Click images for desktop size: "Rossetti and Dunton" by Dunn Not feeling well today. Whatever I think is wrong I've decided is wrong inside of me.
I'm to see the doctor on April 20th. Have to bring along all my numbers, my health diary.
Its obvious somethings wrong. After doing the lite exercise of working out the pain in my shoulder, Stretch it to the point where the pain just is about to start, then hold it for a count of 10 - repeat; trotting around the yard my blood pressure was 195 over 108. At the oral surgeons on Tuesday it was 180 over 90. Waking up its around 155 over 90.

Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Unknown A year or so ago it never got above 130 over 70.
A year seems rapid to me. A rapid change.
I'm trying to resist self treatment. Diet is easy and obvious. Cut out sodium etc. I get twitched because I keep remembering the oncology team saying that it was important that I keep my blood pressure low, like my opthamologist was always telling me my eyes would do better if I kept my sugars at near hyperglycemic levels. Truths we hold to be self evident stuff.
My blood sugars are okay but not near the low levels I was keeping them at. Sometimes I think I'd do better if I would just get overwhelmed. Let panic take me someplace.
At least I can still laugh and think.
The giant dog has gone to work with my friend. The crazy thing jumped about four feet up in the air on his way to the car, he was so excited.
Inside my puppy let loose the saddest coyote/wolf howl I've ever heard from her. Its what prompted
Click images for desktop size: "Emotion Machine" by Unknown my trotting around the yard with her and gentle dog. My puppy gets the Kong. I chase her. Gentle dog latches on to my wrist and tries to keep me from catching her.
It must be a great game to them. They want to play it all the time.
It will be funny walking the two sane dogs. Easier on me but the giant dog's intent insanity sure makes every one of our expeditions a memorable adventure!
My mind may be wrapped up in morbidity but I can still think.
I've been watching a TV series. A Japanese TV series: The Mute Samurai. The first episode was entitled "The Man Who Lost The Ability to Sing" which is pretty RAH when you think about it.
What attracted me to it was the star, Tomisaburo Wakayama, of "Lone Wolf and Cub". Wakayama's brother Shintaro Katsu, Zatoichi, makes appearances. Hideo Gosha wrote the story! When I saw that a few episodes were directed by Misumi Kenji, it became must see stuff.
I'm watching them in order. They're pretty standard TV fair. I'm not keen on the pacing. The plot is that Kiichi's father was an honest judge in Nagasaki. He refused to turn a blind eye to the foreigners illegal drug smuggling so the foreigners killed him, his wife and slashed Kiichi's throat and left him to die so he could watch the foreigner's rape his fiancee.
Lots of reason for hopeless rage there.
Kiichi spends the show as a bounty hunter. He lives off the money but mainly is searching for criminals who can lead him to the foreigners. When the show picks up he's been on the quest for 18 years!!
He's become a deadly swordsman who's only fear is that the foreigners might have left Japan before he can kill them!
The humour of the stories comes from Kiichi's discovery that he only gets half as much money for bringing in the criminals dead. That and people making fun of the strong samurai that cannot speak. This is a tough show. In the first five minutes there's a graphic decapitation.
Misumi directs the third episode. It fit in to the series canon but because it's Misumi it takes an odder slant.
There are ideas that flow through all of Misumi's films. That's one of the requirements to be considered an "auteur". One of the most telling is his depiction of society and its relationship to his swordsmen. Society becomes a dense but single character in his films.
In this short film (which is what most of these TV episodes come across as) his concept of society gets clearer than ever before.

Click images for desktop size: "John Kennedy" Society and the people in it are vile, frightened contemptible things. Why shouldn't they be. Any hint of heroism from one of its part leads it to being rejected and destroyed by the society that protects itself above all else. Self preservation rules the vast majority. It is all they have.
And due to the low cruel lives they are forced into it is the superior man's instinctual need to love these people. To protect them and enable them to perhaps grow into something more than the miserable thing they are condemned to be.
And the superior man does this while not living amongst them, not ever letting them touch him lest they contaminate the purity of his love with their sodden reality.
Society's only touch of humanity comes from the women who maybe just as rough as their men but they have samurai's strength in their hearts. They are not afraid to show gratitude and realize their is pride in humility.
It would seem that this grim view of the world is essential to the power of Misumi's imagery. It forces him to construct his "fleur de mal" images of gore and beauty.
A world where the only thing worth loving is contemptible and represents dirt that you would never allow to taint your own soul is a tough place to live. That Misumi's heroes thrive in this world without regret and that they never let their love for their common man become infused with pity presents an image unlike any I've encountered in classical or existentialist literature. I guess it only works if you've got a heavy sword and the emotional where with all to calmly slay dozens at a pitch.
I'm going to take my pair of dogs out to explore a world that's not tinged with madness. I like walking all three of them. I always figure people see us and point while thinking to themselves, "There goes the luckiest man in the world."