Reset.

B 2000 16.1HH

By Zabeel - Assertive Lass (Zeditave)

Reset, in another sense, is what I'm going through right now.  If I were a thoroughbred horse, I wouldn't be a Reset, or probably any sort of Zabeel progeny anyway.  I'm more your Shogun Lodge.  I always loved that horse, for some strange reason.

Anyway, horses aside (except in my channelling of the Horse Ancestors on my little quest right now) I expect I'll be offline for a wee moment as of.....now.  I have to go with my gut here and listen to the theme song playing in the background, dance to this tune, and go through it.  Time for another chrysalis moment then.

That's a thing I love about respite.  I sort of 'save up' some of the more intense psychic/spiritual/energetic stuff that needs doing for these respite weeks, as I know I will be relatively alone and free of ordinary day-to-day responsibility.  I can be as 'crazy' (free) in my head and heart as I need to be without the distractions of dogs who love games, cats who lie on computer keyboards, gardens who like water, and of course wives who tantalise with their friendly charms.  The other thing that is part of my domestic reality these days though is The Social Online World.  It's good, it's educative and illustrative of oneself in a similar way to having F2F conversations used to be back in the days when they could happen, but still......

Really this is just a post about nothing because I cannot say what is about to take place, except that from the outside it might well look like a personality reset or renovation and/or replacement of sorts.  It has the last few times, for a while afterwards at least.  Speaking of at least, at least I'm getting better at recognizing the signs earlier and getting braver about letting myself fall over into it earlier too, rather than waiting for the external pressures of my acting out and manifesting unconsciously to push me off this cliff again.  I'll certainly be making more sense thereafter also - fear not.

So this post is also to say sorry to anyone I've abraded the last few days.  Oops, yes, sorry.  If I said something that rankled, well, I probably do mean it, but probably not in the way it seems.  Tact and patience with language go awol at times like these, shucking the husk of social nicety that is the very thing we usually use to convey our genuine compassion whilst expressing a different viewpoint from our interlocutors'.

Also, lastly, just letting y'all know I'm not being rude if I choose not to 'like'your status on FB or respond quickly to your email.  I might, or might not, can't say.

Right, so, see you on the other side!  In the words of Sandman; "I choose to start this story..........now"

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TFTD - DFTD, Belief , Superstition.

Here's one of those Thoughts For The Day.  Well, a thought I had anyway.

Devil Facial Tumour Disease is a nasty, heartbreaking, horrible thing.  For those who don't know, it is a disease about which not enough is known.  If affects Tasmanian Devils, causing terrible facial tumours.  It is spread by biting (which they just do ALL the time naturally to each other) and it as always fatal.  90% of the population is already dead or infected - doomed.  I'm not going to show you a picture of the effects, because it really isn't necessary.  And it is, as I said, heartbreaking.

This one is happy and fine.  Really, they're just like that.

So, some of you may know that for a spell in my past I was part of an enterprise researching, manufacturing and marketing homoeopathic products to treat plant diseases, or more correctly soil and plant problems.  It ended badly, but we don't need to go in to that right now.  But for sure, you're aware of the basic principles and controversies surrounding homoeopathy, yes?  No?

A quick primer, just to be sure then.  Homoeopathy as first devised by a dude called Samuel Hahnemann is a form of medicine that proposes that 'like can cure like'.  That what can cause a disease can also cure a disease.  Hahnemann followed a hypothesis of potentisation, whereby substances from nature (more on this in a minute) are finely divided (ground up) and diluted minutely.  Imagine putting a drop of substance 'Z' into a litre of water, shaking it up a lot, taking a drop from that litre, putting it into another litre, and repeating this process many times.  This is essentially how you create what is called a homoeopathic 'remedy'.  The more diluted, the higher the 'potency' is said to be.  So an example of this 'like cures like' would be that a substance that causes vomiting may, when given at the correct dosage to someone who has chronic vomitous problems, cure them, very broadly put.  An important point to keep in mind is that Hahnemann 'proved' his remedies by causing illnesses in his students by giving them potentised doses of these remedies.  The remedies supposedly can cause sickness, when used outside of a correct diagnosis.  Hahnemann's methods of diagnosis we won't go into here  that's a whole encyclopaedic subject on its own.

Of course, since such remedies cannot really be scientifically measured as even existing, they are so diluted, there is no way to prove a method of action.  Nor it seems can Hahnemann's exhaustive batteries of tests on his legions of students and patients be replicated to produce his stated results; and as a result modern science staunchly rejects homoeopathy as basically akin to voodoo.  Makes a mint in the pharmacy though, doesn't it?

So, the remedies are derived from nature.  Hahnemann used parts of plants mainly, but also minerals and later on he began to experiment with the concept of nosodes.
(Disclaimer: all this homoeopathic knowledge stuff is coming from my frail, flawed, and very human memory alone - so there may be factual errors - just sayin').
So, yes, nosodes.  These are where a remedy is made from the expression of an illness itself - for example a rabies remedy is made from the saliva of a rabid dog.  The original vaccines, in a way.  Very targeted things then, you'd think.  In our venture back then  we used calcined snails (dried, burned and ground) in an attempt to create a snail-repellent effect.  There were, let's say, varied results.

Pretty much anyone who's ever heard of or thought about homoeopathy has made their own call on whether it's a mysterious and inexplicable yet valid and effective form of medicine, or a load of utter codswallop.  Belief, or superstition, if you will.

So there I was, seeing the poor lumpy face of a Tassie Devil on the TV ad appealing for research fund donations, and suddenly I wondered what would happen if you made a nosode of the tumour expressions, and set about treating the entire population?  Of course, to treat the whole population, the very best and simplest way to ensure coverage would be just to use a crop-duster - spray all of Tasmania's forests by air.  Simple!  But I wasn't wondering what would happen to the Devils - I have no idea.  And I'm not suggesting it seriously either.  But let's imagine some eccentric wealthy individual decided as a public service to undertake this task for the good of all mankind, at no cost to the taxpayer!  I'm wondering what the humans would do with such an idea.

Let's revisit our two camps then.  Those who are believers in homoeopathy and its effects would understandably be concerned about possible negative effects on themselves, or perhaps other animals or entities in the ecosphere, but of course that would be ameliorated (as is homoeopathic lore) by having available a different dosage of said remedy to 'antidote' anyone thusly affected.  So, no problem, and the Devil Facial Tumour Disease could marvellously and miraculously be eradicated forever!  The pooh-poohers of course would just laugh.  Wouldn't they?

I think perhaps not.  I'm willing to bet that there would be a substantial proportion of the folk who firmly believe that homoeopathy is bunkum as it a) cannot be scientifically even shown to exist and b) cannot be reliably proven to even have any effect on subjects beyond the placebo effect would also feel really quite a bit squirmy about the prospect of being lightly sprinkled with a little bit of aerosolized 'special water'.  I think there'd be a big push back, along the lines of not being able to prove there would be no side effects (from what science assures them is simply water).

So, in the end it would not be allowed to happen because of the superstitions of those who dismiss such rubbish as superstition.  Or am I wrong?  Golly gee, I'd like to see that tried.

Mama Devil says "Don't y'all make me open this can o' whoop-ass!"

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TFTD - What's going on with me?

OK, well, long time, again, no?

So I thought it was about time to let y'all know what it is that's really been going on behind the scenes (as it were) with this little ol' being of mine.  Because it's true, I've been keeping something back.

Now it's nothing bad, it's nothing major really, but a few have been poking about and I have let a few things slip too, so in the interests of full disclosure I'm going to out myself here.

I'm writing two books.  Well, technically a book and a half.  But I can't tell you much more than that I'm afraid, especially about the half-a-book.  Why?  Because, as the 'half' bit implies, I'm co-authoring this with someone else, and we have a sort of commercial-in-confidence thing going on, is all.  BUT, if all goes to plan (yeah, like that happens a lot in life :-) then you'll hear about it in the latter part of this year sometime.  And the synergy is good, the timing is right, the outcome will very likely be.....rather better than ordinary.

The process of starting that project has sort of got me inspired a bit more writing-wise, as it's true that historically I have always been a bit more of an interpreter and disseminator of information than a raw creator and this has given me an 'outside' influence vis-a-vis subject matter.  I was always better at school when asked to write an essay on a certain subject than submit a few hundred words of 'creative writing'.  Although the latter sometimes worked out pretty OK too.  So what happened next sort of took me by surprise.

I started having little flashes of what all these thoughts as expressed here in this blog, and lately in short form on Facebook (etc) are all circling around - the central theme, or conundrum, or quandary perhaps, that I find myself returning to over and over.  And I realised that it wasn't the migration over to FB and short-form expressive release that was dampening my blogging impetus so much, as a combination of two things - simple demotivation from not really feeling connected or 'right' in my longer expression, and secondly - that what is 'right' does not fit the blogging format.  It's large, it needs to be presented whole and not eked out as it dribbles and drains from the pores of my mind - it's a book in gestation.

Yes, demotivation.  In truth, and it's related in a weird way to the subject matter of said pending tome, there was another wee niggle keeping me from seeing or accepting the challenge laying before me.  Back over a year ago, I forget exactly when, my journey was passing through a dark and fairly helpless phase and I sought out some 'professional' assistance with matters of the head.  I can't remember her exact qualificatory title, but I think she was a clinical psychologist.  Anyway, she was a great find, specializing mainly in cancer patients, the terminally ill, and the family and friends thereof.  One of those sorts who never gives or offers advice, just facilitates your talking and occasionally rephrases what you've said to check for understanding and hold up a mirror for you.

One of the things she said to me by way of summation as I discussed my issues with demotivating feelings of depression and "not knowing how to proceed with life" was this: She asked me if what I was saying was that "I was afraid to start anything new because I was afraid I might not be able to finish it."  Well, er, yes, actually, that's hitting my head on the nail right there.  And it seems I've been past that for quite some time now really, but hadn't seen this thing taking it's shape until very recently.

I wonder if we'll see it finished?

The very astute among you may have already noticed I have told you absolutely nothing about the book itself. Well spotted, you.  And I'm not going to be leaking much either, so please not to be holding your breath OK?  What I can tell you right now is as follows:

To the extent that anything we experience in life and especially anything we attempt to communicate in words can be said to exist in an objective view, then this will be  a work of non-fiction.  To the extent that everything we ever see or think or say is the product of our very highly programmed, narrowly tuned and selective consciousnesses, it will be a work of fiction.  There's a little clue.

I suppose it's sort of a philosophy thing, a socio-historical thing, a human evolutionary thing.....the expression of where my life's learnings and questionings finds me at this point it time.  I can tell you it will be extremely un-PC and controversial in some of the views I espouse and hopefully rather confronting in the way it raises questions. (See how I'm dissociating it already as an 'it'?  It's ALIVE!!bwahahahahaha...).  I have a working title, but sorry, it's just too cute to share, and I don't want to spoil the fun - in case I end up not using it.

So.  These two projects are of equal importance to me, and as well I have my allegiance to co-administrating the blenderizeddiet.net site and also my other blogsite for the use and benefit of my fellow tubies and their lovers and carers.  Should keep me out of mischief for a bit then.

As a side-benefit, it might happen that the process of writing each day (I'm told that's what 'writers do') might prove to be self-generative of spin-off creativity that wants outing and doesn't fit either project so might end up here as the occasional TFTD - Thought For The Day.

Well, here I go!  Thanks.  Now you know.