OK - of course there have been naturally occurring periods of global warming and cooling - at all kinds of periods  - long term million year cycles and short-term decade and century-long  stutter. In historical times there was the Medieval Warm Period from about AD 950 to 1250 then The Little Ice Age from about 1450 to 1850 (when the Thames froze - variously attributed to sun output variability, volcanoes, inherent climate variability and decreases in human population). However - know this - the planet has warmed an average 1.4 degrees F since 1880 - it's been measured.  Ice cover (glaciers, polar caps) is shrinking. No matter how you feel about cute polar bears, that's also been measured. CO2 levels have increased commensurate with industrialization. That's also been measured. What all this means has been less sure but is becoming more sure. In the 2007 IPCC  (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Report 2500 scientist from 130 countries agreed that human activity has likely caused this change.

What strikes me particularly is the accelerating nature of these changes.It's nonlinear - this feeds into that which feeds back into this.  Dark, heat absorbing oceans increase while ice cover decreases - which puts more water in the oceans, which heats the planet which causes more ice to melt  and so on. 1+1 no longer equals 2 - but 5, 10, 20 etc. Guys I have been reading (and yes I've got a new book coming out) think we are heading for a Great Disruption or Fall or Pulse. If this doesn't lead to a Great Awakening among those who can do something then we are going to experience a Great Collapse.

(And by the way, thanks for indulging me.)

Warning - more or less self-referential, probably politically incorrect, and certainly irrelevant to most of you. But, back in The Day (way back) many white boys and girls, without knowing it exactly, wanted to be black boys and girls. Brad, my dead wife Brenda's cousin (also dead) hung out in black clubs drinking bootleg hooch and listening to dirty rock and roll. Brenda also harbored the urge. And one day when we were smoking at the back of the lumber plant Skin, a jittery little man with slick-backed hair asked  me to go with him to The Bucket of Blood over in the colored section of West Palm Beach. He said, "Hey white boy, you be a nigger one Saturday night you never be a white boy again."  He probably heard that somewhere else - but still I wish I had gone.

A small point. If you believe in science you believe in global warming - maybe not in the details but generally. If you don't believe in science - well it doesn't matter what you think - unless of course you become hazardous to the health of others.

old man and old dogs

walking around the block
butt strain better
wondering if i am fit to kick
i encountered an old man
(older even than me)
and old dogs
going up a hill
man and dogs slowing down
i said, "how are you"
he said, "fine i hope you are"
i said, "yes sir i am"
he seemed happy, at peace
the little dogs too
i walked on
contemplating kicking
i like kicking

relevance

The older we get the more irrelevant we get. That's not a tragedy but just the way things go.  Our experiences become increasingly less interesting because we don't relate to most people. Most people are becoming increasingly younger than us as our contemporaries die off.  We are becoming a quaint minority. If our population was included on a Pareto curve of populations vs age we would be at the end of the long tail.

Consider this blog post. I doubt if it is read by more than one or two people - if that. Partly that is due to an increasing number of blogs competing for attention of a limited audience. Partly its is because most of the audience doesn't find my material relevant.

Basically I am writing to myself. This blog post is an ordered  version of the dialog that goes inside my head.

What to do?

Do I clamor for attention?   Become even more unseemly than I am now?  Do I buy a fast motorcycle and see how far I can go?  Pick a fight with murderous redneck? Dawn says we all die and rot - are embraced in entropy's sweet bosom. She says not to obsess over it - to alter my path of thinking - to be alone and find ways to like it. That is hard work - harder than krav maga.

My father - grand fellow that he was - found other old people boring.

Odd.
 

poems and poem things

my friend writes beautiful poems
reducing moments
into revelation...

like this...

"Superior cloudwork to the east.
Light rain, sun, hard rain, mist.
Two gods appear on the beach
contending over the corpse of a blue crab."

and this...

"We spread the blanket, setting our place at the banquet.
Chaos, outer garment of divinity,
embraces our quaint squalor."

whereas i
well
write stuff like this ...

the machine gun chattered
the .50 cal chugged
the M1 cracked
the .45 pistol popped

the boy shot the .45
hitting the bulls eye every time
impressed the instructors told him to do it again
but he froze up
and was all over the place
the instructors shrugged
and walked away
the boy muttered
those guys are killers

reducing moments
into... what?

changes

everybody changed

hack lost weight
looked tough
chewed tobacco
grinned
and ran the platoon
because the regular army sargent was lazy
and hack become  the best platoon sargent in the company

every morning hack and the boy walked around the barracks
smoking
in hack's case also chewing
discussing the day
hack always laughed
thought the boy was amusing

gerald was another product of rural georgia
he had a flat slavic face and would one day break the boy's arm
he lost weight
becoming preternaturally strong
preternaturally quick

the boy himself gained thirty pounds of muscle
and discovered he could walk
all day every day

and the big black boy neither lost nor gained weight
but stared the white boys down
using his hostile eyes and angry mouth
like he did from the first
and one day behind the barracks
with no one else there
he beat the shit out of hack
who pushed him once too often
all hack would say
his face a mask of cuts and bruises
laughing
was that guy is damn quick

shooting

the machine gun chattered
the .50 cal chugged
the M1 cracked
the .45 pistol popped

the boy shot the .45
hitting the bulls eye every time
impressed the instructors told him to do it again
but he froze up
and was all over the place
the instructors shrugged
and walked away
the boy muttered
those guys are killers

soup

two days in the field
practicing basic unit moves
this squad advancing
that squad covering
running through the woods
wet and cold
flopping down on soggy leaves
crawling along gullies
pushing on

until
at the end of the first day
in looming dusk
the mess hall trucked out soup
and somebody in authority gave the boy a ladle
telling him to serve it up boy
and he standing in the rain
served it up
his fellow soldiers
appearing in the gloom like shades

slopping hot soup into sopping mess kits
the boy spied two big pieces of ham
floating on top
determined
making sure nobody was looking
he reached in with his filthy hand
and grabbed a chunk
stuffing the scalding meat into his mouth
then noticing a ring of grime floating where the ham had been
he stirred the dirt into the soup
so nobody would see

new year's eve

an old man walks
past a mix of renovated and run-down victorian houses
each different with its own history
down an empty street
(of living people not ghosts)
trotting down wooden stairs
to get coffee from the girl who is beyond beautiful
he tells her we might all be hallucinations
generous with her attention
she laughs and flashing a brilliant smile says the coffee is real here i'll punch your card so at least you can start the new year with a free cup
he is back on the street
with three others
downtown on new year's eve
an older black man
who says hey brother
a younger black man
who eyes him with wary regard
he eyes him back
and a man hauling chairs from his pickup
to the antique shop
who says hi
past temple emmanuel
lovely and simple
perhaps grecian
back in the historic york district
to be greeted by a woman teetering on the roof of a cute bungalow
sweeping leaves
he yells that is steep
she says yes but a necessity

amber skin

she came at him with a fierce grin
kneeing
choking
moving like a cat
and he grabbed
her smooth cat muscle
one hand on her back and shoulder
pulling her over
into him
the other hand pining her arm
striking her mat with his knee
again and again
her amber skin
beaded in sweat
her wet black hair (with a little gray)
brushing his face
waiting her turn
to take him apart

in the moment

("now they often call me speedo but my real name is mister earl..." - the cadilacs 1956)

sometimes i have the urge
to nail piggy
(my fast little car)
to let her scream
my raging surrogate
mad
the tach redlining at 6200 RPM

and sometimes i do

sometimes i have the urge
to taunt a big redneck
some tough guy
to see where it goes

i might yet

sometimes...

everything collapsing
into now
into the moment
no past no future
live or die
it doesn't matter
in the moment

(every morning brenda drove the 56 buick she called speedo 90MPH down highway 74 and she was so beautiful the cops just grinned and waved )

episodes

I shouldn't be writing this. It might expose too much. But writing it might help me. And reading it might help somebody else.

I have been having "episodes." Starting 7/26/10 there have been 26. As of this writing the last one was 1/28/12 - yesterday.

Episodes are when something - maybe seizures (pseudo or real) - happen while I am asleep and wake up with more-or-less temporary memory loss. Episodes are like brainquakes with preshocks and aftershocks. I have variously described the aftershocks as...

• deja vu (snatches of memory and/or emotion associated with waking, sleeping events - most very old) 
• panic (when emotions seem to turn inside out - no good language for this - panic sometimes associated with odors, visual perceptions - I find myself bothered by kid's TV shows and this morning a female jogger wildly flinging her elbows behind her back struck me as funny, sad and disturbing.) 

Preshocks are sometimes like looking at the world through breaking or melting glasses (words don't work for this).

The first episode occurred in Altoona PA on day 13 of a driving tour to Nova Scotia.  This is what I wrote in my travel blog.

"This morning at 4:00 AM I woke from a dream that seemed more real than this Hampton Inn, the trip, Altoona PA. Leaving the dream was like leaving an unremembered life and for a long uncomfortable time I could not remember where I was, what I was doing. The dream - which might have featured a woman - seemed to be the better place. Looking at a Cracker Barrel receipt brought me back."

I have seen nine doctors, one counselor, and have taken three different seizure medicines (one medicine stopped working, one made me suicidal and last one is still ongoing). At first the episodes were thought to be sleep apnea. I had two sleep doctors, and two sleep studies (one with an EEG). Nothing significant showed up. An overnight O2 study also did not show anything. I was on a CPAP machine but I stopped that in Fall of 2011. A particularly bad episode/panic attack in May 2011 sent me to hospital (MRI, EEG done there did not show anything). No EEG done anywhere has shown anything significant - including a 3-day ambulatory EEG ordered by Dr. Sinha. The Duke MRI did not show anything.

As of this writing, there have been seven visits to Duke - two visits with Dr. Strittmatter, one visit for MRI/sleep deprived EEG, two visits with Dr. Sinha, two visits for the ambulatory EEG.

Every doctor I asked about Alzheimer's said, no that is not it. Physically except for some joint issues I am in the best shape in years.

So.

Aside  - My daughter the scientist/chemist thinks my symptoms match PTSD.  That might fit. My wife of 48 years died seven months before the first episode. And the night before the episode I saw a young woman who looked like my wife when she was young and beautiful (although she was always beautiful - not fantasy but fact).

Here are further efforts at descriptions and metaphors.  

Deja Vu - Feeling that something sensed now (an image, odor) maps to something from the past. It might be a fragment of a dream or waking event  - or an emotion associated with event.  If an emotion, it is always truncated down to anxiety. (My normal background state is vague anxiety.)

Panic - Panic is what I feel when I am being turned inside out. It is as if sensations are not properly buffered - as if my inside connects to the outside in odd ways. My inside is outside.  I panic when I am about to be overwhelmed by sensations.

Earth Quakes/Jelly Quakes- My brain is like jelly with structure. A seizure shakes the jelly, affects the memory accessing structure. It is like an earth quake - a jelly quake. When the quake settles down most (but all memory) becomes available again.  However, aftershocks continue. These aftershocks affect some connections between sensory input and memory - causing exaggerated responses. Episodes/quakes are also preceded by preshocks – brain/mind seems to skip a beat. This also induces panic.
   
Short Circuits - Temporary amnesia episodes are caused by short circuits in brain - which cause electrical surges to temporarily overload some memory pathways. Aftereffects are lesser short circuits which do not destroy pathways, but reduce resistance to data/electrical flow.

silly

Clamoring over rocks on top of Pinnacle I saw a teen-age couple nestled in a sheltered spot out of the wind. The boy had long silly hair. The girl was poking food in his face. Mouth open, he looked like an eager dog.

I moved further up where the wind howled even louder.  Thirty or so miles away South Mountain hugged the horizon. I tried to call J to see if she could hear the wind over my cell phone but she wasn't in. I called Yancie who was in.

Going back down, showing off for a couple coming up the mountain, I stumbled jumping between rocks. But I got back on my feet before they saw me.

At home I had an episode.

So who is silly now old man?

(Ev and I decided I am silly - which is OK with me. And the boy with silly hair. Nassim Taleb says that dignity is an expensive virtue.)

moments

(in bed awake
deciding whether to get up
or just drift)

drifting

what if someone asks
"what are your favorite places?"

there were moments

when bob and i
drove down a dirt road
through a dripping forest
over the edge of a mountain
fording creeks
seeing wives
gone
in mist

with brenda
in the night
in the heat
beside an open window
finding a breeze
to cool her skin
shining smooth
in moonlight

sitting
in the little harbor dive
across the bay of fundy from nova scotia
dipping french fries in gray gravy au jus
then walking up a hill to the hotel
footfalls lost in silent fog

seeing both ends of I95
almost getting killed
in miami
with bill
his mercedes
and the porsche
closing at 140mph
twitch swerve twitch

walking into a playboy club in st louis in 1974
seeing a bunny playing snooker
where
in the spirit of the moment
i played three games with her
at five bucks a pop
beaten every time
my money stuffed
in the decolletage
of  an unsmiling girl
with a rabbit's tail

drifting

krav maga on the pinnacle

Maybe  this is bragging. Maybe I will break my artificial knee tomorrow. But the hike up the Pinnacle this morning was odd. I wasn't too surprised to find myself moving a little faster, not minding breathing hard, even trotting some coming down. That's the result of krav maga. But I was also able to "see paths" on the trail, where to step over, on and between rocks and roots. These paths just jumped out from the background. I suppose that is also krav maga. Weird.

Harris Teeter Rant

(See PS at end from friend J regarding the realities of WalMart  -vs- HT shopping.)

I had another Harris Teeter rant last night at the Thinking Men's book club meeting. It wasn't a full blown rant. There was no spittle. But toward the end my voice did shake with righteous certitude and social indignation. The Men looked at me with embarrassed wonder. And Don the sustainability scientist who spoke to us - he's Hal's father-in-law - seemed a little disturbed.

As before, I ended up accusing my friends of being well-off (e.g., able to shop at Harris Teeter) and out-of-touch with the less well-off who must shop at WalMart.  I implied as one who lives off highway 321 in Gastonia that I am more in touch. I didn't mention that near my parking spot at the historic Ashley Arms  apartments is a Lexus sports car, a 7-series BMW, and a Lincoln Town Car with a low numbered license plate.

What prompted the rant was Don's argument about locally grown, organic foods. He said these products are a viable alternative  to products grown by big industrial farms  using genetically modified seeds and pesticides (produced by Monsanto and others). My contention was that the local products would be more expensive (the sort of stuff sold at Harris Teeter).  I proclaimed, in an ever more shrill voice, that most people live  close to edge and would chose the cheaper alternatives at WalMart.

Now, the next morning, reflective and calm, I stick by my main points.

Solutions geared toward people with significant discretionary incomes do not work for people who are barely getting by. Educated taste buds, aesthetics, and ethics are unlikely luxuries for people on the edge. And - based on my unscientific observations - there are more and more people on the edge.     

Liberals - people like me - are fond of making statements like "if people would only just do....", "we should do..." etc. People, especially in this country, don't like being told what to do. Exhortation only works on those already so inclined. Human nature is not especially frangible.  Free-will is complicated.

The ever-escalating pursuit of efficiency (self-service this or that) reflects energy degradation and scarcity.  We are doing more with less. Developed regions suck order and cheap products from undeveloped regions and transport  disorder, entropy, and waste. According to Thomas Homer-Dixon in the Upside of Down and Paul Gilding in The Great Disruption this can't go on forever. As we adopt more and more extreme efficiencies we become more and more complex, more and more fragile. At some point there will be a Fall/Collpase/Pulse/Disruption. A Black Swan will happen. However, and this is the upside described by Homer-Dixon we can learn from this event (perhaps we become inclined to listen to exhortations). We can come out better on the other side.

But maybe I am just jaundiced and old.

Here's my web site on the issue...

http://edge-apocalypse.blogspot.com/

PS - J says this...

"People who shop at WalMart don’t realize that they aren’t getting the best prices…. At least in terms of groceries. I’m an expert when it comes to grocery shopping, and here’s the deal.  Harris Teeter has weekly specials and they double coupons.  If you shop the weekly specials it’s way cheaper than WalMart.  For example, boneless skinless chicken breast might be $3.50 per pound at WalMart and $4 per pound at HT, but every other week HT has theirs “buy one get one free”, so you get it for $2 per pound.  The same thing goes for shrimp (which is often “buy one, get two” free – a phenomenal deal), frozen meals/veggies, and lots of other stuff.  HT doubles coupons, so you can buy staples and condiments (e.g. ketchup, flour, sugar), bread, rice, pasta, canned goods, etc with a doubled (and sometimes tripled coupon) which brings the prices well below WalMart prices.  Between coupons and sale prices I often get things free.  As for produce, some prices at WalMart are better, and some aren’t.  Once again, the specials come into play.  For example, a couple of weeks ago HT had all kinds of apples (very good quality) for 99 cents per pound.  Their normal price might be $1.49 and WalMart might be $1.39.  I have to admit, there are some good deals at WalMart.  I love their ethnic foods selection, and they have some okay generic brands.  The generic brands at HT tend to be better, though.  Anyway, that’s just my two cents worth about HT v. WalMart.  And the neighbor that I walk with (who is a very savvy shopper (due to her husband’s having lost his job) agrees."

"I personally think everyone should shop at produce stands (with local stuff) in the spring, summer, and fall, and eat winter fruits and frozen veggies in the winter.  The produce stands provide much better produce, and in the case of Port City, much better prices than both WalMart and HT."

yaweh

(thanks dawn)

immanent

in dark matter/energy/whatever (making up 95% of our universe although nobody knows what it is)

in quantum entanglement (when separated stuff communicates instantly despite einstein's prohibition and all the inherent problems)

in the wave particle duality thing (where Schrodinger's Cat is both dead and alive in a superimposition of all possible states)

in a multiverse that goes on forever

yaweh

not human in word or deed

not caring - not not caring

not loving - not not loving

the ultimate unasked for freedom

get over it

gauss vs pareto

(metaphors abound)

contrast

the world according to johann gauss (of the 18th century)
where billy graham
ward cleaver
lawrence welk
and the golden mean
fit neatly under a bell curve
where those who work hard get ahead
and rugged individuals stand tall
and god loves us all

with the world  according to vilfredo pareto (of the 20th century)
where luck counts
where the rich get richer and the poor don't
where rewards are concentrated at the fat end
of a curve sloping one way only
reflecting connections of this with that with this
in feedback loops
that generate surface complexity
from inner simplicity
and there are no averages
and black swans reign
and god...
well

brain plates and quakes

like continents on physical plates
we float on plates of history and genetic predispositions
subconscious stuff
organized in complex layers
connecting perceptions thoughts and feelings
in symbols and metaphors
down to the physical substrate
the gray matter itself

as we think (and dream) the plates move
side by side
(or extending the metaphor - up and down, back and forth)
sometimes sliding
sometimes sticking

sometimes when the plates stick too much
and release too fast
we have a brain quake
things break
metaphors get mixed
history gets lost

and for a few days there are aftershocks
when feelings remap
reconnecting in moments of deja vu
turning inside out

He looks so easy 
He looks so clean 
He moves like god's 
Immaculate machine 
He makes me think about 
All of these extra movements I make 
And all of this herky-jerky motion 
And the bag of tricks it takes 
To get me through my working day 

(paul simon - one trick pony)