Into the Whirring Yards, 73rd Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Helios): Today should pretty much do it for this long, exhausting year.

When the Dalai Lama was asked what was the best moment in his long and illustrious life, he immediately replied, without a moment's hesitation, "This one." 

The end of the year sees all kinds of "Best of . . ." lists. Best music, best movies, best meals, best sports, and so on. I have yet to see a list that includes the current moment as the best of the year. 

Is this moment right now, posting these words during halftime of the Ohio State-Miami Cotton Bowl, the best moment of my year, and if not what can I do to make it so? I'm home alone on New Year's Eve right now, but I like it that way. It's a choice. I have comfortable furniture. It's still cold outside, but I still walked a Madison today and my home is heated. I have electricity and high-speed internet, which might seem commonplace but its more that many people in parts of the world can say, and which the majority of people throughout history couldn't have said. I have clean, hot-and-cold running water. I'm listening to music I enjoy, I've had a nice meal earlier, and I'm not in any danger that I know of. 

I can't think of anything to add to this moment to make it the best of the year, other than to add to my own appreciation of the moment. I don't need anything more in my environment or more material possessions. I just need to add some appreciation of the moment to this moment, and to let go of the idea that I need something outside of myself to make it better.

And if I can bring that attitude forward into next year, that might be the best year of my life.

Happy New Year!  

   

  

End of All Doubt, 72nd Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra): The most honest answer I can give when asked, "Do you believe in God?," is "I don't know what you're talking about." 

Setting aside philosophical questions of what "believe" even means, or Zen skepticism about the existence of a separate "self" and "other," I have no idea what the person asking means by "God." Even if I know their religion or faith, there's still a lot of potential variations in what they personally conceive of as "God." 

When I ask them, "What do you mean by 'God'?," they seem surprised and often resent the question. They usually answer first in the negative, saying "Well, I don't mean an old man with a white beard in the clouds," or "not a specific person in the human sense" but some greater power. When they answer in the negative like that, telling me what God "isn't," it tells me that they never thought much about what it is they profess to believe. 

When I'm asked, more broadly, if I believe in a creator, I assume they're implying that their God is that creator. If so, where was God when he (for lack of divine pronouns) created the heavens and the Earth? What realm was he in, and who created that realm? "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth." Where was he when doing that creating, and who or what created "God"? 

People usually get annoyed at that point in the conversation and think that I'm just trying to avoid an answer. But if I don't know what they're referring to, how can I truthfully reply? When I'm in a deposition and asked "Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" I just go along with the intent of the question and say, "yes," although the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth would be, "I don't know what you're talking about."  

In Islamic theology, God’s absolute oneness and incomparability is beyond human comprehension, making any depiction of Allah inherently incorrect and potentially misleading. Likewise, the Abrahamic Ten Commandments prohibits graven images. If there were to exist a higher power that created the entire universe in all its infinite complexity, including its own realm of existence (whatever that may be), as well as possibly its own self, it probably is beyond the finite capacity of the human brain to comprehend. 

It is beyond a matter of merely believing or not believing. It is a matter of accepting that the limits of human understanding and comprehension take precedent over our beliefs. An earthworm doesn't believe or disbelieve in the mathematical concept of 𝛑, as an earthworm isn't equipped to even conceive of mathematics, geometric theory, or 𝛑.

Given the probability that if there were some higher-power creator, it would be beyond the capabilities of our minds to comprehend, any idea that we may have is incomplete, insufficient, and misleading, much like the Islamic concerns about artistic depiction. Therefore, whatever we think God "is," God isn't, even with regards to the question of is or isn't. 

If I told you that in the next room I have the last thing you'd ever expect, you would never know what it was. Even after millions of guesses, billions of guesses, there would always be at least one more guess, an infinite number of guesses, so that any guess would never be "the last." Even if I showed it to you, and your guess would be it's what you just saw right there in front of you, there would still be potentially at least one more guess (maybe it's not what I just showed you). It's a Schrödinger's box where the waveform never collapses.

So it is with God. We can't and never will know what it is. It's beyond our comprehension. But for millennia we've kept making "one more guess." And if we don't know what it is, how can we believe or disbelieve in its existence or nonexistence? 

It's really a sort of ultimate koan.

Today was a sitting day. These are among the thoughts I observed as I sat observing my thoughts.

 

Muttering Hopping One-Legged Racing, 71st Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): We're only one week past the solstice. Is it possible that I'm already sensing the days getting longer? I can definitely feel them getting colder - after a week of unusually warm winter temperatures in the 70s, a front moved through this morning with gusty winds and the low tonight is forecast to be around 25°. Things will gradually warm back up as the week progresses, but we're in for a doozy of a chill (by Southern standards), for the next 48 hours of so.

I managed to get my alternate-day walk in today despite the chill, and despite the presence of a football game on television. The winds were chilly but the skies were clear, but I still kept the walk to a relatively short 4.1-mile Madison. Still, it was better than two days ago when I got in zero miles, but I already feel better than yesterday for keeping to my schedule and routine. My preference become my habits, my habits become my routine, my routine becomes ritual, and ritual comes to seem sacred. I felt out-of-sorts until I got outside this afternoon and started walking again.

And I got back home in time to watch that football game. 

     

Runs Tripped by Splendor, 70th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Castor):  Brigitte Bardot is dead. Impermanence is swift.

I renewed my Georgia Professional Geologist license today. I'm not sure why. I haven't used it since 2019 and with each passing year, it's more and more unlikely I ever will again. It's only $100 for a two-year renewal but a major pain in the ass to reactive if it ever expires, so it seemed a reasonable expense. However, this is very likely my last ever renewal. 

I missed my walk yesterday because of football, but I did complete my sitting today. Priorities. However, I'm nothing if not a creature of habit, and even missing one walking day yesterday has me feeling out-of-sorts today. Can't wait to get back out on the trail again tomorrow and get my rhythm back. 

Yesterday, while I was indoors all day glued to the television watching football, the temperature set a record for the warmest December 27 in Atlanta (78°). That's three degrees above the previous record and 24° above normal. Today's not as warm as yesterday but the temperatures are still up in the high 60's, although they're forecasting freezing temperatures again by Tuesday morning. 

Crazytown.

 

The Hitchhike Mysteries, 69th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse):  Excuse me for making this a short post, but it's been a crazy day of manic-compulsive binge-watching of football games for me. There are eight collegiate bowl games today, and I think I've watched parts to most of all of them since 11:00 this morning. The mania will continue to well past midnight. The games, and my compulsive viewing, are documented over on the Sports Desk's site.

I even missed my alternating-day walk, even though it was a positively delightful 74° outside today.

Life will snap back to normal tomorrow. Not so sure about myself, though.  

 

Creaking Phantom Mob, 68th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): Chattanooga, Tennessee is about 90 minutes north of here by automobile. I live close to Interstate 75, and the trip is pretty much a straight shot up the highway. The drive takes me a while to first reach I-285, Atlanta's Perimeter highway, and then a while to pass Marietta, Georgia, including the exits for both the North and South Loops. As I continue to drive, I eventually pass Lake Allatoona and Red Top Mountain State Park, and eventually Cartersville, Georgia. Soon after Cartersville is the turn off for U.S. 411, a four-lane highway that eventually narrows to two lanes leading into some nice hiking and backpacking territory. But staying on 75, there's a long stretch next without a lot of noteworthy features, at least to this city boy, until getting to Calhoun and the first Starbucks in quite awhile. Then it's more long miles until the Dalton-Ringgold manufacturing area (mostly carpet) and then, finally, the Tennessee state line and soon after that, Chattanooga at last. The highway is quite busy with 18-wheel tractor-trailers and other trucks, and a driver has to remain vigilant and alert the whole team. ready to switch lanes when needed and mindful of potential hazards on the road.     

You're excused for thinking so, but I didn't drive to Chattanooga today. Instead, as per my alternating day routine, I sat for 90 minutes today. If I had instead jumped in my car at the start of the period rather than sitting on a cushion, I could have been in Chattanooga by the time the session ended. The reason I bring up that hypothetical road trip is that the perceived passage of time during 90 minutes of zazen seems much shorter than the drive up to Tennessee. The 90-minute trip up to Chattanooga seems to take a long time - that stop at the Starbucks in Calhoun is as much to take a break after all that driving as it is for the coffee. Each individual minute sitting on the zafu doesn't seem to speed by particularly fast, but when the whole session is over, it feels like far less time has passed in total than during the drive up I-75.

I think the reason is that more events occur during the drive than during the sit. There's the assessment of the risk posed by each large truck, the changing of lanes, and the progression of milestones and landmarks from the Perimeter to Marietta to the lake and beyond. Sitting, very little happens - I sit for thirty minutes, a timer rings, I get up for a couple minutes and stretch my legs, and then repeat that two more times. Our perception of the passing of time is based in part on the accumulation of events that occur during that period. That's why when in an emergency, like if our car hits a patch of ice and spins out of control, those seconds seem to pass so slowly - we're aware of each little moment and occurrence during a life-or-death event, and cramming, say, 10 events into two seconds makes those two seconds seem to last as long as 10 other events over two minutes. 

It was 2:30 pm when I sat down to meditate, the timer struck three times and just like that, it was 4:00. Nothing happened, and the minutes flew by. Sitting on the cushion is like entering a time machine that carries you forward into the future at the rate of one minute per minute - time doesn't perceptibly seem to move "fast" but the whole thing is over before you know it. During a road trip, time doesn't perceptibly move fast or slow, but you're quite aware that after 60 miles "only" an hour has passed.

We are not in time - time is in us.                  

 

Day of the Magic Child, 67th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Helios): Originally, Day of the Magic Child was the 55th day of Hagwinter in Angus MacLise's Universal Solar Calendar. But in my New Revised Universal Solar Calendar, I couldn't resist calling the 67th day, December 25 in the Julian calendar, "Day of the Magic Child" for the Christmas holiday, so I moved it. And there you have it. 

It's warm today, quite a pleasant surprise after all those days of unseasonable cold we've had since late October.  It hit a high of 73° F today, only two degrees less than the record set in 2013 and 18 degrees above the average high for this date of 55°. For the record, the lowest temperature for December 25 in Atlanta was 0°, set in 1983.

I took advantage of the warmth by taking an extra-long walk today. I got in an 8.7-mile Van Buren, my longest walk since November 23rd's 9-mile Harrison.

But anyway, Merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, blessed Rohatsu, or whatever holiday you're celebrating or not celebrating. Saturnalia, Yule, Festivus, Day of the Magic Child, whatever. There are many paths.    

Fifth Day of Quandary, 66th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra): Russ Vought, the White House Director of the OMB, announced on Twitter that the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder will be dismantled, calling it "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country." NCAR was founded more than six decades ago and studies both climate and weather. Vought said any "vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location," although weather and climate cannot be properly understood separately. 

HOSCA points out that Vought, an extreme MAGA Republican, probably a white Christian nationalist and almost certainly an authoritarian, was the chief architect of Project 2025. Back in 2017, as an adviser at OMB during the Stable Genius' first term, Vought wanted to eliminate USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and to fold the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with the SNAP food-stamps programs, into a new Department of Welfare, because he thought that name would sound bad. He led Project 2025’s development, including drafting executive orders, regulations, and other plans to more fully empower the president. 

During the 2024 campaign, the Stable Genius repeatedly claimed to have nothing to do with the unpopular Project 2025. His campaign aides criticized the initiative, and news reports suggested that Project 2025 leaders would be blacklisted from working in the White House. However, his administration moved quickly put Vought in charge of the OMB and to fulfill many of Project 2025’s policy objectives. During the government shutdown, the Stable Genius announced that he would meet with Vought to decide which “Democrat agencies” to temporarily or permanently cut, and even referred to Vought as "of Project 2025 fame.”

Climate research and science has long been a target for Vought and the Stable Genius. Earlier this year, they dismissed scientists working on the country's flagship climate report and then removed the report from a government website. They replaced the report with a product produced by the Department of Energy written by hand-picked climate-change deniers 

The Stable Genius' 2026 budget proposes cutting NOAA's budget by about 27% and eliminating the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, the agency's core climate and weather research branch. The administration has also rolled back National Science Foundation funding for climate science.

And now they're targeting NCAR. Among other contributions, it developed dropsondes in the 1960s, the tube-shaped instruments released from aircraft to measure temperature, pressure, humidity and wind. In the 1980s, the center helped develop and refine technology to monitor wind shear at airports.

NCAR's Weather Research and Forecasting Model is used around the world to predict everything from thunderstorms to large-scale systems, including hurricanes and frontal systems. Its Community Earth Systems Model is also widely used by scientists for long-range signals on extreme cold-air events,  like the February 2021 event that resulted in sub-zero temperatures for days and the total breakdown of the electrical grid in central Texas. 

But the Stable Genius calls climate change a hoax and has cut funding for climate research, removing climate and weather scientists from their posts across the federal government. He perceives the science as a threat to the bottom-line profit margins of the fossil-fuel industry, which in his anachronistic mind is still the beating heart of the economy. 

In a speech last September to the U.N., he called climate change the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world. "All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong," he claimed. "They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail."

He's wrong, of course, and he himself is the one who's stupid, profoundly so. HOSCA points out that it's this country that's going to fail if we follow the Stable Genius down his oil-slicked road of budget cuts, science denialism, and subservience to the sooty profits of the petroleum and coal industries.

Fourth Day of Quandary, 65th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): You won't read about it in the American press, but Britain's The Guardian continues to cover the State of Georgia’s persecution and racketeering charges brought against the Cop City protesters. The case is the largest ever leveled against a protest or social movement using RICO, a law created to go after the mafia and usually associated with organized crime but here deployed against a largely environmental and criminal justice-focused movement.

Opposition to the $109M police training center, which opened last spring, has come from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters, and is centered on concerns around police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police have said the center is needed for “world-class” training and to attract new officers.

Last September, a Fulton county judge orally dismissed the state’s criminal conspiracy case on procedural grounds. According to state law, the decision should have been put into writing within 90 days, but the judge missed a December 8 deadline to finalize the decision. That means the case, now in its third year, remains unresolved and the government continues holding on to massive amounts of personal property seized from 61 defendants as evidence. The state continues to hold hundreds of devices, including cell phones and laptops, nine hard drives, 10 USB sticks, three tablets, and dozens of boxes containing diaries, health records, bail-fund records, letters, and many other personal items.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said his office will appeal the decision once it’s in writing. “The attorney general will continue the fight against domestic terrorists and violent criminals who want to destroy life and property,” his office announced in its usual hyperbolic fashion, even though Georgia hasn't yet provided compelling evidence that the 61 defendants in the case are "violent criminals," much less "domestic terrorists." Carr is a Republican candidate for governor in next year’s race, and is using the case to burnish his MAGA credentials and tough-on-crime image.

Manuel Paez Terán, known as “Tortuguita,” was shot and killed by Georgia State Troopers in January, 2023 while camping in a forested park near the Cop City site. During a raid on the camp, the troopers opened fire on Tortuguita while still in their tent, leaving 57 bullet wounds in their body. The killing was ruled “objectively reasonable” by a  Georgia District Attorney, in part because Tortuguita allegedly fired first, striking a trooper. However, body cam footage of the raid reveals an officer saying "You fucked your own officer up," suggesting the injured officer had been shot by so-called "friendly fire" and not by Tortuguita. 

The Guardian reports that Tortuguita wrote a last message, "Help," on their cell phone minutes before the troopers shot and killed them. The state continues to hold on to Tortuguita’s cell phone, as well as their diary and laptop, and Tortuguita's mother understandably would like to have that cell phone and its message. 

Three other defendants in the case make up the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, one of nearly 100 similar organizations across the country that help arrested protesters with bail, legal defense, and related needs. The ASF is mentioned more than 120 times in the state's criminal indictment. Although the state has withdrawn the money-laundering charges against the fund, the racketeering charges will remained until the oral dismissal is finalized. Meanwhile though, the state continues to hold dozens of receipts needed for the organization to get money returned that was paid for bonds.

HOSCA opposes Cop City, protests the persecution and demonization of the protesters and their legal defense, and does not support Chris Carr's gubernatorial candidacy.  

 

Third Day of Quandary, 64th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Castor): This is hilarious: the mighty U.S. military tried to intercept a tanker, the Bella 1, in the Caribbean this weekend after determining that it was not flying a valid national flag. The ship did not comply, however, and simply kept on sailing. The Coast Guard repeatedly tried to hail the Bella 1 and direct it to stop, but the vessel has ignored those calls. 

Apparently, all you need to do to avoid seizure and pirating by the Coast Guard is to simply tune them out and ignore them.  

The Stable Genius has made it clear that its targeting of ships carrying Venezuelan oil is intended to push Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president, from power. “We’re not just interdicting these ships, but we’re also sending a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro is participating in cannot stand,” the puppy-killer Kristi Noem said in an interview today. “He needs to be gone.” 

The campaign to interdict oil tankers is drawing criticism from foreign governments, threatens global energy markets, and is getting pushback inside the United States from HOSCA and others over the risk of escalation.  

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a libertarian who routinely opposes U.S. military intervention overseas, was one of two Republicans who joined Democrats last month in voting to block a potential attack on Venezuela. Yesterday, he called the tanker seizures a provocation and a prelude to war. “Look, at any point in time there are 20, 30 governments around the world that we don’t like,” he said. “But it isn’t the job of the American soldier to be the policeman of the world.”

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said that an “armed intervention in Venezuela would be a humanitarian catastrophe.”

China, the biggest consumer of Venezuelan oil, condemned the seizures, calling the actions a serious violation of international law. Beijing confirmed that it opposes any actions that “infringe on the sovereignty and security of other countries, or constitute acts of unilateral bullying.”

HOSCA neither condones nor supports the Maduro regime, which lost the popular election in Venezuela but had refused to cede power. However, HOSCA does not view the nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry as "stealing U.S. oil" as the Stable Genius maintains, and opposes another U.S. military intervention in Latin America to further corporate interests. No blood for oil.

 

Second Day of Quandary, 63rd of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): The Coast Guard confirmed they are tracking a third oil tanker in international waters close to Venezuela for potential seizure. An official characterized the ship as “a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion.”

HOSCA, a dues-paying member of the  antifa network, condemns the seizure of oil on the high seas, as well as the more than two dozen military strikes against vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean that have resulted in at least 100 deaths.

The Stable Genius' administration tried to reassure the public that the seizures won't cause the price of oil to go up in the U.S. because of the small number of ships captured. That might seem correct from a strict supply-and-demand POV, but HOSCA points out that the seizures increase geopolitical tensions, which  are likely to drive oil prices higher. An end to the war in Ukraine could help limit those price increases.  

 

Day of Quandary, 62nd of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): HOSCA condemns the seizure today of a second merchant vessel seized while allegedly carrying oil in international waters off the coast of Venezuela. The vessel, believed to be registered in Panama and not on a list of US-sanctioned vessels, was intercepted east of Barbados in the Caribbean. HOSCA views the seizure as an escalation of U.S. actions targeting Venezuela and intended to replace its president, Nicolás Maduro. 

The seizure comes as the Stable Genius refuses to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela. He said that that going to war with Maduro’s regime remains on the table. “I don’t rule it out, no,” he said. Maduro has urged his navy to escort oil tankers in defiance of the largest US fleet deployed in the region in decades.

HOSCA does not endorse the Maduro regime or condone its oppression or the lack of democracy in Venezuela. However, HOSCA opposes the use of U.S. military action for regime change or to appropriate the natural resources of Latin America (no blood for oil).   

I talked on the telephone to my sister today for the first time since her cancer surgery in November. She had been unable to speak following the removal of tissue from her jaw and cheek and it is something of a breakthrough in her recovery that she was able to talk on the phone today. Her road to recovery is still a long one, and she will have to go through additional post-op rounds of radiation therapy and chemotherapy before her treatment is complete. Two months after the fact, she still can't swallow and relies on a feeding tube to her stomach for nutrition. 

However, despite all that, her spirits sounded good, although I still can't fully imagine all that she's going through.     

 

Day of the White Glare, 61st of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Helios): The Stable Genius, his FIFA faux peace prize securely on his mantle, launched airstrikes against dozens of suspected Islamic State sites in Syria today. Last week, two US Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in an attack on a U.S. convoy. The attacker was shot dead, but the Stable Genius vowed to retaliate. Today's strikes have been described as a large-scale attack on targets across central Syria.

He can't start a war with military troops stationed in U.S. cites or with a build-up of naval forces in the Caribbean, so the Stable Genius is turning to that old reliable hot-spot, the Middle East, to get his war going. 

Anything to distract us from the release today of the Epstein files.  

The Prince Is Aloft, 60th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra): I've been influenced in life as much by art as by fact - song and fiction have shaped my views as much as historical and current events.  

Jaimie Aiquina is a fictional character, never met, in John Barth's novel, The Tidewater Tales (1989). One of the former lovers of main character Katherine Sherritt Sagamore, Aiquina's influence had led her 

to help establish HOSCA, the anti-interventionist group which could by 1970 boast chapters on fifty major U.S. campuses and serious infiltration by both the FBI and the CIA. The acronym was English - Hands Off South and Central America - but the word was Spanish.  

In the timeframe on the novel (1970), Aiquina was in Santiago de Chile, "trying unsuccessfully to keep our government's hands off his hero and leader, Salvador Allende." It was Aiquina's prediction that "the combined forces of ITT, Anaconda Copper, the Chilean right wing, and the CIA would never permit a Marxist administration in Chile even if legally elected, and that the coup when it came would be a bloodbath in which Chilean democracy would drown like Argentina's, for the rest of this century at least."  

Aiquina believed the generals were going to overthrow Allende and turn Chile into another strong-arm state, with a lot of help from Uncle Sam. He believed that thousands of people like himself will get deseparicido'd: tortured and shot. He hated injustice but was skeptical of revolutions and had no confidence in the ultimate victory of good over evil, but nonetheless invited Katherine Sherritt (she hadn't yet married Peter Sagamore) to live with him in Santiago. 

She declined, but the fact was, she was patriotic. She despised what the U.S. had done in Vietnam and South America and deplored about half of what we'd done in our history. But she did not admire any other major country more, and she liked being American Kathy Sherritt and living on Chesapeake Bay (the tidewater setting of the novel).       

Aiquina was right about Allende. He clashed with the judiciary and with the right-wing parties that controlled Chile's Congress. On September 11, 1973, the military moved to oust Allende's democratically elected government in a coup d'état supported by the CIA. Declassified documents showed that Nixon and Kissinger were aware of the military's plans to overthrow Allende in the days before the revolt. As troops surrounded his residence, Allende gave his last speech vowing never to resign, but later that day, he died by suicide in his office. The exact circumstances of his death are still disputed.

Following Allende's death, General Augusto Pinochet refused to return authority to a civilian government, and Chile was ruled by a military junta, ending more than four decades of uninterrupted democratic governance. He dissolved Congress, suspended the Constitution, and initiated a program of persecuting alleged dissidents, in which at least 3,095 civilians disappeared or were killed. Pinochet's military dictatorship lasted until 1989 when an internationally-backed constitutional referendum led to a peaceful transition to democracy.

As Sherritt-Sagamore's HOSCA would point out, if it were not fictitious, the U.S. has a long and deplorable history in South and Central America. Most recently, the Stable Genius has overseen a major military deployment off the coast of Venezuela, and this week instituted a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving the country, which he accuses of using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who to be sure is not a good person and certainly no Allendel, claims the US seeks regime change instead of stopping drug trafficking. 

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. U.S. oil companies dominated Venezuela’s petroleum industry until the country’s leaders moved to nationalize the industry in 1976.

On Wednesday, the Stable Genius cited lost US investments when asked about the blockade, suggesting his moves were motivated by disputes over oil investments. “You remember they took all of our energy rights. They took all of our oil not that long ago. And we want it back. They took it – they illegally took it.”  But his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair that the campaign is actually intended to oust Maduro.

With the huge military buildup, the strikes of alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that have killed at least 100, and increasingly bellicose language, we are clearly heading to war. I deplore and condemn all war and am not willing to see blood sacrificed for oil like this was Iraq in 2003. NO BLOOD FOR OIL! 

Where is the real HOSCA when we need them?

 

The Fire Is a Mirror, 59th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): The Stable Genius told reporters today that Venezuela "illegally took" US oil and "we want it back." 

“They took all of our energy rights, they took all of our oil from not that long ago, and we want it back. But they took it, they illegally took it.” he said. 

As Hands Off South and Central America (HOSCA) points out, oil reserves in Venezuela, a sovereign nation, never belonged to the U.S. Some U.S.-based oil companies may have had contracts to extract petroleum from Venezuela, and Venezuela may or may not have terminated those contracts according to certain agreed-upon terms, but it was never "our" oil.

The Stable Genius is a stone-cold idiot. He's already moved thousands of troops and nearly a dozen warships, including the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the Caribbean north of Venezuela in the past couple of weeks, and he's obviously trying to provoke a war.

The Stable Genius Deviant of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine is to develop a western sphere of influence in the Americas under U.S. control, and encourage the region’s governments to align with U.S. principles and strategy. The Stable Genius says he will promote stability in the region by focusing the U.S. military on Latin America, and use lethal force when necessary to secure the U.S. border, defeat drug cartels, and extract resources from the region. He says this will “make neighboring countries as well as our own more prosperous,” but he's never been known to look out for anyone's interests but his own. 

His financial backers and donors and the U.S. oil-and-gas lobby want greater access to Venezuela's oil reserves, and the Stable Genius will start a full-blown war if necessary to grant their wish. Venezuela is home to the world’s largest oil reserves but only produces about 0.8% of the world’s output because of struggles in the wider economy and its state-owned oil company.  It exports about 900,000 barrels of oil a day, mostly to buyers in China, a fraction of the almost 22 million barrels of oil produced by the US. Still, oil is Venezuela's main source of revenue, with profits from the sector financing more than half of the government’s budget. 

Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976, bringing it under state control. Some U.S. firms, notably Chevron, operate in Venezuela through special licenses, partnering with PDVSA, the state-owned company, to produce oil. U.S. sanctions heavily impact Venezuela's oil exports, although Chevron operates under specific exemptions granted by the Stable Genius to export oil to China. ConocoPhillips and other U.S. companies have sought compensation for assets expropriated by Venezuela, and the Stable Genius is framing these legal disputes as Venezuela "stealing" oil.

So here's a question: are you willing to see U.S. lives lost and U.S. dollars spent on a military adventure, guided by our black-out drunk of a Secretary of Defense, to enhance Chevron's and ConocoPhilips' access to Venezuelan oil reserves?

HOSCA's not, and I agree with them.

 

Rose Over the Cities, 58th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Castor): My parents didn't want me to know my grandfather was African-American, or that my great-great-grandfather was a plantation slave for the first 30 years of his life. Papa died when I was five, so I have no first-hand memories of him, and they raised me in all-white suburbs and sent me to all-white schools. I was in the eighth grade before I had my first non-white classmate. 

Papa had light skin thanks to mixed-race marriages and probably going back to plantation rape. He could pass for white, although from what I've learned he embraced his African-American identity even after he married my (white, Irish) grandmother and raised my Dad and his sisters and brother. I think Papa was something of a code-switcher, representing civil rights cases in court one day and benefiting from white privilege the next as best suited his needs.

My parents didn't want me to know but I found out anyway, after Dad had passed away and when my Mom was too old to discuss it with her in any meaningful way (she's gone now, too).

I don't believe my parents hid the truth from me out of racial animus. They were your standard-issue, Kennedy-Johnson Democrats, and taught me that the civil-rights movement was a good thing and segregation and racism were bad. I think their intentions, although misguided, were for their children to have the greatest possibilities in life, and in their minds, formed as they were in the 1940s and '50s, identification as an ethnic minority was a "stigma" they didn't want their fair-skinned children to endure. It wasn't hatred, but it was a perpetuation of self-fulling stereotypes that allowed and even perpetuated racism. 

Our work isn't done until, as Bob Marley sang, channeling Haile Selassie, the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned. When that philosophy is accepted "for the sake of the children," it's the white children that benefit at the expense of the others. 

I can't change my past of my upbringing, but I can rise above the small-minded bigotry of previous generations.

 

Humming of the Distances of the Planet, 57th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): You know what's colder than the weather in Atlanta today? The Stable Genius' heart. Responding to last night's tragic death of beloved director Rob Reiner (murdered along with his wife by their own son), all he could post on his vanity media platform was that Reiner didn't like him and was a critic. No empathy, no sympathy, no condolences, not even a fond memory from one of Reiner's many movies. Inconceivable!

The post - and a follow-up press conference where he doubled down on his remarks - are just the latest visible symptoms of his malignant narcissism. He can't see anything except as it relates to him, and his mind bends everything back to himself.

Unfit for the presidency. Unfit for any office. Unfit for polite society.

Unfit. 

        

 

Whistling, Smiling Hand of the Hangman, 56th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): It's cold out. 

Yesterday reached a high temperature of 70° F, 13° above normal, and I was able to walk a 7.1-mile Jackson. But temperatures plummeted overnight and it is expected to drop down to 19° tonight, with a wind-chill factor of 14°. 

By midweek, the temperatures should be back up into the 60s. 

Last summer, I was following the on line dispatches of two woman explorers, Ellen Hibbert and Tamara Klink, who were each separately solo sailing through the usually ice-blocked Northwest Passage. However, all that open water absorbed more heat than does the ice which usually reflects the heat away, and the Arctic warmed more than usual. The heat and warmth (by polar standards) caused disruptions to the polar vortex, the ring of winds circling the Earth's pole, which in turn disrupted the jet stream, which migrated south in large, meandering loops bringing cold Arctic air down with it. Which is all a long and probably not completely correct way of saying that, yes, this shockingly cold evening in Georgia is the result of global warming. I can already hear conservative minds explode over that last sentence.

This drafty old pile of bricks up on a hill that I call "home" isn't well equipped for these temperatures. It certainly isn't insulated against the extreme cold. It will be a chilly night, and an expensive one as my furnace runs non-stop all night, but I already have a big stack of blankets on the bed to keep me warm overnight. I'll survive, but I may not be getting out from the bed very early tomorrow morning.    

If the power goes out overnight, I'm fucked.

Twelfth Ocean, 55th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Helios): This, the 348th day of the year, marks 39 dozen days. My New Revised Universal Solar Calendar commemorates selected dozens as Ocean days, and this day is the Twelfth Ocean. While there is a 40th dozenth day still this year, that day is Day of the Magic Child, or as some people call it "Christmas." So this, then, is the last Ocean day of 525.

My great-great-grandfather was born in Hartsville, South Carolina. Like all of us, he didn't get to choose how and when he entered this world but as it was he was born on a plantation in 1835. You can pass judgement all you like but as I said, when and where he was born wasn't his decision, nor was the society in which he was raised or the heritage he received. 

Today, I randomly came across the 19th-Century diary of the son of Colonel Law, a prominent Hartsville planter, which gives as good an impression of life on an antebellum plantation as you're likely to find outside of fiction. Hartsville sits in the Coastal Plain of South Carolina between the Great Pee Dee and Lynches Rivers. It is a low-lying, humid area, subject to frequent rains and summer thunderstorms. Like most plantations in the area, the Colonel's consisted of acres upon acres of level, black-soil farmland with rows upon rows of cotton, fields of food crops, and orchards full of generous peach trees. The old Colonel, always on horseback and sometimes carrying an umbrella against the heat of the sun, could often be found out in the fields inspecting his domain. 

The main house was large and roomy, and the porches were capacious and comfortable. The live oaks, cherished by the Colonel, were equipped with swings and joggling boards and provided shade for the children as they romped in and out of the house. In addition to the children, there was the constant comings and goings of the many friends and kin-folks — the Cokers and the Coopers, the Charles and the Edwards, and the Norwoods and the Lides. 

Black Creek flowed through the plantation, clear and limpid, spoiling the Colonel’s boys and girls for swimming in any other spot on Earth. At supper one night, the Colonel asked one of his sons, ‘‘How many times did you go swimming in the creek today?”   

“Only twice, Sir,” the boy answered fervently, hoping he didn’t look too waterlogged from the non-stop swimming all morning and afternoon, taking time out only for dinner. 

Across the road from the main house were spacious barns with dozens of sheep, many heads of mules and horses, and wagons and carriages suitable for the various journeys of the family. To escape the summer heat, the Colonel would take the family on trips to Virginia Springs using two carriages, a rock-a-way, and a spring wagon for the trunks.  

At night, neighboring young folk would visit the house for an evening of music, and the young ladies of the family, with their friends from the Laurensville Female Academy, would vie for the opportunity to chat with the handsome young tutor recently hired to instruct the younger children. On occasion, those young ladies would go off to Charleston, escorted by the Colonel or his sons, stay at the Planters Hotel, and shop for bonnets on King Street.

Eli, my great-great-grandfather, didn't get to enjoy any of that idyllic, antebellum life. He was African American, which in South Carolina in 1835 meant that he was a slave - human chattel, livestock, property of the Colonel. No lemonade on the veranda, no swings under the live oak, no trips to Virginia Springs for Eli - there was cotton to be picked.

In addition to their King Street bonnets, the young ladies  also purchased coarse clothes and knick-knacks in Charleston to be sent back home for the slaves. It was the responsibility of the women, their "mixed bane and blessing" as the diary put it, to provide clothes, food, and medicine for the slaves. The women would instruct them and pray with them off in the slaves’ quarters, situated some distance, of course, from the big house.

The plantation life was ended by what the diary referred to as “the tragedy of the Confederate War.” The sons were sent off to fight in Virginia battlefields, and Sherman’s Army eventually swept across the plantation, burning the cotton gin, ravaging food and fodder, and stealing horses. The slaves broke out into open riot, and it fell upon the old Colonel and his faithful body-servant (i.e., house slave) to hold things together. After the war and when the sons finally returned home, they encountered a new and difficult master-servant relationship. 

Eli was no fool. By 1870, he fulfilled any remaining obligations on the plantation and got the hell out of Hartsville, moving his family down to Jacksonville, Florida and out of harm’s way.

 

Day of the Inner Lid, 54th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra): The Stable Genius has sued Fulton County to inspect the ballot I cast five years ago in the 2020 election. 

That sounds like hyperbole but it's true and a sad indication of how far we've fallen as a nation. The Stable Genius still continues to question his loss in that race to Joe Biden, and his administration is now suing to seize and inspect the ballots from that election. Those ballots include the one I cast by mail-in vote in that year of the covid plague.

The Stable Genius has long fixated on his defeat in the 2020 election and continues to promote his lie that the election was stolen from him. Since returning to office, he has embarked on a wide-ranging campaign to settle scores related to his effort to overturn the election, including issuing a sweeping pardon to nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6.

Fulton County, which as the NY Times reports is largely nonwhite and voted overwhelmingly for Biden, was one of the main focuses of the Stable Genius' effort to cling to power after he lost the election. He and some of his allies were charged with criminal election interference in Georgia and the former president was booked at the Fulton County jail. That was a good day, but unfortunately he was allowed to leave and things never got that good again. 

Although Georgia's Republican leadership confirmed Biden’s victory with a manual recount, the Stable Genius pressured Georgia's Secretary of State to “find” him enough votes to overturn his loss here.

The Stable Genius has repeatedly argued, without reliable evidence, that the 2020 election was affected by mass voter fraud, and it's feared that a new inspection of the 2020 ballots may be used to stoke suspicions of fraud if the 2026 election doesn't go his way. His administration is trying to establish a national voting database in a quest to bolster the unsubstantiated claim that "millions" of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally and the Justice Department also sued four other states to obtain personal and private information of voters. 

I don't know about you, but with their track record of retribution, grudges, and vindictiveness, I can't think of too much good that came come from the Stable Genius and his Republican enablers having access to the names and addresses of every person who voted Democratic in past elections, including, and this part is important to me, my name and address. It's almost like if, say, Elon Musk and some unvetted goons were allowed access to my social security and other sensitive files. 

In related news, the Stable Genius announced that he was pardoning a former Colorado county clerk who was convicted of tampering with voting machines in an effort to prove false claims of fraud in the 2020 election, even though the president has no legal ability to pardon a person from state crimes.

 

Smoke of the Shore, 53rd Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): I consider a walk of five to six miles a "Monroe," named for the fifth president of the United Snakes. My Monroe Doctrine is to walk at least five miles every other day, although between the cold weather, early sunsets, and recent Rohatsu practice period, I've only been getting four-mile Madisons in lately. 

The other Monroe Doctrine was outlined by James Monroe in his annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. Monroe, a Virginia planter, owned as many as 250 slaves throughout his lifetime. He inherited some of the slaves from his father and worked them on his family's plantations, and some were brought to the White House with him to work as household servants. Some of the slaves remained in bondage even after his death. He did support the American Colonization Society and its goal of colonizing freed slaves in Africa, but the plan was not a commitment to freeing his own slaves. 

In the early nineteenth century, Spain’s empire in America was crumbling. Beginning in 1810, Latin American countries began to claim their independence and in just two years from 1821 to 1822, ten nations broke from the Spanish empire. Spain had previously restricted trade with its American colonies, and the U.S. wanted to trade with these new nations. 

As president, Monroe and his advisors worried that the newly independent nations in South and Central America could revert to alliances with the European colonial powers, severing their new trade ties with the U.S. and orienting their allegiances back toward Europe. In his message, Monroe warned that “the American continents . . . are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” The United States would consider any attempt by Europe to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. 

In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt established what came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. He noted that there was no judicial way of enforcing international laws, and so military powers have to serve as international police. Such policing included protecting Latin American nations from foreign military intervention and also meant imposing U.S. force on nations whose unwillingness to support U.S. goals "violated the rights of the United Snakes or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.” 

Couched as a form of protection, the Roosevelt Corollary justified U.S. military intervention in Latin American countries and established a U.S. sphere of influence over the Americas. However, the two world wars in Europe and the Pacific during the 20th Century illustrated the danger of spheres of influence, in which less powerful countries are controlled by regional superpowers, and the emergence of nuclear weapons and ICBMs rendered the embrace of localized spheres of influence quaint.  

The Stable Genius' Deviant of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine promises not to protect Latin American countries from foreign intrusion but to reward and encourage the region’s governments to align with U.S. principles and strategy. The Stable Genius says he will promote stability in the region by turning the U.S. military away from its European commitments and focusing instead on Latin America, where it will abandon the “failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades” and instead use lethal force when necessary to secure the U.S. border and defeat drug cartels. Then, he says, the U.S. will extract resources from the region “to make neighboring countries as well as our own more prosperous.” Already, he's blasting suspected drug-running boats out of the water and seized an oil tanker off the Venezuela coast, and has announced his intention to keep the oil seized.  

The U.S.-led international system and pacts such as NATO have kept the world relatively safe since World War II. But the antiquated notion of spheres of influence, a system in place before World War II,  is once again favored by Vladimir Putin, among others. The Stable Genius is abandoning Ukraine to the whims of Russia as that's not in the United Snakes' perceived sphere of influence, and he has recalled the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, the world's largest aircraft carrier and the largest warship ever constructed, from the Middle East to the Caribbean. The military buildup in the Caribbean region is the largest unrelated to disaster relief since 1994, when Bill Clinton sent two aircraft carriers and more than 20,000 troops to Haiti.

This isn't going to end well. 

 

Day of the Mind Blizzard, 52nd of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Castor): The Stable Genius, now with his FIFA faux "peace prize" firmly fixed on its shelf, is determined to drag the United States into another pointless, costly, and fatal overseas war. Anything to divert attention from a faltering economy and, of course, the Epstein files. Today, the United States seized an oil tanker off the Venezuela coast, part of an escalating series of strikes including the unsanctioned assassinations of the crews of numerous boats in the Caribbean. 

Hands Off South and Central America (HOSCA) maintains that the Stable Genius' adventures are just a continuation of the U.S.'s long - and legally and morally questionable - history of interventions in the region. There have been dubious actions by the U.S. in the hemisphere going all the way back to 1823's Monroe Doctrine, issued when Latin American countries were first winning their independence from France and Spain. The Doctrine asserted to European countries that the U.S. considered Latin America its sphere of influence and their meddling would be considered a meddling in U.S. affairs. In the 19th Century alone, HOSCA counts the following dubious achievements:

In 1852, U.S. President Millard Fillmore had the Marines land in Buenos Aires to protect American interests during an Argentinian revolution.

In 1853, Fillmore's successor, Franklin Pierce, used the American military to protect American lives and interests during political disturbances in Nicaragua.          

In 1854, the American captain of a steamboat in Greytown, Nicaragua shot and killed a native boatman in cold blood. The U.S. minister to Nicaragua later prevented the captain’s arrest when he cocked and leveled a gun at the town's marshals. That night, an angry mob confronted the American Minister over his prevention of the murderer’s arrest and a resident threw a piece of a broken bottle at him, striking the Minister's face. In retaliation, the Navy sloop-of-war USS Cyane bombarded the town with 177 rounds of cannon fire, leveling the town before the Marines landed and burned down anything left standing. 

In 1855, President Pierce sent U.S. naval forces to Uruguay to protect American interests during an attempted revolution in Montevideo.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 led to a number of 20th Century interventions in Latin America, particularly in Cuba. The Cuban revolution against colonial Spain inspired many Americans, who saw it as a reflection of out own revolution of 1776, but led to concerns among some about a potential majority black regime ruling the island. "Two-fifths of the insurgents in the field are negroes," an 1896 article in The Saturday Review cautioned. The author, a young and eloquent English-American imperialist named Winston Churchill, argued that while Spanish rule was bad and the rebels had the support of the people, "another black republic" might be worse than continued Spanish rule. The "other black republic," of course, was Haiti.      

The U.S.S. Maine was sent to Havana in January 1998 allegedly to protect American citizens. After a mysterious explosion sank the battleship a month later, the U.S. began a naval blockade of Cuba and went to war with Spain. The Marines landed in Guantánamo Bay in June 1898 and moved swiftly through the island. 

This was the start of a long period of Marine involvement in conflicts in Central America and the Caribbean. “Before the Second World War, this is what the Marine Corps did,” The New York Times. quoted an authority on the history today. “Their bread and butter was destabilizing and overthrowing governments in Latin America.” HOSCA agrees with that sentiment, and the Times recounted several of the United States' 20th Century adventures in the region. 

In 1912, while Nicaragua was in the middle of a revolt against its right-leaning and pro-American president, U.S. President William Taft  sent in the Marines, again "to preserve U.S. interests." This quickly turned into a direct military intervention and began 21 years of U.S. occupation of Nicaragua.

In 1913, the U.S. supported the overthrow of a Mexican president in favor of another who was viewed as more pro-American, leading to a coup d’état. However, the U.S. turned around and withdraw its support for the new president, backing instead the bandit and revolutionary leader Pancho Villa to depose him, before turning around yet again, and opposing Villa. After the Mexican government refused a 21-gun salute in apology for nine American sailors arrested in April 1914, President Woodrow Wilson ordered a naval blockade of the Port of Veracruz. An arms shipment was subsequently discovered heading to Mexico in violation of an American arms embargo, so the Navy seized the Mexican port of Veracruz, occupying it for seven months.

After the president of Haiti, that "other black republic," was assassinated in 1915, Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines. The stated mission was to restore order and stabilize the civil disturbance, which had been fueled in part by U.S. actions such as the seizure of Haiti's gold reserves over debts. The Marines stayed almost 20 years, not withdrawing until 1934.

In 1983, Ronald Reagan accused the government of Grenada of building an airport that would enable the Soviet Union to land transport planes capable of carrying weapons. After a political crisis in Grenada and the execution of its prime minister, the military announced a curfew and said anyone on the streets in violation of the order would be shot on sight. Reagan sent 7,600 troops, including Army Rangers, the 82nd Airborne, the Marines, Delta commandos, and Navy SEALs, ostensibly to protect 600 American medical students on the island. Grenada’s military government was quickly overthrown, and an interim one was installed.

Gen. Manuel Noriega, the military leader of Panama, helped the U.S. sabotage the left-wing Sandinistas of Nicaragua and revolutionaries in El Salvador for decades. Noriega also worked with the DEA to restrict illegal drug shipments, and laundered drug money on the side. In 1986, news reports surfaced in the American media about Noriega's criminal activities, and American courts indicted him on drug-related charges. The general survived several attempted coups and a disputed election and in 1989, Panama declared a state of war with the United States. President George H.W. Bush ordered U.S. troops to remove him. 

In 1994, Bill Clinton sent the Marines to Haiti again to restore to power President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been democratically elected but quickly overthrown. Ten years later, Aristide was out of favor with Washington and ousted in a coup orchestrated by the United States and France.

Since September of this year, the United States has been attacking boats in the Caribbean that the Stable Genius claimed were smuggling drugs. To date, the U.S. has launched 22 known strikes, killing more than 80 people. On top of the strikes, the Stable Genius has ordered a massive buildup of U.S. forces in the region, with more than 15,000 troops and a dozen ships in the Caribbean, including the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford. Covert action has been authorized against Venezuela and the Stable Genius has warned that the United States could expand its attacks from boats off the Venezuelan coast to targets inside the country "very soon." 

And now, on top of all that, he's gone and seized a tanker full of oil, as if, as HOSCA points out, there was ever any question as to what the conflict was really all about. Venezuela has the world's largest proven reserves of petroleum, and the Stable Genius has shown little interest in alternative energy or sustainable fuels.

 

The Glistening Drivers, 51st Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): The EPA has removed references to the fact that human activity is causing climate change from its website. Specifically, a page titled Causes of Climate Change and another that tracks the impacts of the global warming in the United States were both scrubbed of discussion of man-made causes.

A spokesperson for the EPA said the agency is focused on protecting human health, rather than what she called left-wing political agendas. “This agency no longer takes marching orders from the climate cult,” she said. Apparently, they're now taking their marching orders from lobbyists for oil, gas, and coal, the main drivers of global warming

The Stable Genius has taken aggressive action to boost fossil fuels and has called climate change a “hoax.”  He has eliminated climate regulations and made it easier to build fossil-fuel plants and harder to develop renewable energy like wind and solar power.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Dept. of Energy commissioned five climate skeptics to write a report that downplayed the seriousness of global warming. And the EPA is about to eliminate a scientific finding that climate change threatens human health, a move that would erase the federal government’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other planet-warming pollution.

We're fucked, but out children and grandchildren are fucked even more.

 

Secrets of the Essence Chamber, 50th Day of Hagwinter. 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): Rohatsu. Monks around the world tremble in anticipation. On this eighth (and final) day of the practice period, the actual day itself, I sat for 5½ hours, bringing my grand total going back to November 30 to 31½ hours.

It feels inappropriate to talk publicly about the number of hours. It feels like bragging, and bragging about the wrong metric at that. It's quality, not quantity, but the quantity does still matter. For what it's worth, the posts here these last few days weren't addressed to some public I imagine is out there reading this like I was some sort of Instagram influencer, it's written for and to myself to encourage me to keep on going.

The past few days have been my own personal sesshin, really the first I've ever done without a sangha. It's so, so easy to just quit, to throw in the towel and say "that's enough for one day." Sitting with others encourages one to keep on going, and for me, documenting my effort in this personal web log was a form of encouragement.

Last month, contemplating the upcoming Rohatsu week, I set myself a personal  goal to sit every day of the week instead of my usual schedule of every other day, and, starting with my usual 90 minutes, to add a half hour every day. I made a commitment and today I completed the task I set for myself.

All this while maintaining my alternating-day walking schedule (although at fewer miles each day in the interest of time) and making daily calls to my brother-in-law in Massachusetts to support him as he cares for my sister in her recovery from cancer surgery. Also, I somehow managed to sneak a David Byrne concert into there and, possibly not unrelated, to catch a cold.

It's over. Done. On to the next thing.

Happy, Rohatsu, y'all.

Day of the Banner, 49th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Helios): Seventh and penultimate day of the Rohatsu practice period - five hours of zazen. It's also a walking day, so I got a Madison out of the way early because it's easier to sit indoors after sunset than it is to walk outside. I split my sitting into a three-hour and a two-hour session, with a short meal in between.

With my feet on the ground and my head in the air, where is my mind? After five hours of zazen, where is my mind? Where is, where is my mind? 

   

 

The Book Lingo, 48th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra): The Rohatsu practice period continues (sixth day). Today, I sat for four and a half hours, but had to split it into two sessions so that I could watch the SEC Championship Game (it may be Rohatsu, but I'm not crazy). I sat for three hours in the afternoon, three Caves, an Occam and, three Sisters, and then for three Caves in the evening after the game was over.

If you don't know what I mean by Caves, Occam, or Sisters, either go back and read the last several posts or just accept the sweet mystery of life - your choice.   

All of which is to say I didn't do much today other than sit, watch a football game while sitting, and then post this blog (still sitting). Electra is a sitting day.     

 

The Mad Albino, 47th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): The psychiatrist Oliver Sachs once wrote about a man who had lost the ability to form new memories, like the protagonist of the movie, Memento. However, his patient had been a concert pianist before his affliction, and could still play long classical sonatas on the piano solely from his earlier memory. 

When not playing, he was constantly afflicted with a disorienting sensation like just awakening from a deep, deep sleep ("Where am I? Why am I here? What am I doing?"), but when playing the piano, he could always tell exactly where in the composition he was - say, an early, mid-, or late passage - and he found that sense of place comforting, even if he couldn't remember sitting down to start the piece to begin with. The length of the composition was longer than his memory, so playing music served as a sort of prosthesis to compensate for what his memory lacked. He couldn't remember playing the intro sequence, but he knew that he'd been at that piano playing Bach for at least a half hour, based on his knowledge of the piece, and he knew he'd be there for another 10 minutes until the end.

But that's not what I want to talk about. Imagine yourself a sailor on board one of the ships in Columbus' first fleet. You're heading for a distant shore that you think exists but you're not completely sure (some on board say it's not real), and no one has any idea how far away it is.

You stand on the deck and for all 360° around you, you can see the sky meeting the ocean on the horizon. Not a speck of land anywhere to be seen, and you don't know if it's going to be another two days, two weeks, two months, or ever, that land appears to the west. On the other hand, as soon as the next wave crests, land might appear on the horizon. You have no idea. All you can do is watch and wait.

Sitting for long periods of meditation over many intervals sometimes feels like that. The umpteenth sitting period is in progress, and although there were regular kinhin intervals between the periods, all that sitting starts to bleed together. Soon after the echo of the starting bell fades away, you can't tell if you've been sitting there for 5 minutes or 25 minutes. Or maybe longer. You're lost in time just like that sailor lost in the endless sea. The ending bell might not ring for another twenty minutes, or it might ring . . . right . . . now. All you can do is sit and wait. 

When you're lost in time in that quiet space, any external distraction is like a marker. Somebody coughs, a noisy car passes by on the street, or a dog barks, and for at least a short while you know it's been one minute, then two, then more since that little distraction. You may not know where between the start and finish bell you are, but you're pretty certain it's been about five minutes since you heard that door slam.

The trouble with music during zazen, even the most droning, ambient music, is that there are constant little markers keeping one aware of the passage of time. Even in the most structureless of ambient compositions, where there's no compositional clues as to how far along in the piece you are, you're still aware of the passing of time. There are no clues as to whether you're near the end or not, but you know it's been 10 seconds since that last little "tink" of a bell, or that rumble of bass.

Today, the fifth day of the Rohatsu practice period, I used several of Brain Eno's ambient "installation" tracks as timers for my meditation (four hours!). It was lovely, quiet, meditative music, but it nonetheless still got in the way of my sense of time dropping away. With all the constant repetition, layering, and cycling, there's no sense of progress to the music itself, but it's still right there, giving the mind something to focus on and keeping you fixed in time.

Still, while it certainly wasn't shikantaza (just sitting), it was nonetheless four hours of meditation. A day well spent. And since today is Deneb, a walking day, after I finished my sitting I went out and got in a 4.3-mile Madison, returning home just as the sun set. 

Three more days of Rohastsu practice to go, although I won't be using ambient music tracks as my timers anymore.