| Latest dispatch from Atlanta is welcome news. |
[Apr. 13th, 2008|08:55 pm] |
The latest from Kristin's journal (I hope she doesn't mind that I re-print):
"What I have accomplished this week (to say the least), my voice is so much clearer! When I was injured, I could not voice my words for anything. My muscles in my throat my worked so hard! Years ago, I could not speak worth anything! I was just mouthing words! Then I was just babbling but now I can speak clearER. I used to type everything on my Dynawrite. A type-writer computer that I carried around with me. It was kept with me just as sacred as a purse (if not more). I have realized how inconvenient it is that now that I just speak (I try to speak clearly and skip the words with letters that are unclear) and I leave the Dynawrite with the other person. I will use it if I have to say something really long.
I’ve been thinking about what is different between this year and last year. From the time I left rehab or was getting ready to leave rehab for good (or in my 2nd year of recovering), Since last year, I have had some amazing improvements! I have: thought about weighing the different years together and from my one year anniversary of my accident to last year (my 2nd year), it did not seem like I was not improving fast enough (it just takes time for the brain to heal up). But this year, has been better than ever! I can walk on my treadmill (now to a normal walking pace!), I can hear the different letters people/ myself pronounce (whether they sound male or female!), I can most adequately use my left hand (though I am right handed but I am working on it!), I can chew chewier things, I can remember everything that currently happens (!), I hold my breath under water, I am currently able to shower myself by myself, use the potty, go to sleep and sleep deeply!!!!!!! So, that is everything that I am working on or have accomplished! Last year, my ataxic right hand was really good! But that came as a result of practice, practice, practice. I am planning on to practice, practice, practice at home. I had people making me do it. Since I was kicked out last year, they have changed the rules! So, I am back in! They had changed the rules from where you could be go directly into rehab for a year and a half (I was in for 2 years) but then leave. It has been my 3rd year anniversary (of living) and (my ataxic right hand is thankful) they changed their rules! This week, I started back! -woot woot- I have been thinking that I would be back to my normal self (despite maybe my hands… possibly) when I have reached year 4 and a half or maybe the 5th year (of living).That within 4 and half to 5 years later, from now."
I don't know how she does it but she never ceases to amaze me. . . . |
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| Why Plato, even though often boring, is the shizzle |
[Jan. 29th, 2008|08:37 am] |
| [ | music |
| | The Teaches of Peaches (at least in my head) | ] |
For reasons not altogether clear, we read a journalists self-interview where he claimed to shed light on the death of Socrates. He was perplexed that Athens, often the model of democratic values, could silence Socrates. The journalist thought it to be political and provided textual evidence for this. Reading the "Apology," (which is the trial of Socrates as told by Plato) this seems the obvious explanation.
Anyway, the point is that I sat down an re-read one of my favorite pieces of philosophy. Many lessons can be drawn from this short piece.
"For I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: 'Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individual and collectively.'"
"'This man among you, mortals, is wisest who, like Socrates, understands that his wisdom is worthless.'"
. . . and finally his closing:
"Now the hour to part has come. I go to die, you go to live. Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god."
Is there a better closing in Western literature? |
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| January is the armpit of the year |
[Jan. 17th, 2008|11:08 am] |
The start of the Spring semester has now consecutively delivered the end of two relationships. I think that priests might be onto something, seriously. |
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| Jeff Foxworthy has targeted the wrong group of people |
[Dec. 5th, 2007|05:28 pm] |
You know you are a douche bag when you are conducting an interview at an office wearing a polo shirt and ask the interviewee what his definition of a team sport is and tell him that law clerks "have to show that they want to work here" when queried about needed time commitment while the applicant is in law school and on a journal.
On a much brighter note-- Karma as Rainbow Brite:
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| It's about f---ing time! |
[Sep. 9th, 2007|12:00 pm] |
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I finally saw bears in the wild two days ago. I've lived in this state for so many years and finally got to see a mama bear and her cubs hanging out just outside Boulder. Dunno why that makes me as glad as it does but I can finally say that I've seen bears. Next, mountain lions. On second thought, I can do without seeing them. |
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| Pretty random. . . . . |
[Aug. 30th, 2007|07:30 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Interpol, who I actually first thought were English | ] |
That high valley doesn’t let you forget what time of year it is; that is, it won’t let you forget that winter is coming. The shadows become much longer much quicker in the shortening days. The possibility of escape on either side could be easily foreclosed by an unexpected storm blanketing the scree fields, which would render the landscape, already inhospitable, fatal for human travel.
This did not bother me because these possibilities were not really possibilities in my time. Such dangers no longer existed unless I decided to make a drastic change in lifestyle abandoning the world in which I drifted through without grounding my feet or grasping hold of. This change had entered my mind previously on several occasions for reasons both familiar and wholly alien at the same time. It was for this that I had begun to think I was born a century late and had missed the train I was meant to catch that was bound for adventures both epic and savage.
Such a shift in gears to evade the world of men was not likely, which was demonstrated by the lessening interval at which the telephone poles would pass by. This could only signal an increased urgency to make it back to the city yet four hours away as if my loyalties were divided between that which I longed for and my duties, which were mistakenly created in part by such longing. This is so because I lacked the understanding to make my otherwise vague dreams become reality. This was not for lack of diligence or want but from the fact that what I wanted was always one step beyond my comprehension and so diligent pursuit was not an option. I would sometimes attribute this to fate when I forgot, only momentarily, that I believed in no such thing. After all, “[n]otions of fate and chance are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings,” as Cormac McCarthy once noted.
Still, my shortcomings were compounded by my resignation to utility and prudence both of which, I was convinced, ought to be supplanted by rashness and risk. I believed that this was the only way to avoid the bumbling sequence of banality in life. Ironically, however, my actions never betrayed the secrecy of these ideas and so I both was, and seen as, my own contradiction. Rationality and the supremacy of reason had been taught to me from a young age, and I was still convinced of their merit. But, also from early on, I had harbored that which is at odds with the analytics whom I would come to admire: an intense yearning for inspired creation.
These two instilled poles had caused me some frustration before because there was the question of loyalty among two mutually inconsistent camps and I felt compelled to choose one or the other. There was a point where I decided that Plato had lost—that the Ancients and their offspring, even given their obvious merits, could not hold sway since they could not eradicate the banality and meaninglessness that I thought so plagued the lives of my fellow Earth dwellers and myself.
* * *
_____________________
Dunno why I decided to post that incomplete little tale. Oh well. I'm back in school after finishing a final two weeks ago, made law review, went to buddy's wedding but wasn't in it, which didn't please me so much, had an old family friend commit suicide, which either pissed me off or something like that, went camping twice, climbing twice, and saw the Magnolia Electric Co. at the Bluebird who I haven't seen since I was living in the U.K., blah blah blah. |
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| Aspiring snake-in-the-grass blues. . . . |
[Apr. 28th, 2007|03:52 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Li'bary | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Grinderman; Laughing my ass off to David Cross | ] |
It's helicopter season in the hood north of Martin Luther King Blvd. I guess when it gets warm outside, criminal activity comes out of hibernation (maybe that's why the Denver PD rounded up 49 suspected gang members this week). This brings me to my point: it's REALLY warm outside and I'm inside wondering what the hell I'm doing in law school, which seems to continually prevent me from doing things I really want to do.
I thought it was touching, however that our Dean gave us chocolate (among other things) as a going away and final exam gift on the grounds that "you all are going to get no sex the next couple of weeks believe me!" We all laughed, especially when the girl next to me offered to give up her chocolate because she "wouldn't be needing it."
Anyway, all I have is two weeks and then this crap will take a rest. Climbing at Shelf Road is within sight and I will be very, very relieved. Until then, back to reading and outlining. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 17th, 2007|11:00 am] |
Law school can be a bummer but not as much as breaking up . . . |
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bill_carson's journal
