{"id":1050,"date":"2007-03-09T20:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-10T00:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/03\/09\/friday-night-karl-marx-samstones-potluck-sat-night\/"},"modified":"2007-03-09T20:38:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-10T00:38:00","slug":"friday-night-karl-marx-samstones-potluck-sat-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/03\/09\/friday-night-karl-marx-samstones-potluck-sat-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Night – Karl Marx + SamStones Potluck Sat Night"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Flash : <\/span><\/span>We’re having a SamStones making potluck at our house at 6:30 Sat Night  (3\/10) . Please bring pizza and\/or salad to share. Sometime in the eveing I’ll be doing a short talk on Nikola Tesla, the mysterious scientist featured in the movie The Prestige. I’ll also be doing some cool High Voltage demonstrations. Come perepared to be shocked!<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n

<\/p>\n

I woke to Sam dreams this morning.. not necessarily sad.. but bittersweet. I only ended up getting just a few hours of sleep. Somehow I still ended up waking up refreshed. After a few hours of work, I went in to see our friend Marci for a Reiki massage. I was feeling a ‘blockage’ between my head and heart. (I’m not sure if ‘blockage’ is the right word.. but the other analogies that seem to fit are more digestive <\/span><\/span>) What I mean is that my rational\/scientific mind is sometimes at odds with the spiritual openness I’ve found following Sam’s passing. When I just think with my head..  <\/span>reality feels pretty grim. When I let my heart lead along with my brain  <\/span>I find I can be more optimistic, creative and forward looking. I’m not sure how it works, but Reiki seems to help me balance the two. As I said a few days back when I  <\/span>am feeling ‘blah’ ..I often  <\/span>need to feel much sadder  <\/span>to feel better. The blah feeling really saps energy and limits my creativity.  <\/span>Once I let go a little and open up to some sadness, it re-energizes me.   <\/span>It’s funny to think I need to get so sad to allow me to be happy again.. but that’s the way it works.  <\/span>What’s more the happy periods.. and they are much more frequent now.. feel all that much more good and healing because of the contrast.  <\/span>One other interesting data point.. I tested my heart rate on one of those drugstore machines today.. My heart rate was in the low to mid 50’s\u2026 which is about 20 BPM slower than my normal rest pulse for as long as I can remember.. I guess I really am more relaxed now. <\/p>\n

  <\/span>After the massage, I went into work. I’ve been working at home more often now\u2026 and when I do go into work, I often spend the time on the phone in my office so I don’t do much wandering around of the halls. I did do a little walking around today and I realized what a mixed blessing it has become. It’s wonderful to see people. I always get such a warm and genuine caring response from everyone I meet. At the same time, It’s hard for me to get anywhere without having the same ‘how you doing’ conversation with everyone. I’m glad they ask\u2026 I just run out of good ways to answer. I also find that folks are very  <\/span>eager for me to be ‘better’ . I get lots of ‘you’re looking good’  <\/span>(yeah.. right <\/span><\/span>).. or ‘things getting back to normal ?’ kind of stuff. I know those are good hearted comments.. but normal isn’t even a goal for me anymore.. anyway.. I realize that everything anyone says is because they care.. when I remember that it doesn’t matter what they say. <\/p>\n

     <\/span>Around 4 I had to leave to get my hair cut. I’m going to China<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region> on Sunday. Last time I was there I had folks come up to me on the street and call me Karl Marx .. which I think was a compliment..  I just don’t see the resemblence.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/param><\/param><\/param><\/object><\/div>\n

I decided to neaten up a bit this time in order to be a little more incognito. While I was getting my haircut the  <\/span>Red Hot Chile Pepper’s song ‘Dani California<\/st1:place><\/st1:state>‘ came on the radio. I lost it\u2026  <\/span>not because the song is so great.. it’s because the 5 of us went to a Chile<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>‘s show in Quebec City<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> just  <\/span>a few weeks before Sam died.. <\/p>\n

   <\/span>From there, I went to help ‘organize’ at the Richmond<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> free library book sale at the middle school.  <\/span>Actually I didn’t help that much at all.. all I did was slum and eat some of their pizza. For the first time in the 18 years I’ve been going to this event I realized that  <\/span>I didn’t want any books.. partially because I didn’t see anything that caught my eye.. and partially because I have a huge stack of books to be read under my bed..  <\/span>I spent the evening pick out books I thought other folks would like I found a copy of Wallace Stegner’s ‘Crossing to Safety’ for Deb.  <\/span>It’s one of  <\/span>my favorite books.. Diane says that I say that about lots of books !   <\/span>‘Crossing’ is one of  <\/span>those books I love where nothing happens. It’s about an older couple surveying their lives  <\/span>in the setting of a summer vacation spot they’ve gone to for years.. They are realizing how they’ve come through their lives relatively unscathed.. That used to be my image of our life in the future. .. not anymore.. I also found copies for friends of some other  <\/span>of my favorites include ‘Blindness by Jpse Saramago, ‘Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius’ by Eggers, ‘Choke’ by Chuck Palahunik, ‘To the Lighthouse’ by Virginia Wolfe and Shipping news by Proulx,  <\/span>‘The Hours’ by Mike Cunnignham,.. which is also sort of about Virginia Wolfe. ‘Last report of the incident at little no horse’  <\/span>and ‘Love Medicine’ by Louise erdrich.  <\/span>I love books.. just not now\u2026.<\/p>\n

   <\/span>Right now. I can’t keep my eyes open.. I ned to  <\/span>post and then get some sleep. Tomorrow is the last Night riders competition at Bolton<\/st1:place> and Gabe is competing. I need ot be fresh for that .   <\/span>We’re also  <\/span>making SamStones at our house tomorrow night.. with a pizza and salad potluck.  I’m going to do a short talk and some high voltage demos’ on the topic of Nikola Tesla, the great last century inventor  <\/span>in honor of the movie ‘The Prestige’ we just saw. Be there are by quadrilateral Sam !<\/p>\n

-jc<\/p>\n

 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

   <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/o:p><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flash : We’re having a SamStones making potluck at our house at 6:30 Sat Night  (3\/10) . Please bring pizza and\/or salad to share. Sometime in the eveing I’ll be doing a short talk on Nikola Tesla, the mysterious scientist featured in the movie The Prestige. I’ll also be doing some cool High Voltage demonstrations. … Continue reading Friday Night – Karl Marx + SamStones Potluck Sat Night<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}