Life has a way of making the foreseeable what never happens; and the unforeseeable what your life is about. “Appaloosa”
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.
Yes, same LOTR quotation as previously.
I’ve ‘always’ had a tendency toward OCD. In me, the ‘disorder’ takes the form of desiring control. Our house is a mess, but I am very particular about some things. Mentally, I always calculate the most efficient way to accomplish tasks. I have the store in which we buy groceries memorized, to pass through the store quickly. Since Social Distancing is my normal lifestyle, I’m not tempted to engage in conversations with random people. I eat the same food during the day that I’ve eaten for years; and have specific ways of preparing it. The dietary ‘rules’ relate to my degenerative polyneuropathy [doctor-speak for, ‘we have no idea what’s wrong with your nervous system’]. By eating the same selections of food, if my body doesn’t work properly on a given day, it isn’t because of my diet.
Among the ‘rules’ for my life is the rule that I primarily use my own illustrations in my blog. I wanted to use the above lines from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy in my last post, so I needed to create a LOTR illustration in order to continue writing… While it looks like an image from the original promotional illustrations, it’s actually original art. That will be more apparent on the next LOTR illustration I’m working on.
I write as a way of analyzing and understanding the Disorder of the world. A Disorder that has not existed in this country for a century, compounded by America’s Original Sin of Racism.
My great-grandfather, and one of his daughters died in 1919, here in Portland, during the Spanish Flu Pandemic. My Dad was something like a year old, having been born in Eastern Oregon in 1918.
The Spanish Flu Pandemic infected 500 million people—about a third of the world’s population at the time.[5] The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
By the time you read this, over 400,000 people in the world will have died from COVID-19; over 110,000 of those people will have lived in the U.S. The number of infected people in the world will be approaching 7 million. Lockdowns in the U.S. started about 3 months ago.
I wrote to a friend tonight and told him a story from one of my favorite books. The story takes place in a VA Burn Ward. There was a patient called ‘Sarge’ who had suffered third-degree burns over most of his body. He helped the nurses in the Burn Ward by bringing cups of water, and other Graces. A woman had been brought into the Ward, also suffering from third-degree burns over most of her body. Some months later, Sarge was telling this woman about his daughter going off to college. The woman said something like, ‘why would you send her to a Black University?’ Sarge replied, ‘because we are Black.’
There is no Melanin in the Burn Ward.
All of the patients in the Burn Ward have a thin transparent layer covering the muscles and tissues under the surface of our skin. The muscles and ligaments and tissues under our skin are the same throughout the world. The concept of Racism is based on a grim fairy tale that having pink skin is better than having brown skin. The idea has no basis in fact.
Black Lives Matter Plaza, Washington D.C. June 2020
The other day, a friend asked me if I believe in evil.
Evil has been on display across the country; sadly, many of those who are sworn to protect and serve are responsible for creating the evil. I saw Evil’s face in Minneapolis, staring into a camera for 9 minutes while he and his partners crushed the life of a man who supposedly paid for something with a counterfeit $20 bill. When did buying something with a counterfeit dollar bill become worth a person’s life? Do you check the paper money you receive from a cash purchase to see if the bills are counterfeit?
Karma may come into the picture in the weeks and months ahead. In his autopsy, George Floyd was found to be Positive for COVID-19…
He said he wanted a wall. Only, it isn’t at the Southern Border [that one has been breached in many places]; and the American Taxpayer is paying for it.
‘The need to fortify your house shows weakness’: Heavily secured White House at odds with its long history as ‘the people’s house’ The Independent, UK
The White House is known as “The People’s House” — and since 2009, the Obama administration has made that nickname truer than ever before for millions of guests by opening the White House to as many Americans as possible.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/09/15/opening-peoples-house
Tourists may find it harder to get that perfect photograph of the White House after construction begins on a new 13-foot fence, almost double its current height, to help keep intruders out.
The White House has become a fortress.
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Tags: depression, freelance, heroes, hope, illustration, material poverty, mental-health, Nerve Pain, Neuropathy, pain, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self-employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 