Son of Mary

Yes my mother's name was Mary but that is not what I am referring to. I am referring most specifically to a poem by Rudyard Kipling called The Sons Of Martha. It is a poetic relation of the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42

The poem elaborates heavily on the theme set by the passage of not worrying too much about the little things in life and to focus instead on God.

The first two lines of this poem are:

The sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.

I have been told many times over the past half of a decade that I come across as very pompous and arrogant. That my demeanor reflects this most heavily. And I have come to the decision that it is true. I am not saying that I am pompous or arrogant but I am acknowledging that my demeanor poses that impression. There is, however, a reason for this and it is for that reason that I have finally come to accept this perception.

In my youth I had a very peculiar characteristic. I didn't worry. In fact, that characteristic carried through until I was about 29 years of age. I simply did not worry. I felt that nothing of consequence could affect me. Because I did not worry I strolled through life. I had faith that God would allow no terrible harm to befall me and because of this I most certainly must have (and still do) appear to the world to be arrogant. To appear as if I believe myself better than the world. This, however, is not the case. It is simply that I believe whatever is presented to me in life that God will carry me through it. I felt this way because of an unerring and unfaltering faith in God. The thing that changed that was that I took on a family (which was and is a good thing.)

The problem was that I had always had faith in God to take care of me but I had been taught by society that it was my place to take care of my family. I felt that God would continue to care for me but that I had to take on the responsibility of my family. Basically I discovered that my faith was very narrow and limited.

It is because of this change in faith that I, myself, changed. When I took on my wife and children I suddenly started to worry. That worry has eaten away at me for 5 years. It began to eat at me in recognizable ways the moment I took on the role of father and husband and it began almost immediately to change me. It changed me from the man my wife had fallen in love with into a man who reacted to everything with fear.

Every time my wife said something and I mistook her meaning or reason for saying it I snapped back with fear. Every time we had a problem financially and I felt it was my fault for not providing I reacted with fear. Every time my wife reacted irrationally to a situation (which was frequently in the beginning because she was mentally ill and not diagnosed or treated properly) I did not know how to react and so I reacted in fear. In fact I look at all of my poor behaviors and I realize that they were, and are, all manifestations of fear.

There are two things that make this realization all the worse for me. The first is that I can look back and see many times when God showed me that he would take care of me AND my family. He tried as hard as I would let him to show me that I did not need to fear and yet I continued to do so. The second thing is that I now that I am aware of this I have let go of my fear and it will no longer control me. I am now returning to the man I was before I found fear but I believe it is too late. It took me too long to listen to God. It took me too long to realize what had made me change from the person I was (the person I liked, the person my wife loved) into the impatient, loud and reactive man I have been for five years. I believe that my family has been to irrevocably harmed by my fearful reactions to forgive them and certainly too much to forget them and so they will forever remember me for what I have done for these past five years and no matter what I become they will always FEAR that I will become that way again.

There is a very distinct chance that I will continue on in my life alone. My wife has lost the attraction she had to me because I became an unattractive person and because of this she wants to move on. My children love me because children are forgiving but they owe their loyalty first and foremost to their mother and that is how it should be. My wife dislikes the desert whereas I have an affinity for it. She will move on with her life and her life will carry her away from here and it will, most probably, do so without me. I will hurt for the loss of the woman I love with all my heart and for the children I would give everything for but I know I cannot follow when they leave. I may see them on occasion and they will be able to see the man I will have re-become but always they will remember the man I was. I can only apologize for that man and hope someday to be forgiven for him.

I am a son of Mary who, for a time, became a son of Martha. I worried too much about the world and forgot to listen to God. For this my life has suffered. Not as a punishment but as a lesson. I know that God will care for me and I know that I will be carried through this. I just wish I had let Him carry me before I fell so far behind the needs of those I love.

Terrible I tell you

Not a single comment on any of my posts in over 10 weeks now. Guess I started getting too weird for everyone...

Another dream

Why? Mostly 'cause it gets it off my chest and also because I haven't posted anything in a little while. Before I start I would like to post a link though. Intrusive Thoughts are something that everyone experiences from time to time. There are those, however, who have extremely vivid thoughts or who have trouble dismissing them or accepting them. The page itself is not nearly as helpful as the comments by visitors. If you have intrusive thoughts and feel helpless or alone in experiencing them check out the user comments at that site.

So I found myself with some time to kill sitting at a table in Charlie's restaurant. I had a while before I had to get back from lunch so I treated myself to a protracted hallucination.

At first I see a wooden post. Then at the base of the post a shape comes into focus. The shape is a cartoon like drawing of fire. As I see the fire my perspective pans upward and pulls back just a little. I see that the post is a cross and that flames are rising from the arms and top of the cross.

Just as I see all this a little boy around 11 years old leans in from the left. He has fair skin and glasses and his bangs are brushed into a high "wave" shape. He leans back out after only a split second.

Now my view pulls back some more and I see that the cross is a painting on the wall and the boy is standing in front of it. He takes a match and lights fire to the lower right corner of the picture and watches as it starts to burn. After it has burned the corner off of the picure he cuts the burning section off with a pair of scissors.

The burning corner falls to the floor where it ignites the carpet and part of the wall. The fire burns very hot and fast as if there is an accelerant involved. The fire burs so quickly in fact that there is a 4 foot wide swath of fire with only decimated ash in its wake. As the fire takes hold of the room I see the boy sitting on the floor with his back against the left wall. His left knee is drawn up while his right leg is extended and he is reading a book.

The flames engulf him entirely in a matter of seconds (he doesn't even move) and as they pass over him his body crumbles into a pile of ash in their wake.

Then I open my eyes, take a sip of my soda and head off to the Home Depot to wander around before resuming my post at the paint desk for another 3 hours.

Wrong on SO MANY levels

Obvious issues...1) Freaky, Twilight Zone, monkeys 2) Friends who just keep on riding on their "9 block ride" and don't stop or seem to care that their friends have been killed along the way 3) Creepy announcer trying to make witty remarks about each death 4) The fact that this was an educational video in the 70's. No wonder our parents are so screwed up ;-)

More sleepless dreams

I see a spinning planter (it looks like an inverted pyramid set on a cubical base.) The planter spins faster and faster and then inverts and becomes a brown cloth wizard's hat. The hat is being worn by an old, dark skinned Dwarf with white hair. The Dwarf removes the hat and there is a smaller, rust red hat under it. This hat has a braided tassel. The tassel has a frayed end that moves closer and closer to me. The end turns black and becomes hair. The hair is the pony tail of a shrunken head. The head turns toward me. It has bright white paint markings over it's eyes and the lips are pulled far back from the teeth. It is turning to the left and it's jaw protrudes grotesquely forward. As it comes to face me I see that the upper jaw is broken away from the teeth to the eye socket on the head's right side.

And so I open my eyes...not because of the imagery (shrunken skulls with shattered jaws are VERY tame compared to what I sometimes see) but because I'm tired and the head just stopped and hung there staring at me and I didn't want to wait it out to see what was coming up next.

Garmin Nuvi 205 additional information

The reason for this post is that Garmin lists the nuvi 205 as not being Geocaching friendly. I just got the opportunity to use my nuvi 205 for Geocaching and it worked nicely. The only complaint I would have is that the navigation icon covers the geocache icon as you get close to it.

So here's how easy it was:

1) Grab your .loc or .gpx file from geocaching.com
2) Use Mapsource (free software) to load the entire loc or gpx file onto your nuvi
3) Use the Nuvi to navigate to the cache
4) Once you're close go into the menu and select Tools, Settings, System, Usage Mode and change it over to "Pedestrian"
5) Return to the main map and then change over to the 2D map view

Suddenly the unit goes into a detailed mode that gives you accuracy to within a few feet. The only problem (as I stated above) is that the "vehicle" icon is kind of big. If someone could create a "geocaching" vehicle icon (A simple cross hair with an arrow at it's extent to indicate direction of travel) it would be perfect.

Also, the Nuvi 205 has a nice feature that allows you to set multiple "via points." I set a geocache that was most distant from me as my destination and then set each geocache between me and there as via points. The nuvi will automatically work those via points into your travel plan in the most efficient order based on your route preference (faster time, shorter distance, less fuel, off road)

All in all I would say it's quite suitable for Geocaching despite what the web site says. Don't forget though that if you're going for multiple caches you'll want to switch that Usage Mode back to Automobile before heading from one cache to the next. Otherwise the unit thinks you're on foot and will keep telling you to do silly things like cross the street to the left hand side and will weave you through all sorts of side roads and places you wouldn't really want to take your car.

A dream without a dream

There is a white coffee cup with a wide blue band around it hanging from the string under a sun hat. The hat is pink and has a white ribbon around it. There are real roses woven into the ribbon. One of the roses has a hammock strung from one edge of a petal to the other side. Laying in the hammock is an Emperor penguin. It is lying on its left side facing away from me with it's beak pointing upward in relation to it's body. The penguin is reading a book with very old leather binding.

Ok, so now that you're totally confused here's what's going on. I experience two phenomenon. One is very rare and is called hypnagogic hallucinations or hypnagogia. The other phenomenon that I experience is constant and is called "closed-eye hallucinations".

Basically put I have extremely vivid hallucinations that manifest immediately whenever I close my eyes. Sometimes these hallucinations are full sensory hallucinations with sound, smell, etc. but they are usually just visual. They are very vivid and rapidly evolving. The scene I described above evolved in the span of 10 seconds or so.

I think they are interesting. I think they tell me something about myself as I tend to just let them run their course and do not try to affect them with conscious direction. I just close my eyes and enjoy the ride. My wife, on the other hand, is somewhat disturbed by them. As such I don't generally discuss them and have given up the habit of describing the evolution of the scenes as they are happening. Still I think that some of them are interesting enough to share so that's what I'm doing. From time to time I will post here with descriptions of these scenes. As they are immediately available to me I should have no excuse not to blog regularly.

And just to whet your appetite a bit I'll close my eyes for a few seconds before heading off to bed.

There is a sloping grassy hill that drops gently into the bank of a river. The hill becomes the tip of a crocodile's tail. The crock starts to walk off to the left and swings its tail as it goes. The tail comes toward me and blocks out all the light leaving me in darkness. First a coiled cord appears glowing green like glow in the dark paint. The cord is then filled out into a telephone. The receiver lifts off the pone and points toward me. Then the ear piece starts to twist clockwise and the mouth piece twists counter clockwise as the middle is "wrung out." Blue and pink musical notes start to fall from the wrinkles as the handset is wrung.

And then I open my eyes to finish this blog and say good night.

Garmin Nuvi 205

For the most part this blog is just a ranting and raving spot for me. However, I sometimes run across a product or piece of software I really like and I figure I should share that with the one (maybe two) people who read this thing.

We just purchased our first vehicular GPS system. Because we don't travel a whole lot and don't have much money to spare we went simple and chose the Garmin Nuvi 205. I figured "GPS is GPS and I like the Garmin name." It turns out we made a fine choice and I couldn't be more pleased.

I would urge anyone who travels to get one of these units. You can always lend it to a friend or family member when they travel (just make them swear on something important that they'll remove it from the car EVERY time they leave the vehicle.)

Bottom line though is that this thing guided us through Los Angeles as if we had lived there for years. We found food, hotel, gas and shopping with absolute ease; we were redirected instantly when I couldn't fight traffic fast enough to make a turn; we took strange and unknown off ramps for puppy potty breaks with the knowledge that we would most certainly be able to rejoin the freeway; we knew when we could afford a leg stretch or meal because the ETA is constantly updated; it even encouraged us to save on gas with an "eco challenge" game that monitors your driving and rewards you with points for accelerating and decelerating smoothly, using cruise control and keeping your speed under 65.

We are doomed

I was at Wal-Mart about a week ago and was standing in line in front of a couple of "skaters." They had the long and grungy hair, loose clothing and they had the long and lazy drawl to their voices reminding me of Keanu Reeves in every movie he's ever done (but especially Bill & Ted)

So these two were looking at the candy and one of them asked the other "Should I get two of the regular size or one king size?" And the response was "The king size 'cause of the tax. It's only tax on one thing instead of tax on two things so it's less tax"

I was barely able to complete my purchase as I was concentrating on both not laughing out loud and also on not finding out if it was possible to slap the stupid out of them.

All I could think (once I could think again) was that we are doomed because these two will some day vote. But then again maybe they'll vote for reduced taxes for multiple item purchases...

Crafty Devils

What do 14 square feet of framed drywall, 36" of 1x3 lumber, 15 feet of 16 gauge galvanized wire, 38.25 square feet of cardboard, a kitchen table and two wooden chairs have in common?

That's what's required to keep our puppies confined to where we want them. It's amazing how crafty puppies can be at 7 weeks old.

I'm in charge here

I was at Burger King the other day (I must recommend their vegetarian burger as it's made with a morning star branded patty and sweet sauce. Quite tasty) and a woman walked in with a little girl who couldn't have been more than 5 years old.

Immediately upon entering the girl announced that she had to go to the bathroom and led the mother directly to it.

Once done in the bathroom they approached the counter and the little girl proclaimed that she was going to order for herself. She placed her order with the employee and then went to find a table while her mother ordered for herself.

When their food had arrived the little girl again had to use the bathroom and would not take no for an answer. Her mother told her to "just go" and stayed seated at the table. The little girl would have none of this and stood her ground until the mother relented and accompanied her to the bathroom.

Upon returning to the table and getting situated the girl decided she wanted to sit in a booster chair so the mother got up and got the chair and got the girl into it.

After this they were quiet for a while and my attention wandered until just before they left. That was when the mother, in response to something the little girl had asked, replied "because I'm in charge."

Something deep inside tells me that whatever that comment was in reference to that the little girl got her way in the end.