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The COPD Club & Other
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The COPD club, they meet outside at the electrical box in the parking lot for the hotel. The building actually built a shelter for the smokers, but nobody likes to use it. Nowhere to sit.
They're all the same age, my age, but to look at them you get a widely varying picture of biological ages. 2 of them, barely able to walk, coughing up lungs. The other, my upstairs neighbour.
It's the water cooler of community housing.
Upstairs neighbour is on the outs with her boyfriend, she can't support him, he's not pulling his weight, he's bought groceries but he gets them at Dollarama, buys the cheap Neopolitan Ice Cream, she's had enough. He has to get a job.
This is rich, given it's been 30 years since she worked, on disability but she's never offered to explain just how or why...
And running into him, now inspired to get work, hilariously he's been working on the truck at the thrift shop, he's got to have a talk with her, they get along well enough, only - well, she's a handful and wants it all...
Since he's been out of the picture she's made me a "Friendship Bracelet", the kind with all sorts of various beads, colourful, the beads, plastic, wood, glass, some rocks, like what you might exchange at a Taylor Swift concert...
If the pink shirts didn't make me suspicious looking enough the bracelet will cement things.
I pop by to check in on the Other Neighbour, she's been on the down low, broke and in one of her self-pitying humours, her place slowly drifting into a messy oblivion, coffee table littered with empty canned cocktails and mini-liquors, she's stopped asking to borrow money as she has no way to repay it and so I just e-transfer her some cash, community housing means your pay cheque is community as well, which I don't mind in trifling sums but I have bills as well...
She let herself in this morning only to demand that I carry her table, outside on the landing for 2 weeks now, downstairs to donate to the thrift shop. Management must have sent her an email. I could see all this being "the helpful neighbour" growing old real quick...
***
The restaurant, busy ever night except (oddly enough) on Friday and Saturday. Last night, passing through, a refugee from Shambala, the streets are filled with these lost souls, loving the vibe, sleeping in the alleys and doorways, this one, clearly not yet come to his senses, dancing, looking at the menu, dancing some more, I’m too busy for this. I leave him alone, attend the paying customers, it’s a hectic night. When finally I get around to asking him if he’d like to order he tells me the …. looks good, and I ask - just to confirm - if he’s able to pay. He digs through his bag, and after a few minutes shows me a couple of rocks. Just rocks, not crystals, not polished, just river-worn rocks that somehow caught his fancy. Now he must know his audience, because I’m intrigued, but too busy for this at the moment, in the afternoon we could have talked but now I’m hopping, not the time, and so I send him packing and he takes it in good nature…
***
And, out for coffee, the town has a new superhero, the "Unicyclist", tall and made taller by the Unicycle, in full on leather biker gear, reflective motorcycle helmet with full visor, speeding down Ward on his electric unicycle, he makes it look easy, all you have to do is keep your balance...he'd make a great community safety officer, speeding around and administering Naloxone to all the sleeping beauties...
Cosmic Consciousness (Finished)
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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Bloody hell this took forever.
Anyways, overall, an interesting idea that spurred a lot of thought, but the source material, well - OK. Nonetheless I'll outline it again and then make my notes.
First and again, the author is arguing that Man is in the process of evolving from a period of "Self Consciousness" to a higher plain of Universal or "Cosmic Consciousness" in which he will be able to experience the divine as part of his day-to-day experience. As substantiation for his arguments he provides a long list of people he believe's have (at certain times, and for certain periods) experienced it, with quotes from both them and those people who knew them.
Beginning with Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, etc. and ending with a more contemporary list of people; some of whom are listed by their initials only, others of whom are named, all of whom really loved Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass". I may have to give it a read.
A partial list follows, linked to their respective Wikipedia Pages, some of which make for more interesting reads than others.
And too many more to list. Now the author, as a Psychiatrist had a privileged insight into a lot of patients/inmates personality’s and experiences, unusual states of mind, and doubtless some of the acquaintances he made in his career influenced his observations. But - while not entirely doubting him, it doesn't hurt to be a little bit skeptical. The whole "I've achieved enlightenment and this is how it feels and perhaps you should/would benefit from it as well..." highlights the perils of self reporting, for what man doesn’t report himself better than his peers? And the belief that this is somehow an Aryan thing, or beyond the ken of more "primitive" tribes and civilizations does them a disservice, for only after we had destroyed their cultures and displaced them from their homes did we take a look at their spiritual practices. Language, culture, and the timed distance we put between them and our own understandings make it unlikely we'll ever know, but - from the books I've read, first hand and pertaining to North American and Australian Indigenous peoples they were far more in that zone than we are, and so (since we report on the extraordinary and rarely the ordinary) they have as much claim to this evolution as anyone.
As well the author overlooks that the mind can be trained to experience these things, as in Buddhist or Hindu traditions, and that indirectly the Christian tradition prepares one for the same epiphanies.
But, ignoring these criticisms, it's of it's age. Instead take the idea that you can somehow reframe and rewire and experience a world you had only hitherto suspected. Discarding the drugs (MDMA, ACID, MUSHROOMS, KETAMINE, Too many others to list) there are abundant instances in our current age where you can be "transformed" with an attenuation of sense you had never suspected.
Try for example Color Blind Glasses (Link provided to people getting colour blind glasses...). Clearly the experience is one that is both transformational - an invisible world becomes apparent. Or babies getting glasses or babies getting hearing aids.
Or lying between 2 giant trumpets in the forest to have all those quiet noises that lie beneath your perception made audible.
But these are technological remedies to sensory deficits. Consider that human beings have had colour cones since we were apes (they share a similar eye biology), yet only relatively recently did these distinctions make it into language.
Gladstone's colour theory postulates that Man/Humankind did not evolve a colour sense until relatively recently is undermined by the fact that the Ancient Egyptians were using Blue as a pigment as early as 2500 BCE. It's late entry into language, though, is suspicious, or curious - and the abundant studies of certain tribes and cultures that could not differentiate shades of blue/green until they were taught. But - their hardware (cones, rods) is the same, it is only that they have been bounded or restrained by language. So - while our hardware (bodies) are relatively the same; our software (thinking and language) are different.
When language expands, so do concepts and our ability to think. Which suggests that just as we hope to upgrade our software (language) we can hope to expand our experience(s) of the world.
Consider then Tetrachromats, with 4 types of cones in their eyes and a much vaster spectrum of colour than language will provide. Factually a different hardware, running on legacy code. Or synesthetes, who's experience of vision or sound is tied to another sensory input, "seeing" red as a colour and experiencing it as noise or a taste or touch sensation of some sort. Old hardware, new code. Imagining that you are the first to achieve this hyper-attenuation, a new cell in your eye that expands your spectrum, sharpen your vision to that of a Mantis Shrimp, with it's ability to see in ultraviolet and polarized rays, or a Hawk or Eagle, evolve the olfactory sensibility of a dog, the hearing of a whale, every enhancement of sense demanding a correlating enhancement in the brain to process and - in time, language to express and share it.
Or Supertasters, of which I'm sure my neighbour is one, you have only to watch her face as she bites into a dessert to know that her experience of it is so far beyond my own, but then words fail her in describing...
And consider the vocabularies of taste and smell - 5 basic tastes, Umami, Salty, Sweet, Sour and Bitter, after which everything is described in terms that can only make sense if you have prior experience of the taste or food it's referencing. And the same with scent - one theory lists the seven primary scents as "camphoraceous, musky, floral, pungent, ethereal, minty and putrid", almost all of which require some experience of items similarly described.
Contrast this with numbers - I have the theory of numbers, the experience of small numbers, and I can generalize from this up to larger numbers. I don't need the entire infinitude of integers or fractions to make sense of the world. But - the vocabulary of scent, taste, is meaningless without experience of these things.
...which is making me think of language as a virus, something that exists beyond us, a parasite that needs 2 hosts in order to evolve itself, grow, a parasite with a will and direction of it's own.
Consider LLM's, with their evolving "intelligence", AI is a little hyped and overused but their building upon the language of code and numbers and grow their "software" based on their interactions with others.
IN time, presumably, they will have to update their "hardware" to process these new ideas that they're creating...
Which makes curious, the stages of a babies psychological development, the child then of a magician who never learns object permanence, how then is their experience of the world? What narrative of their existence? Or a cat, just discovering (gingerly, slow pats of the salt shaker while sat upon the cupboard) discovering gravity? And wonder at the worlds of angels, fairies, elves and demons beyond our ken, coloured in shades beyond our perception...
House, M.D.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Now following the boys underhanded recommendation I watched the first season of "House, MD". Others have recommended it as well, and I think I understand why.
First of all the lead character, Dr. Gregory House played by Hugh Laurie, a splendid character full of wit, charm, personality, and both pithy and perspicacious observations on fellow staff and patients.
This is why I suspect most people watch it. Funny no one's offered me a T.V. show.
Now to the rest of it...
A CSI rip-off, merely set in a Hospital rather than a Crime Lab. A main plot involving a mysterious disease that usually reveals itself just before the end. There sure are a lot of "One in a Million" diseases out there, folks, watch out. CGI graphics zoom inside the patient to reveal the inner workings of the human body while the attending physicians puzzle over improbable symptoms to arrive at a diagnosis.
The plot follows a predictable path: A primary patient, who’s situation is grave and demands a thorough 45 minute investigation by both House and Staff, and a secondary patient (his assigned Clinic hours) whose primary purpose is to provide comic relief. Some politics and friction between the main characters.
It is of course complete and utter balderdash. Much like people like to believe CSI and other such "Law and Order" type shows demonstrate some aspect of the real world, there is no way a team of dedicated experts are working on resolving your murder/mystery ailment for days on end, let alone 45 minutes. The way they treat both the homeless and poor with the same care and dignity as they do the rich and privileged is as well ridiculous, it's the "Fairy Tale" of healthcare. And the way they use "Seizures" to indicate the situation is serious - well, it's a bit predictable, isn't it? As predictable as the "Human Interest" aspect of every show and the invariable cheesy ending.
But this is in general the state of television at the moment. What is missing in the series is the fact that the healing is seldom put in the charge of the patient, the psychological or inner life of the patient is seldom probed (apart from when House exposes it with his witty repartee), and there's missing (so far, I've only done Season 1) a more spiritual view of medicine that confronts placebos, belief, deathbed visitations, wonder and the mysteries of existence. House is a purely material, atheistic view of medicine and the body which I think we have somewhat cast doubt upon, if not clearly disproven.
House really needs a miracle.
Now I've downloaded Season 2, I'm hoping for more of a character "arch" - where the characters develop over the season, than was present in Season 1, but - well, I'm also quite prepared to abandon it. While Hugh Laurie is great he's hardly enough reason to waste 45 minutes watching the show. I'm a bit sad the boy has invested so much time in it, but I suspect it's just that he's missing my caring parental style...
Neighbours in Community Housing
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Neighbour on my floor pops in yesterday morning, lets herself in, she'd had a bad dream and wanted to consult my dream dictionaries. She's kinda-the-Kramer, seldom knocking, merely letting herself in to grab some coffee, sugar, art supplies, whatever she needs, and I haven't the heart to start locking the door.
Her dream, that she and her brother were in a football game, they lost, and then he killed himself, and it has her all out of sorts.
Myself, this is odd, I'd had a dream that night that I was in airports, missing flights, confused as to connections and destinations, and my sister (young, maybe 10 years old) had taken a dive from a platform, suicide, landed on her neck, it broke and a milky-white fluid poured out around her body and I'm shouting for my father...
As well disturbing, and I'm struck that we both should have had such similar dreams (the death of a sibling by suicide.).
But she's too busy to chat, conversation is not something she does anyways and I have to be kind of grateful, she's looking up the symbols in various of the dictionaries, finding competing explanations, trying to sort it out...
***
The neighbour upstairs, taken the past few weeks to hanging out with a boyfriend she met at the Soup Kitchen, he's homeless, lives out of his car, so she spoils him with bubble baths and home cooking and inane TV and they seem pretty happy.
"We laugh so hard together..."
She doesn't work, too many of these people don't, and so every day it's wake up to the Vodka, have a joint, and the party gets started...
They approach me, they've been drinking too much, they want to start a sort-of mutual support group, a Temperance or Tee-Totaler league, there's no doubting I'm occasionally off the rails but these, these people don't help...
I volunteer instead my free liquor removal service, I'll take all the leftover vodka they have on hand, for free, they can get started on this abstinence binge right away...
"Tomorrow" she tells me, but tomorrow comes and goes and there's no half-empty bottle of vodka on my doorstep.
***
Money has started to stick in my bank account. Partly because the restaurant is that little-bit busier, and - more largely, because I've been buying the native cigarettes. They're terrible, but the whole smoking thing is terrible, and the savings is enormous. The savings is my bank account. And I ask if they have a moonshine or liquor distributor, but they don't, they might get, they've got everything else, "E", "Superman" pills, Adderall, Ritalin, Special K, they're just getting started, their prices are great and so maybe soon...
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