I am observing Lent in my own way. Which I hope is better than nothing. I am praying every day. I am trying to consume more spiritual media on my smartphone. I am trying to make it hard on myself physically by cutting out some habits I have like listening to pop music, drinking lots of coffee and having a bottle of beer every day. But alas these things probably don't suffice.
I had been in the habit of composing my blog entries in QQmail, and then cut and pasting them to Hotmail, which I would then use to publish the entry by mailing it to a special email address on BlogSpot. But for some reason, QQmail would lose my work. An updated entry would not be saved. On two consecutive days of my work being lost, I decided to go back to my old habit of typing and updating the entry on a text editing program.
What am I reading these days? Lots of poetry, a translation of the Iliad, and the Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. I try to read some poetry and something spiritual every day. I am also trying to read books that are old school and very un-woke.
My son Tony is going through a phase. The phase where he doesn't care so much for the company of his old man. I had report from his school of an incident at the dorm where he got angry about something his classmates had done to him, and where he had to be talked to by the dorm master. Trying to ask him about it, I found that Tony was reluctant to talk to me. When I pressed him on why he was reluctant, he said he didn't want to make me worry. He also didn't like my lecturing him.
A new freeway has been completed that connects our area to the rest of Wuxi. It is a godsend because it makes our drive to Tony's school much quicker. The freeway takes us though Tianyi, through the Hui Shan Mountain tunnel, the Taihu tunnel and onto Tony's school which is located near the new Wuxi CBD. However, the freeway is changing traffic patterns in the area. I encountered a traffic jam on a road that hitherto had never had a traffic jam in my experience: it was all these vehicles going onto the new freeway. Previously, all these cars would have taken the Hui Shan big bridge to go south into Wuxi.
Pain. Pain in my side which I suspect are stones of some sort. And now pain in one of my remaining teeth. My teeth are horror show but I have been able to endure discomfort. But this pain was bad enough to have me imagining the pain of Jesus during the Passion. It was my way of dealing with it.
I had said that in a previous entry that Tony was going to go to Shanghai to see experts to deal with cognitive troubles he has exhibited at his new school. This may not happen. It is too bloody expensive. We will have to find other ways to help him. Maybe, he will have to do what I did which is to will himself into getting better grades at school by really concentrating on what he is studying.
I sent an email to Tony telling him I was suffering with a sore tooth. Later on, in a phone call, I talked about how I had to endure it and brought up an example of Michael Jordan enduring a fever as he played in some crucial playoff game. Tony knew the details of the game where that happened and knew what Jordan's stats were for that game. Brilliant on the part of Tony!
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