Brouhahas .... and Karma

Earlier this evening, I read a post on a friend's FB page. That friend supports Phil Robertson and calls Jesse Jackson an idiot. I didn't comment; I don't have the energy. I like my friend, even if we disagree on certain viewpoints. Plus the dialog from some commenters had degraded into name-calling. (The commenters are mainly friends from my high school daze.)

My thoughts?
So here we have two extremes.
On one end is Robertson, far right; on the other Jackson, far left.
I can't genuinely back either.
If I had to choose between the two? Hmmm...if I had a gun to my head and would have to choose between Jackson and Robertson; I'd probably choose whomever the gun holder supports.
Neither Jackson or Robertson are worth dying over.
Are their differences worth dying over? Yes, perhaps; but it would have to be in a far more serious context.
I wonder who has more money, Robertson or Jackson? I wonder who has labored more for their money?

I first heard about the Phil Robertson drama about a week ago. The conversation went something like this:

Neighbor: "There's some controversy brewing about something Duck Dynasty Phil said."
Me: "What'd he say?
Neighbor: "Something about equating gays with beastiality and terrorists."
Me: "And that's a surprise to people?"

I've never seen a full episode of Duck Dynasty (DD). I saw partial parts of the show some years back while staying at a hotel that carried the A&E network. (We don't carry A&E on our home TV. We pay less than $10 a month and get about 15 channels.) I got a few chuckles at the DD snippets I watched but soon found myself bored with yet another reality show. I'm not a big fan of reality shows. I get enough reality on my own. I wonder how much "real" is in "reality shows?"

This past week I read some articles (including the GQ interview) regarding the recent DD and A&E brouhaha. My initial thoughts were along the lines of:

• Yup. That's what Robertson said. That's his opinion. Who would expect differently?
• A&E is a company and can suspend whomever it deems suspendible.
• Follow the money trail; ultimately showbiz boils down to money.
• I wonder if A&E has a policy regarding the speech of reality actors when those actors are offset?
• On the other hand, if A&E remains silent, that would be like an endorsement of Robertson's statements. Why not just make a response statement and let the chips fall were they may? Meh; the network made a judgement call.
• As far as the black-history statements, Phil plain old showed his ignorance. Sure folks were singing in the fields; including Robertson I reckon. That doesn't negate the voluminous historical accounts of black oppression in our country...nor the origin of some of their songs. I wonder if these folks have seen "12 Years A Slave"? Even though "12 Years..." recounts times before Robertson's days but was also "pre-entitlement and pre-welfare."
• Robertson's black-history statement would be kind of like me saying, "I never saw leaders in The Way abuse their power of trust with women. Those women where happy in The Way Corps."  Right (not).
• I wonder if down the road some sort of underbelly regarding the Robertson's will come out? I wonder if one of the Robertsons may be in the gay closet?

I am somewhat surprised that many of my high school friends (whom I've read on FB) have joined ranks with the conservative religious right. Many of those high school friends were sexers, druggies, and rock-and-rollers (SDRs). From what I've read Robertson followed the same pattern. Then again I was a young SDR and shortly thereafter became a young Bible thumper...before my high school friends followed a similar route.

I'm no longer an SDR nor a Bible thumper.

Neither do I believe in karma.

****
(Following is a link to an interesting article that addresses the damnable so-called-what-goes-around-comes-around  "Law of Karma": Komments on Karma.)
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Love

non-subjecct: pain
aww ~ 12/11/13
****

Mom's rheumatologist's name was Dr. Payne.
Her final psychiatrist's name was Dr. Downs.
Sometimes she'd joke about the irony of their names.

Before Dr. Downs, she saw a psychiatrist whose name was Dr. Kim.

When I was hospitalized at Catawba Memorial Hospital after swallowing jimson seeds, Dr. Kim was my attending physician whom I only remember meeting after the affect of the jimson plant had worn off. I had been admitted to ICU on a Tuesday and hallucinated through sometime Friday. On Friday an antidote to the jimson was administered and I was able to sleep. When I awoke sometime Saturday, I looked around the ICU room. I was able to identify objects that my mind had warped into roaches and witch doctors and people and castles and arm casts and an aquarium and the passageway to the outside world beyond the hallucinatory asylum wherein my mind and body were trapped for four days.

I was released from ICU on Saturday or Sunday and was admitted to a regular hospital floor but not to the psychiatric floor. That's when I remember meeting Dr. Kim for the first time, though I must have met him in my hallucinatory state. I was puzzled as to why I was kept in the hospital for a one week observation; I felt perfectly fine. Each day for that week I would arise and dress in street clothes and take walks, including walks outside around the building and in the patio area of the hospital. My plastic bracelet identified me as a patient. I was fifteen years old.

I didn't see Dr. Kim again until sometime in my thirties. My brother and I went together for a consult with Dr. Kim concerning Mom after she had lapsed into a series of severe bipolar episodes. I wonder if Dr. Kim remembered who I was; I certainly didn't bring up what had happened some fifteen-plus years previously. My brother did most of the talking at the consultation about Mom.

Those were hard years, the years after Dad's wreck that left him paralyzed with quadriplegia. Mom became a wreck. In many ways caring for Dad was easier than maneuvering through Mom's mania and depression.

Yet, what a strong woman Mom was. She cared for Dad almost the full thirteen years of his quadriplegia. Day in and day out. Bathing Dad; dressing Dad; changing his condom catheter; making sure his bowels moved; cutting his food; holding his drinking glass so he could drink from the straw; lifting Dad from his bed with the Hoyer Lift and then swinging him around and lowering him into his wheelchair and then positioning him so he could sit comfortably. All the various details of life. Buttons; zippers; hygiene. Day in and day out.

Mom was the one who found a used camper for sale and had it set up at Green Mountain Resort in Lenoir about 45 minutes from the home place. All Dad's equipment had to be hauled along so Mom could dress and lift and feed and care for Dad. Mom would drive herself and Dad in the converted cargo van and spend multiple nights at the camper. Mom bought Dad the wooden card holder so they could invite friends over and Dad could play bridge.

Mom couldn't give up caring for Dad, and it drove her to extremes. But she loved him, probably doing more than most people would do in a similar situation. She couldn't bring herself to have Dad admitted long term in a care facility.

And Dad, he too was a trooper. He would cry from time to time. He probably cried much more in private; tears that others never witnessed.

****

Added note: Home health did come by three days a week in the mornings for some of the years. My brother and I lived close by and also helped in the care of Dad. My sister lived out of state and would help whenever she came to visit. But Mom was the one who was always there, and she carried most of the burden. It was a labor of love.

Companion - Number 1

aww ~ december 4, 2013
non-subject: something appeared

******
I don't talk about it with anyone except my husband, John.
And even then, I rarely bring up the subject.
Until last week when I opened up to my good friend, Leah.
******

I vacationed alone again this year. John was supposed to go, but he ended up having to work. I'm thankful he has a good job. At least he isn't in the armed forces where he'd be physically away for months at a time.

John helps me load my traveling gear into the 1999 gray Ford Explorer for my week-long trip in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia.

In order to fit my bicycle into the Explorer, we lay down the back seat so that the cushiony seat-back that supports passengers' backs kisses the cushiony seat that supports passenger's buttocks. John helps load my bicycle. I direct him that the rear tire of the bike goes in first, then to tip the bike at an angle to the right and roll the angled bike backward toward the front of the Explorer, then to lay the bike on its left side so that the chain faces the vehicle ceiling, then to turn the front tire and handle bars toward the ceiling so that the back hatch of the Explorer will close. After the bike is stable, we load my other gear: a box of food, a couple small coolers, various size overnight bags, a toiletry bag. I had divided my toiletries and clothes in smaller overnight bags so we can place them around the bike and not disturb the gears or the chain. I'll get someone to help me unload after I arrive at the resort condominium where I'm staying.

I leave that afternoon on the five-to-six-hour drive north. It's a pleasant drive. But, like so many times since our kids have become adults, I am solo in the vehicle.

It's okay Carol. This is just the way it is. You are used to being alone. Maybe you'll enjoy yourself more without John on the trip. You'll be free to roam as you please. You can write. You can meet people, strike up conversations about their lives. That's what you do.

And that is what I did - venture alone and talk with some folks.

On Monday I visit Luray Caverns and the Garden Maze. I decide to walk the Maze before I enter and tour the Caverns.

The Maze paths are about 4 feet wide. On each side of the path grow eight-foot-tall evergreen hedges that resemble cypress or cedar type trees. While walking the one-acre maze, I meet the Maze owner and designer. His name is John. John and I talk for about 20 minutes as he shares how he moved to Virginia from the northeast in the latter 1990s. He took up residence in the Shenandoah area and designed and landscaped the Maze. He shares, giving me directions to a place I could ride my bike down by the Shenandoah River. It's not a bike route per se, but rather country roads, a place the locals know about.

Next, the Caverns. I've toured Luray Caverns at least two times in the past. It's always an awesome walk; the majestic stalactites and stalagmites mesmerize my soul and intellect. They grow one cubic inch every 120 years; some of them are over seven million years old. Wow, just wow.

Within this belly of earth, Dream Lake mirrors the ceiling and looks like an unreal 3-D city of limestone castles. The appropriately named Cathedral has been the sanctuary for some 450 weddings. The Catherdral houses the world's largest musical instrument, the Great Stalacpipe Organ. Stalactites covering 3-1/2 acres from the surrounding caverns act as the organ pipes. I ask the young man who is our group's tour guide lots of questions; he's very knowledgeable and seems to enjoy sharing the history and facts.

As my eyes examine nature's limestone sculptures, I wonder if others notice how much the sculptures look like human body parts and organs...penises, the labium and folds of a woman's vagina, tongues and tonsils and the digestive system. These seven-million-year-old growing rocks are like the inner organs of the earth and its reproductive system.

I can think of nothing in nature that consists of straight lines; it's all curves and swirls and folds and dips and mounds. Straight lines are man made.

Awakening

I open my eyes this morning after a full night's sleep.

I am alive. I feel rested. It feels good to feel rested.

I had taken a sleep aid last night so I could sleep the whole night through.

I arise to relieve my bladder. Simply by getting up, I am reminded of the disability in my hands and arms and feet and ankles. After relieving myself, I lay back down.

It can be a good day, Carol. You can get some things accomplished today.

Yesterday I accomplished very little in relation to what I could have accomplished had I not been grieving and fatigued.

I lay in bed and lift both arms perpendicular to my body. The action to raise them causes the regular continual pain in my biceps; I can feel their weakness. I bend my arms at my elbows...up and down, up and down. I lower my arms again feeling the pain in my biceps. One at a time, I touch each finger on both hands with their corresponding thumbs. I make a fist formation with each hand. Fist-making too is painful and I am unable to make full fists. I look through the holes in each fists like they are binoculars. I unfold my hands and examine the recent lump on the back of my right hand as I run my left fingers over the lump. The lump used to be on the outer side of my right wrist; it moved sometime in the last month to the back of my right hand.

In my mind's eye, I see Dad, see him moving his arms back and forth, back and forth, as they dangle down over the armrests of his wheelchair. He used to move his arms back and forth often; it was about the only part of his body below his head that he could move.

As I move my own arms, I realize how much it must have meant to Dad that he could move his arms, giving him some sense of control, to feel the little bit of strength that was left in his limbs. Dad was labeled an "odd quad." His spinal cord sever was at C-4. He shouldn't have been able to move his arms, but he could. He couldn't move his fingers though.

I arise and walk down the hall and down the stairs. I take one stair at a time due to the tenderness in the soles of my feet and the shooting pain in my right ankle. I remind myself that my feet will feel much better shortly; they improve as I go about my day. I enter the kitchen.

I assemble the blender to make my morning smoothie: water, apple cider vinegar, tart cherry juice, grapefruit seed extract, powdered nutritional supplements for inflammation and general nutrition and hormones, beet powder, green veggie powder, frozen blueberries, and immoglobulin powder. With all my strength I pry the cap off the vinegar bottle. I use the wooden cover end of an ice pick like a hammer to secure the lid back onto the bottle. I combine all the ingredients and whir my smoothie in the blender. Using both hands, I pour the mixture into a glass and insert a colored straw into the deep purple beverage. I fill another glass with the herbal tea I brew every other day; the tea addresses fatigue. I eat a handful of pistachios to get digestive juices going to prepare my tummy for pills: quercetin, vitamins C & D, fish oil, probiotics, garlic, mixed boron and calcium, Theracumin, prednisone. I pop a sublingual vitamin B-12 under my tongue and let it dissolve. I try not to despise that I spend most all my personal earnings on supplements to either counter the side effects of prednisone or address the nerve damage and inflammation.

As I go about my morning, I hear myself grunt and groan. I don't like it. It's a habit that has come about due to the pain and weakness in my arms and hands. I hear myself whispering, "Okay Carol, you can do this," as I make my body work to put up the vacuum cleaner and pick up the bottle of laundry detergent and make the bed and pull my shirt over my head and brush my hair and engage in some simple stretching exercises. "Come on, come on, come on; work," I whisper in quick succession, reminding my hands and arms to function.

I am unable to use my palms for resistance - they are too tender and weak. Sometimes I feel like an ape when I engage in certain floor exercises. I curl my hands in an almost fist and use the back of my hands with my knuckles to support my body and absorb the pressure as I lift myself off the floor.

Nerves. I never really gave them much thought in regard to physical strength. It seems I equated physical strength with muscles and ligaments and tendons and bones. But Dad was weakened and paralyzed due to the most severe kind of nerve damage - severing. My limb nerves are inflamed at the spinal cord, at least that is the current diagnosis. The nerves are damaged. The inflammation causes weakness and pain in my limbs.

I cry. Then I remind myself, I can at least move my hands and my arms and my legs and my body. Don't give up Carol. Keep that spark of hope. Find joy and laughter in little things. Gratitude, gratitude.

Don't Stop Believing?

I continue my course away from theism. Part of that saddens me...that I seem to be heading further down the road of non-belief. I let go a little at a time. It's not that I set out to deconvert; it just seems that is the path I end up on as I read about and/or ponder the heavenly father and only begotten son and creator god questions.

In the recent past I've referred to myself as a "hoper;" that is, I have hoped that there is more to this life...that hopefully there is an afterlife or reincarnation or eternal life or the universalist belief that all will be reconciled. But, that hope feels more and more like a fantasy.

Hmmm...interesting that I "feel more and more" rather than "logically conclude more and more" that something akin to an eternal bliss and merciful justice is fantasy. Perhaps one of my fears is that if I cease hoping, that I will close the doors to so many wondrous and serendipitous occurrences of life, that the mystical feeling will cease. No way. Just thinking about the universe contained in one tiny cell and all its intricacies is awe-inspiring.

I've pondered recently if I can believe in reincarnation as a natural occurrence (not supernatural). Then I think, "Why in the hell would we be reincarnated if we can't remember the previous re-incarnations?"

One of the books I'm currently reading is Trusting Doubt by Valerie Tarico. I recently finished the chapter on blood sacrifice. Blood sacrifice has never made full sense to me. It was always one of those questions on my "back burner." I'd tell myself the whole spiel about God being just and having to redeem us on legal grounds, etc. But I could never fully reconcile a god who desires life (and not death) with the scripture "without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin." I would wonder why; why is shedding of blood the qualifier? The only answer I ever came up with was because that is what "God says."

My why question was just one of those things I'd have to wait until the return of Christ or until I was more spiritually mature to understand.

*****

Added note: Here is a link a website that Valerie Tarico manages: Wisdom Commons; "...an interactive website that seeks to elevate our shared moral core, sometimes called universal ethics. It is a place to find and discuss information about virtues that human beings generally agree are important like generosity, compassion and courage. As a user or member, you can search or input quotes, proverbs, meditations, stories, and essays from many traditions...."

Facebook Drain

I've grown tired of Facebook. Last week I called it "Fakebook." Yesterday when talking on the phone with a friend I stated, "Facebook is starting to drain me."

Yet, I don't feel that "Facebook drain" when I comment on blogs or on a couple online forum sites that I currently visit.

I've pondered, asking myself, "What is it, Carol, that you find irksome about the god of social internet connections, Facebook?"

Some of my thoughts have been....

Information overload. When I click on my FB timeline, a waterfall of information streams along on my computer screen. Some of these rolling tidbits are promotions for services that search engines have decided I might be interested in. Most are updates from my Facebook friends or conversations they are commenting on. Some are updates to conversations I have commented on.

Relationship overload. Or more succinctly put, emotionally-invested-relationship information overload, which ties in with the above "information overload." I feel some sort of obligation to respond to friends' updates about their personal lives. If I were face-to-face with people in a room, I wouldn't feel pressure to acknowledge/share with twenty folks almost simultaneously. This was one reason I deleted my first Facebook account a few years back...the feeling of obligation to respond to folks' updates. But with so much scrolling in front of me, I have to turn off the faucet.

Ticker spy (my term). Fakebook's damnable ticker feed on the right side of the screen. I don't like it. I can hide the feed so I personally can't see my ticker feed scrolling by giving me updates on which of my friends are posting where and liking what, but that's not what I dislike about it. My dislike? I don't want all my friends to know when I post on someone else's timeline or conversation or when I 'like' something. It irks the hell out of me. Again, if I were face-to-face, I'd be conversing with one to eight or ten people. That's about all a person can converse with at one time unless you are on a stage interacting with an audience

Facade. I am not as genuine on Facebook as I am on a forum or on my blog. I mean, I don't lie or anything like that. But on Facebook I share very few deep things going on in my life. I will share some depth on my blog and on the online poetry forum where I am a member. So what is the difference between those and Facebook? Facebook is actually private so only my Facebook friends can see it; my blog is public. Why do I feel I can't be myself on Facebook with my two hundred plus friends? Is it because I feel I can't be as genuine with them as I can with strangers on the world wide web whom I will probably never meet face to face? That seems crazy. Is my discomfort due to the old approval syndrome and caring too much what others might think about me? (Most folks are thinking about themselves, not others.) One thing may be that on my blog, readers have to come find me instead of my life rolling through on a newsfeed or ticker scroll. Hmmm...I guess when I post on Facebook, I feel like I am advertising my personal life. For some reason I don't feel like that on my blog. But, it is almost the same thing. Or is it? Hmmm.

Difficulty with and/or lack of options with Facebook. If I want only certain people to be able to see what I post on FB, I have to designate the not-seers instead of the seers. That's too much work. I'd love to be able to block my comments and likes on the ticker feed. But I don't think there is an option for that and even if there is, it's more detail work; most folks are already detailed beyond reasonable.

There are good things about Facebook...

I've connected with folks I may otherwise not have connected with.

I have had some fun conversations.

I get to read all sorts of weird news, but I could access that from a web search.

I can read my very liberal friends' updates to get the liberal viewpoint. I can then read my very conservative friends' updates to get their viewpoint. Both usually have links to articles, where I read more on political mishmash which (again) I could get from a web search.

Why do I feel the need to justify my irksome dislike with the Facebook machine? (rhetorically stated, mostly)

I realize the problem is not Facebook, but rather my interaction with Facebook for which I am totally responsible.

Facebook feels too invasive for me these days....like something prodding me to behave a certain way. Again, my issue, not Facebook's. (I am too easily influenced. Bah humbug.)

Drains. Probably time for some of my homemade drain cleaner. I make it with baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. Vinegar and hot water swish the mix down the drain and gurgle the clogs away.

Vinegar, what an odd thing to use as a metaphor. Vinegar is used as an ingredient in natural insect repellents. Hmmm, I'm probably already naturally repellent.