Tuesday, November 9, 2010
140 letters
This looks like a second missile was shot from north of the first one at about the same time. "Left to right" and "right to left" trajectory http://tinyurl.com/22n49u7
the missile
The Matrix Disclaimer
Today I took Peter to the doctor, and when I was in the waiting room, I saw a television, which I don't usually see, since I don't have cable or anything at all at my apartment and I never watch TV. So I got to see the news, which was unusual. There was a mysterious, unexplained missile-like thing that was launched near California. I wouldn't have ever heard about it if I hadn't been in the waiting room.
Anyway, I commented on Twitter that I hoped the missile would hit one of the matrix mind control satellites. For the rest of the day, I got bombarded with voices after that, expressing concern, and wanting me to talk about this subject.
First, my disclaimer about 'the Matrix.' I believe that it's possible, but I'm not absolutely certain, that everybody, all of the time, is being spied on and controlled by a field similar to a radio broadcast. I don't know any details about it, I only know what I experience. This might not be what's happening. Instead, the attacks and surveillance might be only targeted at a small number of people, while the rest of the people are ignored most of the time. I don't know.
So I sometimes talk about 'The Matrix,' meaning a system that controls everybody's moods and thoughts, and spies on everybody. However, I believe that the material world around us is real, unlike the Matrix in the movie. In the movie, even the material world was imaginary. I don't think that the real mind control system works that way, but I have no way of knowing. I just assume, for now, that the material world is real, but that there are attackers using an unknown method to spy on, and control, large numbers of people. I can only imagine what kind of systems and methods they use, so sometimes I think it might come from satellites, and I wish somebody would destroy the satellite systems that are being used. And that's where my Twitter comment came from.
But I don't want anybody thinking that the real world is only an imaginary computer simulation like in the Matrix movie. I assume that when you die, you're really dead for real. I assume that there's no way to escape from this material world. I am planning to die when I am a hundred years old. Then I'll find out what happens when you die. Hopefully, I will have had some children before then, too. That's the plan.
So 'they' wanted me to make that disclaimer, since I was commenting on a popular, trending topic on Twitter, and it's likely that my comment might have been read by a lot of people, who might possibly look at my blog as a result.
This blog isn't action-oriented, not yet. It is just a journal about my life, about love, about hearing voices and being controlled, about chemical sensitivity, and about other random things. And yes, I would like to be more action-oriented, but I suffer from moderate to severe chronic fatigue, so it's hard for me to do much more than drag myself to my job, and then come home and go to bed, or write a few blogs.
Today I took Peter to the doctor, and when I was in the waiting room, I saw a television, which I don't usually see, since I don't have cable or anything at all at my apartment and I never watch TV. So I got to see the news, which was unusual. There was a mysterious, unexplained missile-like thing that was launched near California. I wouldn't have ever heard about it if I hadn't been in the waiting room.
Anyway, I commented on Twitter that I hoped the missile would hit one of the matrix mind control satellites. For the rest of the day, I got bombarded with voices after that, expressing concern, and wanting me to talk about this subject.
First, my disclaimer about 'the Matrix.' I believe that it's possible, but I'm not absolutely certain, that everybody, all of the time, is being spied on and controlled by a field similar to a radio broadcast. I don't know any details about it, I only know what I experience. This might not be what's happening. Instead, the attacks and surveillance might be only targeted at a small number of people, while the rest of the people are ignored most of the time. I don't know.
So I sometimes talk about 'The Matrix,' meaning a system that controls everybody's moods and thoughts, and spies on everybody. However, I believe that the material world around us is real, unlike the Matrix in the movie. In the movie, even the material world was imaginary. I don't think that the real mind control system works that way, but I have no way of knowing. I just assume, for now, that the material world is real, but that there are attackers using an unknown method to spy on, and control, large numbers of people. I can only imagine what kind of systems and methods they use, so sometimes I think it might come from satellites, and I wish somebody would destroy the satellite systems that are being used. And that's where my Twitter comment came from.
But I don't want anybody thinking that the real world is only an imaginary computer simulation like in the Matrix movie. I assume that when you die, you're really dead for real. I assume that there's no way to escape from this material world. I am planning to die when I am a hundred years old. Then I'll find out what happens when you die. Hopefully, I will have had some children before then, too. That's the plan.
So 'they' wanted me to make that disclaimer, since I was commenting on a popular, trending topic on Twitter, and it's likely that my comment might have been read by a lot of people, who might possibly look at my blog as a result.
This blog isn't action-oriented, not yet. It is just a journal about my life, about love, about hearing voices and being controlled, about chemical sensitivity, and about other random things. And yes, I would like to be more action-oriented, but I suffer from moderate to severe chronic fatigue, so it's hard for me to do much more than drag myself to my job, and then come home and go to bed, or write a few blogs.
Monday, November 8, 2010
"Disappointed that you tried...?" No, I'm GRATEFUL that you tried.
Disappointed that you couldn't be like me?
Disappointed that you tried to be like me?
No, I'm grateful that you tried to be like me. Thank you for trying.
What's this all about?
I was thinking about the future of the Order.
What happens if I create the Order, but some of the members start to think they can do it better than I can? I see myself trying to start the Order, but some bossy people start thinking that THEY know what it's about, and I don't. They start complaining that I'm too extreme, that they don't want to follow this rule or that rule, but they like the other ideas. They like this, but they don't like that. They like the idea of getting a bunch of people together to cooperate with each other and help each other, or enjoy each other's company, or work together, or trade together, or do car pools together, or cook together, or have their own religion together. But one or two of my ideas are too extreme, and they just don't like that one particular thing, and they don't think we should be doing it.
Maybe they don't want us to be required to eat the same diet. Maybe they don't like the idea of not being allowed to cut our hair, or, the idea of losing status, losing compliance, if you do cut your hair while you're in the Order. There's always going to be something that they don't like. Some rule they don't want to follow. They joined this group thinking it was one thing, but actually it turned out to be something else, and it's not what they wanted.
What's my reaction to that?
I'm grateful that you tried.
They tried to be like me, but they couldn't. I'm disappointed that it didn't work out, but I'm glad they tried to do it. We can still be friends.
I encourage them to start their own group with their own name and their own reputation. People aren't competing to call themselves 'retmeishka.' That's a unique glossolalia name with no meaning. I didn't try to monopolize some really cool-sounding, meaningful name that everybody wants to have, for instance, 'The Free Will Order,' or something. I didn't take that name. I called myself a unique, meaningless name.
Somewhere down the road, in the future, after I die, people will struggle to follow the original intent of the Order. They will struggle to define the founder's original spirit. What would Nicole Binns do? What did she want for the Order? It's just like any other religion. After someone dies, people struggle to follow their spirit, without any guidance except their own interpretation of that person's writings, the memory of that person. They can only try. That person is gone, and that person can't tell them whether they're doing a good job or not. That person can't tell them whether they're accurately following the original intent, the original spirit, or not.
Sometime in the future, there will be a schism in the Order, just like there is with any religion. Someone will decide that the name retmeishka has been corrupted beyond repair. People are calling themselves retmeishka, but it no longer follows the original spirit of the founder. What do we do? Are we disappointed that you tried to be like me, and you failed?
No, I'm grateful that you tried. Both sides of the schism were trying to follow the original intent, the original spirit. They disagreed about what that spirit was. Thanks for trying.
And then, there are those people who aren't even TRYING to follow the original spirit. They're just making their own thing and naming it after themselves. What do I say about that? I say, go with my blessing. I WANT them to build their own groups. It's helpful for people to have a group to be in, even if that particular group is doing something we disagree with. Usually, for the most part, a different group with minor disagreements isn't doing anything really bad. Groups as such are helpful. They help people meet each other, work together, and cooperate. They support and guide people who don't know what to do. They give people something to rebel against, something to disagree with, something to question. It's better than having nothing at all.
So, sometime in the future, people will leave. They'll disagree about the original spirit that we're trying to follow, they'll say that one person or the other person isn't really following the original spirit. Or someone else will leave and create their own group, with their own spirit, and not even worry about what my original spirit was trying to do. Or they'll be inspired by bits and pieces of it, but they don't want the whole thing. They can all go with my blessing, and, thank you for trying. Thank you for trying to be like me, and, thank you for being yourself.
This is something that inevitably happens when you start an intentional community.
Disappointed that you tried to be like me?
No, I'm grateful that you tried to be like me. Thank you for trying.
What's this all about?
I was thinking about the future of the Order.
What happens if I create the Order, but some of the members start to think they can do it better than I can? I see myself trying to start the Order, but some bossy people start thinking that THEY know what it's about, and I don't. They start complaining that I'm too extreme, that they don't want to follow this rule or that rule, but they like the other ideas. They like this, but they don't like that. They like the idea of getting a bunch of people together to cooperate with each other and help each other, or enjoy each other's company, or work together, or trade together, or do car pools together, or cook together, or have their own religion together. But one or two of my ideas are too extreme, and they just don't like that one particular thing, and they don't think we should be doing it.
Maybe they don't want us to be required to eat the same diet. Maybe they don't like the idea of not being allowed to cut our hair, or, the idea of losing status, losing compliance, if you do cut your hair while you're in the Order. There's always going to be something that they don't like. Some rule they don't want to follow. They joined this group thinking it was one thing, but actually it turned out to be something else, and it's not what they wanted.
What's my reaction to that?
I'm grateful that you tried.
They tried to be like me, but they couldn't. I'm disappointed that it didn't work out, but I'm glad they tried to do it. We can still be friends.
I encourage them to start their own group with their own name and their own reputation. People aren't competing to call themselves 'retmeishka.' That's a unique glossolalia name with no meaning. I didn't try to monopolize some really cool-sounding, meaningful name that everybody wants to have, for instance, 'The Free Will Order,' or something. I didn't take that name. I called myself a unique, meaningless name.
Somewhere down the road, in the future, after I die, people will struggle to follow the original intent of the Order. They will struggle to define the founder's original spirit. What would Nicole Binns do? What did she want for the Order? It's just like any other religion. After someone dies, people struggle to follow their spirit, without any guidance except their own interpretation of that person's writings, the memory of that person. They can only try. That person is gone, and that person can't tell them whether they're doing a good job or not. That person can't tell them whether they're accurately following the original intent, the original spirit, or not.
Sometime in the future, there will be a schism in the Order, just like there is with any religion. Someone will decide that the name retmeishka has been corrupted beyond repair. People are calling themselves retmeishka, but it no longer follows the original spirit of the founder. What do we do? Are we disappointed that you tried to be like me, and you failed?
No, I'm grateful that you tried. Both sides of the schism were trying to follow the original intent, the original spirit. They disagreed about what that spirit was. Thanks for trying.
And then, there are those people who aren't even TRYING to follow the original spirit. They're just making their own thing and naming it after themselves. What do I say about that? I say, go with my blessing. I WANT them to build their own groups. It's helpful for people to have a group to be in, even if that particular group is doing something we disagree with. Usually, for the most part, a different group with minor disagreements isn't doing anything really bad. Groups as such are helpful. They help people meet each other, work together, and cooperate. They support and guide people who don't know what to do. They give people something to rebel against, something to disagree with, something to question. It's better than having nothing at all.
So, sometime in the future, people will leave. They'll disagree about the original spirit that we're trying to follow, they'll say that one person or the other person isn't really following the original spirit. Or someone else will leave and create their own group, with their own spirit, and not even worry about what my original spirit was trying to do. Or they'll be inspired by bits and pieces of it, but they don't want the whole thing. They can all go with my blessing, and, thank you for trying. Thank you for trying to be like me, and, thank you for being yourself.
This is something that inevitably happens when you start an intentional community.
How To Save The Great Apes: Give Them Reading and Writing
The great apes already have their own language. We don't need to give them that. They speak to each other, in the wild, as they go through their daily lives.
But they don't have reading and writing. They don't have a calendar, either, a way of recording and expressing time in years. (As far as I know.)
I want the great apes, the bonobos, the chimps, the gorillas, and any other apes that are able to do it - I want these apes to write and read their own histories. I want them to record their own culture in books. It will be written in ape language. It will have their myths, their memories, their genealogy, their history, their ideas, their names, everything, just like a human history book would have.
It will be just as boring, and just as necessary and important, as a human history book. It might be hard to read. It might be mundane. It might not be wise and full of insight. But still it is necessary.
I like to imagine that somewhere in the jungles, the scientists have built a room underground with the apes' books already in it, protected. I imagine they've been working with the apes all these years to get their history recorded. All those researchers spending years and years in the jungle observing them, I hope they're doing something useful. I'd like to imagine that's what they've been doing all this time. An ape-written history would be useful. Not just history, but whatever else the apes want to write. Ape fiction, ape how-to books, ape philosophy, ape myths. All of it.
We could also give them a money system. Of course, I'd want it to be a good one, like gold and silver. Not fiat money. The bonobos already understand how to use sex as a way of trading for favors and food, so they'll be the first to understand money. But I'm sure the other great apes can too. They understand language.
(Why 'they' wanted me to write about this today, I don't know. There's probably a reason. It's almost always a 'joke' of some kind. But me, I'm not joking, I'm serious. I literally want to see the (non-human) great apes' reading and writing.)
But they don't have reading and writing. They don't have a calendar, either, a way of recording and expressing time in years. (As far as I know.)
I want the great apes, the bonobos, the chimps, the gorillas, and any other apes that are able to do it - I want these apes to write and read their own histories. I want them to record their own culture in books. It will be written in ape language. It will have their myths, their memories, their genealogy, their history, their ideas, their names, everything, just like a human history book would have.
It will be just as boring, and just as necessary and important, as a human history book. It might be hard to read. It might be mundane. It might not be wise and full of insight. But still it is necessary.
I like to imagine that somewhere in the jungles, the scientists have built a room underground with the apes' books already in it, protected. I imagine they've been working with the apes all these years to get their history recorded. All those researchers spending years and years in the jungle observing them, I hope they're doing something useful. I'd like to imagine that's what they've been doing all this time. An ape-written history would be useful. Not just history, but whatever else the apes want to write. Ape fiction, ape how-to books, ape philosophy, ape myths. All of it.
We could also give them a money system. Of course, I'd want it to be a good one, like gold and silver. Not fiat money. The bonobos already understand how to use sex as a way of trading for favors and food, so they'll be the first to understand money. But I'm sure the other great apes can too. They understand language.
(Why 'they' wanted me to write about this today, I don't know. There's probably a reason. It's almost always a 'joke' of some kind. But me, I'm not joking, I'm serious. I literally want to see the (non-human) great apes' reading and writing.)
Saturday, November 6, 2010
I'm on lunch at mcd. Not enough time. But I'm tweeting about Twitter. Comparing it to myspace. Can't even post a tweet in old version of opera. Why is it so hard? Isn't that merely a .php or something? I don't know much programming but I learned a teeny bit of HTML and posting a tweet should be easy. I can't use technical language to describe it. But I know a company is going the wrong way when web pages can't do simple basic functions that are the central core of what they are there for. For instance, the only usable myspace page is the mobile site. You can quickly check email in only a couple seconds. But even on high bandwidth the full sites email drags and drags forever and won't work at all in old browsers or alternative browsers or dialup. They're making a mistake by thinking dialup doesn't exist anymore... And it's so bad it can't even go fast on cable. Twitter is going down that same pathway.
I'd like to make my own site. Social network that promises function and simplicity without flashiness. We need a source of income other than venture capital, borrowed money, or advertising, but also want it to be free for most users. Plentyoffish.com is created by just one guy if I understand correctly. I'd write a wish list of everything I want, and what I want to avoid. No time now...
I'd like to make my own site. Social network that promises function and simplicity without flashiness. We need a source of income other than venture capital, borrowed money, or advertising, but also want it to be free for most users. Plentyoffish.com is created by just one guy if I understand correctly. I'd write a wish list of everything I want, and what I want to avoid. No time now...
lots of quantity, not much quality
12:09 PM 11/6/10
I'm trying to wake up and get ready for work. I took a little bit of St. John's Wort last night just before bed, and I also took a little bit this morning when 'they' woke me up at 7:00 or so. I open up the pills, pour out the herb, and eat a little finger-dab of it, so that I don't get too much. But I had enough this morning that it made me sleepy and I haven't wanted to get up out of bed. So I'm using Vivarin.
I don't like using all these drugs. But I have fallen so badly that I can't help myself. There is so much to do that I can't do. I don't like it when the drugs change my personality. I *do* like it that they make me able to do tasks and projects that I normally don't have enough energy to do, like work on my computer. And also, the one project that has been blocking all of my life - the storage unit full of contaminated belongings.
I haven't been writing about Curtis much now. 'They' have been talking to me about him. They 'try,' quote unquote, to make me go and look for him and try to deliver a letter. But I know they're not really trying. Whenever they decide to force me to do it, they will. They won't have to 'try' and 'fail' to make me go do it.
They've been saying stuff in my head to make me think that he misses me and he wants to see me. They reminded me about the time when he gave me a raw green bean to taste, and it was wonderful. It tasted and smelled like the garden that my parents had when I was a kid. They made it sound like he would give me something like that again, something small and special. But the two times when I've seen him, I've been having a panic attack, and couldn't stay long enough to have a conversation.
In a way, the drug makes me need him less. Again, this reminds me of Edward the vampire in Twilight. The hungrier he is, the harder it is for him to be near Bella. I have had exactly the same thing happen. Whenever I am hungry, literally and physically hungry, when I feel needy in any way at all, it's very scary for me to be near Curtis (or I should say, 'it WAS scary,' in the past tense, back when we worked together). I felt so needy, it made me want to hug him, and I'm guessing it's an instinctive need to nurse, to breastfeed. You know that it isn't socially acceptable to do that, so you get very scared because you really, really want to. But you don't consciously remember that that's what you want. You just know you want to touch someone, but something bad would happen if you did. But the drugs make me more numb and less needy, and that used to make it easier to be close to him without fear. The less I needed him, the closer I was to him. And often, if I would get something to eat, I would calm down enough that I could then go talk to him.
I don't know what 'they,' the voices, will force me to do with him in the long run. Will they keep trying to make me maintain a relationship with him, even though he isn't my neighbor, and he isn't my co-worker, and I haven't been invited to go see him in the outside world - after I got the email from him that said he didn't want us to hang out together? I don't know what 'they' are going to make me do.
Also, I don't know *when* they will make me deliver my letter to him. I have one, and it's ready to go. I tried and failed, once, last week, but only once. I didn't try again. I worked on a couple of other things that required me to get up early in the morning, like making a phone call about my car that still needs to get its bumper fixed. It's like I can only do one small project per day, and if I have some other project or task to do, then I can't do the project of stalking Curtis.
I was looking for something on Flickr.com the other day. I don't recall how it started. But I ended up re-discovering the existence of the safety settings on the search results filtering. I forget what it's called. Safe, moderate, or restricted. I was on SafeSearch. So I changed it to 'restricted,' and then started looking at naked pictures and everything on Flickr.
I remember what I was doing. 'They' wanted me to take naked pictures of myself, and I wanted to find out how to put them on Flickr. They won't be on eagledove9, because that's the one my parents are looking at. I wanted to find out if there were any rules that forbid you to put naked pictures on Flickr. You can do it, but you have to label them 'restricted' so that people won't see them in the safe search.
Anyway I found pictures labeled 'thin' (as in, skinny) and 'boy' or 'youth' or something like that, so I ended up looking at pictures of skinny teenage boys. Apparently other people feel the same way that I feel about them. Some of these pictures were also labeled 'emo,' and those were the teenage boys with long hair. So then I saw other tags associated with 'emo,' and I saw the word 'scene queens,' and I didn't know what it meant, so I started reading about scene queens. I thought it meant gay men, but no, it's referring to females. The 'scene' is the social, cultural group of people who like a particular kind of music, in this case, emo. It was showing pictures of how they dress and how they style their hair and what kind of makeup they wear.
A 'scene queen' is a girl who becomes very popular in this subculture. I was looking at them and they seem to be the Sx/So instinctual stacking (Oscar Ichazo). Some of them were vegetarians. I found out that human skulls can be a symbol of vegetarianism. I've been wondering about human skulls. Human skulls are all over the clothing and jewelry. I started noticing them because Curtis has skull jewelry and pictures on his clothes. It occurred to me that I should be horrified by people worshipping human skulls, but I loved everything Curtis did, and wanted to understand it, so I became curious about who is using images of skulls, and why. He isn't a vegetarian, so it means something different with him. He likes symbolic images, like roses, and blood, and skulls, things that are in the goth or emo culture. I saw it on his MySpace page and, again, in his clothing and jewelry and his car.
Anyway, why were human skulls associated with vegetarians? Some of the 'scene queens,' like Kiki Kannibal, are vegetarians. They believe that killing and eating an animal is the same as killing and eating a fellow human. They twist this belief in a way that says humans are evil, and killing humans is better than killing animals. It's a feeling of hatred for the human race. And I know if you asked them, they wouldn't say this, and they wouldn't admit it, and they would probably call themselves peaceful, and they would probably be anti-war. But I still get the 'hatred of human beings' idea from them. The hatred of self.
Years ago I wondered whether I would become a vegetarian. I decided not to. That decision was strengthened when I read about the Weston Price studies. But that's not the only reason. I decided that if I judged humans to be doing a bad thing when they ate animals, then I should also judge tigers, and sharks, because they are predators too. Why are tigers and sharks forgiven for eating animals? Well, duh, it's because they're 'unconscious,' and they have no control of themselves! But... wait... you're saying they're unconscious? But didn't you just say they were conscious, and equal to humans? Didn't you just say it was wrong to kill animals, because animals are humanlike, and they're conscious, and they have feelings?
So are they conscious, or not? Well, they don't have free will, or self-control. They can't make choices. Really? I disagree. If you raise an animal in a cage, and then release it into the wild, it will struggle and have great difficulty surviving. It has to LEARN how to hunt for food and survive in the wild, and it learns it when its parents, and its tribe, TEACHES it how to hunt and survive. Animals have to learn to survive just like humans do. A few things happen automatically without learning, but not everything. And humans, also, can do a few things automatically without learning them, too. We have instincts. So animals have to learn how to survive. They don't operate automatically just by instinct. They aren't unconscious. They have to make choices. They have to learn. They make mistakes just like humans do. Their lives aren't robotic, or automatic, or perfect and flawless and without mistakes. Animal lives don't happen automatically. They are complex. Like humans, animals have to learn, and make mistakes, and make choices. So in some way, they have free will, too.
So the tigers and sharks are eating their prey, but we forgive them. And they have free will. They are responsible for their actions. ('Fish are friends, not food!' from Finding Nemo.) But we forgive them. We can argue that we're more COMPLICATED than they are. Maybe their lives are simpler.
Darn it, I don't have time to explain all of this, because I have to get ready for work. I wanted to write it out, but it's a mess. And I'm writing a lot because I'm on drugs.
Anyway, the point was, I decided not to become a vegetarian. I decided that it was against my nature, because I decided that humans are a semi-carnivorous species, an omnivore. The other apes are, too. Bonobos and chimps eat meat. I don't remember if gorillas do. I think they eat a little bit. It's my nature to be carnivorous, so I forgive myself, the same way I forgive the tigers and sharks for being carnivores. It's a self-acceptance thing. I decided that humans ARE NOT 'different from' or 'better than' other animals. We are more complicated in some ways, and we can build objects that last a long time, and we can write words on paper that survive after our death, and we don't see that happening with the animals very much... but then, we're not looking hard enough. When we look hard enough, we see language in animals, and other forms of culture. If only I had time to write, I'd complain about the contempt and the superiority, the attitudes of the 'scientists' who study animals and think that they're different from humans.
Vegetarians say that animals are different from humans, but also, the same as humans. Animals are different than we are - helpless, weak, automatic, programmed, unable to make choices, not responsible for their actions. But at the same time, animals are the same as humans: they have feelings, they get hurt, we shouldn't eat them because it hurts when they get killed, their lives matter.
(Note, when I say 'vegetarians say' something, it doesn't mean that ALL vegetarians explain it the same way. I am writing this, but remembering that my brother is a vegetarian, too.)
Bonobos are using language in the wild. They make noises, but we can't imitate them, because their mouth and throat is different from ours, and the noises are too high-pitched and complicated in a way that we can't do it. They're not just making random noises. They're talking. I don't know why this idea bothers people so much.
Well, anyway, so I saw lots of human skulls on some of the vegetarian web pages. It's connected to the idea that killing animals is the same as killing humans, and maybe, that it's better to kill humans than it is to kill animals, because humans are inherently more evil than the other animals are. I think we should forgive ourselves the way we forgive the other animals.
I wish I could keep writing all day. My writing quality isn't that great right now. Lots of quantity, not much quality. I feel like sitting and typing because that's something I enjoy doing. It's just a satisfying thing to do. But I have to go to work.
I'm trying to wake up and get ready for work. I took a little bit of St. John's Wort last night just before bed, and I also took a little bit this morning when 'they' woke me up at 7:00 or so. I open up the pills, pour out the herb, and eat a little finger-dab of it, so that I don't get too much. But I had enough this morning that it made me sleepy and I haven't wanted to get up out of bed. So I'm using Vivarin.
I don't like using all these drugs. But I have fallen so badly that I can't help myself. There is so much to do that I can't do. I don't like it when the drugs change my personality. I *do* like it that they make me able to do tasks and projects that I normally don't have enough energy to do, like work on my computer. And also, the one project that has been blocking all of my life - the storage unit full of contaminated belongings.
I haven't been writing about Curtis much now. 'They' have been talking to me about him. They 'try,' quote unquote, to make me go and look for him and try to deliver a letter. But I know they're not really trying. Whenever they decide to force me to do it, they will. They won't have to 'try' and 'fail' to make me go do it.
They've been saying stuff in my head to make me think that he misses me and he wants to see me. They reminded me about the time when he gave me a raw green bean to taste, and it was wonderful. It tasted and smelled like the garden that my parents had when I was a kid. They made it sound like he would give me something like that again, something small and special. But the two times when I've seen him, I've been having a panic attack, and couldn't stay long enough to have a conversation.
In a way, the drug makes me need him less. Again, this reminds me of Edward the vampire in Twilight. The hungrier he is, the harder it is for him to be near Bella. I have had exactly the same thing happen. Whenever I am hungry, literally and physically hungry, when I feel needy in any way at all, it's very scary for me to be near Curtis (or I should say, 'it WAS scary,' in the past tense, back when we worked together). I felt so needy, it made me want to hug him, and I'm guessing it's an instinctive need to nurse, to breastfeed. You know that it isn't socially acceptable to do that, so you get very scared because you really, really want to. But you don't consciously remember that that's what you want. You just know you want to touch someone, but something bad would happen if you did. But the drugs make me more numb and less needy, and that used to make it easier to be close to him without fear. The less I needed him, the closer I was to him. And often, if I would get something to eat, I would calm down enough that I could then go talk to him.
I don't know what 'they,' the voices, will force me to do with him in the long run. Will they keep trying to make me maintain a relationship with him, even though he isn't my neighbor, and he isn't my co-worker, and I haven't been invited to go see him in the outside world - after I got the email from him that said he didn't want us to hang out together? I don't know what 'they' are going to make me do.
Also, I don't know *when* they will make me deliver my letter to him. I have one, and it's ready to go. I tried and failed, once, last week, but only once. I didn't try again. I worked on a couple of other things that required me to get up early in the morning, like making a phone call about my car that still needs to get its bumper fixed. It's like I can only do one small project per day, and if I have some other project or task to do, then I can't do the project of stalking Curtis.
I was looking for something on Flickr.com the other day. I don't recall how it started. But I ended up re-discovering the existence of the safety settings on the search results filtering. I forget what it's called. Safe, moderate, or restricted. I was on SafeSearch. So I changed it to 'restricted,' and then started looking at naked pictures and everything on Flickr.
I remember what I was doing. 'They' wanted me to take naked pictures of myself, and I wanted to find out how to put them on Flickr. They won't be on eagledove9, because that's the one my parents are looking at. I wanted to find out if there were any rules that forbid you to put naked pictures on Flickr. You can do it, but you have to label them 'restricted' so that people won't see them in the safe search.
Anyway I found pictures labeled 'thin' (as in, skinny) and 'boy' or 'youth' or something like that, so I ended up looking at pictures of skinny teenage boys. Apparently other people feel the same way that I feel about them. Some of these pictures were also labeled 'emo,' and those were the teenage boys with long hair. So then I saw other tags associated with 'emo,' and I saw the word 'scene queens,' and I didn't know what it meant, so I started reading about scene queens. I thought it meant gay men, but no, it's referring to females. The 'scene' is the social, cultural group of people who like a particular kind of music, in this case, emo. It was showing pictures of how they dress and how they style their hair and what kind of makeup they wear.
A 'scene queen' is a girl who becomes very popular in this subculture. I was looking at them and they seem to be the Sx/So instinctual stacking (Oscar Ichazo). Some of them were vegetarians. I found out that human skulls can be a symbol of vegetarianism. I've been wondering about human skulls. Human skulls are all over the clothing and jewelry. I started noticing them because Curtis has skull jewelry and pictures on his clothes. It occurred to me that I should be horrified by people worshipping human skulls, but I loved everything Curtis did, and wanted to understand it, so I became curious about who is using images of skulls, and why. He isn't a vegetarian, so it means something different with him. He likes symbolic images, like roses, and blood, and skulls, things that are in the goth or emo culture. I saw it on his MySpace page and, again, in his clothing and jewelry and his car.
Anyway, why were human skulls associated with vegetarians? Some of the 'scene queens,' like Kiki Kannibal, are vegetarians. They believe that killing and eating an animal is the same as killing and eating a fellow human. They twist this belief in a way that says humans are evil, and killing humans is better than killing animals. It's a feeling of hatred for the human race. And I know if you asked them, they wouldn't say this, and they wouldn't admit it, and they would probably call themselves peaceful, and they would probably be anti-war. But I still get the 'hatred of human beings' idea from them. The hatred of self.
Years ago I wondered whether I would become a vegetarian. I decided not to. That decision was strengthened when I read about the Weston Price studies. But that's not the only reason. I decided that if I judged humans to be doing a bad thing when they ate animals, then I should also judge tigers, and sharks, because they are predators too. Why are tigers and sharks forgiven for eating animals? Well, duh, it's because they're 'unconscious,' and they have no control of themselves! But... wait... you're saying they're unconscious? But didn't you just say they were conscious, and equal to humans? Didn't you just say it was wrong to kill animals, because animals are humanlike, and they're conscious, and they have feelings?
So are they conscious, or not? Well, they don't have free will, or self-control. They can't make choices. Really? I disagree. If you raise an animal in a cage, and then release it into the wild, it will struggle and have great difficulty surviving. It has to LEARN how to hunt for food and survive in the wild, and it learns it when its parents, and its tribe, TEACHES it how to hunt and survive. Animals have to learn to survive just like humans do. A few things happen automatically without learning, but not everything. And humans, also, can do a few things automatically without learning them, too. We have instincts. So animals have to learn how to survive. They don't operate automatically just by instinct. They aren't unconscious. They have to make choices. They have to learn. They make mistakes just like humans do. Their lives aren't robotic, or automatic, or perfect and flawless and without mistakes. Animal lives don't happen automatically. They are complex. Like humans, animals have to learn, and make mistakes, and make choices. So in some way, they have free will, too.
So the tigers and sharks are eating their prey, but we forgive them. And they have free will. They are responsible for their actions. ('Fish are friends, not food!' from Finding Nemo.) But we forgive them. We can argue that we're more COMPLICATED than they are. Maybe their lives are simpler.
Darn it, I don't have time to explain all of this, because I have to get ready for work. I wanted to write it out, but it's a mess. And I'm writing a lot because I'm on drugs.
Anyway, the point was, I decided not to become a vegetarian. I decided that it was against my nature, because I decided that humans are a semi-carnivorous species, an omnivore. The other apes are, too. Bonobos and chimps eat meat. I don't remember if gorillas do. I think they eat a little bit. It's my nature to be carnivorous, so I forgive myself, the same way I forgive the tigers and sharks for being carnivores. It's a self-acceptance thing. I decided that humans ARE NOT 'different from' or 'better than' other animals. We are more complicated in some ways, and we can build objects that last a long time, and we can write words on paper that survive after our death, and we don't see that happening with the animals very much... but then, we're not looking hard enough. When we look hard enough, we see language in animals, and other forms of culture. If only I had time to write, I'd complain about the contempt and the superiority, the attitudes of the 'scientists' who study animals and think that they're different from humans.
Vegetarians say that animals are different from humans, but also, the same as humans. Animals are different than we are - helpless, weak, automatic, programmed, unable to make choices, not responsible for their actions. But at the same time, animals are the same as humans: they have feelings, they get hurt, we shouldn't eat them because it hurts when they get killed, their lives matter.
(Note, when I say 'vegetarians say' something, it doesn't mean that ALL vegetarians explain it the same way. I am writing this, but remembering that my brother is a vegetarian, too.)
Bonobos are using language in the wild. They make noises, but we can't imitate them, because their mouth and throat is different from ours, and the noises are too high-pitched and complicated in a way that we can't do it. They're not just making random noises. They're talking. I don't know why this idea bothers people so much.
Well, anyway, so I saw lots of human skulls on some of the vegetarian web pages. It's connected to the idea that killing animals is the same as killing humans, and maybe, that it's better to kill humans than it is to kill animals, because humans are inherently more evil than the other animals are. I think we should forgive ourselves the way we forgive the other animals.
I wish I could keep writing all day. My writing quality isn't that great right now. Lots of quantity, not much quality. I feel like sitting and typing because that's something I enjoy doing. It's just a satisfying thing to do. But I have to go to work.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
random notes, mostly about dreadlocks
I am taking bits of Vivarin pills, and I am also taking a little bit of St. John's Wort every few days, but not every day.
I took Vivarin this evening to get myself up out of bed to go to the storage unit and take out a couple of boxes to sort through. The Vivarin is making me talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. That's why this is long and obsessive.
'The real problem is elsewhere.' I talk to the voices all the time when I'm lying in bed. They wake me up and then ask me questions and make me talk about things and make decisions with me. I used to hate them and fight them, constantly, but that's when I was on a lot more drugs, and also, I had a metallic dental filling back then, which made me even more hateful and sick and uncomfortable. I think they're not as abusive as they used to be, either, although actually, if I were on drugs and in withdrawal, I would be getting angrier a lot more often, and when I get angry, they are just as abusive as they ever were. They cause a lot more damage whenever I'm working lots of hours and desperately need sleep, but right now, I have only one job, so it doesn't matter as much that they wake me up and destroy my sleep.
Anyway, 'the real problem is elsewhere' means that there is a barrier preventing me from making any progress, from being happy, from getting anything done. My apartment is full of garbage, and I can't walk on the floor because there are ephedra residue footprints that have gotten into this house, so I always have to wear sandals around the house - and I refuse to clean any of it up. The voices can't make me clean it up. They can't force me to work on cleaning this up, because I won't, because it's hopeless - it would waste a lot of time and energy, only to get contaminated again. I've had so much experience with contamination over the past three years that I know all about what happens when you waste lots of time cleaning something over and over again. Carpets are hopeless. It's not worth cleaning anything up, until I have dealt with the real problem... the storage unit. All of my contaminated belongings are in there. If I ever get them out, they will re-contaminate the place that I bring them to. So I can't clean up my home until I've gotten rid of, or cleaned up, the stuff in the storage unit. Everything in there is a 'bomb.' That is what the voices called it whenever I brought the ephedra seeds into the other apartment. They said that it was the same as bringing a bomb, or a lit stick of dynamite, into the house. It causes an explosion. The voices knew all about ephedra residue contamination already.
So if I want to feel like I'm making progress, I have to get things cleaned up or thrown away from inside the storage area. That's the real problem preventing me from getting anywhere.
So I got a couple things out of there tonight and I will sort through them. I found some things that I might be able to throw away. I have a box full of papers. Some of the papers will be put into another box and saved, but a lot of it is just garbage papers that I never sorted through. Another thing is a blanket. My blankets got contaminated like all of the laundry. No matter how many times you wash them, there is still residue on them, because the washing machine just recycles the dirty water around in it, to save water. It doesn't constantly flush fresh new water over the laundry. It sloshes the old water around in there for a long time, spreading the residues all around so that a tiny spot of residue gets everywhere instead of in just one place. Ideally, I would want to wash my laundry in a creek, where the water was constantly new, but I won't be doing that. I just throw laundry away nowadays when it gets contaminated. I get the cheapest goodwill clothes and I make sure that they're not nice, and not unique, and not special, and I make sure that I don't like them too much, so that I won't mind throwing them away. I don't wash laundry anymore. You can't imagine this unless you have experienced a toxic drug residue contamination.
The voices were wondering about why I am antisocial.
We've been talking about what would be needed for me to be able to tolerate the company of other women. I used to have a best friend Rachael for eleven years when I was in middle school and high school. I haven't had a female best friend as good as she was, ever. My friend Valencia in college was my best friend there, but we aren't in contact anymore, and still, I felt as though she didn't really understand me either.
There are two women at McDonald's who talk to me. Both of them are usually telling me about their problems with men.
An enneagram Four has a hard time relating to other people's problems. I've always felt that way. I usually find it very hard to see something from their point of view, to care about it as much as they do. When these two women from McDonald's tell me about their problems, I always feel as though their problems aren't as bad as my problems, and I don't really want to be friends with them... but the voices have been asking me for more detail about WHY.
I want to DO things. When you value something, when something matters to you, when something is important to you, then you want to DO things about it. You want to get the things you value, and avoid the things you disvalue.
If I were going to be friends with women, or if I were going to have them in the Order (which is what the voices were asking me about) - they were asking me, why would women want to join the Order? And why would men want to join? Men's and women's roles in the Order are different. I looked through a book called 'Rumspringa,' about Amish teenagers, about their rebellion, and about how some of them, lots of them, decide to come back and officially join the Amish. You aren't born Amish, you join it as an adult. And some of the people they interviewed said that they returned to join the Amish because the Order takes care of you. That was how they phrased it. The Order takes care of you. The church takes care of you. Maybe they said church, not Order, but either way. It actively participates in your life. They DO things for you. And you can see this. The Amish community really does the 'barn raisings' that they talk about. The whole community works together to build a barn in a very short time, and I think it really might be one day. They help you with getting married, and that kind of thing. I would have to find out more details. But that is what I want my Order to do. I want my members to get real, material benefits from being in the Order. It isn't just an abstraction or an idea. They will physically participate in your life and help you. This means things like work, food, money, knowledge, gifts, and real-world help of all kinds. That's why I call Retmeishka a practical religion. You DO things in the material world. You receive physical benefits by joining. You quality of life, in the material world, will be better, easier, healthier, and wealthier.
So I was talking to the voices about why women join the Order. And we were wondering what would be needed so that I could stand the company of other women. Well, my first answer was that I wouldn't want us all to stand around gossiping and complaining about the men. I don't want to be in one of those man-hating groups of women.
And I want to be action-oriented. I like to talk about *doing* things. I like to make plans and strategies. What will we do, how will we do it, when will we do it, when can we get started, when will we finish, what's the goal.
But I don't want to just be too goal-oriented without a deeper understanding of the big important things going on in the world, or their significance. There are people who can talk about goals and actions, and they can get things done, but they never see what they're doing or why they're doing it or why it matters. I want to talk to people who are goal-oriented but they also see, and feel, how much it matters, why we're doing this, why this is important, how it fits into the big picture. I want them to *feel* that it MATTERS.
But I don't want to work with people who have contempt for me. I don't want to be with people who are *too* competent and strong and don't have any problems. There are people who can't imagine how terrible and how difficult my life is. There are people who are so healthy that they can't imagine how hard it is to get out of bed every day with chronic fatigue, and how it's a big huge achievement just for me to get one small task or project done. I don't want to talk to people who will have contempt for me when I'm proud of myself for doing one tiny project today. They would have contempt because I'm not doing enough, because I can't do a hundred tasks every day the way they do. I've talked to women who are competent and goal-oriented, and they always act like I should be able to just push a button and magically fix everything that's wrong with my life, quickly and easily. I try to explain that my chronic fatigue is real, it's terrible, it's overwhelming, and I would try to explain that I'm being attacked by murderers who burn me and de-focus my mind whenever I try to use my brain, but they don't understand those things. They don't believe that mind control is real or that I'm being attacked, and they don't believe in chronic fatigue, or they think it has a simple solution. ('Why don't you just go to the doctor?' HAHAHAHAHAHAH! Don't you think I already have??? The doctor won't do anything. They'll prescribe pills. If I want pills, I can buy my own pills. I'm using Vivarin, a caffeine pill, for my chronic fatigue right now. I don't need a doctor for that.)
So I don't like to be with people who do nothing but complain about men, and I don't like to be with people who are so extremely competent and goal-oriented that they have contempt for my tiny achievements ('I sorted through a couple of boxes today! This is a huge big deal! I made progress on disaster recovery!') And they would advise me to do things that are a waste of time and money ('Go to the doctor') that I've already done and that didn't work, or things that violate my values and my beliefs ('Go apply for welfare, and medicare, and get food stamps, and get help from the government'). I'd want to talk to them about doing things that work with my values and beliefs, things that I believe will be useful instead of a waste of time and money.
So the voices continued to ask me questions about what I would need to do to tolerate the company of other women. And here is one thing we thought of. I imagined us taking a walk together, me and a big group of women. But we would be forbidden to talk. We would be forbidden to speak out loud to each other. That would be an official rule. This is because we wouldn't have to be uncomfortable or strain to make conversation or chit-chat or small talk with each other, or talk about things I don't like to talk about, or have disagreements and conflicts with each other. So we would be forbidden to talk to each other at all. And I imagined me and this big group of women walking together, dressed in uniform, walking through town, a silent procession. We would walk a certain distance down a pre-planned route, and then go home. When the walk was over, we'd be allowed to talk to each other again. It would be like a parade of the Order. In the parade, we're not supposed to talk to each other. And I've actually been in parades several times, because I used to be in band class in middle school and high school (I played the flute). It would be formal like that.
These would be women who were following the grooming rules with me. That's another thing that I need in order to tolerate other women. I don't like the way they groom themselves. I don't like makeup, I don't like eyebrow-plucking, I don't like haircutting and hairstyling. So they would be following the grooming rules and we would do a silent procession together through town. And if they had been following the grooming rules with me for a long time, they would have longer and longer hair, so that I would enjoy the sight of them. I enjoy the sight of other women with very long hair, even if it's longer and more beautiful than my own, even if I envy them. My hair is very, very thin, and it only grows to hip length, and no longer. That's the ultimate length of my hair. It stops growing, and the individual hairs fall out and then start over, because they are only 'programmed' to grow that far. So I will never have floor-length hair if my hair is loose. Other women can have floor-length hair. I will envy them, but even so, it is required, and I am required to tolerate my envy, and to find other ways to compete against them, and find other ways to show the world that I am a special, important person, and I cannot use 'longer hair' as a way to show everybody that I'm special.
However, I have dreadlocks now, and so, according to the theory, my dreadlocks are able to grow longer than that hair length limit. So far, I haven't had them for a long enough time to notice it. 'Dreadloops' cause the hair to get shorter for a little while. The loose hairs tangle together into loops that pull part of the hair upwards and sideways, so that it loses length at the bottom. My hair has done that a little bit. So it's still about the same length that it was before I let the dreadlocks grow.
I've been reading about dreadlocks, about other people doing them, and I went to a website devoted to dreadlocks. On the website (I think it's 'dreadlockssite.com') they advocate natural dreadlocks, the kind that I have, instead of artificial dreadlocks. I read about people taking hours and hours and hours to create artificial dreadlocks. And there was this guy who approached me when I went to Papa John's Pizza a month or two ago, and he asked me about my dreadlocks, and he said his roommate was doing them, and it took lots and lots of work. I was puzzled, I was like, 'Work? What work?' The guy said it took hours and hours of work to create the dreadlocks and to constantly maintain them. I am not doing any work at all. All you have to do is stop using shampoo (and conditioner, and any other hair product). Just wash with water. The grease sticks the hair together and it gradually mats, starting up at the roots (not the ends). The ends can stay loose. The real mats are up at the top, not the bottom. Then, as it grows, and as the short hairs stick to the existing mats, they tangle together tightly and densely all by themselves. You don't have to do anything at all.
Anyway, since the hair no longer disconnects and falls out, the locks will get longer and longer. That's the only way my hair can grow longer than hip length. And it's true, my hair isn't falling out anymore since I started the dreadlocks. Back when I used to wash and comb my hair, I would get big clumps of hair in the drain in the shower. I had to have a hair catcher over the drain and I had to throw away the clumps of hair every day. These were just the ordinary loose hairs that disconnect and fall out by themselves all the time. It's normal. I don't mean that my hair was 'falling out,' (although I did have a time when I lost more hair than usual). I just mean the normal individual pieces disconnecting. That's not happening anymore at all. There is no hair at all falling off when I take a shower. All of the disconnected hairs are tangled into the locks. I don't have loose hairs all over my clothing and all over the carpet anymore. It used to be that the hair would get all over my carpet, and if I ran the vacuum, or ran a brush over the carpet, it would pick up wads and wads of hair. Now there is nothing. So the dreadlocks have been successful at keeping the disconnected hairs together in my locks.
I had one tiny lock under the hair on the back of my neck. It was a tangle of the short pieces. There is short hair that never grows longer than a few inches. That tiny lock of hair actually fell off yesterday. It's the first lock that has fallen off. I kept it. It's sitting in the shower on a little shelf. I have to decide what to do with it. It was a baby dreadlock only a couple inches long. The whole thing fell off. It wasn't connected to any of the long hairs that keep growing for years and years.
I've taken lots of caffeine this evening. That's why there is no end to all my talking.
Anyway... there are other reasons why I'm not making friends here. It's partly because I don't know if I'll stay here forever. I'm at an apartment group and I'm not going to the neighbors' houses or getting to know them. I don't want to do that if I am going to leave in a year or two. But it's also for a variety of 'they don't understand me' type reasons which 'we' are still talking about.
I'm going to post this even though it wandered through various topics and never really finished anything.
I took Vivarin this evening to get myself up out of bed to go to the storage unit and take out a couple of boxes to sort through. The Vivarin is making me talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. That's why this is long and obsessive.
'The real problem is elsewhere.' I talk to the voices all the time when I'm lying in bed. They wake me up and then ask me questions and make me talk about things and make decisions with me. I used to hate them and fight them, constantly, but that's when I was on a lot more drugs, and also, I had a metallic dental filling back then, which made me even more hateful and sick and uncomfortable. I think they're not as abusive as they used to be, either, although actually, if I were on drugs and in withdrawal, I would be getting angrier a lot more often, and when I get angry, they are just as abusive as they ever were. They cause a lot more damage whenever I'm working lots of hours and desperately need sleep, but right now, I have only one job, so it doesn't matter as much that they wake me up and destroy my sleep.
Anyway, 'the real problem is elsewhere' means that there is a barrier preventing me from making any progress, from being happy, from getting anything done. My apartment is full of garbage, and I can't walk on the floor because there are ephedra residue footprints that have gotten into this house, so I always have to wear sandals around the house - and I refuse to clean any of it up. The voices can't make me clean it up. They can't force me to work on cleaning this up, because I won't, because it's hopeless - it would waste a lot of time and energy, only to get contaminated again. I've had so much experience with contamination over the past three years that I know all about what happens when you waste lots of time cleaning something over and over again. Carpets are hopeless. It's not worth cleaning anything up, until I have dealt with the real problem... the storage unit. All of my contaminated belongings are in there. If I ever get them out, they will re-contaminate the place that I bring them to. So I can't clean up my home until I've gotten rid of, or cleaned up, the stuff in the storage unit. Everything in there is a 'bomb.' That is what the voices called it whenever I brought the ephedra seeds into the other apartment. They said that it was the same as bringing a bomb, or a lit stick of dynamite, into the house. It causes an explosion. The voices knew all about ephedra residue contamination already.
So if I want to feel like I'm making progress, I have to get things cleaned up or thrown away from inside the storage area. That's the real problem preventing me from getting anywhere.
So I got a couple things out of there tonight and I will sort through them. I found some things that I might be able to throw away. I have a box full of papers. Some of the papers will be put into another box and saved, but a lot of it is just garbage papers that I never sorted through. Another thing is a blanket. My blankets got contaminated like all of the laundry. No matter how many times you wash them, there is still residue on them, because the washing machine just recycles the dirty water around in it, to save water. It doesn't constantly flush fresh new water over the laundry. It sloshes the old water around in there for a long time, spreading the residues all around so that a tiny spot of residue gets everywhere instead of in just one place. Ideally, I would want to wash my laundry in a creek, where the water was constantly new, but I won't be doing that. I just throw laundry away nowadays when it gets contaminated. I get the cheapest goodwill clothes and I make sure that they're not nice, and not unique, and not special, and I make sure that I don't like them too much, so that I won't mind throwing them away. I don't wash laundry anymore. You can't imagine this unless you have experienced a toxic drug residue contamination.
The voices were wondering about why I am antisocial.
We've been talking about what would be needed for me to be able to tolerate the company of other women. I used to have a best friend Rachael for eleven years when I was in middle school and high school. I haven't had a female best friend as good as she was, ever. My friend Valencia in college was my best friend there, but we aren't in contact anymore, and still, I felt as though she didn't really understand me either.
There are two women at McDonald's who talk to me. Both of them are usually telling me about their problems with men.
An enneagram Four has a hard time relating to other people's problems. I've always felt that way. I usually find it very hard to see something from their point of view, to care about it as much as they do. When these two women from McDonald's tell me about their problems, I always feel as though their problems aren't as bad as my problems, and I don't really want to be friends with them... but the voices have been asking me for more detail about WHY.
I want to DO things. When you value something, when something matters to you, when something is important to you, then you want to DO things about it. You want to get the things you value, and avoid the things you disvalue.
If I were going to be friends with women, or if I were going to have them in the Order (which is what the voices were asking me about) - they were asking me, why would women want to join the Order? And why would men want to join? Men's and women's roles in the Order are different. I looked through a book called 'Rumspringa,' about Amish teenagers, about their rebellion, and about how some of them, lots of them, decide to come back and officially join the Amish. You aren't born Amish, you join it as an adult. And some of the people they interviewed said that they returned to join the Amish because the Order takes care of you. That was how they phrased it. The Order takes care of you. The church takes care of you. Maybe they said church, not Order, but either way. It actively participates in your life. They DO things for you. And you can see this. The Amish community really does the 'barn raisings' that they talk about. The whole community works together to build a barn in a very short time, and I think it really might be one day. They help you with getting married, and that kind of thing. I would have to find out more details. But that is what I want my Order to do. I want my members to get real, material benefits from being in the Order. It isn't just an abstraction or an idea. They will physically participate in your life and help you. This means things like work, food, money, knowledge, gifts, and real-world help of all kinds. That's why I call Retmeishka a practical religion. You DO things in the material world. You receive physical benefits by joining. You quality of life, in the material world, will be better, easier, healthier, and wealthier.
So I was talking to the voices about why women join the Order. And we were wondering what would be needed so that I could stand the company of other women. Well, my first answer was that I wouldn't want us all to stand around gossiping and complaining about the men. I don't want to be in one of those man-hating groups of women.
And I want to be action-oriented. I like to talk about *doing* things. I like to make plans and strategies. What will we do, how will we do it, when will we do it, when can we get started, when will we finish, what's the goal.
But I don't want to just be too goal-oriented without a deeper understanding of the big important things going on in the world, or their significance. There are people who can talk about goals and actions, and they can get things done, but they never see what they're doing or why they're doing it or why it matters. I want to talk to people who are goal-oriented but they also see, and feel, how much it matters, why we're doing this, why this is important, how it fits into the big picture. I want them to *feel* that it MATTERS.
But I don't want to work with people who have contempt for me. I don't want to be with people who are *too* competent and strong and don't have any problems. There are people who can't imagine how terrible and how difficult my life is. There are people who are so healthy that they can't imagine how hard it is to get out of bed every day with chronic fatigue, and how it's a big huge achievement just for me to get one small task or project done. I don't want to talk to people who will have contempt for me when I'm proud of myself for doing one tiny project today. They would have contempt because I'm not doing enough, because I can't do a hundred tasks every day the way they do. I've talked to women who are competent and goal-oriented, and they always act like I should be able to just push a button and magically fix everything that's wrong with my life, quickly and easily. I try to explain that my chronic fatigue is real, it's terrible, it's overwhelming, and I would try to explain that I'm being attacked by murderers who burn me and de-focus my mind whenever I try to use my brain, but they don't understand those things. They don't believe that mind control is real or that I'm being attacked, and they don't believe in chronic fatigue, or they think it has a simple solution. ('Why don't you just go to the doctor?' HAHAHAHAHAHAH! Don't you think I already have??? The doctor won't do anything. They'll prescribe pills. If I want pills, I can buy my own pills. I'm using Vivarin, a caffeine pill, for my chronic fatigue right now. I don't need a doctor for that.)
So I don't like to be with people who do nothing but complain about men, and I don't like to be with people who are so extremely competent and goal-oriented that they have contempt for my tiny achievements ('I sorted through a couple of boxes today! This is a huge big deal! I made progress on disaster recovery!') And they would advise me to do things that are a waste of time and money ('Go to the doctor') that I've already done and that didn't work, or things that violate my values and my beliefs ('Go apply for welfare, and medicare, and get food stamps, and get help from the government'). I'd want to talk to them about doing things that work with my values and beliefs, things that I believe will be useful instead of a waste of time and money.
So the voices continued to ask me questions about what I would need to do to tolerate the company of other women. And here is one thing we thought of. I imagined us taking a walk together, me and a big group of women. But we would be forbidden to talk. We would be forbidden to speak out loud to each other. That would be an official rule. This is because we wouldn't have to be uncomfortable or strain to make conversation or chit-chat or small talk with each other, or talk about things I don't like to talk about, or have disagreements and conflicts with each other. So we would be forbidden to talk to each other at all. And I imagined me and this big group of women walking together, dressed in uniform, walking through town, a silent procession. We would walk a certain distance down a pre-planned route, and then go home. When the walk was over, we'd be allowed to talk to each other again. It would be like a parade of the Order. In the parade, we're not supposed to talk to each other. And I've actually been in parades several times, because I used to be in band class in middle school and high school (I played the flute). It would be formal like that.
These would be women who were following the grooming rules with me. That's another thing that I need in order to tolerate other women. I don't like the way they groom themselves. I don't like makeup, I don't like eyebrow-plucking, I don't like haircutting and hairstyling. So they would be following the grooming rules and we would do a silent procession together through town. And if they had been following the grooming rules with me for a long time, they would have longer and longer hair, so that I would enjoy the sight of them. I enjoy the sight of other women with very long hair, even if it's longer and more beautiful than my own, even if I envy them. My hair is very, very thin, and it only grows to hip length, and no longer. That's the ultimate length of my hair. It stops growing, and the individual hairs fall out and then start over, because they are only 'programmed' to grow that far. So I will never have floor-length hair if my hair is loose. Other women can have floor-length hair. I will envy them, but even so, it is required, and I am required to tolerate my envy, and to find other ways to compete against them, and find other ways to show the world that I am a special, important person, and I cannot use 'longer hair' as a way to show everybody that I'm special.
However, I have dreadlocks now, and so, according to the theory, my dreadlocks are able to grow longer than that hair length limit. So far, I haven't had them for a long enough time to notice it. 'Dreadloops' cause the hair to get shorter for a little while. The loose hairs tangle together into loops that pull part of the hair upwards and sideways, so that it loses length at the bottom. My hair has done that a little bit. So it's still about the same length that it was before I let the dreadlocks grow.
I've been reading about dreadlocks, about other people doing them, and I went to a website devoted to dreadlocks. On the website (I think it's 'dreadlockssite.com') they advocate natural dreadlocks, the kind that I have, instead of artificial dreadlocks. I read about people taking hours and hours and hours to create artificial dreadlocks. And there was this guy who approached me when I went to Papa John's Pizza a month or two ago, and he asked me about my dreadlocks, and he said his roommate was doing them, and it took lots and lots of work. I was puzzled, I was like, 'Work? What work?' The guy said it took hours and hours of work to create the dreadlocks and to constantly maintain them. I am not doing any work at all. All you have to do is stop using shampoo (and conditioner, and any other hair product). Just wash with water. The grease sticks the hair together and it gradually mats, starting up at the roots (not the ends). The ends can stay loose. The real mats are up at the top, not the bottom. Then, as it grows, and as the short hairs stick to the existing mats, they tangle together tightly and densely all by themselves. You don't have to do anything at all.
Anyway, since the hair no longer disconnects and falls out, the locks will get longer and longer. That's the only way my hair can grow longer than hip length. And it's true, my hair isn't falling out anymore since I started the dreadlocks. Back when I used to wash and comb my hair, I would get big clumps of hair in the drain in the shower. I had to have a hair catcher over the drain and I had to throw away the clumps of hair every day. These were just the ordinary loose hairs that disconnect and fall out by themselves all the time. It's normal. I don't mean that my hair was 'falling out,' (although I did have a time when I lost more hair than usual). I just mean the normal individual pieces disconnecting. That's not happening anymore at all. There is no hair at all falling off when I take a shower. All of the disconnected hairs are tangled into the locks. I don't have loose hairs all over my clothing and all over the carpet anymore. It used to be that the hair would get all over my carpet, and if I ran the vacuum, or ran a brush over the carpet, it would pick up wads and wads of hair. Now there is nothing. So the dreadlocks have been successful at keeping the disconnected hairs together in my locks.
I had one tiny lock under the hair on the back of my neck. It was a tangle of the short pieces. There is short hair that never grows longer than a few inches. That tiny lock of hair actually fell off yesterday. It's the first lock that has fallen off. I kept it. It's sitting in the shower on a little shelf. I have to decide what to do with it. It was a baby dreadlock only a couple inches long. The whole thing fell off. It wasn't connected to any of the long hairs that keep growing for years and years.
I've taken lots of caffeine this evening. That's why there is no end to all my talking.
Anyway... there are other reasons why I'm not making friends here. It's partly because I don't know if I'll stay here forever. I'm at an apartment group and I'm not going to the neighbors' houses or getting to know them. I don't want to do that if I am going to leave in a year or two. But it's also for a variety of 'they don't understand me' type reasons which 'we' are still talking about.
I'm going to post this even though it wandered through various topics and never really finished anything.
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