Chicago, the hand held city

For over three months I have been wanting to write a post on this subject; knew that I wanted to say a few things, get them down on virtual paper and so to clear my mind. The thing that held me off was that of coming to the right view, the better attitude–I am there and here it goes.

As I drives out of O’Hare Airport on I-190 I often notice the overhead sign that declares “Chicago is a hands free cell phone city”. This is one of the first impressions a visitor has of our town, the airport being different as it is but a facet of the international air travel system. The next views are the masses of flowers, grasses and ornamental bushes that line the highway, a hint that this is a town that is serious about its appearance and attitude.

Then my car joins with the mass of other automobiles on the Kennedy Expressway heading southeasterly towards the Loop and eventually eastward to the Atlantic. We have heavy traffic for more hours of the day than we don’t; the morning rush hour starts sometime after six and lasts until about ten, the afternoon traffic congests somewhere before three and doesn’t loosen until well after seven. These periods may on occasion be longer but almost never are they less; weekends are no less because people we want to get out and around, to go shopping, visiting or are just traveling through the area. The reason that I list some details of our traffic is because it relates to what the overhead sign at O’Hare proclaims.

My observations won’t have much statistical value because I am too occupied to actually count, but I truly believe that by the time I drive the eighteen or so miles towards the Loop I will have observed at least fifty people holding cell phones to their ears, the number who are staring at something on the little screen is less but is more frightening. And here is my point, my question: Why do so many drivers use their cell phones in Chicago? For a long time this habit made me angry because as a professional driver I feel as threatened by distracted driving as I am by drunk or buzzed drivers. I was angry because I am more likely to be injured than if they hung up their phones to concentrate on driving their two tons of machinery along some of the most congested highways of this whole country. I was and still am angry because I see that the threat.

It is not as if City Hall had not noticed and paid service to this hazard; there is on the books a penalty of $250 for driving while using a hand held phone. Hands free phones were exempt so that drivers could pretend to be conscientious, hand held not so much. The law was passed a couple of years ago against heavy lobbying by the communications industry (certainly not because the mayor’s brother had run SW Bell). After the passage we all made sure that we had the ear piece attachment that would make us legal drivers again; we slowly became aware that although it was prohibited de jure, it was not forbidden de facto. A driver is as unlikely to get a ticket for driving while using a hand held as he is to get a speeding ticket; and no one gets speeding tickets in Chicago except on the Outer Drive or by State Troopers.

Stand at any busy intersection, watch the traffic as the lights change and you will need to take your shoes and socks off to count the cars being driven by otherwise occupied cell phone users. It takes a little longer to observe a number of police car drivers on their cell phones, but then again there are a lot less patrol cars than citizen’s. The lowest count will come for bus drivers of the CTA, but the number is there; it was slow to start but becomes less uncommon as the months add up.

That’s my observation of the scene; here is my quandary. There has to be a reason that supersedes the need for traffic safety; there has to be something greater than that of making aware soccer moms in Range Rovers drifting through red lights with a bunch of kids in the back. There has to be some greater good to citizens and perhaps this is the spirit of what we are about; perhaps the reason is theological or at least spiritual in nature. City Hall does not stop the issuing of expensive tickets for no reason at all (remember that it is $250 per pop). It is the search for this ultimate reason that kept me from just ranting about what I saw as a safety and law enforcement problem; and now I think I have the truth, it is related to the planting of flowers and other ornamentals.

This is a city that thrives on being in a good frame of mind no matter what; observe our love for the Cubs as just the most obvious example; that we don’t forsake the town in spite of hard winters; that we pay the highest sales tax in the nation because He has ordained it so. We are of good spirit; there is nothing that contributes to feeling good than our friends and relatives; nothing makes friends and relatives more cherished than connecting with them whenever possible; no device is more suited to making mom, boyfriend, office friends more important than to talk with them on any and all occasion. It is this spirit of having close friends that is greater than traffic accidents and casualties, trumps the slowdown effect on traffic caused by erratic driving. So this cell phone use is to be seen as a good thing, it is a positive for which we ought to be thankful that those who rule this town have decided to ignore law for the sake of an even greater one; that of talking to one’s girlfriends long and often. There is also the benefit of saying “like” twenty times per minute, the mantra that offers relief of anxiety and tension.

This decision is good and everyone should appreciate the long sighted nature of our betters, especially in these difficult times. Just another reason why I love living in the city not only of Obama and Blagoyevich, but the Modern Wing of the Art Institute and the Vader-like City Hall.

As I finish this post I keep in mind that I am not influenced by my recent parking ticket for having a clear plastic cover over my license plate; or the earlier one for having my front bumper eighteen inches inside a yellow curb zone. I know that for those offenses it was right to be punished; that the potential for harm I caused by these two egregious acts needed law enforcement action. I know and respect the law for keeping me in line when I was wandering over it. This understanding kept me in the right attitude as I figured out why Chicago encourages hand held cell phone users among its millions of drivers.

WHAT DO I LIKE TO DO?

WHAT I LIKE TO DO

There is a question that used to make me uncomfortable because my answer won’t be anywhere near to what the questioner expects:

“What is it that you like to do for fun?”

It could be one of the top ten questions in the world, if anyone cared enough to count and compare. It may be thought of as one those necessary boxes that have to be filled in before proceeding to the next page. And why the hell was I uncomfortable about my answer.

The response is that I like what I am doing right then, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it: Drinking coffee with a friend, discussing a book with another, arguing politics with the guys at work, looking out the window at the progress spring is making in the back garden, figuring out what I’d like to make for dinner, and of course there is doing just this putting down of words and thoughts.

After I give the short answer there comes a pause as the listener tries to fit it into one of the fun & enjoyment categories. Failing this there now appears a slightly puzzled look, as if I posed a riddle without adding a clue.

When this happened the other day I added; “I wouldn’t be having a better time if we were eating hot dogs at top of the Eiffel Tower (which used to have the most powerful mustard in those little pots); wouldn’t be feeling any better if were about to visit the coliseum in Rome”; I think that I added a couple of other obvious situations, but you get the idea by now. Doing and being active don’t make me any happier nor less; it isn’t that I don’t do the usual things, it is just that feeling good is independent from doing.

From the discomfort I was feeling when this question was asked I began enjoying it as I practiced my response, getting the words and inflections just right; I enjoy it because it is true; fun in and of itself, otherwise I’d ignore the question and move on.

This isn’t a big idea, but it is a crucial one; those who go from here to there and check off all the points of interest along the way don’t come back in any better shape than when they left, if I need something in my life going to Niagara Falls won’t supply it; I was born and raised in Niagara, so I can tell you it ain’t got anything you can’t find anywhere else. Beautiful, awesome at first, unique—but not a real meal.

I thought that I’d pass this along with the hope that it will resonate with perhaps one or two people, puzzle a few more.

A Refurbished Part for the Engine

I have never had the imaginative cues that would have me starting a book nevertheless a saga, I have never done much writing at all other than journals and these few unscripted scribbles, so I don’t know the rules or guides for starting a new chapter, finishing another. About all that I know is intuitive aided by the thoughts of just a few authors and a friend or two.

I know intuitively that I have just completed a chapter of what voyage.

Without resorting to those rules and guides for either novels or non-fiction writing I figure that a chapter has characters whose role grew, diminished or evaporated through the circumstances that the protagonist experiences and how the characters may fit and be important, appropriate or irrelevant. Out of the weather of events and fates the main character emerges into the next chapter a different person, one who is more fitting to his fate. Routes and passageways have been explored carefully so as not to damage the keel although the loss of a little hull paint is no great price as it will be replaced at the next haul-out.

It is not that there are or ever will be winners and losers, instead there is a crew who may or not be aboard for the whole voyage. One plans then begins a cruise with the idea that the plank owners, the original volunteers and the paid crew will be there at the final port; there is no reason at all to believe this, it is a wish coming from inexperience and love. At each port along the way there is the opportunity for some to leave and some to sign on; there is languishing on docks ahead a few whom I have no reason to choose or be chosen because they are as yet unmet. There may or may not be berths open at that time, and once leaving port it is rare to return to sign on someone who had been left on land.

Yesterday I was informed that the engine needed a new auxiliary part and that it would lengthen the time I can be at sea and maneuver me more easily through squalls; this addition came as a complete surprise to the engineers but it will be installed shortly.

Right now the pilot is obtaining charts of what opportunities have just been offered by the current repair, the charts he thinks he needs are now being drawn as the previous are now out of date and will be stored away in the map drawer. Like all charts they provide information, but no chart, no meteorologist, no pilot knows all that lays just beyond the horizon—and that uncertainty is what makes everyone anticipate the long cruise. The pilot has a few more lines from squinting in bright sun , he is not as quick to bend or haul a line as he had been, but this is of little concern because the tackle we carry has been proven and maneuvers well practiced.

The boat will make a test run of but a few days to check out the maintenance and fitting of the rig while thinking again on those new charts that are arriving piecemeal from the cartographer. The anticipation, that anticipation, tomorrow’s anticipation sparks the crew-ready to embark and hoist sails.

Fibromyalgia, etc.

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In looking for a subject of a five-minute writing exercise I realized that it has been a while since I passed along how I am doing with my fibromyalgia; as I wrote previously I have had it for over three decades, could find no way to manage it and was suffering quite a bit when I heard about Lyrica which I tried for most of one year. The drunken side effects became too much and I got a physician’s order to go to the Pain Clinic at RIC; they immediately put me on Cymbalta even though the approval had not yet come through from FDA—it relieved my pain within two days of beginning. Along with the other therapies from the clinic I have been pretty much fibromyalgia free since the middle of last July. I almost forgot to list the side effects because I only have one, and I can live with it alright.

Not only does it help me manage the pain it is good for my mood; those of us who have fibromyalgia probably have depression lurking around the corner and paying the occasional visit. The double acting whatever it does has helped there as well; recently I was found to have heart failure and concurrent to that a major family problem, both are under control as much as is possible, my mood through all of this has been the vehicle that carried me. As with any illness more than half of it is a mind game, that is a condensation of my latest on the field action.

Merely Five Minutes a Day

One of the guys at work was teasing me for so soon breaking my effort of writing five minutes a day and posting it; I had to agree but with an explanation.

To post something for anyone and everyone to read means that I believe the words say something not said before. Not that everything hasn’t been said but something I haven’t said in my own voice. So much of what I scribble is the emotional record of the day to day movements along my trajectory; and being emotions they quickly come and go without needing record. Emerson said something to the effect that life is a string of emotions like colored beads, each a lens in its own color and shape, one after another.

I am working on a post that is in the form of sailing instructions which reflect what I have learned and what I try to do as I go along this route; none of it will be new nor unique, just the distilled results of having made just about every mistake that can be made by a traveler.

This is my five minutes plus a few for today.

John Updike existentialist

FEBRUARY 24, 2009 WEBLOG

There is a lighted sky after five in the afternoon.

Snow and ice are gradually being reduced as the mercury peeks above freezing now and again.

People are responding to these changes even though February isn’t quite finished.

I awoke about four this morning feeling that abysmal dread that can arrive at that hour; a void that is filled with the blackest of blacks, and from which there seems to be no way out. As this despair swept over me I knew that I could avoid the strongest of what was to come by getting out of bed, turn on the television or go check the computer; I also knew that it was and is an honest feeling that is appropriate especially now.

I have an elderly patient in the hospital for whom I have consented to do medical approvals which are coming daily. I received lab results on tests I had done last week; I entered them manually in Google Health and noticed where they lay in their respective ranges. A very good friend who has agreed to do some things for me has just moved in a couple of blocks away; and I have another test this week.

All these combined as a perfect wave of anxiety that carried me upward to despair at that blackest hour; and today I read a review of John Updike’s life in the NYRB, how he recognized and handled the existential anxiety that he recognized early on and grew to be his muse. Reading that article meshed with what was going on with me, what goes on with anyone who will avoid the computer and television when it arrives. I didn’t get out of bed but lay there feeling and examining the great truth of meaninglessness that this despair brings.

And today the sun is shining through a thinly clouded sky, there are paths down most sidewalks that are free from snow; people are pleased to be experiencing these days because they have gone through a hard winter, a winter which tests but cannot destroy.

A Short Follow-up

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February 11, 2009

This is the third day of my ‘five minute a day writing exercise’ which I hope will graduate into something more, different, better. The first challenge is the subject and if the right one is found everything follows well from there. The post of yesterday could be thought of as heavy and even morbid, that is not an unknown criticism. Heavy? Yes, the topic of what goes on in the very center of a soul can’t be anything but heavy, except when it is frivolous; morbid? I don’t think so because it was a fine lines describing the utmost in living, in being. Remember that shying away from something means that I never get to know and enjoy it. For reasons that aren’t all that clear I do enjoy untangling the knots that are at the edge of my reason, my emotions, my spirituality.

I am going to leave this here.

My Old Pal Ben

FEBRUARY 10, 2009 Just as I was about to sit and start my five minute daily writing exercise I received a phone call from the social worker of St. John’s hospital. After introducing herself she asked a few questions to make sure that she had the right person on the phone, then she asked about my old pal Ben. Ben had been hospitalized a couple of days previously with pneumonia; he doesn’t exercise much if at all so I wasn’t surprised that what might have been a chest cold became something else; but that wasn’t her concern. Does Ben have any relatives that I know of, any friends whom she might contact, was there anyone else? The answer to all of these is no Ben has no one in his file except my name and number because I have been visiting him for a couple of years; not as a hospice patient, just as an elder who received the occasional visit. Ben has had dementia from the beginning although recently it has become severe, he no longer recognizes my face, never mind my name. Ben lives in the here and the now, can’t look backward and is frightened to look forward, although he sometimes does talk about that. It has become difficult to visit Ben and the others since I had the heart experience, not that I am near being a candidate for either a home or hospice, just that I sailed a little closer to that shoal than was comfortable. If I go over and see Ben tonight I will have to introduce myself, expect that nothing we have said previously is remembered, and that as soon as I leave all is forgotten. Why go?—- To give a guy the few minutes of conversation and maybe a joke or two that will be all he gets in the course of a day; and immediately forgotten. The reason that it is more difficult to make visits is that it forces me to face the meaningless of all of this, that nothing one accomplishes means anything other than at the time and place; that whether we are or whether we vanish is irrelevant, except that we need to do whatever it is that we are about in order to be complete. This is the fucking paradox that has been giving people headaches and into arguments for thousands of years; and in the end it is about visiting Ben for a few minutes.

Fibromyalgia, etc.

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In looking for a subject of a five-minute writing exercise I realized that it has been a while since I passed along how I am doing with my fibromyalgia; as I wrote previously I have had it for over three decades, could find no way to manage it and was suffering quite a bit when I heard about Lyrica which I tried for most of one year. The drunken side effects became too much and I got a physician’s order to go to the Pain Clinic at RIC; they immediately put me on Cymbalta even though the approval had not yet come through from FDA—it relieved my pain within two days of beginning. Along with the other therapies from the clinic I have been pretty much fibromyalgia free since the middle of last July. I almost forgot to list the side effects because I only have one, and I can live with it alright.

Not only does it help me manage the pain it is good for my mood; those of us who have fibromyalgia probably have depression lurking around the corner and paying the occasional visit. The double acting whatever it does has helped there as well; recently I was found to have heart failure and concurrent to that a major family problem, both are under control as much as is possible, my mood through all of this has been the vehicle that carried me. As with any illness more than half of it is a mind game, that is a condensation of my latest on the field action.

Five Minutes Daily

There is much that I can do to fill up five minutes of writing time; describe what is going on with the weather, birds in the yard, something about work, something about health that isn’t a complaint; it could be a memory of growing up by the Falls, a year long trip to Europe in 1960 when things were quite different, the reasons that I bounced around at university for six years and never went for a diploma, the story around my epiphany although it is of value only to myself; thoughts and words I have now about the future, how it will remain the same and how it might change. My intention is to write five minutes daily and then post to my weblog with the hope that more writing and thinking will follow. I’ll keep the above paragraph pinned to the wall above this machine so that my eyes cannot avoid it.