Massaging the noggin. Taking off my glasses I massage my face as well as my entire noggin with both hands. I like to call it, manually moving thoughts around. It…

Spirituality

One of the truly sad things about being human on this wonderful planet is that we do not get to pick our own names. But is this really true and is it really a sad thing?

In old Lakota society everyone was given three names; one for their childhood, one for their adult years, and one for their elderly years. And no one was allowed to pick their names. They were given to them.

For instance, the famous warrior Crazy Horse went by the name, Curly, during his childhood. It was all because of his hair. While everyone else in his tribe had very straight jet-black hair, he had brown, wavy hair. Then in his late teens as he entered adulthood Crazy Horse’s father renamed him Crazy Horse because of a dream he had. …

Society

Vince and Troy met for coffee and scones. It was a blistery cold day and even in the warmth of the coffeehouse they kept on their coats.

Troy cradled his coffee cup in his hands for warmth, “So how’s the experiment going?”

“I don’t know. I’ve gone six days now without getting on the internet and I’m feeling lost and scattered and lethargic. I thought it was supposed to feel good to detox from the internet but man, I just don’t have any energy whatsoever.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I don’t understand it. Remember when Christine went a whole month without the internet? …

The Big Disconnect — Part One

There are a lot of articles on the internet about disconnecting from the internet. Many Earthlings have written how they disconnected from social media and the internet in general for a week or a month or longer and they described the resulting happiness and peace that they experienced as a result.

Such a disconnection makes a lot of sense to me and I have tried to do it from time to time. The big problem for me, though, is that I was never able to do it for more than twenty-four hours. One day is not a true disconnection. It is just a very brief break. It provided me with only a fleeting sense of what a true serious disconnection could bring. …

Footwear Expatiation

(Inspired by Ann Litts)

Old-time Chinese men preferred women whose feet were bound since childhood and ended up with deformed small feet that made them walk in an exaggerated unnatural fashion. Are high heels the modern day version of that? They make women walk in profoundly unnatural ways that men mysteriously find sexy. Why do women put up with that?

Personally, I have always found women walking in high heels to be somewhat off-putting. It’s just so darn unnatural. Maybe that’s why Meg Ryan always turned me on so much.

Meg Ryan has been vocal about her disdain of high heels. In so many of her movies she is wearing flats — so she is walking in the natural way a human body is designed to walk. …

Spirituality

He walked up to the top of the hill. From there he would have a perfect view of the sunrise.

He was wearing four layers of clothes. It was cold. The temperature was in single digits (Fahrenheit). He did not care that he was shivering. He put the freezing cold aside. He cast it out of his immediate reality.

As he stood at the top of the hill he put himself into a deep meditative state. He could feel his entire body tingling. He could feel the energy of his being fill him completely.

In this state he released the past; all of his past. That past no longer existed. He also released his future. It did not exist in his NOW. …

Gardening

The houseplants in my writing room would not shut up. They were all complaining about their positioning in regard to current sunshine angling. The sun has moved a lot in the last three months — or should I say that the planet has moved a lot?

It can be rather disconcerting to hear constant complaining while you are writing. It is distracting and annoying. I had to do something.

No one was complaining more vociferously than ficus tree #2. I used to have eight ficus trees in my home but now I only have three. Closing my eyes, I think of the other five trees I gave away or sold. …

Dreams

I tore my new apartment upside down looking for my favorite jacket but I could not find it. It was one of those leather flight jackets that Air Force pilots wore. It had a sheepskin lining and was very, very warm. When I wore it I felt like Sam Shepard in The Right Stuff. That jacket was a babe magnet. Women always wanted to touch it.

Then it hit me that perhaps I failed to bring the jacket with me when I moved so I went to my old apartment and knocked on the door. …