Friday, August 16, 2019

    I  loaded the paper recycling in the trunk of the car the night before and was planning to stop at the transfer station on the way home from Bikram.  Three stoplights after the transfer station, Kathrin asked me if I was still planning to stop there. If I don't leave some reminder for myself, like some of the trash on the front seat of the car, I forget what I was planning to do.  I turned around at Costco and headed back.  Kathrin asked if she could have some time to look in the thrift shop that is located there.  I said sure I would be able to dump the trash on my own.  She was out of the shop reasonably quickly because they didn't have any books she was interested in. 

     When I got home, I experienced some nerve pain in my left wrist.  I was pretty sure it was coming from my shoulder or my neck.  While I was planning to do more trimming of the blue-flowered bushes against my neighbor's fence, I thought I'd better put that off for now and give my body a chance to rest.  

    Kathrin prepared a brunch of fried eggs and lox and cream cheese on crackers. I was planning to do some less strenuous gardening since I couldn't do the blue-flowered bushes.  Instead, I went down for a nap after washing the brunch dishes.  I must have laid down around 11; I woke up sometime after two.  The phone rang several times.  I was so tired I didn't care.  It wound up Judy had called twice in a row and left a text.  She hadn't heard from me and was getting worried. I explained my exhaustion.  I told her if I went on for six months like this, I would be seeking medical care. 

    I finally got up and did something with my day.  While I didn't trim the blue-flowered bushes, a massive job involving cutting down some haole koa trees in the process, I was up for trimming my bougainvillea running amok in the upper back yard outside of my bedroom door.  I moved the radio from the kitchen to the bedroom to listen to Fresh Air while I did the garden work.  After I finished trimming the shrub, I raked the waste on the front driveway that I had cut when I trimmed back the vines from that shared fence the other day. Then  I raked up the green waste in the upper back yard from the work I had done a few weeks ago.

    While I took a break and worked on the blog, Kathrin was getting ready for a date. She was playing some music by Sade. I thought her voice is so powerful because there is always longing in her voice. I remember being younger and having those feelings. Maybe they will come back after a while, but I didn't have them while Mike was alive.  The longing was to love someone deeply and freely.  I had that with Mike without having to lose my center.  

    I think I've written about this before, but what the hey.  One day early in our relationship, I went up to him and told him how much I loved him.  He said he wasn't feeling it right then. His comment wasn't a putdown or a way to push me away; it was just a fact.  I told him that was okay.  I still was enjoying feeling love for him.  He had a wonderful reaction. He said, "I'm so jealous." He was jealous of my feeling of love.  He wanted that feeling for himself too.  I had a relationship with him, where I could freely express my appreciation and feel completely safe.  It was worth everything.  I don't know if there are many people like Mike out in the world.  But he was the only one I found like that. How much of that limited exposure I had to people like this was due to who I was or because there are only a few people like him in the world, I don't know.

    Whatever, I sit here now realizing that I don't feel some huge ache for something unfulfilled in the realm of human connection.  Mike and I were genuinely able to build something together that satisfied me.  I can only hope that it satisfied him as well.  I am aware that if it didn't, my blame is limited.  It had something to do with his inability to freely accept love. I will never know. I doubt I would have ever known even if he had lived to tell me because everyone's experience is so much their own.

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

    

My point of view of human nature isn't quite as dire as many that of many Christian religions, if not all religions. Most religions talk about the evil in man, and good comes only from God. There is a push back from some groups, arguing that man is capable of being fundamentally good.  My point of view is that man is pulled in both directions. Complex.  

    Our need to belong, our need to connect, is compelling. Of course, that very impulse can be used for evil. Do I think evil, therefore, outweighs good in us?  I don't know. I do believe that when we harm others, we also harm ourselves.  

    I worked with a Guatemalan man tortured for a month and then thrown out in the street to finish dying.  He was able to see the auras of the men who were torturing him.  He said those auras got darker with each act of cruelty they performed. I'm of the school of thought that we can't set out to hurt others without hurting ourselves.  This does not stop us from harming others. That's inescapable.  Sometimes we hurt others entirely by accident. Sometimes we hurt others by rejecting them for what they do to us.  I have rejected people in my life simply because I couldn't cope with their negativity. I'm sure I hurt them in the process.  I can only hope that my openness about why I rejected them helped them modify their behavior.  I know that there have been people who have rejected me and shared their profoundly negative opinions of me.  If they didn't do this to hurt me, I became a stronger and better person for their input.  Intention has a significant role in our impact on the world.  But that is tricky.  We have to be honest with ourselves about our intentions.  Ah, there's the rub.

    I think we have a drive to be connected and see ourselves and be seen by others as good. I remember reading somewhere that even serial killers on death row believe they are good people who did something wrong.  Wanting to be seen as good can be the very thing that drives us to do evil things. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Very tricky.     So the drive to be seen as good can lead us to do the opposite. I'm beginning to persuade myself that the direst statements of religions about the basically evil nature of man may be right. 

    I have to wonder why we are so vulnerable to our worst impulses. How has this furthered our chances of survival? I guess when we are living hand to mouth, and we have to make sure the food makes it into our mouth and the mouths of those who support our well-being, these traits make sense. As absolute power corrupts absolutely, perhaps the absolute abundance corrupts these other impulses.  On a simple level, I know I feel much better off eating fruit, but I reach for cake, cookies, and candies.  Now, this is a dysfunctional system if there ever was one.  It does look like our intelligence, which created this abundance, is the author of the circumstances for our imbalance. I'm back to vigilance as a solution to the problem.

    Vigilance is what religion teaches.  Always be on the lookout for the presence of sinful intentions in what you do.  Sinfulness is overreaching, or perhaps it's under reaching too.  If we attack ourselves, aren't we also attacking a human being? Can we hurt ourselves and not hurt others? Does it make any difference who is the subject of the torture or the abuse?

Thursday, August 15, 2019

   This morning, I found an email from Crista, the Bikram studio owner, who taught the class yesterday, saying, "I was so impressed with your practice today!! You really have been working hard in class, and it shows," asking me to write something about myself for the student spotlight and thanking me for being part of the studio community.  It is a supportive community to me, besides the wonderful impact of the practice itself.

    I rushed home because I had a telephone appointment with my therapist a 10 am, four pm her time.  I showered and was ready to go. As usual, I asked myself, "What's is most annoying me?" I am having the voice of a friend coming to mind telling me what to do about any number of things. He is the type of person who loves to instruct but cannot tolerate having anyone give him advice. He's not an arrogant man.  There is some trauma behind his behavior.  Unfortunately, his information is frequently inappropriate.  If it has any value, I make a point of acknowledging it. While I know what drives him to behave this way, it can still get on my nerves, having someone willing to correct me but never say anything positive.   

    As I started working on my reaction, I realized the problem is l that, like him, I feel that no one values what I have to offer.  In my case, it is around my work as an educator and a healer.  I think my work is good, but there aren't people beating down my door.  I have always realized that there is something I am doing or not doing to cultivate this situation. My work isn't that off from the mainstream to be rejected.  

    The teachers I worked with last year at the elementary school contacted me when school started, telling me that they hoped I was returning.  They had already identified some students who needed help. I worked with one child who had visual distortion and showed her how to correct that. The second time I worked with her, it was clear that she could use my processes to clear up the problem.  The second child I worked with was a boy who was having trouble with phonics.  When I checked what part of the brain he used for auditory processing, he pointed to the brain's visual section.  I showed him how to engaged the auditory part of the brain.  I haven't had a second session with him yet, so I don't know if he has shown any improvement. Both the students had some trouble with blending individual sounds to pronounce the word; I showed them the cross-body blending starting with the vowel sound, and I showed the girl the procedure I use for decoding multi-syllable words.  In the second session with the girl, her reading accuracy was much improved, and she initiated utilizing the method I taught her for decoding multi-syllable words. How's that for two sessions with a child that is over a year behind in reading?  

    Yes, the teachers know I'm good, but they think it has something to do with me rather than the procedures I've developed.  I try to tell people that the methods are straightforward; they can be taught in ten minutes to a student.  But no one is interested in learning them.  Yes, it took a particular person to develop them: my background in reading instruction, neuroscience, and linguistics, and my problem-solving mind put me in that unique position.  But what I have developed is simple to apply. 

    Given how easy it is for me to produce improvement in students, the better the student, the more quickly the improvement, you would think that there would be people banging on my door.  Ah, that's the problem  I don't want people desperate for help banging at my door.  When I think of being well-known, I fear I'll be attacked like Orpheus by the Thracian women, torn to shreds. 

    Even I know that I won't be physically attacked, but that is the image in my mind. Why can't I imagine a situation where I can protect myself from people's desperation?  What I came up with is that I feel everyone's problem is my fault.  

    Why would I feel that I am responsible for all suffering in the world?  My father taught me  I was somehow responsible for all suffering in the world, even the suffering of those on the other side of the planet.  This philosophical position is assumed by some, if not all, spiritual disciplines.  There is also the effect of the butterflies in Madagascar. If they can cause weather changes on the other side of the world, it is not unreasonable to assume that everything we do has a ripple effect on the whole world.  I believe this to this day, but the way I assume responsibility in my nonconscious mind is disproportional to my impact.  I was introduced to this idea as a young child.  Children take things very literally.  My adult mind, my conscious mind, doesn't make these assumptions, but my nonconscious mind learned these ideas as a young child.  They are buried in there.  

    Then I had my mother, who blamed the bad weather on me. She was using me as a whipping boy for her anxiety.  I mentioned before that she made some cockeyed assumption that she wouldn't do damage to my sister or to me by using us that way.  

    When Mike was studying for the diaconate in the early 90s, another applicant made an observation about me.  He said to me, "You're like me.  You feel guilty about everything." He said that he was made to feel guilty about WWII, and he hadn't even been born when it started.  I had never thought of myself that way.  It was interesting to have someone see that in me.  Having guilt inappropriately laid on you as a young child creates a pretty steep mountain to overcome to reclaim an appropriate concept of self.

    I have mentioned before that I think Mike also carried a burden of terrible guilt for who he was.  His guilt was laid on him by his mother, who always screamed and yelled when she didn't get what she wanted.  Then there was that day in the late 40s when six or seven-years-old Mike came home from school and told his parents that he had announced that his parents were Communists in school. It was during the pre-McCarthy period. Mike remembered his parents tearing through the house, looking for every piece of incriminating paper.  I knew Mike's mother as an older woman when some of her energy had been drained; she was still difficult.  I can only imagine how she behaved toward that vulnerable young boy, accusing him of trying to harm his parents.

    I found out about that story from my friend Judy; Mike had told it to her.  When he was in the hospital, I was able to tell him how Jean's mother, his ex-mother in law, dealt with it when Jean did something comparable. Jean's mother (her parents were also active Communists) was gentle; she didn't scare jean; she just advised her not to say anything in school and asked if she could do that.  

    While Mike was in the hospital, unable to communicate, I told him I was going to tell him a story.  I told him how Jean's mother dealt with the situation. I then told him he had done nothing wrong, despite his mother's ravings.  That little boy had heard his teacher put down Communists.  He was proud of his parents.  He understood that they embraced the idea because they wanted equality for all people.  (Many people confuse the 'how' of  Communism, a dictatorship of the proletariat, with the economic 'why,' economic equality for all.) He was proud of his parents and stood up in their defense.  

    When I was finished with the story, I asked him if it helped to hear it.  He nodded, yes.  I suspect that if he had brought this trauma up with therapists long ago, a therapist who was prepared to deal with PTSD, he would haven't had high blood pressure which caused his kidney disease or anxiety, for which he took extremely high doses of antidepressants which may have been the cause of his pancreatitis.  Ask me if I resent his mother for her unbelievably self-centered behavior?

    I called NJ Benefits and Pension to find out when I would receive Mike's pension. First, they told me that I had already received three checks.  The person who answered the phone excused herself and said she had to check with her supervisor.  She came back to tell me that I had been receiving the wrong amount.  They had already overpaid me by three thousand dollars.  They said they I will receive less money until they recoup the money. Good thing I caught it now rather than later. I noticed that there were no taxes withheld. Mike claimed three deductions.  So Mike.  Money was always better in his pocket than someone else's. I had to change that. I would rather not have payments hanging over my head. 

    When living in Princeton, the town decided to install curbs on the edge of our property.  If they were repairing the curb, it would have been on their dime.  Since it was a new curb, we had to pay for it.  When the job was finished, I called the country office asking for the bill.  They told me that they would send it sometime in the future.   I went down there and told them they had no right to place me in debt and demanded that they give me a bill now. Something like five years later, I got that bill. It was so long ago that I forgot that I had already given them money. Fortunately, they remembered.  I still owed a small amount.  I have little confidence in the stability of the economy.  My parents went through the inflation in Germany and the Depression in the US.

    I had some plans to go to school today, but I was too tired. I texted the teacher, telling her I needed to rest, and I hit my favorite napping couch. I set the alarm for 1 pm because I had a two pm chiropractic appointment.

    Once there, I placed a call to the bank to see if they could give me exact information on the individual checks I had deposited so I could check if I deposited the New Jersey pension checks. They said yes, they could verify specific checks.  Yeah.  

     I showed the chiropractor how the simple shift of my head, moving my chin slightly to the left, changed my posture.  She continued working on my left foot and moved up to my calf and my neck. 

    Dorothy, my sister, called while I was in with the chiropractor  I called her back after I got out and talked to her while I drove with the phone on my lap on speaker.  I stopped off at Target. I decided I needed a Hersey's Milk Chocolate with whole almonds. I bought one instead a package of six. Unfortunately, I can't rely on myself to eat just one.

    I stopped off at Island Naturals to pick up some progesterone cream to help with my hot flashes.  They didn't have any. It's Hawaii. You cannot rely on products being in at any time.  You have to grab things when they're on the shelf.  

    I went home and took another nap.  I got up in time for dinner.  Kathrin spent some time fishing around in the freezer. She found some salmon. She made it with veggies and rice. It was delicious.  From her, I'm learning not to eat more than I want. According to Ayurvedic medicine, when you burp, you're finished. 

    After dinner, I watched some TV while I sorted and dumped that last of the papers Mike had saved.  Here I found renovations plans for our house in Ohio, which we sold in 2014. The man threw nothing out. As long as it was orderly, he kept it.

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

    Brooks talks about the value of losing ourselves in something bigger than ourselves. That can go bad in no time.  The KKK and its values are bigger than the individual.  We have a thirst to be part of something bigger than ourselves, an institution worthy of such submission. 

But that submission, like everything else, involves choices. We sacrifice A to achieve B.  

    I look at the human condition through the lens of evolutionary psychology. We are social animals. Like chickens, if we are raised in isolation, if our own kind does not value us, we fail to thrive. We can die of loneliness or go mad.  We are designed to be part of something larger than ourselves. 

    The first institution was the family, the group, and the tribe. While groups may have varied in size, it was always a group, just like wolves. Our need to lose ourselves in something larger is morally neutral.  

    Worse than that, it can be used against us. Those early families, groups, and tribes were committed to the survival of the group for the survival of the individuals in the group.  We have institutions now that set goals which are irrelevant to the welfare of the members of the group, see the members of the group as mere pawns to serve the interest of the organization.  

    With the Industrial Revolution, institutions arose that made production of commodity important, independent of the wellbeing of the individuals. This rendered humans comparable to slaves, perhaps even more dispensable since the institution wasn't even responsible for their maintenance.  Workers became throw-away commodities used for some purpose that was of no benefit to them. 

This is what Marx saw that inspired him to develop his solution to the problem.  While his intention may have been honorable, he was painfully naïve as to the human condition.  He assumed that once the oppressed rose to power, they would be kind to others having experienced oppression themselves. Boy, did he have another thing coming to him!

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

    There were only four students at Bikram this morning. This is after there were 28 in the class on Saturday morning.  Crista taught the class; Heather is out for a few days.  She usually teaches mornings Tuesday through Friday.  We did the class in silence, followed by a lavender washcloth chaser during the final savasana. 

    I went home directly after class.  I had plans to go out and do more work on the clearing the blue flower shrubs, but I played some FreeCell instead. It's hot dirty work out there, and I think squeezing the clipper is hurting my wrists.  

    I was going to go to school today, but by the time I got in the car, it was already 12:30.  Then I remembered that today was Wednesday, early dismissal. School's out a 1 pm.  I went back inside the house, slipped out of my dress and into home wear, and sat down to read Mike Fanuel's, Damon's good friend,  book Stop Making Sense. It's billed as the new Brene Brown. 

     After I read a little, I fell asleep. Nap.  I had a healing telephone client at 5 pm.  He is doing fantastic work. 

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

Musing: I've been reading Mike Fanuele's book "Stop Making Sense." I haven't finished the book, but from what I have read, I find his premise very upsetting, assuming it's true. (I am planning to finish the book. It's interesting in its own right.) Mike's premise is that appealing to the intellect does not persuade people to behave differently. We respond to everything emotionally and therefore shouldn't ever appeal to reason, which he argues doesn't exist, basing his premise on Kahneman's Thinking Fast Thinking Slow" thesis. 

    Yes, there is plenty of evidence that we 'decide' upon an action before our frontal lobes can get involved.  We are often acting before our conscious minds wake up to what is going one.   Our conscious minds are merely observing what our nonconscious minds decided to do, not initiating that action.  It all happens fast enough so that we trick ourselves into believing that we make conscious rational decisions.  

    Mike's premise means that our conscious minds have no role except to observe and concluded that it is in control. But the title of Kahneman's book is "Thinking Fast; Thinking Slow," not "Thinking Fast and Not Thinking at All." Our conscious minds have a roll in decision making.  

    I learned Vipassana meditation, which involves observing bodily sensations.  I learned to observe what was going on in my body, which gave me a heads-up about my nonconscious mind's decisions. This gives me a chance to intervene, when necessary.  God forbid I had to intervene at all times and that most of the moment by moment decisions of my life were not automatic.  I only have to intervene when there is a potential problem with my behavior for myself or others.

    There is a process called 'reframing," which teaches people to look at an experience differently. Reframing is a mental process. The slow thinking process gets the fast-thinking process to change its mind. As those of you who know me or read this blog from the beginning know, I recently lost my husband of 45 years.  I could see this as the end of my life or the beginning.  I choose to see this as an adventure.  C.S. Lewis reframed the death of his beloved wife as a different phase of the marriage.  Despite the physical absence of the partner, the co-creation of their life experiences continued. I adopted this point of view.  Reframing is not an appeal to emotion through poetry. It involves a conceptual change. 

    I agree with Mike's Fanuele's thesis that it is necessary to appeal to emotion if you are going to persuade someone to do something differently.  Our intellects and our emotions are codependent.   The intellect can be used to bypass or repress emotion, but emotions can be used to escape undesirable feelings too. What does it mean to appeal to people's emotions to influence behavior?

    Ask any conman. Conmen don't approach their victims through poetry, they use arguments, bullet-points if you like, but these arguments target emotions.  Those emotions are usually ones like fear and greed or maybe desperate need. Conmen and grifters are the bad angels, those who prey on others. What about the good angels, those who are out to persuade people to do what is right for themselves or others, or at least what they believe is better, without using meaningless tricks.

    I'm an elementary school teacher. How do I convince children who got stuck along the way to change? There are children I can't convince to do anything differently.  With those, I sometimes fall into the unfortunate emotional appeal evoked by threats. I'll bully them. I'll tell them their lives will be terrible if they don't make an effort. If they only want to do what comes easily and is fun, they are screwed. (I don't use that word.) When I see myself approaching it that way, I have to use my conscious mind to get myself to pull back. I've never seen bullying work.  If I did, I'd go for it. Rightly or wrongly, I think the quality of a person's life is benefitted by literacy and reading.  

    I have been working with children in the third grade for the last ten years.  How do I convince a child to change?  Do I use poetry and stop making sense? No.  But I have to say something that makes sense to the child. I can't just point out how their life will be better if they do it my way.   Last week, I worked with a boy who was uncomfortable trying to pronounce words unless he produced something familiar. Well, folks, every time you come across a new word, it will be unfamiliar. Avoiding the unfamiliar is an emotional response and a psychological problem.  Learners have to develop a tolerance for the unfamiliar.    Giving students a lecture with the ideas mentioned above might be a good start, but it doesn't address the problem. The problem is the student's fear of the unfamiliar. My question to this boy was. "Do you think pronouncing an unfamiliar word is dangerous?" Isn't that what fear signals, danger?  So I engaged his slow thinking process to ask his fast thinking process this question.  He was a bright boy without any obvious emotional problems.  His answer was, "No," and he was able to move ahead.  I appealed to his emotions, emphasis on HIS, the ones he was feeling that interfered with his ability to tolerate the unfamiliar. (There are evolutionary reasons for us to avoid the unfamiliar. But that's for another day.)

    Mike has spent many years in the corporate advertising world. I can well believe emotional constipation is the rule there.  The day of being able to bully people into buying a product is gone.  I remember negative advertising designed to make people feel that they were social misfits for one reason or another. Those were bullet point arguments; they were memorable, and they worked. Now they are positive bullet point arguments for why you should use a product.  I can see why that wouldn't be too successful.

    Mike sites the Cadbury ad of the gorilla playing the drums to a Phil Collins song. It increased sales by 20%., a wow! result. No bullet point here. Why was it successful?  The unexpected tone of the ad captured our attention.  It became like an earworm or an eye worm.  We talked about it with others. We became members of this smiling subgroup who were in, who got it.

    Mike points out the Trump appeals to emotion. Part of his appeal is that he is surprising and engaging as that gorilla playing the drums.  He is full of surprises.  He upsets our ideas of what a national leader should behave.  Then he also appeals to groups that feel excluded, ignored.  He says, "I see you." Now that is not just poetry. "You count" is a  bullet point.

 

 

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

 

            I slept better last night after that lousy night's sleep I had the night before. I did have a period of anxiety.  There was no reason I could figure out, just a racing heart and unexplained fearfulness.  The best I could come up with is that I am alone without someone to watch my back. I had a few episodes where I felt people I relied on weren't that interested in being with me. It felt as if they brushed me off when I asked to spend time with them.  (When I checked with both, it was a miscommunication more than anything else.) Those experiences left me feeling unprotected.  I think I did an exercise where my conscious mind informed my nonconscious mind that my life was not in jeopardy. I may be alone without someone to watch out for me with the consistency that Mike did, but it is not a life-threatening situation.  I fell back asleep.

    Sometime last night or this morning, there was a new development in my body. I was able to use my upper body differently in breathing.  The book on breathing says that the inhale should start at the top of the lungs and move its way down.  It is my habit to initiate the inhale by expanding my abdomen. That gives me a big belly — another good reason to change my breathing pattern.  

    Heather helped me experience shoulder relaxation, which has led to a change in my breathing.  When classes are small, she comes around and puts lavender soaked cold washcloths on our faces.  As she applied the cloth, she pressed my shoulders down, so I relaxed them more.  Sometime last night or this morning, I allowed my shoulders to move back as I inhaled and found it much easier to start the inhale from the top of the lungs instead of the bottom.  It looks better too. I don't think I would have been able to relax my shoulders this much or coordinate the shoulder movement with my breathing if I hadn't changed my head and neck position, also recommended by Heather. 

    When I got home, I quickly changed to dry clothes and went out to continue cutting down the blue flowering shrub, which grows like a vine and is intruding on my neighbor's property.  This might be a nice thing, except he is a commercial farmer growing crops.  He does not want my blue flowers.  I have been moving along the fence, cutting the shrub back and pulling the vines off the fence. It's hard work, but lots of fun.  I did the second eight-foot length of the fence today; there are eight in total. 

    I started on this project because he said he was planning to cut them back from his property;  it was next on his schedule.  If he had pointed out how the plumbago was impacting his property, and  I would have worked on this problem a long time ago.  Unfortunately, this couple does not have the aloha spirit of Hawaii despite having lived here for quite a while.  I had no idea how bad the vine intrusion was.  When I told Yvette what was going on with the shrub, she was also surprised.  Again, neither of us thought vine; we thought it was s shrub. Either I have the wrong idea of how shrubs grow, or they grow more enthusiastically here in Hawaii than on the mainland where I lived. It's very possibly the latter.

    The gardeners are supposed to come sometime this week.  They are going to have fun collecting all this garden waste and dumping it.  I even have more in the back yard from work I did earlier this month.

    Damon has made airline reservations for my trip to the west coast to visit my family.  Mike had over 80,000 miles on Delta. We couldn't use them because we couldn't figure out the key questions. "What was the name of your first pet? And. "What is your father's middle name?" I knew that Mike had had no pets before he met me, so his first pet was a black cat named Melissa. But what was his father's middle name? Neither Damon nor Shivani knew it. I asked them to ask Randy, Mike's sister.  

    I remembered that Mike's father's name must be on his birth certificate.  I checked it; there was a middle initial, P.  I tried Paul first. That's a good middle name for a Jewish boy from Brooklyn.  That didn't work. I tried Peter. That was a possibility since the family came from Eastern Europe. Neither worked.  I realized it is possible that no one alive knows Mike's father's middle name, and that Mike didn't know it either.  I tried, "I don't know," as an answer. The autocorrect dropped the 'I" leaving, "don't know." It worked!  It worked!  Those 80,000 plus miles are mine. Yeah!  

    For the record, I'm voting for Paul as his father's middle name for future reference. 

    I did a little more straightening in the library before I went to bed. There isn't much left to do to have it look it's best. I'm putting off the final moment, the moment all the books are gone.  Once I have moved a few things and polished the glass top coffee table, I will take pictures of Mike's beloved library and start taking it apart.  I already have a request for 100 books from the librarian at the seminary in New Orleans.   I couldn't give Mike's whole precious library to a single recipient; no one wants books anymore. I hope he will be pleased with what I can accomplish, placing what books I can in hands that will value the gift. 

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

 

 

Who would have guessed that I share the point of view of man's nature with devout Baptists, but it seems I do. (I think most Christian religions hold the same point of view.)  Brooks wrote a chapter specifically on Bayard Rustin and generally on the men involved with the civil rights movement; King, Randolph, and Rustin.  These men did not believe in the perfectibility of human nature through education and the evolution of culture.  They believed that we could never escape our 'dark' side, the parts of our selfish motivation, which is destructive for others, and I also believe ourselves. (Again, I think religions also believe that if we pursue our 'dark' side, it isn't good for us either.)

    These men understood that their 'enemies' were not going to give up ground easily and had to be forced to do it. They shunned the liberal point of view of the essential goodness of man.  Their skepticism did not just apply to their political enemies, those who opposed equality of the races, but to themselves.  They were ruthless with themselves. Brooks wrote:

 

"Even in the midst of these confrontations, Randolph, Rustin, and the other civil rights activists were in their best moments aware that they were in danger of being corrupted by their aggressive actions  In the best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just;  they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged; their hearts would harden as the conflict grew more dire and their hatred for their enemies deepened; they would be compelled to make morally tainted choices as they got closer to power; the more they altered history, the more they would be infected by pride. P.148 Brooks. Road to Character.

 

These men were prepared not to just put their lives on the line for this cause, but also never let themselves off the hook.  They understood that being human,  they were capable of becoming the very evil that they were committed to combatting. These men realized that the enemy of their cause was not just external but internal as well.  

    My view of human nature is not quite as harsh but just as complex as the one I think these men held. 

 

Monday, August 12, 2019

 

    I had a bad night's sleep, worried about money:  $7,000 for the headstone, $4,500 to have the house fumigated, and money for the flights to the west coast. I'll be fine.  I have the money; I just don't like to spend it. 

    When I got home from yoga, I went out to finish cutting back the vines at the top of the drive. I collected these great red flowers, a type of heliconia, which spread and pop up between the other plant and stuck them in a vase in the kitchen. Then down to check on the bush with blue flowers. Wow!.  It grows like a vine and has crawled on top of the fence and into my neighbors' property.  It makes much more sense for me to maintain it from my side.  Got one section of fence completed, but the cuttings are all on the ground close to the fence.  I think I'll leave it for the gardeners to clear them.

    I showered and napped. As I woke up, I felt something pressing against me on my left. I thought, "Mike!" Of course, it was the back of the sofa.  Oh, well. 

    I called Delta Airlines.  Mike had 80,000 miles on his Delta card.  I have been working on getting it for my use. I can't get the miles transferred to my name.  To use his miles, I have to get access to Mike's father's middle name. I put out an APB to Mike's family members to see if anyone knows it.

    After I walked Elsa in the afternoon, I applied her flea protection.  Elsa is good with this. 

 

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

 

 

    I am dealing with several people who refuse to look to themselves as a source of their problems. I can imagine their fear of plummeting into the depths of their despair. Their current strategies may not be working, but they once worked. Maybe they will work again. Self-scrutiny is out of the question.  Understandable.  If their idea of facing themselves is having all their defenses stripped away at once.  Why do people think they should be able to do it on their own without knowing how to safely approach the problem? Is there a potential danger?  I would say so.  Self-knowledge can be very challenging.  But facing ourselves and our inner demons is the only path to healing I know unless you count doping yourself up on drugs, prescription or otherwise. Although, I wouldn't call that healing, coping maybe but not healing.

 

Sunday, August 11, 2019

 

    I set up the alarm for 8 am. I had to be ready to be picked up by Judy and Paulette at 9:30 instead of prepared to leave at 7:30.  I finally figured out why I'm so tired on Sundays. It's because I throw off my sleep schedule by sleeping in.  I woke up at 5 am and was ready to rock and roll but made myself go back to sleep.  Understanding my problem made me feel a lot better.  I stopped associating my tiredness with depression due to a lack of Bikram or a lack of Mike. 

    We had a priest I had never seen before in church today. He's retired and covers for vacationing priests.  He was joyful and playful on the alter.  I loved his sermon. It had some meaning for me, but I can't remember what it was about now for the life of me. 

    It started pouring during mass.  We ran to the car when the storm let up a little. I wasn't going to be able to do the gardening I had planned because of the rain. 

    When I got home, my car was gone. "Yikes!" was my first reaction. Then I thought that Kathrin probably took it to go to Bikram this morning.  She hadn't asked me, and I couldn't find a note immediately. Unusual.  I finally found a note in the kitchen. She didn't want to wake me when she left at 7:30.  A little disconcerting, but she was right. (Notice: I didn't notice the missing car when I left at 9:30.)

    After my shower, I went to lie down on the couch. The blankets I leave lying there were gone.  I leave one to cover the couch, so my body oils don't stain, and the other to cover myself.  I figured Kathrin took them to throw them in the wash with her and Yvette's Bikram stuff.  When I said something to her, she said she hoped that providing me with clean blankets would make me feel good the way the clean sheets had. Can't ask for more.  She sure as hell isn't a 'Millennial!  

    I tried to get the Sunday NY Times on my Kindle.  I couldn't.  I had switched the kindle program to some book I wanted to read yesterday, but then I couldn't get back to the NY Times. I finally called Amazon Customer Service.  I had to press the word 'filter' to switch back.  This is the problem with giving the company constant access to your device; they do updates which change the program and leave you high and dry.

 

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

 

     Brooks talks about politeness being the core of morality. I think he is talking about respecting other people's boundaries.  The word politeness reminds me of the word manners.  Manners can be systematized.  I am reminded of an incident where I was accused of being impolite. (This is not to say that I haven't been impolite any number of times  in my life, particularly when I was younger.) 

In this case, Jean called to ask me if I could drive her father home because she was busy.  I took him from Princeton, NJ to downtown Manhattan, a good hour and a half to two-hour drive.   When we arrived, her father told me to come up because his wife (Jean's self-mother) had prepared lunch.  I thought I had devoted enough time to this favor.  I wanted to head back home, another hour and a half to two-hour drive.  I was to learn that Ceil was outraged at my rudeness; here, she had prepared lunch, and I wouldn't stay to eat.  I wasn't hungry; I was anxious to get home; I felt that I had done enough and shouldn't be asked to do more, i.e., stay for lunch. Which one of us was rude?  I think you could argue that I showed a lack of consideration for a woman old enough to be my mother, who was stuck in a different conceptual world than I was. I feel the same way now about my decision to go home as I did then.  I quote St. Tereasa de Lisieux," It is a sin to make a gift and obligation." Was I obliged to give me to make Ceil comfortable? 

    However, respecting boundaries is very important.  Even here, there is lots of room for interpretation.  I am sure that one of the reasons I put off getting into a long-term relationship until my thirties is because of this problem. Mike and I came from homes where our boundaries were not respected. Both our mothers approached everything with hysteria when they didn't get what they wanted.  I was able to reconsider my position when I heard a story about George and Martha Washington. I heard that they always addressed each other formally as Mr. and Mrs. Washington.  Ah!!  To me, this meant they knocked before entering.  I had no idea that was even possible. Very early in my relationship with Mike, I proposed a method for securing our mutual boundaries: the use of the life-saving tap.

    I learned the life-saving tap in my life-saving gym class in my sophomore year of college.  Life-saving techniques have to be practiced in the water. This means that we paired up; one of us has to be the drowning person and the other the life-saver.  People who are really drowning are not calm and cooperative.  They often grab the person who is the saver and push them under the water to get themselves above and get access to air.  Therefore,  the "drowning" partner in this practice has to struggle as part of the exercise.  It is impossible to know if either party is distress.  Ergo the life-saving tap.  If either party is having trouble, they tap twice with a single finger on their partner's body.  With this, there is an immediate end to the exercise, and both parties can swim to the surface and recover. 

    I proposed to Mike that we use this whenever one of us was distressed with the other's behavior. We agreed that we should stop on a dime unless it was a life-threatening situation.  Kudos to Mike and me.  We were able to use this method effectively.  I can imagine someone more concerned about having power abusing this solution.  Unfortunately, I don't think there is any trick that guarantees mutual respect and caring.  It is up to the individuals in the dyad, or in any group.

    Mike and I continued using the life-saving tap for at least ten years.  Then it fell away. I think we knew enough about each other's boundaries and trusted each other enough.  Also, I suspect we had developed different ways of telegraphing our needs to each other.  That is not to say there weren't incidents of boundary violations throughout the remaining years of our marriage.  We were good, not superhuman.

    Those who are very reserved see me as being without boundaries.  Mike would criticize the way I approached workers in stores to ask for information.  He said I had to say," Excuse me," before I asked my question. I explained to him that I only said that if I hadn't already interacted with the person nonverbally through body language. He finally left me alone.

    I've been in restaurants and observed what someone at a neighboring table is eating. If there is sustained eye contact, I might ask what they're eating. There have been occasions when someone has offered me a taste of their food.  I love interactions like that.  Mike wondered where he could hide and deny he knew me.  I only do with others what I am comfortable having done to me.  Even this rule, "Do unto others as you would have others done unto you," isn't hard and fast. I am extroverted; I do unto others as I don't mind or even enjoy having done unto to me, but that isn't always comfortable for the other person.

    I see myself as a freelance comedian;  I will make somewhat inappropriate comments meaning to be funny.  Humor is the unexpected delivered with good timing.  Mike would sometimes criticize my humor.  I would explain to him that it was a poorly constructed joke.  He loved my sense of humor but was all over me when one of my comments hit a sour note. No, I am not the type of person who says, "I'm just having fun," to justify making someone else uncomfortable.  But, I'm not the only person who is guilty of the social faux pas.  I make them in the process of taking risks; others make them in the process of avoiding risks.  But we all make them. Anyone who thinks avoidance is a get out of jail free card has another thing coming to them.

            

Saturday, August 10, 2019

  

             There were  28 in class this morning at Bikram.  When we got out, Kathrin and I headed over the Walmart.  She had drowned her phone yesterday when a bottle she was carrying in the same bag as her phone opened. She had to get a new phone. While she went into Walmart, I sat in the car, listened to the Saturday shows on NPR, and texted Shivani to find out how she was. 

            When I got home, I went down to Yvette's. She had texted me to invite me down after Bikram.  Scott was there. She told him to show me the progress he was making on her yoga room.  There is a small room, which is this weird little extension of the house.  It has a roof. The floor had been tiled, and she found that made for an uncomfortable surface for doing yoga. Scott took up the tile on the floor, found water sitting underneath it, and wound up with more of a project than he thought he would have. 

            Scott talked to me about the work he was going to do on Yvette's bedroom ceiling, spraying insulation to dampen the sounds of people tramping around up here, especially in the guest room. I have wanted to provide sound insulation for her bedroom since we moved in.  Having guests stay in the room above her bedroom for a week or even two is one thing.  Having someone move in for a more extended time is another.  Now Kathrin is living there for several months; it is already a problem. 

            When Katrin first moved in, Yvette said she was the quietest guest we ever had up in that room.  But Kathrin wasn't feeling well when she first moved in. Now that she is feeling better, her step has become more robust.  

            When I researched how to insulate, I found that there is some material designed to be placed under flooring.  Installing means taking up the laminated floor, which Mike and I had laid when we bought the house, laying down the insulation and then relaying the flooring.  Scott proposed blowing insulation into the space between Yvette's ceiling and the subflooring of the guest room.  He found there's no such machine for rent on the island. There is one company that blows in insulation here, but they cost a fortune.  Scott said he is going to buy some Great Stuff that can be squirted in from a spray can. 

            He will probably be able to do a better job with this system.  I remember hearing that with the other method, when you open one hole and blow in the insulation, there may be a blockage somewhere along the way that you are unaware of.   But it does sound like he is planning to take down the whole ceiling now.  I have to ask a few more questions about this procedure. What is clear is that Scott is a meticulous worker.  While I like the thoroughness of his work, I wind up not being comfortable, assuming that the best is the only option.

            When he took up tile flooring in Yvette's yoga room, he discovered standing water. Different theories were generated as to why this had happened.  The other day he noticed water spurting out of a gutter drain pipe.  It wasn't intelligently placed. Where it is now, the water shoots out and then runs down toward the house.  Scott will put an extension on the existing pipe to channel the water away from the structure.  

            I went down to the bottom of the property to check on the limes.  I had seen several green ones the last time I looked.  There were some on the ground, but they aren't even yellow yet. Yes, limes, at least these limes, turn yellow when they're ripe.  When they're green, they are too hard to extract juice from; they're great for slicing and placing on the edge of a Margarita glass. 

            Once I had picked the limes on the ground, I went to the top of the driveway and placed all the branches I had cut off the old hibiscus tree yesterday into the industrial trash bag.  I want them to be thoroughly cooked before they are placed in green waste, so all the blister mites are dead, dead, dead.  I can imagine that the gardeners will take advantage of the bagged material and dump it right into the trash.  I believe they have to pay for the green waste probably by the truckload. 

            I went to work on clearing off the vine growing on the fence along the driveway that I share with my neighbor.  It's his fence, which he made clear when he took down the vine with the pretty orange flowers that bloomed in February.  I wasn't happy about it but cooperated and helped him clear the vines myself.  Being neighborly.  When he was out and about in the yard, I asked him if he could remove the parts of the vine that was up there now that were difficult for me to reach.  He said it was on his schedule. I asked him when he thought that would be because the vine was beginning to produce fruit. It means it was planning to plant more of the same. He said he didn't know it was on his schedule.  It took me fifteen minutes to get most of the vine off the fence; it would have taken him about 5 minutes to clear the rest. But it wasn't top on his schedule. What was top on his schedule was dealing with branches from my blue flowering bush reaching over into his yard through the fence at the bottom of the driveway. 

            Okay, so tomorrow, I will finish clearing the vine growing on the fence at the top of the driveway. It will mean clipping all the shrubs that have grown close to the fence to get in there and get to the vines.  Then I will go down and clip the brushes with the blue flowers along the fence lines. It will be easier for me to get in there and cut them back than for my neighbors to shave them off at their fence line.  I don't have a rigid schedule, so I can accommodate them.  

            I have to admit  I am a little testy with these folks because their dogs almost killed Elsa as they tossed her around like their favorite new toy.  I also imagine that the woman of the house would be furious with me for allowing this to happen.  What does she think? I wanted Elsa killed? Yeah, that sounds like what I needed after losing my husband.  She might also think that I disrespected her wishes because I have wanted to get the dogs together under controlled circumstances. I would never have agreed to introduce my 14 lb. dog to her four large dogs at once in their yard.  No, I didn't do it deliberately.  I was shifting my retractable leash from one hand to another when Elsa, sensing her moment, took off into their yard. I'm still traumatized, as my neighbor helped me get those dogs off of her and saved her life. 

            It was drizzling when I finally went in for my shower. Boy, are we ever in the rainy season.  Every day we have a good storm. Today it drizzled while I was driving on Queen K on my way to Bikram. It poured for a tenth of a mile, and then it drizzled again—a local downpour.

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

   

Making life a game:  I do not consider writing work unless I have a deadline. I do not consider teaching work. It is also fun. I do not consider washing dishes work.  If it feels like work, I leave it for tomorrow. I wait until it feels like play. Cooking always feels like work.  

            Converting every activity into a game started when I was 12.  We were issued gym outfits, which we had to wash and iron once a week. They had baby doll sleeves and puff paints. My mother took one look at that outfit and declared that she was not going to iron it.  I was going to have to learn how to do it.  I can still remember working at the ironing board in the living room.  I loved doing the ironing.  These outfits were blue.  The color blue changed under the heat of the iron.  I thought it was fascinating.  

            Once my mom discovered that I could iron, all my shirts became my responsibility.  There was one shirt I loved to iron.  I had small multicolored flowers of orange and red with green stems on a blue background. The color transformations on that shirt were magical.  From these experiences, I learned I could find a way to enjoy any activity. 

            While I was writing this entry, I was listening to TED Talks for radio on HPR. Today's subject was about the importance of play.  I realize I turn everything into a game. It's a beautiful trick.

Friday, August 9, 2019

           When I got out of Bikram this morning, I promptly called the monument guy in Hilo about Mike's gravestone and got an appointment for 2 pm.   On the way home, I stopped in at Target and bought two six-packs of Hersey's Chocolate bars with whole almonds, a plug-in for charging the phone in the car, and a hairdryer.  When I got home, I worked on cutting down more of the old hibiscus shrub. I did as much as I could with the clipper. Then I sprayed the whole front yard with one gallon of vinegar to kill the weeds. This stuff is amazing. It reduces the number of weeds I have to kill every week.  

            I showered and left for Hilo at 12:30. There are several ways to get to the other side of the island.  You can go north and around to the east, south and around to the east, or go by Saddle Road, which passes between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.  This is the fastest route if you can tolerate getting your ears plugged up from the altitude changes. Going this way, I pass the access road to Mauna Kea.  The demonstrators were camped there, protesting the large new telescope installation.  The police had set up a portable traffic light.  There was something on the order of 50 tents.  I didn't do an exact count. The number may be fake news, but I thought there was an impressive number of people there. 

            While I am not demonstrating, I sympathize with the demonstrators. The designated caretakers of the mountain had nothing but disregard for the Hawaiian people's concerns, who consider the mountain sacred. My understanding is that they built indiscriminately and didn't remove structures that were no longer in use.   This latest telescope is supposed to detect asteroids flying toward the earth and help the military deflect them. While the concern for humanity might be considerable, I can appreciate the anger people feel about the lack of concern for their humanity to not care if they cause the death of the whole human race.

            Going through that stretch of road, traffic had to slow down considerably. Then, further along, I ran into rain and fog.   I had left myself just enough time to make the trip and get there at the appointed time. I wound up running a bit late. I pulled over to call the monument guy to say that I would be ten minutes late.  Ten minutes isn't a big deal in Hawaii, but I didn't want to come all this way and have this busy guy run out. 

            As I approached the place where the shop was supposed to be, I didn't see anything resembling what I anticipated.  Lady Gaga, (Mike's name for the GPS voice) announced, "Your destination is on your right." I was looking for a building with elegantly displayed headstones.  I called the guy and told him that I was close.  I said I didn't see a sign.  He said, "A car ran it down a few years ago." No hurry here. Well, he is the only provider on the whole island.  He said he would wait out in front and wave me down.

            I had seen the open-air shed with the metal roof as I passed and thought, "No way!" I was wrong.  The place looked like a junkyard with stones laid out helter-skelter. I had to step over things to see. The shed also serves as his workspace.

            I took pictures of what he had that I was interested in to send to Damon.  He gave me the price, "$5,000-$7,000 plus the engraving fee." This is one expensive junkyard.  

            I asked him where he got the stone from.  It surely wasn't from this island. There's lots of rock (It's all rock) but no granite.  He said he got the stones from India and was traveling there this coming weekend. As I walked around, I got a glance out of a back door.  This shed sits right on a cliff overlooking the water.  Gorgeous location.  He said the saltwater corroded everything.  Yeah, everything metal can rust here in no time flat, and we're 1,000 feet up from sea level and a good 3 miles as the crow flies.

            I stopped off in the old downtown area of Hilo to have nachos as Reuben's. I am never disappointed.  I don't know how they make them so good.  I could only eat half and had to other half packed up for dinner.

            On the way home, I stopped off to work with S .on division and K, her younger brother, on reading.  It didn't take much to help S.  She showed me a format for the division that was unfamiliar.  I asked E., her older brother, if he knew it.  You never know, something new may have been developed that I had never heard of.   When E didn't know what she was talking about, I said we would do it my way. When she got more information from her teacher, I would learn that way and help her.

            K is in first or second grade now. He had problems with both visual and auditory processing.  I don't know how I am going to be able to help him seeing him only occasionally. I recommended that they play the audio files I created on  bandcamp.com under my full name, Elisabeth David-Ross, that models auditory processing.

            When I got home, I contacted Damon to set the dates for my west coast trip. My first stop will be Portland to visit Mowgli and Lilith. Then off to Seattle to visit with David and Karin and their baby Sam. Dorothy will be visiting at the same time, so I will get a chance to spend some time with her too.  After that, it's off to San Francisco to spend time with Shivani and Sidney.  The last stop will be to LA to visit with Damon, Cylin, and August and then return home, my lovely home. 

            

Musings:

            All math operations are procedures; all procedures involve steps; a specific pattern of steps is a dance.  Math is a form of finger dancing.  I came up with this idea when I became aware that all proficient arithmeticians move their writing tool from point to point as they perform the arithmetic operation.  That physical movement is not necessary, but most people do it.  

            When performing this 'dance,' I use the traditional format for long division.

Division is a waltz: (1),(2),(3); (1),(2),(3); (1),(2),(3);(1),(2)-(3).

            

3    754 with the frame around the 754. ( Sorry, I don't know how to create the division frame on the computer.

There are four sets of three waltz steps in each round of the division operation. This can be repeated indefinitely, but it is always four sets of three waltz steps.

(1)  7 divided by  (2) 3 is (3) 2

(1)   2 times        (2) 3 is   (3) 6

(1)   6 from         (2) 7 is   (3)1

(1)  1 is smaller than (2) 3                 (3) bring down the 6

 

Start again

(1)  16 divided by        (2) 3 is   (3) 5

(1)  5 times                 (2) 3 is    (3) 15

(1)  15 from                (2) 16 is  (3) 1

(1)  1 is smaller than   (2) 3 is               (3) bring down the 4

 

Start again

(1)14 divided by        (2) 3 is    (3) 4

(1)4 times                   (2) 3 is    (3) 12

(1) 12 from                 (2) 14 is  (3)  2

(1) 2 is smaller than    (2) 3                 (3) There's a remainder of 1

            I modeled the procedure over and over using the same problem, the same numbers. Then using the same problem, I had the student move my hand through the process. Next, the student did it on her own repeatedly until she felt secure.  Once she was confident with the first problem, I changed the numbers.  I had her write down the 3 times table on the side, so she didn't have to carry the extra burden of remembering multiplication facts.  She could concentrate on the procedure.  Once she was secure with the second problem, I stopped the lesson; what she had required a great deal of energy.  It was time to rest and absorb. 

            I spoke to her the following Saturday.  She said her teacher started using "my way" of doing division. (Smart teacher.)  I have no idea what caused the student's confusion in the first place.  She also said that she had passed some computer test on division. Guess that worked!

             

Thursday, August 8, 2019

           During Bikram, I worked on changing the weight distribution on my left foot.  I relaxed part of the outer edge, allowing my weight to sink deeper.  After Bikram, I stopped at the transfer station to drop off another large bag of paper waste. Good Lord, that man saved everything he could find a place for and threw nothing away. Every once in awhile, I come across a goodie. I found the paperwork my dad saved when he was securing an affidavit for his brother to get a visa to immigrate to America from Nazi Germany in 1937.

            When I got home, I put the rest of the cut hibiscus branches into the black bags. Then I started cutting down the oldest of the three shrubs that both Farm and Garden and Margo from Sun Rise Nursery told me I should give up on.  I found some additional infected leaves.  I guess I will go out every day and check if any new ones come up and pick them off.  I should spray the ground around the shrubs as well as the bushes.  I will do that tomorrow.

            Once that chore was done, I showered and went to school to work with the child, one of the teachers asked me to work with.  I didn’t have much time today because I had a doctor’s appointment at 1:15 pm.

            The teacher introduced me to the class and told them I was coming in to help this one child, but I would be able to help others. School started on Monday. The teacher had told the girl about me, and she asked the teacher every day when I was coming.  The teacher also told me that she was shy and shut down.  Her first-grade teacher had bullied her because of her reading problems.  With a kinder 2ndgrade teacher, she made a year’s progress.

            She brought a low first-grade book. She read 2 or three sentences before I could identify a problem. She skipped over the word our.  I asked her if she skipped it because she didn’t know the word or because she didn’t see it. She told me she hadn’t seen it.  I took this as an indication of a visual processing problem. I asked her if the letters moved around for her.  Yes.  I taught her how to release the movement, so it no longer interfered with her reading, the spin release.  I also gave her an exercise to do: naming the letters in a word either before or after reading it. I think she wasn’t looking at the letters in the words because she couldn’t trust her eyes to take in all the details in a reliable way.  When spin release reached full speed, she didn’t want to release it.  She had that Cheshire-cat-grin on her face, otherwise known as the shit-eating grin.  It is neurologically impossible to stop that grin.  What does it mean?  Somehow, we know we’re up to no good.  How does it promote our survival to be so self-revealing?  Beats me. I did some work with her on her feelings about the spinning, both positive and negative. At the end of the 20-minute session, she reported she saw a difference.  I told her she would have to do the spin release each time she saw the letters move. Eventually,  the spinning would stop. 

            I also discussed the vowel letters, their role in decoding single and multi-syllable words, and how to divide multi-syllable words by my process, and encouraged her use of context clues. 

________ ___________ ____________

Musings:

            

            Brooks writes a lot about self-sacrifice and self-restraint as hallmarks of the truly great.  I have seen people who measure their goodness by their degree of self-sacrifice rather than the impact on the people they serve.  

            I remember in 1968 when young people like myself were revving up to go the Chicago Democratic Convention to protest.  I thought these are people looking for a cause to die for. The opposite is being willing to die for a cause.  They are not the same thing.  Having a cause we are eager to make sacrifices for, throw ourselves into, allow ourselves to be consumed by, can be fulfilling. It can also be just plain distracting. It gives us an excuse for not looking at ourselves and the impact of our actions, both positive and negative.  A cause can be just as much an addiction as any drug.  I will say that serving a cause can be better and less overall destructive than drug addiction, but not necessarily. You have a partner or a parent who makes the cause of more important than you or their children, sacrificing them for the cause along with yourself.

            On the subject of self-sacrifice: every decision we make involves self-sacrifice.  We are always dealing with conflicting desires, ambitions, objectives.  We can’t have it all at all times.  Two-year-olds have temper tantrums because they can’t be two places at the same time.  We all want the impossible.  We all have to make choices every day of our lives. And each choice involves a sacrifice of something we want.  

            Sacrifice is a great advertisement, but it’s overrated. I prefer people who understand that whatever they do, they do for selfish reasons, including giving their life for another.  We are in the center of our world. The problem comes in when we think we should, therefore, also be the center of everyone else’s. No, we are not the center of their world; they are the center of their world.  I love people who deny this fundamental truth about the human condition and consider themselves truly giving people.  I don’t do well with those kinds of people, or did you guess that already?

            What separates the selfish from the unselfish is not who comes first, but how closely someone else comes second.  How important the well-being of others is to us.  If the only person who counts is number one, ow!

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

            August's sixteenth birthday. Boy, time flies. Damon said not to call until after 11 am LA time.  I called about noon to sing the birthday song- a la Ross.  Mike and I developed our version of the song. Mike couldn't sing to save his life. When on the altar, the priest would signal him to shut off his mic if he was singing. Really bad.  So, he and I developed our way around this little problem. We sang off-key; we caterwauled; we howled while we sang the birthday song. Now, I sing solo. I keep up the tradition with my variations, not dependent on Mike's limitations.  I can hold a note much longer; I can reach notes that he couldn't.  This is fun. The family pretty much girds their lions in preparation for this serenade.  But it is still special- I think.

            Changes are happening quickly to my body in Bikram. I was doing a single standing posture when my body said NO.  Okay, I stopped and moved much, much slower. I experienced changes in my left calf and somewhat into my thigh. Paying attention and respecting the messages from the body makes a big difference.

            After class, I stopped off at the T-Mobile store. I haven't been able to access my GPS for at least a week.  When I went to the door, it was locked, the store looked stripped, and there was a workman on a ladder.  It was 9:30. The store was supposed to open at 9.  What was striking was there was no note on the door saying what was going on. When I got home, I figured out I could call T-Mobile directly and get help.  Yep!  My cellular service button was on off. I have no idea how that happened.

            I continued working on cleaning up the clippings from the diseased hibiscus. Yvette gave me two industrial trash bags.  I have been cutting up the branches to fit in the bags. Scott said that when the sun hits the black bags, it will produce a heat that will cook those troubling little mites feasting on my plants.  Once dead, the green waste can join the municipal green waste without fear of infecting other plants.   I only work until the sun makes me feel par broiled.  Then I go to shower and go on with my day.

            The plan was to go to Hilo today to order the headstone for Mike's grave.  I had to call the owner of the shop to see if he would be available today.  Sorry no.  I called B and told him that I was not going over.  That means he went over to deliver a super large backpack for Elijah to carry his high school books.  Since I wasn't going over today, B would have to do the school shopping with Elijah, too; the school has been in session since Monday.  I wasn't able to do it this year with the kids because of timing. Maybe I can do it again next year.  

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 Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

 

            Research in neuroscience shows that we don't make rational decisions. Our nonconscious minds, using a life-time of knowledge, make those decisions for us. Well, yeah.  God forbid, we had to use our conscious minds to make every decision. We'd be back in bed after half an hour. It would be exhausting. 

            But I find my conscious mind does have a role in decision making. While it doesn't do the driving, it acts as a traffic cop. In doing healing, I receive impressions.  There are a few seconds where I can observe my reaction, and my nonconscious mind's instruction to do something. In that brief window, I have a choice to follow the instructions of my nonconscious mind or not.  

            When I'm in healing mode, I'm usually at my least anxious. However, there are situations where I get conflicting impressions.  My conscious mind 'knows' things I could do to 'help' the client, but I also think it's not quite right to take that action.  They are two different feelings involved.  The most challenging part of the decision is sitting with the session's discomfort where I do 'nothing' and have to risk being 'a failure.' I have a choice.  While being in that position can make me uncomfortable, I have never regretted taking the 'wait 'option. 

            Meditation has helped me observe what's going on in my mind before it's translated into action.  I can discern the difference between actions driven by some form of fear versus the other option, whatever you call it.  I know they feel differently.  I know I have a choice.  Do I always make the best choice? Don't be silly.  When I was young, my choices were always driven by anxiety. I've had to work hard to learn when not to accept the counsel of fear.