Saturday 30 October 1999
|
Pic of the day: Washing day! Did you know that the inside of your washing machine is connected to another dimension? The World of Lost and Lonely Socks! That's where they all go, vanishing from our universe without a trace. Few are the brave souls who dare follow them into the unknown ... Uh... don't try this at home, kids. The picture is arranged, to say the least. Still, I bet I made you wonder for a moment, hmm?Yes, it is washing day in the Chaos Node again! Not only did I get to wash some clothes, I also found the hiding place of budding new dust bunnies and terminated them. Presumably there will be less such things in the future, now that the air cleaner is catching the dust while it is still in the air. The majority of the clothes washed - in number if not quite in mass - were boxer shorts. Yes, I do have a strong preference for boxers. Don't leave home without them! Covering all the essential areas and not gnawing you anywhere, they are wonderful smallclothes. They don't look half bad either, in my humble opinion. Some of them are getting a bit worn by now, but they are cheap enough that I can buy new ones. If you prefer them in pastel colors, you can wash them together with cheap new clothes at a sufficiently high temperature. I discovered this by accident, once when a bunch of white boxers shared the washing machine with the new red jogging suit. Flamingo pink, the newest trend in boxer shorts! Well, perhaps not. People haven't seen enough of them to start a craze, and hopefully won't. ... I was up way too long into the night, till over 3. I then slept for ca 5 hours, and woke up fresh and eager for a new day. This is probably because it was Saturday ... if it had been a workday, I might have been as tired as an old sock. But I think it also matters a lot that I wake by myself. If woken by he clock radio, I am often much more tired, even though I wake at practically the same time. And during the night, the soreness in my throat disappeared! I have not felt any of it all day long. But now in the evening I do feel some tightness in my lower throat or upper bronchies. It is hard to say where the body ends and the mind begins, though. Anyway I'm not even wheezing, and there are lots of people who have lived years with bronchies that play bagpipes on their own. It may just be my subconscious looking for cheap sympathy. :)I am not quite sure what mechanisms that regulate breathing in each of us, I mean fine tune it. But mine seems to be tuned to maintain a fairly high oxygen content, more than average. I start to get dizzy from hyperventilation almost immediately if I start to breathe more deeply by my own will. Such as when I had to breathe deeply for a while during my doctor visit (he had to listen a lot of places). I almost fainted. Protracted coughing, screaming, even singing can make me dizzy with hyperventilation. On the other hand, I don't get dizzy when I rise up quickly. Wonder if the two are opposites? I mention this because I just became dizzy from trying my bronchial cough to no avail. There may not be anything to dislodge tonight. Now that I know how it works, I stopped the dizziness by slowing my breathing. In the past, I would breathe harder, hyperventilate and pass out in typically inappropriate places. (There are not many good places to faint in contemporary society, come to think of it.) ... All in all, I seem to have a much higher body awareness now than as a young man. In a way this is ironic, since I now have that much less time left in the body. And there will surely be no use for body awareness where I go afterwards. One should think that people grow gradually less attuned to the material plane as we approach the exit. (Not that I hope to exit for a long time yet, but it must be closer than before, logically speaking.) Experience shows, however, that we grown-ups are more earthbound than the young ones. Not just the body awareness that I mentioned. Many people also grow attached to their material belongings, their career or other temporary things. In some cultures, such as religious Hindu tradition, the elderly are expected to withdraw from their material attachment when the task of child rearing is finished. If still alive at the time where all the children are self-supporting, a man will start to distribute his material possessions. He may retain what he needs for a simple life, or in extreme cases he may become a beggar monk. People are expected to show respect for such an elderly beggar monk and give him all that he needs to maintain life, as if he were their own father. This way, those who follow this tradition extricate themselves from the complexities of life while still in the world. I have met a few elderly people in our culture too that have gone this way. But many continue to hoard and to meddle till their body fails them.I feel that I already live a fairly simple life. Yet, the number of material possessions tend to creep slowly upwards. Mostly it is because I am incredibly bad at throwing away things. From old shoes to defunct electronics, from 10 year old magazines to a wheezing old accordion that is almost certainly older than I am ... It just accumulates. I'm not sure how much of my soul is in it, though. If I live long enough, I will have to move again. Then I may find out. :) I have to say, though, that the place I now live is very favorable in almost every way. And the landlord is great, too.Speaking of moving, I now have new neighbors. The house that I mentioned was on sale. The one nearest my door and my bathroom window. Not that I think that has anything to do with it... |
|