The first time in a long time

My Odd Fellow’s lodge secretary called today to ask if I would be willing to take his job. The irony of most organizations is that, if you are a non-attending member, they don’t ask anything of you, but if you attend even a little, you are expected to assume more and more responsibility. This was the main reason I stopped attending my Masonic lodge.

Speaking of Freemasonry, I went to lodge tonight for the first time in years. My home lodge has since combined with another lodge (due to falling membership), and the other lodge meets but a few blocks from my house. I only recognized one of the brothers, but this was enough to enable me to avoid an investigating committee. No matter what such a committee had asked, I probably wouldn’t have known it, my memory of Masonry being so fuzzy. I took my membership card, and I remembered the distress signal that is supposed to bring all Masons within sight or sound to my aid, so I knew that the two together would get me in.

A story that came down through my father’s family has it that one of my uncles from the Civil War era was about to be executed by the military when he inadvertently gave a Masonic sign that inspired an officer to save his life. After the war, he became a Mason and went all the way to the 32nd degree. My father, who knew almost nothing about Masonry, was most impressed by this achievement, because he thought it came as a result of hard work and dedication. Well, not really. Only the first three degrees require a lot of memorization.

The applicant learns the material by hearing the answers from men who volunteer to teach him, and then repeating those answers until he gets them right. His only written aids are books that contain the first letter of every word. When he becomes proficient, he is tested in lodge. When he finishes all three degrees, he is a Master Mason and can attend the basic unit of Masonry, the blue lodge. Afterwards, he can—if he chooses—go into the York Rite or the Scottish Rite (or both), the former being for Christians only, and the latter being for any Mason.

Masonry has a rich mythology and symbolism. In fact, there are books that contain nothing but Masonic symbols. As for the mythology, most of the blue lodge work centers on the building of King Solomon’s temple. I don’t respect tax-and-spend kings and the monuments they erect with their ill-gotten gain, but the stories were interesting.

Mostly, I was happy that the Masons still make a man work to get in, because the Odd Fellows have relaxed all such requirements due to their desperation to attract new members. The problem is that few of the new members in my area give a damn about the fraternity. They come for their initiatory degree so they can gain cheap access to the Odd Fellow campground on the coast, and we never see them again. I’ve railed against admitting them, but mine is a lone voice—my brothers maintaining the hope that, at some point, they will attend lodge.

Not a potty dance at all

The ophthalmologist said I am in the clear. My eye and the top of my head still hurts, but not terribly much.

I have been off Zoloft for two or three months now, and am hopefully done with the worst of the withdrawal symptoms. Peggy was initially happy that I can enjoy music again, but she hadn’t counted on how different our tastes had become. I like reggae and other forms that I don’t even know the names of. Yesterday, I was dancing to American Indian music while I worked on a project, and either the music or my dancing drove her from the house. She says my every dance looks the same, and that they all look like a potty dance. Since I am part Indian, I argued that this is just how “my people” dance, and I threaten to report her to the authorities for committing a hate crime.

The aftermath, desert ghosts

I served my thirty minutes on jury duty today, the defendant deciding at the last moment that he wanted a trial by judge. I left city hall as pleased as if I had escaped an encounter with a poisonous snake, so much did I dread the judge’s and lawyers’ questioning. The judge himself came to the jurors’ room to dismiss us. I watched him looking around as he spoke, and imagined him trying to decide which one of us was the son-of-a-bitch who sent him that provocative letter.

Peggy and I took a three day weekend to camp in the Oregon desert this week. I never saw a desert until I was grown, but I thought I knew all about them from cowboy movies, their chief features being perpetual heat and drought. On this trip, we were snowed upon as we crossed Santiam Pass into the "rain shadow" of the Cascades; were hailed upon the next day as we scrambled up Gray Butte; and were sleeted upon the third day on Grizzly Mountain. I wore my long johns the whole time and slept in my clothes beneath three blankets. I don’t mean to complain, the trip having been a good one—as are all our trips. If the precipitation was a nuisance, it also served to intensify the fragrance of sage and juniper, surely two of nature’s most sublime scents.

We stopped at a small cemetery near where a town used to stand. Oh, but I love those little ghost town cemeteries. What touching reminders they are of mortality with their marble tombstones commemorating the importance of “my darling,” or “the light of our lives” to people who are themselves buried and forgotten. They lie there together beneath the scrub, among barren mountains that they would have looked upon everyday of their lives just as I now look upon them. The brevity of it all! the anonymity! How little we matter; no, we matter even less than that before a sightless universe. Such a wonder is it all, to come, to go, and there be no reason for either, not the least point in us having happened.

I am surviving shingles better than I could have hoped. My sickest day was Monday of last week when I was too ill to walk more than a few feet, yet I was able to climb a mountain on Monday of this week. My left eye aches and feels scratchy, and the top of my head itches, but I consider my ordeal to be but a hint of what I might have suffered. I see an ophthalmologist tomorrow to be sure my eye remains infection free, but I will be astounded if he finds anything.

The nature of shingles

Shingles information from the FDA:.

People who have had chickenpox (varicella zoster) in their youth can develop shingles (herpes zoster) in later years. During an acute attack of the chickenpox virus, most of the viral organisms are destroyed, but some travel up nerve fibers along the spine, and lodge in nerve cells where they may lie dormant for years. A decrease in the body’s resistance can cause the virus to reawaken decades later. It then travels back down the nerve fibers to the skin’s surface.

Symptoms include fever, chills, headache, upset stomach, and a rash of small fluid-filled blisters on reddened skin. The pain can be intense and is often described as “unrelenting.” The rare and most dangerous form infects the eyes, nose, and face.

Occasionally, the rash will appear as a single spot or cluster of spots on the tip of the nose, called Hutchinson’s sign. This means that the ophthalmic nerve is probably involved and the eye may become affected, possibly causing temporary or permanent blindness.

Most people are surprised by how ill they feel with shingles. This seems out of proportion with the extent of the skin involved. Depression is often a feature of shingles, as in many other viruses. You may need up to three weeks off work.

Many experience a complication called post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN). This term refers to pain that is present in the affected area for months, or even years, afterward. PHN is difficult to treat. Described by sufferers as agonizing, excruciating, and burning, the pain can result in an inability to perform daily tasks of living, and lead to loss of independence and, ultimately, depression and isolation.

I’ve had all these symptoms except PHN, and have seen three doctors this week, the last an ophthalmologist who verified that I have Hutchinson's sign, and said that the eye infection will appear in about a week if at all.

I only had one day when I was too sick to do anything. That was Monday when I spent four hours in a crowded clinic for a follow-up to Sunday’s eye exam (a follow-up that I now know was unnecessary since it’s too early for an eye infection). I went to bed when I got home but hurt too much to sleep (I didn’t want to take pain pills) and kept thinking about all the things I needed to do. I got out of bed three times to work on one project or another but was too weak and muddled to get organized.

Today, I awakened feeling pretty good and set out to run several hours of errands, but came home after thirty minutes so weak that I was afraid to drive. During those thirty minutes, I went to three businesses and must have seemed like an idiot to the proprietors since that was how I was treated. At the tire company, I couldn’t make the exasperated man understand where the tire was supposed to be mounted (he said I kept contradicting myself). At the bank, I asked to use a phone and was told to use line three. I kept hitting numeral three instead of line three (much to the annoyance of the woman on line one), and someone had to come do it for me. Now, what kind of people have to be shown how to use a phone? Multiple choice: retarded people? people with dementia? shingles’ sufferers?

I know that such limitations will pass, yet I also know that they are a harbinger of what awaits me as I grow older.

Petrified wood and a case of the shingles

We just took a three-day camping trip to the Kalapooyas where we would have hiked some new trails had snow not blocked the road at 5,000 feet. We backtracked for miles, thinking we might cross the crest another way, but a fallen tree blocked that access. We shredded a tire on a piece of basalt on our descent, and Baxter barfed on the bed while we changed it. We washed our bedding in a mountain stream, but couldn’t get the stink out, so resolved to live with it. My left eye began to hurt like hell from what turned out to be shingles, but—not knowing what it was, or that it could cause blindness—we decided to live with that too.

The roads blocked, we scrambled up steep rocks as an alternative to hiking. I love the challenge of bushwhacking and scrambling as much as Peggy hates it, so I was surprised that she was keen on both scrambles. We reached the top of the second rock and looked off its 500-foot summit just as lightning began to strike at the rate of three per minute, which both exhilarated us and inspired us to descend like people pursued.

We had planned to camp for three nights, but rain sent us home after two. We didn’t mind since we were tired from scrambling, and my eye was hurting worse all the time. On our return, I found numerous pieces of petrified wood in a road-cut, along with charred wood and wood in various stages of petrifaction, all twenty feet down in a pile of rhyolitic ash. The growth rings were as sharply defined as if the trees had just been cut. I suspect the ash came from nearby Mount Mazama (now Crater Lake) because of its depth. Along with the wood were stones of varying sizes and compositions that predated the ash and were blown skyward with it during the eruption. To see a pile of volcanic debris rising high above my head in a road-cut without even knowing how deep it stretches beneath my feet, inspires me to awe. Furthermore, to find wood—both charred and petrified—in that ash and to speculate that, if it did come from Crater Lake, Indians would have witnessed the explosion, adds to my awe. I felt as if I had come upon the scene of a long ago battle, the artifacts of which now lie in peace and stillness, their repose disturbed only by distant thunder and the splatter of an occasional raindrop.

I felt so bad when we arrived home that I’ve spent two nights sleeping in a chair to alleviate the pressure in my head. The rash only appeared last night, and Peggy diagnosed it as shingles. I did some research, and was sufficiently frightened to drive to Urgent Care this morning before it even opened. The doctor prescribed a painkiller and an anti-viral agent, and told me to come back tomorrow to verify that the infection hasn’t spread into my eye. The pain resembles that of a bad bruise in the eye socket itself.

Later

I turned Peggy’s small garden with a shovel today, which might have been a mistake given how weak I am. My eye is swollen half shut, and the rash has spread to my upper forehead and eyelid. I feel sicker than I have been since the last time I had the flu. I read that the pain can become excruciating, which makes me very glad that I have access to medical care, and can afford $200 prescriptions along with Sunday and Memorial Day doctor visits.

I just ate for the first time today (at 8:00 p.m.), and feel as if I might have trouble keeping it down.

Upon stopping anti-depressants after nine years

The radio played Tina Turner today, and I remembered the month I spent in a Richmond, Virginia, commune at which I was the only straight male except for Lee who was dying of a brain tumor. The year was 1984, and AIDS was just becoming big news. I knew a lot of gay men, many of whom thought the disease was a government hoax to make people hate homosexuals.

Tina Turner was popular among homosexual men and often appeared on MTV. I had never seen MTV until my stay in Richmond, and I was quite taken by it. Some other gay men—in Atlanta—had introduced me to different kinds of gay bars earlier that summer, and I was quite taken by them too. I was at an age and had a body type that appealed to gay men, and I was flattered by the considerable attention I received, but I was never sexually tempted, for which I was very glad when the death toll began to climb.

I thought of all those dead guys today as I listened to Tina Turner, and I was overcome by sadness. Just then, the sun broke through the clouds and glinted off the top of a chain link fence, and I was so touched by its beauty that I had to choke back tears. I had thought my transition from Zoloft was complete since I seemed to have gotten past some hard days, but now, all of a sudden, I am so deeply touched by so many things—sunlight, music, memories, the utter strangeness of existence—that I can scarcely keep from crying. There are a lot of feelings that I haven’t felt for a long time, and I am struck by the fact that I had forgotten I had ever felt them.

If someone saw me crying over sunshine on a fence, he would think I was losing my mind. I can but reflect that normalcy is, by definition, nothing more than whatever is commonplace, and not a condition that is necessarily better or worse than any other condition.