Saturday, December 31, 2016

Dialogue between me and LBF

Me - Well, here we are again, stupid Little Belly Fat.  you know what?  I don't care anymore.  Let this be our last conversation for now.  So you're back.  Who cares.
LBF - chuckle.
Me - I'm not listening.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Thursday, December 29, 2016

poem to PTSD and continuing dialogue with EF (LBF)

PTSD:
Pie in Your Face


Pie face
kick you in the
shoelace
this is my
place

don't get in
my space
shoelace
sponge face

erase
memories
freeze
thoughts

*****


Dec. 29

Me - Extra Fat (EF), are you still here?
EF - I'm shrinking....What are you doing to me?  I thought we were friends forever.
Me - No, not forever, Little Belly Fat (LBF).
LBF - What are you doing to me?
Me - I've thought of ways to lose you, while still eating.  I've got to keep eating.
LBF - Yes, that's the idea!  Keep eating!
me - Oh no, but not the way you think.  I have new ways of eating now.
LBF - Don't tell me.
Me - I'm going to write some down for myself to review.
1.  I can eat a peanut butter sandwich without jelly - or a jelly sandwich without peanut butter.  The idea is to overall eat less.
2.  I can enjoy a piece of bread or a roll all by itself without butter or margarine or cheese.
3.  One 50-cent bag of potato chips is only 200 calories (compare that with a handful of cookies) and so satisfying.  It's ok for a snack.
4.  Eat a banana:  protein, potassium, natural sugar.
5.  Coffee black, never any white sugar; brown sugar if necessary.
6.  Farina is good for breakfast, but don't put too much margarine and sugar in it.
7.  I don't like artificial sweeteners except in occasional diet sodas:  no nutritional value, can't be digested by liver, bladder and kidneys.
8.  Smaller meals overall, and leave a little behind on the plate.
9.  Never ice cream, cake or cookies.
LBF - Excuse me.
Me - you may take a break now.  Isn't this fun?
LBF - No.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

EF, you are not my friend

Me - Well, I'm in for it now.  I started this, now I'll have to keep it going.  EF, hello.
EF - Hello.  I'm still here.
Me - Yeah, I guess so.  Maybe I lost a little of you since 2 days ago, but I don't like checking the scale every day.  I just know I have to keep shooing you away.
EF - Ha ha!  I'll never leave you.
Me - Oh yes, you will.  you did before, so you will again.  I know you're going to leave.  Don't slam the door on the way out.
EF - But I don't want to leave you.  I can't.
Me - Oh yes, you can.  I'm going to see it.
EF - Sniff.  Then this conversation is over?
Me - Yes, it is.  I got the last word again, because you're already out the door.
EF - (Distant sniff)
Me - I'm not listening.
***

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Dialogue between me and my little extra fat (EF)

Dec. 22, 2016

Me - I hate you.
EF - You don't hate me.  you love me.  You hate to see me go.  I am your excuse for hating yourself.
Me - I can hate myself perfectly well without you, thanks.
EF - But I make you feel better.
Me - No, you don't!  I hate you!
EF - You love me. 
Me - That's ridiculous.  Why should I love you?
EF - Because when you get skinny, you start to feel like a child, insecure, open to abuse and self-doubt, easily violated, vulnerable.
Me - I can get over those feelings without you.
EF - Then do it.  I will go away if I'm not helping you anymore.  I'll find somebody else to prey on.
Me - Then goodbye.  I am saying goodbye to you, Extra Fat.  I renounce you, EF.  I am changing my diet habits to lose you.
EF - I will not miss you at all.  There are so many others to prey on, who need my reassurance more than you do.
Me - Then goodbye, EF.  I am not worried about you anymore.  you can go where you like.  I will enjoy watching you slip off.
EF - Sniff, I'll miss you.
Me - Like a tiger misses a mouse it has eaten.  What do you know of emotions?  All you know is lard.  I renounce you, lard.  you are ugly, and i don't want you to be part of me.  I stand apart from you, EF, and recognize who I am.

***

Dec. 27, 2016

Me - Extra Fat, I really want to lose you.  But I don't care too much either way anymore.
EF - Really?
Me - No, I'm lying.  I do care.  I want you gone.
EF - But it's hard to lose me, isn't it?
Me - Yes, but I feel alright with or without you, I really do.
EF - Then I can't help you at all.  I thought you needed me.
Me - No, I don't need you at all.  I can diet you away.
EF - I wish you wouldn't.  I've grown attached to you.
Me - Then detach yourself!  Go away!!
EF - It's easier said than done.
Me - Alright, but I'll do it anyway.  Begone, EF, begone!
EF - I think I'll take a little nap now....
Me - Sleep tight, EF.  Don't come back.


***

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Bastille Day



MAYBE THIS COULD BE BASTILLE DAY, OR POSSIBLY IT WILL BE SOON

Now what the hell do I do?  I wonder where Tim is.  Is he attempting to jump onto the subway tracks again???  I certainly hope not.

If he is, somebody will just have to take him straight back to Hell on Earth, maybe the only one thing that could save his life.  Unfortunately, to learn to live with our depression, we have to go to mental hospitals where we have to fight an environment that feels ten times worse than our depression in the first place.  Never have I ever seen a “hospital” to be a healing place.  The word is a misnomer; from what I’ve seen all hospitals have gone from bad to unspeakably bad.  We hear aides saying things to each other that make us wonder all over again if we are in fact in reality.

Maybe if he went back to Hell on Earth, I’d have a chance of finding him.  But no, it would be impossible because of those confidentiality rules.  These rules do not protect the patient (for which alleged reason they were instituted), but they protect the system instead, because these rules make it near-impossible to ever find out where someone dear to you might be. ***********************


Note:  I can work beautifully with Word 2003, but I barely get 2007.  When 2010 came out, I cried and cried.  Why all these little pictures called “icons”?  Whatever happened to words?  When I saw the square thing that stands for “smile,” I thought it was a slice of Sicilian pizza.  ***********************


We are already under a Communist rulership. Capitalism = Communism now, and Left = Right.  This is not funny at all.  In China, Pakistan, Iran, I don’t know where else, they lock up and torture anyone who tries to go against the prevailing system, or religious people who aren’t even trying to do that at all.  The Chinese already own at least one-third, possibly two-thirds, of New York City’s real estate.  Is this fair to New Yorkers, Americans?  No!

The Chinese, those who professed to be doctors (I looked this up) were expected some years ago to go testing with very strict requirements before they would be allowed to practice medicine here in the US.  Now what do these Chinese doctors know?  Nothing at all, especially the psychiatrists!  They can hardly read English.  One of them, who doubled as a food worker, proclaimed that the brain is made of Jello.  Ask him what a nerve cell is.  He is made of Jello himself.  (He should stick to serving Jello.)  They look up the symptoms, put a label on it, prescribe drugs if they can’t even pronounce the names, stare blankly at individuals, not even knowing that they are people, just “cases” with a label, because they are not real people themselves at all.  If you ask them to extend an order for ativan beyond the original amount, they say, “We can’t!” 

The Chinese all look alike; they must be aliens, Koreans too, nasty and inhuman.  Perhaps they are from Mars, seeking an identity, counting on ruling this planet, even going so low as to poison our water, air, vegetables, medicines, pet food….they cause old women taking up space in their apartments to die slowly on the elevator.  They imprison religious groups in concentration camps where they harvest live organs.  They cut off hands, legs and feet, grind up and sell human meat in to Europe in cans.  They kill girl babies after they are born.  Who will be left to give birth to their precious boy babies then?? 

Are we going to be a nation ruled by Chinese?   Dostoyevsky was locked away in Siberia for 10 cold, cold years.  The communists sent him there.  If the hospital nazis sent Tim to Siberia, I hope he takes along a copy of Crime & Punishment.  It’s a good book.

Now what the hell do you want from me?  Do you want to keep on dragging me out of my home, which is unconstitutional, of course none of you ever studied the Constitution either, did you – or are you ever going to stop locking me up?....a crippled old lady cannot stamp her cane on the floor without being suspect of violence.  It takes four big people to pry off an old crippled woman’s clothes because she preferred not to wear a hospital gown.

*********************************************

I really think the police and hospital workers I have seen here so far belong in Alcatraz.  They might as well go there now.
They need some kind of education in ethics and human interactions.  We have had too many Abner Louimas and other morbid stuff.  A good book for them all to read is Verbal Judo.  Much of it was written, in fact, for cops.  But it’s a good book for anybody to read, nothing violent about it.  Have most of these cops, even the psychiatrists they dredge up from the swamp, ever read even one blessed book in their adult life?  (maybe Robinson Crusoe in their childhood school days, which is as far as some of them got, except for the GED)  How about that electronic kindle?  That started about 10 years ago.  Where’s the space to write in the margins?  Think how long people didn’t even have a regular old telephone, and I still don’t understand how that worked, wires and all.  Telephone poles were always part of the scenery.

I’m a writer.  I’m a reader.  People like me have a lot of trouble with technology.  Don’t ask me to understand how anything electronic works; I just couldn’t dig it at all.

So now what do I do about Tim?  If I call his home number, I’ll probably hear no kind of answer, or a lot of Spanish.  If he were back at some hospital, then it would be next-to-impossible to contact him, because of confidentiality laws.

*********************************

I can’t find the phone number for my social worker.  I’m sure she could help me, if she could avoid bringing police or psychiatrists here, which could probably cause me a heart attack right now.  Then it would all be over, and a hospital wouldn’t do me any good at all.  The only difficulty left would be for my friends to decide the cheapest way of disposing of my body.

I am tempted to call Tim’s mother (although the last woman who answered the phone there was not his mother), but that wouldn’t help much either, would it?  Maybe he is still at the rehab they said he would be consigned to for 9 months.  Wouldn’t 6 months have been enough?  Perhaps he has run away from there.  Or they didn’t know what to do with him and let him go.  I need him now.

*****************************

Thursday, December 8, 2016

voltaire

Before you accuse Voltaire of being selfish in saying, "Tend to your own garden," ask him how hard his life has been.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

NEW MANTRA

-- EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT, EVERYTHING IS FINE --

Here's a neat way to get in touch with yourself.
Funny, but we are frequently not in touch with our own minds.
Sit down and make a little sketch.  See what it means to you.  Put one or two words on paper.  See what it means to you.

Then repeat mantra:

-- EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT, EVERYTHING IS FINE --

Repeat this process as many times as you like.

-- EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT, EVERYTHING IS FINE --


Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Redwoods: Poem for a Wednesday morning with little sleep

REDWOODS

trees tall, bleak
can't speak
trees strong, bleak
gone numb
can't
can't
can't

philosophies become cold
idealism gone old
can't - can't -
it hurts the pocketbook,
it hurts the mind

no, we can't
we once could but
now we can't

prunes do not mix with
stones
you'll choke, I'll puke
we have chosen
different spoons

the cereal
the cornflakes
have become polluted
oranges moldy
bread stale

we can no longer
- we can't -


rc
11/30/16

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Saturday morning musings of a disgruntled dreamer

There's no believer like a convert, and no lover like the one who left you and came back.

Somebody must be reading my writing and I'm scared.

Roseanne Rosanna Danna's popular notion of "It's always something" is rather depressing for me.  Can't it be alright sometimes?  Even a lot of the time.  That would be ok with me.

The psychiatrists call "racing thoughts" a symptom of mental breakdown.  But is it?  Depends how fast they're racing.  Maybe they are just flowing in different directions sometimes.  Catch them.

Relieving yourself of constipation and losing weight are very similar to putting thoughts on paper.

If I am in conflict, normally I will trust thought over feeling, but it is not always this way.  You can overthink.

Putting thoughts into clear words, mindfulness, noticing that you are placing your glasses down in one particular spot, mentally repeating someone's name after you have been introduced, then surprising them an hour later when you call them by their name.  Surprising yourself when you remember where you put your glasses.  Mental mindfulness.

Recurring anxieties, who needs them.  Why worry about the same things over and over and over again.  Read.  Change the channel.

I saw a psychiatrist recently.  If she could've stopped staring away from me at the computer screen, she might've been capable of saying something really insightful or compassionate or even creative.  I suspect she's a victim of mental constipation too and goes to sleep at night not knowing much about what she's thinking or feeling at all, waking up the next morning to block it all out again and perform her routines.

My mother was the biggest procrastinator on Earth.  But I was very impulsive, so I guess I needed her.  It seems to me her motto was "Take your time."

Inertia.  Sitting, unable to stand.  Standing, unable to sit.  Inertia.

Why am I spilling my guts out?  I don't know, it's my job.  Byron Katie says that everybody has one.  So like, when the cat's licking her fur, she's doing her job.  Or when she sits, resembling a meatloaf (someone once said that).  Or when crickets rub their little legs together on a spring night and make that pleasant sound, it's their job.  Or the little Mexican guy inside the radiator banging with his little metal hammer when the heat comes up.  That's his job.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Don't follow bad habits after bad

A habit is something a nun wears.  It's not pretty, but if you wear it every day, you get used to it.  A rabbit is a soft furry creature that can be almost as much fun as a cat or dog.

I'm beginning to think I don't know what the hell I'm talking about

Jehovah's Witnesses don't vote.  Leave it to God, they say.  But how's God gonna vote without them?  The Dems were busy smoking dope and forgot to vote.  The Repubs were divided.  The radicals voted for Jill Stein.  So the electoral college, having no other choice, elected Trump.  Now what?  Good or bad?  Who knows.  The story of the Chinese young man who broke his leg and escaped army service.  "Good or bad?  Who knows."

Monday, November 14, 2016

last thing I'm going to write here tonight

One Day a Long Time Ago

I asked for angels
to tell me
what is my purpose here -

I swear to you,
this is what they did say,
"We need your perspective,"
then flew away -


rc

State sovereignty?

this is a dilemma.  The states' electoral colleges elected Trump.  We did not have majority rule as a people.  Is this right or wrong?   Churchill said, [I won't put it in quotes because it may not be an exact quote]:  Democracy is the best system of government in the world, and the worst system of government in the world.  Well, so who knows,God?  S/He is not talking.

Trump [so he got what he wanted, his name is everywhere] ...is saying that states should have the right to decide on the abortion issue.  I am more in favor of the opinion that this is a woman's right to decide [didn't we pass ERA as a nation?  We are a nation, not just a system of states.]

There is one good thing that could come of that, if it ever happened.  Doubtful it would.  But, here it is:  If states were to decide the issue for themselves, this could prevent what's still happening in the midwest -- blowing up of abortion clinics.  However, there would be hopeless women not wanting to raise a baby, not able to move to another state, possibly committing suicide or as in the old days, performing self-induced abortions that would often lead to the death of the baby and themselves.  Of course, there are the obvious problems a woman and her children will have if she can't afford any more children and if her education is thwarted and so on and so on.

I believe these men who claim to be able to decide the issue for women on religious grounds have been reading a little too much of the old patriarchal parts of the Bible, such as passages in Corinthians and Timothy.

Settings??

Checking out the different features here, I saw this question under the heading, Settings☺%@#! --  Adult Content? -- followed by No, of course.  This blog is obviously strictly for kids.

as usual a hectic morning

trying to decide between corn flakes and raisin bran.  easy choice.  more in the mood for cornflakes.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

time check, take 2, no I'm not in California

12:45 p.m. EST

time check

EST, 12:41 pm

Where philosophy & religion meet:

Immanuel Kant postulated an underlying moral structure in and of this physical universe.  (It would be just inadequate, hence wrong, to define God-- as if we ever could-- as existing within such a boundary, S/He who gave birth to the Moral Structure along with everything else.)

This is why Kant was so brilliant, and so practical, therefore the most useful of philosophers.  If we can believe in the existence of a moral structure, as easily as we can believe in our left big toe, then build with the help of it and build upon it, we can indeed be "co-workers with God" (Union Prayerbook), creating things more wonderful than God-without-Us ever imagined.