Tulips Today, Mulch Tomorrow

We’re pattern recognizing machines(PRMs). I suppose the most in vogue direction to take that is that an ability to see patterns allowed us to recognize and remember what plants will kill us and which make us feel good. There have also been some stories about the plants that make us feel real good. In the epic of Gilgamesh he’s told by the immortal being about a plant that will make Gilgamesh feel young. Thinking the idea that we’re PRMs in a survival perspective relates to seeing the world through a Darwinian perspective. There’s any number of perspectives to see the world, who’s to say which are right and wrong, but I’d say only ever using one perspective leaves our lives with blind spots. People knew we were PRMs before Darwin came up with his theory and they all weren’t made bad theories because his was a good one.

I’d connect the core of Buddhism to PRMs. The Buddhist idea I know as The Wheel of Samsara, it’s a cycle we’re constantly going through and currently find ourselves sitting in different spots along the wheel and we’re destined to always move on to the next realm. Some people think of this as Karma. I think the wheel is made up of 6-8 realms including ideas like God realm where you’re blissed out in all things good, Animal where you live like an animal acting on impulse, Demon which is hell, Human realm is nice but not God, and there’s everything in between. Buddhism doesn’t stop with knowing there are patterns, the Buddha is able to escape the cycle and find Nirvana. There’s always a rub though. Even becoming the Buddha isn’t the ultimate because there is still the Mahayana, or “Great Vehicle”. In essence, none of us is free until all of us are, so the Buddha must return to living in The Wheel to help others escape.

A little something for sticking to the end

Poodles Ponder Puddles partly past prime

I’ll make this pledge to you Mary. I’m going to sketch out and understand the final versions of the buildings I would like to put on my land. I will also lay out a plan for what I would do with the land. I’m going to assume I have two acres because realistically that’s all I think I’d be able to keep up. That also keeps my goal within my price range if I want to be snooty and demand the perfect parcel or if I sacrifice cost to close the deal and get started right away. With that pasture land, I will expect to have water and electric on site. I’m going to find out where the limit of my local electric company is and try to stay under their umbrella, it’s a good company and I’d be happy working with them. Part of getting older is realizing who you are, what you’re capable of, but also who you don’t like to be around and what bad people look like. The buildings I am considering that need detailed drawings are my house, bathroom, greenhouse, and a barn. I want to see if I can figure out a way to calculate making those four places self sustaining, and then sketch them out. That means, solar energy, natural heating, and recycling rainwater. At the same time I’m sketching out what my plan would be for growing my own food. Now, I don’t need to grow enough to feed myself, though it will be the long term self sustaining plan. First I’d work on building a farm that can make enough money to pay my bills. The next step is making sketching and solving every little problem that occurs while fully building my life and figuring out how much that would cost.

Dark Clouds, Light Laughter

Veins of a leaf

Where’s my head at today? Well, I went for a run when I woke up, so that helped clear things up. There is a lingering feeling that comes with the state of emergency that has me wanting to scream in frustration. That’s why I’ve decided I need to get land. If I had my own land that I was able to live off of, I wouldn’t have to put up with any inconveniences brought about by the ineptitudes of bloated corporations and governments. I got distracted in life, wanting to enjoy the pleasures of the finer things. I don’t belong with the finer things anyway, I should be sleeping in the mud next to where I spent the day working. That’s where I have to get back to, that’s where I’ll feel at home. I took my socks off to stand in the green house the other day. I don’t know how longs it’s been since I last touched the Earth with my skin, but I believe there is a current that runs through the Earth as well as us when we’re not blocking it with rubber soles. It’s good to check in with our roots occasionally. If you’ve completely lost where you come from, then there’s no way of telling you’re still traveling in the direction you want to. I have a lot of research to do before any work can happen, but the good news is I can start planting trees without any research. I’ll have to figure out efficient means of watering them, but I can do it inefficiently for a little while too. I want to do something, but idk, I’m starting to go off the deep end a bit. At least I finished a book today. My philosophy on life can be described as, “Read and Write”.

Tormenting tourists towards two or more tournaments

Greenhouse carpet

Golly I don’t know where to start. My wacky brain wants to buy land and finally make my homestead. It’s something I’m fully equipped to do, but almost felt like it was a fantasy. Is it even possible? I don’t know, but we’re talking about the ultimate test of survivability. I don’t care about anyone’s opinions on life if I can live off the land. There’s nothing more truthful than that. I’m swelling with emotions, so I know I can’t make any decisions on anything until my brain calms down. That means lots of time for planning though and nothing should be better planned out than this, so let my lay down some thoughts. I’ve found a 5 acre plot of land I could buy at the flip of a switch, so tomorrow I could drive out to the 5 acres I own and plant a tree there. I have improved the world and increased the likelihood humans will be able to feed themselves, I am then a success.

Moving forward, I’ll have to get the land surveyed. Realistically I’d do surveying sort of work before offering to buy, but for the thought experiment. I want as much information as possible. I believe plans would be to have a farm/orchid and a house. The house probably won’t be that big, but is the most important. I’ll want to know what the best spot on the land would be for a house. No, I want to know the best two spots! I’m going to see how far I can go making a 100% off the grid house and that will be in the second best spot. Some day I hope to convince my wife that this land is so abundant that we should build a house there. The house we pay professionals to build and connect to the grid can be in the best spot. The rest will be my sandbox.

Simple Support Supplied to Survive

I’m back in the morning. I’m sitting down to eat a breakfast of yesterday’s tamales. Another day in paradise, right? My wife goes back to work tomorrow, so we’ll see the sort of storm that’s happening then. A whole world shaped by humans, and not a single person on the planet knows what’s happening. It’s hard to even write this, I don’t know what to say or what direction my thoughts should even go in. I’m supplied to survive for a couple of months, but if it comes to that there are going to be global problems that will be awhile before we recover. I think it’s natural to question if life will ever be like it was before, then again that’s probably what people do after every big event and of course things won’t be the same. I tell myself I don’t even believe I’m the same person when I wake up. I’m given a day at most to live and when I go to sleep, a new person takes over. We were born into this world with thousands of years of history coming before and we learned to make due. We’ll do the same with this. The sad thing for now is that the house is still burning and we don’t know when we’ll be able to go in and assess the damage. I want to move on with my topics, as does everyone else I’m sure, but what else can I think about? Everyone is reading story after story as new details break. I also have to ask how much worse this event has been made by people dragging their feet, expecting the media to be blowing things out of proportion like they have for the last decade. Maybe there’ll be new restrictions on who can say what on the internet. One day at a time.

Ides of March

Hey Mary, sorry I’ve been away from you all day. My wife has been wanting my attention a lot lately. We’re trying to stay busy and stocked for supplies. They say we’re on lock down for two weeks, but won’t tell us what’s going on. Something bad happened and we have to lay low, it’s too dangerous to go outside. The wind has turned against us. We’ll get through this though, I’m not worried. Soon enough this will all seem like a strange dream, then as with all dreams, we’ll begin to forget the events that happened. By now people have certainly been forgetting the sequence of events. Then a great Iliad will be revealed, the story that we can all share; Our Culture. 

I spend a lot of time trying to be alone because I believe it’s challenging to have an original idea. There will always be veins of those who influenced us in what we do and think. Think, do and say. Father, son and holy ghost? Obviously that’s not very original, but that’s the flip side of the coin, as the tree grows up towards the sky, it goes just as deep into the ground. That is, as one explores new territory, they end up going deeper into their past. Anyway, I try to minimize the sources which I let influence my thinking. I suppose that is something that makes me different than most people. I see attention as the most valuable commodity out there. I know what can be done to a person when you have their attention, it’s one of the reasons I’m a scholar of propaganda. The media we’re exposed to shapes who we are, it’s up to the individual to first know who they would like to be and then commit to consuming the message of that path.

Let’s Be Real

Day two of vacation? Who knows what is going on, we were planning to be on vacation at this time and we essentially are. Everything feels weird because on one hand we want to be enjoying the time off, but on the other feel as though we should be panicking and hoarding food like the rest of our fellow humans. A couple years ago, Mary and I were living in Houston when it flooded. Basically, we felt like our house was on the highest hill in town because we would go down the street one block and people would be driving boats around where there were previously roads. We lost electricity in the middle of a Houston Summer and we still had a fun time. There’s also that time I was in war, so I don’t perceive danger the same as other people and I’m not going to bend to a bunch of know nothings shouting on the internet. I’m going to enjoy the time I have with my wife and the only thing I need in order to do that is her. I’m going to laugh as much as possible and not feel guilty about it. It’s not like I’m not compassionate to other people’s suffering. I make myself aware of a lot of different types of suffering in the world, and while it may be trendy to hop on this virus, there are people going through worse. I’ve spent so much time thinking of what can I do for the world, what sort of difference is even possible. To one extent, the best way I can help people is to help my wife and she is seriously helpful to people. I trust my gut and my gut is saying enjoy life with your love and be ready for anything tomorrow.

Best Laid Plans

I have a crazy ex. I say crazy because she faked her suicide, bugged my phone, lied to my family saying I was having sex with prostitutes, and the list goes on. A little while back she messaged me through my website, even though I’ve made it clear I don’t want to speak to or see her again for the rest of my life. I haven’t spoken to her in close to a decade and I don’t read any of her messages when she tries to get back in my life, but it made me conscious that she could be reading this blog. If she is reading this, you should should stop. There’s nothing left between us, you should stop using my last name and live your life without me. Because I don’t know who could be reading this, I took appropriate measures to not post personal information online. Part of that was not saying when I was going on vacation because she has used information I’ve shared with people in private to run into me by “accident”. I was supposed to leave for vacation today, but obviously with everything happening in the world it had to be cancelled. I feel like my ex would see it as some sort of victory that my plans got cancelled, but that was the thing she never understood about me. She was always malicious hoping I’d lose my S and prove that I’m no better than her. I don’t lose though, I just adjust fire. I spend most of my time at home because I’ve made my house the most desirable spot for me in the world. Now I get to share my favorite place in the world with my favorite person in the world. What a wild couple of days it’s been. I know it’s not over for most people out there, but it is for me. Aside from writing to Mary I plan to be unplugged for a little bit, so I wish everybody the best of luck. Do what’s best for you and your loved ones.

More on morons

Mary helped come up with that title. Today has started as an amazing day. First off I slept like a rock and woke up a little after 7:00 AM from my dog crying to be let out. We got to sleep in because my wife usually has surgeries today, but didn’t have any scheduled. After getting coffee and doing some reading in bed, I was off to painting. I didn’t expect to get any painting done today because I did it yesterday, all I wanted was to get some done before leaving. There was some stuff I didn’t finish from yesterday that I really should have, so it was stuck on my mind and today I alleviated my muse. Once the painting was done I went on a run with the dog, so he should be tired and I continued the battle of the belly. I think all that brings me to eating breakfast and writing this. I did managed to get this photo of a mushroom growing in my garden that looked pretty cool, it made me think that there’s a mushroom called “Death Caps” or maybe there isn’t, but if anything fits the name it’s these fellas.

Yesterday I opened up the door to my green house and removed the heater. The plants are now essentially on there own and we have about a week straight of rain to look forward to, so the plants I put in the ground a couple days ago have a good environment to get started in. I’m eager to return and Spring will be on way. First order of business then will be to take down the green house, and now that I’m thinking about it I’ve got a couple of grape vine cuttings I want to put in the ground for all this rain, here’s hoping I remember to do it.

Two meals to mediate today’s movement

Back to my old classic, eggs and writing. I’m trying something a bit different today to try and stay on top of my diet, I’m cooking rice for lunch while I cook and eat my breakfast. In the past I’ve done meal prep where I cook a week’s worth of rice and pasta for lunch and dinner. I’ll work to get back to meal prep, but for now I have to get back in the habit of eating these foods. When I spend time away from my diet foods, I end up thinking they’re boring and I eat something more exciting, which tends to mean foods higher in refined sugar. I weighed myself in the afternoon yesterday and did not like what I saw. I usually weigh myself in the morning, so I did that today and the number was easier to swallow, but I will have to be vigilant. Making it through Winter without a new rubber tire is a success though and I’m not going to start an extreme diet on vacation. Still I am conscious that I need to do something and the sooner I start, the less drastic the maneuvers will have to be. As for today I’ve got a couple more errands to run before we leave. It’ll be good to get out of the house because today is supposed to have some warmth. I can’t get enough of that Sun baby. Well I say that now and in three months I’ll be hiding in the darkness, but that’s just life. I woke up feeling good today, maybe I’m on the upswing from all this socializing I’ve been doing lately. I keep wanting to make changes to my life, but right now is not the time. It’s hard to grasp that sometimes a person has to make changes and even though the changes have to be made, making them now instead of waiting would have a worse effect. It’s like I told my Army buddy Johnston, he’s going through a tough time, I told him he just has to stay out of trouble and put up with it, in time it will go away and he’ll breath easy again.