Harold Parker State Forest

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I had a therapist for ten years, then moved off after feeling we'd grown about as far as we were going to, and noting that I was probably mostly looking for paternal-ish approval (stuff that I can't get organically, with my own dad having died over 30 years before.)

My therapist retired, but still works with some of his old clients in a somewhat less formal way, and I've taken up ever other week sessions.

He says I should be more "libidinous". Putting aside the sexual aspect of it (though I guess that's a part of it), I see it as reflecting what they say in Taoism, where they label energies masculine and feminine, the former being more proactive, the latter being more receptive. Putting aside the gendered aspect of it, and using the same introspective framework I've found helpful, I see it as a call for doing more a bit for my own wants, putting aside my deeply ingrained habit of doing what the group thinks is best or most prefers (with my preferences being part of the group).

It's tough, because thinking of the group first is part of my integrity as person. Doing otherwise feels a bit greedy for me... and tbh I kind of wish more folks in the world were group-first in their mentality - more interested in using reason to figure out what really is true in objective reality, more involved with polling what other individuals in the group think and why - especially when there's a good-will difference of opinion and interpretation.

Anyway.

I'm struck by how shifting moods are. I have a ton of things to be nervous about, and sometimes I'm miserable and sometimes I'm sanguine. But usually there's no particular reason why my mood shifts - maybe I get triggered by some fleeting external reminder, maybe the mood just happens. And I have some control over the mood, by changing focus. Which i guess is akin to what some folks do with doom-scrolling and other distractions. Though my therapist, and some others, would seem to argue that it's not good to be blasé about everything. But I guess I feel equanimity is a worthwhile goal and as long as you don't totally undercut your efforts to make the situation better via acceptance, maybe we SHOULD be less attached to the outcomes we're hoping for.

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Making The Rounds:

Why I voted for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz:
So when people ask me why my yard is the only one within a mile to have a VOTE HARRIS sign and not a Scum Trump sign.... I have to explain that there are a few things I don't like about Trump and what he has done so far to America......
• Like when he incited an insurrection against the government,
• mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans
• separated immigrant children from their families, and now they are lost in the bureaucracy.
AND.....
• tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church
• tried to block all Muslims from entering the country
• got impeached
• got impeached again
• had the worst job record of any president in modern history
• pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden
• fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia
• bragged about firing the FBI director on TV.
AND...
• took Vladimir Putin's word over the US intelligence community
• diverted military funding to build his wall
• caused the longest government shutdown in US history
• called Black Lives Matter a "symbol of hate"
• lied nearly 40,000 times and still lying.
AND....
• banned transgender people from serving in the military
• ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions
• vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers
• refused to release his tax returns
• increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion
AND...
• had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history
• called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers
• coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist
• refused to concede the 2020 election
• hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House
• walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl
• called neo-Nazis "very fine people"
• suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID
AND...
• abandoned our allies, the Kurds to Turkey
• pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans
• incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic
• withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords
• withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal
• withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was designed to block China's advances
• insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter
• pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op
AND...
• failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies
• called Haiti and African nations "shithole" countries
• called the city of Baltimore the "worst in the nation"
• claimed that he single-handedly brought back the phrase "Merry Christmas" even though it hadn't gone anywhere
• forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader
• believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe
• suggested the US should buy Greenland
AND....
• colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges
• repeatedly called the media "enemies of the people."
• claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID, we'd have fewer cases
• violated the emoluments clause
• thought that Nambia was a country
• told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public
• called his exceedingly faithful vice president a "p---y" for following the Constitution
• nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet
• nominated a corrupt head of the EPA
• nominated a corrupt head of HHS
• nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department
• nominated a corrupt head of the USDA
AND
• praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies
• refused to allow the presidential transition to begin
• insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death
• spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president
• falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote
• called the Muslim mayor of London a "stone-cold loser"
• falsely claimed that he turned down being Time's Man of the Year
• considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions
• mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID
• locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones
AND...
• used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the "China virus"
• hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses, including his campaign manager and national security adviser
• pardoned several of his shady associates
• gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories
• got into a telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!)
• had a Secretary of State who called him a moron
• forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history
AND ....
• botched the COVID vaccine rollout
• tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him
• charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties
• constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate
• claimed that COVID would "magically" disappear
• called a U.S. Senator "Pocahontas"
• used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka's merchandise
• opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling
• got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers
AND....
• claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US
• ignored or didn't even take part in daily intelligence briefings
• blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining
• redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle
• got played by Kim Jung Un and his "love letters"
• threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution
• botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico
• threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them
• pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to "find" him votes
• thought that the Virgin Islands had a President
• drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane
AND.....
• allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing
• rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos
• pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID
• rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers
• held blatant campaign rallies at the White House
• tried to take away millions of Americans' health insurance because the law was named for a Black man
• refused to attend his successors' inauguration
• nominated the worst Education Secretary in history
• threatened judges who didn't do what he wanted
• attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci
AND....
• promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn't)
• allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues
• struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble
• called an African-American Congresswoman "low IQ"
• threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders
• went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic
• claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were "witch hunts,"
• seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution
• demanded "total loyalty" from the FBI director
• praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles
• completely gutted the Voice of America
• placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service
AND...
• claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower
• suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country
• suggested that COVID wasn't that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public
• overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported
• reduced the number of refugees the US accepts
• insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames
AND...
• gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address
• named as head of federal personnel a 29-year-old who'd previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties
• eliminated the White House Office of pandemic response
• used soldiers as campaign props
• fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him
• demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade
• hired a shit ton of white nationalists
• politicized the civil service
• did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government
• falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts
AND....
• claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won
• insulted reporters of color
• insulted women reporters
• insulted women reporters of color
• suggested he was okay with China's oppression of the Uighurs
• attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him
• summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election
• spent countless hours every day watching Fox News
• refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas
• hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer
• tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him
• acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney
• attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a woman who accused him of sexual assault
AND....
• held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present
• didn't disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin, so the US had to find out via Russian media
• stopped holding press briefings for months at a time
• "ordered" US companies to leave China even though he has no such power
• led a political party that couldn't even be bothered to draft a policy platform
• claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers
• tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course
• suggested that the government nuke hurricanes
• suggested that wind turbines cause cancer
• said that he had a special aptitude for science
• fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure
• blurted out classified information to Russian officials
• tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida
• fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban
• hired Stephen Miller
AND...
• openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago, where everyone could hear them
• interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel
• abandoned Iraqi refugees who'd helped the U.S. during the war
• tried to get Russia back into the G7
• held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden
• seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive
• lost 60 election fraud cases in court, including before judges he had nominated
• falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren't
• shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies
• still hasn't come up with a healthcare plan
• still hasn't come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated "Infrastructure Weeks"
• forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID
AND....
• told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."
• screwed up the Census
• withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic
• did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule, "President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings," allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act
• seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican
• stood before the sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win
• constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president, which presumably includes four who were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump
• claimed Andrew Jackson could've stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened
• said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake
• claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him
• claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,
AND...
• created a commission to whitewash American history
• retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain
• claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn't have happened if someone there had a gun, even though there was an armed security guard there
• hired a senior staffer who cited the nonexistent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims
• had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others
• bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties
• apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House
• stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians
• falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police
• said that the head of the CDC didn't know what he was talking about
• tried to rescind protection from DREAMers
AND ....
• gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic
• tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax
• said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn't count blue states
• deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented
• claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln
• touted a "super-duper" secret "hydrosonic" missile, which may or may not be a new "hypersonic" missile or may not exist at all
• retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile
• forced through security clearances for his family
• suggested that police officers should rough up suspects
• suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs
• tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender
• suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher
• nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy
• retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called "Fuck tha Police" at a campaign event
AND...
• hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags
• accused Democrats of "treason" for not applauding his State of the Union address
• claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were "spending too much time" on Russia
• mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault
• obsessed over low-flow toilets
• ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren't any to release
• called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek)
• hijacked Washington's July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech
• took advice from the MyPillow guy
• claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists
• said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure
AND...
• falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent
• announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria, which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest
• insulted the leader of Canada
• insulted the leader of France
• insulted the leader of Britain
• insulted the leader of Germany
• insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!)
• falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues
• blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually
• continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,
• said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their "Sony televisions" if the US were ever attacked
• left a NATO summit early in a huff
• stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of five knows not to do that
• called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary
• refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise
And I can't remember many other things at the moment.
Copy and paste to your heart's content. I've loved this book for decades. I remember giving a copy to my ex-, back before we were ex-, and inscribing it "to finding a place in poetic memory".

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We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

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Necessity knows no magic formulae--they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

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Karenin was not overjoyed by the move to Switzerland. Karenin hated change. Dog time cannot be plotted along a straight line; it does not move on and on, from one thing to the next. It moves in a circle like the hands of a clock, which--they, too, unwilling to dash madly ahead--turn round and round the face, day in and day out following the same path. In Prague, when Tomas and Tereza bought a new chair or moved a flower pot, Karenin would look on in displeasure. It disturbed his sense of time. It was as though they were trying to dupe the hands of the clock by changing the numbers on its face.

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But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

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While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.

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Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

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But deep down she said to herself, Franz may be strong, but his strength is directed outward; when it comes to the people he lives with, the people he loves, he's weak. Franz's weakness is called goodness. Franz would never give Sabina orders. He would never command her, as Tomas had, to lay the mirror on the floor and walk back and forth on it naked. Not that he lacks sensuality; he simply lacks the strength to give orders. There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

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She answered herself: When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out.

But the dead can't get out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones?

The difference is that if a grave is covered with a stone it means we don't want the deceased to come back. The heavy stone tells the deceased, "Stay where you are!"

That made Sabina think about her father's grave. There was soil above his grave with flowers growing out of it and a maple tree reaching down to it, and the roots and flowers offered his corpse a path out of the grave. If her father had been covered with a stone, she would never have been able to communicate with him after he died, and hear his voice in the trees pardoning her.

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Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: the criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.

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By the word "nonlove" I do not wish to imply that he took a cynical attitude to the young woman, that, as present-day parlance has it, he looked upon her as a sex object; on the contrary, he was quite fond of her, valued her character and intelligence, and was willing to come to her aid if ever she needed him. He was not the one who behaved shamefully towards her; it was his memory, for it was his memory that, unbeknown to him, had excluded her from the sphere of love.

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call *poetic memory* and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful. From the time he met Tereza, no woman had the right to leave the slightest impression on that part of his brain.

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"I used to admire believers," Tomas continued. "I thought they had an odd transcendental way of perceiving things which was closed to me. Like clairvoyants, you might say. But my son's experience proves that faith is actually quite a simple matter. He was down and out, the Catholics took him in, and before he knew it, he had faith. So it was gratitude that decided the issue, most likely. Human decisions are terribly simple."

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On they danced to the strains of the piano and violin. Tereza leaned her head on Tomas's shoulder. Just as she had when they flew together in the airplane through the storm clouds. She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.

Or as New Yorker cartoonis Mankoff puts it:

See, the problem with doing things to prolong your life is that all the extra years come at the end, when you're old.

I suppose any griping I have about the Dodgers and Yankees payrolls is kind of undercut by hoping this generation of Celtics get at least one more championship. trump is too old, and misfiring on a lot of cylinders. older than Reagan when he LEFT office.

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Always loved graphpaper in high school:

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I will always love Big Mouth's Ghost of Duke Ellington saying "Jazz is LIKE Life, it goes on for longer than you think, and then as soon as you're like 'OHH, I get it!' it ends!"

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I am both positive I know where this is and 100% sure I'm wrong.

(the basement of the Salvation Army building in Coshocton, OH)

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Trump became angry. "It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!" He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: "Don't pay it!"
-The Atlantic on Trumps...uh, mixed feeling about the military

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"In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, "Why can't you be like the German generals?" Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as "my generals.") According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals "tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off." This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: "No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him," the president responded."

LOL. This is the guy some of y'all want. TIL "Go for the Gusto" was a slogan for Schlitz Beer.

(the slogan came to mind as i think about trying to act with a bit more verve in a fake it til you make it kind of way)

Sometimes my behavior feels like a flinch response (or I guess more accurately, the flight part of fight-or-flight) where when the least little stumbling block occurs - or its just time for the next step - and I have to at least stand up and maybe walk around. I think of the old (asshole-ish) kids' routine "two for flinching" where you mime going to hit someone and if they flinch you get to give them two punches. Which is... pretty inane? (But it reminds me of the line, false attributed to Churchill:

One ought never to turn one's back on threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching you will reduce the danger by half.

Like I said - two for flinching. Maybe half for standing up to it (though ironically is I'm trying not to stand, and just sit there and plow through, keyboard under by fingers))

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No pressure. We're all going to be dead soon, and it really doesn't matter anymore. So there's zero pressure. You're either going to win or you're not. And when you win, you try to forget about it a week later, and when you lose, you try to forget about it a forget about it a week later. And so it's not pressure, it's an opportunity.