The Elixir Of Standing Under

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I would be lying if I deceptively wrote that the economic situation of the entire country isn't on my mind. It's personal. I have surgery scheduled for next Friday morning at the VA Hospital to replace the cataracts in my left eye. I don't wanna get no phone call saying it's been cancelled.

Delayed for God knows how long because the government welched on their contract to pay the optometric surgeons who work on veterans to gain operating room experience. They are using us veterans as throwaways to put notches on their professional guns. It's the same with the arthritis clinic. They're not yet rheumatologists, but are M.D.s. They work on fellowships to get certified in their specialty. We'll both lose if this beneficial arrangement is queered by politics as usual. 

It would be just my luck for that to happen. I've been playing the edges for a long time now. I've done okay for myself working the bureaucratic angles. I'm the only one who knows that. If you were born with the planet Mars dwelling in Capricorn in the Third house as part of a Grand Trine in your natal chart, you would probably admire my skills. 

Otherwise, doing what I do with such casual ease pisses off all kinds of people. Most of them don't understand why things like that work for me, but not them. I suspect it's because I put my life on the line to defend my country, and survived again and again, and they didn't. Getting shot at with extreme prejudice teaches extreme patience. 

Time flies. In the interim of such interesting, wild-eyed possibilities, something else is going on besides abstract ideas about death and some sterile afterlife. All I ever prayed or preyed for has been understanding. I haven't particularly wanted to make judgment of what's wot, that's a different type of person's duty. I'm here merely to ken the kith of my genetic heritage so as to recognize my due in what's sot before me.

Bringing in the sheaves and observing the ties-that-bind hasn't come kindly to me. Life's learning curve for me is too burdensome to take it up as if a rare privilege. Apparently, I like fishing in the deep water for bottom feeders. They are the very tastiest kind of fish that ever dined on aquatic dung. 

Once, in the past, when I was traveling through Arkansas looking for a cave to meditate in, I became aware of a local myth about the catfish caught in the White River. The river apparently drains a network of calcite-filtered springs, and it's called "white river" because of the purity of the water. The fish caught in this extraordinarily clean river water have been granted super-piscean status by the religious conservatives and para-military survivalists who call the Ozarks ho-me. 

I never et none of those sacred fish. I just heared the story and liked it. It's not over with. Never say never. When I win the lottery, I am is gonna return to Arkansas, and eat me a bait of them White River catfish. Only then, when l'm hopefully licking my fingers, will I make up my mind about whether they deserve being thought sacred by the locals. 

I hope they're right. Often enough I've heard some astonished person remark, "Dear God! Is nothing sacred anymore?" I've said it myself. I too have sinned. Mostly by the sin of omission. I let things pass without being duped. I know, and do nothing. How else could I work the unseen systems? 

Presently, I'm curious about bacterial matrixes. Specifically the ancient ones who make kefir. Why would I not? I believe in magic. '-)

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Ghouls And Goblins

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This morning I'm using a new text editor called TextWrangler to write with. It's a free software program my brother downloaded for me in anticipation of me setting up my own web site domain. It's been pointed out to me several times over the years that text editor programs are not the same as word processing programs. Text editing programs are what programmers and coders use to write binary code in it's various shapes and forms.

Yesterday, while staying in air-conditioning due to the heat of the afternoon, I worked my way through most of the simple tutorial that comes with the free software. The best I seem able to reach for while reading and performing some of the interactive examples, is to just go through the motions and figure out how useful the lessons might be in the future. I used the text-to-voice software (that comes with the Mac operating system) to have it read the text of the tutorial to me. 

Listening to the text spoken by a digitalized voice at the same time I am reading it seems to help me stay on track consciously. I'm feeling a little stressed trying to stay interested in learning the basic coding lingo. Mostly HTML. They say it ain't too hard, but it can be hateful. I only have a minimal familiarity with it. Managing a web domain for the sole purpose of posting my blog on the internet may be more than I wanna deal with. What if it should fail? 

Asking myself this harsh question has become more tedious recently. At least some of the back-burner events that pop into consciousness as I contemplate my life are gaudy looking. As if the point they tried to make were a futile attempt to comprehend the impossible. Not as visions of sugar plums either, but rather, a streaming sequence of inane cartoons poking fun at my previous failures as indulged delusions. 

These cartoon careactors seem like the hypnogogic figures that attacked Siddhartha as he sat under the Bo Tree or the hordes of "kinsmen" in the Hindu story of Arjuna. In the same way these stories or myths speak of their heros as Everyman, I am is everyman too. In my opinion, at some level of understanding, conscious or no, each of us is what Everyman itself is composed of. A great cosmic soup in which individuation loses itself in absolute abandonment. 

My own hypnogogic hordes that attack the Everyman in me are my own unrealistic memores of some very real failures. Possessiveness as a stubborn Taurus personality trait always figures in the mix somewhere along the line. I may act duplicitously magnanimous and sharing to install hidden "backdoors" in the source code of the social contracts I pretend to, and also pretend they allow me to exercise a preferred vested interest and say so, no matter what. 

The imaginary audience I'm usually performing for (when I "practice" meditation and contemplate my own life) is variously composed of those hypnogogic images that represent the purported truth that I am is a fool. A buffoon. "It" is all about being, and in order to remain in the state of being that acts as it's own ground, "It" has to refine the unremitting accusation of "you are not me" into a wayward, dismissive glance.

Meditation for me is a bold attempt to extemporaneously tame the shrewish goblins of my past for a while. What I offer to this spooky, nightmarish group of shamed me-more-s is that despite their right to sullenly exist as a bane to my existense, and as a device designed for fair play, I demand an equal right to my own ground for being without their input. 

Even in their eternal presence. I created them as an excuse for being. Granted, they didn't ask to be given an abstract life as metaphors or myths. I regret putting them through the heart-rending pain of being rejected as unworthy in the light of my present needlessness, 

Each shade (ghost) has particularly hurtful life lessons attached to them. That's the "if" of the "what" can happen which accompanies personal failure. To ask "what if it fails" is all about consciously consulting the pain of my own past failures. 

It is the pain of when I have failed, in the past, and pain during my intense anticipation of failing again for not even trying to succeed tomorrow. It's my cowardly fear of a failure that must die anyway as it passes the event horizon that precedes the point of no return. 

It's the loss of that vaunted fear of failure when the soul is passing through the flaming swords at the entrance of the matrix that seems particularly dreadful. Not because it's undeserving of a pretense of life even as mere illusion, but as a last, though wayward comrade, on the lonely path to the cessation of hope. 

Maybe that's why I seem a little sad since the cataract in my right eye was replaced with an artificial lens. The very prospect of being able to see fairly accurately again is sort of like gaining hope for the future. For example, being able to pass the visual test to get my driver's license. My spiritual quest has a lot to do with abandoning hope, and here I am undermining myself by what visual acuity will allow hope for in the future. I bear sha-me. '-)

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A Truly Proper Condescension

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It's a little disconcerting to have to ask for help for something as simple (as it turned out) as buying a web domain from GoDaddy.com. I have talked about getting my own domain for years now, but I didn't wanna have to learn HTML just to post my extemporaneous opinions on the internet. I got my brother to help me go through the process so that I wouldn't end up buying something I didn't need or want. 

What I didn't really understand was what "web hosting" is. Web hosting doesn't come with buying a web domain, and I thought it did. That why needed an experienced person to advise me. I found out as we went along that buying the rights to the domain name (felixperegrino.com) didn't come with the hosting part of it. Despite my ignorance, my brother's experience got me through the entire ritual for $15 for the next two years. If I should live so long. 

As far as getting my new domain hosted it turns out my brother has some sort of unlimited account with his web host, and can add my puny little domain to his account until I can figure out how I wanna handle this process. He has to figure out how to make this happen, but when he does, I'll be able to publish my arcane views in a more responsible way. I won't have to worry about some cubicle boss at Google deciding whether I have a right to publish my views here. 

Writing in a less responsible way won't make much difference, and it doesn't add up to much. I only have my timorous speech (thus mind) to be utterly provocative with. If you're reading this blog then you probably know that I don't stray far from a central theme, and it's that the-me I'm catering to, for the most part, rather than to some anonymous clone corporation's editorial policy. 

One of the aspects of publishing on Blogger.com is the feature at the top of the page that reads "Next Blog". It's said to be connected to a random generator that takes the user to see other people's blogs. It's a curiosity I like to indulge occasionally, but I don't think the blogs that show up are very random. 

What it represents to me is that by using the Next Blog link, curious people can stumble across my blog without intention. I like the idea of complete strangers reading the way I arrange words without their deliberately intending to. It could be a long time before I get my own site up, and running at all, much less how long the learning curve might take for me to have a viable product. It's gotta be simple. What's simple is easy. 

It's not that big a deal. It's a little like owning my house and car. It impresses me that it's a simple way to ex-is-t. The important part of life as I perceive it is that I am pretending to a multiplicity of I-am-s in order to concoct a ground for being whatever I am that appeals to me. My property is composed of damaged goods. I certainly could not sell it for what it's worth to me. There is a the-me to cater to. 

Hyphenating the term "theme" just now ca-me to me. In the past I have written about "my me" more than I have "the me", but have intended consistently to indicate that my me and The Me are One and the sa-me. 

It's easy for I am is to cop to dualism. In my warped opinion I am can't have One without the Other. I will say that I never could anticipate the future with any certain of being prophetic. The story of my eyesight could act as a plausible example of that. 

One of the most critical parts of the story of my eyesight arrived in my late thirties and early forties pretty much like it does for many people entering middle age for sure. Basically, I began to need reading glasses. My eyesight became a critical deal during this era because I made a living as a pipewelder. 

Working as a pipewelder requires really good eyesight. Journeymen welders can make some pretty decent wages if they're willing to travel to remote places to build the kind of industrial complexes that nobody wants to live near. The welders get tested and have to re-certify on most jobs of this type. There is a constant barrage of eye exams to keep the corporations from being responsible for legal problems. 

During this one period of time when I had laid outta work to live on unemployment a little too long for my economic well-being, my fading eyesight cost me a job that was gonna resolve all my financial woes. I busted the welding test despite the fact that I cheated to keep them from finding out that I was visually handicapped. 

It was a tragic event I had not properly (thoughtfully) prepared for. It was not only a blow to my rickety, unstable moral values to have gotten caught cheating, but the truth of my blindness was driven home in an undeniable manner. I wasn't the man I had pretended to be, and I couldn't do that anymore. 

Hitch-hiking from Casper, Wyoming to North Carolina where my wife and children were was not the happiest time of my life. I didn't have a decent occupation with which to bring home the bacon. My manhood depended on my livelihood, and my second marriage didn't last long after that.

When I did get home, however, one of the first things I did was to get some prescription eyeglasses. I had to wait for two weeks for them to arrive at the optometrist's office. If ever I had carelessly acted like I wasn't really blind up to this point, putting on my first pair of glasses did the trick. I knew how blind I was because now, with the new glasses, I could see what wasn't there for me without them. 

The next critical moment in the story of my eyesight has been the deal with the cataracts. Less and less light was getting through the lens in my eyeball to my retina. Every time I got my eyes check for a new prescription for the last decade the optometrists told me I had cataracts in both eyes. Particularly my right eye. 

Eventually, incrementally, the optometrists began telling me that they were running out of ways to improve my eyesight with new lens for my eyeglasses. The light needed from the outside world wasn't getting through my increasingly cloudy, browning, and hardening lens. 

The world wasn't providing me with a remedy for the growing cataracts, and it was irritating beyond pleasant description. I've whined about it here for years. Finally, the surgeons at the Fayetteville VA Hospital removed the cataract in my right eye and replaced it with a plastic, powered lens with UV filtering. I still wear glasses, they're just inside my eyeballs. 

Soon, less than a full week, next Friday morning I'm scheduled to get the cataract replaced in my left eye also. The right eye procedure was done on June 12th, so it's been over two weeks since it was done. You'd think I'd be ecstatic because, so far, the surgery appears to have been successful, but I've had to deal with unexpected emotional reactions to what is properly labeled a miracle of science. 

Currently, I find myself concerned over how the second procedure turns out. Sure, it's great that I can see real things with good clarity, but if the second procedure doesn't go well it could act as a mockery of that success. That's the way I've learned to cope with the world through my study and use of the oracles. "What if it fails?"

If I'm having emotional reactions to what seems like a good outcome with my right eye, then to have problems with the left eye my emotional investment might multiply by an order of three, and I wouldn't be concerned at all when Rainey haughtily tells me, "I told you so." '-)

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The Death Of A Nation

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The hot weather continues here. Today a new, all-time high temperature is predicted. Over 106° (41.1° C), and it might be hotter tomorrow. I don't know what this might mean for the future. Texas and Louisiana grows a lotta rice that's bought up by the Asian countries. There might be a big food shortage in China and they'll call in their debts and buy up all the world's food supply. The Tea Baggers will be ecstatic if America goes broke. Their minority wins over the silent majority. Big whoop... eh?

Maybe South America can make up the difference for the failed crops here. Either way, food prices are going to continue to get higher and higher and the U.S. credit rating is going to hell in a handbasket. The end of the world as Joe Sixpack knows it is just around the corner? The only food Wal-Mart will have for sale will be Chinese fortune cookies called Marie Antoinette Cakes. 

The Drug War will have put so many people in prison to learn to be mean that when they can't afford to keep them locked up anymore they'll get out and go on a killing spree to get payback for having their lives ruined by the do-gooders. The serial killers won't even bother to bury their victims. 

The police force, which has always been one step away from their counterparts won't need a license-to-kill from the government who betrayed them, and the Mexican gangs will own all the guns they bought from the Border Patrol with the drug profits they got from Americans. A more violent form of Montezuma's Revenge?

I'm probably gonna have to find another place to write since Google has gone insane. I'll probably be contacting GoDaddy.com to buy my own web domain in order to continue to write anonymously to keep from embarrassing my neighbors. Five or more years of writing gone to hell. C'est la vie. "Do no harm"... my ass! I'll try to post a new address before the fall. 

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Easy Peasy

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We got even more rain, and now, the living is easy. No more worries about a drought for a while, but the temperatures are setting records for being over 100° (38° Celsius) for the longest number of days in a row. Ever. The humidity is equally horrid. I guess we can't have it all our way. The extremely high temperatures seem much worse if the ground is dry and all the vegetation is brown. 

My right eye that got the surgery is a little sore. Only when I rub it to get the cracklings out. My sight in that eye is still astonishing. It seems like every day now I think about how being able to see well again might be an advantage. This morning I thought about being able to aim a gun with some expectation of accuracy again. 

Back in my youth when I was in the Navy I was on the rifle and pistol team and was considered an expert shooter. The team I shot with was just the local one on the ship I was stationed, not the high falluting all-Navy competition team. I enjoyed it, and it got me off the ship during working hours. Later in life, as I aged and my vision got more compromised, my aim was not very accurate anymore. Now, who knows? 

My trip to Durham yesterday to reschedule my appointment at the arthritis clinic was a delightful break from my mundane daily ex-is-tense. I didn't take a different route than the one I normally use. I have to take a two-lane road for about 15 miles (24.1 Km), and then it's a super highway for the rest of the way. North Carolina has some of the best roads in the country. They oughta have. They charge the most gasoline tax. 

It worries me that I'm anticipating getting the cataract procedure done on my left eye. Anything could happen between now and August 5th to delay or prevent it from happening. The government could literally fail and the VA Hospitals could close for lack of funding. The legislators are more interested in becoming richer and more powerful personally than in looking out for the needs of the people. You know, the same way it's always been. 

It's not possible for me to accurately guess how having clear vision in both eyes will affect my life. I couldn't anticipate it before the procedure on my right eye was done. Everyone I knew who has been through this before tries to tell me how wonderful it was for them, but that doesn't translate into personal knowledge until the deed is done, and I can look through my own eyes to "see" what's wot. It's important for me to assume the attitude: What if it fails? 

Every surgeon who has had their way with me seems obligated to remind me that surgery can be unpredictable. In this case, I could end up blind in my left eye, and despite the remote possibility, all surgical procedures can end with death. It happens. I could write that I hope that doesn't happen to me, but why bother? 

What better way of dying than to go under the knife hoping to emerge with a better ability to see stuff than ever before in my life, and never waking up? Easy peasy. No suffering. No anticipation of some dreadful afterlife, merely a quick unconscious death in the fast lane. I just love it. 

One of the reasons I find it difficult to plan ahead in regard to the possibility of good visual acuity is that I've never actually been completely blind. The prescription glasses I've worn for the last thirty years have allowed me to see fairly well. Since I've always been far-sighted, I've only had to wear eyeglasses to read and do close-up work. 

In the last decade, however, the optometrists have had a more difficult time fitting me with a prescription to overcome my growing cataracts. In the last year or so they have pretty much told me straight forwardly that increasing the power of the lens couldn't compensate for the cloudiness and the brown shade of my natal lens. 

I've been told about my need for the cataract procedure for over five years by at least five optometrists, but the surgeons kept saying the cataracts hadn't "bloomed" enough to warrant surgery, and besides, neither medicare or private insurance would pay for it until they had bloomed enough. Now, the waiting is almost over. One eye is done, and the other one will be fixed in twelve days. 

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The Things I'll Do Just To Get Outta Town

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It would have been just as easy and a lot cheaper for me to have called up the scheduling person at the Durham VA Hospital to cancel my next appointment and arrange to get another. I could have done that. True, I would have had to borrow a phone to call them, but they got an 800 number and it wouldn't have cost anybody anything. I drove there just to get outta town. 

It was a comfortable drive. I didn't stop anywhere during the 100+ mile one-way trip. Most of it was on I-40, and the rest of it was a breeze. There wasn't any traffic tie-ups either coming or going. I've made the trip so many times I could do it blind-folded. As blind as I've been with the cataracts I actually did drive most of it by memory. 

Finding a place to park when I got there was a piece of cake. I circled through one area, and then found a good spot as I headed toward another area right beside the hospital. I only had to walk a hundred fifty yards (137.16 M) to get to the clinic. There was one guy ahead of me in line at the reception desk. 

After the scheduling guy put my social security number into the computer system, he looked a little puzzled because I didn't have an appointment,and asked me what could he do for me. I explained that I needed to cancel my regular appointment on August 5th and make another one later on. His face lit up and he pleasantly told me what I had to do. 

He told me I had to go up to the second floor to get the appointment canceled, and see the lady who handled all the cancellations for several clinics. He wrote a room number on a slip of people, then got up from his desk and indicated for me to follow him out in the hall behind his office. There, he pointed to an elevator and told me to take it to the second floor and go to the room number on the slip of paper. The woman I needed to see was there. 

I took the elevator upstairs and started looking at office numbers. Two different guys stopped what they were doing to help me figure out where the office was. Soon, this young guy took me in hand and led me straight to the room, then went inside and told the lady I was looking for her. I heard her tell him to ask me to step right inside. 

The office had two rooms each with it's own desks and cabinets. Her desk was the one with the window that looked out on to a manicured courtyard. She motioned for me to come on back, and then she cleaned some folders off the chair beside her desk and ask me to sit down. She seemed like she was in a good mood. Probably because the young guy had flirted with her. 

The piece of paper I had brought with me was the standard VA appointment sheet that contained all the appointments I had for getting the cataract procedure done at the Fayetteville VA. She recognized the standard form right away. I pointed out to her my appointment for surgery on August 5th, and told her that I was previously scheduled for an appointment there in Durham on the same day. 

That was about all I had to tell her. She knew exactly what I was there for. Redundantly, I told her I wanted to cancel my appointment at the clinic in order to do the surgery in Fayetteville, but needed another appointment as soon as possible. I asked her to see if she could find an opening on any other date than the dates I had appointments for on the list I brought. 

Before long, she had found an appointment date for me on August 11th at 09:45. She saw that I had a post-op appointment in Fayetteville on August 10th, and asked me if that was too tight a fit since it was the next day, but I assured her it would be just fine. She printed me out a confirmation of my new appointment, and that was that. It was an entirely satisfying meeting that, for a change, went smooth as silk. 

I only stopped once on my way home at the I-40 Rest Stop near Benson to stretch my legs. I had to deal with the early rush hour going through the state capitol. Raleigh is a big city now with all the traffic problems metropolises have. I wanted to relax a little to let the stress go. The next fifty miles home got further and further away from suburbia. I felt giddy about accomplishing my goals for my trip so smoothly. I celebrated by buying a rare Pepsi Cola. 

Not long after I got home my sister-in-law and next door neighbor drove up in the yard pulling a trailer with her riding lawn mower on it. The hitch had gotten stuck and she asked me if I could help break it loose. I took my large crow bar I keep beside the door out there and made short work of the trailer hitch's problem. 

She asked me if I'd like to use the mower to mow my lawn, and I was very pleased she did. My lawn has been a mess because of the drought that killed back all the lawn grass. The drought ended yesterday. Mowing it and leveling out all the irregular, brown grass before it started growing again, meant that my place would look practically civilized. 

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Nobody Likes Romantics

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As it may turn out, after years (even decades) of late-night rendezvous for the sake of playfulness and recreation, that I'm more of a morning person than I previously thought. I don't even bother to go out after dark for several years now, although that may change after I get the cataract remaining in my left eye fixed. 

It literally got dangerous for me to drive after dark because of all the glare and realistic double-images that distracted me when I was driving my car at night. The glare and multiple images were associated with the various public lights like street lights and traffic signal lights. If there was a bright, deliberately glaring business advertising sign near the road I was completely blinded momentarily from it. 

Sometime I might "see" at least two of everything. I didn't know which of the images to drive toward. At night, if I have to go out by necessity, I drive around from sheer memory of what used to be there... back in the day... eh? I might have been a safer driver to be around back when I drove around drunk as a skunk. 

Soon, within two weeks, I won't have the glare or the double images to blame as my excuse to stay ho-me, you know, where I can unabashedly yearn longingly for a permanent state where no thing must need be nay-me-d to possess it's own ground for being. 

I feel an artificially-induced concern (What if it fails?) for when I can once again perceive real objects for what society agrees they are with a clear stereoscopic vision that's closer to perfect than ever before. Yet, it's entirely possible, that I will still be deluded by what I once thought the objects of the sensory world were, during the "brown period" of my dotage. '-)

What else have I got to compare 'what's wot' with, than 'what' the child within that was formerly me thought a man is/was, or, when fortunate, what it thought a man like I am could be was for. 

Life potential is like cannon fodder, but not metallic. Life potential always evolves human fodder eventually, made-man cannons notwithstanding. No matter what form or stage of life one gets condemned to as punishment for reasons I don't understand. My delusion is that the end result of life's potential must result in be-co-me-ing human, in order to become gods. Loose lips sink ships. 

What is easy is simple. You screw up spiritually, and "they" make you into a life form you can't say no to; but really, really should. Double bind? Okay, it's not really a double-bind if one possesses viable options. The kicker is that one must be present to win. If you snooze, either by lingering longingly in the dead past or within the anticipation of the undetermined future, you can't very well stick your hand up in the present tense, and say "I'm here, and I'd prefer not to do that. Thank you very much, but I don't wanna be a human again. Can we talk?" 

Enlightenment usually consists of a recognizable otherly vision that you really should have ignored your personal desires in order to pay attention for when your not-me (nay-me, name) is called. You literally miss your calling if you get slack. It's tough love all over again... Bitch!

In the past I used to enjoy the late shows on TV. Particularly the stand-up comedy and monologues. Now, not so much after the entertainment gets droll. I don't seem to care as much for the humor as I once did. The jokes are usually based on contemporary events, and I don't keep up with the redundant tragedies of the political and mundane worlds anymore. I go to sleep instead. 

I had a very busy dreamtime last night. I sorta remember what happened. It had to do with ex-wives and ex-acquaintances that turned out not to be as friendly as I needed for them to be to measure up to my ridiculous expectations. It's hell for me when I get around to realizing I am is projecting what I don't like about myself upon them. 

Maybe it's not so much about what I don't like about myself that causes me pause. Rather, its what I do like about myself that takes the cake. My so-called victims enjoy being accused of these wonderful traits about themselves also, in spades. Who wouldn't? But, candidly, is it fair for me to enable delusion?

This disrespectful air may evoke and involve what some like to call karma upon my sorrowful soul. I prefer the term kismet. In some odd, disgusting way I may be a romantic. That's truly bad karma. Nobody likes romantics. If they did, I'd like myself too, if for no other reason than to flatter them through imitation. How uncouth. Such weak careactor. But, since I only live for taking chances. It might be too tempting not to. 

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Rain

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We finally got some rain. Not enough to stem the tide, but enough to cause mud puddles for a while, and luckily, it came in the late afternoon and the sun didn't come back out to dry it all up. When I got up this morning the deck outside my room was still wet. 

It's probably too late for the agricultural crops, and even my fruit bushes that I've been watering with the spigot. I've described the condition of my figs as a result of the drought previously, but my blueberries are tough and not very juicy. Maybe this rain will give them a last gasp. 

Not being able to remember the term "omelet" for a moment this morning was disturbing. I did remember and I got over it, but to not have it come to mind easily in front of the sour, sullied waitress was not comfortable. It's likely to get unpleasant in this way more often in the future. 

This incident made me think about what could happen after I get the cataract in my left eye removed in less than two weeks. I've written about this a lot in the past. I'm referencing the way humans use the objects in their environment to remind them of various events. Like going into a bar or a diner and seeing all the placards on the walls with various quaint sayings. Pretty soon after I sit down I find myself using words from those cards and sayings for the bulk of my conversation. 

This predicament was most aptly revealed to me when I got into the float tank I built from scratch to see what that was like. Sensory deprivation chambers eliminate stuff that stimulate the senses. Any of them. Ideally, inside the tank lying in temperature-regulated salt water (Epsom salts to make you float like you're in the Dead Sea), all the ambient environmental sounds are muffled by insulation. 

All the light is shut out by blocking off all the places it could leak in. The sense of smell is at least modified by the sameness of the smell of the Epsom salts, and you don't wanna taste it... ugh. The sense of touch is ignorable because you're floating fancy free in water that's only a few degrees below 98.6. In other words, in the float tank, any of the senses that can't be eliminated by technology are compromised so that they can be readily ignored, and that's the entire point. 

The abstract thoughts one carries into the float tank are soon forgotten, because there is no stimuli to remind one that something exists outside the sensory deprived condition. Frankly, when sensory deprivation is done right it's like lying inside a coffin six foot under the ground. Nada. No sensory stimuli is coming in, no sensory stimuli is going out. A human being can't think abstract thoughts without the input of sensory stimuli. Speech is mind. Mind is speech. 

People crawl into sensory deprivation chambers to temporarily lose their minds. 

When the surgeon removes my distorted, brown-stained cataract from my left eye and replaces it with a clear, UV-filtered plastic lens to join my bionic right eye, it will be like stripping the walls of all the honky tonk bars and greasy spoon diners I've patronized pretty much all my life. 

Gone will be the source of all those quaint sayings and aphorisms upon which I've bestowed the trappings of my memores upon.  Nothing I see with my new eyes will remind me of my past life experiences because everything around me will have been transformed. 

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Shtick For A Clique

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I became interested in kefir due to stomach problems. Some of them are caused by the prescribed medicines I take for rheumatoid arthritis, but constipation has been a fairly constant companion in my life. Diarrhea? Not so much. Getting Montezuma's Revenge in Mexico City wasn't fun. 

If I'm constipated, I literally (but cluelessly) act like I'm full of shit. People have told me that to my face in public too. They say, "Man... you're full of crap. Git outta here with that depressing shit. Find something giggly to say, buy the house a few drinks, and then ..." 

Contrarily, if I am is afflicted with diarrhea, and around the same sort of socially adept people, I just run on and on meaninglessly for the sake of appearances. Eventually, my mindless chatter drives them all to distraction, and the fix is in the works. No blame. It can't be very flattering to them for my true interest to be where the nearest bathroom is. Egad! I hover... 

Having my deportment ruled by my GI tract makes me feel hopeless. I used to (sort of) wanna belong to a popular clique and be seen as an amenable, back-slapping fellow. No mas. Apparently I use the wrong shtick too quick to belong to some slick, jet-setting clique. It's the bane of my ex-is-tense. '-)

It's the prime season for figs and blueberries around here, but there is a huge drought and the lack of water in the soil and the debilitating heat is screwing with everything about the fruits these plants produce. My fig tree is ripening and dropping off it's fruit to save energy. 

The skin of those moisture-less figs seem to be too tough and thick for the usual bugs and birds to eat through their leather-like surface. More for me, but at this rate they'll soon be gone for the season. I'm eating them as fast as I can, but there are too many of them to keep from going over the top and hating them. 

Let 'em rot! There is always next year. At least for the figs. 

In the past I think I've written that everybody gets cataracts if they live long enough. It might turn out that's not true. I've been reading more about cataracts. Some cataracts form that are not debilitating and there is not any need for an operation to have good vision. Apparently, some people never get cataracts at all. Not even when they get old, and it's not luck that they don't either. 

According to my latest web search there is a possibility that the reason my cataracts turned brown was associated with the fact that i smoked tobacco cigarettes for 30-40 years. It may not be the only reason my lens turned brown, and their turning brown is certainly not the only debilitating problem with my eyesight. 

It's easy to see that now that my right eye has had the dirty brown lens replaced by a really clear plastic one. I can compare my old, distorted lens remaining in my left eye with the clarity of perception in my right eye just by closing each eye alternately. Talking about your sensory changes, my left eye used to be my "good eye", and now, by comparison, it's quite horrible. 

In the past, it's literally been a case of the blind leading the blind. I just didn't realize it until the last week and a half. I thought that by getting my "bad eye" fixed, that combined with my old "good eye" I would be able to see pretty good. Untrue. 

It is correct to assume that I see pretty good with my right eye now. After the bandage patch came off it was immediately clear that my "bad eye" was now my "good eye". It also revealed just how blind I was in my old "good eye". 

I can see how compromised my vision in my left eye is. Right now. Sitting here at my computer. I close one eye and then the other, and it's readily apparent that my left eye was the blind eye that led my even blinder right eye. The blind was leading the blind. 

I feel like going back and apologizing to every person I led astray with my double-bind blindness. There is not a chance in hell that I will. Not that the people I duped don't deserve a sincere apology, they do. The problem I foresee is that my apology would only confuse them, for they would know not what I did even if I explained it real good. I don't do what i do for their reasons, and what else matters?

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Boo Koo, Boo Koo

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The tag paragraph on yesterday's entry was to remind me I had a pre-op appointment this morning. I had to do something to get it in there so I wouldn't forget. Despite that, I didn't get much sleep because I don't have an alarm clock to wake me in time to keep the 8:30 appointment. 

It's an hour away. I practically stayed up all night to make sure I got there on time and kept the appointment. I don't want nothing getting in the way of them fixing my left eye to match the right one. 

The next appointment I have at the VA Hospital if for the surgery itself. It's gonna happen at 7 a.m. on Friday next. That's mighty early for my brother to get up to drive me over there. I have to have a driver or they won't perform the procedure. All I have to do is show up on time, and the operation will go straight from there. After that I won't actually need a driver all though I have three follow-up appointments after the surgery. 

I just realized that my surgery appointment is the same day I have my regular appointment at the Durham VA arthritis clinic. I reckon I got confused because of the way I wrote my reminder down on my bulleting board. I took a Sharpie and wrote the date down in large letters on the letter I get from the VA. 

Instead of spelling the month, day, and year as I usually do, I wrote down the numbers 8-5, and then thought the day was the 8th instead of the 5th. I gotta remember to cancel the arthritis appointment and get another one. I'm definitely getting the cataract operation on the 5th, but I gotta remember to call to cancel during the next week. 

Remembering all these dates and numbers is not so easy as I get older. I seem to be doing alright so far. I have to. There is no one else to do it for me. I can't depend on somebody else when there is nobody else. All my ex-wives and children are eagerly anticipating the call that I've committed suicide. All my siblings and children have their own families. I'm running as fast as I can. 

A few minutes ago I watched a YouTube video on cataract surgery. The video demonstrated an example of two types of surgery. The first one was the one-stitch procedure, which is what I was led to believe was gonna happen, but probably didn't. The second one was a procedure that employs a larger cut, and requires a goodly number of stitches to close up. 

The second method is called an extra capsular extraction if you wanna look it up. I'm pretty sure that's what's gonna happen. The extra stitches the second method uses do suggest that the stitches could be used to pull the astigmatism into a less distorted angle. I don't know the truth about any of this. I like to impulsively guess wots gonna happen next. It's something to do...

Since I was in the big town of Fayettenam I decided to shop around a little after I finished my pre-op appointment. It's not really an exciting, anticipatory thing to do. Living on the cheap means that I'm probably not going to actually buy much when I shop. It  must be obvious to lots of the shop employees that I'm a browser that probably won't make a purchase. 

More often than I'm proud of I do buy stuff impulsively. Particularly kitchen gadgets. I need a bigger kitchen in order to have all my gadgets within view and readily available. I could cook with my tools like a mechanic repairs cars. His tools need to be within reach without him having to think about them. 

It would end up being a big waste of money. There is no consistency in my diet. It's still that way, but I'm getting better. It's better because I finally understand what a diet is for. Basically, it's to feed my gut bacteria in a way that helps the friendly ones, and discourages the unfriendly ones. Hah! Like I would know....

Kefir is fermented, pre-digested milk. The reason it gets that way is due to bacteria. A matrix of bacterial materials whose excrement is to die for. It appears desirable that the beneficial gut bacteria prevail in the war of the gods. I seem to have concluded that if you nourish the beneficial gut bacteria they will do what's needed to discourage the unfriendly bacteria like e-coli. 

If what I've summarized from my ultra-casual research runs true, probiotics is more about the richness of the prebiotics that feed them than the results obtained forthwith. I could be wrong. It's too good to be true. But, that's what I'm thinking. 

One of the reasons (and a major one) for thinking the way I do resolves from my reading about how the positive gut bacteria cling to the walls of the intestines, and do what they do as what we eat passes through. It may not be relevant. 

When I make kefir with whole milk and a teaspoon of milk kefir grains, however, some of the self-propagating baby grains stick to the sides of the quart canning jar I use to let the mother culture do what it is self-designed to do. I take this as proof positive gut bacteria clings to the walls of the GI tract. 

I could be wrong. It looks that way to me. It's not a weak bond to the inside glass wall of the canning jar either. I can put a mason jor I used to make kefir into a washing pan filled with hot soapy water and let it soak. You'd think that between the dish-washing liquid and the hot water that some of the baby grains would fall off the glass sides. They don't. I'm speculating that once these baby matrix cluster attach themselves to the walls of the GI tract they won't budge until, by hook or by crook, they croak. 

The bacteria cultures used to make kefir out of milk (and other products) are self-propagating. As they consume the lactose in milk they multiply. They have babies. The babies are all self-propagating too. As long as you feed the matrixes they keep making clones of themselves, apparently forever. Why would a human do this? To eat their shit. Their shit is ambrosia and nectar to humans. Gods, of course, have the real top-shelf good shit. 

I didn't really do much shopping. I went to the health food store I use and bought some chocolate covered, sweetened ginger chunks. Tasty. I'm addicted. I also bought some red miso. It lasts me a long time. I still have a fair amount of the last pint carton I bought there. To me, miso is strong. A little bit goes a long way, but I lust for that little bit sometimes. I don't remember how I learned to like this stuff. Did I mention that miso is tasty?

Broiled fish is a big hit with me. I cook it with miso. I buy frozen salmon because fresh isn't really fresh by the time it arrives here. Can you spell r-e-f-r-o-z-e-n? I deal with frozen fish all the time, but refrozen is over the top for me. What's wrong with this picture? 

I've taken to browning one side of the rectangular frozen hash-brown potatoes, and the turning them over and put the frozen salmon on top of the previously frozen potatoes to bake above the grease and the frying pan and all the catastrophes that situation represents to me. 

About the time I figure the reverse side of the hash browns is cooked, I cut off the burner so I can walk away. I leave the lid on to save the heat, and take a hike. It took a while to realize that the stuff in the skillet still cooks for a good long time after I turn off the burner. Burning up a few frying pans and nearly my house cured that. 

The salmon is usually fairly dry, and tough when I get through. It falls apart with only a slight push with the fork tines, but the juiciness of it has gone the way of all good things. I suspect it being frozen has a lot to do with it, but in essence I'm not a very good cook. 

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Traffic Jams And Neurons

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Last night I slept long and hard. I may never catch up on lost sleep no matter how hard I try. I suspect the new world I'm seeing with my right eye has changed my dreamtime. It's tedious enough to try to catch a shooting star in the dream world under the best of conditions. Apparently when changing the outside world the inside world is changed too. 

There is a possibility that changing the way I literally "see" the world around me will truly drive me nuts. What if it should fail? It's only nine days since the first cataract was removed and replaced. It's been a little stressful in a physical way to have to make adjustments induced by the impulsive decisions of abstract mental faculties. 

The instinctual world is not designed for cataracts to be removed and replaced with a clear plastic lens. Sure, it's done all the time. At the waiting room at the ophthalmology clinic at the VA Hospital yesterday I saw three other old men come in wearing the same patch that was put on me after the procedure was done. 

I spoke to an old man wearing that cataract patch who was sitting next to me. He wasn't very friendly. I backed off and let him alone. He wasn't unfriendly. He didn't exactly threaten to punch me in the mouth if I didn't just shut up, but I got it. He didn't wanna talk.

The silence was palpable. Then... fade out. Lost connection. I sort of think that's how having one's world changed in not-so-small ways can affect many people. It's enough just coping with an artificially-changed point of view. 

Maybe people's natural eye lens slowly gets less flexible and brown, and that dims one's view considerably. Some people may make it happen in a deliberate way without knowing consciously that they're running that program in the background. If that is possible, and how would I gnow, it might be because they don't wanna see what happens to them due to the ravages of the aging process. 

Back in the days when I was a serious student of hypnosis I've witnessed a lot of deliberately induced changes to the skin and general appearance of people in hypnosis. I've seen knives and nails jammed through flesh and bone, that would immediately heal and show no sign of having happened within minutes. People can change their own common perception of themselves. 

All I'm saying is that getting the cloudy old lens sucked out of a small hole thrust into the eyeball and having it replaced with a specifically focused lens with UV filters is not the result of a hypnotic suggestion. Having this procedure done does not upgrade the expectations of the back-burner binary program that results in it's owner not "seeing" what happens to it as it dies of old age. The new lens is made of plastic. It's a man-made object that not subject to whims and mood swings. 

Nobody can re-hypnotize me and nullify the hypnotic suggestion that dulls the images exposed by my tired old lens and change anything. I went under the knife. I'm never going to see the world the way my old lens made it appear ever again. Well, not yet, soon it'll be that way. In two weeks when they "do" the left eye, my old way of seeing the world will have been excised. 

The vision in my right eye checked out at the ophthalmology clinic at 20/25, and it may get a little better as the healing process completes itself. It's been a long time since I could see so clearly. Even far away things like the individual pine needles on a tree a hundred yards off. 

It's due to such sharp definition of the objects my new lens allows me to see the world the way I do now, that makes me doubt the trueness and validity of my former visual experience of the world. There is a huge difference between what I now see with my right eye and how constrained the view provided by my originally-equipped left eye is. 

If I couldn't believe what my old eyes previously told me (due my natural lens getting cloudy and interfering with what I saw "out there"), then will this surgical change cause me in turn to doubt my other senses? Maybe it will scarify them into working better. Will my new lens cause me to question what my old ears hear and my old nose smells? My ears and nose are as old as the lens in my eye that is getting replaced was. The resolution is the same. I gotta find a way to cope. I always have. No blame. 

The one thing I now see with the new lens in my right eye is how old my skin looks. The vision in my right eye may have taken a couple of days to adjust to having all that light streaming into an former, incrementally darkening, cavern. Eventually, I looked closely at the skin on my arm and saw a lot more detail. I saw what other people with good eyesight see. Aaarrgh...

I should have been more ashamed. How humiliating! I pretended to look less aged than what was real to lots of people out there but me. I got no right to do that. How can I appear dignified if I unconsciously give myself airs? Such dumb-ass deportment has no power. Maybe I was better off not knowing. 

The old man who sat beside me in the waiting room seemed frustrated and confused. A couple of times he picked up the magazines on the table beside him and leafed through them hurriedly, but he put them down again as quick as he picked them up. "Can't git no..."

He was there to get the patch from his cataract operation the day before removed. The one thing he did say to me before he shunned me was that he had the cataract in his other eye done three years before. By getting the second eye done after three years, I suspect he was not totally happy about the prospect of losing his old way of seeing, even as badly as he saw, and it caused him pause. I know it concerns me too. What if it fails? Excisions are usually a one-way street. So is life.

It was seven o'clock before I realized I have an 8:30 pre-op appointment tomorrow morning. I gotta get up and leave here around seven to make it there on time. It scared me a little to have almost missed a pre-op appointment through sheer carelessness. Those VA people are not very forgiving, and I'm very, very close to getting what I wanted before I croak. I can't afford to screw up the works now. Coping with what I see with my new eyes might itself be the death of me. But first, I gotta get myself up and get over there by 8:30 in the morning. '-)

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Of Constant Sorrow

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I kept another post-op appointment at the VA Hospital today. The surgeon took the stitch out of my right eye. I subtly campaigned to get an appointment to do the other eye as soon as possible, and started working a mojo with the first nurse or technician who answered the call. As it turned out, she was the same nurse who attended to me before the first operation. 

That's how every appointment starts with the VA clinics. A nurse bring you into her office, asks you where it hurts, and takes your vital signs. I deliberately asked this woman if I could get the procedure done on my left eye soon, and she told me that it was impossible for me to get the operation. She said I wasn't ready, but she made it sound as if I were not worthy of having the procedure done. I believed her. Why would I not believe her? She worked there with the doctors and surgeons all the time. 

She was wrong about my first operation. Maybe she just wanted to feel important.  Despite her grandiose speculating, the surgeon agreed to do the original right-eye procedure with very little provocation. So, today, it didn't surprise me that if he wasn't all that hard to convince into performing the procedure on my left eye. He modestly let it be known in no uncertain terms that he was the decision maker, not his staff. 

The surgeon almost immediately arranged for me to have the procedure done in two weeks. Two weeks? That's much sooner than the six weeks another nurse/technician in the surgical clinic said was the usual time spread in between doing both eyes. 

I was real happy the surgeon decided to go ahead and do the procedure on the other eye, although there is still something very sad about it. It's so final. There is no going back. What if it should fail? I'd be blind in one eye, but not in the other. The surgeon said today that the surgery he did Tuesday last was successful. 

He doesn't expect me to have any trouble from what he's seen so far. Yet, just after that, he went into the boilerplate disclaimers about all the possibilities of what could happen with any surgery. I could die. I've heard it all before. It doesn't matter. Eventually, we all gotta get sick of something and die. It's the only way to fly. 

It really makes me happy to find out NASA is folding. What a big waste of money for the sake of political propaganda. There is nothing to be accomplished by space exploration. We didn't use space ships to get to Earth, and we won't need space ships to leave. As usual, we'll find ourselves out in the middle of nowhere and run outta fuel. That ain't how we roll. 

I got really sick off last night from some of the water kefir I made. It was the second time I've been deathly ill. I gotta stop using water kefir. I'm not having any problems with my milk kefir, but me and the water kefir are proving together that we are not going to be the best of friends. 

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Getting Outta Town

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Maybe having appointments at the VA Hospital is the only way I can get outta town. I have one this afternoon to see my regular doctor for the first time in over a year. Then, I have another tomorrow to get a post-op exam at the ophthalmology department for the eye surgeon to look at my right eye, and another two appointments early in August for both the arthritis clinic and another post-op eye exam. 

The nurse associated with my first cataract operation told me that the second operation for the cataract in my left eye usually happens most people around six weeks after the first one. That means I'll start the pre-op phase again, then the operation, followed by all the post-op examinations, hopefully without incident. I get paid travel money for all these appointments, and that's the only way I can afford to travel.

In the last couple of days I've been thinking about hitch-hiking out to California again just to make myself familiar with a world I used to know again. The cataract procedure in my right eye has really changed the way I see the world around me. For one thing, nothing is the same color. I don't mean that I see a slightly different shade of color. I see a different color. 

Not only different colors, but I see details I haven't seen in a long time or maybe never. Not even while I'm wearing glasses. It's like I wrote before the procedure was done, I didn't know what to expect from listening to what other people experienced when they received the procedure. 

Both my mother and father had their cataracts removed, and they told me lots about the difference it made for them, but as usual, I couldn't know what they experienced until I received the procedure myself. 

If I do hitch-hike to California after the left eye is done, much of what I'm familiar with between here and there will be very different, and that's the reason I'm thinking about doing it. I guess it depends on how successful the second operation is. In my left eye I have some fairly serious astigmatism that the surgeon said he could compensate for in some way. Either by removing it or using a designed lens that does the trick. 

Maybe I'll go back to Abilene, Texas where I lost a pair of glasses during a very serious storm that I saw coming from over a hundred miles away. I couldn't see well enough to find them after the storm has passed over. They're probably right where I lost them. Why would they not be? Nobody I know of just walks out on to the great plains without a good reason. 

If by some extremely lucky break I were to come into a windfall of a bunch of money that's all I would do with it. I'd never leave the country. I'd travel all over it as I've done many times, again and again, but instead of sleeping on the ground and under overpass bridges, I'd stay in motels and hotels and eat all I wanted in choice restaurants. 

That last statement might have to be altered a little, I'd probably arrange to have kefir with me on a regular basis. It's not that hard to keep the kefir grains alive in order to have a fresh supply. I drank a smoothie this morning that I let sit in the blender all night long. I added some frozen mango chips and put another packet of Splenda in it to compensate for the additional sourness, and it tasted terrific.  

The water kefir tastes good. Maybe even better than the milk kefir, but I feel like I have to be careful with it in a way I don't have to with the milk kefir. The water kefir grains convert the sugar water into alcohol, but then it changes to lactic acid. It's the lactic acid that stops the unfriendly bacteria in my GI tract from developing, but too much of it causes me problems. I think that if I cut down on the amount it may be okay. 

In my research on kefir a lotta people claim they've lost considerable weight, but that hasn't been my experience. In fact, I've gained weight. As much as ten pounds. Granted, that's not very unusual for me. I guess it's my body type. Its not unusual for me to gain and lose twenty pounds over a couple of months. It's been that way since I became an adult. 

Presently, I weigh about twenty pounds more than I did when I joined the Navy at eighteen years old. I weighed about two hundred and ten pounds back then, and had a thirty-two inch (81.28 cm) waist. The weight may not have changed too much (I've weighed forty pounds more), but the waist line will never be the same. 

Yesterday, when I got some gas for my car to make the same trip two days in a row, I was a little shocked that I spent $30 on gas and it didn't even fill my tank up. That's very different from when I was eighteen too. The gas only cost seventeen cents a gallon back then. Shit happens. Things change. No blame. 

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It's Too Hot To Tango

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Getting up this morning was not hard to do. I went to bed early. What else is a single old bachelor gonna do on Sunday night? The one good thing was, and is, presently, the temperature was only in the eighties all day yesterday, and I had to pull a blanket over me to stay warm early this morning. All that will change later today, and tomorrow we'll join most of the rest of the country with some really hot weather. 

It's not hot in Montana. My friend Barbara wrote me an e-mail yesterday telling me how comfortable it is there. If I were a rich man I might go visit her for a couple of months just to partake of the cool weather. I tease her about how cold it gets in the winter there, so I guess turn-about is fair play when she taunts me about how hot it gets here. She oughta know, she was raised in D.C., and it's not much different there than here in the summers. 

When I got involved in researching probiotics and found out about the benefits of kefir I subscribed to a couple of e-mail discussion groups to learn as much as I could about how to make my own kefir. There is not really that much to learn, but the process is a little scary because making kefir is not a sure thing. Each batch of kefir I've made is a bit different than any other batch. Sometimes I need reassurance that the way the last batch turned out is okay.

These discussion groups ignore most of the stuff I write, and frequently the moderators don't publish my posts to the other members, so my participation in the groups is not really interactive. I receive what posts they do send out, but I'm not allowed to respond. Being moderated is not unusual for me, I don't go along to get along like expected these days. It's still irritating to be shunned. 

Currently, I'm even more irritated by the cost of medical treatment in the U.S.A. The problem with me whining about it is that I suspect I have very little trouble getting medical treatment compared to many people. At least I can go to the VA Hospital and get some help with any serious problem. Medicare is just an excuse for the medicos to charge excessive prices above and beyond many people's ability to pay. There is a great shame associated with just needing some medical help these days. Getting sick should not be an embarrassment. 

It's unconscionable of the government to spend the taxpayers money to help other countries live according to our standards, and then turn their back when Americans need help themselves. It's bad enough for the poor countries to want what we have and will do anything to get it, but it's worse when our government is helping them to help themselves. 

I don't have much to write about today. I haven't been around people too much lately. I've had some visitors, but they don't seem much more encouraged about life in general than I am is. They are themselves fairly healthy, but they're being forced by circumstances to deal with people who are not doing well. I keep getting the impression that some of their people will die soon, and I'll be dealing with their remorse. That's been going on forever. 

My lackadaisical attitude may have a lot to do with brown grass. Not only is it really dry here, but the heat in the middle of the country is coming our way, and the lack of rain is just part of it. The weather report this morning did mention a tropical storm out in the Atlantic, but it's predicted to turn north and miss the United States entirely. Farming communities get real grouchy during hard droughts on general principles. 

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