With numerous health problems, I have difficulty with sleeping every night. One of the worst problems I have is nocturnal acid reflux. It makes me wake up in the middle of night with fire in my throat, like some sort of dyspeptic acid-spitting dragon. I have to vault out of bed, arthritis and all, and go toss the contents of my stomach into the toilet. Sorry to be so gross, but it is important to this theme to get a sense of just how bad it is to be on the wrong side. What do I mean by that? Well, I learned from a doctor recently that which side you lie on to sleep makes a big difference. If you sleep on your right side at night, your stomach is oriented in a way that the top opening angles down towards the esophagus. This leads to an unfortunate ooze of stomach acid that sets off the reflux crisis. If, however, you sleep on your left side, the stomach is angled in a manner that allows gravity to work for you instead of against you. I have been intentionally lying on my left side every night for a month. It works. No acid reflux. Until last night. But when I woke up gagging, I had unconsciously rolled onto my right side. So it has become obvious to me, the left side is the right side.
Life has to be in balance. But, unfortunately, it constantly shifts back and forth, up and down, and all around. Keeping life in balance is a juggling act that may involve lying only on your left side while you sleep.
I worry too about the balance affecting the world as a whole right now. We are very deeply mired in a time when political right and left are out of balance and have been for too long. In politics, the right is the conservative belief that things should remain the same. Since the Reagan administration, that has meant deregulating in the name of profits, free market capitalism, and letting Wall Street profit-makers do anything and everything they want to do to make higher profits. The left is in favor of change. When I was a kid, I can remember the left being a very bad thing. They wanted communist-style revolution. They robbed banks and blew things up. But most of those leftists are now dead. They still exist, but the far right is just as dangerous, the KKK, the militias, and they are far more numerous in this day and age. The leftist agenda now is more what used to be the moderate position. Senator Elizabeth Warren and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders want to re-regulate the Wall Street trends that caused the economic meltdown in 2008. They want to promote progressive tax systems that move the money out of corporate profit-funnels and back into the hands of the middle class, and the institutions that benefit them. There is a need to shift to the left. There is need to restore balance. Once again I think it is proper to say, the left side is the right side.
Catch a Falling Star 
Stupid Is as Stupid Does
This post is a reprint of the time I set out to become a nudist since I was retired and no longer had to fear what it would do to my career as a teacher.
This is not a tribute to Winston Groom and his famous creation, Forrest Gump. This is an admission that when I have had very little sleep and lots of worry lines on my brow, I often do remarkably stupid things.
And sometimes, doing something monumentally stupid makes me feel better. You know, more a part of the stupid, meaningless, and goofy world around me. So, what stupid thing did I do? I joined a nudist organization’s website. Me, who freaks out when members of my own family happen to see me naked. And, you see, there is more to joining this organization than just signing up for some random thing on the internet where you get a lot of random emails. I had to submit nude photos of myself to be posted in community forums. And I may be able to write a blog for this website, which will mean taking some camping gear and actually going to the naturist club site near Dallas to experience the things I will be writing about… and probably making jokes about. But don’t be afraid of being subjected to the hideous torture of having to see me naked. In order to see any of that, you would have to join the organization yourself, and you are probably not as stupid as me. (But I am not telling you the name of the website anyway.)
This is a detail from an illustration based on Golding’s Lord of the Flies. But it is also a picture of me and a childhood friend from back in the skinny-dipping days, based on an old black-and-white photo.
You see, I have some real life experiences with nudists before this happened. I had a roommate in grad school who liked to go au naturel, and even was comfortable with me being in the room when his girlfriend was visiting. He was nude in the kitchen one time when my grandparents came to visit. It is a good thing my grandfather entered that room ahead of my grandmother. I also had a girlfriend in the eighties who had a sister living in the clothing-optional apartment complex in Austin, Texas. Every time we visited Austin, the city nearest where my parents lived, she would stay with her sister there and I would have to go in to fetch her whenever we had plans. Sometimes I was there just to visit. But always, since clothing was optional, I took that option. I did get used to being around naked people, though. I actually have nudist friends.
So, though I am not a nudist, I guess I already know a lot about how to be one. It is how I managed to stumble into this awkward arrangement.
I know I will never be able to get my wife to go along on this harrowing adventure. She refuses to even consider going nude in the house. She has to wear clothes to bed even though studies say that sleeping nude is good for you. I will be facing this basically naked and alone. And possible paid writing work will never make this worth it by itself.
But my photos are already posted and approved. My membership is a real thing. And I am not ready to shoot myself for this stupid decision. In fact, I will probably be less naked there than I have been here in this very blog where my every secret is laid bare and made fun of on a daily basis.
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Filed under battling depression, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, nudes, Paffooney, self pity, self portrait, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as bad decisions, comedy, humor, life, naturists and nudists, stupid stuff, stupidity, writing