Posts in the “personal” category

I was listening to a book by Lisa Scottoline named Killer Smile, and a woman in her seventies told a woman in her late 20s or early 30s to be brave.

“I don’t know if I can be brave,” the younger woman replied.

“Don’t worry about that,” the older woman said. “If you can’t be brave, just be determined. And you’ll end up in the same place.”

That struck me as smart. I’ve often thought that I don’t know what brave is, but we all know what it is to be determined.

Bob was the first guy that wrote his own songs and recorded them that I had ever met. He said, “You know, if you want to make it, you’re gonna have to write your own songs.” And I said, “Well, what if they’re bad?” He said, “Well, they’re gonna be bad. You just keep writing and keep writing and eventually you’ll write a good song.”

~ Glen Frey, talking about Bob Seger and writing music

As a brief personal note, I just remembered that back during 2014-2017 when I went unconscious seven times — a process known as syncope, and pronounced sync-oh-pee — I would later find out that the reason I went unconscious is because I didn’t feel the initial symptoms of MCAS. Those initial symptoms were suppressed because I was taking a statin.

So while I was taking a statin I would feel sick, like I’d been poisoned, and then go unconscious in a process that took 2-15 minutes. But on September 1, 2016, I stopped taking the statin because of some things that happened in the previous days. To my surprise, after I stopped taking the statin I would feel bad from the MCAS much earlier in the process, and then I’d also get hives, rashes, and other symptoms hours before entering pre-syncope. This gave me an opportunity to take more medicine to avoid the actual syncope event.

So, my personal experience is that taking a statin suppressed the initial mast cell disease symptoms, and that led me to go directly to syncope events without first having hives, rashes, etc.

A friend posted this quote on Facebook recently: “Speak to people in a way that if they died the next day, you’d be satisfied with the last thing you said to them.”

It made me think that I was happy that Lori and I had a good relationship through Facebook, and that the last time I talked to Ben, he was showing me photos from a cruise that he took, and giving me advice if I should ever go on one.

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

~ Mother Teresa

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

~ Mother Teresa

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.

~ Alfred Tennyson

One of the things I love about Peter Gabriel’s music is how brutally honest his lyrics are. Sure, there’s imagery and metaphor and other things that make music great, but like these lyrics from Washing of the Water, the lyrics are just raw and emotive:

’til the washing of the water
Make it all alright
Let your waters reach me
Like she reached me tonight

Letting go, it’s so hard
The way it’s hurting now
To get this love untied
So tough to stay with thing
’cause if I follow through
I face what I denied
I get those hooks out of me
And I take out the hooks that I sunk deep in your side
Kill that fear with emptiness
Loneliness I hide

River, oh river, river running deep
Bring me something that will let me get to sleep
In the washing of the water will you take it all away
Bring me something to take this pain away

It turns out he had a little magic in him: With his overabundance of unconditional love, he could change people. I know, because he changed me.

~ from this story about Zeus

That you and I were made for this
I was made to taste your kiss
We were made to never fall away
Never fall away

’cause even though you left me here
I have nothing left to fear
Fears are only walls that hold me here

You’re coming back for me
You’re coming back for me
You’re coming back for me
You’re coming back for me

This is a song called Letters From The Sky, by a band named Civil Twilight. I learned of the song from the underrated 2011 movie I Am Number Four. The end of this video is really terrific.

“Never make someone a priority, when all you are to them is an option.”

~ Maya Angelou

(I saw this quote this morning, and I was debating about whether I like it, but it does fit with a relationship of late.)

There’s a constant contradiction,
What feels good and what feels right.
But you live with decisions that you make in your life.
And what steers your direction is hard to understand,
(With so much riding on the choice at hand)
The spirit of a boy, or the wisdom of a man.

~ Randy Travis

As a brief note about meditation, over the last few years people have written more about some potential negative side effects of meditation. I haven’t experienced those, but over the last two years I have experienced hallucinations when I wake up during the middle of the night. A sleep specialist told me the name for this, but I can’t remember it now.

As an example, two nights ago — the evening and morning of 8/20 to 8/21/21 — I woke up and looked across the room, and in an area where there is a hallway that leads to the bathroom (and laundry area), I saw a disembodied head that looked like Princess Diana. Two years ago that would have been pretty freaky, but now things like this are a common occurrence.

This experience only became freaky when she began to move her eyes. It was like her head was frozen, protruding out from the laundry area into the hallway, and then her eyes began to move and look around, like, “Holy crap, where am I, and why can’t I move my head?!” That reminded me of an old Don Knotts movie where he’s in a haunted house, and it was indeed freaky.

UPDATE: I’m reminded that I wrote about the name for this phenomenon before in Sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations, and hypnopompic hallucinations, and the name for these specific experiences is hypnopompic hallucinations.

As a brief note today, for the last year or so I’ve been experiencing various “visions” when I wake up at night. I mentioned them to a doctor recently, and he said, “No, you’re not crazy, they’re referred to as hypnagogic hallucinations.” I found out that more accurately, the ones I’m experiencing are known as hypnopompic hallucinations.

If you’re interested in what these look like, here are three that I experienced recently. I regularly see images of “splatter” on the ceiling, and they can be all sorts of color. Last night they were mostly black, but the night before that they were red and pink:

“I’m such a liar.”

(said anyone who has seriously practiced
mindfulness or insight meditation)

(we lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel good (or bad);
we lie to others to hide our secrets and feelings)

When I found that Texas A&M Aerospace Engineering poster, I also found this “Anytime, Baby” poster. I’m 98% certain that I got it at Virginia Beach, probably in 1989.

I found this 1986 Texas A&M Aerospace Engineering poster in a tube in a closet. Amazing what you find when you’re moving. :)

Nobody else in my family seems to know the song, Love at the Five and Dime, but I knew it many years ago, and was reminded of it several years ago. It was created and sung by Nanci Griffith, who passed away in August of 2021.

As I’ve learned over the years, if you can touch someone’s heart in a positive way before you pass away, that’s about all you can hope for, and her music definitely touched many hearts. Godspeed.

One of my favorite songs from 1991 is Crazy, by Seal. This line always stands out for me:

“In a world full of people, only some want to fly, isn’t that crazy?”

Kiss From a Rose is another favorite song by Seal.

February 24, 2018: After a long hiatus, during the last week I finally got back into a consistent meditation routine. As usual, this helps me remember my dreams better, and to also have lucid dreams. Last night that combined with something else I had thought about casually recently: Wouldn’t it be nice to be young again, and if I was young again, what would I do differently?

After falling asleep, I wake up in strange apartment. Looking around I can’t figure out what’s going on, but having been in this situation dozens of times before, I find the bathroom, turn on the light, and look in the mirror. I’m pleasantly surprised to see a much younger version of myself. My face is young again, and my hair is longer, soft, and as dark as ever, with no touches of gray. Realizing I’ve been given a second chance, I vow to make the most of it.

After I figure out the apartment situation, I decide to go for a walk and see what the neighborhood looks like. As I walk down the road and enjoy the new scenery, a speeding car comes around a turn. I try to get out of its way, but it hits me hard. My body flies through the air and crashes hard on someone’s lawn as the car speeds away. Lying on the ground, my face pushed into the lawn, I look at the blades of green grass in front of me. I try to hold onto it in my mind because I know that my second chance at living a younger life is coming to an abrupt halt. The green grass fades into darkness.