in praise of

paid subscribers

First of all I’d like to say thank you to all the paid subscribers of the rohn report. I’m deeply grateful, and I just turned payments back on : ) I feel less disabled and more in a rhythm of writing. Typing speed is back to half of what it was, carpal tunnel symptoms are abating.

There are 14 paid subscribers, if you’re curious, and 169 regular free subscribers. Most of the rohn reports go to both but sometimes there are special editions just for the paid subscribers. Well atleast there’s supposed to be, I haven’t done many lately. Let me get back to you on that.

So welcome back, paid subscribers. Plunking your five dollars and sixteen cents into the slot machine every month helps me be sustainable. And even more than that it shows me that I’m appreciated, somebody thinks my writing has worth. I need to know that.

summer heat wave

Boom. Pow. Wow. The summer heat wave marches on here in South Texas. It’s been all of 3 weeks and probably more, every day 100 degrees plus. The next 10 days are all forecast to be 100 degrees plus. To say it’s oppressive is to miss the point, it’s an assault. My good nature suffers and I become angry and depressed. Ok, maybe I’m externalizing but it’s just too hot.

Then I think about the 3 raccoons that live under the house in their raccoon skin coats and Bob the feral cat who lives under there too. In a different apartment I suppose. Bob and also Betos, the crazy cat, both live outside in the 100 degree plus heat without complaint.

I think about the cardinal couple who come and visit me almost every day and sit in the tree outside my window and sing. Aren’t they hot too? They must be hot as the dickens but they fly around, hang out in the trees and seem ok. I’m inside in air conditioning and complaining.

It’s just a perspective, my neighbor George would say. A choice, in other words. Hmm, that sounds about right. It could be I’m projecting. Big time. The Summer Heat Wave is actually just alot of hot air.

flying around / being grounded

Sometimes it feels like life is some kind of very large board game, where whenever I move a piece it affects all the other pieces but in unexpected ways. I am one of the pieces too so I’m affected too. Even though I imagine myself to be in control when I make decisions, I’m really not. And precisely in this way life happens, unfolds all around me and manifests its random nature. If things work out according to my expectations it’s almost like a fluke, a stroke of good fortune, an accident.

This is my state of mind as I delve into a new phase of life: not complaining, just observing and noting without any reaction. It’s going to take alot of practice but I really want to do it. Just for the adventure of it, just for doing something outrageous.

I feel pretty stir crazy these days, not too much external adventure happening. Like when you’re a teenager and you get grounded, that’s what it feels like. I’m grounded but flying around in my imagination of the possibilities of not complaining.

First of all, the world looks very different. It’s a new world. In fact, my goal is to replace complaining with gratitude in an active, deliberate switch. Fly around with that. Explore. See what happens. That’s got to be an adventure.

in praise of

“We asked the captain what course
of action he proposed to take toward
a beast so large, terrifying and
unpredictable. He hesitated to
answer, and then said judiciously
’I think I shall praise it.’”

This is the epigraph from Robert Hass’ book, Praise. The final poem is titled ‘Songs to Survive the Summer’. It’s written in 3 line verses, like I often do, and goes on for 20 pages. Some selections.

'Should I whisper in her ear,
death is the mother
of beauty?’

‘I try out Chekov’s
tenderness to see
what it can save.’

‘What a strange thing!
To be alive
beneath plum blossoms.’

All kinds of good stuff.

So let me unlock my own treasure box and see what there is to praise.

My fingers work. They are a marvel of engineering. You can carry a 5 gallon bucket of water with those spindly little fingers. The powerful muscles that actually carry the water are in the forearm and connect to each segment of the fingers by cables. Delicate finger movements like playing the piano or typing on a computer are performed by small muscles in the hand itself. Hey, I can type, I can drive, I can blow my nose.

I’m alive. Not to be taken lightly, I frequently remind myself. Of course it’s hard to appreciate something that has no known opposite, something that’s always been with me, but there would be no driving, no typing, no blowing and no nose. There would be no loving or hating, no praising and no complaining. Actually I have no idea what there would be.

I praise the morning light. It comes softly into my room, where Kybo waits quietly by my bed, and slowly lifts me up and off to the shower. Sometimes I greet mornings by jumping into the fish pond, that way I can greet the fish and the morning at the same time. The fish are red and white, sleek and swift and they move like darts in the green water. The iridescent green of the dappled oak leaves next to the back porch, where I sit sometimes and look at the world, are shining in the morning light. I praise the morning light because it doesn’t last long, it diffuses and disappears, but it comes again again.

I give thanks for the world, people and animals and trees and fire and rain and politics and the wisdom of babies learning how to walk (they never give up) and traffic in the streets and the sun in the sky.

Yes even the traffic, which sometimes seems to me like an evil entity unleashed by our own greed and unbridled ambition, symptomatic of our confused minds (what is real, what is good?) and endlessly, pointlessly polluting our planet, but atleast you get somewhere. And people are content in their cars. They bought that car because they like it. They can travel swiftly. They can meditate on whatever they meditate on in their car.

I am praiseworthy. I would go with Walt Whitman on this. I am a man, a human, a human being. It’s a pretty cool deal. Feature rich, definitely the luxury model with all the bells and whistles. My brain is amazing. It can decode all the information coming in on the sensory input lines and make sense of it. Create a world out of it. I can talk to other people with it. I can imagine exploring all the possible things that it’s possible to explore - you can imagine that with a human brain. I don’t know about the dolphins. Maybe they can do something even better but being human - I have to congratulate myself and all the rest of the humans. Three and a half billion years of evolution and here we are. Bi-pedal, innovative, adaptive (hopefully, we’re about to find out) and charismatic - we really can be friendly when we want to be.

I’m gonna stop there. There’s work to be done. Feeling grateful and not complaining. Feeling my body and exploring the fine finger movements. Being alert, like I was riding my bike down Broadway; there is something to be grateful for somewhere. I have to find it.

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