Monday, December 16, 2024
D+41
1969 British House of Commons voted 343-185 to abolish the death penalty
In bed at 9, awake at 3:15, up at 3:45. I put a load of laundry in the washer.
Prednisone, day 216, 7.5 mg., day 31. Prednisone at 5:00 Other meds around 11:00.
Pariah. Israel has closed its embassy in Ireland. It has also recalled its ambassadors to Spain and Norway, Each country has recognized a Palestinian State. Ireland has announced that it would file an intervention in support of South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Ireland said that it was intervening in the case against Israel in The Hague to ask the top international court “to broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a state.” Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme, said on "Face the Nation" yesterday that Gaza is "near famine." My take is that it may be that Israel's combined defensive and revenge war on Gaza may be sui generis and come to be recognized as its own form of genocide predicated not exclusively but in large measure on Israel's interference with humanitarian relief for the Gazans and the destruction of virtually all of Gaza's life-sustaining infrastructure. That is my best guess of what will happen at the ICJ. If I am correct, the decision will be denounced by Israel's government and by many Jews as "anti-semitism" because of the inevitable conflation and confusion of the State of Israel and its government with all of Jewry. It seems to me that this conflation and confusion is itself a pernicious form of anti-semitism. I should consult again the writings of Yeshayahu Leibowitz.
Sadness is an emotional pain associated with, or characterized by, feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, grief, helplessness, disappointment, and sorrow. Wikipedia.
Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The Debt
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
Pay it I will to the end —
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release —
Gives me the clasp of peace.
Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best —
God! but the interest!
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know; and such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. Annie Hall
We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other. Sigmund Freud
Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results. William James
The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. Thomas Merton
Two Years Ago this date:
Mickey the Mope. This is a term my mother used to use, disapprovingly. She, who had so much to mope about in her short life, chose not to mope through her life and to discourage it in others, including me. I feel some real shame in moping but nonetheless wallow in it whenever Geri is out of town. Today is no different. I'm so happy that she gets to spend a few days with her dear niece Katherine and husband Jordan, and perhaps (I don't know yet) with nephew Steve and his beautiful wife Maggie, a favorite of mine. And of course with her beloved brother Jimmy who, Katherine's reports tell us, is sinking deeper into the mire of Alzheimer's. On the few occasions when Geri is out of town I'm unavoidably aware of how empty my life is without her. I'm like the Jackie Gleason character 'The Poor Soul," or in my mother's words, Mickey the Mope.
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