Hmmm, yes, I wonder why piles of rotten fence boards are appealing to passersby. Firewood is all I can think of. Or maybe they want to start a termite farm. Jane should ask these people what their plans are for the wood, then pass the answer on to you, and you can pass it on to me. And then if anyone ever approaches me and asks "Why are neatly stacked rotten fence boards appealing?" I will have a definite answer, and not seem like some wishy washy fool. Maybe I will suggest that as the next question at the Socrates Cafe.
That is horrible that Renee's insurance company was billed $20 per Tylenol, and $340 for a tube of ointment. And they talk about how Mexico and India and places like that are rife with corruption. They have nothing on our medical/insurance industries. Having to stay in a hospital is like being kidnapped and held for ransom.
Meditating helps me understand what makes me tick. The main thing I get out of meditating is some kind of clarity about who I am, what I am feeling and why. To most people, that probably sounds like the dumbest thing ever, and they'd be saying "I already know who I am, and I already know how I feel, and I don't need to sit around doing nothing to find out! Total waste of time!" But it makes perfect sense for me. I feel like I've gone through most of my life remarkably unselfaware, and out of touch with my emotions, and what makes me act the way I do. Many times I've felt essentially broken, with no idea what's wrong or how to fix it. Meditating gives me insight. I'm still a tangled mess in many ways, but I find meditation very helpful, and pretty fascinating, too. Just as a recent and kind of unusual example, last night I had a strange dream in which I was playing a guy in ping pong, and he was a supercilious asshole and he was doing all these Bobby Riggs type cheap shots, and I couldn't score a single point off him. He was smirking at me the whole time. I woke up with a start in the middle of the night in an absolute rage. "What the hell was that all about?" I wondered. "Who gets that worked up about a ping pong game?" I was in enough of a state that I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep for about an hour, so I got up and meditated. By the time I was done, I knew exactly what the dream meant and what it referred to. It had to so with some dark shit from my childhood. I faced it, and ended up at peace with it. Plus, meditation an excellent stress reducer. But having said all that, most people I know don't meditate, and many people who have tried it get nothing out of it. No doubt, some people are genetically configured so that meditation "clicks" with them, and others aren't. I don't mean to sound like some kind of meditation missionary. It works for me, that's all I can say. Sometimes it's the most interesting part of my day.... it's like exploring a strange and scary land full of adventures, menacing figures, and hidden treasures. Actually, if I told some authentic Buddhist or whatever what happens when I meditate, he'd probably sniff and say it's not meditating at all... it's just me playing mind games.
One of our neighbors just walked by the house. His name is Wayne. He's about 58 years old, and he's a total creep. One of his favorite pastimes is to troll around high schools and any place with attractive young women, and go up to them and tell them he's a professional photographer. He suggests they would make excellent models and he chats them up and takes their pictures in the most suggestive poses he can get out of them. He does this obsessively, during all his free time. I'm pretty sure he abused his daughter -- his family moved away years ago -- and his entire life now is devoted to cozying up to young women. He's probably got several severed heads down in his basement. He lives in a house that sort of looks like a suburban ranch style version of the Adams Family mansion, all falling apart and overgrown with weeds and stacks of junk. On the other hand, I guess you could look at him in a different light and say he's a clever, self-motivated guy who is living the dream. I just googled him and I see that he has a website that makes him appear to be legit. Just something he created to give himself an air of legitimacy with the babes, I think. Want to know more about Wayne's world? Check out his website, Model Mayhem.
Interesting that the house on Arden Avenue seems a lot smaller, plus that it is now a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood. How did that happen? No doubt, grandfather and grandmother are turning in their graves. Someone should come along and turn the house into a kosher meat market.
Yes, I remember some months ago you questioned whether you were going to keep up with your health insurance -- nobody can say I don't read e-mails carefully -- because it was your biggest expense. Of course, if you ever cancelled the policy, it's pretty much guaranteed that within six months you would have some very expensive health crisis. Think of it this way.... having health insurance is a semi-magical way of staying healthy.
Hey, I see that Obama listened to your advice and is making a statement clearly in favor of gay marriage. Oh, that's going to get the southerners, catholics and social conservatives absolutely turning cartwheels of rage. But they already hated him. I don't know if it's going to help him or hurt him politically, but it's a good, honest stand. One good thing that might happen could be that it will throw the fundamentalists into such a tizzy that they won't be able to talk about anything else for weeks, and they'll get more and more extreme and outrageous, and hopefully further alienate a bunch of moderates.
--edward
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