Misery

It's supposed to hit 95 today.  I don't blame my dad for not installing AC back when he built this place in 1994, but global warming has definitely changed the game up for much of the Pacific Northwest.

It's worse in Seattle.

It's worser in Portland.

July In The Country

Posting has been light due to stuff.  I'm still working at the animal shelter, and that's actually going pretty well.  I am about four diners away from finishing my Diner Reviews, which is also kind of exciting.  At home, the wheels are turning on some changes with my Dad and our current living arrangements.  I'll leave it at that for now.  He's fine, doing as well as can be expected at 93.

It actually rained a little yesterday, which is pretty shocking for Whatcom County in July and August.

More to come soon!

"as I still try to believe"

"If we are extinguished by death, as I still try to believe, what point is there in leaving some books behind any more than bottles, clothes, or cheap jewellry? and if Sarah is right, how unimportant all the importance of art is.  I tossed up, I think, simply from loneliness."

-- Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

"endure it all the way"

"'It exists," Shevek said, spreading out his hands.  'It's real.  I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can't pretend that it doesn't exist, or will ever cease to exist.  Suffering is the condition on which we live.  And when it comes, you know it.  You know it as the truth.  Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does.  But no society can change the nature of existence.  We can't prevent suffering.  This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain.  A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering.  The rest remains.  The root, the reality.  All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we'll have known pain for fifty years.  And in the end we'll die.  That's the condition we're born on.  I'm afraid of life!  There are times I -- I am very frightened.  Any happiness seems trivial.  And yet, I wonder if it isn't all a misunderstanding -- this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain. . . .  If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could. . . get through it, go beyond it.  There is something beyond it.  It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self -- ceases.  I don't know how to say it.  But I believe that the reality -- the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness -- that the reality of pain is not pain.  If you can get through it.  If you can endure it all the way.'"

-- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed