Poor Jackie hated me.

It is always hard to come back.  When one has been off it is hard to be on.  I have been slightly off all my life so this is natural.
Maybe this is why my sister hated me as a child.  Being slightly off garners a lot of attention.  I was so like my father in this way that we totally bemused my mom and perhaps my sister. 
My earliest memories of my sister are of her not liking me and me trying to get her approval.  I think this happens a lot with younger sisters.  I am sure this played a part with my nieces.
The younger sister never feels as valued by mom as does the older.  It stands to reason that since the older girl was mom's first little baby girl, she got all the pictures and attention and special love only an only child or first girl can experience.  I see the love lavished on baby Natalie now in our family and woe be to the second if ever she comes along.  Mama favored Jackie all along but when I was sick it took a lot of attention away from her in her adolescent years. 
Anyway, I adored my sister as much as she loathed me.  I always wanted to be near her and her friends.  Mama used to make Jackie take me with her when she went to the movies with friends or even on dates, like to the country fair and the little traveling circus.  You see we lived in the country and there were at first no other little kids around me.
I had rheumatic fever(St Vitus Dance), when I was like six and a half to seven and a half.  I had to stay in bed all the time for one year and then start up real slow.  They didn't want my heart strained in any way. The thing I had resulted in facial movements and twitches, but hadn't effected my heart as rheumatic fever often does.  I was on penicillin until I graduated from high school.  The year I was in bed I had to have a blood test(sedrate) once a week.  My mom and dad ran a truck stop cafe and garage while I was in bed.  Our house was on a little hill and my bed was placed next to a window where I could sometimes catch a glimpse of mama through her window in the little lunch room down the hill from me. She worked very long hours cooking and serving at the cafe.  We were connected by a walkie/talkie from my bed, down the little hill and to the kitchen attached to the garage.  Mama could hear me all the time but she had to press down on a button to speak to me.  I used to sing to myself and talk out loud as I told myself stories.  The truckers would sometime asked my mom what kind of children's program she was listening to on the radio.  She would say it was just her sick daughter.  I'm sure the word for her had more than one meaning.
I used to ask my mom to put something down on the button like a soup can, so I could hear what was going on in the kitchen, but she could not then hear me.  She hated to do this because she wanted to hear me and monitor me all the time.  Sometimes, after school when Jackie got home from school, mama would allow the button to be down and I could hear all the exciting things going on in the real world.  One day mom's worst fears were realized.  Jackie got home.  The button was pressed down, and Jackie decided to listen to the radio.  I complained because with the radio on I could not hear the customers in the cafe and my mother.  Jackie screamed at me and said "you are  a spoiled little brat  who always gets what you want" and she ran out of the house crying.  SHE LEFT THE RADIO ON.  I cried, very upset and then the program changed and instead of music a scary  horror serial came on.  It was dusk, though still late afternoon, as nights were long in the north country in the winter. Classical spooky music played in the sound track for the scary program. I became terrified and kept crying for mama.  My little hands beat against my window trying to get her attention and I screamed and kept crying and screaming.  I do not know how long this went on or when my sister came back and found me but it was a horrific experience for all of us.  My sister got punished, I got babied even more and mama would never let the button be put down again unless an adult was with me. I am sure this didn't endear me more to poor Jackie.
All I know is that still, when I am alone at dusk I feel somewhat scared and I've never really taken to most classical music.  I HAVE BEEN SCARED FOR LIFE.
Mama used to bring me special food treats the year I was in bed and I gained weight.  I could eat all the pie, cake and ice cream I wanted.  Still today, food, especially sweets comfort me when I am feeling sick or blue.  I can remember Aunt Mildred telling mama she was making me as fat as a little pig.  Mama tried to cut me back but I had a way of  asking daddy and he always caved.
daddy had special feelings for his sick little girl and I really could do no wrong. I was crazy and funny and Jackie seethed when I got special treats or little presents.  I remember when Dad worked for Spartan he went on a business trip and came back with a gold colored metal ashtray that said Spartan on it.  He gave the ashtray to me and Jackie was furious.  He gave her some little packets of Sen Sen but it didn't help.(Sen Sen are little mouth mints sort of like TicTacs)
I tried later to give the ashtray to Jackie but every time I tried she would get more angry as it wasn't really about the ashtray.
I look at these things with hindsight 20/20 but then I just thought she hated me.
I an done for now but we will definitely come back to my sister, who loves me now, but hated me then. 

O.K. So you do not like philo/religio thoughts

O.Kaaaaaaaaa


We will move on to something else.  Need to keep my followers happy and engaged.  Why? Because this is what I do.  At 70 you do not have a lot of energy for challenging new outlets but I damn well am going to keep looking. 
Social media is perplexing isn't it?  You find out things about others you are often better off not knowing. Much of what we learn is useless but amusing.  Some of it is downright unacceptable.  Yet it is the world wide phenomenon of the 21st century.  Everyone who doesn't have a devise, if only a smart phone, is, almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world.  Maybe this is the best way to be but it is too insular for me.
 My dad would have hated social media.  Of course he was mainly interested in himself and his own little pleasures. He would sit in his recliner and watch Vanna White turn the letters and think he was in hog heaven. I am seriously afraid my sister is doing the same thing, but I am not sure if she has a recliner.  I know she is afraid of some of the technology and thinks her secrets might be put out there.  Who cares about secrets when you are over 70.  You know that God knows anyway, and he is the only one who matters once you are dead.  Gloria Vanderbilt sure doesn't worry, and I don't either.  What are you going to do sue me, or arrest me, or defame me, or even ignore me!!! ?  None of it matters much anymore. 
Now if I was a young person, yes, I would worry.  For most people their professional life depends on their image and in only certain fields can you let it all hang. 
Oh, the freedom and joy of the elderly.  For what you have to put up with in pain, limited mobility, and relative poverty you gain in mostly untold advantages.  In the future I might let out even more of our aging secrets.

Being and Nothingness, a journey in understanding.

I'm not sure how to title this yet as I don't know what it is about.  I sit here as the sound and the muse enter my consciousness.  It is an altered state as I am here but not here.  Everywhere I hear other sounds like the keys clicking and the heater motor whirring but the sound in my head overrides all else.  I experience dry mouth so go for more coffee all the while my sound is with me.  I know what most of you must think.  Tinnitus. Srini experienced tinnitus several years back and it was found he had a blockage in his inner ear channel. It almost drove him crazy until he went to physical therapy and in one session it was gone.  I would be very unhappy if my sound disappeared. It grounds me in everything I do.   Dizzy Gillespie said once that on drugs he could hear the space between the notes.  That is what this is like.  The sound beneath all sounds.  The continuous ground which lies beneath everything.
Being is that ground.  I AM that I AM.  Nothing can exist without the ground or Being, but everything exists within it.  Contrast every thing with no thing.  All things come into and then pass from existence.  No thing can nor can not exist because it is NO THING.  Existence presupposes thingness. Non existence is just a metaphor involving that which cannot be imagined. One cannot imagine nothingness.  Space/time/universe, existence is always filled with some thing.  That thing can perhaps be imagined as a vacuum or a void or a blank space or antimatter.  Each of these participates in thingness. Not, no thing ness. Nothing can be conceived as outside the whole of existence.  We can talk in the abstract about WHAT IS NOT. If we try to deny existence in any form we are left with SOME THING beyond infinity or eternity but we always hold in our imagination some thing, that is the WHAT.  So we are left with what is and what is not. Notness trys to deny existence, but since it is not, it can not.
This is all so clear to me and my muse but I am aware that is can be confusing or even absurd to my audience.  All I can say is Everything IS, and Nothing is Not.  There is nothing outside the Whole or Being, or God.  All things are contained within the Whole and it is inconceivable that they are Not. How do I know this.  The only way one knows is to know.  Many people believe that they know but when you really know there is an internal realization that yes, this is not a belief or something some wise man said.  It is knowledge itself , recognized.
I owe my tortured journey to three individuals,  Plato, Spinoza and Harvey Burstein, (teacher of philosophy at Queens college.  I owe my understanding to my ground of my being who let me know.

The Sound of Music

When I don't really feel like writing I just start writing.  The old clichés go through my mind. Just do it.  Do it now. Don't procrastinate.  Losers never win(how did that get in there?)
Anyway, I mostly try to face the unpleasant task after a few minutes of avoiding it.  This doesn't always work as a lot of drivel can come out but I try to keep an open mind.  If it is important to my lazy brain there might be something in it for my sharp, intuitive, restless, and creative being.  So today I'm just plodding along awaiting my muse.  I wonder about the word muse.  a muse ment.  It is a part of it all.  If the muse is not amused it will simply not cooperate.  After all, there should be something for everyone in my blogs.
I was discussing the sound in my head with a dear friend in December.  This high pitched sound has been with me as long as I can remember.  When I was a child I used to ask Mama, "what is that high pitched sound?" I used to think the light bulb was humming or something. Since she never heard it and would look at me strangely I didn't mention it to anyone else.  Mama looked at me strangely a lot but that is another story for another day.
So I have always had the sound with me as my companion.  When I used to have migraine headaches I would try to relax into the sound(go into an Alpha state).  If there were no distractions I would go to sleep in the sound and wake with no migraine.  At times the sound drove me crazy because I didn't understand it and would wonder why it was always with me.  I figured it was some kind of Electra/chemical process  and I would occasionally ask others if they too had a sound. No one I asked ever did but I did read in a few places that some people hear this but it is believed to have something to do with the inner channel of the ear.  I do have large floppy ears so I thought this was most likely a result of my strange hearing apparatus.   When I practiced transcendental meditation for a few months I was given a mantra but it never worked.  I simply could not meditate.
Much later I discovered that if I tuned into this sound when I prayed I could feel God's presence more strongly, but again didn't think too much about it. 
Then, along in December, comes my friend of untold years and lo and behold, she too has a permanent sound in her head.  Upon discussion I learn that as a child she too questioned people and she also got little understanding and strange looks.  She told me she has discovered this is an om sound. 
I still do not know for sure but it has been humming like crazy since I began writing this piece. 
I feel that, among other things it is my muse, my guardian angel, my soul.  It is always with me.  Sometimes in the background, very quiet, a mere whisper.  At other times, like now it is a roar. a celestial song playing loudly in my brain.  It is in me, yet I actually hear it. When I tune in and let the sound envelope me there is no fear and no problem. It simply is and it comforts me and drives me and consoles me.
My husband loves to listen to music, I often like the quiet because the music is in my head.
I feel it is an integral part of me and makes me what I am.  So much for this post.  If you have a similar sound please let me know.  There cannot only be two of us in the world!!!.