random

If anybody happens to read this, please note that I am thinking out loud here. I put this stuff up here for me to look at. If anybody else finds any of it useful, great. But I certainly have no fixed expectations for this approach (scattershot?) It's just the only way I can think of to keep track of all these random, yet seemingly connected, ideas. It's like this massive collection of sticky notes that I can't keep track of any other way. As such I periodically lose some of them, or they get buried under layers of things that catch my interest for a while, and then, when I lose interest, the old things may re-surface and catch my attention again. And so on. Over and over again. Covering old ground, like walking a path again and again until every stone, evey bump, every patch of grass is known and familiar. That way, when something truly new shows up, you can actually see it, rather than missing it because you've never really looked carefully at any of it before.

Today, so far:
Wondering why I drink so much Coke. What does it do for me?
Theories to date: The caffeine helps kick me past the depression so that I can actually do things.

And the Jack Daniels is the same, only opposite - it kicks the hyperdrive sensitivity and hypervigilance into the off position for a while, so that my body/central nervous system is able to actually experience relaxation. It's pretty cool, because if I get the mix right the 'calm' effect can last through to the next day, which is amazingly enjoyable if you've ever been a person who's constantly 'amped up' by life. I've noticed lately that now that my body has a chemical experience of relaxation, I'm better able to get there without assistance. And on the days when I can't get there single-handedly (-mindedly??), I don't shame or berate myself, but instead just get out that lovely bottle and clink myself a wee drink. And then I remember - ahhh, that feeling of relaxation! How lovely! How wonderful to climb down off the high-stress ladder of always being 'on', of 'keeping up with the Joneses', of 'keeping your act together'. ('Act', another one to deconstruct. Another time, maybe.)


All my life people have been telling me I'm too sensitive, insisting that I perceive things that don't exist. Well, what if they're wrong? What if, by the way I construct my life, I'm actually able to be quiet enough to hear and see things that they can't perceive because they're making too much damn noise all the time???

Like ley lines, for example. Now, a ley line may or may not exist. Dunno, jury's out, and really, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether feng shui 'works' or not, either. What matters is getting in touch with one's own intuition to a level that does you some good. Fuck what other people say or think. Are they you? Do they live in your body and have to (get to?) have your experiences??? Fuck no!!!!! And so where the fuck do they get off telling you what to do or how to be or how think or anything whatsoever at all???? Answer: They have no right. (little voice telling me my brother & SIL may feel this way about my 'meddling' with 'their' children. I disagree, but that has more to do with me not perceiving their children as 'theirs' than anything else.)

So, ley lines: I've been sleeping on a built-up pad in the living room (narrow, but comfortable) for over a year now. One side effect is that I've been embarassed to have people over, because I feel silly about having a bed on the living room floor and having the bedroom empty. After all, this is a tiny house (less than 500 square feet). But - though it feels silly to leave a whole room empty, it just feels safe out here. Meaning, in the living room. Something happened in there (in the bedroom - I think it may have just been a huge, gigantic, explosive build-up of intolerable emotions), and I've been waiting for it to clear out before going back in there. It feels like an emotional Superfund site in there, the land has to be allowed to sit, unused and vacant for some period of time to allow the background radioactivity (or other toxicity) to die down. I've also felt that it's something about the electrical currents in the house - the place is a frickin' nightmare of random wiring, overloaded circuits (metaphors everywhere!) and so on, to the point that the one outlet on the wall where I used to keep the head of my bed felt like there was something 'shooting out of the wall' there. I could never figure out what it was, it was just the outlet. But as long as I slept to one side of that 'line' (to the west, but not east), I was fine, and could sleep fine. But if I tried to sleep to the east of it I couldn't sleep - too close to the window, or something else?

So when everything went haywire and I got rid of the old bed and was experimenting with different sleep positions and locations, I found that sleeping on the floor under the bedroom window was horrible. In fact it may even have been a precursor to last years panic attacks - I'm thinking I was suddenly/finally developing this overwhelming sensitivity to the negative in my life so that I could deal with it - I had finally, after all these years, been able to create an environment in which the background noise of daily stresses could be blocked out to a level that I could actually beging to deal with the internal, emotional, relational stuff. In other words, I could begin to become clear about which people are good, and which people are bad. Like a sorting device.

Along the way I read about ley lines, and that this area I'm living in was once a Native American holy ground. Now I don't know if this exact spot was considered holy (I'm thinking not), but the location and natural geographic feautures make it feel like a power source - top of a hill, secluded from noise generators, wind and weather patterns tend to find a node here - as in, when it's windy, something about the microterrain etc. seems to create peculiar little 'eddies', as of a kind of trapped energy (which certainly mirrors my internal state and sometimes feels right at home! Other times it simply exacerbates or makes the 'already irritated/irritable' feel completely like shit.) And sometimes I feel like I have my own wonderful little microclimate - the only blissfully sunny, warm spot in the neighborhood - I'm basking on my front porch like a cat, while ten or fifteeen feet away neighbors and passersby huddle miserably in their overcoats like a bunch of frozen northerners. Radiant heat, my friend! :-) Yes, a little smugness at having made a good choice. (And recognition of the good fortune that such an option exists! Now know why 'backward' people are so superstitious - warding off the evil eye with self-effacement, false humility, etc.)


Dots encountered in Brownian motion wanderings today and last few days (may or may not manage/attempt to connect them at this time):

fibromyalgia
chronic fatigue
hypouricemia
salicylates
gallbladder out (this Wiki entry caught my eye:

Abdominal surgery also has a uricosuric effect, as well as the potential to precipitate an acute attack of gout.

(Huh - just like that, eh? After all these years of trying to figure shit out, the connection between many of my problems and having the damn gallbladder removed become clearer and clearer. Fucking egotistical, clueless (dangerous combination of traits!) western doctors and their bullshit 'protocols'/practices. Assholes - they treat us like fucking guinea pigs, not people...)

The Principles of Therapeutics, by Oliver Thomas Osborne, written in the 1920s. Page 215 or thereabouts has some interesting things to say about caffeine, overstimulated modern life, etc. Not available through my local library, might buy it if I can find it cheap enough online. Might be a useful addition to a 'home library', though at this point I'm enjoying owning practically nothing. More a matter of having it readily available for reference since I can't get it from the lib.


I do lots of things that go against the 'conventional wisdom' - eating half a pound of bacon a day some days, then two cokes, then half a pint of ice cream [ran out yesterday, need some more]. People ask how I stay in such good shape [or worse yet, some guy asked me why I kept myself in shape if I wasn't seeing men - fucking moron - "because I like my body, you idiot"???] and I tell them I have no idea. I don't exercise much, eat all the 'wrong' things, sit around and read a lot, am often a hermit for days on end. I think it's luck of the genetic draw, to some extent, but mostly I think it's because I trust my instincts about what's right for me, and ignore all those idiots out there peddling their various wares. That's my best guess anyway, but who knows what's really going on - as I've probably said a million times in other ways, most 'explanations' are more for convenience than any sort of accuracy or usefulness - they allow us to think we have some sort of control, rather than life being this bucket ride to hell... tryin' to enjoy it :-)

So I love, love, LOVE it when something comes along that 'explains' why one of my 'odd' habits totally and completely makes sense in some way that the 'mainstream' never thought of. "Hah!" I thinks to myself - "I was right all along, you fricking morons!" Now we're even. It's all about revenge, after all, ain't it? Hahhahhaaaaaaaaaaaa - bwahhahahhhh!!! Smug demon laughter :-)


Years ago I stopped using sunscreen and just tried to limit my time out in the sun to that which felt comfortable to my body, and/or used a hat (never liked sunglasses) and long sleeves to cover my body when I feel I've exceeded my 'quotient' of direct sun on any given day. Seems to work, and over time I'm reading more and more articles that suggest that direct sun is what's needed for proper amounts of vitamin D and thus calcium absorption, especially among northerners. And that noon or thereabouts is the only time of day where sun angle at northern latitudes is actually steep enough to give enough benefit. Plus eating lots of calcium-bearing foods such as cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt. (sorry if all this is boring, skip it if it bores you, please!)

Along these lines, today encountered this blog, drbganimalpharm.blogspot.com, the linked post seems to make many similar connections to ones that I've been experiencing over the last few years (including one I hadn't made yet, namely the wheat sensitivity/intolerance/celiac thing with sunlight/vitamin d):

In the dawn of time, ancient wheat probably did not cause as many autoimmune and silent/non-silent celiac diseases (or ?autism or ?coronary artery disease) as the present day. Why? In the Gladiator days, for one, sunscreen did not exist! Secondly, most people worked and warrior-ed outdoors. Toiling in the sun, hand laundering clothes, baking bread on outdoor hearths, practicing swordplay, gathering berries, fishing, preparing crops, hunting gamey-flesh (which BTW gamey-meat and grass-fed beef are enriched in EPA+DHA, much like fatty deep sea fish/fish oil), and other noble chores in the bright sunshine (because candles were scarce). All day long 24/7...

Does having enough sunlight and vitamin D give us more power to tolerate gluten and not develop damaging self-destructive auto-antibodies?

Fascinating stuff, at least to me. More and more reasons for 're-wilding', as much as is possible in a near-urban environment on an ever-more-crowded planet...


Totally random link encountered while surfing around for ideas about why caffeine might actually be good for you: Is Caffeine a Health Hazard

In 1903 an Italian manufacturer who was impatient with the amount of time his employees spent brewing coffee during coffee breaks invented a machine that used high temperature & pressure to rapidly extract coffee from grind. The result was espresso (Italian for fast).

Thought that was really funny - around here espresso is touted as the ultimate, hipster-ish, tres cool version of coffee. Turns out it was just some guy's solution to getting his people to work harder... hah! :-)


Trying to make sense of my unconventional diet (seeking 'validation' so that I can just do what I do and spend less time worrying about what other people think), came across this one about Intake of purine-rich foods, protein and dairy products and relationship to serum levels of uric acid:

In conclusion, our results suggest that higher levels of meat and seafood consumption are associated with higher levels of serum uric acid, but the total protein intake is not. Dairy consumption was inversely associated with the uric acid level.

So: The half pound of bacon is neutralized by the cheese, cottage cheese and ice cream. The Coke helps break down the fat which is harder to digest because of no gallbladder; the caffeine helps boost serotonin. The best thing, once my adrenaline has been jacked up by the caffeine, is to go use it - long, vigourous walk, strenuous exercise out in the garden, what have you. What a frickin' complicated domino-chain of effects! But, it still feels like, the more I trust my instincts, wherever they may lead me, the better off I am. For now I continue to use these links to help fight of the doubters, the naysayers, the 'I-know-more-than-you-because-I-spent-eight-years-in-med-school-being-brainwashed-by-Big-Pharma' folks. (Watch the video King Corn sometime if you want an eye-opening alternate view/understanding of how brainwashed we all are by the various 'food industries' in this culture. Pretty scary shit. Also, The Omnivore's Dilemma has some pretty useful/interesting ideas aong these lines.)


In the two-steps-forward-one-back category, came across some guy's idea that massive doses of guaifenesin (the active ingredient in cough syrup, the expectorant part) could be used to counteract fibromyalgia. Now, I'm not saying I have fibro or chronic fatigue. But I'm in that category, moving along that continuum, and I really, really don't want to go there. So I figure anything I can 'understand' along those lines that might act as a preventative measure has to be a good thing, eh?

Anyway, the guaifenesin sounds like a bad idea to me (anything that wouldn't have been part of our natural environment as we evolved seems unlikely to have a 'natural' place in our body chemistry and therefore, our health [and yes, I realize Coke falls in this category, but if you think about it, both Coke and Jack are far more 'natural' than any pharmaceutical. But I digress.]) So I go hunting for why guaifenesin might work, what it's supposed to do, and get to the Wiki article about uricosuric acid and all that. And then I have to figure out what uricosuric acid is, and I'm led to gout (which one brother has) and hypouricemia, and the link about abdominal surgery having a uricosuric effect (still not totally clear what this actually means?).

Which then led to the AnimalPharm link, and back round we go again about how it's all connected - sunlight, wheat intolerance, ley lines, too much time in front of the computer. Having to find these things out the hard way through my mind rather than from the more natural, direct way of listening to my body. Which I will go do some of soon - two cans of caffeine and half a pound of bacon down, the sun's out and it's almost warm enough out there to finally go for a walk and/or garden and to 'hunt/gather' some ice cream :-) to complete today's (or this particular moment's) cycle of food substitutes for unmet emotional needs.


And the whole need for external sources of physical warmth thing - growing up with unaffectionate parents, and a needy clingy mother who clung to me for her needs, I've always been cold. Only one guy has ever gotten it right, this funny-looking guy I don't like very much at a garden shop I visit - he always 'hits' on me a bit (or maybe he's just one of those annoyingly insensitive people, doesn't pick up on body language). But anyway, he offered this one piece of random 'wisdom' one early spring day when when I was shiveringly making my way through the plant display, nearly blue with cold, "I always think that women who are cold all the time, it's basically a cry for affection." And I'm like, yeah, you're right. Bingo. Right on the money. Too bad you're not attractive to me, otherwise I might see if we could explore that notion a little!

So I huddle, waiting for the sun to get warm enough. And then, suddenly: Too hot! Too hot. Very narrow comfort range. As if the internal regulator simply doesn't work. But: When I'm getting my emotional needs met, as in, getting lots of snuggling and having someone to do things with/hang outwith/affection, talking, etc., suddenly all that goes away and I'm fine. Huh. Not exactly rocket science here, eh Watson?


It's as if everything in our so-called 'modern' world does everything possible to go completely against nature, against instinct. So that merely the act of following one's instincts becomes, in itself, such a basic act of rebellion that it's almost impossible to do.

So every day I spend hours 'girding my loins' against this onslaught from the outside world, armoring myself to the assaults on mind, body, spirit. Bloody fucking hell! Is it really worth it??? Maybe, the more I think about it, being a hermit is a good thing.