I Use Labels Too Carelessly

☯


I'm writing my regular blog at felixperegrino.com now, but I composed this post to an e-mail discussion group about food, and I liked it enough to wanna save it to look at occasionally, so I'm putting it here for safekeeping. 


Hi David, 

I'm not wealthy enough to be that picky. Some people got phobias about metals. Not me. I was raised outta cast-iron pots and drank raw milk and spring water out of galvanized pails. Even now, infrequently, I use silver and copper colloids internally. I normally take dietary supplements with other metals in them every day, that is, if I'm holding. 

I do got phobias about plastics. How could a non-nerd like me possibly discern what's "food-grade" about plastic containers or no? I don't trust labels. Why would I? I wield them too carelessly myself. I ain't no walking encyclopedia about the chemical makeup of most ceramic glazes either. Moreover, all kinds of wooden utensils retain weird residuals that might be the death of me. 

In the past, as a homeless bum who might not have eaten for a week nor had a safe place to sleep for longer, upon encounter, I got less and less picky about what's wot with each passing moment. I don't even wanna remember what I et then nor the despicable acts I may have performed as I lay dying. '-)



☯

Changes

☯

I'm changing to my own website:


http://felixperegrino.com

☯

Around The Mulberry Bush

☯

It's hot outside, but not too humid even though it's somewhat cloudy. I've been laying on the second-floor deck on the chaise lounge and watching the wind sway the pine tops. It amazes me still that I can now see the pine needles on the trees a long way off, and that the blue of the sky and the green of the leaves is really blue and green. 

My new plastic lenses are uncontaminated by the nicotine brown that stained my cataracts. If you have ever noticed the brown stains on people's fingers that smoke cigarettes, then you've seen the color I had to see the world through before the eye surgery. 

At the time I didn't know any difference. The cataracts grew and got stained with brown slowly and incrementally. I didn't actually know it was there until it was gone. I knew it was gone immediately after my right eye was operated on. Maybe not immediately after the surgery, but the next day after they took the plastic cover and bandages off the next morning. That is when I knew I had been seeing a brown-tinted world. I had a clear lens in my right eye and a brown one in my left eye. 

Three weeks later the ophthalmologists removed the cataract in my left eye and replaced it with an intraocular lens like they had installed in my right eye. Except that this time, the world wasn't so clear when they took the patch off the next day after the surgery. They operated early one Friday morning. Then, took the patch off the next morning, and the world was grayed out in my left eye. It took two days before I began to think the surgery might work out right. 

Now, it's a couple of weeks later. As far as the seeing part of it is concerned the completed surgical procedure on both eyes has worked well. Like I mentioned above, I can see individual pine needles at the top of the pine trees a hundred yards (91.4 M) away. I just don't know why anymore. Being possessed by really good vision without eyeglasses doesn't make sense like it once did. 

It doesn't make sense in the sense of sensuality. Having pretty good vision didn't make my libido return in full force. Looking at fertile young women doesn't arouse me anymore than watching turtles sit unmoving on a log down by the pond. They're still there looking sexy to potent young men, but all I see is where that's gonna lead to... babies... and hard times ahead. Fools! We're all fools...

People were telling me that my eyeballs looked swollen right after the procedures were done, and as time passed they commented on how they seemed not as big. Not as swollen. But, nobody has yet told me my eyes look about normal again. They don't feel normal. There is a new normal that is not normal to me yet. 

There is a circle of physical sensitivity around each of my eyeballs maybe a half inch wide. The feeling follows around the edge of the socket holes in my skull. It's no hinderance. It doesn't appear to interfere with my seeing stuff. It doesn't hurt or make me happy either. It's just there, and it worries me a little that I don't know what's going on. 

I may have options at this juncture about whether to reconnect objects that made sense with my old way of seeing to my new way of seeing. It's becoming more apparent that my recall is not as sharp as it used to be. It's very reassuring to have a web connection and a search engine to remember content I used to depend on in order to make a living. 

Why would I wanna remember the details and formulas of how to fit steam pipe when I haven't done it for nearly twenty-five years, and not very likely to ever do it again. What I can do, however, is to remember little parts of it and use that in a search engine to find the whole thing. Once it's sitting there in front of me I can remember what the formulas are for. 

Yet, it's a little like being able to see well again. What I abandoned as not useful in the past doesn't become useful again just because it's clearly available for the old reasons. I still don't fit or weld pipe anymore, even if I might do it better than ever because I can see how once again. 

☯

The Zen Of Spicy Food

☯

Humans eat spicy foods for other than the nutritional value it sometimes includes. They eat it for how it helps the immune system fight against bacteria that kills people. It doesn't matter whether chile peppers, garlic, onions, and leeks has any nutritional value as long as the chemicals in them destroy unfriendly gut bacteria, and promote the growth of friendly gut bacteria that manufactures all the vitamins the body needs to prevail over nature. 

My personal and contaminated research into the notion that the human immune system is composed in it's entirety by their gut bacteria doesn't appear to be going away. Contrarily, I continue to be moved by information from all the cooking shows on TV instead of relying on the medicos who are using placebo-like suggestion to get me to believe I'll be just another victim of the worst case scenario. 

This line of thought started when I heard what amounts to a rumor that in some parts of Italy the food they cook is the medicine they take on a daily basis. They eat foods that depress the unfriendly gut bacteria, and have heaping helpings of food and drink that promotes the growth of friendly gut bacteria. 

Yesterday I found myself watching a program about chili peppers, and how the cultures that eat them have a lot fewer health problems than cultures who avoid them. The capsaicin in chili peppers gets rid of the bad gut bacteria in the same way onions and garlics and leeks do. Besides, the foodies talked about how peoples who eat peppers can turn the pain associated with the hotness of peppers into pleasure (sometime with a sexual bent), and instead of feeling pain when they eat peppers they feel pleasure. 

This is not exactly new thought. Before refrigeration made food preservation handier, a lot of the ways people preserved foods was with products that kept the unfriendly bacteria away from the food they tried to keep from rottening during the off seasons. Like preserving olives in olive oil. Eventually the olive oil will oxidate and spoil the broth, but it keeps food alive for months until it does. 

I'm not much of an expert on preserving food, so the ways the old people did it. Even my parent's generation practiced these methods. Most of the homes in the neighborhoods I grew up in had smoke houses for salt curing ham and bacon. My mother "put up" half gallon jars of vegetable soup mix for the winter for years even after she got her first refrigerator. Canned foods became prevalent and were the basic products for separate grocery stores. 

Having a "strong constitution" in the past meant that a person's gut bacteria was in balance and they didn't get sick every time other people did because of something they all et. The idea is that friendly gut bacteria destroy unfriendly bacteria, but sometimes it's the gut environment itself that makes the difference in whether the friendly bacteria can win this war of the gods. 

Salt preserves meat because unfriendly gut bacteria can't survive in a salt-laden environment. They gotta have oxygen to breed successfully, and that's why antioxidants are supposed to be good for you. It's also why smoke is used to cure meat. Smoke protects by killing off the oxygen in the curing process. 

This is a priori speculation at it's worst. '-) Read my disclaimer at the top. I'm not trying to tell the truth here, but rather, I'm writing to see what comes out when I entertain certain ideas. 

Yesterday, after I watched the TV show on chili peppers, I went and bought some peppers and used an onion and some garlic and a can of pinto beans and made me a killer of a supper. There was so much anti-unfriendly gut bacteria stuff in the meal I made, that the crown of my head was still singing when I woke up this morning. 

I only ate a small bowl of it. This morning I turned the stove back on and put some frozen breasts of chicken into this spicy goop, and I'm going to eat some of it for breakfast soon. Right after I drink some kefir that contains trillions of friendly bacteria to help fight the good fight. 

☯

The Babylonian Wisdom Of THE GAMBLER

☯

When I started getting some help with my eyes I thought replacing the cataracts with intraocular lenses would take care of my sight problems, and it has to a large degree, but my right eye has some astigmatism and that's making me question how satisfactorily this deal will work out. I don't have a clue whether my current problems with my right eye will work themselves out over time. 

I almost got a traffic ticket yesterday for not wearing eyeglasses. It's marked on my driver's license that I am supposed to be wearing them all the time when I'm driving, but with my old prescription I can no longer see very well. 

The cop didn't care whether I could see better without them, only that my license said I was supposed to have them on, and he had to write me a ticket no matter what. He said I'd have to take whether I needed them up or not with the judge. No blame. He was just doing his job, which obviously doesn't require judgment on his part. 

The only way I can get this legal restraint off my driver's license is to go and re-take the visual test at the DMV, but the problem with my right eye makes me hesitate to do that right now. I'm sort of waiting until after my next post-op appointment to see what's up first. In any case, I gotta study the road sign shapes again. 

I like to be super-prepared when I do these bureaucratically controlled chores. The less the bureaucrats get taken out of their routine the friendlier they seem to be toward me, and the more unconsciously beneficial to me they become. I seem to have a knack for dealing with people who do Capricorn-like work, and it's helped me survive more than once. 

Fortunately, I studied oracles for most of my early and middle years. Mostly vegetable oracles with the four seasons used as the indicators of the wheel of life. Oracles were/are used to measure and mark time. Like ropes with knots tied into them are/were used to judge the depth of water on ships and boat to avoid reefs or to find the holes where the fish hang out. 

The best words for choosing a wise course of action I've found recently are contained in the lyrics of a pop song called The Gambler, made popular by the country singer Kenny Rogers. I don't know who wrote the song or the lyrics. I like it. I always stop and listen if it's in the air. I've never met anybody who didn't like the song. It rings true for life as we know it to a lotta people. 

It's a fun song to sing when I'm alone. Especially if I'm driving to some place that is a fair distance away. It seems to cause me to think about real situations I've found myself, in the past, at the same time I'm singing the lyrics of The Gambler. 

What seems to tickle me to do this while I'm driving my car is how I nostalgically realize that I unconsciously reached for the utilitarian ideas within the lyrics of The Gambler that apply to this remembered scenario, and because of it, I'd see myself successfully coping with wot's what with no undue haste. 

It's very frustrating to experience this after-the-fact ecstasy despite the joy it provides. Sure, I'll take being immersed or enveloped inside a fine state of euphoria any ol' time. There has hardly ever been a revered state I wouldn't instantly abandon in order to participate in some joyous reverie for as long as I could milk it. Glutton?

What endlessly plagues me, however, is that I don't experience ecstasy in real time by having reached for and employed wisdom as a deliberate tactic. Why can't I become ecstatic in the same moment it arrives, but have to wait until it appears as afterthought? 

Maybe immediate happiness is such a distraction that expressing it during the event itself could break the spell. It's not a matter of ethics or morals, but practicality. For ecstasy to erupt into being as if spontaneous, sometime it has to be held in until it's all over but the shouting. That may be why I am always the last to know? 

Most of the holy books of graven images I've encountered appear to inform their devotees of what they gotta know in order to cope with traditional problems of their culture in the wisest way possible when one encounters them along life's way. Many of those holy books were written a long time ago in ancient languages that have been interpreted in thousands of ways using thousands of modern languages that now have a thousand words to explain each original word. 

I'm still astounded by the claim of white-haired pundit I once admired who claimed that the language of the ancient Babylonians had fewer than fifteen hundred terms or expressions with which to build the Tower of Babel, and it had to be dully represented, for they only had five words for colors.

All these holy books from all those different cultures say about the same thing that's written in the English lyrics of The Gambler. "You gotta know when to hold 'em. Ya gotta know when to fold 'em. You gotta know when to walk away, and you gotta know when to run." Candidly, what else does a thoughtful human being need to know?

☯

Screw An Attitude Of Gratitude

☯

It's beginning to feel like I am reaching the end of my rope. Yesterday, while driving home from eating breakfast I got a ticket for not wearing my seat belt. The cop looked at my driver's license and saw that I was supposed to be wearing glasses (which I can no longer see through because of the cataract surgery), and charged me with endangerment. 

I may have talked him out of that by offering to show him my VA appointments sheet. Even without that additional charge this is gonna cost me cold hard cash I can ill afford. What a drag, man. I live two miles from the grocery store, and the rheumatologists are telling me I'll soon need artificial knees soon enow, so even walking that far to get something to eat is gonna be tough. 

Perhaps I can develop some sort of sanguine attitude that will serve to get me through to the end of the trail. I doubt it though. I can get pretty whiny. I don't have but one or two visitors outside my family (who rarely visits, if at all) who stop by, and only two days ago one of them complained about the repetitious, redundant topics I hack to death with my boring outlook. I couldn't help it. I had to ask why he even bothered with such a buffoon. 

Getting that ticket is gonna set me up for a vigilance I don't like to have to observe. The cop told me I have a couple of options. Go back and re-take the visual test at the DMV and get the restriction removed from my drivers license or wear eyeglasses I don't need if I drive. I see a lot better with the cataracts replaced, but not so good as to try to pass a visual test at the driver's license office that will cost me another $20-30 to be re-tested. 

On the 7th of next month I'm scheduled for my final post-op appointment. They say they will check my eyes to see if they've healed from the surgery correctly, and then they'll test my eye sight for a new prescription if I need it. However this next appointment goes will probably be our last encounter in regard to the cataract surgery.

I don't know this for sure, but I'm impressed with the notion that the clear plastic, intraocular lenses the surgeons installed means that whatever prescription I receive from this appointment might be the last one I ever need. The flexible plastic lenses don't change much, and so the prescription I need to maximize my vision will probably stay the sa-me until I croak of becoming altogether too ancient. 

With my point that whatever I got to go to the DMV office with after that last appointment will decide whether I get the visual restriction removed from my current driver's license. I want it off the record so that I don't have to think about whether I have a pair of glasses I don't need every time I drive my car. I'd like that to happen, but other facts may come into play that prevents it from transpiring. I.E., what if it fails? 

The ambient temperature this morning at 9 o'clock is 70° (21.11° C) with fairly low humidity. It's very comfortable for a change. It hasn't been even been getting this cool at night. I'm sitting here practically nakid with no fans or air/conditioners making a bunch of noise. The cloudless sky is bluer than I have been able to see it for decades

The high pressure system means the noise from the paved road and the Wal-Mart maintenance room about two miles away, is going straight up in the air instead of being held to the Earth like it does with low pressure systems. Sometimes it's a reach for me to imagine air as a physical object that can constrain sounds to a corresponding altitude. 

When I kept my last appointment with the new doctor that replaced the woman doctor from Vietnam at the VA Hospital. It turns out that this guy is from the mideast originally, and appears to have a different attitude toward medicine than she did. That's hard to say after just one short visit. The nurse was changed too. Everybody is new to me, and vice-versa. The nurse was very pleasant. She's new. That'll change. 

As she looked over my medical records she saw that it's been a while since I've been vaccinated for pneumonia. She encouraged me to get it while I was there, and it would protect me from getting pneumonia for another five years. I have some reservations about not being able to develop pneumonia. That's what finally killed my father, and pneumonia was then called "the old folk's friend". 

I don't know what will finally kill me. I'm hoping to die while under anesthesia during some dumb-ass attempt to save me from death. I can see it now. They put me on a gurney and place the intravenous needle into the top of my hand, and then (without me knowing when) they insert some nice drug to relax me, and render me unconscious for the purpose of the surgery, and I never ever wake up. 

It'll never happen. It's just not my sort of luck. I probably won't be out of my mind with pain. That would be too easy. Death for me will probably not be short and sweet, but lengthy and unending. Days, perhaps months of sheer agony, and to top it off, I won't even get pneumonia so that it will finally end my torture. 

Of course I told the nurse to go ahead and give me the shot. That was weeks ago. It still hurts. There is still a small, knotty lump there where she skillfully injected the serum into my body. I've been coughing up  a clear phlegm rather constantly since then. I'm assuming it's my body's way of reacting like I had the actual disease, but don't. 

☯

Saccades

☯

It's becoming more and more apparent that my intensely-considered purchase of some very expensive (for me) Bose noise-canceling earphones was a life-giving investment for my sanity. What's really insane is that I'm legally deaf. Being legally deaf and having to wear noise-canceling head phones is just crazy. I've tried to make sense out of this predicament, but so far, I've not been very successful. '-)

Each morning and throughout the day I'm beginning to realize that I have to learn to see all over again. Having to do this with another of my senses has been (and is) burdensome, but like with teaching myself to hear through my skin using the Neurophone, it has yielded odd, but beneficial results. 

The artificial lenses the surgeons installed to replace my original biological lenses are made of clear plastic and not stained by over forty years of smoking tobacco. The reason I have to re-learn to see is because there is a lot more light coming into my eyes now, and my brain has to learn to cope with the availability of all that new-found light. I can cop an attitude about the adjustments I'm having to employ in order to accommodate my new condition, but that would be silly wouldn't it? 

For the last week or so I've been attempting to set up my own website as the container for this blog. For this purpose I bought a domain name to host the site. You can see what I've done to get it online by going to http:// felixperegrino.com. The only thing you'll see there so far is the text of my disclaimer header like it appears at the top just under the pic of the painting of Falstaff above. My youngest brother is hosting it for me on his own unlimited account with godaddy.com. Since the website is only intended to host a blog format similar to this one, it's purportedly not a huge task to conjure. Unless you're a neophyte like me. I'll probably use more images because it's easy to set up my own unlimited images folder to use as I please, but mostly I like words.

My brother makes a living from what he sells on his websites. He's got this HTML thang down. He's hosting my site for free, and helped me to get it online with the text paragraph you can see there as the front page. It's not like my brother won't continue to help me get it going, he will, but not only is he busy with his businesses and his family, it will be more interesting if I learn enough about websites to set it up as a blog and maintain it by myself.

I don't have a problem posting here on Blogger.com, but it was bought up by Google, and Google appears to be getting autocratic and totally abandoning their credo: Do no harm. I've been a big fan of Google since they initially showed up with a clean, easy to use design, yet sadly, they're already going the way of all good things and become a part of the military/industrial complex. 

To learn what I need to know about creating and maintaining a website, I've started watching how-to videos to generate or inspire constructive thinking about the tools I need to get a viable end result and how to use them. This video-watching method has been useful in the past. Apparently people, in general, take a lotta pride in displaying their expertise using the various methodologies for doing they love to do. They appear to enjoy making video tutorials on just about any facet of life that intrigues them. I love this about people. How truly humane.

One of the reasons I'm watching the videos to learn how to setup and manage a website on my own is that doing so gives me a lotta say so over what appears on the website and for why. I own the domain name felixperegrino.com. It's mine for the next two years or for as long as I pay per year to keep it. Having to turn to somebody else to maintain it defeats the whole purpose of ownership. 

In keeping with my basic nature, that of a miser filled to the brim with avarice, I gotta find the cheapest way to get this done. I'd like to buy the software program Dreamweaver to accomplish this end, because my brother uses Dreamweaver and he is perfectly willing to help me learn what I need to know, but Dreamweaver is expensive and actually much more than I need. 

Dreamweaver is owned by the same company as Photoshop called Adobe, and it's complicated like that too. Eventually, if I enjoy messing around with it I might set up a commercial site and try to make some money with a website, but that's a big if. Presently I'm checking out a free open source software program called KompoZer:

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

Maybe it will do the job for me or maybe not, which is the whole point, that presently I'm fumbling around trying to get started with something. If I just wanted to set up a blog and let it go at that I could use WordPress, but that's hitching a ride in somebody else's wagon, and not much different than using a source like blogger.com to express my inimitable opinions. Sometimes these sources wanna censor what people say on their nickel. 

It's probably a good thing my eyes got fixed so that I can see what appears on my monitor without wearing eyeglasses. At first I thought I might need at least reading glasses, and I probably still will need them for low light and small print conditions. A lot of the problems I've had so far seems to be associated with relearning how to see. 

I couldn't see very well through the cataracts even with the best prescription the optometrists could come up with because I just wasn't getting enough light through the lenses of my eyes. It was because of this progressive darkening of the light that it got to where I stopped trying to see what I looked at. 

I saw in glances instead of focusing directly at what appeared in my in the center of my focus. Now that I can see what I focus my vision upon I have to learn to actually look at what's there and truly seeing it for the purpose of comprehension. If you're interested in how the eyes see things a useful expression to type into Google might be "visual glances". It's been a fascinating side journey for me. 

☯

The Victim Of Gods And Devils

☯

Horrible night. I couldn't wait for morning to get here. It's difficult to cope with so-called "authorities" telling me in no uncertain terms the un-tempting fate that awaits me. I've already got plastic eyes, and I like them. Thank you very much. Getting stainless steel knees should be a snap. It's not. I don't want them. Except, that one day I might be grateful. I can't see it now. Not from my seedy, run-down mausoleum. 

I asked the two doctors if they had a drug that could turn me into a masochist so that all my arthritic aches and pains would serve to get me sexually aroused. They looked at each other and rolled their eyes. No blame. They based all their conclusions on statistics and the scientific method. Why take a chance on archaic systems? I've never formally studied statistics. I didn't see it as a useful tool for me, and therefore baggage. Not baggage for the statistics junkies. Por mio. 

Their relationship was with each other. The senior Fellow performed for the newbie Fellow. Until I started going to this arthritis clinic in Durham I never knew about Fellowship programs. I still don't, but I'm getting treated for my ills by them. In my opinion my general MD could do as good as they do, and maybe better. He's got a lotta experience as a physician, and while the Fellows are all licensed MDs, their experience, I'm guessing, is pretty much exclusive to getting their medical license. 

That's why I feel like I have to resist these pedigreed paper chasers. They're making decisions about me for themselves to become registered Rhumatologists with full privileges of all that implies. Mostly, it seems, it applies to being able to practice medicine without being bothered by the problems of poor people. They can't afford you. No blame. 

I hexed them. They may be experienced good-grade makers, but they're still soft about life in general. I meant to help them build Rome even if it did take more than a day. Rather, incrementally, one day at a time. They didn't realize the confrontation was between well-versed academians with honed medical lexicons and a shamed man. I never took no Hippocrates Oath. I resort to trickery with great delight. 

It was their supervising physician I wanted to get up with. My trickery was designed merely with that intent in mind. Mind is speech. Speech is mind. In effect I sent them to fetch their master. They seemed pleased with a viable excuse to leave the room. 

Their supervisor was an older man. Maybe in his sixties. He calmly looked at me and smiled, and even a fool of my caliber knew it was time for straight talk with a twist. I knew immediately I wasn't gonna get over on this dude. Period. It's be a waste to try. I asked for an emotional investment. Due to his absolute security in his own rap he let me reach for humor. 

Basically, I was asking for additional time to think over what his chelae were suggesting. They wanted to change my entire treatment program, and if that put me in dire straits, it seemed unimportant to them. It was important to me. I needed this wise dome to intercede in my behalf so that I wouldn't have to git wooly and sull' up. I plowed a mule like that once, so I know the ropes and the most effective way to say "Gee" and "Haw". 

This ol' boy must have been raised on a farm. He understood my use of the vernacular, repeated it a couple of times weightily in front of his Fellow, as if grateful for an outlook to torment him with. Without ado, he told me they would not change my prescriptions if I would agree to come in for a complete lab work up in two months. I knew the jig was up, so I acted all humble, and said, "Yes sir."

A complete lab workup, the first since 2008 (which I didn't know. Time flies), is not an exciting idea. Rheumatoid arthritis is a progressive disease. Three years is a long time for a progressive disease to progress. Considering that and the fact that I have two kinds of arthritis, is exactly what the crude senior Fellow was impatiently explaining to me. 

That's why a call him a statistician instead of a physician. "Look", he boldly informs me, "You have two forms of arthritis. Either of them can lead to leukemia and diabetes. That's the percentages. You probably will not be mobile for very much longer, that is, if you don't die of a heart attack first. Right? You do know more people with RA die of heart attacks than anything else. Right?"

I thought for a moment there he was trying to murder me with words by telling me what my statistical odds were for getting through the next short while without some of my parts either falling off from cancer or getting chopped off by some eager-beaver surgeon determined to get rich and famous by being a butcher. Jeez! He made it quite obvious that soon, by hook or by crook, I'm a goner, and it's gonna be a horrific death to boot. Selah

That is why I had such a unrestful sleep. I woke up occasionally for the sole purpose of feeling my body to see if it was still there. This does not bode well. Yet, I admit to being a little excited. Maybe I really will become a masochist and get sexually aroused by my inevitable and inimitable personal aches and pains, and my parts falling off. Maybe the video clip I viewed yesterday about the trials of the biblical careactor Job was not coincidental. 

☯

On The Side Of The Lowly

☯

Every year that passes proves how gullible a kid I was. I like to think that most kids are gullible simply because they're kids, but I may be wrong. Somehow I was taught that people like cops and the family doctors were your friends, and that they wanted to help you, but that hasn't worked out the way I was led to believe. 

Many, if not most of the cops are no better than criminals, and doctors are all like Mengele. It's only because they are human, and humans are just another species of animals who happen to talk better than your average bear. Speech is mind. Mind is speech. 

Thursday night was practically sleepless again. I went to bed a little early because I had the drive to Durham and the appointment to keep at the arthritis clinic at the VA Hospital. I probably should have taken a sleeping pill Thursday night instead of waiting until last night. I took the prescribed dose of Ambien around nine o'clock, but only after worrying a good bit about whether I might sleepwalk and make a fool of myself by driving downtown in my underwear. 

So far this morning I haven't had anybody showing up saying that I slept-walked my way to their house in the middle of the night. This prescription sleeping pill has been in the news a lot in the recent past. People take it and literally don't know they have gotten out of their bed and went about their business in a totally unconscious state. When my new clinic doctor prescribed these pills he seemed to think they were better than the old ones that my former doctor prescribed to me. I don't agree. 

As far as falling asleep quickly is concerned they probably are more efficient, but the threat of sleepwalking is scary. I don't think for a minute that I am any less susceptible to exhibiting the traits any other average person anybody else could. In fact, I may be more of the garden variety of gullible fools than average. 

"Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone." AU

I'm still a little upset that this young doctor tried to convince me that I am a prime candidate for artificial knees and leukemia within a short amount of time. Granted, he might have been showing off his horrible bedside manner to the new guy who accompanied him, but it may not have turned out all that well for him because I might have shown him up in front of his supervisor. Nice guy... eh? I know these things go on. That all sort of professional people attempt to use suggestion to bring in business, but at the expense of compassion. 

It irks me to have to employ all these mechanizations to get these people to tell me what's going on. I literally conned the dude into telling me what diseases they were treating me for, and what the drugs they prescribed to me are used for, and to tell me the side-effects of those drugs so that I can act in an informed manner. After he did, I wondered if I was better off not knowing. 

Lately I've found myself contemplating a phrase I don't remember the source of. It goes something like "the superior man always stays on the side of the lowly." Somehow I took that to heart, and it's been one of my true tenets for a long time. It's a stupid sentence to take seriously, much less to accept it as a guiding light. 

It was very obvious to me yesterday that those young doctors did not take such a statement seriously. When I asked them who I could call for help if the side effects of these drugs they wanted to prescribe went south, and complained that none of them had answered my telephone messages ere now. 

He admitted that they didn't have much time to spend with their veteran patients, after all, they spent most of their time across the street with the rich people at the Duke University Medical Center, and they were not available to the lowly veterans. I don't know what the medical equivalent of "Let them eat cake" is. But, it was frightening to see their total lack of concern so openly. 

I stopped typing to reflect on how harsh I may sound, and suddenly I realized that I have been sitting here for a couple of hours typing, and haven't once put my eyeglasses on. Some of those mean, nasty, condescending Fellowship doctors over at the Fayetteville VA Hospital operated on my eyes, and fixed them so that I can see again. Of course, they're associated with the UNC Medical Center. Go Tar Heels! Actually, it might seem that I am the grumpy, ungrateful wretch. Not them. It's probably too late for me to learn to be a nicer person. Good. Nice people are patsies. '-)

☯

Guinea Pig

☯

Since the cataract surgery I'm beginning to think that perhaps getting blind in one's dotage is a good thing. I saw myself in a way today that I'd prefer not to have occurred. It was myself in a brightly lit mirror in one of the men's rooms at the VA Hospital in Durham that did the trick. With my new eyes I saw that I have indeed become a wretched looking old man. Still, without option, I gotta take it straight up.   

There is a couple of mirrors here in this house of horrors I built. Apparently as a mausoleum. A smaller mirror that is essentially a Wal-Mart special I bought one day thinking I could move it around to a good light, and actually see what's become of me over the years. People lie. I needed to know for myself. Now I do. Damn!  

There is a larger mirror in the bathroom that came with a chest of drawers I inherited from my mother's furniture. Despite the seedy, rundown condition of it's frame, it's a fair quality mirror. I have a jury-rigged overhead light in this room that's only there for the sole purpose of seeing my way to the commode at night. 

There are two ceiling-to-floor windows in the adjoining room on the south side of the house, and a large open doorway that provides light to the bathroom during the day. But, there is never enough light in that room to allow me to take a good look at myself from top to bottom. Besides, I stopped really looking at anything with the onset of the cataracts. I couldn't really see the objects of the world anymore, why bother to look? 

It's a handful to attempt to describe how I moved through the world more blind that I had dreamed of. I know that when I was driving my car I went everywhere by some sort of memory system. Like the note I wrote earlier about change not being what I bet the farm on, but on what didn't change, that guided my hands on the wheel and my foot on the brake. 

I didn't recognize people by what they currently came across as in real time. It might seem obvious that I would try to gain recognition through the sound of their voice, but I'm legally deaf too. I felt very foolish when I paid $700 plus shipping for a pig-in-a-poke gadget, copy-righted as a Neurophone. It's inventor claimed that by using it that a person could learn to hear through their skin. It's occasionally paid off for me to be this kind of foolish. 

No, it wasn't by sight or sound that I somehow maneuvered my way through the physical world as I got older, and then older still. Today, on my drive to Durham I sang some vowels to bring my focus to my voice. It might have been the best decision I made all day. I sang the vowels to open up the resonance of my voice. Speech is mind. Mind is speech. 

It's probably true that I don't listen to what a person says to get my clues on how to respond. I listen to how they say it. It doesn't matter to me what they say. Everybody says anything that's convenient to get across their intent. What a person chooses to say from all that is possible will still be known, and therefore unknowable. 

Sometime the people I converse with sense that I'm not listening to what they say, and that has political consequences that don't facilitate getting to the null point where anything is possible, but in the dimension of how, not what. 

The doctor I've seen the last couple of appointments at the arthritis clinic wasn't there today. She had a good excuse. She had a baby since I saw her last. It doesn't matter. I hope she got the baby she wanted. I've been through four or five doctors as my primary clinician since I got sent there for a final diagnosis. They're all on a fellowship program to become specialists in Rheumatology. 

It doesn't matter which MD they assign my case to. Nobody knows how to cure rheumatoid arthritis, much less the regular, less drastic kind of arthritis called osteopathic arthritis... or some such. About the only thing any of the doctors can do about these autoimmune diseases, and all other autoimmune diseases is to treat the symptoms, and pray for an easy death. 

The VA Administration feeds the teaching hospitals and universities with veterans for them to do what they will. No harm. No foul. VA hospitals can be scary places to visit. Those places reeks with unlimited examples of man's inhumanity to man. It is hard to sit in practically any waiting room without body parts from every aspect of a human missing, and many times, multiply so. Even so, many laugh at themselves. 

I was attended to today by two doctors, both Fellows. Their relationship appeared to be that of a more experienced doctor, and a newbie learning the ropes. Both were licensed general MDs who were trying to take the high road. They felt me up and used their stethoscopes on me simultaneously. They seemed befuddled. Particularly the more senior one. 

At least he told me what all was considered wrong with me, but concluded that all my illnesses paled before the rheumatoid arthritis. He practically guaranteed me I would eventually get several types of cancer and diabetes, and that I should seriously entertain the future replacement of my knee joints, and that could happen anytime. 

I was rather amazed at what he said. He was not happy that I questioned his diagnosis due to the fact that I walk and climb stairs practically everyday. I accused him of using hypnosis to cause his diagnosis to come true. They left the consulting room looking for their supervisor. They took their time. 

Soon enough, however, the "boss" doctor came in the room, positioned himself before me in an easy, non-threatening manner, and asked me what was going on. The only thing I talked about was how I'd spent a couple of hours yesterday researching the term "undue haste". That's all it took. 

He figured it out, and assured me they would not change my prescriptions for the next four months, but I had to return in two months for extensive lab work. Okay? Sure, but will I get travel pay like a regular appointment?

The older, more experienced doctors can get pithy with me and we both enjoy it. I can only resist their omnipotence in small ways. My life is at stake. They know. I refuse to let them use me as a guinea pig or as a teaching tool at the expense of my questionable, yet vulnerable self-respect. 

☯

Beulah Land No Mas

☯

So, everything went well this morning. I got up in plenty of time to keep my appointment with no undue haste. In fact I had plenty of time to go to the Shoney's restaurant in Fayetteville and partake of they breakfast buffet. It's a favorite place for me to eat breakfast because of the food. It's a good thing I can't afford to eat there much. I'm not particularly fond of the ambiance. 

They have hash browns cooked about right, and the grits are firm and not soupy. The scrambled eggs seem to be fresh made because of the traffic. It's obvious that I'm not the only person attracted to the breakfast bar at Shoney's. The fact that lots of people like to have the options provided at the buffet is probably why nearly all the food seems freshly prepared. 

Many people not raised to grits don't understand the soul of them, or rather, the soul projectable upon them. They're just a medium. If you cook them and then spread them out on a cookie dish and let them cool to congeal, then slice them up in three inch squares, dump them in an egg batter to coat them in goodness, then fry them up in country ham red-eye leavings, and serve them up to people you love... you'll have to do it all over again to stop them from begging. 

I like to make enough grits to cover the cookie sheet at least 3/4 inch (1.9 cm) thick. That way they have soft ham flavored centers so tasty you can just eat that, and throw the rest away to the doGs. The dawgs will beg for more too, but it's too good for them. There is nothing worse than a spoiled, finicky dog, except it's owner. 

Pet owners want you to treat them like they treat their pets. Granted, it's just about impossible to interpret their interactions in a way that can guide you to their inner peace (it's even harder if they're doing the same things to people that they do to their pets). I find the entire pet peccadillo  a sickening waste of time and money. 

As if nobody is looking. I once knew this incredible woman who was just my type. I created an aura for her that she couldn't resist. Thangs were looking good between us. I had to compete for her love with cats. Or, was it booze? No, that was another perfect woman for me, who had inexcusable flaws so ingrained that she hung herself to the highest tree as penance for destroying my love for her. 

When I clicked on some of the Google Results links to read some examples of how 'undue haste' is used it made me realize my interest in this expression. It's a lot like the Ben Franklin quote about "Haste makes waste." This happens to me a lot because of my propensity to jump to conclusions. I'm a fairly impatient person. 

It's not a positive attribute. Either to myself or to the world around me, but it's a weapon I employ to change how the status quo is coming down. Really intelligent people sometime find themselves stumped by my inexcusable, thoughtless (or so it seems) statements or conclusions that are both dumb and virtually impossible to untangle in an acceptable mean-time. Such incites a pause that is not a meaningful moment, but a null point. 

A null point is not a somethingness I control, but a nothingness I allow to happen by abandoning some uncalled need for the idea of personal respect. Why do you think they call my illiterate hubbub, distraction? Abstract and distract are opposites. If speech is mind, then mind is subject to the vagaries of speech and vice-versa... No? 

"... 

where do you go

when there is nowhere to go,

and the place that you're at

is kind of blue,

and you look deep inside

for the child who has died,

and the kingdom

it once occupied

is gone too?

...."

fmp, '72

☯

My Contribution To Clean Water

☯

The night before last I just lay in bed and never really fell asleep, and I didn't find many naps during the long day yesterday. I don't know exactly when I went to sleep in the late afternoon, but I woke up with the eleven o'clock news blaring away on the TV I had left on, and my bladder screaming for relief. After I finished my toilette and moved around a little bit, I realized I needed to set my new alarm clock to make sure I got up in time to keep an appointment at the VA Hospital for a post-op appointment for the surgery on my left eye. 

Maybe that's when I made up my mind to keep the new alarm clock instead of taking it back for a refund. I don't need an alarm clock very often, but when I do I want to be able to rely on it. Even though the clock loses a couple of minutes a day it does set off the alarm when it's set for, and if it's a couple of minutes late it's not a threat to our peaceful co-existence. 

Today is the day when the three digit heat is supposed to go away for at least a week. It's cloudy this morning and that is holding the humidity in place although the high pressure system has definitely moved into place. Instead of a brilliant sunrise followed by rising temperatures, there is a lovely pink glow to the clouds to take it's place. It's actually pink for me in both eyes now. I don't know how long it's been since I have experienced such a lovely pastel sight. 

My left eye is still not perfectly clear. It has seemed to get a little better each day, but not so much improvement the last couple of mornings. I'm not wearing eyeglasses to write this entry, so I can't be too unhappy with the overall results. 

My suspicion is that there is not too much improvement to be gained from here forward, but since my vision is so much clearer with the new plastic lenses and I can see color so much better it might be ridiculous to complain too much to the surgeon during my appointment at 10:00 a.m.. I have a final post-op appointment early next month.   

Soon, this decade-long foray to get the cataracts in my eyes replaced will be over. If you've read any of my blogs for long you know of my trials and tribulations. I don't know that it's any more satisfying to get things like this done from the stance of being dirt poor than simply paying the medico's asking price with hard-earned cash. Such does give a sense of accomplishment. 

At least I haven't come out of my efforts blinded by total incompetence. The Veteran's Department of the government uses M.D.'s on fellowship to do this kind of work. The surgeons who performed the procedure on my cataracts are medical students working on getting certified in a specialty like opthalmology at the University of North Carolina up at Chapel Hill, and the M.D.s from Duke University who intend to specialize in rheumatoid arthritis handle my RA. 

The only experience they have or actually need to become specialists in some medical field happens this way. I don't know or care what sort of financial arrangements happen, but it's probably the only way poor doctors can get to have specialties and get outta having to deal with the great unwashed. It takes four years of what amounts to a high-class apprenticeship after they become licensed MDs. 

Most of them haven't become cynical yet, and some of them still display vestiges of ideals and compassion. That won't last long. Probably because they're expected to be more humane than mere humans. No blame. They asked for it during their youth. If they had waited until they understood the nature of human beings a little better they might not do it. 

My need to dip into my scant savings account to pay my property taxes disgruntled me earlier this week. In the past I've been able to do without and save enough money from my Social Security checks to pay the government to leave me to my own devices. I've been getting a check from the agricultural department because the government forced the tobacco growers to sell their allotments back to the government. 

This happened due to my small inheritance. If that hasn't already run out I probably won't get much more. A year's worth at most. Considering the nature of annual inflation rates and the fact that Social Security recipients has been denied cost-of-living raises for the last two years I will inevitably die in some institutional poor house. 

With the way things are falling apart I probably won't even be aware that I'm senile and abused by Nurse Wretched. If I won't be conscious of it then, why worry about it now? 

The weather has changed since I've been sitting here typing. The clouds are gone or at least going. The high pressure system looks like it's taken over and it feels less humid. That's the only comfort promised with this system taking over for a week or so. The temperatures will still be fairly high, but the humidity is supposed to drop considerably. It's about time. 

With the clouds pretty much gone and the air much drier, the sun is now shining brilliantly through the open eastern doorway on the second floor of my house. Soon, I'll get up and take a shower for the sake of the medical staff at the hospital. I haven't had one since I did it for the same reason a week ago. Thats how it goes with old people. They're not sexually desirable anymore, so why waste the water? '-)

☯

Sha-me-ing The Shaman

☯

The ordinary point of going to bed is to eventually go to sleep. The ordinary didn't happen much last night. I just lay there and lay there, waiting to drop off into the dreamtime, and it was hard to come by. I watched my youth pass me by instead. I remembered lots of events that I am ashamed of. I think that happened because of being able to physically see the world the way I did back when my eyes were fairly new and I was a child, and now they're new again. New again, but not new and perfect. I'm pretty sure I'll need at least reading glasses. 

When I finally decided to go ahead and get outta bed it wasn't light outside yet. I could hear the vehicle noise from the state road about two miles away. When that quieted down I can hear the machines in the maintenance room over to the Wal-Mart SuperCenter located a little closer to town from me on that same paved road.

Whether I hear this annoying machine noise or not depends on the weather system. Low pressure systems seem to hold the noise down to earth. Like now. Low pressure and high humidity. That's supposed to change by sunset with a dryer, cooler high pressure system dropping south out of the Great Lakes region. 

The events of my youth that I'm still ashamed of as an old man were fairly innocent affairs to review this morning. I didn't know any better than to act the way I did back then, and I was made to feel shame intentionally so that I would think about it the next time I felt tempted to dispute their word. 

It was misbehavior only in the grown-up world, and grown-ups were who I had to live with, so I dutifully felt shame for my parent's sake. Feeling shame as a duty is not quite the same as when I arrived at a sense of shame by my own convictions. I appear to know better than to do that to myself, for any reason, unless it will get me what I want. The older I got and the further I got away from my parent's control the less shame I experienced. 

Since it was up to me to decide whether I oughta feel ashamed or not as I got older, I decided not to, unless it was my only way out. This attitude didn't go over so well with my ex-wives and children. They didn't have the rebellious spirit I did. I sometime think my rebellious spirit was the reason my ex-wives got interested in me in the first place, and we seemed to get along fine until the children came along. Then, I was seen to be setting a bad example for my own kids. How could I fight that?

The adult way of life taught to them as children came alive for my ex-wives when they bore children of their own to care for, and the rules they were taught overwhelmed any curiosity they might have been formerly attracted to in me. As a result I've lived alone a lot. Around thirty years since my last divorce. I don't know why. I don't particularly like living alone. The world changed from what my parents made it into to compensate for how they were raised. Life left the mules and wagons behind, and got digitized to the max, much less electrified. 

Nobody who grew up watching television can possibly comprehend the foundations of people who didn't. Even more so in regard to personal computers, and then the internet. They don't know what it's like to do without them. There is certainly no blame in that. Just a big generational gap that will never be closed. 

Both of my parents lived a rural life in the poorest state in the union during the Great Depression, and without electricity in their early years except in the large cities. Street lights were something they gawked at in total amazement when they were allowed to go to town, or so they said. They lived twenty miles from town. It took two days to get there and back for my father's family using a mule and a wagon. My mother's family lived closer to town. It took them only one day to make a round trip to town. Only the youngest children in my parent's families could read or write. 

The Great Depression proved to them that getting a formal education was their only salvation. That meant going to a boarding school after the sixth grade. Naturally, it became my salvation too as far as they were concerned. Not getting a college degree for myself became just another due cause for shame. I am is a shamed man. A sha-man. I heal people's shame by taking it upon myself. It's the one thing I'm good at, but it hurts. 

In my pubescent rebellion against my parents I became the opposite of a formally educated person. I rebelled very powerfully, and it eventually cost me the respect of all my families. I actually thought it would make them love and admire me for standing up for myself. I was wrong. I'm wrong a lot. Some things never change. 

It's light outside now. Only scattered, fluffy clouds in the sky. The sun will soon rise high in the sky and heat up everything. The temperatures are supposed to go up to the mid-nineties, and then the cool front is supposed to arrive by nightfall. The TV weathermen say the cool weather will stay for at least a week, but I don't believe it because it's too good to be true. 

The cataract surgery has allowed me to see colors again. I had pretty much figured out the cataracts were making me blind, but I didn't realize they had interfered with the way I saw the colors of the objects around me. It took the surgery and the clear plastic lenses they replaced my natural lenses with for me to see the color of the world around me again. 

If you had told me I didn't see the color of some object in our mutual presence I would have argued that you were wrong. I'm kind to myself in regard to my flaws. I pretend not to have them. It was only when the world around me proved to me that I was blind that I submitted to the eye surgery itself. I found out my view of colors was flawed on my own. 

I literally don't remember ever arguing with anybody about the color of something. As far as I can tell, it was only after the surgery and receiving the new lenses, and writing here about my trips to Lowe's, and seeing the difference in the color of flowers after my right eye was fixed, that I realized I wasn't seeing what other people with clear vision was seeing. Now, I'm wondering why that never came up. 

The colors I saw was still colors. What I saw was just not what many people must have been seeing. I didn't know it. How could I have? I saw what I saw, but I had to interpret the language other people used to describe how they saw colors, so I shined them on by assuming we both saw the same  object in the same way. We didn't. I didn't, and it wasn't due to ignorance. I didn't ignore anything. 

What I saw through my clouded, worn-out old lenses was just something I incrementally took for granted. Probably over decades. I've read that the lens of cigarette smokers turn brown. Makes sense to me. My lungs did. I started smoking when I was seventeen. I only stopped four years ago this month. I've probably not seen pure colors for forty years. I now know I was innocently color blind. I didn't know before the surgery, and nobody else knew either. 

I can never be innocent about colors again, but I am is still jaded and world-weary. It's interesting to see the real colors again. I gotta go to the North Carolina Art Museum and take another gander at Thomas Cole's painting of that Hudson River valley. Maybe the red splash of color I loved as a kid is still there, and it was just me that changed, and not the painting or the light in the new museum building they moved it to. Maybe my own paintings don't represent what I thought they did. No blame. It's time for a burning of the old days. 

☯

Speculating About Spectacles

☯

While I was driving one day I thought of an interesting comment, and I stopped beside the highway to write it down. Here is what I wrote:

It's not how things have changed that my "judgment" is based on, but by what has stayed the same."

Am I basing my opinionated judgments on what is unchanging about the world as I perceive it. Do I imply that my judgments are not grounded in the changes of being? That seems silly. Everything about the sensory perceived world is based on the fact that all parts of it changes eventually. Wouldn't it be more prudent to base my decisions on the inevitability of change? 

Maybe. How the hell would I know? I don't even know what I'm referencing when I write about what doesn't change. It could be me. I am changes, but that ain't me. Me doesn't change. It just is. Always. My favorite saying for what the me is, involves the Gnostic Gospel called the Gospel of Thomas. 

Some of his disciples approached Jesus and ask him what they should thing about paying the taxes of Caesar and the Jewish priest class? He purportedly suggested they should "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, to render unto God that which is God's, and unto me that which is mine."

When the Roman Catholics translated these gospels they left out the part about "rendering unto me that which is mine." I don't particularly care about what their reasons were for the omission. Anything about the priest class will eventually be motivated by power. Sex and money for the most part. Leaving the "me" part out of that statement serves their own purposes, and not your's. No bla-me. 

It's a lot easier for me to explain what I am is trying to say by the use of the term "docetic". It's not a convenient descriptor. Not many people seem to have heard of it, and the ones who have heard of it disagree with my interpretation of it's me-and-thee-ing (meaning). To me it describes a spiritual being who wants to, but can't become human. You know, like Pinocchio, who was a wooden dummy who wanted to become a real little boy. That docetic spirit is me. 

The promise of evolving to the state of being human implies immortality. How could a docetic entity be-co-me something it already 'is'? It is. It is me. That's the only material object it can pretend to be, but never gets over the hump with it because of the aging process. It's sins of the flesh. Desire, lust, and all that other immoral jazz. 

What is easy is simple. It's easier to figure out how to cope with desire and lust as the very elements that bind a human being to becoming itself for the sake of the docetic spirit which created it as an indirect effort to attain immortality as an identity. "I am is this, I am is that. It knows ten ways to skin a cat." As if a really clever person could be-co-me so-me other by pronouncing it to be a done deal. Magic by utterance. 

My left eye seems to be clearing up a little more, but there is a problem with astigmatism. I'm seeing two images side by side. At least it's different than before the surgery was done. Before, I saw two images also, but one was over the other. Now they're side by side. Fate is at hand. I must have done something evil in some past life that I still have karma to pay to acquire my redemption. 

Part of the astigmatism I'm experiencing now may have something to do with the fact that I'm using my old glasses which were prescribed to account for the astigmatism I formerly experienced in the same eye. This doesn't seem to be the time to be making up my mind that such and such is so and so. 

It could be that this will straighten itself out in a matter of time. Perhaps the eyeball itself is still swollen and when it shrinks to it's normal size my eyesight will be perfect. I honestly can't guess or offer a wise perspective on how it will turn out. For a couple of days after the surgery I didn't think I'd be able to see nearly as well through my left eye as I do now, some three days later. 

I have a post-op appointment on Thursday. Much may be revealed about what's going on and if there are viable re-me-die-s for the astigmatism I am is now experiencing. Presently, I'm not all that unhappy with the results I'm seeing now. A better prescription for what currently ails me in the specious present could make me ecstatic for a while... but, what if it fails? 

☯