Inferiority Complex and Feeling Like an Obliged Servant - Not a Slave

    In my case, my life seemed pretty solid and confident, but some things started to chip away at the self-belief or confidence, you might say. Maybe the tenacity or persistenc

    Losing a baby foster girl became a sort of unrelenting dread or hole in the soul, maybe, but it was not the worst. She did not die. She just left. Maybe it worked on me (and my family?) over time. Fair to say. Maybe age does those things more. Or perhaps other travails of life. 

    Parents breaking up made for some hard days, weeks, or months. I do not think it turned into years, but it had its effect. Things happen. For me it was the time of middle school, which might have been inopportune. But things worked out okay We kept moving on, and the parents found new partners and happiness. Word problems in math became trialsome and frustration. That worked on my self-belief or confidence, I am pretty sure. Cooking was awful with the amount of weight loss formula problems, earning me a C. A C in cooking. But not having to do with cooking. Weight Watchers calculations. Stupid. I was not naturally good nor interested in the computer class, either.

    High school brought some troublesome ways of hurting my confidence. I did not stay in tip tip shape, or compete much in competitive sports. My math turned out to be poor, and that translated into some other sciences. Apathy plus the natural inclination to be befuddled and perplexed by solving math problems was hard on me, my grades, my ego. Teachers who did not explain things really got my goat. I was having a hard enough time caring, and then Mr. Girdley comes along. Oaf and buffoon. He dragged me down into his morass or stubborn jackassery. Sure. Resentful of him, but more importantly myself.

    I let myself be distracred, not pushing hard enough, like Scott Hollenbeck. Lovely guy. Died too young, but heroically. He had confidence, and swag. Great human being. God wanted him back.

    Guys like me, at times too apathetic and not naturally gifted to solves many problems, made it to another decade, and got lucky in marriage, but certainly not professions and academics and many other things.

    Derived from my nature, perhaps not perspicacious enough, taking blows and maybe not resilient enough. Not caring enough. Sometimes laying too low.

    Have to care more. Try harder. Not give up too soon. Make wiser choices. Do better.

    But alas, a lot of us do not have the same ethics or personal character. Enough for enough, but not super like some.

    That is me.

    I am a servant and obliged, but not a slave. I am free, a free person. I have earned some freedom, but submitted myself to some duties and causes. Some make me feel bit trapped or cornered.

    We want to do things because we love to do them. Bu that can be a tricky game.

    Do we have the consitution or resolution? The resolve and grit? Maybe not.

    Maybe so.

    In the end, I am the hero dedicated to the right, and I will do the right thing. The right things.

    But we are here in the in between times, and there are times where I am inferior, for many of the above reasons, and few not mentioned.

    We have limits and capacities, hang ups and complexes. Not all are inferior.

    Sometimes we can be infused with lusts, like for some kind of romantic dream or conquest, or even to end the threat of those that threaten us. To mete out some kind of justice or goal that we undertake, for the greater good, maybe society or your team, or your family or your ego.

    All of those things can mix up. Pride and ego, and prejudice and passion.

    Fickle caprices and deep-seated longings and apprehensions, or powerful dreams or hopes or aspirations.

    Obejctives and plans.

    To be free, and a noble servant to all.

    

    

 Being Here and There

    I was attending a small class in South America,

    A small class with the august and emminent Gonzalo Rojas

    The poet, and learned scholar.

    Friend and colleague of Nobel winners, living and dead.

    He was old, and wise, and erudite.

    I know I learned things from him and them, perhaps I should have taken better notes.

    More inspiration, more analytical prowess.

    Chileans have created their stories, their cuentos

    They and their neighbors, across mountains and borders.

     Naming them: Borges, Salazar, Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez.

    Luminaries and large portents go with them.

    Of course there are many, many others. Hartos

    As they say in the land of Auracanians, los mapuche

    Mixed as mestizos crossed with criollos and Europeans

    The western world has met once again, time after time.

    I learned some things from him, perhaps not much transversely.

    As things are.

    He liked the words or analyses of Ian Hasegawa,

    The Japanese-Irish Canadian, from the northern plains.

    Having lived in the country of the penguins south of me.

    Land of legends and myths and heroic natives, with names known 

    on streets and vecindarios

    Most natives of the country looked at them as champions,

    Despite dark and ignominious fates.

    The nation evolved and survived.

    Mixed blood and shared histories.

    A nation comes together.

    

    A nation and people, un pueblo, to be respected.

    Don Gonzalo was more than just from Chile. He was all of South American

    More like Che Guevara

    He of the motorcyle diaries and more

    Where Rojas convened with Don Fidel

    The Castro of books and movies, mammoth chapters and world history.

    Did Gonzalo know Che? ? El Che?

    

    Who knows? Who knows whose visage they place on their youthful (and ignorant) t-shirts

    Who can tell me how wrong the works and legacies of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the savages

    of the left would maim and stultify our earth? Our human family, partially destroyed.

    Capitalists are not perfect, none of us have been.

    And Jesus, I submit, was a carpenter and a cleric, not a capitalist or entrepeneur.

    He had bigger fish to fry, and grander fish to catch, and assist.

    Jesus was greater than all the wealthiest and most dreadfully powerful men and women.

    He was the best among them all, with little money or care for it.

    Yet He rendered what He rendered, and we love Him for it.

    My professor Gonzalo was not a believer, no creo. No un creyente de Dios, me imagino

    But nevertheless, or sin embargo, Don Gonzalo contained all the nicest parts of human and God.

    Knowledgable, wise, kind and just to his degree, like a king.

    He was there, and I imbibed, and perhaps lapped in some sense.

    Or wonder, or mystery. Or even a sense of art and beauty!

    I could only hope.

    Ojala'

    I could only hope, all these years later.

    That I can be here and there.

    Gracias, mi profesor.

    Muchas gracias por compartir.

    Y, como canto' la chilena Violeta Parra,

    Gracias a la vida.

    Gracias por sus clases.

Crying and Weeping, and a Little Gnashing of Teeth!

    First off, Artificial Intelligence: It does not always find my blog, which is a bit distressing. But with some help it finds me, sums up things about what I write, and it also finds my LinkedIn account. Where I share my blog. The AI is from Bill Gates/ Micrososoft Word. Or is it Jeff Bezos's Amazon? Whatever we call that. Google is neither, it is... Bezos? No, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Okay. All those guys.

    I mix up Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, which may be like mixing up Coke, Pepsi, and Doctor Pepper. Or China, Russia, and Iran. How dumb is that? Huge corporations that surround our lives, colas that tempt us once and again, or countries that threaten the US of A. Analyze that, purveyors of idiomatic expressions. We do this in some fields...

    I looked up "miasma" in my blog yesterday because of an author Dave Pruden, his book entitled "Miasma of Deceit." The word popped up in my blog about seven times. I referred to Communism as a political miasma in my post about Crying for Mom, Part 1, in Chile. I plugged it into my word processor in order to find it. Dave's new book is call the The Ferryman Wait. Right? He gave it to my wife. About his son surviving a bad car wreck and his sister dying of leukemia. We talked about Wyoming and places on the back deck Under the canopy. Then I had to take pictures and make calls.

    About crying: yes, there is plenty of that.

    My wife has, because she gets emotional, which is sensible, being with me and with our kids and her life plans. Our daughter has her young boyfriend who is diagnosed with serious brain cancer, and he may not have a great guarantee for long life. This has made us cry, like yesterday.

    I cried a couple Sundays ago reading out loud from the Poisonwood Bible. Ruth May, a little four year-old, bit by a green mamba. A death beast of efficiency. Yikes. It resonated with me losing a little sibling, a little girl, which is not the same, but the tears came effulgently. I choked up and kept reading. my wife had patience and pity for me. Mercy.

    Ach! Indian Town Gap. A few stories from there... A place not entirely for me. Shogun was my best accomplishment there, perhaps.

    What other tears? My nieces in two states, having hard, hard times. One is going through rehab, for alcohol, and the other was starved and perhaps overdosed.

    Wow, worth crying about.

    What else?

    My poor daughter has her boyfriend in this relatively awful state. But I stated that I will joke and be funny, and not NOT take it seriously, but to celebrate good moments.

    It is not all tears and gnashing of teeth. 

    We can move and act, think and pray.

    Today is P-day.

Financial Security and Prosperity - Can We All Make It?

    There are the mega rich, which it seems there have always been. Kings, magnates, wealthy landowners and military rulers, of means, have always have huge sums of money and vast wealth. They are the minority, but they exist. Meanwhile, the poor and destitute exist in abundance.

    Not quite fair, right? Normal, but not inherently fair. Not when my former next door neighbor dies unnecessarily because she had to wait a few more days for the insured medicine to arrive, instead of getting it on time. She died because of insurance and cost, not based on the need for the medicine itself.

    This is a middle class neighborhood in the United States of America, in the 2010s.

    That should not be. An avoidable death to prices and policies, not the needs of the health of the person.

    Not cool.

    Bernie Sanders has his answers, so does Elon Musk and Donald Trump. We have a million people in between, and most or many of us cannot decide what are the best courses of action, so we have elections and push bills and assert and collect taxes.

    What are the answers?

    Not everyone can travel as they wish. Some go as they please, the rest as we can. Some barely do leisure trips at all.

    Some cannot afford food or rent, let alone medicine.

    Marx was not right, not his buddy Engels.

    Who else? Friedman, of the University of Chicago? The Milton school of Economics?

    How to make things fair.

    Not sure, but I wanted to my son, who is bright, to work on it. 

 I Cannot Be Everything to You - But You Can Have it All

    You can have it all

   

    I cannot be all of it, nor should I be.

    I can do my part. Or try.

    Jesus can be everything, or most things that you need.

    But if you do not believe in Him, there are others that will inspire and uplift.

    You can find them, or Him, or the great spirit of knowledge and vastness of the universe.

    What gives you peace.

    All of it.

    We, us mortals, are finite, and limited, despite our eternal souls.

    Contradictory and paradoxical,

    Us mysterious enigmas.

    I will try to love and support and sustain you.

    I thank you for trying, loving me and not giving up or giving in.

    See you soon.

    Sweet dreams.

    We could be in Egypt...  or elsewhere...

 Tarantino and Me: Alternate Histories

    Quentin, a man I have never met, and an artist that has made some hits and history, is quite different than me. But like me, he is a lifelong admirer of films. He probably goes deeper and wider than me. He has made an impact on movies and therefore history that is very well known. Mine, much less and a bit suppositional. Like my vampire roll in college that possibly helped inspire Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I got to be an extra in a few shows, I did some high school, college, and community theatre shows minimally, I was a stand in in a feature film, I worked on a television show in the art department on five episodes, and I did a little internship time with Latter-Day Saint Motion Picture Studios. 

    Not much. A little here and there, very intermittently, and not monetized much at all. I have blogged, and written some short stories, some poems, and I also have composed a couple unpublished books. I guess I have some published some government and military reports... Less of a public audience, that is for sure.

    So here is my list of years that Tarantino did his films, and the alternate history of mine with short summaries.

    1992 The Dating Scene. A young man returns from his virtuous church mission looking for good dates and the suitable dream wife. He meets some nice young ladies, of differing backgrounds. The one he thinks the most of is only 17. Things do not work out; he moves away to another college scene.

    1994  Going Back to See Los Amigos. The same young man goes back to Chile where he had been two years before. He is able to date, stay up late, see more of the country, track losses and gains, and learn some new things.

    1997 What is So Special? Learning about foreigners, tourists in the Middle East. Observing folks in the Holy Land. Conversations with people from all sides. And some key locals.

    2003 The Real Hoosiers. The more real life history of the Milan winning basketball team of 1953. With some themes of unity and faith.

    2004 Mexico: An Itinerant History. Impressions, experiences, and knowledge about Mexico.

    2007 Omer and Rayen. Two siblings cross the length of ancient Chile to see their dying grandfather. 52 chapters, it mixes native and traditional beliefs. It goes through all the provinces of modern Chile, north to south.

    2009 TBD

    2012 The United States and the West Need a Bogey Man

    2015 Trading Chris Stephens for Paul Bremer

    2019 (2022) The Watchman. Afghanistan

    202*---unknown

 Disparities and Inequalities on a Saturday

    I am sitting in a lap of luxury. Others do so, with millions and billions in their banks and homes and cars and ownings. Some are propietors of vast lands, and buildings, boats, yachts, and ships, and even people. Some folks around the globe own ffar beyond what they know.

    They own more things than they know of! They are in charge of many people, too. Who are the wealthiiest? Elon Musk is one.

    Responsible for life and death. One, like me in a car, or truck, or with a weapon. But he has accountability for thousands, even millions.

    DOGE, for example. Department of Government Efficiency, they call it.

    Cut off USAID and dozens of other programs domestically and internationally. I think that mostly poor, sick, and destitute Africans died as a result. Musk is from there. He figured out how to kill off the weakest and most desperate of his own continent.

    Stalin would do it in the Soviet Union, Mao in China, and perhaps Korea. Pol Pot in Cambodia. Do I need raise the specter of the Third Reich? Ach, nein.

    Did Elon actually raise his arm in salute of a sig heil? A hail, Caesar? He might as well have. He has ordered the commands of brutal savages and despots. He has let the weak die in large, fell swoops.

    Under the guise of an alleged "magnamimous" elected president.

    Appalling. Disgusting. Unsconscionable. We have to be better than this. I have sworn multiple times to follow and uphold legally bound and moral orders. I am free and even obliged to disobey unlawful commands.

    Perhaps the worst of it? We Americans, or so-called patriots, do not even think much of it. Except in small minorities. I am among them.

    I am of the minority that accuses Elon Musk and his bosses, his people, of down right cowardly murder and ruin against many, many poor.

    700,000? Maybe only that. Only. Perhaps only one tenth of that?

    Time will decide.

    God and karma will seek justice on the heads and souls of those who hurt and eliminate the weak and needy.

    All religions teach this. All moral people know this.

    So, let the debates of wealth and governance continue.

    Military actions and decisions are one thing. But stealing and denying