Sol's Inner Vault

When necessary, reread this to remind yourself about what's real. You are not a job, or money, or no money. You're not a car or any other possession. You're not a bank account, bills, or, receipts. You're not anything online, offline, or out of line. You're not just a head full of thoughts and worries. You're not whatever you fear or daydream about. You're not any of these small and transitory things.  You are a DNA unique human, aware and conscious, living your life day by day, hour by hour. You are perfectly created by the universe, in spite of your faults. You are a loved member of a family that includes your parents, other relatives, and your family of friends, roommates, neighbors, everyone who values and cares about your well being and person. All the other distractions in the first part are easy to get sucked into, to identify with, to define yourself by, but so inaccurately. You don't need to define anything, you already are defined by your chara...

Our mom Rachel passed early this morning, peaceably, with family. She was 98. Now she is in heaven with father. There will be more to say about her extraordinary life, and how she inspired everyone. Thanks to all my friends for your support these past months, it helped me immensely through this difficult time.

Consider this: All humans are 99.9% similar to one another in the part of the human genome that codes for proteins. In equivalent areas of the genome, we are 98.8% genetically similar to chimpanzees, 75% similar to chickens, and even 60% similar to banana trees.  Somehow, I find these well-known facts of research oddly reassuring. The universe knows what to do. I'll take the afternoon off, walk my dog, make a sandwich for lunch, with a banana. There's no actual existential drama, except by my own anxious invention.

No-Limit Hold'em. Another blessed week with mom, a few days remaining. Each visit, the reality no less heartbreaking, the erosion more advanced and self-evident. But, we are both determined that it doesn't lessen the quality of our time together.  After breakfast, we watched a Discovery program about whales, one determined scientist's long-term research with some very sociable sperm whales. A sub-theme of this documentary was the notion that all creatures seek relationship, how that is an intrinsic definition of life itself.  This story must have resonated deeply with my mom, as she was fully entranced the entire hour, asking many questions. What do they eat, how do they breathe, have their babies? How do they cling so tightly to their roving family pods for an entire lifetime?   Later, we got out the chips for a little friendly poker. We had a lively chat again about the whale show, how super strong the bonds of relationships can be. Maybe the most powerful experien...

Reflection time. Do I hash this out every year ending to self punish, or encourage, or take some other count? Not sure, but it feels like a requisite process that must be some form of healing, or mending all the unforeseeable hurts and surprises of the past dozen months. Perhaps each time I'm looking for purpose, or reason to count up all my blessings. There are always more to realize. It was a year of profound and consequential change, inevitable maturing, and generational shift. To our amazement, our boy turned twenty-one, truly a child no more. Personally, my own progress as a human being doesn't impress me. This year, I still worried too much, reacted to too much, and definitely another year of just thinking too much. Overthinking isn't good. Neither is emotion controlling the moment when it's unimportant.  Still room for so much improving, fine tuning, and just learning more. Maybe that's next year's theme: more discovery, being simply kinder.

For most of an entire summer vacation, I was brave Green Lantern. Green outfit, big green ring. I dutifully memorized and faithfully invoked the ring's secret oath every day, recharging its consequential power over uncool evil doers and such. Many innocent lives were saved around the apartments, my neighbors were safe and grateful.  But, I also had a close second DC Comics hero, favorite for a reason. Batman, unique among his mighty colleagues, had no superpowers! Along with his partner Robin, the Caped Crusader won his Gotham City missions without any magic, metaphysics, or otherworld tricks. And, as every DC diehard knows, Green Lantern and Batman just didn't really get along, although they did team up together many times. So, what did Batman have? Six major attributes taken to the very highest  levels of accomplishment:  - Martial arts expertise. - Gadgets and high-tech.  - Stealth and surveillance. - Strategic thinking. - Superior intellect. - Athleticism and agi...

Everything vibrates by frequency. Everything in the universe has the same vexing challenge: distance. We don't see the silent splendor. We don't feel the furious drama. Every thought is fully recorded.  All memory is retained and stored. There is this one single moment. Perception of time is an illusion. The illusion of time is all-powerful. Space expands faster and faster. But, all that doesn't matter when  I can not see this world revolving. I'm just outside walking my dog.

We can not always know who or what the teachers or lessons are. Some of what I learned early, still learning a half century later, a short and consequential list: Courage, the rarest of qualities. A hateful lie may live forever. Rage is every man's Kryptonite. Generosity can be swindled. Reason, the refuge from chaos. All have an unassailable core. Age, a number; attitude, timeless. Teachers and lessons come from both losses and gains, times of turmoil or calm, all unannounced, becoming the basis of experience. This daily instruction never ends.

Global. Cosmic. Eternal. Strolling down the supermarket aisles, filling the cart, my state of mind is a dozen eggs mundane, a loaf of sourdough below awake, even after my two morning coffees. We navigate our lives hour by hour, task by task, priorities announced, and we comply. Hard as we try, planning things as the day goes by, and little time for much reflecting. Whenever I remember resuming the connection to higher realms of thought, well beyond the lower politics of conflict and arbitrary division, the stress of the day seems to vanish along with inner bickering as moods often display. Can one function in this life while channeling the cosmos? Unlikely, probably not. It's puzzling. Mortal beings we are, bound to the trivial details of living, till the end. However, many would challenge that idea, believing the divinely conceived is inseparable from our quaint and worldly experience.

This morning I briefly walked around an ancient cemetery, my thoughts swirling and unsettled. Ending another blessed week with my amazing mom here in Mojave, we've had a grand time together.  Nearby is the Hardyville Cemetery, all that is left of a town that once thrived with steamboats and cargo along the Colorado River, all gone. There was a somber air this early morning, walking in the desert. It seemed so far away from the news, the shouting headlines, all the world's hubris faded into dust.  I've read this tiny, sixteen plot burial acre, with various sized piles of rocks separated by neat rows, has a dubious past. A tragic history of massacre, untold cruelties to the local river tribes living in the valley for nearly a millenium, they were crushed by many settlers, all vanished now. I thought of this past election, all the vitriol, hating, sore divisions. The silence of the small cemetary seemed to mock the shrill urgency of recent days - how it's all the same to t...

Once upon a time, people knew all the answers. Questions were rare and usually just asked rhetorically. Folks nodded knowingly about nearly everything. Words were less needed, or just a noisy distraction. Language became simple looks and gestures, and speaking would lose its reflexive urgency. Silence was highly valued, for some even exalted. Solitude was the ideal vacation. Being alone was a blessed gift.

The sun behind the sail locks all coordinates for the heart's voyage. You're already unique in the universe. You've finally forgotten the future. You'll soon remember something you've never known. Expect the impossible while ignoring what is likely. First, face those fears with no name. Then, face that fear that names you. Names harness their random power. Who gave you those masks before you were anyone? When can you peel them off to begin again? Do you trust your own beguiling smile? Then, keep going in opposite directions, but tack to the most northern winds. You'll arrive at your destination out of breath, unbelievably tired. You'll remember: Gratitude is eternal.

At the risk of looking like the dropped burger patty on the grass, a few thoughts about how we Americans may celebrate this momentous day of independence.  Yes, it's about family, freedom, pride, picnics, and the fireworks. Yet, how many ponder or even recall how these rituals and joyous symbols still represent the chaos, uncertainty, and suffering of war? How the fireworks characterize "the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air." All the precious lives lost. My amazing mom, Rachel, never liked the shows we saw together as a family at the L.A. Coliseum, but I didn't know why until I asked. As a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp seventy-five years ago, the exploding fireworks and smoky drama only remind her of the fearful horror she experienced. Our gratitude for receiving the gift of life in America has been huge. Emigrating to liberty after tyranny and World War is a blessed voyage full of love, hope, and opportunity. Every year, so not forgotten, let...

So often, in so many ways, I'm reminded how two things can be true at once. A few days ago marked another anniversary of legendary writer Earnest Hemingway's suicide in 1961.  It is well-known how tortured his life had become his last decade, the illness and depression, the multiple shock treatment sessions, the alcohol. Finally, he could no longer write or even read, the two mainstays of his very existence, identity, and ability. But, my own empathy regarding Hemingway and his very sad decision is reluctantly blurred by the way he chose to exit this world. No, I don't mean by his gruesome manner of dying by gunshot.  I mean that he chose - however one is even able to 'choose' in such final moments of despondency and hopelessness - to end his life in the foyer of the home he shared with his wife. In his last act of brutish disregard for his long enduring spouse, Hemingway underscores the colossal, intrinsic selfishness of his character. Hardly a macho persona, but r...

Commander-in-Chief cognitively compromised  they knew it and we  knew it too so now  swamp rats leave rapidly  in single file seeking fast  and new heroes while  not looking back at  the sinking ship of deceit  and subterfuge cargoes  of peddled lies become  anchors of doom.

Well into 2024, there is now a prominently new and extra layer of consideration that is freshly attached to nearly everything. Already so quickly automatic, it's not even realized in the casual moment.  A requisite super question over all that we see and hear: "Is this really real?" A silly redundancy in phrase is suddenly a serious challenge to carefully negotiate. Today, everything encountered is suspect. Everything we hear, witness, and interpret can be something else entirely by design.  Definitely makes reality a conundrum, as if our lives are lacking in risk or uncertainty. No one wants to do this extra assessment, but with AI, VR, and other new technologies slipping into our lives like a blind and barreling movement, whatever traditional fabric of conscious world from before, now worlds are very much plural.

First Voice: There isn't any proof. None. You take the Bible's story on faith. Whether the entire sixty-six books, or just the Old Testament, or only the first five books. All the versions of the Bible's content require believing without tangible evidence for any of it.   Whether it is the ageless wisdom of the Torah, or the joyous Good News of the Gospels, the scripture in this and every holy book similarly compell readers to accept details as full narratives, or as confirmed, structured thought well beyond challenge or alternate understanding. The Torah claims a Messiah's arrival is yet pending. The New Testament says God, i.e., Yahway, Jehovah, Christ, Holy Spirit - sent his Jewish Son to die on a cross for the sins of man, thereby redeeming humanity for all of eternity. Neither story persuades me at all. Both belief systems stretch reality beyond rational possibility or anything plausible, desirable, or with arguably noble motives. I could never believe an allegedly...

It's occasionally necessary, definitely universal in nature and function, and it has its practical purpose. It's how we human types learn anything and everything. However, we can also resist the knee-jerk tendency of comparing, and that's what it is, a habit learned very early in life. I also struggle with it on occasion, like thinking too much on a topic, overanalysing till the cows come home. Usually, our errant valuing is actually more like apples and oranges, so that comparing becomes a pointless exercise of mental flogging that can become negative or dogmatic.  Instead, we can simply see, know, and accept differences without the constant comparing and contrasting that gobbles up so much of our time.

Whether it is the Bible or another book of faith or any work of self-expression, art, and study, it is the resonance that matters.  Sometimes, it really does happen, and it's happened to me, although it is very rare. There is no clear explanation, only hints and clues. The mechanisms of inspiration are not fully known, nor is there a charted path to understanding - it's all discovery. You start out reading a book, a certain book, and there is a transformation, page by page, a journey both natural and new.  Then, by the final chapters, you are no longer exactly who you were before. All thru some strange magic of conscious thought, evolution, words and ideas, and the crystal clarity of brilliant composition. Siddhartha is about the Buddha. His birth name was Siddhartha Gautama, and Hesse's timeless novel chronicles the panoramic inner journey to personal enlightenment.  Certain experiences can be life-changing or have inexplicable influence for a myriad of reasons. I starte...

I've heard the rumor, the kind that seems too good to be true, so my skeptic antenna pops and pings, very doubtful we could be so lucky.  I've read it in the sacred scriptures of various religions and faiths, most promising the stars, or life everlasting and perfect in nature. I've seen it on occasion, the bliss of a generous moment, the grace of simple kindness and good will. There's no denying charity's power. But, now I have a new word for the idea, a new definition to consider: Pronoia- the belief that the whole universe is conspiring to help you.