My girls came up to our house Christmas Day- we feasted, laughed, opened presents, and laughed... click on the lady at showing off her new outfit at right to see pictures.
"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely."- Carl Jung
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Health Update:
Received results of lung biopsy. Happy New Year! The news was not good. It confirmed the presence of an aggressive fast-acting cancer that has metastasized from my esophagus into my right lung. Without treatment (chemo) I have been given "months not years" to live. With treatment maybe a little longer but with troublesome side-effects. I am electing to go with no further treatments. The oncologist didn't think this was a bad decision given the options.
posted by Craig 1:43 PM
On his dreadful journey, after the shaman has wandered through dark forests and over great ranges of mountains, he reaches an opening in the ground. The most difficult stage of the adventure now begins. The depths of the underworld open before him.- Uno Harva, quoted by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces
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"An honest politician is one who when he's bought, stays bought."- Attributed to Simon Cameron U.S. Senator (1799-1889)
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."- attributed - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
I was reading Jay's January 12th Forbes magazine and found an interesting article in their Creative Giving section about The International Justice Mission. It was founded by a lawyer who graduated from Harvard and then discovered some of the workings of the world that he wanted to impact- slavery, child sex trafficking, illegal detention. He has organized a large non-profit organization, faith-based, that helps overworked or unmotivated prosecutors to enforce laws. In Cambodia they helped effect a crackdown on child brothels by lobbying for Cambodia to be listed as a chronic offender under the US government's 2000 Trafficking in Victims Protection Act- a designation that would cost Cambodia US government aid. The picture of children links to the organization's site; the Harvard Journal logo links to an article there.
"There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which politicial institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality."- de Tocqueville
It is colder than sh** here- only in the 20s today, very cold for this place. The roads are quite icy. Some folks are lucky and warm in Mexico soaking up the sun on the beach. Click on the picture of the sunbather at left to link to a clever snowglobe presentation sent to me by my niece Heather from Germany.
Kira is in Hawaii and having fun- she flies back at the end of the week.
"It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all."- James Thurber
"'You know me don’t you?' Hazel saw that in the darkness of the burrow the stranger’s ears were shining with a faint silver light. 'Yes, my lord,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know you.' It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and to try to get used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses. 'You needn’t worry about them,' said his companion. 'They’ll be all right- and thousands like them. If you’ll come along, I’ll show you what I mean.' He reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap. Hazel followed; and together they slipped away, running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."- Richard Adams, Watership Down
Last friday Will's mother passed away. My thoughts are with him today, he is a good man.
A little saying included in the text of a recent e-mail:
I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright. I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more. I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive. I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger. I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting. I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess. I wish you enough "Hellos" to get you through the final "Good-bye".
Western Washington has been busy today having what amounts to a blizzard in these parts. The snowfall is puny by Michigan standards yet the roads easily become treacherous, and I don't know if it is because the temperature hovers closer to freezing or because it is more noticeable with all the hills and grades or because God just wants it to be that way here. I started out to go to work, but the freeway was collecting the white stuff so I returned home.
I was looking back through some old e-mails with Will and really old ones with Craig. We talked a bit about politics and religion, both subjects we can't seem to quite agree on- subjects most of us can't quite agree on. In one I talked about a friend who has gone to India a couple of times and once she was in a lecture/class group with the Dali Lama. She said she never really internalized that he was the reincarnation of Budda until she was there with him- she said to be in his presence was amazing, a different vibrational energy, and when he looked at her she felt an incredible happiness that stayed with her for hours.
I also ran across a reference to Woody Allen, a story I have told to others a few times. "It reminds me of one of Woody Allen's movies where he goes to a therapist and says they "hardly ever have sex, 3 or 4 times a week" and then you see his girlfriend talking to her therapist and saying they "have sex all the time, 3 or 4 times a week". Once again, people interpreting the same information/experience very differently."
And lack of agreement coupled with life's up and downs can lead to statements like this: "Maybe it is all a cruel hoax, there is nothing to get enlightened about, we are here for no particular reason, we have feelings for no particular reason, we do good or do bad for no particular reason and with no particular impact on our future and there is no destiny, no plan, no growth over lifetimes, maybe we are all fucked..."
These are tough things to sort out- tougher still because there are no answers. There is only faith, whether faith is put in organized religion, atheism, agnosticism, psychopharmacology, sex, or whatever beliefs you decide to hang your hat on- they are all matters of faith, whether you believe in God or not, they are all matters of believing or not believing based upon no proof- just faith. That is all there is, and we are here. It is up to each of us to decide why we are here. As Carrie once told me, "we're all here for different reasons", saying it almost increduously, as if were a given that everyone knows.
The body is a temporary vehicle (so says George Harrison via Vedanta). I tend to believe something akin to that. (It is the oldest philosophy on earth, for what that's worth.....actually that is worth quite a lot.)- Craig
"Music can be a form of prayer, a form of healing, a form of happiness, sadness, drenched in joy, heartbreaking. Bring it on."- Linford and Karin, Over the Rhine
Kira and Jon are much in love- this helped them to have a wonderful time in Hawaii. They got back Friday and missed our freezing cold and snow, yet still want to go back to Hawaii- can you imagine?
I guess one area they were in experienced a twenty year record for the most rainfall in one day, but the last five days were full of sun and fun- hiking, swimming, snorkeling, rock climbing, sunbathing... hmmm, does sound like fun.
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values."- Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)
There is a lot of land on the "flats" here that is farmed- berries, tulips and other bulbs/flowers, potatoes, organic things, etc. Not too long ago I was driving to LaConner and saw a field up ahead with white things all over it and I wondered what it was that was growing there. As I got close I realized that the farm was prolificly growing geese... well, not really. The snowgeese like it here, so it seems, and some people plant winter crops just for them to feast upon. A field full of snowgeese- a surprisingly nice sight.
"In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line."- Henry David Thoreau
I am heading to Olympia in the morning for a week of training, coming home again Friday evening. I do the same thing again next week from Monday-Thursday, then again the first week of February for three days and then the second week for two days. Whew! I am looking forward to learning a lot to help me in my new job, but I will sorely miss Jay...
Carrie lives in Olympia and we are meeting on Thursday for dinner and a movie- that will be a treat. I don't get to see her much.
All of the changes the last couple of years have been difficult for me and my daughters, and their distance from me has made the "empty nest" stuff different than I had imagined- having made it more complicated with my own changes.
I have told this little story many times over the years and am not all that sure that I have not mentioned it here before... forgive me if I reiterate. There was a movie I saw many years ago about a female comedienne who struggled to support herself and her young daughter. Eventually she hits the big time and she has a wonderful friend that helps her by taking care of her now early teens daughter while she is on the road. Her daughter becomes upset, even though her mother is finally happy and successful at what she loves to do. The comedienne says something like a child would rather have its mother suicidal in the next room than happy in LasVegas- and it is one of those lines that has stuck with me, striking a cord so to speak. Now. all of these years later, I have found that line to hold some truth...
"Why is life so tragic, so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss? I look down; I fell giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end."- Virginia Woolf
Boy, that stuff sounded a bit to heavy up above! To lighten up a bit, I include a picture provided by misterspim from FARK.COM. It seems that the Chinese live at the edge, going from one extreme to the other- disavowing all that smacks of capitalism then swinging to embrace commercialism to the hilt... I saw Mao at Walmart myself just the other day, pushing all of his products- made me do a double-take.
"Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."- House of Commons, 11 November, 1947 Winston Churchill
At left, from The Seattle Times, "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holds his head after being struck by a rock as he led 600 demonstrators on a civil-rights march through crowds of angry whites in the Gage Park section of Chicago's southwest side. Aug. 6, 1966."
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
I went to the movies with Carrie while in Olympia for training this past week. Kira had recommended seeing The Last Samurai and so we went to see it- a good choice.
The movie was set in the 1870s or so and Tom Cruise played the main character, a man who had seen the harsh realities of war while in the army fighting the American Indians. He was well known for his fighting and bravery but was haunted by his own experiences, dealing with those things by drinking. Tom then finds himself in Japan as a highly paid trainer for the Emperor’s Army, and in a fierce battle with the Samurai fighters. When the Samurai leader witnesses Tom continuing to fight while the only soldier left alive he flashes back to a vision of the coming of a white tiger and orders that Tom not be killed. Instead Tom is taken back to the Samurai village, where he is a prisoner for the winter. He suffers through DTs and wakens to find himself with a people who have a different way of viewing and being in this world. He learns new skills in fighting, learns to have "no mind", learns to meditate, learns to feel the spiritual all around himself.
It is interesting to watch how the movie presents the two cultures learning from each other. The Samurai leader near the end asks Tom something about awaiting his destiny and Tom tells him that he is correct, but that he believes in doing everything possible, being active in his life, until his destiny is revealed. It was a good story of an individual man discovering himself. It was also a good story about an individual's effect on others, about following your path, about doing what is to be done, doing the right thing.
The sword fighting was bloody- difficult to take for one who does not often experience the anesthesizing effect of television.
We humans are so incredibly diverse, our languages, our clothing, our cultures, our beliefs, our bodies all so different, and yet if you look beyond the details it is there- we are, all, more alike than different.
Thank you for taking me to the movie Carrie.
You know how the weekend goes along, and on Sunday morning you start getting this feeling that the weekend is slipping away? Or when you are on vacation and you can feel it sliding irretrievably away, on and on, to the last day?
Days feel like that more now, as time moves on and age gives perspective that was so dearly needed all of those years ago. Time no longer lays endlessly ahead. The good things I want to have forever, and I know I will not get to have that. That, as Craig says, I will not get out of this alive. The good things are so very precious. Our time together is limited, and it always has been. Being alive is fascinating. I really do hope that there is more to the story, that those familiar precious things can reunite with us beyond this life. Time will play itself out; the story will be told.
Time has only a relative existence.- Carlyle
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is so easy to go there, to worry about what will be. Right now is right now. This is it. Be actively calm. Be actively present, and still. Observe your self.
We are all going home, sooner or later. Right now we are here. Right now is what we have been given. Attend to it, this time will not come again- at least I don't think so...
There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.- Epictetus
I found these images on the web and the owner kindly consented for me to place them here for your pleasure...
Clicking on them will take you to the site.
"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."- Henry Ward Beecher
I am once again heading down to Olympia for more training for my new job and will be gone from Monday to Thursday evening. I am here now, and the time still is precious.
After discussing Harvey's ability to "look at your clock and stop it and you can go away as long as you like with whomever you like and go as far as you like. And when you come back not one minute will have ticked by." Dr. Chumley (of the sanitarium) asks, "And does he do this for you?"
Elwood replys "He is willing to at any time, but so far I've never been able to think of any place I'd rather be. I always have a wonderful time just where I am, whomever I'm with."
Happiness is a function of accepting what is.- Werner Erhard
I spent all last week in Olympia for training and then drove down again on Monday, staying that night and the next, then returning home Wednesday evening. Whew!! A lot of time away from home, away from Jay, for me.
Jay found a postcard with a picture of the motel I stayed in down there... quite the digs, eh?
"The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing."- Dizzy Dean (explaining how he felt after being hit on the head by a ball in the 1934 World Series)
Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe ....and am not contained between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
... all just as immortal and fathomless as myself;
They do not know how immortal, but I know.
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass [Song of Myself]
When I went to work at the state hospital here I worked on an admission unit with a new psychiartist- she was odd and often patients would mistake me for being the doctor on the interview assessment team. She seemed to think that everyone had a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and should be on a certain medication. She tended to wear frumpy dresses and often would simply leave her overcoat on inside.
A couple of years later there was an article in the newspaper about "back wards" at the state hospital and how the not-so-good psychiatrists were assigned there- and that all the patients seemed to be on the same medication... hmmm.
Later, when I worked at hospice, I saw her again as a patient there. I think she was about in her mid-40s at the time.
Life does exact a high toll.
"A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth."
-Robert Frost
My favorite quote from Mae West:
Good sex is like good Bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.
I worked for child protective services when we moved out here to Eastern Washington- the land of hot weather and cowboys. I would go out to homes in response to reports of child abuse or neglect and try to figure out what was going on. Many of the homes were not nice, sometimes the kids ran around barefoot, with snot hanging down from their noses. I remember one father, indignant that anyone should question his parenting, standing outside of his old trailer, his white tee shirt not covering all of his protruding belly, proclaiming that his kids were being raised "the same way I was- and I turned out alright!". Yes, of course.
I was not fond of CPS work and I think it was all the more difficult with little ones of my own at the time. Because I was the only worker with a master’s degree in the office the supervisor decided that I would be their sexual abuse expert, despite my having only completed my degree a couple of months before. I listened to some training tapes and then I was an expert and got to interview several people about these things.
Twice in the year that I was there I interviewed people who were day care providers in family homes, with the local deputy, and I know at least one of those was convicted of child molestation. After that I couldn’t even begin to consider a family day care for my children... It was difficult work and the caseload was like a tidal wave.
I moved on to the state psychiatric hospital, where the clients were also vulnerable but in many ways could fend for themselves. I guess at that time I fit in better at the "nut house". I certainly was less stressed there.
The bottom line is that I am responsible for my own well-being, my own happiness. The choices and decisions I make regarding my life directly influence the quality of my days.- Kathleen Andrus
I grew up in a small farm town in Michigan (Eaton Rapids) located kind of in the middle of the lower part of the "mitten". Eaton Rapids, or ER, now has 5,000 some residents- it was smaller when I grew up 5 miles outside of town.
The high school there was actually fairly large because it encompassed a huge rural area all the way up to almost Lansing- the bus ride was a drag... I think there were between 800 and 900 students in my high school. The school also served the National VFW Children's Home, located east of town. The VFW Home came into existence in the 1920s and serves children and grandchildren of deceased and disabled veterans.
I recently thought back to my high school years, how I thought the last couple of years were a waste of my time, and how I think that still. I was listening to an NPR broadcast about teen sex education in the public schools- still controversial all of these decades later, when we have indeed figured out where those babies come from.
They had a story about a school in Maine and their sex education program, which I thought was great. The class discussed not only birth control, with abstinence promoted as most effective, but had the kids handle condoms and dental dams, discussing lubrication, "enz" and whether or not oral sex counted if you were "abstinent". They considered what lines a guy might say to avoid using a condom and what responses could be given- empowering the students. Condoms were available in machines in the bathrooms for 50 cents, but students could get them free from the school nurse if they wanted to hear her spiel...
They closed the segment with a visit to the school day care, added to the school a couple of decades ago when they discovered that teen moms dropped out because they had no childcare- just think what social discoveries are yet to be made! The nursery had room for five babies and at that time had three, all belonging to teachers because no students at that time had babies. That actually brought tears to my eyes, thinking of the girls my age who had to go "visit their aunt" for a few months, or who just stopped showing up for school...
Whether you think sex is evil, or a necessary evil, or just bad for people who aren't married, it seems like it would be best to admit that sex is, it does exist and teens do get pregnant every day. The pregnancy rate is actually down from when I was young- that is a good thing, a great thing. Teen pregnancy robs girls of so many choices- how can helping girls to understand that choice and empowering them to be able to make that choice for themselves even be controversial? Why is it necessary to justify the existence of such programs with broadcasts like this? It is beyond the comprehension of my ever so small mind...
"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years."- Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)
I like the poetry of Walt Whitman... He likes to put...in his work, just like I do...
Click Walt's picture for poetry page. (Last added to 01/24/04)
Judith Viorst's book Necessary Losses is one of my favorites.
Click book at right for ongoing quotes. (Last added to 01/06/04)
All pictures posted on my pages link to somewhere in the cyberworld... try clicking on each of them.
E-mail comments to: thecindyj@hotmail.com or click MAIL TO
Click on our mailbox to view comments (after I've added them).
Thanks Grappler!
Music: Click on the Lips Page Created January 2004
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