Tasting Death Requires Abstract Thought

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This morning's weird dream.

It's like I got there in my own vehicle that maybe someone was driving for me. It looked like Kansas. Open country. Flat. Like on the Great Plains. I was told that I would be staying at a house about a hundred yards away. There was a path from the one place we arrived at to the other building. They were waiting for me when I approached the building and I entered a second floor entrance of a split-level dwelling.

Once I was warmly greeted and inside, I was pointed toward a vehicle that was parked there, and I took off my gloves and shoes and tossed them toward the underside of that vehicle. I was dreaming, right?They were immediately picked up by two playful dogs. I was worried they were gonna tear them into pieces by their antics. I was told not to worry.

The next activity I remember was cleaning and putting white shoe polish on the lady of the houses boots. Eventually I looked out of a window and saw the house I had arrived by car to. It was made of poured concrete about five stories high. Each floor had a balcony, and there were a group of people that I took for a family standing on the balcony of maybe the third floor with a couple of horses.

They kept their horses inside the house. I remember thinking that was rather odd, and began considering the logistics of how they removed the horse's shit out of their homes. The gray concrete buildings looked like they were designed and built very recently with a view toward basic survival in a mad, mad world.

Maybe I was thinking of how people had moved their entire lives inside away from the radiation into these filtered environments. Maybe because of the nuclear leaks and the radiation being talked about in the news from Japan. I found myself doing other menial task in the house I'd been sent to. It was like I had to earn my keep to be inside of one of these buildings. I didn't mind, and in fact, I felt grateful to be allowed inside.

Later, after I had woke up and had relieved my bladder I lay in bed thinking of how the people in the area around the troubled nuclear plant in Japan being told not the eat the vegetables or drink the milk grown in the surrounding neighborhood. Then, I realized there is a nuclear plant up at New Hill not far from here, and another one that I worked for a couple of weeks about 70 miles away down in Southport.

This radiation threat doesn't come from nuclear weapons like many people have feared. There doesn't have to be an explosion. All there has to be is a lack of water to cool the rods down, and everything around where this happens will be radiated, and no one will see it coming. Maybe I wasn't joking in the recent past when I've written that the end is near. Perhaps this is what the Gospel of Thomas means when it claims that the humans that follow the precepts of the Jesus stories won't taste death.

I'm pretty sure I understand why the GoT makes the statement about how some people won't taste death. That is a specific statement. Not "tasting death" calls for the reader to ponder the me-and-thee-ing (meaning) of. I realized in within the last few days. It has to do with devolution. First one grows in consciousness from childhood to a certain point, and then they begin a process of throwing it all away.

Abstract knowledge leads to delusion in a way that is hard to believe. The reason it's hard to believe is that the brain-washing that causes a human to believe that the intense development of abstract constructions associated with a formal education is the path to glory, and in a lotta ways it is, but people don't naturally go senile or get Alzheimer's without a reason. Not tasting death happens when the identity gained through the delusion induced by abstract knowledge is eliminated such that they no longer know they have a "who" that is dying. '-)

This suggests that one's personal identity is a lost cause if it's based on an academic education. In other words, that of graven images. I am is not claiming this is the truth. Read my disclaimer at the top of the page. The topic of "graven images" is something I relate to the Ten Commandments. Specifically: Thou shalt not worship graven images.

The definition of what "graven images" are came to me slowly. Probably precipitated by a job I once had etching coated copper rollers that had film by a printed resistant by dipping them in vats of acid for specific times. The acid ate away the copper that wasn't coated by the resistant film that had the design on it, and left tiny holes in the copper rolls that picked up ink to be printed by design on paper in a process called rotogravure printing.

Rotogravure printing is what's used to print very fine print on various surfaces. Usually paper, but other surfaces like vellum and some types of plastic too. I'm no expert in the printing process. I just had a minimum wage job doing this for a while, and the term "gravure" associated with the printing process made the connection to graven images for me.

Admittedly, my casual research into what "graven images" consist of was pointed toward the Christian Bible which contain the Ten Commandments. I thought it ironic (at best) that the very device which contains the warning is a graven image itself through and through. The very people who are warned by their religious faith to not do that are doing that without realizing it.

Then, I began to realize that books of any kind or media of any kind fit the description of "graven images." This commandment appears to resolve to not using other people's written experiences as a guide for living. If true, and I don't know, it means that our academic education is designed only to make it's victims the same as indentured slaves to the military/industrial complex.

I realize this blog entry is not exactly organized for maximum effect. I'm just trying to get my thoughts down so that the possibility exists for me to write it more clearly down the road. That is, if there is a "down the road." Nearly every day I'm reminded that my forgetfulness is more in evidence than ever.

I like to tell myself that I'm forgetting stuff that doesn't matter to me anymore. Like the mathematical formulas I used to fit pipe back in the day, but it's more than that, and more about words and recent activities I fully intended to activate than I like to admit. More often now, I make extra trips to the grocery store to buy what I forgot to buy in earlier visits. The price of gas makes me worry about these mistakes more these days.

Okay, maybe these odd behaviors don't worry me so much. It's just that they ought to. Right? One thing is for sure, I'd probably be a lot more concerned if it wasn't for sitting in front of my computer a lot where I can use Google to find the very terms I forget momentarily during my "senior moments".

I'd probably worry a lot more about having these moments more frequently if I couldn't resolve them soon after they occur. It's easy to understand why older people who don't use computers to think with would worry themselves to distraction more than those who do use computers and have a connection to the internet.

One activity that doesn't appear to be hard struck is my love for expert level crossword puzzles. In the last couple of years since the New York Times changed puzzle editors I've started buying the puzzle books published by the Los Angeles Times Press. I really enjoy these puzzles better because of the editors they employ.

The clues provided in order to solve their puzzles makes me reach for the most vague use of most of the answers that I get amazed at how they come up with them. Hardly ever do I get through one of their Sunday-sized puzzles without having to look at the answers in the back of the books.

It's more than occasional, upon finally realizing the correct answer, that I hear myself muttering, "How the hell did they come up with that perspective?" It's utterly delightful to finish most of their puzzles without looking in the back, much less the whole thing.

I think about my crazy mother when I work crossword puzzles sometimes. I started solving them as a child to impress her. By puberty I was constantly pissing her off because I would pick up her half-finished puzzles and completing them before she could get back to them. If somebody did that to me currently, I might go into an uncontrollable rage.

Writing about my mother's influence in learning to solve crossword puzzles reminded me, that fairly recently, I had openly realized that I had read the King James Version of the Bible twice before I was twelve years old solely to impress her and make her love me more.

It was obvious to me that I was getting a lot less attention with the birth of my two younger brothers. I became obsessed she would desert me and keep them. All that laborious reading wasn't really for any other reason. After that, however, I started having my own visions, and there was no need to read about other people's visions.

Maybe that's why the I Ching states that "the superior man" contemplates his own life. I must have realized that on my own when I was just a little boy. This seems to be the time of life for realizing I had more sense than I gave myself credit for when I was quite young. Coming to believe that was possible took much, much longer.

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