Idealization and the Left Hand Path

 

1   Hi Everybody, this is Leo Volont with a relatively short informal piece I shall call “Idealization and the Left Hand Path”.  If this subject intrigues you, well, I elaborated the Philosophy of it more completely in my “Creating a Better God” series, and in my longer series, “The White Light Paramahamsa Swan Dream” I lay out how my Life had channeled me into the Left Hand Path.  I will also discuss the Spiritual Qualities of the Cerebellum, as distinct from our Conscious Mind that resides within the Cerebral Cortex… but there, the more complete treatment of the subject can be found in my more recent “Ego Soul and the Two Minds”.  I’ll leave the links down in the Description.  So, yes, thank you, but now let me get started….     

 

2   The Big Return on the Left Hand Path is Life at its Fullest, that is, in proportion to the extent to which we had nurtured our Ideals.  We do exactly the opposite of what the Transcendentalists do, with their spiritualized complacency towards any Quality Distinctions.   Then, even while we certainly see them in more swimming pools than sewage pipes, they have a Doctrine of positive disdain for any other Aesthetic Ideals other than their own Ideal of rejecting all Ideals as baseless or illusory.  Thus in their living through their Lives, while rejecting all that Life has to offer, well, they live as though they were dead already. 

 

3   But for us, well, living as though we are dead can wait until last, until we really are Dead, when all that the Transcendentalist renounces for, and struggles against the grain to attain, comes as the fulfillment of a Spiritually Natural Process – that when we are finally reduced to Nothingness, when Death causes the Dissolution of the Body, well, then we will finally be enabled to appreciate the Undifferentiated, Unchanging and Eternal Nothingness, certainly, when that is the only thing we have left.   So, in the Eternity of Time, what’s the hurry?  Until then, while God Given Life still animates us, we can find Bliss by living for our Aesthetic Ideals.   No, not as those prone to Transcendentalism do, who place the Faculty of Consciousness over all other Spiritual Attributes, for then, as would logically follow, they couldn’t go any further than just being Passive Spectators to Life.

 

 4   For us we see the Seats of our Soul in Will to Action, not in mere Consciousness.  Consciousness may sometimes even just get in the way. Many of the greatest marshal artists went through their most astounding feats in Conscious Blackouts – their Seat of Will apparently not wishing the Word Encoding Ego Mind to interrupt any of the Real Action, with its slow background pinging of Thoughts that are often enough off key to the flow of the unfolding situation, you know, being at cross purposes to our Essential Will that not only lives to Survive, but to survive Beautifully.   

 

5   So for us, we focus our Will upon achieving some Ideal, honing our Aesthetic Vision down to the Core of Psychologically appealing Archetypes.  These Archetypes had developed within our Genetic Coding over Trillions of Generations, going all the way back to the First Organization of Life, where a Corporation of Molecules got together to move in a chosen direction in order to absorb what it could then use to make it bigger and healthier.   All such Archetypes are basically Quintessential, even if clothed in Elaborations unique to time, mood and place.   Now, consider what that must feel like for a Spiritual Person, throughout the body and  mind, being able to achieve, to embody, to be some avatar of an Ideal… any Ideal.  I believe that is what the Saints were, because of actions they had taken, proving they were more Creators of a Providential Divine Will than only of mere Divine Consciousness.  

 

 6  The Ideals of the Saints were Noble in their Humanitarianism, Idealizing nurturing the Needy.   My innovation here is to point our Path of Willful Idealization towards what we hope we may enjoy.  Yes, of course, the Religious Ideals of Altruism, Service and Charity are the most Noble of Ideals, but they are not the only category of the Ideal which we need heed, no.  Many to Most of us hear other Callings, and are drawn down different Paths, and it’s okay that we follow them.  You see, I had a Lesson in Life when I was still quite young – young enough to still be among the Elementary School Children in my Family’s Protestant Church’s Sunday School (though I later converted to Catholicism, to be more in concordance to the Ideal of a High Medieval Marian Catholicism and the Culture of a Civilization that had called itself ‘Christendom’).  But what the Sunday School did was that they took us to the State’s Insane Asylum.  That was in the days back before “One Flew Over the Coo Coo’s Nest”, when Madness was still institutionalized rather than being released out on the streets, for the sake of Personal Freedom, but then having to be cycled through the jails whenever the poor lunatics would go into crisis. 

 

7  Well, once this Tour into this Den of Insanity commenced, I was horrified by the sights and especially by the stench.  It was as though we’d descended into one of Dante’s Rings of Purgatory.  It was then that I made a startling personal discovery, that it seemed as though only I myself had been the only one so affected.  The other Kids had either a Stoic Resignation to this Horror, or they were simply insensitive to it, but I couldn’t stand it, and ran for the Exit, being desperately glad that nobody tried to stop me.

 

8  When I got outside, I joined up with some of the Church Ladies out by the bus.  One of them, Mrs. Mitchel, as respectable as any Church Lady could ever be, saw the worry in my face, that I had suspected that I’d somehow disgraced myself by retreating out of that ghastly Hell on Earth, and so she gave me a wry consoling smile and told me “Leo, Sweet Heart, you’re okay.  Look at all of us.  We couldn’t go in there either.  Being Sensitive is a Blessing from God, and while Suffering might come into our Lives, as no Life can be totally free of some Suffering, well, it’s okay that the Good Lord did not Call you to seek it out, and it’s no Sin to be more comfortable with the Good and the Beautiful than with the Stark and the Ugly”.     

 

9   So I personally pursue Idealizations in the Arts and Music, but that is probably only because I wasn’t a born athlete, or I would have put much more emphasis on Sport.  Oh!  I almost forgot.  I used to be a Motorhead.   Yes, in my adolescence my Passion was Flying and I got a Federal Private Pilot’s License as soon as I was old enough to qualify for it, but as an adult my Sporting Favorite became Sport Touring Motorcycles, on twisty canyon and mountain roads, going much faster than the speed limit… the Ideal I was shooting for was the Optimization between Risk and Caution with the view for Maximizing the Fun.   Yes, every time you have fun, it’s because you are touching some Ideal… or the Ideal is touching you, like the Hand of God reaching down to pet a kitten. 

 

10  So how can that not be Holy?   Yes, it’s perhaps ironic, that the only way the Transcendentalists can blame us, is by first rejecting all aesthetic criteria, except for the one where the Desiring of Positive Emotional Outcomes is somehow considered to be a Bad Thing, you know, as per the First Principle of Buddhism which states that “Desire is the Source of All Suffering”, probably because the spoiled Prince Gautama, having been surfeited by unappreciated and therefore undeserved pleasures for his entire life, somehow became blind to the fact that Desire is also the Wellspring of every Aesthetic Ideal, that is, everything done by voluntary action that brings emotional joy, unless one is as dead to it as was the Buddha.   

 

11   So, yes, the Knowledge that the Left Hand Path offers does not come in terms of what to Think but in what to Do.  The Seat of the Soul is in the Cerebellum, not the Cerebral Cortex, and so we are ruled by our Impulses to Action, while the Cerebral Cortex is only up there as an Application that fabricates what is only the Sensation of Consciousness, becoming Spectator and Critic, thinking it’s the Core of our Spiritual Being, only because it’s programed to think that way, that it’s watching and referencing all events from the First Person Perspective, which doesn’t need to be anything more solid than just being a subjective assumption, which could certainly be programmed into any sophisticated Robot.   The Cartesian “I Think therefore I Am” should have been “I Do therefore I am.”  Not that there is anything wrong with Thinking, no, not once the Cerebellum has conditioned Thinking to its Will, for where else could Intellectuals and Poets come from but from out of the conjunction of Will with and a Way for Words.  

 

12  Thank you everybody.  That’s it for this video, that in the making of which it became more like one of my polished formal videos.  Oh, I know that I promised you all my Book by now, but I’ve had some delays.  You can see that I recently moved, and my Cats and I love the new place, but moving took a lot of my time and attention, and I strained my right arm, making it painful to hold my hand up over a keyboard.  But, I’ve gotten back to work, and suppose I only need to go through one more Read Through of what is now 65 Thousand Words, that is, in order to assure that it’s all of the highest literary quality.  Yes, I won’t consider it good enough to please You until it is first good enough to please me, but, yeah, I’m getting more and more happy with it.  So, yeah, this Video was me just screwing around… now let me get back to Work on my Book: “Heroic Army Super Clerks”, the Book that will Heal America. 

 

Spirituality in Terms of the Left Hand Path, that is, Realizing some Ideal. This Video is an elaboration of the Video I made for its Philosophical Justification, "Creating a Better God" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i67vwggdDMs&list=PLj3dZ8QP5bjFDzmAmMOEmJYpQWLpFB6Xf ) as well as for the Video I made in regards to how my Life led me to the Left Hand Way, "The White Light Paramahamsa Swan Dream" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZaJnvgmIKI&list=PLj3dZ8QP5bjEB7mRO8OI5hgNYsUnCWche ) This Video is actually something of a first. I suppose you all know that while I write during the day, well, in the Evenings I turn to my Dancing Practice, that now admits to Singing Practice also, since I seemed to have been Called to it when an injury happened to my right arm, which prevented me from being able to dance at all vigorously without continually re-opening up the Tear or Sprain. So I started Singing through my Playlist, and it occurred to me that, since I have plateaued as a Dancer, it would be nice to add Singing, just so as to keep my Evening Practices, of whatever, challenging, but with new insights, often several times each evening. Practicing anything systematically, at the first, is the most frustrating thing, while being the most rewarding. BUT, be that as it may, in the evenings, to make Dancing and Sing more appealing than it would otherwise be, I do, via the various mediums for it, Delta 8, 9, 10, THC, HHC, and I find it always puts me into an expansively thoughtful mode. Well, I developed the habit of keeping a WORD Doc open and if I had any Inspiring Thoughts, I'd just click them out on the keyboard, giving me something to do when resting between songs. Well, I've piled up months of these Insights and Pearls of Wisdom, and swore over and over again to put them in service of this Channel, but only today did I follow through. Yes, this video came from a High Thought I had, of several hundred words, but when I got to looking it over in the late morning, after having run some errands in the morning, well, I just put it through my normal Rewrite Editing Process, and then to Video, and it was up on Youtube before 7 in the evening. And the Quality is good. This Idea of expanding Ideations that I had while Psychotropically Inspired, well, it's an Idea I know now will work.

Ego Soul and the Two Minds

 [note to the reader:  This is the draft I used when I shot my YouTube Video, however, although this Blog went through quite a few Rewrite Edits, still, there is something about the Pressure of Doing the Shoot that clarifies the mind, and I changed a few words and phrases during the Video Recording, but essentially this is the script for the Video, but if the Video itself were to be transcribed, then THAT would become the official Reading.]

1   Hi Everybody, this is Leo Volont.  I got a New Video for you all, and I think I’ll put this in the same Playing List as my “Material Mechanics of Spirituality”  Series.   You see, since I’ve taken up Dancing as a steady discipline I’ve noticed that I seem to have two Minds, for my one body.  Of course, my ordinary Mind, the one that delivers the running narrative of my life, you know, with planning ahead, mulling over the past, and worrying about the present, well, that Mind certainly seems to be dominant most of the time.   But while dancing, much of what I do seems to be driven by intelligent impulse, or what I had called ‘Intuition’ in some of my previous Videos, most notably in the Third Part of my  “The White Light Paramahamsa Swan Dream” Series.  There I spoke of Intuition as being something of a Spiritual Gift, but perhaps here I can bring my explanation down a bit closer to Earth, with materialistic explanations in terms of Neuro-Biology that are still so fresh from their Research that I’d doubt if you’d be able to find them yet in any of the newer Text Books.   

 

2  Yes, what was getting my attention while Dancing was that I was no longer feeling as though I were getting single discrete momentary intuitions and following them, as that I was really just depending upon a continuous flow of intuition to carry me through intricate routines of spontaneously arising choreography, hitting all the marks on their precise beats, and it just became undeniable that there had to be some mental intelligence involved in setting all that up somehow.  But the Flow of Intuition was wordless, and also without image or concept – nothing like the usual thinking process.  There was only some Silent Will to Action directing me, putting me through my paces.  Well, it became all too curious to ignore, and so I decided to crack a few books and do a few searches to see if I could piece together what was actually going on.

 

3   Well, I found that my source of Intuition is the Cerebellum, which is what the experts call the “little Brain”.   It’s back below the rest of the Brain, just behind the Brain Stem.   It’s just one tenth the size of the rest of the Main Brain, the Cerebral Cortex, but it’s densely built and tightly packed, containing from 50 to 80% of all the brain cells in the entire brain.  Then, if we can extrapolate between Computer Science and Neural Science, we could conclude that because the Brain Cells of the Cerebellum are so much closer together than those of the Main Brain, that we could expect the processing times for the Smaller Denser Cerebellum to be much faster, though none of my searches revealed the exact Clock Speed of the Cerebellum. 

 

4   Also, it occurred to me that there is an important distinction between Reaction Time, a voluntary function governed by the Main Brain, and the much faster involuntary Reflexes, which we will soon be very much interested in, and, yes, they source from out of the “Little Brain” Cerebellum.  Yes, the experts tell us that the Cerebellum is essential for learning Motor Skills.  However, I was only able to find a few limited studies that could connect Impulsive Reflex Actions to the Cerebellum, but why should the Scientific Community spend too much money on expensive experiments if we could reasonable conclude that no other part of the Brain could plausibly be responsible for them.

 

5   But perhaps that’d be easier to understand if we knew what else the Experts tell us that the Little Brain Cerebellum is responsible for, that it works with sensory data from the eyes, and middle ear to maintain balance and posture, that it works with the muscles in the throat and voice box to pattern speech for both talking and singing, that it’s been found to be important in Language Development, and also in processing emotions in regards to pleasure and reward responses as well as in summoning the stresses of fear or anxiety in situations of danger and insecurity.   

 

6   Also, it seems that the Cerebellum is responsible for focusing the Attention, making it an Organ of chief importance for those who’d otherwise be scatterbrained Intellectuals, using Emotional Tension to set the agenda for what we think about, and probably also for how we would be thinking about it, but leaving the drudgery and the details for the Narrative Mind to deal with – sort of like the distinction between getting an idea for a Blog, and committing oneself to actually writing it.  Also, while I’ve been calling the Cerebellum a Second Mind, well, I think our understanding of it would be enhanced if we thought of it, in the Language of Poetry, as our Heart, the Seat of Will and Emotion, the vital Intelligent Organ that propels the Arts, Poetry, and, yes, even Sports and Athletics.     

 

7   Oh, and that mention of Sports reminded me, that during my research, I’d found that the Experts, in large part, are probably a pack of Geeks and Nerds, and therefore don’t really know how to apply the word “Voluntary”, when it comes to Sports.  Yes, I found an example where we’re told that a batter’s swing at a fast ball is a Voluntary Action.  Well, yes, taking a stance in the batters box is certainly Voluntary, but talk to any Major League Batter with a batting average of 250 or better and you’ll find that they swing on what we could call Conditioned Impulse, that is, they swing as a Reflex.  Really, they would need to swing on impulse, wouldn’t they (?), not having a heck of a lot of time to think things over, right?  

 

8  Yes, I’d read that Voluntary Reactions, sourcing from out of the Main Brain, are on a 400 millisecond clock, which means that as far as Conscious Thinking goes, we can only have one thought every two-fifths of a second, and so the inference there would be that most active Sports would require Reflex Responses, that click off on a far faster clock, or the Playing Fields would look like a bunch of Zombies staggering around, overwhelmed with all the choices that would need to be voluntarily made.  

 

9  Yeah, just look at what happens when the Geeks and the Nerds are compelled to Suit Up to play whatever Sport their Department Managers think would be good for Teamwork and Morale, that, when they do take the Field, they seem virtually paralyzed by indecision and hesitancy, and that’s because they’re trying to use their Narrative Conceptual Minds, when, really, they should be putting their Hearts into it, you know, their Cerebellums, if only they’d ever been developed for doing anything Active and Physical, besides turning the pages of Books with great poise, grace and elegance.    

 

10   Really, the best example I can think of, in regards to this issue of Neural Clock Speeds, is that a Fastball Pitch takes that same 400 milliseconds of Cerebral Clock Speed to go from Pitchers Mound to the Plate, where Voluntary Thinking would therefore still be scratching itself, standing dumb, and waiting for just that one Ment of Conscious Deliberation to decide the fate of the game, while, if the Cerebellum were the Active Agent for Decision, it’d be running on the far faster Reflexive Clock, generating multiple Ments of Perception, in that same 400 Milliseconds, to plot the course of the ball, and would give the Impulse for Swing Away the instant the Cerebellum would detect a conjunction, an overlap, between the predicted flight of the ball, and some predictable arc-plane through which the bat would be impelled to swung, where the two Constructs could be supposed to have a high probability of occupying the same place at the same time, that is, of the Bat hitting the Ball.  And, no, it’s not just Swing and Hope to Luck.  Major League Baseball has a website where they list their 20 best Fast Ball Hitters… Yeah, those would be the guys with the smartest best-conditioned Cerebellums supported by the physical strength and mechanical dexterity necessary for accelerating their bats through what must be very accurate and precise arcs.  

 

11  Also, there’s issues related to Reaction Time as a function of the Transmission Time it takes nerve impulses to travel from the Brain and down through the Spine to whatever muscle groups  are involved.  So, yes, absolute surprises can impose upon us some Reaction Time delay, and in Sports, plays that make use of sudden fakes and feigns to shake off defenders will never go out of style.  But when we are talking about Reflexive Impulse, we are not talking of reacting to surprises, no, we’re talking about how a Fully Conditioned  Cerebellum could be in effect planning ahead, being able to respond to what is only a predictable probability, if cyclic patterns or repetitions are at all involved. 

 

12  And, yes, a Dancer has Songs to work with, which are really just standardized patterns of sound.  And, yes, while it can be said that every song is different, well, if one has been a connoisseur of various genres of Music for over sixty years, then even New Songs will be predictable in that they will follow the same expected patterns that all Songs generally follow.  But, yes, if you’re just sitting down and listening, then you might think you’d have no idea how to dance out some new song, but remember that the Cerebellum is Wordless and communicates only by Volitional Impulse, so, really, for the Cerebellum to work for you, you have to get up out of your chair, jump down to the Floor, and let that Little Brain of yours make you One with the Music.   Yeah, “Just Do It” works for Dancing Shoes too.  

 

13  Also, while going over the Books and what the Experts have to say, I found there’s also the Motor Cortex which they say controls the Voluntary Muscles of the body.   Okay, now, has anybody else suddenly become confused?   What exactly is the Motor Cortex doing if we already decided that the Cerebellum is controlling movement through impulse?   Well, yes, we’ll deal with that presently, but let’s also keep in mind that just adjacent to the Motor Cortex is the Somatosensory Cortex, whose job it is to monitor sensations coming from those same muscular areas, where we can imagine the Nerves, one Sending and the other Receiving, going out almost in parallel.

 

14  Well, both of the Motor related Cortexes sit back just behind the all important Frontal Lobe, that is, the Executive Part of the Brain that is said to Plan, Organize, Initiate, and Self-Monitor all of one’s actions and responses.  Well, again, while the Main Brain’s Cerebral functions are on a much slower clock than that of the Cerebellum, there are important generalized communications taking place between the Little Cerebellum and the Motor Cortexes, but it’s not that necessary that they be all that quick, being of a Supervisory Role of setting Policy and providing feedback, which the Executive Cerebellum can acknowledge later when it’s not quite so busy doing all the Work.  

 

15   It might help us to understand this Relationship between the Motor Cortexes and the Cerebellum if we remember how the Cerebellum works with the Emotions of Pleasure for Reward, and Anxiety for Remonstrance, which would imply that the Cerebellum has some Evaluative Role to play, but Evaluation requires Conceptualizations and Comparisons, which are exactly the kind of complex Thinking that slows down the Main Brain.  So for the Cerebellum not to be slowed down, it must delegate out this kind of work to the Motor Cortexes and Frontal Lobes.   

 

16  So what I think might be happening is that the Motor Cortexes provide only a kind of First Order Planning for incipient Muscle Activities, that is the Wish or Anticipatory Visualization of some Ideal Action to Perform, while the Cerebellum does the Second Order Task of Execution – delivering the wished for product of precision impulse movements.  But, again, because Muscle Movement follows impulse and not Concept, we must wait until after the action is performed to infer what our Ideal Move should have been, only after comparing it to what actually transpired.  So, yeah, we might not be able to exactly describe our Perfect Ideals, not having much acquaintance with them, but outright blunders are easy enough to spot, and the Devil is always in the Details.

 

17   So, yes, during the Post Action Evaluative Phase, the Somatosensory Cortex, along with the Frontal Lobe Feedbacks contribute towards providing a record of the Actions or Movements that the Cerebellum can compare against the parameters of the originally envisioned Wish of the Motor Cortex, with conformance to Model evoking a sense of pleasure, while falling short of the Ideal would result in various degrees of restlessness, discomfiture or feelings of inadequacy… that is, the kind of Anxieties that many people typically feel when engaging in new forms of activity, driving them out of Interests before they’ve had time enough to ‘acquire the knack’ for them, which typically takes months, even with more than an hour per day of practice.  Yeah, my advise here is to not quit anything you think you might develop a love for until you give yourself a good six months of practice.   So, really, if a Mother can wait nine months to give birth to a Baby, well, you can wait six months to give birth to a hobby, a hobby that you already know you would like, right?     

 

18  Yes, it’s from my own experience that I’m lead to believe that the Cerebellum speaks to us in the Silent Language of Volition, and that any Emotions of Anxiety would be, or should be, secondary to the promptings of the Will to get in more Practice.  The Cerebellum, developed in the Crucible of Evolution, seeks for Perfection in Motion, always finding room for improvement, and so incremental improvements are rewarded with an Addictive Sense of Well Being, which exerts a tension to return to the Field of Activity, whereby, through Repetition, the Muscle Memory can be educated for the End of not just perfecting some prescribed set and familiar routines, but to enable the spontaneous execution of elaborate and extemporaneous actions whenever they might be called for, whether in fights for Survival, or just active displays for enhancing ones Personal Status, which, in Primitive Evolutionary Times, may have amounted to about the same thing.  

 

19  Yes, the Little Brain Cerebellum would need to hone itself through the Discipline of Practice Practice Practice, using those constant cycles of Execution and Evaluation to train the Muscle Memory up to the level of Efficient Elegance.  But if these Motor Skills were purely in the Domain of the Executive Main Brain, then the Mental Command would only need to be, “Do it Perfectly in conformance to the Idealized Concept” for it to be done Perfectly, which is often how we see it being depicted in TV and the Movies, where everything is instant and easy for the Heroes, but that isn’t at all the way we know it to be in real life.  Yes, First Order wishes, visualizations, hopes and dreams are only Acorns when we want Oak Trees, and we require Second Order Execution, which will at first seem an Ordeal, then a Campaign, and finally, after enough Practice, an Accomplishment and a Satisfaction.       

 

20  Yeah, we only have to look at the lives of committed Athletes, Artists, Musicians and Dancers, to see that there does arise a level of anxiety if the usual Practice Routines are skipped.  Really, I remember back when I was in the Army, that I would worry about missing my Violin Practices, when we’d be ordered out into the Field, but then, upon returning, I’d be beset with new ideas and  new ‘Riffs’, and all that would make me think that my Mind, what I now know to be the Cerebellum, had still been habitually occupied, at the subvolitional level, in going over all of the old practiced patterns, in order to find new combinations to try out, which would come out in a kind of deluge the moment I’d get back to my Violin.  So, yes, missing individual Practices might do very little harm, just as long as the Habit of Practice has been deeply engrained, conditioning the Cerebellum to a high level of activity that it strives to maintain, even when the usual Practice Times are unavoidably denied us.    

 

21  Also, as an illustration that there may be even more that we could expect of the Cerebellum, well, let me tell you of this one Incident, that decades ago after a long hot day at work, I was in the Right Hand of two continuous lanes of traffic riding my motorcycle, and there was another motorcycle moving up on my left and so I glanced in my mirror to take a look, when all the cars stopped in front of me.  Seeing that Motorcycle in my Mirror suddenly drop back alerted me, and so, Facing forward,  I realized the full extent of my predicament and so I hit the brakes hard but was still carrying a significant amount of speed when I hit the rear end of the pick up truck in front of me.  Then, the next thing I knew, I was on my feet running out in front of that same pickup truck, and had to arc around to get back to my totaled motorcycle, curious about what had just happened.  

 

22  Yeah, there were plenty of people who saw it all.  My motorcycle, on impact, had flipped forward tossing me up into the air, but I threw my arms up over my head, apparently trying to use their inertial energy to pull myself up for just a bit more height and hangtime, and lifting my knees up so I could clear the cab of what was fortunately one of the smaller models of pickup truck.  I landed on my feet just in front of the truck, but most of the momentum was still moving forward, and so I tucked down my helmeted head and went into a forward roll, and when the rolling slowed to the speed of a run, I spung up off the ground and ran off the rest of the speed, which is where my consciousness returned to me.

 

23   Yeah, my only injury had been from where a snapped-off Windshield Bracket had stabbed me in the left shin, which required a few stitches, and I still have the scar.   And, yeah, who knows, but maybe it was that stab to my leg that decided my Body’s Higher Mind to just pull the plug on my consciousness for a while, figuring that my Cerebellum could handle the Emergency just fine with all the Perceptual Data it was getting, and that all the Neural Resources that go into constructing Conscious Awareness would’ve best been diverted to dealing actively with the Emergency, than in just recording it, and that maybe Consciousness might have turned me into some fussy and frightened Spectator who’d get in my own way.  

 

24  But, yes, I never trained specifically for such an eventuality, but I suppose I did have the kind of Muscle Memory I would have needed for that kind of performance, because, you see, as a kid I got a lot of practice in on Diving Boards and Trampolines and such, and did more than my fair share of tumbling down steep grassy hills, and then had plenty of practice with falls doing the usual rough play and riding my bicycle throughout my childhood years.  Yeah, if I hadn’t been such a physically active kid, I might have gotten really hurt that day. Yeah, let that be a message for overly-protective Mothers, that taking a few spills might be the most important education their kids could ever get.     

 

25   So, okay, it’s time that we should  move on with our Discussion and ask ourselves what about the Ego, and then, what about our Souls?  How do they relate to our two Minds, you know, the one with its Inner Narrative Voice and Mental Concepts, and the other that moves us with just Pure Intelligent Impulsive Will.  Yes, in which Mind does our Soul reside, and which is possessed by our Ego, or is perhaps Ego and Soul just different names for the same thing?

 

26  Well, from what I remember about Zen, it’s easily inferable that the Spiritual Community HATES words and HATES concepts.  Then in all of the Martial Arts, where Machismo Violence brazenly masquerades as Spirituality, we can see how they’d LOVE the Cerebellum that automatically works to perfect Motor Function Attack, Maim and Kill Routines.   So, yeah, I used to ask myself, “if we get rid of the Ego, well, what would we have left?”  But, with what I know now, if I were to be confronted with Ego Death, what I’d wish to remain would be the Cerebellum, that Wordless Little Brain of Practiced and Perfect Motor Skills.   Yeah, it’d make me the most elegant of Automatons, with every action being the product of some Trained Conditioning or another, reverting to Creatively Intelligent Animal Instinct only in situations that aren’t part of the Training Regiment.  But, then, it’d be a Life lived in a Consciousness Black Out, and remembering Old Socrates’s Dictum, that “a Life unreflected upon is not worth living”, well, that would mean that Life without the Narrative Mind’s Ego would be, well, like a Movie without an Audience, or a YouTube Channel that nobody ever clicks on [whistle in the dark].    

 

27  Yeah, really, all of us in the Spiritual Community need to be just a bit more wary and cynical in regards to the necessity for annihilating our Egos.   Really, we need to remember that most of our Religious and Spiritual Philosophies and Practices have come from out of the Monasteries and Ashrams, where we could assume that the Social Dynamics involved would entail a lot of Leadership and Command issues.   So, yes, of course, Masters and Gurus, and all those other Managerial Types, would naturally think that their own Executive Main Brain Egos are sufficient for running the Show, and so, if means could really be found for shutting down the Frontal Cortexes of their Students, Initiates, Devotees, Soldiers or Employees, as the case may be, then that would become the Spiritual Ideal they’d be communicating to us, wouldn’t it?  Yeah, the way they say it nowadays is “There’s no i in the word Team”.  But there’s no i in the word Slave either.

 

28   But, yeah, I often think in extremes, and they tell us to  “never say never”,  and so I need to remind myself that not everybody is me, and that Human Intelligence does come in a broad range, and many of us really don’t have either the Intellectual or even the Material Capacities to manage our own Lives anyway, and so taking a Passenger Seat in some Competent Person’s or Institution’s Ride, and just Following Instructions, might actually be the best thing for many or even most of us.  And we’d know it, or perhaps feel it in terms of a deep sense of security, remembering that the Cerebellum, the Seat of Wordless Will Power, with all of its innate Survival Imperatives, would emit feeling of Anxiety and Fear if there were anything Instinctual to worry about, right?  And, yeah, as the experienced World Travelers used to tell me, that when in Strange Lands, and you don’t know what you’re doing, do whatever it is that worries you the least, and hope you finally find a situation that doesn’t worry you at all, like a Stray Cat looking for a new Home and finding one.  Yeah, we need to get in touch with our Instincts, which, again, refers us back to the Cerebellum.  

 

29  Yeah, it now makes me wonder whether it’s the Cerebellum that’s responsible for Telepathy, but it would have to be a Wordless Telepathy, expressing only Will and Intention.  Yes, that would explain why everybody talks about Body Language, but with nobody being able to catalog its vocabulary or grammar.  It would also give us a hint as to why we seem to know so much after looking into the eyes of another person or animal.   

 

30   But now, what about the Soul?  In which Mind does the Soul reside?  Was Descartes right about “I think therefore I am”, or should he have said “I Do therefore I am”?   Well, remember, that the Cerebellum was the Original Animal Brain, and those Animals had Souls, right?... well, no, not according to everybody.  … But, also, as we’ve found, we don’t need Consciousness Constructs to function,  you know, “black outs”, and that in the truly tough situations, consciousness might only get in the Way, but, then, we don’t ordinarily think of the Soul as something we can switch on and off, do we?  And, yes, we’ve been told over and over again that Consciousness is the core attribute of the Soul, but what if the Truth is actually that the Soul is composed entirely of Volition, and that Consciousness is only a kind of an Auxiliary Monitoring Circuit.   Yeah, how can the Soul be separate from the Spark of Life, you know, that basic Will to Live, which would be focused in the Organ of Will, the Cerebellum.  

 

31   But, I could be wrong, couldn’t I?   Really, looking at it the opposite way, well, don’t they say that Life is only for the Living, and so the Will would necessarily die when the Body Dies, but Souls are supposed to persist, aren’t they?   Also, the Mystic Transcendentalists go on and on about Pure Consciousness and Knowing All Things, and even in regards to their understanding of the God Consciousness, that Divine Qualities are all fixed and unchanging – a Perfection that requires no Will to Action, having come to some if not really Perfect than at least Unimprovable Cosmic Stasis.  And if it is true that feelings of Pleasure and Contentment come from the Will, well, so do our Anxieties which may have a far greater impact on some people, and so perhaps the Disciplines of Meditation are intended not so much for regulating the Mind as for suppressing and negating the Will,,,  and that Anxious Feelings and the Flow of Words, that bothers them so much, can only be strangled off by decapitating the Will that gives rise to them.  Oh, and then there is the chronic inactivity and the forever sitting still that the Meditators enjoin upon us, where we could infer that they would have their Volition and Cerebellums wither away to a passive Disability, in the same way that their Muscles and Motor Functions typically do.   

 

32  And, yes, the Cerebellum does have some direct connections to the Hypothalamus, the organ in the Mid-Brain that secretes Dopamine, the Divine Bliss Hormone, and so perhaps when the Cerebellum is relaxed or suppressed past some certain point, that the signals coming from the Cerebellum to the Hypothalamus just incidentally rail over to the extreme side of pushing some maximum Dopamine Discharge, which probably happens during the Death Process too, if the Cerebellum, being the Brain’s largest Oxygen Sink, is the first organ within the Brain’s Complex to sign off and die, you know, with the first symptoms of which being imbalance, loss of coordination and vertigo (all being impairments to the functions of the Cerebellum).  So, yes, we can guess that it’s the blinking off of the Cerebellum that culminates in all those Blissful Near Death Experiences we hear so much about. 

 

33  Oh, and yes, everybody should keep this in mind, that it would be great news for those of us who expect to die someday, that the process would be intrinsically blissful, and that the most euphoric moment of our Life may be our Last.  And then we should consider whether it’s in any way advisable to pursue the Transcendental Path if we’re already guaranteed to achieve that most prized of Transcendental Experiences, and at precisely the moment it’d be most appreciated.     

 

34  So, yes, let’s conclude, perhaps tentatively, by saying that our Individual Body Souls are defined by their Will and so reside in the Cerebellum, but that the Universal Soul, the God Consciousness, that has no Will and contemplates no Action, well, it lives, as Consciousness, a Projected Construct from our Frontal Lobes.  Yeah, we would still have the problem in regards to the Soul surviving the Death of the Body, which could only be obviated if, as I suggested in my short “Creating a Better God” series, that the Material Body is the Seed to a surviving Etheric Body, in which case, we could also expect that a Soul of Etheric Will could also persist past the Grave also.  

 

35   But, yes, while we’re still alive, we have Two Paths to choose between – either a Life of Will, manifesting in the Arts, Sports and all the various forms of Life Accomplishments, or we can choose the Life that centers on Pure Consciousness, dedicated to unattached and emotionally neutral Observation and Meditation.  The first is the Female Principle of Creation, and the second reflects the inherent laziness of a self-satisfied Patriarchy, the Transcendental Male Principle.  Most of the Spiritual Community goes with the Transcendentalists, but, we only have to refer to the Sufi Brotherhoods of Dervishes, Dancers, Musicians, Artists and Poets to see examples for a Religious Path that emphasized the Female Principle of Willing  to Live actively and creatively, and we know that all our legendary Muses have always been deemed Female, and while we might Fear the Masculine Gods of War and Strife, it is the Goddesses we Love – our Eternal Mothers, Daughters, Friends and Lovers.  

 

36  Well, that’s it everybody.  Thank you for clicking in.  Yeah, I should have a new video relatively soon, as just last night I had a breakthrough Realization in regards to my pet interest, the Collective Consciousness.   But until I can get back to you all, well, remember the Wisdom that the Ancient Brotherhoods of Dancers and Dervishes have passed down to us through the Ages, that “It’s always our next step that keeps us from falling down.”

 

 

 

    

 

 

I’m Sorry Foxxy

 

1  Hi Everybody, this is Leo Volont.  Yeah, I was out Clubbing the other night, really mostly just dancing, since that’s a Persona Ideal I’ve been working on this Year, and during one of the breaks some Lady asked me about Happiness.  I told her that Happiness is a Life without Regrets, and she then she wanted to know if I didn’t have any regrets, and I told her I’m not always happy, and my mind reverted back to memories of my Poor Old Deceased Foxxy Buddy, [Foxxy Buddy 2004 – 2021] who died less than a year ago.  He was only 17 but for him it had been a full enough lifetime.   But my mind wasn’t easy and I couldn’t help whispering under my breath “I’m Sorry Foxxy”.  Honestly, I’m worried those may someday be my last words, and so maybe I should explain them now.  

 

[Cats with Young Foxxy sleeping (4 Amigoes) ]  

 

 [Cats  012 (2)  Foxxy Buddy 2004 – 2021]

 2  Foxxy had been a soft furred Tawny Tabby, the same color as a Lion, but with Grey Eyes.  You see them a lot in Half Breed Siamese cats.  I had taken Foxxy in when he was still just a Big Kitten down in the Parking Lot.  I knew his sisters from the same litter who were more obviously of Siamese Extraction.  But unlike his more cynically cautious sisters, he had been fearless and wouldn’t run away from anything, and so I figured it would get him hurt out there.  Yeah, the point that decided me on that was, well, this Big Fat Little Chinese Kid was kicking this ball high, almost straight up, and the ball was heavy enough that, along with its momentum from falling, it was hitting the ground really hard.  I pointed out to the kid that he’d need to be aware of the Cat, which could be seriously hurt if it were to be struck by that ball.  He told me with a contemptuous Spoiled Brat Sneer that “It’s only a Cat”.  So I silently cursed his Life and walked over and picked up that Fearless Big Kitten, who wasn’t afraid of me, and took him in.  His Tail was so soft and bushy that I named him Foxxy Buddy.   At the time he became my fourth cat. [Cats 4 amigos 23]  He would enjoy 3 Kitten Years before I’d get another cat, and no matter how much we try, the Youngest always seem to be the Sweetest somehow.  Foxxy got spoiled with Love.  

[Cats  012 (2) ]

3   So, yeah, over the years I’d get three more cats and it was wondrous how they’d all get along, and I felt that much of the reason was that Foxxy was so easy going and friendly, always being each new cats First Friend and thereby linking them into our Family.  Yeah, I understood how precious that made Foxxy and I loved him for it, and I was endlessly bragging to people about him.  But All Good Things Must Pass, and trouble came to our Happy Little Home, and I made a terribly regrettable mistake with Foxxy.   

 

4   It all started on a dark truly mysterious night where it seemed that three of my seven cats had been caught in some kind of fantastic noiseless explosion, with one getting killed and the other two getting wounded.   [ Cats  Bettybear (2) ]  Yeah, I lost Betty that night.   But for me the evening started as just an ordinary Music Practice Night in my Studio, what had been my old Bedroom, where I’d close myself in for three hours, listening to recordings through a mixer while I’d lay down a track of my own with either Strings, Saxophone or a Keyboard, and I’d given myself the rule that after each full hour playing, I could reward myself by going out to the kitchen to get myself another finger or two of cheap Scotch.

 

5   So I think it was coming to the second hour when I came out and stepped over Betty, whom I thought was just sleeping in the most frequented thoroughfare of the house, like all cats do, right?... but then it struck me that Betty was in a pose I had unfortunately seen several times before: the Dead Cat Pose, where their legs are all out straight underneath, and with the tail straight out behind.    Yeah, I only had to whip my head around to take one more glance to see the Truth, that Betty had died.  Well, I had an initial Breakdown, but then I remembered that I shouldn’t get distraught in front of all the other cats, as it would only go towards  worrying them, right.  And that thought decided me to look around to check on the rest of them. [ Cats Foxxy and Roary] So I looked up from the floor, and Foxxy and Young Roary, just a year old then, were looking down at me from the counter.  Roary’s right eye was red as though it had just been injured, and, later, Foxxy was showing too many signs of distress to easily ignore, and I found a day later that his ear had puffed up with blood or pus.  They call that “Pillow Ear”. 

 

 [Cats 008]

 

6   Foxxy was in a lot of pain.  I knew that because he always wanted to sleep, but couldn’t find a comfortable spot, but he’d keep going from place to place looking for one.  That meant that he was carrying the discomfort around with himself.   So I did what is ordinarily supposed to be  a good thing, what we’re all expected to do  – I took him to the Vet, which turned into two vets over the next two months, since the Pillow Ear came back after the first Vet’s Treatment.  It must have been hell for Foxxy.  We know how cats hate the Vets.  And then there were the operations, and heaven only knows whether they really monitor the blood oxygen levels for cats during these surgeries.  You know, oxygen deprivation can seriously impair the brain, but those Vets know that nobody gives IQ Tests to cats, right?  So they might think it’s nothing to worry about.    And, yeah, I once had a Vet tell me to go easy on optional procedures that require Anesthesia, like just Teeth Cleanings, as they’re harder on older cats, and so it haunted me that not just once but twice, I put Old Foxxy through such brain impairing ordeals.  Then, for weeks post op I was supposed to clean and dress his ear everyday, and Foxxy hated that too.  And I also made the mistake of doing all that rough work on the sofa, which had been my bed.  So, in effect, I was destroying all good associations he had with that sofa, doing to him what must have felt like Torture.   Yeah, after all that, Foxxy was never the same again.   

 

7   You know, really, taking Foxxy to the Vets had been stupid.   I really should have just used my common sense, that I must have seen a dozen tomcats out on the street who had gotten over Pillow Ear all by themselves.   Old Battle Scarred Tomcats, more than 4 years old, nearly all have Final Stage Pillow Ear, you know, where one or both ears look withered, and we know that they didn’t go to the Vets for it.  But I could have helped Foxxy by suppurating the ear myself, by poking a hole in it with a leatherworking awl or whatever, and then just be being there and being supportive of his own Healing Process that we know for a fact works.  That, Foxxy might have taken in stride, but what I’d done seemed to have broken his spirit, and I felt it was because he had lost his trust in me.  He became a grumpy old grouch, and he’d hesitate to come into my Territory, but if he had a message for me, he’d just yowl like some Old Tomcat.  My bright eyed enthusiastic love for Foxxy had turned into a duty.  

[Cats   Foxxy and Tommy]

8  But, yeah, thankfully  there had been some reprieves, especially the time Foxxy rallied to help me raise Little Siamese Tommy.  What I guess happened with Little Tommy was that someone, who knows I like cats, probably put little tiny starving Siamese Tommy outside my screen door when I was cooking Supper, and my other cats alerted me by crowding the door.  So I went over to look. [ Cats  little Sick Tommy]  And when I saw what I saw I said “Damn!  I love Siameses”.   I guess that was me giving myself permission to keep him… but that would only be if I could bring him back to Health, and Rescues often end tragically.   He had an infected eye, and looked weak, thin, and way too little.  I was guessing he was 4 or 5 weeks, but he looked like he hadn’t eaten for at least two or three days.  I was hoping he had already been weaned.   So I took him into the bathroom and stimulated his little Boy Butt, yeah, to see what we would get out of him, and it was yellow poop.  Damn, that mean Mother’s Milk Poop, doesn’t it?... and that would have meant that the last time he ate was from his Mother, and who knows when that was.

 

9   [ Cats  Sick Tommy Carrier]    But I had no Kitten Formula or Goat’s Milk on hand, and the stores were already closed, and so I’d have to gamble that his digestion would tolerate weaning.   So I opened a can of Wet Food, and, yeah, he didn’t know what to do with it.  He’d just lick at it as though he could lap it up like water, and then give up on it and sleep.  So I decided to make Wet Food Soup and Syringe Feed him, every 2 hours that first night, to assure his hydration even if he did have trouble digesting the food.  Then I boiled up a big pot of water that I could dilute as necessary, and got a heat gun ready and heated up some towels.  I wanted to Flea Bathe him, before my entire house became infested, but also to get his fur fluffy and bushy again to help him retain Body Heat, but I didn’t want to chill him in the process, so I wanted to do everything under heat.  And, I treated his eye the way I’ve always treated eye infections in Cats – I first smear a dab of Triple A Antibiotic into my own eye, and then into the Cat’s eye, and I’ve found it begins to help almost immediately.   Then I set my timer for the next feeding, kissed the little thing goodnight, not promising anything outloud, not wishing to Jinx his chances, but crossed myself Nine Times, and then caught some Shuteye… hoped for the best. .   

 

10  So, yeah, Tommy had been a serious rescue, almost starved.   He was listless and would lay down where ever I put him.  [Cats  Tommy recovery carrier]   But, the second day I saw some hope that he was beginning to thrive, when he rejected the syringe by trying to bite my fingers, and when I put him down, he crawled over to the dish and tried licking up his food again, which was why I went to Fork Training him.  You see, Fork Training teaches the Kittens to bite up Chunks of food, instead of them trying to lick the food up.   Yeah, the trick is to have the kitten work with the fork until he starts biting instead of just licking, and once he’s biting, then put him down with his dish to see whether he’s really learned his lesson or not, and as soon as you see the kitten dig in and bite out of his dish, he or she is Trained, Certified and Ready to Eat for Life.   And, yeah, I had Little Siamese Tommy trained in two minutes, which meant he still had all his faculties.  But, yeah, while otherwise seeming so close to death, with these signs of rebellion and self-reliance, well, it showed that his Spirit was strong, and it still is, that Little Scamp, and so I felt encouraged.    [Cats  Tommy on stole] But only on the 3^rd day did he stand up and begin exploring, and I realized that my Little Siamese Tommy had made it out of the Woods.  Thank God.

 

11  You know, Rescuing, well, that’s a strange way to Bond with a Cat.  You see, now, Tommy takes me totally for granted and I can see that there isn’t a shadow of a doubt in his mind that I’d give him anything he wants, once he can make his ‘Eye to Eye’ Telepathy work on me, and then he shows no gratitude, figuring that my making him the center of my Universe is just part of the Natural Order of Things.   But, yeah, I do feel honored to have earned so much of his Trust.  [Cats  Tommy on Chair]   But only now in his 4^th Year has it gotten through to him that I would like Quality Times too, like my brushing him for my pleasure, even when it’s not his idea first.  Yeah, that Flash of Understanding came to him probably because he’s seen how his Big younger Brother, Franky, delights in Surprise Brushings… and I sneak in some kisses too, or at least I make the noises, you know, like: [make kissie sounds]… yeah, it sounds stupid to us but the Cats know what that means. .    

12  But, remember, Little Siamese Tommy had lost his Mother way too soon.  So as soon as I realized Tommy was safe from my other cats, well, I began taking him to bed with me, but somehow Foxxy realized the exigencies of the moment and he’d jump up on the sofa to sleep with us, and, I don’t know whether this had been Foxxy’s intention, but little Tommy began trying to nurse from him.  [Cats   Foxxy and Tommy] But Foxxy, remembering his masculine dignity, shoved Little Tommy out from underneath, but allowed him to nurse on his Shoulder.  God Bless Him.  But after Tommy reached about a year old, both myself and Foxxy began insisting that Tommy was getting a bit old for that, and the nursing stopped and Foxxy went back to finding his own beds again.  But the Sofa became Tommy’s Territory and so I wasn’t especially lonely, but I worried about how Foxxy must have felt.  Really, I didn’t think it was about me anymore, but that Foxxy was there for the other Cats… that were all the love still was.   

 

[Cats  Foxxy Hugging Betty]

13  Oh, by the way, at least some of you might be wondering about what killed Betty, but that’s something of a long story, but I think we should discuss it… and you’ll see why.   So, let’s get started.  You see, Betty had been a socialized kitten from an apartment where she had a dish outside the door that she ate from, but I guess the tenant moved who had been feeding her, and so Betty, now not more than a year old, [Cats   Betty behind the wire]   took over my Feeding Station as the Alpha, and, yeah, Feral Station Alphas always seem to be a females from one year old to being knocked out of the slot before reaching 3, but I’ve seen some tough torties or calicos carry the Alpha Title almost until they were five.   But Betty didn’t take over my Feeding Station without a fight, no, so my not realizing she had been abandoned, I resented her for wanting to ‘poach’ our food, and I guess I always did feel that the my Feeding Stations always already had Enough Cats, and so I’d be as resistant to New Members as any of my Feral Cats would’ve been, whose innate assumptions would have been that More Cats would mean Less Food for themselves, and with myself thinking that I had to buy all that food, and then lug it and the Water around with me morning and night.  Yeah, the Spirit is willing but the Flesh loves to complain.   

 

14  But, yeah, Membership in a Feral Cat Feeding Station is always up to the Ferals themselves.  You know, while people talk of Cats as being ‘Independent’, they mean that cats are more independent than dogs, who are full blown Pack Animals, but cats can and do form Colonies, and a Feral Cat Feeding Station is a Colony, with those who gain admittance having to show or at least tolerate some aggression.  No, from what I’ve seen, there’s little blood or fur-flying, with that level of aggression being reserved for Rival Tomcats fighting over Mates.  At the Feeding Station I’ve seen only Hissing and Paw Batting.  Really, any New Prospective Member needs only to hunker down, and take abuse for a minute or two before looking up to ask, “Is it time to eat yet?”, and 9 times out of 10 the answer will be ‘Sure, if you made it this far’.   But the kind of female cats, with Betty’s ferocious temperament, will carry all of their own Aggression into the mix, making everybody else ask, “Is it okay if we eat now?”  But, surprisingly, there’s a significant number of cats that are too afraid to approach after only just being hissed at, and then I never see them again, as though they interpret their Rejection as a signal to abandon the entire Territory, from horizon to horizon, that being about a few hundred meters in every direction, though exactly where they mark their lines remains an olfactory mystery to me.      

 

15   But Betty had more to worry about than just the Cats… you see, she had to get through me first.   Yeah, I wanted to fight off Betty all by myself, and so I bought this little toy gun that shot out little soft plastic bullets.  So from about 20 feet away I was holding her off by firing the little plastic bullets at her butt, knowing that at that distance their velocity would drop off to harmlessness.  But then, apparently growing complacent, I set aside “holding her off” for a moment to care for the other Cats somehow, and when I turned back around, there she was, Betty, just at my feet.  Well, being as jumpy as a Cat myself, It startled me, as we had never been that close before, and I wouldn’t have expected such a tactic from any Feral, who usually rely heavily upon Retreat in such circumstances.   So, our eyes met and I knew that she knew that I couldn’t shoot at her now, being afraid I’d hurt her.  Yeah, the Demonically Clever Little Thing had called my bluff.    So, yeah, after that, I gave up trying to think I could outthink her, and threw the little toy gun in the Dumpster, and, giving up all resistance, it became Betty’s Feeding Station, and it would be hers forever, as it would turn out.   

[no photo]

16  But Life would remain all sunshine and roses for a while longer, and, so, yeah, as it happened, there occurred this Precious Moment that somehow seared itself into my Memory, a memory that would contextually become so much more important to me not long afterwards.  Yeah, the Feral Cat Feeding Station Membership had never been higher.  The way it worked was that I’d get up while it was still dark to feed them before Work.  I had my own Wild Animal Call that I’d use to assemble them, like the word “Wuu” but I’d extend the vowel sound, changing its pitch and rolling the sound like the Spanish roll their r’s, you know, it’d sound like  [“Wuuuuu…”], but a lot louder.  And that would bring them out from every direction, from Building Stairwells, and from pathways out of the jungle’s underbrush that are so low to the ground that most Humans don’t even see they’re there.   

 

17  I never counted them, but I always thought there were about 15 to 20 of them.  We’d walk together about 150 meters to the Station’s Feeding  Lot, an abandoned Motel Swimming Pool [ Cats  Feral cat franky]  with a Railing that the cats could get behind, but which was inaccessible to myself and the Boonie Dogs, and I’d pour their Dry Food under the lowest Horizontal Rail.  [ no photo]   Yeah, I suppose I could have gone all the way down to the Station myself, before calling them all, but, everybody who’s ever run a Feeding Station knows, you’ll always have at least one Door Cat that knows where you live and waits for you.  So, yeah, these Door Cats become special for you, and it comes to seem like you’re really assembling the others in honor of their presence, so that the Door Cats can claim the honor from all the other cats, of having fetched you from your Lair.   And, beside, I really liked walking surrounded by all of them, will all their Tails standing Tall and Happy, with the Orange Twins Franky and Franky, Sons of Funnyface, Mother of All Cats,  weaving and crisscrossing in front of me with the precision of dancers, letting me bat at their tails in rhythm.  Yeah, that Special Memory Moment occurred for me as we walked through the parking lots, emerging from the darkness as we all flowed under this one Street Light, when I noticed that its Circle of Light spread out to exactly envelop all my Happy Cats, with myself in the Center.  And then we walked back out into the  darkness.       

 

18a   Yeah, the good times couldn’t last forever, and some parents had bought their kids long barreled high velocity 17 caliber pellet guns for Christmas.  Yeah, those things are sold as toys for children.  So, with the New Year, I began losing about two or three cats per week.   The kids would leave some of them seriously wounded, but  they were still ferals, and even wounded, I couldn’t catch them.  They’d crawl off to die in some secret solitude…

 

18b  Yeah, that’s a laugh…  Me telling my Cats to be good… I might as well think that I can command the Wind and the Tides, but, yeah, as I was saying, that, even wounded, the Ferals wouldn’t come to me for help.  They’d crawl off to die in some secret solitude, and I’d find their bodies later by following the scent of death.  I guess I had to make myself emotionally numb to be able to get myself through all that, but you can probably see how hard it had been for me, and especially for them.

 

19   But one moment punched through my daze and  hit me especially hard.  I came out one morning and the first thing I noticed was that Funny Face had been killed. [ Cats  Funnyface ]  Yeah, Funnyface, a Tortie Calico, had been the Station Alpha for 3 years.  Yeah, that was before Betty toppled her Reign,  and, yeah, now that I think about it, maybe my resisting Betty’s Coup had only sourced out of my old loyalties to Funnyface.   But there she was in the Dead Cat pose atop a pile of junk.  Was that where she had been shot and fell, or did somebody put her where I’d be sure to find her?   But I appreciated that she had been put up high, as though to honor her.  She had been the Cleverest and Slyest of Cats and it’d taken me years to figure out how to catch her to get her Spayed.  I had nicknamed her “Funnyface, Mother of all Cats” and a great portion of the Feeding Station were her progeny.  I had tremendous respect for her, and when I lifted her to put her into her fresh new Pillow Case Burial Shroud, well, I couldn’t believe she was so light.  Yeah, I remembered that the only other time she had ever let me touch her, besides batting her tail which she still half resented, had been after a serious Tropical Storm had spent had stalled for three days over our heads, and I could finally get out to feed them, and Funny Face had been so obviously cold and hungry, that she allowed me to stroke some admiration and consolation onto her, while she focused on eating.  Yeah, I wondered how such a Big Life could suddenly have become so Small.   

 

20  Oh, and I just noticed it now, bringing up Funnyface’s  photograph, that she is very similar in color and line with my new kitten Gloria… yeah, let me switch the photos of the two of them back and forth and we’ll see what you think…  here’s Gloria. [Cats Gloria compared to Funnyface] … now here’s Funnyface…  [Cats  Funnyface]  Gloria again  [Cats Gloria compared to Funnyface]  and now back to Funnyface [Cats  Funnyface]  Yeah, see what I mean.    And, yeah, in a previous video, dated Feb 15, 2022, down in the description, I tell about how I had come by Gloria.    But now I’m wondering why I hadn’t realized that similarity between the two of them before, but maybe that’s the real reason why I couldn’t turn down that new kitten after it had been offered to me, getting up to answer the door to say “No Thankyou, I already got enough cats ”, but changed my mind after only seeing her from 20 feet away through a screen door.   And then there was the Name Gloria already in my Head, rolling off my tongue without any thought at all, on the first instant that I held her in my hands.  Yes, it had sometimes bothered me that the name Funnyface took the Dignity of that Noble Creature far too lightly, and it had somehow been an injustice against  her that I had given her a name that so much misrepresented her Character.   Yeah, I should have named her Gloria, but she was Funnyface, and so that will be a name that will forever after suggest to me only what is and most noble in Life… Noble like Funnyface..     

 

[Cats   Blacky]

21  But sometimes the Light Shineth in Darkness and by this time Betty had become best friends with Blacky, who had only been half feral because I knew him from the day his mother, yes, Funny Face, Mother of All Cats, brought him out, along with all his Siblings, out to be weaned.  Me and Blacky bonded in the strangest way, but maybe it could be expected of a couple of knuckleheaded guys, that is, I wanted to catch him to take him to the Vet to get him “fixed”, but I had grabbed him too far back along his Scruff and so he was able to reach his head around and give me a good solid bite on my thumb before I could drop him, but I remained mindful to not utter a sound.  And then, after wrapping my thumb in my handkerchief, to staunch the bleeding, I just pretended nothing happened, that I didn’t just try to catch him, and that there had just been some kind of unfortunate misunderstanding.  Well, it worked.  I could see right away that he was sorry he had bitten me, for no reason, and the little thing did everything to atone.  We became really good friends, and I think Betty saw that and decided to tag along with us, to bask in our radiated warmth.   

 

22  And that brings us to another very special memory between Betty and myself, but Blacky was probably the catalyst that brought it all together, and the memory would become very special regarding him too.   Yeah, this Memory happened when I went out to feed Blacky, who had taken the role of being my Door Cat, and Betty wasn’t with him as usual, which got me worried, because the Shootings and Killings had already progressed rather far at this point.   So I put down his food and went to look for her, but Blackie walked away from his dish to follow me.  See what I mean about his being such a good friend, putting my company ahead of his dinner.  Or maybe he was Betty’s good friend and wanted to help me look for her.  Either way, that made him one heck of a loving little guy, right?

 

 23  So Blacky and I are crossing down the parking lot and I notice the old abandoned car sitting off to the side on a vacant strip, with its windows all either rolled down or smashed out, but somehow I wonder if Betty’s sitting  inside, and so I yell “Wuuuu Betty”, and up from the Drivers Seat her [Cats  Betty Behind the Wire] little head bobbed up, and our eyes meet.  There was the Memory Lock right there.   It seemed like maybe she’d been testing me to see if I’d come and fetch her for dinner, and that it wasn’t just Blacky I cared about.  Or maybe Betty had only sent Blacky to “fetch me from my lair”, which is really exactly what he did, didn’t he?     But, yeah, now we needed to head back and so I gruffly yelled at her “Come On!  Let’s Go  Eat!” and turned and started walking home, not looking back… yeah, cats like to think it over in private whether or not they’ll obey a command, but after a few seconds I looked down towards Blacky, and Betty was already shoulder to shoulder with him.  It was a beautiful memory, [Cats   Blacky ] and  it would be the last I’d ever have of Blacky.  Yes, you can love somebody forever if they leave you memories like that.     

 

24  Yeah, Blacky and Betty would be the Last Survivors.  [Cats  Betty Behind the Wire] It really seemed like Betty was preternaturally tuned in somehow, and if we’d hear the report of one of those guns, even hundreds of yards off, she’d slunk down and scurry off, vanishing out of sight.  Yeah, I wondered whether I had inadvertently taught her about the Evil and Danger of Guns, with that little toy I had used on her.  Well, Fate does work in mysterious ways, doesn’t it? [Cats   Blacky ]   But I only wished that Blacky would have followed her lead.  Either his bravery or his stupid indifference would get his little butt killed.

 

25  And, so, yeah, it wasn’t long before it was Blacky who’d be the one who wouldn’t report for Dinner, and somehow I had no doubt as to what that meant, that they finally shot Blacky too.   So I made an instant decision. [Cats  Betty behind the wire] I didn’t want to lose Betty too, so I’d try to bring her in.  You know, many Ferals simply refuse to live inside.  [Cats   Blacky ] I tried moving Blacky in, you know, back before when I first got him Neutered, but he’d spend his days yowling at the Door to be let out, but he’d let me sleep at night, until he figured out that yowling while I tried to sleep might work better for him, and it did, and I opened the door.   [Cats  Betty behind the wire] But now I’d give Betty her chance to be an Indoor Cat, and it would be a Life or Death decision for her.   So I took Betty’s food dish to my apartment and put it just inside the door’s threshold, and when she cautiously began to approach her dish, and as soon as I thought I had a good clear shot, I kicked her, well, we could call it a long continuous push, with the inside of my foot, sliding her well into the center of my kitchen, giving me enough time to step in and close the door.  But it turned out she liked living inside. Yeah, some Ferals will be wanting to break down the door to get out, but other Ferals never go near it, except to sun themselves behind a nice securely closed Screen Door.

 

[Cats  Mr. and Mrs. Bear]

26   I loved that Betty, but she kept that Alpha temperament with my other house cats, and she claimed me for her own.  But Betty also liked having her boyfriends and so she became a thing with Big Bear, my big fat Silver Siamese with a stumpy tail, meaning he was a true East Asian Variety.  Yeah, that’s him in that photo.  You know what I named that photo way back then?  “Mr. and Mrs. Bear”… they always looked so good together.   [Foxxy hugging betty ] But I’d see her sleeping with Foxxy too sometimes, and so these few were welcomed to jump up to sleep with me.

 

27  [Cats Betty Sleep]   Later, Betty also became a Second Mother and protectress for Roary when he was a still a kitten that I brought home, a few weeks after Poor Big Bear died of Old Age…  [Cats Big Bear easy chair] yeah, I never knew how Old Big Bear was, but I had had him for 10 years and he may have been that old already when I got him.  You see, he had been given to me.   I’d heard that he’d run away from his Owner time and time again and come to the door of his Landlady, a friend of mine, and she’d take him in.  Finally she refused to give “Kitty”… yeah, she called that Big Spectacular Cat ‘Kitty’… she refused to give him back to his Owner, you know, Enough is Enough, right?  So she kept him until she had to travel to visit relatives and asked me to watch Kitty for her.   Yeah, by the way she talked,  I thought Kitty would turn out to be some ordinary Scraggletail Tabby but when I showed up, he turned out to be this Glorious Blue Eyed Silver Siamese.  I literally gasped in wonder.  

 

28  So, yeah, Me and Big Bear had our own bonding moment.  Afraid from the drive home and having been in a pillow case… a shredded pillow case by the time I got him home ... and frightened of being in a strange house, he at first ran under the kitchen sink, where I had accidentally left one of the counter doors open.  Well, that Lady Friend of mine told me that he was friendly and so I decided to crawl under the sink myself,  making and then breaking eye contact, you know, first to acknowledge him, but then to look away to assure him I wouldn’t be a threat, and then I pretended to yawn, because no aggressive animal would ever yawn,  and finally I pretended to fall asleep, making a few snorting noises, because he’d expect that from a big animal like myself.   I stayed that way for I guess five minutes, then I lifted my head, yawned again, and looked at Big Bear (and, yeah, I had named him that the first moment I saw him) and said, “I’m hungry Big Bear,  Let’s go eat food”, and he followed me out and we were best friends ever since.   In less than a year he would welcome little Foxxy Buddy into our home as his Little Brother.  

 

[Cats  Foxxy and BB Four Amigos 018]

 

29  Oh, but at first I worried that Big Bear wasn’t mine!  Yeah, when my Lady Friend came back, I wouldn’t take her calls, afraid she’d ask for her Kitty back, [Cats four amigos 013]  but finally she tracked me down to tell me that it was okay, that I could keep Kitty if I wanted too, and I said, “He’s Big Bear now.” and that made her laugh.  Yeah, besides, she’s mostly a Dog Person anyway or she never would’ve given up a cat like that.   

 

[Cats Big Bear easy chair]

 

30  But, yeah, after having him for a decade, losing Big Bear broke my heart, [no photo]  but I felt I was getting too old to get some new kitten, if I wasn’t sure I’d be able to out live it, but this one Lady Professor at the University told me I was being ridiculous and that she had one kitten left from a litter and wanted me to take a look at him.   Well, being the last kitten is not quite “pick of the litter” and so I wondered what might have been wrong with him, but I was curious to see him and so the next day I drove out to take a look.  [Roary Kitten] Well, He was just a light ginger striped tabby, but when I came into their house, I saw him come down the steers to meet me.  His Mother, a Feral that Madame Professor had taken in,  hissed at me like I was a threat, but the little Ginger Kitten ignored her as he walked right on by and up to me, apparently taking it for granted that I’d reach down and pick him up.   Yes, this kitten had been thoroughly socialized and apparently already felt as though  he could read minds.   So, I reached down and picked him up and looked into his eyes.  Yeah, we were two strong silent types checking each other out, and we both seemed okay with each other. [ Cats Roarys Home]  So Forever home we came.   

 

31   And, no, I hardly believed it when that Professor Lady told me that Big Little Thing was only just 8 weeks… she had to prove it to me by showing a time stamped photo of the new Litter.  [ Cats   Foxxy and Big Ears] And then there were his huge ears!   It all indicated that he’d grow into a Giant, and, now, almost ten years later, [Cats  Big Bear on Table with Gloria cropped out]

I call him Big Bear Roary, and he’s as sweet as the Old Big Bear ever was, and probably longer, taller and fatter too, well, no, obesity really shouldn’t be a highly valued trait, and I’ve been trying to keep the food dishes empty most the time so that Roary wouldn’t overeat just out of boredom, and the other Cats aren’t starving and so I think I’ve got the best balance going I’m ever going to get.  But, yeah, just look at this photo from the present and tell me that Roary didn’t become another Big Silly Sweet Big Bear.   Yeah, whoever says that you can’t Replace a beloved deceased Cat with a Kitten, well, they probably haven’t tried hard enough.

 

[Cats Betty Sleep (with little Roary)]

32  But yeah, for a full year Betty had been Roary’s Guardian Angel, especially great because she was House Alpha, giving Roary the feeling of being Prince of the House.  [Cats  Roary Betty Foxxy ] The only problem with Betty was that she controlled access to me with the other cats who weren’t especially on her Friends List, so I’d have to go to them for their Quality Times, as they wouldn’t have Betty’s permission to come to me, not while she was in the same room.  [Cats  Betty Foxxy Roary]  And, no, it wasn’t obvious.  It was like the Cats decided all their own rules without consulting me.  So, yeah, for anybody who lives in a Multicat Household, well, you can’t assume that some of your cats are aloof because they don’t love you, no, maybe you just have to wait, and you’ll find that when one of your Close Loving  Cats die, that one of your Aloof Cats will step in and take his or her place, probably like what they agreed to all along.  Yeah, I learned that after Betty died, and Norabora came back to reclaim my Heart.    [Cats   me and Norabora]  Yeah, Norabora had been the first new Kitten 3 years after Foxxy’s arrival, the sweetest most loving Female Cat I’ve ever had, and yeah, she died last year, God Bless her [Cats   Norabora]  but there’s no story of Regret to tell about her… just a feeling of joy whenever I contemplate her memory… she was just full of Love, and not just for me… that sweet thing would sleep with all the guys, you know, Big Bear, Foxxy and then Roary..  

 

[Cats  Foxxy hugging Betty]

33  But, yeah, I guess on the night Betty died, that some pellet that was already inside of her, for the past couple of years, finally cut through some artery or whatever, and she just dropped over dead.   Yeah, maybe having been shot once already was what made her so cautious about ever getting shot again, where she could help it.  Or maybe it was her own obesity that killed her and it was a Stroke or a Coronary that pulled that trigger.   But I have no idea what could explain Foxxy’s Pillow Ear, or the fact that Roary’s Right Eye  was injured and that it still seeps tears.  Yeah, something Weird happened that night.  I thought that only Foxxy and Roary were somehow caught up in this Mystery, but now that I think about it, well, I was drawn into it too, and I carry my own permanent wound, you know, my heart felt painful regrets that I hadn’t taken better care of Foxxy, giving him the kind of care that he would have wanted, and not all that Human Crap I imposed on him.  Yeah, I’m sorry Foxxy.

 

 

[Cats  Foxxy and Norabora]

 

34  Well, Poor Foxxy finally died not long back, probably of kidney failure.  He was endlessly drinking water, but then he wasn’t and then his appetite failed.  He became like a baby again and I’d brush him, prepare his beds for him, and see if he needed to used the litter box every 5 or 6 hours, you know,  everything to make his last days comfortable.  Oh, you know, Dying Cats,  they always try to seclude themselves, but once you bring them out from their first hiding place, well, they surrender into your care, perhaps realizing that they’d want better closure too.  Oh, and remember that their last bed will have to be on the floor, because they won’t be able to jump up or down any more towards the end.  So I always keep my own dry used towels and cloths to place under and around them, where ever it is on the floor that they end up.  Yeah, it’s my hope that my scent on their bedding would help to comfort them.  

 

35  But, yeah, eventually Foxxy dropped into a Coma, or whatever it is when they only take one breath every seven seconds or so, and more and more his posture was slipping into that of the Dead Cat Pose.  I’d check on him every few hours through the night and he was still alive in the morning, as the sun came up.  Well, so I decided to sit down on the floor with him for a while, and I was glad that I had.  I was stroking him gently with his favorite “Brushy Brushy”, and then I leaned down and kissed his darling little head, and I said what I had so often thought, “I’m sorry Foxxy,  I la oo good” [kissie noises],  and that was when he gave a little jerk, with his chin tucking down just a little bit, and then there was no more breathing.   Foxxy had slipped and flown his mortal coils.  God Bless you Foxxy… I’ll love you forever.       

 

36   But Life goes on.   [Roary and Gloria sleeping on the Work Bench]    yeah, Here’s a photo today of Big Bear Roary with his Little Sister Gloria.  See how happy they are?... yeah, even with that tear still in Roary’s right eye.   Oh! And look at this next Photo: [Cats   Tommy, Franky, Gloria on Shelf] Yeah, that’s Little Siamese Tommy on the end  – he’s still little, but as full grown up as he’s ever going to get.  And then there’s his  Younger but much Bigger Brother Franky Blue, who seems to have taken over for Foxxy, being the Pillar of Peace and Harmony in the House, and of course there’s their pretty Little Sister Gloria, the most beautiful Girl in the World… or that’s what her 4 guys think, and its our opinion that she likes us too.   But, yeah, you can’t take happiness like this for granted… so we’ll all keep praying to God, and be as jumpy as cats when it comes to trouble.  

 

 So, yeah, that’s my Video.  Thanks everybody.  I’ll try to come up with something else soon.