A long day of mostly fog with a few sunbreaks finally falls to night. What I thought (or more hoped) was the common cold turns out to be the flu. Carmen told me first thing this morning that she talked with her sister's friend, trying to track Cecilia down, presumably to talk to her about Gramma. The friend spoke to Cecilia a couple months ago when she told her that her boyfriend hit her and she gave him all of her money (before he hit her). She hasn't heard from Cecilia since. Sounds like the set-up for a murder. I just said, "It sounds like something Cecilia would do." Mom also told me that she spoke with Gramma's case worker, and that because Gramma was lucid, understood the questions and gave sensical answers (if molesting a 90 year old woman makes sense), that it's very possible that someone molested my grandmother. I want to see her, but on the same hand I don't. Isn't that awful? I feel like I can't look at her the same way. It's not like she did anything - she's the victim. Even if this is part of her dementia, it's real to her.
I was able to study, and watched a few recorded episodes of Dr. Maddow interrupted by throbbing headaches. I read the news; Dow was up (when I last looked), and so is the death toll of American soldiers in Afghanistan. A while back I read a book written shortly after the Civil War in 1910 about how the ruling class effectually exploited the working class to do their dirty deeds for them. Most wars are based on territory, authority, and religion - they're really wars between the ruling classes, but most aristocrats found they could easily persuade the working class to go to war for them with the empty promises of glory and honor, offering them meager benefits when many of the young working class could choose that, or a dreary career working in a factory or mine, or today Walmart or Starbucks.
When reading about different cultures, and I live in an individualist culture, but it's mostly understood that individuals still conform to their surroundings or the group they identify themselves with, even though many people move from group to group where those in a collectivist culture stay in one group. So it seems that it would stand that most members of an individualist culture are still somewhat collectivist. The same cannot be said vice versa.
I found an old friend who always filled me with new information and insight. An interesting character to say the least. We talked of philosophy mostly, which I always enjoy. I understood Plato much more in the period of an hour than in the past six weeks.
I had an interesting dream the other night. I had to have open lung surgery, that was performed while I was still concious. The surgeon used an electric saw to cut down the middle of my breast plate and remove my left rib cage. That's the part I remember most vividly. I thought why I dreamed about needing surgery on my lung was because I was worried that I was smoking too much, even though very low compared to some people. I thought the removal of the rib cage was very symbolical of Adam & Eve, and that pertained to my women's studies class. But maybe I'm wrong. Now maybe some reading before I "ride the wooden shoe."
"Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know." ~T.S. Eliot
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