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I have nice things to say, on a nice day.

2009-08-30 - we need time, we have time

I have so much love for people, most of the time. Not all of the time. Not the bleeding heart love, although that can happen sometimes for some elders, (note: 80ish gentleman who was working behind the bar at a crab place and looked tired and I was mad at his family for not taking better care of him!) and people that look especially sad; I tend to take on their emotions if only for a few hours or minutes with my head tilted to the side in an empathetic gaze.

How can someone have such love for living beings and then bash! them by turning them inside out on a page?

I have decided that the determining factor of my future mental health will be based on the day I don't dislike my neighbor anymore. Some additional rules on that:

1) I will use my thoughts of him as a barometric gauge, being honest with myself about either progress made or outlook not looking so good.

2) I will not discount his humanness, although I presently do discount his humanness.

3) Still, I will allow myself to hate him if I flipping feel like it. ('Flipping, or flippin', is the new 'fucking'. After speaking to Ben & Rag on a Skype call recently, and hearing myself curse repeatedly, and not hearing much cursing from them so much anymore, I asked them why. They said because they have kids now. But I have dogs now. They're right. People with kids should tone it down, even if some of us never do have any).

4) I will write about my progress here.

5) I understand that I may never like this neighbor, therefore I may never be better, or what the Christians are calling "whole".

I used to say typical kid things around my mother like "oh, I just hate so and so". And she'd say "Hate is such a strong word Ohell. Hate?"

Which made me hate them more....

"It's so and so on the phone."

"I'm not here."

"I'm not going to lie to anyone, Ohell."

"Then - please tell them I'm here, and I'm busy."

She usually ended most of our conversations with

"Can't we just have one nice day?" or when she was happy after a family party:

"Nice day."

So now it's an amicable family joke.

"That was a nice day."

"Yeah, nice day."

It could be that I think I truly know myself, but could be fooling myself, like when the real awakening comes, maybe. A someone with an unreliable shadow. Possibly that's how I was wired, to love and to despise. Not that I spend that much time thinking about my neighbor, it just dawns on me fairly regularly like when I pass his house, that I avoid seeing him so I won't have to see him.

But today was a nice day. My husband and I spent it together. Some of the LA mountains are still burning, so we tried to avoid a hike so as not to burn the lungs and hence, heed the public safety warning system. Translation:

"Avoid heavy exercise. Unless you'd like your insides to crackle and burn!"

Plus I fainted yesterday. I was emphatically saying something at the lead-up that I felt was really important, but wasn't. Suddenly I felt really sick and lightheaded, so I simply stopped speaking and walked into the kitchen, where I collapsed on the floor like an Alzheimer's elderlady who forgot she had a world. It was 99 degrees and our place is not equipped for a/c. It's not like the west side, where I prayed for humidity. Two year lag, I guess.

It was 97 degrees today, and the dogs were looking limp. So we went for a hike, but at the LA River. Still, it went on for a couple of hours. You really could feel the smoke from the neighboring mountains, so it was an all-sensory experience. Everything kind of felt weird and light. Spooky daytime hazy fun. Grayish everything, but so hot, with fire and sun and evacuated people. It was great, and then we made a lot of really pretty food later. Cilantro is something I have been using on everything for the past three days. I don't know if it's a redundancy herb in his mind, but I will use it till it's empty or he says stop. I should know this, but never knew until today that ground coriander is actually cilantro. Same thing! My husband is a food/spirits expert for many reasons, and I get a kick out of that, it makes me so curious. So to throw him off, tomorrow will be cilantro ice cream. You can virtually put it in everything. Today I was dictator of blended drinks, and we had it in our bubbly effervescent fruit peach shake. I forgot what my point was. Such a nice day.

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