The Healing Arts: Survival of the Fittest

Let me say again that building this house was the A#1 best thing I have made...stress the word THING. This being the second time I have recovered from broken bones, the stability of my home is a blessing that gives me such great strength. Being with my wonderful husband now almost makes it enjoyable at times. Shortly after being discharged we talked about whether this experience was going to break us apart or bring us closer together and what we needed to do in order to survive together. The sucess of being able to talk openly and honestly together, and for our words to have meaning through action is the work that makes this time enjoyable.. Not being able to build and finish up little projects is only annoying at worst. The most painful part has been finding out that friends and neighbors we thought were actually friends and neighbors aren't. The old saying goes that when you're down you find out who your true friends are. We are very thankful to have found those people. Another meaningful expression is that if "friends" were $ I'd rather have 4 quarters than 100 pennies"- and that is exactly the case. As painful as it can to see people's true colors as being turdular...we are thankful to get rid of the turds. As some people go we have more focus to share love, respect and enjoy a deeper level of friendship and trust with good people. Plus now we are more resolved than ever to get the fork out of this crazy backwater southern shithole town.
 I am getting stronger, not sure how well the bone is re-growing yet but we'll see next week. I can stand and walk for longer periods and distances, and have regained pretty much my normal flexibility by doing yoga and feldenkrais exercises. Thanks to my friend Pendra for turning me on to the practice so many years ago. Water jogging every other day is huge. The water pressure helps get my heart rate up to force blood through my legs, where I need the tissues to be thriving.
 I used to play the viola, and have been practice again with an instrument given to me by a friend, one that her daughter never really took to and has been living in a forgotten corner. Keeping time with by tapping and lifting my foot has helped quite a lot. So has resuming my sewing work. There will be images of that work soon at www.egretion.blogspot.com. Perhaps it is time to return to this work, and my work as a writer, as my livelihood. For now working the machine peddle is a good work out, and being creative is helping keep my sane.

In the meantime, here's a snippet of Haydn for ya! 

This time has also allowed me to brush up on other fields of interest. I realized I don't know much about biology, chemistry and evolution so I started out with some excellent science explainer videos produced by a fellow named Jon Parry and his animation project "Stated Clearly."  Here's a playlist about evolution and genetics that got me going, and THIS playlist about research into the origins of life has blown my mind! These videos in particular explain the basics of pre-biotic chemistry and the RNA World theory that I found so compelling I had to learn more. So, off to the local library!
Now I am reading "The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origins of Language" by John Maynard Smith & Eörs Szathmary. Despite the grandeur implied in the title it's a very engaging lay person's read- at only 170 pages! In general as a thought experiment I have a chance now to contemplate how the apparent lack of cooperative brhavior - which in large part I find due to the vast differences between how people present themselves as being cooperative online but in fact behave selfishly, affects our ability to behave collectively to actually help another survive- or in my case, recover. Perhaps the breakdown in the ability to actually copperate in favor of inagining coorperation is a control for forcing actual survival by cooperation. How can any of this be expressed in action if not first the conflict be resolved inside the individual- and then resolved first in a shared reality of language. Language doesn't stand in well for action - which seems all too often to be the go-to assumption these days. All I can say is that in order to recover and stay sane too I realized it was time to delete my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I had only started them to run my business, which has ended because I can't work to keep the permits and insurance current. Returning to the practice of creative self expression is the healthiest, most authentic course of action, which speaks louder than words.