Entry Note To Self...in this our life

Nov-el a noun...a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

So you see our lives really are a novel...a fictitious prose of some length, representing character and action with some degree of realism...

In This Our Life,

Every person's life is worthy of a novel. One's life is a true novel, and one they can believe in. Philosopher Jonathan Glover, pondering the notion of what he calls "self creation", argues that self creation tends to make life like a novel, penned by a single author. This process begins early. Children themselves are emerging novelist, assembling their life stories from the numerous emotional incidents in their daily lives. They are the tellers of the stories they are, busy assembling it into coherent life histories.

In our daily lives we are ad hoc novelist. We are both the hero of our own plot and it's creator. So in a very real sense, we are the author of our lives. Do we not sense the drama in people's lives, the plots they live through, the suspense they create, the discovery of unique characteristics and the microcosmic commentary each life offers? And what about their inevitable creative passage through problematic experiences?...a novel indeed...What will you name your novel?...Doc

Discovering Ourselves...Focus

Field of llusion...can you find it?

To use the metaphor inspired by the brilliantly forward-thinking 19th Century American psychologist, William James, our visual attention system works a lot like a spotlight that scans the world around us. This ‘attentional spotlight’ represents the finite region of space that is occupied by our focus of attention at any given moment. What falls inside the spotlight is consciously processed while that which is outside is not. By moving our eyes around a visual scene, we can shine our spotlight on any area of the environment we want to inspect in detail. In fact, in-depth processing of an object, a string of text, or a location can’t be carried out unless it is first brought inside the spotlight of attention. Our conscious awareness operates like a spotlight, bringing the details that matter into sharp relief.

We have a localized spotlight of attention because taking in all the visual information from the environment at once would overwhelm the brain, which is a system with limited resources, much like a computer. The spotlight allows your mind to focus only on what's important while ignoring the irrelevant. This makes reality comprehensible.

Now imagine that this attentional behavior is going on all the time. As the threat bias filters out the positive and lets in only the negative, worry and fear flow through the cognitive system. The result is an overly threat-conscious appraisal of the environment. Essentially, to the anxious, the world literally looks like a much scarier, unhappier place.
.

Lessons From The Sane Asylum...life

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

Louise Erdrich

The Beauty In Humanity

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.” 

Henri J.M. Nouwen

The Beauty In Humanity

The beauty of the human soul is not in the pretty face, it’s found within the heart, and hands of those who look, and stay. With all the daily violence going on around the globe, we might feel that the beauty of the heart and hands are lost. But did humanity really get lost? 

Let us revive our hopes for the human condition, and give each other faith in our fellow humans. Sense beauty, express gratitude and xperience forgiveness...Doc

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

Iain S. Thomas

Lemme Think About It...never thought of that

"What if you do die of anxiety, created by something that didn't happen?"

From Inside The Sane Asylum...Where Y'at?

Who Dat Whodunnit...a cool dude. Shady in a cool way...ran into him at JT's. A little bar along A1A. The soft white sand leads through a screen door to the nearest bar stool. A U shaped bar serving several savory characters. They have this large juice jar at one corner. Filled with pickled eggs and other pieces of mass I could not identify. Anyway, it's not the jar I'm trying to get too. It was the face reflecting through pickled rum juice that captured my attention. It was a neighbor and friend of mine from around Pensacola by way of three or four hurricanes. Originally from Tennessee as I recall.

We were at the same hotel when Matthew blew by. Just happened by his door during the Tennessee-Texas A&M game he was streaming, while wearing these orange socks on his hands. Did I mention he was screaming at the top of his voice? Well he was. Grown man...

I don't think the behavior was as much about the game as it was we both chose this part of the world to inhabit based on our scientific research. Safest place along the coast and here we are. Watching a grown man put socks on his hands to cast a winning spell on a football game in a hurricane...Tennessee lost in overtime by the way...I think the voodoo worked for the game...But it's my opinion that when it goes into overtime you have to take the socks off your hand and put them somewhere else. Not sure where. But hey, don't listen to me, I chose this place to live...

Back to JT's...he poked his head around the pickle jug and said, "Who Dat?" The only thing that came to my mind was Whodunnit? So here's the thing...He wanted me to put him in one of my post. I told him I would as soon as I had a good name for him. An altered selfie of sorts. So Who Dat Whodunnit, this ones for you...Where Y'at?...Doc

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Therapy...should

 "The constant message of 'should' we hear from our mind and then we take to the world around us       and it becomes they also 'should'," 

From The Study...a conversation of possibilities

I recently ran across this article from Big Think regarding the premise that we are living in a Matrix and we are in fact a computer simulation...much like in the movie Matrix. Gave me much relief. I knew I had been hacked...what a thought and you know how I like thoughts of possibilities. Think about this possibility...

Do you think we’re actually living in a gigantic computer simulation like the one in The Matrix? If you do, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in some very famous, very wealthy company. Near the end of a recent New Yorker article about Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley tech-company incubator, this paragraph raised the possibility we’re in need of a red pill:

Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer; two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation. 

Stopped To Ponder...Fear

"Fear is its own enemy. It does not want to feel it's self,
because it fears it's own self."

From Inside The Sane Asylum...glancing blow

Glancing Blow...yep, made it through the acquaintance with Sir Matthew...What a ride! I stayed holed up at this hotel about ten miles inland from the barrier island. Weathered it pretty well. Great hotel and staff that seemed to have practiced this routine as a critical emergency. 

Never will forget the first evening of the stay. I ventured to the lobby to see what liquid entertainment might be had. As I entered the lobby there was a mass of people. Picture this...all of the baby boom and greatest generation generation. I thought I had died and God placed me at Live Oak Retirement Center. Made me grin of course.

My first thought..."I selected a very safe bunker. I'm sure they would know the safest." Then I remembered the settlers of Denver. Seems they were headed west to find their fortunes in gold but got to the foot of the Rockies and said something to the effect, " Hell NO!".  They stopped right there. Think that may be the case with these settlers. Headed west with their lady and their walkers to save one last day of toddy time. Got ten miles west, saw the first hotel and said "Hell No!" Stopped right here. What a sight.

Toddy time it was. George and Mertle talking to Bernice and Bernie. Harry was out of it, sitting on the coffee table looking at the fish in the aquarium. His wife Bert standing close by ruminating if she turned on the porch light, or something like that. Then there was this one that came gliding by...Walked right up to me with a wine in hand and said " I own the mortuary in Flagler Beach." Now that was funny as hell! I mean really funny. After I finished bending over from laughter it only seemed reasonable for me to ask the name of his Mortuary. " Creg's with a C". Now that was funny too. "Well Creg, with a C, so nice to meet you", finally breached my lips. "No, my name is Allen and this is my wife named Mary", he spouted. Now that was funny...back home today and all is well with a grin on my face thinking about Allen and his wife Mary...Thanks Allen. Hope all are well...forgot to ask if Allen is with one L or two?...Doc

Lemme Think About It...opinions

"Wolves don't lose sleep, over the opinions of the sheep."

Photographic Museum of Humanity...

The Vanishing of Portugal's Countryside

Behind a fable’s title, Maria Oliveira recounts the vanishing of Portugal’s countryside, where her roots unraveled and still are. 

            © Maria Oliveira, from the series Under the Surveillance of Ancient Animals

This series is not the portrait of the changes nor about the rural exodus. Rather, it’s a diary of her re-encounter with the place where she grew up. “I started this project to think about my relationship with the place where I grew up, to capture what this place means to me after years and how it has changed”, she explains.

“The title comes from a poem that I wrote. They are many wild horses around this place, and as the village is more and more empty they are coming closer to the homes. Nature is slowly conquering the place where people used to live”, she explains.

© Maria Oliveira, from the series Under the Surveillance of Ancient Animals

The silhouette of a cow appears within the fog, both majestic and quiet. Oliveira’s images are imbued with silence that we imagine reigning with these landscapes. The black and white of the photographs contribute to distill the atmosphere of a place frozen in time, uncertain, between life and death. And mystery is at every corner, on the form of a wild footprint, an aging dog looking like a wolf, the rays of the moon on nature.

“There is a mystery that this place arouses in me. When I was living there, people were telling me stories about the past. Even if I don’t think about it, it’s half way between a dream and a memory”, she explains.

© Maria Oliveira, from the series Under the Surveillance of Ancient Animals

It also gives a strong sense of uncertainty, as if the past was somehow taking over the present and not leaving much room for the future. The horizon is usually blurry, hidden by the frequent mist covering those mountains. “There is a strong feeling of emptiness that goes inside people living there, which enables them to reach a calm way to approach life. People are very strong in their way to live with only a few things and to accept the thin line between life and death.”

A symbolic photo is that of a person, seen from far away, still, in the middle of a dirt road. “This photo is really representative of what this place means to me. Someone seems stopped in the middle of something. There is nature around, and the person is lost in some ways; it’s just a small point in the middle of the nature.”

See more on Maria’s PHmuseum profile: www.phmuseum.com/mariaoliveira

Stopped to Ponder Series-Sunday morning Soul

"We all have a calling."

They call him the Wayfarer. When asked why he always feeds the pigeons, he  replied..."We all have a calling."

A living soul would seem to be a reflection of our character or those things that describe us...our IsNess.
But let us  assume that some day in the future...we will just call, future day...our souls become fully
emancipated and manifest itself as a way of totally being...

We really do not know if it will possess the character of goodness or the character of no goodness. Of course
we all think goodness, but this might give us pause to ponder the deeds of our character before it becomes a soul.

Wayfarer has a soul void of defenses and desires...the last words he spoke...
"Release all that does not serve you."