Last month my wife came into my office crying because one of the little parrots was on the bottom of the cage not moving. Connie doesn't cry often but when she does she makes up for all the time she doesn't. If possible it's usually better to circumvent such an event. I explained to her the bird was sitting on eggs and was alive and well. She had a difficult time letting go of her perception and accepting the reality since she'd already begun to be swept away by the emotional event. It's also difficult for humans to admit they were wrong. They trusted in their perception and it was incorrect. That's unsettling. How many other perceptions did we trust that were equally incorrect? Now, my farm fed friend might have said, It's only a little bird. Get another one. But my wife is not a little bird and I don't want to get another one of those so I stood with her and pointed out the little bird's eyes were open and blinking and we watched until it moved. Eventually, reluctantly, the tears were dried and life proceeded. Why reluctantly? Well, because we imagine that our emotions make us human. We imagine our emotions are our creator and have given us life. We forget we have emotions. We think we are emotions. Then we justify this untruth with sentimentality and nostalgia. When we justify something we get to keep it no matter how much it undermines us. Our condition is such that the emotions have us. If we were well, or at least more healthy, we could have emotions. Then we might have some choice in the kinds of emotions we were having. But we're not. Now, my farm fed friend thinks he's having the emotions he wants to have when he isn't being sentimental about animals but he's just as much a machine as the rest of us. He has to feel the way he feels because that's the way the farm raised him.

Pshaw you say? You think all this is just a jumble of double talk? Yes, yes, you're quite right. It's a jumble of letters and words to which only you could give any meaning. Upon what will that depend? Why, on your Perspective, of course. And that would be entirely dependent upon your level of Being. And where is your Being right now? Here! Of course you'll say it's right here right now. And it might be. Then that dog might also have gotten that pig to fly so it could get the Bush's Baked Beans recipe so it could sell it to make a lot of money and buy some dog food that didn't have rat Poison in it. There! I've Posted two days in a row. Thanks for stopping by and reading. See you around the xang . . .

Yesterday I got an email request from a young man. It was serendipitous. So much of life is that way for me. The point is he, like so many others, is a lurker. Lurk -  [ intrans. ] read communications on an electronic network without making one's presence known. Alas, due to his request he has made his presence known. I lived in the town in which he currently resides before he was born. I'm smiling. Long before he was born. He asked a couple of favors of me. I'm going to do them because I am able. Because he asked. Because life is happier when you can do favors for strangers or familiars with no regard to which they be. I wonder why I'm so happy? Someone looking from the outside might say he's happy because he lives in a big house, drives a nice car and has a wife who looks great naked or clothed. But I know lots of people live in bigger houses, drive nicer cars and have a wife and mistress who look good naked or clothed. But they're not happy. I'm not ruling out the car. It's a great car!

There's also a new video game in my life. Final Fantasy XII has claimed my xanga time. Buddy Love is alive and well. I'm still Podcasting and planning on expanding to Video Podcasting in the not too distant future. That may explain the new computer and all the disk space. The Podcasting thing is going better than I ever thought it would. There's a steady and growing base of listeners. It will be a year this coming June since I started. Wow! That long? Two Podcasts a week for nearly a year. That takes some time. Though I do have excellent help from two other people. One provides photos for the Phat Podcast and the other maintains the website and updates the weekly podcasts. Why do video? You know, I don't know. It's not that I think I'm interesting enough to watch. Truth is I don't think I'm interesting enough to have anyone listen, but the material is good and that makes up for my falling shorts. *smile* Yes, I've tried suspenders. All this blithering just to let you know I'm alive and well. Happy and productive. Yeah, there are other things going on in my life but this is enough. Thanks for reading, being interested, commenting and sharing the planet with me. Be happy. I am. Have I told you lately that I love you? No, of course not. I haven't been around but that's one thing that hasn't changed. I love you. Why? Well, because you're there.

The fact I haven't been around much is not due to anything other than I haven't had much to say here. It seems to me we'd all be better off if when we didn't have anything to say we simply didn't. But that's not going to happen in this life so I'll practice what I preach and see you back here when I've got something to say. Y'all come back now, ya hear!?

Once upon a time I saw Bob Newhart do a skit where he was a psychiatrist who had a patient came to him with phobias. He asked her to write her worst fear on a piece of paper and give it to him. He'd advertised he was able to cure anything in five minutes. The person would tell their problem and he'd say, Stop that! They'd say, What? And he'd say, Stop doing that. The punch line to the skit was that he'd take out the piece of paper and read the patient's worst fear and threaten to do that to them if they didn't stop the behavior. If that's not funny it's because you had to be there. I'm not there so it's not that funny to me now. But it does illustrate my point. Many times we can't do what we need to do even when we want to do it. Depressed? Stop it. Just stop it. We don't know how. If thinking happy thoughts worked no one who worked at Disneyland or the Comedy Store would ever be depressed. The drug companies would have to hire people to take political office so they could stress out the rest of us to increase their bottom line profits.

I'm an optimist. It's true not everyone knows that about me. Some folks think because I have the ability to see the peeling paint that I'm a pessimist. But they're wrong. They're wrong because they can't see they are the pessimists not I. They can't see they don't have the courage to face the daunting task of scraping away the peeling paint before putting on a fresh coat. They'd much rather slap a coat of paint right over the holes, cracks and peeling without all the work. My Dad worked at the Philadelphia Naval Base when I was growing up. He was in charge of the paint shop and getting the submarines painted. He knew paint and painting and even invented a paint to be used on the slick decks of wet submarines when they surfaced so the men walking on them wouldn't slide overboard. I learned from my Dad that preparation was the biggest part of painting. If the surface was properly prepared and a good primer was applied the paint would last many times longer. That wisdom has made me an optimist. Yes, I see humanity for what it is. A sore mass of broken machines breaking things around them as a result of their condition. All this without knowing what they've done most of the time. With the courage to assess the task and the know how to prepare the project I am filled with an abiding optimism because I know what's possible for a man who is willing to work.

It's been a hell of a battle at times. Me against the world. But these days I'm enjoying people. The progress they make when they put forth the right kind of effort inspires me. Having traveled a bit of the course thus far I've become process oriented. It's familiar to me so I recognize the steps and stages when others are in the same place. It gives me a sense of satisfaction to be able to provide what may be the boost someone needs at just the right time and place. Not only that but it helps to keep me mindful of my debt to those who have gone before me. Those who took the risk of loving me. Those who drew near the wounded animal to bind up the wounds and pour the healing balm of love on the raw parts. None of this means I don't see what absolute morons people can be. How vicious and stupid we can behave when things don't go the way we think they should or as we expected. It sure is nice to be able to step back and see the bigger picture though. To be able to see I've done the same things as blindly as they now react to their pain and frustration. I'm afraid there's no help for it. I like people in spite of us.

The word weird comes from the Old English, wyrd meaning destiny (the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future) and has an archaic Scottish usage as a noun meaning a person's destiny. It originally meant having the power to control destiny. Now I'm interested. But when I asked the messenger, Only six? He wrote back with, Well, and the first couple should be pretty obvious. Yes, only 6. Must I mention here this seemed even more odd to me? If it hadn't been vexations sending the messages I doubt I would have replied at all. Apparently someone else would have a much easier time writing six weird things about me than I. But lately I've been thinking about my destiny. Yes, I consider I have a destiny. I mean by that something I need to do in this life more than certain events that need to happen. There are a few events I think needed to happen in my life. Events I could not avoid. Having a leg amputated forty years ago springs to mind as one of them. The parents I got this time round would be another. These are things I would not change had I the power to do so. These are things I have already changed because I developed the power to do so. It seems to me many of us may develop the power to control our destiny. It's not so much a power to change the future as it is a power to change the past. Of course, once we've changed the past we've also altered the present which in turn changes the course of the future.

Most have the potential to control what will happen in the future, to some degree, by what he does in the present. But the power to change the past is much more appealing because it not only changes the past but also the present and future. It seems it takes much more thought and practice to change the past than to change the present. After all, the present is pretty much determined by the past. I mean today's present was yesterday's future. The problem with the past is it's not the present any more so we can't do something in it as easily as we can now. Why? Well, because, in spite of where we imagine we are most of the time, we are actually in the present. The past is a place we visit only in our minds and we do that in the present. But time is not what it appears to be to most of us. We see it as a line that stretches from some point in the past to some point in the future and we are on it at some point we call the present. But a long piece of string like that can be wound up, as it were, into a ball. This kind of understanding of time opens many different levels of meaning as well as corresponding possibilities. Pretty exciting stuff to me. Yeah, that's weird. Now, if you've had your miner's hat on and the light at the top of it switched on you've been able to find at least six weird things about me in these three paragraphs. Happy now? I am.