Book up to now

BOOK, A FEW DAYS IN

Now that I have been an honest-to-goodness book author for three days I want to bring the wannabes up to date; wannabe being my category until now.

I have about fourteen chapters, an introduction and a table of contents put down. Some chapters are still empty but there is plenty of time yet. What I have found is that by thinking of a chapter heading certain memories of or around that period come to mind; I note them on a scrap of paper, then add the beginning of that memory into the chapter; building upon building.

Today I learned something, again; how to keep track of various drafts and to know which ones I wanted to keep. There were a couple of chapter headings that I had tried and then discarded; but which ones and were the right ones in the contents section. Two hours of sorting, finding missing files, rebuilding the contents list and then putting a desktop shortcut on the repaired master document has taught me to be more careful about drafts and preferred documents. But each time I go through one of these exercises I become better informed about how to use the master-document format and more wonders of the computer than I had imagined.

I wish that I could give anyone, just one, advice on how to find the thing you want to write about; I have looked for years until I realized, again, that there is only one subject in which I know more than anyone else in the world. I’ll try to remember that tip the next time I feel the need to begin a new project; but I have a feeling that I’ll have to discover or invent that suggestion again.

A NEW ATTITUDE

A NEW ATTITUDE

I had thought for quite a while now that there is nothing new in the area of feelings and attitudes, now I am not so sure that what I knew to be true is so. Here is what has happened so far:

Until about two weeks ago it looked as if I could expect to live another three or four years; this is from the statistics for people who have what I have, and is a number not too far from the average expectancy for all men in this country. I am well aware that these statistics imply and I intend to do anything that I can to come out on the far side of that bell-curve; I also found the study that found people with heart failure often over estimate how long they have to go. I had asked a few medical people, found more than a few articles online that all said about the same thing. My chore had been to get my head around that notion, to accept what was and then to get on with my life.

As I wrote a week or so ago I had an appointment with someone who discovered that I have severe apnea, but that with treatment I can expect to add perhaps four years to this cruise that I am on. And one other thing, he now has probable cause for something that I had been told many times was idiopathic. Treatable and redeeming–quantity and quality.

In effect I have just have just been offered a doubling of my expectancy; this idea is taking a while to root in my cranium and germinate, but it will. There are events and situations all through life that cause feelings and attitudes; except that this business is different, what I am feeling and how I am seeing the world is not quite like any I have ever experienced. I am not ready to say that this is unique, it might just be a variation on one or more, I just can’t say yet.

Obviously I am happy with the news, I have long ago discarded any wish to be dead notions; have reached the conclusion that whatever pains and discomfort come along, no matter how intense, they cannot overwhelm that of being, of becoming. This new thing is a testimony to perseverance, to scratching at the tunnel face until the gold vein is completely discovered; and for that I am relieved, perhaps more than a bit smug. This that I have just received is a gift, more to God than from; but it is such an overwhelming gift that no words are appropriate. Perhaps it would be as if someone gave me a new car–then I see that it is a brand-new Rolls convertible; what the hell do you do with such a thing! A great problem to work at as I go on.

I may write more about this as I figure it out and believe it would be of interest to someone, anyone else. Let me add one more thing: To say that this is more a gift to God than from God is because I know that without man God is irrelevant; He is what we are about, that makes us what we are.

That Abject Feeling

There are times in everyone’s life when the terror of aloneness approaches the limits of what can be handled, if the loneliness was any more painful it would push me over the edge. When I see that boundary coming at me I automatically look for diversions, we look for diversions because allowing or welcoming pain is weird or pathological. They might be: work, booze, drugs, orgasms, casual friends, games and entertainment, there is Twitter and Facebook; all these and more allow me to shy from this abject feeling, this most horrible of feelings.

There are times in everyone’s life when the bliss of solitude is the greatest pleasure imaginable; I then travel with the knowledge that I am where I ought to be and who I ought to be. I need nothing; I will have activities but they are no longer necessities. When I have let myself drift from being the center of my universe and that necessity to control I get to enjoy this rightness.

To find the latter I have to allow abject loneliness its time on stage, letting it cavort and destroy the sets, frightening us actors. It is when I stay for that complete show, all three acts, watch the curtain descend that I can allow myself to be–to leave the theatre in peace.

Forcing myself to feel the pain of loneliness and emptiness is not masochism because there is no pleasure in it; but from the depths of that terror arise bliss, joy, rightness and a knowledge of that that allows all this to be.

Pain Management Clinic

Half an hour ago I received a call from the Chronic Pain Care Center , they just had a cancellation and would I like to come in tomorrow at 8 a. m.? My answer was an immediate yes, the two month wait to see them has now become little more than half a day.

They had sent me a series of questionnaires about my pain, my health, my attitude that I was going to answer in June; so I had to do them this afternoon. To question closely the specifics of pain is unsettling, like most people I had made a mental accommodation, a day to day way of handling this thing, my special way; now I have described it by questionnaires for medical and psychological doctors. All my previous accommodations are upset and would like to be back to their almost once comfortable positions.

This is my first professional visit to pain specialists; not only do I expect that they have all the possible modes of handling whatever it is that I have, there is the thought that if they don’t have an answer, the answer, then I am in trouble. I have been avoiding, denying that my pain may be impossible to relieve, the rheumatism or fibromyalgia pain; in the back of my mind there was the belief that there is a cure, but if I don’t search for it I can maintain that belief, that fiction. That notion is about to be tested.

Now that I have put the idea down here, that there is or is not an answer I can see that there will probably be a complex answer, things that will relieve the pain and things that will assist me living with whatever pain is left over. This is not an uncomfortable afternoon.

A series of questions has to do with my significant other , they are insistent that I list someone in my life to whom I turn, this isn’t an easy question. I saw in the paper that a recent survey found just over half of all women are single, from that I assume that a fair number live alone, are divorced. For every divorced woman there has to have been a divorced man: that means there are is a big bunch of divorced guys out here, and many of them are not living with someone else, many of us have parents who are dead, more than a few are alienated from their children, or never had any, perhaps don’t have a close friend, haven’t had a close friend since they growing up. I don’t think that I am alone in having trouble naming this significant other person. I mention only men because that is what I happen to be part of, if someone wrote that there are a large number of women who would have trouble with that question I wouldn’t be surprised.

About a decade ago I had to go to an Emergency Room at 3 a. m. I had thought that there is nothing lonelier than going to the E. R. alone at 3 in the morning. Even when I had a wife who didn’t like me she would have felt it her duty to go with me; I think that there are a number of situations where an unhappy spouse gives in to duty, I remember when I did it for her, she for me. Now I sit alone.

I volunteer to sit with people who are about to die, I have yet to have a situation where there is a spouse present; children often are in denial about the situation, are present physically but not fully. There can be nothing fucking lonelier than sitting someplace and waiting to die; yet it is a necessary, the necessary, act of our life. It can be described as the second most common act, the first being when we become alive. I sit with these people in order that their loneliness is lessened.

Several people have commented that I have been writing about weird stuff, that I have difficulty writing about everyday things. Yes, that’s the truth. Is there anything more everyday than the knowledge that I am alive but someday will not be? I guess that I am writing weird stuff, and so what?

It is a beautiful spring afternoon in Chicago, daffodils and tulips are spots of strong color after months of gray and brown smudges. Almost everyone I have talked with in the last few days has mentioned how much they are enjoying our spring; it doesn’t last for long, but that makes it even more precious.

That is all I have time for now, it is time to open a beer and cook some orange roughy fillets, fingerling potatoes, green pepper, broccoli, a fair amount of olive oil and garlic are about to be ingested by this occasionally weird guy; there may be a third beer tonight.

Weather Forcast

At long last it appears.The promise shows a touch of being here—–today.Spring is paying a visit to our little community; the prediction is for a clear and sunny day with temperatures approaching 50° F. And I have the day off of work. Asking for more would be just wrong-headed.My intention is to walk up to Wicker Park, carrying a book that has always been good friend to me, an unread copy of the New York Review, and to wear my new hat, the one bought while winter was still flogging our souls.

Our souls have been flayed by this long season, almost unrelenting dreariness and lack of promise; person after person I know has had the temperature of their souls decreased. Now it is over, as we all knew it would, there has always been a spring, etc., etc.

Do something joyful to celebrate: feed a pigeon, fuck a new friend, find a bookstore, fix that broken outside stairway.

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On a somewhat different note is the lesson I had a chance to learn, again, during my recent bout with what I now call rheumatism I neglected to exercise; my pain levels were above 8 for long periods, there was nothing I wanted to move, not even my eyelids; as a result when the Lyrica finally tamped down the pain I was left with muscles that hadn’t done anything other than flinch for several weeks. Flabby muscles make their own brand of discomfort, this is something that everyone knows, has always known —but I forgot it until reminded.

I ran into a guy I know who is a running coach, trains people to run marathons and other such strange behavior; I was limping and grimacing, he took one look at me and said “you haven’t been doing those core exercises on that disc I gave you, have you?” No I hadn’t.

The results of starting them again were felt immediately, the creakiness from stretching tissues that had been allowed to shrink makes me wince, but in a good way. The lesson is to not forget to keep things stretched even when other things are pressing on the agenda.

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I for one have had enough of dark weather, crabby people, backward looking practices; I for one intend to be out of here within the hour. I hope that everyone else is of the same intent.

Why do I do it?

Several friends recently have suggested that visiting the old and the dying is something I do because I have a big heart, implying that I have more of something or other than anyone else:—that is going down the wrong road, it says something about where they are coming from, doesn’t say much about me. I began visiting the dying out of fear, a fear of mine that I would end up on a gurney, in a hallway at Cook County Hospital; that image scared the hell out of me for a long time.

I really don’t like living with fear, I have found that it isn’t a great diet, is a poor exercise companion, is an all around unpleasant thing to keep in my belly: so I decided to get rid of this big one. The best recipe for eliminating any kind of fear is, of course, to go right up to it, look it right in the eye, smell its breath, listen to it gasp; and then realize that it ain’t so scary after all, that fear evaporates, my stomach becomes unclenched, I can get on with other business. So, in order to get rid of that dying fear I took a close look at it, got as close to the experience as possible, and did it again, until that fear became a memory.

The reason I continue is the friendship I experience, friendship is a rare and valuable thing; especially one that has no agenda, no history, nothing to be gained or owed, there is just being there with someone, watching the parade go by.

I visit these people for selfish reasons, the best of selfish reasons, and I hope that I will continue to listen to my belly when it signals that fear has taken up residence, listen and go on from there.

Wearing my new hat

Last Saturday I was wearing my new hat when I went to visit Bert in the home; I had worn it on earlier occasions, for about a month, but they were ‘test runs’, Saturday I was a guy wearing his own hat.

I have worn hats off and on for almost seventy years, but this is different, this is the first good hat I have ever worn or owned: Printed on the sweatband is “RESISTOL ’self conforming’ Made in Texas, USA, 4xxxx BEAVER”; that pretty much explains everything. I do like wearing it, it is sitting on my head as I write; I have had floppy hiking hats, berets, and those ubiquitous one size fits allbaseball hats. I have a big head, the baseball caps look like undergraduate beanies, missing the propeller at the crown; this hat is “7-5/8″, there were only two in the store that fit me, a black and a brown, I left the black. It isn’t accurate to say that there were only two hats in the store that fit, there were straw hats of the cowboy variety in my size;but this has not been a straw hat kind of winter in Chicago, this is very much felt hat weather.

I am self-conscious about wearing a hat indoors, was raised when a hat was removed in an elevator, restaurant, addressing a lady, in the house; it was with that background that I went to the second floor to see Bert.

I found him in the day-room, his wheelchair was part of a circle, with Molly in the middle, a woman in her mid-twenties, of unending energy and enthusiasm, she was dancing around while waving a stick with a piece of ribbon attached. Everyone had a stick with ribbon attached, I was offered my choice, I took a green stick with green ribbon, Bert’s was a blue stick and ribbon. Molly would go from one to another of her dozen attendees, dancing, waving encouraging; she would hold someone’s hand and dance, she would make her ribbon shiver and shimmy; looking to elicit a reaction from each and every one.

All the wheelchairs had alarms attached, the alarm would sound if the sitter attempted to rise, Bert is always in a chair and alarm, it will also go off if he comes too close to the elevator.

A couple of the women were in regular chairs, their walkers standing next to them; one woman, I think her name is Carol, is always in a special chair that looks as if it is a hinged mattress folded to be a long chair, with high, padded, arm rests. I have seen Carol strapped into this chair on some occasions, today she was not; Carol’s limbs are in constant motion, irregular waving and bouncing, jerking, twitching she seems never to be still; her head swings from one shoulder to the other, the chin near her chest or pointed to the sky, the chords on her neck visible much of the time. Carol never talks, she moans, she howls, she screams; the last time she saw me she began shrieking, a nurse had to come and assure her that I was not there to harm.

Molly pushed a chair into place for me, between Bert and Carol, sat down clasping my stick with the ribbon attached.

Bert saw me, there was that pause before that warm smile, he raised his hand a few inches so that I could grasp and shake it; “hello old friend” is how I have been greeting him, that elicits an even warmer smile. He has no idea of my name, when he last saw me, just that he recognizes his friend of several months.

Molly finished dancing, a one sitting one standing sort of dance with each of the dozen women and Bert; thankfully she did not dance for or with me. A beach ball was produced next, and a game of catch began; catch turned out to be more appreciated than the dancing, most everyone opened their arms in an attempt to catch the beach ball, many attempted to return it. There were a couple of women who were not awake long enough to complete that give and take, their wakefulness is measured in seconds.

As Molly went around the circle giving everyone a chance to play she came to Carol; Molly threw the ball, Carol caught it, and then Carol threw the ball right back at Molly; there was a pause while I understood what had just happened, while Molly understood what had just happened, while Carol herself understood what had just happened. I had never seen Carol do anything purposely before, I don’t think Molly had either; all three of us laughed, others in the circle smiled, we had all witnessed something really good.

Within the last week I have corresponded with a theologian, had my attention brought to the religious statement of Oliver Sacks, talked with a woman interested in hospice work, drove someone who has a hangar at Midway Airport: That few seconds with Carol were the most interesting, the most memorable, the most spiritual.

I have read a few books of philosophy, theology, some great novels; all of them worthwhile, but that few seconds when a person concentrated her all, invested whatever she has, to catch and return that ball, that was something really good. The intensity of that situation lasted just a short time, it cannot be sustained, but it will always be remembered.

I was glad that I was wearing my new hat, that I was now grown up enough to wear a good hat, to appreciate it, take it to important events.

Watching the parade

My intention this morning was to describe how I cook a whole bird; I started doing that, but realized that it is something that will take time and care to get right; I will be describing something, that is simple when observed, but in my inadequate words.

I decided to write this short post because I have come to make doing this a good part of my day, a way of starting forward, the stretching exercises after a night’s sleep.

This has been a particularly hard week of winter, not that there has been heavy snow or very low temperatures, it is just that this hard season persists. This has been a week where I have been the subject of criticism, not more than I can handle, just hard criticism from many corners; it continued through to about midnight as I finished driving a limousine, full of one family, who seemed to question every turn that I was making, passed judgment on every turn that I had made, wondered if I knew where I was going, and in the end told me that the car was dirty on the inside. And do you know what? I did make a wrong turn, I made two of them in that five hours they were with me; and there was something spilled in an ice box, some juice that a child had dropped in there previously, that I wasn’t aware of. That was the end of that day, this is the sunny morning of this day.

There were others: landlord, potential girlfriend, and someone who had once been a friend; there was a lot of criticism of me this week.

I can’t say what today will be about, I know that right now there is bright, hazy sun, that there is a big wedding to be driven this afternoon, that the freeze will continue, other than that who can tell?

I don’t find it easy to separate the good that I might get from criticism, from the hard effect it has on my mood; the former is good, the latter not so good. It is what I can practice doing today, it is why I am writing this post, I want to put it out there that I have this problem to solve, that it is just a problem, is not anything to be kept secret, just something to work on like any other situation that I come across. Having written that I feel a bit easier about the situation, it’ll take more work, but I do see with more objectivity the difference between what was said, and the effect that I make of it.

When I am sitting with Bert, out at the home, he often becomes agitated: something he can’t remember, something he can’t do, the prospect of what is to come; at those times I suggest that we just sit and watch the parade go by: nurses, always busy and focused; aides doing the hundred, not always pleasant, tasks they do over and over again; patients, in wheel chairs, with their various disabilities, the ones who needs to be belted on to a gurney, but who are always included in any activity for as long as they can stand it. It is all a passing parade, some of it interesting, some of it humorous, some of it sad, some of it fucking pathetic—-it passes down that hallway, as we sit and watch; my old friend of four months, and I, sit and enjoy the view; we both know that sometimes we are part of the parade, and sometimes we are bystanders.

Bert can no longer drink liquids, every time he wants a drink of water it has to be prepared by adding a thickener to the liquid, something that keeps it from sliding down his throat and gagging him; that is the way that Bert drinks nowadays, perhaps that is the way I will drink someday; but not this day. The worst that I know is I will have, is my own remembering of the criticisms of this week, their residual pain; Bert has a more difficult day ahead of him.

It is 0° and breezy

I recently remembered that I know how to make ° £ € ¿ on this keyboard, the upside down question mark is one that I’d like to find occasion to use, but this may be the only occasion.

Our focus was on the possibility that it would get to 50°, which it did, and to ignore the next paragraph of the prediction; it decreased 50° from late afternoon to about midnight yesterday, and dropped about an inch of fresh snow. So what’s the big deal, it is the last week in January in Chicago? (I was looking for an appropriate character to end that sentence, maybe I should have used ð) I hadn’t put away my heavy Irish sweater, the big leather coat sits where it did, there is nothing of concern other than I liked the warmer weather, didn’t want winter to return. But it is here.

Yesterday I wrote a first explanation of something that has been bugging me for longer than I knew, has been at the back of my mind from the start; that first attempt is awful, I want to erase it, never bring up the subject again. And I didn’t want winter to return.

I won’t erase the question I wrote, I would not write it that way again, have felt my error for the day since I did, it was as if I had constipation, when getting anything at all out is a start. I have an idea now how to go on with my exploration, and where to do it: WordPress has a Pages area that I have used before for things that are not daily, I have some things over there, no one ever reads that stuff, I’ll be safe experimenting over there.

When I wrote that Google had only 3 hits from my query I knew I was in empty territory; all along I have been saying that inner exploration gives access to a complete library, it is true. Is there a better thing for a person to do than explore a really difficult problem, not give in to the trite that is offered? This continues to be a difficult notion to get across, people drift to magic, where pre-destination, outside spirits, the ability to see the future dwell, but that wishful thinking never brings up anything nutritious, it is cud chewing at best.

So that is what I will do about that, the special thing that makes us us is going to be examined over there.

There is sun in a clear blue sky, chimney steam is pushed to the east in the breeze that is predicted to gust to 30 mph; the sparrows are not as numerous as before, they come and go in waves, but they always come back for food. I haven’t seen my big bird in about a week, someone suggested that it might be a buzzard, they are common in the suburbs; I do remember that I saw the wingtip feathers spread in finger formation when it flew away, I think that buzzards are one of the birds who show spread finger wingtips at low speed. I’ll have to focus on the neck if it returns; but it has always been backlit, seen in contrast, never a clear, lighted sight.

I went to see Bert in the home yesterday, was surprised to see that it had been 2 weeks since my last visit, sometimes this is a tough thing to do. When I started visiting him in the autumn he was noisy, had idée fixe that was frustrating to be around; recently he is calm, has snippets of conversation that require little or no memory, his speech is clear and vocabulary seems alright. I gently probe the floor nurse about his condition, am given ‘oh, he’s doing fine, doing fine’ in the same studied way; perhaps there has been a problem with the confidentiality thing, I don’t push it beyond the gentle inquiry.

I really don’t care what his medical condition is: I am just there for that time, Bert is only in this time, what he accomplished or didn’t is irrelevant now, what is coming next week or month is irrelevant now, what is relevant is the big smile I get when I say ‘how are you doing old friend?’ That is all that any one human can do for another human being ‘how are you doing old friend?’

Bert can’t remember my first name, has never been told my last name, can’t remember if I had ever visited him, he does recall my face from somewhere; I have printed out the Auden poem The More Loving One and keep it pinned to the wall above my desk; there is a sentence that alway resonates:

If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.

I can’t say that my friendship with Bert is stronger than his for me, it really doesn’t matter which is which now.

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The feeder has about 2 inches of seed in it, about enough for today; I want that bottom seed to be eaten, don’t want it to get wet and moldy.

Letting go of meaning

For the last day I knew that I had to put down here what follows, it comes from saying goodbye to a new old friend, from the understanding that I am starting a new epoch, from that special insight that sets us apart from everything else that is alive. Any embarrassment I feel about writing this comes from my inability to put down just the right words that express what I know, what every one of us knows within.

My path led me to find meaning for who I was and what I must be about, “what will you be when you grow up?”, the route that took me everywhere but to peace. I don’t know why I never questioned the mission, never followed the clues that pointed to a wrong end; I searched and searched for the thing that would make me valid. Depression and terrible anxiety were all that I found.

There is being and knowing, that I am, everything is built upon this. Out of this came, comes, the knowledge of the mystical that I first experienced when Lydia Aello loved me and I loved her in return. Various experiences were of the mystical nature, mostly they happened when hearing a certain piece of music, looking at a picture, that kind of thing; most intense was when I believed that I was about to die, when I could see the deep black of the edge. It was from that intensity that came my daily exploration of the Spirit, the presence, etc.

I felt the need to put all of that down here again while we are at this new place, this beginning, this New Year. Intuitively I know that this direction is unlike the others, the goal a better one.

And I know that I have spent enough time analyzing and writing this: And that the bird feeder is empty, that the rent check needs to be delivered, that there is a cable for the new television that needs to be exchanged for the on that will do the job. And so it goes.