Kulfi the Fat Cat
We could all use a happily ever after story. Even if it involves fat shaming a heavy gato.:-)
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Provided to YouTube by The-Source
Kulfi the Fat Cat · Ghizela Rowe · Kim Maerkl · Kim Maerkl · Patricia Saco
Kulfi the Fat Cat
℗ 2020 Atlantic Crossing Records
Released on: 2018-04-01
Illustrations: Patricia Saco
Recording Artist: Ghizela Rowe
Composer: Kim Maerkl
Lyricist: Kim Maerkl
No Fixes
3:42 AM
Discouraging talk with my family practitioner yesterday.
Although he wouldn’t admit it in so many words, no cure or fix exists for my chronic anxiety, nightmares, or insomnia. There never has been.
All the medications and talk therapy over the decades has only been to help. Not cure.
Some of those drugs and talk have helped me for a while. Perhaps. Because its difficult to know if I got better on my own (spontaneous remission) or whether I got better from a treatment.
For the majority of people like me suffering long term mental health problems, however, cures are not forthcoming and never will be.
It is in a doctor’s nature to want to help. They do that by prescribing treatment after treatment, even when the problem is insolvable
Medicines for most mental illness just tamp down or help control symptoms, they don’t root out the problem.
I’ve always envisioned electroshock or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as a method to reset or change my brain in a fundamental way but no doctor I’ve talked to will prescribe it. I haven’t checked overseas.
Failing that course of action, I’m not sure what’s next. Other than my conditions continuing while old age problems add to my misery.
Compounding all of this, the insurance industry would now like to see everything through the lens of depression or anxiety. Anything outside these two conditions is too complex, untreatable, and therefore not worth covering to the extent those problems need.
Myself aside, what about the mentally ill homeless people who haunt our streets? No fix for them either or perhaps even treatment. Without insurance, what happens? Who covers them? If they did get their meds, though, would they take them on schedule? And what if they drank?
I no longer drink but I used to. I had to quit alcohol each time a doctor asked, to make sure they knew I wanted to get better. Many of the powerful drugs I took were contraindicated by alcohol. I don’t know, therefore, how these meds could help someone who has a drinking problem.
Everyone seems to need help.
What, then?
Given my forty plus years of dealing with mental health problems, I think a better approach to the craxy expensive and unavailable mental health system would be a network of advocates.
People assigned to patients, people that could be called at two in the morning to listen or someone to go with the patient to anxiety crippling events like blood draws or dental appointments.
People oriented management may be a better approach or an adjunct to all these short term fixes which in fact are no fix at all.
Louis Wain’s drawings of cats as his schizophrenia worsened.
Wonder Woman 1984 Review
7.5 out of 10
A good film. This is a romance and “hope conquers all” movie with action serving as a backdrop. It is not a normal follow on to a superhero movie.
It is obviously not the film investors, critics, or most fans wanted. A hard-hitting action film would have capitalized on the formula that made the first movie a massive hit.
It is a credit to DC Films that they allowed the women producers (including Gal Gadot) to continue the timeline and development of Diana’s character as they saw fit.
It is sad, though, that the trailers deceptively marketed Wonder Woman 1984 as an action film first. But manipulation is what advertising and promotion folk do and we are all poorer for it.
Worst CGI ever. The Cheetah looks like it was hit with an ugly stick. The Cheetos’ Cheetah looks better.
8 out of 10 if Lynda Carter’s cameo had been longer. Those few seconds were not enough; a flash of a smile and she was gone. I hope she returns.
Yesterday at the original townsite of Tecopa, California. More at my Instagram site: https://www.instagram.com/tgfarley/?hl=en
Caliban in the Coal Mines
By Louis Untermeyer 1885- 1877
God, we don’t like to complain—
We know that the mine is no lark—
But—there’s the pools from the rain;
But—there’s the cold and the dark.
God, You don’t know what it is—
You, in Your well-lighted sky,
Watching the meteors whizz;
Warm, with the sun always by.
Nothing but blackness above,
And nothing that moves but the cars—
God, if You wish for our love,
Fling us a handful of stars!
God, if You had but the moon
Stuck in Your cap for a lamp,
Even You’d tire of it soon,
Down in the dark and the damp.
—
Transformed into song by Julie Bennett Hume
Merry Christmas or a Happy Chanukah!
Thanks for visiting my site this year. I hope you found something enjoyable.
I’ll be in Quartzsite for the four days of the PowWow. Hope to see you there!
If I had more time I would write you a shorter letter.
I can’t stay at home. I have to get out for my mental and physical health.
You can follow my day trips on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tgfarley/
In March I suffered a wrenched back, for which help was a long time coming. I have what used to be called sciatica, now sometimes called radicular pain. This burning and pain on the left side of my body continues to severely bother me there, along with it spreading to my right side where it now badly impacts my right hand and wrist.
The normal course of treatment is with a combination of drugs and physical therapy. In the last two months my medicines have been dialed in, allowing me to get some sleep and more importantly to get me on the trail.
You see, the physical therapy people gave up on me after only two sessions, saying they couldn’t help me with the complexity of my condition. They referred me back to my general practitioner who said I should keep hiking and carrying weight as much as possible, to better strengthen my back and legs. This is now undirected exercise, instead of directed exercise which I would prefer to be doing under the guidance of the PTs.
This is all I can do, pending this miracle injection which I am promised for in January. In that operation, they will put a needle in me and push in some kind of steroid which is designed to travel to my frayed or otherwise damaged nerve endings. That might offer better relief for several months at a time, perhaps letting me reduce the prescription meds I am taking.
Adding to this are my age related cataracts. For this vision problem I shouldn’t be outside that much but I have to treat my back and my eyes are going to fail in a few months anyway. The eye doctor said I will probably need my left eye operated on in three months or so. Given that, I am out and about until failure. The hypersensitivity to light is very intense, though, and my screen time is very limited. Right now I am typing this while looking away from the monitor.
To finish, I live alone and impact no one save my cat. My parents have passed and our family no longer gathers for the holidays which were so important to celebrate with my Mom and Dad.
Doing these posts adds to the enjoyment I feel outdoors. I like being outside and it is vital for me to continue.I hope all of you can stay safe no matter your situation. I will be at Quartzsite for the PowWow, however, and I hope to see some of you there.
More fine poetry from Teasdale. Another poem of hers is here. (internal link)
In my youth, time seemed to begin anew when meeting someone new.
The Years
by Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933)
Read by Ghizela Rowe
The Years
To-night I close my eyes and see
A strange procession passing me-
The years before I saw your face
Go by me with a wistful grace;
They pass, the sensitive, shy years,
As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears.
The years went by and never knew
That each one brought me nearer you;
Their path was narrow and apart
And yet it led me to your heart-
Oh, sensitive, shy years, oh, lonely years,
That strove to sing with voices drowned in tears.
This simple looking verse is actually quite elaborate in structure. As one critic put it, one might not understand a single word yet still be charmed by it.
For more on this Civil War era poet, visit this site:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sidney-lanier
Ballad of Trees and the Master
Sidney Lanier (1842 – 1881)
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him;
The little gray leaves were kind to Him
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
’T was on a tree they slew Him—last,
When out of the woods He came.
Lost in thought is a common phrase while lost in no thought is not.
We’ve all driven miles without thinking about the road we were on or the scenery we passed. Abruptly we come to, realizing that we were driving while not thinking about it.
We’ve all stared at waves or at a roaring fire without noticing the passing moments.
Those unconscious but awake times are not what Krishnamurti is writing about. In his example one is walking about fully aware and awake and non-judgmental. Difficult.
I’m sure Krishnamurti met Aldous Huxley at some point, I will have to look that up.
It’s extremely doubtful that K ever took LSD and I am somewhat sad that he didn’t. He could have made insights into the mind that his sober self would have never achieved.
Inspired by Huxley’s Doors of Perception, I took acid twice to see what all the hullabaloo was about.
I was overlooking the street from the top of a two story stairwell, facing the street. A brown UPS truck roared up. The mundane became magnificent.
The UPS Man, the UPS Man! He’s arrived! Where’s the package? There, he’s going to the back door of the truck. Getting the package. Oh, boy, he’ll be coming up the stairs soon. Look at him go! Charge up those stairs! Yes! Where’d he go? He’s delivered the package, now he’s racing back down the stairs. Off goes the truck. Fantastic.
I treasured every second of that delivery under LSD. I knew what was coming and looked forward to all of the steps. Talk about being in the moment, I was the moment. The ordinary march of life changed its sound and canter, it was no longer ordinary but extraordinary.
As I said, I only took that drug twice and only carefully controlled circumstances. People and the drug vary so I cannot recommend it to anyone. Having said that, glimpsing a new world inside the present world was illuminating beyond anything I had ever experienced.
For most of us, though, we can only occasionally enter Krishnamurti’s judge-less state by luck and circumstance. LSD forces it on you. But that is like being forced to eat the most delicious desert you have ever had. You don’t want to eat cheesecake at every meal and be consumed by it. But taking a few bites sure tastes good.
This is an excerpt from The Only Revolution (external, unsponsored link), provided by the Krishnamurti Foundation of America.
Life Begins Where Thought Ends
“If you pass on through the meadows with their thousand flowers of every color imaginable, from bright red to yellow and purple, and their bright green grass washed clean by last night’s rain, rich and verdant–again without a single movement of the machinery of thought–then you will know what love is. To look at the blue sky, the high full-blown clouds, the green hills with their clear lines against the sky, the rich grass and the fading flower–to look without a word of yesterday; then, when the mind is completely quiet, silent, undisturbed by any thought, when the observer is completely absent–then there is unity. Not that you are united with the flower, or with the cloud, or with those sweeping hills; rather there is a feeling of complete non-being in which the division between you and another ceases.
The woman carrying those provisions which she bought in the market, the big black Alsatian dog, the two children playing with the ball–if you can look at all these without a word, without a measure, without any association, then the quarrel between you and another ceases. This state, without the word, without thought, is the expanse of mind that has no boundaries, no frontiers within which the I and the not-I can exist.
Don’t think this is imagination, or some flight of fancy, or some desired mystical experience; it is not. It is as actual as the bee on that flower or the little girl on her bicycle or the man going up a ladder to paint the house–the whole conflict of the mind in its separation has come to an end. You look without the look of the observer, you look without the value of the word and the measurement of yesterday. The look of love is different from the look of thought. The one leads in a direction where thought cannot follow, and the other leads to separation, conflict, and sorrow. From this sorrow, you cannot go to the other. The distance between the two is made by thought, and thought cannot by any stride reach the other.
As you walk back by the little farmhouses, the meadows, and the railway line, you will see that yesterday has come to an end: life begins where thought ends.”
J. Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti Foundation photo. Link to the KFA: https://www.kfa.org
