The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Over the weekend, I finished Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Not your typical science-fiction--Heinlein's best work always transcended genre--this is really a novel of revolution... so of course it appealed to me right away. My review follows the jump.

Good thing, too, because from the first page I knew I would have trouble with the dialect the book is written in. I've discussed (in Plainsong and elsewhere) the fact that I'm very picky about writing style. In this case, after two pages I decided the narrator, Man (Manuel O'Kelly Davis), was Russian. This was based on some clues in the narrative (and the use of the Russian word for comrade, 'tovarishch'). Although I later decided there was no way Manny spoke with a Russian accent, by that time it didn't matter any longer. I still read it with a Russian accent in my head, which was amusing because if I read long enough I'd speak with one for a few minutes after I put the book down.

Anyway. Manny isn't Russian and the one place where Heinlein's future world falls apart is the existence of the Soviet Union and the fact that the U.S. seems to have disappeared some time around the turn of the current millenium. Hey, he wrote it in the 60's.

Two things make this book stand above others. One is Heinlein's political viewpoints, so well articulated within the framework of the narrative that the book in no way reads as a polemic. Stranger in a Strange Land, which I finished in early 2005, before I was reviewing books here, suffered a bit from this. It, too, was more than a simple work of sci-fi/fantasy literature, but Jubal Harshaw came across as a more direct Heinlein mouthpiece than Professor de la Paz does in this book. The politics is both clearer and more subtle at the same time in this book, if that makes sense.

Being a libertarian (classical liberal, whatever you want to say), Heinlein's political leanings mirror my own a bit so I just loved delving into Prof's (and Stu and several other characters') discussions. But the book also made me ache, for what Prof is describing, a state without government--a stateless state, I guess, or maybe an anti-state--was only possible on the moon because of the physical situation there. Individuals were forced to conform to a certain set of behaviors--to be a decent person at base level, having nothing to do with drinking or gambling or cursing and everything to do with working hard, being polite, etc--simply to survive in the harsh territory. It's not rule by law or by men, but by environment. Anarchy could conceivably have worked there--though, as Manny points out, men seem to have an unquenchable thirst to bully other men around, make laws, enforce standards, rather than let people get along by themselves. It's probably inherent in human nature, for some reason, for us to want to control what other people can do. As Prof points out at one point, no one wants to ban a behavior to stop themselves from doing it, only to stop other people from doing it.

The other thing that makes this book stand out is the well-crafted Lunar world. Heinlein got a few things wrong, as always happens when we try to predict the future, but the tightness and reality of his world is breathtaking. Everything fits together. The existence of Mycroft Holmes is entirely plausible in just the way Heinlein describes. The way the moon was settled, the view taken of the moon by the powers back on Earth, the necessity of living underground, the types of jobs done by Loonies (residents of Luna, naturally, are Loonies), the construction of the cities... it's done so well. Apart from the awakening of Mycroft Holmes--which I maintain is plausible--and the existence of water ice within the moon (not disproven but probably unlikely), there are no leaps of faith required, no suspension of disbelief. If the moon were to be settled surely it must be just this way.

It's brilliant. It's gripping. It's well worth a read. My friend Taemon sent it to me while I was in Djibouti, and it took me this long to finally get around to reading it. Sorry it took so long, T--but it was great. Thanks.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Over the weekend, I finished Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Not your typical science-fiction--Heinlein's best work always transcended genre--this is really a novel of revolution... so of course it appealed to me right away. My review follows the jump.

Good thing, too, because from the first page I knew I would have trouble with the dialect the book is written in. I've discussed (in Plainsong and elsewhere) the fact that I'm very picky about writing style. In this case, after two pages I decided the narrator, Man (Manuel O'Kelly Davis), was Russian. This was based on some clues in the narrative (and the use of the Russian word for comrade, 'tovarishch'). Although I later decided there was no way Manny spoke with a Russian accent, by that time it didn't matter any longer. I still read it with a Russian accent in my head, which was amusing because if I read long enough I'd speak with one for a few minutes after I put the book down.

Anyway. Manny isn't Russian and the one place where Heinlein's future world falls apart is the existence of the Soviet Union and the fact that the U.S. seems to have disappeared some time around the turn of the current millenium. Hey, he wrote it in the 60's.

Two things make this book stand above others. One is Heinlein's political viewpoints, so well articulated within the framework of the narrative that the book in no way reads as a polemic. Stranger in a Strange Land, which I finished in early 2005, before I was reviewing books here, suffered a bit from this. It, too, was more than a simple work of sci-fi/fantasy literature, but Jubal Harshaw came across as a more direct Heinlein mouthpiece than Professor de la Paz does in this book. The politics is both clearer and more subtle at the same time in this book, if that makes sense.

Being a libertarian (classical liberal, whatever you want to say), Heinlein's political leanings mirror my own a bit so I just loved delving into Prof's (and Stu and several other characters') discussions. But the book also made me ache, for what Prof is describing, a state without government--a stateless state, I guess, or maybe an anti-state--was only possible on the moon because of the physical situation there. Individuals were forced to conform to a certain set of behaviors--to be a decent person at base level, having nothing to do with drinking or gambling or cursing and everything to do with working hard, being polite, etc--simply to survive in the harsh territory. It's not rule by law or by men, but by environment. Anarchy could conceivably have worked there--though, as Manny points out, men seem to have an unquenchable thirst to bully other men around, make laws, enforce standards, rather than let people get along by themselves. It's probably inherent in human nature, for some reason, for us to want to control what other people can do. As Prof points out at one point, no one wants to ban a behavior to stop themselves from doing it, only to stop other people from doing it.

The other thing that makes this book stand out is the well-crafted Lunar world. Heinlein got a few things wrong, as always happens when we try to predict the future, but the tightness and reality of his world is breathtaking. Everything fits together. The existence of Mycroft Holmes is entirely plausible in just the way Heinlein describes. The way the moon was settled, the view taken of the moon by the powers back on Earth, the necessity of living underground, the types of jobs done by Loonies (residents of Luna, naturally, are Loonies), the construction of the cities... it's done so well. Apart from the awakening of Mycroft Holmes--which I maintain is plausible--and the existence of water ice within the moon (not disproven but probably unlikely), there are no leaps of faith required, no suspension of disbelief. If the moon were to be settled surely it must be just this way.

It's brilliant. It's gripping. It's well worth a read. My friend Taemon sent it to me while I was in Djibouti, and it took me this long to finally get around to reading it. Sorry it took so long, T--but it was great. Thanks.

Pottery Pictures

Hooray for new pottery! I hadn't been down to St. Pete Clay to do anything substantial in months. Seriously. It annoyed me greatly. And with the coming budget crunch I won't be a member there much longer, though I'll stay through December. That will give me time to make a few things I've had on my list for a while--a sugar bowl with a spoon notch to replace the one we use now, a jug to replace the jug I made as a wedding gift for friends of mine, a set of teacups (maybe with saucers?) and perhaps a couple of flowerpots. If you'd like me to make you anything, and I know who you are, now--as in, right now, today--would be a good time to request it.

Many many more pictures are after the jump.


All right. Many things to look at, so little time. First, a mug! It's an important mug. I made a mug for somebody a while ago, and it broke. I don't know how it broke, but it was a sad thing because it was big, and kinda nifty. I was never happy with the glaze, but, you know. Well, since it broke, obviously I had to make a new one. I'm very happy with this one. It's a bit bigger, too. So, Rick, you just have to come out here and get it.

These are two other smaller mugs. They're what you'd call normal sized. Nothing special about either of them, but I dig the glaze job. That was the theme of this kiln: the glazes all came out great. I really enjoyed going through these.

Here's a skinny jug. Not a big fan of the piece, but it's a jug and I can't bring myself to not fire a jug if it's at least halfway decent (and this one is about halfway decent. Maybe like 3/5. Tops). Black glazes are cool; this isn't actually black since we don't have a shop black. We have temmoku, which, applied thick, comes out black. And really shiny.

I did not like this jug prior to glazing. But I had already bisqued the piece, so I couldn't recycle it. I suppose I could have shot it. More on that later; anyway, now that I think about it, there is a giant bisqued platter that needs to be shot... Anyway, the glaze is called shino. I've never used it because as a rule I don't like shinos. They're very unpredictable; I don't mind the spotting, and I quite like the color variation, but our house shino can craze to the point of break apart into dust--which it did on this jug. But it looks cool! So I like it now.

This is a platter. It is meant to go under a flowerpot, which I don't have a picture of in this collection because it's a pretty standard flowerpot, nothing special (although it does have a nice plant in it). But this platter, this is cool. Certain friends of mine may recall my driving need to develop an amber celadon in college. I never succeeded, and although this isn't really amber celadon either, that's what it's called, and it's kinda nice. Someday I will return to my glaze chemistry studies and seek the honey-amber I've been looking for, but for now this is nice.

Here is a largish bowl. It's not special or anything but it's fairly attractive and I do like the glaze job. A glaze called Mel's Base on the right, with our regular house celadon on the left. This is a nice pair of glazes; I used to overlook Mel's because I wasn't sure what to do with it.

Here comes the really cool stuff (although I think the entire firing was a smashing success). This is a plain red jar, not even very well made. The red glaze is called Ohata Khaki. The yellow glaze is amber celadon. Where they met (and I don't recall which was on top but I think it was the amber) they made this great black line. How cool is that? I'm a big fan of glazing by dipping; too time-consuming to do spray and everything and I don't have the hands for painting. Dipping two glazes is always nice for contrast, but until this kiln I hadn't found good pairs to use. This is the first good pair; believe me, I'll be using this again. It's rather fortuitous; I only started using khaki two firings ago because I could never get it to fire nicely before--but I've figured out the rule (put it on damn thick), and now I can make really nice stuff with it.

I am absolutely in love with this pitcher. It's not very big--certainly no more than six inches tall. It's more of an oversized creamer--a creamer for Lucky Bob's giant coffee-and-tea setting, perhaps. But it's so pretty! I almost took this one home but decided against--not sure what we'd do with it (though of course if Smittygirl wants it I'd be happy to bring it home). But it is pretty. Celadon on the left, temmoku on the right; another excellent pairing.

This is kind of a silly little piece. Again, not something I liked, but I'd already bisqued it and couldn't recycle it. It's a tiny little carafe--it reminds me of and is in fact exactly the same size as the bizarre little glass carafes I sometimes get in restaurants when I order hot tea. The red here is Coleman Red, our house red, which has the advantage of looking like a barium red without actually containing any barium carbonate; this is actually a copper red. I've found that if I put Coleman's over our house white glaze, as here, I can get mauve out of a reduction atmosphere, which is outrageously difficult (my own recipe for Apple Blossom is the only consistent pink I've ever used, and even it sometimes trends red, certainly never mauve or lavender)--so this is another nice pair, though in this case where the Coleman's is over the white, it isn't pink, it's just a lighter red. Sometimes the Coleman's will also float and break away from the white; this is because the white glaze liquifies before the Coleman's in the kiln; if the kiln comes up slowly there is enough time for bits of the Coleman's to float over the white and detach from the rest of the colorant, a very amusing (but potentially disastrous) effect; that didn't happen this time but I thought I'd mention it since some of my readers saw an example of this last weekend on a hideous jug.

Wee jars! Hooray! I usually use these little guys as test tiles because they're fun to make and much more interesting than a plain old tile. But I haven't been making and testing many glazes, so these have been sitting on my shelf for a very long time. The one in the middle is the only "test" this time around; clockwise around it are plain celadon, amber celadon, my own nickel blue, and temmoku.

This is the test jar. I didn't make the glaze here, it's been sitting in our studio for quite some time and I have no idea what it's supposed to do. There's a sticker on it that says in big letters: Warning! This glaze must be applied thin!. That's been enough to scare me off of it, but I figured I had a test piece, I might as well test it. It certainly is interesting. Looks like an ash glaze, which we don't have any of in the studio (apart, of course, from this, if this is ash). It's called "Ipanema," and I'm not sure whether this is supposed to remind me of a beach in Brazil or what. It's not that I don't like it, but I don't know what I'll find to use it on. Still, may be worth playing with.

Here are four small bowls. I've been trying to make more small, easy things that I can charge less for and hopefully sell some stuff, so these bowls are part of that mission. Of course I took one of them home so I'm already breaking my own rule. Were I to glaze these again, I now have a batch of really nice glaze pairs I would use. Instead I used solid glazes on three of them and a pair on the fourth. In the back left is celadon. Back right is my own nickel blue--which I need to try pairing with some things considering how nice some of the other stuff turned out. In the front right is more coleman's red, which you'll note looks much lighter here than on the carafe. Copper reds are like that.

And here is the fourth bowl, the one I took home. I love this thing. Look at this glaze pairing, Mel's Base on the right, temmoku on the left. Look at that gorgeous olive green where they meet. Makes me feel good every time I eat out of it. I'll be using this pair again, no question.

And here is the item you've all been waiting for. Remember that martini shaker I just loved? Oh, how I loved that martini shaker. I was lost for how to glaze it so I settled on temmoku, since I figured it would be shiny if nothing else. You'll have to forgive the sunlight in this picture; the thing is actually quite black in some lights, but with sun reflecting off it it really shines. Isn't it nice?

It is indeed a functional item--though I'm not sure I'd put ice cubes in there. Chipped or crushed ice, sure. As you can see, there are little strainer holes in the top to pour your martini out of. I thought of everything... except the lid on a cocktail shaker usually goes over the base, not inside it as I've done here. Hey, it's my own creation.

I like this picture though you may not understand why. For starters, I love the color of this clay. I wasn't sure what sort of clay I used to make the shaker and though I'd been hoping it was Toast, I wasn't sure. Nice dark red-brown. But then, look inside! Look how nicely that black turned out. You can never count on what's going to happen inside a lidded pot in the kiln. I usually default to white inside, both because it allows you to see the color of the liquid you're putting in there (good if you brew tea in it, for example), but also because our house white is consistent and will produce a nice glaze even if it's a few degrees cooler inside the pot than out. Using black both in and out was thus a bit of risk, one that paid off I think.

Here's a detail shot of the lid. I should say "lids," since as you can see there are two parts. The detail work on the main lid is very nice. That upper lip there, I was going to make a second lit that would go over that like a normal cocktail shaker, but it just didn't look right no matter what I did. So I shaped a nice little chunk of clay to fit in the top, and there it is. I glazed it nickel blue because one does want a hint of color (name the movie for ten points).

So there you have it. Lots of really nice stuff, and I'm serious people, you want something you better say so now. I'll take very specific instructions (but understand the more specific they less likely it is to be exactly right), glaze colors, shapes, sizes, forms, you can say " I want a bowl," or you can say "make me something," in which case I'll suggest things for you to choose. But the window is closing. Unless I win the lottery or get a book published, and I'd have to work on the book to get it published...

So much to do, so little... I mean, so much laziness

I haven't posted here in quite some time, eh? Sorry about that.
Let's see, what have we missed...

Hmm. Well, there was the fantastic trip to Clemson with Smittygirl. Great time. Clemson lost... that was lousy, but... the trip was still awesome. Then, a couple weeks at home, during which we got new furniture in the bedroom (and I was forced--a good thing--to clean out the mess in there). Then I went back to Clemson again for homecoming (we won that game, you may have heard, 70-14), another great weekend. Much pottery was shot.

I got some cool stuff out of the kiln recently at St. Pete Clay, by the way, of which there will be pictures shortly.

I also finished the book that I've been reading for a while. I'll review that shortly. Now I have to go make dinner, and while that's cooking I'll be cutting out a pattern for my Halloween costume. Really! There will be pictures. Some of you will be highly amused. Others will scratch your chins and wonder what the joke is.

Ha ha

Taking a break from working at cleaning up the house. I saw this headline over at Political Wire:

Republicans pretend Bush doesn't exist

Man, if only it was that easy for the rest of us...

Smittygirl is the coolest fiancee ever!

She's been planning a surprise for more than a month! We're going on vacation this week! To Clemson! And all my friends are going to be there!

How awesome is that?

On a related topic, I got this new Clemson T-shirt and I needed to wash it. I knew it would run so I didn't want to put it in with the rest of the laundry, so I hand-washed it in the guest bath sink. Note the faucet, which Smittygirl and I installed about two weeks ago. Note also the color of the water, after the shirt spent about five minutes in there. Anyway. I'll see most of my readers this weekend; the rest of you, have fun!

Migratory

Hooray for the migrating head cold! My sinuses are no longer blockaded by icky goo and I can think straight (or as much as I ever do). Unfortunately the goo has migrated down into my chest so I have a fun hacking cough. I feel pretty good, though, but because of the cough I'm cancelling going to the gym today (although really, who wouldn't want to work out on a machine some guy just coughed up a lung on?).
I rambled on in no particular direction here about the gym, cleaning the house, setting goals, the existence of God and the soul, Buddhism, mindfulness, and the elimination of anxiety. The rest of it is after the jump.


The last couple weeks I've just been going through the motions in the gym anyway. Not sure why. Lack of motivation I suppose though usually I'm pretty good at self-motivating. I guess I'm just feeling a little... well, I said "unmoored" in an earlier post and I like that word so I'm sticking with it. I've been having good thoughts about a story I want to work on, but I can't sit down and work on it. I've given myself things to do every day and for the most part have accomplished them. Maybe I need to set bigger goals. Not "clean out the filing cabinet," but rather "eliminate all useless crap from bedroom." That's a full day right there; I fear it's a full week, and I think that fear stops me trying to make it a full day. I mean, I have this goal in mind--clean out house and organize so as to enable combining of households--but that's pretty nebulous. Maybe I should set a goal for poundage of stuff thrown or given away.

I think that's the problem with my goal-setting. I haven't set any clear goals for this house-cleaning project. I haven't set a clear goal for words written or pages edited, just a "I'd like to work on that." I haven't set a clear goal for workouts, I just go to the gym. Clear goals would probably help. Then again, as Peter says in Dodgeball, "I find that if you have a goal, you might not meet it. But if you don't, then you are never dissatisfied." Unfortunately I don't think he's right...

Dissatisfaction is interesting in itself. The Buddha said all of life is suffering, but the word translated as "suffering" can also be translated as "dissatisfying." Meaning, even when we aren't suffering, for example when we're happy, life is still dissatisfying, because happiness is transient. Eventually we'll be unhappy, or less happy anyway, and so we crave more happiness and that leads to cravings for other things that we think will bring happiness. And the cravings lead to more dissatisfaction and suffering. But who doesn't want to be happy? How do you move beyond craving happiness, and why bother?

If my limited understanding is correct, you bother because while happiness is good, it is transient, and craving it leads to suffering and dissatisfaction. You can never be happy 100% of the time, and if you were, you'd start to wonder whether happiness wasn't just a sham and what you really wanted was to be ecstatic all the time. Humans naturally want more than they have, whether that be material or spiritual; Buddha's enlightenment was to free himself from that constant desire for more (tanha, craving). He lived for many years after achieving enlightenment and was thus able to enjoy happiness and suffer grief, but he was mindful of these things and experienced them without allowing them to overtake him or create cravings.

This mindfulness of emotion is what has interested me a lot recently. The thing about Buddhism seems to me to be that most Buddhists won't achieve enlightenment during their lifetimes and have no expectation of it. That Buddhism is a religion without God or a soul means that these people then, as I see it, are really quite hopeless. I suppose perhaps this is why there are so many branches of Buddhism that have adopted the ideas of spirits and Bodhisattvas and karma carrying over into new lifetimes and so forth, the sorts of things your Richard Gere-type American Buddhist gets all silly and New-Age about. Buddha cautioned against such things and, importantly, insisted enlightenment was available to all of his followers during their current lifetime. That seems to have been lost.

Unfortunately for me, after some meditation last week and this week, I determined that although Buddha insisted there was no God and no soul and further said belief in the soul was the cause of much suffering and craving, I find that I believe in God and believe we have souls. I don't know why, rationally. And I think that, in fact, may have much to do with it--on a rational level I don't understand why I would believe in God, but God doesn't want or need my rational explanation for His existence; He wants my faith. And on that level, faith, when I probe around the darkened corners of my mind, God is there. And that's all there is to it.

But I still believe--actually, I know--that my life is full of craving and dissatisfaction. And my albeit perfunctory examination of the Christian faith has thus far failed to show me how to be rid of that. Indeed, listening yesterday to a bluegrass CD I was struck by the song "Heaven's Bright Shore." A lot of gospel tunes carry this theme (this is an old song anyway):

On Heaven's bright shore
(on Heaven's bright shore)
There'll be no dying
(over there)
Not one little grave
(not one little grave)
In all that fair land
(that wonderful land)

Not even a tear will dim the eye
And no one up there will ever cry
Just singing His praise
Through endless days
On Heaven's bright shore.

That is craving, my friends, that right there. We crave to be free of grief. We crave to exist in eternal joy.

I mean, on the one hand, God would presumably want us to crave an eternity in Paradise, hence to obey His commandments; why else give commandments and create Paradise? But how much of the form of God-centered religions--Christian, Judaism, Islam--is created by humans to direct human behavior? Created by humans, not by God? I mentioned in my earlier debate after the dream that I don't understand why all our conceptions of hell only involve things that would harm a human body; similarly, our conceptions of heaven all involve eternal bliss, the one thing we'd like to have down here but can't get. It smacks of salesmanship, crafty salesmanship at that. Do what I say and when you die, you'll get what you wish you could have right now. I don't know, something strikes me as manipulative if not downright evil in that notion. This is how the fanaticists get people to sign up as suicide bombers, is by promising them things in the afterlife, and any slope that leads to suicide bombing is slippery indeed. Why not promise something good in this life?

Buddha doesn't offer a lifetime of bliss, nor does he claim that such is even possible. But if we are mindful and rise above craving and learn to live in the present, we will realize that there is joy in many things we currently overlook, and that pain and suffering are as transient as ecstasy. In this way we find that we are capable of having satisfaction all the time, regardless of our situation. Satisfaction is not happiness nor should it be confused with it, but it is certainly better than dissatisfaction.

So I like this idea of mindfulness and living in the present. Buddha notes that when we are mindful we realize that we are not the only ones suffering and dissatisfied, and therefore we discover that we must have compassion for everyone, and therefore we will work to reduce suffering in the world. That's a good thing, too. If living in the present causes that we should all do so.

But I'm an American; we don't live in the present. The present is an annoying pit stop on the way to a future we will never actually reach. Some people call this the "Protestant Work Ethic" or the "American Dream." It's craving. It built this country. But we are an overstressed and undersatisfied people, and living in the present needn't prevent us from having ambition and goals. But I still have a lot of trouble with it. It's something I'm working on. I can do it from time to time--indeed, it's been mentioned that we all live in the present in those first few moments in the morning when we are enjoying lying in bed, before we start thinking about the day ahead. But I need a lot more practice.

Mindfulness is another matter. I mentioned the Eightfold Path in the dream post; Right Mindfulness is the seventh element thereof. It is grounded in bringing your consciousness back into the present, which allows you to notice not only the sensations you are experiencing, but to recognize your mind's commentary on your present experience--and by recognizing, to treat the commentary as just that, and free yourself from judging experiences as good or bad.

I've been thinking about that. The Eightfold Path is not necessarily meant to be taken as a course of eight steps, but the last two, mindfulness and concentration, ultimately are I suppose the most difficult (and generally are seen are being part of meditation). But there is an aspect of mindfulness that has interested me:

(ii) He remains focused on feelings in and of themselves ... ardent, aware, and mindful ... having already put aside worldly desire and aversion.

So I haven't managed the last part of that. But the first part, focus on feelings as things in and of themselves, seems valuable no matter how far away from enlightenment one might be. I have anxiety, fear, anger, these things in spades some days. How nice it would be to be able to medititate on these feelings as feelings and thereby remove their sting. I may not eliminate anxiety or anger, but I can separate them from myself and examine them as feelings, apart from their proximate causes, and thereby reduce the power they have. For example, yesterday I got stuck in traffic going to pick Smittygirl up from work, and it made me angry and frustrated. You can't meditate in traffic, but if through meditation I learned to recognize the anger and frustration as things in themselves, perhaps I could pull those lessons into traffic and calm myself when the sea of brakelights beckons.

I tried it last night. I wasn't tired. I got up and read for a while, and when I went back to bed, I was terribly anxious. A couple things have been bothering me lately; I won't go into detail, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, worrying about it. Worry is living in the future, fearing the future; it is clearly not mindful, but right mindfulness might allow me to decouple from my worry and examine it as a thing. I considered that.

I stopped thinking about the cause of my anxiety--which was anyway in the future and not something I could affect while lying in bed at midnight-thirty--and instead focussed on the anxiety itself. What did it feel like? My blood pressure was up. I felt warm. I noticed that the fan was blowing cool air on my leg and my leg did not feel warm. I associated the warm feeling with the anxiety, so I threw off the sheet and let the fan counteract it. I then examined what anxiety felt like in my mind. I isolated three areas in my head where I felt the anxiety. I noticed that all three of them were on the right side; one was a narrow finger above my temple, the next was a wider area between my temple and ear but separated from the first area, the last was another narrow finger at the back of my head far removed from from the others. I probed this feeling for a while, which was interesting. Was my anxiety being produced by my brain in these areas, or was this feeling just something that was being created as a response to my examination? I don't know. I considered whether the creative part of my brain might suffer this anxiety without the logical part of my brain being involved. As I thought about that, I noticed that I was no longer warm, and my blood pressure had come down. I realized I wasn't experiencing anxiety any longer. I noticed the cool breeze from the fan. Fairly soon I was asleep.

I don't know what happened. But I intend to do that again the next time anxiety keeps me up at night. Meditation is surely preferable to Xanax.

Ack! Ick!

And I don't just mean Clemson's play against Georgia Tech on Saturday (barf!). Smitty is laid low with a head cold and the assorted aches and pains (particularly the sinus-related ones) that go along with it. At least I know I'm not suffering an allergic reaction to some unknown thing, which was the going theory for a while until the fever hit last night.

Poor Jackson is sitting around all depressed because I don't want to go out and play. Oh well. I do need to go walk him and so I shall. Just wanted to poke the blog.