When I Awoke The Weather Had Changed

ON THE NATURE OF HUMAN TRUTH AND RELATIONSHIPS

My Fathers Brother And Sister Are Gone

Last night I checked on the latest weather for Southern Arizona.  We were to be drying out more today, while the weekends wetness was being scaled back since the computer models were less suggestive of that.

Eight or so hours later, its all changed. Moisture is up, disturbances are near, and the chances of rain were much increased for this weekend.  Guessing about the future, sometimes even just hours or minutes away, is ultimately a guessing game.  Regardless, we do live in a space-time continuum.

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My fathers self inflicted death occurred some 44 years ago.  My mother had been dead for several years at that time.  Dads brother and sister lived on, each in differing areas of the country, until this year, when they became perhaps closer than ever, in death.

As far as I knew, they had not spoken for decades.  My aunt Ann was the only relative that kept contact with me until about a decade ago, although I visited her a number of times across country.  She had a somewhat difficult life, spending many months at a time, over the years, in mental health facilities.  She never married, but really enjoyed children.  She was the only family member who ever showed any interest in we four orphaned children.

As far as I know, no relative has even asked about me over the years.  I would have last seen them in the 1960′s at funerals, except for me having visited some of them over the years. If they talked about my childhood and that of my sisters, it was with a shaking of the head sense of tragedy; ‘What happened to you kids.’…

This has always been the oddest part of my family; they left us with someone they despised, abandoning connections to us in their disdain for this person who staked my father starting at the day she saw him at my mothers funeral.  The priest there passed to us what was to be a curse on us that day.

Anyway.

Family is the basic first building block of extended family-community-society-humanity.  We are actually all interdependent and interconnected, if not obviously by human relationships, by the reality of the Environment itself. Ultimately there is not a bottom line to your actual family; it intertwines with all other families and Creation. Most people are 6 or so contacts away from everyone else on earth, the so called 6 Degrees of Separation.  There is the family of humanity, which we all have a vested interest in genetically and in many other ways.  But that does not prevent human beings from creating many reasons to fear and suspect other humans.

This separation part seems to come easy to my family, and unfortunately for my sisters and me, both sides of the family had serious abandonment and alienation issues.  Some of us had a “Perfect Storm” of dysfunctional modeling in what was once termed the American melting pot, a pot in which we were seemingly left cold in.

Nature and Nurture and Nothingness

This problematic life set-up such as I and others have had, will present any person with the prospect of unconsciously living the dysfunctions programmed in–out, over and over as if haunted. We are set up to learn much when we are the ones living life the “hard way”, and all while being ignored trying. Even with families intact, many of us live lives of quiet desperation, the accumulated separation forming momentous obstacles to a sense of connection and belong to others and to Life.

Then, there is the sensible restorative alternative to programmed in error; an essentially spiritual quest, seeking out awareness and its potential for understanding relationships in and to Life. Understanding can go on to forgive and release the seeming oppressions of the past.  Without it, we can go on to inflict the curse into our future, and into the world.

Seeing Through While Not Being Blinded

This self enlightenment, where burdens are set down and regrown into healthy fruit, is essentially The Way to solve the riddle of “The Sins of The Father”, which should actually be called patterns of ignorance in action, or Evil’s nascent seedling. Life gets thoroughly reconnected, not by politics or religion, but by spiritual immersion of the moment into Life.

I define Evil as ignorance in action, for none of us actually plan things that seem to others to be evil.  Most often, what we do do, is pass on an infliction and narration of our ignorance of Life and Creation.  This will likely produce unkind to horrible evidence to others, they can see and feel the evil, but most likely not understand the full breath of reason to it manifestation.  Even they then, through good intention, can go on to manifest ignorance in action by reaction. Well meaning unconscious continuance of ignorance in action can morph into its own “Sins of the Father”.  The answer is to be in the Ways of Life, or in some terms God, the opposite of ignorance in action.  It is a simple logical formula, as if mathematical, yet not knowing the math can sentence my own ignorance to its fate.  We are fundamentally designed to be Truth seekers, yet much can overwhelm and obstruct that pure intention.

This practice of being in the Presence of Life, or God, is not supported very well in the social and material worlds.  Largely, we are living in a consumerist and materialism paradigm where “successes” measurement is most often in dollars, holdings and “accomplishments” of the “free” individual.  Proud abstractions are proffered as if they were reality, while the reality of experience actually does not exist outside the universe.  This fact goes even so far as to connect each action of you or I to all of Life.

Social consequences, as well as other environmental ones, are consciously avoided, ignorance instituted, in mind frames seeking self aggrandizement, “success”, “achievement” and other “free individual” pursuits, for they are essentially delusional if the consequence of full connections are kept from cognition. This is most often done as an intention to not know, making it into ignorance in action while the delusion promotes self importance and the values that validate its bias.

JUST DO IT!!!  A Montra Of The Fearsome Self Actualized Achievers

Just desiring to go get a drink from the refrigerator, besides involving the use of energy and social, scientific and economic policies involved, besides that reality, gravity is in constant connection–the universe is altered, albeit seemingly very minor, from you deciding to go to your bedroom or sit for a while watching TV.  It is not exactly mentally questioning every move you make, but knowing the consequences of the collectivity of such movements by not denying their existence.  Not worshiping ignorance.

I will step out of the reflective self individual consideration to offer this observation; you will see in society, likely in most societies on earth, the desire to promulgate fear and insecurity through the intention to offer ignorance as knowledge, and that knowledge actionable intelligence.  This is then the realm of rationalization; where fantasy and reality have indistinguishable borders.

Now we can allow what is not factual, not fully honest, not interested in understanding others; let these kinds of perversions of truth and reality be called real and truthful, and not know our self deception.

Well, this trick of making fantasy into a kind of cognitive perceptual reality is a quality, or lack of quality, that holds a subjective capital; Ignorance becomes an avenue to propose and prosper; to rationalize false “truths” into a plausible narrative line.  These narrative lines need connecting to the individuals identity to attain real value.  The way to do this and set up a solution to a now intrinsic cognitive dissonance aversion, is to have this story maintain its expression as a factual entity.

The Mandates Of Mind Control

Confirmation Bias is now a mandate to this creation of a fantasy into an Appearance Reality, and that more broadly into a perceived Consensus Reality thought of as being The Real Truth, one most always requiring arrogance, attitude and world of other societal enemies.

This false truth; the one avoiding an honest platform of observation outside of ideology, is prejudiced against full questioning as well as honest evaluations of outside answers.  It must avoid this to keep ignorance in its now sacred place. This feat of distortion requires emotive protection to blame and shame, to mystify and to dominate the individuals truth seeking apparatus, making it dependent on emotion and rationalization to stand in as apparently confirmed sound reason.

To detect these aberrations of human consciousness, we need wonder as to what the actual reasons are in the rationalizations; what is served by distorting Truth into something other, while at the same moment considering the means of objectively determining Truth as something unwholesome?

Truth Is An Ideal; An Ideal To Be Connected To

My aunt and my uncle carried much emotional reactivity in areas of life.  The differences between them essentially led to their disconnection.  This has more and less effected my sisters and I as well.  As it turns out; if you are insecure, having been or felt betrayed or abandoned in life, you tend to be reactive to its its stimulation. Then, as I have learned in family, and see is evident in society(the huge extended family of humanity), defensive projection of inner irritation targets family or societal elements as the source and object of irritation.  You will “see” in these blamed folks, rightly and perhaps wrongly, that they ARE the way you accuse.

This is a primitive yet effective self preservation trick when the Truth is not known but requires substitute explanation to issues being avoided.  We actually all seek to live by The Truth, that is why we become mandated to perceive a likely reason, but what is more likely, we live by an assembled logic masquerading as Truth. What fantasy and imagination do here is very clever; we come to feel what we believe is true.  Now we only require the stimulation of that idea to “know” this felt truth substitute.

Girl oh boy, are we ever now set up to be used and abused by the rationalized dialectics of the worlds idea parades.  What will be excluded from these grand notions of explanations of existence will be the current immersion of your life into all Life; or your spirit with The Spirit–the One without exclusion.

More Tricks Of The Rationalization Trade

There are always reasons that the weather has changed, whether I understand them or not.

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Is Death an Illusion?

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Life Goes On for a While: Aging still mandatory

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And here I was several years back in my early 40′s.

A friend showed me this photo the other day. I said; “Oh, yeah. I was all worn out when that was taken.” She said; “You always say that about your photo’s.” No. I thought. Late in the day ones, this one particularly, I know I have. I have had an amazing string of eyes closed photo’s. I keep my eyes open for the photo to be taken. Then, as time drags on I figure I can blink. Blink and hear the click. Like clock work. The sleeping through life guy. I have avoided having photo’s taken since childhood.

This photo was taken by a this friend while I was visiting. I am wearing a second hand store shirt in it, and trying to recuperate after 9 or so hours of outdoor construction work. The afternoon temperature was well into the 100′s in those Tucson summers. I remember the first time I saw this picture. It appeared in a 2×2 inch frame. Good, it is tiny, was my first impression. Oh, I thought it was OK. I was not blinking as so often in my photo history. Yet I could see how exhausted I was. I had showered and all that after work, but those summer days can be very draining, even after coffee the energy level did not recuperate.

I bring this up, for now when I looked at this little photo, I could barely tell I was tired then. I can see it around my eyes a little, but now, I do not think of the photo as being as bad as I always thought. I wondered why this perception has changed?

Now that I am somewhat older and grayer, does the fatigue I was feeling at the time not register cause I feel more fatigued more often now? (I am writing this while I am trying to avoid having my back go bad from doing a bending over project for a few days.) Then again, now I am older, and older caries its own kind of appearance changes. Maybe I am associating a younger me with a more energetic me, so the tired part from then is less familiar now from the old context. Could be.

Enough about me. Or the photo thing, anyway.

Life does go on in our awarreness for this while we are here. I remember wanting to get older while a youth. I’d wonder what the mature me would appear as. If lucky(?) one gets to discover the changes of being older. The reverse, however, the waiting to get younger, now lingers in photo’s and movies, perhaps in writings and in stories of what one was like before, before more recent history came with its paintbrush and axe.

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It seems weekly now, that someone I know, or a close friend of theirs, has a parent die. My generation is entering this last run in general terms; most parents will exit and be gone before long. It is different for me. Add up my parents deaths in years ago, and compounded, they’ve been gone for well over 80 years. I grew up with this part missing, for I faced my parents deaths in differing dates as a child. And no, there was no actual substitute for them. I feel much empathy for my friends elder parents losses.

Other elder parents we are are monitoring, are accidents happening; monthly incarcerations into hospitals (falling a number 1 issue), hips breaking, parts being removed, hospital stay creating new health issues. This, while for some of these seem not to be acknowledging the wall coming; that “for a while” eventually comes to an end. It will be right here at hand, immediate, one day. Many are always at that day. The; “It’s a blink of an eye.”

Those of us who have close brushes with death, can sometimes come away with enhanced values for common things great and very, very small. We live in a dynamic Creation, where everything relates to us. What we do does effect all else. We cannot grasp the exact magnitude of our connections and relationships. Close connections often loom in proximity. These days, I would go so far a to generalize that we often try to deny our connections, thus stemming any pressing needs to review responsibilities and accountability’s. This seemingly evasive need to avoid awareness, endemic to the ME individualism paradigm, has cosmological consequence as well.

All this said; love, or passionate connection and awareness for well-being, is something we can be certain this Life needs for a while. No matter the abuse, the loss, the betrayal, the times love seems taken away, in the simple act of returning It by giving it, there is restoration. For a while, I can always offer something up and into Life in this way instead of taking something out. I can discover all the new dimensions to the same Big Life I am a part of.

I can seek to make myself indispensable, for a while. I can know now with confidence; after this while is passed, Life and Love, the same “things” I am a part of, will persist. What I can add to these is the mandate of the eternal now.

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…trying not to blink-

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DENTIST TRIPPING

THE COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT WHINING ROOM  Brush before entering.

My old filling gone bad tooth gone abscessed gone missing hiding root, has gone into the next stage of decisions.

I went to my budget dentist service yesterday to find out what my options were, since my last visit there 2 weeks ago did not fix things.  Then they were performing a root canal on a molar with three roots, but one of which was in back of the other two, but they were incapable of x-raying it and I’ll never know why.   I know it is there from another x-ray, when I went in to a regular dentist for a severe toothache. They got the shot of the problem on the second try, since the front two roots were not abscessed then.  Had to be somewhere right. It amazed me that after a dozen mentions of this third root, these people with their x-ray device are incapable of finding it.

And may I mention, the budget dentist is still much more costly than regular dentist were just ten years ago.  I wonder where all the excess money is going?  Does not seem to be in the hands of the workers there.

Anyways.

Since they were probing on my word (actually said that) of another root 2 weeks ago, they blew through the tooth, knocking a side off looking for my alleged other canals, that tooth actually has at least 5 presumably.  Two hours and a gallon of Novocain later, they called it quits.  Better luck next time.  Only next time is apparently going to cost me a whole lot more somewhere else.

I took the 130 mile trip to this dentist yesterday, since they (two certain people) did not return my calls.  Yesterday I found out the person (now one?) has gone on vacation and left nothing in my chart regarding the arrangements they were to have made to a real orthodontist who knows how to find all root canals, even in a crooked tooth!  Never mind that on the bench there they had the x-ray staring all of us in the face, and should have known the tooth was tilted before a side was pooped out fishing for that elusive third root that was obviously to the right, and not to the left of the two canals found on the left root.  I go on and on about some “professional” work, when I think I actually understand more about what they should be doing than they do.

This will probably end up with the cheaper solution of just pulling the tooth and leaving another gap, cause in America if you do not have the dough you end up with nothing, as God intended.  When I was a kid I had four molars pulled at once in all four quarters in the “same” location.  Most all of my molars have fillings that in time go bad, as from my experience with this particular tooth.  Over ten years of telling at least 5 dentist that I felt something was going wrong with it, left me with no care until it in effect demanded attention that seems to have come too late.

A guy was in the office while I was there.  Maybe a farmer or rancher 10 or so years older.  He was there to nix his two root canals and tooth caps to come and instead have all of his teeth pulled.  He and his wife came to this decision over cost. I am beginning to see why older people decide to both save money, lots of it, and deal with the dentures until death.

Here is the actual evidence of another disappointing trip to the dentist.  They had some metal contraption in my mouth, so some things in the photo might be added.  At the photo’s top, the center tooth on the left side has a strange broken looking area, a shady shft goes down below it over a third of the tooth. That was the oops. It was all dark where the tooth broke out, but here some temporary filling is there (still) not showing the bust out as prominent as it was without that in there.

I have lived most of my life being very careful while eating apples or anything hard.  I have brushed and flossed my entire adult life.  My deceased oldest sister never had tooth issues or fillings throughout her 40 years.

Who say’s people do not put their private whiny problems on the WEB for all the world to see ?

I do.  All the world will not see this.

Chew on…

The Old Tooth Troubles

I’m in-between antibiotic spells on my next old filling to go bad. I could not afford to have it dealt with a couple years ago, but eventually it has to be undone one way or another.

I have had several molars pulled in my youth which never were replaced in any way. Gradually, the other teeth migrated to kinda fill in the voids, allowing my “wisdom teeth” to come in without being cramped, or so I imagine. I had dental insurance at one job I was at, but heard what a ridiculously long wait it was to get an appointment, so I will never know what could have been done then.

To inform you; although my long dead oldest sister never had any tooth issues, I grew up with many unattended cavities and eventually missing teeth through my teenage years. I mention that since you are often told it is genetics. I have heard that the first born tends to have better teeth due to better availability of calcium and such in the mother, so that does not elude genetics either.

In much of my life, I just took what happened and lived with it, years of toothaches, unattended broken finger, etc. One was never to complain or bring up costly issues. And though I should have been “made” to brush my teeth as a child, I was not. We were just supposed to be always perfect. If one is perfect, what then can be the problem? It sounds crazy to some of you I am sure, but this is the self destructive mindsets some of us are raised into. After I was 16, both of my parents were dead, and I was left with an even more dysfunctional “guardian” who pretty much was my prison guard.

Anyways. Two weeks to the next root canal, and then I am getting a cap on that tooth. The World War Two guy I occasionally see on a hospice visit might have it right. He had all of his teeth pulled and a sculptor who lived in the neighborhood made him a realistic set of false teeth. None of that ridiculous perfect white vanity plastic mouth for him. The sculptor made a very organic set (30 years ago) that you would have never guessed were false. He feels all those costly problems like I have are permanently off of his radar.

My whole life, (except when they were past the point of no return, and may I add, sometimes too abscessed to allow the Novocain to penetrate), they have told me the object was to save your teeth. Around 1970, I had a rich uncle Sam who died, and left me 1,300. dollars, my only ever inheritance of assets, which I then used to have my teeth fixed as much as that would afford. After that, I always brushed twice a day and flossed daily as well when that came around. I often go many years without a cavity, except where old root canals and fillings go bad and I end up with infections I cannot see until they show up on the pain scale. Unfortunately, root canal teeth are “dead” and it takes an X-ray or a large enough abscess to get noticed. What fun.

I resign myself to going to dentist, and with that surface anesthetic they give before the shots, dentistry had gotten less painless. But these days they are seemingly so rushed, that my last cleaning was one of my most painful. I mentioned it to the person doing the cleaning and they acted like; suck it up. They never inquired how I was feeling, which I have noticed is another feature at some of these low budget dental centers. So next time I will say; just give me Novocain in advance. So there. I had one root canal with nitrous oxide, I am going to ask for it as well this time. I am too accustomed to paying intense attention during dental procedures due to my often youthful extreme pain experiences.

Those of you waiting for your golden years to have it easy. Uh. For many of us, we were never told of the rope burns you get sliding down that rainbow into the pot of gold. Only to find you are no longer strong enough to lift the gold out, but a little might get left in your teeth when you fall face first into the treasure. Remember to floss.

CARS WITHOUT GAS RUN ON WIND SAILS!-fiction

Then I woke up.

We had created rail systems for personal wind travel.

Computers kept track of the track (you know what I mean) from the rail, which is barely noticeable embedded into streets. The rail also delivered solar energy to the sail car when wind was not enough. You also had the option of exercise to generate your own power source. Along with advanced battery packs you could plug into the sail car, charged up any way you managed to. (Yeah. Right.)

It was my childhood fantasy come true, but true in a dream. I guess that counts for not much as far as any reality is concerned. In my own life, it might be back to the early twentieth century. Riding a regular old bike and travelling much less as I increasingly become more of a senior citizen. I remembered as a little kid with my wagon, thinking I could sail up from Illinois and maybe make it to California

The nightmare of ever increasing gas prices but not wages or income will be left up to that nice blend of predatory capitalism and complicit elected officials whose real source of support we are so often kept in the dark ages about.

I’m sure they will fix things as usual, especially if we first kill off the government. That is the crucial final nail into the commons still not driven into the We the Peoples heart deep enough to make us into a totalitarian slave state. But the hammers keep a-pounding.

Money makes right? Our new morality.

Keep dreams alive!

Oh, yeah. And wake up too. That is the important part. Otherwise one might be dead.

(I put fiction in my title since a search engine had me at a serious car site.  I do not care what car anyone drives.  To bad the government did not bend over for big auto and oil interest united to keep gas use so high.  Now that is a tax on all of us drivers we will not call a tax!  Yet come election we will be suckered once again into the alleged anti tax party.  Enjoy the expensive exhaust.)

ANTI WHITE HANDS

FIRE spit out of my fingers

onto a wall without reason

a hand could send signals

through time

through lives

and all for the freedom

of taking a look

doing something

outside myself

on a cave wall

a living memory

the underside of a cliff

I touch you, see

out of nowhere

I reach you with just one clue

we contact outside of time

was it a minute

a while

a brief forever

does it matter?

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(hand prints and all colors done by me with concrete impregnated with dye)

WARM WIND FRIDAY

Not even noon here yet, but if you go out with dark shirt it feels like 88, actually it is 68 now. OK, probably 70 in the last 20 min. since I looked.

We had a meeting last night for community interested in taking part in family anti-violence work. It went quite well, but I was tired, having gotten up early for a doctors appointment, then cleaned up late after the evening meeting. Another one related to it but not the same this evening. And then on Saturday the actual regular meeting with a certain family.

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS

Bad news is, I have always had high blood pressure, (probably since six months old incident-PTSD) but have long outlived my grandfather and father in years. My heart issue from a early childhood fall some 50 years ago was finally diagnosed, and after 50 years of a back burner concern, and lifelong attempts to do good things for my heart, the diagnosis was very good regarding my valve issue. It probably will not be a problem for me for the future. A half century question answered. (I never had a regular doctor.) I had sever arrhythmia for some time after the accident, but no signs now, even under the stress test.

But here today, summer is knocking on the doors. Being up in the mountains a wee bit, even during summer it gets quite cool at night, except for a day or two. You can open windows and doors (screened) at night, and keep the cool into the afternoon. As long as you close them by mid morning!

I will post on the exciting new monsoon seasons we are guaranteed to have, now that they have extended the season for about a month. Who knew we controlled the weather like that!

LET IT RAIN!

WHO IS HOLIER THAN WHO? VOTE THE MOST HOLY ONE!

WHO IS HOLIER THAN WHO? VOTE THE MOST HOLY ONE!

I looked at my tag list again, and since it has politics; liberal and conservative in it, I get to read how humbly but absolutely certain we are, that we are on the side of good and honest. You, on the other hand, I do not wish comment from. I write my polemic and you keep your punditry out of it. At least I have seen examples today of this proclamation.

HYPOCRISY

Most of us think we are true to ourselves, unless we are purposely lying to someone online. I do not tend to see my own hypocrisy in areas I have not scrutinized closely enough, or where the self protection psychological defense mechanism called cognitive dissonance kicks in to avoid my looking into incongruities in my philosophy or beliefs. That doesn’t make me right however.

Since I value liberalism for its freedom loving, and for some, responsible interconnection to all things, I tend to let liberals slide on our contradictions or blind following of what is said to be a liberal value by someone on liberalism’s side. I do believe that liberals overall, need to listen more closely to conservative interest to try to get to the heart of the matter, which is often a somewhat camouflaged insecurity fear, behind a conserved superiority notion or liberal blame buzz frame.

THAT SAID:

As a human being, I cannot comprehend being against health care for all. Sure, have special care for those who want the freedom to pursue “better” care. Keep the private health care system going for those who can afford it, of course! But do not leave people to die or not have preventative care out of some callus so called moral reason. Who said money equals morals? It was once a conservative tenet, in some old circles, that money if the source of all evil.

LIFE OR DEATH OR IN-BETWEEN

I do not care if for some emotional or dysfunctional disturbed reason, that you cannot or will not work. If we are human, we still care, even if gratitude is not returned. Since when is love and caring a strictly reciprocal “deal” or contract? What kind of humanity is that? Seems like differing space aliens using sign language to trade spaceship parts for their robots.

People who are alive but supported by a society for whatever reason, still pass money on to eat, or one way or another, all the other necessities for existing in society. That contribution does not dead end there. We are willing to spend more on defense than all countries combined, for our insatiable fear of everyone else. But what of helping our own citizens for a tiny fraction of that, who are in trouble for one reason or another? No. I cannot go with you on that, cause I have heard that is not conservative values.

It ends up we help farmers some, yep in “conservative” states. We bail out corporations, some. We get pork deals for our votes, some. We take money from the public till; and as we have seen under the so called conservative breed in recent years, the reality check is, that they are the biggest pork and wildest spenders of all. (I have come to call much conservatism, hyper liberalism.) But do not help someone poor out! That would just encourage them to do nothing!

What kind of consciousness lives in such dichotomy, yet still has the time to point the same finger out at liberals. Would we help pick up an old person who asked for our aid if they fell on the street? Or just walk on by as to not interfere with Gods will? Well check the hand while pointing, cause three are pointing back at your own heart.

THE WEDGE CUTTING MACHINE

Since World War Two, conservatives (their manipulators) have been out to “warlordise” the population into post industrial feudal systems. Especially in the last thirty some years, huge fortunes have been spent to breed conservative “ideals” or “values” into the direction of the opportunist and predator. It has become lazy and easy to be conservative because there is such a deep well of ad hominem logic poured into the airwaves and out of “think tanks” and even pulpits, to make sure money and blame seems to be closer to Godliness.

I can get my teeth fixed and my heart looked after if I inherited, stole, have a rich relative maybe, or hard earned enough money to. If not; too bad loser. Is that the high ground conservatism sticks its post into? It is, if one is against health care for all. Or else one is a misanthrope. Much vocal conservatism these days, seems more founded on quicksand.

THE DRY ROT OF CIVILIZATION

I have come to call conservatism the dry rot of civilization, because it eats away ones humanity from the inside out. You can look responsible, dress nicely, have a golden home over the sea, go to church and agree at the terrible state of a permissive society, do all that and be hollow inside.

Someone posted recently, quite a list of prominent conservatives who changed sides on specific issues as soon as it hit their family ( ex. Mrs. Reagan and stem cell research). I believe many conservatives are hiding stealthily behind a hardened heart, listing, thanks to propaganda, many attributes about withholding here and withholding there. The whole tax and spend wedge frame is fraudulently placed solely at the liberals door. Are soaring oil profits not putting any dent in your wallet? How about global warming and depletion of resources and pollution?

But when the storm hits, or a beggar pulls them out of a burning car and gives them the shirt off of his back. Well then, some floodgate opens inside. Our common humanity and connection comes rushing out.

It is not about tough love or hard love. It is what happens when one allows into ones life; unconditional Love.

WHEN LIFE BECOMES PROBLEMATIC

There is that illusion in youth that one is immortal if healthy. Years take an eternity to go by. I remember once hearing a boy say, his friend with him is an old friend of his; they knew each other 9 months.

We stretch our limits physically; how fast can I run, jump, climb, at least many boys do. Girls have some of their own physical feats; sometimes like the boys, or other games, jump-rope, hop-scotch(?), even tumbling and other daring doo’s, that boys might rather not be “shown up” at.

I first hurt my neck when 5 or so, secretly. When 16, I was knocked out after catching a football in a parking lot. I went over the roof of a car and landed on my head. Being “out” was curious, being that I was in a black void, wondering how I find myself, looking for my senses. There was nothing but a desperate search. Things started to turn on in strange ways, hearing in color, until everything snapped into place and you could use your muscles.

I first hurt my lower back when diving off of a high dive while I was recovering from “walking pneumonia”. It was a bad choice to go to that pool, but my older cousin invited me and I hardly ever went anywhere for fun. I loved bounding off the end of the board as high as I could.

In my early twenties was the first time my lower back “snapped” when I picked up a dropped fork, (after the prior days digging up and turning over of the whole back yard in California, huge clay chunks, some prob. one and one half by two feet thick), leaving me with those ten days of no improvement, can not lift much of anything. It is a struggle to get out of bed, then have to walk like a stick not allowing any leaning forward or backwards, or sideways.

In about 3 weeks I was back to normal, but never the same, since that crippling extreme has happened half a dozen times in my life fully, and dozens more in a milder one week recovery way. Now I can usually tell how I get into this situation and try to stop what I am doing before that. That is then only a day or two of back swelling, sweating, or stiffness. Unfortunately, the neck and lower back are connected. I most always have to not bend my head when getting into cars, or the lower back might pop.

Later in life, I went on to work in construction. sometimes doing strange stunts like carrying a five eighths thick four by twelve foot sheet of sheet-rock balanced on the middle of my head to install it up on scaffolds onto a businesses ceiling. What a pain; balancing, aligning to edges, trying to use a hand to put a screw, or start a nail with.

I did this once to get our half hour lunch ended, since no “boss” was there and guys were still talking 40 min later, lounging on the floor. I was hired to work as I promised, so I did. Usually that would wake the others up from their mid day vacation. That is how I have been; I will sacrifice myself to achieve some promised ends in the face of difficulty, even if others sit by watching.

In my late thirties, as the main “clerk” in a huge warehouse in Tucson, I might lift and carry from 50,000 to 100,000 lbs. of boxed cotton goods (boxes often 80-115lbs) in one not so unusual day. All for about 1 dollar over minimum wage. My back went out once big time there. I told the manager, who then put me on another detail. I could feel my back leaking inside. In about an hour I could not hold my hands up in front of me without extreme pain. That started a 3 week no party of a vacation.

By my mid fifties; carrying a three quarter inch think sheet of MDF board (4′-8′) on my head to get it into my narrow trucks camper top and gate opening got more and more difficult. After several of these my neck seems no longer what it was. Now I cannot use it at all for a prop post.

Moral of the story being that; depending on use, some parts of your body can suffer from experiences at an early age, or leave you with a surprise chronic pain later. In case all you athletes thinking the possible thrilling abuse will not be met again later as the aging surprise. Surprise! There are birthday surprises that may be coming to a body near you. A gift that keeps on giving.

HARD WORK AND ITS SACRIFICE FOR ALL

Throughout the culture we have some people using muscle and or being in positions that will have them regretting it later, but for many, that job was what they could get, and they might even become loyal to it, to their later detriment. The culture requires this work to be done.

These people may not have the ability to pay for health care. If you do not believe society (which depends for its existence on these people just as if they were the military) if you do not believe society owes them the decency for their service and sacrifice to it. Well you might be considered one off those heartless Darwinian conservatives, that are enlisted into Pavlovian response come election time, to blame the physical effects on the decisions of the one who sacrificed themselves; because it was their choice! Not only that. But why should I then offer anything to those suffering individuals since I knew better; was hereditary endowed (physically or monetarily), avoided hard work or difficult military service. We see this, the proud and righteous anti tax perception, promoted by predatory opportunist, as a moral value in the society. Down with the Nanny State!

This is an example how the greediness endemic to the alienated-separated individual, can be used to pivot their perception from full life connection, to defending oneself from responsibility to the whole. If one is kept in the perception of economic stress and or ego non accountability to other parts of society, which constitute the whole, I can think I am standing up for moral self accountability BY NOT ACKNOWLEDGING OR RETURNING THE SACRIFICE OTHERS HAVE GIVEN FOR MY OWN VERY LIFESTYLE AND PRIVILEGE TO BE PROTECTED AND CARED FOR IN THIS COUNTRY.

Imagine it. Conservative pundits right now as I type, are well paid to tell society that those homeless (yes, even from the military) living under bridges or a box in the alley, are mentally unfit and so beyond our province to help. That is the conservatives own mental illness of separation, often disguised as pride and moral, even spiritual superiority, to help shove someones life out of sight and out of mind. Their consciousness of the whole that is; amputated.

But this was to be a note on my life from yesterdays travels.

I avoid going to dentist and doctors, so yesterday was a special treat to see both.

Now from the doctor, I must make appointments for three specialist in differing fields. Isn’t that special. I also have another filling gone bad and have an appointment for that one. I did not know I was going to be getting x-rayed yesterday, so that was another surprise for the pocket book.

Gem Show

The tiny bit of the Tucson Gem and Mineral and Everything else Show one can see in two hours, was interesting in that there are many new kinds of stone and craft work suddenly all over, with an increasing shift, where I was at, towards Asian items.

Poetry

The poetry reading was fun. I read the poems I have put on this site, which are in some strange ways different than my usual. I just write them and post them, sometimes going back and finding mistakes or awkwardness from the process of hurrying things on-line, or speaking to interest of my concept of who is writing poetry in general on my tags. Live and learn. That is what I have heard.

There were quite a number of newcomers to that reading, all seniors. Every writer is distinctly different. I sometimes enjoy particularly the straight forward from life ones from someones past, telling of some slice of life impression, fond or difficult memory. No fancy razzle dazzle word usage, just insight. Which is just so very much; a whole lot!

It is warming up an I am contemplating making a longer and less high dam on that small stream I mentioned many post back. The one with the one dam I already made last week. I often have to judge the price I will pay for lifting 94 pound bags of cement then walking sideways downhill with them. Plus all the mixing and shoveling.

Sometimes if a thing is to ever get done, you just go up to it, and do it.

From the nations last line.

Benafia

IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU __________ MOST LIKELY

You see it happens everyday; one day me and one day you. We will die.

We will, presuming we make it that far, realize how eternal youth actually vanished like our shadow at noon. The feeling will be noticed that one will soon be more akin to the dinosaurs than kids turning twelve. Some of us even today, never heard of blogs and cannot imagine using a computer, the learning curve seems as near as the edge of the moon.

The young these days may not realize that they to will be labelled a generation, indicating a certain lack of human continuity; now we are packaged and labelled. Yet each generation, as other ones fill in behind it, will yearn for its old boxes, looking longingly at the stamps no longer in use. Heads will shake at the young; how they seem to think the are the first to notice, first to understand, first to see through all the old crap.

Even these our young, before they know it, will be shaking their heads; was it not just yesterday I could jump up on that wall? What happened to all my friends? We thought we were forever? And loves? They were forever and now how little I remember who they really were? Did I ever know?

And if (Gods) science is stopped in its tracks; if the magical answers never come or if they do but turn into monsters we could never imagine, cities will gather dust. They will be recycled like parts of a great pyramid. Perhaps generations will stop and humankind will be back to basics.

If trees make it though, they will become the eternal forest, a place of mystery, imagination and dream. What animals make it trough; some will graze on the grass that grows enthusiastically on those old city streets. Cities will be scary jungles though, for at times it will be said; great pieces fall off the monoliths, sometimes they crash down all together. The big downtown’s will have been long ago pillaged, a twelve year old wondering, if it was gods or some evil race who built these towers to nowhere. Their language no longer understood or apparent.

Log-poles and stone now hold their arms over our heads at night. Elders speak of how foolish humans had been; that they had built and lived in those cities. Something called resources that came with the earth are too far to ever recover access to again. Now we live “in life” they tell the young. We live in each others hands. We honor the earth for it remains our Mother.

Some of this will happen to you; the tree leaf destiny of youth, the generational identity that proves itself a dried up wash, the young doubting it ever flowed strong and bold. Love will come and go from things you never thought would leave you. And your pride; pride in belongings and in self achievement, it too will become transparent, that sense of having leaving you.

The few who read this post will soon be gone in more ways than one. The Internet shut down due to its insidious joining of unwelcome ideas to the state and church. Something called “inalienable rights” will have been declared seditious. They are being so labelled already as the poison spreads.

“I have heard from a distant “Pile” (what cities are now called), that a stone tablet was found.” We listen attentively to this travellers tales. “We have a brilliant one in our tribe who has deciphered the tongue of it.” Now our ears are sharpened for the next sound. “It tells of a god who knew a way out but it was forsaken.” This seemed plausible to those of us gathered at the fire. “Dennis Kucinock was his name.” We had never heard of this idol. “He was a man like some of us, but he had seen the Mother Ship.” The what? You could see it written on our faces. “The Mother Ship, it was from the stars or somewhere. It shown onto him the light of Love from somewhere beyond yet into him.”

We did not know what to make of this travelers ideas. Did it mean something we should do? Are we to look into the sky for love? Love more than that of the sun? Must we do this at night? We did not now. I thought to myself; We can only take this with a grain of wheat. This left me with what the traveler had left us with; an existential angst. For it seems a certain truth; that if I too forsake the Kucinock, am I then also forsaking a certain way of Love itself?”

One elder spoke up after the traveller had left us. “We should not allow strange visitors to speak of spiritual things over the nights fire. For I had dreamed of the Kucinock. It’s ears were slightly pointed, it was a serious one, with a beautiful goddess by its side. It made no sense to me. The Kucinock carried small tablets in his outer skins, talisman to the thoughts of his time. I kept waking up with the thought; But this is now!, This is now! The Kucinock is gone forever! Little sleep would fill me up overnight.”

But I have noticed a change; we follow the embers up into the black air at night. We are sometimes quiet and reserved at this, as if expecting a sacred sign. We do not speak of this to one another, but I do at times notice a flicker across my face and a times those around me. There is a smile that reminds me of something precious just found, that had been lost.”

BATTLE OF THE BULGE BETRAYED

At times I accompany a friend who is a hospice volunteer, to her regular visit to the survivor of a family. This old guys health is deteriorating and he wonders why he still lives.

He and his wife retired to the southwest over 25 years ago. He went on to work as a nurse or hospital aid for some years. His wife had a severe stroke and he became her loyal and unwavering caretaker for many years. He is quite a character, very opinionated and a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. He was wounded there and spent some time in a French hospital during the war.

He feels that the old like him, the poor and many others are ignored because they are off the rich and powerful radar. He feels the US system is rigged and most politics is mostly tricks.

That aside, he is faced with no longer being able to live in his mobile home park. He has one niece who lives states away and an even older sister who just moved into a old folks home states away. The VA provides him with some medical help but mostly he is a living artifact that cannot make ends meet in the modern world. Many are in this situation.

He cannot make it into the nearby inexpensive assisted living home until there is an opening. Contingent on this is he would have to sell his home to have enough to make the move. Being barely able to walk, most moving presents a huge obstacle to him. He was ambiguously looking forward to moving, being that he likes his independence, yet must face the reality that he may at any time be incapacitated. So he sits on his couch in this limbo, waiting for something to change but feeling trapped in more ways than one.

(He has many hand gestures.  His fingers flick out on the right hand to demonstrate he is an informed man of action, for a photo where his reading materials are all about.)

We help him all we can but there are limitations for us, given gas cost and distance to aiding him.

So here is the deal. We as a culture leave the very ones who saved our common freedom to languish in uncertainty and a profound sense of abandonment because we are a heartless and self centered people, or for some reasons, the plight of the needy are kept out of the big picture. Remember Katrina?

With elections coming, I would urge anyone who can to remember those who have served this country to not forget we live from their service to us. Remember them more than shooting some rifles off at their funeral. Remember that others, as well, are unwanted, have made mistakes, some of which they have not recovered or redeemed themselves from. They are still human beings. Each of our own humanity is defined on how the least of us are treated by the rest. We are each that rest.

There is the unfortunate tendency in this modern world for short attention spans. The “top ten list” of things to think about has been shifted to individualistic “responsibility”, bypassing or subverting the truth that there is a commons, there are common responsibilities, and not only when rich companies get into trouble here or from their policies overseas. Much of the worlds interest, which we all are are part of, must be on the radar.

If I ignore the issues facing human beings in my home or my world, it is darkness that becomes self perpetuating. The light only comes out into view when our hearts are allowed to look, that seeing is illumination.

Benafia