WARNING!!!: LANGUAGE IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK

shut up, he explained

The more you know
The less you understand

Tao te Ching #47

I’ve read about alcoholism. I’ve read AA’s “Big Book” and the so-called 12X12 and other AA approved literature. I’ve read lots of other stuff, too. But, really, I don’t know all that much about the disease and don’t pay nearly as much attention to the subject as I might. Lots and lots of people know a lot more about it than I do. However, I do have an understanding of what it is like not to have any alcohol for more than 12 continuous years, no matter how much you may want a beer, a flute of champagne or a couple fingers Scotch, single malt, neat, with a sidecar of still water over ice. What that understanding is that I have I can’t tell you. I don’t have words for it. Even if I did have the words, you still would have only the knowledge of what I said and not my understanding of what I’ve lived on a day at a time basis.

It is the same with my depression. I’ve read so many self help books, you wouldn’t believe. I’ve read psychology books, treatment manuals, the list goes on and on. Still, any physician or pharmacist likely knows more about my disease as a medical condition than I ever will. I don’t really know an awful lot about the disease. I do, however, have an understanding of living with it for the past 25 years as a chronic condition. I’ve read many deft and evocative passages by people like Mike Wallace and Dick Cavett about their experience, but I also understand something of their experience that isn’t in the words.
I have at least one friend who is a diabetic and another who has grand mal epileptic seizures. Two more chronic conditions that can’t be seen or discovered by the casual observer. Two more conditions that have certain demands and realities. Same with allergies, same with lots of things.
In this passage of the Tao, Lao Tsu tells us that you can read all you want about spirituality and you can think about it until the world goes level, but you won’t understand it until you experience it.
I recently re-read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the last of that novel contains a passage of conversation between the enlightened Siddhartha and his childhood friend Govinda. Siddhartha says about the same thing: that there are simply times and situations in which words won’t do, in which explanations can’t be had, and yet there is a reality to be experienced that can be understood.
Having recently had the very bad judgment to try and write about relationships, I now realize that part of the problem is that I can observe women to beat the band and read like hell about them, but that I’ll never really understand and vice versa. Better, I now think, to be much more concerned about the HUMAN condition and what I can understand of what we do have in common.
That’s enough musing for one post.
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OH, WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS A MAN!

Roger Ebert does a second review of “Watchmen”, the movie he saw and reviewed once on a regular screen and this time on IMAX. His review includes several YouTube type videos about the science of the movie, especially about Dr. Manhatten the Quantum Man and how real quantum physics aligns with the movie. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but the science vids were pretty interesting. Below is some folderol only tangentially related to the movie, but it kind of goes along with the musings above and was among the videos appended to Ebert’s review.

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY

Does DST really save energy? Not so much

My ex-wife used to express the most vehement dislike of the time change to Daylight Savings Time. I disliked it, too, and we riffed on it almost every year. To my way of thinking, DST is just that much greater chance that I’ll be bored to utter tears by golf anecdotes and detailed descriptions of all 91 strokes my interlocutor took going round all 18 holes. Golfers, in my view, are a plague on the planet and should be eradicated for ecological reasons in addition to the social advantages of their absence from gatherings where alcohol is served. And the one and only reason we have DST, as far as I can tell, is to advantage them to even more boring adventures. Whatever golfers like, I’m against it. As Twain remarked of golf, “a good walk ruined.” I could forgive them much, perhaps even the annoyance of changing my clocks and missing appointments, if they just didn’t feel that the rest of the population of the world is waiting with bated breath to hear their pathetic little stories. My spleen feels just slightly less full of bile now, thank you very much for letting me rant.

One Way to Calm Down From a Rant

medical marijuana slideshow by CNBC Biz Channel

I personally have never seen even one of these 12 varieties of marijuana, but they are beautiful. Some are lavender, some a silvery white, others with rusty red mixed with oranges and yellows. I guess it’s been a while for me, but the prices seemed sky high: $400 an ounce up to $7,000 a pound. That’s some heavy lifting in my books.

Obama signals feds to end pot prosecutions

I think it’s appropriate for the federal government to decide that when a state legalizes pot for medical purposes, that the feds should stay out of it in the absence of some very unusual circumstance. If I understand correctly, the feds will still intercept Mexican pot coming over in commercial quantity, but they won’t interfere with the homegrown stuff in Humboldt County being used, ostensibly, for legal purposes. Of course, I’m one of the people who thinks it should be legalized, taxed and all those pretty normal people doing time for holding should be released from prison post haste. This decision by the Obama Justice Dept. seems like the same kind of pragmatism he’s showing in other areas. I’m beginning to think of Obama as embodying “The Vital Center” (and if you don’t know that reference, don’t worry, but I’m not going to explain.)