Writing for Sanity's Sake

I think the biggest fear of dying, at least in my mind is the basic human fear that almost all of us grow up with….fear of the dark.  Not just the dark as in a darkened room…but the dark as in the total absence of light of any kind.  It’s a scary thing to me.  To be conscious and in total darkness and not be able to do anything about it….

That’s terrifying to me.

I’ve had it happen to me on one occasion.  Back in my first year of college, the first time I ever went caving.  We used carbide lamps back then.  A carbide lamp is a two chambered light where calcium carbide is placed in the lower chamber and water in the top chamber.  The water is set to drip down on the CaC2, and produces acetylene gas, which comes up through the burner mechanism and is lit to produce light and a bit of heat.  They’ve been using these types of lamps in mines and caves for a long time.

We had tiny ones affixed to the front of our helmets, and with the reflectors behind them, they produced a fair amount of light.

I was the last one coming out of a small cave we were in on Pigeon mountain, and I got a little behind the rest of the group…not a long way, but just dragging behind like I sometimes do.  My gas ran out on my light and the light went out.  I was still about 50 or 60 feet inside the cave and no light penetrated down that far.  The darkness was as total as I have ever experienced.  All I had to do was to yell really loud, and the two other guys who were with me came quickly back down.  It was only about five minutes.  I’d hate to have been there any longer than that.

I don’t know if I could survive the ordeal of the two boys who discovered Linville Caverns in North Carolina.  Legend has it that they got 600 feet down into that cave using only an oil lamp, which they broke.  This was around 1900 or so.  It took them two days to find their way back out by following a little creek.

I guess the first thing we see after coming through our Mother’s birth canal is the light.  Usually bright lights in some hospital  OBGYN ward nowadays.  Probably less than that back in the old days, but always moving towards some type of light. After that, unless there is some type of vision impairment, we are around light every day of the rest of our lives.  Light is everything.  It is the sustainer of life.  Without it, life as we know it would cease to exist.

In our modern world light has become pretty pervasive.  It’s hard to get totally away from light nowadays, even if you try.  I opened my eyes last night as I lay in bed trying to sleep and saw little lights coming from all around.  Little digital lights on the DVD and the TV which are in our room, and a tiny red light on our TV receiver.  The Fitbit I wear lights up when I move around, and the phone I have which lays on the side table next to my bed, will light up at a touch.  Last weekend when I went outside late at night to try and see some meteors, I had to move to the South side of our patio, because all of the ambient light coming from the City of Chattanooga and the Airport just north of us were so bright they lit up the night sky to the north.  In a way, it’s aggravating, but in another way, it is comforting.  You know you are still alive, when you open your eyes at night and look around you and see all the tiny lights.

I suppose that my focus….some might say my obsession with sunrises and sunsets has to do with my love of light, and what it does to the world around me.  I’ve always been fascinated by the light at those times of day.  It plays with the world in such delicate ways, and sometimes in such extreme and colorful ways. It all depends on the factors and conditions in our atmosphere.  I love to capture some of these moments with a camera, as anyone who knows me can attest….to capture these striking and sometimes marvelous moments in time in perpetuity, to enjoy later and to share with other human beings, my contemporaries, who are inhabiting this place now at the same time as me. There is not much that I can do in this world to try and bring a little bit of joy or gladness, but those captured moments in time are an effort on my part.

That brings me back to where I started.  What happens when we die?

I am not sure.  Nobody is sure.  With the exception of some religious figures, nobody has ever come back from the dead to tell us what happens after we breath our last breath.

I have read of people who have “near death” experiences who talk about moving towards the light when they “die”, only to be pulled back to this side in order to go on living this human life.  Their descriptions of what lays beyond are comforting to be sure.

I’m not stressed about it all the time, but it’s a concerning thing.  It’s something that has always lurked in the periphery of my subconscious and sometimes comes bursting to the surface at unexpected times.

People of faith will say that they will see the light of the world once they cross over.  Some talk of heavenly cities with streets of gold.

Of all of these things I ponder and wonder.  These years I have spent in the light have been wonderful, marvelous and glorious.  What more could any being ask then to be able to live in the warmth and light of the Universe and to love and hold onto those around them?

If there is nothing beyond here except for a lasting and eternal peace of blissful non existence, it will still have been so worth it to have been here.

Going through things trying to decide: keep, sell, give away?

I come across a hot wheels container with multiple used…some well used, toy die cast cars. I recognize some of them. They are left overs from pre 1987, when we lived at 35 9th street. They belonged to Teddy and Matthew.

I posted a few weeks ago about finding all my tax returns from way back in the day. In 1982 through 1987 we were a one paycheck family, and it wasn’t anything to brag about dollar wise. But we got by.

However, every payday I’d take the kids to the store for a toy. Most of the time the boys bought hot wheels. More bang for the buck at .99 cents each. I can’t remember exactly what Kisi got…by 1987 it was probably teen magazine, with Menudo, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna pictures.

But the boys pretty much stuck to the hot wheels during that era. I can’t tell you how many times I’d clean up their room and put stuff into their big old basketball shaped toy box, and there would be dozens of hot wheels in the bottom. They buried them, burned them, and blew them up…but some still survived. They made roads in the dirt for them, dropped rocks and bricks on them, and let Junior have some. Some still survived. Ted started wanting the ones with electric motors, and even cleverly wired one of them up to an electrical cord one day, and plugged it into a 110 outlet. That little motor ran 1000 miles an hour til it started smoking like a bomb, and blew the fuse.

Ted and I moved on to baseball cards in 1988, and Matt started wanting spider man comic books, so one day before we moved to Elm street in 1987, I cleaned the bottom of the old toy box out one last time and put what was left in the box I found today.

After a little reflection, I decided to put them in the “keep” pile. What else could I do??

I cannot reconcile some of the posts I read with the commandment that Jesus gave: “A new command I give you. Love one another. As I have loved you, you must love one another”. You must…he…said…

He didn’t say love the sinner, but hate the sin. What nonsense!

He didn’t say justify your lack of love due to mitigating factors of your own invention.

He didn’t say to cherry pick this verse, nor that verse, and use it out of context to make some convoluted point that proves absolutely nothing.

I’ll tell you this. I have not melted myself down to the dregs in a hot cauldron these past five years…tortured and searching, and repoured myself into a new mold, to see and hear people say up is down, and wrong is right.

It’s not. You can’t make it so just by thinking it.

Can a person be spiritual without being religious? Can you be a good and loving person? Can you follow your own heart and be respected for your actions, without detailed instructions and indoctrinations from others who claim to know more than you do about how to love your fellow man?

Change comes hard for me. It’s the Scottish blood I think. At least that’s what I’ll blame anyway.

My Grandpa was a Stewart. About as Scottish as it gets. He loved his old home place at the end of Snake nation road. I can only remember him being talked into riding the 100 mile trip to Trion just a few times during our time together on Earth. Fewer than you could count on one hand. Most weeks while he was living at the “old” place you were lucky to get him to go to town on Saturday and to church on Sunday. Actually going to church was voluntary on his part, while going to town was something Grandma had to fuss at him in order to get him to do it.

I’m sure he would have gladly drawn his last breath in that old house…but the tornado of ’73 blew it off it’s foundation, and in the end Grandpa got sick and lost his memory, and ended up in the nursing home. I still think of him and Grandma quite often, as anyone who reads what I write can tell.

We had a lot of good memories in the old house. Almost all our Christmases were spent there. I gave Eli the last physical thing I had left from those Christmases the other day. It was a tin box which candy canes had come in that had a lion on it. I still have most all my memories from there and then though. Sometimes it takes a little digging to uncover them. I’ll keep doing that now and then as I can.

As Paula and I move from this old house in which we have lived for most of the past 29 years (with a two year hiatus on 7th street) I’m taking many of the familiar things which surround me that trigger memories. Some little physical things which will inhabit our new space with us.

But most of all I’m taking my memories. Raising three kids here…all the joys, and a few sorrows. The get togethers and the holiday festivities. The “long” hallway. The kids and grandkids coming and going. It’s been a pretty good run, and I’m hoping the coming years will be full of new memories…good memories! The only thing changing is just my abode. My love is not changing. My caring is not changing. My heart is not changing. These things will always remain the same…constant…towards those I love.

As Paula Neurauter Bowers says, soon the things which are changing will just become the new normal. We will remain Mom and Dad, Papa and Nana…for as long as we live.

This is simply my little soliloquy for this epoch of my life.

Now…I gotta quit cause my eyes are leaking.

Peace and Love…

I know that many people hope and pray for better things beyond this mortal life. A lot of the World’s religions promise such in their teachings. I’m not debating or demeaning anyone’s beliefs. I’m coming to think that sometimes hoping for great things in the afterlife blinds us to the possibility of the great things humans might do in the here and now, and in our future.

I know I sometimes steer my boat a little to the negative, but the more I watch the babies of the world and see how smart they are, how quickly they pick things up…the more hope I have for humanities future. I hope for a new paradigm which allows humans to live together without hate and war, with cures for dread diseases, with mankind reaching out for the stars to find and populate new worlds. I think it is within the grasp of the many tiny hands now out there learning to navigate themselves through a world of technology which is already here, and a more complex and wondrous one which they themselves will create…it is within their ability to perform magical works.

So, let us love them. Let us teach them tolerance and virtue. Let us tell them they have no limitations. Let us entrust to them all of humanities tomorrow’s, and I swear they will succeed where we have failed. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

It is not easy to explain how a person’s feelings and psyche change over the decades of their life. It’s hard to describe. If you are lucky enough to live a long life, or are getting there like I am, you will know what I mean.

It’s not just the loss of some of the physical attributes, like taste, smell, vision problems due to cataracts and macular degeneration, and other often taken for granted functions of the body.

There is also a change of the way we older folk fit into society, and in my mind at least, an altered perception of the way the Universe around me feels. Somehow this all feels different than it did 55 years ago when I was running around as a ten year old. The newness of life has worn off, and although I still enjoy life immensely, it seems the the sharp, crisp corners of existence are now a little rounded.

Life often seems a quarter bubble off from being level.

I just can’t quite put my finger on it to say what I really mean!

My mechanism is winding down, the boiling water is settling down to a simmer.

And, the strangest thing of all is that I can now accept this outcome, where once I would have denied it…..

Does anyone else out there get what I am saying…?

My Dad’s nickname was “Tarp”. His friends and brothers gave him the name because he used to catch a lot of terrapin turtles when he was a little kid. It certainly wasn’t because he was slow. J.W. Greenwood was Dad’s good friend when they were young. He once told me that Daddy was the “quickest” man he ever saw, and also the most accurate rock thrower he ever knew.

My Dad told me himself that he had beaten many a big bully by “rocking them” then running away….then rocking them again. They finally gave up and ran when they had too many knots on the noggin’ to count….and they never caught him. If they came around the house where my Daddy lived, they risked getting their butts kicked by my Uncle “Curly” or by the oldest brother Robert…who everybody called “lightning” because he could hit so hard and so fast. Fighting was a pretty common pastime during the Great Depression.

My Mom had three different versions of my Dad’s name. When she was just commonly addressing him…she would just say: Tarp

If she wanted something, as in getting him go to the store it would be: “Tarpie will you go get us some frozen yogurt?” Mom loved that frozen yogurt.

The most fearsome of the versions was when we….my brother and I, were kids and did something wrong. Then it would be: “Tarrr…up! Come and give this kid a whooping.”

Strangely enough, that happened more often than I needed it to up until I turned 13, after which Daddy said I was too old to whup anymore. I guess he figured I could be talked to, and have some “privileges” taken away….with the same effect.

My Mom, on the other hand, continued to chase me around be the house with the wire handled fly flap!

Ahh..the memories.

A lot of times I still find myself picking up a pen and paper and write things down on them before I transcribe it to the cyber world.

To me, writing something down on a page, especially if you are trying to create something gives me a warmer more responsive feeling, as opposed to the cold, clinical, sterile feeling of creating something on a screen that sits up in front of you, like a monolithic all seeing eye, daring you to put your fingers against the keyboard and interact with it in some kind of weird pseudo sexual dance. A dance that it always seems to win. I still participate in that particular dance more often than I would like. In this day and age we have very little choice if we are to interact with the world at large. However, my deeper feelings are still recorded with pen and paper. Just an old habit that’s hard to break.

In my life time I have seen humans being gradually sucked into the black arms of technology, gradually a few steps at a time. I have gone along too, I will have to admit. Sometimes reluctantly, fighting against it tooth and nail, but more often like everyone else accepting the change as just another step to make life easier and more convenient for us.

Wood cook stoves have changed to electric and gas and then to microwaves. Dinner used to run around on two feet and your Grandmother would grab it, and it would be extremely fresh that night for supper. Now, we grab it out of the freezer from a box.

People used to walk places. Miles and miles to places. It wasn’t unusual for my Mother to walk 6 or 7 miles into “town” when she was a child, and then the same distance back after she had conducted whatever business she was doing. It took all day. You were tired after that and had no problems sleeping. Adults didn’t have any problems with sleep either. They worked all day in the fields, or in the barns or at the house. There was very little idle time. Maybe a little bit in the evenings before the sun went down to read a little in their tattered old Bibles before going to bed, exhausted. No problems sleeping. No sleeping pills needed due to having sat around all day and pecked on a computer keyboard and not gotten up and walked more than a few steps. No sleeping pills needed due to worrying about deadlines for unimportant things which seem critical. Just tired bones and muscles needing a full nights sleep before getting up at first light the next day to start over again.

Miles of walking. Now, I sometimes drive the single mile to the local Wal-Mart Superstore 5 or 6 times a day to pick something up. I am the one that worries about the critical things which are not critical and has to have the pill to sleep well. I don’t have to build a fire in a wood stove to stay warm, just turn up the gas or the electric heater. I wonder if I am better off.

Oh, and on those trips to Wal-Mart ( I really don’t particularly like Wally World, but…I would have to drive 20 miles to go to another store that has what they have, SO I conform…what’s a person to do?) most of the time I used to end up buying some pre-packaged stuff to fix for supper. I used to pop a Freshetta Pizza out of the box, and pop it into the oven. I used to NEVER look at the labels. I was afraid of reading them. I didn’t want to know what it took to preserve what I was eating. I’ve changed that by a long ways now…trying to pay attention to all the stuff that I have been consuming over the years which has been slowly killing me. Will it work or not…time will tell.

I know that Grandma used to cook stuff in Pure Lard. For a long time the Drs. said that was really bad for you, all that animal fat and stuff. I don’t know about that though. There is some contradictory report on the TV news every day now about what’s good for you and what isn’t. It’s enough to boggle your mind. If you try and keep up with it, and do what they say you have to change the way you eat and drink about every other week because some study shows this or that. I quit keeping up with that too, and just eat what I think is right for me. A lot of veggies and stuff. I guess if it’s bad for me one day, and good for me the next I figure things are balancing each other out over the long run. Right?

I can barely remember back before there was a TV in the house. Just vaguely. I remember listening to records and radio programs on the Philco combination Radio/Phonograph that my folks owned. There were some great singers. Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney. There some funny radio shows. All of those are fuzzy memories though. I don’t think we used that radio more than a few times after the first little Black and White TV came into the house. After that, it was ‘I Love Lucy’, ‘The Honeymooner’s” and Baseball games during the week. And then on Saturday mornings, it was the BEST of all. There were Western’s with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Hoppalong Cassidy. You name them, they were there. The cartoons were great too. Bugs Bunny and Popeye the Sailor man. The “Officer Don” show, with the puppets and the cartoons and clowns, not to speak of “Howdy Doody” and old Buffalo Bob. Who could resist that over listening to the radio? We sure didn’t realize we were being suckered into a new life style though. It just seemed like entertainment back then, and not a shady plot to take over our lives. But boy we were wrong, weren’t we?

Now, there are 4 or 5 TV’s in more every house. Every resident usually has one of their own. There are 2 or 3 computers, there are enough Nintendo game systems, and Microsoft game systems out there now to fill up the Superdome if you could stand up at the top and chunk them all in, prior to setting them all on fire in order to save mankind. I am afraid it’s a little to late though. And I will even have to admit that at my house there are two TV’s, and three or four computers. I sigh while I am sitting here thinking about it, but there’s no use in trying to deny the fact that I also have been caught up in the technology trap.

I have seriously thought sometimes about trying to simplify things, but I don’t think I know how anymore. I watched that movie “Lost” with Tom Hanks a few weeks ago, and I don’t think I want to live like that. You know the one where he is trapped on a deserted Island for so long that he starts talking to a soccer ball? Ohh…the lack of a dentist would kill me, but ol’ Tom survived it.

I guess there’s no turning back the hands of time. I wonder how many of us would go back even if we had the chance. I probably wouldn’t.

I wonder if there is anybody out there who has a list of the technological items that have come along since 1950. I have thought about trying to come up with one, but it would take more time then I have now to even think about starting. If there is one out there on the web that anyone knows about, make sure and let me know. Surely there is somebody out there who had all the spare time that all this wonderful technology has created for us to do such a list. That was the point in starting to invent all of it wasn’t it? To make life less complicated and less hard for we humans, and to give less time toiling away at menial tasks, like growing our own food, and raising our families, and more time to do the IMPORTANT things we want to do, like watching more TV, playing more video games, text messaging our friends on our Cell phones, going to one of the 9 billion fast food places in the country to eat our supper, pay our bills online, order our Christmas presents online, read our newspapers online, go to war with people we don’t like with smart bombs, and laser guns, because we have found out we hate each other more because we know more about each other, and what we know we have found we don’t like, and to drive our mega trillion automobiles around 1 mile to Wal-Mart 10 times a day putting so much Carbon Monoxide in the air that our planet is starting to warm up (so they say on TV anyway)

We take out other people’s body parts and put them in people to save their lives. They can transplant just about anything nowadays. I heard a few years ago they are working on a head transplant, so that’s why they got Old Ted William’s head frozen away out there somewhere in California waiting til’ they perfect that surgery. There are pacemakers, and stints. There are Dialysis machines and heart lung machines, and Cat Scans, and MRI’s…….

….and so on and so forth. Whew…we have come a long way baby, to get to where we are today.

I could go on, but there’s no use. You get the point by now.

Of course there is good connected with all of these things. Certainly, there is. I’m still alive because of some of this technology. I would never have gotten to do some of the amazing things I have done because of it. I have friends I would have never “spoken” to without this technology. I can keep in touch with my family, and that’s the most important thing I have gotten out of it. I guess it’s best to live with it, take the good and try to change the bad if you can. We were all created with a built in conscious (at least

Most of us were) so we know good from bad, and it’s up to us to try and change the things about our ‘New’ society that are bad.

We can write our Congressmen and Senators about the things that are wrong with our government, and how we feel about the Economy, and such. (Those would be some very long letters, but…it’s what we should do) If you see a program you don’t like on T.V., turn the channel. That’s the fastest way to get something done there. Recommend to your friends that they do the same thing. Vote next time there’s an election. Even in a GOOD voting year, most of the time fewer than 50% of registered voters vote! If they are not listening to the cards and letters…vote them out!

Quit making so many trips to Wal-Mart (That will be a hard one around my house) Cut down on the computer time, cut off the lights when you are not using them, read some instead of watching TV all the time. Spend time with your family….real time in person, not time “on line”

Question anything you aren’t sure about when it comes to technology:

Just because some Dr. wants to do something to you, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right or correct thing to do. I don’t really want them doing too much to me to tell you the truth, but I haven’t gotten on the stick and even written a living will, or a real will yet. Yes, that’s something I need to do, how about you?

Just because some salesperson at the computer store wants to sell you the “latest and greatest” PC doesn’t mean you really need it.

Do you really need that flat screen or HDTV? ( I decided I did…arrghhh.)

When you get your next car can you make sure it’s not a gas guzzler, or maybe even try and get a hybrid.

Ah well, I have rambled on long enough.

By the way, I wrote this directly onto the screen, instead of using a pen and paper. It would have taken too long otherwise.

Dang me. Dang me….outta’ take a rope and hang me…

There are good people, wonderful human beings everywhere in this world. Good Israelis, good Palestinians, good Russians, good Chinese. There’s good Christians, good Buddhists and good atheists. There are even good bankers, and rarely…even a good politician.

Most people are just trying to live their lives with good intent.

I believe that only a small percentage of humanity is truly bad or evil, but they are mostly the ones who drive society and everyone else simply either follows, or reacts to them. Some react appropriately some don’t.

I hope it is not many more years or decades until the vast majority of good in humanity recognizes the bad apples and has the strength to stop following them or simply ignores them.