11:54 PM - 08.11.04
Time Machine
Chinook winds today meant our temperature was at 17 C/60+F. That meant walking outdoors was a bit tricky. I went to get groceries but only wore runners instead of boots - no ice anywhere. I felt a bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz at one point as it felt like the wind was going to lift me off the pavement. In the mountians this wind has been known to blow semis and those huge fifth wheelers off the highway - Morley Flats is notorious for that. I felt pretty good considering most days chinooks wipe me out. I did feel really tired and my bones ached but no migraine and no breathing problems at all. Progress. One of the toughest things about chinooks is that they can suck all th moisture out of one's skin and hair in no time. In the article by that one entertainment columnist acouple of weeks ago he noted that actors from out of town often find that they lose their voices and experience symptoms like cracked lips and bleeding noses from the dryness of the air. It isn't just a phenomenon for them though, it's just that the effects rob them of some of the key tools of their trade while the rest of us just feel sickly.
The visit to the grocery store was really pleasant even feeling the way I did. The staff all went out of their way to acknowledge shoppers and chat with us. I like ordering on line because of the convenience but the social aspect of shopping is something that is difficult to give up. During a week day it is pretty quiet and everyone is much more open and relaxed about bieng in the same building together. I guess there is some value to being unemployed. Didn't feel like it when I got to the till and had to pay for stuff though. Watching the bank balance dip even lower is not good for morale. Hope some way of adding to it comes fairly quickly. Exchanging one form of stress for one just as equally damaging really isn't all that useful is it?
In the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know?" there is a dream sequence where the heroine sees herself standing on the beach of a Caribbean island with the indigenous tribe's shaman. The story has often been told that when the Europeans first arrived in the New World that the aboriginal people could not see them. The ships were so far outside their realm of experience that they simply could not take in what was before their eyes. That changed when the shaman confirmed that there was something unknown and new on the horizon. In a lot of cultures the shaman ould have been written off as insane and likely burned at the stake. The aboriginal people were a lot more open to accepting that they didn't know all and so listened rather than attacked someone bringing forward new ideas. Simlar stories have been told in other culture of course. Plato's story about the cave and the Hindu story about several blind people describing the elephant from their own perspective only to name a couple. In the movie the shaman pokes the woman at the site of her third eye several times so that she can see the clipper ships. When she awakes she finds she is more open to "seeing" what is around her in very different ways.
One of the oddities discussed by the scientists and mystics interviewed for the movie is the appearance that time only flows in one direction. There doesn't seem to be any reason for that to be so except for our perceptions of reality. There is further discussion about how we feel we can influence the future by our choices but not the past. Maybe a shaman needs to come forward who can open our society's third eye just a bit, so that it can be acknowledged that time flows in both directions. Certainly some scientists and some seers have said so. Often the scientists are pilloried in their own communities of interest and the seers are put on Prozac or some equally damaging preparation. Could it not be that a lot of people suffering from stress and depression and insanity are that way because their reality is constantly being denied by the main body of the North American tribe.
The psychologist, who I have been talking with lately, and I discussed the issue of defining mental illness one day. Each culture and faith has a very different definition of it and it based on what they describe as acceptable perceptions/beliefs. Anyone who sees another face of the creator is locked away or shunned or burned at the stake or whatever is done by that society in terms of dealing with those who see differently than the mainstream. Maybe the answer to some of our most compelling quetions and concerns is locked away in the minds of those we fear to hear. One just never knows. The most profound advice with respect to influencing the past as well as the future comes from the seers who say "live in the now". In other words be fully present and conscious in the moment one is experiencing at any given time.
In the news today one story solved a puzzle for me. Yesterday one the train on the way home it was evident some major emergency was occurring downtown. Streets blocked off, police cruisers all over the place and about 20 emergency vehicles all clustered at the exit to the 4th street bridge. Turned out that some sort of illness swept through the homeless shelter causing about 200 people to need immediate attention to their health. Suspected is either contaminated food or water. Emergency.
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