[This entry, as several others, had to be silently edited to figure out what I really meant to say, as opposed to what the Dragon thought I meant. Wonderfully convenient though the Dragon was, I finally had to give up using it (after trying about four successively better versions) because of just this problem.]
Monday, September 13, 2010
Noon, nearly. After I did, transcribed, and sent the above, I started to set up for the post office to mail the first orders for Robert’s books, but windpipe clogged up and I began having serious trouble breathing. I had the books in the car already when I decided I couldn’t go. So I stayed and tried various things – the inhaler, Jim’s DMSO with colloidal silver, ozone water. Nothing was helping. Finally I gave in to the impulse I had been having, and called Nancy, who knew just why I had the impulse – she had been writing about my asthma robot or whatever is that’s attached to it.
Let me talk to the representative of the body that we discovered while talking. I never knew I could talk to you; I never really knew you were there. My apologies for a lifetime’s neglect. So how can you and I worked together? For, I get a strong sense that together we will amount to more than merely one person getting a handle on his health and health problems. I was thinking to call you back unless you have a preferred name, and then I thought, might as well call you Scotty – I can imagine you in Scott’s exasperated competence.
Mac is fine. Otherwise you’ll go imitating Scotty in your mind, hearing me talking that way. It would detract from the conversation, I think.
Yeah, I would too. Okay, who would we need to do to learn to work together? I put my attention on my lungs and nasal passages when I was feeling better, thinking to perhaps pay more attention. In the past I would deliberately not have paid attention, for fear the attention would start the problem again.
And so it would have, if you were treating it as a problem in mechanics, only. It is the only thing in life – your body – that you treat as if it weren’t connected to everything else. You don’t quite think of it that way, but you’re not far from it.
What should I have for lunch? (breakfast, whatever it is)?
You can’t decide by what you think is going to taste like. You noticed how dulled your taste has become. Why do you suppose that is?
Your doing?
Indirectly. It’s an effect of imbalance, and an attempt to overcome the cause of imbalance, which is imagination of how things taste. You even rely on intuition to tell you how things taste!
I wouldn’t have put it that way. That’s interesting. My idea of how it tastes overcomes my experience of it.
You hardly have any experience of it. You read, you think, you do anything but pay attention.
And this would help how?
You’d reconnect, to that extent, with what your body is feeling, how it is reacting to what you’re giving it,
[After browsing the pantry shelves.] So, Rice-a-roni?
Best choice among the possibilities.
All right, I’ll try it.
And eat it without reading.
Well – I’ll try to remember.
People remember what’s important to them.
1 PM. Well, so that was lunch, about half the rice-a-roni.
And what did you learn from the experiment?
A couple of things. It’s as important not to let my mind wander off as not to read. In other words, pay attention to what I was eating. I learned again that I can’t really quite taste things – it’s like tasting through a layer of mucus.
Equivalent to a smoker’s loss of taste, but for different reasons.
I ate much more slowly, and not as much.
And now try to realize in the next hour or so how the meal affected you – for meals do.
I’m sneezing, for one thing.
That’s the black pepper you added halfway through, after asking if there was any reason not to. It didn’t really add to the taste, did it?
To the bite.
Again, like smokers and salt.
The sneezing is annoying, being so constant, but I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it.
It will help, in this case. But it won’t be fun.
I never thought it would be.
We’re only at the beginning of a long road, try not the only mind involved in this. But keep thinking of it as learning to cooperate in creating a joint mind – that will hold your attention – and you won’t be bored.
I don’t see that I could have done this without Nancy’s help.
You haven’t done anything yet, you’ve just had a lightbulb turned on. But yes, you’re working well together.
– What does the headache mean?
Partly stressed – not quite enough sleep, the new this problem, inbreeding, the continual reading. Take a nap, or try to.
Try is right, but – I’ll try.
[To my surprise, I succeeded for a while.]