War and Play and my Black Jeans

It’s been a head spinning week starting with a lecture here at the continuum care complex that was---well, very complex and totally over my head. It was presented by a woman whose field of expertise is the Holy Lands and she’s spent a lot of time in that area of the world. It was titled: Understanding the War. I went away from it being nearly---if not more---confused than I was before. As one of my fellow residents said, “She assumed too much about our basic knowledgeable of the region and used a lot of words that aren’t in most people’s vocabulary.” I went into the lecture hoping to learn exactly what it means when people say they believe in a two state solution. I was under the (apparently false) impression that the two proposed states would be like our states under an umbrella of united states that formed one country. But, no. The two groups would be living intermingled but with separate religions and governing bodies---this assumes I understood the lecturer correctly.

In the speaker's opinion a two state solution won’t word because they have too long of a history of fighting with each other, with each side having valid claims over the territory. And as much as I really want to understand that conflict I could have easily fallen asleep in the first three-quarters of her lecture because she started around 3,500 years B.C. and went through ALL the conquers and surrenders from that time frame to the present time. 

Beware of a Rant Starting Here: 

Cynical and naive me, at one point I was thinking, Why can’t they just let the past go and start where they’re at? Clean slate; no religions nor scores to settle from ancient history of any kind to muddy things up. I just don’t get holding century-long grudges against people you never met. The blacks in this country have---for the most part (70%?)---let go of their collective grudges born in the slave era in the name of co-existing. How many more centuries is the Holy Land region going to fight over whose religion is "best" and who is the most entitled to live there? Wouldn’t it bring harmony faster if we quit worshiping the person/s credited with bringing us our value systems and just concentrate on living up to those values? I contend, for example, that The Ten Commandments, that are held up as the word of God SHOULD be held up and valued because they are the moral foundation for Judaism, Christianity and Islam---a logical way to live in peace---and NOT because they supposedly came straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, via way of different messengers. I could care less where they came from. It’s the message, stupid, not the messengers who went around spreading and planting the seeds that would become our major religions that are the important part. Forget the spin that has been added to the Word since biblical times; Get back to the basics, find those long-ago common values and take it from there. Compromise. It's not a bad word.

Rant off.

The next day was my play day on steroids. I designed and taught the first of a three part clinic on how to play mahjong. (And after that hour and a half classs was over I played the game for two more hours.) I had on my Mahjong University sweatshirt and my packet of hand-outs and I so prepared it wasn’t funny. As I said in an earlier post my co-teacher and I were shocked by how many people want to learn…a total of eleven people! We cut the sign-up off at six with five on a waiting list for the next time we teach. Halfway through our first session my co-teacher came over to my table of students to whispered, “Never again!” She didn’t really mean it. We both know that if we don’t grow the present group of players, the club will peter out, not just from people in a senior complex dying but someone is always going to a second home up north in the summers or down south for the winter. Some days we can only fill one table and other times we can fill three tables.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with this ancient game from the orient it was introduced to America in 1920 and it’s a gin rummy-like game played with 152 tiles that combines luck, skill and strategy. Every year the National Mah Jongg League puts out a new card listing over 60 winning combinations of tiles and who ever builds their hand first as the tiles are passed around, drawn and discarded wins the game. I love it because the more you learn about playing and its history the more there is to learn. And nearly all the action goes counter-clock-wise which makes your old head work in a brain-cell building way you don’t get from games designed in our part of the world. I love studying the old game sets as art and antiques and I love following the mahjong Facebook groups. I love everything about mahjong and guess what, I just bought my very own set and a tee shirt that says, “I don’t always talk about Mahjong…oh wait! Yes, I do.” Can’t wait to wear that shirt but I’ll have to wait until it gets a little warmer.

For me, I’d like to stay in my winter wardrobe another month or more. I’ve been trying to lose weight and it’s going slow…only down six pounds in a month. But it’s enough to make my clothes feel more comfortable. Hopefully when I can get out to walk more I can lose at a faster pace. I am, however, proud that I’ve been consistently making better food choices. I hate being fat but its been more than a few decades since I’ve been ‘normal’ that I wouldn’t know how to act. Hopefully not like an old friend from my other life who daily posts photos of her body, her face, her meals, her hair or toenails on Facebook a couple of times a day.

Actually, my goal isn’t to get that far down on the scales that I'd be normal sized again, but I’d like to drop a size and a half. I’m right in between two sizes and nothing looks good on me. My friend mentioned above who has lost 50 pounds would go every few weeks to Goodwill to drop off a batch of clothing that got too big and to buy some new things from them. I couldn’t do that. What if I gained the weight back and couldn’t afford to buy new stuff? It’s not like Goodwill and other thrift shops have a glut of queen size clothing on their racks. Anyway, I have a brand new pair of black jeans that I'd lusted after for years that I couldn’t zip up a month ago. Now I can get it the zipper half way up. I plan to be able to zip them fully in another month. Wish me luck.

Until next Wednesday. ©

 P.S. The map above is the same one the lecturer used during her lecture.