“I have to get out of here because there are people in other places. There’s a whole world out there that I don’t know anything about.”
~ David Byrne of the Talking Heads, in this article
Dear Jackie Waller (of Ohio/Virginia): You were right, I was wrong. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is an excellent album.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
~ Part of the poem Ulysses, by Lord Alfred Tennyson
(In the process of writing Functional Programming, Simplified, I had to make thirteen trips to the emergency departments of three different hospitals. So this poem has some meaning to me.)
Ongoing dreams are one of the top five or ten most interesting side effects of meditation. This morning I was in this rinky-dink dive motel, and I thought nobody knew I was there. Then there’s a knock at the door. I open it, and a woman tries to walk in. “Hey, hey, hey, slow down,” I say as I stop her from coming in.
“You don’t remember,” she asks.
I look at her hard, but no, I don’t remember.
So she holds up a newspaper clipping, and I look at it. It’s something I wrote. She starts to explain, “You wrote this,” but then it all comes flooding back to me before she says any more. “Okay, that’s good,” I say, holding up my hand. “I remember it all. Come in.”
“Thank god,” she says, and walks into the room and plops down on a bed, face down. “I’m beat.” Then I turn around and more people start to come in, but it’s all good, I remember them, and the dream continues from where we left off. One person has brought several containers of taco ingredients, and the meat mixture smells amazing. We begin to put them together quietly at a makeshift counter while the woman rests.
As the tacos are made, we take them outside. It’s a bright, sunny day, and there’s a Jaguar parked outside my room in this crappy motel in the desert...
Those who know me know that I was born with a rare blood disease, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), also known as “Bubble Boy” disease. MCAS is an autoimmune disease, and I’ve written about this in quite a few places over the last five years, including these articles:
Interesting discussion of the day: A young woman who helped me at Best Buy today told me that one reason she works there is so she has something she can talk about with her father (tech stuff).
~ May 16, 2014
Mama always told me not to look into the eye’s of the Sun ... sunrise in Virginia Beach, April, 2017.
Last night I was chasing people who were putting bombs in buildings and flying shape-shifters (who I would later realize were on my side). When I started to catch up to them I’d find myself yelling, “please comply.” I give a “thumbs up” for the action/adventure part of the dream, but the writing and line delivery were just horrible.
~ a dream from April 8, 2017
Doctors have been treating me for “suspicion of mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)” since 2016, and I recently got my first Covid vaccination shot. Here’s a quick summary of the experience.
Before the shot I took one Allegra pill, as usual, and then two Xyzal pills (where I normally take one a day, but as many as four).
I got the Pfizer vaccine shot, and quickly developed these symptoms:
“In enlightenment, death has no relevance to one’s state of being.”
As I reflected on the meaning of Easter this morning, I remembered this quote from Tibetan lama, teacher, physician, sculptor, and painter, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. The quote is from his book, Life in Relation to Death.
I got vaccinated this past week at Boulder Community Hospital, in Boulder, Colorado.
If you struggle to learn new things, check out this podcast interview with Barbara Oakley. A few years ago I read her book, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra), and it was helpful to me, and even influenced my book, Functional Programming, Simplified.
When I edit my own text, I make comments like those shown in the images. A few of my own:
When I write books I try to complete a chapter, then get away from it for at least a month, then come back and edit it like this.
The images here are from the excellent movie, Finding Forrester.
When I was very sick in 2015-2016, I used to tell my doctors it felt like I had been “drugged.” When I could see that they couldn’t understand or believe that, I’d tell them that it felt the way you feel after surgery, groggy and woozy.
For the most of this year I’ve been eating very well, but yesterday I went to see a movie (Logan) and had some popcorn. Shortly after eating the popcorn I started to feel sick, and today I feel like I’ve been drugged.
This — as I have learned — is life with mast cell activation disease, known as MCAD or MCAS.
Quick note: Since The Mood Cure helped me so much with my thyroid problems last year, I bought The Diet Cure, and have been reading through it. In short, the power of amino acids blows me away. While I've never felt any different after taking any other "supplements", the difference I've felt by taking amino acids has been amazing.
Today I just want to make a note about the differences between DL-Phenylalanine, L-Phenylalanine, and D-Phenylalanine. Here's a description of Phenylalanine, courtesy of this website:
This is the amino acids supplement chart from the excellent book by Julia Ross, The Diet Cure. With this chart you look at the first two columns to find whatever “deficiency” problems you may be having, then look for the amino acid supplement(s) that are known to help with those problems.
I originally learned about this when my thyroid was failing in 2011. A nutritionist told me about this book, and I quickly found out that L-tyrosine was a major help in living through a failing thyroid. Ten years later I still take L-tyrosine after losing my thyroid to cancer, for me it’s a basic supplemental requirement that helps with focus on concentration.
“I’ve seen a lot of my friends lose their passion and end up in a rut, afraid to take a chance. ‘Night Moves’ is about romantic passion, but ‘Ship of Fools’ is about passion for life. Maybe a guy’s working a job he doesn’t like, and he sees an ad about the Alaska pipeline or something that excites him. But there are problems. His family says it’s too cold in Alaska or whatever. So he passes it up and just keeps on with something he hates.”
~ From Bob Seger, about his song, Ship of Fools
“Good things happen if you show up.” I’m pretty sure Glenn Frey said this on The History of the Eagles. If you haven’t seen it, and you like their music, it’s a great video/biography.
If I remember it right, the context was about work, and essentially that you can’t win if you don’t play the game, or in this case, you can’t be successful if you don’t show up and put in the hard work.
A cartoonized bearded version of me, circa 2021.
This is me with a mustache, circa early 2021. I had this mustache for a few minutes when I shaved off my beard. Hopefully I look like a cowboy, lol. :)
