second breakfast

Frustration: the total physical and mental discombobulation when this happens -> I eat what I'm sure is a safe breakfast and it collapses on me. At breakfast I avoid bread and other carb foods because they bring down disabling post-prandial hypotension, drop in blood pressure with wobbly dizziness of trying to make it to the bed before falling. This morning - - why am I telling this, it's nobody's business but mine - - I baked two tomato slices, two slices of bacon crumbled over them, laid cheese slices on top. Baked until bubbling furiously, then out onto my long rectangular plate that I bought at Stone Lantern in Highlands years ago.

It made a lovely presentation, pleasing both to eye and tongue. Mug of hot & black with, and my usual collection of heart-related pills.

Delicious. And safe enough, eh? No, within minutes the dizzy feeling in my neck came on almost instantly, and BP, which normally runs 106/60, had plummeted to 76/42. Quickly into bed to give it Time to recover, usually 15 minutes to half an hour.

It's not completely back to battery now, but enough to function mentally and physically. Plus, I remember: ten or a dozen years ago, my all time favorite heart specialist told me that when this happens, eat potato chips. The salt will do it, restore blood pressure quickly. Getting better now, but I'll not check the BP again, I'll just sit here and finish this bowl of salty potato chips dipped in mayonnaise. Not an objectionable treatment regime.

Back home In Hobbiton we call this second breakfast. Which takes me back to changing my mind: if I could go back in Time and space, it would be to a morning with my middle-school kids at HNES, reading and discussing Tolkien, and watching "The Hobbit" or a book or film from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. My class technique was to do those things together with them, each student constantly on the lookout to spot a hint of agapē and be prepared to tell it when I stopped the film for discussion.

The idea was to be aware of love, and its absence, as a habit of daily life.

So, agapē. No, agapē is not Gollum obsessed with the Ring and murmuring "my precious, my precious, my precious" - - but it is many Times throughout "The Hobbit" and "LOTR" books and films and talks in class; and especial one scene, later, the little fellowship is in Moria, and Frodo suddenly realizes that Gollum is right there in the cave with them, has never given up following them, is at a short distance in the shadows, watching them, waiting.

Frodo and Gandalf are talking. Frodo tells Gandalf that Gollum is there, and says that when he had the chance he should have killed Gollum then instead of mercifully letting him off.

Gandalf: ''Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

In the same conversation, Frodo says he wishes the Ring had never come to him, laying on him all this burden, risk, danger and responsibility.

Frodo: "I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened."

Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times; but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil."

If I could live a moment of life over, I might go back to that morning with my kids, maybe not to BE me again, but to watch in the same way that Emily in "Our Town" goes back and watches all the ordinary love of that ordinary morning of her twelfth birthday. As it happens, the feelings are so intense that Emily cannot bear it.

That LOTR film scene has never left me, and the hour of watching it with middle schoolers whom I loved more than life. Life and Time evolve, things keep changing, and tomorrow it'll be something else; but for me contemplating life and Time at this Friday July 23 moment, discussing agapē and watching that film with those kids those years ago, may be the most important thing that has ever happened to me.

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There is destiny in life. Someone, some anonymous person on line who evidently loves Hobbiton as much as I have, observed about struggles we face in life, "Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."

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For this morning I had a mental list of four things I wanted to blog about, but thanks to the PPHypoT I didn't get to even one of them, and now they've completely evaporated, I have no idea what they might have been.

Anyway,

RSF&PTL