Spring has sprung?

Wow! I actually missed a day! For the first time in, what, three weeks? Yesterday - Sunday - I woke up naturally about 6:00, played and chatted online for the morning, and crawled back int obed around noon -- and woke up at 3:30 with a 4:00 family birthday party to get to! so by the time I got back, I forgot I forgot.

as for today, went to Sisters' Cardiac Rehab to work out again, as I had - after an over a two-month absence - on Thursday and again on Friday. Surprised that I have been able to maintain (almost) my full-paced 40-minute workout. Also shocked today that my heartrates were back down to almost the levels they were when I had been doing the workout before. Maybe because I remembered to refill and start taking again my Coreg, which I pretty much had let trail off for the past month - not sure if Coreg is a beta blocker or not, and have been taking the Lisiniprol regularly as prescribed -- or if somehow my body just re-adjusted over the two-day weekend break.


But.... There is a woman there I had never seen before, Jane, maybe early 50's: slender, you know in her 20's she was a real looker.

I want her.

Which is a feeling I haven't had in some time, for several months, to be talking with a woman, or just watching her, and thinking about approaching her and saying, 'my place is a mess, but I can throw a few dollars down for a motel room...' Strange thoughts from me. Especially that she is not my type, she is rather "Buffalo", literally a loud talker. but pretty, and slender, and energetic.

It feels good. Even though she's married and it is of course all wrong, lol.

A Saturday afternoon

As usual I was full ideas and thoughts to write about earlier, but now, at 4:00 and having spent a lot of timer doing Saturday-type errands, I've run out of steam.

I've added a counter to my blog -- you can't miss it, upper right-hand corner over my top pic -- but at this point at least, it only shows a tiny logo-ad, and not even a "00000" counter. Maybe it will after the first hit, whenever that will be.

Anyway, catch you later!

Starting to work out again

Worked out at Sisters' Hosptal Cardiac Rehab yesterday and today, for the first time since January 17. I gained 10 lbs in these past two month alone!

I forgot how wonderful it feels to work out, and to have worked out. I can feel my metabolism bubbling. And I'm hungry, but for some reason food, the food I imagine right now I would enjoy, feels like just one part of something bigger. Hard to explain. Almost that it is okay to be hungry, okay to crave. But also as equally okay not to give in.

But I am worried about my heartrates -- my resting both days as I came in was 94, and I was getting up to 136 on the Elliptical with the handgrip pulse sensor, even staying back at level 2 intead of my previous level 3, and working it slower, about 2.5 to 2.7, compared to having to keep myself from going over 3.0. But with a minimum of lowering like that, including pacing my first few minutes at the treadmills slower and working up to 3.3 at the 5 minute mark, I pretty much kept up!

feeling like shit, still

I'm in a shitty mood this morning.

Doing Men's Division toban at the new Community Center was tougher than I had thought, evn get winded -- and as I have all my life, I sat there, obstensibly watching over other people, from a distance, while they laughed with each other and enjoyed their own lives.

And tonight I am supposed to give a study/lecture at the GLBTS meeting -- I had originally wanted to present from President Ikeda's 2008 United Nations Peace Proposal - but it is so dry, a discussion of UN agency works and recommendations, that there is nothing I could find to bite into.

So I decided to go with current Living Buddhism's ongoing study chapter on The Heritage of The Ultimate Law of Life -- which I had not been informed was being presented by Susan and Lynne last night for the Buffalo South Chapter.

And at least neither Lynn or Joe will make it tomorrow, and so many GLBTS members were there last night...

I TOLD Lynn and Joe that my giving a study would cause issues...

another day waiting for spring, I guess...

When I first re-dedicated myself to writing here every day - about two weeks ago - of course I imagined myself dedicating an hour, or half-an-hour, here discussing big issues, exposing my thoughts and wonders.

But most of the time, even as boring and dull as my life is, I just plop down a couple lines about how I am just going to plop down a couple lines.

~ ~

I've been having some sleep issues the past couple weeks; I assume it is the Valium, or the coffee I am downing to counteract the Valium. Nodding off and crawling into bed even before prime time starts, waking up at 1:00 or 2:00 totally confused, usually panicking about getting to work even on the weekends. Up til 4:00 or 5:00, playing in the trivia rooms with the wide awake Australians.

Went back to be just before 5:00 this morning -- and I let the radio alarm blast juvenile sports talk radio for over an hour, before I actually stumbled - literally - out of bed. Almost fell back onto the bed. Before I could manage to turn off the heating pad and then yank the plug out.

I'll be taking today as a sick day, just did morning gongyo, still in my robe - although I've been calling in my voicemail, and will be going nn for about an hour to check up on my emails and mail.

~ ~

So I guess this has been another just posting to post posts. But I do want to get to my own email to look back through and thnak thoe who replied (so nicely) to my questioning post on SGI Diversity.

just feeling.... flat

Feeling down evening, not sure why, can find no reason.

I have to get on the study on "The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life" for my lecture Thursday evening.

boring Easter weekend, really

Easter, boring day, boring weekend, slept odd hours, ate too much. Although I did go out and bike -- in 30 degrees -- for 20 minutes yesterday.

A good dream

It's 9:00 in the evening, and I just woke up from a 3 hour nap, in which I had the most positive dream I've ever had about Buddhism and my practice. In spite of the intense post I sent to SGI Diversity this weekend.

In the dream, Stephanie Celano (I think) - by way of disclaimer, she left Buffalo over 15 years ago, ended up working for SGI-USA and marrying an L.A. fireman - but not really her idf you know what I mean, was my girlfriend, and she, or she and I, were taking in a foster child, or actually I think disabled adult, in Sharon and Mike's old house - not their real house - as they were moving into their new house (which they are actually planning to do).

And playing house with her, and helping her take care of a disabled person - both big parts of being a good Buddhist in my dream's world and my mindset in the dream - felt good. Like I was doing the right thing to do with my life.

At the end of the dream, it was time for me to wake up in the morning earlier than them, and I went downstairs to another bedroom or a room where we where temporarily storing bedding, and still tired I lied down and did gongyo to start the morning.

And I did gongyo.

For real. In my real bed, gongyo for morning with my hands together lying there or on my side. As far as I can remember doing a full gongyo.

It felt good, in a dream, to feel good about Buddhism and being a Buddhist, for once finally.

A theory about the US invasion of Iraq

The American invasion and occupation of Iraq is actually not against Islam, or Islamo-fascism or Arab Hegemony or whatever you want to call it --

But against the European Union.

To make sure that the US controls the routing of Iraq's oil, so that it would not go the closer and therefore economically cheaper and more reasonable route directly into Europe; to establish a Soviet-style "satellite state" threatening the borders of the EU...

And after all, is the new Iraqi cellular phone system we are building on the worldwide, or the singularly American, system?

"Fuck" is all I can say

I was in "Mainstream..." last night. A marine, about to go back on another tour, was having pretty much a PTSD meltdown on mic. In his PalTalk profile he has a photo of himself holding up a prefectly adorable little Iraqi girl, probably not quite a year old -- huge dark eyes, unruly brown hair, her tiny fingers playing with his ear making him wince and smile at the same time.

She had had surgery at the American military hospital.

Four days after he was holding her in the photo, the baby and her young mother were gunned down like dogs on the street.

For taking her baby to the American hospital .

The trouble with karma

I have been having a philosophical issue with karma that has all but destroyed my practice and my belief in Nichiren's Buddhism as practiced in the SGI, for years, although I play along (most of the time).

I cannot avoid the conclusion that "karma" is bullshit.

Here's why –Buddhism – and reason – concludes that the Universe and all things in the Universe are eternal. Neverbegininning and Neverending. In his lectures on such things as the Lotus Sutra, President Ikeda has frequently mentioned the Law of the Conservation of Energy – that energy and its concurrent manifestation as matter can never be created or destroyed.

Buddhism is perhaps unique among religions in that it states that the Universe was never created, and will never be destroyed. Science says the same thing. Everything that is, and everything that ever was and everything that ever will be, whether we can see it now or whether it is currently in its dormant state of ku … always was and always will be.

Therefore, you have been here for eternity.

An infinite number of lifetimes. Not a thousand lifetimes. Not a millions lifetimes. Not a billion billion lifetimes.

But you have lived an INFINITE number of lifetimes.

You have therefore experienced and done EVERYTHING YOU POSSIBLY COULD.

In that infinite number of lifetimes, in that infinite number of cycles of the universe; in what is beyond our brain's capacity to imagine. You have had lifetimes of constant joys and births; you have had lifetimes in which we have personally found the cure for cancer. You have had lifetimes in which you have been Nichiren, and lifetimes in which you have been Devadatta. You have spent lifetimes being Gods; you have spent lifetimes being Hitlers destroying races and galaxies. You have spent lifetimes in which all your consciousness has been unbelievable agony, and you have experienced lifetimes of unimaginable joy.

We are talking about ETERNITY here, folks.

Not a billion times cycling through this, not walking through solar systems dropping a grain of sand in each one.

But ETERNITY.

Buddhism talks about FOREVER, never-beginning, never-ending.

Infinity.

And we will experience infinity all over again in the future. And infinity by definition contains an infinite number of infinities. In short – by the Buddhist definition of the universe – YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE EVERYTHING! AND YOU WILL DO EVERYTHING AGAIN.

THEREFORE, YOUR KARMA IS LITERALLY "MAXED OUT".

So… what we do in this lifetime, is infinitesimally MEANINGLESS.

AND ALL OF US HAVE DONE EVERYTHING, AND WILL DO EVERYTHING AGAIN IN THE FUTURE. THEREFORE, NOTHING WE DO IN THIS LIFETIME WILL HAVE ANY EFFECT ON OUR ETERNAL LIVES.

So why be nice? Why bother doing shakubuku? We have been and will be shakubukuing an infinite number of people in the future; heck, we already have in the past.

Why not just rape and steal and murder and take what we want? Your karma will even itself out through eternity.

For me, I am just hardwired to try to be nice and empathetic and magnanimous I guess, and I honestly feel I have missed out a lot of "normal", "human" experiences and emotions and successes because of it.


Why bother? I mean these questions literally.

And seriously. I am simply postulating from the "eternity", from the "lifetime after lifetime" that we bandy about at discussion meetings, that SGI-USA writes about in every issue of Living Buddhism.

When I chant, I can feel good and positive, and these thoughts evaporate for the moment – but they also evaporate when I am eating Ben & Jerry's.

This is a thought paradigm I cannot simply "put aside" and forget about, as much as I would like to do so.

Hanging out in "Mainstream..."

Tired tonight, ate a full Wegman's sub.

But am spending interesting times in the acerbic "Mainstream..." PalTalk room, eveyone still haranguing over Obama's race speech.

Obama's speech

I must admit I stayed home late this morning, to watch Barack Obama's speech.

My thoughts while listening to it - after having read a bit of it published shortly before his address - is that is was -- is -- a classic, historic, American speech. Obama pulled no punches, evaded no words: he spoke about Race in America. About his white grandmother openly fearful of black men she passed on the street while walking with him, about her using epiteths in front of him that he says still sting.

He admitted that working white people are angered and fearful of the attempts at good and equality that have been created to "help" blacks at their expense, even though they have nothing to do with our country's failings or even if their own ancestors had nothing to do with slavery or institutionalized oppression -- and that that is unfair.

A straghtforward, well-spoken, and balanced tone of a speech - magnanimous - when we have become so accustomed to the mumbled emotional whining of the Right.

Listening to Christians

Spent a couple hours, it ended up, in a couple of Christian debate rooms on PalTalk -- fascinating, that so many intelligent people so deeply believe, so deeply hold their real world view on that stuff.

"The Dust" as a blovel?

Am considering writing up "The Dust" story -- my screenplay idea as "Bogart battles vampires" -- as a "blovel", just for the joy of writing something, for the joy of sitting here lost for hours actually creating something, something substantive. Like I was doing when I was making my music a few years back. There are issues with character perspective, tone, the interplay of Ron Mayhew's stoic early 20th century front (what we would call machismo) with the reality of his lung cancer and his unacknowledged deep biting worry at the possibility of losing Trish to the vampire Roman -- issues that I honestly think will come across better as a movie, in which the audience will discover these things before Mayhew himself does. These arcing narrative and character themes and processes just feel better as an unfolding movie in which characters act, or react, instead of describe.

More on Conservatives

On NBC morning network news they played a clip of that now controversial preacher of Obama's church, railing against Hillary Clinton for having no experience, and no real idea, as Obama has, of what it is like being a "n****r" in America (his word) -- but in the clip he also proclaimed that al Qaeda and 9/11, that our morass in Iraq and Middle East anti-Americanism was the response of American hubris there.

And commentator Chris Matthews was apoplectic, called him un-American for suggesting that.

What is it about Conservative and Christian Americans that they cannot see -- or at least admit -- that other people may see things differently than they?

More on D'Souza III

In Chapter Nine, toward the end of The Enemy at Home, D'souza puts forth the proposition that in his last two videos bin Laden is literally suggesting an alliance between himself and the American Left, because both he and they want to defeat Bush. He never says bin Laden actually states this directly though, but is using subtle innuendo that, apparently, only D'Souza alone,and not even the American Left intelligentsia bin Laden is addressing, has been able to decipher -- uh, yeah, sure, Dinesh...

D'Souza on hypocrisy, or lack thereof

Trying to think up a solid argument against Dinesh D'Souza's contention that it is the moral high ground for a hypocrite, even a hypocrite hiding her or his shortcoming, to point out the same failings in someone else -- pointing out someone's moral or philosophical shortcomings trumps the error of omission for hiding your own.

Hard to work around that. It does make morally logical sense. but still leaves a nasty taste in your mouth; D'Souza's example was Newt Gingrich's working to expose and impeach Bill Clinton for his dalliance with Monica Lewinski, while Gingrich himself was having an extra-marital affair. Just because Gingrich was doing something wrong, did not lessen the fact that Clinton was doing something wrong and that it was Gingrich's responsibility (granted by what or whom, we don't really know; we assume D'Souza's reliance on God and the Christian moral code) to point out and prosecute Clinton's indiscretion.

It is a powerful, and as far as I can figure so far, ironclad, paradigm.

just a couple things

A dull day today after the work-up and concern, and finally, the meeting with the County yesterday. And Marie had only minor points and questions: not at all necessary to have brought in Jim Coder and Jim Casion as she wanted. I'm not sure what she was thinking.

Everything is okay, to flow like it has been. Just that Marie wants Lucy and me to work down the figures for the Curriculum Development and the New Trainer Training and Development.


Not much else to say, but that I feel I have to let go of my emotional attachment to G.; and I've met a couple nice and fun-sounding people online in the last few days, and am looking forward to relaxing and connecting and having fun with them!

Depressed?

I haven't heard from G. since Thursday morning - four and a half days ago. It is so intense talking with her sometimes -- and she's even said she'd be lost without me. Now I wonder if I am just a fool.

My karma -- people leave me. Suddenly. Without a hint, much less without a warning. I think as a young person she does not take such things as seriously: she could be dealing with a busted computer, for some time, and think nothing of it, the time she has and the time and opportunties to be with people and to meet new people expanding out from the doorway of this moment, her life feeling endless, or so it seems to the young. Now for myself, knowing my mortality, I know there are only a finite number of days, a set number of moments, and then.... oblivion.

This all seems so useless sometimes, just a madman whose best he can muster is to bark out into the sweeping wind, uselessly jabbering "the sound and the fury".

morning

Woke up at 4:00 in the morning, the morning of the Daylight Savings Time change. We're in the middle of a winter storm, with the move-up of DST, a strange anomaly with a foot-plus snowstorm going on. Had heartburn, but even before then I was tossing and turning. Excited by getting my add request approved, and talking a bit with, someone for a good roleplay start - talked a bit last night, with explanation marks and smileys, but she didn't or couldn't stay.

It was strange for it to be 7:00 and still dark.

Meds

Been taking the Valium since Tuesday. I had just happened to see Spaceballs the day before I met with Dr. Napoli: once of the characters is of course the foppy boring and constantly yawning Prince Valium. And valium is such a... girlie medication. The TV jokes by jaded wealthy housewives. I also saw Dr. O'Brien on Thursday for a six-month checkup, and he told me that the decision to present Valium as a tranquilizer instead of a sleep aid was a marketing one - just a higher dose and it would be a sleeping pill.

But I began to quickly feel that same sense I did when I had taken Zoloft and then Effexor years ago -- the worried Thoughts might be there, but the concurrent Emotions don't blossom, instantly or otherwise.

It is very much a relief.

More on D'Souza II

Dinesh D'Souza, The Enemy at Home, page 190:
"International agencies like the U.N. and its various spin-off groups have been active in asserting the rights of women, children, homosexuals and others that directly contravene Islamic teaching."

So, D'Souza would argue that the Federal imposition of African-Americans' civil rights on the South in the mid 20th century was indefensible because it contravened historic Southern culture?

Another binge

Bought and plowed through a whole bag of multi-grain tortilla chips and most of a jar of black bean dip last night.

Why the fuck do I do this.

Food

Saw Dr. O'Brien today, six month checkup. I had gained 12 lbs. since September, and admitted to him I had been binge eating. But last night I plied through nearly all my junk food and dessert food. Easy not to have the food in the house, being by myself. Now I just have a jar of yogurt in the fridge -- Brown Cow, maple, expensive at $4.59. Also have three little Green Giant tubs of specialty vegetable combinations waiting in the freezer. The idea being some honey glazed sliced carrots is better for me than half a bag of chips.

The problem with food may be my imagination -- even just thinking about food, my mind goes to how enjoyable it is to taste it, to have it in my mouth, the swirl and sometimes clash of flavors, the touch of textures in my mouth and on my tongue. About the only real life sensuality I have, at the moment; maybe the excitement and energy of biking and maybe even skateboarding will be something, when I begin doing them again in a few weeks.

More on D'Souza

More on Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 :

So far, 125 pages into it, D'Souza cites bin Laden's and contemporary Islamic intellectuals' railing against Western "decadence" - women's rights, sexual images, drugs and alcohol, our relative acceptance of homosexuality - as the Muslim finger pointing to the reasons for bin Laden's attacks on 9/11. Bin Laden constantly refers to these things, complains he does not want them poisoning the Arab/Moslem world, in his audios and videos "warning" us of fresh attacks, his harangues.

Not withstanding that bin Laden himself has had secret mistresses, and a reported passion for the music of The B52's and Van Halen, of an obsession with Whitney Houston. But then again, D'Souza argues that it is okay for a hypocrite to point out the same hypocrisy in someone else; exposing the evil trumps the exposer's own hypocrisy.

Anyway, D'Souza is taking at face value that the moral high ground bin Laden espouses as bin Laden's reasoning. Without considering that that all could be just a cover of palatable self-righteousness, for his fellow Muslims to digest.

More later.

"Zippers"

During dinner with my parents and sister Eileen on Sunday, I mentioned that I finally talked with the only other local Buddhist member who had had a heart attack, a couple years before mine. It turns out that all he got was stents!! How disappointing. Not a "zipper" like me, I told my parents.

My mom didn't know what a "zipper" is. I was shocked. My father had a double bypass almost twenty years ago, and he never used that term, she had never heard or overheard it in any talks she had with him or visits at the doctors or with him and his friends?

My dad told her what a zipper referred to.

So, in the eighteen years since he had his heart attack and open heart surgery, all the days and weeks after when she helped him and bathed him, he never said "zipper"?


It struck me that my father wants to ignore his heart attack. Totally. Wants to make it didn't happen. Nancy Mischler in her pastoral visit with me at the hospital said as much; my father refused, or claimed to refuse, to change his diet or his lifestyle. This is the man who raised me; no wonder I have such difficulty changing and facing reality.

An appointment this evening

It's 50 here today. And sunny. Forcast for 60. Home for another long lunch, threw a couple windows open to freshen the place, even though it's already cool in here.

But a winter storm watch for tomorrow and Wednesday. Oh well.

I have an appointment with Dr. Napoli this evening, a psychiatrist at JFS. I've already canceled my last two appointments with him over the last month. Money is one thing. But mainly I just don't want to be back on meds. The stigma, yes, at least the stigma that I feel. But I also worry that it is in some way giving up control. Not that I would go crazy violent like a (very few) handful of gunman have done in the news. But just-- for the same reason I never did drugs, or drink myself blotto.

Which is a manifestation of my problem, lol. And my running to the back of my flat four times this morning as I was leaving - once after I had locked the inner door - to make sure that I had pull the space heater's cord from the socket. And my paranoia that my car will stall without warning, "now!"

The Right and The Left

Reading Dinesh D'Souza's 2007 The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. Yes that's right, the American cultural left -- including me and the SGI-USA in D'Souza's view.

The gist of his argument is that what bin Laden and al Qaeda and radical Islam are angry enough to send their compatriots on suicide missions against America and its interests, is their sensibilities being offended by the far extreme of liberal Hollywood and gay acceptance.

More on that later.

But for now, let me just put forth that liberals see America as an idea while conservatives see America as a culture.

The presence of pre-history

Watching a Discovery Channel show on early man.

Do you know there were Homo Erectus in England at least 500,000 years ago? England! Half a million years ago!

It makes me conjecture that perhaps the reason ridiculous anti-evolution and anti-reasonable Fundamentalist Christianity has such a hold on Americans, and not on Europeans, is that European- and African- Americans are so physically divorced from this history.

We are floating on this continent with only a 500 year history. Cavemen - prehistory, and Biblical history are both somewhere far off, in a neverneverland oceans away.

I am watching these re-enactments of early man in England and I wonder how my European friends see them? Knowing that these are their ancestors, or really that the uncovered shards are their ancestors' tools, that skulls are their ancestors, that someone they or a fellow townsman or national are descended from actually held this deer remnant in her or his hands, actually ripped this animal's flesh off and swallowed it.

But this did not happen in this land I sit upon -- but this did happen on the land Alice and Witchy and Zoltan sit upon.

We Americans feel a distance from this truth of descendency and history. That is why the ridiculousness of Fundamentalist Christianity can hold such a powerful grip on so many tens of millions of Americans. The truth of our long past is so far away.