11/12/23

 Sunday, November 12, 2023

In bed at 10 after dozing on BL, awake at 4:15 and up at 4:30, let Lilly out.  43°, high of 53°, mostly cloudy, windy, wind S at 15 mph, 8-18/30, w/c=36°.  Sunrise at 6:40, sunset at 4:30, 9+50.

Treadmill; pain.  Went to bed with CPP and woke up with CPP, hoping this won't be another day lost to pain. . . . Got better at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.  21:42    0.51

Random thoughts: Old age, debility, incapacities, pointlessness, chronicity as in The chronicity of neurodegenerative diseases allows the brain to engage compensatory mechanisms …, on a scale from 1 to 10, . . . ,,  side effects,  may I have your attention please medical emergency rapid response team needed in red clinic room 1106,  how often, how severe, how long, how often, . . . 

Such a gorgeous photo, such an awful reality

Israel and America.  I can't resist it - the thought that Israel became, some time ago, a racist and fascistic country.  But I also entertain the thought that perhaps it was practically inevitable, inexorable.  I have the same thought about the United States: perhaps it is inevitable that we will become if not a racist country (but who knows?) at least a fascistic, authoritarian, right wing country.  Israel has always been a militaristic country but that was due to its being surrounded at all its borders by enemies. The U.S. has become a militaristic country with a homegrown Hessian army, not mercenaries in the same sense as the Hessians, but all-volunteer with many of its members induced to join up because of the valuable benefits that are provided to military members and veterans.  Israel's militarism is rational, existential, and defensible; it needs to defend its citizens.  America's militarism is also rational but less existential and defensible; America defends its markets and suppliers of raw materials.  Israel relies to a large extent on its reserves, citizen soldiers subject to conscription, unless one is too busy studying Torah and Talmud while being supported by the State.  Maybe being an orthodox true believer does have some salvific value?!?!  At least in Israel, it'll save you from the draft!  In large measure Israel is right-wing because of its religious wackos and Jewish nationalists.  In large measure America is right wing because if its religious wackos, Evangelicals and Christian nationalists.

    

Many thoughts, many memories, many emotions

I rested on my basement recliner chair after I dismounted the treadmill this afternoon.  The thought came to me that the space I use as my basement 'sanctuary' is larger than the basement apartment at 7303 S. Emerald Avenue that I lived in throughout my childhood.  The apartment had one small bedroom, a small living room, a small kitchen, a closet, and a bathroom.  My sister and I slept  in bunkbeds in the one bedroom; my parents slept on a hide-a-bed in the living room.   The apartment featured asbestos-wrapped steam heating pipes running along its ceiling and Oriental cockroaches hiding here and there on the floor.  We called them "water bugs."  I think we lived there for the first 12 years of my life before "movin' on up', like the Jeffersons, "to a deluxe apartment in the sky", i.e., a second floor flat next door at 7307 S. Emerald, thanks to the kindness of our neighbors, Carl and Ann Semrau, who owned the building and lived in the 1st floor flat.