Thoughts before carpel tunnel surgery

Not long ago, the anesthesiologist called about my surgery tomorrow. “You’ll be given two painkillers,” he said, “the first to kill the pain of the second until the second takes effect.” Drugs are funny. One doctor wrote me a prescription for Ambien recently. “This medication has been known, in rare cases, to cause violent behavior,” the packaging warned. A few days later another doctor gave me a prescription for Requip. “This drug has been known, in rare cases, to lead to compulsive gambling,” the packaging advised. “Oh, great,” I thought, “I’m going to be a violent gambler.”

Last night, I was too manic to sleep, so today I took a Vivarin. Since I don’t do caffeine anymore, an occasional Vivarin makes me really manic. I was that way when the anesthesiologist called, and was consequently so bubbly that I wondered whether I sounded drunk. After we hung-up, I went back to my yard work. As I crossed the backyard, I passed Bonnie walking the other way. “Hello, Bonnie,” I said. Then I remembered that Bonnie was in the front yard, and that the gate was latched. I thought that, well, maybe I just thought the gate was latched, so I went to check. It was latched. Things could be worse, I suppose. I could be hallucinating a dog that is dead or never existed.

I’ve spent days doing all the work around the house that I won’t be able to do during my convalescence. Last night, I baked crackers, biscuits, and cornbread. I actually started baking crackers two weeks ago because each batch takes two hours, and that’s if I don’t double it. I was raised on store-bought loaf bread, but my mother kept the larder stocked with homemade biscuits and cornbread. Of course, they were inferior to what I bake. I never use shortening—much less lard—or sugar, and all my breads contain several whole grain meals or flours. There are only two things that I love to cook. One is soup and the other bread; and of the two, I prefer bread. My father believed that whole grains were for hogs (he claimed that bleached flour was purer because it was white), so he was challenged to eat my bread when he came to live with us.

I am more nervous about this surgery than any I’ve had, because the ligament that the surgeon will cut is directly above the nerve that makes my hand function. I’ve thought about what it would be like to go through life with a purely decorative right hand, and whether the odds of that happening are small enough to justify the risk of surgery. I dealt with the issue by opting to stick with the decision I’ve already made, my thought being that I would need new information to back out with any integrity.

My hernia surgery (in January) was hours late, so I had a lot of time to lie on my stretcher and think. I really wanted to walk out of that place while I still could. I remembered my friend, Hulene (a woman after my own heart, her last act before surgery was to write me a letter), who died during hernia surgery five years ago. I also thought about my surgeon, and how I didn’t entirely trust him because he always seemed so harried. I finally reconciled myself to the fact that, having made the best decision I could, and having no new information that would justify a change of heart, I needed to trust the thinking I had done when I was less emotional. Even if it was wrong, it was the best I could do. This is what will make it possible for me to lie down upon yet another stretcher tomorrow. Meanwhile, I do dread the long night ahead.

Thoughts about supporting private and governmental evil

My neighbor, Ellie, also has carpal tunnel problems. Hers is advanced, so a return to normalcy is unlikely even with surgery, but Ellie is obliged to sell plasma just to get by, so surgery is out of the question.

One of my Masonic brethren, Nathan, changed jobs recently, and his new insurance wouldn’t take effect for ninety days. During that time, Nathan came down with an undiagnosed illness that caused his fever to hit 104º. He couldn’t afford a doctor, so he rode his illness out at home.

Linda, the technician who hooked me up to the monitors for my recent polysomnogram, was injured in an accident and unable to work for seven months. Her insurance ran out after six, leaving her $30,000 in debt.
I don’t look for such stories, but now that I have become so dependent upon insurance and so aware of how different my life would be without it, they leap out at me. It’s like never noticing a certain make of car until you buy one.

There is really no way around the fact that, as individuals and as a nation, we spend money on that which we value. I value financial security, so I save money. My sister-in-law values foreign travel, so she spends money on that even though she has to borrow against her house. As a country, we value the War in Iraq. We also value health care for poor people in other countries, although the money has to come partially from the taxes paid by the poor people in our own country, people who cannot afford health care. We say to our own poor that their lives are of less importance than countless other things that we spend money on. If Nathan should die or Ellie should become permanently disabled, well, that’s very sad to be sure, but Africans with AIDS need our help more, even if we are obliged to borrow the money from China.

I am amazed that we Americans put up with as much as we do, but then I am one of those by whom I am amazed. But what to do about it… I met a man last week who was going door-to-door to gather support for Barack Obama, and I wished mightily that there was a candidate who I believed in that much. Hell, I just wish I believed in the goodness of our democratic system that much.

“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge…. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority…. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.” Thoreau

I have long admired Thoreau because he writes as if he were beside me, contemplating the same problem that I am contemplating. No matter that the steam engine was cutting edge technology in his day, his issues then are my issues now. Ah, but he knew what to do about them. He avoided marriage partially because marriage would make moral compromise easier, but I embraced marriage because I had yet to meet the issues, and because I naively thought I could have it all. Still, I would not choose to live alone. But what would I do differently if I were alone? I would bury my money in a hole in the ground (figuratively or literally), so the IRS couldn’t find it, and I would stay in Oregon most of the year so I wouldn’t have to pay a sales tax. I feel little compunction to eradicate evil, but a great compunction to abstain from supporting it.

Yesterday, I received a bill for $465 for the carpal tunnel surgery that I haven’t had yet. The letter explained that this should cover my portion—after insurance—of the clinic’s operating room. This means that the clinic is going to charge $2,325 for the half hour that I will spend in that room. If not for the insurance company’s required write-off, the charge would be closer to $3,000. The letter also explained that the surgeon and anesthesiologist will bill me separately.

Last night, I could scarcely sleep for knowing that I am supporting a merciless and avaricious health care system. During one of the short lulls in my wakefulness, I dreamed that I was required, before surgery on Friday, to pay $499.99 in advance for a bath in a stainless steel tub. The tub turned out to be a thin vinyl mattress that was painted to look like stainless steel, and the bath was a damp washcloth with which I was told to wipe myself off.

My father died partially because he was unwilling to support what he considered a greedy healthcare system. People generally thought he was a nutty eccentric, but, for what it’s worth, Thoreau would have made the same choice. Of course, people in Thoreau’s day thought he was a nutty eccentric too. People who won’t support evil no matter what the cost to themselves are ever seen in such a light.

I look at things this way. My wrist hurts and my hand tingles. I sleep in a brace. I avoid certain activities. I am guardedly optimistic that surgery will change all this. On the other hand, if I refuse the surgery, what good will I have accomplished? None, externally. But would I respect myself more? Maybe, but I am still going to put my money into surgery, because I value my health more than I value my own moral approval, especially in regard to a decision that won’t make the world better or worse anyway. How do I live with this choice? I tell myself that the surgery will soon be over, and that I will move on. I usually prize expediency above principal, and I feel bad about this at times, and not so bad at other times. Mostly, I try not to think about it. In fairness to myself, those around me seem to knuckle under more than I do. They just ponder it less.

practically a doctor a day

This has been a doctor week. Yesterday, I saw an orthopedist whose specializes in hands, wrists, and elbows; today, an orthopedist who works on shoulders. Before them, a sleep specialist. I resist being the kind of person who runs to the doctor for every little thing, and I indeed considered canceling at least one of my appointments on that basis alone. But, the thing is, I don’t run to doctors for every little thing. I’ve had sleep problems for ten years, carpel tunnel for twenty, shoulder pains for eighteen months. I’ve put in my time studying—and sometimes trying—self-treatments and alternative treatments, yet I have only gotten worse.

I usually have a tentative diagnosis for a problem, and know everything medicine can do for it before I even see a doctor. I try to keep emotion out of doctor visits, because doctors are at their best when they feel they have something to offer, and few have much to offer in the way of emotional support.

The longer the appointment, the more of a challenge emotional neutrality becomes, and I might not know I’ve lost it until I realize I missed several sentences or failed to understand simple statements. Peggy and I try to go with one another to the doctor to compensate for such deficiencies.

I originally went with her—at her request—to offer moral support, and I usually didn’t ask her go with me because I didn’t think I needed moral support. I’ve discovered, though, that what I do need is another clear head in the room. She takes me with her for an additional reason. She is convinced that doctors—both male and female—treat her better when she’s with a man.

She and I both hold doctors in low esteem until they give us reason to think otherwise. Her nursing experiences have soured her, whereas I react more to the deference they expect and to the exorbitant fees they charge. They’re also typically rushed and, to many of them, medicine is simply a way to earn money. Then there are the limitations of medicine itself.

If a doctor comes into the room and says, “Mr. Thomas, I am Doctor Boneshaker,” he or she loses five points. If he shook hands as he said it, he only loses two points. If he gives his full name (giving me the option of what to call him), he gains five points.

I am often tempted to say, “I don’t do deference. I can call you Bill, or I can call you Mr. Boneshaker, or I can not call you anything. You choose.” I don’t say this because it might arouse hostility, and hostility would inhibit the doctor’s ability to help me. It’s one of those predicaments for which I can find no good solution.

I often run into more interesting problems with doctors. Both my hernia surgeon and the hand surgeon I saw yesterday (for carpel tunnel surgery) proposed the last surgical option that I had expected based upon my research. Every website I visited recommended endoscopic surgery over an open incision for hernia surgery, yet my doctor recommended an open incision based upon my thin build. The hand surgeon had even more treatment options—four in all—yet he chose one-hole endoscopic, the very surgery that has the highest failure rate.

How is a patient to respond? I fall back upon my overall impression of the doctor. Does he seem to care? Did he take the time to explain his reasoning? Is his resume impressive? The hand surgeon explained the discrepancy between my reading and his own approach this way. (1) Less qualified surgeons negatively skew the results. (2) Many websites lean toward conservatism because they are collectively produced across many disciplines, and because a wide range of surgical candidates look to them for advice. His patience in addressing my concern impressed me and that, along with his reasoning and his other qualifications, made me decide to go with his recommendation.

His description of the level of care my wrist I would need after surgery was far more optimistic than what I had read. For example, the Mayo Clinic advised that I not even lift a jug of milk for the first two weeks, whereas he told me to let my comfort level be my guide. When I asked about the discrepancy, he said that Mayo’s advice was based partly upon what he considered outmoded surgical techniques, and that tissue damage from a single puncture would be much less than that from a four-inch incision. That made sense. Whether it’s true, I don’t know. I could consult one or two more surgeons and go with the consensus, but I waited ten weeks to see this one, and this is an extremely common surgery, and it is also his bread and butter.

The amount of caution that is warranted in a surgical undertaking becomes much clearer in retrospect. My knee surgery was a mistake, but I undertook what I considered a prudent amount of research going into it, and I didn’t learn until later that the surgery plus physical therapy is no better than physical therapy alone. But that was two years ago, and I have come far in the amount of trouble I am willing to go to on my own behalf.

I can see how doctors would come to resent all the hours they spend explaining why they disagree with Web MD, but I should think that a patient would have to be pretty naïve to want to remain ignorant. Of course, I might be leaning too far in the other direction. I took complete control of my discussion with the hand surgeon yesterday, and, after I had gotten all of my questions answered and verified the Peggy had gotten all her questions answered, we left without either of us asking the surgeon if he had anything to say. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to ask, but I try to look at things from the doctor’s viewpoint.

Yesterday, for example, the doctor tried to take the initiative, but sensing that I knew where I wanted to go—and that I needed to feel in control—he backed off. I later wondered if he didn’t go so far as to stop thinking proactively, allowing himself to become simply a resource for answering questions. I quickly consoled myself with my observation that I have never found surgeons to be a timid species who readily allow themselves to be trodden upon.

My shoulder appointment this morning did not have a happy outcome. I thought I had lingering tendon inflammation from yoga exercises two years ago, but the x-rays showed jagged arthritic damage in both shoulders. The doctor advised that I avoid weight-bearing activities if I want the joints to last. When I asked how she was able to rule out soft tissue injuries, she said she wasn’t, but that there isn’t much she can do about them short of surgery, and I’m hardly ready for that. The best she could offer was an appointment with a physical therapist, and I took her up on it.

Sleeplessness

Last week, I repeatedly mistook the same chair for Bonnie, and I heard voices coming from a radio that was unplugged; both no doubt due to a lack of REM sleep. When the insomnia first hit me, I lay in bed longer to catch-up on my sleep. My back soon hurt so bad that I couldn’t lie on it, yet I couldn’t lie on my sides or my stomach either due to the tendonitis in both shoulders. What sleep I did get was interrupted by dreams of suffocating in airless rooms, suffering cyanide related seizures in a Nazi death chamber, or vomiting due to exhaust fumes. I have never faced a more dismal prospect than that of finding sleep and wakefulness equally impossible. I realized that there was a limit to how long I could hold up either psychologically or physically, yet the prospect of leaving Peggy by my own hand seemed equally cheerless.

I have gone to a lot of trouble and expense (including two surgeries) over the past ten years in an effort to remedy my sleep problems, yet they have grown increasingly worse. The only advantage I have found in such things is that they allow me to make a more accurate appraisal of human frailty. People who have not known sickness cannot know how tenuous health is, yet it is knowledge worth having. I read the thoughts of the benefactors of my species, and I contemplate the extent upon which their thoughts were based upon such things as trace minerals and sleep, things that they so often despised. How ungrateful the man who loathes that upon which his every thought depends.

I bike to get Wittgenstein, his misery contrasted with Hume's happiness

I biked to the library in the rain this morning just to get Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. I had avoided Wittgenstein because I knew enough about him to know that he dismissed most of the questions that are asked by philosophers as nonsensical, and I didn’t want this to be the case because, nonsensical or not, they are questions I cannot avoid. He wrote:

“People say again and again that philosophy doesn’t really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical questions as were the Greeks. But the people who say that don’t understand why this has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions.”

Okay, great. I can even imagine him to be right, but—and this is another reason I avoided Wittgenstein—the man was suicidal. When he finally learned that he had terminal cancer—at about the same age I am now—he didn’t even care, because as he put it: “I have no desire to live.”

But the skeptic in me might well ask: “But how do you know that his despair was the necessary outcome of his philosophy?” Well, I don’t. David Hume was the most renowned skeptic of all time. He could abolish claims to knowledge as adroitly as a man with a machine gun could abolish chickens, yet he was a happy man, and as he approached death, he remained that way. He even wrote that he had no idea why one with such a dismal philosophy could be so happy, and concluded that it must simply be congenital. Go figure. Surely, nothing is good or bad unless what our thinking makes it so, but what makes our thinking make it so? Optimists say that we are free to choose, but I think they give themselves too much credit. They say “Be like us” in the easy certainty that they too could be jaded, cynical, and pessimistic if they so pleased.

insomnia, thoughts about philosophical skepticism

Sleep? Not much. Maybe four hours a night—five if I’m lucky—and it interrupted every hour or two by nightmares and headaches. I arise several times a night and read—Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail of late, but mostly the Britannica’s section on philosophy. I find much that I can’t make sense of, so I reread and rethink. Often, I still make no sense of it, and I wonder if anyone can. Examples are numerous, but I will offer one that is brief, ancient, and famous. In the 11th century St. Anselm made the following argument in favor of the existence of a deity.

“…a being conceived to be perfect must necessarily exist, for otherwise he would lack one of the essentials of perfection.”

Isn’t this the same as saying: “A rabbit that is conceived to be omnipresent exist must necessarily exist, for otherwise he would lack the qualification for omnipresence”? Why has Anselm’s argument survived for 1,000 years rather than being dismissed the day it was made? Much of philosophy strikes me as equally meritless.

The only philosophical stance that has ever appealed to me consistently has been skepticism, because it is the only one that is logically unassailable. To every inductively-based knowledge claim, the skeptic responds: how do you know this to be true?; and the claim is quickly shown to rest upon a train of assumptions that are themselves improvable. The problem with skepticism is that it often defies common sense, which greatly reduces the number of thoroughgoing skeptics. If I say that a given bachelor is single, I might be redundant, yet I will be right 100% of the time, based upon the definition of the terms. On the other hand, I might truthfully argue that there is no absolute proof that pressing my face to a red-hot griddle for ten minutes will damage it (a knowledge of past events justifies, at most, predictions of probability), yet I have no intention of holding pressing my face to a red hot griddle for even ten seconds.

Skepticism is a cure for illogical proofs rather than a source of logical ones, and hence it is of small comfort when one is wide awake at 4:00 a.m., almost panicked by his inability to sleep, and twitching and trembling while struggling to coordinate his movements—all while wondering what in the hell life is about. (I personally delivered a friend to the asylum when he became stuck on the question and would say nothing else all day long.)

Of course, I err logically in assuming that life is about anything. I even err in assuming that insomnia is a problem. After all, I can’t prove either, and I can’t even define my terms since words like meaning, purpose, and problem are among those words that we think we have a clear grasp of until we are called upon to define them. As do most words. Table, for example, or even red; words that are either umbrella words or that define a quality of perception as opposed to a quality of measurability (as in the water is hot, versus the water is 110. 246841º). Only is there, really and truly, such a thing as objective measurability? After all, words and numbers are a human creation, a way of describing reality in terms that we can understand and communicate. We impose an artificial construct over that which our senses can detect and our minds can comprehend, so we can never know that we have experienced reality as it is as opposed to how it seems to us. There is my perception of my dog, and there is my dog, and I cannot know how closely the two coincide.

Peggy in Paris

I just talked with Peggy. It was ten p.m. Paris time, and she was on a busy street. Spotlights highlighted Notre Dame; the Eiffel Tower twinkled; and searchlights crossed the sky. A continual din of sirens made me nostalgic for Inspector Clouseau. The César Awards were commencing across the street, and the press of the crowd was threatening to push her off the sidewalk. Peggy didn’t know what the César Awards were, so I did a web search, and told her they are France’s version of the Academy Awards.

I haven’t heard Peggy more excited in years than she has been every time I’ve spoken to her on this trip. It is the excitement of youth, and I miss that in her. When a boy marries a girl, he expects her to remain a girl (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) and, as the years past, and she moves ever further from girlhood, he grieves for the loss of his young love. I have often wished during these thirty-six years that I could protect Peggy, not so much from the ravages of physical aging as from the ravages of disillusionment (some of it, alas, caused by me). Disillusionment makes discernment possible, but we pay for discernment with reduced joy. It is the difference between puppyhood and dogdom, and is as sad as it is necessary.

I would have my young bride back if I could, but, to keep her love, I would have to go back too. Only, I was never so young as she, at least in my capacity for joy, because joy requires absorption in the moment, and I could never escape the thought that the moment must end. The frailty of life loomed ever before me, and its poignancy was always by my side.

When I heard her today, I wished so much that I could be there on that noisy, crowded sidewalk, not so I could see France, but so I could see Peggy. Beside her face, a million twinkling Eiffel Towers would be as dim as the cold darkness of space.

the joys of solitude are diminished by the needs of the dogs

What a pleasant morning. I remained in bed a sinfully long time; the sun is shining yet again; I’m listening to happy harpsichord music; and I have absolutely nothing that I must do.

Yesterday was a day of phone calls as a surprising number of people checked-in on me. I was delighted to hear from them, but was perfectly happy to be alone. Sometimes, when Peggy is away, I worry that I will come to enjoy solitude so much that I will dread her return, but, by the time she does return, I am always glad to see her. Meanwhile, it is grand, not having to adjust in the least to anyone else’s needs, schedules, preferences, moods, or requests. Furthermore, I have no meetings this week except for my nerve conduction study, and I am dreading even that. Oh, but if only I could be fully alone—what a joy.

Ah, but my joy was just interrupted in mid sentence. I was on a cancellation list for my sleep study, and someone cancelled, so I will spend the night at Sacred Heart Hospital with wires glued to my head.

Yet again, the dogs are a burden. They will be miserable tonight. They are already miserable. They are miserable because Peggy is gone. They are miserable because it’s pretty weather, and I can’t take them on an outing. They spend their days unhappily dozing except when they’re staring at me accusingly. Three weeks ago, they stared pleadingly, but quickly realized that something was seriously wrong with me. They still know that something is seriously wrong, but they don’t like it. They wonder why I don’t go to the vet and get it fixed, and I can’t convince them that the vet is of no use. A cat in heat could help as much as a vet, and a cat in heat couldn’t help me at all, although it would greatly entertain them. If only a cat would step through their doggie door and be unable to find its way out, they would be happy dogs indeed. Baxter enjoys looking out the window for a few hours each day, but Bonnie has no life apart from her walks and her tennis balls, and she needs me for those.

Yesterday the temperature reached into the fifties, so I put one of my three remaining houseplants out by the curb, and it quickly disappeared. It was a snake plant that I had had for years, so putting it out felt treacherous, the more so because I realized that whoever took it might not want the plant but just the pot. But I had grown tired of caring for it. Now that I can do so little for myself, the more desperate I am to reduce the number of things that require my nurturance. I don’t want to be depended upon by dog, wife, plant, friend, or lodge brother. I don’t even want a book on a shelf to be awaiting dusting unless it is a book with which I truly cannot part.

my recovery continues

Peggy made it to France on only three tranquilizers. I knew she had taken one in Eugene, so when waited to take the other two in Atlanta, I asked her if she was more afraid of crash-landing in the Atlantic Ocean than in the Rocky Mountains. She said NO in a tone that implied it was a silly question.

My Friday doctor’s appointment was actually with his physician’s assistant, and he gave me to the go-ahead to bike and to do pretty much anything that caused me no pain. I therefore took the dogs for an hour’s ride Saturday, and was so swollen and sore afterwards that I’m back on narcotics. Several people called today to ask if I needed anything, but the one thing that I am unable to do for myself is to exercise the dogs; and it is a task for which there are few volunteers. I certainly can’t take them biking again, and even short walks are an ordeal for a man who feels like he has been kicked in the groin.

My moods range from despair to guarded cheerfulness. I spend my time reading, watching old Westerns, and editing old journals. I just started on 2006, the year I had the arthroscopic knee surgery that left me worse off than I had been. I can but wonder if this surgery won’t turn out the same. I know it is unlikely, but then I felt the same way about my knee.

Despite my surgical fears, I made an appointment for a nerve conduction study in preparation for carpal tunnel surgery. The last thing I want right now is even more forced inactivity, yet the higher my medical expenses during a given year, the greater the portion that insurance will pay, and I had planned to have the surgery this year anyway. I am also scheduled for another sleep study (the last one was five years ago). This is something else that was on my list of things-to-do, but now that I having to sleep entirely on my back, I literally wake up more tired than I went to bed.

I still entertain the hope that there is a silvery lining to all these gray health clouds. After all, I am but 58 (at least for a few more days), and am greatly motivated to regain as much vigor as possible. The worst challenge is that I feel forced to turn my surgical care over to people without any certainty that they know what the hell they are doing. If I were rich, I would get four second opinions for every one procedure, and I would fly to the foremost surgeons at the foremost medical centers, but I’m not rich so I must make do.

I managed to limp behind the dogs to the end of the block today, and we passed a string of maybe ten teenagers, each with multiple piercings and all black clothing. Two of them asked me for money for cigarettes, and I wished I could somehow convey to them how few years they can take their good health for granted. In truth, no one can ever take good health for granted, but most of us have thought we could, and decades passed during which it seemed that we were right.

how I pass my days, the joys of Percocet, thoughts on disability and euthanasia

The ultrasound showed the source of my abdominal pain and swelling to be a hematoma. It is large enough to be visible through my clothes, and will have to be excised if it doesn’t dissolve on its own. I was sent home with Percocet and told to alternate between ice and heat. I can neither take walks nor bike rides, and the Percocet makes me unsafe to drive; so I am as housebound as I have ever been. I nap, read, eat, watch squirrels, listen to Baroque music, and, once these many labors have been completed, I beging them again. I’ve read Silas Marner, two books on logic, the 1882 novel John Eax, and parts of other books.

This is not such a terrible way to live when one gets used to it. Friends are solicitous, painkillers make the days run together dreamily, and even a recent sunny day scarcely tempted my thoughts outward. The sun emits a pleasant glow through the window, but the air is chilly, and I am too lethargic to venture out even if I could.

Josh took Bonnie out on Sunday, over did it with her ball-throwing stick, and had to carry her home. He is unable to understand the limitations of a ten-year-old dog, and she is unable to understand that she can no longer run, jump, and make u-turns at full speed. Bonnie and Baxter have both gained two pounds now that I am unable to take them for their daily bike rides.

I ponder the lot of those whom we used to call “shut-ins,” and of what it must be like to lead a life devoid of all ambition aside from passing one’s days in warmth and comfort with plenty to eat. Imagine, no one looking to you to do anything, of no longer having the ability to do anything—at least not anything much. Maybe a hobble down the hallway for stretching exercises, or else a wheelchair ride to the common room to hear a community volunteer play the piano. Then, every other Thursday, another volunteer would arrive with her golden retriever for the residents to pat with the paper-thin skin of their perpetually bruised hands. With the illumination of Percocet, I can see how such an existence might not be so bad—assuming the ability to afford a “nice home” rather than a warehouse where manacled residents with open bedsores slump in odiferous corridors atop squished feces.

But does anyone ever really come to want nothing more than that? With enough drugs, maybe. The power of a pill to alter one’s life is remarkable. Percocet is like a comforting hand, like a voice that says, “Doesn’t it feel beyond heavenly just to lie here, just to read ten pages, nap for two hours, read ten more pages, and then nap for another two hours? How could anyone ask for more? Yes, the world is out there, somewhere, but it’s a crazy and frenetic world—as you yourself have often observed—so why not just let it chase its tail while you lie here in warmth, and peace, and a joy that is as real as it is mysterious?”

Such feelings are one reason I hold back on the Percocet. My prescription calls for a maximum of twelve a day. When I found that I was becoming unable to remember how many I had taken or when I had taken them, I began keeping a record. Most days, I take no more than five, and only then if I really need them to keep the pain from reaching a fever-pitch.

Peggy leaves in two days, and I will miss her dreadfully. I miss her badly enough when I am well and have projects to occupy my thoughts, so how much more will I miss her if the zenith of my capacity is to sit at a desk doing paperwork. She departs on Valentines, and returns two days after my birthday. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but it would be even more bitter if she stayed home to nurse me—as she is even now tempted to do. As much as we love our dogs, we have come to think of them as more a burden than a joy; and I want to do everything I can to prevent Peggy from seeing me in the same light.

I question the wisdom of a person devoting their own life to the deteriorating life of another. Peggy’s father has cared for her mother in such a way for years with no end in sight. I can but wonder at my society’s many contradictions regarding our so-called reverence for life. On the one hand, we are determined to keep every frail, damaged, deformed, demented, and aging human being alive as long as possible no matter what the financial or emotional burden. On the other, we have shown the consistent willingness to send our youngest and healthiest adults to die in foreign lands for reasons that seem nonsensical a decade later. And is it not the epitome of irony that we “put our pets to sleep” because “it would be cruel to make them suffer” even while we denounce human euthanasia and imprison those who help make it possible? So many of the values that are commonly esteemed by my society appear so damnable in my eyes that I don’t feel that I am a part of society, but am instead like one who was caught in a current too powerful to resist.

I storm my surgeon's office, thoughts on being aggressive but not too aggressive

The surgeon said on Wednesday that he would order an ultrasound if the swelling didn’t go down by Monday. Today—Monday—I was at his office at 8:30, because I didn’t want to wait until the phones were turned on at 9:00, be switched to someone’s voicemail, receive a callback at noon, and an ultrasound appointment later in the week.

The staff made much ado about my presence, and insisted that I be examined, first by a nurse, then by a physician’s assistant. I told everyone that I didn’t want to be examined, I just wanted an order for an ultrasound, yet I submitted in the hope that being seen today meant that I could cancel my appointment on Wednesday.

I finally did get an ultrasound appointment for this afternoon. I’m supposed to drink 40 ounces of water one hour in advance and hold it for the half hour exam. Now, does that seem feasible to you? I have every anticipation of (a) running from the exam room or (b) pissing on the table. There was a time when I wasn’t embarrassed by my bodily functions because I thought I was so good-looking. Now I’m not embarrassed because I’m too homely to give a rip. I’m just glad someone else will have to clean up the mess.

Life would be easier if getting medical care didn’t require that I assert myself so much. If I’m too aggressive, the staff balks at my every request, but if I wait passively for my request to be honored, odds are that it won’t be. I suspect there are people who stay home and die simply because they get tired of jumping through the hoops.

Medicine is like the legal system in that it habitually deals with people who are in a horrible predicament, yet it expects those people to behave as if everything was business as usual. This is why I said it won’t do to advocate for oneself too assertively: you are not helped on the basis of need but of influence and likeability—if that. The “if that” arises from the fact that patients are tiny, anonymous, plentiful, and highly expendable cogs in an immense profit machine.

Thirty years ago, I had but one doctor, and his wife was his only assistant. My current surgeon works in an office with ten other surgeons, and I would not be the least surprised but what there are more than thirty clerks, receptionists, schedulers, nurses, nurse assistants, physician assistants, and who knows who else. Most of my doctors have so many examining rooms and so many twisting corridors, that I get lost on my way out. And these doctors don’t even own their practices; they are on the payroll at Peace Health, the same outfit that employs Peggy along with thousands upon thousands of other people, and which expects its doctors to see a LOT of patients. The more patients, the more insurance claims; the more insurance claims, the more money. Tell me, does this sound like an organization that encourages caring, no matter how many crucifixes it glues to the walls?

The surgeon came by my room beforehand on the day of my surgery. I was in the bathroom at the time, and Walt was sitting fully dressed in a chair by the bed. Although Walt weighs twice what I do, and although the surgeon had seen me five days earlier, and had made a big deal about how my thinness would affect the procedure; he still called mistook Walt for me. Our healthcare system is like a conveyer belt, and conveyer belts only work when everyone moves in a straight line.

hell-week

I had hell-week until Wednesday night. I had been in significant pain since Saturday when a lump the size of several inches of garden hose appeared from the top of my incision to my groin. Starting Sunday, I spent most of my time flat on my back—that being the only position in which I could find even a little relief. Monday, I called the doctor’s office only to learn that he would be in surgery all day. His nurse assured me that my symptoms were to be expected since I had lymph nodes removed during the hernia surgery.

I wanted to believe her, but I couldn’t understand why the pain and swelling was getting worse instead of better, and why the swollen area resembled an intestine. No, I thought, it can’t be intestine because the internal repair mesh is holding that in place. Tuesday night, it hit me that the mesh must have broken free, and allowed the intestine to float upwards. I was positively distraught, not so much because I would have to go through another surgery with a less rosy outlook, but because Peggy would miss her trip to France. By the time she got home from work, I was in tears, insisting that she go no matter what, and promising that I would have friends care for me.

Peggy was puzzled. “You never wanted me to go to France in the first place, and now you’re insisting that I go at such a bad time!?” I said that for me to miss her and worry about her while she away was entirely different from me wishing to be the reason she stayed home. She said she would decide after we saw the doctor.

Along with my anxiety over her trip, I was also mad at myself for not insisting that I be seen on Monday. I stand up for myself well except when I’m sick, and then even mundane tasks sometimes overwhelm me. For example, changing my e-mail address this week was a major coup given my condition, and actually facing real people in any situation required so much heroism that I wondered how I ever pulled it off.

Nonetheless, I was unable to think of anything Tuesday night and Wednesday except my appointment with the surgeon on Wednesday afternoon. That I had to do, and I had to do it well, meaning that I had to be prepared to battle for getting the second surgery done immediately, because I knew that Peggy would not leave if it wasn’t behind me. I therefore took a written copy of everything I wanted to tell the doctor. I made the list partly because he is a terrible listener, but also because of my problem with remembering things when I am in pain. Although Peggy would serve as my backup, I knew that I could stand up for myself if only I could marshal my resources.

The surgeon read my list, examined my belly, said he thought the swelling was fluid and that my pain was caused by going off the Vicodin two days after surgery: “Pain left untreated feeds on itself.” He also said that the possibility of a mess failure was “too insignificant to consider.” As for my list, he admitted that it had grabbed his attention, but he said he was sorry that I felt the need to grab his attention. I was sorry too.

The Percocet helped so much that I couldn’t believe how much it helped; and the surgeon’s assurance that my problem wasn’t dire was an even bigger help.

Now, I’m happy, and Peggy’s happy. Peggy is also excited about her trip actually coming off, having passed through, first, the cancer scare, and then the failed mesh scare. I am also resigned to the necessity of letting Peggy do things for me until her departure. Oh, but how much easier it is to be the helper than the helpee, because the latter feels humiliating despite my knowing that we all have to endure it at times. The greater my need for help, the greater my resistance to accepting it. This, I’m sure, is my real weakness, for I would never make the same judgment against others that I so readily make against myself.

the surgical holding area, the strength of old ladies, I make my incision swell, my father's stubbornness

Rain all day, as usual. Last Sunday—the day before my surgery—we had five inches of snow—a phenomenal amount for the valley floor—and I spent the day clearing it from the patio roof.

After I checked into the hospital, I was taken to a room that held six patients. Curtains offered visual privacy, but there was no verbal privacy. My surgeon was running two and a half hours late, so I saw other patients come and go. One was 88, and had suffered for nine years from infection following a knee replacement. He was there to have the joint removed and the space packed with antibiotics for three months. Then would come another replacement and, if that didn’t work, a fusion. He was sharp of mind and did his own talking. We were taken to the surgical holding area together, and, as he was wheeled into the O.R., I kept thinking, “You are screwed, dude; you are not going to survive this at your age.” Then I realized that he was probably screwed anyway.

Every day, I watch Mrs. Fredericks walk by. She is 90, lives three houses down, and lost her husband to diabetes last year. A few months later, her daughter and a couple of her grandkids were killed in a plane crash. She stays in her house until she “can’t stand the loneliness anymore,” and then she walks. I ponder the pain she suffers with every faltering step, and I wonder how much longer she can holdout. We denigrate men by comparing them to old ladies (“an old lady could run faster…lift more, etc…than you”), but old ladies usually live to see their once strong men dropped into holes.

I feel sicker now than I did the day after surgery, and I finally figured out why. It’s because I am forced to sleep on my back, and my sleep apnea is worse that way. Last night, I had dream after dream in which I was trapped in dark, dank, putrid rooms without enough oxygen. The constipation came back with a vengeance too. I lay awake most of the night reading Silas Marner.

This morning, I decided I was babying myself too much, and that I might feel better if I did some light housework. I unthinkingly lifted two empty backpacks from the top of a closet, and the area around my incision swelled alarmingly, forcing me back to bed. Peggy was in tears for worry.

Walt stayed with us at the hospital all day Monday, Shirley brings us food every morning, and others have reached out too, but I feel too vulnerable to open my heart. Instead, I am more annoyed by their faults than usual, and can hardly be civil. I am surely a difficult person to befriend, much less to be married to. But then aren’t we all, more or less? Maybe the human race is perpetually at war because we are too obnoxious to tolerate ourselves.

Peggy, I can tolerate better than usual, partly because I see how hard she is trying to help me, partly because I am in no shape to be argumentative, and partly because I see how hard things are for her. I don’t know how people who live alone are able to survive life’s travails, but, come to think of it, if Peggy were alone, she would be free to go to France.

I want Peggy to go to France no matter what, but Peggy wouldn’t be able to enjoy France no matter what. This makes me even more regretful of my foolishness this morning. I wanted so very much to not feel helpless that I made myself more helpless. Every year finds me longing for my comparatively strong body of the previous year. I apprehend further deterioration, and will have to grow stronger of mind if I am to survive.

The surgeon’s nurse said he might want to do further testing for cancer despite the biopsy coming back normal. Why didn’t he think to do “further testing” when he had me cut open on Monday? I seldom go to a doctor but what I leave less enchanted. As a group, they know so little, and most of them know even less than that. Besides, their services are so half-assedly rendered that I can but conclude that money is the main motivator. A five-minute visit costs $200.

Peggy and I tried to hide the cost of my father’s pills from him, but when the day came that he found out, he argued that if enough people chose death over “highway robbery” that medical costs would come down. This is probably true, but how few are willing to volunteer.

Everyone dismissed my father as a stubborn fool. I knew his faults better than most, but I have also observed that normal people don’t achieve sainthood. You’ve got to be a hardcore hard-ass to be a saint and, for better or worse, my father was that.

fun times with Vicodin

The lymph node biopsy came back negative, but now the surgeon wants to biopsy the other side.

I had an iodine-contrast CAT scan yesterday to look for a reason for my partially collapsed lung. Preliminary blood tests were ordered for the day before, and I was in a lot of pain when Peggy drove me to the internist’s office. I had called twice to verify that these tests hadn’t been run as a part of my pre-surgical blood-work, but Peggy asked a third time when we got there, and was told that they had. The nurse had an “Oh, well, shit happens” attitude, about it, so Peggy complained to the practice manager.

Another nurse promised me that we wouldn’t be charged for coming, but I stopped at the front desk to verify it. She appeared while I was there and, looking hurt, reminded me of her promise. I couldn’t very well tell her that I no longer trust anyone in the medical community to get anything right.

I took full advantage of Vicodin for the first two days. Even with it, I hurt too much to sit up for long, but time passed pleasantly enough in bed with an ice pack on my groin. I was determined to read a book on informal fallacies, but I dozed off so often that I re-read most of it twice.

I was just starting to understand how people get addicted to painkillers when the side effects hit. I hadn’t pooped in three days and was eating heartily, so my weight shot up an incredible ten pounds, and my abdomen became as rigid as it was bloated. (When you’ve had hernia surgery, the last thing you want to do is to strain to poop.) Then came the itching. No sooner would I scratch in one place than it would start in another, and I was soon itching in way more places than I had hands to scratch. Last—but not least—I was forgetting to breathe. I would be feeling all happy and mellow, when all of a sudden I would gasp for air, and realize I had missed a few breaths. It was like sleep apnea, but I was doing it while awake. I can’t say enough bad about how this feels.

The surgeon’s nurse advised that I cut the Vicodin in half, but I decided to simply endure the pain. I thought that, being two days post-op, it just couldn’t be that bad. It was. Now, four days post-op, the pain is so intense that I have trouble walking. It is worst in my privates, which are purple and swollen.

19 hours hernia post-op

Surgery went well, as far as I know. The doctor was running 2 1/2 hours late, and I spent the last hour, as usual, in a line of ten gurneys in the pre-op holding area. These gurneys face a bank of windows opposite which stands a two-story cross (the sole evidence of Sacred Heart’s Christian ideals is that cross and a crucifix in every room).

Just before I was rolled to pre-op, Peggy read on my chart that I am 6’10”, so I passed the wait pondering the implications. As a young man, I would have thought it great to be a foot taller, but now I can see the downsides, things like beds being too short, chairs being too low, airline seats being too close, and so forth.

The surgeon wanted me to stay awake during surgery so he could have me cough when he was done. He apparently decided against this, because while I was still on the table trying to ask questions, he was calling a friend to make dinner arrangements. It was by now 5:30 p.m., and he had put in a full day, so I naturally accepted the priority of his dinner plans over my health issues (in all fairness, the tranquilizing agent might have caused me to forget being told to cough).

He did say that the lymph note he removed didn’t look ominous. I went home shit-faced on Percocet, but optimistic that I had dodged the cancer bullet. Bright and early this morning—7:30 in fact—a nurse from my internist’s office called to say that I needed to come in for blood work and a full-chest CAT scan. This was more than a bit of a surprise since the surgeon had said nothing to me about my x-rays being abnormal. The nurse had no explanation, so I asked if she might please find out and call back (or, better yet, have the doctor call). She called (no surprise there) with a confirmed diagnosis of chronic atelectasis (a word she couldn’t pronounce, but that Peggy could upon hearing the first four letters). Chronic atelectasis is a lung blockage that can be caused by any number of ominous diseases, one of which is asbestosis (I used to work around asbestos, and have long worried about it).

Other than the kind of shabby treatment that I have learned to expect from doctors, and the fact that my anesthesiologist was pitifully sick with a cold, everyone else who was involved in my care were terrific. From the young man who shaved my groin to my many nurses, I have only praise. As for the doctors, I can but reflect on the irony of the fact that they make far and away the most money, yet act as if they are doing me a favor by treating me at all.

The surgeon said I would hurt and swell more than most people (I don’t remember why), and I suspect he was right, but the pain meds are keeping the hurt down to a dull roar, and ice applied thirty minutes every hour is keeping the swelling manageable. My bandage is bloody, so even as I write Peggy is out getting a new dressing.

With this, as with my last surgery, the post-surgical pain is minor compared to the aggravation of trying to get information from nurses who don’t know and doctors who won’t talk to me.

That’s where things stand at 11:00 a.m., nineteen hours post-op.

credo

We’re like the people in the Twin Towers just before the planes hit. We can do nice things for others; we can enjoy good food and good books; we can even create meaning in our lives, but the moment will come all of this is gone from us—or rather us from it. We will then exist in the same way we existed before we were born, which is to say as matter and energy. I ate sardines tonight. They used to be little fishes; now they are me. Soon they will be something else. Such is our existence. The personal is transitory. The eternal is indifferent.

The universe is incredibly dark, incredibly cold, and infinitely uncaring. This I worship because it is nobler than an anthropomorphic deity such as the petulant and vindictive god of the Bible. Yet, I could happily partake of mass or communion because they are like the word god in that they have so many different meanings that they lack meaning. It’s not the object of worship that matters but the impulse to worship. I refer to worship that comes from the inability to not worship. In this, I find purity.

France when you might be dying!

Peggy asked if I thought she would still go to France if I have cancer. I said she should consider the prognosis. Her response was that there was no way she would go. I was so surprised that I didn’t think to ask if she would stay home to support me, or because she would be too bummed to enjoy France. I wouldn’t want her here unless the prognosis was grim. I would miss her, but no more than I would miss her anyway; and I would be awfully sorry about all those nonrefundable reservations.

Peggy and I differ in that I am much more likely to make decisions based upon money. I love watermelon, yet I didn’t buy a single melon last year because the prices were too high. Peggy was horrified. “You’re worth the money,” she argued with generous intent, but with logic that reminded me of a television commercial. “What does my worth have to do with overspending on a watermelon?” I countered. “You could just as easily argue that I am worth saving the money.”

When I spend big, it’s on non-consumables like tools or that $1,750 bike I bought last year. I’m not cheap; I’m frugal. I’ve been this way as long as I can remember, and I have no desire to change. Peggy is also frugal, but not as much. If she weren’t frugal, we wouldn’t be together. She would be out spending like the average American, and I would be home packing my bags and separating our finances. She does have her indulgences, but we’ve worked it out so that I can live with them. Her skiing—like her trip to France—comes out of common funds. Her buttons are another matter because the expense is ongoing. When she began spending what I considered a lot of money, we agreed that, for every dollar she spent, I got one dollar for myself. Her “dollars” are displayed in cases; my dollars are in mutual funds.

She argues that the stock market could crash tomorrow and I could lose everything, whereas she has already gotten enormous enjoyment from her buttons, and is unlikely to lose them. She might be right, but then again, a fire or a flood could take her buttons while my funds would go on doing their compound interest thing. Maybe I don’t enjoy greenbacks as much as enjoys buttons, but they still give me a warm feeling. Money alone can’t buy security, but I never heard anyone say he felt more secure without it.

Peggy is away (reluctantly, due to my health) on her annual “Girls’ Weekend Out,” and I’m cleaning house in preparation for surgery. Hernia surgery is low risk, yet I had a friend who died on the table, so I’m doing a more thorough job than usual. Things like cleaning out closets, rearranging cabinets, putting contact paper in drawers, backing up computer files, updating lists, and getting rid of unneeded items. Peggy literally doesn’t know how to operate the washer and dryer, and she is all but computer illiterate, so I know I would be missed.

Yet, she would survive, I suppose, which is more than I might do if she died. I can’t say for sure because I haven’t crossed that bridge. I just know that I always hold suicide as an option, and that she does not. This is another of our differences.

Medical errors

The following is a weeks worth of medical errors—or at least medical system errors—and I haven’t even been to surgery yet.

1) My internist sent me to the surgeon with a form stating that I had a hiatal hernia instead of an inguinal hernia.

2) The surgeon’s office sent paperwork for me to fill out before my appointment. It was mailed Tuesday; my appointment was at 8:00 a.m. Wednesday.

3) The surgeon was a half hour late for my appointment, so Peggy and I took the liberty of reading my chart. Before the nurse took it from us, we discovered that I had been wrongly diagnosed with acid reflux and a missing left ball.

4) When I went for my pre-surgical appointment with the anesthesiologist, he said he had no idea why I was there. His office called the surgeon’s office for an order, but the surgeon’s staff was not yet answering their phone. Peggy went and got the information.

5) When I went to Oregon Imaging for my chest x-ray, I learned that I was scheduled to have it done at the Sacred Heart. I denied this. Since it is unusual for an outpatient to go to the hospital for an x-ray, Oregon Imaging called the hospital and learned that I had been admitted through the ER and was in room 683. The hospital was sure of this, and the lady at Oregon Imaging was equally sure that I was standing in front of her. I got my x-ray at Oregon Imaging.

6) After Oregon Imaging straightened out where I was to be x-rayed, they informed me that the surgeon had neglected to say why I was to be x-rayed. This meant that my HMO wouldn’t pay for the x-ray. I refused to pay for it myself so, after much discussion, they assured me that they had arranged things so that my HMO would pay for it.

7) After returning home, I called my HMO to be sure the surgeon’s office had contacted them to okay my surgery. My HMO was surprised to learn that I had a hernia, and they suggested that I “build a fire under the staff at the surgeon’s office”.

8) I called my internist to ask if my surgeon had called him to ask if he wanted to see me before my surgery (the surgeon had said he would call as soon as I left the office). The internist didn’t know I had been to a surgeon.

I see a surgeon about my hernia

I saw the surgeon today about my hernia, but he seemed more concerned about my swollen lymph nodes (Peggy asked me months ago to see a doctor about them). He seemed as eager to get me into surgery as I was to go, and he made special arrangements to reserve an operating room for Monday.

He suggested an open incision (instead of a laparoscopy), because it will enable him to attach the mesh better on such a thin person as I, and because I will run have less risk of chronic pain (a common side effect of hernia surgery).

I should be well enough by Peggy’s departure for France on February 14th to take care of my own needs, but I will be unable to exercise the dogs or wash their feet when they’ve been in the mud. The timing is no less bad for Peggy. I would not want her to stay home—unless the prognosis was grim—but I could hardly insist that she leave. Ironically, I have been worried for months about the trip, because it is, after all, a long way to France, and in winter at that. I think of all the things that could go wrong—closed airports, car wrecks, the flu, and a hundred more—and I know I will not rest easy until she is home.

Tomorrow is another doctor day. I see the anesthesiologist at 8:30, then have blood drawn, and then top the excitement off with an EKG. The surgeon said that the blood work will rule out some forms of cancer. Since I had expressed no great concern about having cancer when he said this, I concluded that he must be concerned.

Thoughts on diet

I’m down to 144 pounds—fourteen pounds lighter than at Thanksgiving. I only planned to drop to 150, but with my new diet the pounds keep disappearing.

I’ve inexplicably developed a taste for hot peppers. (Take it from one who knows: never touch your eyes or use the bathroom after handling a habanera.) I actually like to feel the heat climbing across my face and up my scalp. There’s definitely a high that goes with peppers.

More of Lowell’s advice about food…

Build your food pyramid atop a base of whole grains and beans.
Eat foods that are nutritious and low calorie.
Prepare your own meals from simple ingredients.
Learn to love cooking by cooking that which you love eating.
Eat only cold-pressed canola and extra virgin olive oil—even for things like piecrusts for which you normally use Crisco.
Reduce or eliminate meat, cheese, sugar, and butter.
A few times a week, eat fish that are low in mercury and rich in Omega-3s. Avoid farm-raised fish.
Don’t keep desserts or junk foods at home.
Remember that a little “sin” can undo a lot of hard won progress.
Drink only skim milk.
Dilute juice with water. Uncut juice will soon come to taste like sugar syrup.
Don’t buy foods that contain: enriched flour, artificial ingredients, added sweeteners, hydrogenated oils, or oils that you wouldn’t use at home.
Drink a glass of red wine a few times a week.
Buy un-processed foods, and observe how beautiful they are. Reflect that this is how food looked until a few decades ago.
Make every meal sacred. Instead of eating in front of the TV, eat against a backdrop of inspiring music.
Regard food as sacred. It will help you avoid foods that have been debased.
Avoid between meal snacks.
Consider fasting one day each week. It can be spiritually uplifting.
Consider only eating two meals a day.

By doing these things, I have come to prefer foods that are good for me. For a long time, I ate good foods at home, but pigged-out on junk at lodge. I eventually noticed that my favorite treats—like doughnuts—no longer tasted so good, so I would eat different kinds with the thought that the next one would taste better. I finally had to admit that I no longer crave doughnuts. I also decided that, if I pigged-out at lodge, and my weight was up the following day, I wouldn’t eat that day. This has helped me to at least moderate my consumption of treats that I still enjoy—like homemade lemon meringue pie.

People tell me that it is good to treat myself at times, which seems to imply that a treat is something unwholesome. My goal is to believe that a treat should taste good and be good for me. Inasmuch as I have tried to have the former without the latter, I have failed.

“Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.” H.D. Thoreau

Letter to Guard

I had the following published in the Register Guard Monday.

“While browsing the new book section at the Eugene library last week, I came across the following instructional manuals: Street scene: how to draw graffiti-style and Moonshine! Recipes.... Whence this belief on the part of some librarians that they have a first amendment duty to instruct people in criminality? And what adolescent will continue to regard a crime as serious if the public library taught him how to do it? When I asked a librarian why they would carry such books, and was told that they carry books on every subject, I asked where I might find manuals on pimping, meth-making, and dogfighting. Clearly the library has some standard of discrimination.

"In a country that values free speech, some evil must be tolerated, but it need not be supported at public expense and endorsed by publicly owned institutions.”

John and Paul, and our trip to Lexington

I worked hard yesterday making final preparations for the Masons’ first meeting in the Odd Fellow Lodge. Tension with the building manager made everything more difficult. I’ve been hated before, but rarely by people I see all the time. I ask myself why it should be a problem. Well, maybe there’s no good reason. Maybe it will just take some getting used to. I did as I thought right, and I expected to be treated as I am being treated. I see this as a learning experience, the lesson being that it’s okay to be hated.

I’ve known people who fell overboard in this regard, militant atheists being a case in point. I had two friends in Mississippi who se bumper stickers made fun of Jesus. On one of our trips together, we drove to Lexington, Kentucky, for an American Atheist convention. I was sick with a cold and only wanted to lie in the back and sleep, but I kept being awakened by horns honking and people screaming profanities. John and Paul were laughing their heads off, while I was wondering if I would live to get home. You might think that they were bad-asses, but they were anything but. John was 68 and weighed 450 pounds; Paul was 85 and hardly weighed 120; and neither was armed with anything.

In Lexington, I asked Robin (Madelyn Murray O’Hair’s granddaughter how she could survive having such hatred directed at her. She said she had learned to not take it personally.

It was meant personally, but Robin had the right idea. Regarding vicious people as if they were vicious dogs, and dealing with them matter of factly instead of hatefully is surely the best policy. This might be what’s hard for me. What I want to do is to let the building manager have it with both barrels, but I’m determined to conduct myself with dignity, because I know I would only make a bad situation worse. Why stomp on what’s already broken?

The meeting goes against me. We are not a rational species but a species that uses rationality.

The trustees’ meeting went against me, its purpose not to address the issues but to attack me personally. Being a pessimist, I was prepared for the worst, and the worst was what I got—yelling, wild accusations, red faces, popped eyes, quivering lips, trembling hands, faces contorted with rage, and people leaning forward as if to leap at my throat. Through it all, I remained calm. At one point, I even laughed aloud at the absurdity of it all.

If a person feels superior to his fellows, he risks being blinded to their virtues. Yet, how hard it is to not wall others up within the confines of a small and remote cell in my mind, a cell with a sign over the door that reads “worthless.” For example, when I was locking my bike up in front of the library yesterday I overheard the following: “Man, I was so fucking wasted that I fucking didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.” This level of exchange is commonplace. In the library’s new book section, I came across how-to books on graffiti and moonshine.

I know that my fellow trustees, the hangers-on in front of the library, and those librarians who consider it their First Amendment duty to instruct adolescents in criminality; are members of my species. I know that somewhere within them a light shines that is akin to my own. Yet, I am challenged to remain open to that light—it being so dim—and the fact that I am able to do so at all comes through considerable struggle. I want to see what is instead of seeing merely the labels I have placed upon what is. To feel that I know, really know, a thing is to close myself off from new information about it. The extent to which I am able to maintain objectivity is the extent to which reason reigns over feeling as my guiding principal.

But look at which of the two rules the world. Most of my fellow trustees were only too glad to give themselves over to anger. They even felt entitled to their anger because, as they saw it, I MADE them angry. Witness the slavery implicit within this conclusion. Look at the teenage drunks and druggies in front of the library. Where is the clear thinking that rules their lives? They too are slaves to feeling. School, society, and family being flawed, they feel justified in devoting their lives to drugs and crime. Look at how most people relate to food or sex. Is a “super-sized burger, Coke, and fries” a rational choice for lunch? Is losing your family—or your presidency—for a toss in the sack reasonable?

We are not a rational species but rather a species that sometimes uses rationality to achieve goals that were emotionally determined. There is no ridding ourselves of emotion as a central force in our lives, but we need to understand that emotions can become to our lives what cataracts are to our vision, and that rationality is the only antidote. We get into trouble when, instead of striving for congruence between feeling and reason, we embrace feeling and abandon reason. Our dilemma is that we often don’t know we are doing this. Indeed, in the absence of intelligence and maturity (maturity of character not years) we are doomed to fail much of the time. Just as a toddler trips when walking, we trip when we try to enthrone reason as our guiding principal.

And, if we live a long, long time, there is every chance that senility will rob us of whatever measure of reason we have managed to achieve. But our certain dissolution is of no consequence to us in the present. It’s as if life is saying, “You will lose everything anyway, but for today you can give yourself to the tutelage of reason, or you can surrender yourself a slave to feeling—you decide.” Look at the world and witness the response.

The cost of harmony

I am in wonder that there is so much violence in the world, as it has been my experience that people will tolerate a great deal before they strenuously object to it—much less kill over it.

Two members of one of my lodges have clearly shown the desire to take control of the lodge. I began to suspect this months ago, but said nothing because tolerance of bad behavior is the norm, which is to say that we get along by overlooking one another’s sins, both venial and cardinal. However, their particular behavior became so egregious that I tried to address it in lodge. They misused their power to silence me, so I wrote a letter to everyone who regularly attends lodge. I mailed that letter Saturday, and spent the weekend contemplating the effect of the bomb that I had sent on its way.

I go to lodge tomorrow and also to the trustee’s meeting that precedes lodge. I dread both so much that I can hardly get them off my mind. I have already received an angry phone call from the one lodge member who does more than anyone else to set the tone for avoiding disharmony at all costs. Our exchange put me in mind of children who were molested by relatives and later bring verifiable accusations against their molesters. Oftentimes, it is not the molester who is ostracized, but the victim who “made trouble” by bringing the molestation into the open.

This is an example of why I have trouble explaining the level of violence in the world. One key to the dilemma might be that proportionately more governments commit violence against other governments than do individuals against other individuals; and I should think that everyone has witnessed instances of smaller groups treating a person worse than the individuals within those groups would have done. Such could be my lodge’s response toward me. If so, I won’t be surprised.

Even my caller agreed with the facts I related, my letter being largely a listing of egregious actions followed by an appeal for the lodge to retake control. Yet retaking control will require aggressive action, and it might be easier to simply blame me for creating disharmony.

Such considerations are among those that prevent me from trusting any group. People like to think that groups are definable, but the larger the group, the less it can be contained within a definition. The Freemasons, the Catholic Church, and the U.S. government, for example, have all done so much good and so much evil that it is difficult to tell which is weightier. Whether a given person sees these institutions as a curse or a salvation depends upon who he is and where and when he is alive. The important points are that groups are not human beings; they have more power than human beings; and they exceed our individual capability to rationalize.

But how am I to behave tomorrow? First, I will not defend my letter. I started it a month ago, gave it serious deliberation, made it as fair and accurate as possible, and won’t, therefore, back down from any of it. Second, I will enter the lodge more as an observer than a participant, i.e. from a standpoint of emotional neutrality rather than reactivity. Furthermore, I will re-read parts of Marcus Aurelius.

“When you feel that you simply cannot live if a person or a group of people disapproves of you, remind yourself of what kind of people they are. Ponder their limited intelligence, their fickle sentiments, their often base motives, and reflect upon how little their opinion is worth” (my paraphrase).

Organizations; feelings of superiority

I got up this morning, opened the blinds, and turned on the radio. The first word spoken was Iraq, so I changed over to a classical music station and listened to Handel. Iraq has nothing to do with me except for the fact that the government will take my property at gunpoint unless I help pay the interest on our war loans.

I weary of the oppressive nature of organizations—all organizations, even democratic ones. In our society, we figure that one vote per person is about right, but I think we could do better. Instead of voting for only one candidate for an office, each voter could have ten votes and award them as he pleased. This could work out as follows: five votes for candidate A, three for B, one for C, and none for D. Or in the case of ballot measures, each voter could have 300 votes to distribute. That way, people who were deeply invested would have more say than people who were not.

One of the groups I belong to has been trying to decide whether to move a pool table from the basement to the dining room. Those who play pool oppose the idea, but others have the vague hope that it might encourage more people would come to meetings. Now, which group do you think is more invested? Yet, everyone has the same voting power. This reminds me of a cynical definition of democracy: “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”

Another of my groups is moving its meeting place due to a rent increase. I brokered the move, which might reasonably have been expected to take nine hours but instead took nine months. I was the reluctant center of attention at meeting after meeting as I answered the same questions and addressed the same issues. I was emotionally finished well before the process was physically finished, and I often found myself almost too perturbed to stay in the room.

I could bear my fellows better if I respected their intelligence. As it is, I see more in me than I see in them, but I am unable to use my gifts to the benefit of either.

“…intercourse with others requires a process of leveling down. The qualities which are present in one man, and absent in another, cannot come into play when they meet; and the self-sacrifice which this entails upon one of the parties, calls forth no recognition from the other…. To show your intelligence and discernment is only an indirect way of reproaching other people for being dull and incapable.”
Schopenhauer

It would be appropriate here for me to say how it is that I am superior, but I cannot well do so, and this leaves open the possibility that I am deluded. After all, I have accomplished little. I do many things well but none outstandingly. The highest award I’ve earned was a bachelor’s degree. The most money I’ve made was a trifle. I excel in neither looks nor personality. I seldom took a class but what I was outclassed by some of my fellows. Likewise, I am strong and coordinated, but not remarkably so.

The only thing I can offer to support my claim to superiority is that I appear to think more deeply than most people, but I cannot say why this is the case. It could be a matter of intelligence, but I doubt it. I think that it is more a case of curiosity combined with intellectual courage, but I cannot prove this, and I have no way to account for it.

In any event and for whatever reason, I have felt this way for as long as I can remember. I first became aware of it in the context of religion, because I was one of those rare people in rural Mississippi who expressed doubts about what I was told in church. To my astonishment, even my fellow theology students at Whitworth College went to class like horses led to a trough. I initially surmised that other people didn’t ask questions, because other people already had answers, but if this was true, why didn’t they share them with me?

I concluded that I could think deeply or I could be a Christian, but I couldn’t do both because Christian belief necessitates an accommodation between a person’s intellect and his desire to believe. I came to see that faith in Jesus was like floating in water in that it could only happen if a person was able to let go and relax, but I could not relax, and I found a strange comfort in this. Other people appeared to sell their souls too cheaply. They made a pact with God that denied their intellect, and they called this pact faith, deemed it a virtue, and said that only “a fool” would disagree. I considered it a pact with the devil, because I could not see how such a God surpassed the devil.

So, what do I do with my life? As the years pass, I join organizations like the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows, organizations that require at least a token theism. Does this connote the personal superiority of which I boast? No, I think that it connotes a seriously ambivalent personality. One might even conjecture that I feel superior to other people to hide the fact that I don’t have it together nearly as well as they do. But I don’t believe it. In this, at least, I can let go and relax. The fact that I have not made the most of my abilities does not disprove their existence.

It is oftentimes the case that special gifts come with special liabilities. Whether this is necessarily true or co-incidentally true seems to vary, but, in my own case, I know two things: I could become a great deal more than I have ever been; and I am not yet dead. The fact that the same could be said of anyone does not concern me.

Why we eat badly; the holiness of good food

Peggy’s parents sent us a $60 fruitcake for Christmas. It’s a heaven-in-a-bite affair for someone like myself who loves fruitcake, but it’s also a gain weight looking at it affair. A really good fruitcake is one of the few gustatory evils that still tempt me. If the one at hand was less tasty, I would give it away, but—except for the revolving head and projectile vomit—fruitcakes are to me what demons were to Linda Blair.

Peggy and I were talking about the days of childhood when we believed that anything they sold in stores was good for us, or otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to sell it. This belief enabled us to eat all manner of horrible things with unmitigated delight. As we talked, I wondered whether the many obese adults we know are able to eat with such pleasure, or whether, even as they indulge, the voice of conscience is playing a discordant note. I thought that this must be the case, but Peggy speculated that they are able to stifle that voice so completely that it is powerless. Though she is not obese, I have watched Peggy eat compulsively, and I can but offer that I witnessed no such abandon in her. I just saw someone whose hand kept returning to the plate in a way that looked desperate instead of joyful. If such torture has been largely alien to me, it is only because I gain weight less easily.

It seems to be the human condition that we all, at times, will trade a portion of our health and our dignity for that which delights our palate—or our lower regions. Some say that a life without indulgence is not worth living. That might be true, but can’t we at least elevate our indulgences?

When I end a fast, that which is good for me tastes a thousand times better than that which is bad. A piece of salmon, a serving of collard greens, some lentils and barley, a slice of cornbread, a glass of wine; such things are a veritable symphony of taste. They are far too glorious to be consumed in front of the television. Anything more than dim lights, soft music, and quiet conversation would be irreverent. No doughnut or fruitcake could stand against them.

I have concluded from this that we eat things that are bad for us because we are sated. In food as in all things, intemperance deadens our ability to appreciate the good. I would even say the holy, because eating can be a religious observance. Maybe that’s why we—blasphemous species that we are—process our food until its nutritive content is gone, filling it with fake colors and other chemicals, and distorting it so that no can guess its origin.

My joy in baking

Since Peggy was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, I’ve become quite excited about the possibilities of barely processed grains, and am going through every book I can find on the subject. I’m also buying things like sorghum, buckwheat, pot barley, and teff, grains I have never used.

I began baking yeast breads in the mid-seventies. My mother made yeast biscuits, but she never made yeast loaves, so I was the first person I knew to do it. A few loaves didn’t rise as much as I would have liked, but I didn't see fit to throw them out. Of course, the only whole grain I could buy in rural Mississippi was wheat flour.

Over the years, my baking interests turned away from yeast breads and toward whole grain crackers, biscuits and cornbreads. Biscuits and cornbreads were Southern staples that I had always made anyway, but crackers were entirely new and exciting, and appealed to me aesthetically and by virtue of their toughness (you could throw them against the wall without hurting them) and longevity. Peggy and I were traveling a lot at the time, and I would bake enough crackers for a two-month camping trip, and they would keep without refrigeration. My first recipe was for whole-wheat communion wafers and was given to me by an Episcopal priest. I baked them for the church until someone with throat cancer objected.

After fifteen years or so, the thought occurred to me that maybe I didn’t have to stick to the recipe so religiously, and I began experimenting with various oils, flours, sweeteners, etc. I discovered that it is really hard to muck-up a batch of crackers unless you burn them, Unfortunately, that is easy.

I’ve seldom baked a cake, rarely a cookie, and I only bake pies at Peggy’s insistence, but crackers, biscuits, and cornbreads have retained my passion. I eat the last two with molasses or sometimes maple syrup.

People who don't acknowledge others

A man with two white dogs just walked by. I’ve seen him almost daily for years. His dogs are longhaired yet always clean. He is in his forties, and has the build of a runner. He never makes eye contact, almost never speaks, and he and his wife are known for an unwavering coldness that easily turns to rudeness. The one time he spoke to me, Baxter—who was off-leash—ran up to his dogs to say hello. Bonnie was close behind. “If you don’t control your dogs, I will,” the man said. “Fuck you,” I retorted in the sure and certain knowledge that hurting my dogs would not bring anything good into his life. “That was constructive,” he replied, and walked on. Three years have passed. I had seen him almost everyday for at least the preceding seven, and I’ve seen him almost everyday since.

I feel more curiosity than hatred. Why are he and his wife so unfriendly that their neighbors refer to them as “those hateful people with the white dogs”? And how does he keep his dogs show room clean? Most of all, why does he never make eye contact?

There is another man in the neighborhood who I have seen almost everyday for fifteen or more years. He is bald, but hasn’t shaved in decades. He rides a cheap bike at walking speed, and collects cans and bottles for the nickel deposit. He is fit, clean, in his fifties, goes hatless in any weather, dresses simply, and appears intelligent; but he too never, ever makes eye contact. Are these men self-contained or just self-absorbed?

I think back to Harry, who I knew in college and considered the coolest, most self-contained person on earth. He too never made eye contact, and I rather wished that I was like Harry because, except for having a wife and child, Harry was like the lone drifters in Western movies. One morning, Harry shot his wife and baby girl as they bathed, and then shot himself. This made me doubt my ability to judge cool. It also made me wary of—and intrigued by—men who are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of others.

I lose nine pounds in three weeks

I dropped to 149 yesterday, a nine-pound loss in three weeks. My leather belts hang so loose that I’ve gone to webbing. Hunger is no fun, although I’ve gotten accustomed to it, and can even enjoy certain things about it. For example, I find it awfully hard to feel depressed when I’m hungry, depression being a vice that requires affluence. I also shy away from television news and talk radio—two of my other vices. I don’t much care about the latest Iraqi suicide bomber or what Hillary said about Barack anyway, but such news amounts to a toxic overload when I’m hungry. Hunger focus my mind on what’s really important in life—like food. This inspires me to look for new recipes.

I was trying to remember yesterday how many years I was on a liquid diet. Just throw uncooked foods in the blender, hit juice, and, voila, dinner is served. Little planning, no cooking, minimum clean up, lots of variety, and never a boring meal. I had thought I might stay on juice for life, but there were a few obstacles. First, it wasn’t filling, and this worked against keeping my weight down (a 42 ounce blender can hold a lot of food once it has been ripped to smithereens). Second, Peggy had less than zero interest in a juice diet, so I had to cook for her anyway. Third, I began hearing that some nutrients are only released from foods that have been cooked.

There followed a few years when the quality of my diet dropped. It was still good by American standards, but I began eating so much mayonnaise and peanut butter that I practically had to buy them by the case, and the fact that it was canola mayonnaise and un-hydrogenated peanut butter didn’t keep my cholesterol from hitting 230. After that, I kept going with the mayo and peanut butter, but began eating just as many oats. At my next physical, my cholesterol was under 200, but I knew that neither my diet nor my weight was what they should be, and this inspired the recent changes.

On the one hand, I feel great. On the other, it isn’t easy. I utterly and completely believe it is to my benefit, but it still isn’t easy. And the fact that Peggy is less than excited about having a skinny husband doesn’t help. She says she is supportive—and I know she tries—but when I gave her the stupendous and breath-taking news that I had finally dropped below 150, she just grunted.

If I can stick to only two meals a day (or at least cut out snacks between three meals), keep no questionable foods at home, and eat sparingly away from home; I should do fine. And none of these things are truly odious—they just require getting used to. As a society, we have carried the idea that we should “treat ourselves” a bit far, and it shows. We’ve gone from walking to waddling, which brings to mind one reason that I don’t tell many people I am trying to lose weight. I am already the thinnest person I know. It is true that my bad knee feels much better now that it is carrying nine less pounds. It is also true that my sleep apnea troubles me much less, and that my energy level is much greater; but people whose body-mass index is off the chart don’t even want to hear it, and I don’t even want to tell them.

I lose nine pounds in three weeks

I dropped to 149 yesterday, a nine-pound loss in three weeks. My leather belts hang so loose that I’ve gone to webbing. Hunger is no fun, although I’ve gotten accustomed to it, and can even enjoy certain things about it. For example, I find it awfully hard to feel depressed when I’m hungry, depression being a vice that requires affluence. I also shy away from television news and talk radio—two of my other vices. I don’t much care about the latest Iraqi suicide bomber or what Hillary said about Barack anyway, but such news amounts to a toxic overload when I’m hungry. Hunger focus my mind on what’s really important in life—like food. This inspires me to look for new recipes.

I was trying to remember yesterday how many years I was on a liquid diet. Just throw uncooked foods in the blender, hit juice, and, voila, dinner is served. Little planning, no cooking, minimum clean up, lots of variety, and never a boring meal. I had thought I might stay on juice for life, but there were a few obstacles. First, it wasn’t filling, and this worked against keeping my weight down (a 42 ounce blender can hold a lot of food once it has been ripped to smithereens). Second, Peggy had less than zero interest in a juice diet, so I had to cook for her anyway. Third, I began hearing that some nutrients are only released from foods that have been cooked.

There followed a few years when the quality of my diet dropped. It was still good by American standards, but I began eating so much mayonnaise and peanut butter that I practically had to buy them by the case, and the fact that it was canola mayonnaise and un-hydrogenated peanut butter didn’t keep my cholesterol from hitting 230. After that, I kept going with the mayo and peanut butter, but began eating just as many oats. At my next physical, my cholesterol was under 200, but I knew that neither my diet nor my weight was what they should be, and this inspired the recent changes.

On the one hand, I feel great. On the other, it isn’t easy. I utterly and completely believe it is to my benefit, but it still isn’t easy. And the fact that Peggy is less than excited about having a skinny husband doesn’t help. She says she is supportive—and I know she tries—but when I gave her the stupendous and breath-taking news that I had finally dropped below 150, she just grunted.

If I can stick to only two meals a day (or at least cut out snacks between three meals), keep no questionable foods at home, and eat sparingly away from home; I should do fine. And none of these things are truly odious—they just require getting used to. As a society, we have carried the idea that we should “treat ourselves” a bit far, and it shows. We’ve gone from walking to waddling, which brings to mind one reason that I don’t tell many people I am trying to lose weight. I am already the thinnest person I know. It is true that my bad knee feels much better now that it is carrying nine less pounds. It is also true that my sleep apnea troubles me much less, and that my energy level is much greater; but people whose body-mass index is off the chart don’t even want to hear it, and I don’t even want to tell them.

Behavior at the library, the rewards of kindness

I go to the library several times a week, and have consistently found its environs to contain the most insane, criminal, and otherwise desperate people in Eugene. Yesterday, a wild-eyed man leapt in front of my bicycle and screamed, but I expect such things and was not startled. Mostly I am invisible to the crowd, and am therefore free to look and laugh at their appearance and antics.

Today, a young and attractive woman inside the library laughed at me, and I knew why. I wore a helmet with a yellow rain cover; gauntlet-length yellow mitts hung from my neck; the right pant’s leg of my thirty year old trousers (I stocked up) was rolled halfway to my knee and secured by a rubber band (to protect it from the bike chain); my shoes were paint-splattered; and I wore no less than one sweater, one fleece jacket, one windbreaker, and one rain coat beneath which a large daypack protruded.

I remembered my own youth and how ridiculous I thought older people looked. I pitied them because I assumed they were so out of it that they didn’t know any better. Now I see that that they were exercising the very nonconformity on which I so falsely prided myself—my own attempt at individualism consisting of long sideburns and a sleeveless military shirt that I wore unbuttoned over my regular shirt. My friends were identically individualistic.

As there are always several people entering or leaving the library when I am, I usually hold the door open for someone. Older people are more likely to acknowledge my courtesy than younger, and women are more likely than men, but most pass without recognition.

Such discourtesy offends me as do the times people in cars cut me off on my bike even when I have the right of way. I know they do this intentionally because they hold eye contact as they await my reaction. Sometimes, I reward them with obscene words or gestures, but mostly I go my way as if they were ordinary road obstacles, which in a way they are.

"Once your have determined that your fellows are unprincipled buffoons, and that you yourself are nothing to brag about, why then should you be shocked and outraged by their bad behavior? Should you not instead exercise compassion, and thereby endure them as best as you can given your own pathetic nature?" Marcus Aurelius

Such thoughts are a great help. I attempt to treat people as if they possess every virtue, not because I believe they do, but because it is a way I can make the world a little better at no cost to myself. In fact, being kind infuses me with kindness.

Winter mountain biking

Often, during our trips to the woods, Peggy has wanted to hike farther or stay out later than I considered safe. Last Sunday, we biked five miles up roads so steep that she had to walk in places, often in dense, frost-laden fog. We are new to winter biking—in the woods, I mean, our bikes being our primary transport in town—and despite our efforts to dress adequately, our hands and feet were slowly getting colder. In addition, we were in an area unknown to us; it was mid-afternoon; and our maps were woefully inadequate. We had planned to do a loop, but we still hadn’t come to our turn, and we probably wouldn’t be able to tell for sure when we did come to it (most of the logging roads being either unnumbered or numbered differently than on the map). What’s more, we would have no way of knowing whether our turn was passable.

The decision to turn back was a no-brainer as far as I was concerned, so I was surprised when Peggy wanted to continue. I told her of my reservations and, after much discussion, we turned back. As we re-entered the fog, the chill factor increased dramatically, and its effect was heightened by the fact that we were going downhill. Despite the bad roads and having to go at schnauzer speed, we reached the van in less than an hour. By then, Peggy was in tears from the cold.

I had told her during our discussion that I felt badly about always being the naysayer. She said I should take comfort in the fact that we have always made it home safely. I do. A young and fit math professor disappeared three weeks ago during a day hike on Olallie Mountain, an area that we love. He left his extra clothes in his car, probably because the day was fairly warm and the hike only six miles each way. The search-and-rescue effort was scaled back to a search-and-recovery after a week, but when his guidebook was found, a renewed effort was mounted. No other trace has been found.

Every winter brings such stories, and every winter I ponder the suffering that is taking place somewhere nearby, somewhere that I love. Being just a little bit cold and disoriented when darkness is falling is such a horrible experience that I cannot imagine what it would be like to multiply that horror many times over and continue it to death.

I assumed that mountain biking would be much like mountain hiking but have found that it imposes entirely new challenges. For example, we can’t carry as much. We initially thought to wear our daypacks, but discovered that the extra weight on our butts was torturous, and that the high center of gravity was a safety hazard. I purchased large bike bags, but they are far smaller than our packs, so we take both, placing heavier items in the bags and extra clothing in our packs. Still, we are obliged to leave most of our emergency gear at home in favor of tools and an air pump.

Despite having taken a class, I’m largely ignorant of bike mechanics. Also, my Reynaud’s Disease is sufficiently bad that my fingers often turn white just from taking food from the freezer. So where does this leave me? I have neither the knowledge nor the physical capacity to repair a bike of any but the simplest malfunctions, and my bad knee would make it difficult for me to hike out over steep terrain. If we were not on a gated road, one of us could go for the van, but we usually are on gated roads, and I don’t like the idea of separating anyway.

Peggy was so miserable on Sunday that she vowed to give up cold-weather biking. Perhaps, she will, but I think it more likely that we will carry even more “extra” clothing, and that I will learn more about bike mechanics. If the latter doesn’t help, at least it won’t hurt.

Problems with dog poop, hunting

As I mowed today for the last time this year, I observed that it is an unalterable law of the universe that no matter how fine a man a person a pet owner is or how thoroughly he searches his yard, he is still going to get poop on his shoes and in his lawnmower tires. This constitutes my chief argument against the existence of a benevolent deity.

Peggy and I took three bike rides last week on Weyerhaeuser roads, which we like because they are usually gated. It being hunting season, the gates were open, and we encountered several hunters. They were mostly young men, wearing camouflage, and driving pickups. We worried little about them running over the dogs, because they were barely moving. Presumably, they were looking for things to kill. I don’t know if hunters actually shoot their prey from inside their trucks, but I have only seen them outside on two occasions, and on those occasions they were leaning against the side panels. This raises the question of why hunters wear camouflage. All I can figure is that they want their prey to think their trucks are unoccupied.

The sport of hunting differs from human-against-human sports in two ways. The most obvious is that hunters kill things. The other is that human-against-human sports include rules that favor skill and fairplay. Even I could beat Tiger Woods at golf if I poked his eyes out, or I could knock Mike Tyson right out of the ring if I hit him from behind with a steel pipe. Such rules don’t apply in the world of hunting. If they did, hunters would attack grizzly bears with Bowie knives instead of shooting them from distant hillsides. Such considerations cause me to hold hunting in very low esteem, yet I know several people who hunt, and they all seem fair-minded and even kindly in their ordinary lives. I think of them this way …

Ken (a non-hunter) was my best friend in Mississippi. One day, Ken and I were at someone’s house, and this person’s little girl was flirting with us by “making eyes” as it is called in the South. After we left, Ken said, “That kid sure did want it, and someday somebody’s gonna give it to her.” I first tried to convince myself that I had heard wrong; then I felt dismayed and heartsick. All of the many little things I loved about Ken were still there, but I could never get past this one big thing.

Hunters say they hunt because they enjoy the outdoors, or the camaraderie, or the thrill of the chase, yet none of these things need end in the death of an animal. Some few say they hunt because they enjoy eating game. If you are going to eat meat anyway, I suppose you might as well kill it yourself, yet I find even this reason suspect due to the amount of money the meat costs. The price of trucks, guns, licenses, clothing, and, in some cases, trips to faraway places, make for some awfully expensive jerky.

I have no doubt that many hunters are among the finest people in the world except for this one thing that they do, but, as with pedophilia, it ranks as a very big thing in my eyes, and I can never get entirely past it. My life would be easier if I could. My best efforts involve a remembrance of my own sins, including that of hunting. From ages eight to eighteen, I hunted—nearly always alone even when I was eight. My reasoning was threefold. First, I was curious about death, and I thought I could better understand it by being near it. Second, I believed that hunting was what real men did, and I wanted to be a real man. Third, I hoped that the power of the animals I killed would pass into me. This sounded idiotic even at the time, but as with other magical thoughts, I later learned that it was both common and ancient. The best face I can put upon my years as a hunter is to say that what I wanted with animals was intimacy, even oneness. The problem with this is that I wanted them to be absorbed into me, and most definitely not me into them.