❧
This phrase popped into my imagination recently and I'm writing to explore it's me-and-thee-ing. It's sort of a statement I guess. That's how things come to me. I get no respect. The phrase said this: As long as you depend on the recognition of others to be satisfied with your identity in life, your dependency upon others and otherness makes you vulnerable to those who don't or pretend not to in order to yank yo' chain.
I may have added a bit on to the original impression. Why would I not? Nobody knows. I seem more fascinated with what I take to be a species obsession with identity, and not just recently either, but for as long as abstract thought solidified in the homo sapien framework. Maybe my curiosity is just an extension of the age-old question: Who am I?
That is a question about one's personal identity. Who am I? What am I here for? Why do I care? "Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?" Then, everybody know I'm somebody even if they don't know who I am is either.
My wanting to have my own identity above and beyond the reach of the politicians and priest class has been my lifelong pursuit. I say that now, but I only found out myself fairly recently. I mean, I knew, you know, but, I didn't REALLY know until I finally found out that what I'd always had was really mine, and not invention.
I'm writing about some sort of cornucopia. Why reinvent the wheel? The whole point is that I didn't make this resource up. I do make things up, mind you, but even I know it ain't something I can hang my hat on. Hell, everybody does that, and I've always imagined myself as different, and I ain't changed my mind.
What is different about me is the same thing as what's the same about everybody including me. That may seem silly to some, and even to me when I get drifty, but what distinguishes me from other people is my remembering vision, and it took me thirty years to even realize it. The tie-to-me is time.
Another facet of life I'm more sure of now than ever is that I can't provide anybody else with their equivalent of my remembering vision. I don't remember any ritualistic way I used to cause it to happen, so how can I tell anybody else how to tread that path on their own?
On my own, I figure my efforts are reduced to an old Oriental saying I'm not sure of the source of it is. It's "neti-neti", and means "not this-not that". If I've never been satisfied with any identity that made me dependent on another person's idea of what's wot, then how can I pretend to be an enabler who cooperates to create their dependency on me. Nobody wants that. I will let you down. Eagerly. I gnow the source for you is not my me.
It is very difficult for me to admit that. To me it announces that because I'm completely undependable, then nobody will want anything to do with me. They won't bother with me because I'm a waste of time for those who are looking for something they can sensually perceive to reassure them they matter for something. Where does that leave me? On my own? You betchum, Red Ryder! It sho' nuff' do!
The contents of my remembering vision is not all I use as a source to make me-and-thee-ing out of the world around me. It's not even the framework I use to seek the answers I need from it as a guiding oracle. I use other frameworks I didn't invent or discover myself, but accepted them as legitimate gifts from a world beyond words.
This is what I use as a source for my identity. It's beyond human reach.
TCOYOA
❦
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Police State Galore
❧
A friend woke me up yesterday morning. He brought me a walking stick he had decorated, and took me out for breakfast before I'd even performed my morning toiletries. I give him my digital camera in which the shutter was stuck, so I don't know if I did him any favors. The camera had hardly been used, and that's why the shutter was stuck. I'm hoping he'll be able to get it unstuck and use it. At least he will use it.
After he left I went back to bed and stayed there all day. I got up again about dark, and went back to bed around mid-night, and then got up again this morning around five-thirty. It's cold. About as cold as it gets here except for unusual conditions. Not cold like its cold up north, but pipe-busting cold around here.
I don't have any heat but for small room heaters, so I'm dressed inside my house as if I were outside in Arctic weather. I have one space heater here in my bedroom where I keep my computer, and another downstairs in my kitchen to protect my water pipes from freezing.
It works out pretty good. I don't use the downstairs heater except when the temps head down toward 20 degrees (-6.666 C), and I cut off the upstairs heater every night when I go to bed and crawl under the electric blanket. In the early morning hours today I realized I gotta start using the down comforter I've been holding back on. If I'm warm in bed I can stand anything.
Testing myself against the elements is part of having Scorpio as my "rising sign" in my natal astrology chart. It also means that I test the other too. It took a long time for me to realize I was doing that, and only then because I have a framework for finding stuff like that out.
It would be difficult for me to accuse people who don't have a framework for finding out about the way they can possibly see the world. It's because when I look at the shabby way I live others can find no reward for emulating my behavior. That may not be the exact reason I don't provide other people with unsolicited advice, but it comes close.
Who am I to tell other people its okay to live like a bum? I'm practically cruel to other people to do it. Cruel to all the people who think I should be more responsible to them if they love me. All of them are much better off because I haven't helped them, so they learned to help themselves. I don't ask anything of anybody much, much less than I give to them. But, I would say that, wouldn't I...
Last night, when my youngest brother and next door neighbor went out walking in the dark back in the woods mostly with his dogs the Army helicopters using the local airport for war games was so loud we couldn't hear each other talk even when we were only two feet apart. They have begun to do this at least four days a week. Sometimes for 10-12 hours a day.
I feel like we're being attacked by our own Army. If I had any real psychic power I could make them go away, but I got nothing. I'm helpless to influence their decisions, and am afraid if I complained about the Homeland Security people would come knocking on my door in the middle of the night like the Gestapo did, accuse me of being unpatriotic by complaining about the noise, and send me to Guantanamo for mental realignment.
America is a police state in which its citizens are it's victims. It seems worse lately. If I don't write an entry for a while you will know they've read this blog and hauled me off. I don't have many complaints about having gotten to live in a free America, but my children and grandchildren will never know that privilege. "Gone are the days..."
❦
A friend woke me up yesterday morning. He brought me a walking stick he had decorated, and took me out for breakfast before I'd even performed my morning toiletries. I give him my digital camera in which the shutter was stuck, so I don't know if I did him any favors. The camera had hardly been used, and that's why the shutter was stuck. I'm hoping he'll be able to get it unstuck and use it. At least he will use it.
After he left I went back to bed and stayed there all day. I got up again about dark, and went back to bed around mid-night, and then got up again this morning around five-thirty. It's cold. About as cold as it gets here except for unusual conditions. Not cold like its cold up north, but pipe-busting cold around here.
I don't have any heat but for small room heaters, so I'm dressed inside my house as if I were outside in Arctic weather. I have one space heater here in my bedroom where I keep my computer, and another downstairs in my kitchen to protect my water pipes from freezing.
It works out pretty good. I don't use the downstairs heater except when the temps head down toward 20 degrees (-6.666 C), and I cut off the upstairs heater every night when I go to bed and crawl under the electric blanket. In the early morning hours today I realized I gotta start using the down comforter I've been holding back on. If I'm warm in bed I can stand anything.
Testing myself against the elements is part of having Scorpio as my "rising sign" in my natal astrology chart. It also means that I test the other too. It took a long time for me to realize I was doing that, and only then because I have a framework for finding stuff like that out.
It would be difficult for me to accuse people who don't have a framework for finding out about the way they can possibly see the world. It's because when I look at the shabby way I live others can find no reward for emulating my behavior. That may not be the exact reason I don't provide other people with unsolicited advice, but it comes close.
Who am I to tell other people its okay to live like a bum? I'm practically cruel to other people to do it. Cruel to all the people who think I should be more responsible to them if they love me. All of them are much better off because I haven't helped them, so they learned to help themselves. I don't ask anything of anybody much, much less than I give to them. But, I would say that, wouldn't I...
Last night, when my youngest brother and next door neighbor went out walking in the dark back in the woods mostly with his dogs the Army helicopters using the local airport for war games was so loud we couldn't hear each other talk even when we were only two feet apart. They have begun to do this at least four days a week. Sometimes for 10-12 hours a day.
I feel like we're being attacked by our own Army. If I had any real psychic power I could make them go away, but I got nothing. I'm helpless to influence their decisions, and am afraid if I complained about the Homeland Security people would come knocking on my door in the middle of the night like the Gestapo did, accuse me of being unpatriotic by complaining about the noise, and send me to Guantanamo for mental realignment.
America is a police state in which its citizens are it's victims. It seems worse lately. If I don't write an entry for a while you will know they've read this blog and hauled me off. I don't have many complaints about having gotten to live in a free America, but my children and grandchildren will never know that privilege. "Gone are the days..."
❦
Monday, December 6, 2010
The Projection Of My Direction
❧
My drive up to the Durham VA Hospital was fairly uneventful. It was a learning experience. I learned how to arrange my appointments more better. I realized from all my former visits that the guy making the appointments has a lotta wiggle room. More even than he thought.
After I finish my current visit and get the nurse staff to check me out, I go back to the desk that checked me in, and that's when s/he fixes my new appoint. Today I jumped into his routine, politely, and asked him if he could get me an earlier appointment.
My last two appointments were at two o'clock, and that squeezes my effort to get my travel money from the pay window that closes by four-thirty. He was friendly and gave me a choice of three different times four months from today. I picked the earliest one, he waited for a printout, gave it to me, and I sit down to wait for the nurse to check me out.
Before I settled in my seat good he called me back to the desk because my doctor wasn't scheduled to come in that day, so his supervisor showed him how to figure it out and I ended up with an appointment the day before, but at the same time of the day. Now I understand why they changed the time of my appointments.
The various fellowship doctors who are training in rheumatology have schedules that seem to be arranged by the actual certified rheumatologists that work for Duke University Hospital. My last fellowship doctor was an asshole who lied to me, and I made life hard for him, so they changed me over to a new guy with a new supervisor. It all worked out for the best so far, and today was the proof of the pudding.
It's situations like this that bring the planets Saturn and Mars into play in my natal astrology chart. They are in what is called "mutual reception", and square by aspect. Basically Mars is in the sign Capricorn, which is ruled by Saturn, and Saturn is in the sign Aries, which is ruled by Mars. These two planets in my natal chart inhabit each other's sign. Did I mention that they are also square to each other?
Moreover, Mars in Capricorn is the best sign it can be in, and Saturn in Aries is in the worst sign it can be in. The strongest and the weakest are pitted against each other by a square aspect, which is the worst kind of angular aspect in astrology.
I get my way most of the time by command rather than statecraft, but sometimes I attempt to do that with the wrong people, and it truly costs me bigtime. I never see it coming. As you might imagine it is very disconcerting.
Driving fairly long distances that take over an hour is a great time for me to practice singing the vowels. By the time I got to Durham I was in full voice and I could feel the affect it had on all the people who heard me talk. In the way I view the situation its like they are drown to hearing that cultivated a sound, and they begin to wonder what they're dealing with. No blame.
❦
My drive up to the Durham VA Hospital was fairly uneventful. It was a learning experience. I learned how to arrange my appointments more better. I realized from all my former visits that the guy making the appointments has a lotta wiggle room. More even than he thought.
After I finish my current visit and get the nurse staff to check me out, I go back to the desk that checked me in, and that's when s/he fixes my new appoint. Today I jumped into his routine, politely, and asked him if he could get me an earlier appointment.
My last two appointments were at two o'clock, and that squeezes my effort to get my travel money from the pay window that closes by four-thirty. He was friendly and gave me a choice of three different times four months from today. I picked the earliest one, he waited for a printout, gave it to me, and I sit down to wait for the nurse to check me out.
Before I settled in my seat good he called me back to the desk because my doctor wasn't scheduled to come in that day, so his supervisor showed him how to figure it out and I ended up with an appointment the day before, but at the same time of the day. Now I understand why they changed the time of my appointments.
The various fellowship doctors who are training in rheumatology have schedules that seem to be arranged by the actual certified rheumatologists that work for Duke University Hospital. My last fellowship doctor was an asshole who lied to me, and I made life hard for him, so they changed me over to a new guy with a new supervisor. It all worked out for the best so far, and today was the proof of the pudding.
It's situations like this that bring the planets Saturn and Mars into play in my natal astrology chart. They are in what is called "mutual reception", and square by aspect. Basically Mars is in the sign Capricorn, which is ruled by Saturn, and Saturn is in the sign Aries, which is ruled by Mars. These two planets in my natal chart inhabit each other's sign. Did I mention that they are also square to each other?
Moreover, Mars in Capricorn is the best sign it can be in, and Saturn in Aries is in the worst sign it can be in. The strongest and the weakest are pitted against each other by a square aspect, which is the worst kind of angular aspect in astrology.
I get my way most of the time by command rather than statecraft, but sometimes I attempt to do that with the wrong people, and it truly costs me bigtime. I never see it coming. As you might imagine it is very disconcerting.
Driving fairly long distances that take over an hour is a great time for me to practice singing the vowels. By the time I got to Durham I was in full voice and I could feel the affect it had on all the people who heard me talk. In the way I view the situation its like they are drown to hearing that cultivated a sound, and they begin to wonder what they're dealing with. No blame.
❦
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Edema In Mah Haid
❧
It's a little strange to me that religions and tribes try to take over the world by breeding the most children that will keep the faith. It's not so amazing to me that the Catholic Pope suddenly approves condoms to fight AIDs. In my opinion, the reason they forbade condoms and birth control in the first place was to fill the world with Catholics.
The Muslims are doing that in England if the name of most babies there are called Mohammad, if that's any indication of controlling the world. Bill Maher, the comedian seems upset about it. He has a very funny rap about it that even the NeoCons don't trash. The Jewish doctors insist on birth control to stem the tide of all other races if you listen to the pundits. The Chinese have a law against its citizens creating more than one child per couple. India has no restrictions whatsoever.
To me, none of that has anything at all to do with the fact that this latest frost has killed my last remaining tomato plant grown outside, and if I'd been ambitious I could have saved it by moving it over to the greenhouse with the other tomatoes I did save. I woulda moved it, but it was too heavy for one person, and I didn't wanna ask for help.
It's not that the tomato plant that was killed by the frost and cold weather didn't survive. Cuttings from it have survived the last time I checked. I have two plastic buckets that have tomato plants growing out of the bottom of them.
The plants in one of the buckets had an accident and didn't survive, so I took some cuttings from the now dead plant, dipped them in root hormone powder, and shoved them up into the dirt of the bucket whose former plants died. The cuttings are doing just fine in their new home.
Tomatoes are self pollenating. Who would have thunk it? That's why they do so well in greenhouses. Granted, the plants with the blossoms on them have to be physically shaken to get the spores (whatever) to swoosh up into the air so they can find other blossoms. I'm not sure how that works, but it does.
Another thing I found out about tomatoes with this year's experiments was that the stalks have potential roots everywhere. They don't have to have the cuttings taken from certain places, and it doesn't matter how mature the plant is .
It's not certain in my mind that I even have to use root hormone to get them to develop roots wherever I stick them. I'm gonna experiment more with this during the winter by placing cuttings in some potting soil to see what happens. If it works I'll never have to buy tomato plants again. I can take cuttings from any existing plant.
The fruit I got from the tomato plants I was able to grow for the first time in my life is not so great. Most of them didn't get any bigger than golf balls. A couple of them may have grown as big as a tennis ball. Not many of them matured without some sort of bad spot/spots on them.
That didn't spoil the broth. I just cut out the bad spots and ate the rest. Part of the problem with me not getting what I wanted probably has to do with the kind of tomato plant I used. I think they're the kind that are grown basically to have a long shelf life. They're firm, not juicy. I'm looking for juicy tomatoes that actually rot when they get too ripe.
Cutting gluten and dairy products from my diet is the biggest hassle I've gone through diet-wise. Most of the food in the various restaurants have one or the other in them. I read the ingredients on a package of imitation crab salad yesterday, and sure enough, it listed wheat starch as the fourth largest amount of ingredient in the whole deal. Filler. I guess wheat starch is practically pure gluten. Fried foods in the franchises can't be had without it.
The larger problem for me personally is having to do without cheese and the various dairy product I use. In the past, I've used sour cream by the pint tub mixed with dried onion soup as a condiment for every thing. Particularly vegetables.
Eating dairy products stops up my sinuses and forces me to breath a lot through my mouth. Dairy makes my throat and sinus cavities swell up. I can't imagine how much money I've spent on cold medicines used just for fighting this edema in my haid. Edema! In mah haid, man, whatta drag!
❦
It's a little strange to me that religions and tribes try to take over the world by breeding the most children that will keep the faith. It's not so amazing to me that the Catholic Pope suddenly approves condoms to fight AIDs. In my opinion, the reason they forbade condoms and birth control in the first place was to fill the world with Catholics.
The Muslims are doing that in England if the name of most babies there are called Mohammad, if that's any indication of controlling the world. Bill Maher, the comedian seems upset about it. He has a very funny rap about it that even the NeoCons don't trash. The Jewish doctors insist on birth control to stem the tide of all other races if you listen to the pundits. The Chinese have a law against its citizens creating more than one child per couple. India has no restrictions whatsoever.
To me, none of that has anything at all to do with the fact that this latest frost has killed my last remaining tomato plant grown outside, and if I'd been ambitious I could have saved it by moving it over to the greenhouse with the other tomatoes I did save. I woulda moved it, but it was too heavy for one person, and I didn't wanna ask for help.
It's not that the tomato plant that was killed by the frost and cold weather didn't survive. Cuttings from it have survived the last time I checked. I have two plastic buckets that have tomato plants growing out of the bottom of them.
The plants in one of the buckets had an accident and didn't survive, so I took some cuttings from the now dead plant, dipped them in root hormone powder, and shoved them up into the dirt of the bucket whose former plants died. The cuttings are doing just fine in their new home.
Tomatoes are self pollenating. Who would have thunk it? That's why they do so well in greenhouses. Granted, the plants with the blossoms on them have to be physically shaken to get the spores (whatever) to swoosh up into the air so they can find other blossoms. I'm not sure how that works, but it does.
Another thing I found out about tomatoes with this year's experiments was that the stalks have potential roots everywhere. They don't have to have the cuttings taken from certain places, and it doesn't matter how mature the plant is .
It's not certain in my mind that I even have to use root hormone to get them to develop roots wherever I stick them. I'm gonna experiment more with this during the winter by placing cuttings in some potting soil to see what happens. If it works I'll never have to buy tomato plants again. I can take cuttings from any existing plant.
The fruit I got from the tomato plants I was able to grow for the first time in my life is not so great. Most of them didn't get any bigger than golf balls. A couple of them may have grown as big as a tennis ball. Not many of them matured without some sort of bad spot/spots on them.
That didn't spoil the broth. I just cut out the bad spots and ate the rest. Part of the problem with me not getting what I wanted probably has to do with the kind of tomato plant I used. I think they're the kind that are grown basically to have a long shelf life. They're firm, not juicy. I'm looking for juicy tomatoes that actually rot when they get too ripe.
Cutting gluten and dairy products from my diet is the biggest hassle I've gone through diet-wise. Most of the food in the various restaurants have one or the other in them. I read the ingredients on a package of imitation crab salad yesterday, and sure enough, it listed wheat starch as the fourth largest amount of ingredient in the whole deal. Filler. I guess wheat starch is practically pure gluten. Fried foods in the franchises can't be had without it.
The larger problem for me personally is having to do without cheese and the various dairy product I use. In the past, I've used sour cream by the pint tub mixed with dried onion soup as a condiment for every thing. Particularly vegetables.
Eating dairy products stops up my sinuses and forces me to breath a lot through my mouth. Dairy makes my throat and sinus cavities swell up. I can't imagine how much money I've spent on cold medicines used just for fighting this edema in my haid. Edema! In mah haid, man, whatta drag!
❦
Saturday, December 4, 2010
I Too Have Sinned
❧
The photo or painting above has deep meaning to me. I've seen storms like this on land and at sea. I oughta spend more ti-me spinning around myself like the whirling dervishes do. I seem bombarded with examples of how spinning does good things. It takes worrisome topics off people's minds. It can cause crying babies to give it up and go to sleep.
Spinning disorients people even when they spin to disorient themselves to let in new thoughts. The new thoughts may not be so hot, but they're not the same thoughts that sets one to spinning. I sorta believe in nature gods, and of all the nature gods I believe in the strongest are the dragons. Dragons are the electrical storms that bring both blessings and destruction during the warm months.
The monsoon season in Asia is the same thing as the hurricane season in the U.S.. Its when the dragons fly in formations created by nature for the sky gods to have fun with. Since they're immortals they don't understand why their appearance frightens humans so much.
Maybe Mark Twain was right about angels in his story The Mysterious Stranger. Immortals can't die, so they don't understand why humans are afraid of death. They come in a strong wind spitting fire and ruining the best-laid plans of mice and men, and they get cursed for it in one breath, and prayed to in the next to spare their human lives. Humans pray to deities who don't grok their fears. Talk about your crazies... eh?
I feel just as helpless about the Army helicopters buzzing the neighborhood for half a day or better for 4-5 days a week now. I think it's going on all around. I think they're doing it deliberately in concert with the invasive body searches "they" do at the airports. I'm pretty sure America, the home of the free and the brave is gone forever.
Another empire just like the other empires succumbs to too many wars going on at the same time. America's effort to police the world is just crazy when America has more of it's own citizens in prison than any other country in the entire world.
Why would any other country wanna be like us? Half of them would have to go to prison to be like America. Who wants that? I suspect the rest of the world would like for America just to leave them alone and let them work it out for themselves. I could be wrong. Whatta I know?
❦
The photo or painting above has deep meaning to me. I've seen storms like this on land and at sea. I oughta spend more ti-me spinning around myself like the whirling dervishes do. I seem bombarded with examples of how spinning does good things. It takes worrisome topics off people's minds. It can cause crying babies to give it up and go to sleep.
Spinning disorients people even when they spin to disorient themselves to let in new thoughts. The new thoughts may not be so hot, but they're not the same thoughts that sets one to spinning. I sorta believe in nature gods, and of all the nature gods I believe in the strongest are the dragons. Dragons are the electrical storms that bring both blessings and destruction during the warm months.
The monsoon season in Asia is the same thing as the hurricane season in the U.S.. Its when the dragons fly in formations created by nature for the sky gods to have fun with. Since they're immortals they don't understand why their appearance frightens humans so much.
Maybe Mark Twain was right about angels in his story The Mysterious Stranger. Immortals can't die, so they don't understand why humans are afraid of death. They come in a strong wind spitting fire and ruining the best-laid plans of mice and men, and they get cursed for it in one breath, and prayed to in the next to spare their human lives. Humans pray to deities who don't grok their fears. Talk about your crazies... eh?
I feel just as helpless about the Army helicopters buzzing the neighborhood for half a day or better for 4-5 days a week now. I think it's going on all around. I think they're doing it deliberately in concert with the invasive body searches "they" do at the airports. I'm pretty sure America, the home of the free and the brave is gone forever.
Another empire just like the other empires succumbs to too many wars going on at the same time. America's effort to police the world is just crazy when America has more of it's own citizens in prison than any other country in the entire world.
Why would any other country wanna be like us? Half of them would have to go to prison to be like America. Who wants that? I suspect the rest of the world would like for America just to leave them alone and let them work it out for themselves. I could be wrong. Whatta I know?
❦
Friday, December 3, 2010
No Brighter Future This Year
❧
What a lousy day I had yesterday. I went to the VA Hospital expecting the surgeon to look at my eyes and schedule me for surgery, and he shined me on by refusing to operate to please his boss. Told me to come back in six months. He didn't have any choice. He was working under the direction of this cruel old man who told him not to help me. Once these people get into the VA system they stay there forever. A male version of Nurse Cratchett.
I got the same situation going at the Durham VA. Nobody cares what anybody does or don't do. They're just going through the motions to get that government check. The doctors order bloodwork done to check on how these powerful drugs are affecting me, but the nurses don't do it, and they doctors don't care if they do or not.
At least they pay my travel expenses. Or will eventually. I had to wait in a long line to get the money yesterday. It was a little unusual, but not very. The veterans in line are ninety percent black even when they're only 20% of the population. White people get discriminated against because they oughta be able to afford better care. I accepted that I'm a pretty sorry white guy a long time ago.
My brother has been coming over in the evenings after dark and asking me if I wanna go walking with him. He needs the exercise because of his heart condition, and so I'm going with him simply because he ask me to. Last night we walked about a mile in the woods with his dogs tagging along.
I don't know what phase the Moon is in, but it didn't shine last night. We had to find our way by starlight. Both of us had little LED flashlights we could use if we became uncertain, but only used them to get around a gate area that was located next to a ditch. Next thing I know we'll probably go walking in the swamp at night. Our father used to do it regularly in the winter.
The weathermen said it was going get cold and stay cold. They're right so far. The tomatoes I didn't put in the greenhouse because the pot was too big for me to move alone looked pretty dead yesterday. It was even colder last night, so I'm pretty sure it's all over but the shouting. The tomatoes I put in the green house seem to be doing quite well.
I did remember to go to Barnes and Nobles to buy me a new puzzle book. In fact I bought two of them because they were the only ones they had from the LA Times editors I like a lot. They use some of the trickiest clues of any puzzles I've done yet. The NYTimes replaced their old puzzle editor, and I hate Will Shortz' trivial puzzles. They're more like a TV game show for the great unwashed than an intellectual exercise.
It's difficult for me to determine whether I've wasted my life on purpose, as I sometime claim, or whether there was nothing I could do about the way things went. Probably a little bit of both. I've explored the depths of despair, and thrown away whatever pride I might have inherited genetically.
I feel like I must be close to death or someone near to me is close to death. My heart is hurting, but I don't if it's not my brother's heart that is causing these motions. When he had heart palpitations and ended up getting a pacemaker put in, me and our other siblings independently went of our own accord to have our own hearts checked out.
This has happened twice in the last couple of days right after I finished eating. I don't have a clue what eating has to do with my heart hurting. I do know that my appointment with the eye surgeon left me very disappointed. The ophthalmology profession has really fucked me around over the last five years about the cataracts they see in there.
That's my general assessment of the medical profession in general these days. Their true credo appears to be "Your money or your life." It seems so tragic to discover in my dotage that the people I was led to trust with my life have their own agenda that has nothing to do with my well-being. The problem for me is that I can't really claim to be any better or worse than the people I accuse of being like me.
Yoga came into my life when I was a teen-ager through reading, and then when I went off on my own into the world I recognized opportunities to learn how to do yoga during my travels. Even today the local people think any practice outside of the interpreted auspices of the King James Version of the Bible is heresy.
If I'd stayed around in this part of the world and tried to fit in I would never have been able to adopt a hatha yoga practice because I would have been laughed at and taken for a fool. Just the way I am is now. I hurt my back in a auto accident and have never been able to return to my previous yoga habits.
About the closest I come to that is my singing the vowels. I sing the vowels as a chant or mantra or perhaps like a nursery rhyme that reaches deep into my experience as a newborn. I didn't occupy this specific body during its matriculation of being born and made wireless by snipping it's umbilical cord. I suspect this body wants it's old creator back. It may be self-destructing just to show my me who is boss. No blah-me-n.
My entire house along with me in it is being vibrated by an Army helicopter hovering about the runway at the airport. They began flying over here to this local airport which was built with Federal FAA money to use it to play war games.
The only positive feelings I get out of this was that the fat cats over to the country club thought they were really getting over when they lured the feds into paying for the runway extensions so they could come and go in their Lear jets.
Now when the Army comes and hovers over the runway for hours 3-4 days a week, there is nothing the fat cats can do to stop them from using the local airport any way they like. Many of them live closer to the runway than I do.
Other than the Army demonstrating that they are the largest and most powerful organization in the universe by using noise to demonstrate their superiority, the local pilats with their small airplanes and medium-sized passenger planes are not so distracting with the noise they make.
When they warm up the engines and eventually take off to go somewhere there is a brief wrinkle in the force and that's it. But, the Army helicopters hover above the runway about five or six feet in the air for as much as ten hours a day. At least they don't do it at night.
Sometime I wonder if I'm personally responsible for the Army making decisions that bring their noise over to my house. I'm perfectly aware that I'd have to be batshit crazy to cop to that. What I'm really wondering is whether it would do any good for me to move to a quieter place?
If I did have the power to make decisions about where the Army helicopters played war games I'm fairly sure I would change that decision and make it more pleasant for myself where I am now. I suspect that if my brother has a heart attack and dies, I'll die due to sympathy. Why would I not?
❦
What a lousy day I had yesterday. I went to the VA Hospital expecting the surgeon to look at my eyes and schedule me for surgery, and he shined me on by refusing to operate to please his boss. Told me to come back in six months. He didn't have any choice. He was working under the direction of this cruel old man who told him not to help me. Once these people get into the VA system they stay there forever. A male version of Nurse Cratchett.
I got the same situation going at the Durham VA. Nobody cares what anybody does or don't do. They're just going through the motions to get that government check. The doctors order bloodwork done to check on how these powerful drugs are affecting me, but the nurses don't do it, and they doctors don't care if they do or not.
At least they pay my travel expenses. Or will eventually. I had to wait in a long line to get the money yesterday. It was a little unusual, but not very. The veterans in line are ninety percent black even when they're only 20% of the population. White people get discriminated against because they oughta be able to afford better care. I accepted that I'm a pretty sorry white guy a long time ago.
My brother has been coming over in the evenings after dark and asking me if I wanna go walking with him. He needs the exercise because of his heart condition, and so I'm going with him simply because he ask me to. Last night we walked about a mile in the woods with his dogs tagging along.
I don't know what phase the Moon is in, but it didn't shine last night. We had to find our way by starlight. Both of us had little LED flashlights we could use if we became uncertain, but only used them to get around a gate area that was located next to a ditch. Next thing I know we'll probably go walking in the swamp at night. Our father used to do it regularly in the winter.
The weathermen said it was going get cold and stay cold. They're right so far. The tomatoes I didn't put in the greenhouse because the pot was too big for me to move alone looked pretty dead yesterday. It was even colder last night, so I'm pretty sure it's all over but the shouting. The tomatoes I put in the green house seem to be doing quite well.
I did remember to go to Barnes and Nobles to buy me a new puzzle book. In fact I bought two of them because they were the only ones they had from the LA Times editors I like a lot. They use some of the trickiest clues of any puzzles I've done yet. The NYTimes replaced their old puzzle editor, and I hate Will Shortz' trivial puzzles. They're more like a TV game show for the great unwashed than an intellectual exercise.
It's difficult for me to determine whether I've wasted my life on purpose, as I sometime claim, or whether there was nothing I could do about the way things went. Probably a little bit of both. I've explored the depths of despair, and thrown away whatever pride I might have inherited genetically.
I feel like I must be close to death or someone near to me is close to death. My heart is hurting, but I don't if it's not my brother's heart that is causing these motions. When he had heart palpitations and ended up getting a pacemaker put in, me and our other siblings independently went of our own accord to have our own hearts checked out.
This has happened twice in the last couple of days right after I finished eating. I don't have a clue what eating has to do with my heart hurting. I do know that my appointment with the eye surgeon left me very disappointed. The ophthalmology profession has really fucked me around over the last five years about the cataracts they see in there.
That's my general assessment of the medical profession in general these days. Their true credo appears to be "Your money or your life." It seems so tragic to discover in my dotage that the people I was led to trust with my life have their own agenda that has nothing to do with my well-being. The problem for me is that I can't really claim to be any better or worse than the people I accuse of being like me.
Yoga came into my life when I was a teen-ager through reading, and then when I went off on my own into the world I recognized opportunities to learn how to do yoga during my travels. Even today the local people think any practice outside of the interpreted auspices of the King James Version of the Bible is heresy.
If I'd stayed around in this part of the world and tried to fit in I would never have been able to adopt a hatha yoga practice because I would have been laughed at and taken for a fool. Just the way I am is now. I hurt my back in a auto accident and have never been able to return to my previous yoga habits.
About the closest I come to that is my singing the vowels. I sing the vowels as a chant or mantra or perhaps like a nursery rhyme that reaches deep into my experience as a newborn. I didn't occupy this specific body during its matriculation of being born and made wireless by snipping it's umbilical cord. I suspect this body wants it's old creator back. It may be self-destructing just to show my me who is boss. No blah-me-n.
My entire house along with me in it is being vibrated by an Army helicopter hovering about the runway at the airport. They began flying over here to this local airport which was built with Federal FAA money to use it to play war games.
The only positive feelings I get out of this was that the fat cats over to the country club thought they were really getting over when they lured the feds into paying for the runway extensions so they could come and go in their Lear jets.
Now when the Army comes and hovers over the runway for hours 3-4 days a week, there is nothing the fat cats can do to stop them from using the local airport any way they like. Many of them live closer to the runway than I do.
Other than the Army demonstrating that they are the largest and most powerful organization in the universe by using noise to demonstrate their superiority, the local pilats with their small airplanes and medium-sized passenger planes are not so distracting with the noise they make.
When they warm up the engines and eventually take off to go somewhere there is a brief wrinkle in the force and that's it. But, the Army helicopters hover above the runway about five or six feet in the air for as much as ten hours a day. At least they don't do it at night.
Sometime I wonder if I'm personally responsible for the Army making decisions that bring their noise over to my house. I'm perfectly aware that I'd have to be batshit crazy to cop to that. What I'm really wondering is whether it would do any good for me to move to a quieter place?
If I did have the power to make decisions about where the Army helicopters played war games I'm fairly sure I would change that decision and make it more pleasant for myself where I am now. I suspect that if my brother has a heart attack and dies, I'll die due to sympathy. Why would I not?
❦
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Rivers Have Cataracts Too
❧
It was so warm last night I couldn't sleep under any covers. There is a good reason, it's as warm early this morning as its gonna be all day and for the foreseeable future. Oh, joy! There is a huge cold front arriving just behind this gale-force wind, and the weather reports say that the Sun will be out by mid-morning and there won't be any clouds to hold the heat down to earth.
With my appointment with the eye surgeon coming up just after lunch tomorrow I'm anticipating what my options will be in regard to the lenses available to me through the VA. I may not have much of a choice about the multi focal lenses. The more I read about the positive and negative aspects of them, the more the simple clear replacement lens appear to be the most practical solution to replacing the cataracts.
Several times in the last couple of weeks when I've mentioned that I was due to have the eye surgery for cataracts the people I talked to mentioned some beloved older person in their life getting the same procedure done. Both people added, "... just before they died." The prospect of getting the procedure done as the harbinger of death is not so scary to me.
With my real question being: What if I live? What if I don't die for another twenty years? My mother did, and my father almost did. They did a lot more living even after the thrill was gone.
The choice of lens is something I've tried to familiarize myself with. The one thing I don't wanna happen is for me to regret I didn't know my options, and could have made a better choice simply by the asking. My friends and kin folk are trying to help me by telling me what they've experienced with their own eyesight.
I've never worn contact lens due to having been far-sighted. I only needed reading glasses when I reached my early forties just like many people, but some of the people around me did use contact lens and they have tried many of the features on the outside of their eyes that I might encounter with the lens the surgeon puts inside my eyeballs.
One of the options I may encounter with mono focal clear lens that are designed to simply replace the cataracts. The surgeon can use lens of various magnifications that will allow me to be naturally far-sighted and only need eyeglasses for close work like reading or working at the computer or near-sighted and always need eyeglasses to see long distances like for driving a car.
My friend who wears contact lens claimed that not being able to see long distances clearly is a disadvantage compared to being able to see close up as far as he is concerned, and I'm starting to understand his reasoning. This topic is what has me hyped up about my appointment tomorrow. Not that hyped up.
Right now I'm thinking more about how cold it's gonna be by tomorrow morning. I took a shower this morning since it's still half-way warm. Tomorrow it will be too cold. I don't live in a well-heated house. I got two small space heaters. One for this room, and another for downstairs in the kitchen to keep the water pipes from freezing.
The problem with the cold weather has a lot to do with getting thin-skinned due to the aging process. My skin is naturally losing the collagen and subcutaneous fat that makes a sexy young person's skin smooth and touchable. The subcutaneous fat insulates humans just like it does whales and walruses. If it ain't there (in my case, it ain't), then cold weather can be tormentuous.
I'll put on some clean clothes tomorrow, and use mouthwash, and I'll probably get by. People don't expect elderly men to smell like they're trying to get a young girl to go out with them for a night on the town. It may even provide the hospital staff with a good enough reason to keep us at a distance. No blame.
One of the aspects of getting the cataracts removed and possibly being able to see clearly again will be the ability to see just how pretty the young girls can be, but I like to see old people clearly too. Maybe I'll be able to read palms better.
Yeah, I know I've written that I don't read people's palms any more because it turns out to be mere projection of myself upon them. But, if I don't have any option but to see my own idea of myself in other people, I at least wanna see myself in them as clearly as possible.
I didn't think I had any real problems when I got my first prescription glasses until I put them on. The ophthalmologist who recommended me for the cataract surgery told me several times, "You're gonna be real happy after this operation." I sure do hope he's right.
❦
It was so warm last night I couldn't sleep under any covers. There is a good reason, it's as warm early this morning as its gonna be all day and for the foreseeable future. Oh, joy! There is a huge cold front arriving just behind this gale-force wind, and the weather reports say that the Sun will be out by mid-morning and there won't be any clouds to hold the heat down to earth.
With my appointment with the eye surgeon coming up just after lunch tomorrow I'm anticipating what my options will be in regard to the lenses available to me through the VA. I may not have much of a choice about the multi focal lenses. The more I read about the positive and negative aspects of them, the more the simple clear replacement lens appear to be the most practical solution to replacing the cataracts.
Several times in the last couple of weeks when I've mentioned that I was due to have the eye surgery for cataracts the people I talked to mentioned some beloved older person in their life getting the same procedure done. Both people added, "... just before they died." The prospect of getting the procedure done as the harbinger of death is not so scary to me.
With my real question being: What if I live? What if I don't die for another twenty years? My mother did, and my father almost did. They did a lot more living even after the thrill was gone.
The choice of lens is something I've tried to familiarize myself with. The one thing I don't wanna happen is for me to regret I didn't know my options, and could have made a better choice simply by the asking. My friends and kin folk are trying to help me by telling me what they've experienced with their own eyesight.
I've never worn contact lens due to having been far-sighted. I only needed reading glasses when I reached my early forties just like many people, but some of the people around me did use contact lens and they have tried many of the features on the outside of their eyes that I might encounter with the lens the surgeon puts inside my eyeballs.
One of the options I may encounter with mono focal clear lens that are designed to simply replace the cataracts. The surgeon can use lens of various magnifications that will allow me to be naturally far-sighted and only need eyeglasses for close work like reading or working at the computer or near-sighted and always need eyeglasses to see long distances like for driving a car.
My friend who wears contact lens claimed that not being able to see long distances clearly is a disadvantage compared to being able to see close up as far as he is concerned, and I'm starting to understand his reasoning. This topic is what has me hyped up about my appointment tomorrow. Not that hyped up.
Right now I'm thinking more about how cold it's gonna be by tomorrow morning. I took a shower this morning since it's still half-way warm. Tomorrow it will be too cold. I don't live in a well-heated house. I got two small space heaters. One for this room, and another for downstairs in the kitchen to keep the water pipes from freezing.
The problem with the cold weather has a lot to do with getting thin-skinned due to the aging process. My skin is naturally losing the collagen and subcutaneous fat that makes a sexy young person's skin smooth and touchable. The subcutaneous fat insulates humans just like it does whales and walruses. If it ain't there (in my case, it ain't), then cold weather can be tormentuous.
I'll put on some clean clothes tomorrow, and use mouthwash, and I'll probably get by. People don't expect elderly men to smell like they're trying to get a young girl to go out with them for a night on the town. It may even provide the hospital staff with a good enough reason to keep us at a distance. No blame.
One of the aspects of getting the cataracts removed and possibly being able to see clearly again will be the ability to see just how pretty the young girls can be, but I like to see old people clearly too. Maybe I'll be able to read palms better.
Yeah, I know I've written that I don't read people's palms any more because it turns out to be mere projection of myself upon them. But, if I don't have any option but to see my own idea of myself in other people, I at least wanna see myself in them as clearly as possible.
I didn't think I had any real problems when I got my first prescription glasses until I put them on. The ophthalmologist who recommended me for the cataract surgery told me several times, "You're gonna be real happy after this operation." I sure do hope he's right.
❦
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