Poe, El Dorado

What I could not "see" that might allow me to recognize that I am is a miser was my incessant need to be alone. I need to be alone for a specific reason. I don't experience truth in real time. I only "get it" upon devout contemplation without interference. I am is a jealous god, and nosy. I can't contemplate my own shit with anybody else around. Not even God. Not even "when the dew is still on the roses..."

When I studied the Enneagrams and realized through listening to the workshop tape that I shared something the testimonials described I sort of went into shock with the truth of it for-me. It's not that I don't like being around people, I do, but there are times when I gotta be alone to contemplate my own self or I get jerked around big time playing catchup.

There is nothing particular important or interesting about what I contemplate about myself. It's just that if I don't take my own point of view in consideration in light the other's opinions it's like blaspheming the spirit in which I am is me.
❦

Binary Brains And Binaural Beats

❧
This blog entry is further evidence that I'm not interested in writing the truth as much as I am capturing drifting thoughts with words, and in this case the drifting thoughts are about the binaural beats material I have been subjecting myself to for a few days.

My earlier study of binaural beats was revealed to be less-than-in-depth the last few days. I never have fooled myself that I had become an expert in this subject. As a matter of fact, my meager efforts to create binaural beats by my own bootstraps didn't work out because of technical incompetence. I made better than passing grades on the theory of electronics, but I was never able to get it from my head into my hands. I'll live.

Until I watched a video by a nerdy guy who does know how to create binaural beat videos I didn't really know what a "beat" was, much less that the definition would have informed me that it had to evince itself binaurally to happen at all. This guy not only explained the intricacies of binaural beats, but demonstrates it to his viewers who wear stereo earphones. Now, I know what the big fuss is about.

My friend Rainey came by for a visit and rudely interrupted the amazed enthusiasm I displayed in explaining how ignorant I've been, in the past, by tuning my ratty-ass classical guitar using "beats". He told me just to "Shut up and listen...", and I did. He demonstrated how two strings on the guitar are tuned correctly.

To do that he played the same note on both strings by traveling up the fret board to the second occasion. Then, he plucked the first string and quickly followed by playing the same note on the second string. If the reverberation between the two strings produced a warbling roll of a sound, then it was off-key. If it didn't make that warbling sound it was in tune. The warbling sound is what's called the "beat" and it's produced binaurally.

Furthermore, when I was about to comment on this remarkable phenomena, he told me again to shut up and listen, "The lesson isn't over."

"Well... Damn!"

"Shhh..., listen!"

The rolling reverberation of "the beat" pulsed one way if the second string was too tight, but it pulsed another way when it was not taunt enow. He seemed pretty happy with his demonstration, and he oughta be. After he finished "the lesson", he admitted that he had never heard it referred to as a binaural beat, and that he had never felt satisfied with his previous explanations of how he tuned string instruments. That all changed by the ti-me he finished "the lesson". Now he can write that novel that's gonna be his saving grace.

Andy Dolph is the guy's name whose video explains binaural beats. He creates videos that feature it, and has a free download he kindly offers to well-meaning people who wanna hear his handiwork here:

http://binauraljourneys.com/jordl895632/

Taking the beat out to tune a stringed instrument is just as deliberate an act as introducing a binaural beat designed to entrain the listener's brainwave patterns to the desired end. In this case the beat can be shaped by the variation in the induced vibration.

I'm pretty sure the only precise result a normal person can get when they tune a guitar is the pure resonance of an exact match. My thought is that it might be hard to measure the exact distance apart the two strings are without a measuring device. This is not a problem with a digital signal generator. Precise frequencies can be dialed up from the git go with LED readouts galore.

Playing two digitally-produced pure tones simultaneously for the purpose of the difference between them is a piece of cake with the modern computers. The third tone rendered from the difference between these two pure digital sounds is the binaural beat. It can be adjusted to any other possible beat by changing either one of the pure sounds.

The point of producing a stereoscopic binaural beat is to simulate existing brainwave patterns such that the brain will entrain its current state of being to the induced binaural beat. What happens when it does that can only be extremely subjective. Like a bus ride, it gets you to your desired destination, but what you go there for is none of the bus company's business.
❦

Great Big Batteries For Windmills

❧
It's so stupid of me in my dotage to be interested in the energy crisis. More than likely I won't be around when these technologies come to fruition, or the Earth dies in the effort. I'm reading about how some inventors are trying to build battery-like storage devices to hook up to windmills and solar panels so that the electricity they produced can be stored locally and used as needed.

Presently, the only practical way to handle the generated electricity is to sell it to the grid, and pay the difference in how much power you draw from the grid. If you use more than you produce you pay them. If you produce more than you use, they pay you. You can wax ambitious to make a profit or kick back happy to pay less. If you got the cash it's a good deal either way.

My personal interest is in each household individually producing at least it's own requirements, with a surplus for the grid, if at all. Wireless power would be aesthetically pleasing to say the least. There is a guy down the road who re-wired the house he grew up in to run off 12 volts like a motor home does. I believe if everybody did that it would really help use less power to begin with.

This is an interesting article on how to save the electricity windmills and solar farms generate:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20011751-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

One interesting method mentioned in this article that I haven't thought of would be to use the electricity generated in real time to pump water up to elevated tank, and then when you need it back to run a household it would be opened up to descend upon a turbine generator that would switcho-chango the energy back into electricity to cook with.

The home refrigerator could have it's own outlet from the elevated tank with it's own small turbine that produced exactly what is needed, and only when the compressor runs. If I had a windfall I could have a waterfall to play with. What fun!
❦

Great Big Batteries For Windmills

❧
It's so stupid of me in my dotage to be interested in the energy crisis. More than likely I won't be around when these technologies come to fruition, or the Earth dies in the effort. I'm reading about how some inventors are trying to build battery-like storage devices to hook up to windmills and solar panels so that the electricity they produced can be stored locally and used as needed.

Presently, the only practical way to handle the generated electricity is to sell it to the grid, and pay the difference in how much power you draw from the grid. If you use more than you produce you pay them. If you produce more than you use, they pay you. You can wax ambitious to make a profit or kick back happy to pay less. If you got the cash it's a good deal either way.

My personal interest is in each household individually producing at least it's own requirements, with a surplus for the grid, if at all. Wireless power would be aesthetically pleasing to say the least. There is a guy down the road who re-wired the house he grew up in to run off 12 volts like a motor home does. I believe if everybody did that it would really help use less power to begin with.

This is an interesting article on how to save the electricity windmills and solar farms generate:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20011751-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

One interesting method mentioned in this article that I haven't thought of would be to use the electricity generated in real time to pump water up to elevated tank, and then when you need it back to run a household it would be opened up to descend upon a turbine generator that would switcho-chango the energy back into electricity to cook with.

The home refrigerator could have it's own outlet from the elevated tank with it's own small turbine that produced exactly what is needed, and only when the compressor runs. If I had a windfall I could have a waterfall to play with. What fun!
❦

Solfeggio-Sound Into Light

❧
The Neurophone I bought and used some years ago seemed to work for me as advertised, but I probably got more from it than intended. I also got skin cancer from the ceramic contacts that had to be burned away with liquid nitrogen three times to make it go away. That's what friends are for.

The Neurophone was invented to train a person to "hear" through other body parts than the ears. The inner ear transfers the information it gathers to the brain through the eighth cranial nerve. The information gathered by the skin transfers through other cranial openings. It's been a long time since I read the documentations, and the so-called facts of the matter have gone the way of all extraneous tagalongs.

The sound gained from "hearing" through the skin isn't stereotypical. It just appears somewhere like in the middle of the brain like when you have a great pair of earphones adjusted just right. There is a new digital speaker system that bypasses the ears and the eighth cranial nerve with the same result. The "sound" makes itself known omnidirectionally instead of in stereo from two sources, the ears.

If you used the link I provided yesterday and listen/watched the YouTube video with stereo earphones the result could have been that you might have read a statement on your computer monitor that said "Sound and light are one." I believe that's what's going on with the Neurophone.

The "sound" received from the ceramic electrodes (that require a contact gel just like with EEG scalp electrodes) isn't transferred to the brain through the eighth cranial nerve like sound from the ears is, because it is converted to light with the skin layers, and the brain recognizes it as the same sort of stimuli as physical sound.

What I do know is that the audiologist at the VA Hospital diagnosed that I was legally deaf, and I'm anything but deaf. That's how I know the Neurophone works as advertised. I don't think the inventor knew why at the time he created the circuitry. He originally did it in order to assist human beings "hear" and communicate with dolphins when he was fifteen years old, and got his picture on the cover of Life Magazine.

If you used any of "mountain/mystic's" videos you probably read that the various videos focus on specific frequencies like the overall frequency of the Earth itself at 528 Hz. The reason the term "solfeggio" is used is to indicate that the listener/viewer participate by humming or singing a tone at the same frequency.

Here is a link to a video based on the 528 Hz frequency that is not accompanied by music or other possible distractions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgMQOAWeVs0&videos=cVq_upj5n3A

This is not from the Mountain Mystic group. There seem to be lots of people making these videos these days and putting them on YouTube. I started the video and started humming as close as I could to the provided tone. The audio part of the video seemed to help me zone right in on the precise frequency.

When I got it just right I started hearing overtones both above and below the orally uttered frequency. If I changed to an octave above the 528 Hz frequency or an octave below, the overtones changed a bit, but I still had to hone in on the exact octave to get the desired results.

It's come to mind thats how this whole deal works. The revealing statement "Sound and light are one" is the key to understanding why stereo sound can be converted into light signals by the skin. As a matter of fact, the ears themselves are made of skin that's been folded in a particular way, just like brain tissue is folded in a certain way.

Singing along with the solfeggio section of the videos makes me a participant in this really strange process. Certain reproduced sounds make for specific, predictable light shows on my subjective "silver screen". Hypothetically, I should be able to completely explore external sound as what it be-co-me-s as it's converted to light to enter my body through my skin.
❦

100 Degrees Fahrenheit/ 95% Humidity/ WHEW!!!

❧
Ahhh, I wake up to temps in the mid-eighties (- + 30° C) and sticky as all get out because the humidity is in the 90% range. The air tempuratures are predicted to be 103° Fahrenheit in the shade tops today. What a drag, man, I ain't digging it at all, but whatcha gonna do? Sweat. perspire, and wear wet clothes...

I spent a couple of hours watching and listening to a series of YouTube videos that were all about sound and light. Most of them featured specific digital frequencies reputed to cause specific reactions in my brain and sensory system. It's called entraining and involves the sounding of two frequencies that are set at certain decibels apart, and that distance is the same as the frequency of specific brain waves.

http://www.youtube.com/user/mountainmystic9#p/u/1/ueV55o7SyXo

You can watch/listen to these videos or not. I've been to training seminars on how this works and have learned what to do with them from the Monroe Institute and I'm pretty amazed they're free on YouTube. It cost me thousands of dollars to participate.

The link is to just one of the producers, "mountain mystic", but there appear to be lots of other producers who design the frequencies and apparently they can't be stopped any more than the record industry can stop the music pirating. The mountain mystic recording appeal to me because they employ solfeggio. Solfeggio involves singing the notes of a song using do-re-me-fa-sol-la-te-do. Like the lessons Julie Andrews gave in The Sound of Music. The idea is to sing along with the frequencies to create the harmonic givens.

The first video I sang with caused my voice to move to where it was in harmony with the recorded presentation. I started hearing all sorts of harmonics of other frequencies that stopped if I stopped singing. That's the way it goes with this stuff. I don't know what the people who haven't studied entrainment get out of it. I suspect it would work just fine if you listened to them enough times. I am delighted to find these videos.

The Monroe Institute teaches people how to leave their bodies and go astral traveling. If you don't think you could handle this because of some preacher or your stultified parents has declared this sort of activity nonsense, then you probably shouldn't do it and go listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck instead.

If you do listen to the the frequencies on these videos you need to wear stereo headphones to get the intended effect. That's because the videos play different frequencies in each ear that are the designated distance apart. I've forgotten the frequencies of the four predominant sound waves, but any and all of them can be entrained by the brain to any desired range.

For instance, 528 hertz is the frequency of the entire Earth, and when the difference between the frequencies played in each ear, no matter what range high or low, amounts 528 hertz between the two of them, then that brain wave frequency will predominate over the other three frequencies.

Typing this much is causing me pain, so I'm not going to spell this stuff out even if I could. Listen and see what happens or not for you. You could Google up "brain entrainment" to get the whole story.

I've been putting off resuming taking the methotrexate until tomorrow. I "think" I've found out what was causing the sores in my mouth that frightened me. Not the result I wanted. It's the NSAIDS ibuprofen and naproxen, and surprisingly, aspirin. Tylenol don't appear to cause my lips and tongue to swell up. That may be the NAC (n-acytyl-cystiene) I'm using daily, but I'm gonna live with that. I can literally feel it working in my brain. For a while after I take it, it feels like a got a hat on around my head, but I don't, then it fades out.
❦

Coping With Hopelessness

❧
My sister-in-law came by for a while on her lawnmower and mowed around the entrance to my house. It was getting pretty grassy like a jungle. The new bamboo plants over in the northwest corner of the lawn helped with that rainforest look.

My hands have gotten to the point that I can't drive the lawnmower much. I was hoping the prednisone would stop the pain in my shoulders, especially my left shoulder, and it did, but the core pain deep in the bone doesn't seem to want to give it up.

The arthritis has been the biggest problem so far, but the osteoporosis seems to be the culprit in my shoulders. I haven't read that much about it. Reading about the RA hasn't really helped me deal with it any better, so I might not spend too much time reading about osteoporosis. This shit is very scary as far as looking toward the future is concerned.

I'm getting a lotta ripe figs now. They started ripening slowly, but now they're really going to town. I walked out on my deck to get a breath of fresh air, and dozens of birds took off from eating their fill. I just went over and ate some myself before they all get gone. YUM!

The blueberry bushes that have popped up at the base of a small oak tree where various kinds of birds roost are really healthy this year, and they are loaded with blueberries. Even last year I wasn't sure they were the cultivated "rabbit-eye" sort that are real sweet. Now, I'm very sure.

This variety are ripening slowly and I've been able to go out and get some to put into my oatmeal each day for a couple of weeks. The amazing thing is that there are lots of green berries that look like they'll take much longer to ripen. I could have fresh blueberries for weeks.

There's no sense in writing about this hot weather. It's been just below 100° (37.778° C) with humidity around 90% +. Today it's supposed to go well over a 100° and feel like 110° Fahrenheit. Everybody has to cope the best way they can. If they have an electrical brown-out on the East Coast in the next couple of days, a lotta very young and very old people will die. More room for the immigrants... eh?
❦

Get The Laziest Man To Do The Hardest Job

❧
On Jul 22, 2010, at 8:43 AM, ____ wrote:

There's no denying that the church of rome integrated the solar/son/god myth into what was the early christian church.

***

I used to plow cotton with an old mule I spent time following each day except Sunday in my teens. I talked to her butt and vagina as she stopped to shit and piss in the fields where we worked each day. I accused her of having no shame. I was practicing to be-co-me skilled at inducing unwarranted sha-me.

A possible lesson this mule taught me was that no matter what I did to convince her to change her mind, she stopped working and headed for the barn before the sun set each day. Mules are perfectly capable of living up to their reputations for being stubborn. But, in my unwashed opinion, mules are the perfect companions for climbing wholy mountains to seek peak experiences.

Oh, I walked with Her,
and I talked with Her,
and She told me
I was Her own,
and the joy we shared
as we tarried there,
none other
has ever
known.

~ Early Christian Hymn by A. Einstein

Does a mule need it's own myth to know to get back to the security of the barn before the sun sets? Do you think they have to wait for a neighboring mule to tell them where to go when the sun don't shine?

In my world view there is no separate Christian solar myth that's any better or worse than any other solar myth. Just pick one that suits your fancy and move the fuck on. Nobody knows. Jeez!

To me it seems presumptuous to suggest God/Sol needs such haughty transitory assistance from it's illegitimate spawn. '-)
❦

The Forsaken

❧
The time came when I had to do something or go into shock from the shame of it. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I may have gotten myself into this mess physically because I knew I had a way out. If I hadn't have, I'd surely taken another course. Even so, I'm not sure I'm out of the woods yet. I'm just buying hope with underhandedness.

I've had some prednisone stashed back in case I started experiencing pain beyond my present ability to cope. I took the first 20 mg tab yesterday and another one today. It's not really making the pain go away. This doesn't bode well. If prednisone don't work I'm in for a lotta trouble.

The veggie omelette I ate this morning was fairly tasty despite the fact that the cook did burn the outside a little brown. I specifically asked the waitress to tell the cook I wanted the omelette to be cooked soft, but not runny. She told me that's the only way he could get it to hold together. I acted disappointed to have had my word disputed, but actually the omelette was fine. They should try harder to earn my patronage. LOL

It hurts a lot to type, so I'm stopping.
❦

It's All I Do Anymore

❧
It's been a rough night, and it's all my fault. My shoulders started hurting pretty bad. I was crippled in my upper left arm and shoulder. The pain was horrific. I hoped that if I could get some sleep it would ease off. That didn't happen. I woke up almost screaming.

There was a cause to all this madness. I moved my computer downstairs, but not my computer table that's set about the right height. Everything downstairs was the wrong height and I ended up bent over with a lot of strain on my shoulders. This put stress on the joints, and that's what hurts. I moved my computer back upstairs. I couldn't move the table downstairs. Apparently those days are gone.

I'm trying to get out of taking the stronger painkillers. They're not that strong, but when I take two of them they work a lot better. The two naproxen 220 mg tablets I took have caused the worst pain to wane, but the deep bone pain may not go away without a little more help. I'm taking them. Screw this. I deserve a break today.

My left arm has gotta have a break, that's why I'm switching the mouse back to my right hand. For a while. I enjoyed learning to use the mouse with my left hand. It was interesting, but painful in a way. I switched in the first place because of what I thought was carpal tunnel syndrome, but it was actually arthritis.

It took me a while to notice that using the muscles associated with my left hand caused the same muscles in my right hand to flex. In sympathy I reckon. By the end of the day the muscles for both hands were each as tired as the other and I wasn't using my right hand.

I don't watch a lot of TV. When I do it's usually something on PBS. I don't receive satellite or cable TV. Sitcoms bore me. They're too predictable, and full of government and religious propaganda. They try to teach their audience how to be good citizens by consumerism. PBS, on the other hand, tries to get it's audience to contribute directly to it in order to save it from it's inevitable demise as a tax write-off for the wealthy.

The digital transmitting deal that took over from analog broadcasts allows them to have several channels. It's called multi-casting. It's fairly simple to understand why the switch to digital became appealing to everybody except the people who only get over-the-air-reception. Despite that, it gives me more options of stuff to see. If I could afford it I would pay for satellite service without complaining too much.

PBS started what they call the Explorer Channel which shows a lot of travel shows and Ken Burns stuff. All of them advertise their wares throughout the program and at the end of the show. So much for commercial-free TV. Still, it's convenient to have a little more choice about what to waste me time with.

Burt Wolfe and the other tour guides probably get paid to show their advertisements, but I enjoy seeing the various places they visit and talk about. I've never been to Europe, and from the response these travel shows conjure from me I don't particularly want to. Those people are so steeped in tradition it's repulsive to me. I like wine as much as the next person. As far as alcoholic beverages are concerned wine is nearly all I drink, Europeans are obviously a bunch of tradition-bound drunks who are obligated to wage war on one another. China will eat them for lunch, followed by a terrific Bordeaux.

That's pretty much my response to Ken Burn's patriotic crapola. He's really getting over. He gets a high percentage of his material free from the government archives to sell it to the people who contribute to PBS. In the industrial construction trades that's called "feeding the monkeys" until their audience becomes addicted.

The painkiller is kicking in. It doesn't really help the pain as much as it distracts my attention from it. It allowed me to amuse myself by day-dreaming about bitch-slapping images of Ken Burns. He has got to be another draft-dodger. The entire time I composed my remarks about him above, I forgot about my shoulder hurting, so I guess he's useful in a way.

Maybe I'll drive over to the strip mall and go walking to see if that will act as a distraction instead of using my distasteful scorn toward Burns. Maybe I'm envious of him because I won't allow myself to come across as being that disgustingly fey, and he does it as easily as water rolls off the back of a duck.
❦

The Wrong Time Of Year For A Cardigan

❧
There was no reason for me to do the same ol' thang yesterday, so when I drove off from my house intending, perhaps, to get some breakfast and a fresh perspective, it didn't surprise me much that I drove on past town out toward I-40 and the world beyond.

I didn't get far. A couple or three exits later I decided to turn left on I-95 and go toward Dunn, then cut back on Highway 421 to bring it on home to a life of quiet desperation again. The reason I got off at Dunn was there used to be a restaurant there I stopped at occasionally that I wanted to see if it was still open. It wasn't. Gone are the days...

The fact that I know this area from a long time back is because I was raised on the coastal plains, and these little towns and villages all took the same trunk roads to the State capitol, Raleigh, and getting there from anywhere in the southeastern parts of the state was like playing a pat hand in stud poker.

The Interstate Highway system forced all those old routes and trunk roads to conform to their design. No blame. They were designed to collect traffic from the existing network of smaller, more cluttered roads on to express routes with lots of lanes. It had to happen. The United States of American is a large block of real estate. All for sell to the highest bidder. God bless our happy homes?

Sometimes I'm content that I did what I needed to be young to do when I was young. I couldn't do any of that stuff I did presently. I think having to sleep on the ground without any shelter from the ambient weather would be a very miserable existence for me. Yet, I wouldn't take anything for having lived that way with aplomb.

The nightmares I sometime have about being stuck in a huge industrial complex wandering endlessly and futilely to find my way back out into the real world are based on real experiences. I have worked in places like that off and on for years. New work and shutdowns. As long as it offered lots of overtime and per diem I wuz they man. I liked living as a stranger in places that were strange to me.

I liked having a skill the investors needed to make their money work for them. We had an understanding. I earned a right to feed at their trough and get paid for it via highly developed eye/hand coordination. I learned to weld high pressure pipes and steam vessels and do it to 100% x-ray specifications the first and only time. Pipe-welding was the only skill or craft I ever mastered. I couldn't not have done it.

Learning to weld was practical experience in developing insight into what it takes to master about anything. In art I've compared Grandma Moses to Rembrant to specify the difference between primitive and fine art. Grandma Moses worked a natural mojo until she made it do what she wanted. Rembrant served an apprenticeship and had his natural mojo honed by an existing master artist.

My welding was fine art liken to Rembrant. I welded way beyond the finest junk yard talent that ever stumbled through a graveyard to cars. I attended classes and had master welders critiquing my work every day. It has to happen to pass the welding tests to get the big money. It's not that big, but usually the highest on the job site. You have to prove you can do it before they can hire you. Auditions... auditions... auditions!!

Becoming a master welder was the height of my ambitions realized. I didn't get started until I was 35 years old in a field of endeavor where the participants hardly ever last beyond 40 years old because of eyesight. It's the same reason people start needing reading glasses in their early forties.

The main thing about welding for a living at that skill level is that you gotta be able to see really well. Some welders might continue beyond that to some degree. Mostly because it's the only way they know how to make journeyman's wages. But, it's stressful enough when you can see good to weld 100% x-ray work. Not being able to trust your eyesight because of anything that goes wrong with your glasses can go over the top. Skilled labor is still laborious. You gotta get off your tools before your body wears out.

The rudest thing I know about the aging process is that it doesn't know when to stop. Yesterday I was imagining these wizened old men that I have seen frequently enow throughout my life. I don't reckon I spent too much time wondering how they became "wizened". I don't have to wonder about that so much anymore. It's me. Be-co-me-ing with wizenedness can be a real drag, man, but it's a little cute at the sa-me ti-me. My disbelief has caught up with me or stayed with me, as the case may be. I don't believe this is happening to me at the sa-me ti-me I gnow, for sure, it is.
❦

Who Do I Look Like To You?

❧
Replacing the naproxen with aspirin was a dumb idea. I don't know the chemical difference between these two NSAIDS. but the pain threshold difference is... a lot. I've spent all morning attempting to recuperate from not getting any sleep much last night because the pain was so intense I couldn't sleep. I couldn't find a place by tossing and turning that it would leave me be. This doesn't bode well.

I'm used to my shoulder and elbow joints hurting. Ordinarily it's not both or all at one time, but a particular joint that possesses exclusivity. That's why its called rheumatoid arthritis. It moves around. Rheuma, roma, roam... it moves. This morning the pain was in my left shoulder, but not only there, it included my collar bone and how it connects to the spine. Great! Just fucking great. This is not good for my public image at all.

I didn't know what else to do but to get up. Maybe something I could find on the computer would catch me up in it and divert my attention away from my troubles. I came downstairs and sat down to it before I realized it was the weekend. No e-mail. No new news. I certainly didn't feel like writing, and I stopped playing the scales on my digital piano weeks ago.

A couple of days ago an old pen pal wrote to tell me that drinking aloe vera juice might help my malady. The term "juice" is a misnomer in the sense that the part of the aloe vera that's eaten is in the center of those spear-like leaves. The outer fiber shell has to be removed, and beneath that is the slimy stuff that has to be washed away.

The slimy stuff is aloe vera's way of protecting itself from grazing animals, and humans too. The slimy stuff is what the big companies use to make laxatives from. It does the job, but it does it in such a rough way that it's been banned. It doesn't take much to realize that after a couple of times of eating this stuff in the wild, and getting diarrhea that most any animal would not eat it anymore.

It takes some trouble to prepare aloe vera to consume as a medicine. That's about all it's good for internally. Externally, the list of the illnesses it cures or improves is practically endless. I've used it on my skin many times before. I've even washed what hair I got left with it. The central part of the leaf is the only thing one eats.

By the time I get the tough outer layer off, and wash the slimy stuff off under the spigot, what's left is a sliver of clear vegetable matter about a tenth of the bulk I start with. It's firm when the slimy stuff is gone, and easy to slice up any way desired. The first one I ate I shook some table salt on it to give it some taste, and it went right down the ol' gullet.

I tried a bigger piece the second time, and decided to cut it up in little bits and mix it into some cole slaw I bought to the grocery store. That didn't work as well. It felt kind of slimy like stewed okra. Ugh! I'm not sure the ritual to get the edible part into my belly is worth it.

At this juncture I'm more in need to stop the existing pain than to possibly prevent future pain. That seems to defeat all my vainglorious hope for the future. If last night is any indication of my future, it's getting very dim.
❦

Do Humans Remember Pain Itself?

❧
Saturday is not a good day to sit around and watch TV at my house. I only get the over-the-air stations and they're all going broke it might seem. There were more infomercials all day long than programs. The golf programs were dull and boring. Just today though. Sometime I can enjoy watching the top pros play.

There wasn't much e-mail circulating either. Practically all of it was from a couple of friends I know in person. I guess the biggest event of the day was when one of them discovered that instead of having appendicitis he has/had kidney stones. That's the most painful kind I understand, but he got some relief and hopefully is on the road to recovery.

It's not so clear in my memory whether or not I ever had kidney stones. If I did it was when I was in my twenties. If they're so painful it seems like I would remember, but somebody said that people can't remember pain itself, just the events that caused the pain. Sometimes not even then.

In my opinion, the reason humans don't remember pain, if such is so, is that pain happens in the eternal NOW! I don't think I register pain in my brain in a way that I can later remember it. My most favorite example of how it personally happens with me is when I jumped off that cliff in Yosemite National Park in California.

I was in excruciating pain at the time, and that was a primary reason for me deciding to jump to my death and get it over with. I was freezing to death. My body had already turned blue from the cold. I couldn't find my way off the top of that mountain. I'd been trying all afternoon, and now it was turning dark, and so I was dead. I couldn't have lasted through the night up there in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

I remember pretty much everything that happened up until the time I jumped, but after I jumped and felt gravity start pulling me down, I didn't remember anything at all until I approached the camping area shower building that was open and the hot water was hot. Even then, as I slowly warmed up to the point I felt fairly sure I wasn't going to die, I remembered jumping off that cliff. It was just the immediate time I was in the air on the way down that has apparently been lost to me.

That's why I think humans don't remember pain. They only remember what they did to get hurt, and then after they do get hurt, but that's all they got on their mind. Humans don't record pain itself for posterity. But, hell, I could be wrong. I too have sinned.
❦

Random Noises Queers My Concentration

❧
The fact that I'm going to bed earlier than ever and getting up when I can't sleep anymore snuck up on me like a thief in the night. I got up this morning after I had woke up to go to the bathroom, and then I found it impossible to go back to sleep again, so I got up and came downstairs to see if I had any e-mail. Hmmmm...

It is! Moving my computer downstairs is the culprit behind my irregular sleeping patterns. Ever since lightning ruined my ___ socket and I had to get a wireless router to get online, I can carry my iMac to any room in my house, plug it into a wall socket for electricity, and I'm good to go online.

The dilemma that's screwed up my nocturnal habits is not caused by my moving my computer downstairs. The problem is that I didn't move my digital TV downstairs at the same time. If I wanna do what I wanna do on my computer I gotta come downstairs, but if I want to watch television I have to go upstairs.

I left the television upstairs because it's setup to be conveniently watched when I'm laying in bed. In the past, I wasn't watching much TV but for the news sometime, and the late night shows for the comedy. It's easier for me to know what the public is generally paying attention to by listening the monologue jokes.

Going up and down to do something I did simultaneously when my computer was upstairs is probably what's got my days and nights confused. Except for when I might go to bed in preparation for watching the late night show, I usually watched TV while sitting in front of my computer. Many times with the Mute button in full operation because noise queers my concentration and I find it impossible to compose words and listen to extraneous presentations at the sa-me ti-me.

Having Mercury in Aries in the Sixth house of health and discrimination, for all practical purposes, nullifies my ordinary ability to multi-task. Of course, I didn't know what multi-tasking was until I got into computers and the internet. So, I'm rather single-minded.

I can concentrate with great determination long than many folks, and when I discovered I was a natural at something many scatterbrained multi-taskers can't grok, I don't experience a moment of envy. We all need each other, and I'm willing to give the multi-taskers' their due, but honestly, it seems like to me, that they need me more than I need them. Fire in the mountain. I sit still and command respect.

Multi-tasking people who come by it naturally are easy to spot if you're a palm reader. They got spidery little lines running haphazardly all over their palms. Some having tiny little lines running all over their palms and over the sides too. How could I not know what to say to someone with hands like this, and who sots themselves before me and offers me their hand?

It's just crazy to me that people pass by those little palmistry books at the checkout counter and not buy one and take it home to look at their own palm and compare what they see there with what they see in the book. Certain people can't do certain things and need for their own sakes to let it go and git on to the next best thang.

Just like multi-taskers have spidery little lines running all over and around their hands other people have very few lines in their hands at all, and the ones that are there are deep and powerful. Neither type of palms can do what the other one can by nature.

One of the most outstanding demonstrations of this dynamic was the entire movie about Mozart called Amadeus. His nemesis was Antonio Salieri. Salieri got mad at God for giving Mozart the natural talent he couldn't display. Eventually, it is suspected, he killed Mozart and stole his music. Well, at least he became famous for something.

Finding a path with heart might depend on whether what a person seeks is what they can naturally do. When I read palms it was real easy to see fairly immediately when the palm owner wasn't doing something with their life that they had a calling for. I filtered for their true calling with my patter. Sometimes I'd be able to conjure it up from their depths through trickery, and other times not.

The most difficult thing to do while reading palms was to refrain from projecting who I think I'd be if I were what they looked like they might be. It takes trickery to get them to tell me what they'd like to be in order for me to check it out and see if they had the lines in their palms that would support their ambitions. Sometimes they'd get it, but mostly not. At least not right then and there, but I've had people chase me across several states just to be able to tell me that I was right about something I told them. Life's funny that way.

I'm on a new health kick. Aloe vera juice. It's not really juicy at all. I watched a youtube video that showed how to prepare it fresh from the plant. Aloe vera gets slimy once it's cut. Like my friend David wrote, "I thought that slimy part was what aloe vera was."

Nope. The slimy part is what can give you diarrhea. It's what was used in constipation medicines until it was banned by the FDA. That slimy stuff gets washed off with water, and what don't wash off is what works. I spinkle a little salt on it to give it some taste, and wash it down with butterscotch liqueur. Hmmm... tasty!
❦

The Extremes Of Simplicity

❧
More of the junk other people dumped on me got burned this morning. Other stuff will follow. I seem to be imposing my rights as a minimalist to the supposed good will of others. I have a dirty old box of cheap pottery that was given to my mother as a sales prize for selling Compton's Encyclopedias. My siblings urged it upon me when we were cleaning out my mother's house when she died. "Just get it out of here for right now. We have so much stuff to get rid off."

To my knowledge we haven't had a truthful, intimate conversation about what we did with my mother's collection of hokum. Her youngest sister's house was filled to the brim with cheap trinkets the last time we visited. I think she might have bought the original ones as mementos from she and her husband's travels on his motorcycle, and then her family started bringing the other stuff because they thought she might like it. Every open space in at least three rooms was covered with this affectionate junk.

It's not clear to me whether I'm not naturally a collector type person or whether I've decided that waxing nostalgic for the stuff of days gone by is a waste of time. It's a little of both maybe. Back when I was literally a bum on the road I had to tote whatever stuff I carried with me in my hands or on my back. Heavy stuff of whatever value didn't last long.

Except for the last twenty or thirty years I have lived by myself in this rat hole I built as a place to sleep and put my legal papers like tax returns and my Navy discharge documents, I have moved around too often to build up a bunch of extraneous household items. You know how it is. Every time a body moves to a new place they throw away what they can as excess baggage. I may have gone to extremes occasionally.

The weather seems to indicate a drought soon locally. That's not unusual for around here. The yearly amounts of rain can run up to 50-60 inches. But, we get a lot of our rain from tropical storms that form down in either the Bermuda Triangle or the Gulf of Mexico. Granted, the seasonal rains we get from the cool fronts dropping down out of Canada or parts north do happen at a fairly regular pace, but if no tropical storms pass through here a drought condition may arise.

That's gonna be a problem sooner than later for the larger cities up in the piedmont region of the state. The Research Triangle located around the state capitol is producing lot of high-paying technical jobs, and with the jobs come real estate development, and a drain on what fresh water is available from the lakes and rivers in the piedmont.

A drought just emphasizes the present limitations, and brings the focus on what can happen in the future. Nothing. They're already topped out. They go a few years without a drought and the residents with new houses think they got it made with irrigated lawns and flower gardens galore, and then it doesn't rain... and it doesn't rain... and what seemed like a rain forest turns California brown.
❦

Echos And Shadows, And Me

❧
Reading about piezo electricity over the years has not make me an expert in this field of study, but I've read enough articles about how it works over the years that I've learned to appreciate the consumer products various people who are experts in this field have generated through genius and invention:

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nmat2792.html

These people are making microphones and audio speakers that are incredibly small. Sure, that will make more room inside the already cramped living quarters of the digital guts of smartphones, but I think it's gonna lead to something else that goes beyond speaking and hearing in order for humans to communicate. Instantaneity? Real things happen real fast? They don't wait to be interpreted to change the world?

The disclaimer I publish occasionally really comes into play in regard to this subject because its further out there than the mundane topics I normally decimate by triviality. These drifting thoughts may actually apply. That's because they're not necessarily abstract constructions.

I don't know irrefutably that these particular drifting thoughts aren't man made from ideas. They could have been given being by humans. My true sentiments, currently, is that these kinds of drifting thoughts are almost impossible to capture with words.

The fact that I unknowing stumble across them while seeking something easy to write about manifests their presence by how entangled life becomes when I can't find an easy way out. These types of drifting thoughts are not thoughts at all, and that's why I can't make something of them.

I guess the last paragraph defines my real position on this topic. Some of the "objects" I encounter when I'm looking for drifting thoughts to capture with my limited vocabulary are not drifting thoughts at all, but so-me-thing beyond the pale of reason. Something I can't acquire by not-so-subtle begging.

I am is a begging fool. Who could it tell that to for acknowledgement? Who could it brag to in order to swell with pride at receiving their compliments and congratulations for such an incredible accomplishment? Instead, in lonely frustration it merely swims with the invisible fishes.

Whether or not the entities I encounter in the dreamtime have a life of their own or a life I conjured up for them may have something to do with a statement I wrote yesterday about the separation of the body and soul. Especially the remark that breath is "of" the soul. By that I mean that something decides to initiate each cycle of breath the body demands, and it ain't "of" the body that does it.

I don't know what I read online yesterday that got me off on that path of inquiry. It may have been something I wrote about breathing. "Breath is of the soul." Indeed, how could it not be? Maybe this topic is another of the non-human, unconstructed non-thoughts I so-me-ti-me encounter.

There is a certain way I can breath when I want to that acts as an indicator of how "breath is of the soul". I don't know if it's true, but if it is possible to discern or to discriminate among the various clues that show up when I'm deliberately meditating, it's what happens when I get the breathing right.

The effort I made writing about this yesterday never seemed to get across the point that getting my breathing right can happen from any of the chakra points, although the rituals and techniques I've learned or discovered for getting my breathing right while hovering in any one or the other of these centres, may differ wildly.

The point I was trying to make is that if I get my breathing right anywhere, that deliberate act automagically gets my breathing right at all the other chakras simultaneously. It seems to be an all or nothing proposition, but the real experts may call me a fool. No blame.

No matter how I get there, when my breathing is right, there is a feeling of separation I haven't been able to put my finger on. It's not quite kinesthetic. It is not "of the body", this feeling of separation isn't, but not "of the soul" either. Well, there you go. I've contradicted myself again almost immediately. Maybe breathing is not "of" either the body or soul, but is it's own worst enemy.

"We three.
We're all alone.
Lost in a world
we call our own.
My echo,
My shadow,
and me."

~ The Mills Brothers
❦

A Little Joy Of It's Own

❧
A casual acquaintance with whom I have some things in common with sent me a link about yoga. Yoga is something I'd like to have in common with many more people. I'm a big fan. I practiced hatha yoga daily for decades. Then, I had an automobile accident that resulted in a ruptured disc that set my practice back for years. With the advent of a worsening of the rheumatoid arthritis that I was born with I can't do much stretching like I used to, but because of the arthritis I was never as limber as many of the people I did yoga with in the past.

I guess it might be proper to say that I practice raja yoga now more than anything physical. The Royal Yoga seems to be all about controlling one's breath. Even after the disc operation relieved me of the pain from the wreck I was limited in some physical movements. It doesn't hurt, but after the operation I just couldn't go back to where I was with hatha yoga no matter how much I stretched. Doing breath work was about all I had to respect myself with. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on the Hindu form of breath work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama

It describes the general ideas about breath control that I awkwardly followed to get where I am with what I do. Formal voice lessons is also about controlling the breath, but it's basically about how to do it while singing. I had a few years of private lessons and I sang in several choirs and glee clubs. I like to sing. Singing is not only about breath control, but about where one "places" the breath as they intone the sounds. I don't strictly follow the Hindu pranayama techniques nor have I had much formal training in this regard. The soul don't care what it's called as long as the breath calls it into being.

There is one important point about what happens that negates the validity of formal training in breath work. That irrefutable point is that there is an absolutely correct way to work the breath for any and everybody who breathes. The important point is that if you find what works for you, either accidentally or on purpose, no more tutoring is necessary. When it happens for you it's practically impossible to mistake it for something else, and you know forever what to do.

You might not recognize that what you are doing when you practice breathing at first or even for a long time that the body and soul are separate, and the breath is with the soul. Mind is what you coordinate the body and soul's efforts to unite with. It's a state of being one can "fall" into. You might not recognize the ambiance of your existence has changed during the transition itself. Many times I recognize the sigh I exhale to let it be.

When I reach this state of being in which I'm fully aware that the breath is "of the soul", and that my body and soul are separate even when I'm not consciously aware of it, and my recognition of this state of being invokes mindfulness of one to the other, one of the conditions I can notice inside the state is all of what are called the chakra points are naturally doing what I trained them separately to do to get where I'm at.

I've been at this for a long time. Around fifty years. That's how it is with the self-taught. That's how it is with the self-starters. That's how it is when you're a self-made man. Clumsy as hell beside a formally-trained artist. A Grandma Moses beside a Rembrandt. Both fetch high prices from different kinds of people.

When I first got to this place of my own volition I was in my mid-twenties and lived with my first wife in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was determined to practice this technique I read about in a meditation book. The fact that I got it right away with very little effort was surprising, and then absolutely shocking. This specific incident was when I learned that in this state of being I could stop breathing completely, and thereafter stop my heart from beating also, and then, I could crank them up again.

This breathing technique that I read about in a book requested that I notice how, during my regular breathing through my nose, the incoming air felt at the very entrance to my nostrils (nares). The technique was to feel the incoming air touch just inside my nares where there is always hairs of some length and breadth to filter the incoming air, and to taste it with my sense of smell.

To do this, to sample the incoming air, to feel for it's specific temperature, to smell for ambient odors that might be airborne, to feel for how much humidity is in the air. To "see" my surroundings through my nose. Synesthesia at it finest.

How could I not realize by how much water is in the air whether or not I'm sitting in a desert or a rainforest? How could I know from the taste and feel and smell of the moisture in the air that even though my eyes are closed that the sun is shining? That's just on the inhaling portion of the breathing cycle. The air that I exhale from my lungs gets the same inspection. How better to tell about the condition my condition is in than to filter my exhales for fumes that might indicate malfeasance?

Part of this meditation exercise I read about in a book and stumbled across it's most hoped for results required me to feel the sensations produced by inhaling and exhaling through my nose. At first I was to feel how it felt to inhale and exhale around the entrance to my nostrils, and once I established a lingering sensation near the entrance to my nostrils, then I had to deliberately move that established sensation up deeper into my nares incrementally, until I was feeling for how the sensation created with my noticed breathing moved upward until I'm feeling for when the air reaches the top of my nares and turns down toward my trachea and then my lungs.
In many people this happens in near proximity to the brow chakra.

The third eye. This exercise is how one reaches for the "third eye" from the inside out. The sensation one deliberately creates by observing how the inhales and exhales possess sensory qualities as they pass through the outer entrance of the nostrils can be moved incrementally upward toward the brow chakra until the generated sensation reaches the highest point in the nares to where it then turns downward toward the lungs.

That's what you deliberately create the physical sensation for. To use it as a guide for finding the absolute sensate place where the air turns downward. Not just in a general sense, but specific for each person. Look at all the various shapes noses appear on humans. It doesn't matter if it's different one to the other. It only matters that you locate that specific spot in your own haid. Nobody can do it for you.

At this location when the breathe turns downward, either toward the lungs or toward the openings of the nostrils, to personally know that location in your own body is key to a lotta occult shit, man. I don't remember this spot from one session to the next. If it can be done, then there are humans who have done it. Each time I meditate or practice breathing I have to create it all over again. It's only real when I make it real for me.

It's an easy jump from there to the third eye. It's not real or permanent either in my opinion. It could be for someone more gifted than me. Por mio, however, it's a daily thing I have to do if I want to get the results I sit for. Many times I can just act like it's there from previous encounters and proceed as if unopposed.

The third eye is not the last stop nor the one after it. Once I get to the third eye I start using my breathing as if a bellows, and I direct my breath to drag it across a rippled area at the top of my nares. I can't describe that so well, yet, but a familiarity with that spot will reveal this very real rippled area, and I alter my breathe to flow evenly and specifically over those ripples.

This work moves the originally generated physical sensation I brought up from the entrance to my nostrils through my third eye to the top of my skull and into what's called the crown chakra. This can be very distracting to a newbie because it's rather spectacular show, but there is more work to be done.

By using the same bellows technique I just described for moving the self-generated spot of sensation from the third eye to the crown chakra it can be lifted through the skull and out of the body to it's apparent, appointed place of radiation.

Since all I'm doing when I write is to attempt to use words to describe drifting thoughts, the order in which I do that can get discombobulated. A few paragraphs ago I stated that the process I mastered to bring one chakra up to par has to evince itself in all the chakras simultaneously. To make this entry seem logical I should have started describing from the root chakra, because using the breath as a bellows to move from one chakra to the next is pretty much the sum of how it's done. It doesn't have to be done in any particular order, but all the chakras have to be doing right at the same ti-me.

If I serendipitously fall into this state of being I can go to any of the chakras and they'll each be doing their optimal stuff. I'll be breathing just right for all of them. There is a correct way for them all to be acting, and once you get to state you can easily notice that. It only takes getting the breathing right for one of them for them to all join in. The breathing and the body have their own way, and if you can lead them in over their heads and baptize by fully immersing them in the world of the soul, then the mind gets to have a little joy of it's own.
❦

A Non-Cure That's Worse Than The Disease

❧
Typing while leaning forward in an electrically-operated Lazy Boy type chair has me hunched over and uncomfortable. It's the coffee table I've got my computer on that's too low. It's lower than the height of my knees from the floor. I could have gotten the visitor I had yesterday to help me move my computer desk from upstairs, but I didn't think about asking him while he was here.

I bought the computer table from Wal-mart. It was made in China, of course, and as a table it's put together really well. It came with another table that is smaller and not as high. I guess it was designed to hold a printer, but I don't own a printer anymore. Going online obviated my need for one. I gave the last one I had away because it had been so long since I'd used it the ink dried up inside the machine.

Giving stuff away to get rid of it is an old trick of mine. I know I oughta sell it in a yard sale or otherwise turn a profit on the stuff I give away. I don't know why I don't lust after making a profit. To me it's just simple. If I end up with some object I get tired of being responsible for or bored with looking at it I want it gone. Outta sight, outta mind.

Extraneous stuff that is so shoddy I might be ashamed to give it to somebody I burn on my trash pile. Either way is fairly quick for dumping ballast. Much of the stuff I get rid of is stuff somebody else gave to me because they didn't want it. I guess I have such a shoddy non-conventional appearance they figure I'll be grateful for their trash. I don't mind burning it for them. One of these days they might give me something I'll keep.

Yesterday, I gave away my great-grandfather's Civil War saddle to my youngest brother for him to "store properly". He's had his eye on that saddle for a while. I brought it down from my attic and laid it on the floor down in my living room to clear out my attic. I knew it wouldn't be there long.

It had been so long since I'd been up in my attic I didn't exactly remember what I had up there. I was surprised to find two musical instruments, a classical guitar who top has come unglued, and a mandolin that I have forgotten to loosen the strings on before I stored it in the hot attic, and it had come unglued too. There is nothing in my attic now.

I gave away a shabby looking framed backpack, two sprouting jars with stainless steel screened lids, and a $900 Apple monitor I wasn't using anymore. I had planned to use it as a second monitor to my iMac, but that seemed like rather stupid waste of power because I didn't use it.

There is one saying in the Gospel of Thomas that has Jesus saying that if you have expendable cash you should not loan it out for a profit, but you should give it to somebody who can't pay you back. I think that goes for non-cash stuff too. I don't have much expendable cash. Barely enough to scrape by, but I want my home clear of stuff I hoped might be useful down the road, because hope seems to be less affordable to indulge the older I get.

A friend suggested I try aspirin as an anti-inflammation drug if I seem convinced I'm allergic to ibuprofen. I do kind of think I am allergic to ibuprofen, but it might have more to do with the amount of ibuprofen I've been using rather than if I had used less rather than more.

One of the first things my doctor at the VA Hospital prescribed me was 800 mg caplets of ibuprofen four times a day if I felt like I needed it. Later, when there was a big legal ruckus over NSAIDs causing heart problems she cut my prescription back to 600 mg caplets three times a day, but by then I'd already thought I was having heart problems without realizing my fears were caused by a reaction to ibuprofen.

It's only be recently that I became suspicious that ibuprofen was causing me problems. My rheumatologist at the VA in Durham responded to my saying that I wasn't taking all three prescribed caplets a day unless I was in a lotta pain or discomfort. I started doing that because it actually helped with the pain, but there were other side-effects that caused me pause. Constipation. When I switched to naproxen, that went away.

Naproxen is also an NSAID, but it affects me differently than ibuprofen. It's been a silver bullet for me in the past, but I wanted to see how aspirin might differ from both NSAIDS, ibuprofen and naproxen. I took three 325 mg aspirins last night, and it noticeably relieved the pain in my joints. I guess I'd sort of forgotten about what a miracle drug aspirin was, and apparently still is.

There is a gold standard anti-inflammation drug for me, and probably for a lot of other people too, and that's prednisone. It can't be used long because of really serious side-effects that can take you out. But as far as finding out just how crippled I am by rheumatoid arthritis, it takes the cake. The crippling pain of my joints goes away entirely as if I'd never had a problem.

It's my opinion that I'm going to have to concede to at least some of the pain of arthritis. Trying to find something that has the affect of eliminating all my discomfort like prednisone does without the deleterious side-effects is not going to happen. Using powerful prescription drugs like methotrexate and Humira that lower my immune system to the point that a tooth infection can kill me before they can stop it is totally unacceptable to me.

My sister-in-law's brother has RA and it was diagnosed at least ten years before I was. He was taking Humira and methotrexate. He got a cyst in his throat, and because his immune system was so compromised it turned into forth-stage cancer. The chemotherapy causes horrendous discomfort and pain that made his RA seem like a cakewalk.

All of that because of joint pain. I'm treating the symptoms my way from now on unless they absolutely develop a cure for autoimmune diseases. The powerful drugs they prescribe for the symptoms bring results that are more deadly than the disease.
❦

Vaporware And Upside-down Tomatoes

❧
Last week I read about a new invention for air-conditioning that is supposed to revolutionize the industry and use less than one third the power to do it. It's supposed to do a better job at the same time. I sure hope this ain't vaporware. I'm as big a fool about believing stuff that I read that I ought not to believe as anybody else.

Sometime the idea itself is so powerful it demands attention, but it don't pan out. Unexpected problems encountered. Legitimate ones. Stupid ones. It peters out. I get all worked up about enjoying myself using it in the future. I put money in a special savings account to be ready for it to arrive on the standard consumer market, and ka-blooey! No mas.

I'm not sure I'll ever be immune from hyperbole. I suspect charismatic people will be selling me hope until the light fades from illumination. I've always been a victim of people who sell hope for a living. Mostly because that's all anybody has to sell or wants to buy. Hope. Without no hope you got no container for faith and charity.

"Oh, mah bucket got a hole in it... can't buy no beer." ~ AU

My plan to grow upside-down tomatoes hit a snag. The handles came out of the cheap plastic buckets I bought at the paint department of Wal-Mart, and they both fell to the outside deck on the same day about two hours apart. What a drag, man. The A-Team notwithstanding, I hate it when a good plan falls apart.

My youngest brother brought his twin grandsons over for a visit, and as usual, these 3-4 year olds headed straight for my digital piano to see if they could beat and bang it to death. Well, they can't. Not barehanded anyway. That's why I don't mind them banging around. That's what going to uncle felix's house means.

The first bucket fell while they were here and while they were the only people upstairs when it happened. After I found the bucket on the deck and the branches of the tomato plants cut off by the bottom rim of the bucket I figured it was just one of those accidents that happen when children are around.

When the second bucket fell to the deck an hour or so later (but didn't cut the plants off) I realized the kids didn't have anything to do with it. I had seen previously that the holes in the plastic where the wire handles attached was stretching because of the weight of the potting soil.

The plants falling forced me to find a more stable way to hold those plastic buckets up on the air so the tomato plants could grow out of the bottom of them. The solution was simple and allowed me to think of a way to put more upside-down plants into full sunlight during the late summer and possibly the winter (with a plastic greenhouse built around them.

The outside decks I built on the east side of my house were intended to provide me with a set of fire escape stairs. I had one existing door to the outside on the east side of my house on the first floor already, so I built a treated lumber deck outside of it to use both as a porch and as a landing for the stairs I would build to the additional deck to the upstairs.

I have a series of four-by-four treated posts buried two feet in the ground to support the upper deck. I found two eight foot studs I had left over from another project and leveled them and plumbed them up to fit on both sides of two of the four-by-four posts.

That way I could sit the buckets across the two studs with the space of four inches between them for the tomato plants to hang down between. My brother came over with the kids and they helped me to lift the buckets up on the studs, then he drove a twenty penny nail through the side of the plastic buckets to the four-by-four posts, and I was good to go.

The plants survived. Even the ones whose branches were guillotined off by the two foot fall to the deck. New sprouts are coming out from the branch nodes of the main stem of the plant already this morning. The bucket that I put on the outside of the deck post should get a fair amount of sunshine throughout the day. The other one not so much because it's partially shaded after midday.

What I'm pleased about is that my experiment with growing upside-down tomatoes is ongoing. It'll probably take a few weeks for the really chopped off plant to regrow some branches and maybe set a few tomato blooms to boot. The other bucket survived fairly unscathed and it should produce something in the next week or so. That's the undamaged plant.

If this works I'll be able to buy some more cheap buckets and expand the number of plants. I should be able to use two four-by-four posts with two 2" X 2" horizontal bucket holders inside my brother's greenhouse for the winter. I'm surprised at how well things grow there when it's cold.
❦

Diet and Rheumatoid Arthritis

❧
The reading I've done in the last couple of days on diet and RA have convinced me my intuitive system still works quite well. Yesterday I wrote about how, when I was a road bum, I was always healthy. I couldn't afford to get sick, so I didn't. I was also skinny. Skinny for me is to weigh around 160 pounds and every rib I got is easy to see.

I didn't look like someone coming out of a prisoner-of-war camp or a concentration camp, but my body fat probably hovered around next to nothing. Not only did I not get a lot to eat because I'm a lousy beggar, but I went on a lot of total fasts during that period that might last from 3-5 days to 2-3 weeks.

Once, I tried fasting for 30 days, but I fell short a day, and then got fairly sick for a few days after I broke the fast. I stopped fasting after I got up with the woman who was to become my second wife. I stopped writing poetry once we hooked up too, but poetry did not give up on me.

The conclusion I seem to be coming to is that I need to get extreme with my diet again. I weigh 220 presently, and I've lost ten pounds in the last month. I need to get real skinny again. If for no other reason than to get some of this weight off to relieve my knee and hip joints. This rheumatoid arthritis is not going away before I am does.

From all the articles I've read on the internet about diet and autoimmune diseases, so far, there is practically nobody (that's not trying to shamelessly sell hope) who believes RA is either caused by or is cured by diet.

I read the articles put out by all the big research hospitals like Hopkins and Mayo and the Linus Paulings Institute at the University of Oregon. They are not encouraging anybody to think that diet can cure RA, but they do acknowledge that fasting can help with the symptoms temporarily. That's good enough for me for now. I know how to fast.

Although rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases aren't caused by one's diet, some of these so-called experts seem to claim that the symptoms associated with these diseases flare up or seem to be caused by the reaction of one's immune system to certain foods, and the immune system treats them as if they were poison and tries to remove them from your system.

That's fairly easy to recognize with diabetes. Many people know somebody who has some kind of diabetes, and probably have heard that eating sweets can sometime make you sick, and other times something sweet is needed to balance the system.

The researchers whose papers I've been reading seem prone to accept that the symptoms of RA can be instigated by specific foods that the immune system of particular person will reject as an attack on it's body, and that the person isn't consciously aware what the cause is.

Reading about this possibility has perked me up. This is something I understand. This is something I can play with to find out whether it's that way with me. There is nothing different about it than what I'm doing already. Finding out if some food allergy is causing the symptoms of RA I experience is a process a poor person like me can do for themselves about as well as doing lab work to discover allergens.

The aforementioned fasting is the bottom line for finding out if any particular thing I eat is causing my RA symptoms to flare up. The idea is to fast for a while, and then start eating the suspected foods and see what happens.

That's exactly what I'm doing with these prescription drugs presently. Something, and it doesn't have to be the prescription drugs themselves, at least not the prescription drugs I specifically take to deal with the symptoms of RA. Presently, I'm attempting to discover where I'm allergic to ibuprofen. The internet says it's possible, the druggists at the Wal-Mart say they've never heard of such a thing.

There is nothing much to lose by my explorations. Nobody believes there is a cure for any of these autoimmune diseases. Since it's true that there is no cure for RA the only-est thang I can do is to find a placebo I can truly believe in, and then ride the wave of delusion as long as it has legs. '-)
❦

Holy Sites

❧
I'm still trying to describe an invisible process that can only be observed by it's outward appearances. My interaction with the external world from the inside out is the most difficult stuff for me to write about.

The walking meditation I developed for my self to observe when I'm out walking to get a modicum of aerobic exercise worked really well for me today. What happened was nothing new. I've attempted to do it before. The goal is so nebulous in construction and so hard to hold in place long enough to develop an idea about it, that it always surprises me if I have any success at all.

A lot of what the practicing is about is breath. Not so much breath control. That part of it is fairly easy if you've ever practiced meditating when sitting. I count even numbers when I inhale, and odd numbers when I exhale. That's not as easy. Couple that with inhaling when I step with my left leg, taking two steps, and exhaling with the step of my right leg.

So, I deliberately arrange to start by exhaling at the time I step with my right leg and mentally counting the number "One", and left step, right step, and count "Two" when I step with my left leg, then right step, and inhale again on the next left step... ad infinitum.

That's not too difficult for me anymore. Occasionally, for example, a customer may come out of one of the shops and that breaks my concentration, but I just start again and establish my count again.

What I did today that was one toke over the line was that I attempted to introduce another activity, and that was to concentrate on breathing from my taint instead of just my lower belly. I do that constantly in my sitting meditations, but to do it when I'm walking in public instead of while I'm alone in my room takes a little more patience.

I was able to stay focused for about a half mile. That's very good for me. Probably the best I've ever done while walking.

When I woke up this morning I realized I had laid down to take a nap and ten hours later I got up in the early morning. I was dreaming about being on the road as a bum again. I was as skinny as a rail, and I never got sick. I couldn't afford a doctor, so I just didn't get sick.

The reason that I was skinny is that I'm not that good at begging, and I had to really be hungry to do what I needed to do to feed myself. I seem to be headed back to that sort of life style, except that I'm staying in one place now, and have money to buy food if I want it, and a kitchen and a refrigerator. I'm not healthy anymore, and I think that's why.

The drugs they prescribe for autoimmune dis-eases are almost as bad for you as the disease. I'm learning a lot about the expression "autoimmune disease". There are quite a few diseases that come under that label, and all of them are horrid. Diabetes being the most well known.

The way the term "auto" is used in autoimmune is the same way it's used in autohypnosis. Self-hypnosis. With autoimmune diseases your own immune system has turned against you and doing the very opposite of protecting against intruders. It's a real drag, man, but that's death for you. It's called the aging process. The immune system is said to build what it takes for your body to survive in a cold, cruel world, and then when you get too old for it to support it turns on you like Judas and nails you to the cross.

The most offensive part of this process is to be forced by the powers that be to treat hope for the future as mere baggage. Hope is the only reason anybody needs to face the future. Hope is the only product on Earth anybody got for sell. Getting old is realizing all the money in the world can't buy enough hope to ward off the inevitability of death.

Abiding the ignorance of those do-gooders whose self-appointed calling is to cheer you up and take hope in your future in heaven with God. Hope is all they got for sale too. Hope for a better day when yo' days are numbered? How ridiculous is that?
❦

Nom de plumes And Death

❧
Since I moved my computer downstairs in order to stay cooler longer before I have to turn on the air conditioner, I haven't been comfortable typing because the computer desk I had everything arranged around upstairs is too heavy for me to handle alone. "Just another old man with bad hands."

It doesn't seem too odd to me that I would chose the Spanish term for "hands" to be the middle name in my nom de plume. Manos. Felix Manos Peregrino. Granted, I chose the term as my middle name because, at the time, I was reading palms a lot. Reading palms petered out on me just like my hands have.

It's mostly my thumbs that have caused me the main problems. I can't squeeze anything like doorknobs and medicine lids. Anything child-proofed makes me feel helpless and stupid. I have to hesitate to shake hands with men who might wanna impress me with their youth and vitality. The pain from that can be excruciating beyond expression.

Many of my daily activities remind me that death will take everything I value away and leave me nothingness in it's stead, but I fear there won't be any awareness of a "stead". My experiences as a psychonaut have exposed me to the various states of death, and due to what I learned from deliberately going there, giving up what I've imbued with value is the very thing to do.

This bit about having to surrender all to death reminds me of an epiphany I had while watching a PBS travel documentary. This dude went to some Buddhist monastery somewhere in Asia. The monks there provided a lecture about their activities there after which a visitor could ask questions. One visitor asked why nearly all the Buddha statues show him smiling enigmatically.

The monk's answer surprised me with it's frankness. He said, "The Buddha smiles when he meditates in order to be kind to those who might see him practicing." The reason it surprised me was that I had come to the same conclusion. I have seen a few so-called "master meditators" in the throes of their purportedly lucid state of being, and the looks on their faces was hardly holy.

Of my own volition I decided to put a smile on my face when I'm practicing meditation for the sake of-the-other. I hadn't thought about my doing that as an act of kindness, but in consideration of what the monk on that travel show, it probably means the same thing.

During the last decade or so, a group of Tibetan monks has been traveling from one Buddhist temple to the other in the United States. I've never seen them perform their sect chants in person, but I've seen several videos of them doing it. In my opinion they're doing bel canto exercises that are recognized by some Christians as being good for the soul.

Except for one or two out of maybe twenty-odd Tibetan monks making the tour, none of them smiled when they chanted or meditated. What incentive does that offer for a neophyte to want to mimick them? I don't think there is such a mystical, secret society that gives an edge to it's students or to the various seekers who kowtow to their personal demands.

There are no more secrets that cause a chela to bend before some master's will. It's all on the internet. True, acquiring all the abstract knowledge about meditation there is from studying it on the thousands or millions of sites on the internet, but what is gained by practicing still requires that a body sit down to it and do what it takes. That part can't be explained for either love or money.

Time for my disclaimer. I make up the stuff I write to amuse myself. It's not the God's own truth to the best of my knowledge. I probably wouldn't recognize it if it were. The point of me keeping this blog is to attempt to use words to capture drifting thoughts. It's fun, and the very idea that somebody might believe this as gospel makes my day... for a little while.
❦

Tuesday Feels Like Monday Today

❧
There was a hand-made sign on the door of the restaurant I sometime frequent that informed the restaurant's patrons that they would close at 11:00 a.m. on July 5th. The way this restaurant operates seems a little weird to me in regard to when they close for holidays. It makes no sense to be open on the 4th, close at 2 p.m., and then open the next morning for breakfast, but close for lunch. Why not take the whole day off? Jeez! The employees can't catch a break.

It's not like I care about the employees. The same people have worked there for several decades. They deserve whatever they get. No matter who is currently managing the restaurant the cooks and waitresses are the same people. They're all lousy cooks. They cook lunch room food because that was the first healthy food a lot of these people had when they were children.

I have written lately about how poor this area was when my parents moved here from Mississippi. They felt right at home on the coastal plains of southeastern North Carolina. The more well-to-do people in these agrarian villages were themselves cash poor, but with collateral. Usually, they were owners of the larger farms in the area, and had white trash tenant farmers who had blacks working for them. Everybody was barely surviving from a modern perspective.

I don't think they knew how poor they were in relation to the rest of the United States. Their not knowing they were poor was what kept them in good spirits to some absurd degree. There were not many fat people around as I remember it. Everybody, including the relatively well off big farmers lived out of gardens and pig sties.

Our family had meat because my father was a hunter. We ate anything he killed and was glad to get it. Some of our neighbors weren't so fortunate. Some families didn't know how to kill their own meat. Their real problem had more to do with not knowing how to prepare dead animals for consumption through the winter. They didn't know how to smoke meat or preserve vegetables through canning or in glass jars. Many of them were illiterate. They lived hand to mouth.

Their ignorance was the reason my parents moved here. The State of North Carolina not only mandated the hiring of agriculture teachers for every high school in the state, but Home Economics teachers too. It seems strange in a way, but the Civil War killed off many of the people who knew how to do this agricultural and housekeeping stuff.

In some cases, practically the entire adult male population of a region was either killed, debilitatingly wounded, or shell-shocked until there was nothing civilized about them after the Civil War. Waving Willies of one sort or the other. Standing on the street corners waving at everybody who passed them without a clue who they were. A lot of widows lost the farms their dead husbands and sons left them burdened with. It took a hundred years, two World Wars, and a Great Depression to recover.

It's a little laughable to me to think about how I was raised out of a large garden and the animals we slaughtered. By the time I joined the Navy at eighteen years old that way of subsisting was practically gone. Even my parents stopped gardening and bought most of their food from the grocery stores.

As an adult I've practically lived out of a commercial grocery stores or even more frequently, I eat in a restaurant. Just for old time sake I decided to plant some tomatoes this year. What astounds me to some degree is that bought the dirt I grew them in at Lowe's. I doubt many people even a decade younger than me ever knew how to grow their own food to eat.

If something happens to the food distribution system and the world stops shipping the people in the United States food grown in other parts of the world, a lotta people are gonna starve from sheer ignorance of how to grow their own. Cannibalism will run rampant. Some will eat their own children. Why would they not?

If the civilized ways of a once proud people can dissipate into a hand-to-mouth existence because the knowledge of their men killed in war provided was lost to them, then modern people will be just as helpless when the United States goes broke because of their voracious penchant for war-mongering.
❦