Helen knew the look
And feel of her
Trojan archer, yet
Set aside as she was
Waiting the war out
Reflected much more
On her own momentum,
Guilt, some had said
That she’d assented
Too readily; yet she’d
Been abandoned
And betrayed, left,
While Achaea played
Games, left again
As Hector and Paris
Fended or fell. Now
They’d set her here
Like an antique vase,
No one of moment
Seeing her face,
Her troubled brow.
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Helen, Pensive
Friday, September 17, 2021
A Hunter-Gatherer's guide and Post-Traumatic Growth
On 8-25-21 I was trimming branches out front, sawed most of the way through an especially large one which kept hold of my saw as it fell to the ground. Unfortunately for me I held onto the saw. The fingers on my right hand were bent back. I thought they might be broken, but when I got up found that they weren’t. However, something in my hand hasn’t completely healed. When I write with pen and paper, as I do in my journal, pain increases with each line. Fortunately my hand seems fine when I type.
I’ve begun A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life by Heather Heyling and Bret Weinstein. Quite a bit on this subject appears in science magazines, and I wondered if I would find anything new. Perhaps I have:
From page 7: “Conscious thoughts are those that can be communicated to others. We define consciousness, therefore, as ‘that fraction of cognition that is packaged for exchange.’ This is no trick. We have not chosen a definition to make an intractable question simple. We have chosen the definition at the epicenter of what people mean when describing a thought as ‘conscious.’”
I have gone on a bit in the book but keep coming back to this idea. I recall Susan, in our early days of getting to know each other, telling me that I wasn’t in touch with my emotions. She urged me to write her some poetry so I could find out what I felt emotionally, and that worked. No doubt it worked before Susan urged me to do it. I was writing poetry long before I met her, but I never thought of it in the terms she used.
In one of the reviews I read recently, a poet (whose name I can’t recall) was asked the purpose of poetry and he said something along the lines of “a poet writes in order to find out what he thinks.” That seems right as well. I do not seem able to sit down and think my way to answers. That probably wasn’t always true, but it seems to be true now.
In the 9-11-21 issue of ScienceNews is the article “Roads to the Good Life, Happiness and meaning are not the only ways to get there” by Sujata Gupta. She begins “In December, my husband, our 5-year old daughter and I tested positive for COVID-19. Life, already off-kilter, lurched. Smell, taste, breath – were they normal? The air smelled only of cold; everything tasted vaguely of cardboard. . . Prior to the sickness, I’d been researching pandemic fatigue, a term used to describe the boredom that can arise during a protracted crisis like the one we’re in now . . . research [of Shigerhiro Oishi and his team] suggests that the ingredients of a rich life come not from stability in life circumstances or in temperament. Rather . . . it arises from novelty seeking, curiosity and moments that shift one’s view of the world. . .
Gupta goes on in a rather stream of consciousness fashion. One needn’t assume that we are all at risk for PTSD. “A large body of literature shows . . . that natural disasters and other traumatic events can trigger a phenomenon known as post-traumatic growth: a transformation that gives people a newfound appreciation for life and a desire to help others.” [Gupta here quotes SN Online: 4/3/19]
“Growth” sounds unrealistic when applied to someone 86 years old, but perhaps I’m wrong. I’ll have to give that some more thought, and I should probably give up sawing large branches from trees for fear of losing my ability to think.
Wednesday, September 8, 2021
Personal, technical problems & Garrison Keillor
Yesterday I spent an afternoon and evening as we all periodically do when our computers misbehave, or we think they do. Yesterday I wasn't able to access wi-fi; which is usually the fault of my router. After rebooting several times, I thought perhaps my router had failed; so I got a new one from my closet and went through the aggravating trial and error one must go through to set one up, unless one is a techie who does this all the time.
After getting my new router to work, I discovered
that I had access to the internet through Mozilla Firefox, but I
still didn't have access to my email through Mozilla
Thunderbird. I then recalled a few times in the past when I had
access to the internet but not my email; so I hoped that my
email would be back this morning, and it was.
However I still couldn't access the photographic
forums and the ongoing discussions I was in. I could no longer
type my password in the space provided for it. Perhaps I have
been banned I finally wondered. Moderators can do that for all
sorts of reasons, and they don't need to explain themselves to
the real or imagined offenders.
After checking to make sure my new router was
functioning properly, I checked my email system and found they
were once again coming into my in-basked without hesitation.
The first one I read was the following from Garrison Keillor:
"I am thinking about moving to Texas so that I can
be in open disagreement with the powers that be and express this
freely, instead of living in colonies of liberal progressives
where I must put tape over my mouth except when among close
personal friends. Freedom of speech is watched closely where I
live and we all know it. “What exactly is it you want to say
that you can’t?” you wonder. It is something that, were I to say
it, I’d be kicked out of the Democratic Party and my library
card would be confiscated and I’d be barred from Amazon and
Starbucks and the Episcopal church would make me sit in the
Penitents’ Corner. So I’ll keep it to myself. . . ." https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/
The moderators would make short work of Keillor if he voiced such an opinion on one of the photographic forums. I myself occasionally think of moving to Idaho, but then I don't talk or write as much as I used to, so it's probably okay to stay here.