Autumn

I have been watching the leaves falling outside my patio glass doors this morning. First, I saw two leaves fall and then a strong breeze pushed a bunch of golden leaves past the steps that are not far from me. The green trees now have golden streaks in them and for me they seem like gold for I now know if I did not move to Portland things would have turned out badly for me in Redding. I may have gotten my house purged last year but it created in me a need to leave and I would never have gotten the medical help I have been receiving here in Portland.

Yesterday, I learned that a medical problem that started about three or so years ago may be a sign of thyroid cancer. My doctor gave me some medication to control the problem but never investigated the cause. When the problem got worse, he increased the medication. The doctors here investigated the cause. I am going for a needle biopsy today after two other tests showed problems. Many people have survived thyroid cancer if that what it is. The lung cancer is in its early stages. Again, the problem was not looked into.

I am not saying that I got bad care there in Redding. They saved my life and caught ovarian cancer which is a big killer of women. I was exposed to Agent Orange in the military and I have had problems since. The Veterans Administration have done well with me on that score but I have had to be my own advocate.

The sun just came out. It is so beautiful out there right now. I can hear birds singing including crows who are cawing. Now, it is hard to see the golden leaves in the bright green leaves but I know they are there. September is hard on the heels of August. When I was growing up, this was my favorite time of the year. I grew up in San Diego and trees were not all that common especially when it was time for the leaves to fall. I had to look hard for the signs. Here in Portland, it is very apparent. The signs of life is also very apparent for me as well.

Meditation

Knowing I will get old, I breathe in
Knowing I can't escape old age, I breathe out

Plum Village had the above meditation chant on my Facebook this morning. It is a good one to use in formal meditation. No one can escape old age unless death intervenes. You say it over and over again so the self can accept this reality.

A friend told me that one of child's playmate's died during the week. She was trying to explain this to her daughter. It was a two layer thing as she had to explain that her friend had died and what death was and explaining death to a nine year old is not easy. It isn't at any age even an adult. Her family had the child in question over the house on many occasions so all of them had gotten to know her well. She was a delightful child but a troubled one. The second layer involved the reason for her death. Her father had killed her in a dispute with the mother. That was very difficult to explain to her daughter. How do you explain that a care taker, a parent had done such a thing? He had killed himself later.

This was not about old age. Yes, it was. For a similar thing happened to a childhood friend when I was growing up too. We all leave friends behind in childhood as this daughter of a friend was learning now. It is part of life to experience death and to experience many things such as aging. We all have mirrors. We will all watch ourselves age from that childhood to old age.

There is no way we can avoid it, but we can deny this truth for many years. We deny death as we deny many things. If we are men, we can shave with our eye closed. Not all women wear make-up. We can avoid the mirror. We can avoid the friends that are no longer there, the relatives that have disappeared. Then one day it hits us like a bolt out of the sky. We are old, our hair is grey, our joints and muscles ache. Sales clerks start giving us senior citizen discounts.

Wouldn't it be better to slowly ease our way into older age? We have all seen people fighting old age with heavier and heavier make-up, dyed hair, fashionable and young looking clothes and more time spent at the gym and still having young children calling one grandma or grandpa. I know people who instruct their grandchildren to call them by their first names. It all catches up with us. The constant questioning: "How old do you think I look?"

I watched an episode of Midsomer Murders and it was set in an convalescent home. One resident said that when you get old, you become invisible. When people started to die in the home no one thought anything about it because the residents were elderly in the first place. Even the doctor got irritated with the people who lived there and their complaints. Culture and society places a lesser value on the older citizen. That does not mean the individual has to. I can't change the world but I can change how I view myself.

There is a lot of life that happens every day we have to strive to accept. As a child, we see death coming in early to take our playmates, relatives and even parents. This continues to happen as we grow older. There is so much of life to accept on a daily basis that I don't want to accept everything because it means so much more. Growing old means the death of dreams of so many things, of endless plans of living in places beyond the horizon, of romance and being young and beautiful, of living in a thousand fairy tales that I am the heroine. It means seeing the end of things of what must of been in the eyes of that little girl just before her father killed her.

It is a rough life out there, but as a zen master said once to Joseph Campbell, life is just what it is and nothing more or nothing less, life is. I don't understand what happens everyday and I have to accept that. I have to accept the fact I don't know a lot of things but what I do know is that I am getting older and nothing will stop that except death. Nothing will stop me aging. Breath in. I know I will get old. Breath out. My life consists of this moment. It is a small room, this moment and it is all that I have, all I should have, all any of us will ever have.

Listening

I have both Facebook and Twitter accounts and because of that I tend to read articles and essays that I would normally not read. I read one on the art of listening and it was from Plum Village in France. It said that listening to other people was part of one's spiritual path. I had not considered that before or maybe I forgot.

I am also reading a book on autism, "Be Different, Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian: With Practical Advice For Aspergians, Misfits, Families and Teachers" by John Elder Robison (Crown Archeype: 2011). The reader might wonder why I brought this up but this book by an author who suffers from a form of autism explains why he had to learn to listen and have an imaginary stop watch in his head so he could listen to people and not tell people all kinds of interesting facts in the first 30 seconds after meeting them.

I am a writer and often spend time alone writing and sketching in a journal or writing on a laptop. A laptop does not answer back and is a very willing listener. I get used to just downloading what I have to say without listening to anyone other than myself. I miss out on a lot of things that way. I do listen to my grandchildren but I had trouble listening to one of my children because he talked about technical matters and I have zero interest in anything of a mechanical nature. He would get so frustrated talking to me. I had to learn the hard way that I was being unfair to him. I was his mother and I had no interest in what interested him the most. I am better now and listen to him more.

I listened to my other child because he talked about literature and the arts. I am fascinated with those subjects. Inadvertently, I increased the sibling rivalry between them. Again this was not a good thing and it was my fault. There is a natural amount of it between brothers and sisters in the first place. When I was growing up, my parents did not want to listen to me which hurt me but they did not want to listen to my other siblings either. My father did not want to listen to anyone but himself and even that he did not do a very good job.

Listening involves listening to oneself. Many people forget that. I am doing that nowadays. I am trying to do that as honestly as I can which means hearing what is really said and not what I want to hear. I also listen to others and look like I am listening when I do. It is not only polite to do so, but also a very compassionate thing to do. I remember times in my life when people really listened to me. As the kids say, it is awesome when someone really listens to you. I need to do the same to others.

I read a great deal and sometimes I think that if it isn't in a book, it isn't worth listening to. That is so wrong. I need to put the magic glue on my lips and listen to someone and ask questions if I don't understand some aspect of it. Of course when the conversation is so practiced that you know he or she has told this same story many times it takes great amounts of patience to stay with the talker. That is when I ask questions to break the sameness of it. That does not mean I have to stay with someone who won't stop, won't consider the listener.

There is a Star Trek movie in which Mr. Spock's mother asks her son: "What do you feel?" To break the stream of someone's story that has been told countless times I have asked what do you feel about that? It is usually enough for them to stop the sing song words and say what they are feeling about the story they are telling and some real conversation gets started. If not, then I go somewhere else.

I know someone who always asks the same questions in a conversation but it works. What did you like about that experience the most, the worst? I don't know if he is really interested in the answers but it seems as if he is. It usually gets the other person thinking too. Listening is part of a conversation in which there is an exchange of ideas and information. No one wants to be part of a one sided conversation. That was what Robison wrote he learned from his experiences in talking with people.

When I worked for the employment department for the state of California, I did learn that the best thing I could possibly do was to listen to the people who came in to see me. They weren't just looking for work but also they were in pain after losing a job. Some men burst into tears. I tried very hard to stop this because I was a woman and I did not want them to be seen in tears in public because they would feel bad about it later. I did want them to feel they were being believed, listened to sympathetically. It is scary to be working in one job for 19 years and suddenly lose it a year before they could get their pension. They would blame themselves but it was their employers who wanted to save money. Employees also feel hurt by the callous behavior of people and companies they worked for so many years. Listening was essential. Then as I left that job I fell out of that skill of listening.

It was Plum Village that reminded me that is was part of my Spiritual Path to listen because it was a compassionate thing to do. When you do compassionate things, you become kinder and gentler towards your fellow human beings. It is a cycle of good and it helped me to be a better person and in turn a happier person. And by listening, I learned things about people. I also became calmer and took things slower. I started to remember what I knew before about being an active listener. I was a reader which is a form of listening. I am trying to put what I have learned into use these days. I don't want to leave this earth a worse place than I found it.

#NeverApologizeFor

Every so often, there are a flurry of postings on a certain headings on Twitter. This morning was for "#NeverApologizeFor". I twitted a few things about not apologizing for liking certain things such as reading and listening to particular kinds of music such as classical. Most of call I think it is important to be who one is without apologizing.

I put down in my Twitter that one should own up to who they are. Some interpret this to mean their sexual orientation and it might mean that to them although it does not mean that to me. Some people think it means being rude to some people, but I don't think it means that for me. I like to not say things to people I don't mean. If people are gossiping about someone, I like the freedom to go somewhere else. I think gossip can be vicious and mean. It means saying things that are compassionate and kind as I did when I worked at a regular job for the state of California and getting criticized for it. I got awfully tired of being called a "bleeding heart liberal" for simply trying to understand why people do certain things. This is the way I am. I am not going to apologize for it. I just turn around and went somewhere else. I don't have to listen to it.

I love to read and television is boring to me. I am not going to apologize for it. I know there are many people who find my interests dull. So be it. I love museums and art shows interesting and exciting. There is room for all of us in this world and don't understand why some people have to tell others what they think of their interests. If you want to do things that I find boring to me, then do them and leave me alone to do what I enjoy. Heavens knows there are plenty of people doing things I don't like as there are people who enjoy being together that I don't like. I don't see why anyone should apologize for certain likes and dislikes.

I remember being on a train where one has to share the dinning room tables. The train was going through Nevada and I was seated at a table with a couple of senior citizens. I was on my way to a training sessions for my regular job in Denver, Colorado. I was astonished by the beauty of the mountains and desert. I said as much when I sat down. The senior passenger got very angry at me and told me that I did not know what I was talking about. Then the waiter was very nice to me as he gave me a very good breakfast and I tipped him. The man got mad at me for tipping and again told me that. I was in a good mood and was not going to be talked out of it. I told him that I always tipped the waiters, and I found the scenery beautiful. I just ate my breakfast and worked very hard to ignore him. The wife never said anything.

I don't think any of us should apologize for anything unless we make a mistake and err on the side of bad manners. I have done that. I have bitten someone's head off, so to speak, because I was low on sugar as I was the other day. I apologized for that. I still think I was right in saying that the person in question needed more training on her computer and never said I was wrong only that I should not have been so negative. She discovered the error herself and corrected it.

I love Twitter because of the chances we have to Twitter about different things ever so often. I rarely have the chance to add my own posting to a subject. I sometimes put down the name of the book that I am reading on Friday. Every so often they have something that is fun to add one's own two cents worth as they did today. I read what other people post. Others have posted writing such things as never apologize for telling the truth or being bigger than you are. I am not sure I understand all of the posts but it is fun to read.

Midsomer Murders and Art Fair

This past weekend I went to Silverton, Oregon for their Art Festival. The weather was perfect for it and I went with dear friends and had a great time. There were some wonderful artists and photographers who were displaying their wares. I bought several coffee mugs and one friend interviewed someone for a magazine. I met some very interesting people including the mayor of Silverton.

When I wasn't at the Silverton Art Festival, I watched several episodes of Midsomer Murders off of Netflix on my laptop. It got warm in Portland and I enjoyed the coolness of my apartment which never went above 70 degrees F. I had not watched it before. It is a series made in England under the wide umbrella of the BBC. It is a beautifully filmed series and they used very well done scripts. Each episode starts with a brief scene of the murder and the rest of the series is spent in solving who did it. I am in the early part of the series which has as its main detective, Tom Barnaby and his partner, Troy. There are plenty of red herrings to go around.

What I like most about this series is that the murders has many layers like life and all reasons are addressed and looked into until all questions are explained. Some of the plots were weak on explanations but that was rare. For example a elderly woman murders a man so a will could be found so an innocent woman would not be blamed for a murder and her unborn child not get his inheritance. There is no real connection between the elderly woman and the woman and the elderly woman except a sense of justice. The other scripts are far more stronger than that. There is also humor and some strong friendships and even love between Chief Inspector Barnaby and his wife.

I don't watch that much television but what I do watch must have the elements this show has such as wonderful photography, good scripts, good character development and excellent action. It has all of that and more. I love the English countryside. The homes both inside and outside look absolutely delicious.

New Area of Concern

Well, you know what they say, when it rains it often pours. I have another area of concern on my body. I was in for another cat scan today. The woman who was giving me the scan told me to be positive and I wanted to strangle her. I am already scheduled to lose one lobe of my lung. What else is going to happen? And she is in her early 30's and telling me to be positive. I suppose it is better than her being someone crabby.

I do feel positive about the whole experience. If I did not move here to Portland, all of these areas would not have been caught at such an early stage. I am positive, but I just don't want to be told. That is all. It is my thyroid that has something suspicious. Again, I have no signs of any problems. The worst that could happen is for me to lose the thyroid and many people live without one for many years. I feel my neck and I feel nothing. I glanced at the picture that the woman is running and it looked like there was something, but I am not trained. The woman wanted to make sure if I don't hear within a few days I should call my surgeon. I promised.

Then I went to the Women's Clinic to find out why I have not gotten my prescription medication. I only get one, but I have not gotten it as yet. I am not out but I usually get the renewal about two weeks ahead. The receptionist told me that my prescription was not in the computer. I know it is for I have seen it. By now, I am low on sugar and I can feel it. I am surprised because I ate a sandwich before I left home. I am getting irritated. I told the receptionist that the other clinics that I have been at in the hospital have asked me about the only medication that I take. Then I said it looks to me that she needs some more training on the computer program she works with. I said it in a soft voice but that is not normal for me. I leave. On the way home she calls me on my cell phone and tells me she found it and let my doctor know it needs to be renewed. I apologized and told her that I was irritated because my sugar level was low. She said it was alright.

I went to Powell's Bookstore after I went to New Seasons Grocery Store where I could eat something that is gluten free. New Seasons is a wonderful food store that is full of wonderful things to eat and has many things that I can eat. I went to the bookstore and bought a few books and magazine and went home after stopping at Goodwill's Superstore for a few items that were on sale. I got a coffee cup tree, a filter for my vacuum cleaner and a picture for my bedroom.

Portland was not hot today, but the sky was blue and the sun was out. It got darker sooner this evening and I enjoyed reading and looking out at the trees through my patio door. Life is what it is and I am not happy about the new area of concern in my body. I have been lucky in that I have beaten cancer several times already. I think I will beat it this time. Someday, I will run out of track but I don't think I am there just yet. I am trying very hard not to be concerned about it.

I have several books that I am reading now that are enjoyable. My apartment is set up exactly the way I want it to be. That is pretty good considering I moved here in May with only a few pieces of furniture. The biggest worry for me in the past was getting a job that would pay the bills and support my children. I don't have that problem anymore. I have enough income coming in that my bills are paid. I don't have a writer's block although I am not sending anything out because I have pending surgery. I am getting things edited and ready to send later. I seem to be getting along with relatives and friends. I am living one day at a time.

Bar of Soup

I really thought hard about posting about this. If there are any readers out there, they are going to think I am mad; but because this seemingly harmless solution really worked for me and is harmless I thought I would put it out there. I called my son about it.

I suffer from leg cramps and pain during the night. I often can't sleep because of it. I read in the newspaper and on some Internet article that I forgot where about using a bar of soup. It is an old traditional way of treating this malady that many people swear by and doctors say that there is no reason that it would work. It has to be in people's heads. Well, I got tired of feeling the pain and scared about taking medication that really didn't work all that well. I went out to the store and bought an imported bar of milled lavender scented soap from France because I don't use hard soap in the bath. I use liquid soap. I was going to put it in my underwear drawer if it didn't work. Well, surprise it did work. I was simply astonished. It worked. You feel the pain and then rub the bar of soap on the afflicted area and the pain disappears. The pain did not return all night. I slept through the entire night and woke up at 9 am.

That is not the first time some old remedy has worked. I remember having some hemorrhoids problem years ago. I got some prescription medication that did not work all that well. I had a book that listed "old wives tales" and it listed a mineral you take in pill form. I bought for just pennies at the nutritional center and in 24 hours I was healed. Now if I think I am coming down with the problem, I take the mineral although I lost the book in last year's purge. I never have the problem again.

I remember someone giving me these band aids with magnets in them to help with joint pain. I just could not image them helping. They did but they were very hard to get and expensive. The band aids wore out and the magnets never did. They played havoc around computers. Now, I use soap at night but just rubbing on my muscles. Heck if I know why it works but it does for now.

I just thought I would pass it along. It is like baldness for women. Women's hormones will cure baldness in women and red heads who have this problem have tremendous problems with this. They can get relief from going bald by getting hormones. I have no idea about men but it works for women. I got that tidbit from a doctor. Sometimes, we use cannons for mosquito bites. A little old fashion medicine helps when that is all what is needed and the only way we are going to learn about these little "tricks" is from word of mouth so to speak. As I said, if it didn't work it would not have done any harm.

Tethered to a Phone

I don't have a land line but use a cell phone. These days I am tied to the Veterans Hospital and am tied to my cell phone. Because my hearing is not what it used to be, I don't leave the house during the week until after the hospital closes so I won't miss a phone call. Getting the Veterans Hospital to answer a phone call is very difficult.

I need light bulbs(I also need bars of soap which I just found out works wonders on cramps on the legs. No one knows why it works, but that it does. You just rub it on your cramping legs and the cramps goes away.), but I can't get any until after 5pm when the VA closes. I am sitting close by my cell phone while it recharges. If I leave during the day, I can carry the phone but won't hear it. If I do hear it I might be driving the car. I never carry my phone on my person but in my purse. Even taking a bath is chancy as I move the phone into the bathroom while I take my bath and hope it doesn't ring as I would have to get out of the tub in a hurry. So far, that has not happened. I love the weekends because then that is not a problem as the VA is closed.

I have a friend that calls me from time to time and I always look forward to his calls. I don't like the beeping when another call is trying to get in. I remember a time when phones could not do that. My android phone does. I am glad I can get calls for the matter is my health and it is important. When I used to take trips to the lake I could get the news and listen to music. Now, I stay at home and wait for phone calls.

Finally, Some Answers

I finally have some answers from my doctor. I will be having surgery again and this time I will be losing a lobe from a lung. Since getting out of the military, I keep losing bits and pieces of my body to cancer, however each time the Veterans Administration were able to stop it at that particular spot. Then, it is on to a new spot. My pet scan shows another area as well. Sigh.

I was thinking this morning that I am not as depressed as I thought I would be. I have already decided to live mindfully which means day by day. I am alive today and that is what counts. I still have a feeling that I will be able to survive this time and the new site that the pet scan found. I will be filing additional service connection with the VA for it but I am not hopeful. I am just grateful that they have been able to catch it in the early stages.

The doctor gave me this device to exercise my lungs and strengthen them for the upcoming surgery. It has actually helped me with my hay-fever and I really feel better using it. I cough less. I was tested for lung capacity and I am in the normal range.

Things change and this latest bout with cancer has changed me. I was behind this senior citizen yesterday coming home from the VA Hospital. He was in a brand new shiny Porsche and he was driving as if he owned the road. He didn't bother me at all and I just let him go on with his delusions. It wasn't that long ago I was smug in my own delusions(without a new expensive car, however) and feeling alienated from the real world as he is and I am no longer there. I am more compassionate towards my fellow human beings and I am more glad at that development.

We are all on our own spiritual pathways and each of them are individually crafted and engineered for each of us. I was able to take a step and understand some additional knowledge and as they say no pain, no gain. I am not even going to pretend to understand that man and his Porsche and how he is living on his spiritual pathway for it is none of my business. I am just grateful for mine. I just hope it lasts for a while.

The Timing of Comedy

Last night I watched the movie, "The Producers", with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. It has been a long time since I watched that Mel Brooks movie and I remember laughing until I cried. I still laughed when I watched it last night, but it was different. I found parts of it not as humorous as I once did. I had changed. I still found the whole plot line funny and the play within the play of "Hitler In Springtime" hilarious; but I have altered my viewpoint. I did not like what role Mel Brooks had placed women.

In the film, women were sexual excuses for cheap jokes. There was the Swedish receptionist who wanted to have sex all of the time and who's idea of work was dancing with grinding motions or elderly women who had nothing better to do than play sexual games with a fat producer and give him money for his Broadway plays. The real emotions were those played by men in bonding. Even gay men were not excluded from those same tasteless jokes especially transgendered men. it was all done for the sake of a joke.

When I watched this same film years ago, I did not see the offensiveness of this movie and I don't remember the current remake. I think I have changed in what I consider funny and it is possible Mel Brooks has as well. I watched a more recent Mel Brooks film and as usual found it very funny and far less sexist. I still think "The Producers" is a good film. It's just that I have changed.

I remember re-reading a Mary Stewart novel and was shocked to read of the protagonist being physically abused by the romantic hero. He twisted her arm bruising her wrist. She wore a bracelet hiding the injury. She found him alluring and certainly did not run away from such a brutal man or even file charges. She married him. At the time I read it, I found it a romantic story. Now, I am shocked that I would have thought so. I was a teenager at the time. The novel did well then. It is buried now. People have changed. Nowadays, people would protest such a story line.

There are other stories that I watched or read that I did not object to but find it shocking now. I find the "The Philadelphia Story" staring Kathrine Hepburn to be an awful movie although I loved it the first time I saw it years ago. Hepburn divorces her first husband because he was an alcoholic and somehow it is her fault because she did not trust him enough. Then in the film, Hepburn's father blames her for his extramarital affairs. In "Camelot" with Richard Harris, it is Guinevere's fault that Camelot failed. Lancelot is held blameless. When I first saw it, I was enthralled with the story and did not see the underlying "hatred of women" theme.

It would be a rare thing if comedy stayed funny no matter when it was performed or when it was written. Comedy is based on what was funny at the time. We are all products of the times we live in. I watch old movies and can see how much I and the current mores have changed. How people look at people of color and at women is so obvious in movies. I can see how the image of gay, lesbian and transgendered people have changed in recent years. The altitudes of people have changed along with it so that more people are in favor of same sex marriage than they were only a few years ago. When I was a kid, television was a small round screen with Eddie Canter dancing and black face dancers were common. That would never happen now. These changes are in my lifetime.

In television, when someone asks for a doctor or a lawyer one can encounter a man or a woman in that role and nothing is thought about it. I remember during my teen years when to be a woman doctor was a rarity. I remember engineers, scientists looking for work and not finding it because they were women and if they were women of color they could just forget it. I remember the demonstrations in San Diego when people insisted that bank tellers be hired that were people of color because up to that time they weren't. Unfortunately, they were men and they could support families and buy houses. Now, many tellers are women and buying houses on their income is uncommon.

Things have changed for me since the old movie, "The Producers", came out. I don't think Mel Brooks was a sexist and I still enjoy his movies such as "Young Frankenstein". He made movies that attracted the audiences and they certainly did. No one stays the same. Movies change. I was glad they did for I was getting tired of the Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies when the hero chased the virgin until she married him. It wasn't based on any sense of reality. I love Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers movies and watch them frequently. Many people do. Our tastes change in what we consider funny and on a personal level I change. One day, I will go into a movie house and see a movie that I love and still find very funny and the younger people sitting around me will be sitting stone-faced. It will happen.

What Do We Know of the World?

"What do we know of the world?"
This is a question that one of the characters asks in the book that I am reading, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog", by Muriel Barbery. It is supposed to be a question that has been occupying philosophers for generations if not hundreds of years. Even as philosophers view this question, they also have argued on how to address it: Can one answer it from one's own experience or can you use information outside this experience?

I remember as a child realizing that I was a unique being, that I was an 'I', and that there was a world outside of myself. I even remember walking on a small sidewalk in Linda Vista in a housing project that no longer exists. I don't remember my age except that I was under the age of nine. I have heard of other people making this same discovery.

As for the world, I just knew I wanted to escape the family of origin that I was in and live by myself and have control over my life. My parents were desperately unhappy and believed in spreading that unhappiness onto their children. Luckily, I had a great big make-believe world that I created aided by books. I stayed in this world for long periods of time. Maybe that is why I never really went into the problem of what is the outside world. I was too comfortable in my own one.

The character who brought up the subject in the book that I am reading described some of the philosophers and read their works looking for the answers. I knew of some of them from my own reading but I was never much of a reader of philosophers. The only reading that I did was in my education at the university and as it pertained to the evolution of how humankind viewed science. I was more interested in literature,poetry and history.

I mentioned in earlier blogs the book that I am reading and the one that I mentioned here has gotten me thinking about different subjects. Occasionally, I read into the science of Physics since it is part of my reading of the changes of how people view the world. I have been reading about the String Theory and find it fascinating especially the part of the different dimensions. I have always felt that time does not exist the way we as human beings think it does and that is why I have read different ideas in Physics since it is a science that deals with time among other things.

I have also wondered how real the world is in the first place. I read in other religions and Eastern thought as well. It is fun for me but I know if I did not turn the wheel of my car when I come to a curve in the road, I would hit the wall and really feel it. Speculation is what you do when you are sitting in a comfortable chair sipping coffee or tea in one's living room.

When I am visiting my grandchildren, I never consider the world not real for I love my grandchildren very much and they are very real to me. It is all relative. Maybe that is why there are so few women philosophers, mostly men in the field. Love and affection for our family and friends have a way of overshadowing everything. I am very much a loner, but I love some people very much. They don't have to be relatives either. There are some friends who I love and will always love even when they pass away. They are very real to me.

What do I know of the world? Not much. I have never been interested in grand conspiracies that some have spent a great deal of time and money on. I worked for the government for years and learned that the right hand usually did not know what the left hand was doing. I just can't imagine any organized human activity that would perform the sort of thing as direct certain crimes although I can see corporations doing all sorts of things to make sure they turn a profit. I can see culture as having a superego as one anthropologist speculated once years ago (Krober) so a certain set of beliefs would live beyond the life time of its members. People often adopted these set of beliefs without conscious thinking so it would live in the minds of people in the form of archetypes (C.G. Jung). These things still change but slowly as people become aware of these things.

To become more understanding of who we are and to question is the specialness of this book. We as human beings are, alone, capable of this and then to record those questions is truly wonderful. The character said of all of the philosophers who tried to answer the question, not one came up with an answer. It was the asking that was important. I am sorry to say I did not ask all that much, myself. I just asked, "who am I?" I answered similar to Descartes, "I am, therefore I exist." I thought that was enough. Evidently, I did not go far enough. How interesting to speculate further. I think Barbery is a very good philosopher for she encourages the asking.

Reading to Learn

Yesterday, I wrote about how a book, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog", by Muriel Barbery was changing the way I looked at my life. This was not the first time books have changed my life. Books have changed my life many times over the years.

Sometimes, I went looking for answers in books and found them and other times I found both the questions and the answers. Sometimes, as in the above book, it was a new way of looking at an old problem. Sometimes, the book that I was reading was my own journal as I sat there not knowing what the problem was and I would write aimlessly as in writing meditation and before my eyes the issues appeared. That has happened numerous times.

In journal writing, we touch the resources within, the unconscious where an enormous amount of power lies but it is also unknown and it can be a bit scary at times. You never know what is going to appear at the end of one's pen or on a computer screen. It can often be something you have been trying to avoid for years. I have learned when something ugly and awful appears it is worthwhile staying with it because the other side is almost always a rainbow. It turns out what the self is dreading, avoiding is not some awful truth of oneself but some aspect of reality that has no one to blame and a black shadow dissipates into the sunshine of mindfulness. It is really quite lovely.

I have known people to write through grief and sadness and to read through it as well. Ignoring it or even self-medicating it through drugs or alcohol makes it far worse. I have a friend who learned the hard way that if he wrote about it, he did not have to drink the alcohol he was drinking to escape and he found he could make a very lucrative living at it. I read a review this morning of a woman who read a book a year to get over the death of her sister ("Nina Sankovitch, Allaying Grief Through Books" New York Times) and then wrote about it.

I went through a rough patch in my life when I was in my 40's. I had moved to California from the Midwest and was working as a teacher but with adults. I felt I was in a dead end. I was a professional teacher with credentials but working with others who were not. My marriage had ended and I felt at a loss to what I was going to do with my life. I went to a discount bookstore and there was a sale of books written by women from Australia and New Zealand. I bought books by authors I have never heard about. I did not so much read as I absorbed them in which the books were about women who were in similar places as I was. They did not find a new romance as many books that I had found in the bookstores by American authors but different and unique ways of coping with the changes in their lives. A new romance with a new man wasn't going to fix what was ailing me. I had to find new ways of coping with life. I always thought that I was able to sidestep a breakdown and to look at new and different ways of fixing what I thought were intolerable things in my life. I did. I got a new job in a professional setting and started living a life that I wanted to live. Those books that I remember lined a wall in my bedroom gave me the breathing space to come up with ways of dealing with my current problems.

I don't think I am writing down here a cure-all for everyone. This was one way I did it. I was able to remove myself from the situation I found myself in and detach enough to figure out what I needed to do. I did it with reading and writing. My journal was very important during that time. Sometimes, as in the example of a friend of mine, a spouse can provide the support and guidance the other needs. We don't always have it. Sometimes, a spouse is one's worse enemy as in the case of one friend. Sometimes, it is one's fellow girlfriends, the ones who grew up with. I don't know if men bond with other men quite like some women bond with other women but I have not heard they are as intimate with each other as women are. Some people have gotten the same results with religion. In years past, there would not have been books so readily available and certainly pen and paper for all to use nor event he skill to use them effectively. I was reading the history of books and often a library in the distant past would have been only one shelf of books. Many people would never have even seen a book let alone have some in their home. We can thank the printing press for that phenomena.

Whatever the method that is used, the greatest resource for solving one's problems remains and will always be the self. Even religious leaders have gotten their greatest revelations by going into the wilderness alone or sitting under a Bod-hi tree alone. We can do worse but reading a book or by recording our problems in one, the journal. I would rather trust my self than depend on someone else to find my answers. It is certainly cheaper. When I was starting my life as a young adult I was very poor and it was far cheaper to read a book about my problems than to go and see a therapist who I could not afford. Over the years, I was able to see therapists but it was the books whose author's words have stayed with me over the years and of course the explorations into one's inner worlds that have done the most good.

"The Elegance of the Hedgehog"

"The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Murel Barbery Translated from the French by Alison Anderson Europa: 2006

I often get a new and fresh viewpoint from books, but I never expected the perspective from the above book. It is not the plot so much as the way the author looks at the world through two of her characters, a girl and a 54 year old woman. It is not their vision of the world that is breath taking but the way it is done with such freedom and uniqueness that gives the reader the freedom to perform this free flying task oneself. Otherwise, can each of us look at the world on our own without linking our senses to what others have seen before we opened our eyes. The answer is this manual on how we can do it too. At least this is how I am taking the reading of this remarkable book.

I started to question the beginning of the day and to everything that comes across my mind. I saw the beauty of the clear beginning of the sunrise and instead of ruminating of what was not done this morning, I threw the whole thing out. Certainly, a clear day in Portland does not happen all that much and I just enjoyed the sun. Growing up in a Christian household I was always taught we were sinful beings and full of original sin we inherited from the Garden of Eden. I had rejected much of it when I converted to another religion but still felt bad about what I did not do yesterday. No, I am determined not to play that card. It is a wonderful day and I am starting fresh. Why should I slap myself? I did the best I could. That is all any of us can.

There is so much life that comes our way all of the time we often don't see because we are lost in the past. Instead of looking at the crows playing in the branches outside and listening to them cawing in the summer air, I am thinking of what happened years ago or what I had inadvertently said to the apartment manager yesterday. There are zen masters living among us who live mindfully all of the time but I am not one of them. I have to remind myself to skip to the present as I do in meditation. A friend of mine felt a Buddhist nothingness twice in his life and counts it as a precious time. I understand some feel it more. I am not going to beat myself over the head because I don't feel it all of the time either. I just keep trying. What I am going to look for is the squirrels that are playing on tree branches, kids that play on the playground equipment, flowers that are everywhere and those special books that come by every so often.

Trees

All of my furniture was finally delivered yesterday including the right office chair and end table. I am now sitting in one of my new recliners in my living room looking out the glass patio doors and at the trees that form a green lacy pattern out there. It is too cold to open the glass sliding door even a crack. I put a temperature gauge out there and I an see that it is still in the late 50's degree F. out there. It is 7:30 AM.

Sometimes I think that the real treasure of the USA is the wonderful weather we have in this country. I know it is very hot in some parts of the country, but one can find a weather forecast that is pleasing to anyone someplace in the country. When I found out that there was no air conditioner in this apartment, I found myself panicking. Although I was raised in San Diego where my parents did not have one or need one as it was close to the ocean I had not lived in an area that was conducive to going without one. How in the world did people live without one not too long ago? Looking around, no one living in the basement apartments had one either. There is an odd air conditioner in a window in a third floor apartment here and there but not very many. It is the 10th of August and I can say for sure that there hasn't been one day that I felt I needed one here. The weather is very mild in Portland, Oregon.

I have always been fond of trees and in San Diego there are few enough of them for trees to be a pleasure in parks and in the country surrounding streams and in the higher elevations. I had relatives in Oregon although not in Portland and so I used to associate trees with coming to visit them. What made Balboa Park really beautiful in San Diego for me was the astonishing was the different kinds of trees that were planted there by someone at the turn of the 20th century.

In Portland, it isn't easy to chop down a tree even if it is on your land. You have to get permission and so on. I like that myself but then I don't own land here. When I was researching the area before coming here, I looked it up on Google and saw that it had plenty of trees. That was a big plus.

Of course, Redding has trees. One of my favorite places when I lived there was Whiskeytown Lake, not far from my house. It had lots of trees, mostly evergreen. It did have enough deciduous trees to make the autumns fantastic. I am expecting the fall to be beautiful as well here too.

Being Radiated

I took a pet scan yesterday at an university that is connected to the Portland Veterans Hospital. It was an odd day. The campus is connected by an enormous sky bridge that I took to a campus that I did not even know existed. The university itself is connected by a tram that goes up to the top of one of its hilltop buildings and the machine that took the pictures was the very floor it landed on. Walking on that sky bridge as it is called, a young man walked by me and told me that he loved me. I never seen him before. That was just the beginning of a rather bizarre chain of events that day.

There were small coffee shops everywhere but I could not have a cup of coffee as I was on a fast for the test. That is in a direct contrast to the VA Hospital where the only coffee shop is on the first floor. The campus is spread everywhere but no one knows how to get from one building to another including the information desk that I saw immediately after I got off the sky bridge. I was not suppose to exert myself because of the test but had to climb up and down stairs. There were elevators that I could not use as I was not staff. There were also lots of people who felt very good about telling me that I could not use them. I almost went home.

Finally, I found a information booth that had someone who did know how to find an elevator I could use. It was apparent that patents had a low priority at the medical university. Since no one is going to tell me that I am inferior without my cooperation, I did not cooperate. I asked them to stop with the game playing and just tell me how to get where I need to get to. I could not believe that a new campus such as the one I was in could not have a way of transporting the patients. I found out later they did.

I found the waiting room and the bad treatment of the patients continued there. The receptionist insisted before I could say anything that I fill out forms with a pen tied to a flower. At no point was I asked for ID. At the VA, I would have had to present my VA photo card. Luckily, the woman in charge of the test itself was not that way(She was very nice.) and I took the test which lasted two hours. They inject radium and then take pictures of the whole body. I had never heard of the test before.

Then on the way back to the VA Hospital, I saw a woman with a baby carriage on the sky bridge and causally looked in as I usually do to see the baby and saw that in it was a full grown terrier dog. If all patients are treated as badly as I was at the medical university, I could see someone bringing their dog. People here in Oregon, as a rule, are very nice and friendly; but at that place they were mean and rude. At one point, I went to a doctor hoping he would be the exception but he barely spoke English. At least he apologized that he did not. The staff at the VA Hospital are thankfully not that way. I have no idea why this is so. I was never so glad to see the VA Hospital again at the end of the Sky Bridge.

Maybe, I was just in a strange mood. On the way back to the VA Hospital, I found someone at a information booth who told me the correct way of getting to the VA. I took the correct elevator and then found the signs who told me to follow them to the VA and I never had to climb mountains of stairs. I don't know why the other stations did not know about these detours or shortcuts to the VA. What I do know was that it made a scary procedure even more scarier and I don't know what I would have done if I was in a wheel chair. These were people being trained to treat patients and their teachers. Again, maybe I caught them on a bad day. I was glad to be home and not have to see any of them for a week.

Delivery of Furniture

I found a second hand store that had furniture and had a policy of delivery. It is not without its problems as I was to discover. A friend came over and waited with me to receive my furniture but I did not get the dining room table and chairs as the store sold me the chairs that were sold previously to someone else. I asked for them to choose another dinning room set which they did. I thought it worked out well. The office chair was not the one I purchased and my end table went to someone else. The delivery people said for me to come by on Tuesday and they will work things out. The office chair is very uncomfortable and too small for me.

Even with all of the problems, I got a set of matching recliners that seem brand new. I needed them badly. I also got an end table with two drawers in it. I also got a six foot tall book shelf that is solid and nice looking. It all cost less than one hundred dollars. I was really surprised. I am sitting in one of my recliners now.

The second hand store is run by a Christian mission with volunteers. The merchandise is just as nice as Goodwill and Value Village except that the mission does not have a work force that rehabilitates the things that are given to them as Goodwill and Value Village. Some of the furniture are brand new and some are not. I really think the recliners are new but the dinning set is not although in good shape. The bookshelf is not new but also in good shape.

Most of my week was spent in medical procedures at the VA Hospital. I have several scheduled on Monday. Today, I have to be on a high protein, low carbohydrate diet and no exercise program. My arms are black and blue from the tests that are taken. At least, I won't be required to take a cab tomorrow. I can drive myself.

I am still hopeful about the results of the tests as the doctors seem to be. They think they caught the cancer at the early stage although I don't know the exact kind of cancer that I have and I am hoping I will know by tomorrow afternoon. So far, all of the cancers that I have had have been the slow growing kinds. I am hoping that my luck holds out.

I moved here in the first week in May with very little and now this apartment has everything I need. It is ironic that the main reason I moved here was the "purge" of my house by my ex-husband while I was working in Korea. I felt violated in my house and did not feel safe there anymore. I then learned that he was on his way back to Redding from Kansas. Since my oldest son said he would take over the payments, I left Redding and moved to Portland, Oregon a city I have been wanting to live for some time. I now know that if I did not move here, my cancer would not have been caught for it was the cat scan for a small benign tumor that my previous doctor did not want to scan but my current doctor thought she should showed on the corner of the scan the presence of something suspicious in my lungs. I have no symptoms of cancer at all. I have never smoked but was a passive smoker in past jobs when it was legal to smoke indoors.

I love Portland and have a good friend here. I have the atmosphere great and now my apartment is just the way I want it.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

My son called to say hello yesterday and asked if I heard about the deal about congress and the agreement regarding the debt ceiling. I told him that I had. I was concerned about it only because I have blinders on right now. I wanted to make sure the Veterans Hospital stayed opened and that I continued to receive my Social Security as I have health issues right now.

I saw a cartoon in the paper this morning. It was Ziggy and he was on the phone waiting and he received a recorded message: "...Your call is very important to us but ANSWERING your call ISN'T!" I really understood that joke because nothing is more funnier than something with a kernel of truth at its center. I even put it on a tweet this morning. I put it here as well.

I just got a call from someone in the admin office of the VA office about my travel. They wanted to make sure I was aware that they will be making the arrangements for my travel to the hospital since I am a disabled veteran. Again, I was brought to their notice by a call from the central office of the VA because of a note that I wrote on the VA Facebook Page. They also wanted to make sure I was getting all of the services I needed. I said yes. Although I did not get all of my calls answered, I am only concerned about my cancer at this point. I am very happy they are going to take care of my transportation.

I will be doing a series of procedures and I did some of my shopping yesterday because I have no idea if I will be able to do it after Thursday. I will finish the rest of it today. I remember when I was involved with cancer and the VA before and I was not able to do it. I also will be returning my library books because I don't want to worry about that either. I went to Barnes and Noble and bought some murder mysteries that were on sale. I have one of their discount cards. They also had a 75 percent off sale and I bought two blank journals and several classic books that I have been wanting to read.

I just had another call from the VA and this one from the social worker department. They were wondering if I had enough money to live on. I told them that there was not an issue now that the transportation issue being worked on. He was very nice. Again, I am astonished to the amount of attention I am receiving thanks to Facebook.

It has occurred to me that that I have always been known as a trouble maker; but what if I was a veteran who had trouble putting things together? What would have happened to me then? I shudder to think about it. When I was a veterans' representative in California, I considered it my duty to make waves for the veteran who sat at my desk asking for help. I got in trouble for it many times and some of my fellow vet reps really resented my doing it. Still, I could look at myself in the mirror although I earned some serious enemies in the Veterans Administration. Luckily, that was long enough ago that it is forgotten and in another state.

I am still hoping that I will survive this latest health crisis. Last night as I was sitting reading my book and looking out the patio door it occurred to me as I looked at the beautiful scene outside in the evening dusk that many people that I have known over the years are now gone. My parents and brother are gone. Several close friends have passed away and my first love recently died. It would not be so bad to die now, but I don't want to at this time. I still have things to do.

On the Internet yesterday, there were a series of names, ages and pictures of the people who were killed in Norway. They looked like an assorted bunch of people one would know as neighbors. Many of them were so young and some were close to my age although not many. They had things to do too but a mentally ill person took their lives. Just because I feel that I have things to do does not mean that I will be allowed to do them. That is the new reality that I have been facing lately.

Most people have war stories that they tote out ever so often. Those stories become polished by their telling and re-telling. I am no different. I went to the second-hand store last week and bought a wonderful large map of the USA that I put just below my map of the world that I had in South Korea last year. I used the world map last year to see where I was then and to look at the USA. Now, I look at California and now at northern Oregon where I am now. California is green and Oregon is orange and Washington is bluish purple. I am just a few miles from Washington but I have never been there. I was waiting until things calm down so I can drive there and say I have been to Washington. I would do it today, but things have not calmed down yet. Maybe someday soon they will.