Today

This is Don a friend from Uptown Bill's. Some people say he is handicapped. He does not see it that way. He is simply someone who is trying to become more healthy. That is what Don has taught me today. I would tell you what he taught me yesterday but I think this site may be censored.

Mental

Sometimes life is very difficult. Sometimes it is not. Life seems to be just what it is. The perceptions of it are mine. I anticipate a great improvement in my perceptive abilities as soon as I have some coffee.

With assistance from my psychiatrist I am weaning myself off my medication for manic depression/temporal lobe seizures and schizoaffective disorder. I believe that the combination of congnitive-behavioral therapy, electro-convulsive-therapy and psychotropic medication have allowed me to develop skills for coping with my disease. I want to see if the skills I have developed are sufficient by themselves to allow me to manage things without medication. I am into the fourth week of an eleven week process for weaning myself off of the medication. Things are going well.

The trick seems to be to guide my behavior by two principles:

1. Try to act with love and kindness toward all things (animate and inanimate).
2. Do a continual inventory of my actions and ask myself, "Is this going to help keep me away from or push me toward the mental hospital?".

Wait a second... There is a third principle - Never eat your boogers in public. This is frowned on by most people and could lead them to think that you are not "quite right".

Rick for President

This is my friend Rick Chacone from Uptown Bill's. He is not a politician. He is superman - you can tell by the T-Shirt he is wearing.

Unfortunately our president is a politician. He is not superman. He does not have the right T-Shirt.

Our president is also a poet. The following poem is made up of actual quotes by our President. You can verify this by checking on http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/piehigher.asp

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER

by George W. Bush

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

Food for Katrina Victims

Good to see our President taking action to alleviate the suffering of Katrina victims. What can you expect from the son of Barbara Bush who had this to say about those who lost everything to Katrina:

"Almost everyone I've talked to says, 'We're going to move to Houston.' What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them. "

The above quote was taken from a transcript of the September 5 show of Marketplace on NPR.

Katrina Leadership

I took this shot when I visited DC last spring. I wonder if Lincoln would have handled the Katrina disaster differently? Would he have waited to be called up by "local officials" before acting? Would he have hired others to speak for him? Or would he have simply provided leadership and sorted out the details later? Some Lincoln sayings our current president could benefit from:

"Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way."

"Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel and invastion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose and you allow him to to do whenever he may choose to day he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure."

And last but not least, Mr. Bush please remember:

"You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

Worrying About New Orleans

This is RDA, my wife, walking down the portico of the replica of the Parthenon in Nashville. She is not worrying about New Orleans in the picture. She is compassionate about their suffering today while she is in Iowa City.

I am worrying about New Orleans. What is the best way to help? I am sending money. Is there something else that I can do? Should I feel guilty for eating today when there are others that are not eating? Should I be disgusted with my government for responding so slowly? No. I do not think feelings of anger and disgust will help the people in New Orleans. I will spend some silent time meditating and praying and I will send money. If I find a way to do more then I will. More will be revealed. Meanwhile I will enjoy life to the fullest in honor of those who are not able to do so. Worry does no one any good. When I worry I miss the beauty of this moment.

Flea Market

I went to the Uptown Bill’s Labor Day Flea Market yesterday. I sold two cards for a total of three dollars. I had spent the night before anxiously preparing mounted prints of some of my original pieces of art. People were more interested in the cards. RDA and Doug (a friend) sold more stuff than I did. This made me bitter and brought out the cynic in me.

Suddenly the flea market was a metaphor for life in America. There we were, booth after booth of us, sweating in the sun hoping that someone would notice us - trading our junk to each other in an endless cycle of consumption. My new stuff today is tomorrow’s junk. Won’t you please buy some of my junk so that I can buy some more new stuff? Please, please buy so that I can go home feeling successful. Please, please notice me so that I can feel loved.

Fortunately, while I was musing on the meaninglessness of it all, a fly from the nearby dumpster landed on my arm. It was just looking for a meal. Rather than kill it I brushed it off. It kept coming back until finally it distracted me from my thinking. I went and bought a hamburger for myself and hot dogs for RDA and Doug. When Doug saw my hamburger he was disappointed with his hot dog.

Just like me I thought. Rather than being glad at having sold two cards; rather than enjoying the sunshine; rather than loving life for what I have I had momentarily chosen to dwell on what I did not have. Once I did this I became poor and dissatisfied with myself and everyone around me. Cynical thinking can end with me returning to the hospital. Thank you David. Thank you Universe. Thank you fly. Thank you dumpster.

By the way my art is still for sale. The price? You have to ask for it. I anticipate much better sales from this point forward. Perhaps I will branch out to eBay!

See todays MORE FLEA MARKET PIX for more photos of the flea market.

Remaining Geneva Pictures

In sequence we have pictures of:

1. Downtown Geneva
2. A path outside the Crowne Plaza Hotel Geneva
3. Proof that people in Antiquity were into pornography
4. Further proof that people in Antiquity loved pornography
5. A street musician - I gave her a franc. She did not love pornography. She gave me my franc back.
   

Farewell Geneva

This is me flying home from Geneva. I spent a week there after the conference in CAUX. Some day I will learn how to post pictures and text in sequence, for now I will post the remaining Geneva pictures on another post.

Geneva is a beautiful city. There is a lot more than chocolate there. The Swiss also have lots of watches, banks, cheese...and also a love of ancient pornography (at least some of them do - see my other post for today).