“Casino potatoes and pale ink”

> dreamt of multiple racing horses at a handicapped peoples school – not very handy capped but a school for people to re-learn things, this is to differentiate it from the horseback riding club type of chic social gathering, this place is not chic oriented but has a very beautiful natural country side type of setting. People are riding various horses with and without saddles, some rode bare back. One of the courses offered was bare back riding training in one month from 0 to success, it was very beautiful to see these people roaming about on horseback with their legs pinched around the stomach of the horses, these horses were not running very fast, but still it was a light trot.

> another scene, sharp green handbags, a travelling kit of a sort for a trip in an organised tour; apple green very beautiful like my backpack ; taking a brocade jacket owned by Geraldine – the secretary of the university vice president whom I know just so so, she is always friendly - and trying to see how I could fix it up; do I cut it under the arms or what? It was like a bourgeois dame type of jacket with very very used patches.

> the dream was sequences of happy scenes

> I told Julien that the Casino might be closed on Monday and Tuesdays, he seemed very annoyed – but he said he asked the guards and they told him that they are open 365 days of the year.

> the Casinos are controlled by the government there are only 2 groups in France. Each group must pay the gov 30% of their earnings. Only the government officials could come and touch the one arm bandit machines. And just the other night, on the 20cent machines one lady won twice the jackpot – she went home with 1000euros in her pocket. The machine was ringing and ringing. And the old pappy next to me too, he had almost no more coins and then 3 buckets full of them after we came out of the restaurant.

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> went mushroom/black berry picking around 11am, within half an hour I had a basket full of black berries. Just along the fence of the field behind the house, where the sun light hits the berries much sooner, they were huge (like 1" long)… lots of bees, and sounds of small animals squirring in the underbush.

> most houses are not in use, they are for retired people

> then, there is Evaux-les-bain, 30mn from Bedjun, a thermal cure place, and they run it like for a semi-clinique however to my eyes, the bath etc are no more than a jacuzzi, I would say the jacuzzi in the backyard of Gail’s neighbour seem more active… for 11euro50, you could stay in there for 10mn! Totally unsatisfactory, on top of it the water was lukewarm, and already ran for some other people before hand… not impressive at all.

> there is a little open air swimming pool with thermal water source, also lukewarm, not hot, of course a swimming pool is better cool than hot, but there is no hot spring source at all, very disappointing. However, the water is very smooth, our skin became very smooth after a soak in there.

> the clinique woman showed me the hand and feet steamer – it is like a round pod like white furniture a la James Bond- with holes for the hands and holes for the feet up to midcalf, we steam our hand/feet for 10mn, the clinique assistant told me its really good at the same time she complaint about her migraine, she didnt want to come to work , she said, but no one could replace her, … she offered to let me try the hand steamer and after looking at my leg said I should not use the feet part because of my veins (they were visible since my skin is very thin, but in no way did I have a "vein problem"! then she said for legs like mine I should use the double bubble massage tub, that I should try too – she showed me a lady, with the soft swirling pool water in one tub for 10mn, when the timer goes off you put your leg in the other tub which has bubbling water like jacuzzi for your legs...most people I saw had large black eye pouches and splotches on their legs – old folks home type of thing, everybody was dressed in white robes…

> I will try the vaporarium this afternoon – I think it is a steam room – with thermal water steam and the receptionist on the phone says its only 5mns, I think in a hammom steam bath house, you stay as long as you want, like 4 hours to relax etc. this 10mns what could you possibly do? They have the water but its not for relaxing its for "treatments", medically certified the clients could get health insurance coverage from the service, they made it seemed to be mainly for this purpose… what a waste… I thought, maybe you should have two kinds of service one is for general well being, and another truly clinique treatment (the well being service is an option that they have, but it doesn’t have the ambiance of a service oriented relaxing indulgent bath house like the one in Karlsruhe (now that is one that I really like! They did it so perfectly that I wanted to go there everyday – and if I lived there, I would spend my whole day in there reading and writing, they did it so right!)

> I wonder if there are any other sources in open air settings like in Hualian Taiwan – I really enjoyed there in the mountain public bath type of water soaking pool… a medium warm pool – where there are lots of women and children, then a hot pool – soak for 10mn, 20mn, 30mn –take care and not over stay, and an ultra hot pool (that only one or two people are in, and most people only stay in it for 60sec at a time, I tested it with my toes and did not go in at all- temperature boiling almost), all this are carved out of the mountain side from a natural spring. The rocks underneath are very slippery, it is next to a running rapid river, so we could also soak in the cold stream immediately a la Swedish sauna heat-cold-heat type of vein exercise. But I don’t care for the cold bath… heat and more heat for me is fine, fine, fine.

> then the boys came back, no luck, no mushrooms found this morning. So they plucked some carrots from the back and boiled some potatoes. But these potatoes are not the same as the ones from the supermarket, somehow they taste delicious, almost like a fragrant type of root, I don’t really care for potatos but these ones are so good as is without salt or anything. Julien asked if I know that potatos are imported by marco polo or what? Whats it like in China, and the historic source of the potatoes? Then I said it was imported from south america in the year 500bc, much earlier than the arrival of columbus. Then he questioned that the vikings were the first in North america, its not possible to claim that the Chinese had already arrived there first. Then of course, I re-tell the tale of the Shan-Hai Jing – the oldest geography book ever written by humans (by the Chinese) and the book Pale Ink by Henriette Meret in 1954 (an american) and the thesis publication by a retired archeologue in 1995 (a professor from China), that by deduction, Henriette Meret has shown a hypothesis that way back before columbus, a charming, charismatic monk from china, already has set foot in North America and taught much of astrology geography building gold smithing solar and lunar calendar religion so on so forth - and in the Shan Hai Jing (Book of Mountain and Sea) there were two mountains and some seas that the Chinese couldn’t find in China – and of course not, because these places were named "the outer mountain and outer seas" – they were not in China, but outside, but where? According the the ancient text it took several months to travel there by boat, it cant be Japan, cant be Polynesia… etc etc. only possible place that matches the descriptions is the North American West coast along Mexico… so the author went step by step following the logbook of the ancient and found that the landscape matched exactly to the area now known as southern united states and Mexico - the description of a large hole where the sun is born, the lake of milky white color and a lake of black color side by side… these magnificient sights so fascinating to the ancient is in fact => the grand canyon… and a lot of people have travelled back and forth in what was called the Buildings-Boat (similar to house-boat, but building-boats) – boats that carried 2-3000 people with fresh water supply enough for a year at sea… Julien looked at me, knitted his brows, he was not so happy to hear of this story, because I didn’t invent it, I quoted it from books. Anyway, he soon turn back his attention to the Casino and we talked about using different strategies for winning. And we will go tonight and tomorrow night to test them.