I can’t feel my left index finger. It has been tingling since Dec. 20th. (2 wks. 4 days) I’ve dropped two glasses unable to detect my grip on them and several times I’ve subjected the numb fingers to the point of injury…since I can’t feel when it hurts.
It’s not going away. It’s getting worse.

Any advice?

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Update – 1/9/12: I have a week for the Dexamethasone to work or…. God knows.

Time to take up religion again.

wkp.us - ...my personal blog

It’s December. That special month of the year when in the hour of greatest darkness we celebrate. It’s a buzz.

For myself the month is introspective. As the last month of 2011 passes, I take stock:
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I remember the moment, in my fourteenth year, when I outgrew my size 9.5 Timberland Men’s Classic Lug 3-Eye Boat Shoe and bought my first pair of size 10.5 shoes. (the same shoe.)

A few months before my 40th birthday I went to an Optician for some vanity contact lenses for my Halloween costume and came home with an appointment six months later for reading glasses.

I guess that’s how age gets you.

Blessed with the perfect metabolism, acute senses and overall excellent health, my body has never failed me. I am strong and lean and I have a thick head of hair.

I walked in to that optician’s office thinking about an upcoming party and walked out facing a disquieting reality: I’m losing my perfect vision on 40th birthday. …and that’s not all.

I’d been warned. Admittedly, it’s hard to believe a certain birth day could trigger anything more than a hangover and a belly full of cake but it has happened.

My belly is bigger.. or just drooping. I think my skin is changing texture this year. I find it frightening. I’ve had things happen that I’ve previously only heard about, and unending pain. There’s hair growing over my shoulders. I seriously thought I had newer genes than that. Should I shave my shoulders? …why bother. No one ever sees me.

So, 44 is knocking at my door. I wonder what it’ll bring? I currently have no idea what size my feet are, if they’re even the same. Though I clearly remember the day my feet changed from size 9.5 to size 10.5, it wasn’t until my 40th birthday that they changed to size 11.5.

I needed glasses to write Christmas cards this year. (need them) As 44 rapidly approaches, my left arm is tingling and the fingers numb. A nerve is pinched. I would like to be more flexible.

I’m interested in Buddhism. Buddha was a persistent fellow.  I need to be a little more persistent.

Cheers.
24 Dec. 2011.

wkp.us - ...my personal blog

My own “best friend” surreptitiously stole $2,000 from me. That’s real life for you.

wkp.us - ...my personal blog

Turning onto Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway, Route 15, near 10pm on a dark night in the rain, I merged into traffic. To those of you in Montana, traffic is when there are lots of cars on the road, right next to you, in front and behind you. All around you are cars; whether in little groups or the whole highway.
Speeding up to the flow of traffic, late at night on this tight, windy, hilly, under-construction, soaking wet parkway … is about 70m.p.h. Yeah, I guess that’s weird that there are lots of cars going that fast, but… 

Here on the East Coast, drivers are incredibly aggressive. They vie for the tiniest space, most often to no real advantage – other than to exacerbate the stress levels other drivers. Ironically, when you glance over to see who’s being so inconsiderate, it’s likely some retired school teacher-looking person. (Old and bitter? – That would suck~!)

So, I was jammed in there, in aggressive ‘maintain my little space’ mode, in the pouring rain, when I thought of what it’s like driving down a lone Montana highway, with perhaps an occasional passing a car… or maybe not.

Right there in the height of the battle for a lane, a feeling of peace came over me with the perspective of knowing an alternative to this East Coast way of life.

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When I get to Montana it takes me about 3 days to slow down. When I get to Connecticut it takes about 3 days to speed up. People live all over the world in so many different ways. Nature is aggressive enough.

On my morning commute to work, when folks are really jamming it down the road, I often wonder if their job is really that awesome.

wkp.us - ...my personal blog

In July of 2008 I will have been a vegetarian for 20 years.

As I come to this milestone anniversary, I consider my original intentions and relay some of my experience. In many ways I am not the same person I was 20 years ago, yet I have remained vegetarian all the while. I am constantly asked why I am vegetarian so I thought I would write it down.

Becoming a vegetarian was not due to a concise decision to stop eating meat as much as it was a natural step on my path toward enlightenment. How could the product of a passing spiritual phase have withstood 20 years living in a carnivorous society?

I was raised in a wholesome environment that offered regular exposure to country living, including hunting and farm-raising various animals for food. I grew up with the experiences of shearing sheep, milking cows, collecting eggs and even the slaughter of pigs and cattle we considered our pets. I’m cool with the lifestyle yet I’ve made a distinction between the Animal and the Plant kingdom for my personal diet for twenty years.

I was born a ‘spiritual’ person. I was raised following a religion and even became an ordained reverend ~ lol, no kidding! After leaving home, I diligently studied philosophy, theosophy and religion. By the time I was 20 years old, I was actively pursuing various forms of mental and physical yoga. I had moved to California and was living in the land of open-minded people and the land of fresh produce! Each day was a spiritual experience which I can remember to some degree but today I am far from the person I was back then.

My passionate studies of Chakras and the Human Energy system, including the practices of Kabbala, Raja, Hatha and Kundalini yoga, led to a expanded awareness which accepted a vibrational value to all matter, including thought. Yes, at times I had an awareness of the vibrational qualities of all things including ‘things’ such as negative thinking. I was very in touch with myself and made an effort to participate in actions which were free from negativity.

My original reason for becoming a vegetarian was to avoid the negativity involved with consuming the denser vibrations associated with eating animals. It isn’t solely the meat that is the source of the negativity. There are several heavy vibrations involved with the eating of meat, including the thought that in the final moments before slaughter adrenaline races through our soon-to-be food and we end up ingesting fear. “You are what you eat.”

The rate of nearly one million confined, genetically selected, antibiotic-stuffed chickens killed per hour seems like gross exploitation to me.

Cattle ranching a rainforest in South America potentially depriving humanity of untold cures from plant medicine as well as destroying earth’s most precious assets seems unnecessary to me.

Fast-food corporations doing whatever they can to lower standards and raise profits had just gone so far beyond my childhood experiences of gathering a supply of meat that I could no longer participate.

The reason I’ve given for the past 20 years is, I choose not to participate.
I do not eat animals nor lend my resources to the industry.

I am not evangelical about my own behavior. I don’t care what you do.
Sure I have a leather belt and many shoes made from hide. I eat eggs and drink milk, sometimes from farmers who automate and unfavorably manipulate their cows but if you think about the results of my behavior for the last twenty years, I think we can safely estimate I have not eaten:

5 duck, quail and pheasant
10 deer, elk and bison
30 cows
75 pigs, sheep and goats
500 fish
1000 chickens, geese and turkey
3000 shrimp, shellfish and crustaceans. (mMmm, lobster in butter…delicious)

When I imagine all of these animals in one place, I am rewarded with a sense of happiness which I do not consider when making my choice to continue being a vegetarian. The fact is, I have made a difference. Like I’ve said, it is a personal choice. I really don’t care what goes on around me. I have chosen not to participate for my own benefit and there is a positive benefit to the animals and the earth as a result. In this aspect I make less of a carbon footprint.

There are so many “conversations” to continue writing about being a vegetarian for 20 years but I will end this entry now with a mantra: To my honorable teacher, I give reverence ~ Om Sri Gurubhyam Namahas.

Nature is my church.

wkp.us - ...my personal blog

wkp.us - ...my personal blog