I got very drowsy again this afternoon and opted for a nap.

     While napping I had a dream.  I initially got on a bus heading downtown to the telco where I used to work 20 years ago.

     The bus went through downtown and kept heading south, all the way to Southern California.  The driver was a big monster body builder type and wouldn’t let me exit the bus.

     On the way, we crossed over a river, the bridge went way up super high, like 1500 feet, and then back down. The bus labored to make it up the hill to the top of the bridge and then seemed to be going uncomfortably fast coming down the other side. I was afraid the brakes would burn out.

     At the bottom of the hill we were still on an elevated part of the highway, about as high up as the bus was long.  We came to a section where the highway was missing, like where you expect those “dip” signs in Southern California.

     The bus driver got out and lifted the bus down to the ground below.  Finally he let me get off the bus, I was in the Northern portion of Los Angeles.

     I had a cell phone with me, and my mother was still alive here on Earth and hers was the only number I could remember off the top of my head.

     So I called her, and in the conversation stated that I wasn’t sure if I should call the telephone company and explain why I was not at work or stay and look for a job here.

     I haven’t been to Los Angeles for more than 40 years.  I know that it’s basically taken the same route as Seattle and the housing has become totally unaffordable.  The average person in LA spends 49% of their income on housing.  I know I could never afford to live there.

     So don’t know where the LA portion of this dream comes from.

     Today’s Our Daily Bread shared this verse:

     One of the things I discovered through my journey to prison and back is that God can use anyone and anything to his purpose, even people of different faiths.

     One of the most helpful things I experienced in prison was a Mindfulness Meditation course.  It was presented by Buddhist volunteers.

     This morning I was feeling a little anxious, having some difficulty getting centered and I stumbled upon this video:

     It has many of the same elements as the mindfulness meditation course and by the end of the video I found myself very relaxed, quite a different and better state than I was in, and because I found it helpful I thought I’d share it with you.

     Here is a mid-50’s vintage Mercury in excellent shape.  It was parked in front of a neighbors house, haven’t seen it before.

     Yesterday I took ibuprofen for my gout induced foot pain.  Usually when I have a mild flare-up, a little cranberry juice and within a day I’m good.  Yesterday the pain was sufficiently intense that I wasn’t willing to wait a day.  Had to get groceries which meant having to be on my feet and my toes and toe-box area was creating stabbing pain when I put any weight on it.  So I took ibuprofen.

     I hate doing this because with me there is always a nasty rebound effect.  That is to say when ibuprofen wears off, I feel pain all over and this morning when I first got up that was most definitely the case.  Fortunately that effect has subsided mostly now and the cranberry juice has done it’s thing and my feet are better.

     I’ve read about other people having a rebound effect if they’ve taken ibuprofen long term, but it happens to me even with a single dose, and same for other pain killers, aspirin will do the same thing to a lesser extent.  It did not do this when I was younger.  I guess just punishment for not dying sooner.

     Gout flare-up both feet today, gout sucks.

     The problem with reductionist explanations of consciousness which invariably attempt to define consciousness as an emergent phenomena of the brain is that invariable it fails to explain the subjective experience.

     It is easy to say when this particular photo-receptor gets activated, it activates this nerve, and eventually this neuron in our brain and we perceive red.

     What isn’t easy to say is WHY red looks red to us and not green or some entirely different sensation.

     The man inside the man is not explained by reductionism, nor do I believe can it be.  Some of these attempts at explaining consciousness have lead me to wonder if some people lack the subjective experience because I can’t think of any other way that scientists could invent some of these theories unless they themselves lack this experience.

     I have had experiences that are non-local in terms of space and time and thus defy reductionist explanations.

     For example, when I was younger, I used to frequently have lucid dream experiences and occasional waking out of body experiences where I could go anywhere and anytime I wanted just by thinking about it.

     One time I wanted to find out if there were any reality to these or if these were just a willed dream of sorts.  So I devised a simple experiment.  I would go some place that I haven’t been to but yet was close enough that I could drive to it, and upon returning to my body immediately write down what I had seen there.  Then I’d drive there and see if it matched what I saw.  It did, exactly.

     I’ve also had a number of times I’ve got into the future and when that time came it played out just as I’ve seen it.  I haven’t had these for several decades but back at the time they drove the direction of my business in as much as I saw it in a dream and then created it in reality.

     Still tired today, not as bad as yesterday but I think it is the broken sleep I had last night.  My circadian rhythm is probably totally messed, between digestive problems making sleep difficult and my wife’s new work hours.

     Last night I rebounded in the opposite direction, got super-drowsy around 6PM, took a three hour nap.  Slept better last night but not anything close to good.  Woke up out of nightmares of one sort or another half a dozen times.

     The nightmares weren’t like really bad apocalyptic nightmares, just mundane things like a friend abandoning me at another friends five miles from my home with no way to get back except walk, or watching a movie on a 16mm projector where I work and an idiot co-worker didn’t know how to re-wind the film and put it back in the canister so ended up with a big pile of tangled film which I had to hand untangle and put back on the reel.

     I would be less bothered by it all if I’d been doing drugs or something to explain my mental state, but other than a tad of caffeine yesterday, nada, and caffeine wasn’t even in my usual excess amount.

     I knew earlier when I was listening to music I was feeling a little too good.  Not drug enhanced, just a natural kind of high and I new a low would follow.

     Now, everything is aching and I’ve got random stabbing pains all over and I feel wound too tight to sleep but too tired to function.  I felt fine until I ate a late dinner, then I started feeling kind of queasy, then gassy and constipated, then everything went to hell.

     Sometimes I think this is why I don’t have money because if I did I’d hire a couple of hookers just to rub everything that hurts and eat vicodins like House.

     I wonder if this is what Pam on Archer felt like after eating two pounds of cocaine.