I have still been sick. It has been over a month now, and only now am I starting to feel like something that could be thought of as “better”. The doc who looked in my ears said they were scarred and dark when they should look like living membrane. I had some lost hearing my left ear already, and upon my retesting, it seems I have lost a small measure more. It isn’t the hearing loss driving me nuts is having uneven hearing, but compared to where I was a few weeks back, I will take my current set of problems all day, everyday.

I really wish Michael Foucault was alive. We are living in the world he said was coming and he was more right than I think he would have wished. I have been in and out of urgent care, primary care, telemedicine, and an ER in the last month. Like police – when you need a doctor there is no better feeling than having them arrive to help. When they start abusing their power and acting like your overlord, little is more humiliating and vexing. I am always trapped between these two things.

We need Foucault because it is time for a total rethink on what institutions and people can be granted power. None who have it appear worthy to me at this point. I would make the case the only real problem in the world (outside of the spiritual) is the abuse of power. All power is abused. We don’t appear to be able to resist the temptation to do so, and the institutional checks on power have all been subverted. This really is the only worldly fight I can think of that we all struggle with together. It is definitely a problem we could all fix together, but at this point, who believes anyone of us can really change anything?

That feeling of powerlessness among us was put there very deliberately – and the escape hatches from it are under constant guard. To me, the intensity with which that powerlessness continues to be forced on us actually betrays the weakness of those doing it. They can’t lose an inch because they will lose the whole thing, and they know it. We can get that inch much more easily than people think, and it wouldn’t be a bad use of the reminder of my time on earth to try to persuade others to feel the same.

Maybe I will find myself with the energy and desire to go all-in on that struggle, but if I am honest, my heart is elsewhere. My heart is with Christ and laying-by for the next world. The problems of our planet become insignificant in the face of that larger spiritual struggle we face as individuals. The temptation to seek to rule in hell is very strong and easy to give in to. To the contrary, seeking to serve in heaven seems difficult and the opposite of the road to happiness. That is certainly how I saw life until very recently. I was wrong, but I don’t yet have the words to explain exactly why I am so certain I know this. Perhaps they will come. I believe they will if I seek them. Forgive me if seeking that takes primacy for me over anything else. I don’t think I can get where I am going any other way. We shall see.

I don’t mean any of that to mean I plan to become some sort of mountain-top ascetic. Not at all. If anything, I’d love to go the way of the warrior monk! Alas – I am too old and fat to even venture the first steps down that path. Not sure where that ultimately leaves me, but if I figure it out, I will try to make y’all the first to know! Don’t wait up.

Short news week for me this week as work and life and such have been kicking me in the butt of late. Hoping to get the mojo back soon; but whether it does or doesn’t, I know I won’t run out of material!:

• The drugs continue winning the war on them. The people waging the war haven’t so much as gotten their boats ashore.
• This is barbaric.
• Power creates sadism.
• I am hopeful that the AMA is trying to do the right thing and constrained primarily by politics. They are clear about the fact that prescriptions are down and the drug deaths are up. It looks like they can read.
• They won’t ever give up the “Poor Whitey Snared By The Pusherman” narrative because it such reliable content. It happens to not be true, but let’s not let that get in the way of a good time.
• This is wrong.
• The drugs work. The drug war doesn’t.
• Now they tell us.
• It’s old, but yet fresh as a daisy.
• Our country hates human weakness to such a degree that we need to admit it is normal here to project hatred at people who are even perceived as weak.
• Everything is theatre and pravda at this point. These people want to look busy because Satan comes back first.
• White Coats Won’t Make It.
• Yes, but did we make our numbers?
• What makes us sick makes us sick!
• Nightmare. A preventable one. Harm reduction is needed now.
• Fentanyl dont dance.