A leaf for the turning?

Many things are happening...

Our apartment building has been sold to the Devil.  Today he walks through.

I tried to work less this week in preparation for our trip.  I ended up with an extra shift.

We leave on Saturday for the other side of the world.  I think I'm ready.

My father has no end to complaints on nearly every aspect of his life.  I may give him a call.

My brother and his wife are with child again.  Hopefully it goes well this time.

Should I bring The Quartzsite Trip to Ecuador, or the Bhagavad Gita?  A few hours will tell me the answer.

Math

The total number of days until we leave for Ecuador is now less than the total amount of days we will be spending in Ecuador.

Salamanders

Gearing up for my upcoming trip to Ecuador has had me beginning a pharmaceutical program of taking the anti-malarial drug Larium.  This drug has many interesting side effects.  Rapid and vivid dreaming is one of them.  I must have had 1,000 dreams last night.  I struggle to remember my dreams.  This is one exception:

There were four of us.  We were humanoid but never human.  We were neither man nor woman, simply Man.

The Earth was a primordial sphere of pristine water and coral-like black rock.

We each set out in different opposing directions.  Our intentions were not discussed or known.

I went East.  The others went North, South, and West.

Arriving at East, I made a dock.  There was no construction.  I needed there to be a dock, so after a short while there was one.

Standing back to admire my dock I saw approximately twenty smaller humanoids working baskets and crates around.  They were dock workers.  Though a dock typically lies on the threshold between water and land, ours was completely water.  A water that you could be in, where the docks separated the other water.  I had accomplished what I knew not what I set out to do.

Then the giant salamanders came.

Pangaeaically massive, they swam up from the depths.  They had tiny eyes that took up so little of their blunt heads, yet shined with infinite knowledge.

They were smiling.  Their smiles were both the effect of a salamander's skull shape and a joy for what I had created.

They had been waiting for untold aeons for me to come and make my port town.

Without saying a word yet staring directly at me, they began to flex their bodies.

Me and roughly half of my civilization instinctively clutched at the coral rocks with all our might, the other half ran off scared.

The giant salamanders began to quickly draw in oceanic volumes of water into their mouths.

Everything rushed around me, I could feel the water sucking past my skin and hair, the sharp rocks digging into my fingernails as I held on against the force.

I wasn't scared.  Those who were scared were sucked into the salamanders.  A few that were holding on were sucked into the salamanders as well.

After a short while the salamanders ceased, smiled at me one more time, then slowly sank back down into the depths.

I and those that remained returned to our work on the dock.

Selfish Charity

I often times suspect selfish intentions in people who are overtly charitable.
Giving and giving all in the name of being known as a giver.  Any action we make puts our reputation at stake, great or small, good or bad.

It's not unlike being a warlord.
Killing and pillaging so that others fear your power.  Your actions directed by the final outcome of other people's opinion of you.  In the warlord's case you want others to tremble at your name.

The giver wants others to rejoice at their name, to be known as a good man.

Key word there is wants.

That is not to say that there aren't any truly charitable people out there.
I like to think they are living in hermitude and do great things for others without ever being detected.