PEACE OF MIND

I've not written to you, oh my blog, in quite some time.

This weekend, I've been convalescing from a cold and have somehow avoided getting a stomach virus which seems to be all around me. I slept a lot yesterday, which I indeed have to be sick in order to do. Overall, my body is better but somehow I feel like I'm unbalanced. Maybe it was the sleeping a lot... I'm in one of those "how am I going to get through this school and career thing and not feel like an imposter" moods, most certainly. Humility, I realize, is the integral state needed for spiritual progression, but I'm falling back into low self-esteem-type stuff, which, because the focus is on myself, is just as bad as being egotistical. At least I'm realizing this and processing it, I guess.

Again, too much thought...

Great Spirit, guide my way...

WILD WILDERNESS DRIVE-THROUGH SAFARI

So Jenn, Michael and I went all the way up north to Gentry yesterday to see this drive through zoo they have up there. All in all, it was a good trip I think. Here are just a few good highlights, as bandwidth on this site is limited. Peacocks, emus and deer are a very common and predominant sight there as they are wandering all over the place. Jenn found a fairly good sized peacock feather which were being sold at the front office for $1 a piece. Though we really bought nothing except a bottle of water from them, Jenn commented that the prices were not the usual gouging you would expect in attending a theme park or a theater (who could forget something like a $4 Coke?).

Watching all these animals and observing their various plumage, I got to thinking about natural camouflage and how it came about in the natural world. Naturalists are quick to say that the tiger's stripes are to help the beasts to be more stealthy and undetectable in the bush and so forth, but what I wish to understand is the origin of how such a selection is made from the genetic level. The tiger certainly doesn't just say in his head "I think I'll turn a little lighter because the scrub isn't as thick..." etc. Similarly, over time, prey species develop eyes which are more on the sides of their heads (allowing them to have an almost 360 degree sweep of vision), while predator species (like us humans) have stereoscopic vision which allows them to track and home in on prey. Interesting thought anyway. Enjoy!

OBSERVE MY HANDIWORK...

A week or two ago, our mailbox was demolished. This is a common occurrence in our neighborhood for years, and the source has varied from crazy-assed mailmen (who have only served to demonstrate the veracity of the term "going postal" by their actions which Jennifer has witnessed) to assholes who just want to tear shit up. The culprits of this last attack, we figure, fall into the latter category, though we can't be for certain. Anyhow, we stopped getting mail for a while because the box was just left lying in the yard for many days. Finally, just today, my father and I took to the task of repairing this thing for hopefully the last time (we went through this a little bit in times past, but it wasn't so bad as to knock the whole thing over before). We got 40 pounds of Quikcrete and half buried a little mold for the base before we filled it with the stuff. Here's a before and after for you, my gentle readers. Please observe Crybaby the kitty taking special note of our finished product:

The duct tape you see was to hold part of the crappy aluminum frame together as the rest of the thing dried. I buried part of the column itself in the concrete this time. The blue jeans you see were added because my dad said we needed cloth soaked in water to help the stuff to not dry too fast.



Our neighbor Debbie said that (a week or two ago) she heard something that sounded "almost like a loud motorcycle" and the sound of breaks squealing. When she looked outside a few minutes later, our mailbox was lying on the ground. Anyway, there's a piece of rebar driven down quite a ways in the ground now with the 40 lbs. of concrete anchoring it. I'll be curious to see if such an auto will be able to speed away after hitting that! Hah!

ANOTHER SAD ANIMAL TALE...

I must start off by saying that Jenn and I just came off of a good mini-vacation. I took her to see Jeff Dunham at the Verizon Arena in Little Rock on Sunday, and we stayed overnight and returned this morning. We stayed at a Best Western nearby which had been newly built, so that eliminated a lot of the usual problems one runs into when staying at a hotel. The only drawback was that somehow we got a room on the same floor as some kind of pee wee baseball team. We kept hearing preteen kids running up and down the hall and yelling occasionally. Jenn complained when this kept happening after 10:30 at night, and this seemed to help somewhat. The show itself was pretty good, but it really amazed me how such a simple comedic ventriloquist performance (with the addition of his friend the "Guitar Guy") commanded somewhere around seventy dollars a ticket (for floor seats). Given, one doesn't see that many ventriloquists these days and Mr. Dunham has worked for many years to make a name for himself, but wow... It's just the human touch, isn't it? The guy brought out jokes based on his life experiences, and he was genuine in doing that. Gives me hope for humanity in a way because people resonate to such a performance with such force. It's hard to explain, I guess...

But now for the sad animal tale. Jenn and I returned the rental car in the middle of the day today. Since I returned it to the Fort Smith airport terminal, we took lunch and even did a little shopping on that side of town. We usually go back to Van Buren the Barling way through the bottom lands when we're on that side of town, and we cross the bridge over Lock and Dam 13 to get over the river. It was on this bridge where Jenn spotted a cat that was not much more than a kitten - a little black one with some spots of white. She begged me to get out on the bridge as she turned around and try to get the cat out of this very life-threatening situation. I obliged, and we ended up kind of stopping traffic there for a few minutes while I tried to approach this terrified feline. When I first approached, it looked up at me with eyes full of terror and ran out of the middle of the road, jumping up on the concrete guardrail. "Don't jump, kitty," I said, but it was hard to use slow and deliberate mannerisms when you are in the middle of a bridge and traffic is flying by. I walked as carefully as I could toward the kitty. Panting from the heat, it looked back at me again with terrified eyes. Then, it looked down at the water flowing fast underneath us hundreds of feet below. As I walked to its side of the bridge, it hurled itself off and into the river. I watched with disbelief as it took what seemed like forever to hit the water. It floated away, and amazingly I think it survived the jump as it seemed to keep its head above water. I'm always going to carry that image in my head of the cat plummeting toward the water belly-down with all four legs extended. I feel a little guilty for hesitating at that critical moment when I was within arm's length of grabbing him, but I feared that 1) he might have had rabies or something similar and 2) that he would probably have clawed me to pieces if I did put my hands on him. Jenn consoled me by saying that at least we did try to do something for the little critter and that he was certain to die if he stayed on that bridge. Maybe he was able to swim to safety... There's a part of me that clings to that possibility. Jenn reminded me that the Lock and Dam 13 area is where a lot of people drop their unwanted pets off at. That's just depressing...

WORRY

Against all better judgment, I tend to worry about things. What if I totally flop professionally after graduating from John Brown? What if I'm not making the most of my time? What if my continually poor diet leads to health problems? I could choose any of a host of things to run over with in my mind, and I often do. Over the year, however, I have found ways to divert this constant morass of nagging and unproductive thoughts. I basically ask myself if there's really anything I can do about the issue right now. If there is, I will take action - even in some small way. If there's not, I rationalize and tell myself I'll pick another time to deal with it during a more opportune moment. Of course, this doesn't work every time, but I've found that this simple method is effective. Speaking from a cognitive behavioral perspective, a lot of my worry comes from my core belief that I'm lacking in different ways. Even though I was raised in a good loving home I still brought with me from childhood some feelings of inadequacy for whatever reason. Thinking back, I could have done and been so much more than I am today: the backwards-looking "what if" regarding things I might have done differently. One part of me dwells on such regret, while the other focuses on present-day opportunity (and the latter part is the one that I try to feed the most).

Being a former English major, I'm always interested to divulge the etymology of certain words. I looked for this with the word "worry" and found the following at Answers.com:

Worrying may shorten one's life, but not as quickly as it once did. The ancestor of our word, Old English wyrgan, meant "to strangle." Its Middle English descendant, worien, kept this sense and developed the new sense "to grasp by the throat with the teeth and lacerate" or "to kill or injure by biting and shaking." This is the way wolves or dogs might attack sheep, for example. In the 16th century worry began to be used in the sense "to harass, as by rough treatment or attack," or "to assault verbally," and in the 17th century the word took on the sense "to bother, distress, or persecute." It was a small step from this sense to the main modern senses "to cause to feel anxious or distressed" and "to feel troubled or uneasy," first recorded in the 19th century.

I like that image of being strangled, as that says it all.

As I often preface this to my friends, I know the thought of one's eventual and inevitable death is a morbid thought (and obviously this fact of life is a great source of worry and fear for a lot of people), but actually it helps me with being able to rationalize the absurdity of some of my worries. Who will be around in 100 years to acknowledge any of my shortcomings? What will it matter to me then pending the time I've ceased to draw breath and after my body has been simplified by cremation into dust? One could use this as a license to totally live for today and totally not give a shit about anything, of course, but that's out of balance as well. Going in that direction, you're bound to have some regret regarding what could have been or find yourself homeless at 40, having burnt all your bridges with the people you know after so many years of self-indulgent celebration. Life's meaning is something that you create for yourself as you go within the parenthesis of birth on one side and death on the other. You cannot control the happenstance of your birth or the inevitability of your demise, but you can work to make the most of your life in between.

ABSINTHE

For years, absinthe for me was one of those forbidden pleasures as it was not legal to sell it from within the United States. I always got mine through Alandia (http://www.alandia.de/) who assured me that even if my purchase were intercepted at the border, my money would be refunded. I don't have to worry about that now (or the outrageous shipping fees that applied for overseas transportation). They carry the stuff at Shamrock! Incredible! What you see to the right is a brand I formerly had to order from overseas but which is now available locally. It originates from Austria and is known as a "bohemian" absinthe. The only real difference is that it contains less anise (the herb that gives absinthe that really powerful and not-so-desirable (in my opinion) licorice taste. Because of this, it makes it easier for you to mix it in cocktails.

Absinthe has a rich history and was, of course, outlawed here in the States and most places abroad around 1915. Wikipedia has a really good entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe

The following particular paragraph, quoted from Wiki, says it all. Though absinthe has long been knows as some sort of devilish psychoactive poison, those claims are just not warranted:

"However, the debate over whether absinthe produces effects on the human mind additional to those of alcohol has not been conclusively resolved. The effects of absinthe have been described by some as mind opening. The most commonly reported experience is a "clear-headed" feeling of inebriation—a form of "lucid drunkenness". Chemist, historian and absinthe distiller Ted Breaux has claimed that the alleged secondary effects of absinthe may be caused by the fact that some of the herbal compounds in the drink act as stimulants, while others act as sedatives, creating an overall lucid effect of awakening. Long term effects of low absinthe consumption in humans remain unknown, although the herbs in absinthe have both painkilling and antiparasitic properties."

The only danger that I might warn would-be experimenters of is that it's not as easy to tell how many drinks you feel you've had. The absinthe does indeed "wake up" the brain, and the experience is quite beyond normal alcohol intoxication. You travel above the normal swaggering "blarrgg" of an alcohol buzz to a place where you find a flight of ideas and an overly talkative impulse.

Something I did over the weekend was to experiment with a basic absinthe martini recipe I found on Webtender. Here's what I ended up with:

1.5 oz. Stolichnaya vodka
1.5 oz. Mata Hari absinthe
1.5 oz. Gallo dry vermouth
add a little red grenadine to taste (but you don't have to)

Shake all that stuff up in one of those mixing things along with some ice and pour yourself a cocktail. Drink heartily, but be warned...

"After the first glass (of absinthe), you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world." - Oscar Wilde

patriotism

On Friday, I had a conversation with an associate (who will remain nameless for certain reasons) about America and I asked him generally what he thought about our country. He is undoubtedly one of the most intelligent people that I know, and when posed with this question he voiced his opinion that he thought Denmark and Norway had better health care systems than the US and that in general those European nations were just better countries. By this declaration, he jumped on the traditional liberal bandwagon which is of the opinion that America is inferior and full of itself. Granted, America IS full of itself, but that's part of why I love my country. Why does it seem to be generally accepted that highly intelligent people here in the states eschew and seem to be embarrassed by their country? I must make clear that I'm certainly not one to endorse blind acceptance to any government, as that's where so many peoples have gotten into trouble in the past. One must remember that America was set up so that its citizens could criticize and be heard AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

I think that America is the greatest country in the world, warts and all. We have our problems, sure, but we're always working on them. We are a hodge-podge of gene pools which traditionally has built off of the strengths of variation and differences in opinion and ways of life. There's a reason why the brilliant fathers of our country put the First Amendment first!

the skies

Suffer the skies and their mist

Suffer the strange mud of the forest

Suffer the selfsame seas that floated Noah!

Oh, how far shalt thou goest?

See! Do you not see?

The obscurity is gone, and all that's left is...

Me

Jennifer's birthday party

Today, my Jennifer actually turned 30 years old. Yesterday, however, we had her party here at the house. Though a fraction of the folks that were actually invited showed, we still had a decent crowd I think - a crowd which was made up mostly of family and people Jenn and I know from work. All in all, I think everything turned out rather well. However, as you can tell by the cake here, Jennifer has a rather pessimistic view of aging which she shares with our society at large. Growing old is inevitable. The kids that think they're so cool today will feel totally left behind by the generation which comes after them. 'Twas ever thus, and ever thus will be... I'm going to be 36 this year when August 19th comes around and I feel totally cool about it. There is always more to learn and so many different ways to evolve and express myself that I do not feel limited or ashamed in any way. As I often quote from my man Tennyson: "Old age hath yet his honor and his toil..." This body is not meant to live forever. Whenever I go out in public somewhere I'm quick to remind those around me that everyone we're sharing the room with at that moment will inevitably be dead in 100 years' time. Jenn just thinks it's a morbid thought, but I find it quite liberating really. If you look at it in the right way, you see the simple truth that the most important thing for someone to do is to make the most of this very moment - RIGHT NOW. It reminds me of Nike's oh so popular slogan from the Nineties: "Just Do It". I watched this show on MSNBC one time that talked about successful businesses and their stories, and they said that people were writing in to Nike during that particular campaign saying that they "just did it" and it changed their lives. Obviously, such a phrase means different things to different people. I challenge you, oh readers - what does it mean to you?

self loathing

This morning, I moved our pet turtle from the bathroom sink (where she had stayed for well over a week) into a cooler which I had cleaned out in a good way, I thought. Apparently the soap I used to clean out the plastic container was toxic to Looksi, because before I left for work she was dead...

I feel like utter shit. Though this death was certainly not intentional, I still feel quite responsible.

Just thought I'd share this...

a visit to my aunt's house for Father's Day

I spent a couple of hours at my aunt's house today with my mom's side of the family. Mostly, we were there to honor my grandfather, the celebrated World War II veteran and pillar of my family for many many years. From left to right, here's my mom, my granddad and my grandma all posing for a pic:

Can you believe that my granddad is 88 years old and that my grandmother is 84? Jennifer has often jested that I'm descended from a line of elves...

And yes, I brought that champagne you see in the foreground. It was Chandon - good crispy stuff!

My grandmother is going through some early stage Alzheimer's right now, and it's quite tragic. So far, the Aricept has been staving off the inevitable, but unfortunately we all know that her illness is just that - inevitable... I owe them so much love for the love and kindness they have shown me over the years, and I feel powerless in the face of this disease of forgetting that is slowly encroaching... All we can do is enjoy days like we had today when grandma was so much like her old self. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, my friends...

As a sidelight, here's a squirrel that came to drink from Debbie's birdbath. The picture looks kind of faded because I took it looking through a screen door...