Any way, I see you are giving up.
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It actually requires commensurate effort on your part, to the effort I put into writing all these comments in this thread over the past days.

You think you were rational (this is a common pattern of delusion and all addictions), but first of all agnostic was the same SJW (diversity devouring, power vacuum creating) religion you are following now. You've just adapted your desire for power vacuums to a God religion to make yourself feel more noble and honorable, but you actually ignore all the falsifiable facts. How rational is that?
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There is no logic involved in your decision other than finding a way to continue the SJW indoctrination that you were mind controlled and enslaved with in your formative years of SJW education. You haven't responded to any of the falsifiable facts.

The following two (relatively) short videos may be of interest regarding previous discussion:
The moral argument for God
Why Does God Allow Evil?

Certainly you can't argue that people are choosing God religion based on a rational, independent assessment.
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I have accurately conveyed the concepts. But unfortunately I can't force someone to comprehend what is written.

I'm defining it more broadly as a inability to effectively have freewill due to a loss of independent control over one's choices.

Making choices which do not achieve premeditated goals is not a causal (and thus not an independent) relationship and the person is not in control. Making choices which achieve goals, but those goals were coerced or driven by mind control is not being in control. By control, I mean in an entropy equation, where the potential outcomes are independent.

I am choosing to use the term slavery, because SJWs abuse the term to incorrectly claim that they have achieved the elimination of slavery.

As I already stated, your apparent bias to want to frame everything in terms of the importance of non-existent absolutely true morals (from my perspective my opinion that is a manifestation of your lack of freewill because you are enslaved in God religion delusion), leads you to put entries on the table which I assert are irrational, incorrect, and myopic.
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How many times have I told you both publicly and in private messages that top-down control doesn't mean there is only one top authority. A diversification of cults each with their own top-down control, is consistent. Never do we have in the universe a falsifiable example of a single top-down authority for any phenomenon. Even you noted that religions are not all the same.
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Afaics, the only absolute and thus noble goal is to adapt to maximize the increase in entropy in the universe.

On February 7, at the University of Georgetown, Jonathan A.C. Brown, the director of the entirely impartial Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, gave a 90-minute talk entitled "Islam and the Problem of Slavery". Except that the white convert to Islam, Jonathan Brown, apparently did not think that there is a particular problem with slavery -- at least not when it comes wrapped in Islam. During the talk (which Brown himself subsequently uploaded onto YouTube) the lecturer condemned slavery when it took place historically in America, Britain and other Western countries, but praised the practice of slavery in Muslim societies. Brown explained how Muslim slaves lived "a pretty good life", claimed that they were protected by "sharia" and claimed that it is "not immoral for one human to own another human." Regarding the vexed matter of whether it is right or wrong to have sex with one of your slaves, Brown said that "consent isn't necessary for lawful sex" and that marital rape is not a legitimate concept within Islam. Concepts such as "autonomy" and "consent", in the view of the Director of the Alwaleed Center at Georgetown, turned out to be Western "obsessions".

Of course, Jonathan Brown's views on Islam are by no means uncommon. One could easily demonstrate that they are all too common among experts in Islamic jurisprudence. Among such people, debates over where and when you can own a slave and what you can or cannot do with them are quite up to the minute, rather than Middle Ages, discussions to have. But until this moment, there have been no protests at Georgetown University. Under a certain amount of online pressure, from the few websites to have reported Brown's talk, Brown has attempted to clarify or even reverse some of his views. But no mob of anti-sharia people has gone to Georgetown, torn up telephone poles, set fire to things or smashed up the campus, as mobs did at Berkeley.

Note how all the Stages on CoinCube's table (as edited as I proposed) all have a form of slavery.
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Submitting to an authority can be horrifically evil. I think if we aren't horrified with our own evil, then we are probably not close to seeking wisdom.
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It as if we humans can't accept our human nature. I think we are embarrassed by what we are. We want to be something we are not, some march to noble virtues. I guess we don't want to think of ourselves as animals with primitive instincts.
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Religion and local culture exist to organize the relatives and tribe that fit within the Dunbar limit. In short, top-down versus bottom-up organization.

I advocate a magnificent world of abundant diversity; whereas, you implicitly support a monolithic mayonnaise that smothers everything and turns us all into xerox copy, Facebook, McFat, SJWs lies regurgitating mind controlled zombies. I don't want to live in your dying top-down driven enslavement high economies-of-scale, corporate-fascist, power vacuum, industrial age strip mall hell heaven.

When you use the God religion to attempt to repress your women and mind control them into not defecting from the optimum life strategy, that is not conceptually different from an enslavement perspective than any other cultural strategy that accomplishes the same goal.

The pot calling the kettle black. Hypocrite.

What is the difference between a shidduch and a date?

Well for one, tachlis, the end goal, makes the difference. In a date the end goal is a good time with some one nice, whereas in a shidduch, the end goal is a quality marital partner. With these two diverse goals we can begin to understand the high marital success rate for a shidduch and the low rate for a date.

In a date, generally a place of entertainment is chosen and an event is enjoyed together. Interspersed between the entertainment is some conversation, perhaps about the source of entertainment, perhaps about other more personal topics. In a shidduch, a neutral place (which is not a place of entertainment) is selected, and the conversation is the main focus. Each side asks questions about the other, and shares their feelings and opinions openly so that the other side can understand their character, their desires and their direction.

A date often is a romantic interlude that comes to its conclusion with some hugging and kissing, perhaps more, perhaps less. A shidduch is a hands-free event, for the schmuching (hugging and kissing) would cloud the purpose of the event, the proper evaluation of the other. Emotional involvement is only granted after the other person has been properly seen as worthy of a life time mate.

A date starts with a chance meeting, followed up by a proposal to go out together. A shidduch starts with a proposal by a third party (the shadchan male or shadchanit female) and develops after a careful investigation of the character and integrity by both parties of the other sides. Both sides refer back to the shadchan with their findings. If they are both interested, then a meeting is made. If, however, one of the parties feels that this is not for them, then the relationship does not even begin and no hard feelings are made.

Even if the couple sees each other several times and then one side decides that the other is not for them, then it is the job of the shadchan to tell the other side. The shadchan generally says that the other side feels that this person is a very nice person but not the one for them. No hard feelings or depression is caused since each side knows that the purpose of the meetings were to assess the possibility of a marriage. With dating, hard feelings can be generated if there has been some emotional involvement and then one side wants to terminate the relationship. This generally leaves the other side feeling rejected and depressed.

Perhaps one of the most important points which contribute to the success of the "brokered" marriage is the fact that the couple keeps their hands off the other. This is not always easy, but the dividends, are overwhelming. Sex before marriage, including hugging and kissing, can cause emotional attachments before the partner has been certified as worthy and appropriate by the mind.

Sex comes together with the marriage. In the confines of marriage it is a positive thing, but before marriage it can destroy a person. The freedom of the western society has brought much material wealth, but in terms of personal pleasure, has brought much sadness and loneliness.

When material goods make a person happy, then his happiness is dependent on his ability to generate more and more material goods. When his happiness is based on building a happy loving family, then the materialistic society becomes an obstacle and a hindrance.

In all, thinking youth are realizing that the road to a proper marriage and happy life is not like a commodity purchased in a store. Entanglements cause emotional scarring and unhappiness. A person that is happy with his/her mate, is a person that has much going for them. To make a wise choice, learn from the wise, not from the mistakes of others.

You implicitly demand that my female children not be denied exposure to certain "rights" else I am not allowed to live in "your" society. What happened to my society and my choice? In other words, you demand I invest for at least 18 years in my children and have all the repercussions+liability for how my children behave and perform, but you don't give me the control to decide what I think it best for my children. This is why fathers are defecting and allowing the State to raise their children, even if they are still around by implicitly allowing their kids to attend State (and even SJWs infected private) schools.

What I am driving at here is that your so called universal "rights" are actually allowing the camel's nose under opening in the bottom of the tent to enable the total annihilation of my culture and infect+overwhelm it with the culture of the State and SJWs. This is the insideous Marxist demoralization strategy. This is a slippery slope which slides all the way to the Frankenstein outcomes such as where both men and women defect from the optimum life strategies and society collapses.

You refuse to acknowledge that JAD is correct where he wrote:
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Here I will quote it for you:

So feel free to have your God religion, but please keep it to yourselves lest we find ourselves competing over our respective differences in philosophy. Are we really at the point where we need to annihilate the other in order to be free to practice our own?

Again what pisses me off are those who do not respect the right of others to have their own personal power and strategy. Those people who think the know what is best for everyone else's children.

The work of Menelaos Apostolou, a young Assistant Professor from Nicosia University in Cyprus - collected and explored in this recent book, turns-out to be the most significant 'paradigm shift' in the evolutionary psychology of sex since the modern field began in 1979 with Don Symons The evolution of human sexuality.

Apostolou's work means that this whole area of work - many thousands of papers and scores of best-selling books (not to mention the theoretical basis of the online Manosphere and PUA movement) - now need to be reframed within a new explanatory context.

In a nutshell, and with exhaustive documentation and rigorous argument, Apostolou establishes that parental choice is primary in human evolutionary history: for many hundreds of generations of our ancestors it was primarily parents who chose and controlled who their children would marry and reproduce-with; and the individual sexual preferences of both men and women were relegated to a secondary role.

This means that it was mainly parent choice that shaped human mating preferences - and personal choice would have been relegated to a subordinate role within and after marriage (e.g. infidelity choices; and the choice to end marriage - e.g. when to divorce).

Most of this book is taken up by the collection and discussion of a mass of empirical data - hundreds of references, and the detailed working-through of the implications; but the take home message is relatively simple and clear.

Apostolou shows that in most societies in human history, and continuing in most modern societies outside of The West, individual men and women had very little choice of their mates - and that this choice was nearly always made by their parents. In other words, marriages were arranged by the parents of the husband and wife - especially the daughter's marriage, and usually by their fathers more than their mothers.

Parents preferences for a marriage partner differ from those of their offspring. In general, parents (relatively to their children, especially daughter) prefer delaying sexual relationships until an early marriage with early onset of child-bearing and little or no extra-marital sex. And parents have been generally hostile to divorce.

The characteristics parents prefer (compared with individual preferences) include good character, ability to provide resources (especially men), coming from a 'good family' - with high status and wealth, and pre-marital chastity (especially in women).

The characteristics individuals prefer (compared with their parents) include beauty and good looks (hair, face, figure etc. in a woman; muscular physique in a man), a charming and entertaining personality, the ability to provide sexual excitement and so on.

The system of parental sexual choice seems to be unique to humans - which makes it a matter of exceptional biological interest: we may be the only species that has not evolved to choose our own mates.

More exactly, the ancestral system was probably (to simplify) that two sets of parents controlled who thier children married - the individual preferences of the prospective husband and wife may or may not have been consulted. Individual choice was probably important mostly after marriage - since there was the possibility of extra-marital liaisons (although Apostolou documents that these were extremely risky, and generally very harshly punished, up to and including death - especially for women).

But all the ancestral societies permitted divorce (while strongly discouraging it - since this undermined parental decisions) - although mainly in a context where one of the spouses turned out to be unsatisfactory from the point of view of providing grandchildren (eg. men who did not provide sufficient resources - due to their behaviour or from illness or injury, or women who were barren). Probably since women are more controlled in arranging marriage, it is mainly women who initiate divorces.

Apostolou summarizes this as: Parents decide who gets married, children decide whether they stay married.

Another way of describing this is that parents screen or filter prospective spouses - and individual preferences only work within this pre-screened and filtered population. Consequently, modern men and women are not adapted to select a partner from an unscreened population - and not equipped with the proper instincts to assist their choice; so they are vulnerable to deception and exploitation.

Therefore human evolutionary history has left modern individuals, in a world where parental choice and control has been all-but eliminated from mainstream life, woefully ill-equipped to manage their sexual lives.

This affects both men and women adversely - but in partly different ways. men and women share a common problem of not being worried-enoughabout the problem of finding suitable long-term mates, marrying and having children - precisely because this whole business was managed for them by parents through hundreds of preceding human generations.

Women delay and delay marriage and child-bearing, and seem unconcerned about their genetic extinction - because their deep inbuilt expectation is that these matters will be arranged for-them. men worry too much about attaining high status among men, and becoming a good provider - when these were selected for in a world where prospective in-laws wanted these attributes from men; but in the modern world they are an ineffectual strategy for getting a mate.
In sum (and in terms of their biological fitness) modern men are too worried about working hard, and not worried enough about meeting and impressing individual women.

So men and women who are apparently, in biological and historical terms, extremely well-qualified as potential husbands and wives, remain unmarried and childless in large and increasing numbers.

Modern single people therefore are much too happy about their living in a state of unattached childlessness, than is good for their reproductive success. And this (biologically) foolish happiness is at least partly a consequence of evolutionary history: people are behaving as if mating and marriage will be sorted-out by parents - but it isn't.

However, as is usual in works of evolutionary psychology - in a subject where the professionals are almost 100 percent atheists (and militant atheists at that!), in this book there is a too brief and conceptually inadequate consideration of the role of religion.

The subject gets about three pages, and religion is treated as merely a trumped-up rationalization for enforcing biological imperatives. However, it is not mentioned that in modern societies it is only among the religious that we can find biologically viable patterns of mating, marriage and family - and indeed only among some particular religions that are traditionalist in ethics and patriarchal in structure: which fits exactly with the evolutionary predictions.

My point is that religion needs to be regarded as a cause, not merely a consequence, of sexual behaviour and selection pressure; in sum, religion (more exactly, some specific religions) is the only known antidote to the pattern of maladaptive modern sexuality which is trending towards extinction.

Another omission is the role of intoxication by alcohol and drugs. Much of modern sexual behaviour is initiated in parties, bars and nightclubs; and occurs more-or-less under the influence of intoxicants - and this in itself deranges delicate brain functioning and destroys the benefits of behavioural adaptations that may have taken centuries or millennia to evolve.

An intoxicated person is maladaptive.

So, from a biological perspective, I would contend that there is no reason to suppose we can solve the biological problems of modernity outwith religion (especially since the social system of religion has in practice been replaced by... the mass media - see my book Addicted to Distraction). Biological knowledge can diagnose the problem - but science cannot provide a solution nor the motivation to implement it; since humans are not evolved to structure their sexuality according to biological principles.

We are 'set-up' to seek our own gratification and try to avoid suffering with reproductive success as a by-product - we do not seek directly to achieve optimal personal/ or tribal/ or national/ or species-level reproductive fitness.

Such omissions and other imperfections do not detract from the exceptional originality and importance of this book and the empirical research and theoretical discussion which it summarizes.

In a world where actual scientific achievement was the primary determinant of professional success; Menelaos Apostolou would be among the most prestigious, most cited, and most intellectually influential people in evolutionary psychology.

I hope that this deserved outcome will, sooner or later, come to pass.

Married couples who attend church services together are more likely to live longer, are less likely to be depressed, and less likely to get divorced, according to a new study conducted by a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The study, titled "Religion and Health: A Synthesis," conducted by Tyler J. VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, noted that religious service attendance is connected to "better health outcomes, including longer life, lower incidence of depression, and less suicide," the Institute for Family Studies noted on Tuesday.

Married couples who attend religious services are 30 to 50 percent less likely to get divorced than those who do not, the study asserts. Such couples are also nearly 30 percent less likely to be depressed and, over a 16-year follow-up period, were shown to have significantly lower risk of dying.

Digging to the full report:


And additionally note that even though my X generation has improved the relative ratios for marriage between educated and non-educated (which I've hypothesized is a temporal reactionary aberration, and no data has been offered to refute my hypothesis), our rate of marriage is still much less than it was for non-educated before 1950, so this supports my point that we are losing the cultural war.

Apparently you did not read the entire page carefully and look at the cited reference.

More damned facts:

(Various links from blogger James Donaldson)

Highly educated women get married less, get divorced more, and have fewer children than less educated women.

When Hunter S. Thompson was 22 years old, he was contacted by a friend looking for advice on the meaning of life. His response was bizarrely profound, especially for his age, packing the punch of a heavyweight philosopher or seasoned-author... This letter was written April 1958:


April 22, 1958
57 Perry Street
New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles … ” (Shakespeare)

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?

The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “God only knows” purely as an expression.) There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “existentialism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try something called “Being and Nothingness” by Jean-Paul Sartre, and another little thing called “Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre.” These are merely suggestions. If you’re genuinely satisfied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleeping dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires — including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life — the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN — and here is the essence of all I’ve said — you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Naturally, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn’t any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know — is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writing a book. I hope it’s not as confusing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of looking at things. I happen to think that it’s pretty generally applicable, but you may not. Each of us has to create our own credo — this merely happens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that — no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,
Hunter

"Never solve a problem from its original perspective." - Charles Thompson

Framing is a mental structure that is built upon the beliefs you have about yourself, your roles, your circumstances, and about other people. It is a structure you use to ascribe meaning to given circumstances. In other words, the meaning you ascribe to any event is dependent upon how you frame it in your mind. As such, your frames shape how you see the world, how you see yourself, how you view others, and how you interpret your life.

Frames can be of a positive or of a negative nature; they can also be within your control or out of your control. As such, they are either helpful within the context you are using them, or they are unhelpful. They either expand your opportunities and the possibilities of the situation, or they limit your options moving forward. They are therefore appropriate or inappropriate, good or bad depending on the objectives you have in mind.

When you decide to work on a project you set a scope or frame for that project so that everyone knows what is included and excluded. Everyone understands what is required to get the job done successfully and what they therefore need to focus on in order to get their part of the project completed. In the same way, the frames you use on a daily basis provide a context for your thoughts, decisions, attitudes and actions. They help guide the direction of your thoughts to help you accomplish your desired outcomes. Thusly, your actions are guided by how you frame events and circumstances; and how you frame things is dependent upon your preferences, attitudes and biases.
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The frames of reference you use collaborate with your beliefs and values. You will therefore frame things in a certain way that corresponds with what you believe and value most in life — irrelevant of whether your beliefs are helpful or unhelpful. This basically means that every frame you make is linked to an underlying belief and/or assumption that is implied by your thoughts. In this way your frames provide you with a context in which you can assess your progress. This is helpful, but at the same time can be unhelpful. It is helpful because it allows you to unlock new opportunities and explore other possibilities that might be advantageous. However, it is unhelpful if your frames are built upon your limiting belief systems. In such instances — and without much objective thought — you might unconsciously be setting boundaries and putting limitations on yourself regarding what you can or can’t do; and this therefore limits your perspective, opportunities and the possibilities that lay before you.

There are as many versions of reality as there are living room windows.
From the comfortable folds in the couches of our brains,
We stare out at the world and interpret the shapes that filter through our panes.

One day, I had an out-of-house experience.
I floated out of my frame of reference into the great beyond.
I had no idea where I was going and my level of control was negligible.
A strange house swam into my peripherals and my system got quite nervous.
It had the markings of a house but was somehow altogether different.
Music was leaking through its seams to the tune of Shostakovich.
A crescendo came and warped its frame and all the panes around it.
I peered through the window into a room that was very much alive.
At first, I saw a dancer twirling around the room to the timing of the tunes.
But then I realized the room was twirling around the dancer and the tunes were playing to her.
She leapt across the room and the walls bent towards her with the deep sound of an oboe.
Her pirouette sent the chandelier spinning with the twinkling of a flute.
A graceful wrist caressed the air and played a sorrowful bar of violin.
The house bent, warped, and swayed as did my frame of reference.

I looked around and realized there were houses all around me.
I flew up to a neighboring window and excitedly gazed in.
A man was pacing and tracing a figure 8 into his living room floor.
He was deep in thought and shallow in socks as all his pacing had worn through his soles.
With a quick “POP-POP” he would disappear for a second or a year then suddenly reappear.
Sometimes he looked older, sometimes he looked younger, sometimes he looked lost, sometimes he looked found.
The only constant was the figure on the floor that bore the tracings of his pacings he left behind as he figured himself into infinity.

Through the neighborhood I floated until a titillating scent tickled the tendrils in my nostrils.
I peered through the window where the smell was smelling from.
A woman with long, dark hair was stirring a bubbling cauldron hanging in the fireplace.
There were haggardly creatures of all shapes and sizes lined up for a dolling of the potion.
Their bowls were as empty as their hearts that hung from drooping frames and outstretched hands.
The woman whispered a spell upon each creature with the lilting of her ladle.
I spotted the ingredients of the potion on the cutting board.
They were beetroots, celery, and mushrooms.
I leaned in close to hear the spell and heard the woman say,
“It’s perfectly okay to feel the way you do, so go ahead and feel it through and through."

I floated back through town and back through my own window frame of reference into the nodes of my own abode.
I sat in the grey folds of my corduroy couch and stared out of my window.
Something about the pane had changed.
The shapes that filtered through were now a bit more wobbly.