my road-explosion and the death of the deep horizon

Sex and anxiety do not mix.  I had not even wanted to have sex until now, there had been no one to have sex with.  I was coming back to life in every way possible.   I began to believe, no I began to perceive, that everything that was happening around me had a purpose.  My theory in physics required predestination, and while that was inherent in the fundamental principles, I had not applied it to what was happening around me as the theory was built around a math model.

I was, instinctively, feeling pretty forgiving, taking everything in, evaluating it one body part at a time; body, heart and soul, the last of which I don't remember studying in comparative anatomy and which apparently doesn't even belong to me.  I did not realize what I was doing.

Every once in a while, you have one of those "aha" moments in life.  I had not yet realized my condition of virtue, as I said, that did not come until after it was gone.  I had not yet figured out the whole narcissism thing which would be only after I had fallen from virtue and realized it.  However, I was still capable of insights which I had never had  before.

I remember sitting in an eye doctor's office, considering my upcoming blindness and the limitations that would impose on snow-skiing, also bemoaning my economic status as I felt the soles peeling off the 10 year old running shoes that had passed the falling apart stage and were held together my little more than gravity.  Huge sections of the soles flapping in as I moved my feet like so many flags in a breeze.

I had other things bothering me.  The 3 hour delay waiting to see the doctor among them.  Then there was the pig-headedness of those who feel that by attaching a label to you they can get rid of you.  I thought about the foolishness of power in a relationship.  There is no fixed power, it is only what one person gives up for another.  There is a quote in the book, the last part of which I won't use since I don't like to be overly spiritual.  There is a fixed amount of spirituality beyond which I don't travel without a champagne bottle full of holy water and at least a 38 caliber with silver bullets.

The quote, however was this, ‘power said to the world you are mine; love said to the world i am yours.’

That is what power is about in relationships.  Relationships about understanding, take in everything and evaluating it 3 times, three different ways not just once.

Anyway, I was feeling pretty beat up with my blindness and my rotting shoes, and then,  someone was seated next to me.  He had scars which were so disfiguring, it was hard look at him.  We were stuck waiting forever, and so eventually I told him that I had not yet determined whether I would survive the economic disaster that followed the deep horizon disaster.

He in turn told me his story of what had happened which I will try to relate to you, the night of the explosion of the Deep Horizon Oil Rig on April 20, 2010.

It was night time.  Nelson was a deck hand without much to do.  He made sure lines were tight, he oiled, he hauled and he watch television.  He assisted in maintaining the most complex and costly drilling rig in the world.  The well was being closed in, concrete was being incorrectly set, a disaster was forming, but he was blissfully unaware of what went on around him.  His work would start soon enough. 

The rig was losing close to a million dollars a day and large oil leases would be lost if it did not get on its next station.  To make things worse, BP had created a dangerous condition by drilling too deeply into the structure to be mined and was cutting corners to save a few dollars and precious time.

As crews raced to limit the fines based on missing deadlines imposed based on over-scheduling the rig and not safety, he was being lectured on how to pull up anchor and move the rig to the next location as soon as the well was capped.  In the interim, he sat on his bunk and worked a crossword puzzle.  Eight letters, begins with a d and ends with an r, what happens when you rush something dangerous.

The first clue that something was wrong was when the motors pumping cement began to race ominously, sounding out of control to the trained ear.  Nelson, for that was his name, was inside on his bunk but instinctively leapt to his feet.  He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew something was wrong and with the reflexes of a sailor whose ship was in peril he was on his way before he fully knew where he was going.  “I’m going to the deck to see what’s going on.”

The other two men in the bunk looked up, but neither had picked up on the sound and in the way of sailors who live their lives in danger, they said nothing.  One went back to writing a letter, the other to reading.  Nelson reached hallway to the deck.  Before he could open the door it seemed to open itself from the top and he found himself flying backwards.  In his recollection it seemed like it was happening in slow motion, he saw the two other deckhands looking up their eyes wide as he flew back through the doorway into their bunk room.  He hit the back wall and lost his breath, but was otherwise unhurt.  The other two were on their feet and after a quick check to make sure he was alright, something he could only show with his hands as his breath had not come back.  Nervously but quickly, they went onto the deck together.

In place of the well ordered drilling platform that was the main deck of the deep horizon, there was a junk yard of debris.  The power on the ship failed after they only had a glimpse of this and then everything went dark except for the light from the fires at the stern where the drilling equipment was supposed to be finishing the closing of the well.  There was a single light visible in the other direction at the bow of the ship and the two others started towards it, but Nelson pulled away from them, waving them on.  He climbed up a ladder to get a better view of the bridge.  The captain was surrounded by five to 10 gesturing figures, each seeming to be completely independent of the others in a ritual dance to get the captain’s attention.  One of the other officers was calmly looking through a large book Nelson believed to be a book on the ship systems.  Debris, some large enough to kill a man, was falling from the large cranes overhead and fires climbed some of the cranes.  The ship was taking on a list that was impossible to mistake.  The deep horizon was sinking.   This did not sink in at first, but became obvious before long. People were scrambling in all directions, there were cries of pain, screams for help.  Nelson's job was maintaining the ship, but that job was gone, so he went to help and quickly found himself enlisted as a stretcher bearer carrying a survivor too badly hurt to walk over the wreckage and around the fires to the lifeboat station where the one remaining light on the deck continued working.

There were conflicting orders, launch the boats, don’t launch the boat, launch the boats.  He decided someone had to determine what was happening and he said, “I’m headed to the bridge, don’t wait for me if you have to leave.  Nelson, it seemed, was a fellow swimmer and had confidence in his ability.  Despite having the breath knocked out of him, he was fine now and healthy and wanted to do whatever he could before the ship went down.  He made his way to the bridge, but it was dark and he got lost.  The ship was beginning to list further and was slipping into the water.  He was perhaps 75 feet above the water when a smaller explosion, but close by, blew him off the deck, for a minute he tottered on the edge and then he fell, flailing his arms into the water below the drilling deck.  When he hit, it was not like falling into the water but into mud.  Again the breath was knocked out of him, but he didn’t sink. He was in a thick pool of oil floating on the water.  It wasn’t easy, but he began a half crawl, half swim through the muck of crude, he was at the edge, when it caught fire.

He did not remember clearly being pulled by a rescue boat from the oily water or being transferred to the rescue ship.  He did remember getting lifted by a basket into a coast guard helicopter and flown to Mobile where he waited several hours before being transferred to a hospital.  After he told me this story, I was embarrassed, but I didn’t know why, to have told him the troubles I had.  His face was deeply scarred and he walked away with a limp.  He said he had a rash, whether from exposure to fire or the oil he was uncertain, and his voice was raspy for the same reasons.  With the scaring he looked much older.

After that story, something began to form in my mind, but it was not complete.  I wandered and I found myself in a grocery store and a middle aged thalidomide survivor, was happily talking to me while filling my grocery bag with hands attached to his shoulders like flappers so that he has to drop things into the bag because he has no arms with which to lower them and I think, "ok, got it.  Quit whining about my problems," I thought.

I often sang the litany of the hazards that befell me like biblical plagues.

Any one of these things, any two of these things, would not have crushed me, but all of these things, one after the other.  

I was crushed, I was burned out, but a light was shining on me, or perhaps it was shining from me.  She saw the spark of life and she blew on it till in burst into flames, and I rose from the ashes.

my road to virtue and back-understanding

31700.

Chapter 24

 my road to virtue and back-understanding

The first bank fell quickly. 

I was becoming an irresistible force against my creditors.  I would also become irresistible to her.  I did not realize the power I had.  It would not be till after it was gone, till I had left the road of virtue that I could look back to see what had happened.

But the results might have been obvious were I to have known.   The banks caused the real estate collapse.  Most people accepted that.  After all, we had cooperated.  The difference was that the government was willing to bail the banks out.  They had no interest in the small people, at least not yet.  Eventually, the government would realize that if all of the small people lost their homes, the banks would fail on a level that the government could not subsidize, only then did the government realize how significant the problems were.  But not yet.

And I challenged the first bank as being equally responsible and it folded.  This did not result in the recovery of money, I did not plan to recover any money, I was much too virtuous for that, but I saw a great injustice in making me and making others pay for the mistakes of others who were better able to take care of themselves, who better understood and in some cases for their own selfish short term benefit responsible, who were, in some cases being bailed out by the government despite their culpability.

Perhaps the government is not as evil as it seemed, but the book I wrote determined the government was that bad.  This is the government that destabilized the middle east without understanding or a back up plan, this was the government that deregulated the banks and allowed the banking crisis tied to realestate, and, personal to me, this is the government that pumped so much money into multi family units in the area I held property without considering the effect on existing units.  This is the government that turned its back on the poor until it became obvious to the banks, who made it obvious to the government, that they had to not only bail out the banks, but the middle class or the entire home ownership system on which the banks based their own wealth, would collapse.

I had lost millions.  How many millions?  Enough so that if it had been in cash instead of real estate, if it had been in cash instead of investments, if it had been in cash instead of opportunities, it it hadn't been lost due to the criminal acts of banks, the importation of Chinese Drywall, if an oil company had not decided in 2010 to allow oil to flow in the gulf all summer, I could have lived in luxury for the rest of life.

But it was lost and being lost it seemed as if there were no way to get it back.  I gave up hope for a while, then giving up on despair I began to write, I began to live my life for the first time in years, and I began to fight back.

college blues

Why more U.S. colleges will go under in the next few years

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-more-private-colleges-are-closing-2015-03-25

my road-brains

The sound of the snow being blown against the window made a tinkling sound.  "Even now," the stranger said, "I can here the sound of those discs banging together."
"You must hate yourself for letting her go."
"Letting her go?  Letting her go!  That never happened.  The failure of the relationship was entirely her fault."
"But you said..."
"Yes I said I had my problems, but she of all people in the world should have known what she was dealing with and in this case I can assure you that she did.  She can say that she didn't understand what was needed, but....but I'm getting ahead of myself."  He twirled his class idly.  "Where was I," he said to himself.  He had pulled his other arm back from under the table, but he immediately put it behind Jane so it remained hidden.
The regular noted that Jane still had the same expression on her face as when he thought the stranger had his hand up her dress.  Interesting that he never noticed it before.  "You talked about the first night you spent with the girl."
"It was not the first night I spent with the girl.  I had already spent the night with her, fully clothed.  And the first night we had sex,  I didn't spend the entire night with her.  I didn't go to sleep with her.  I should have, I suppose.  You see I had not expected what happened and I had a child's birthday party to go to."
"What?" A large segment of the audience seemed to gasp this at once.  It was as if they were sitting at a table with a demon.
But the stranger took no offense.  He laughed.  "You know, if i had half a brain then i'd be half witted.  My brain was damaged.  Not in a way that would defend my actions.   I don't think I have a damaged brain, not they way that you are thinking.  It requires an explanation.
"I was in love with someone, but I did not know how much she was willing to risk to be with me until she pulled me down on the bed with her..  I was caught off guard, happily I will add.  Of course, I could have said no.  I could have said no to her, or at least not yet.  And, more importantly, I could have said no to the child.  Children need to learn disappointment, and they need to understand love.  There was a way to thread the needle, to do both, the birthday and then the truth perhaps...the truth.
It was the one thing that I could not do for everyone. Everyone!" He shouted the last word.  Then he took a deep breath and continued.
"If I had been capable of honesty, I would have told my wife that, much as I liked her, much as I respected her, that the feelings I had for her were eclipsed by a love that predated our even meeting and one which turned out to be much stronger.  And, of course, my wife and I did not have a relationship based on me falling in love with her and getting down on my knee and professing my undying love; something which never happened.  I married her because it was the only honorable road that seemed open to me.  My affection for her was based on shared experience and my respect for her and what she had done.  Even had I been in love with my wife first, however, there was a need to be honest.  Because many people who did the down on one knee type of marriage get divorced when the situation changes.  It only requires character.  A very minimal amount of courage.  A very minimal amount of humanity."
He stopped.  With his one free hand he drained his glass, filled it and drained it again.  He paused for so long that the regular was certain that he had stopped, that the enormity of what had happened had overwhelmed him.  His expression was fixed.  The regular might have suspected that he had died, except that his grip on the glass was so tight the regular feared the thick glass would break.  The snow continued to ring against the glass, the group around the table held their breath.
Finally, his hand released its grip on the glass.  As if there had been no delay he continued, "Love dictated that I tell my wife that I was in love with someone else, irregardless of how much I loved her.  It would have been the kinder thing.    But the pain, the pain of losing everything.  I had, you see, learned that I had to live entirely in the moment to survive.  There very spirituality that had allowed me to achieve so much with my problems, my life and with the girl insulated me from what it should have made so obvious to me.  I did not have to think ahead to what the right thing to do was, I could love in the moment without fearing all the dangers that surrounded me.  In fact, I think it was obvious to me.  I was in a state of virtue, but even being entirely there, the negative aspects of my personality continued to exist.  I was scared and I was beginning to recover from the bottom and I did not want to derail the recovery which was still far from certain.  The odds of economic meltdown outweighed the chances of even a modest recovery.
There is no excuse, of course.  Well, there are a hundred excuses, none of consequence.  My situation had nothing to do with the sex or the marriage.  It had everything to do with being honest with everyone, especially myself.  And in the end the one who would be harmed the most, would be the one I lied to the worst, myself.
I had destroyed much of my memory.  I would often listening to stories by friends of our past exploits and they would tell details that were lost to me, sometimes the entire story was lost.  All that time calculating.  Calculating what I would need to recover, how I would deal with my problems.  I was not living, I missed what was going on around me.  I made myself be there physically, but mentally I was somewhere else, calculating the same numbers over and over again.  To deal with the problems, I used the mental power required to maintain memory.  They were reallocated to coming up with solutions.  As you will find out, my mind did this well, but I ignored my friends.  My friends were largely business associates anyway, but there were true friends.  But so many of them tied friendship to status and I felt I had lost my status.  The only time when I was there was when I was pursuing the virtuous path, then and when I was with the girl.  It was as if when I was with her my life was starting all over again, the slate was empty.
At the same time I was trying to save my own ego and incorrectly I believed that meant protecting what was left of my finances and dealing with the tidal wave of lawsuits that were building against me and which I was trying to circumvent.
So what was I to do?  I spent much of my time dealing with the economic disasters that came along in the form of the oil spill and the Chinese drywall, the real estate collapse, the hurricane, and partners who may have robbed from me.
I was depressed and the two things that gave me the power to go on were virtue, that made me realize that what mattered was not success or failure...and the girl.  One was road to the right thing, the other was less clear.  Today, sitting at this table, you may feel you know what the relationship with the girl required, but are you sure you are all thinking the same thing?  I know now, but at the time I did not know.  And it was the girl, and not me, who would destroy the relationship.
When he said this last sentence, one clear thing.  He said it, but he did not believe it.

my road-the storm

The snow was piling up outside the window.  The television behind the bar, one of the more recent editions, reflected off of perhaps the oldest, the disco ball over the wooden dance floor that now supported pool tables and electronic games instead of dancers.  A thousand tiny broadcasters warned people off the roads.
You see, the cat was out of the bag, I had told her the story from 1990, of how I had confessed my love to her before my marriage.  That she had not remembered, but she remembered now, I would have sacrificed everything to be with her.  And remembering it once so presented, she had no choice but to believe it given my sincerity.
We were attending a party at the mansion.  She no longer lived there.  I was invited, although we did not go together.  I suspected that it would be more of the same.  A sense of friendliness which was closer than others felt.  In the past, would have thought sadly, this would be the party where she would find another lover, but now I was overcome with optimism that we'd meet and be very close friends, who could touch each other, hug each other without an expectation of more.
Perhaps I should admit that I had not had sex for several years.  This was not because of any personal inadequacy on my part, but my wife had at best had a lackluster interest, and my depression had given her an excuse to abandon any attempts.  The lack of a spark between us made this more of a relief than a setback in our relationship which had become one of mutual responsibilities and not emotional attachment.  This is not to say we were not friends, we shared, after all many years of fighting together and the child that had caused a casual fling to evolve into a marriage.
In my current state, of having been freed by terminal living, the lack of a sexual bond made me feel justified in looking elsewhere.  In fact, this had a been a theme of the entire farcical union, I was there as a business arrangement and I took my lovers where I could find them for solace accepting that I was not to gratified in life.  In the back of mind now, however, I was beginning to question a life of servitude to unpleasantness.
I ask you to question this yourself before you judge me too harshly.  If you lived with someone who did not like you, but kept you around only for the sense of security you provided, why should societal norms hold you prisoner.  In fact, my narcissism was my greatest enemy here, making me think I was somehow above those who got divorces, the common men.  In my state of virtue I began to realize how wise were those who realized they were not happy and having only so many days to live decided to spare everyone involved misery and opt for joy instead.  What a fool I had been, what a fool I was.
It was a fine time, with fine people and fine food.  Best of all, she seemed to give me most of her attention, despite the presence of her friends all around us.
We found ourselves in the owners hot tub, alone for a moment after several people left, me wearing my racing suit which I was never far from and her in a bikini which nearly drove me out of my mind.  And yet, I did nothing more than to hold her hand and kiss her, innocently but with passion.
The night wore on and I prepared to leave, but (redacted, there you have it)
 We knew instinctively when each of us was at our limit and we didn't want to stop.  The minutes turned into hours and when it was finally over, we had both worn each other out.
I lay with my arms around her not caring if the world ended right then.  I knew that I would never be more complete than I was at that moment, never more alive, never more certain of what I wanted.

my road Public Spirit

So, you want to read the pornography.  We have reached that point in the story and it is written.  And yet, I'm not sure I am ready to tell that.  It is deeply personal and I am not sure that I am the actor to tell it.  I am not very good at pornography, I don't think.  Very good pornography should excite prurient interests, I have heard that before.  So what is prurient interest?  If prurient is an over-interest in sex, then who of us can escape that?  Perhaps the better definition is the interest in degrading or unhealthy sex.  For sex is as natural as rain. All life engages in open sexual conduct except humans.  We hide our sex.  We use the word prurient as if it thinking immoderately of sex is somehow strange when the more basic the form of live, the more virulent the sex drive.  I do not see sex as inherently evil and therefor I do not know that I can write of it that way.
It is misunderstood like narcissism.  You might think I do not care about others, do not understand love.  In that you are wrong.  I believe I feel love deeper than you.  And so I feel sex deeper if it is with someone I love.  I have feelings just like everyone else.
And narcissism is so necessary to mankind.  Imagine 3 cave men.  One is loved by all because he is kind and compassionate, another is smart and he uses a stick to ward off animals and is loved.  But the narcissist, he sees the stick and is envious, he believes himself capable of something more so he sharpens the stick, or perhaps he has the kind man sharpen it for him.  Who is the most important one in the group?
You want to look at this as if it is something wrong, but you don't understand.  I had been in love with this girl without sex for so long that it was an anti-prurient relationship.  The sex had been buried in the name of friendship.  And when it was exposed to light, it was as if lithium were exposed to air, it spontaneously combustive.  But that is not a strong enough comparison, together we were so much more than we were apart, it was like the critical mass of uranium was reached.  It was an explosion when we touched and those parts of our bodies which instinctively craved the act of reproduction were not a tool for us, but we were at tool for them.
I don't know that I should tell you, unless you ask for it what happened, so ask if you want to hear.  Otherwise, I can go on with other parts of the story.  For when this next part happens it is the end of summer.  Oil is still pouring into the gulf.  On news networks there is a constant feed showing the almost sexual picture of this hole ejecting masses of black crude under pressure and nearby a device spraying the corexit 9500 directly into the stream.  No it is not sexual, it is obscene.  There is nothing beautiful in it, the oil itself might have a beauty, but the overall picture is of the act of a natural oil seep being turned into something evil, depraved.  It had become such a background of life that it hardly made any difference.
I was so close to the end of my rope on things that I was as near terminal, and therefore as near totally free as anyone alive.  But being terminal means dying and I was in terrible pain.  The pain was only absent when the girl and I spoke together, or in those brief moments we had shared together.
I had no idea we would consummate our relationship.  Did I want it, I wanted to run away with her.  I knew my destiny, were I to have one, was intimately tied to her, for she was the sun and I was nothing more than a rock in her orbit.
So I turned to public spirit.  The historical view of public spirit is be so devoted to the public welfare so as to become famous in ones lifetime.  Machiavali held that society itself depended on the virtue of voters and much of my political writing seemed to follow this, trying to wake voters from the lethargy that led to a tyrannical government.  In the words of Machiavali, in a battle of fortune vs virtue, that when fortune wins, tyranny results and I railed against the tyranny that was so obvious around me.
But I still had the disease and it is a disease in its way.  It would one day cause me to give up on my one chance for love and happiness.  Could she have cured me?  I am not sure, because, for reasons you will learn, she chose to let the disease run away with me.  I could, perhaps, have been great in my own time, I could perhaps have become a writer, but I was not strong enough alone to cure myself, I did not know I was ill, and she...well, that will come later and you will have to judge for yourself.
So what do you say, do you want to hear the sexual part or not?

My road-narcissism

IT is not yet time for the conversation related to our consummation or not of our relationship.  It is time to go back and tell you about the conversation we had before I got married, many, many years ago.
I've already told you about the narcissist's obsession with the perfect love.  Understand that I had no knowledge of my condition at the time.  But don't think that I am apologizing for my condition either.  On the contrary, high performing narcissists are not necessarily a liability to society as a whole, much as they may be a liability to themselves and those who love them.
I would go so far as to say that the qualities of a narcissist are absolutely essential to a well ordered society.  High performing narcissists by definition are exceptional performers.  Their need to protect their inflated sense of self-importance drives them on.  
On the other hand, in my personal situation, I can be excused in my failure to be as selfishly in love with myself because I had recently been so thoroughly humbled.  I had, in fact, turned on my own condition as a defense mechanism, but it showed itself in the undertakings that I undertook.
As a result of the destruction of everything I held dear, my reputation and my money in this case, I was freed to turn to a virtuous view of life.  I began to pursue my dreams, and one of my dream was to be a writer.  I had no support at home for this undertaking which was seen as a silly diversion from the need for me to rebuild my financial fortress which had been so absurdly risked in the pursuit of unreasonable growth. 
  But I pursued my writing anyway.  Much of it was for what I considered socially valid purposes, without a financial target.   I developed a new theory of quantum mechanics which, while clever, is not necessarily as important as I would like to think.   Certainly, the most anti-narcissistic thing that I did was to prove to my own satisfaction the irrelevance of individual creativity in a universe where everything is predetermined, including creativity, but coming up with the process which incorporated so many unknowns (dark matter, the absence of bosons, unified fields, black holes and the like) and explained them so elegantly was something to be proud of even if I was only following a script which I could not change.
Narcissism is an offensive condition, but it is not the type of personality disorder that is necessarily self destructive or a danger to others.  In fact, as you will see shortly, the anti-destructive forces which were to destroy my chance for happiness were a result of the narcissism which I did not realize until it was too late.
Still, it is a condition.  The DSM-IV-TR defines the narcissistic personality disorder as 'an all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behaviour), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts.'

According to this diagnostic manual, it is present when at least five of the following criteria are met:

• 1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
• 2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
• 3) believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
• 4) requires excessive admiration
• 5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
• 6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
• 7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
• 8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
• 9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

I might add from my experience that this list describes the stereotypical medical doctor, aggressive business mogul, and successful trial attorney to say nothing of the mad scientists.  In fact, I daresay that without the narcissistic tendencies of mankind, we would be huddled naked in trees to escape more confident predators.  While such a world would be a better place for the rest of the non-microscopic animals excluding perhaps bed bugs and cockroaches, it would be dreary to the extreme.

I was, then, at this time a recovering narcissist.  I had all nine of the tendencies in hibernation, but I had lost my arrogance along with my money, I had given up on envy because I had fallen too far to aspire to such worldly goals, I had adopted empathy for others because there seemed little reason not to sacrifice what was left of myself to my fellow man since my own soul was lost.  Or so I thought, in fact it was soaring at the time.  I had no sense of entitlement, the world having shown me that I would be treated ill, and so on.

But the disease remained and my exploitative nature was buried but not killed, waiting for the chance to dig out of its grave like a psychopathic zombie and terrorize the world again.  I still fantasized about coming back from the abyss, and what a glorious thing that would be.  And so, I did not recognize what I might be doing to others as I rebuilt my life from a sense of humility and awakening of spirit.
The story? Oh yes, the story.
You will remember I told you it happened on January 12, 1990 and was the last good decision I made.  I was sick, I was a spectacle, but I was successful at the time.  I drove a beautiful car, was quite a hand with the ladies.  Too much so, in fact, I had gotten my wife to be pregnant.  Rather than being the good sport and aborting the accident without telling me, I found myself the victim of an odd bit of extortion.  My freedom for the opportunity to participate in raising my child, who was no accident, indeed not on her part.  The fact that it was disreputable and sure to result in an unhappy union if any union was fashioned at all was not a consideration.
  It was something of a predicament, the narcissism I know now was telling me that I had to do this thing which was of little interest to me.  But there was another aspect of me that was thinking something else.  It was thinking that I had been in love with only one woman for the last decade or so.  What kind of fool would marry someone else?  Now at this point in time, this woman I was in love with , the girl of whom I have spoken so often on this inhospitable night at this hospitable table, was quite engaged to someone else, someone successful, someone well matched to her.  Anything that I was going to do in connection with that would be the height of absurdity.
And yet, I felt, I still feel, that my love was a pure as the purest mountain stream, untouched by man or beast running amid sand encased stones, surrounded by pure grasses and patches of newly melting snow.
And so I went to New Orleans, sick with the flu, my lips cracked as if I'd been in the desert without water for days, with my dreadful story of having trapped myself.
But what did you say, what was the last honest, good decision you made?
The stranger paused and sipped at the glass before him.  He stared into the fire of the candle on the table, the wick yellow in its pool of melted wax.  He took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
Controlling my symptoms with drugs, I went out with her.  I told her my story as we drank and talked, remember, we had no closeness at this time, except that of old friends who had never dated, who had never had the chance to date for she was always involved with someone else, a string of lovers, the first far before I knew her, the one when we met the inviolate relationship with my best friend, and later before I knew she was free of that one with her current lover who I had never met but of whom I had never heard a bad word spoken.
She was drunk, I'm afraid, I was too scared to be drunk, for I saw my entire life in the balance.  In the seat of the car, my nose and eyes running, my lips cracked as she began to say her goodbyes, I said to her, "I don't want this false marriage, I want to date you."  Now I may have left the word false out, but the meaning was clear based on the talk that we had had.  And with that i reached out to kiss her with my lips which were so badly damaged that it hurt to smile.
Pulling away from me, she said, "you're just scared and drunk.  You don't know what you're talking about.  And I am engaged to someone else."  And then she was gone.  I don't know whether she disappeared suddenly or whether she left slowly, fading away.  I only saw the dreary clouds and the street stretching out before me, filled with people who were still alive, while I died.  They slowly melted away before my eyes.  I cried.  Yes I cried, for everything I wanted in life had stepped out.
The next day I decided to go through with the marriage, there was nothing left for my heart, so my duty would be served.
When we talked the next day, she confessed ignorance when I apologized for my conduct the night before. "For what?" she asked.  I told her it was nothing.   It was as if it were some nightmare that I would never share with anyone else.  The last plane out of Casablanca and I was not on it.

my road-the lull before the storm

It is said there are only two answers, yes and no.  The movie yes man was one of the great modern movies, because it correctly identified the power of yes for what it was.  But more subtly it showed the importance of living in the moment.  How was character compelled to live in the moment?  By being compelled to say yes, life and death were no longer relevant to the inquiry.
This is not the same as realizing, completely realize how temporary we are, it is about life in the moment.
And that brings me to the corollary of the two answers.  There are only two places to live.  One was best described by Dr. Seuss as the waiting place.  The other was the state I was in, terminal living.  And the waiting place, is not living at all.
What is terminal living?
Terminal living living as if you are dying, living knowing you are going to die at any moment, the terminally ill, the soldier on patrol, the old and infirm.  Someone who has lived for a time only to make money and then who loses it all.  In such a place you can do what you like. you take on a power that only a complete ignorance of death and responsibility (youth) can replace.
You can stand up to disaster, watcher your wealth disappear through no fault of your own leaving you penniless but laughing at the disaster, you can be married but fuck to the woman you love.
Movies and books  are about people who are terminal living.  While they are desperate, the desperate are the lucky ones.  They are living. It is nice to think about the couple who has ridden off into the sunset sitting quietly on a porch watching the same sun go down day after day; but the moment when they have everything at risk is the time they are living, that is the time we are interested in, that is the time they are completely aware in.  Whatever the purpose of this world, the purpose of living lies in those moments of desperation.
Or does it?  Because I wanted to stop the desperation, I wanted to sit with the girl and watch the sun rise and sun go down again.
But if you loved her why didn't you stay with her?
The old man lifted the drink with his hand which the regular assumed was not sneaking up the leg of the girl next to him.  The drink reflected the light sparkling onto the face of the old man, glimpses of how old he really was under the shaggy hair.   He drained the glass to dispel the light and held it out for a refill.
"That is the saddest part of this story."  But he didn't answer the question, in the way he told the story, he just continued where he had left off.  "We were both terminal living, we were living in the same space that all great action lovers lived, at least when we were together, in person or on the phone.
Unfortunately, terminal living, like all living is is ultimately followed by death, but not yet.
We made excuses then to talk.  We saw each other more often.  It was innocent on the surface, but underneath the surface we both longed for each other, we both completed each other in a way we didn't understand.  We both needed someone who understood our problems, her the massive work load which distracted her from the rest of her life, me the economic disaster I faced.   And whether we wanted it or not, with the time together and the increased proximity intimacy grew.  We found ourselves alone more often.  We kissed and petted each other, and now with less friendship and more passion.  This followed a story which I told her, one which she knew, but which had largely been forgotten over the years.  It lowered barriers, it gave us a primacy over everyone who kept us apart.  We were exploring the bounds of friendship, but I had expressed my love with words.   You see the pussy was not out of the bag yet, but the cat was.

my road-the fickle lover

At this point in time I began writing a book of poetry.  I didn't know it at the time, but eventually it would be known as "The fickle lover".  In fact, at the time, I did not know it would be a book.   It was just a single poem.
The poems were all written to her, of course.  At the time, they had nothing to do with fickle.  Instead they were puns on the non-relationship that inspired them.  It was a type of friendship where both parties admitted, grudgingly perhaps, that they wanted to fuck each other, but weren't going to do it.
Through my memory I remembered what my senses had experienced.  The smell, she had this incredible smell, of her hair and skin, the look of her as she lay asleep and the look in her eyes when she woke up, the sound of her regular breathing, the feel of almost every part of her body.  Yes, she was asleep and I might well have not moved my hands at all, but save for one place which seemed in appropriate, I touched every part of her body, to keep the circulation I had to move, and there were so many different ways to hold her, none of which seemed to disturb her very much.
The kissing, well that was also of a friendly nature, although there was a tremendous amount of passion held back.  It was like trying to stop a wild fire backed by hurricane force winds with a straw mat, at least that it what it felt like to me.  Nevertheless, I dutifully held the mat up against the flames.
The next day after I left, we talked on the phone and the night before was not an impediment. If anything, it became easier to talk to her the closer we got.
And so I began to write poetry which was added to the books I was writing as a part of my awakening to virtue and my sense of self.  I did not yet realize that I was living as if it was the last days of my life, but slowly I would recognize that feeling, even up to the point when I died and became nothing more than a dead person imitating life, but that took much longer.  My glass is empty.

NLC-shared changes result in exponentially less information changing

This is a work in progress, but occasionally a concept so difficult to understand comes up that it requires I take a moment to examine it.  The third edition of The Einstein Hologram Universe, Non linear information theory continues as a work in progress.

It might surprise you to hear that I am still working on this since it has been some time since I have take it.  There are so many things I am working on and before I give the latest information on NLC.

One of the things I am working on is the next phase of my life.  In this case that involves asking certain questions.  Instead of dwelling on my problems, I try to come up with 3 things I’m grateful for in the morning.

I think of challenges to overcome today and what I'll do that is of value.

And mostly, I think about what Life changing decision do I want to make today and this I know.

But you don't care about that, you're just here for the physics.

It seems likely that at the time when two dimensions are formed, x y, AND z coordinates change for CT1 and CT2 which are one and two dimensional frameworks.  This is because we see features of light and energy throughout the universe and not just in one place or along a single plane.  This fact, leads to the conclusion that something other than the coordinates themselves must define the dimensional state.  The obvious choice, one that indicates a grown exponential concentration factor is the number of coordinates that can change at once.

Compression theory requires that the number of coordinates changing together increases when there is compression.  This equates to how much information can change simultaneously relative to a single point.  The total amount of change does not vary, but the amount of information changing at once in one point does.  How can more information change for a compressed point than with uncompressed points while still conserving the total amount of information change?

The number of points must decrease in some way so that the shared information changing offsets the speed of movement of any single point, at least in theory.

That is, total change of (2^n+1) points changing together is not equal to the same number of points changing independently.  The suggestion is that more coordinates, more information change is possible when they are united because many of the informational changes are shared.  Exponentially less information must change where the changes occur together due to compression because many of the changes are shared.

my road: the crucible

The deep horizon rig floated around 5,000 feet above the sea floor.  Far below was something called a blow out preventer.  It was predicted that if the well had functioned properly this blow out preventer would have stopped the spill.  The well itself stretched far underground,   The Macando well below the the deep horizon traveled more than 13,000 feet through the bedrock below the gulf of mexico.  The well was over budget by 60 million dollars and over a month behind schedule.  The deep horizon rig had other jobs, on the other side of the world, where it had to start drilling or more money would be lost.  The deep horizon was overbooked.  They were so far behind schedule, bp had decided to temporarily close the well and move on before finishing it at some time in the future.
BP, Transocean and Haliburton were all found liable for blow-out of the well, the spill itself, and the explosion of the deep horizon which rendered its schedule irrelevant.  The three were found 67, 30 and 3%  liable respectively.
The reasons for the well failure started with misinterpreting negative pressure tests and the failure to set up adequate safeguards or put them into effect when the incorrect test procedure created the dangerous conditions that resulted in explosions which might have had a limited effect had anyone been ready to react correctly.  They talk about how little time there was to react during different phases of the disaster, but the truth is that expediency had taken precedence over safety.  The parties were operating 18,000 feet above the bottom of the well without a safety net.  Only the accountants were surprised when disaster struck.
 Regardless of fault, however, the gulf coast economy was shut down and 5 years later many would say there were no shrimp to be found where the oil spill had the largest effect.  For at least 3 years, the real estate market was in shock and I was the result of that.
I found myself in New Orleans for a meeting associated with the clean up.  Oil was still gushing from the well head 5000 feet below the surface and had been for more than a month with no end in sight.  It was odd that it proved successful, but bp had actually started asking the general public for ideas on how to stop the well and in the meantime were planning on spraying pollutants, something called corexit 9500 over the spill area to hide the extent of the spill and for whatever beneficial or harmful effects it would ultimately have.
I checked into my air conditioned room.  I hoped to see the girl again although her relationship was on again from everything that I knew.  I planned nothing that was not casual, I had no expectations.
However, expectations are never a guarantee in this world.  One should always wake up with an expectation that things will be better than they expect.  It is better to regret than to lose optimism.  My wife never woke up with a happy thought.  I accept responsibility for that.
The stranger looked at Jane.  Her eyes were slightly glazed as if from surprise.  She was breathing heavily and her mouth formed a small "o".  The regular wondered if the broken old man had not put his had up her skirt.  It the darkness you could not tell what was going on and without looking under the table with a flash light it would have been impossible.
What brought us here was an oil company that was found to be guilty of negligence that killed several men, burned and maimed others and left a scar on the bottom of the gulf of mexico that they would never admit to, much of which was apparently the result of spraying corexit 9500 on the oil slick to prevent it from being visible, some would say multiplying the damage by adding pollution on top of pollution.

The girl agreed to meet that night.  Happily, for me at least, she was alone and also exhausted, she said, from the constant pressure of the work of bringing the city back from the dead.  The city had not completely recovered from Katrina and would not for another decade.  It still hemorrhaged from the storm  but now it was being poisoned from the same direction the storm had come, from the same direction where the city had gotten its wealth.

So we had a pizza delivered, opened a bottle of wine and she told me the marriage was on hold again.  This time, however, we didn't go for a drive.  Instead we talked long into the night.  She talked of her problems and I told her what I could of mine.  Eventually we were too exhausted to go on and we kissed, laid down together, fully clothed, wrapped in each others arms for whatever comfort we could give each other.
I remember something a lover of mine said many years before.  The same one that I had when I first saw, and therefore when I first fell in love with the girl.  The lover said, it wasn't sex that brought couples closer together, it was sleeping in the same bed.  We laid down together in the crucible.
I think she slept that night, comforted knowing that someone she could trust completely lay beside her.  Of course she was mistaken.  For I wanted her to be able to trust me completely, but I could not sleep at all.  It was, up until then, the best night of my life and I did not want to miss a minute of it. She had made it very clear we would not have sex, but my heart pounded in my chest as if I were running a marathon up a steep cliff, and my head exploded as I tried to savor and save every minute of the long night.  When the sun came up and I knew I would have to let her go, I knew it would be as if I had run off of the cliff I had spent the night climbing.

my road: fermenting love

If today was your last day would you spend it with me?  Would you spend it avoiding me. " The stranger seemed strangely energized as if the story was getting ready to take an important turn.
Only when you have given up on hope, only when the doctor says you have one month to live, can you live everyday as if it were your last.  It is the point where conflicts disappear and as long as they are gone...but they can come back, you can be cured..
But I was not cured, that was where I was.  I had received the terminal diagnosis, had calculated it in my head over and over again for days, then weeks, months and finally years.  And when I admitted defeat, I found not despair, but the most important gift of all, life!  I had lived before when I was young and knew nothing of despair because I didn't care.  Now I was living again because I did care, but knew it was no use to care.
And most importantly, I realized that if I only had one day to live, I knew where I would want to live it.
"With the girl?"
"Of course.  With the girl.  But she was unavailable to me, so I threw my efforts into doing important things, pursuing lofty goals.  I thought I would donate all of my time to giving.  If there were a god, perhaps he would repay that selflessness.  Of course, I would only be disappointed by god, but life would not disappoint me.
The group leaned closer.
"Oh, I see, now you are expecting the sex."  The group pulled back, embarrassed to be caught.  "Oh, you are all so disappointing.  People are so immature.  Every 14 year old boy knew what page the rape scene appeared in "The Godfather".  Forget the incredible prose and the smarmy, captivating and revolting crime drama, it only mattered where the sex came in.   And so you will be disappointed again.  For now there is only the crucible of love to discuss.  I was in love, but for real love to exist it must be shared and formed in a crucible of unbelievable heat.."
And so, here is the story of the crucible.
To understand this you have to go back in the story to the night of the dinner with the animal rescuers.  This is a story of pretended innocence.  I wish that I could be the person I was on that night, the one who had dedicated his life to doing good for others, who had given up selfishness.  That person is dead now.
I got up after staring in the mirror, brushed my hair and teeth to give my ex lover time to leave and rushed downstairs, retrieved me car and drove across town to where the girl was staying.  I had no idea what I was doing, what I expected.  All I knew was that if I died tomorrow, it would not matter as long as tonight I could look on her, hear her voice.  I wanted nothing more than a moment in her presence alone.  If her fiance could give me that, I would be satisfied.
A zombie movie.  It was like driving from sanity to something completely irrational.  The entire city was dark.  It was unlivable and yet it teemed with life, people who were shadows in the oppressive darkness, and equally dangerous.
I arrived at the mansion where she kept several rooms near the park.  From inside many of the homes on the way had been lights, some fed by loud generators, but hers were the softer lights of candles.  You might wonder if I should have been worried about my car, and the answer is certainly yes.  But I thought nothing of it, better it be stolen and I have to walk back through the darkness with the other shadows, because I was death and there was no harm that could come to me in the night.
She showed me in.  She had changed out of the formal clothes she had worn to dinner and wore shorts and a long sleeve shirt, but thin due to the humidity of the night.  And she was alone.
The fiance and her had decided to put their relationship on hold while she dealt with the work load she had and he dealt with his personal losses.
Inflamed?  Were my passions inflamed?  They were not.  For she was sad and jealous.  When we became lovers, the thing that would make our love making special was our desire to please each other.  We derived all of our passion from the passion we could inspire in the other.  There was no selfishness, only the fear of disappointing the other.  I was in love, more deeply in love than any of you ever were or ever will be unless you can find out that your life is over and can truly live each day as your last.  You think that it was the last day of my life so I would want it making love to her.  Today, that would be true, but then I was virtuous, you see. I wanted to ease her pain and could only do that by standing beside her.
So we talked, I took her hand, but she drew it back.  She asked me if I would drive her by her fiance's house and we drove by so she could feel her jealousy and loss more deeply.  We went back and it was very late.  It was the time to take her or to leave.  You are married she said firmly, you have to go and I went.
But I thought I brought her some peace and my soul sang out, the terrors of my impending destruction held no fear for me, for I lived only for her, and I would do so until I died.

My road: Nlc-fact vs fiction

I read another writer pondering where fiction came from.  I presume the whole idea of the lack of a relationship to people living or dead suggests it comes from some great vacuum.
If you were to read my physics papers, you would see that I feel that predestination (physics or math, if you prefer) suggests that it does come from no-where, at least what most of us would perceive as nowhere.
The universe seems to like a snow globe.  When god picks it up and shakes it, the flakes are instances of life, gravity their falling back to the bottom.  But in this case they always shake the same way.  Perhaps since the universe spins, it would be better represented by a spinning snow globe, but its all the same, shaken or spun.
If one wants to believe in a god, then one must accept that the universe is created by something more complicated than the most complicated thing we experience.  The atheist must, on the other hand, accept that things exist without any reason for it to exist.  The only true religion is agnosticism, since all others must rely on accepting the promises and assurances of creation.  The agnostic only has to accept the possibility that something so complicated cannot exist without the actions of something more complicated, something dimensional and linear can only exist in the presence of something that exists in its absence.  It is all such nonsense, this life we lead has no logical basis.
But creativity exists.  The ability to face your problems and change things around you exists.  Even someone who feels that predestination is proven, can understand that part of predestination lies in creativity of a predestined universe and whatever we consider creativity, whether predestined or not, has an element that appears to have spontaneity.
And creativity doesn't exist in a vacuum...or of course it does, now that I think about it, at least according to my interpretation of the linearity of time which defines vacuum somewhat more restrictively than what you'll find in your dictionary, the vacuum of non-linearity is not only empty, but dimensionless.
That all being said, creativity feeds on feedback, it survives because it gets results.
I began to feel that every day was special.  Whether every day could be controlled, if not by me then by something greater than me, was a question that had no certain answer, but having nothing left to lose, I realized that whatever was left could be controlled.  In my little economic cell, I could at least walk from one end to the other.  I might fly into a brick wall if I assailed my problems, but I could lay down and die or I could assail them.
I could also do all those things that were important to me at least to the extent that I could.  The very lack of responsibility embedded in total failure meant I was responsible to no one, perhaps I was not even responsible to myself.  Instead I was responsible only to what I thought was important.
I wrote my thoughts down and there was positive response, some took the time to buy a copy of my not quite finished physics books even though the newer versions are only days away.  Even if no one listened to me, even if I was only a mad preacher screaming my religion on the streets, I was being true to my beliefs.  I began to understand the mad preacher.  I no longer mocked or felt sorry for them, instead I now understood that they held a power that those who laughed at them lacked.

It did not matter whether there was an answer to this question: which of those works will withstand the test of time, which will turn out to be fact, which fiction.

My partner began to file bankruptcy.  Not the one who was impervious to debt for he created his own reality.  He was, perhaps, more like me than the others.  I chose a different path, however.  I stood up to reality and said, I can deal with you on my terms.  I am clever enough to beat you.  In a predestined universe, I can be destined for something more than to be a victim.  And still things continued to get worse, the problems multiplied.  I was like a person who had raised his fist against an unstoppable tidal wave, a wave that was about to get a lot bigger.  However, on this special day as all days are special, I raised my fist and yelled into the approaching storm, "here I am come and get me."  And it did.

My road-The darkness

The lightning had stopped and the rain had turned to sleet.  It was the darkest part of the night.  The wind blew it against the windows through the burglar bars and it made a tapping noise.  The stranger had his head down on his arms.  He had mumbled for a while and then become silent as if sleeping.  We wondered if the alcohol and emotion of the story had worn him down and left him this peace, but he slowly lifted his head and his blood shot eyes shown in the light of a candle that had been placed on table so that the candle flame danced against within his eyes, the yell flame rimmed in veins of red.
The stranger continued as if he had never paused.

I remembered the days when I was my happiest.  I had nothing but a 20 year old motorcycle and my wits and a dollar which I vowed never to spend which I had received somewhat randomly and which bore the legend in red: “keep me and never go broke”.  I wondered with all the millions that I had and I had lost where that dollar was now, where that poor broke, invincible and happy risk everything person had gone to.
Around this time I went blind.  It was only a temporary thing, both retinas detached as a result of a sudden trauma.  My wife breaking a board against my head.
This is a notable event and one which I'm not particularly proud of but one which was critical to my redemption.
Like everything else that happened to me, it did not happen quickly.  After the event, I had some time when I saw what appeared to be a flurry of black snow which I could see through much as you'd see through a storm. The cause of this strange event said not to worry about it, but it became hard to ignore.
Once it was reported properly to an eye doctor, there followed some incompetent surgeries which ultimately left me able to see again, but absent the sharpness of youth, I could no longer read comfortably, nor see well in the distance.
It seemed at this point in time with everything collapsing around me that even my health had decided to abandon me.  In fact, I had largely abandoned it.  I was, you see, despite the wretched figure you see before you, quite the athlete in my younger days.  Several years of worry, a misguided or well guided blow to the head and the general passage of time had conspired to take away much of what I had before.
But it also seemed like as the outer vision was fading, and inner vision was getting clearer.  I was not happy. But quite suddenly, I was not unhappy either.  The idea that I would die, however, no longer frightened me.  In fact I welcomed it.  I read perhaps the first few lines of the book on "why was I here" but just the question seemed enough for me.  Was I really here just to worry away the last years of my life?  I wasn't always depressed.  I was not talking to the girl, at least not very often.  Her newest love seemed happy and her happiness was unbearable to me.  But I began to feel a certain contentment in the impending doom of all things I found important and in their absence, there was not so much a void to swallow me as a void which seemed to beckon me to fill it.
What was important to me, why was I here?

my road-an introduction to virtue

The financial collapse was not quick.  Nor did it happen in one place.  It would have been nice if it had happened that way, like getting shot with a bullet.  But it was nothing like that.
Virtue waited only at the end, which as it turned out, was a beginning.
I did occasionally hear from the girl.  I tried to make myself happy for her when she told me about her latest lover.
We had reconnected and the natural flow of our conversation sealed the friendship which never did more than hide beneath the surface of our separate lives.  I began to realize that the only thing that kept us off the phone for hours, was the pain I felt at her absence and knowing she shared her deepest passions with anyone else besides me.  But such was our friendship, such was my respect for her that I was able to give my heart to her and my loyalty without asking for anything more in return than her friendship.  I was willing to live without more, or so I thought.  She was repairing New Orleans and enjoying a good life with wealth while I watched my financial empire crumbling around me.
Fortunately, my casino project was moving forward and since my remaining real estate was positioned to provide housing first for the contractors and then for the guests.
But there were any number of potential problems with that moving forward, a small event might not stop it, but another storm could kill the project.  There was no storm on the horizon, but my fear fed my imagination.  But even my imagination would not predict what happened which was much worse than another storm.
The other item, which it would take some time before I could acknowledge to myself was my envy. I was not envious of the rich, except for one man who'd I'd never met who was the new love of her life.  I did not even realize this for years later, but it was there nonetheless.
The world seemed to be offering me nothing, not giving anything, taking everything.
I found myself floating in my hot tub wishing I could die, but I didn't die.  You see, I wasn't just broke, I owed huge debts,  At the time I was so confused, that I thought the money and the banks controlled me.  Things which were essentially inadequate objects had become real to me and I had given them force over me.  They did not even want it.
  And I had not yet realized that all of this would give me a power over life that I had never realized possible.  But for the moment, I was dazed, I went through life like anyone else, seeing the events of life that everyone else saw, but in the background my mind was doing calculations, figuring the dollars owed, the assets remaining, the bills due and the dwindling supply of money to pay them, the conduction of litigation, the negotiations with the bank and somehow, despite all of this there was still a strange spark of light.  I did not know till much later what the light was, but it came from that night long ago, when I was able to extend myself to show compassion to the girl, me with all of the problems which I thought that I had, put them all aside for a moment and extended compassion to someone else who needed it.  Someone else who was heart sick had needed me and I was able to be there.  In this unrealized memory, lay the seeds for my salvation.
One day while I was shopping, the background of counting measured against the cost of the food,  I picked up a religious pamphlet.  There is no god, perhaps, but the theme caught my eye.  My world of money was collapsing around me and in front of me was a pamphlet that asked the question, "Why are you here?" Why indeed.
When you discovery what is important something happens.  I had not reached this point yet, but it was coming.  When you discover what is really important, you may turn on everything that came before, everything you believed was real, you realize the foundation of the world may be different from what you imagined.  You may question this but you would not question a slave waking up one day and rejecting slavery.  He looked around at the white faces at the table before him. At least, you wouldn't if you were the slave.
It can be one thing or it can be many things, but in the moment of clarity that is virtue, I was not there yet, but when it came I could see many things that were important to me that I had known but never properly prioritized before.  This can be a manifesto, it can be a hundred things.  But for me, eventually one thing, one person would be the defining statement of virtue.

my road-the nightmare

It was the darkest part of the night and outside of the bar the storm was beginning to rage.  A flat screen television told of the weather possibly changing to snow, by daylight and warning residents to go home.  The scotch bottle was nearing the end.  Bolts of lightning illuminated the stranger who against the cold seeping through the window remained wrapped in his trench coat.  The crowd listening had grown so that the regular was sure that the two girls on either side of the stranger must now be touch legs with him.  The regular thought of the rot e had thought he'd seen under the coat and shuddered a little, but was too curious to say anything further.
The stranger had a haunted look on his face as he remembered unwanted thoughts.
The nightmare when it came started slowly as nightmares often do.  The first indication was when sales started to slow, this was the beginning of the real estate collapse.  Eventually prices would fall 30 percent, a stunning reversal, but within the limits of our endurance.  Then out of the blue we began to experience widespread electrical problem.  We considered them inexplicable at the time and the sales stopped completely and to make things worse, lawsuits were filed.  We were accused of poor construction, inadequate design, and much worse.
I had run into a friend on the streets near the park and we had started to chat.  The friend was my not yet attorney and I bewailed the troubles I had to this person who I knew was well heeled and wanted for nothing, but would enjoy the problems.  He surprised me by responding with great casualness, "Oh, that's the sheetrock."
"No, no," I insisted, "this is an electrical problem thinking he was confused by mold problems or something else.
"No, it's Chinese Sheetrock."
And there it was, high sulfur sheetrock wrecklessly imported with no proper quality control from China to meet the post Katrina shortage.  The sulfur mixed with the high humidity and you ended up with sulfuric acid and god knows what else.
A class action, that mean a million years from now some solution would be reached that made the attorneys rich.  Holy Shit, I thought.  I picked up the phone and let my partners know the bad news.  Then I called our attorneys, how much was this going to cost me?  Some of the notes already were being paid in arrears.  Banks were calling wondering about margins as the real estate collapse experienced in other areas already began to filter down and the results of government fueled over-building finally began to overcome the post storm housing shortage.
My partners were getting more and more distant.  I was getting more distant.  I discovered that we were not all in the same boat, but all the boats were leaking like crazy.
I started the mantra of going through all my debts and all my assets.  You might think that I was getting ready to collapse in the abyss.  That is what I thought too, but I was getting ready to discover virtue.  But first, I had to experience the nightmare. Ha!  Or what I thought was the nightmare. Perhaps I shall call it the first nightmare.
What?  The night after the dinner in New Orleans?  Why the hell do you want to know about that?  What childish curiosity you have.  You will certainly be disappointed.  But I see that the bottle has gone empty, I'm too dry to continue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB7ONnfIjaI

nlc edited chapters and how fast we are moving through the universe

Super Dupe Fission and Fusion and successively more complex systems:

          If black holes represent CT5 than the question of what the formation process or potential deformation process entails is worth considering.  The existence of small, temporary black holes in certain earthly environments (perceived if not actual in atom smashers) render this more than a study of outer space phenomena.

          The idea here is that the CT4 to CT5 state is a kind of "super fusion" and the reversal of the process would be a "super fission".  We exist in a "super atom" (not a super molecule necessarily) and each of the black holes are fundamental particles in this system.

          If a weapon could be made it would be exponentially more powerful than the fusion or fission bombs we imagine, the energy which radiates from Black Holes may well reflect the forces of this reaction.  Imagine a power source which was able to tap into this reaction, a power source able to provide exponentially greater power.  

          While it is seductive to think in terms of all of clock time forces co-existing, this model indicates something different.  Instead this indicates that a "system" exists for each clock time.  The "size" of the system is a good question to ask, not because of any "real size" but an apparent size.  The size of the system for a given clock time is related to the scale of compression.  It is also predicted that the content of the system changes the way that the specific clock time interacts.  Fundamental particles can all be explained away in terms of being nothing more than clock time, but they appear and interact showing differences.

          Likewise, every black hole should, to remain stable, reflect a compression factor of at least 10^32.  But what about those black holes that appear to have higher compression?  What about those black holes that have bigger systems around them that interact with them?  These differences in black holes are the same type of differences we have with lower clock time states.  Hence we can study these larger system to better understand the smaller systems and vice versa although larger systems, containing smaller systems, are necessarily more complex.

          This does not mean, however that CT5 “particles” are any different than any other particle in terms of space occupied in the universe.  The concept is that black holes (CT5) look like points because they are points.  The amount of CT4 necessary to generate this point is enormous, but in the end you have “one CT5 particle” made up of 10^32 fundamental matter particles.  You have “one fundamental matter particle” made up of 10^15 energy particles, you have “one wave particle” made of 10^8 photon particles; on photon particle made up of 10^4 space particles and one “space particle” made up of 10^2...what?  Since “particle” is artificial, these are “time quantum” with different changes, we can envision the concentration of 10^2 being merely a switched on/off, 1/0, etc non-linear time quantum and because it is not governed by our laws of dimensions or linearity, it can create everything else.  The obvious analogy to “god” or at least a “god particle” is curious only because it is mathematically sound.

          Since the lower clock time states would have fewer factors affecting them, their “types” would be more consistent and fewer in number which is observed, there are many types of matter, fewer significant differences in wave energy, fewer still of photonic energy and only one apparent type of space.

          It is predictable that smaller systems (CT1 being the smallest linear system, at least in the most basic rendition of NLT) have fewer permutations which would explain the smaller number of fundamental particles that matter shows as compared to black hole systems we observe.

 http://www.iflscience.com/space/how-fast-are-we-moving-through-universe
Using one frame of reference 800 miles/second

Babbage, extractor's club

the perfect country song-the real one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYIrs1Dx4Ck

my road-new orleans

She was asking if a profile on the internet was me, since you asked.  We were friends, you see.  It had been some time since we had seen each other.  I knew she was engaged, perhaps even married.  I told her I was going to be town meeting with several people and asked if she'd join us for dinner.  My head was spinning, but I forced the feelings down where I kept my concerns about the ever more out of control real estate developments.
New Orleans was surreal in the extreme.  To understand it you have to understand that many people were dead.  My ex lover and her team were rescuing animals who were abandoned in the evacuation of the city.  Everyone that had left did so with the expectation that they would come back, but with no local services, there was nothing to come back to.
I met the ex lover in my hotel room.  She took a shower, there were no real showers in the temporary camp where they were headquartered.  You might think that I tried something, and I certainly thought about it.  We grasped each other when she came in, and exchanged a kiss which could have been a preamble or the recognition of a deeply satisfying and satisfied past sexual relationship.  It was both chaste and deeply sensual.  Then it was into the shower for her to change while I sat at my desk and thought about the girl, the sound of the shower in the background.  You may well guess what was going through my mind, but no matter what your guess is, you would be right.
Outside, she in a clean black dress that was none too conservative or chaste it was growing dark.  Bourbon street was lit up like the week before the storm.  The rest of the city, however, the entire rest of the city was pitch black.  It was the dead city of the apocalypse.  Ten years later, parts of the surrounding community would still be empty as a result of the massive collapse of infrastructure and the flooding that accompanied the storm.
The pet rescue people were a bizarre assortment of people who passionately loved animals and had the resources to pick up and move at the spur of the moment.  They were poor and rich, hippy and socialite.  The stories they told were moving in the extreme.  In many cases, it being summer, the area being flooded and there being no power, they would break into homes sealed for weeks to clouds of deadly black mold; often to find a starving, dehydrated dog standing defensively over the body of their drowned master.  And they were a handsome group, the women beautiful, the men tall and handsome if a little worn from the primitive conditions they'd adopted out of necessity.
I forgot them completely when she walked into the restaurant.  I tried to stay focused on my friend who I'd come with, but I couldn't focus on anything else.  You have to understand, in addition to her beauty, which needed nothing added, she was the most intelligent, vibrant person in any room.  Everyone had stories of their work after the storm, living in the chaos of a series of crises each one having a higher priority than the next, the shifting nature of things confusing the order minute by minute.  This was when President Bush, overcoming his initial bafflement, was over-reacting in the opposite direction and there were humvees and men in uniform randomly appearing and disappearing and both rescue and combat helicopters sharing airspace trying to decide if they were in a war zone or a rescue mission.
Bourbon street was Bourbon street, somehow, and I ensured that the drinks and wine flowed for there seemed no end of money for me at that time, the darkness that was coming was still on the horizon, like the black curve of storm when you see an organized hurricane looming in the distance.
I caught the girl alone for a moment and asked if I could see her again.  She suggested I could come by after dinner.  There was nothing sexual, I did not even have time to find out if it was to meet this fiance or husband or just to talk.
After dinner we, the ex and I, went back to my hotel room ostensibly to pick up her things which she'd brought in contemplation of using my shower.  She, an exotic beauty, seemed baffled by my failure to give her an opportunity to fight off, or not, my advances, but as soon as practical with as much decorum as I could muster, I sent her on her way, clothes in hand in disorganized bundles.  In this situation of madness that was post hurricane New Orleans, no one would have noticed.
I sat back on the bed after she was gone and looked at a complete stranger in the mirror.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC8QcaMMVQE

my road-fever pitch

I dropped my other business ventures then to deal with the emergencies and by that I mean the opportunities presented.  I threw myself and my resources into construction of housing.  Unfortunately, the partners I started with were the confidence man and the attorney.  I don't blame them for their decisions and their decisions did little more to save them than mine did to save me.
I had always been cautious, unwilling to get in over my head.  That is a key to making good decisions, don't get in over your head. Ah, but I was living, at least for something.  I was living to make money, he he, but I was living nonetheless. At this moment, I was wildly successful...making money. In truth I was a dismal failure as person.
And things were working, despite the fact that I was being robbed blind, trusting as I was in someone I knew could not be trusted, not auditing the books, seeing projects go wildly over budget.   Millions of dollars were missing, although where to was lost in the fog of the moment.
 Everything was making money you see, the profits were not what they were supposed to be, but they were profits.  Notes were being paid down.  Of course, they were being replaced with larger notes, but the projected profits were being replaced with larger projected profits.  It only slowly began to dawn on me, blinded by greed and high living, that the best, most profitable jobs were somehow being financed with money that was not coming from our joint pool.  I slowly realized this and started, too late, to withdraw back to safety.  The dream, you see, was beginning to change into the nightmare.
Then two strange things happened, I got a call from an old lover who had moved to California.  She was a fantastic lover, beautiful raven hair that reminded me of the girl I was in love with.  But she was available.  At least she had been. And she was a wonderful lover, completely dedicated to the moment.  I have no idea if she was available then.  You see she was married, but I had long sense abandoned honor for money and there was not even the trace of friendship between her husband and I so that I was willing to let our common hormones chart our course when we set up a meeting in New Orleans which was still a post storm ghost town populated only by those who absolutely needed to live there.  Rather than eating at the few restaurants that were still open, for example, I had my lunches at red cross or other emergency vendors, often siting next to people eating the ever pervasive MREs.
Were you still married?
Married?  Yes, of course I was.  That marriage was part of the last wisps of friendship I had clung to that prevented me from being a complete savage, like the one you see before you tonight.  When he said this it was with such a sense of coldness that it seemed like a cold wind had blown through the bar.  The listeners involuntarily moved closer to one another.
"What was the other thing that happened?" Jane asked tentatively.
I received an e-mail from the girl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4pg6Jh94Lo