Human Rights and Legitimacy

I wanted to say something theoretical, briefly, because it vindicates my life's work (at least the last five years of it). I attended a human rights symposium yesterday at the university in honor of a departing professor. There were three speakers: one from the European Council of Human Rights, one from the prosecutor's office at the International Criminal Court (which America is doing all it can to derail, we are so forward thinking!), and finally the professor in whose honor the symposium was held. My issues are with the third speaker, and he was the only speaker that did not offer a Q&A after his lecture!

He addressed attacks on "universal human rights" from three different sources; international actors (states, i.e., the United States), religious groups, and philosophers. I will only deal with the third. The criticism laid out by philosophers goes as follows: in order for there to be "universal human rights" there must be some way that these rights can be said to have universal validity, or derive from something universal. The lecturer reduced this to a "search for universal essences."

I will take that for argument...they must derive from a universal source or themselves be universally valid. An example of a universally valid statement is the old logic example: "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal." This is a judgment that moves from the universal to the existential/particular...this is a logically valid step. What cannot be done in logic is move from the particular to the universal. Such a judgment lacks validity.

The lecturer conceded that the search for universal essence poses a problem to a conception of universal human rights protection, and then he went on to defend a universal conception of human rights on consensual or intuitionist grounds. "We can all agree on the protection of some human rights, like the right to be free from torture, right? So we can conceive of some kinds of universal human rights." This is a logical fallacy! You cannot derive the universal from the particular, and no matter how many people he includes in his "we can all" he is still dealing with an existential or particular set of people and not a universal set. This has been my problem for years, and it grows worse everyday as my study of Nietzsche makes "universal" look less like a mistake and more like a dishonest joke.

Now here is the problem. In a post-Nietzschean world, where, if anything, we must question the connection between our devices and their universal sources...maybe both...then how do you have a valid global human rights theory. We do not want human rights to be purely subjective or relativistic (for similar reasons intuitionism is not enough), but we cannot with a straight face give them universal validity. Can there be a middle ground? Theoretically, the answer is yes. The theoretical solution, I believe, is found in Immanuel Kant's 3rd Critique on aesthetic judgment and the subsequent work Arendt did to begin to move this theory of reflective judgment into the realm of political legitimacy.

Kant was trying to find something akin to universal validity in aesthetic judgments while acknowledging that aesthetic judgments deal with particulars. So he meets head-on the problem of moving from the particular to the general. This is the "reflective judgment," judgment which moves from reflection on the thing to its rule.

Kant gave a famous example of the problem of validity with aesthetic judgments and it goes as follows: "All roses are beautiful, this flower is a rose, hence this flower is beautiful." One can immediately see the problem with this judgment. Its simply not the case that "all roses are beautiful" so the judgment lacks a universal foundation to make a deductive judgment, one cannot make a "cognitive" judgment about aesthetic value. Yet, why is it that when we see a beautiful thing we feel as though others should share this feeling? We feel that our judgments are "communicable" and not merely private.

Ok, I have class and that is enough off the cuff discussion of Kant for one morning. The issue is clear in human rights theory...they have not been able to deal with their modernity problem yet. Human rights theory still believes it is part of some universally valid teleology even when it acknowledges that it is not. There is a good Nietzsche quote that refers to this kind of foolishness:

"What is dawning is the opposition of the world we revere and the world we live and are. So we can abolish either our reverence or ourselves. The latter constitutes nihilism."
F. Nietzsche

This quote is all-too-true about human rights theory, a worthy pursuit that is at risk of abolishing itself to save its reverence for universality and the upward teleology of the Enlightenment myth. I propose to abolish reverence, or I will abolish both and then we will really see nihilism!

American to the Core

I just spent over 45 minutes in a grocery store line waiting to buy a package of wheat crackers. This grocery store is the most inefficient and unpleasant place in the entire western world to shop, but I go there cause its close and cheap. Were I not so lazy I would go somewhere else, and that is a promise.

Today I am not really sure what was going on. Of course, there are five cashier's stations and they keep, at most, two open. Of these two, they are able to maintain only one in working order. In the meantime the other cashier is trying to solve some kind of problem, and this usually involves at least 15 minutes of wandering through the store in conjunction with a 5 minute smoke-break outside.

Now keep in mind that Danish "supermarkets" are about the size of American gas station markets so they are already difficult to move through. As the line backs up and weaves its way through the store's aisles, all two of them, it gets to be like moving in a phonebooth with 5 of your closest friends. This is intensified by the fact that many of the grocery stores have been closed for much of the last weekend due to Easter. Even the Danes need to supplement their five packs of cigarettes per day diet with a little bread from time to time.

So I am standing in this line with every fiber in my scrawny arms straining from the basket I decided to carry my one package of crackers in. People are bumping into me and pushing me into the candy stand. I begin to wonder if perhaps we can condense this mass of humanity into a small enough space and generate enough heat to fire up an internal combustion engine.

This is also the precise moment that one of the employees decides he wants to wheel out the 15 ft. high stack of shopping baskets that has developed. Of course, it falls over...mayhem ensues...and I swear to you that a women, zeroing in on a century-old, cuts in front of me. How she pulls this off I do not know because she looks to be buying about $400 worth of merchandise...not the kind of load a delicate elderly women slips past you. What next? You guessed it...her credit card doesn't work, and she doesn't have any money. She has to try to slide it repeatedly for a few minutes while this crack squad of commercial retailers that run this joint confer on how to deal with the latest crisis. The solution undoubtedly requires another cigarette break. Finally one employee, we will call him "brilliant," decides to open another register and begin ringing up the rest of the line.

While all this is unfolding I am quietly losing my mind because I realize that I have been waiting in this insanity for a $5 package containing 15 wheat crackers....I don't need the wheat crackers, and as one more punchline to the joke that is my life, I am sure these very crackers will give me another one of my wretched stomach-aches.

This is how you can be positive that America has thoroughly soaked into your second nature. I want something I don't need. I want a lot of it, a lot more than I can get. I want it for so cheap that it should have brought those who labor to produce it near the brink of starvation. I want enough space in the market where I am going to buy this thing that, were I so inclined, I could drive my gas-guzzling, overpriced, and unsafe SUV up and down the aisles. And finally, I want all of this to happen so fast that it both proves and disproves Einstein's theory of relativity simultaneously. A second or a penny too much makes me furious. I won't be bothered with voting in a local election, but God forbid I have to be inconvenienced when it comes to getting my luxuries!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to everyone.

The Anticlimax

I just wanted to inform my adoring fans that my friends from home have arrived so I am a bit preoccupied. It is altogether possible that over the next few days I will not be able to charm you with my endless wit, eloquence, wisdom and boyish good looks...all served up with a touch of humility of course. So keep your ear to the grindstone and have an abundance of faith! I shall soon return and flow forth like a river with tales of conquering the banal and overdramatizing the mundane. This has always been paced on my erratic schedule anyway, and what good is time kept by a man who does not own a watch or any clocks?

I am Trying!

This is my third attempt to write something today. There is nothing to say! My heater doesn't work again, but that is old hat by now. Its cold out, so what. Actually yesterday the weather was quite nice...sunny and warm. I am being quite liberal with "warm," by that I mean around 40. The silly Danes actually put out the outside tables and chairs at the cafe and some of these fools were sitting at them. They were all shivering and layered in clothing as they sucked down a combination of cigarettes and overpriced coffee or tea. I decided I would just go inside...I usually wait for the season before I get in the "spirit of the season." It may be spring now but in name only. When its between 65 and 70 and sunny then I will go outside...if it gets a degree over 70 then I am going to start complaining about the ungodly heat.

I had a pretty nice afternoon in the cafe with my $5 dollar green tea (and not worth a fifth of that) and my new book, Concepts of Modern Art. I finished Cubism yesterday and did Purism and Orphism...I was "ismed" out by the end of the day. My life has been a steady march of "isms" for the last 10 years...sometimes people use "ian" or "onic" as in "Artistotelian" or "Platonic." These are adjectives though and the "isms" are nouns..."ist" being their adjective form...you have to tag on a noun to use an "ian" or "onic" as the name of a school of thought..."Marxian Politics," etc...Timism is an amalgamation of Timian ideas that portray a Timist or Timonic view of the world. The following is a bit of colloquial witticism from the Timist school of philosophy.

After I left the cafe it became immediately apparent that I had imbibed way too much green tea...I needed a restroom and quick. In Norreport there are two classes of public restroom. The underground one where you pay some poor sap 2 kroner and he opens the door for you...he is like a bathroom gnome who lives underground and gives you a riddle...if you can answer it then you may proceed...if not, well then you are plum out of luck. The other class of Norreport public restroom is more common in Copenhagen at-large...they also have these in the south of France and Stockholm. This is the high-tech, everyman public bathroom where you put money into a glorified port-a-potty and the door slides open to reveal wonders beyond your wildest imagination.

It is this second public toilet that I turned to in this hour of most urgent need...mostly cause it was closest and didn't require running like a madman through Copenhagen's trendy commercial district. I think this one costs 2 kroner as well, but who knows...when you stoop to using a pay port-a-potty you are hardly in a state where mathematical reasoning is most precise. The situation often looks something like this:

You walk, very fast, toward the location...you try to decide if you should run, or maybe even slow down. You ask yourself...if I move fast is it going to cause my body to speed up generally, perhaps causing the unspeakable to happen? There is always a moment of near-resignation..."so what if I wet my pants...I can't make it anyway, and I am not going to look like a fool running at a dead sprint through crowded streets."

This is demonstrable of the "really got to go" thinking process. You might look dumb running down a street, but not at all standing in a subway with a big pee spot on your jeans. The moment of resignation is just that, a moment.

Next comes the "near-eastern mysticism" phase. In this phase you try to relax away the urge to do biological necessity. Like a Buddhist monk you tell yourself, "ok, just calm down, think about something else, think about sports." Guys use the near-eastern mysticism approach to deal with a lot of things...it usually works for a very brief period...but at this point brevity may be all one needs to finish the journey to the final destination.

The final phase is arrival...this is the most dangerous point in the whole venture. At this point the body, in a moment of near ecstatic relief, relaxes...and then you have a problem...it is heightened tension that has kept the wolves at bay up to now. You cannot recreate any of the phases you have just been through so you have to find a new approach. This is usually "the dance." With the dance one is not really sure what one wishes to accomplish...clearly you are no longer concerned with your public image or a zen-like mastery of the physical. This last phase, arrival, is usually made worse when you have to pay to accomplish your mission in a foreign currency.

At arrival you realize that you have 10 lbs of change in your jacket pocket and it is in 4 different kinds of currency, none of which you have fully mastered. Change is flying everywhere...should you pick it up...is that a Swedish, Danish or Norwegian kroner?...why do they all need their own kroners anyway?...thats not even a kroner its a euro...why don't the Scandinavian countries use the euro?...especially if they peg their currency to the euro (now is no time for understanding euro-economics).

So you go back into the pocket...ahh, a US quarter...old familiar George Washington seems to smirk at you as if to say..."Not even the father of the republic is going to help you out of this one." Getting change out of the jacket pocket is tougher to do while doing the dance...the dance causes the pocket to move around...and, guys, lets be honest...while doing the dance you only have one free hand...the other hand is furiously tugging at yourself as if, like a hose, you can hold the flow back for just a few more seconds while your mind sorts out the math...your mind begs your body..."please, just hold on, I am doing the best I can under this kind of pressure." The dance is a one-handed, running-in-place jig to no particular rhythm.

Finally, Danish currency...you pile it into this 21st century pay port-a-potty...nothing! What in the world could have gone wrong? Its only now when you notice that only certain coins are accepted...so you have wasted money, lost precious seconds, and now the dance begins again along with the quest for the right currency. It doesn't take long this time, and lets face it, at this point you don't have long...if you get into the second "resignation period" all is lost...so you get the right coins in there and the doors slides open...slowly, of course, as if someone with a real sense of humour designed these things...you can just see them around the corner laughing hysterically at what has unfolded before them.

The door opening is always an event too, cause you have no idea what you are going to find inside...these things are "self-cleaning," right! My room was self-cleaning when I was a child. The door then shuts precariously behind you. For just a second you wonder if its going to stay shut because there is no lock. A sigh of relief...you made it! (Unless you are in California cause then untying the drawstring on your boardshorts adds a bit more drama to these trials and tribulations...that double-knot always seems like such a good idea as you leave the apartment).

Afterwards water starts running down in some carved-out section of the port-a-potty...above is a disembodied picture of hands cleansing themselves in this stream...are you kidding me? I am not letting my hands within a yard of any liquid in that thing. I turn quickly for this space-age door and it begins to open when my hand (encased in tissues) touches the handle. (Once I hit this thing while I was, you know, tending to other business, and the door starts opening...I reach back behind me in a panic trying to keep it shut while trying to manage my other situation...this is "multi-tasking" in my frivolous bohemian life for all you "real world" cubicle-dwellers).

As you walk out, you glance back at this urban cave and a thought crosses your mind..."what in the heck did I just pay for?" Were you leasing that space for a few seconds. That filthy, dark and foul-smelling little box just cost me the equivalent of two gumballs (this is how a childish 25 year old does currency conversions...from US currency to gumballs and then from gumballs into the foreign currency). Really, I am doing the city a service by using it...next time I think I'll just nestle up to the side of the pay port-a-potty and pay with a little good ole American current-cy. I will inspire protest throughout the city..."We will no longer pay for---" Thats our slogan. Where I come from we fought a revolution over taxes on our tea...I am simply extrapolating, but after we get our tax-free tea would we pay 60 cents to relieve ourselves? No, thats un-American. No taxation without representation!

No Posts

Yeah...I am tired, bored and uninspired. I plan a longer post on my trip to France, but I did it once and it got erased somehow...now I am too tired/lazy to do it again. I cannot be rushed. I answer a muse and she has not sung lately. So everyone is gone from my building, which is good to a curmudgeon like me...no more noise or 20 year old children. Its also bad because some of them are my friends so I am in a most terribly bored state. One ought not worry though, were one so inclined to become worried. I have two friends from San Diego arriving in the next few days so I suspect things will pick up a bit. The weather is actually nice right now too, well, sunny at least. I figure that the weather has taken to compromising with me..."so you like the sun, ok, then here is a sunny day, and the temperature is 20." "Oh! its warm weather you like, pardon me...here is a 40 degree day...and rain." I give up...

Cotes de Provence

"Quand j'ai compris que chaque matin je reverrais cette lumière, je ne pouvais croire à mon bonheur."
Henri Matisse on the beauty of Nice

http://www.msnusers.com/PrinceofDenmark/shoebox.msnw?Page=1

Unfortunately I am having trouble getting all the photos to load...so the last 5 or so don't work yet. I will work on it.

Death-Defying Aerial Experience

The Nice recap will be forthcoming in the next day or so. I am just gathering my thoughts, sorting pictures, and going over some things I have written. I will give you a teaser though...it was easily one of the best weekends of my life. Now we all know that everywhere I go the threat of chaos is always nearby...so what was this weekend's near-disaster you may be asking. The flight home.

Its started like any other...uncomfortable and surrounded by unpleasant foreigners (they were pleasant but I was only interested in speaking either French or English and that was not on the menu). I had the March issue of the Atlantic Monthly on hand, which I was absolutely thrilled to get a hold of because there is an article in it that I have been dying to read and all you can find in Denmark is pop culture magazines and pornography. So I am reading my Atlantic and starving since you have to buy food on Scandinavian Air, but things are on the up-and-up. As we approach Copenhagen the weather is typically disgusting but what could you expect. "We are beginning our final approach into Copenhagen...blah, blah...we should be on the ground in 10 minutes."

As we descend all of a sudden the plane pulls up quickly, enough to make all the passengers gasp. The pilot gets on and says that there is a minor problem with the flaps and we have to abort the landing. He assures us that the problem will be taken care of quickly and our landing will be normal. After about 20 minutes we start down again, and again the plane jerks back up. The pilot says something in some nonsensical Nordic language and people are getting visibly uncomfortable. The flight attendants take seats in empty passenger seats and strap in.

I am quite anxious because the pilot is not translating his updates in English. After a while more of flying in circles we begin down again and again the plane is brought back up quickly. At this point a general panic is starting to set in on the plane. Any time there is the slightest bump people gasp or yell out loud. This time the pilot says that we have again had to abort the landing.

I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical from the start. How were these guys going to fix the flaps on the wings from inside the airplane? I thought that my arch-nemesis, the commercial airliner, had finally decide to destroy me like all those nightmares. Inside it was a bit of vindication against all those who said I was nuts for being so afraid of flying. Anyway, at this point the pilot says that the flaps have "failed" and we must try "another method" to land the plane. To me this means that he is going to wing-it, no pun intended. It reminded me of when I had gone skiing as a youngster and in my first run I realized that I had forgotten how to stop. I needed to do something to keep from plowing into the people waiting for the lift, I needed "another method." So I took a dive and slid to a stop on my face. The pilot was going to find "another method!" Well, that's fine I suppose...what the heck was I going to do?

It should be noted that my fear of airplanes is not a fear of passing in a crash, not a fear of pain, its a fear of how I would react to a catastrophe in an airplane. If my premonitions and nightmares are right then I would behave like a raving lunatic. The truth was, despite that fact that I was scared out of my wits, I just sat there and held unto the chair in front of me while staring out the window at the wing. Maybe I could will it into operating properly! I actually don't think a single thought crossed my mind...I was just kind of frozen in fear.

So we start the "other method," and as far as I can tell this consisted of flying in circles and dropping really fast every once in a while and then pulling back up a little. It felt like they would just let the plane fall out of the air and then pull it up a little bit. Every time we dropped, as if nobody knew it was coming, people would scream. Now my stomach is no novice to discomfort...I would even call it battle-tested, but I was almost positive I was about to throw up...part from the fast up and down and part because I was getting so scared.

To end the suspense I am sure you are all gripped in at the moment, the plane landed without incident. As we rolled down the runway I noticed that a small cavalry of fire trucks and ambulances had assembled to await our fiery plummet from the grey heavens above. Not today! No, I will live to sit through my disgustingly boring human rights class tomorrow. After we had stopped the pilot said he called for the emergency vehicles when the flaps failed and that it was standard in kind of a situation to do so.

The pilot met us as we got out to answer anyone's questions and the airline had arranged for people who were in shock or something to speak to counselors and they asked us if we were alright as we got off. I thought maybe I would talk to a counselor about my general anxiety, insomnia, and psycho-somatic stomach ailment...but was I alright? Of course! I just spent one of the best weekends of my life on the French Riviera.

In all seriousness though everything is fine and I was quite shaken up. One of the more frightening things I have ever endured and I am already irrational about air travel. When I saw the emergency vehicles on the ground I thought that this might have been a pretty serious thing. Well, two months in Europe, a fall down a flight of stairs followed by a week in a hospital, and a near catastrophic flight and I am sitting here with a smile on my face because I am about to look through my Marc Chagall book that I picked up at the Chagall Gallery in Nice!

A Nice Weekend to Be An Insomniac

I have decided to workout two times a day. Right after I start working out once a day which should be next week. I know this decision is going to entail some sacrifice. I ran down my daily schedule: sitting, two hours naps, eating banana chips and nothing looks expendable! I thought perhaps hour 6 staring blankly at the Internet could go, but what if, what if something worth looking at appears on the Internet? I have to go back to the drawing board with this one.

I am almost done with The Prophet Armed my bio of Trotsky, and I am prepared to move on to The Prophet Disarmed. So far the prophet hasn't been armed with anything and I am on the last hundred pages of a 5oo page book! Its been pretty good so far, but a little romanicized at times. It may well be the case that Trotsky spent his youth witnessing in horror the treatment of the Russian peasantry, but I bet he also played with bugs and ran around in the woods. Anyway, I will finish this weekend and move on to part II.

One of the unforseen benefits of insomnia is when the delusional impulses lead you to make a benign dumb decision. Its 4:22 am here in Denmark, and just over an hour ago while listening to the radio and checking flight prices around the world I encountered the "great deal." We all know about the "great deal." Usually you don't need the good or service being offered, and sometimes the good deal is a positive waste of money. My good deal was a $169 round-trip flight to Nice, France, and I have made the purchase! So in a few hours time I board a train for the airport and leave for 5 days and 4 nights on the French Riviera. Mostly what I plan to do is wear shorts and sandals. I will of course do the usual...evaluate public restrooms, walk around for hours, etc...but I am going to sit on the beach for a while, in shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt, and read. More when I return I assume. Au revoir!

Theatre/Opera

I just found out that the city opera center here is doing Seigfried and Gotterdammerung (the last two parts of Wagner's Ring Cycle)...I may have to check that out. There is a play at the theatre called "San Diego," and I don't think it has anything to do with San Diego but it is about to as this San Diegan will likely be in attendance! I am pretty stoked about the Wagner though, but I wish I could catch the first two parts...oh well...it will be in German so I will not understand it anyway. Sitting around at the opera is going to be my new venue for sitting around. Wagner has such a hugeness to it though that it is a bit of a stretch to call that "sitting around." Maybe it is a transcendental sitting experience. They are also doing an operatic adaptation of The Trial by Franz Kafka. The Trial will be in Danish with english "super-titles." Art has been one way to bridge the spaces of inactivity that the winter has brought in bundles.

Night and Day

Oh what a difference a little time makes! And a good book doesn't hurt...Well, I took a nap today because my rear-end was actually getting sore from sitting on it. I must say that is a first.

I awoke with just enough time to run down to the library and pick up a book I had ordered. Brief tangent, I tend to develop a reputation at the university libraries as the obnoxious guy who needs new books ordered almost weekly. I also make no secret of the disgust I feel toward university libraries that don't have books. "You don't have Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind! No wonder nobody is learning anything here." So it begins...Copenhagen is very good about book orders though. I just do it online and then I go the following day and pick up my book. To be fair to USD, and I am not one for "fairness," they did have a nice classical record collection that offered me hundreds of hours of pleasure between classes in my career there...and the grass is nice, green and short. The toilet paper is like sandpaper there though.

Ok, enough of the tangent. I got my book today deciding that I needed some light reading, Isaac Deutscher's The Prophet Armed. This is the first part of a three part biography on Trotsky that I have wanted to read for years(parts 2 and 3 are The Prophet Disarmed and The Prophet in Exile, respectively). Trotsky had a fascinating life, like a Shakespearian tragic figure. Deutscher's account is criticized for being overly romantic (he was a Trotskyite), but I make no bones about my interest in Trotsky. Trotsky to me is just as useful as a fictional character as he is a historical character. Think about that life! Better a fiction in fact. Plus, in studying philosophy you encounter the ideas of "representative men," or "exemplary thought" on the path to reflective judgments and derivation of universals. These are conceptual tools for judgment in a Kantian/Arendtian/Nietzschean sense...the validity is not objective, but not relative. I will not go into it, but suffice it to say that I am thrilled to have my Trotsky biography...although its not helping my lame presentation on the Patriot Act. Now I will return to The Prophet Armed!

New Day

I had trouble sleeping last night so I arose around 2:30 am with a spring in my step to the chorus of obnoxious drunks prowling the halls of the building. I have come to call it "daycare" because that is what 19-21 yr. old people living in another country need. I began immediately to finish my presentation on the Patriot Act for our "Terrorism Seminar" this Saturday. Sounds interesting doesn't it! It was interesting as billed, but much like the "Patriot Act," which has nothing to do with "patriots," our Terrorism Seminar has morphed into a 6 hours class on a Saturday. I couldn't be less thrilled. I also couldn't care less about the Patriot Act, but since I am an American my professors decided I would love the extra-work of preparing a presentation on it. At least a 6 hour class gives me an organized venue to do my sitting around tomorrow. But today was different, I awoke a man inspired. Today I was going to try to do all three things: sit around, walk around, and sleep. I am two-thirds of the way through with only sleeping left. I want to pace myself though so I can hopefully sleep up to bedtime and then go back to sleep without having to do anymore sitting around because I am plum tuckered out from my sitting around up to now. Finally, the inventor of solitaire could not have dreamt up a name to make you feel more pathetic for sitting around all day and playing solitaire.

Nada

Soooooo bored! I hope the weather changes soon cause its getting terrible. I feel like I have to hurry everywhere I go to get inside. The best thing about Denmark so far is all the walking around I get to do between sitting around inside, which has never been a favored activity of mine. Taking my sweet time to get everywhere I have to go also fills up the day. Today I sat in a cafe and read from 8-2 and then I came home and I have alternated between looking at nothing on the Internet and playing solitaire. I countdown to 9 pm cause that seems like a reasonable time to go to bed. I also did some forensics on the fly today while I was at the Metro station. The disgusting mix of slush, ice, and snow on the concrete staircases is ideal for slipping and hurting yourself. Today I was running late for class and as I went out the door my roommate yells to me, "don't run or anything, just take your time." I was not sure if this was like Confuscion wisdom or something on aligning my chi, but I realized about an hour later that it was a reference to my fall. Ok, I am going to bed...just a few more days to make it through till the week is over!