Is not writing drivel for over a year an achievement?

Increasingly, I do not travel well.

(Many details skipped. You are welcome.)

I am in a hotel room now, and I cannot get to sleep.

Tried checking my blood oxygen saturation, but the device won't give me numbers, and it's rudimentary pulse trace looks weird.

(Had I mentioned that last December I was diagnosed with Pulmonary Hypertension? This is why I even have a device for measuring blood oxygen saturation. A relatively rare condition, and the science around it is a work in progress. The primary symptom is hypoxia, a fancy word for acute shortness of breath. After many tests and examinations my category of this illness is "ideopathic". Ideopathic is a fancy word to describe a shrug. So now I finally have the supplemental oxygen that I have felt I needed for years.)

So, I get out my portable EKG device and check.

Four readings in a row all say "possible atrial fibrillation".

Have I mentioned before that I have a recent history of AFib? After two emergency cardioversions (zapped back to sinus rhythm while under general anesthesia), I had an ablation (tools snaked up through my femoral veins to burn out selected nerve connections at my heart).

I have done enough to ruin this trip, so I will not wake up Patricia (Spouse) to tell her about the return of AFib. I don't feel very bad, so I will just keep taking EKGs until it reads normal.

I feel terrible that this will likely ruin some of her plans for the day.

I left a few things out. My body is in cascading failure mode.

Sounds like a lot of complaints, but I really appreciate every day of life more than ever before. Mortality is for everyone, and I am glad that my awareness and acceptance of that truth makes every fraction of existence something to love.

IDK

 I am terrified of dying, and I don't know why.  In geologic time my lifespan is insignificant.  In cosmic time my lifespan isn't even worth mentioning. Having any strong feelings regarding being dead or alive is pure comic hubris.

I have no anxiety considering the vast span of time before I existed, so why should I be so bothered about any of the vast span of time after I stop existing?  Indeed, the span of time where there will be any evidence that I had ever existed will also be insignificant.

 

I seem obsessed with a desire for an open-ended continuity for my consciousness,  the thing that I perceive to be "me", despite having done so little to make anything of my existence in the time I have had.

 

This obsession is puzzling because I experience discontinuity of my consciousness for a number of hours every day.  What else is dreamless sleep but a discontinuity in my consciousness, in my awareness of this "me" thing.

I would be lying if I said these daily discontinuities don't bother me.  For most of my life I have been terrified of sleep because I can never be certain that I will wake up.  Ceasing to exist without even being aware of it happening is terrifying to me.  

The funny thing is, once I return to the the previous, arguably normative, state of non-existence, I will be no more aware of it than I was before I began to exist.  It can't possibly hurt or be frightening when I am not happening to be.

Life is pain and fear and very short, especially at the end, so why do I want it to persist?  

Some may attribute this desire to something like an evolutionary imperative.  But I have already done all that evolution demands of me.  I have reproduced. I have fumbled my way through parenting well enough that they are independent adults now.  There is even one specimen of an additional generation.  Why would evolution allow me to persist, to consume resources, when I am done with what it requires of me?  Why would it produce a consciousness that wishes to persist with no purpose?  Why was this comical fate thrust upon the minds of billions of forgotten lives, and billions more to come?

Generally, humanity has replaced God with Evolution and Cosmology, but none provide satisfactory answers to many of the questions we regard as personally most important.  At least all agree that each of us are individually unimportant, and it is futile folly to pretend otherwise.  It isn't the answer I want, but it is an answer I can believe.

Once more, given possible implications of what I have written here, this is not a suicide note nor an encouragement for anyone to consider willfully shortening their existence.  Most observant readers would find this to be very much in opposition to such ideas.

Why am I about to post this to my blog?

No Complaints

 I don't usually make resolutions, but this year I resolved to complain less.

I have learned that the main thing that moves me to write is an urge to complain.

This may explain if there is very little recently to read here.

I may indeed be truly "done".

Perhaps I evolved, or devolved, a personality capable only of complaint.

Not complaining, just saying.

Have a nice day, if at all possible.

Done [...or "Done 2" since I just noticed a previous post titled "Done"]

I am more relieved than sad to know that I am done.  

I am done with doing anything more than what life demands of me.  

I am done with trying to make good. 

I am done with trying to feel good.

I am done with trying to reinvent my past and present self.

I am done with imagining a future.

So very tired.  So much pain.

I apologize to anyone who may have expected more from me.

[Editorial Note: It seems the responsible thing for me to make clear is that I have no intentions, no plans, for ending my life.]

Pain

Pain obliterates the mind.  I can't think.  I can't organize the story of my pain enough to write it out.  I don't even know why I am writing this now.

I would surrender the rest of my life for just one week without pain or feebleness. This is the wish of a feeble, childish and selfish mind.

I should not post this.  I should not endanger anyone with the slightest possibility of reading this.  But my various essential measurements of health have been so unstable, so unmanageable, I have just enough ego left that I don't want to obliterate what may be my last stupid thoughts.

No I am not suicidal.  I don't need to be. The Reaper is coming for me on multiple fronts.  The only gift he offers is an end to this pain.

[Added February 11th, 2025, ~2AM] ...and an end to the ringing in my brain which is nonsensically attributed to my ears.

Retro-Blog: 2012, about the band Point Line Plane

 [What follows is the text of a review I wrote, in a rather self-aggrandizing way, about the first, and eponymous, album by the band Point Line Plane, which still resides at amazon.com under a listing for used copies through third-party sellers. Since this is subject to disappearance at any moment, I hope to give it some further virtual persistence here, however longer "here" may exist.]

5.0 out of 5 stars Love's Labors Lost
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2012

This self-titled album by Point Line Plane is screamo synthpunk with blistering drums, and one of the more intense and unique phenomenon of the very brief but surprisingly authentic old-school punk revival that flared up in Portland OR, peaking around 2000-ish. Point Line Plane put on shows that felt genuinely dangerous, like anything could happen, and often did. This album, with instruments tracked live in a cavernous ancient ballroom, and studio vocals subjected to all manner of distorted re-amplification, faithfully conveys the manic energy of the live shows, while also providing creative ways to do violence to the sound which would not have been possible on stage. The songwriting channels teenage rage and terror from a dystopian science-fiction future that arrived while we weren't looking, with a little timeless metaphysical torment added for good measure. Much of it can be physically uncomfortable listening for some people, but that is very much the point.

Since I had been too much of a prog geek to "get" punk when it happened the first time around, it was a real pleasure to experience the real thing later in life. For the young and confused, the first time around for real punk was the late 1970's, in case you are suffering under the misconception that bands like Green Day and Blink 182 were authentic punk bands. They aren't even bands now so much as brands.

Contrary to the description, Howard Gillam doesn't play on this CD, as at the time of recording he was in another duo, the Momeraths, with Joshua Blanchard. This was also a time when droves of duos roamed the dark and smoky dives of Portland, and this is a duo release with Josh Blanchard and Nathan Carson. I should know; I co-produced it with the band and Merlin Carson. Both Carson brothers were previously in the genre-defying Bishop of Battle. Later, the two duos converged into a trio, keeping the Point Line Plane name, for their second and final full-length release, Smoke Signals. All three members have been involved in an array of musical projects since, perhaps most significantly Nathan's return to the Doom Metal band Witch Mountain.

Recording and mixing this was tons of fun because we were experimenting and creating a sound, instead of trying to re-create some preconceived notion of how it should sound. We allowed ourselves to surprise ourselves. Other tracks from these sessions were released on a split EP with The Planet The, which, sadly, you are very unlikely to find. I would love to see a re-release of this album, with the EP tracks included as a bonus. But this review is entitled Love's Labors Lost for a reason: this CD can be had right now for a penny, with shipping rounding it up to under five dollars. The studio which produced this is as obscure and defunct as this album, and this band.

I strongly recommend that you make the tiny investment of time and spare virtual change to buy this CD. I promise it will make the most extreme music you own now sound like gentle lullabies for baby.

Title Pending

Arriving at the keyboard late in a string of internal associations can be awkward and, to the reader at least, confusing.  This is only made worse when the author is coming down (up?) from being overly drunk on home-made absinthe.

Age has both stolen from me, and gifted to me, freedom from passion.

For the romantic mind, passion is the source of all that is most precious.  The rational mind counters with the popular phrase "crimes of passion".  Personal experience reminds me that passion is the source of my strongest among weakening memories, some of them precious, many of them, at best, embarrassing.

For nearly a full year, my passion for music has been given a new life by one band, named "boygenius", and the prior solo and collaborative works of each primary member, Julien Baker, Pheobe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus.   Although I do not presume to know the full back story of each member of this trio, or to what degree their songwriting is autobiographical or fictional storytelling, their songs have a ring of personal truth that touches me more than anything has in several decades.

My history with music had thus far been almost completely male and presumably heterosexual, particularly given my proclivities towards "Progressive Rock".  Really, only Kate Bush had thus far broken that ceiling.  Then last year, at age 60, I saw and heard boygenius play "Not Strong Enough" on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show, and was instantly moved and enthralled by a band of queer girls.  Although I don't feel physically or mentally strong enough to withstand the experience of in-person live shows, I have listened to or watched little else in the way of music for an entire year, which went by very quickly.

I am not sure what else to say about, or what I have learned from, this. This post will probably remain an unpublished draft until I can find a way to craft it into a better... something.  The band itself, after winning some Grammys, has announced an indefinite hiatus, which I do not begrudge them.  They have been working very hard non-stop for a full year at least, and I could not ask for more except a concert film, which may yet come about since at least their Forest Lawn concert seemed to have been professionally recorded in both audio and video in full.  A professionally recorded single of the "boyfriend song" would be nice, too.

Perhaps the best statement of a lesson from this experience was spoken in the previous century by a minor human character in "The Muppets Take Manhattan", which was "peoples is peoples". (Yes, I am aware that the phrasing, characterization and delivery of that line was racially/culturally problematic, but the core truth of it, especially in context, is stronger than the superficial aspects of the delivery.)   

The Rewards of Being My Friend

[Editorial Note: A friend read my previous blog entry and wrote me an email to express their concern and well wishes.  The apology for the slow reply refers also to previous unanswered emails. As I express below, I felt my reply was better suited to this blog, and a bit too much.... I guess a bit too much "me" for a polite response to a friend. Nonetheless I sent it, and now, with minor edits, I post it.  Never fear, nothing private about my friend is disclosed.  I am far too self-obsessed for that. Another note, which I consider important, will be appended below.]

Sorry for the slow reply.  I wasn't expecting to be able to touch-type today, but I had a last-minute reprieve from my hand specialist.  It seems that they ran out of whatever chemical agent they use to dissolve cysts on tendons.

My blog post was mostly regarding my frustration with going through a cardiac stress/echo procedure, which I can describe if you want or you can just look it up if you are curious, getting the initial notes and some of the raw data from the technicians, but getting no overview/summary or other communication from the cardiologist.  I've learned a little about this stuff through experience and googling, but I still don't feel qualified to correctly understand what I have received so far.  The word "abnormal" certainly shows up a lot in the notes.  I suppose if there was anything wrong requiring timely action or instruction from the cardiologist I would have received it... is what I would say if I were an optimist.

I like to think of myself as more of a realist than a pessimist, but I would be the last to know.

For a person with an anxiety disorder, I certainly have found it easier, as I get older, to take an "it is what it is" attitude towards potential worries of uncertain magnitude.   That may be a gift from my treatment-resistant depression.  More likely it is just that I have a different kind of anxiety.  I'm less afraid of the big things I can't control, like death, civil war, and the looming end of constitutional democracy, than I am of many little things most people enjoy, like being around other people, being seen, being present.

I just spent fifteen minutes staring at this screen while my mind plunged down multiple spiraling rabbit-holes of global and personal doom, fighting back the urge to pointlessly word vomit about them.  I don't need the internet or social media; I can doom-scroll my own psyche.  My only island of peace is in reminding myself that I am stupid and probably wrong about most things.

This isn't going well.  A friend should not subject a friend to such unfiltered psychic waste; that's what the "Psychic Toilet" is for. I should use it more often and see if it leaves me more personable. The word "personable" suddenly strikes me as more profound than the dictionary definition of, essentially, "pleasant".  Able to be a person, to be seen as, to see oneself as, a person.  Some of this may end up in my blog after all. 

Perhaps it would have been better to have had the procedure on my hand, just to slow down this typing.

I sincerely hope you are doing well, and am sorry as usual that I can't seem to talk about anything but myself.

 [Cynicism is so pervasive in everything I write, it is difficult for me to say anything positive without it appearing to be sarcasm.  I swear what I say next is not.  I am more grateful than I know how to express that there are a few people who I can call "friend".  The very idea of it is a source of constant surprise to me, or at least when I take the time to contemplate it.  There are a very few people from my distant past who, by the simple accumulation of shared experience at that time, I will always consider to be my friends, even if we have not communicated in years, even decades in some cases.  To dare to call anyone I have met since, say, 1996, a friend, in most cases I have literally asked explicit permission to use that word, to know that there is a mutual agreement and trust that the word is appropriate.  This is how poorly I understand what friendship is, and how bad I am at being meaningfully present in the lives of others as a friend.  For the most part, I am the lucky recipient of the good graces of very patient and kind friends.  If I lived under a definition of friendship that required frequent and mutual maintenance, I would have no friends at all.  I am again so very grateful for those who knowingly let me use that word without contract.]

Done

Not suicidal, just done.  Done with tests with results I cannot understand and which are not explained. Done with worrying about when and how I will die. Done with trying to estimate my worth, past, present or future.  I'll keep taking medications as prescribed, showing up to appointments as scheduled, but I will no longer complain of symptoms or concerns that might lead to more tests.  I am sick of tests and none of them will change anything.  I'm too old for a lifestyle change, and I don't want to fight the reaper with Big Pharma or Big Medicine any more than I already am.  I am so tired. I am so stupid.  I am so tired of being stupid.  I wanted so bad to be smart that I convinced myself that I was, but I'm not that young any more.

[Editorial Update: Stupidity proven by the fact that, despite compulsively re-reading my own blog entries, it took me at least three or four reads to notice I had used "told" where "old" was intended.]

I Have Always Been Like This

I could have sworn I had already made a post with this title, but a search can't even find the phrase anywhere in my blog. Go figure.

Context time: What follows is my response to someone else's lengthy post about Depression on a different "social media" platform.  I spent enough time writing it that I thought I should "preserve" it here, but I often think stupid things.

I like to think I am good at hiding it. I know I am especially good at hiding all of myself. Hell, back when I was able-bodied enough to do so, I built a room inside my garage that is literally lightproof and soundproof, and that is where I am right now, in the middle of a nest of clutter I know I will never clean. SSRI meds didn't work. MAOI meds made it worse. TMS treatments didn't work, but the people were nice. Despite assurances that the methodology has improved greatly, I am still, for now, more afraid of ECT than I am of just being like this. I have always been like this. My memory is bad, but I have artifacts, things I wrote and drew, not just as a teen but also as a child, and I have some of the concerned notes sent to my parents from my teachers. I have always been like this. I don't expect I will ever feel suicidal again. Life is pain but it is also short, and it keeps getting shorter the longer I live, and I have never really been on good terms with Death. The only good thing Death has waiting for me is a final silencing of the infernal ringing in my ears (not really my ears, they can't hear pitches that high, but rather my broken brain seems to be stuck in some kind of feedback loop in my auditory cortex). But enough about me, how are you?

Addendum: This is a remarkable demonstration of the problem I have previously described as "The Prison of 'I'" or "The Problem of 'I'".  I seem to recall having postulated a solution.  I should go back and read it before I write anything else.  A particular clip of a particular scene from the final episode of The Prisoner always pops into my head when I use "I".

Serious Errors In My Favorite Film that I didn't notice until I turned 60

Already with the disclaimers: the title of this essay is a convenience which ignores that, while "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968, Stanley Kubrick, Director) has been, for most of my life, my favorite film, even with the proviso that it cannot be well understood without also reading the novel of the same name (Arthur C. Clarke, also co-author of the screenplay), it has been surpassed in my estimation as both film and science fiction by "Arrival" (2016, Denis Villeneuve, Director), not to be confused with "The Arrival" (1996, David Twohy, Director), which is fun, but doesn't fit in this discussion. Even further, I recognize that the film is even better understood and appreciated if one reads the sadly out-of -print "The Lost Worlds of 2001", a 1972 paperback-only book also by Arthur C. Clarke.

 The reasons for now preferring "Arrival" over "2001" are more about what is good about "Arrival" than it is about shortcomings of  "2001", nonetheless, it had been a few years since I had really sat down and gave the Kubrick film adequate attention, and I was bothered by a number of things.

I'm going to limit myself to a few problems that I think should have been obvious to, and avoidable by, Kubrick and his collaborators and advisors at the time, not based upon new knowledge obtained since the beginning of pre-production on the film, which is estimated to have begun sometime in 1965.

Importantly, note that Project Mercury was complete, and Project Gemini had already flown the majority of it's missions and returned many color photographs, before 1965.  Note that these photographs were all in the public domain and many of them widely distributed at the time, and would have been easily obtained by anyone involved in the production of the film, along with eyewitness accounts from the Astronauts.

 I was going to include photos from Gemini and screenshots of the film to illustrate my points, but anyone sufficiently interested can easily obtain these, and can take my word for what I have to say here, or not.  Best Google Image Search keywords for relevant Gemini photos are "Project Gemini Photos of Sun" and "Project Gemini Photos of Earth".

Opening title sequence:

I will set aside any nit-picking about relative size of the Moon, Earth and Sun from the fictional point of view in this opening shot, as well as the amount of luminosity of the far side of the Moon when the three bodies are in this configuration.  I have no idea, nor do I particularly care, if the stars shown from this point of view, or in any other scene, are correct.

The literally "glaring" problem that takes me right out of the film is the depiction of a yellow sun with a a vastly expansive corona of yellow/orange.  The sun, as viewed from space, is intensely white and any "bloom" effect seen in photographs are due to interactions between sunlight and the optics in the camera, and remain white. This scene looks exactly like what it is: a spotlight aimed at a camera in a room full of air, perhaps even with a yellow "gel" in the spotlight.

The Earth and moon look exactly like what they are, static paintings, vastly underwhelming compared to available contemporary photography of Earth from orbit, the Moon from telescopic photos, or the Ranger and other probes, or better paintings based upon the same.

The Dawn of Man:

This is just a potential continuity problem: When the ape-men are examining the monolith, they are in a small depression in the ground which is not very well lit and the sunlight in the projected background photo appears to be coming from a less-than-noontime angle.  Suddenly we jump cut to a view looking straight up the monolith and the sun is directly overhead and the moon very nearly so.  So, maybe the jump cut also indicated a passage of time to when the alignment of objects in this view was possible.  I honestly don't know where in the world, or at what time of year, one can look directly upward and see the sun, but I am sure it happens, so, I should let this one go, or at least defer to someone who knows more than I do about such things. 

First Scenes from Earth Orbit:

My main complaint here is just how flat and boring the painting of the Earth is, especially when presented in relatively close temporal proximity to beautiful telescopic photos of the Moon.  Look at the Gemini photos of Earth from orbit, how much more colorful they are, and how land-masses are often easily seen, along with the thin envelope of atmosphere along the edge.  There is a palpable sense of a spherical object in view, even in two-dimensional photos from very low orbit.  Certainly a better painting could have been done than the washed-out mostly-white flat disc we are offered by the film, given, again, the easy availability of Project Gemini color photos at the time of production design.

From late stages of moon lander approach through the end of the TMA-1 sequence:

In addition to a carryover of my complaints about the plain appearance of Earth from space, here I just have another bunch of continuity complaints, that reflect what I can only explain as simple laziness.  It is reasonable to assume that the entire time Heywood Floyd is on the surface of the moon as depicted in this film is only a few hours, an Earth day or two at most.  Further, it is important to note that the Earth is frequently seen in the background in many exterior, and at least one spacecraft interior, shots in this sequence, thus it can be safely assumed that all fictional filming locations are on the tidally-locked near side of the moon, the face we always see from Earth.  Also, keep in mind it takes over three weeks for the moon to orbit the Earth, thus no significant change in the "phase" of the Earth as seen from the Moon should be observable within even as much as a couple of Earth days.  So, it is beyond curious that in successive shots in which the Earth is visible, it is alternately lit by the Sun, sometimes from camera left and sometimes from camera right.  These are simply and inescapably errors made in the production which could have been avoided if adequate attention were given.  The final shot before the cut to the Jupiter Mission is simply absurd.  After showing sunlight bouncing between left and right of all scenes, and the Earth always low in the lunar sky, suddenly, looking straight up from the bottom of the monolith, the Sun is directly above and the Earth very nearly so.  A pretty composition, but one which cannot be reconciled with the relative positions of these large bodies depicted immediately before the jump cut. 

Jupiter Mission:

For the remainder of the film, I can mostly leave any other observable oddities to artistic license.  I will note that the portions of the spacecraft that are in shadow would be in very dark shadows with virtually no hope of being photographed without supplemental lighting, and even the lighted side, at this distance from the Sun, would be very dimly lit, but that wouldn't be very nice looking, so, artistic license.  I will also note that the side of the antenna array directed towards the sun keeps changing between the front and the back, with no explanation. Finally, the size of the pod bay and the pods, and the size of the circular habitat area, all of which are supposedly inside the spherical front portion of Discovery One, don't seem to be able to fit.  I have yet to see diagram that makes sense of the internal use of space.  

 Beyond The Infinite:

Once Dave leaves in his pod the final time, to the end of the film, much if not all of what is shown is more allegory than literal, so just enjoy the ride and look forward to reading the book.

Finally:

I apologize for my gross inconsistency in the use of capitalization, but I am just too lazy to go back and fix it. Go figure.  Oh yeah, and it is really worth the trouble to watch "Jupiter and Beyond The Infinite" while listening to "Echoes" by Pink Floyd, instead of the original audio, especially the quadraphonic mix, if you can get it.  It is almost exactly the correct length, and this may not be a coincidence, but that is a whole other story.

It took me 60 years to begin to understand this...

I have always been a very self-involved person, and have not considered history to have much relevance to me personally.   The Baptist Church in which I was raised was very keen on various forms of "Sins of the Father" guilt-mongering, and I rebelled against this with a vengeance.  Having been named first, middle and last after my Father, I even went so far as to go through the legal process of changing my entire name.  I did not consider myself in any way connected to the actions of my ancestors, and thus did not have any great curiosity about them.  This was made easier because something about my origins were considered shameful by my extended family and they treated me accordingly.  I still can't be sure I fully know why, and have always maintained that I don't care.

I did not consider the imperialism torture and slavery my white ancestors visited upon the world, nor the continuing actions of my contemporaries, to be in any way connected to me.

These convenient pretenses have been eroding very recently.  Within my own selfish life I began to realize that the past is as real and important as the present or the future.  Eventually, it occurred to me that my life as it is, including great privileges that I take for granted, cannot exist other than within the context of a vast web of history and current events, people of the past and present, which I can only hope to understand in the smallest way.

I am beginning to feel that it is important for me to understand as much as possible, for my connection to it cannot be denied.

In particular, I have been trying to fill in the vast gaps in my knowledge of the history of the United States of America in which I have lived my entire life.   Part of this comes from being old enough to be horrified at how little generations of adults younger than myself really know about the small span of history through which I have lived. 

The earliest curiosity I developed about the ongoing economic imperialism of the U.S. was when I left the hard but necessary work of farming and moved to the city to do the dehumanizing and needlessly dangerous work still being done, back in the 1980s, in factories here.  I was aware of the great amount of regulation that had been developed over decades and even centuries to make working conditions in U.S. factories safe, humane and fairly compensated, but the "ground truth" of life on the factory floor fell far short of the ideal. Then I noticed how most of the manufactured goods used in this country, in my life, were made in other countries where the scarce worker protections I enjoyed might not even exist.  I could only imagine how much worse it was for those workers.

I had long been vaguely curious about monuments in the downtown Portland, Oregon park blocks celebrating the bravery and heroism of local soldiers who fought in a war in a place called The Philippines.   I was previously unaware that there had been such a war, and the name of the place where it happened only sounded slightly familiar.

Then a few years later, I find myself in a long distance internet friendship with a kid who lives in The Philippines and shares, even exceeds, my great enthusiasm for a surf-punk band called "Man... or, Astro-Man?" (and many typographical variants of the same).   For many months I have been providing what small help I can for his grand project of re-creating the rather complex staging and sound design of the band, very specifically, during their 1999 tours.   

I began to get curious about a history that includes some kind of past war between his country and mine, and ends up with his passion for an American band that has never even played in his country.

I turned to YouTube and a history educator for whom I had developed some trust for telling the whole story as best as his own research, often involving multiple consultants, could allow.  I recently watched his video on The Philippine-American War, which as it turns out, was a sort of spin-off of the already ongoing Spanish-American War, about which I also knew almost nothing.  The Philippine war started in 1898 and lasted until... well sometimes it's hard to set a specific date when something like this ends.  Sure there are dates for treaties and such, but those don't always mean terrible things just stopped happening.

If you want to watch it, the video is here:

https://youtu.be/SbH8D381J-I?si=pjRL-Mi4_p5SKBDW

And of course, as with any important subject, seek your own sources as well.

At this juncture I don't know how to reconcile my horror and shame about my own country and my realization that these same horrible and wrong things make the life I mostly sort-of enjoy possible. 

Side step in world and personal history a few years, and I was briefly working for a sub-contractor for customer service for the shoe and fashion company Nike. During training for this job, we are treated to many videos, including one that features a very positive story about the wonderful work being done at one of the Nike factories in The Philippines.  Even with all of the positive spin, I could tell this was not a manufacturing workplace like those I had known here in the U.S., and the vast contrast between that sweatshop and the gleaming modernist dream of the Nike corporate headquarters just a few blocks away from where I live, is hard to express adequately.

And all of this is just a small sample of the atrocities of the relationship, past and present, between The United States and The Philippines. 

I haven't even touched upon the vast sources of shame based upon just the internal history of the country that made me who I am.   

I don't know what to do with this, about this.  For now, I am just trying to learn as much as I can about the country, world and history I have for too long considered mostly irrelevant to my life.

Of one thing I am increasingly sure: there were no "good old days", much less any past standard of "Great" to which we should return.  The farther back in time one looks, the less "great" things were for pretty much everybody, but especially anybody without my privilege of being a white heterosexual male. 

[Editorial note: I have done a pass through this to correct some of the most embarrassing errors in spelling, syntax and readability.  Along the way I found a tangled web of tenses that, if I were to try to untangle it, I would give up on this essay entirely.  In a way, shifting and conflicting tenses are intrinsic to one of the central ideas I am trying to put forth here: that the past, present and future, as well as the individual and their small place in the world, are all inextricably, interdependently connected, like it or not.  For a lot of my ongoing "awakening" process, I would also like to thank Roccie Hill and her powerful book of historical fiction "The Blood of My Mother", which I am still reading, but can already recommend.]

An Old Man Falls Down

Halfway through writing this, I feel compelled to add this preamble, explaining that much of what follows is excessive in detail that does not contribute to a tolerable, much less entertaining, narrative.

I have fallen down three times in the past week or so.  This is considerably more frequent than usual.

There has been a late resurgence of winter weather recently. "Resurgence" is not the right word. Winter had been mild until it suddenly wasn't in mid/late February.  It might yet not be done.

Fall One:

I was out in the most extreme of the snow, at about 5AM, trying to get a large round segment of tree from my side yard into my house, to burn in the fireplace.  Our heat pump has been out of service for a few years, and in any case, even using electrical heat is dodgy, and expensive, because the heat exchanger is rather clogged with pet hair and such.  

So, I was out in the extreme cold trying, as I was too weak and lazy to simply pick it up and carry it, to roll a large chunk of wood towards the front door.  It accumulated snow as I rolled it, much like a snowball in a cartoon or when children are building a snowman.  I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I think I was pushing on it with my foot and lost my balance.  In any case, I ended up face down in a little more than a foot of cold powder snow, with no gloves and no obvious way to get back on my feet.

The snow was so cold on my bare hands that it felt, paradoxically, like they were on fire.  White hot needles of ice tore through my bare hands as I crawled towards my car.

Fortunately, I had the forethought to bring my car keys with me in case I wanted to use it as a warming shelter.

 Eventually I made it to my car, started it up, and waited for it, and subsequently my hands, to warm up.

The pain was amazing.  The time immeasurable. Eventually, I was able to get back in the house, but without my burnable prize snowball.

I would eventually find that I had somehow scraped off a large patch of skin from below my right knee. Diabetes slows healing, especially in my legs, so regrowing this skin is a long-term work-in-progress, but infection has been avoided.

Fall Two:

This was during the cold weather, but doesn't really count as a weather-related fall.  I was leaving a small room in my garage.  A space I had created for myself after the demise of my recording studio, intended to be a smaller studio for smaller projects.  It is extremely well insulated regarding light, sound and heat, so a very small heater keeps it almost too warm in the coldest of weather.  I can't imagine physically constructing this space, from the scraps of my old studio, with the body I have now.  I am glad I did it back in 2004. 

I had a sudden notion that there was something I left behind that I wanted to go back and get.  An attempted turn on the cluttered floor of my garage and I was suddenly on my back, painfully lying on the metal edge of a discarded, inoperative, 24-channel mixer.  Not much more to that story.

Fall Three:

I ventured out into the world, one of my least favorite things to do as of late, to secure supplies which had proven difficult to acquire through delivery services.  In a Fred Meyer parking lot, I failed to notice a patch of ice near where I had parked, and down I went.  The bizarre aspect of this experience is that I found myself once again crawling towards a place where I could pull myself up, but this time it was in a public place in what passed for full daylight at the time.  There were people all around going about their own business as if there wasn't a 60 year old weakling trying to find a way to make right his figurative capsized tortoise shell.  In retrospect, I think people rushing to help would have been more horrifying than being left to my own limited devices.

In any case, I obviously solved the problem and completed my errand with only a smaller patch of missing skin next to my left elbow.

 In Conclusion:

I think writing this all out was a strange and pointless thing to do.  What do I want?  Pity? Empathy? None of the above.  I just have an inexplicable urge, occasionally, to document the mundane events of my decaying life.

Perhaps my mundane documentation, along with those of others, may eventually help some future archeologist form some marginally realistic understanding of common life in this era.

I also like to feed birds that don't really need me to feed them, and one very old feral cat who very much needs me to feed her if she is to continue becoming older.  I also do the laundry and take care of my two indoor cats. Life could be worse, and it will be.

Introduction to the Boss Battle with my Ego

 I have taken to re-reading books I remember that I like, but have not read in so long I could scarcely provide a summary from memory.  I am starting with Kurt Vonnegut, who I had first read in my late teens.  It is astounding how little I remember, but not at all surprising that I liked these books.  It is also clear how these books shaped my way of thinking and observing the world, especially then. Even now, they help me look at life in a way somehow more tolerable.  I almost said "yet cynical", but it is the cynicism itself that takes some of the sting out of existence.  In most of the intervening years between my Vonnegut-influenced youth and decline, between 16 and 60, I was very earnest, very busy, and very self-indulgent.  Most of the time I covered the sting of existence with a sense of immediate importance in everything I did, and when that didn't work I was episodically unpleasant, unhappy, or just gratefully drunk.

I had wanted to be an author for the longest time. I wanted to be many things, but I am lazy and stupid, and easily distracted by what I believe others want or need from me.  The only thing that comes easily is writing, but now even that has become something I rarely do.  After awhile, due to my self-indulgent habit of re-reading myself, I finally realized I have been repeating myself, and that has brought me to an almost complete stop.

Long before noticing that I have been repeating myself, I became painfully aware that I only write about myself, and from my own perspective.  Not only do I lack a "mind's eye", I lack the ability to figuratively wear shoes that are not my own. This makes for writing that isn't just boring, but painfully boring.

Regarding the repetition, I know there are many little mildly interesting vignettes of experience which I have spoken of to others, back when I spoke to others, but have never written out.  There may even be more than that.  The main problem is that I know my memories are eroding.  I cannot call up any story at will.  I have to wait for something to trigger it, which does happen, but then they don't hold up as stories because I often remember fragments, but not what connects them, and generalities, but insufficient details.

This also does not solve the "I" problem.  I am sick to death of of writing sentences that begin with "I", and I am absolutely sure this is not the first time I have written those words.

So I have the "I" problem, and the "story full of holes" problem.

Reading Vonnegut closer to 60 than 16 seems to hint at possible solutions.  The first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five is written in the first person, and serves, in part, the function that most authors waste on an "Introduction" or "Preface" that readers routinely skip.  From then on, the story isn't about "I", it is about Billy Pilgrim.  That solves the "I" problem, and also gives Vonnegut freedom from the burden of trying to maintain the integrity of so-called objective truth.  He can fill in the missing details and connective story tissue with convenient or entertaining lies.  By making Billy Pilgrim "unstuck in time", Vonnegut even frees himself from strictly linear storytelling, and can distract from the absence of sequences that might otherwise have appeared to be missing.  He even distracts from the fact that most of life is truly dull, repetitious, and unworthy of novelization.

These cannot be original observations about Vonnegut or Slaughterhouse five, or even the task of authoring fiction in general.  They aren't even entirely new to me, but perhaps for the first time, usefully complete and clearly codified for my own purposes.

Then there is the problem of someone else's oft mentioned "shoes".  To me, this is a variation of what I like to call the "Leading Man" problem, or for illustrative purposes, the "Tom Hanks" problem.

Tom Hanks is a "Leading Man" not just because he is famous and first-billed in the majority of thing in which he performs.  He is a "Leading Man" because at all times you are aware that you are watching Tom Hanks, not a character actor who disappears into their role.  Yet at the same time, this doesn't take you out of the story.  The viewer remains in a state of suspended disbelief sufficient to be engaged with the events of the presentation. My theory is that Tom Hanks doesn't play a character, he plays Tom Hanks fully immersed in the situation of the character.  This is his solution for his own "I" problem.

Again, certainly not an original observation, nor the first time I have attempted to convey my own thoughts about it. But together with the other solutions Vonnegut implies, I almost have a working theory of how to write something potentially tolerable to myself, and maybe even others.

Unfortunately, I feel like I have only learned how to steal a pale ghost of the genius of others.  I am still oppressed by the conviction that it has all been done better, and there is no need for my version.  This is the "Boss Battle" with my own sense of self-importance.  Egotism and self deprecation are not even a yin and yang, they are functionally identical.  There is an aspect to my "I" problem which I have not yet mastered sufficiently to begin tolerable writing.

Is Everyone Dying?

 Yes.  Of course.  But is everyone I know, including myself, dying right now, very soon, all with symptoms resembling pneumonia?  Momma Kitty's symptoms seem to come and go with the weather.  Patricia's mother died last week of something more akin to pleurisy. I've been sick for a week with something confusing.  Definitely not pleurisy.  I've had that, after my open heart surgery many years ago, and it hurts a lot more than this.  But maybe I have something like pneumonia, which is annoying because I had a specific vaccine against that earlier this year. 

This isn't like when I went to the hospital and found out I had congestive heart failure.  If anything, I am dehydrated.  I have been losing about a pound a day for a week, and that is almost certainly water weight because I am not exercising.  So much chest congestion, to the point that I feel I can barely breathe, and I have almost no voice, and my breathing sounds like an Aztec Death Whistle (look it up, if you don't know), which keeps me awake.  Some nasal discharge, but definitely not to the degree of sinus infections of the past. 

Why am I even writing this?  I don't know.  Forensic bread crumbs?  For whom?  I had intended to go to a clinic today (Friday), but woke up feeling better than I had for awhile and it all seemed so inconvenient.  But then the symptoms come back.  Coughing to the point that I nearly pass out and my stomach muscles ache, just to divest my lungs of a tiny measure of sputum. 

Maybe tomorrow I will go to a clinic.  Maybe tomorrow I will feel better. Again, I don't even know why I am writing this.   My apologies to my audient (right or wrong, I hold that to be the singular form of the plural "audience").

Three Mothers

Yesterday, technically still today for me, my Wife's Mother died.  This is a complicated passing, with a complicated back story, and my part in that story is one that I will probably never fully tell.  Ultimately it is sad, in no small part because I don't know if I ever saw her truly happy.  It feels strange and wrong to have nothing more to say than this when a human life which has so thoroughly intersected with my own has ended.

My own Mother moved with my younger sister to another state a year or two ago.  I honestly can't remember which state right now.  My Mother, at least as of a few days ago, is still alive.  The story of these relationships, with my mother and my sisters, is also very complicated, and a story I feel I have every right to tell to anyone, but I do not feel very motivated to do so at this moment.  My immediate concerns and responsibilities are with and for my wife at this time.

The third mother is a cat.  "Momma Kitty".  She is very old.  It seems she has always been living on my back deck, with food, water and warmed shelter provided. She became the matriarch of a minor cat population explosion, but I managed to get her and her first born all captured and fixed, and her grandkittens all socialized and placed in homes.  Now only she remains, having outlived her own offspring and several other neighborhood ferals.  Just a few nights ago her breathing sounded very labored and I was afraid she wasn't going to last the night, yet she still found her way to unreachable shadows before I could pick her up.  Fortunately, she seems a lot better today.

Notes for an Introduction to a Book (which will probably never be written)

I'm sorry to give away the ending, but there is no point, there is no meaning.  Life is not a Movie, it isn't even a Story.   It's just something that happens until it stops happening, and every one of them is different, and the only person who knew it all is dead.  Soon anyone who knew any part of it will forget, and then they die, and eventually all of it ends.  Entropy wins.  Creation loses. 

Or I'm wrong.  I don't know shit, and I certainly don't know you or your life, or the universe in which it is happening. 

I very much want to be wrong, but wanting doesn't make it so any more than pretending to know does.

A good writer, a popular writer, would feed you a bunch of happy horseshit about how the meaning is in the moment or some such brain vomit as that.  What good does living "in the now" and finding meaning "in the moment" do me after I am dead?  None that I know of, and none that any dead person has ever bothered to tell any living person.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably lying or delusional.

But again, I am really good at being wrong, and I really want to be wrong about all of this.

A Vague Sense of Final Purpose

The brief flurry of "Retro-Blogs" was an attempt to rescue increasingly hard to access writings on other online platforms.  I lost the initial manic drive to pursue this effort rather quickly, but it should resume at some unpredictable time in the near future, or not.  Some will not be recoverable, but I may have offline drafts that can be refurbished.  As layers of my life peel away, some shadows of memory are returning, and there may be an effort to document some of those.  As I review what I have written, I realize some of what I have not. There may also be some overlong emails in my sent folders which may spark other memories or tell stories that can be reclaimed.

All of this comes from an absurd conceit that something could be organized and condensed from this blog to form a physical book.  Nothing digital lasts, but physical books can be surprisingly resilient over time.  This grew from the increasing conviction that I have very likely exhausted my supply of things to say, of days with events specific to me even marginally worth describing.

Of all of my shallow ambitions, the most persistent was for me to be some kind of writer, followed very closely by the ambition to be some kind of songwriter and singer.  Singing is largely out of the question now, but I am fortunate to have had a few moments on a real stage, with a real band, in front of a real audience, and I managed to make reasonably finished recordings of two original songs. I have also documented lyrics and non-standard attempts at conveying melody and other musical elements of several more, almost all of which were originally conceived in a very narrow period of my youth.  Writing and editing of writing remains possible, if sufficiently low standards are applied to the quality of the work.

Mine isn't a life that tells a story.  There are some stories within it, but not the kind of thing that adds up to a book of general interest.  But it is the only life I have had, or likely will ever have.  Even boring books of boring lives such as mine exist in abundance, yet I feel some small compulsion to add my own, even if only very few copies can be produced at my own expense.  There may eventually be, I suppose, some small historical value to boring people documenting their boring lives.

Retro-Blog 2010.10.20 - Self-Therapy Experiment One: FAIL

Office, afternoon.

Dr. Noble: So, what brings you here today?

Patient: Seriously, that's the best I can do?

Dr. Noble: I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean.

Patient: You're imaginary.  I am in the process of creating you as a character, and I already think the opening line I gave you is hopelessly lame.

Dr. Noble: Lame?

Patient: A completely illogical cliche'.  I mean, I would be here because of an appointment, and through the process of making that appointment you would already know why I am here.

Dr Noble: Perhaps it is just a standard open-ended way to start a conversation and to learn about you.  I may have some idea of why you made the appointment, but your own thinking about your reasons for being here at this time could be different, and illuminating.

Patient: No psychiatrist or therapist I have ever seen talks the way you are talking right now.  You sound more like me.  I'm bored with me.

Dr. Noble: As long as I am allowed to be atypical, allow me to point out that you would not be here if you were bored with yourself.  If anything you are curious about yourself, perhaps fascinated with yourself.

Patient: Well, that is certainly atypical, I'll give you that.  You are so completely unrealistic.

Dr. Noble: How?  Please explain.

Patient: Well, right there, you're asking questions.  Do you have any idea how seldom people in your profession demonstrate any curiosity about me as a patient or a person?

Dr. Noble:  Until I am better developed as a character distinct from yourself, I expect I will know exactly what your experiences with people of my profession have been.  But is your characterisation accurate?

Patient: You present a valid challenge to my prejudices. I'll just say that my characterisation is consistent with my subjective experience.

Dr. Noble:  That's a dodge.  You didn't really answer me.

Patient: And real therapists don't ever challenge me like that.

Dr. Noble: So once again, why are we here?

Patient: I have found my experience with therapists to be boring and frustrating and they never generate any sense of progress.  I was hoping that by approaching the process in a fictional setting I could say, and hear, all of the things that have seemed to be missing in real sessions with real therapists.

Dr. Noble: Progress towards what end?

Patient: Exactly.  Can you believe that no therapist ever simply asked me that question?

Dr. Noble: Frankly, no.  In one way or another I think they must have asked.

Patient: Really, all of them?

Dr. Noble: Honesty, yes.  I suspect that the resulting conversation has never met some need you have, and thus you have projected the full blame for this on the therapist.

Patient:  The only therapist I have seen who would have given such a defensive answer is the original Dr. Noble whose name I borrowed for your character.

Dr. Noble: That's interesting.  Why did you chose his name?

Patient: Maybe it isn't interesting to anyone but me, which is why I had you say that.

Dr. Noble: Another dodge instead of an answer.

Patient: Fair enough.  Of all of the therapists of various disciplines I have seen, he is the one for which I feel the least personal and professional respect.  All of the others I would be hesitant to offend, no matter how unlikely it would be that they would read this.  But him, I have depersonalised to the point that I don't care if I hurt his feelings.  In fact, the idea of him having feelings isn't entirely real to me, thus he is the perfect choice for the namesake of my fictional therapist.

Dr. Noble:  That doesn't sound like a very healthy attitude towards others.

Patient: I would pay double to hear a therapist say that to me just once.

Dr. Noble: Obviously, you've never really expressed yourself honestly and fully enough to justify such a response.

Patient: Maybe your kind would never say anything so directly punative no matter how justified you may feel it to be.

Dr. Noble.  Perhaps. Why do you say that?

Patient:  Please, don't go all Eliza on me.

Dr. Noble: You're the one writing this, not me.

Patient: Yes. That is the root problem we need to solve first.  We need to make you beleivably a distinct individual from myself.

Dr. Noble: Is that even possible?  Is it even a good goal to have?

Patient: Obviously it is possible.  Fictional works by individual authors are full of distinct characters.  As far as being a good goal: in terms of writing, of course; in terms of therapy, that's a good question.

Dr. Noble: Maybe you're just a bad writer.

Patient: Talk like that isn't making you any more real or separate from my own psyche.

Dr. Noble: And whose fault is that?

Patient: Wow, if anything, you are devolving as a character as this goes on.  You are just a sock-puppet manifestation of my self-hatred.

Dr. Noble: Why bother hating yourself?  Isn't there a world of people ready and willing to do it for you?

Patient:  You would think so, but I don't give them much of a chance.

Dr. Noble: Have you noticed how transparent I have become?  I have almost completely ceased to exist.

Patient: That's ok, you've done your job.

Dr. Noble:  Really?  And what job was that?

Patient: You have reminded me that no matter how boring or disappointing they may be, talking to a real therapist beats the Hell out of talking to myself.

Dr. Noble: Are you sure?

Patient: No.

Retro-Blog 2010, January-August: Some of The Final Days of James Milton Wood Sr. (my Father)

[Editor's note: Much that was excessively technical or otherwise irrelevant has be excised from this series of online posts. And obviously, this was not originally a Blog entry.]

January 4, 2010:

Wondering what is going on with Dad.  No word from my sisters.  Must take a break for kitty searching and check on Dad.

January 10, 2010:

Dad back in the hospital, Jen leaving again for CO on Tuesday. Hopefully both turn out better than last time.

January 19, 2010:

I'm going to attempt an extended break from sharing family and personal drama on Facebook.

August 3, 2010:

Dad is back in the ICU at the horrorshow Willamette Falls Hospital. Stomach bleed and Pneumonia. Most vitals are trending positive, except for lung function, which is pretty bad.  Barely keeping acceptable blood oxygen levels with a positive pressure mask delivery of over %80 oxygen, and hoping they don't have to go for full artificial respiration.

August 4, 2010:

Dad's lung function greatly improved, transitioned from the positive pressure face mask to a simple nose tube.  Should be moved out of ICU any time now.

August 6, 2010:

I hate the night nurse.  First she calls my sister and says Dad won't make it through the night.  Then she gets all pissy about so many people showing up and kicks us all out until morning.  He's still alive, but worse again.

August 9, 2010:

The health-care roller-coaster was extra wild today.  It started with a "family meeting" where the staff tried to talk us into pulling the plug, and ended with my dad waking up, and talking to my sister. The difference: less morphine, more music.  I set him up with an mp3 player with many hours of his favorite country and gospel music, as well as old family recordings.

August 11, 2010:

There is another "family meeting" today. I lack the objectivity to know who is more irrational, myself or my older sister, but a determination on this point does not alter the inevitable conclusion.  I am sufficiently agitated that I must exclude myself from this process.

August 11, 2010:

Score another win for evil.  A medical professional violated her Hippocratic oath and state law by murdering my father at 5:15PM Pacific time today.

August 20, 2010:

Skipped my Dad's funeral. Too much bad blood between me and all other survivors, and selfishly, I really hate funerals.

August 23, 2010:

My father's third wife, Shirley, died today, on his Birthday and one day short of a week since his funeral. Her cancer was only at stage 2, so I'm not sure what happened.