sunshine in the morning makes me happy

 

Dark out, 4:xx a.m., a small ship gliding by, around the turn, and out the Pass, heading for Progreso. Clearest sky imaginable, stars galore. Venus high in the east, Sirius the Dog Star, Orion high overhead and slightly south. Sirius: thinking of Harry Potter, seems to me Sirius is Harry's godfather, whose alternate form is a large wolfish dog. 

Sirius is killed in the Harry Potter series, inaccessible behind the veil of death, but if I start from the beginning Sirius is still alive, which is it, dead or alive? Some have said eternity is like that, all eternity spread out like a screen and God sees past, present and future all at once. That's nonsense, but suppose it were so: conceivably, could I choose where to Be and keep starting there over and over again? Maybe that's what Hell is like? Or, Heaven? No, in the peace of death, all such possibilities are lost to us. Thank God, eh? we could be like Sisyphus, eh?  

Following the Israeli-Hamas war too closely, so closely that it's affecting my sleep and my dreams, and right now has allowed my first mug of hot & black to go cold. Extremely fitful all last night, with an expanding dream that would not quit, resumed worse every Time I came to the surface, awakened glad it had been a dream, only to sink back into its high stress even while conscious that it was a dream. 

Awake or sleeping, illusory or physical, perceptions are our reality of the moment. I'm sitting at a table typing, is the table real? What about the thoughts I'm having that get transferred to words on the computer screen? Was it all more real or less real a generation ago when I used paper and a typewriter? There's paper and a ballpoint pen on the side table: would thought to word be be more real if I close the laptop and take up pen and paper? Is it real anyway, at all, or only to me? When I was a parish priest it was my practice to publish every week's sermon transcript on paper that interested parishioners could pick up and take away: a parishioner once told me that something was lost between pulpit and print, lip and paper, was that real or his perception? which is real anyway, his perception or someone else's? Not to be stupid, but the dream's ongoing realism was quite unsettling and flushes out all this absurdity. 

I've had such "continuing dreams" before, in the ICU at Cleveland Clinic for one, defined to me as "ICU psychosis," it'd be okay if I could choose my dream topic, but not.

There's a level of sanity where what's in the mind is just as real as what appears to be standing in front of me; as, indeed, both are my own perceptions and no one else's.

An hour later, 5:52 a.m. and still dark, a large ship just passing, heading for Port of Panama City's west terminal. Did the pilot who took the earlier, small ship out wait out at the three mile point and bring in this large ship, or are two pilots involved? 

+++++++++

You get your news from whomever you trust, I trust Reuters, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera to be reasonably balanced, without my deep prejudices and bias. I would like to trust an American political party to look after the country instead of itself, for example, if the Dems had supported McCarthy, who came across the aisle to work with them on keeping the government open, maybe we would not be quite where we are now, facing another shutdown threat. We need a system that has more than just two political parties squared off hating each other, it's so discouraging.

++++++++++++

So are the wars discouraging. And a two-state solution in Palestine/Israel isn't going to resolve the murderous hatreds but maybe it's worth doing it anyway? 

Maybe that eternal Time line actually includes peaceful MiddleEast solutions that satisfy everyone? Dream on.

T88&c