Hiatus...Hold, Maybe Endgame

I think we'll stop here. There doesn't seem to be much happening besides the details of the decline.

For those of you who've yet to make the decision, I talked w my friend Trini a few days ago. He did alot of the early work on Phoebe: installed her roof rack and built the custom rack that kept things handy inside near the back ceiling.

Phoebe

Trini was a big guy, round of stomach. He had triple by-pass surgery a year ago and said he's still recovering. As you may know, after they tried stenting and found my three arteries blocked, I chose to take meds instead of surgery. It was the right decision for me.

There're three posts that'll appear after I'm gone. The title of the first is: Relationship ist Alles.

Here's a rousing tune to go out on.

🥕 Happy Travels! 🥕

Hospice Referral

My health has deteriorated sufficiently that my cardiologist felt she could refer me to hospice; it's the first step toward Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) which, up 'til now, I've resisted.

Over 400 satisfied customers have taken advantage of the program in the year and a half it's been available, but I don't like the requirement of picking a date & time and that a physician then, at the appointed time, comes bearing the lethal cocktail as if bestowing a sacrament.

While I hope the physician is kind and sympathetic, the protocol feels incredibly pompous and -- at least from my perspective -- obviates any possibility for spontonaity; it actually feels disgusting and abhorrent. On the other hand, gaining access to the program likely means many participants are eagerly begging, PLEADING, for release if they picked a time & date too far out. And what of the folks who *did* and now are no longer capable of drinking it down?

But the past couple of weeks things have taken a sharp turn. The syncope, the feeling of losing consciousness, has become almost continuous except when I'm lying down. Then, if I turn my head or move in the slightest, there's a wave of dizziness.

Nausea is constant with extended (10 minutes or more) of wretching every half hour or so. And today, after not having eaten in a couple of days, straining with dry heaves.

COMMENTING Disabled

No idea what they've done, but my comments on others' blogs have come back w a long note about being blocked.

Somehow I doubt, though it's certainly possible, everyone decided to block me in the same week.

In the 14 years of blogging I haven't had to even moderate comments, let alone block anyone. My yahoo email is at the bottom of my profile and my gmail email is on my "complete" profile....lest you too are being "blocked," but not by me.

Psychedelic Science 2023

Having attended conferences where the Keynote was something to "get through," I was pleasantly surprised by how interesting this one is.

I chose the custom amount of $25.00 to gain access.

Tap image to goto Home Page of Conference

https://2023.psychedelicscience.org/sessions/1532/

I was fortunate to have guidance when I began my explorations in altered states at 13 and a half and had four years of solid space-travel under my belt before I tried LSD. That "upbringing," not too dissimilar from the one that came with my small glass of wine at dinner when I was seven, included sincere words of caution.

Many sessions later, I can count on one hand the times I took it "recreationally," mainly because I often spent several hours slogging through demons and baggage. The small doses I've been taking every few months for the last several years have helped me navigate as I embraced the re-emergence of my emotions and my felt-self (kinda like dryer-lint, but different).

I had, just before leaving for Germany, begun vomiting as we walked from our classroom to the cafeteria. We, Mom, younger brother and I, were in a duplex across the street from St. Bernard Academy.

The nuns, sympathetic, let me come home for lunch. There were several I liked alot, but even in First Grade I didn't cotton to their trip. Looking back, I surmise the nausea was a sub-conscious reaction to having to suppress emotions as we, yet again, pulled up stakes.

I still encounter nausea when I'm overwhelmed, which, curiously, is happening more frequently as the debilitations increase. But I can't tell the difference between a chronic stomach upset and a psychosomatic one. More LSD, methinks.

Lilac Trees

The husband of an acquintance, in the throes of a virus, slipped over the edge into delirium and began crying for his mom and his first wife. Incidents such as this are, though not yet common, becoming more frequent as my cohort (I'm 71) approaches the end of the line. 

I think it was Joanna (therapist in 2012) who asked if my mom was depressed. At the time, I didn't think so, but years later, as I remember being rocked on her shoulder and her singing her version of this song, I wonder?

Tap image to goto lyrics

They were married seven or eight years before I was born. During that time they visited Paris, skiied the Alps and lived in Friede Wagner's home in Bayreuth where they had a chaffuer, gardener, cook and maid. The time in the gouse was in appreciation for his work as a double-agent.

After I was born he was away, fighting in Korea. If not depressed, I know she missed him.

The dizzyness when I sat up last night had me gagging for awhile. Fortunately, I had nothing in my stomach, and have eaten very little these past couple of weeks.

This morning, as the syncope took hold, I was able, before I fell, to lie down on the kitchen floor.

I'm close to calling for her.

Allana Clarke

Is it okay to like something for its own sake? As a white man, I can relate only in the vaguest way to being Black, let alone a Black female.

The time I dated a Black woman, in my late thirties, I was surprised, when we went out, by how White I felt. It was kinda similar to being monolingual in Whitehorse, YT, where everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, spoke at least three languages.

The wall pieces appeal, but her statement, music, performance pieces leave me saddened. Still, I had to add her in; I like it enough to want to find it again, and this is the only way for that to happen.

Videos

https://allanaclarke.com/video-time-based-media

Cheese!

M.F.K. Fisher wrote about her travels. Her descriptions of people, places and food are exceptionally evocative.

In the 2nd-to-last paragraph of How To Cook a Wolf, published in 1942, she opines "An unnesessary peptic goad, but a very nice one now and then, is a good, soft stinky cheese, a Camenbert or Liederkranz...." 

Unfamiar with Liederkranz, I wended my way via The Web to Chalet Cheese where I ordered some plus a pound each of white Brick, both young AND aged Swiss and some Pannaro. 

It's true there's cheese made in Tucumcari. But there're some things that just aren't right and high, eastern New Mexico scrubland-made cheese is one of 'em.

Five pounds of cheese including 2-day shipping came to $17.60/pd. A deal compared with the $24.97 per pound for an attractively mottled roguefort at Smith's (Kroger). And from a fifth generation family farm where there's plenty of water.

Thank you, Ms. Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher Parrish Friede.

Here she is a week or month before her 80th birthday. At 20:35 she says, "Everything is sexual." What a woman!