Learned: I love it when a compliment includes use of the words “bad ass.” I can still find some basic energy on a low-barometric pressure pain day. “We three” mostly don’t get hooked by breakdowns, or if we do, we could make a pact to always strive for a measured response. 3. Bonus: Stuff about the early days of propaganda/spin ala Edward Bernays.
3. Having a Grocery Outlet within walking distance. Having laundry machines in-house. Chi-walking. 3.
Seems: Like we identify as poor without saying it at Grocery Outlet. Like 75mg of Venlafaxine will be what I will be using to manage nerve damage sensations. Like it’s a little dangerous to assemble a big grocery delivery in the middle of the night while mostly asleep. 3.
Three Questions:
Ask “What if I made this Easy?”
Ask “What about this is REHAB?” (see “Accomplished”)
Ask “What if I made this Important?”
Desirable Habits: (TOP THREE)
✔︎Do things you normally wouldn’t do. (Like make a big pot of wholesome split pea soup.)
✔︎ Seek out and pursue opportunities for TRUE REHAB.
✔︎ Embrace community while putting self-care first. Note: If you start a conversation, have a way to remember that it’s still active. (so, what is the way?)
Thinking about: That it feels good to have a big pot of wholesome split pea soup on. How the deep aches are oddly handled with just a little extra venlafaxine. How great it always feels after Hilda comes, even if she doesn’t accomplish the whole regular list. 3.
On-purpose ways of being: Courageous, radical and confronting with forgiveness, peace, freedom and unconditional love in the background always.
Accomplished: The grocery order. The split pea soup. All laundry. Cleaned refrigerator to make way for the mystery shipment. How at peace I become with food security. 3.
Q: In the early 20th century, there was a PR campaign designed to get people in the U.S. to think of a hearty breakfast as a better breakfast for their wellbeing and that adding bacon to a plate of eggs and toast made it hearty. It was meant to boost bacon sales. See what happened there?
Me: Bacon seems right with breakfast. Oh, so we ended up believing something is true that was once a public relations maneuver.
Still Watching:“Falling Water” on (correction, USA NETWORK playable on Amazon Prime). A cult is formed around people who connect inside of their dreams. Weird and cool.
Need to speed read:“We Were Eight Years in Power – An American Tragedy” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and “Hands of Life” by Julie Motz.
Learned: Nerve damage is real, coffee helps with it, but not as much as venlafaxine. NB watches the worst kind of TV – IMHO. My weight is 304 pounds. 3.
3. My study nurse friend, Jay. Spontaneous cleaning. Pantry and Leftovers. 3.
Seems: Like instead of everyone having a photo of the president on their wall, they have his business in their faces no matter where they look. Like if you indulge in any kind of media, something either intended or unintended will creep into the conversations you are and modify. Like I get a little nervous with limited snack material. 3.
Three Questions: Ask “What if I made this Easy?”
Ask “What about this is REHAB?”
Ask “What if I made this Important?”
Desirable Habits: (TOP THREE)
✔︎Do things you normallywouldn’t do. (Like?)
✔︎ Seek out and pursue opportunities for TRUEREHAB.
✔︎ Embrace community while putting self-care first. Note: If you start a conversation, have a way to remember that it’s still active. (I have conversations I still mean to have that have fallen through the cracks and no structure.)
Thinking about: How the peripheral neuropathy in my legs and feet may require me to stay on the SSRIs if I want to function. That LH remarked at how I can have health problems but still be inspiring. How KS might have accidentally been listening to untransformed assessments as truth. 3.
On-purpose ways of being: Courageous, radical and confronting with forgiveness, peace, freedom and unconditional love always in the background.
Accomplished: Plugged in a rodent screamer next to the point of our ant invasion and they are backing off. Pulled out the cutting board cabinet and cleaned like I’ve been saying to myself I should. Made dough and baked eight diabetic friendly chocolate chip cookies, so the rest is slice-and-bake ready in the fridge. Gave blood to HepC study, still cured year 3.
New Q: What have you bought into after hearing/being persuaded it was “good” or “better” that you might like to rethink?
My 1st pass Answer: It could be anything, right? The idea of normal. Truvia/stevia. What cool is. I feel a list coming on! Do I have to rethink it?
Watching: “Falling Water” on Amazon Prime (I think). A cult is formed around people who connect inside of their dreams. Weird and cool.
Wanting to read more of: “We Were Eight Years in Power – An American Tragedy” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and “Hands of Life” by Julie Motz.
Something I bought into that helped me with living life:
“Responsibility begins with the willingness to be cause in the matter of one’s life. Ultimately, it is a context from which one chooses to live. Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what’s so, and your stand. Being responsible starts with the willingness to deal with a situation from the view of life that you are the generator of what you do, what you have and what you are. That is not the truth. It is a place to stand. No one can make you responsible, nor can you impose responsibility on another. It is a grace you give yourself — an empowering context that leaves you with a say in the matter of life.” ~ Werner Erhart
“Clearing for Chaos 1” 2018 collage. I’m sure some of the imagery is copyrighted.
Learned: Shopping, cooking, cleaning, and caregiving are truly rehabbing me. Most of my models involve swirls and trap-doors. Some of what I figured I’d lost capability-wise was not completely lost, so maybe rehab works. 3.
3. Kite string. Chocolaty chaos. The inevitability of Swirls. 3.
Seems: Like my energy and sleep have been better since reducing the SSRIs. Like if I wasn’t so whimsical, I might occur as creepy. 3.
The Three Questions: (that I mostly forgot to ask)
Ask “What if I made this Easy?”
Ask “What about this is REHAB?”
Ask “What if I made this Important?”
Desirable Habits: (TOP THREE)
✔︎Do things you normallywouldn’t do. (Like?)
✔︎ Seek out and pursue opportunities for TRUEREHAB.
✔︎ Embrace community while putting self-care first. Note: If you start a conversation, have a way to remember that it’s still active. (I have conversations I still mean to have that have fallen through the cracks and no structure.)
Thinking about: How the peripheral neuropathy in my legs and ankles is now more apparent and I’m bruising more easily. Banana chocolate chip something. A nap. 3.
On-purpose ways of being: Courageous, radical and confronting. Forgiveness, peace, freedom and unconditional love in the background.
Accomplished: Made roasted potato wedges that tasted good, and a brunchy egg and spinach thing that went beyond edible. Lightly sprayed ant invasion with ancient American remedy like the kind I used as a child (Raid). That sentence. 3.
Same Q: What’s something you say you’re going to do that you never get to, but still want to say you will do it?
My 2nd Answer: I guess when I think something is a good idea, I want to have it up somewhere just incase its time comes. I asked the question with freedom in mind. I LOVE having ideas that I’m never going to do. I LOVE it when someone else does them. I just want it done, it doesn’t have to be by me.
Watched: “HUMANS” (invert A) a weird British take on a Swedish android SciFi series. Weird and cool.
Wanting to read more of: “We Were Eight Years in Power – An American Tragedy” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and “Hands of Life” by Julie Motz.
Well, of course, some of the images are copyrighted, silly! How else could it be chaotic?And I love the smell of Raid in the morning… Perfect accompaniment to chaos!
“Sandspit” 1953 painted by Andrew Wyeth – (Wyeth’s wife, Betsy at Cutler’s Cove, Maine) Boston Museum of Fine Art, as found here on the internet.
Learned: When I start being impatient, I lose the listening. I can run a pretty good small open source breakout session if I put just a little thought into it first. A bunch of global and local statistics about HIV & AIDS from one of the Docs who has been in the fight from the very beginning. 3.
3. Patient painters. Patient Friends. When I can tell I’m being impatient. 3.
Seems: My game ends soon and it seems like nothing happened. Seems like if I keep up the practice of cleaning my face with the potion and applying the cream, my skin will get better. Seems like NB will never get better and I’ll end up being the help he needs without getting the help I need. 3.
The Three Questions: (that I forgot over the weekend)
Ask “What if I made this Easy?”
Ask “What about this is REHAB?”
Ask “What if I made this Important?”
Desirable Habits: (TOP THREE by Priority and for readability.)
✔︎Do things you normallywouldn’t do.
✔︎ Seek out and pursue opportunities for TRUEREHAB.
✔︎ Embrace community while putting self-care first. Note: If you start a conversation, have a way to remember that it’s still active.
Thinking about: How to care for myself and my caregiver without the help of my caregiver. When rehab really starts, will I really do it? When I was young, I didn’t want to like artwork like the kind Andrew Wyeth made. 3.
On-purpose ways of being: Courageous, radical and confronting. Forgiveness, peace, freedom and unconditional love in the background.
Accomplished: Moved desk in bedroom, vacuumed and dusted behind. Went grocery shopping again. Took the venlafaxine level down to 37.5mg from 300mg a few months ago with no jagged neuropathy pain (yet). Slept a lot.
Q: What’s something you say you’re going to do that you never get to, but still want to say you will do it?
My Answer: First thing comes to mind is those super-cleaning behind furniture jobs or repainting the bathroom trim, but I know it’s deeper than that. More mañana.
Finished Reading: “Echoes of My Soul” by Robert K. Tanenbaum (my father’s kind of story). Took longer than it should have and put me in nap-mode almost every time. Was irritated with the incredibly long epilogue and postscript. Not my cup of tea.
Wanting to get back to reading:“We Were Eight Years in Power – An American Tragedy” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and “Hands of Life” by Julie Motz.
Clay, Loved your comments about not wanting to like the art of Andrew Wyeth when young. Reminded me of the last 10 years or so when I had to change my mind about music genres. I was so-so on folk and really down on CW. Then we went to the Ozark Opry (we stayed in a timeshare at Lake of the Ozarks and bought tickets for the show). I realized that the genre was less important to me than the musicianship. Had to get down off my high horse! Just another small step in owning my own arrogance. Would be interested to hear what shifted for you.
Dario
To love a painting is to feel that it is not an object but a voice.
~ André Malraux
Dario, I would like to try to answer that. It probably is mixed up in the letting go of that identity I created to survive, the avant-garde bohemian outsider artist. I had to be weird, listen to weird music, hang out with other weird artists and only truly love art that was difficult to figure out or hard to be with.
Andrew Wyeth was a boring ol’ white man country painter of barns who just left nothing for my complex, otherworldly imagination, plus his palette was completely brown. The folk music of paintings. A little too precious. I may have even pitied him, as I did many a technically proficient painter, for being so damn predictable. I still heartlessly shrug off the yawnably predictable, but I found I had something in common with Andrew and the technically proficient – so am I. And he did a good job of being the painter he was, as a business, but also snuck off and did something he wanted to do, in spite of what those around him may have wanted him to keep doing. I’ve done that, in my way, so if he and I sat down and talked living as an artist, I might be the chaotic one, but he’s got his secrets, and I guess that’s what I couldn’t see before. So yeah, a result of transforming my view of life.
Did the same thing with Splenda upon hearing that I have diabetes 2. I like sweet, so I just made up a new opinion and went with it!
I stopped making painting-like objects around 2002. I’ve has a nice break from it and I don’t have to “anything” about it, but a common thread for me has been looking at the pictures in life, even if I’m not actively making them. Empty and meaningless totally helps with this. And I could… and I could use brown and I could use an alternate name… heehee.
Thanks, buddy. Not an unsurprising evolution for a smart person who came of age in a certain time and place. There’s really a tale to be told in both our stories about inherited conversations. I neglected to mention earlier that I grew up with a mother who had been trained in the classical canon of music in the 20s and 30s, Went to my first opera at 15 and listened extensively to classical music when I wasn’t tuned in to beep-bop-a-lula, ‘cuz that’s what we did as teenagers in the 50s and 60s. Then came to jazz, since it was really the most in the 70s and 80s for a certain class of intellectuals. We all had toolkit certain things and cultivate certain tastes to fit in with our peeps!
Thanks, Dario
“…muscles never stay stretched, you know. One good painful stretching on Monday will not do for Tuesday. Tuesday will demand its share of the discomforts, as well as Wednesday and Thursday and the rest of the week.” ~ Jose Limon, dancer
Learned: They are either a mentor, a message, or a mirror. I have been a clearing for chaos. Time to collage something, tear-style. Seems like I have a job with lots of breaks, but no days off. the days are like a stress dream. Made chicken cordon blue burritos. When LG has an idea, he thinks it’s a good one and that we should do it, but will also listen to reason. (A creation/I think I might do that.) JS and I are friends.
3. The idea of a family retreat by the sea. The inner beauty of men in touch with their hearts. The inclusion of women and other genders. 3.
Seems: Like I am creating a space for back to the drawing board. Like so much has happened since the day I started this that I should call “False Start” and begin again. Like I can get how building a wall could seem like a good way to take care of yourself. 3.
The Three Questions: (that I forgot over the weekend)
Ask “What if I made this Easy?”
Ask “What about this is REHAB?”
Ask “What if I made this Important?”
Desirable Habits: (TOP THREE by Priority and for readability.) ✔︎Do things you normallywouldn’t do.
✔︎ Seek out and pursue opportunities for TRUEREHAB.
✔︎ Embrace community while putting self-care first. Note: If you start a conversation, have a way to remember that it’s still active.
Thinking about: What my new freedom is and isn’t like.
On-purpose ways of being: Courageous, radical and confronting. Forgiveness and unconditional love in the background.
Accomplished: NB is set up to be able to take care of himself while I am away for the weekend (and beyond). Made all the members at the weekend voting members for the weekend. Wrote a good and well-received mission-statement even though it wasn’t adopted. Completed being Registrar. Facilitated new guy’s completion over the noisiness of the quiet dorm. Am now friends with LG in that unpredictable way you can’t see until love and affinity are restored.
Q: What is your inner idiot like?
My Answer: My inner idiot likes to turn everything into a joke. He wants things to be perfect, or as good as they can be under the unfortunate circumstances. He pities fools but is enamored with dorkiness, primitivity, and innocence. He thinks every idea he has is brilliant and feels he has the answers and the know-how to get any job done and done right! He can take any situation and make light of it while forgetting that it might seem different for others. My inner idiot doesn’t get how annoying he can be when adding his hilarious brilliance to something perfectly fine the way it is. He seemingly has no problem eating anything invented in a laboratory.
Ivan Meštrovic (Croatian, 1883-1962). Archangel Gabriel, 1918. Photo: Brooklyn Museum
I don’t have a story about this statue of a lovely listening angel, but for a friend who experiences death around him: whatever you experience at the learning of a friend’s death, I feel you. How wonderful it must have been for you to have known them, and for them to have had you in their life; they got to have your love from the moment you met, whether you were in-touch or out-of-touch. I do get that it can occur as a surprise or even a drag when someone dies. You will miss them in the loveliest way possible.
Learned: There is much I can learn from other men. My ways are not like the ways of others. The past that’s complete is the “bad” past, but the past that’s judged as “good” lives on for comparison purposes. 3.
3. Struggle. Trust. Being asked to make eggs for breakfast to trick me into also eating eggs for breakfast since the pan is already dirty. 3.
Seems: Like I have the longest colon in the world. Like it’s hard to see a path to forgiveness when someone seems stuck being a maniacal narcissist. Like it’s exhausting work to care-give. 3.
The Three Questions:
Ask “What if I made this Easy?”
Ask “What about this is REHAB?”
Ask “What if I made this Important?”
Desirable Habits: (TOP THREE by Priority and for readability.)
✔︎Do things you normallywouldn’t do.
✔︎ Seek out and pursue opportunities for TRUEREHAB.
✔︎ Embrace community while putting self-care first. Note: If you start a conversation, have a way to remember that it’s still active.
Thinking about: The surreal dreams I’ve been having. Do people with weird stress dreams become the insane? Is wanting to know a source of human suffering?
On-purpose ways of being: Courageous, radical and confronting. Forgiveness and unconditional love in the background.
Accomplished: Taken good care of NB and his sprained foot since last Tuesday.
Watched: Binge-watched “Travelers” by Netflix, loved it; the guy from Will & Grace is in it, and he doesn’t seem gay in this, either. “Peaky Blinders” started. (2)
Still Reading:“Echoes of My Soul” by Robert K. Tanenbaum (my father’s kind of story). Wanting to get back to “We Were Eight Years in Power – An American Tragedy” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and “Hands of Life” by Julie Motz. 3.
Learned: How to make a little origami shirt out of a one dollar bill. What out-of-control blood sugar feels like while preparing food. NB sprained his foot, it’s very swollen, and he is on my couch so I can help him for a change. 3.
3. Delicious potstickers. Slight reordering of “H: Daily Communication.” Comfy-tasting lentils over brown jasmine rice. 3.
Seems: Like I could become good at money, numbers and investing if I say so, but I may not feel like it. Like that brown spot on the Dollar Shirt image symbolizes everything I obsess over in life. Seems like life would be more fun if the goal were to gain weight and love it. 3.
The Three Questions: Ask “What if I made this Easy?” Ask “What if I made this Important?” Ask “What about this is REHAB?”
Desirable Habits: Shaving these down to the TOP THREE by Priority and for readability. ✔︎Do things you normallywouldn’t do ✔︎ Seek out and pursue opportunities for TRUEREHAB.
✔︎ Embrace community. Note: If you start a conversation, have a way to remember that it’s still active.
Thinking about: Magic wanding the lentils but leaving it chunky. All the mistakes ever made by the innocent.
On-purpose ways of being: Courageous, radical and confronting. Forgiveness in the background.
Accomplished: Handyman hired & paid, shelf mounted, curtain rod installed. Grocery order painstaking made, breakdown handled, delivery received, stuff all put away. Wanded the lentils. Served with brown jasmine rice with a dollop of tangy Greek yogurt.
Watched: Binge-watched “Mindhunters” and started watching “Godless” and Season 2 of “Travelers” all by Netflix, all excellent. (3)
Reading:“Echoes of My Soul” by Robert K. Tanenbaum (my father’s kind of story). Wanting to get back to “We Were Eight Years in Power – An American Tragedy” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and “Hands of Life” by Julie Motz. 3.
