For the past 2+ years, I’ve been experimenting with improving my vision. The underlying hypothesis is that *something* created my imbalanced vision (20/300 in my right eye, 20/50 in my left). My leading idea is that strain created the right eye condition.

I obtained an eye patch a couple weeks ago, and wore it over my “good” eye, thinking the “bad” eye needed exercise. Yet again, I was undermining my own hypothesis. If strain created the original condition, surely more work/strain would not “fix” the condition.

After this aha moment today, I am attempting a half-day wearing the eye patch over the “bad” eye. It is interesting to note that my “good” eye is the “lazy” one: the eyelid is more limp and the eyebrow less arched. So perhaps it is not trying as hard to see as the right eye.

Then, I wonder if darkness helps the eye relax or work harder. I’m thinking it helps relax, because I can feel the right eye kind of giving up and closing already.

Update to follow later!

Had a minor breakdown this evening, mulling over my last intense relationship of the past three years. I’ve been doing a lot of purging this week. People I do not get along with I’m shutting out of my life and breaking bonds. I’m tired of unnecessary drama and struggle. I’ve cultivated a lot of relationships over the past three years based on some glimmer of excitement, but many have had serious integrity or character flaws that I’ve accepted as a tradeoff. I’m not perfect, no one is, and I’ve tolerated a lot of bullshit in the name of adventure and learning opportunities.

I was looking for some way to “let go” of my last love, for once and for all. Otherwise, my brain continues to run in the background to try and “fix” the relationship, and I can’t afford the wasted energy. My love’s main problem with me was my “lack of stability”, but I feel this was in part caused by his actions. I sought stability very early on and he rejected it. I thought the sensible thing would be to demonstrate my commitment. When that failed, I demonstrated my independence. In the meantime, in his overzealousness for security, he held too tightly to too many loves, causing an eventual backfire. To be blamed for my instability is not to take the entire picture into account. Atonement in this case would require something he is not willing to give up, i.e. his illusions and tokens of security. It’s too bad-we could have had a lot of fun.

I suppose this is what Gibran said about love’s threshing floor. The deep, dark lessons about the nature of being human, which loving another reveals to us. Our needs for acceptance, security, freedom, and self-expression, among many others.

I can only hope I will be more brave and more open-hearted in the next round, and Hafiz’s promise is for me:

“Anger, all this fighting and tormenting want, sweetheart, God has seen your heart in prayer. Sweetheart, God has seen you and sent a close one. Surely there is something wrong with your ideas of God if you think our Beloved would not be so tender.”

Having dinner outside on a beautiful lawn in a club at night, next to the Arabian sea under a full Aquarian moon, my heart is full.

“You’re never getting married?” One of the aunties asked me. Well, who can know? I’ve always assumed I would, and I still long to be a mother (though technically I already am one, if a very distant one!).

I’m ready for a more mature relationship built on a more solid foundation I think. Some people approach relationships with more open-heartedness and honesty than others seem to be capable of, and I’m gravitating toward the real–the lovers who bring out my deepest laughs, make me feel comfortable, and share things they normally might keep hidden. I’m ready for a more open equal, and excited for my new path in career and relations upon my return to the bay area.

A Piscean I met on this trip said she was born at 3am, and loves that time because it’s neither day nor night. She also has excelled in delegation and purposefully unstructured communication during presentations at her job. These are lovely Piscean metaphors.

Bedtime.

My stomach has started acting up, right on cue beginning the fourth day in Karachi. And I’ve noticed it makes me more thoughtful.

When I don’t feel well, I notice I become quite sensitive to people that I don’t feel are taking care of me in my life. It’s as if I become illumined to my loved ones’ caretaking abilities when I am feeling naturally selfish, as being sick forces one to be. I tend to be very externally-focused generally I think, frequently looking to others for cues on how I should act. I figure this is a pattern ingrained from my youth, which involved many moves to new towns, where I would have to figure out the local culture quickly to figure out how to “fit in.”

So I become repulsed by the selfish people in my life when I am sick, and that might actually be useful information. Ask me when I’m well ;-)

Watching a political discussion on the television in the Urdu language, reminds me of the vastness of the human experience. So many cultures and differences, and yet all connected in one chain going back thousands of generations.

I feel comforted with the knowledge of how many people similar to us have lived on the planet, especially when I start to feel a little existential crisis coming on, which happens more frequently than I’d like to admit. Through some experimental experiences, I’ve come to understand just how interconnected we are as a single organism with many detached, mobile sensors! Even our speech with each other flows in a field of energy which affects both the speaker and the observer, so that it can be confusing who is thinking the thoughts when linked-in with each other. We have done so much work generationally teaching each other how to think and speak for maximum cooperation among different tribes/bloodlines, that sometimes among the complex interconnectedness I start to question and become apathetic about the relative value I am adding, 1/6 Billion-ish.

Earlier today, I was reading an article about the latest climate change science, and a comment was made about how Republicans are so afraid of a global government and global currency and work to maintain status quo (in this case, by funding “hoax” campaigns against the science). It brings me back to story of the tower of Babel, and how just when everyone was seeing eye-to-eye, God confused the languages of the people so that they could not, through their cooperation, build a tower to reach God. In retrospect, this was good, because we know now that humans trying to build a tower won’t actually get you any closer to God. We have left our atmosphere for the moon and beyond, and no material God-figure was anywhere to be found in the heavens.

So perhaps what the people were building toward was cooperation, and in that global cooperation is where God is found. Each of us pictures God according to our understanding, whether a father-figure, goddess, lover, friend, baby, or nature, for example. This is not poly-theistic, in fact, it is the opposite. One God, like the elephant in the room that we see only a portion of from our perspective, is at once omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, Hermes and Aphrodite, living in the polarities and all the spaces inbetween.

So operating as a human amidst an energy that we call God…

I was just distracted by my own thoughts, which happens often. I was thinking that I’ve noticed that the human capacity for self-reflection gets out of control with me sometimes. I think I became hyper-vigilant as a child, as children do when they feel unsafe in their environments. Psychology teaches us that children realize the only thing they have control over is themselves, so they turn their powers inward to calculate and control in order to affect a safer interaction with their environments. If they can become very good at self-reflection before taking actions, they can take some degree of control over how they are treated by others.

My life right now, at age 33, is about unwinding the excess of self-reflection that I needed to protect myself as a child. This makes me think I ought to stop journaling! But I do find my journal/blog entries really insightful in terms of helping recognize when history is trying to repeat itself. Sometimes I will forget the lessons I’ve learned along the way until I go back and re-read my poems or blog posts. My excess of self-reflection makes me a good investigator and has enabled me to see multiple perspectives and act in a pointed way, so there are benefits, but there are also downfalls, namely, spending too much time in being critical of oneself and not taking action, or not being fully present in the moment and attuned to flowing among life’s wonders rather than safeguarding against life’s threats and what-ifs.

And I become quite verbose when ill. Time for a nap.

Drawn in so deep by more magical sf experiences…a movie theater with couches and loveseats where the food comes to you and it’s a surprise…just kinky enough kink films…a meeting of the minds…intoxication and connection…worlds opening up…hearts opening up….posh surroundings…rubbing shoulders with hard edges…smart and barefoot and happy and centered, and a little manic but at least mindful of it…supportive and questioning and raising the roof on awesome and what ifs and what can we do…pioneers on the leading edge of what is and what is not…and loving each other’s company…diving deep into pleasure and what vibes our own souls no matter what we were told…leaving behind cults and sniffing the groupthink…lots of time apart and just enough together…barely remembering to be women and mothers and friends in a playland of gogogo…dododo…bebebe