Flowers and Lead

Flowers and Lead

My oldest dog just died.  We only had him for two years; we adopted him when he was 14.  Name was Merck.  He was born in Wales, so he was an immigrant I guess.  He was a great dog.  Loving and sweet, tolerant and chipper (on his good days).  And, quite a handsome fellow for a Border Collie. 

Of course, in our hearts, as a family, he’s only moved on and not really gone.  But as I was standing by his grave (which I dug – took two days) with our other adoptee, another Border Collie, the transitory nature of life flitted across my small mind.  Dogs can come into our lives as puppies, as did our beloved Max (a yellow lab) and we watch them age before our eyes.  Or, we can provide a home for older dogs, who have worked their whole lives as ours have.  Herding sheep or protecting our airplane runways from nesting geese, which can be quite hazardous for the airplanes and the geese.  Asking for nothing but shelter and food and love.  The most important of these is the love.

And, it’s not as though as humans we have greater lives, or are necessarily more important to the overall universe (?).  We just have longer lives.  Standing next to most species of tree or sea turtles, we are like week-enders.  In a microcosm, or possibly macrocosm (not sure, that’s a conundrum).  It’s been my experience though, almost all dogs that are raised with love and respect, just simply love back.  That’s about it.  If they are mistreated, or treated with cruelty, they will either protect themselves or will whither in spirit, shut down and die. 

And giving, showing, treating others with love is also, just so-o-o easy.  It is so easy to just love.  Yes, you can be hurt by others, and taken advantage of.  Sure being loving is often naïve.  Punched in one cheek and turning the other is maybe doubly (get it?) painful.  To many, if not most, it’s stupid and to the really stupid it is often seen as cowardly.  But, I’m talking about what quality of life a person chooses. 

Our human lifespan can be as brief as a dog’s.  Accidents, genetics, the chance of disease.  Our lives can be brief.  If we just happen to draw a good hand in the game of life, we can see many decades.  Occasionally even a century.  Juxtaposed to a dog’s lifespan though, we can choose to live that life in a high order and morally, or we can choose to be self-centered, self-serving and basically a shithead. 

“Love” is, in my mind (because all important lessons are taught by parable or analogy) – love is like carrying around a flower, held out towards all you encounter.  It’s very light and pretty.  It is fragile and can be broken, but we can always find, or purchase (they really aren’t expensive) another flower.  It’s the symbol, or gesture that counts.

“Hate”, however, is like a bucket of lead.  It takes a lot of energy to carry around.  A whole bucket, even a small bucket, of lead is really heavy.  You have to decide who to hate and you have to remember why you decided to hate them.  You gotta keep those things straight, especially if you live in a large urban place.  Just walking down the street in – like – New York, “hate that guy, that guy is okay, wait wait maybe he wasn’t???  What about that guy over there?  I think I’m supposed to hate him???  What were those rules again?  Was it race or religion?  Was it race and religion?  Just one of those, or both????  AARGgghhh!!! I can’t remember!!!”  What a dilemma.  Hate is so hard and heavy.

At my age, which is a lot of age, I just don’t have the energy and mental assuredness to deal with hate.  I actually never did quite get it, when it came to hate.  I did serve in the Army during the Viet Nam war, but I was really young and stupid and drafted.  Even if I had found myself in combat, which never actually happened, but if I did I’m pretty sure I’d have been killed.  “Why are you guys shooting at us?  Thud!!  Ouch!  That really hur……” 

One of my best friends in college was from Viet Nam.  I’m pretty certain, I’d have never figured out why I was supposed to shoot at them.  I’ve never like guns either.  They just struck me as – like – dangerous?  I mean – like – you pull that trigger and you are really committed to that action and if it was a mistake, you’re not gonna get that bullet back in the gun.  Sort of, it’s like voting for a President.  You put that vote in the ballot box, they don’t let you put your hand back in there if you change your mind.  That whole notion is also really heavy. 

So  … the next time you have to decide how to treat other people, maybe think about it and decide, “Do I wanna pick up a flower, or a bucket of lead?” 

Wham Bam – Another Scam

Wham Bam – Another Scam

My wife told me it has been disclosed (discovered) that those little devices that scoot around as robot vacuum cleaners are sending data back to some spy data server… ?

Like our cell phones are known to be ratting on us – all the time – even when they are turned off (?) (!!!) 

I’m old and supposed to be retired.  I still work, maybe, thirty to forty hours a week making my Art.  Some weeks, twice that.  And it does sell , occasionally.  Not a lot, but some. 

So … I figure why not just get a part-time job – like being a barista or whatever.  I get some kind of junk email saying a major convenience mart needs workers.  Step Two: I go to that big company’s website and start to fill out an application (everything is online now).  Before I can finish the application, about a minute after I type in my email address, I start getting hit with junk mail.  !!??  I have not finished the application, I have – in no way – hit the return key or save draft button.  And the shit door opens and shit pours out into my email.

Not only that, BUT I start getting spam from a dozen (maybe two dozen) other job sites.  And, these guys are really tricky-wicky .  And, I can see they are super-psychologically playing on the less educated.  I can’t say sophisticated psychology, pretty lame – but still.  “Oh, WOW! Look at all these high paying jobs, and right in your neighborhood!!  You can work here!  BIG MONEY, and you don’t really have to DO much at all!  REALLY!!  Just follow these links.”

One that really got me going was, “Hey Dale, we’ve already hired you!  Just send us your resume … with your Postal Address, phone number and Social Security.”  WOW!  I’ve already got the job!! 

Questions (Red Flag common sense questions:

1. Why do you need my “Postal Address”?

2. Social Security ???  What do you need that for, on an application? 

3. How did I already get a job at a place I never applied to?

4. Who the fuck are you?  I can’t find any hard IP data on you.  I Googled your company name and your website is a dead-end.

As an experiment, I started a mail rule blocking these senders of all these job finders.

Every day, for about a half an hour, for a week, I put a block on every one of these guys.  It did not stop.  It did not stop!  They didn’t even change the sender names, they just roto-ed through a different IP. 

Three pieces of data and they’ve got you.  Just three.  Soon, they may not even need that.  They can just lift anything they want from your life.  Money (first), credit (if you have any) and – big theory here – your vote.  If they can pull your life apart from the inside, they can explode it from the outside by stuffing things into it. 

Second Question(s):

1. Why?

2. Who are these people?

3. How?  Just how doesn’t matter – at all – don’t bother to even ask.

Take one (1) penny from a million people and you’ve got $100,000.  Repeat this at light speed, a million times a minute 24/7 – the amount of money involved is just ridiculous.  So wealth, being translated into power, is beyond comprehension.  So the actual “Why?” becomes – well – stupid.  Eventually it ALL comes down to 1’s and 0’s out there in space – in the cloud.  Bit Coin. 

The people, whose lives can be instantly ruined, victimized don’t exist to those on the victimizing end – most of whom are also, truth be told, being victimized by somebody somewhere else.  We have become the snake, consuming its own tail. 

One solution, and it’s a really bad solution, is to lie (?) about everything.  Problem there is, it doesn’t work.  The MATRIX knows instantly if you’re lying.  Everything you say, or keyboard into a computer, is instantly tracked and MUST correspond, each data point to all your other data points.  Try changing one digit on your credit card, out of twelve digits, what’s one number?  A trillion, trillion convolutions of twelve numbers(?).  (Eh?)  BAM! No good!  Try it twice and you’re blocked – and probably put on some suspicious person (read data) list.  ATM machines will EAT your card!

My view is that there doesn’t really exist a U.S. Economy, a Chinese Economy, a Russian Economy, whatever -  there is just AN economy.  And, every human being is now a literal slave to it.  EVERYWHERE, EVERYONE, even the ones with the yachts with heliports on them.  IT CAN, AND DOES HAPPEN – the more you have, the more you have to loose.  And, something those yacht heliport users don’t realize, is that their lives are constantly on the knife blade.  The higher up you claw, the farther the drop and the greater the impact, when you do. 

The stories of this are endless.  Rags to riches, riches to compost. 

All I can say is, “Smile.  You’re on camera – all the time, all the time.”

“Et tu, Brutus?”

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson
Peterson ArtWorks on Etsy

Note: for the brave among my dear readers, I offer a new, separate but different blog:

Equations for the Joyous Mind

A study in a matter of theory and conjecture about human brain-mind development towards retaining ever increasing meta-cognitive development.  Based on Mathematics, and I refer to Base 3 Calculus. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of people to give it a try.  But if you are in any manner open-minded and intellectually curious, the Math used is truly only a tool to condense the theory proposed. 

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”

Vaporous Memory

Vaporous Memory

One of my sons, I think, could be classified as very wise.  In an otherwise normal, run-of-the-mill, conversation, he can come up with some thoughts that really give the listener pause.  He does read a lot and has a consistently good memory.  Quite often when I make a mention of this, he just says, “I came across, read, that somewhere.”

When my son does this, he’s generally paraphrasing, never exact quotes.  This is what a thinker does.  An intellectual; that is to take bits of knowledge from one source (reading) and one, or two, from other sources, put them together – co-join concepts.  And, bring forward an entirely new way to look at it.  That’s an open intellect. 

One of these concepts, philosophical themes, was that memories are actually merely developed convolutions in the outer layer(s) of the brain - the cerebral cortex (I believe).  Memories are not facts, they are no longer real things.  Of course, if they were empirical events in your life, they do seem like facts.  However, they are gone.  PAST.  Over with.  If there was a life lesson to learn from whatever happened, that is good to remember.  Always apply whatever knowledge gained, to future actions and decisions, if they will make your life better, in some way.

BUT, let’s say, you farted in church – or got tongue-tied during a public speech – some event that was deeply embarrassing, there is really no reason the continue to carry that brick around.  You can just let it go.  Take it out of your guilt basket and set it by the road … move on.  Because, it really is vapor.  Can’t be undone, but what is it, really?  It’s just a small dent in your brain matter. 

I know this concept has been around for a very long time – lots of various intellectuals have gone on and on about “letting go of the past”.  ETC.  But this idea that painful memories are not real things, like ideas or thoughts of grand adventures are truly nothing until you actually do them.  We all have the thoughts, the notions, of climbing massive mountains, running marathons (and winning) and/or sky diving, surfing twenty foot waves.  We don’t carry guilt around because we don’t actually do these things.  They might show up on somebody’s bucket list, but we generally just accept that bucket lists are not – like – Legal Contracts.

This popular concept of mindfulness, living in the now, is a good thing.  Mostly I agree with that.  The hard part is applying it.  A small problem with living in the now and being mindful about it, is that it’s still necessary to remember the important stuff that keeps you alive.  Like, that old person driving that huge old car, is not looking both ways before entering a main highway.  In the past, you have learned not to trust that person won’t pull out right in front of you – that they just don’t see you.  All kinds of little pieces of previous life experiences can really save yer butt.

This means that all the while you are being mindful – in the moment ­– you have to continually dip into your mind bank; a.k.a. memory.  All important and useful knowledge is, after millennia of study by great teachers and learners, built on a foundation of prior knowledge.  Simple life longevity is totally founded on this ability to learn, retain and adapt to changes in concurrence with empirical knowledge retained. 

How to make sense of this concept?  Well, it seems, to me, that it can be reduced to something fairly simple.  If a memory is heavy and painful, step around it.  Mentally perform what a computer does when you erase something.  A hard drive, or any form of digital storage, never actually erases anything, it just writes a little piece of code that says, “Ignore the following data” just before whatever you think is being erased.  At the end of that code string of erased data, it resets a command to begin reading code again.  In other words, the computer skips over the erased data. 

A good computer programmer can, if somehow required or rewarded enough, retrieve that data.  A friend of mine, who is one of these kind of programmers, once said, “You have to write it on water, with a pencil, if you don’t want it to be retrieved.”  The human brain is pretty much the same.  The memories never actually go away.  You can never actually rid your brain of bad data.  But, like a computer, you can practice skipping over the stuff that drags you down.

With enough practice at this, it becomes easier and easier to do this.  And, the weight of al that painful thought garbage, lessens and lessens.  This also helps you find mindfulness in each new moment. 

When I meditated, really thought on this notion my son put out, I felt a major part of my own continuing sense of deep depression begin to crack.  And, through that crack some sunshine began to break in.  It did sincerely change my life – or, at least, my life outlook.

dalepeterson.us

Books on Kindle by Dale Clarence Peterson
Peterson ArtWorks on Etsy

Note: for the brave among my dear readers, I offer a new, separate but different blog:

Equations for the Joyous Mind

A study in a matter of theory and conjecture about human brain-mind development towards retaining ever increasing meta-cognitive development.  Based on Mathematics, and I refer to Base 3 Calculus. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of people to give it a try.  But if you are in any manner open-minded and intellectually curious, the Math used is truly only a tool to condense the theory proposed. 

Just published  “Twelve Roses for Kathy – A journey on a motorcycle out of the darkness of bipolar disorder”

SUICIDE!!! Let’s Talk … Chapter 1

SUICIDE!!!  Let’s Talk … Chapter 1

Calm down … stay calm … don’t panic… !!!  ???

It’s time, dear readers, it’s time to talk (talk) about suicide.  I mean really.  After the recent case of the young woman who talked her boyfriend into killing himself – and was convicted!  She could get 20 years in prison – for what was actually emailing and texting with an already very troubled young man.

Let me repeat that.  She texted him to, basically, go through with a plan and method he already had in process.  She was 17 when she hooked up with this guy and 19 when she talked (encouraged) him to finish what he had started.  Just over 20 when she was convicted of “aiding and abetting a homicide”.  The precise details are not as important as our cultural attitude towards the whole topic; as in the concept of killing yourself (suicide).

How does a 19 year old girl have any concept of what it means to end your own life?  How do any of us, no matter the age, really understand the depth of despair that any human brain can inflict on itself when its chemistry is fucked up?  As a species, even with all of the extreme science we have at our fingertips, we still cannot truly fathom what is truly amiss – to such a drastic degree – in a given unique brain.  AND, we still refuse to use the word, suicide, in context in polite (?) conversation.  Just using the word suicide in conversation can (can) have legal consequences.

#killed himself – took her own life – ended it – etc.  We have a word for the start of life – birth (accepting this as independence, or separation, from the mother’s body).  We have a word for creating your death – suicide.  The first, a joyous occasion, we really have no control over, and the second we have determined is a terrible act.  ???

Always study history.  The long range history, anthropologically speaking, suicide is not, by a set standard, considered to be bad, or evil, or even wrong.  In many societies, to support the continuation of that group, taking your self out, when you became too old or infirm to aid in the maintenance of the group, was what you were expected to do.  Take the long walk out onto the ice or in the desert – whatever.  In some societies if you were guilty of committing an act that put some type of horrible shame on your family – ceremoniously gutting yourself was the honorable expectation.

Where things get weird is when religion gets into the mix.  Suicide in support of the groups survival is proper.  Suicide to demonstrate respect and honor for the groups determined moral code is proper.  Bring in some supernatural spirit that is supposedly responsible for creating life, puts a terrible negative spin on everything.  Even in the face of physiological defect within the brain itself, or when a particular brain is so damaged that rational thought and behavior is extremely skewed, suicide is held to be the ultimate wrong-doing.  Or, even when you don’t really know what you are doing, you are NOT supposed to do that.

So, what is my personal stand on suicide?  Frustratingly I find this issue is far more complex than most people want to listen to, read about or even consider.  My first wife committed suicide.  In a deep depression she found a rifle and put a bullet through her own brain.  This was many years before Mental Illness was even on the map.  In essence, at that time, there weren’t many treatment options available.  Almost none.  Medical Science only had a few drugs to help and most of those came with very severe side effects.  Very severe side effects – like hair loss and general stupefaction (just made the afflicted into drooling morons).  She had witnessed this and the side effects when her own mother had had the same problem.  She chose not to take that path.

A friend of mine wrote on his Facebook page, the other day, “the miracle might happen tomorrow”.  Things might just get worse tomorrow for a person – sure, that could happen.  OR, “the miracle might happen”, things could take an unexpected positive direction.  I believe, whenever possible, remembering this very simple theory can push away, at least some of, the clouds. 

One of my mother’s sisters, a college friend, my current wife’s sister – all took their own lives.  All of the elements that came together such that they made the decisions they made resulted in an action that cannot be judged by anyone else – morally.  And, the resulting consequences on family members and friends, it would seem, have very little baring on that decision at the moment of action – pulling the trigger, stepping off the stool or ledge of a high bridge. 

In truth, the miracle could happen tomorrow, it could also happen within the next five minutes of this writing or reading.  In my life 90, or even 180 degree turns have happened with a single phone call, letter, email – even a text these days.  At the darkest moment you cannot see even a glimmer of light, if your eyes are closed.  And, that is my answer.