… went to bed a little after 9 PM last night… slept to about 4 AM with wakefulness at 2 AM… not feeling terrific this AM, but excess alcohol is not the culprit… only two beers last night… beer is looking more and more the route to go… that or no drinking at all…

… during the night wind and rain moved in… i especially heard the wind as i was trying to sleep…

… I coming to dinner tonight… planning to roast a chicken (that i helped raise and slaughter), fix some kind of potatoes and make a bitter greens salad, perhaps with the green olive anchovy dressing that is so yummy… might throw in a tomato or two from the garden… yes, we have some late harvest tomatoes that, miraculously, are slowly ripening… they don’t taste as good as those that ripen in August-September, but better than store bought…

… i am remembering that i should have gotten notification of a car payment due, but haven’t… will need to check on it today… there have been issues with payments set up to automatically draw from our bank account…

… just before going to bed, a story about Max Cleland on Rachel Maddow… war hero, triple amputee, by all accounts, a good person… the kind of politician that used to be more common, not as addicted to power, more interested in getting things done, serving his constituents… he was unseated by a Republican in a brutal campaign that accused him of cowardice… decorated veteran, triple amputee, accused of cowardice… that’s the sort of cynical politics that has me despising politicians in general… wherever there is power to be gained, the most despicable kind of behavior ensues… ethics and decency have no place in that world… is it any wonder the country is coming apart at the seems when we-the-people allow ourselves to be pushed into tribal silos that elicit the worst from us?…

… tribal silos, it appears, make easy sales targets in all sorts of ways… in big picture thinking, what does this mean about humanity in general that we are easily corralled into tribes that allow for pinpoint marketing?… and that making us angry about something is a very easy way to congregate and target us… is this a no longer useful appendage of human behavior… or is it the way we will be organized by the cosmos into a whole that is greater than the straight forward sum of the parts?… it is this kind of thought that makes me want to read Sex, Ecology and Spirituality again…

… i was recently thinking that i might want to get involved in helping out in elections in 2022… maybe help the Democratic party… but then i realized, i don’t want to be expected to be loyal to the cause… i want to be able to look at the ideas and policies and concerns of both sides and arrive at nuanced positions about the right way to proceed… i am simply not a my-tribe-right-or-wrong kind of person…

… i think i may have hit on something with no title posting… just notes, tagged for future revisiting…

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

… the title of Halsey’s new album… what an interesting dynamic in that statement… i have been known to say i don’t want power… i would perhaps amend that statement to: i don’t want power, but i want to be powerful… that is, i want to be a powerful presence because of the wisdom with which i move through the world, not because i can make the world conform to the way i want to move… now, the idea that it is love or power… hmmm…