☙
My first dream happened just after I went to bed. I didn't even know I'd gone to sleep. I went straight to my bed from meditating with the Gnaural software. Maybe I never did really "go to sleep". I left my body in my bed and went astral traveling. I went to a war zone. I didn't know the people. I had the impression they were Jews and Muslims, but I thought I was dreaming, so it didn't matter. That dream was overshadowed by my last dream, which was also astral traveling.
I was on a helicopter. It was full of what looked like businessmen going somewhere in casual dress. The most exciting thing about this journey was when we got there the pilot swooped down for the landing. It wasn't like an airplane landing. More like being on an elevator. The helicopter seemed to see an open space among a group of helicopters and descended to that spot like a bird. When it touched down that was it. We didn't taxi or coast anywhere. The pilot turned the engines off, and we got out.
The fortunate thing for me was that I knew one of the other passengers. A guy I was in high school with. Like me, he is an old man now. No longer the slim, blond-headed quarterback who was adored by all the young nymphs back then, but his name was mentioned by one of the others, and I could recognize him for being that person.
In the same way I seemed familiar with a couple of the others. I thought I had been invited by them to go with them to whatever place it was that we landed. But, to my surprise, they walked off and left me on my own. That's where I figured my situation wrong, but in the end, it turned out to be correct for what I needed to understand.
I didn't figure out how to identify the helicopter we arrived on in order to find it again to make the return trip. If I was a guest, why didn't they know that and make sure I had the information to make sure I didn't get lost and hold them up when they got ready to leave. The reason is that they didn't know I was there. The only way they could recognize me would require a display of the personality they knew me by, and I am is wasn't present to be accounted for. Without my persona, I was nothing to be reckoned for.
After the group walked off without regard to my person, I walked into what seemed to be a large shopping mall with lots of people all around. There was a carnival atmosphere. I think it must have been designed just for people to fly in to just for having fun. There was nothing much there for an old man like me to get all fired up about, so I began looking for the helicopter again in order to wait for the passengers to show up, and I'd be there to keep from causing them any delay.
Outside of this shopping center there were lots of other helicopters. Rows of them of all sizes and shaped. Large ones that looked designed to haul passengers like there are jet planes designed just to haul people to gambling centers like Las Vegas. Maybe that was the kind of helicopter I had arrived by, and smaller helicopters that looked like they could only haul four or five people.
I walked and I walked to find the helicopter, but I didn't know how to identify it from any of the others, I got really tired of walking and gawking. Nobody paid any attention to me. I was no longer possessed by an identity they needed to re-cog-nize me as a fellow human. They expected me to be like them, and what they needed for me to have being to them was laying on my bed at home.
Many of the people were walking around with cups of drinks or food in their hands as if they were at some sort of fair. Then, magically, I suppose, I had a cup of beer in my hand, and amazingly, I was drinking it. I eventually got tired of walking to find the helicopter I arrived by, so I decided to fly around to find the guy I knew from high school instead of wearing my body out. I didn't wanna get left and have to hitch-hike home. I didn't know where home was from wherever this place was.
Then, I realized I didn't have to worry if I found the helicopter or not to get home. No matter what happened, my body was laying my my bed at home. I did find the guy I knew by flying, and approached him. He acted like I knew the other passengers, but I didn't, and said so. He turned to the pilot and asked him for an introduction in some manner, but the pilot didn't know what he was talking about and seemed confused to be asked.
That strange interlude was what clued me in. That, plus the fact that I had found myself flying just above the ground just previously to find the right helicopter. I wondered at the time if anybody might consider it unusual for me to be flying just above the ground. Nobody noticed.
They could only "see" me in real time. Like the black man who stood up from behind the bushes in my dream last night. He "saw" me, then couldn't believe his eyes, and squatted down behind the bushes again. I wasn't "lost" last night anymore than I was this morning. I've been astral traveling. I don't have to know where I am is to be there. Hurray! Praise the Lord, and all that jazz! I've been worried I was losing it.
This immediacy deal, where people can only "know" me in the specious present when I'm out of body has precedents I've written about before. Specifically, when I left my body sitting on the sofa when I was tripped out on all that clear light at a college student party, and approached these two girls sitting on the floor gossiping about their boyfriends. I asked one of the girls to have sex with me for the stated reason that nobody could see me, and thus couldn't witness us having sex. It made sense to me at the time. No harm, no foul.
During the entire time I was out of my body going around the room attempting to seduce the young coeds, I saw my physical body sitting where I left it on the couch. The social personality part of them saw my body sitting across the room on the sofa too. They could see it too, but the girl I asked to have sex with me refused my request by name. "felix, can't you see I'm busy. Leave me the hell alone." But, the girl who spoke directly to my out of body spirit wasn't the girl talking to her friend nor that who saw my body sitting on the sofa.
For lack of a better name, it was her doppelganger who aggressively told me to get lost. Pretty much in the same way the guy I knew from high school on the helicopter who didn't understand why I asked for an introduction. He "knew" me, but not in the Christian, civilized sense, as it were. In the immediacy of now, he finally realized that I couldn't be seen by the people I was asking to be introduced to, and it befuddled him. For my part, I didn't consciously realize I was there only in an astral sense.
At some point, when I slowly realized I didn't need a helicopter ride to get ho-me again, home again, jiggedy jig, and I was immediately back in my body again laying in my bed again wondering how the hell I was gonna write this down. Wow! This is much better than thinking I've gotten senile already, but there is lots to understand before I sleep. '-)
❦
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.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Never Married, Without Children, And Alone
☙
I'm not really sure why I was driving in the area of Van Horne, Texas. The dream I was having had me there. I was driving what seemed to be a large car like a Lincoln or a Cadillac with an old man as passenger. Suddenly the highway I was traveling upon became a one-lane road, and then it was like a driveway that had concrete on the two ruts, and then weeds were growing in the path when we came to a house that didn't have any windows, and the old man turned into a black dog when we got out of the car to try and figure out where we were.
Over in the tumbleweed-like Texas underbrush next to the road to nowhere, an old black man stood up from behind this creosote bush. Nothing happened. He just stood there for a moment, and then disappeared as if he had sat back down. He seemed as startled to see me there as I was to see him.
Suddenly, I had a two-liter plastic bottle of some orange drink, and I didn't know where it came from. The black dog was jumping up on my back and pushing at my arms with it's paws. I somehow understood from that he wanted me to pour some of the orange drink on the ground so he could lap it up. He was thirsty. That's when I woke up and realized it was me who thirsty in real time. I was in my own bed in my own house, and I was ever so happy to be there. I went to the bathroom and got some water to drink.
After I drank a glass of water, and checked the time on my computer, I realized that it was only about two-thirty in the morning. I'd had about four hours of sleep before I woke up thirsty. I lay on my bed awake for a while. One of the reasons I probably thought I was in Van Horne, Texas is that I had too many covers over me. It was cool when I went to bed and the covers felt comfortable at the time. The weather seems to have gotten warmer since I went to bed, and I had gotten hot like I was in Texas in my youth.
As I lay there, I started thinking about an old friend I'll call Joe. He's been more of an acquaintance than a close friend. We have known each other since childhood, but never socialized together. He is a teetotaler and a church-goer. I'm a psychonaut and a loner from his perspective. He seems embarrassed to sit and have breakfast at the same booth as me. He's a joiner and belongs to several men's clubs. Not me. My siblings do.
He and his sister and mother and father lived a couple of doors down the street from our family. His mother and my mother were both school teachers and friends. They visited continuously from the time my family moved to this small town. I took my mother to her funeral when she died. They both died in their early nineties.
Joe was always strange to me. He was snooty and dismissive for reasons I didn't understand. He had a bad temper and got mad at the damnedest things. It was difficult to be friends with him as kids. Not just with me. He took after his mother, and when his father died of old age, Joe took his name (which was his actual first name) and moved from a garage apartment out back into the big house to care for his mother.
Joe was pretty much of a nerd and science club guy in high school who was into math and photography. We both played in the band. He read sheet music. I didn't. He's never been married. Probably because of his homely looks and his snappish personality. He wasn't easy to be around because he judged people. That's not to say that I was either, it's just that I seemed to like people in general better than he did, and I was willing to make concessions to get along.
Joe went to N.C. State college and got a degree in mechanical engineering. He intended to be a career man in the Air Force, His eyesight kept him from being a pilot, and when they passed him over for promotion he had to resign. That was a terrible event for him. It was when he had to leave the Air Force, that he came under the influence of a woman spiritualist who talked him into returning to college to get his MBA.
Becoming a businessman appeared to be about as far away from everything he had ever believed in about himself. It might have been why he fell in with this older seance-type woman whose philosophy he adopted heart and soul.
I have myself been influenced by the occult world, particularly after my divorce from my first wife, but I never cared much for the spiritualist angle. It was more of the New Age attitude I sought to employ. After we both ended up back here where we were kids together, we tried to be friends. We had similar interests in the occult, but our outlook on life was very different from each other's.
He told me about some of his efforts to get up with a woman to marry late like his father and mother had. He met one woman from New Jersey who lived near the ocean. I think she was a nurse. From what he told me the interest was one-sided, but he became obsessed with her, and probably took her friendliness to mean more to him than what was actually so.
He must have went too far with her at some point in his efforts to woo her, and she called the cops on him. Joe is a fairly determined person when he sets his mind to a goal. When he finally came to his senses and realized she felt like she needed the cops to protect her from him, he was so ashamed that nobody could talk to him for a while. I sort of doubt that he ever even kissed the woman.
His mother's death was another big blow to him. She was a lot younger than his father when they married. He was a mailman and she was an old maid school teacher. From my few encounters with Joe's father, he was probably lucky to get a wife at all. He never talked much, and while he wasn't unfriendly to us kids he stayed by himself in his hobby shop a lot.
Joe got his homely look from both of them. His father was a skinny little man that his mother seemed to dominate. Joe's sister was not all that attractive either, but she was a lot friendlier and ended up marrying a career Air Force guy Joe introduced her to. They had three male children. Surprisingly, from the few times I met them, they were some fairly normal looking children, and friendly like their mother.
Joe told me the other day that his sister's husband had gotten real sick over the last few years. He went to the VA Hospital for help, and when his doctor transferred to the VA in South Carolina which is where the husband came from, they moved down there to continue his treatment.
His sister and her family moving to South Carolina left Joe to live alone in his parent's house. Joe is a couple of years older than me, and has no immediate family left here to take care of him as he gets older. That's kind of worrisome, but I'm no better off than he is in that regard. Well, at least I have siblings who live nearby. He's got nobody but some distant relatives that he never got along with too well because he is picky and has a quick temper.
I think I'm writing and thinking about Joe because of the dreams I've been having lately about the possibility of me dying alone as well. Since I've been meditating again the dreamtime is not that scary, as it has been in the past, but I do dream of being lost frequently. My thought world is decomposing back into the random elements I initially composed them of. I don't think that's unusual for a person of my age. I personally figure I'll drive off to the VA Hospital to keep an appointment one day, and forget how to get back, get lost, and eventually die of exhaustion.
Presently, I don't think my personality will survive my dotage in order to experience death. It's not much of a personality anyway. I'm watching it die each night in my dream world. When I do pass away there won't be much left of what some people might have thought that I am is. Why would it not end this way. I've been a trickster all my life. '-)
❦
I'm not really sure why I was driving in the area of Van Horne, Texas. The dream I was having had me there. I was driving what seemed to be a large car like a Lincoln or a Cadillac with an old man as passenger. Suddenly the highway I was traveling upon became a one-lane road, and then it was like a driveway that had concrete on the two ruts, and then weeds were growing in the path when we came to a house that didn't have any windows, and the old man turned into a black dog when we got out of the car to try and figure out where we were.
Over in the tumbleweed-like Texas underbrush next to the road to nowhere, an old black man stood up from behind this creosote bush. Nothing happened. He just stood there for a moment, and then disappeared as if he had sat back down. He seemed as startled to see me there as I was to see him.
Suddenly, I had a two-liter plastic bottle of some orange drink, and I didn't know where it came from. The black dog was jumping up on my back and pushing at my arms with it's paws. I somehow understood from that he wanted me to pour some of the orange drink on the ground so he could lap it up. He was thirsty. That's when I woke up and realized it was me who thirsty in real time. I was in my own bed in my own house, and I was ever so happy to be there. I went to the bathroom and got some water to drink.
After I drank a glass of water, and checked the time on my computer, I realized that it was only about two-thirty in the morning. I'd had about four hours of sleep before I woke up thirsty. I lay on my bed awake for a while. One of the reasons I probably thought I was in Van Horne, Texas is that I had too many covers over me. It was cool when I went to bed and the covers felt comfortable at the time. The weather seems to have gotten warmer since I went to bed, and I had gotten hot like I was in Texas in my youth.
As I lay there, I started thinking about an old friend I'll call Joe. He's been more of an acquaintance than a close friend. We have known each other since childhood, but never socialized together. He is a teetotaler and a church-goer. I'm a psychonaut and a loner from his perspective. He seems embarrassed to sit and have breakfast at the same booth as me. He's a joiner and belongs to several men's clubs. Not me. My siblings do.
He and his sister and mother and father lived a couple of doors down the street from our family. His mother and my mother were both school teachers and friends. They visited continuously from the time my family moved to this small town. I took my mother to her funeral when she died. They both died in their early nineties.
Joe was always strange to me. He was snooty and dismissive for reasons I didn't understand. He had a bad temper and got mad at the damnedest things. It was difficult to be friends with him as kids. Not just with me. He took after his mother, and when his father died of old age, Joe took his name (which was his actual first name) and moved from a garage apartment out back into the big house to care for his mother.
Joe was pretty much of a nerd and science club guy in high school who was into math and photography. We both played in the band. He read sheet music. I didn't. He's never been married. Probably because of his homely looks and his snappish personality. He wasn't easy to be around because he judged people. That's not to say that I was either, it's just that I seemed to like people in general better than he did, and I was willing to make concessions to get along.
Joe went to N.C. State college and got a degree in mechanical engineering. He intended to be a career man in the Air Force, His eyesight kept him from being a pilot, and when they passed him over for promotion he had to resign. That was a terrible event for him. It was when he had to leave the Air Force, that he came under the influence of a woman spiritualist who talked him into returning to college to get his MBA.
Becoming a businessman appeared to be about as far away from everything he had ever believed in about himself. It might have been why he fell in with this older seance-type woman whose philosophy he adopted heart and soul.
I have myself been influenced by the occult world, particularly after my divorce from my first wife, but I never cared much for the spiritualist angle. It was more of the New Age attitude I sought to employ. After we both ended up back here where we were kids together, we tried to be friends. We had similar interests in the occult, but our outlook on life was very different from each other's.
He told me about some of his efforts to get up with a woman to marry late like his father and mother had. He met one woman from New Jersey who lived near the ocean. I think she was a nurse. From what he told me the interest was one-sided, but he became obsessed with her, and probably took her friendliness to mean more to him than what was actually so.
He must have went too far with her at some point in his efforts to woo her, and she called the cops on him. Joe is a fairly determined person when he sets his mind to a goal. When he finally came to his senses and realized she felt like she needed the cops to protect her from him, he was so ashamed that nobody could talk to him for a while. I sort of doubt that he ever even kissed the woman.
His mother's death was another big blow to him. She was a lot younger than his father when they married. He was a mailman and she was an old maid school teacher. From my few encounters with Joe's father, he was probably lucky to get a wife at all. He never talked much, and while he wasn't unfriendly to us kids he stayed by himself in his hobby shop a lot.
Joe got his homely look from both of them. His father was a skinny little man that his mother seemed to dominate. Joe's sister was not all that attractive either, but she was a lot friendlier and ended up marrying a career Air Force guy Joe introduced her to. They had three male children. Surprisingly, from the few times I met them, they were some fairly normal looking children, and friendly like their mother.
Joe told me the other day that his sister's husband had gotten real sick over the last few years. He went to the VA Hospital for help, and when his doctor transferred to the VA in South Carolina which is where the husband came from, they moved down there to continue his treatment.
His sister and her family moving to South Carolina left Joe to live alone in his parent's house. Joe is a couple of years older than me, and has no immediate family left here to take care of him as he gets older. That's kind of worrisome, but I'm no better off than he is in that regard. Well, at least I have siblings who live nearby. He's got nobody but some distant relatives that he never got along with too well because he is picky and has a quick temper.
I think I'm writing and thinking about Joe because of the dreams I've been having lately about the possibility of me dying alone as well. Since I've been meditating again the dreamtime is not that scary, as it has been in the past, but I do dream of being lost frequently. My thought world is decomposing back into the random elements I initially composed them of. I don't think that's unusual for a person of my age. I personally figure I'll drive off to the VA Hospital to keep an appointment one day, and forget how to get back, get lost, and eventually die of exhaustion.
Presently, I don't think my personality will survive my dotage in order to experience death. It's not much of a personality anyway. I'm watching it die each night in my dream world. When I do pass away there won't be much left of what some people might have thought that I am is. Why would it not end this way. I've been a trickster all my life. '-)
❦
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The Pollen Of Spring
☙
The headaches I've been having are an allergic reaction to the Spring pollen. I cleaned out my nasal and sinus passages with salt water and the headaches went away. I couldn't stand the thought of doing the software-driven meditation with a headache. The very idea of putting headphones on my aching head was more than I could bear to contemplate. Aiiiyyyeeeeee!
After I used the salt water to clear the pollen out of my haidI I decided to do a truncated version of the last 32 minutes of the default sequence. I got to the theta state surprisingly fast, and then to the end of the program more quickly than I expected to. Subsequently, I got up and reset the program to do another thirty minutes which also went by before i expected it to.
The first dreams I had happened just as soon as I lay down to sleep. They came on so quickly I didn't realize I was dreaming for a good long time. I returned to somewhat of an industrial situation. There was a used commercial heater in my living room along with this Virgo guy I haven't seen in a long time telling me that if we could get it working again it would be a very reliable source of heat in the winter. I should have realized I was dreaming from his comments, because I thought it the beginning of Spring.
I dreamed of what I was going to fix for breakfast this morning in the early hours of the morning. Spinach! I remembered that I had a couple of small cans of spinach that I bought fairly recently, and my plan was to put some canola oil in the bottom of a boiler pan, then dump one of the small cans of spinach into it, and after it got hot, to scramble a couple of eggs in the hot, oily spinach.
My concoction turned out to be somewhat tasty, but it would have been more like I dreamed if I had used fresh spinach. I gotta start eating leafy vegetables that have lots of folic acid in them because of the prescription medicines I'm taking. After the rheumatologist at the VA Hospital told me to double up on the folic acid pills I've been taking, and I read on the internet that my sore tongue was due to a deficiency of folic acid, I gotta do what's right.
I've had problems with a sore tongue before, and my regular doctor at the Fayetteville VA Hospital didn't have a diagnosis or a remedy for it. She reassured me, at least, that it wasn't cancer, and let it go at that. Even the doctor at the Durham VA Hospital didn't offer much direct help as a result of my complaints about my poor tongue and the ulcers on my gums and lips. She did recommend I take more folic acid. That led me to do the research on the internet, and some hope, at last, for a cure.
The soreness and rawness of the ulcers on my lips and gums are really painful when I eat anything spicy. They are tender too, and any food that has a crust on it like fried fish can be painful to the point of my not feeling good about eating. I don't know whether my mouth is actually better this morning or it's feeling better is the result of my having some hope the situation might be resolved.
Waking up was quite pleasant this morning. I became fully conscious around four o'clock. It was still dark outside, of course, and it was quite pleasurable to just lay in bed under a single sheet and experience the comfort of the Spring weather. I must had drifted in and out of sleep a few times before I got up to fix the spinach with eggs, and brew up some coffee.
Currently, the sun has risen above the tops of the pine trees and is shining through the open door on the eastern side of my house. It's cooler than yesterday, and that's good, because it got really warm yesterday. The temperature almost reached 90° (32.22 C), and for early Spring, that's hot.
With the temperature so warm I did lay out in the sun for around thirty minutes or more on my new outside chaise lounge. It's for sure that I was out in the sunlight long enough to get lots of vitamin D. I may be fooling myself, but I've never concerned myself with getting skin cancer from exposure to the sun. As a child and most every summer since I go all day (when I wasn't working) with as few clothes as decently possible.
Skin cancer may not be a problem, yet, but my old skin looks the worse for wear. I guess I've lost most of my subcutaneous fat and I am is wrinkled all over my body. I look old because I am is old. In a week from tomorrow my skin will be 72 years old. All in all, I'd say my skin has done pretty good compared to other old people, but it's nothing to brag about.
Everybody knows about getting old. We watch people get old and die from the time we're children. Nothing happens to human beings that we don't already know about. I watched part of a TV program on PBS about Herbert Hoover and what he did before he became President. He ran a food program to help the people of Russia who were experiencing a horrible famine in the early part of the 20th century.
There were lots of film about the troubles the Russians were having. They were starving and the pictures of them looked at least as bad as the pictures of the people in the German concentration camps during World War Two. Talk about your bad skin, even the children looked horrid. It's difficult to believe life got that bad over there.
It happened at the same time as the Communist takeover of Russia, and death in all forms was so common that people had given up hope. It's difficult to imagine that sort of starvation happening here. For one thing, we don't have the sort of cold winters to deal with here as what happens in Russia. Why they don't migrate to a warmer country is hard to understand, in a way, but many humans just can't pick up and leave like other animals do.
Granted, you might have to fight the people who already live where there is warmth and food to eat, but staying in some place like Russia when the crops fail and the winters are lethal is a sure death and a lotta suffering before it comes.
My motivation for traveling when I was young was not based on life or death conditions. Not in a physical sense. I had to go live as a stranger in strange lands to keep from dying of a broken heart.
❦
The headaches I've been having are an allergic reaction to the Spring pollen. I cleaned out my nasal and sinus passages with salt water and the headaches went away. I couldn't stand the thought of doing the software-driven meditation with a headache. The very idea of putting headphones on my aching head was more than I could bear to contemplate. Aiiiyyyeeeeee!
After I used the salt water to clear the pollen out of my haidI I decided to do a truncated version of the last 32 minutes of the default sequence. I got to the theta state surprisingly fast, and then to the end of the program more quickly than I expected to. Subsequently, I got up and reset the program to do another thirty minutes which also went by before i expected it to.
The first dreams I had happened just as soon as I lay down to sleep. They came on so quickly I didn't realize I was dreaming for a good long time. I returned to somewhat of an industrial situation. There was a used commercial heater in my living room along with this Virgo guy I haven't seen in a long time telling me that if we could get it working again it would be a very reliable source of heat in the winter. I should have realized I was dreaming from his comments, because I thought it the beginning of Spring.
I dreamed of what I was going to fix for breakfast this morning in the early hours of the morning. Spinach! I remembered that I had a couple of small cans of spinach that I bought fairly recently, and my plan was to put some canola oil in the bottom of a boiler pan, then dump one of the small cans of spinach into it, and after it got hot, to scramble a couple of eggs in the hot, oily spinach.
My concoction turned out to be somewhat tasty, but it would have been more like I dreamed if I had used fresh spinach. I gotta start eating leafy vegetables that have lots of folic acid in them because of the prescription medicines I'm taking. After the rheumatologist at the VA Hospital told me to double up on the folic acid pills I've been taking, and I read on the internet that my sore tongue was due to a deficiency of folic acid, I gotta do what's right.
I've had problems with a sore tongue before, and my regular doctor at the Fayetteville VA Hospital didn't have a diagnosis or a remedy for it. She reassured me, at least, that it wasn't cancer, and let it go at that. Even the doctor at the Durham VA Hospital didn't offer much direct help as a result of my complaints about my poor tongue and the ulcers on my gums and lips. She did recommend I take more folic acid. That led me to do the research on the internet, and some hope, at last, for a cure.
The soreness and rawness of the ulcers on my lips and gums are really painful when I eat anything spicy. They are tender too, and any food that has a crust on it like fried fish can be painful to the point of my not feeling good about eating. I don't know whether my mouth is actually better this morning or it's feeling better is the result of my having some hope the situation might be resolved.
Waking up was quite pleasant this morning. I became fully conscious around four o'clock. It was still dark outside, of course, and it was quite pleasurable to just lay in bed under a single sheet and experience the comfort of the Spring weather. I must had drifted in and out of sleep a few times before I got up to fix the spinach with eggs, and brew up some coffee.
Currently, the sun has risen above the tops of the pine trees and is shining through the open door on the eastern side of my house. It's cooler than yesterday, and that's good, because it got really warm yesterday. The temperature almost reached 90° (32.22 C), and for early Spring, that's hot.
With the temperature so warm I did lay out in the sun for around thirty minutes or more on my new outside chaise lounge. It's for sure that I was out in the sunlight long enough to get lots of vitamin D. I may be fooling myself, but I've never concerned myself with getting skin cancer from exposure to the sun. As a child and most every summer since I go all day (when I wasn't working) with as few clothes as decently possible.
Skin cancer may not be a problem, yet, but my old skin looks the worse for wear. I guess I've lost most of my subcutaneous fat and I am is wrinkled all over my body. I look old because I am is old. In a week from tomorrow my skin will be 72 years old. All in all, I'd say my skin has done pretty good compared to other old people, but it's nothing to brag about.
Everybody knows about getting old. We watch people get old and die from the time we're children. Nothing happens to human beings that we don't already know about. I watched part of a TV program on PBS about Herbert Hoover and what he did before he became President. He ran a food program to help the people of Russia who were experiencing a horrible famine in the early part of the 20th century.
There were lots of film about the troubles the Russians were having. They were starving and the pictures of them looked at least as bad as the pictures of the people in the German concentration camps during World War Two. Talk about your bad skin, even the children looked horrid. It's difficult to believe life got that bad over there.
It happened at the same time as the Communist takeover of Russia, and death in all forms was so common that people had given up hope. It's difficult to imagine that sort of starvation happening here. For one thing, we don't have the sort of cold winters to deal with here as what happens in Russia. Why they don't migrate to a warmer country is hard to understand, in a way, but many humans just can't pick up and leave like other animals do.
Granted, you might have to fight the people who already live where there is warmth and food to eat, but staying in some place like Russia when the crops fail and the winters are lethal is a sure death and a lotta suffering before it comes.
My motivation for traveling when I was young was not based on life or death conditions. Not in a physical sense. I had to go live as a stranger in strange lands to keep from dying of a broken heart.
❦
Monday, April 11, 2011
Hope Is All Anybody Got For Sale
☙
My fingers hurt constantly now. Not the joints so much, but the bones in between the joints. That is not a good sign to me, but there is hope. The VA rheumatologist asked me last Friday if I was taking the folic acid I've been prescribed to offset the methotrexate. One gram a day. I assured her I was taking it. Then, in an almost off-hand manner she told me that I oughta think about doubling that amount. That seemed odd to me because I was warned by the supervisor of my first rheumatologist at the arthritis clinic that I might wanna watch how much folic acid I took with my regular vitamin tablet.
I've been having trouble with having little ulcers inside my mouth and gums and my tongue has been so sore it's been difficult for me to eat any spicy foods. Last night, around two o'clock in the morning, I remembered what my doctor had told me about doubling up on the folic acid, and I got out of the bed and Googled up "lack of folic acid" to see what it said the symptoms of folic acid deficiency might be.
Believe it or not, I was delighted to discover that some of the symptoms were ulcers, especially on the edge of the lips and a sore tongue. My doctor only told me to double the dosage I was taking, but the sites where I read the information said that some people needed to take five grams of folic acid to remedy the problem for at least four months.
It turns out that I'm not eating my leafy vegetables. I gotta do the Popeye diet and eat lots of spinach. My habit of drinking alcohol doesn't help either. Much of the alcohol I've been drinking, like the coconut flavored vodka, was little sips of it during the day to clean my tongue off because I thought it might help with the soreness. I chose the vodka because wine wasn't strong enough to cut through the film on my tongue.
I took two grams of folic acid and went back to bed. This morning after I lay in bed awake for a while I realized I had some fairly sharp pain in my stomach, and I figured that was from the extra folic acid I popped during the night.
It was a busy night. Some of the most amazing dreams I've ever had. The Gnaural software I use for meditating conveniently has a feature that allows it's users to start or stop the sequence anywhere they like. I did a full 74 minute session yesterday morning, but after my brother and I walked about a mile or so before dusk I decided to meditate for about thirty or forty minutes before I went to bed.
The last part of the default theta state sequence drops to the delta state for six minutes before it brings the user back up to the predominant alpha state. Since I intended to go to bed soon after I used the program, I started the program at 42 minutes into the sequence to include the drop into the delta state for that final six minutes.
It was a stroke of luck that I stopped the program at the end of the default delta stage, but before it woke me up to the alpha state. It only takes a minute of quickly rising to the alpha state before it ends the sequence. I was happy I caught it before that happened, but it probably wouldn't have made that much difference in getting to sleep.
The dream that amazed me started in a large, long room that had a glass wall that was taller than the other side of the room on the northern side. The ceiling of the room was tilted toward the south. The room was filled with light. Throughout this long dream the strange events that happened were always centered about this room full of light.
I knew I was dreaming right away. I get the feeling that is because of the meditating I'm doing using the Gnaural software program. It takes me to deep theta. Just above where the delta brainwave frequencies begin. Just above four hertz, and keeps me there until the end of the default sequence drops into delta for a finale.
Some of the visitors to that room of light in my dream were people I knew. Some of them since childhood. Because I was lucid I realized I could change the events of the dream, and I did, but I was also able to show my visitors that they could change the events of the dream that concerned them.
The room of light seemed suspended in the air like it would have been on the second floor level. Not way up in the air. Most of the time. But, since anything and everything about the dream events and circumstances could be changed to anything me and my visitors wanted to change it to, the height of the room of light was very flexible.
One of the things that happened is that my visitors discovered they could leap from the room to the ground and then back up to the interior of the room passing through the walls of the room as if they were not an obstacle. Lots of flying went on. Later on, every object of the dream constantly changed into other amorphous shapes such that I didn't have any control unless I woke up a bit.
The dream became "a comedy of errors." That is new. I don't know where this aspect of dreaming will take me, but for some reason I'm not afraid of it going wherever it takes me. It breaks down the organization of thought itself into the elemental parts I originally used to create formal ideas with as a child. "Swing low... sweet chario'. Comin' fo' to carry me ho-me."
❦
My fingers hurt constantly now. Not the joints so much, but the bones in between the joints. That is not a good sign to me, but there is hope. The VA rheumatologist asked me last Friday if I was taking the folic acid I've been prescribed to offset the methotrexate. One gram a day. I assured her I was taking it. Then, in an almost off-hand manner she told me that I oughta think about doubling that amount. That seemed odd to me because I was warned by the supervisor of my first rheumatologist at the arthritis clinic that I might wanna watch how much folic acid I took with my regular vitamin tablet.
I've been having trouble with having little ulcers inside my mouth and gums and my tongue has been so sore it's been difficult for me to eat any spicy foods. Last night, around two o'clock in the morning, I remembered what my doctor had told me about doubling up on the folic acid, and I got out of the bed and Googled up "lack of folic acid" to see what it said the symptoms of folic acid deficiency might be.
Believe it or not, I was delighted to discover that some of the symptoms were ulcers, especially on the edge of the lips and a sore tongue. My doctor only told me to double the dosage I was taking, but the sites where I read the information said that some people needed to take five grams of folic acid to remedy the problem for at least four months.
It turns out that I'm not eating my leafy vegetables. I gotta do the Popeye diet and eat lots of spinach. My habit of drinking alcohol doesn't help either. Much of the alcohol I've been drinking, like the coconut flavored vodka, was little sips of it during the day to clean my tongue off because I thought it might help with the soreness. I chose the vodka because wine wasn't strong enough to cut through the film on my tongue.
I took two grams of folic acid and went back to bed. This morning after I lay in bed awake for a while I realized I had some fairly sharp pain in my stomach, and I figured that was from the extra folic acid I popped during the night.
It was a busy night. Some of the most amazing dreams I've ever had. The Gnaural software I use for meditating conveniently has a feature that allows it's users to start or stop the sequence anywhere they like. I did a full 74 minute session yesterday morning, but after my brother and I walked about a mile or so before dusk I decided to meditate for about thirty or forty minutes before I went to bed.
The last part of the default theta state sequence drops to the delta state for six minutes before it brings the user back up to the predominant alpha state. Since I intended to go to bed soon after I used the program, I started the program at 42 minutes into the sequence to include the drop into the delta state for that final six minutes.
It was a stroke of luck that I stopped the program at the end of the default delta stage, but before it woke me up to the alpha state. It only takes a minute of quickly rising to the alpha state before it ends the sequence. I was happy I caught it before that happened, but it probably wouldn't have made that much difference in getting to sleep.
The dream that amazed me started in a large, long room that had a glass wall that was taller than the other side of the room on the northern side. The ceiling of the room was tilted toward the south. The room was filled with light. Throughout this long dream the strange events that happened were always centered about this room full of light.
I knew I was dreaming right away. I get the feeling that is because of the meditating I'm doing using the Gnaural software program. It takes me to deep theta. Just above where the delta brainwave frequencies begin. Just above four hertz, and keeps me there until the end of the default sequence drops into delta for a finale.
Some of the visitors to that room of light in my dream were people I knew. Some of them since childhood. Because I was lucid I realized I could change the events of the dream, and I did, but I was also able to show my visitors that they could change the events of the dream that concerned them.
The room of light seemed suspended in the air like it would have been on the second floor level. Not way up in the air. Most of the time. But, since anything and everything about the dream events and circumstances could be changed to anything me and my visitors wanted to change it to, the height of the room of light was very flexible.
One of the things that happened is that my visitors discovered they could leap from the room to the ground and then back up to the interior of the room passing through the walls of the room as if they were not an obstacle. Lots of flying went on. Later on, every object of the dream constantly changed into other amorphous shapes such that I didn't have any control unless I woke up a bit.
The dream became "a comedy of errors." That is new. I don't know where this aspect of dreaming will take me, but for some reason I'm not afraid of it going wherever it takes me. It breaks down the organization of thought itself into the elemental parts I originally used to create formal ideas with as a child. "Swing low... sweet chario'. Comin' fo' to carry me ho-me."
❦
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Old Friends And Righteous Indignation
☙
The dreamtime last night and this morning was truly amazing. I don't think there was much time that I wasn't lucid. I don't know that for sure, but I was right there consciously involved in some incredible events. Mostly having to do with primitive, third-world peoples who had automatic weapons they were ready to use if a person didn't act right. I was not afraid, and was absolutely sure I would do the right thing.
I was aware of my body and all my unhealthy parts. I went to each of them in full consciousness to see what I might be able to do to alleviate the aches and pains. This morning after I got up and had my eggs and hash browns and my first cup of coffee, I knew for sure that health problems hadn't gone away, but my attitude was/is great.
I was more aware of my chakra points than at ony other time in my life, and I could go to them and leave, and then go there again without effort. All of this, in my opinion, has to do with the deep meditation I'm reaching for with the assistance of the Gnaural software I'm using.
The default theta state program lasts for 74 minutes. I have commonly reached a state of theta predominance about half-way through. It's after reaching theta that I've encountered problems of a sort. It's a matter of endurance. My mind is clear and I'm happy with that part of it, but my body gets stiff and the muscles ache after sitting still for such a long time.
It's an age-related deal. I never had these problems when I was younger. In fact, after reaching theta my body/mind seemed to drop away and I was able to 'fuggitaboutit'. During last night's session I decided to go ahead and move around to find out if that helped me feel more comfortable. I was able to pop my neck and get my shoulders to loosen up some, and that was better.
The reason I say I had to give myself permission to move about is that previously, during my middle years, moving about might take me out of the theta state, and that is undesirable. Currently, dealing with the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis gives me no choice.
I did find out something from the doctor I saw at the VA Hospital yesterday. I don't have psoriasis. She told me in no uncertain terms that it would show up in my lab work if I did, and it isn't there. That's good to know. I'm really glad they changed me to a different doctor. She's not all that friendly or hasn't been, because the guy I was assigned to previously has probably talked about me. Yesterday, I suspect, all that changed.
It changed because I tried to get her to prescribe some more pain-killer tablets because I'm on the edge of running out. I had the bottle with me to show her that I had a previous prescription, but she told me that it had been issued by the VA in Fayetteville, and they keep separate records.
I started talking about how I hated that my female doctor in Fayetteville is leaving the system. She was the one who first prescribed me the pain-killers. I mentioned that even though we could hardly understand each other because she is Vietnamese, that she was a great doctor and had gotten me to stop smoking tobacco.
When I said that about my family doctor in Fayetteville, the one who had diagnosed the rheumatoid arthritis, and who has been helpful in many different ways as far as giving me real help with prescriptions, I wasn't thinking about the reputation of hating doctors her predecessor had laid on me when she inherited me.
It was because of my compliments about my doctor in Fayetteville that she must have realized that I don't hate doctors. I don't hate anybody. I just didn't care for the doctor's attitude previous to her. He is arrogant and a big show-off and not very informative about the drugs he prescribed for me. He was very dismissive about my questions about their side effects. Who needs that? With Capricorn in the third house I know how to work the institutional mentality, and so, pointedly, I got shed of him.
When this new doctor realized she had been misled about my attitude by this guy, she said that she would prescribe a months supply of the pain-killers to tide me over, but I would still have to consult with my new doctor-to-be in Fayetteville. I haven't had an appointment there since my old doctor left. Her doing that will put that prescription on the Durham computers.
Having Mars in Capricorn in the third house in my natal astrology chart is both a blessing and a curse. Mars is in it's Exaltation in Capricorn. That's extremely good, and the fact that Mars is a part of the grand trine in earth signs along with Neptune in Virgo and the Moon/Uranus conjunction in Taurus, makes some natural events that come out of this configuration real spiffy.
The negative aspect of having Mars in Capricorn in the third house is that it is square to Saturn in Aries. That's very not good. It also signifies that Mars and Saturn (the two malefics in the seven planets that can be seen with the naked eye) are in 'mutual reception'.
They are in mutual reception because Mars is in the sign Capricorn (ruled by Saturn), and Saturn is in the sign Aries (ruled by Mars). They're in each other's sign, and in square aspect. Bummer!
The third house has to do with the mundane mental aspects of life, and the sixth house which Saturn occupies has to do with health, specifically the skeletal structure. Not much that has to do with astrology is coincidental.
Actually, not much to do with life if coincidental, much less with the system for thinking about things called astrology. Astrology, however, is one of the many systems one can employ to contemplate one's own life, and contemplating one's own life, as opposed to contemplating other people's lives, is highly recommended by the various world saviors from ti-me im-me-more-ial (immemorial). '-)
I just can't leave tossed-word-salad alone can I?
❦
The dreamtime last night and this morning was truly amazing. I don't think there was much time that I wasn't lucid. I don't know that for sure, but I was right there consciously involved in some incredible events. Mostly having to do with primitive, third-world peoples who had automatic weapons they were ready to use if a person didn't act right. I was not afraid, and was absolutely sure I would do the right thing.
I was aware of my body and all my unhealthy parts. I went to each of them in full consciousness to see what I might be able to do to alleviate the aches and pains. This morning after I got up and had my eggs and hash browns and my first cup of coffee, I knew for sure that health problems hadn't gone away, but my attitude was/is great.
I was more aware of my chakra points than at ony other time in my life, and I could go to them and leave, and then go there again without effort. All of this, in my opinion, has to do with the deep meditation I'm reaching for with the assistance of the Gnaural software I'm using.
The default theta state program lasts for 74 minutes. I have commonly reached a state of theta predominance about half-way through. It's after reaching theta that I've encountered problems of a sort. It's a matter of endurance. My mind is clear and I'm happy with that part of it, but my body gets stiff and the muscles ache after sitting still for such a long time.
It's an age-related deal. I never had these problems when I was younger. In fact, after reaching theta my body/mind seemed to drop away and I was able to 'fuggitaboutit'. During last night's session I decided to go ahead and move around to find out if that helped me feel more comfortable. I was able to pop my neck and get my shoulders to loosen up some, and that was better.
The reason I say I had to give myself permission to move about is that previously, during my middle years, moving about might take me out of the theta state, and that is undesirable. Currently, dealing with the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis gives me no choice.
I did find out something from the doctor I saw at the VA Hospital yesterday. I don't have psoriasis. She told me in no uncertain terms that it would show up in my lab work if I did, and it isn't there. That's good to know. I'm really glad they changed me to a different doctor. She's not all that friendly or hasn't been, because the guy I was assigned to previously has probably talked about me. Yesterday, I suspect, all that changed.
It changed because I tried to get her to prescribe some more pain-killer tablets because I'm on the edge of running out. I had the bottle with me to show her that I had a previous prescription, but she told me that it had been issued by the VA in Fayetteville, and they keep separate records.
I started talking about how I hated that my female doctor in Fayetteville is leaving the system. She was the one who first prescribed me the pain-killers. I mentioned that even though we could hardly understand each other because she is Vietnamese, that she was a great doctor and had gotten me to stop smoking tobacco.
When I said that about my family doctor in Fayetteville, the one who had diagnosed the rheumatoid arthritis, and who has been helpful in many different ways as far as giving me real help with prescriptions, I wasn't thinking about the reputation of hating doctors her predecessor had laid on me when she inherited me.
It was because of my compliments about my doctor in Fayetteville that she must have realized that I don't hate doctors. I don't hate anybody. I just didn't care for the doctor's attitude previous to her. He is arrogant and a big show-off and not very informative about the drugs he prescribed for me. He was very dismissive about my questions about their side effects. Who needs that? With Capricorn in the third house I know how to work the institutional mentality, and so, pointedly, I got shed of him.
When this new doctor realized she had been misled about my attitude by this guy, she said that she would prescribe a months supply of the pain-killers to tide me over, but I would still have to consult with my new doctor-to-be in Fayetteville. I haven't had an appointment there since my old doctor left. Her doing that will put that prescription on the Durham computers.
Having Mars in Capricorn in the third house in my natal astrology chart is both a blessing and a curse. Mars is in it's Exaltation in Capricorn. That's extremely good, and the fact that Mars is a part of the grand trine in earth signs along with Neptune in Virgo and the Moon/Uranus conjunction in Taurus, makes some natural events that come out of this configuration real spiffy.
The negative aspect of having Mars in Capricorn in the third house is that it is square to Saturn in Aries. That's very not good. It also signifies that Mars and Saturn (the two malefics in the seven planets that can be seen with the naked eye) are in 'mutual reception'.
They are in mutual reception because Mars is in the sign Capricorn (ruled by Saturn), and Saturn is in the sign Aries (ruled by Mars). They're in each other's sign, and in square aspect. Bummer!
The third house has to do with the mundane mental aspects of life, and the sixth house which Saturn occupies has to do with health, specifically the skeletal structure. Not much that has to do with astrology is coincidental.
Actually, not much to do with life if coincidental, much less with the system for thinking about things called astrology. Astrology, however, is one of the many systems one can employ to contemplate one's own life, and contemplating one's own life, as opposed to contemplating other people's lives, is highly recommended by the various world saviors from ti-me im-me-more-ial (immemorial). '-)
I just can't leave tossed-word-salad alone can I?
❦
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Nobody Knows The Troubles I've Seen
☙
It's not such a happy day for me this morning. The weather has a lot to do with it. A cool front from the east dropped down out of Virginia and spread out over the coastal plains with a dreariness that permeates my bones. My bones seem to have taken a major role in my life now.
The rheumatoid arthritis is another permeation that chills my soul. It forces me to deal with it. My visit with the budding rheumatologist at the Durham VA Hospital was not a joyous occasion. She tolerated me and just waited for me to leave. I could just feel her parents expecting her to become a doctor for the sole purpose of making them proud.
She probably has one of those "Tiger Mothers" the Asians seem to spawn and ship to America. "There is no joy in Muddville..." The "good grades" crowd lend the appearance of living a dictated life that they take out on everyone else. I guess I hate the education system more and more as time goes by.
My parents openly admitted that the security of holding a government job is the reason they became school teachers. Damned Great Depression. Their holding public jobs was horrible for me. I was forced to conduct myself in such a way as to not bring the public eye on them so they wouldn't get fired. That was not such a pleasant way to grow up. I ran away from home when I was fifteen. I wasn't successful because I didn't know how to provide for myself without becoming a whore or a slave. When I was eighteen I joined the Navy.
I claimed that I joined the Navy to see the world, and I did, I wanted to see how other people lived. The main reason I joined the Navy, however, was to get away from my parents and their incessant ambitions for me. They "worked hard" not to provide for themselves and their children, but to give their children a chance to "be somebody", with all the debilitating implications that their children were not. That one could only "be somebody" if they earned it through "hard work". It wasn't enough to live and let die.
I'm no better. I married two women both of whom had college degrees. I guess I thought, despite myself, that for a woman to have a college degree meant that they were smart. They were not smart. They married me despite the fact that I didn't have a college degree because I was smart. It didn't appear to make the slightest bit of difference that I was crazy, and openly admitted it, and proved it because I was smart enough to pull it off. But then, they wanted our children to be smart by "working hard" to provide them with a college degree. That's dumb.
I'm dumb too. Even though I'm smart. I could have been a contendah if I hadn't had to dumb down to fit my parent's mold. It was when I read one of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas that I began to realize that I really hated my parents:
55 Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."
http://www.gape.org/gapes/prispevki/atranslationofthegospelofthomas.htm
This saying is the opposite of what I was taught Jesus said in the King James Version of the Bible. The Protestants who formed the village who raised me from the First Baptist Church, got their version from the Roman Catholics who altered the original saying to suit their needs. I knew the first time I encountered it while participating in an e-mail discussion group about the Gospel of Thomas it was correct.
I reckon it was because I hated my parents for forcing the education issues they were obsessed by that I turned to religion when I was nine years old. In my mind I was just a tool they employed to convince the people they wanted to impress that they were good parents and good people who were worthy of teaching their children to be good children like their own. I hated all of those hypocrites as a child. None of their ambitions had anything to do with love and compassion.
Most of my life up until the time they died was directed toward proving to them that I was a human being who was capable of enjoying life without being used to get them what they thought would make them socially desirable and recognized people. I failed in my efforts to save them and my siblings. I failed in my efforts to save my own children. I failed in my efforts to save myself... maybe. I ain't dead yet. '-)
There is a slight chance I could save my grandchildren, but I'll never get the chance. They have to live up to my ex-wives and children's need for them to become social monsters too. My oldest daughter of my second marriage wrote back only after I inquired that she's taking my grandson who is barely two years old to a therapist because he isn't using words yet. I wrote back that made me feel good that he doesn't talk yet, and the longer he could hold out the better.
She didn't write back. She doesn't trust my judgment because her mother was totally intimidated by her mother who was crazier even than me. My grandson doesn't stand a chance. He doesn't have anybody on his side. He doesn't have an advocate who will let him be to find his own way. He'll go inside and stay there and be dependent on institutions the rest of his life as punishment for not living up to her expectations. No blame. He's too young to know about Prince Chi. His mother is too educated to care.
It was revealing to me when I went for my walk with my brother's dogs yesterday afternoon. I didn't understand it at first. They didn't run out ahead and scout the perimeters as usual, but stayed close. Too close. I could hardly walk because they got into my path and stood there looking back to see if I would continue along the path I always take on our walks. Then, I heard my nephew shooting his guns, and I understood their fear. It's like dogs act during thunderstorms.
Later, I remembered when I committed myself to the State hospital to find out if I was insane for hating my parents. I didn't know I had to do that to follow the docetic Jesus. I was taught that I had to love and respect my parents or I wasn't a good Christian. The big lie. In the insane asylum there were people who followed me and stayed close to me like the dogs did yesterday.
They were skinny little men with darting eyes. One of them walked ahead of me about ten paces and another one walked about ten paces behind me. Like the dogs they were always looking, looking to see if I kept going down the big institutional halls. One day I turned off unexpectedly and caught the second one and demanded to know why they were following me.
He explained that they were paranoid schizophrenics and that I was the only person in the hospital they were not afraid of. They were like dogs caught up in an eternal thunderstorm or like people caught up in wars and situations they couldn't control. They were like my ex-wives and the woman I dated for a while from Pennsylvania who later admitted that she was bi-polar. When she was up she was bossy and arrogant. When she was down she clung to me like a dog in a thunderstorm.
I didn't get to be the kind of person that frightened animals cling to easily. I went through all the terrors and heartbreaks and the dark nights of the soul. I never did it intentionally to gain the good end, but because I didn't have any choice. Visitations do that. That I survived what I endured is a miracle to me, and only to me, because nobody knows.
The truth is that I'm not as kind as I could be to people who cling to me because of their own fear of life. Eventually, I drive all of them off because, like with the dogs who want to stay so close by, they cause me to stumble over them, I need my own space to contemplate my own life. There is nothing I can do to alleviate their fear or to protect them from themselves.
They have to go through their own "dark night of the soul" under their own auspices. I have tried for decades to be there for them, especially my ex-wives who then cling to our children as their protectors. It's a hard row to hoe knowing they will eventually turn to other people when I can't give them what they want that I suffered for, and then hate me as a fraud because I'm not the miracle worker they preyed for.
❦
It's not such a happy day for me this morning. The weather has a lot to do with it. A cool front from the east dropped down out of Virginia and spread out over the coastal plains with a dreariness that permeates my bones. My bones seem to have taken a major role in my life now.
The rheumatoid arthritis is another permeation that chills my soul. It forces me to deal with it. My visit with the budding rheumatologist at the Durham VA Hospital was not a joyous occasion. She tolerated me and just waited for me to leave. I could just feel her parents expecting her to become a doctor for the sole purpose of making them proud.
She probably has one of those "Tiger Mothers" the Asians seem to spawn and ship to America. "There is no joy in Muddville..." The "good grades" crowd lend the appearance of living a dictated life that they take out on everyone else. I guess I hate the education system more and more as time goes by.
My parents openly admitted that the security of holding a government job is the reason they became school teachers. Damned Great Depression. Their holding public jobs was horrible for me. I was forced to conduct myself in such a way as to not bring the public eye on them so they wouldn't get fired. That was not such a pleasant way to grow up. I ran away from home when I was fifteen. I wasn't successful because I didn't know how to provide for myself without becoming a whore or a slave. When I was eighteen I joined the Navy.
I claimed that I joined the Navy to see the world, and I did, I wanted to see how other people lived. The main reason I joined the Navy, however, was to get away from my parents and their incessant ambitions for me. They "worked hard" not to provide for themselves and their children, but to give their children a chance to "be somebody", with all the debilitating implications that their children were not. That one could only "be somebody" if they earned it through "hard work". It wasn't enough to live and let die.
I'm no better. I married two women both of whom had college degrees. I guess I thought, despite myself, that for a woman to have a college degree meant that they were smart. They were not smart. They married me despite the fact that I didn't have a college degree because I was smart. It didn't appear to make the slightest bit of difference that I was crazy, and openly admitted it, and proved it because I was smart enough to pull it off. But then, they wanted our children to be smart by "working hard" to provide them with a college degree. That's dumb.
I'm dumb too. Even though I'm smart. I could have been a contendah if I hadn't had to dumb down to fit my parent's mold. It was when I read one of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas that I began to realize that I really hated my parents:
55 Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."
http://www.gape.org/gapes/prispevki/atranslationofthegospelofthomas.htm
This saying is the opposite of what I was taught Jesus said in the King James Version of the Bible. The Protestants who formed the village who raised me from the First Baptist Church, got their version from the Roman Catholics who altered the original saying to suit their needs. I knew the first time I encountered it while participating in an e-mail discussion group about the Gospel of Thomas it was correct.
I reckon it was because I hated my parents for forcing the education issues they were obsessed by that I turned to religion when I was nine years old. In my mind I was just a tool they employed to convince the people they wanted to impress that they were good parents and good people who were worthy of teaching their children to be good children like their own. I hated all of those hypocrites as a child. None of their ambitions had anything to do with love and compassion.
Most of my life up until the time they died was directed toward proving to them that I was a human being who was capable of enjoying life without being used to get them what they thought would make them socially desirable and recognized people. I failed in my efforts to save them and my siblings. I failed in my efforts to save my own children. I failed in my efforts to save myself... maybe. I ain't dead yet. '-)
There is a slight chance I could save my grandchildren, but I'll never get the chance. They have to live up to my ex-wives and children's need for them to become social monsters too. My oldest daughter of my second marriage wrote back only after I inquired that she's taking my grandson who is barely two years old to a therapist because he isn't using words yet. I wrote back that made me feel good that he doesn't talk yet, and the longer he could hold out the better.
She didn't write back. She doesn't trust my judgment because her mother was totally intimidated by her mother who was crazier even than me. My grandson doesn't stand a chance. He doesn't have anybody on his side. He doesn't have an advocate who will let him be to find his own way. He'll go inside and stay there and be dependent on institutions the rest of his life as punishment for not living up to her expectations. No blame. He's too young to know about Prince Chi. His mother is too educated to care.
It was revealing to me when I went for my walk with my brother's dogs yesterday afternoon. I didn't understand it at first. They didn't run out ahead and scout the perimeters as usual, but stayed close. Too close. I could hardly walk because they got into my path and stood there looking back to see if I would continue along the path I always take on our walks. Then, I heard my nephew shooting his guns, and I understood their fear. It's like dogs act during thunderstorms.
Later, I remembered when I committed myself to the State hospital to find out if I was insane for hating my parents. I didn't know I had to do that to follow the docetic Jesus. I was taught that I had to love and respect my parents or I wasn't a good Christian. The big lie. In the insane asylum there were people who followed me and stayed close to me like the dogs did yesterday.
They were skinny little men with darting eyes. One of them walked ahead of me about ten paces and another one walked about ten paces behind me. Like the dogs they were always looking, looking to see if I kept going down the big institutional halls. One day I turned off unexpectedly and caught the second one and demanded to know why they were following me.
He explained that they were paranoid schizophrenics and that I was the only person in the hospital they were not afraid of. They were like dogs caught up in an eternal thunderstorm or like people caught up in wars and situations they couldn't control. They were like my ex-wives and the woman I dated for a while from Pennsylvania who later admitted that she was bi-polar. When she was up she was bossy and arrogant. When she was down she clung to me like a dog in a thunderstorm.
I didn't get to be the kind of person that frightened animals cling to easily. I went through all the terrors and heartbreaks and the dark nights of the soul. I never did it intentionally to gain the good end, but because I didn't have any choice. Visitations do that. That I survived what I endured is a miracle to me, and only to me, because nobody knows.
The truth is that I'm not as kind as I could be to people who cling to me because of their own fear of life. Eventually, I drive all of them off because, like with the dogs who want to stay so close by, they cause me to stumble over them, I need my own space to contemplate my own life. There is nothing I can do to alleviate their fear or to protect them from themselves.
They have to go through their own "dark night of the soul" under their own auspices. I have tried for decades to be there for them, especially my ex-wives who then cling to our children as their protectors. It's a hard row to hoe knowing they will eventually turn to other people when I can't give them what they want that I suffered for, and then hate me as a fraud because I'm not the miracle worker they preyed for.
❦
Making Hay While The Sun Shines
☙
There were plenty of cues that I was dreaming. I don't know why I ignored them. I kept waking up and assuring myself, "I'm in my own bed in my own house. I'm in my own bed in my own house. I am not lost and trapped in a really, really weird city. I am not drunk in Galveston wandering from freak bar to freak bar..." Maybe...
I kept my appointment at the arthritis clinic at the VA Hospital in Durham again. Things went swimmingly there. I got in line for the valet parking and the black dude handing out the tripartite tickets pretended to look over my car for damage and wrote down that I had a bent door on the passengers side, and that the window on the driver's side didn't work.
He told me that there were no more parking spaces in the valet parking area, and when I saw the No Parking Spaces Left by the side of the road that I had to go to the parking area behind the hospital. I had seen the sign by the entrance. So, I asked, "How do I get there?", and he said, "No, you can use the valet parking today.", and put the top part of the ticket on the dashboard of my car and handed me the other two parts.
I eventually got to pull behind the other waiting cars in from of the hospital entrance. Another black dude came toward me and told me to roll down my window and leave the key in the car. Then he asked me if my driver's side window worked, I told him it didn't, so he told me to roll the other window down. He took the ticket the other guy had handed me, tore it in half at the perforated line, handed me the bottom third of the ticket I would use to claim my car when I was ready to leave.
When I got out of the car, another young black man came up and asked me if my driver's side window was broke. I told him "Yes.", and he told me to roll the other window down, and leave the key in the car. I did just that, and walked inside the hospital.
Once inside the hospital I walked straight to the arthritis clinic, waited for another veteran in front of me to check in, and then got checked in myself by a very pleasant black woman who noticed that I have a birthday coming up. She told me to have a seat and the nurse would weigh me and check my blood pressure before the doctor would see me.
I hadn't sat there long before a plump black woman called out my name and I followed her into her office. It was the first time since I've been going to that clinic in Durham that I didn't get checked in by James, the black head nurse. I was pleased for the difference. The female nurses all seem to like me.
Once she weighed me and took my blood pressure and asked me the boiler plate questions and wrote down my answers on the check-in form I went back to the waiting area and found a seat over to the side, and immediately began meditating to pass the time. I got to theta in good time and waited for the doctor.
In what seemed like no time at all I heard my name being called, and looked up groggily, and there was my new Oriental female doctor looking for me in a rather blase mind state. I got up and followed her back to her office noticing that she's a little bow-legged. She's suspicious of me because I was rude to the former male Oriental doctor who asked their supervisor to assign me to another doctor. No blame.
I waited for her to instruct me on ever move I made. I waited until she asked me to close the door, and then I waited for her to invite me to sit down. I was excessively polite. I knew very well why she didn't trust me. I knew immediately this was going to be a brief meeting. I had brought the bottle of dope I wanted renewed, and handed it to her.
She turned straight to her computer and started reading. I sat in silence. In a few minutes she asked me to take my shoes off and sit on the table. She didn't listen with her stethoscope, but looked at my foot where I'd had the problem she had ignored on my last visit when I asked her to. She acted like it had nothing to do with the arthritis I was there for and mumbled something about me needing to see a podiatrist, but she didn't make me an appointment.
I told her I had changed my mind about the medicine I'd refused before, and she warmed up a little. My refusing the medicine was why the male Oriental doctor didn't want me back (other than the fact that I had sniggered at his claiming to be the best doctor in the hospital). She said she would submit my request for the medicine to her supervisor, but then added that I would get it in the mail. She told me I ought to wean myself off the prednisone steroids, and I agreed to, even though for the most part I'd already done that.
What surprised me about this visit was that there was hardly any line at all for waiting to get the travel pay they pay for me having to drive a two hundred mile round trip. There were only three or four people with lower numbers than me, and I got through that procedure without much hassle. Outside, while I waited for my car to be brought up, I walked back to see where to park behind the hospital, and when i got back the white lady had just driven up in my car. I'll explain why I notice the various races of the people at the VA Hospital one day.
I got enough travel money to pay for my gas and go by the health food store in the big city and buy a new supply of NAC and a different brand of probiotics. I asked the clerk who showed me where the probiotics was located which brand sold the best. He showed me a brand I was familiar with, and told me that several customers told him their doctor recommended SolarRay by name, and it was half-price, so I bought it. Of course, it only had half as many billions of "good" bacteria and half the "strains" of bacteria as the one advertised on PBS, but I'm too poor to get the good stuff in the informercials anyway.
Once I got home I went for a walk with the dogs in the back field, but I didn't walk all the way to the river. The dogs were nervous because my trigger-happy nephew was shooting his guns. He was a long way away, but it seemed to make them jittery. They stayed close by until we got about a half-mile on down into the cowless pasture, and literally kept stopping in my path to assure themselves I was there for them. Wimps.
When I got back I hesitated to use the binary beat software to meditate. I knew my brother and his wife would go out to dinner at this place that only opens on Friday nights. It makes them feel special, but it forces me to wait for them to have a good time for my brother and I to go on our walk. Actually his walk. I'd already gone and came back.
I went over a couple of days to download the Gnaural software for her to use. I had given my brother a DVD demo of binaural beats to carry to her. When I asked him if she had used it he told me she couldn't get it to work, and she had downloaded something else. I knew it was crap without asking, so I went over and downloaded the Gnaural and showed her how to use it.
She sent me an e-mail about her experience that only said, "Wow.", so I figured she had gotten to the theta state. I hesitated to use the Gnaural myself last night so we could talk about her experience a bit, but then I got miffed at having to wait for them to act like big shots for my brother and I to take "his" walk, and went ahead and did my own meditation. It's hard to go wrong with the Gnaural.
I've meditated for around fifty years now. I know what I'm looking for in a binary beat program or without it, but for a person who hasn't really gotten there using the traditional method the Gnaural software can really do the trick by demonstrating what to expect when the theta state comes on.
That's what happened while I was waiting to see the doctor at the VA yesterday. I got to theta fast because I had associated the binary beat program with my breathing from my root chakra. It's the same deal as associating the classical music with traffic jams back when I commuted fifty miles to work. Except in this case, it was a positive association.
With the classical music (Beethoven's Ninth directed by Bernstein) I played the audio tape to divert my attention from the edginess associated with getting caught in traffic jams. Eventually, without me realizing it, I couldn't listen to the Ninth without associating it with the anger of being caught up in a traffic jam, which ruined it for me as a way to relax. Associating the binary beats with my breathing worked in the same way, but beautifully.
❦
There were plenty of cues that I was dreaming. I don't know why I ignored them. I kept waking up and assuring myself, "I'm in my own bed in my own house. I'm in my own bed in my own house. I am not lost and trapped in a really, really weird city. I am not drunk in Galveston wandering from freak bar to freak bar..." Maybe...
I kept my appointment at the arthritis clinic at the VA Hospital in Durham again. Things went swimmingly there. I got in line for the valet parking and the black dude handing out the tripartite tickets pretended to look over my car for damage and wrote down that I had a bent door on the passengers side, and that the window on the driver's side didn't work.
He told me that there were no more parking spaces in the valet parking area, and when I saw the No Parking Spaces Left by the side of the road that I had to go to the parking area behind the hospital. I had seen the sign by the entrance. So, I asked, "How do I get there?", and he said, "No, you can use the valet parking today.", and put the top part of the ticket on the dashboard of my car and handed me the other two parts.
I eventually got to pull behind the other waiting cars in from of the hospital entrance. Another black dude came toward me and told me to roll down my window and leave the key in the car. Then he asked me if my driver's side window worked, I told him it didn't, so he told me to roll the other window down. He took the ticket the other guy had handed me, tore it in half at the perforated line, handed me the bottom third of the ticket I would use to claim my car when I was ready to leave.
When I got out of the car, another young black man came up and asked me if my driver's side window was broke. I told him "Yes.", and he told me to roll the other window down, and leave the key in the car. I did just that, and walked inside the hospital.
Once inside the hospital I walked straight to the arthritis clinic, waited for another veteran in front of me to check in, and then got checked in myself by a very pleasant black woman who noticed that I have a birthday coming up. She told me to have a seat and the nurse would weigh me and check my blood pressure before the doctor would see me.
I hadn't sat there long before a plump black woman called out my name and I followed her into her office. It was the first time since I've been going to that clinic in Durham that I didn't get checked in by James, the black head nurse. I was pleased for the difference. The female nurses all seem to like me.
Once she weighed me and took my blood pressure and asked me the boiler plate questions and wrote down my answers on the check-in form I went back to the waiting area and found a seat over to the side, and immediately began meditating to pass the time. I got to theta in good time and waited for the doctor.
In what seemed like no time at all I heard my name being called, and looked up groggily, and there was my new Oriental female doctor looking for me in a rather blase mind state. I got up and followed her back to her office noticing that she's a little bow-legged. She's suspicious of me because I was rude to the former male Oriental doctor who asked their supervisor to assign me to another doctor. No blame.
I waited for her to instruct me on ever move I made. I waited until she asked me to close the door, and then I waited for her to invite me to sit down. I was excessively polite. I knew very well why she didn't trust me. I knew immediately this was going to be a brief meeting. I had brought the bottle of dope I wanted renewed, and handed it to her.
She turned straight to her computer and started reading. I sat in silence. In a few minutes she asked me to take my shoes off and sit on the table. She didn't listen with her stethoscope, but looked at my foot where I'd had the problem she had ignored on my last visit when I asked her to. She acted like it had nothing to do with the arthritis I was there for and mumbled something about me needing to see a podiatrist, but she didn't make me an appointment.
I told her I had changed my mind about the medicine I'd refused before, and she warmed up a little. My refusing the medicine was why the male Oriental doctor didn't want me back (other than the fact that I had sniggered at his claiming to be the best doctor in the hospital). She said she would submit my request for the medicine to her supervisor, but then added that I would get it in the mail. She told me I ought to wean myself off the prednisone steroids, and I agreed to, even though for the most part I'd already done that.
What surprised me about this visit was that there was hardly any line at all for waiting to get the travel pay they pay for me having to drive a two hundred mile round trip. There were only three or four people with lower numbers than me, and I got through that procedure without much hassle. Outside, while I waited for my car to be brought up, I walked back to see where to park behind the hospital, and when i got back the white lady had just driven up in my car. I'll explain why I notice the various races of the people at the VA Hospital one day.
I got enough travel money to pay for my gas and go by the health food store in the big city and buy a new supply of NAC and a different brand of probiotics. I asked the clerk who showed me where the probiotics was located which brand sold the best. He showed me a brand I was familiar with, and told me that several customers told him their doctor recommended SolarRay by name, and it was half-price, so I bought it. Of course, it only had half as many billions of "good" bacteria and half the "strains" of bacteria as the one advertised on PBS, but I'm too poor to get the good stuff in the informercials anyway.
Once I got home I went for a walk with the dogs in the back field, but I didn't walk all the way to the river. The dogs were nervous because my trigger-happy nephew was shooting his guns. He was a long way away, but it seemed to make them jittery. They stayed close by until we got about a half-mile on down into the cowless pasture, and literally kept stopping in my path to assure themselves I was there for them. Wimps.
When I got back I hesitated to use the binary beat software to meditate. I knew my brother and his wife would go out to dinner at this place that only opens on Friday nights. It makes them feel special, but it forces me to wait for them to have a good time for my brother and I to go on our walk. Actually his walk. I'd already gone and came back.
I went over a couple of days to download the Gnaural software for her to use. I had given my brother a DVD demo of binaural beats to carry to her. When I asked him if she had used it he told me she couldn't get it to work, and she had downloaded something else. I knew it was crap without asking, so I went over and downloaded the Gnaural and showed her how to use it.
She sent me an e-mail about her experience that only said, "Wow.", so I figured she had gotten to the theta state. I hesitated to use the Gnaural myself last night so we could talk about her experience a bit, but then I got miffed at having to wait for them to act like big shots for my brother and I to take "his" walk, and went ahead and did my own meditation. It's hard to go wrong with the Gnaural.
I've meditated for around fifty years now. I know what I'm looking for in a binary beat program or without it, but for a person who hasn't really gotten there using the traditional method the Gnaural software can really do the trick by demonstrating what to expect when the theta state comes on.
That's what happened while I was waiting to see the doctor at the VA yesterday. I got to theta fast because I had associated the binary beat program with my breathing from my root chakra. It's the same deal as associating the classical music with traffic jams back when I commuted fifty miles to work. Except in this case, it was a positive association.
With the classical music (Beethoven's Ninth directed by Bernstein) I played the audio tape to divert my attention from the edginess associated with getting caught in traffic jams. Eventually, without me realizing it, I couldn't listen to the Ninth without associating it with the anger of being caught up in a traffic jam, which ruined it for me as a way to relax. Associating the binary beats with my breathing worked in the same way, but beautifully.
❦
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