Yesterday I visited Sharen as planned. It had been fourteen days since I dropped by, just after my trip. Now is was the river flood that interrupted the intended weekly visits. We sat out in the courtyard, where we shared an orange I’d brought. Conversation relating to external events has become difficult, but Sharen’s remarks are still there.

When we were talking about her age, her being so old and what she is still good for, she remarked: “I have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel!” But, underneath such remarks, the earlier question remains. I also said hello to Adele, who now is in a private room (+40$$ daily) after two years of waiting. She too asks why she lives on in her diminished and for her painful state.

Such questions are not answered easily in an honest and non rationalising manner, but the question does imply that one must do or produce something, while one lives. Maybe we should consider that a person is given time to prepare for leaving this biological state, reviewing one's life from the perch of old age.

Secondly, it is also a process that adds to the human experience, even though it is not desirable in our eyes. And thirdly, it forces society as a community to confront the diminishment of the human state and act on that, in the sense that people should be able to qualify for a license to die, once they are older than say 81 years of age, combined with some other criteria.

I also was able to get my bank card revalidated and made my insurance payment. I also looked at my financial situation, which has become a bit more tight due to my trip and some medical expenses. My leg is much better and I can now walk about a six block distance. I also carried my groceries home last Tuesday, a first since last January.

I will have to be careful with my dollars though, if I want to support Derrick some in his full time summer studies for July and August. “As time goes, counsel comes” says a transliterated Dutch saying of “Komt tijd, komt raad”.

When in Victoria, I bought “The Red Book - A Reader’s Edition”, edited by Sonu Shamdasani, 2009 at Munro’s Books on Government street. I finished reading the editor’s one hundred page informative introduction and Jung’s Liber Primus part of another one hundred pages. I made extensive notes in order to countermand the effect of the missing index.

The reading of these two sections I found fascinating. However, much to my surprise the tone of the next two, Liber Secundus and Scrutinies appear dull to me. It is as if these two following parts go over the same grounds already covered in Liber Primus and merely ruminate more elaborately what was stated more concisely before.
I will have to give it a more systematic evaluation and overcome my initial disappointment about the remaining four hundred pages! So, the jury is still out, but it is deliberating!
<8:31am~