Honestly I have never been fascinated by people in general.  My two deceased wives fascinated me as I marveled at their thinking.  This writing exercise brings up a part of me that has tentacles.  I remember someone saying to me that I only saw what I wanted to see in them.  Somehow that statement and this topic are related.

I am fascinated by two people, Hillary Clinton and her supporters.  I try to stay away from the news because besides being agenda driven it tends to be most incomplete.  Having been a journalist I do pay attention to headlines because I know the headline meetings and how they ran.

I noticed that the news media has shifted towards a less favorable presentation of Hillary.  If just one thing that is mentioned is true, just one, there lies a despicable person.

So how is this fascinating?  I wonder what she thinks about when she turns out the lights?  Does she plan a reversal of her position? Does she plan her next lie? Does she engage with a group who know her deceits?

And then her supporters.  How can anyone defend her actions, let alone her words?  Yet despite this people will vote for her.  The people who support her represent a disturbed American element.  Of this I am sure. But her thinking.  How can she say to thine own self be true?

Having written this I am going to make an effort to locate several people to be dby.  My being fascinated by the negative elements of Hillary places a form of self righteous arrogance on me.  So, I will seize this message to investigate further.

After all this is BETTERTTHNTHERAPY.

The catch to this one is the BUT.  Lot’s of places I have visited.  No foreign countries entice me however I have always thought of the solitude of norther California, possibly on the shore but willing to investigate the forested areas.  My interest piqued in reading several books that had this setting as well as a colleague who lives there.

It makes no difference because I could afford it or anyplace but where I live now.

This topic requires much thought, writing skill and insight.  A fact is irrefutable by logic, a truth can be reasoned.  So I am given the task of writing a fact, ten facts that would be interesting.

The analytic branch of psychology says that there are three people in each of us; the person we think we are (truth), the person others see (truth) and the person we really are (fact).  The closer these three align the better adjusted a person is.

Fact one.  I introspect events in my life.  I look at my motives, my desires and my ideas with a microscope. I believe that is the reason I say and see things different than most people.

Fact two.  I have the ability to look past the surface presentation a person displays.  As a result I believe (truth) that I can ascertain strengths and weaknesses in another and build my relationship on that skill.

Fact three.  I like dogs.  You could line up all the animals in the world and let me choose and I will choose a large dog.  Not interesting but factual.

Fact three.  I will always resort to logic (truth) when confronted with a problem.

Fact four.  Because of fact three I can make seemingly cold decisions.

Fact five.  I have difficulty in dealing with decisions devoid of logic.  If another makes a decision based on race, sex or whatever despite the evidence, that truly unnerves me.

Fact six, I had to reconcile being liked for being logical.

Fact seven. I find finding facts difficult.

Fact eight.  I find that men and women think and behave differently and as a result I am confused by the women’s right movement.

Fact nine,  I read the news media and ferret out the misinformation daily.  I actually have narrowed my view on material because I recognize the pattern of lagenda speech.

Fact ten.  I look at life and nature daily with awe, I just look at it factually.  That means no mysticism, no beliefs in things without proof, no expectations.

I wanted to say I like animals, I enjoy the company of others, I am brilliant and creative and I like so and so, but those would all be truths — my perception of me.

This existential exercise to the word meaning of fact has me wondering.

I will make the assumption that this excludes your mother because Mom heads that list.

My first love was Donna Sroka in the sixth grade at St. Francis Borgia grammar school.  I still remember her phone number and her street address to this day.

At the time I did not, still some denial, that she ran ahead of our age group.  She had high school suitors.  But I proved naively persistent and got my first kiss under her next door neighbor’s tree.  Unfortunately it was raining and I had just fallen out of it.

We attended different high schools and went separate ways.  My high school athletic fame reached the papers.  The church news and local papers brought her and her friend, Maureen Street, into my path.  I still had that little boy, wise guy, attitude and she had become serious.

After that brief encounter we never saw or spoke again.  I have searched FB and tried other methods but to no avail.  Besides, I suspect she is still too advanced for me.

As I think about that childhood romance, it was for me, I realize something that repeated itself even today.  When I like a girl, as in interested in a relationship, I have difficulty in talking to her.  I become withdrawn, not shy, but withdrawn.

I have two deceased wives who would have attested to my extremely cautious approach.  They each opened me up to them.

I think I will use that personality characteristic in my writings.  I first have to more fully describe it before I name it.  I am doing that right now.  I clam up around a woman of interest.  I use excuses for why she will reject me.  I argue with myself for not being more forward.  My female friends, whom I like, all know of her and my behavior.  I thought it was just high school.  This behavior gives credence to “old habits die hard.”

Memory is at the heart of my education as a neuropsychologist.  I enjoy hearing people telling me they can remember past lives and things in the womb.  That requires mystical elements and beliefs that stand outside my understanding.  Since the human brain had not yet developed the cells to form memory at birth, as the birth of a human, is always premature.  By premature I mean that the baby is expelled early because the human body cannot retain such a large head and shoulders to be expelled later.  So the first year is developing outside the womb that most other animals do inside the womb.

My first memory is at age four.  It enters into many of my dreams.  I am sitting at the kitchen table that is a swirl of white, gray and off white colors that are similar to a thin tile.  The material is like a hard linoleum.  A linoleum floor with red, black splotches on a gray background provide the base for the bright yellow walls of the kitchen.  The placement of the stove, sink and cupboards is etched in my memory.  This tablr pattern has those multiple  aluminum ridges that you saw in the 1950s drive ins.  I am staring out the window looking at Mrs. Ehrlich’s flowering lilac bush and asking my mother questions.  My mother is washing dishes in the sink and I am asking profound questions like, “Why is the sky blue?”  “Why don’t dogs talk?”

I receive answers that just now I realize set the tone for my life.  I ask questions, I do not remember the answers, but I sense your ability to tolerate me and my questions.  My mother was good at tolerating my questions.

Sorry.  No alien encounters, no past life memories, no trauma, no alcohol, no abuse.  Just a normal life that questions.