Someone said I was living the dream, while I understand the sentiment, anyone can choose my path. My strategy has been to find something no one wants and refine that waste into a valuable resource. People suffer from one of two pains, either the pain of work or the pain of regret. When I was young the most insulting thing a person could call me was “dirt ball”. While the Army hurled constant expletives at me, nothing compared to being as low as dirt. Using Shakespeare’s “the lady doth protest too much” I can suppose dirt is how I saw myself, from employers to teachers, the authority figures corroborated the story. That’s how I get to conclusions like doing something yourself is the only way to do it right. People are always looking for ways to cheat on the responsibilities of their own life, helping someone else can make the responsibility easier to bare, but when money is involved only the hungry are motivated. Shakespeare’s Caesar said such men are dangerous that have a lean and hungry look. It’s hard to turn away food though, waste not want not, America is brimming with waste. Waste management would be my recommended career path to anyone, there’s always going to be waste and no one ever wants to manage it. Ego becomes the hurdle to overcome, an inflated notion of the self. Even a king has to be willing to drag his crown through mud. A difficult task I once did during infantry training was a 100 meter low crawl through sand. The low crawl is laying chest down crawling forward without any bodypart getting off the ground. Of course we’re carrying a weapon and can’t let the dust cover face towards the ground. The dust cover covers the ejection port where expanded brass is released, sand in the dust cover could cause a weapon malfunction. All that friction polished me into the gem I am today.
7 November 2023
Last Friday I succeeded in my 200 lbs bench press and it felt like I still had fuel in the tank. I’m technically the strongest I’ve ever been and getting stronger. There are two big reasons for my weight lifting gains. Specifically effecting the bench press was that I improved my technique. In preparation for the wedding I wanted to do 100 push ups in a day with the goal someday being 100 continuous. While researching push ups technique I discovered I’ve basically been doing chest exercises wrong my whole life, my hands needed to be lower than my shoulders and elbows closer to the body, that allowed me to perform bench press correctly for the first time. The other factor in my strength is that I’ve had the land for over three years now and have gained considerable farm strength. There’s also baby strength from carrying that weight around the house and up the hill. Caring for a baby has improved my endurance by requiring me to be attentive at all hours. The lack of sleep never bothered my wife and I much because we’ve both trained in it before. The infantry is an endurance type of training, everyone is in competition to be the last man standing. Genetically I think my family is gifted with endurance capabilities, while in the Army I felt I could literally run non-stop for any amount of time. There was an incident during my first 25 mile road march where I fell down and immediately popped up before I knew what happened, this was after I had been smashing my foot for hours hoping I’d get injured and could stop that stupid road march. 25 miles doesn’t seem like a crazy number, but that’s because civilians don’t know road marches. The first road march I did in basic training was one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve felt, all we had to wear was our helmet and carry an M-16 for 3 miles. By the time I was doing 25 miles I had a 45 lbs rucksack, a kevlar vest with front and back ceramic plates, and I had traded the M-16 in for an M-249 of almost twice the weight. In all that gear we still had to be capable of carrying another man and his rucksack in case of injury, we trained for that.
6 November 2023
I heard somebody say about their life, “I’m just going to have fun, if it doesn’t hurt anybody…” This is an idea or two that has grown in my lifetime and I think the chickens have come home to roost on the issue. Life is tough, we are surviving on planet Earth. There’s always going to be work to do, it doesn’t matter if workers are old, disabled or slow, attempting to make 1% improvement is better than surrendering to the wolves. I’ve been learning to speed read for a couple months now with positive results. I only started reading seriously when I was 25 years old, all through school it was easy enough to get by without reading. I didn’t understand the nature of work when I was younger and now see it as a good thing. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t in control of myself or perhaps a child’s good and adult’s good are different. Values vary from vantage points, geographically the American South does align with my nature better than the North East. Philadelphians seem to be proud of their rudeness only to overshadow it with love, “I’m kiddin’, what can I do for ya?” Appropriately I’m from the city of brotherly love and that’s where my brothers live. For years I’ve worked on a book idea outlining and writing in notes that would sort of tell my life story, the trick is telling the parts that haven’t happened yet. My original idea was inspired by Slaughter House V, a great book, where each chapter would basically be it’s own story. Over the weekend I decided that would be lame, writing a book needs one point. Starting the podcast represents to me starting a new phase of my life, my king era. That means building my kingdom, as such if I’m going to do anything then I want to take it seriously. I’m going to be a king and start wearing a crown. You can be a king too, or queen, let’s just bear in mind the King of kings.
3 November 2023
A struggle people have with the Internet is being overwhelmed by information. It isn’t natural to know what’s happening around the world at all times, or to travel through time with the wayback machine. All that information makes people think they’re smart and by one definition they are, knowing everything. With unlimited information and now AI making up information, proof can be found to support any claim. Our pre-internet bodies run on the thinking, “If this then that”, but the internet is everything all at once. Seeing something through a screen is not proof that anything other than a computer program happened, but all too often people treat their entertainment as real life. Karl Popper argued that science doesn’t prove anything, but disproves. The scientific method begins with a hypothesis before any experiments and should have multiple hypothesises to disprove other effects on the results. Everyone wants to champion truth, I doubt any of them ever find it. Change is constant, that’s about as true as it gets. Rather than thinking there is a hold grail to be found I believe in readiness, to be the best version of myself for whatever may happen. Part of being ready is collecting a lot of other people’s “truths” in an attempt to understand this crazy thing called life. The truth is a perfect sphere and humans can only see in Platonic solids. Today I’m certain the baby said, “book” and pointed at a book she wanted to me to pull out. She’s beginning to communicate and already understands me better than I her. All this truth talk is too old for her and I’m not sure I should even be on about it, but the search for Truth is an abyss I’ve seen many people lose themselves to. What will be, will be. See you on Monday.
2 November 2023
The cold is brutal, completely sucks the life out of you. What I like about living in a rural area is living with the season. I dread Winter every year because it’s historically the hardest time of the year. If we didn’t want to celebrate birth days, counting the number of Winters a person has survived would be worth celebrating. People in the Army would often say, “This isn’t cold.” because every Winter in northern New York it’s certain to get past negative double digits, the coldest temperature I’ve been in was -40 which I believe is the same in fahrenheit and celsius. Even experiencing skin numbing cold, I’d still say cold is cold. When we lived in Texas, a 60 degree F winter felt cold. Living in a place for at least a year will acclimate the body. When we have sharp temperature differences there’s an attack on the body. The leaves have dried up on the trees, now a strong wind will knock them off. There has to be a similar effect on human’s, we’re also effected by our decrease in sunlight. The baby has been going to sleep around 6 pm for a couple weeks now and I’ve noticed the intensity of the sun at that time decreasing. Where I used to cover the cracks in the curtains, I now know the room will be dark. I’m no scientist, but I’m told humans don’t photosynthesize. Although I think I’m also told humans need sunlight to produce vitamin D which literally sounds like photosynthesis. At this point I’m done arguing with biologists, or anyone, I do wonder a lot about what’s going on with universities and what the best path of education will be for my child. It’s like anything else, no one is going to care about your job as much as you. I will know more, I will teach more.
1 November 2023
There was a freeze warning this morning, the temperature dropped around 40 degrees F in the last two days. My crops seem to be ok though I haven’t had time for a thorough investigation. We had some minimal halloween activities, only taking the baby to the cul de sac where my mother in law lives. We didn’t bother even getting dressed up its so cold, it’s good that we dressed up this weekend and got some nice pictures in the Summer temperatures. One of my big messages to people is to take things seriously, act as though your actions matter, move with a purpose as a drill sergeant would say. What that means for my Halloween was that we acted as if some zombie crawl on the weekend was our Halloween and we went all out. We never know if tomorrow will come and this year that was our holiday. The other thought I had of a practical example of moving with purpose is when we would do long road marches in the Army, anytime we would stop for what looked to be more than five minutes, I would drop my ruck. There’s no telling how long we’ll be stopped and I’d rather pack up repeatedly than debate back and forth for 20 minutes. When given an opportunity, take it. The larger reason I focus on the point of moving with a purpose is because that’s the only way you live for yourself, how will I get to my destination if I don’t know where I’m going? It’s easy to get swept away by the popular current, there was a poem I read on my old podcast Being Chris Cooper, that can be found on my website, the poem was about how a swimmer set off from land with a destination in mind. They were given sage advice and pointed in the opposite bank. Deeper into the stream the swimmer met others who had stopped struggling and embraced the flow. Convinced to stop for a time, the swimmer got back to work and began to make up lost ground.
31 October 2023
I had high hopes for malls being a future place that people can congregate in the post smartphone world. Those hope were destroyed today when I went to walk around the mall this morning with baby only to find out the mall doesn’t open until 11 AM. Back in my day I remember the mall being packed with people at 6 AM using it as an indoor track. Real world congregations, that’s what people need. People are quick to poke holes in any plan they didn’t create, when it comes time to create their own they’re out of ideas. To me that means I addressed a problem as lack of meeting places, I better get to work fixing it. Don’t worry, I am, it’s on my to do list. I have to fix a broken sliding door first. Not long ago I shot a rock from the lawn mower and broke the glass on a door, today I had someone come out for a quote to replace it. I’ll save your hearts the stress from what they’re charging, but it looks like I’m going to be learning how to replace the door. Another big item on my to do list is building a back yard privacy fence. Then there will be one continues fence around my house and I’ll be able to take down a lot of ugly fence in the middle of things. Today I also started reading Othello to the baby, we had just finished Much ado about Nothing. An interesting note about Othello is that on the first page of that play is the first writing of the phrase wearing one’s “heart on your sleeve”. Shakespeare is important because the language we speak today was in a large part written by him. There is depth to the human spirit that people are losing touch with because they’ve stopped reading the right words.
30 October 2023
I had a good weekend, I hope everyone else did. We got to spend lots of family time together taking the baby downtown and dressing up as characters from Beauty and the Beast. I dressed up as Gaston and that’s a confusing character since he’s the bad guy in that film. There’s nothing wrong with dressing up as the bad guy on a night when some of the most infamous villains walk the streets, still I don’t like to imagine Gaston as a bad guy. Obviously I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing this character because I like him, I think he’s doing everything he’s supposed to. “No one shoots like Gaston. No one goes around tromping in boots like Gaston.” I once performed that song on stage in college as part of a male beauty pageant. His problem was that he couldn’t let go, his pride got the best of him. He was fighting a 10 ft tall, probably 800 lbs beast with a knife on a tile roof in the rain. At a certain point it’s necessary to pull back and regroup, gather resources, that’s what resting is because no one can run in the red all day. At least we can learn from his mistakes and successes, I myself am going to start eating more eggs to help me get large as a barge. That was a joke, I’m happy with my egg intake, I think my diet in general has been good. Staying busy is the best diet, idle hands are the devil’s play things. Currently I’m regrouping and positioning for a big attack I’m going to be launching with the podcast idea. I was sketching some logos and sending them to the other guys. I’m exciting for that new adventure and there is a lot to keep me busy.
27 October 2023
My wife and I watched Interstellar recently, it’s certainly an epic, there’s one idea that the families are sending video recordings and it’s like the astronauts receive a life time of recordings at once. I mentioned that I write these to my daughter, and in that way they’re like the stockpile of recordings. I don’t assume she’ll read any of it, I say a good deed should never assume a thank you. I have coins with Alexander the great’s face on them, it’s done in a style where he is wearing the Nemean Lion which was the first trial of Hercules. As long as I’m around, Alexander is still great. There are parts of the past that we can allow to fall to the waist side over time and other’s worth defending. I’m not going in the streets defending, but I keep things alive; a steward of the land. I got my life in order when I began to plan for the next year, things got really good when I started looking at the 10 and 20 year perspectives. I thought I was doing well with a 300 year plan, but I was listening to the Dune audiobooks while driving to Philadelphia and Leto the second stuck to a 3,000 year plan, his “golden path”. I’ve always been good at finding a path. Land navigation was probably my best skill and I equally enjoyed it. Walking in the woods always knowing where you are, what’s not to like? I even bothered to teach land nav to the baby already, she might need a refresher someday. Today is my last chance to go to the YMCA before the great equipment replacing, it’s also Friday which means I won’t be writing the next two days. There will be a full moon, I plan to start counting how many full moons I’ve seen, this is #1. I like patterns and paths.
26 October 2023
In problem solving, a lot of time can be spent figuring out the right question to ask. I have to spend time thinking how a sentence should be phrased because I don’t know who’s reading it and what their interpretation will be. It’s easiest to write to my daughter and live my life for her, that keeps things rated G. She’ll hear about my dark side, but the neighbor said it was hard to imagine me as the person that got shot at and it’s hard for me to imagine it as well. “Send me off to a foreign land.” Every part of my life has seemed unbelievable, it’s going to keep getting wilder; literally a goat. I’m having to learn discord and all sorts of new programs getting things ready for the podcast, the digital wild west. It’s important to play on the wild side occasionally, there’s no wildlife found in a cage. The dog, baby, and I were walking around the land and I tried to keep her to the areas where I’ve cut the grass short. Of course the baby immediately goes towards the pond area which is overgrown from the Summer. When she stopped at the edge of the overgrowth there were some unique flowers to examine that don’t grow anywhere else on the property. She wouldn’t know what those flowers look like up close without going to the edge of safety. Where’s my edge of safety? A baby has definitely put me outside of my comfort zone. I bench pressed 185 lbs for two reps today, that’s uncomfortable. I probably could have done three reps, but I have my sights set on 200 lbs. PS is also doing better in the child care area of the YMCA I work out in. They’ll be getting some new equipment next week and the gym will be closed for a few days.
Chris' Morning Pages 