I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allen Poe

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
-Bertrand Russell

What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
-James Branch Cabell

January 10, 2017 - 11:43 a.m.

Progress Report

I hope I wrote down something for me to write about because I got nothing. My excitement for the day was getting bagels and shopping at Trader Joe's. I bought the fixings for my world-famous sausage-garlic-potato soup. I'm going to make it for Bernie and Jane this week. Great now I'm hungry. I might have breakfast before I finish this.

The highlight of the day was making "No Chewing Allowed" hot chocolate with a chocolate truffle melted in it. I'm trying to make that last. It was a nice cold day where I was out and I had the time to sit and savor it. Savoring is part of the fleegix ritual. I'm ashamed this edition of Word does not recognize fleegix; I must not have used it since I loaded it on this computer.

I'm on psych meds for the first time in my life and it's hard to tell what effect they have on me. I still have the same behavior issues I started with. They are improving; I've been reading all my emails. For a long time, I couldn't do that. But I'm also in talk therapy. Maybe that's what did it. I don't "feel" any different when I read them. I do notice a difference in the depression. Something interpersonal is going on that would have driven me into the doldrums but now it just hits me now and then and without the feeling of pain. I know it sounds strange but part of me misses the pain. It's not that I enjoyed the pain. It's that I miss caring so much. What I learned in talk therapy helps with that. It would be nice if my new way of feeling about it changes the relationship for the better. I know for sure without trying but I think I'd feel the same joy. I get joy from other things so I don't think it's unreasonable.

I might even feel more joy than before. It might be an effect of the mindfulness training. There have been many small interpersonal interactions of late that gave me a glow. I doubt that all the other people involved even knew we had a moment. It can just be a touch or a smile or a look or a word.

I'm putting my psychological progress in perspective. It's a lot like Obama's record. He inherited an economy in freefall and spent most of his administration just getting us back to where we were. I've had mental health issues most of my life. They were slowly and not very effectively being addressed for a few years; there was some improvement. Then I had to leave my place in Crown Heights and I sank to unprecedented lows. It took intense treatment just to bring me back to close to where I was before. Now I'm ahead of where I was. I wish things moved faster. I wish I didn't still have huge issues but at least I'm dealing emotionally with them better. I avoid falling down the rabbit holes. I am dealing with external things better too. I'm a very long way from where I want to be but I can see how far I've come.

Sometimes my fingers decide what I'm going to write. This became a mental health progress report. I said I wasn't going to do it anymore but after that I need something routine. I'm off to eat brunch, sausageeggandcheese on a bagel.


I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.





Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018



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Horvendile January 10, 2017
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