‘I worry for my sister’s reaction because of what happened to me’

By Alex P. Vidal

 

AT around 10:04 o’clock in the morning December 21, Marlon “Boy” Doronila walked toward the terrace of his four-story apartment in Queens to voluntarily bring the white envelope that arrived from Aetna, a New York-based health insurance company, containing an “important care plan information” addressed to his landlady Gloria Porras, to her sleeping area but he teetered.

Doronila (R) follows the NYPD
cop on their way upstairs 

“Oh no, (I realized) I can’t go there,” Doronila, 67, hissed.

His reluctance was prompted by what he suddenly “saw” inside the landlady’s sleeping area: “He is there; that’s him sleeping,” Doronila emphasized, pointing to a folding bed.”

The “he” Doronila was referring to was allegedly the person (a male) responsible for inflicting physical harm on him that resulted in “severe” pain on his neck and upper left shoulder.

“(If I enter there) he might scream and utter unprintable at me again,” feared Doronila, who has roots in Capiz but grew up and studied in Paco, Manila in the Philippines.

He placed the white envelope on the dining table located a few meters away from the landlady’s sleeping quarters.

PAIN

A few minutes later, Doronila grimaced in pain and pressed the back of his head and upper left shoulder. “I need a pain killer,” he sighed. “The pain (pointing to the area near the cervical spine) is here again and getting worse.”

He was contemplating on going back to the nearby Elmhurst Hospital emergency room “because that’s what I was told to do just in case the pain (on my neck and upper left shoulder) would worsen.”  

Complaining of “pains on the shoulder, neck, arm,” Doronila was treated in the same hospital’s emergency room by Dr. Megha George and Dr. Jacob Ziff when he went there on December 17.

The physicians’ diagnosis was “assault.”

Doronila underwent the following imaging tests: CT cervical spine without contrast, CT head without contrast, CT maxillofacial without contrast, DX chest AP only.

The doctors gave Doronila the following medications: acetaminophen (Tylenol), ibuprofen (Motrin), lidocaine 5 percent (Lidoderm), and methocarbamol (Robaxin).

Doronila said while in the emergency room, two New York Police Department (NYPD) cops interviewed him where he confirmed the alleged assault.

‘CALL 911’

If attacked again, the cops told Doronila to call 911. He was released from the hospital early morning on December 18.

In that afternoon, Doronila met up with a bosom friend, Ismael, a fellow Filipino based in Queens, to narrate his ordeal. Ismael briefed Doronila of his basic rights and goaded him to file a formal complaint if the alleged physical maltreatment continues.

At around 8:57 o’clock in that evening, Doronila, holding a cellphone, was seen running down from the third floor of his apartment. He called 911.

“He (the alleged assailant) wanted to attack me again,” Doronila narrated to the female 911 operator. “Please send somebody to rescue me. He’s going to kill me.”

“I always pray to God for protection,” Doronila says

Doronila’s alleged assailant, who lives in the same apartment, “has been physically and verbally abusing me for three years now.”

According to Doronila, who is single with only his niece, Cathy, who lives in another apartment, as someone he could reach out for immediate assistance in case of emergency, he worried a lot for his safety.

Fifteen minutes after the 911 call, two NYPD cops arrived.

UPSTAIRS

Before they went upstairs, one of the cops asked Doronila, “who is your attacker and how old is he?” Doronila snapped back, “His name is Michael, and he is 33.”

“How about you?” the cop continued. “My name is Marlon and I’m 67,” Doronila replied.

Upstairs, Michael swore “everything was alright.” After talking to Michael, the cops left.

Doronila insisted he wanted to stay away from Michael “for my own protection because I’m already elderly and with some health issues.” The cops told him to “ask your landlady to separate you and Michael.”

“I worry for my sister’s reaction if she will know what happened to me,” sobbed Doronila, who arrived in the United States in 1995. “She cares for me so much since my mother died when I was 21.”

Yassi, 74, Doronila’s elder sister, lives in Canada and was scheduled to arrive in New York with her dog Chimbo, for a Holiday vacation. They are scheduled to met on December 23.

 

  

 

   

 

 

 

 

Were they like us?

“If you look only at Genesis as an allegory, you have a major problem, because if it's an allegory, then tell me who our ancestor was? If Abraham was real, then from Abraham if Adam isn't real, if it's just an allegory, it's just a story, then what's the real Adam who really fell in a garden and really sinned? Where did we come from?”  

—Ken Ham

 By Alex P. Vidal

 

The first people introduced in the Book of Genesis are Adam and Eve.

They live on our Earth and eventually have children.

We tend to think of Adam and Eve as people like ourselves, and as a family with children.

“Is this a valid assumption?” asks Dr. Erwin Ginsburgh in the First Man.

Then Adam! “Were they really people like us? How might they have differed? What were they? Let us look at the available information.”

The Legends of the Bible, a compilation of material made by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg and used by Ginsburgh as reference, claims that Adam either visited or passed six other worlds before he reached the Earth.

This is the story narrated by Ginsburg, a physicist, in the book, which he also described as “a scientific interpretation of the Book of Genesis”:

In the Book of Genesis we find Adam and Eve living in a Garden of Eden.

This garden provided anything necessary to support life for two people.

Their food came from their plant kingdom. But there were two trees which were taboo:  the so-called Tree of Knowledge and the so-called Tree of Life.

The Book of Genesis (3:22) says that the fruits of the latter tree could provide immortality.

Eve breaks the taboo relating to the Tree of Knowledge. She and Adam ate the forbidden fruit from this tree (Genesis 3:6).

Because of this, and to keep them from eating of the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:23), both she and Adam are forced to leave the garden where everything was provided and must support themselves in our world.

They have at least three male offspring who have difficulty living with each other, and the problem reaches a climax when Cain kills Abel (Genesis 4:8).

 

SONS

 

When their two remaining sons, Cain and Seth, marry we are never told where their wives came from.

Among later descendants, the biblical record shows that there is a tendency for intermarriage within the group.

Adam and his immediate descendants are very long-lived. Many of the first descendants have life spans greater than 900 years.

Noah is famous for having survived the biblical flood.

After Noah, the lifespan of his son, Shem, falls dramatically to about 600 years.

Then there is a second fall in life span to 438 years for Shem’s son Arpachshad.

The life span stabilizes for three generations, and then a third fall to about 200 years occurs at the time of Peleg.

By the 20th generation, Abraham, the lifespan is down to 175 years.

Ultimately, man’s life expectancy falls to approximately present day lengths.

No lifespan can be listed for Enoch, the father of Methuselah, because the Bible does not record his death.

Significantly, there is explicit mention of the death of all the others, but not Enoch.

Genesis says (5:23 & 24), “In his 365th year Enoch walked with God and was not of the Earth, for God took him.”

The Legends discuss this further in the section called the “Translation of Enoch.”

The last paragraph of this section is especially interesting to a 20th century reader: “To the right of him sparkled flames of fire, to the left of him burnt torches of fire, and on all sides he was engirdled by storm and whirlwind, hurricane and thundering.”

Noah was 500 years old when his son, Shem, was born; none of Adam’s descendants had an heir so late in life.

Shem’s birth occurred at a time when Enoch would have been 900 years old if he were alive.

 

COINCIDENCE

 

Was it coincidence that Noah waited until he thought Enoch had lived out his normal lifespan of some 900 years?

Abraham lived about 2,000 years after Adam’s birth.

The Legends discuss in detail the fact that the bodies of the first and second generation did not decay at death.

Specific mention is made that Abel’s body did not decay.

Since the second generation is directly descended from Adam and Eve, we can expect this generation to have inherited, and the bodies of the third generation decay after death.

Something must have changed between the second and third generations. In fact, very specific instructions are given for preparing the bodies of the first two generations before they are “buried” in the cave of Machpelah near Hebron.

According to the Book of Genesis some of the members of Adam’s family were the originators of metallurgy, music and domestication of animals.

Genesis (4:20-22) relates: “Jabal was the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle. His brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe. And…Tubal-Cain, the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron.”

Why should the Bible identify the start of some of the major facets of high civilization?

In addition, the Book of Genesis says that members of Adam’s family talked to God.

It is not clear whether all the late generations were able to talk to God, but certainly Noah, the 10th generation, and Abraham, the 20th, do have this ability.

For God told Noah to build a ship to survive the flood (Genesis 6:14) and also God entered into a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:18).

The ability to talk to God seems to decrease from this time onward, although Moses is still able to do so much later.

There appear to be some final vestiges of this power later in the Bible when the prophets received visions and warnings from God.

Today, is extra sensory perception a remaining fragment of this ability to communicate with God?

Adam apparently had some technically advanced and highly sophisticated devices.

In addition to the well-known Thee of Knowledge and the immortality-giving Tree of Life, there was a set of God-made clothes that made the wearer invincible and irresistible.

The Legends claim that Nimrod (Noah’s great-grandson) is supposed to have worn them.

 

INGENIOUS

 

There is also a very ingenious engraving device, the “Shamir,” which reputedly was used to cut stones for Solomon’s Temple, but which has since disappeared.

The Sword of Methuselah was reportedly used by Abraham when he and his small band defeated the armies of the five kings.

Even as amazing as these people were, they still had problems living with each other.

Ultimately, immortality and evil living led to the destruction of all of Adam’s descendants except Noah and his family (Genesis 6:17).

In an attempt to improve morality, as Noachide code of seven rules was drawn up to provide guidance so the remaining people could live with each other.

In the 20th generation, a very formal relationship was established between God and Abraham; specifically, a covenant was drawn up.

Apparently, there was no earlier need for such a formal arrangement.

As the lifespan of Adam’s descendants was falling and approaching that which we today consider as normal, and as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish, Abraham’s heirs from the rest of mankind, all the males descended from Abraham were circumcised.

Before this covenant, Abraham was known by the name “Abram.” As part of God’s covenant, his name was changed to “Abraham.”

The Legends also relate that Abraham was the first of Adam’s descendants who aged as he grew older.

In addition, Jacob was the first man who declined physically before death.

Before his time, death occurred quite rapidly.

Paradoxical wit and wisdom

“It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense.”

—Mark Twain

By Alex P. Vidal

 

A US-based psychologist, who deals with problems including the art of insult, has coined a new vocabulary we won’t find in any dictionary (at least not yet): oxymoronica.

I bought a copy of the book for only $6; its original price is $14.95 plus tax on a sale day in the Barnes and Noble bookseller in California in November 2012.

The author, Dr. Mardy Grothe, described it to be containing “paradoxical wit and wisdom from history’s greatest wordsmiths.”

Grothe did actually define oxymoronica in the book: “(OK-se-mor-ON-uh-ca) noun, plural: Any variety of tantalizing, self-contradictory statements or observations that on the surface appear false or illogical, but at a deeper level are true, often profoundly true. See also oxymoron, paradox.

Examples: “Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.” Victor Hugo;

“To lead the people, walk behind them.” Lao-tzu;

“You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.” Dolly Parton.

Grothe introduced “oxymoronica” to readers in the delightful collection of 1,400 of the most provocative quotations of all time.

“From ancient thinkers like Confucius, Aristotle, and Saint Augustine to great writers like Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and G.B. Shaw to modern social observers like Woody Allen and Lily Tomlin, Oxymoronica celebrates the power and beauty of paradoxical thinking,” wrote Grothe.

“All areas of human activity are explored, including love, sex and romance, politics, the arts, the literary life, and, of course, marriage and family life.”

He added: “The wise and witty observations in this book are as highly entertaining as they are intellectually nourishing and are sure to grab the attention of language lovers everywhere.”

He came up with the word in the early 1990s when he was working on his 1999 book Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You.

 

INVENTION

 

“A new word invention is formally called a neologism, and my dream is that oxymoronica will one day show up in a dictionary (and given the meaning "a group or collection of oxymoronic and paradoxical quotations"),” Grothe explained.

According to Grothe, The Never Let a Fool Kiss You book introduced people to the fascinating literary device known as chiasmus (ky-AZ-mus).

“Chiasmus occurs when the order of words is reversed in parallel phrases, as in Cicero's ‘One should eat to live, not live to eat’ or Mae West's ‘It's not the men in my life, it's the life in my men,’" he explained.

He revealed that even though chiasmus shows up in some of the world's most famous sayings (like John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you" line), the term is not well known, even among sophisticated and highly literate people.

“While compiling quotations for my Never Let a Fool Kiss You book, I kept running into many other quotations that I loved, but that didn't fit into the chiasmus theme. Some of the most fascinating quotes captured my interest because they had one special thing in common—they contained either a contradiction in terms or a contradiction in ideas:

“Be careful what you wish for, it might come true.”

“Free love is too expensive.”

“I must be cruel only to be kind.”

“A yawn is a silent shout.”

“Man is condemned to be free.”

“To lead the people, walk behind them.”

 

COLLECTION

 

As his collection of these kinds of quotes slowly grew from a few dozen to a few hundred, and then burgeoned from a few hundred to a few thousand, he needed a word to describe them.

Some contained a classical oxymoron (like silent shout) and others a classical paradox (like cruel only to be kind).

But simply calling them oxymoronic or paradoxical didn't come close to capturing their collective magic.

“Then, one cold winter day in the early 1990s, I found myself looking up the word erotica in the dictionary. I knew what the word meant, but wanted to get a precise definition. Very quickly, the entry on erotica took me to another familiar word with the same suffix: exotica,” Grothe narrated.

“Both words referred to collections of things, especially things that hold a particular fascination or interest. Just like that, a word popped into my mind.

“Oxymoronica. I tried the word out on a number of friends and it almost always brought a smile to their faces. I knew I was on to something.”