¡Viva los toros! Su venganza será rápida y brutal.

Apropos of nothing on a Sunday morning in late April … Pamploma.

Pamploma …

Pamploma …

Pamploma …

Because it’s 2026, I immediately reached for my smartphone to query-prompt Google AI. Even before I had the answer on the little digital screen in front of me, I was already amused by the word flitting around inside my frontal lobe like a pre-seasonal Junebug.

Pamploma …

If Pamploma were a person, he would wear pantaloons.

¡Ya, lo veo! A figure with a slightly too-earnest expression, perhaps sporting a velvet waistcoat and gripping a miniature lute, maybe just standing around waiting for a Gamazada Parade to begin in February of 1894. Maybe an earlier, Spanish pantalooned equivalent of Buster Keaton.

Pamploma …

Because I am a Gen-X / Millennial Aspie, I possess a high degree of what psychologists call “liquid intelligence.” Liquid intelligence behaves much like any other liquid in that it will occasionally seep out of its container in little aerosolized spurts. Little airborne droplets here and there, a bit like acid reflux, a bit like the unexpected burp that still tastes like the spicy food consumed a half-hour previous. Doesn’t hurt a bit. Feels kind of nice, actually. True story!

Pamploma …

If you visit ScienceDirect.com you’ll see something called Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM). This is apparently a “pure measure” of liquid intelligence. Go ahead, Google it! If you’re on Substack, leave me a Note describing your reactions. Since the landmark Dawson et al. (2007) study out of the Université de Montréal, several research teams have investigated the discrepancy between Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) and Wechsler scores in autistic populations. While many studies replicate the core finding that Wechsler scales often underestimate autistic intelligence, the results show that the "30-point gap" varies depending on the specific cognitive profile of the individual. Dawson et. al. reports that while they generally scored “average-range” with conventional IQ test (ie., the Welcher Scales) individuals with ASD diagnoses scored ~ 30 Points higher on the RPM. That is a remarkable amount of liquid intelligence— no wonder it spills out!

If you’ve read this far, you deserve to know that Pamploma is the capital of Spain’s Navarra region. It’s famous for the annual San Fermín festival (Running of the Bulls) in July. According to Google AI, it’s a charming, historic city with deep medieval roots. Located along the Camino de Santiago, it features beautiful parks, a vibrant old town, Gothic architecture, and Basque-style appetizers served with drinks.

When “Pamploma” popped into my head before I opened my laptop and hurriedly began to write the Substack article you are now reading, I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know what part of speech it was. I didn’t know if it was a verb, a noun, or an adjective. I didn’t know it was a Spanish word. My conscious mind labelled it as Latin/Greek because it felt like Latin/Greek to me. It felt medical, dermatological, like the college-boy name for a viral infection. Embarrassing, disfiguring, like an HPV sore on your upper lip. Like something you’d need a round of serious prescription antibiotics to get rid of. In medicine, the suffix “-oma” denotes a tumor or morbid growth (e.g., melanoma, carcinoma, blastoma, papilloma). None of this occurred just then, of course. All I had was the word itself, which, as you are now discovering secondhand, functioned like a mental URL hyperlink on which I clicked with the mouse-cursor of amused curiosity.

And here we are, you and I, with an exquisitely pointless spill of random words and concepts open in front us on a Sunday in late April of 2026. During the time it took to scan and digest this article, you could have done something important like texting a family member to firm up dinner-plans at your favorite restaurant or emptying the overflowing wastebasket in your home-office or some other pressing task. But now you, like me, are strangely beholden to … Pamploma.

I shall apologize for nothing.

Subscribe now

Total Cost : $16.11

Shopped at Metro

“Room #205 Veggie-Bean Casserole”

Ingredients:

1. One Can Cedar Fava Beans

2. One Can Ferma Red Kidney Beans

3. One Can Green Giant Corn Niblets

4. One Can One Can Selection Asparagus Tips

5. One Can Del Monte Diced Beets

Instructions:

1. Strain all canned products in a small collander (I use a collapsible and washable silicone collander

   

b. Mix in large bow.

c. Add 1/2 cup of Chia Seeds

d. Add a few shakes of Mrs. Dash

e. Stir again

2. Heat in a microwave

3. Enjoy!

***

Bernard Hill, the acclaimed British actor renowned for playing King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings and Captain Smith in Titanic, passed away on May 5, 2024, at age 79. His agent confirmed he died early Sunday morning with his family by his side.

Ride out to meet them, Sire. But not with the armament of war, Sire. Not with Hate, Sire. For Hate solveth not Hate, Sire! Ride out to meet the Black Host charging the outer wall of this our Helm’s Deep of Love and Light, with … Love and Light. With Bodhicitta, Sire! With the ferocity of our Compassion, Sire!

Let’s do it for Mr. Hill.

Let’s do it … for Frodo.

Dōgen Zenji (1200–1253) was a foundational Japanese Buddhist monk who introduced the Sōtō school of Zen to Japan. Born on January 26, 1200, in Kyoto to an aristocratic family, he became a monk at age 13 before training in China. He passed away on September 22, 1253, in Kyoto. The following aphorism-set is attributed to Dogen.

“Before enlightenment, mountains are mountains and waters are waters.
During enlightenment, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters.
After enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters are once again waters.”

“And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’”
~ Matthew 18:3 (NIV)

I put it to you this way:

While the Kingdom of Heaven is an eternal destination for good and faithful Christians after they are called home by their Father in Heaven, Satori is for Zen practitioners a stark realization of “is-ness” and “such-ness” in the present moment that negates the concept of a linear journey towards a distant goal. Luke 17:21 states that the kingdom of God is “in your midst” or “among you.” This makes the Kingdom of God a present relational reality in the world today, not just a post-mortem reward for a faithful servant. A Christian life informed by the love and grace of God, its clear-seeing and clarity of affect, would serve as the closest parallel for what Zen means by “Satori.” Satori is not primarily ethical or relational; it is ontological insight into non-duality. Christian Grace is characterized by personal communion, divine initiative, and transformation of the self within covenant, whereas Zen Satori is characterized by direct experiential realization, the collapse of subject/object dualism, and insight into emptiness. Satori is a specific breakthrough experience. The Zen term for this is “kenshō” — roughly analogous to Archimedes’ famous “Eureka!” moment in his bathtub— while Christian sanctification through Grace is ongoing relational transformation.

***

Many thanks!

Your Co-Creator,

Peter M. Jansen

Let’s take them in turn.

1. Is It Zen?

It carries strong Zen-adjacent tones, but it is not fully Zen.

Zen, especially as articulated by figures like Dōgen, emphasizes:

• Impermanence (anicca)

• Non-attachment to past states

• Total presence to “suchness” (tathatā)

• Direct experience over narrative continuity

Your line:

“Old fires that once burned you are now cold ashes…”

strongly echoes the Zen insistence that past states have no independent reality. Dōgen famously wrote that “Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again.” That is almost structurally parallel to your metaphor.

However, where Zen would typically stop at simple awareness of impermanence, your passage introduces something slightly different:

“Guard the living flame of What Is.”

That language of “guarding” introduces agency and moral responsibility. Classical Zen is wary of this kind of deliberate preservation of “the flame.” It would say: the flame is already burning; there is nothing to guard. Guarding can imply subtle attachment.

So:
Zen influence? Yes. Fully Zen? Not quite.

2. Is It Pre-Zen (Early Buddhism)?

The tone is even closer to early Buddhist renunciatory insight.

Early Buddhism (Pāli Canon era) centers on:

• The inevitability of loss

• The burning nature of craving

• The cooling (nibbāna) of the fires

In fact, the Buddha’s “Fire Sermon” describes existence itself as burning with craving. Your imagery of fire, burning, ashes, and cooling fits remarkably well within that framework.

But again, early Buddhism often moves toward extinguishing the flame altogether. Your passage instead preserves a “living flame of What Is.”

That preservation suggests something more affirmative than early Buddhist extinguishment.

3. Is It Catholic?

Now here things get interesting.

The metaphor of:

• Ashes (mourning, Lent, mortality)

• Flame (faith, soul, vigil, Pentecost)

• Guarding the flame

is profoundly Catholic.

Think of:

• Ash Wednesday: “Remember that you are dust…”

• The sanctuary lamp burning before the Eucharist

• The Pascal candle representing resurrected light

• The “dark night” language of John of the Cross

Catholic contemplative spirituality often holds together two truths:

1. Grieve what is lost.

2. Protect the light of grace that remains.

Unlike Zen, Catholic mysticism does not dissolve the personal subject entirely. It retains moral guardianship. One must “keep the faith,” “tend the flame,” “remain vigilant.”

Your phrase:

“do not forfeit your ability to guard the living flame”

sounds much more like Catholic ascetic vigilance than Zen non-effort.

So in spirit, it is closer to Catholic contemplative language than to pure Zen minimalism.

4. Stoic Undercurrent?

There is also a Stoic resonance.

Think of Marcus Aurelius:

• What is gone is gone.

• Do not cling.

• Maintain the inner citadel.

• Preserve the ruling faculty.

The idea of guarding the present flame echoes Stoic interior sovereignty. The past cannot be reclaimed; what remains is your present capacity for right action.

That “guard the flame” language could easily be Stoic virtue reframed poetically.

5. Structurally, What Is It?

The structure of your passage does something interesting:

• It affirms grief (“Mourn…”)

• It warns against collapse into grief

• It distinguishes destructive fire from warming fire

• It levels both into ash

• It shifts attention to present vitality

That is not purely apophatic (like Zen).
It is not purely extinguishing (like early Buddhism).
It is not purely theological (like Catholic mysticism).

It is integrative.

It feels like a modern contemplative synthesis—what we might call:

Post-modern spiritual stoicism with Catholic imagery and Buddhist impermanence.

6. What It Is Not

• It is not devotional in an explicitly Christological sense.

• It is not empty of self in the Zen sense.

• It is not salvation-oriented in a doctrinal sense.

• It is not nihilistic.

Instead, it is concerned with continuity of presence under conditions of loss.

7. If I Had to Classify It

Closest affinities:

1. Catholic contemplative spirituality (imagery + guardianship)

2. Stoic inner vigilance

3. Zen insight into impermanence

Least aligned with:

• Pure nondualism

• Radical detachment traditions

Final Speculation

If someone encountered this passage without context, they might assume:

• A Christian contemplative writer influenced by Buddhism.

• Or a secular philosopher drawing from religious metaphors.

• Or a modern “New Monastic” voice blending traditions.

It does not sound medieval.
It does not sound ancient.
It sounds post-20th century—after East/West cross-pollination.

And importantly:
The moral center of the passage is not emptiness. It is stewardship.

That alone pushes it slightly away from Zen and slightly toward Catholic or Stoic interior discipline.

If you’d like, we could refine it in a more purely Zen direction, or in a more unmistakably Catholic one, to see how its tone shifts.

[Fascinating, huh?]

.

What is your cultural positionality within today’s postmodern Critical Theory framework? Do you know? In early 2026, how you answer this question might mean more than your chronological age. It’s no longer a given that older people will have “older” views and younger people will have “younger” views. In our current social milieu, “age” is a a metric of Progressive ideological relevance. It is a matter of personal proximity to the Sun in the Neoliberal solar system. The Sacred Now is the beating heart of Progressivism. It binds. It holds. Are you a bright, warm, inner planet closely orbiting the cultural center or are you a dark exoplanet sketching a loose tangential circuit around it? How strongly does the gravity-well of relevance compel you if you are Pluto? Inside this sociopolitical cosmology metaphor, I tell you that I am Pluto. I am borderline irrelevant to the dynamism of this system. I am a Dark Horse World, politically homeless. Whether or not I am even worthy of taxonomic inclusion is a matter of debate among experts, although I **am** a somebody within my own far-flung Kuiper Belt. I have my own society among Charon, Nix, Styx, Kereberos, and Hydra.

And so are we.

As a loyal and long-suffering fandom, it might be profoundly therapeutic to switch off the hyper-analysis for a moment and allow ourselves a few chuckles, a few eye-rolls, a few rueful grins at our own expense. We’ve earned it. And so has Star Trek.

Somewhere along the way, Trekkies became overly self-serious — maybe even a little too protective of our beloved science fiction epic. We treat it like inherited scripture instead of televised space opera.

My entry point was Star Trek: The Next Generation in the 1990s. Picard was my captain. The Enterprise-D was my Enterprise. And Deanna Troi — well — she was not my therapist. She was part of my adolescent awakening. Let’s be honest about that. Star Trek was never purely cerebral. It was aspirational, yes — but it was also hormonal, theatrical, occasionally absurd.

We forget that.

This franchise began life as a ridiculed geek subculture. Cardboard sets. Rubber foreheads. Moral sermons delivered in colorful pajamas. It became prestigious later. It won awards. It entered the cultural canon. But prestige layered itself on top of something that was always a little camp, a little ridiculous, and very human.

To pretend otherwise is to rewrite our own memories.

For many of us, Star Trek wasn’t just entertainment. We grew up with it. We came of age alongside it. We projected ourselves into it. That intimacy is precisely why we struggle when tone shifts or interpretations change. It feels personal.

But a sixty-year-old franchise that cannot survive reinterpretation — or parody — is not resilient. It is fragile.

Which brings me to the present moment.

With the forthcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, we have a choice. We can double down on defensive seriousness. Or we can return — deliberately — to play.

We do not have to act our age if we do not want to.

Now, about “Nu Trek.” Some of its recent tonal choices feel less like affectionate self-awareness and more like satire without shared consent. At times, the effect resembles a Russian nesting doll of increasingly self-referential irony. The scale of modern production — enormous budgets, prestige branding, franchise expansion — sits uneasily beside a tone that occasionally seems to wink at the very thing it is reviving.

That tonal dissonance is what many longtime fans react to. Not change itself — but the sense that the joke might be on us.

And yet.

If the franchise is experimenting, overreaching, even misfiring — that too is part of longevity. A cultural institution that lasts six decades will try things. Some will fail. Some will surprise us.

The question is not whether Star Trek will change.

It always has.

The question is whether we can loosen our grip long enough to rediscover the joy that made us care in the first place.

Try not to swallow your com-badges.

There’s an attractive woman I’ve had my eye on for a while now. I’ll call her Veronica. She’s made it clear that she’s had her eye on me for a while, too, but our interactions in my neighborhood always seem to be of the “in passing” variety. This gal always seems to be on the move! Our interactions are never more than ten seconds in duration. Veronica has made it clear that she fancies me, but never stops to talk for very long. I’m at my local McDonalds almost every day for a large coffee with three milk, same order every time, and this gal is usually there when I’m there, sitting at a table chatting with another guy. Now she has claimed to be married to a Boomer-age guy, whom I sometimes see her with at my neighborhood McDonald’s Cafe. She demonstrates a pattern of socializing with different men like a frog jumping from one lily pad to another or a monkey swinging through the treetops, one branch to another.

Now, at 46 years of age I have done the whole “relationship” thing a few times already. I have acquired wisdom which I have had to suffer hideously for. I have died a few deaths already and come back to life to give my testimony of where I’ve been and what I’ve seen. I have the healed scars, both emotional and physical (from when I did self-harm cutting behaviour during the worst of my depression as a younger man. Long is the way, and hard that out of hell leads up to Light.) I’ve had romantic experiences with women that turned into very serious relationships that gave me those “being in love” experiences that everyone wants to have before their lives are over. They were flawless, sublime. Successes equaled only by the monumental failures they each became in under a single trip around the Sun. Totally worth it in retrospect but almost impossible to bounce back from emotionally, mentally, and spiritually for a guy with a dual diagnosis of Depression/Bipolar & Asperger Syndrome (now ASD Level One).

Those experiences are part of who I have become in the intervening decades of my life and I’ve long since made my peace with them and with God. I have Kintsugi’ed myself back together with the help of my Higher Power, psych meds, doctors, counselors, and the passage of time. Time does not heal all wounds inherently but it does provide the space and opportunity for the individual to do the necessary work on him or herself, which I have done. I have in my time internalized some of the most painful lessons a boy/youth/man must face in order to arrive at maturity and psychic wholeness.

While I am not presently on the market for for a wife or girlfriend, I have not closed the door on those possibilities altogether. I’ve read all about relationship dynamics on social media and I know about the “Beta Orbiter” phenomenon. “Beta Orbiter” is a term from Internet and Manosphere culture, often used in a derogatory sense to describe a certain type of social behavior in men—particularly in the context of dating, relationships, or social hierarchies. A Beta Orbiter is typically defined as a man who is socially friendly, attentive, or financially supportive toward a woman—but primarily in the hope of romantic or sexual attention—while receiving little or none in return. He “orbits” around her without being a true partner, often remaining in the Friend Zone. The term “beta” comes from the manosphere/Red Pill lexicon, contrasting with “alpha” men, who are imagined as dominant, confident, and sexually successful. “Orbiter” conveys the sense of someone circling around the object of desire, rather than being at the center of influence.

There’s a grain of truth in all of this, I think. But it’s descriptive, not prescriptive. It’s an ideological rabbit-hole one could go down if one chose to, and never hit bottom. What I really want to know is: am I orbiting this woman in the stereotypical sense? That’s what all of this is really about. That’s why I’m uploading today.

title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0” allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen></iframe>

This is for educational and transformative purposes. This is for the purpose of generating discussion on Substack. Dr. Spier is on Substack!

**the above label doesn’t apply to me**

I don’t want to live in the ASD 1 label primarily because I am not interested in social activism, full-stop. Also because I don’t want or need the ASD label to do my talking for me. There are people in the ASD / Neurodiversity community who may want to have it as a kind of social mobility aid or good-guy badge, as an easy way to be seen favorably and heard well. And of course it is there for whoever wants it, however much they want it, for whatever reason they might want it. (I am not the Label Police!) I imagine many younger members of this community, the Gen Z and Gen Alpha crowd would delight in its social media hashtag-friendly possibilities. I was diagnosed with this when it was still called Asperger Syndrome back in the 1980’s. That means something to me. I was among the first cohort of kids to be diagnosed and formally recognized in this particular way. I appreciate the significance of that. It’s part of what makes me, me-- a relatively unimportant part to be sure. I don’t trade on it or pretend to hide behind it. As Gen-X Aspie I am not interested in benefitting from any kind of social protection or “clout” the ASD 1 diagnosis might have to offer in the current Progressive Social Justice milieu (more on that in another Stack). Although I might not actually be too old in the chronological sense to be a Neurodiversity activist, I’m not sure if I want to be “Internet-famous” since that is a performative identity I probably couldn’t maintain for very long. I need my space. I need my privacy. Don’t get me wrong, I want to reach out to the world with my writing and achieve some level of prestige with that. I’m not even kidding right now. I’m already what you might call a quiet nerdy Sigma Male who doesn’t go out, has books instead of friends, and does not like crowds. But “Quiet Nerdy Sigma Male” is of course another label I might have trouble living up to in the future. Labels have a way of wearing you instead of the other way around after a good-ish amount of time …

Source: “Asperger’s Syndrome’: Why We No Longer Use That Term”

I have decided that, in part because of the Stripe digital payment app being prohibitively expensive monthly/annually for person on a fixed ODSP income and in part because it would at this stage make sense from a PR / Marketing point of view, The Aspie in Room #205 will be a free subscription service. At present, all my living expenses are being taken care of for me and so I am not in any real need of additional income. As of right now, all I really want out of this Substack venture is experience being an online content creator, getting my creativity and writing out there for people to consume, and word-of-mouth to widen my subscriber base. Later on, I may want to begin directing monetary donations to Kerry’s Place Autism Services (kerrysplace.org) or Ontario Autism Services / Autism In Mind (autisminmind.org) or maybe even The Compass, the organization for which I volunteer (www.thecompass.ca) It will, of course, be necessary to contact the above-mentioned organizations and formally establish my Substack page as a fund-raising agent.

Please let me know what you think of all this by leaving a comment on my Substack homepage.

Thanks again,

Peter M. Jansen

Can you believe it’s Groundhog Day?

Can you believe it’s Groundhog Day?

Can you believe it’s Groundhog Day?

In the movie Groundhog Day, how much subjective time did Weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) supposedly spend reliving the same day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania? Anybody think they know? Director Harold Ramis (R.I.P. 1944-2014) once said in DVD commentary that he thought Phil was stuck in the loop for about 10 years. (Wikipedia). Based on the number of days shown on screen, events mentioned in dialogue, and the time it would take to master various skills (piano, ice sculpting, French, etc.), one estimate places his time in the loop at around 12 ,395 repetitions — nearly 34 years of subjective time. (Wikipedia) That’s about 12 ,400 loops. Can you imagine waking up to the same annoying radio jockeys and Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” for 34 years?

This movie has a possible Buddhist reading which I would like to share, in honor of the Buddhist Peace Walk currently underway in the U.S. Here’s the Buddhist reading of Groundhog Day in a few tight strokes:

• Samsara as the time loop
  Phil is trapped in endless repetition, mirroring samsara: the cycle of craving, frustration, and rebirth driven by ignorance.

• Tanha (craving) fails every time
  His early strategies—pleasure, manipulation, control—never free him. Desire only tightens the loop.

• Dukkha made explicit
  The film compresses all forms of suffering into a single day: boredom, despair, loneliness, and meaninglessness.

• Ego-death before liberation
  Phil must exhaust narcissism and despair before genuine transformation is possible—there is no shortcut around collapse.

• Compassion as the turning point
  Liberation begins only when his actions are motivated by care for others rather than escape for himself.

• Right action without attachment to outcome
  He helps people knowing it won’t “matter” tomorrow—pure action, no grasping.

• Awakening doesn’t end the world, it re-enters it
  Enlightenment doesn’t dissolve reality; it restores him to time, relationship, and responsibility.

• Nirvana as participation, not transcendence
  Freedom arrives not by leaving the town—or the day—but by inhabiting it fully and rightly.

Hopefully we can all achieve liberation from our personal samsaric ruts in the following months of this year. The world is in dire need of mindfulness, compassion, and lovingkindness in Anno Domini 2026.

Thanks for reading, folks!

OM MANI PADME HUM (Praise To The Jewel In the Lotus)

Author: Potential_Pen_8452

Ecstatic_Lab9010 (my Reddit handle):

“Burroughs seems to be describing social atomization and --perhaps presciently-- warning us about accepting it as an inevitability. He also seems to suggest that living in an atomized state is feasible. I strongly disagree! No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. We are social creatures. Rugged individualism tests the practical limits of this truth and is sometimes desirable as such, but the radical individualism ethos treats it as a flat-out lie.”