Archive for January 2010
What ifs
What if world population actually does continue to grow? What if we don’t figure out how to feed them all? What if a virus does overwhelm our world health organization’s best attempts to fend off a pandemic? What if we have enough food, but not enough medicine? What if greedy people and their schemes to get filthy rich at the expense of others, screw up global economies such that there is complete financial collapse? What if that doesn’t happen and world economies thrive and racial equity is achieved for all and then an asteroid destroys the earth? What if the shots missed Kennedy in Texas? What if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t been assassinated? What if Christians never killed anyone? What if every person on earth held the same spiritual beliefs? What if the Catholic religion focused solely on worshiping God, yet without any rules? What if none of the world religions had any dietary restrictions? What if every person was actually a double agent spy? What if, when the time comes, we forget to die? What if, regardless your religious beliefs, when your body dies, your soul lives on and communes with spiritual masters during the time between returning to another life in a human body? What if some of the souls that return are enabled to bring past experience and show up as child prodigies? What if we learn that our man-made religious organizations are dysfunctional and more often than not get in the way of ultimate spirituality? What if humans of Protestant faith and humans of Catholic faith never harmed each other? What if they practiced actually loving each other? What if no one ever mocked the type of music other people enjoy? What if rock bands never, ever, ever agreed to play Superbowl halftime shows? What if athletes never suffered injury playing their sport? What if no one ever took other people’s stuff? What if no one ever had more than they needed? What if no one ever had less than they needed? What if fresh water was the most valuable thing in the world? What if society completely breaks down after an apocalypse and all you have left is diamond jewelry? What if thought exercises turn out to be useless wastes of time?
Latest Behavior Pattern
It’s the cat. I’m generally of a mind not to go on and on about our cat, Kitty. I’m not really a cat guy. Many people have come to believe I’m not a pet guy at all. Not true. Well, not accurate. I’m not a pet guy of the suburban house, pet on a leash, critters in cages type. If we lived in a rural area, I’m pretty sure we would have had dogs. But the issue I’m not wanting to go on and on about is all about Kitty.
Kitty was certainly not my idea. She was a Valentine present to the kids from my wife. I just allowed it to not be a battle I would wage. For the sake of the family, I would tolerate living with a cat for a while. How long is a while?
Now the kids are grown and gone, yet the cat remains. She must be growing lonely as heck. All day long there is no one to play with. By the time I get home in the evening, she is starved for attention and loiters underfoot wherever I turn. And she meows. A lot. It is as if there might be a way to annoy a person who is not a cat type. Welcome to my world. I was clueless about all the details that Berkeley Breathed’s character creation, “Bill the Cat,” embodied, in the comic “Bloom County”, but I really, really loved it. Aack! Now I understand it to a whole new depth.
Turns out that our Kitty happens to be one of those classic vomiting felines. We get the full range from coughing up a fur ball to emptying the contents of her stomach for no apparent reason. Ack.
I recall a time when the cat was in her early years with us, Kitty would sometimes climb under the covers and sleep with Elysa. For the most part, Kitty has never been a lap cat. She never generally tolerated much in the way of extended contact with a person. Now, that has changed again. For whatever reason, Kitty now has a persistent urge to climb in bed with me, under the covers to sleep against my body. It was quite a surprise the first time, and then a little cute the second time. I never got around to plying the art of discouraging the behavior and now it seems to be her compulsion every night. If I fail to provide easy access, I get the meow cries, any time of the night she decides she wants in. One night when I was too tired to bother acknowledging her, she added pawing at me while she meowed. Just what I always wanted!
I am contemplating what level I would need to raise the reward to for the first child that finds the cat a new home. It’s becoming an increasingly likely ploy for me since the morning last weekend when I discovered some pieces of cat litter in our bed after one of her midnight rambles to and fro while I had tried to sleep. Lovely. Ack.
Some Remembering
I don’t understand why this memory is lingering in my present day awareness, but trying to analyze it has revealed to me how fractured my recollection is. I’m guessing I was about 9, or possibly 10, years old. It was the first time in my life that I believed I was facing my own death. Up to that time, I had experienced only limited exposure to lakes or pools and did not know how to swim. I was playing on a floating raft at a swimming beach on Red Rock Lake, jumping from the raft into the neck-deep water. I didn’t realize the raft had moved to deeper water because I had become mesmerized with the experience of jumping into that water.
I know that I was with others, but I have no recollection who it specifically was. I have a sense that they contributed to my feeling blissfully free of apprehension. I don’t believe anyone noticed the time I jumped into water that was deeper than I was tall. It was a moment of 1, or maybe 2, seconds in which I mentally processed a lot more thought than that amount of time could allow.
Of all the bits and pieces of memory from this event, this is the most vivid of all: the combined feeling of shock and calm. I hadn’t sensed any hint of this possibility. I was in total oblivion of the fun I was having when all at once, I was faced with this potentially fatal reality. I surmised that I had reached the end of my life. I remember the instant of surprise, but in that same split second, the significant, calm insight that this would be it.
Pretty much as a reflex, I pushed off the bottom and sputtered as my face broke the surface. I went down again and without even thinking about it, pushed off like before. Keep in mind that the depth was probably just barely over my head, but to a kid who can’t swim, there is no range of depth; it’s either over your head, or not, and over your head may as well be the deep sea. Since it was not a long distance from where I had previously been playing, my 2 or 3 bounces had landed me back in my neck-deep zone, and that quick, I had overcome the expected demise.
Embarrassment kept me from addressing what had just transpired. Since no one appeared to have noticed, I figured it best to just keep it to myself, lest the fact of my not having learned to swim yet become something to talk about. I liked it better, left unsaid. I seem to have permanently logged the sensation of the lake bottom on my feet, the impression of a mother or sister (not necessarily mine) on shore under a tree, a variety of ages of kids playing in the water, and a day of hazy sunshine or more gray than blue sky. I have no real image of what the raft was like. I have a sense that my interest in jumping off the raft anymore was dashed, and I was left with the mixture of wanting to disavow any knowledge of what just happened, and yet still explore the drama I had just been through.
In addition to being fascinated by the different fragments of memory associated with this incident, I am also curious as to why it seems to be residing in the area of my conscious awareness of late. It strikes me now as I capture all this in writing, that I can’t wrangle a recollection of the point in which I finally achieved mastery of skills in the art of swimming. I bet it wasn’t too long after that. Maybe it served as a personal motivation. My teen years involved a pretty significant amount of time on and in Lake Riley at the Daly’s. There are quite a few memory fragments associated with that, but unlike my perceived brush with death, those remain ensconced deep in the catacombs of rarely disturbed files of the memory bank.
Laughably Busy
Is it really only Wednesday? Yes. Do the days of the week make any difference to someone who truly lives in the moment? I’m not one to say, that’s for sure. The day job is so busy that I would normally really look forward to the weekend for a break, but I haven’t been getting a full weekend for months because the day job is claiming Saturdays. Makes it that much less break to look forward to. The weeks get so long, it becomes a challenge to track what day it is.
What is the deal with printers suddenly misbehaving, right when we really have no time to spare? The number of things piling on at the day job has gotten just laughably insane. If I don’t laugh at it, I’ll cry. My tolerance is really being tested. I really don’t understand why when things can’t possibly get any busier, they do. It feels like being the brunt of some higher power’s practical joke.
Maybe that’s why I laugh at it.
Wordless Image
I do compose words on images, but lately I’ve been just coming up with either words or images. I just didn’t have the heart to mess this one up with verbiage. It’s a thousand words, all on its own. Lake Superior with winter sky.
For Pam
I have often shared my belief that putting our focus on the positive aspects of situations eases our path toward achieving positive outcomes that we ultimately desire. This mindset is not something I held or practiced until the most recent decade of my life. I have far from mastered the art.
Twice in my life I have voluntarily left gainful employment due to my dissatisfaction with the circumstances, even though I had not established any alternative. Ultimately, both times I discovered better alternatives. But back then, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Now, from the luxury of my hindsight, I have no doubt whatsoever, had I understood my mental capacity at that time to impact my life, the process would have brought me much less anxiety.
If thinking positive by an individual proves beneficial, then consider the possibility of numbers of people focusing positive impressions toward one person. Let’s give it a shot. Take a moment today to visualize positive outcomes for Pam this afternoon and beyond. Then, as long as you’re at it, give yourself a dose of the same medicine. Maybe we’ll tip the balance of things positive. I like the thought of that.
Game Day
This is the best moment, folks. Before the game even starts. After last week’s Vikings victory over the Dallas Cowboys, to earn a spot in the NFC Championship game that will commence later today, the whole state has been atwitter. Everywhere I turn, I find people wearing bright purple team wear. We have had a week of building anticipation, all targeted on this day. Prince released a new song written for the team. There are only 4 teams left and the entire nation of NFL fans will focus on these games with no competing games as distractions.
Have you noticed how the broadcasts during the playoffs seem to have difficulty breaking from their regular season format? At the usual intervals they interrupt the play-by-play to update other games in progress. Now, even though there are no other games in progress, they fail to drop that routine and interrupt to report on a game that already finished or tell us about the one coming up next. It seems so awkwardly unnecessary. Maybe the “Gamebreak” has a sponsor that requires the spot, whether or not there is anything to report on worthy of the interruption.
The odd thing about the buildup of anticipation for this game and so many others like it, is that it becomes larger than the game itself. And the sad thing about that is that as soon as the game starts, the anticipation is over. No matter how the game turns out, it is very difficult to live up to the anticipation. If the game goes sour for the home team, the deflation is decidedly thorough. Stranger still, if the home team is victorious, it is such a hoped for outcome, the reality can’t live up to it.
All we really have then is the anticipation for the next game.
Enjoy the Conference Championships today!
Marvelling
It amazes me to think about the subtle details of the workings of our bodies. The vast majority of what goes on, day in and day out, we take for granted. I found myself sitting on the floor for an extended amount of time recently and in just a few minutes in which I had my knees bent to support a laptop, the knee joints began to send signals of pain to announce that position would not be tolerated. I do not suffer any problems with my knees, and under normal standing, walking, and heavy sports activity, I get no pain signals. But, when put in an awkward static position under moderate stress, they quickly announce a problem. They aren’t designed to support weight at that angle.
Imagine what it would be like if we needed to be consciously aware of everything that is going on in our bodies all the time. Of course it is impressive that our flinch reaction pulls us away from harm before we even realize the need, but I am just as fascinated that my bladder can expand like a balloon to isolate urine from the rest of the organs and then collapse within the abdomen as it drains, and do so in a repeating cycle over and over and over for years on end. I am fascinated that the lining of my stomach survives the acid within. I am amazed that somehow the sensation of clothes against my skin gets filtered out of my consciousness, but at the same time I will notice an ant climbing up my leg. My heart beats and lungs pull in air and innumerable little miracles of science transpire, changing pace and depth automatically, never once needing to wait for me to decide. At the rate I make decisions, imagine what a mess that would be if it needed to wait on me in order to happen.
So, what is happening in your body at this minute that you weren’t thinking about until you read this?
A Story
.
.
A story that waits to be told
unfolds quietly
in the hours made up of days
little things
like the glance that speaks louder than words
the dreariness of the day to day
the outburst
over revelations
of having been violated all along
when the one that was trusted
turns out to be
a spy
.
.
Relative Something 