Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
They come in various shapes and sizes; sometimes, the “moment” is just after something is said and regret begins to insidiously creep into one’s conscience, knowing that the statement made will come back to haunt. At other times, it is an event, perhaps beyond one’s control, and the seismic shift of tectonic undercurrents cannot be avoided or ignored. […]
Does it occur when the body is entombed? Or, perhaps, like children who play “king of the hill”, the exhilarating feeling that overwhelms when once you are alone on top of the hill, unchallenged, identified as the winner of a game otherwise known to be silly but at least for the moment, […]
It can refer to the particular or the general, interchangeably almost without thought. To refer to these “perilous times” is to ascribe to a particular period, an epoch or an era, an acknowledgment that the surrounding days and months are unique from all other timeframes of perceived dangers and tumultuous upheavals. Or, it can be quite personal — where one describes specific circumstances concerning one’s own life, […]
Often, choices come in pairs, and the difficulty is in deciding between the binary alternatives offered. Chocolate or vanilla? Apple pie or cherry? If taste were the sole determining factor, one can simply submit to the subliminal voices churning deep within the intestinal caverns of digestive tracts, and simply declare one as opposed to the other. Of course, in such matters, one can “cheat”, and simply say to the host or hostess, “Oh, they both look so delicious, can I just have a small sliver of both?” […]
One may counter that the contrast is no different than that which we encounter daily, especially in this universe of millennials and post-millennial era – of opinion versus fact, or truth versus falsehood (and now the new one, of “news” versus “fake news” or “facts” versus “alternative facts”). But “perspective” versus “reality” has some subtle nuances that need to be explicated. For one thing, one’s perspective may be identical to the reality one possesses a perspective upon; […]
One rarely thinks in terms of multiple stomachs, but certainly cows have them; but when we consider the tripe of language, we project only the inherent foolishness of man. Of tropes, we may envision a higher calling; though, of course, figurative speech requires greater imagination and creativity, and the dullness of many falls back naturally into either the first or second stomachs of the bovine kind, and not merely to be digested and emitted through the natural canals of intestinal tracts, but by metaphorical heights of human depravity. Then, of course, there are trivialities, and most of the drip-drip-drip sort, and never in voluminous waves of profundities, […]
What we do in response to outside stimuli; whether we flee, prepare to defend, aggressively pursue, or otherwise stand idle with resignation and do nothing; whither to stand in consternation or to wither without care; throughout, it is the glare of the world, whether by glint of sunlight upon objects surrounding us, or through another’s eyes which magnify the hostility abounding, which requires our tepid psyche to stir in turmoil. […]
Some events come with it a specific date, and even a time; others, within a span of identified moments and blocks of weeks, sometimes months; the rest, undetermined, unspecified, like the lost soul who wanders the traversing echoes of eternal reverberations left to the sifting cleansing of a foaming ocean washing and lapping, ever repeating the comforting sounds of surf and salt strolling like the footprints gone in the sands of countless castles disappeared. But that medical conditions would conform to the science which attempts to treat, and approach one with technical precision and certitude. […]
If you ascribe something to everything, then nothingness results. For, to declare that all of X is contained in Y is to delete X into irrelevancy, and leave Y with nothing but X, thereby subsuming everything with nothing. Thus, when we argue for a form of pantheism, the language of “all” tends to diminish the uniqueness of singularity, and the meanings of distinction and difference. […]