Something of substance

When I was a Mississippi teacher in a school that was half black and half white, nearly all of my black students and half of my white students qualified for free lunches. In a school where no one was rich, picture one quarter of the student population having to buy that which the other three-quarters get for free. Now, picture the parents of that one-quarter having to pay for their own children’s lunches and, through their taxes, for the lunches of the other students. Such situations build resentment. When I asked in a previous post why it might be that the very parts of the country that have the poorest people are also the parts that so vehemently oppose a national health care system, no one answered. I think that one reason is just such resentment. The South contains a lot of seriously pissed-off people, and I can’t bring myself to put them down too harshly because I’ve seen the world through their eyes.

I support national health care because I also see how miserable and hopeless my own precarious health situation would be if I were to lose my private insurance in a state that has a waiting list for Medicaid. If you become too sick to work, you lose your job, and when you lose your job, you lose your insurance. You can’t buy more insurance because you’re sick and you have no job. What is the message in this? That your life is worthless aside from your ability to earn money with which to buy insurance? I would be astounded if you could find a single person who is desperately ill and can't afford treatment who opposes national health care. If I am right, what you have here is a situation in which those who have their own needs met simply don’t care a whole hell of lot about those who don’t. Perhaps, they blame them for having the problem.

I have been corresponding with a man named Aaron who opposes national health care, and I promised him that I would address the issue here for the simple reason that I feel better about spending inordinate amounts of time writing for my blog than I do writing letters. Aaron’s argument is that private charities should take on the problem. When I pointed out that they’re already unable to do this, his response was that government is to blame, not just for their failure, but for the soaring cost of medical care. He offered two primary reasons for this. First, by pumping taxpayer money into Medicaid and Medicare the government guarantees healthcare providers an income. This stifles competition, and no competition means higher prices. Second, government sets standards for medical facilities, procedures, personnel, and so forth; and the necessity of meeting these standards also runs prices up.

I spent five hours in McKenzie Willamette Medical Center last March for outpatient surgery, and I was comforted to know that my caregivers met government standards. Those five hours cost $18,695, and that didn’t include the surgeon’s bill, the anesthesiologist’s bill, or anything else. When medications, x-rays, blood tests, follow up doctor’s visits, physical therapy appointments, three MRIs ($1,300 each), and so forth, were included, that one outpatient procedure cost more than $40,000, and the bills are still coming in because I’m still needing follow-up care.

Let’s say that Aaron is right, and that if government stopped paying for any medical care for anyone and got out of the business of setting standards for doctors, drugs, procedures, and facilities; health care costs would drop. He didn’t give a percentage, but for sake of argument, let’s imagine that they would drop by two-thirds. Instead of $40,000, my bill would have been $13,333. If I were among the many who work a 40-hour week for the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, I would have to work almost a year (46 weeks) to pay for that one surgery. Since I’m in worse shape now than I was before the surgery, I would be unable to work at all if I were a manual laborer, and no work would mean no income and no income would mean no insurance.

Under Aaron’s proposal, I would be obliged to appeal to private charity for help. This would mean filling out applications for one or more charities and going through what would surely be an extensive screening process. Would I go to one charity for health care assistance and other charities for food, heating oil, and help with the mortgage? And if approved, would I be approved for whatever was necessary, or would I have to have every procedure, every drug, and every office visit to every specialist approved separately and in advance? Would the charity then comb through every bill and negotiate a lower price with the provider as insurance companies do? Would there be a yearly—or a lifetime—maximum that they would—or could—spend?

Now, let’s multiply my problem by the millions who would need help, and let’s imagine that instead of being sixty and needing shoulder surgery, I’m eighty and suffering from dementia and kidney failure and need round the clock nursing care and weekly dialysis. Talk about health care rationing! Talk about death panels! How else could it play out? Private charities could no more pick up the tab for health care than they could pay for building roads or maintaining the military.

Just think of the millions of people who are chronically ill or aging, thousands of them unable to even seek help on their own behalf, and tell me that a network of charities could work. A fundraiser was recently held at a pizza joint here for a little boy who was severely injured when a drunk driver hit the car he was in, killing everyone but that child. $10,000 was raised. Think of it. $10,000 for a severely injured child who might need a lifetime of care. How many pizza feeds would Aaron propose and for how many children? And what would become of people like the old man with dementia if no one wanted to hold fundraisers for them? Under Aaron’s plan, they would die. Those who were on top in our society would still drive their Lexus’s and live in their 5,000 square foot hillside mini-mansions with the five car garages, while those who were less fortunate would be left to suffer and perish, literally by the roadside. When we Americans talk about how much a person is worth when what we mean is how much money does he have, we’re not speaking metaphorically.

Yet, I do not think believe that my friend Aaron is heartless, or else I would not call him my friend. I actually think he is an idealist who sincerely believes that laissez faire capitalism would lead to a better world for everyone. I also suspect that he is a bit of an ideologue, but maybe I project. I was once a devotee of Ayn Rand because she made it all look so good on paper. In her books, the capitalists were creative and hardworking visionaries of uncompromising virtue; the socialists self-aggrandizing manipulators devoid of integrity; and there was no middle ground. Then I read about the Industrial Revolution, a time that came nearer to her vision of unrestrained capitalism than any other era. And what happened? The very few got very rich upon the backs of the very many. Human beings were treated like machine parts that were so cheap and plentiful that their welfare was not worthy of consideration.

Children were chained to work stations twelve hours a day seven days a week. Their emaciated bodies shivered wretchedly in thin rags in the winter and dropped from heat exhaustion in the summer. They became stooped from overwork; they got rickets from bread and water diets; they lost fingers, hands, and sometimes their lives to noisy and dangerous machinery. They died from breathing noxious chemicals or absorbing them through their skins. Laissez faire capitalism meant no fire codes, so they perished by the hundreds in burning factories. And when workers died because of the negligence of their employers, their families got NOTHING but poorer, sadder, and more desperate. Meanwhile, the children of the rich partied before moving from their city mansions in winter to their country—or European—mansions in summer, all while gaily dressed in the furs of slaughtered animals and the plumages of endangered birds. They might as well have gone all out like those Nazis who made handicrafts from the skins of laborers who died of exposure and exhaustion.

America then was like many of the so-called “Developing Nations” are today, and it would take a stretch of the imagination to imagine anything more cruel. But that’s what unrestrained capitalism looks like; a few ruthless men (mostly men) making more money before lunch than hundreds of their employees will earn in their short miserable lives. Whatever the evils of socialism, in theory at least, it holds human life as more valuable than limitless wealth amassed without regard for how many people are ground to dust in the process. Ayn Rand was wrong. There is a middle ground, and it starts with insuring that people aren’t left to die because they can’t afford to be treated.

And he spake unto them in parables saying, "Verily, a fag, a broad, and an infidel goeth up to the House of the Lord..."

I attended church for the last two Sundays after an absence of several months. Most churches don’t have much in the way of Sunday school during the summer, and since Sunday school is the only reason I go, I hung out with Buddhists instead. All they did was to sit silently, a practice that appeals to me more in theory than in practice. I didn’t go for the meditation though so much as for the people, particularly a man with whom I hoped to be friends. It doesn’t look promising. He suggested that we go for a beer; I proposed a date; the date didn’t work for him; and he never proposed another.

I think he has some mental health issues that are holding him back, but they were what caught my interest. I haven’t had a “normal” friend since childhood. I’m not even sure such people exist…well, I guess they have to because otherwise normal wouldn’t exist, and what kind of sense would that make?

Anyway, church. I went to First Methodist. I hadn’t been there in two years (I’ve been going to First Christian and First Congregationalist—no second rate churches for me), so it surprised hell out of me when one of the ministers said, “Hi, Snow,” before I even put my nametag on.

Nametag?

Yeah, I get one for every church I go to as quickly as possible. Otherwise, a dozen people a Sunday ask such predictably boring questions as, “What brings you here today?” “Have you lived in Eugene long?” “Do I detect the hint of an accent?” If I have a nametag, they still don’t know who I am, but they think they should, so they pretend they do. The preacher today was friendly but didn’t try to engage, and I appreciated that. I’m not going to contribute (much) to his salary; I’m not going to "find" Jesus; and I’m not going to join his church. I’m just there because I enjoy studying the Bible, and will jump ship in a heartbeat if another church offers a more interesting class.

First Methodist recently combined its traditional service with its contemporary service (due to falling membership, I suppose), and Sunday school starts right after it ends. I like to sleep in, so this will work well for me. I will get there early enough to pour myself a cup of coffee and select a good seat in the classroom. Then I will read. About the time I get comfortable, the doors to the sanctuary will open, and the people will file out to the strains of some New Agey hymn or another. Since they are all the same sugary pap, it hardly matters which one.

The only good thing about them is that they inspire pretty women in charismatic churches to sway back and forth while holding their hands above their heads. This elevates their breasts most appealingly, and when you add to that the fact that they’re in their best clothes, moving their lips ecstatically, and wearing expressions of orgasmic bliss…well, I find it inspiring to be sure. If I were a minister in such a church, I would sooner or later conclude my sermon with, “Let us lift our breasts to the Lord in prayer,” and my career would be over. I don’t know whether Methodist women lift their breasts in prayer, but I seriously doubt it.

First Methodist welcomes gay people, and I quickly spotted two gay couples, both of which were somewhat past middle age. One of the gay men asked insightful questions about the Bible, and I was touched by this, although it struck me as ironic since the Bible offers him nothing but stoning and hellfire. But then the preacher who led the class was a woman, and the Bible doesn’t have much good to say about them either. Finally, there was me (or is it I?), a nonbeliever who enjoys the Bible. What a group. But at least the church welcomes women and homosexuals just the way they are, whereas it views people like myself as needing a little work. Okay, a lot of work. But, you know, the Methodists of a hundred years ago would look at the Methodists of today and think they are all hellbound, so change is a’coming. Someday, the church might even live up to its motto:

“Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors.”

Friends and families

I just heard a poet on the radio read a loving poem about his dead mother, and I wished I could write a loving poem about my dead mother. When she passed away 23 years ago, I grieved intensely for sixteen months. Every night, she would come in dreams, and we would know such happiness as we had never known in real life. Then I would remember that she was dead, and she would recede into the darkness, leaving me to awaken in tears. After those sixteen months, the anger came and never left. It is still my only connection to her.

Peggy had told me years earlier that my mother treated me badly, but I couldn’t see it. Or rather I could see it, but I had spent so many decades telling myself that she didn’t mean the hurtful things she said, that I couldn’t let myself believe it.

While the poet was on the radio, a caller said that her own mother died in 1971, but that the grief is as fresh as if she had died yesterday. People often say that you should get over your grief in twelve months, but I don’t think it ever ends. It might morph, like mine did, but I hardly feel “over it.” It just takes up less of my time. After my mother died, three months passed during which I never felt a moment of joy. Then I was touring the Duluth, Minnesota, train museum one wintry day when it hit me that several minutes had gone by during which I hadn’t felt sad about losing my mother. The realization taught me that I still had the capacity for joy, and that I could expect to feel it for longer periods.

The good thing about your parents dying is that you don’t have to put up with them anymore. The bad thing is that everything that bothered you about them is frozen in time so that, if you work it out, you work it out alone.

I have a half brother who doesn’t want to know me, and a half sister to whom I am a mostly a penpal. I also have a full sister, but I haven’t spoken to her in the fifteen years since our father died. She abandoned him, so he left her out of his will. She expected me to share his meager estate anyway, but I would have burned it first. The truth of the matter is that we never liked one another, so it isn’t my sister I miss but the idea of having a sister. The same is true of my parents.

My half sister, Anne, envies me because I grew up in a home that had two parents, while she was raised by an uncle who treated her like an object of charity. I meanwhile, envy Anne because she was at least raised by people who didn’t hate one another, and because she had an extended family of other aunts and uncles who loved her and for whom she has fond memories. Oddly, some of my fondest “family” memories are of those very people, yet I was only around them for a week one summer.

I had but one uncle and one aunt of my own. The uncle, I didn’t know, and the aunt and her brother—my father—disliked one another, so her six children consequently disliked me. Things would have been easier had they not been the only other children in my rural neighborhood.

When I was a young man, I imagined that I would create a family from among my friends to supplement my own small and troubled family, but what I found about friends was that when holidays rolled around, they spent them with their blood relatives, leaving Peggy and me alone—unless, of course, she went away to see her own parents and sisters in which case I was really alone. True, my friends might talk about their relatives as if they were the worst people in the world, but when holidays came they went to them, and this made me wonder how close we really were. I also noticed that friends have a way of moving across the country and losing touch.

I turned to dogs for family with some success. The best thing about dogs is that they won’t abandon you. The worst thing is that they’re like perpetual children that need taking care of their whole lives long without ever being able to take care of you. Bonnie and Baxter became significant liabilities after my recent surgeries because they still needed their daily walks and grooming even when it was cold and muddy and my belly had been split open, or I couldn’t put on my coat because my arm was in a sling five inches in front of my body.

Another attempt I made at family was the Masons and the IOOF. There is much to be said for such fraternities, but the people you meet there are no more likely to care about you than are the people you meet anywhere else. My fraternities were founded for the express purpose of serving as extended family, and the members even call one another brother and sister, but it is a mistake to take these things too seriously.

I would feel worse about my inability to maintain close ties with family or friends over the decades if Peggy didn’t have the same problem. I can’t see how it is her fault, and this leads me to think that life is just that way. I’ve known people who I imagined to have a lot of friends, but when I became their friend, I learned that I was wrong or that their friends, like my own, tended to drift away after a few months or years.

Right up through college, friendship came easily. But maybe that was because I didn’t mistrust people back then. Now, I never assume that a relationship will last.

Some news stories keep me awake nights because I understand them; others because I don’t

(May my readers in other countries pardon my use of the word "we." It just seemed too weird to write "the United States" over and over.)

Is it by accident that we are fighting “for freedom” (ours and theirs, presumably) in the oil-rich Middle East while ignoring slavery, starvation, and genocide in the jungles and deserts of Africa? What if those people had oil—or were even white? I mean, we did finally get it together to intervene in Bosnia, yet only thousands died there as opposed to over a million in Rwanda.

Why did conservatives continue to defend the War in Iraq after it became clear that George Bush invaded the wrong country on spurious grounds, yet they are now outraged by Obama’s efforts to insure that everyone has medical care? I could better understand their outrage over the one if they were also outraged over the other. As it is, what is the message here, that killing people by mistake is okay, but saving lives isn’t? Or that anything a conservative president does is acceptable, whereas everything a liberal president tries to do must be defeated?

Conservatives demand to know how Obama plans to pay for health care reform. It is a good question, but why have they never asked this about our two wars in the Middle East, wars that have been going on for seven years at a cost of $915.1 billion?

Residents of conservative states are the poorest and least educated people in America, and they are also the least able to afford medical insurance. Yet they are the very states in which opposition to healthcare reform is strongest. Why is this, do you think?

Pfizer was recently ordered to pay $2.3 billion in fines and penalties for fraudulent advertising. It was Pfizer’s fourth conviction in seven years, yet no one will go to prison, and the fine only represents three weeks of corporate profits. Every major pharmaceutical company has run into similar problems, but since the profits exceed the fines, they keep at it.

Ronald McDonald runs charitable residence houses near hospitals for the families of seriously ill children, yet Ronald doesn’t insure his own rank and file workers—or their children. This enables him to look like a philanthropist even while dumping sick children on the taxpayer’s doorstep.

The Supreme Court is expected to abolish corporate spending limits for political ads before the end of the year. Imagine how it would affect the current healthcare debate if those in favor of reform had to compete with the likes of Merck and WellPoint for attention. Through their lobbyists and political contributions, such firms already exert an undue influence on legislators. When the day comes that they persuade legislators to outlaw free speech on the Internet (to protect us from terrorists, no doubt) their control of information will be complete.

Another fairly recent Supreme Court decision that dispossessed the individual in favor of the corporation was allowing local municipalities to take away the homes and businesses of individuals and give them to corporations. A third was ruling that corporations have the same free speech rights as individual citizens.

The irony of such decisions is that the raison d'être of the Supreme Court is to interpret the Constitution, a document that was supposedly created to protect the rights of the individual.

Yet another example of our government working overtime to screw the individual is that lawmakers denied Medicare and Medicaid the right to negotiate drug costs as do private insurers. Drug companies were said to be exceedingly grateful.

Such things go almost un-noticed by the press, as if to imply that they’re not relevant to our lives. So, Michael Jackson’s death is relevant?

The problem is that the press provides us with the information we want rather than the information we need. For example, thousands of people—including 191 Americans—have been killed in Afghanistan since January, yet Michael Jackson’s death in June has gotten more press coverage this year than that entire country. Given our apathy toward the things that matter to our welfare, the question becomes one of what we, as a country, deserve.

When a person joins the military, it would be well to tell him or her that, oh, by the way, if you should die for your country, your country won’t even notice, and absolutely nothing good will come from your sacrifice. In fact, the war in which you die will probably just fizzle out eventually, and, like the war in Vietnam, be judged by historians as a waste of time and resources.

No one doubts the mass corruption of the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, so the only reason for protecting them is that they’re on our side whereas their enemies are not on our side. It was the same with the Shah in Iran, Batista in Cuba, and the Contras in Nicaragua. I don’t remember a time when my government didn’t support evil regimes—even when those regimes overthrew elected governments—as long as we thought they wouldn’t turn on us.

Did you know that private charities hold fundraisers to pay for plastic surgery on disfigured veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan? If the government doesn’t care about the “heroes” who were supposedly injured while “fighting for our freedom,” why should we think it cares about us?

Conservatives say that we should support the troops even if we despise the war. The problem is that troops make wars possible. If those who will join the military today took the trouble to become informed beforehand, they probably wouldn’t join. The most that can be said for them is that they’re awfully young, terribly naïve, and woefully ignorant.

The thing that I find most distressing about my country is its smugness. Even though we are the most obese, the least fit, and one of the most debt ridden nations on earth, and even though our scores continue to drop in regard to education, longevity, vacation time, infant mortality, and other lifestyle standards; we still congratulate ourselves on being “the greatest nation on earth.” Greatest how? That’s what I would like to know.

Three things

First Thing

I saw an abandoned rubber tree by a curb a few days ago. It was big, ungainly, and in a broken plastic pot. I didn’t want it, but I was touched by how tenaciously it clung to life, so yesterday I biked back to see if it was still there. It was still there all right, still on its side. As I stood looking at it, I thought, what the hell, I’ll just bike it home. Having to hold so much weight in one hand was a problem, but wind resistance was an even bigger problem.

I live in an area in which large loads are often seen on bikes, but never have I seen anyone with a rubber tree. No one else I passed had either, I suppose. First their mouths would drop open, and then they would laugh. There IS something funny about a rubber tree, even when it’s not being taken for a bike ride. “Oops, there goes another rubber tree.”

Second Thing

I went on a raw food diet six days ago. I ate mostly raw foods for years in the ‘90s, but I eventually got bored and went back to a regular diet. Now that I am in pain all the time and looking at multiple surgeries in addition to the four I’ve had in the past 18-months, I decided to go back to raw foods for a month and see if I can tell any difference.

It’s hard to eat enough raw food to keep weight on, so I’ve dropped from 169 to 163. I also feel positively stoned. It’s like looking at reality from a different and more interesting angle. I used to feel the same way when I fasted. Fasting brought me in touch with an inner purity that made it hard to eat again.

Raw foods aren’t exactly effervescent, but they do sparkle in my mouth.

Third Thing

Yesterday, I went to see Mark, my orthodpedic surgeon, for my six-week appointment. I’m 5 1/2 months out from surgery on my right shoulder, but still in pain. Here’s part of what I wrote to him by way of an update.

The pain is such that I can no longer exercise even with three pound dumbbells.

The pain is appreciable at night and mild during the day (most days the joint just feels a little stiff; other days, it hurts all day). The pain becomes worse the longer I am in bed.

The left shoulder also keeps me awake at times, especially if I’ve been active. My middle and upper back also hurt a great deal. I bought a Temper-Pedic type mattress, and that seemed to help for a couple of months, but now the back pain is worse than ever and bothers me no matter what position I am in. I anticipate a move back to the recliner if it gets worse.

I need two prescriptions. One for Percocet [oxycodone and acetaminophen] and one for Restoril [a sleeping pill]. I take two to three Percocets most nights, and I change ice packs every 1 1/2 to 4 hours. I also take Benadryl for the itching caused by the Percocet, but it still interferes with my sleep. Since acetaminophen now appears to be a greater health risk than formerly believed, I would prefer straight-up oxycodone.

Both the Percocet and the Restoril have the added benefit of helping me to avoid going into a funk when I wake up in the middle of the night and brood about my shoulder problems.

He blamed arthritis for the continuing pain in my right shoulder, injected it with cortisone and lidocaine, and said I will need a joint replacement within anywhere from a few months to a few years. I said I still wanted to have surgery on the left shoulder this year, and he said that would be fine if we can get rid of the pain in the right one—otherwise, he’ll operate on it instead.

Mark seemed to be leaning toward a full-joint replacement because the partials have a 20% chance of failure within two years. He said he wouldn’t consider a full replacement as a first option if I was twenty years younger. I told him not to consider it now either.

Mark has a new baby and said he was sleepy. I hope he’s getting better rest before my next surgery. Peggy said not to worry because medical people—she’s a nurse—are used to rising to the occasion no matter how they feel. I found little comfort in this, partly because mine will be a complex surgery. The bottom-line though is that I trust Mark. I don’t care how dire a situation is, if you trust your doctor, it makes it seem about half as bad. If you don’t trust your doctor, you’re screwed, especially if your doctor pool is limited.

The way I see it

When Sarah Palin spoke of her affinity for the “Joe Six-packs of America,” I envisioned the millions of people who believe that an opinion expressed by besotted barflies has a better chance of validity than one presented in a doctoral thesis. Their premise is that anything beyond rudimentary knowledge overcomplicates decision-making, and that the resultant loss of clarity leads to liberalism. I heard it presented in church from the time I was in diapers. “Better to be poor all you life than go to a secular university, read the godless filth that godless professors call literature, study their godless science and their godless philosophy; and lose your soul.”

Led by conservative talk show hosts, the Joe Six-Packs are on the ascendancy. Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Medved, Lars Larson, and Michael Savage, are well known to me because I used to listen to them for hours each day. I quit because, despite their appeal (commercial talk radio is based on personality; public talk radio on issues) and their entertaining theatrics, there was no attempt at fairness. Their tactic was to trash the enemy, no matter how blatant the illogic or skewed the facts. If you believe your listeners are morons, there’s no need to make sense; and the fact that such talk show hosts are immensely popular implies that their assessment of their audience is largely correct. NPR at least tries to represent all sides, giving them time to answer questions, and prohibiting them from talking over one another.

Yesterday, I heard the leader of the Christian Coalition, and, as with a great many conservatives nowadays, I felt embarrassed for him. If there is any intelligence or integrity on the part of the most vocal segment of the right, I’m unaware of it. They seem to believe that democracy is great as long as they win, but if they don’t win, all bets are off. Then it’s time to “take back America,” and this would appear to leave room for pretty much anything—except working for the common good. Other than hysteria, I don’t know what the right has going for it. Unfortunately, hysteria seems to be serving it well, and that is a hard lesson to swallow.


After I wrote the above, I visited a blog in which the owner was bemoaning the lack of compassion on the part of those who oppose health care reform. One reader wrote that she was among them, whereupon there was unleashed against her the most vituperative torrent of abuse I have ever seen on any blog. Another reader and I spoke against it, thinking that, surely, others would join us. They did not. In fact, they joined in the name-calling, ending any possibility of a rational discussion. Even though the dissenter gave up after being called a parrot and a hate-filled bitch, one reader complimented the forum on its openness to opposing viewpoints—after all, no one had been physically beaten.

Experience has taught me that it is a rare day when either side to a debate has a monopoly on righteousness, yet how much sadder is that lesson when the worse cruelty is inflicted by those who claim to be on the side of compassion? Islam calls itself a religion of peace, yet how many people will be murdered today amid screams of Allahu Akbar? The second tenet of Christianity is to love your neighbor as yourself, yet how many millions of their neighbors have Christians killed, tortured, or ostracized? So would it be, I fear, with “compassionate liberals” if they had the power. The worst atrocities are always inflicted by those who think their side represents everything good and the other side everything evil.

Where my species is concerned; no enlightenment is possible, and no lasting good can ever come. For every gain there is a loss, and we extol the Gandhis and the Kings loudest when they are dead and can no longer threaten our smugness. Our lives are so very, very short that I should think we could do better. Perhaps, we are still too evolutionarily primitive. Perhaps, the truly compassionate are but aberrations. I cannot think it otherwise, and I despair.

What happens to a fantasy come true?

At night. Late. Quiet. Alone. In bed. I ponder the daylight world of color, shadow, music, plants, people. They don’t seem real in the darkness. They seem like a drug trip. I think, “Maybe this is what death is like; awareness without stimuli, as if the world were a long ago dream.”

Lately, as I lie in the darkness, I ponder Marit Larsen. I want to be Marit Larsen when I grow up.

Why?

Because she’s young, rich, healthy, intelligent, talented, beautiful, famous... Okay, I’m intelligent too, and I’m talented too (not widely appreciated for it, but talented nonetheless). But I’m also soooo old; I don’t know what my first sixty years were about, and I don’t know what to do with my last twenty. If I were Marti Larsen, life would be soooo good. Or not. I’ll admit it; I don’t know her; I just know about her.

I saw Edie Adams in an old movie last week, only I couldn’t remember her name. I just knew that I knew her. Turned out she was the woman who did the Muriel Cigar commercials in the ‘60s. Women don’t come any prettier. Then, she got old and not so pretty. No, not so pretty at all. Grace Slick was the same way. I feel cheated when women do that. Women create life—right? So what the hell are they doing getting old and dying? I expected better from them.

I worshipped them (the pretty ones anyway) from my earliest memories. It could even be that my earliest memory is of a woman who visited my family, and with whom I wanted to sleep so I could absorb her magic. I wasn’t allowed, and I screamed in protest. There it was, infinite joy right in front of me, and I couldn’t have it. I didn’t know about sex, but I knew that the universe could be mine if only I could press my body against hers in the lonely darkness.

Now, Peggy won’t sleep with me (I snore, I kick), but Peggy can’t give me eternal bliss anyway, so I can live with it. The only women who have that power are the ones who exist solely in my imagination—even though they’re based on real people. Nothing kills a good fantasy like having it come true.

I continue thinking as I lie in the darkness: Okay, if I could be Marit Larsen, what would that look like? Well, I couldn’t just be me in her body; I would have to be her, and this means that EVERYTHING that is, was, or ever will be me would be destroyed. Would I still do it? No. I wouldn’t. I say to myself:

“She too will die. I know that. I look at her, so young, so full of life; but, no matter, she will grow old, and she will die, and then she will be no more. Odds are, it will happen forty years after my death, but what is forty years in the scheme of things?”

Still, she looks like a goddess. I know better, but the little boy in me can never completely give up the old fantasies. Reality is simply too hard to look full in the face. Yet, in the wee hours, I DO look reality full in the face, if only because I can’t turn away. I hate the wee hours.

The thing that is both sad and grand is that I have at least rationally given up on magic. Women can make me feel damn good, but they can’t save me; they can only distract me. Why is such knowledge grand? Because to look to women for salvation was a heavy burden to lay upon human flesh. Men sometimes kill when their goddesses fail them.

When I was young, and I knew guys that were old and rich, I envied them because I knew they could get women that I couldn’t. Now that I’m old (and not really rich, but not poor either), I too could get women that I couldn’t have gotten on charm alone when I was young; but I don’t want them. Funny that I ever thought I would.

Now, even if I could get them on charm alone, I wouldn’t know what to do once I had them. I could fuck them, for a while longer anyway, but what would we talk about? Funny I should keep coming back to that. Peggy and I can talk about 38 years of shared experiences, or we can talk about the years that we didn’t share but that we did both experience. Marit Larsen is a 26-year-old Norwegian.

Me: “So, Marit, did you ever see that mermaid statue thingy in Oslo?”
Her: “Herregud!!! What is it with Americans and geography? The Little Mermaid is in Copenhagen. Me and my Mom saw it a long, long time ago, like in the 90’s.”
Me: “I first saw it in a book in the 50’s.”
Her: “Wow! My parents weren’t even born yet.”
Me: “Hey, I’ve got some DVDs of Have Gun Will Travel. Do you want to watch them?”
Her: “What kind of music do they play?”

Whatever shot I might have ever had at Marit Larson is gone. Watch her video. Try to see her as I see her. She looks angelic, but she’s not an angel. I know that, really I do.

P.S. For best results, double click on the video to watch it on the YouTube site.

Careers, affairs, and other marital considerations

Peggy holds the most respected job in America, and I the most despised. Registered nurses outrank doctors and professors. Househusbands fall below politicians and car salesmen. Indeed, most people don’t believe househusbands exist; they think we are simply men who mooch off our wives. Such was how my mother saw it; she called Peggy my “meal ticket.”

I got the job in 1978 after I built our house in the Mississippi woods. The plan was for Peggy to work and for me to do everything else, which at the time included gardening, preserving foods, adding finishing touches to the house, and working part-time as a writer, carpenter, candle-maker, and housepainter. After we moved to Oregon in 1986, I continued being the houseperson, but I also continued taking outside work, although Peggy never liked it because she had to help with the chores. My last job was as an on-call handyman for an office suite; when my boss left in 2001, I did too.

A major part of my househusband tenure has been remodeling the houses we’ve owned, and this points to one of the awkward aspects of my job. Namely, it doesn’t have an adequate label. Househusband implies cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry; but not remodeling, yard work, investment management, and car care. When I am asked what I do, I either have to go into a long description or offer an inadequate title. Now that I’m sixty, I just tell people I’m retired. Not that they ask much anymore because they assume I’m retired based upon how frigging old I look.

Women who understand how much I do for Peggy often ask her if they can borrow me for awhile—or they tell me that they would like to take me home with them. Peggy doesn’t know how to scan a credit card because I do the shopping. She doesn’t know how to look up a library book because I get them for her. She has no idea how to go anywhere because I either take her, or I go with her and give her directions. I set my mental clock each night so she won’t have to wake her up to an alarm. I make her bed; I cook her breakfast; and when she comes home, I have her supper ready. If she needs an appointment, I arrange it. If she needs business transacted, I do it.

I went to the dentist with her on Wednesday and held her hand while she was having her teeth cleaned. On Thursday, I sat by her side during her bone density scan and learned as much I could about osteoporosis. Later that day, I went to the doctor with her because she had a blocked salivary gland—I did most of the talking. Prior to these visits, I filled out her medical forms and printed an updated copy of her medications. Afterwards, I took her home, and then I picked-up her prescription.

I take care of Peggy like she is a cross between a child and the queen of England. In return, I don’t have to deal with the hassles of pleasing an employer, and I can schedule my time pretty much as I wish. Other than societal disrespect (which really isn’t an issue anymore) my job only has four downsides. One is that I am dependent upon Peggy for my income and my health insurance, so if she should die or lose her job, times would be hard. The second is that I do all of my work alone and miss the feeling of being part of a team. The third is that my work hours aren’t clearly defined, so I always worry that I’m not doing enough. The fourth is that Peggy is my de facto employer, and she can be a hard woman to please.

For example, she recently had a Corian top made for a table in her bedroom, and I mounted it from below with four bolts and nuts. Peggy got down on the floor and, by moving her head from side to side, noted that the sides of the nuts were not lined up with the walls of the room. Most people would consider me a careful craftsman, but I never feel that I make the grade with her. It’s not that she gets upset or gives me a hard time; it’s just that she can’t let go of something until it meets her standards. Her hobby is collecting antique clothing buttons and arranging them on perfectly laid out cards, for god’s sakes. Extreme detail is her idea of relaxation; it is my idea of torture.

The more in touch I become with my own mortality, the more I try to teach Peggy things that she would need to know if she were alone, things about our finances or how to do stuff on the computer, for example. But Peggy is incredibly resistant to such information. Even though I’ve repeatedly shown her how to get to the dentist, her best guess this week would have landed her two miles away. It’s as if she thinks she can keep me alive by making me indispensable.

I’m just the opposite. I assume that she could die at any moment. I worry about her driving to work. I worry about her riding her bike. I worry about her flying across country to visit her family at Christmas. I worry about her skiing each winter. And I really worried about her climbing mountains. Yet, I have no control over these things.

Despite what might sound like a lot of hovering on my part, I never even try to say no to anything Peggy wants to do because it’s not my place to run her life; it’s my place to assist her in running her own life. She gives me the same freedom. If I decided to spend the next month camping alone in Montana, Peggy would support me. In past years, I’ve been gone twice that long and traveled thrice that far, but I’ve since lost all desire to leave home. Everything I value is right here.

Does this mean you regard Peggy as your soul mate?

I would say both no and yes. No, in that it’s a flawed concept. How many people did any of us get to know well enough to consider marrying before we chose the person we did marry? I had precisely three girlfriends after age 18 and before I married Peggy at 22. All three wanted to marry me, but Peggy was the only one I wanted to marry. How many women did I fail to check out before I married her? Millions. And what are the odds that I might have gotten along better with at least one of them? Probably thousands.

The way I see it, the goal isn’t to find the best woman in the whole world (whatever that means), but to find a damn good woman and love her as best you can. Sure, I’ve had girlfriends since I’ve been married (which means that my best hasn’t always been that good), and I’ve sometimes wondered if I wouldn’t be happier with one of them, but I always came back to the thought that Peggy is a woman of kindness, loyalty, intelligence, and integrity, whom I know well and with whom I am highly compatible in important ways. Ergo, how much sense would it make for me to run off with someone whom—in all honesty—the main things I know about are that she’s pleasing to look at, fun to talk to, and hot in bed? A new girlfriend always looks better than an old wife precisely because she is new; I know Peggy too well to build endless fantasies around her.

I could find half a dozen “soul mates” this afternoon alone based upon the wonders I saw (or imagined) when I gazed into their eyes. Lots of women look perfect, but it’s like the seasoned trail boss (Eric Fleming) used to say to his romantic young ramrod (Clint Eastwood) on the old TV show Rawhide!: “Rowdy, just because a woman looks like an angel; it don’t mean she is one.” I’ve found it difficult to wrap my mind around this concept, and the only reason I’m getting any closer is that my testosterone levels are on the decline.

Now for the yes. Inasmuch as the concept of a soul mate is valid, she—or he—is both born and made. I’ve been with Peggy for almost two thirds of my sixty years. Even if I should meet a woman with whom I felt such oneness that she seemed like myself in another body, she still wouldn’t know me the way Peggy knows me, and I still couldn’t give her my unreserved trust because I wouldn’t know her. It’s one thing to know what I’ve got, and quite another to know what I would hope to gain, and in this, as in all things, I live by the adage that, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

You might say that I’m not being very romantic, but I’m not writing about romance; I’m writing about what I’ve found to work in life. If I lived by romance alone, I’d probably be on my fifth marriage by now. Romance is like dessert wine. It’s great to enjoy but bad to get drunk on.

By the way, the picture was made in 1971.

Some people scrounge; others just collect

Yesterday was a good day for a scrounger. First, I ate a piece of toast that someone had left in a restaurant (I dunked it in my coffee); then I found a pair of perfectly good socks under a park bench (socks were actually on my shopping list); and lastly I spotted some votive candle holders on a curb (I’ll use them for shot glasses).

“People who have class don’t scrounge,” Peggy objected.

“Ha!” I said. “In my family, they did. In my family, the ones without class went straight to the dump.” THAT’S low class. Finding stuff around town is serendipitous. (I don’t really think it’s low class to get stuff from the dump—I think it’s damn efficient—but I was trying to impress Peggy.)

“Hey, you didn’t tell me the light changed!” Peggy yelled as a car barreled past. She was prying a penny from the asphalt as we spoke, and I was standing on the curb where I was supposedly warning her of oncoming traffic.

“Shit, Peggy, don’t you go hollering at me. It’s not like you got run over or something!”

This reminds me of a funny story about Peggy—after 38 years together, I could tell you A LOT of funny stories about Peggy.

Peggy abruptly stopped her bike one day when she saw a penny in the bike lane. The biker who rear-ended her was pretty upset, so Peggy lied about why she stopped. Another time, Peggy was going somewhere with Shirley when she saw a penny at a gas station. She had Shirley drive round and round through the pumps until she saw it again. Naturally, the station’s bell kept going off, which, for some reason, seemed to piss off the man whose job it was to answer it.

Peggy isn’t a scrounger though; Peggy is a collector. A collector only picks up things that aren’t good for much, things like beads, pennies, matchbox trucks, and squished rings from Cracker Jacks’ boxes. A scrounger picks up things he can actually use. I especially like baseball caps because I wear one almost every waking moment. Peggy worries that I’ll get head lice—and give them to her—but the risk seems worth it.

I think that what is really low class is waste. I would even say that waste is worse than low class. I would say that waste is a sin. I went to a talk about mysticism at Unity Church last week, and the leader gave out ten-page single-sided handouts. I was horrified. Not only does double-sided printing save resources; it saves filing space in the event that anyone wants to keep the handouts. I was also horrified because Unity claims to teach a better way to live. Well, duh.

Another time, I was in a writing group when a woman read an essay in which she trashed loggers. She gave everyone single-sided copies of her essay. What was she thinking—besides how superior she felt to all those damn loggers?

My Dad was a scrounger, only it got out of hand when he was old. He would bring home things like broken baby cribs, things that took up a lot of room and didn’t even have parts that could be used in other things. When I moved him from Mississippi to Oregon in 1992, I spent weeks getting rid of it all. Everyday, I would take one truckload to the dump, one truckload to the junkyard, and set aside another truckload to sell. What upset me most were the scores of worthless (to him anyway) magazines that he had paid money for, magazines like Mademoiselle and Working Mother. He thought they would give him a better chance to win the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. When Ed Mahon—Johnny Carson’s sidekick who advertised for Publishers Clearinghouse—died last month, my only thought was that I hope there really is a hell, and that Ed Mahon is in it.

To waste means to hold in contempt. The problem is that we all do it. I live in a 1,250 square foot house that has a double garage and sets on a fair-sized lot. All of the houses in my neighborhood are about the same size, and most were occupied by families of three to six people when they were built in the 1950s. Now, most of them contain widows or divorced people. I’ve asked several people who raised their families in my neighborhood if the houses seemed small back then. They all seemed surprised by my question, yet today, anything less than four bedrooms and two baths would seem small.

There really is no end to how much we want, because as soon as we get one thing, most of us start thinking about how nice it would be to have something else. I think 1,250 square feet is too big for a couple, but Peggy disagrees. Ten years ago, I talked her into at least looking for something smaller, but everything that was smaller was in a rundown neighborhood. People who couldn’t afford big houses apparently felt too discouraged to take care of the houses they could afford. Yet, when you think about it, the smaller the house, the easier the maintenance.

I think that, as a culture, we’re going to remain wasteful until something from outside stops us. Here’s why I think that way. Take the average overweight and under-exercised person. If that person develops serious health problems that can only be cured by weight loss and exercise, he or she is probably screwed. Now, extend the unwillingness of the individual to deal with problems that imminently threaten his existence to those problems that will threaten society as a whole a generation from now, and tell me what the odds are of voluntary change.

I have a friend who says that the problem isn’t waste per se, but the ever-growing number of people who are doing it. In his view, this excuses him from changing how he lives. I would consider waste to be an act of contempt if I was the only person on earth, but he’s probably right in a purely practical sense. Yet, I think we’re obliged to do what we can to better the situation we are in rather than to simply bemoan the fact that a better situation doesn’t exist.

There used to be a story that circulated the Internet about a little boy who was throwing stranded starfish back into the water (I don’t remember how they got out of the water—maybe a hurricane). A wizened old man came along and pointed out that, given the thousands of starfish that were stranded, the little boy wasn’t making a big difference.

“I guess I made a big difference to that one,” the kid said as he threw yet another one into the water.”

That’s the way I see it. I didn’t scrounge a pair of socks or a set of shot glasses. I respected them by rescuing them from the garbage. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and I treasure such finds far more than anything I could buy.

What do I care?

A woman was sobbing loudly and screaming at invisible people in front of the library today. I had been out all morning and was looking forward to getting home and eating peanut butter with homemade Parmesan crackers, so I walked on by. When I reached my bike, I looked back and saw that the only other person in the area was an adolescent boy who was beating a hasty retreat.

“Damn, I’m stuck,” I muttered. “Any other minute of any other day, and there would be a hundred drunks, druggies, pimps, whores, punks, Goths, hippies, skinheads, panhandlers, and homeless people standing around with their sleeping bags and pit-bulls admiring one another’s tattoos and nose-rings.”

“I’m having a panic attack,” she said when I asked how I might help. This didn’t fit with what I had witnessed, but I still felt relieved that she might not be out and out psychotic. She calmed down remarkably fast, so fast that I wondered if her hysteria hadn’t been a ploy to get my attention.

She sat on the edge of a concrete planter, and I sat beside her while she told me her sad story. To wit: her “boyfriend” neglected to tell her that he has AIDS, but she loves him anyway although he lost all interest in her after they had sex. Her “partner” doesn’t know about the affair, and she doesn’t plan to tell him because he would beat her up.

“Lady, you are just too stupid for words,” I thought. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to leave, at least not yet. I had decided to help, and, by god, I was going to do it—for five more minutes anyway.

She said she had walked for miles hoping to work the virus out of her system before it put down roots. She asked if drinking a lot of water might wash it out. I said I doubted it, and I then made an unforgivably practical suggestion about going to White Bird Clinic to be tested, and I tried to console her with the thought that she might not have AIDS anyway, but even if she does, people nowadays live for years with the virus.

When I finally got up to go, she thanked me sarcastically “for making fun of a serious situation.” I hadn’t done this, so I figured she was just trying to provoke me into staying, but I honestly didn’t care. The fact is that I never cared. I had done my duty as I saw it, but my heart was at home eating peanut butter on homemade Parmesan crackers.

Maybe you would have cared. Maybe you would have listened without passing judgment, but I can’t imagine how. I really can’t. The only way I can feel warm and fuzzy toward my fellow human beings is to not be around them very much. Still, if you would have cared, I hope it’s you who stops to help on the day that it’s me standing in front of the library screaming at invisible people. Not that I am given to such theatrics. No, not me. I realized when I was a little boy with a screaming sister that screamers get all the attention but none of the respect, and I came to hate them on both counts.

Chronic pain: is it for you?

Here’s how I see chronic pain. Let’s say you take it into you head to help the poorest people on earth, and you are sent to a city dump in Cairo or Mexico City. An hour after you fold the seat-table on the 747, you are standing amid Third World filth, smelling the overpowering stench and looking at the emaciated children with maggot-filled sores, and you think, “My God, I can’t take this.” But you discover that you are stronger than you thought and, after a few months, you get used to it. You still hate it, but you get used to it.

Today, I went to see Shan, my number one physical therapist (I see three in all). If I don’t have less pain in the next two weeks, Mark will want to do a joint replacement on the same shoulder that he did the decompression and tendon repair on in March, so Shan suggested a drastic approach. His “drastic approach” was to stick needles deep into my muscles and tendons. This made them twitch so violently that I bent some of the needles. Every time I thought that he surely must be finished, he would have me change positions and stick me some more. Sweat poured off me, yet the pain still wasn’t as bad as much of what I experience everyday. I tried to carry on a normal conversation. “You handle this better than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he said, and I took it as a better than average compliment. Afterwards, I was sore but a lot more limber.

I realized some time ago that if I want medical people to take my pain seriously, I have to hang tough when they hurt me. As an ob-gyn nurse, Peggy often gets patients in early labor who claim that their pain level is a ten on a scale of one to ten. Peggy will say, “Ms Babymaker, you need to pick a lower number because you’re not leaving anything for later.” I always try to leave something for later. Not that I would act any differently otherwise; I’m too macho for that. Sometimes, macho is good. Of course, emoting is good too. It’s just a question of when. I cry easily (real easily) when I’m touched or grieving, but never when I’m hurt or angry. That’s just how I am, and I like it.

The last time I cried because I was hurt or angry, I was in the fifth grade, and got into a fight with a former friend, Jack White, after school. Jack brought three other friends to the fight, and when they saw that I was winning, they penned my arms so Jack could beat me up. Only he never threw the first punch because I began sobbing at the recognition of such treachery as I had never thought possible. Aghast, they let me up without a word spoken, and I walked home still sobbing. My best friend, Grady Green, was sitting on the porch, and he consoled me. I’ll never forget that, although I don’t even remember what he said. For all I know, he didn’t say anything. That afternoon contained one of life’s saddest moments followed by one of its sweetest. I wish I had a male friend like Grady today. But I digress.

I was dizzy when I left Shan, and that wasn’t good since I was on my bike and a half hour from home with a lengthy errand to do en route. I knew it would be better to skip the errand and go ice my shoulder, but macho kicked-in again. When I finally got home, I iced my shoulder for ten minutes and then ran another errand, followed by more ice, and finally a third errand. If not for ice, I don’t know how I could bear the pain. I try to limit narcotics to the nighttime, yet I still have to get up every two hours for a new ice pack. Demerol, Vicodin, Percocet, Norco, Dilaudid; none of them are sufficient without ice. It’s quite the experience to be passed out on narcotics and sleeping pills, only to be instantly awakened by a pain that comes screaming through the darkness like an arrow out of nowhere. Fortunately, I can usually get by on either the one or the other as long as I supplement it with ice.

A lot depends on how bad the pain is, and that varies, but I would say that what annoys me worse than hurting all the time is not being able to do so many things. Even small things like running the vacuum cleaner. I’m still hoping that I’ll be back to normal in about a year, but if I have to have my right shoulder operated on again (before I have the left one done), it will be closer to two years, and there’s even the possibility that the left shoulder will require two surgeries too since it and the right one look like mirror images on an MRI.

I wish I could have avoided all this, but it hasn’t been a total loss, although I can’t think of much good to say about it either. Really, the only thing that comes to mind is that it has shown me that I’m tougher than I thought—and more adept at suffering. I might hope that it has also made me more compassionate, and maybe it has.

Despite my toughness, I think about death, a lot. It all comes down to how much pain and disability a person is willing to tolerate. I’m not near my limit because I still have hope, and I also have Peggy to consider. Death does seem like an easy way out though. I think that, well, what if I lose hope that things will ever get any better? What if I come to believe that I will always need someone to mow my fucking yard and vacuum my fucking floor, and what if I conclude that I will never pass another day without significant pain? That would be a hard row to hoe, but I could do it. I just hope I won’t have to.

I roofed a dentist office in the early ‘80s alongside Jack Tindall, the sixty-year-old man who owned it. Out of the blue one day, Jack turned to me and said, “You’re a master, and I’m a past-master.” I thought it was a strange thing to say because he was a rich man, and he didn’t have to be on that roof if he didn’t want to. Now, it’s Jack’s turn to be dead, and my turn to be a past-master, and the fact that I have the money to pay someone to mow my yard and vacuum my floor isn’t enough to compensate. Money seemed more magical when I was young and strong. Now it’s mostly good for paying medical bills. That still makes it my best friend, because without it I would be left to suffer and die like so millions of others in “the greatest nation on earth.”

If all I had to look forward to was a continual downhill slide, health-wise, I wouldn’t want to live that way, and if I didn’t have Peggy, I don’t know that I would. Some days, it’s hard to see the point, and my fantasies turn toward how I might escape. I’m only sixty though, and I do have hope for a better tomorrow, if not next year, maybe the next.

So, tell me boy, what'd you wanna burn the woods down for? Did them squirrels do something to piss you off?

“Nothing lasts; therefore nothing means anything.”

I found this sentiment in the blog of a sixteen year old. I couldn’t have written it when I was her age because I still believed, despite serious doubts about the Bible, that life had an ordained meaning. I also lacked her insight into how quickly it is over. The years I had already lived seemed like a long, long time, and I anticipated living several times longer. I still felt as lost as she, but lost in a way that I didn’t know how to articulate—not that anyone ever asked. My best guess about how to deal with my lostness was to set the woods on fire. It seemed like such a crazy idea that I thought it would get me committed to a cozy mental institution where a fatherly psychiatrist could fix me.

Why this faith in shrinks? Did you know any?

No, I had never laid eyes on a first year psychology major much less a bona fide psychiatrist, but I had read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, in which a psychiatrist helped one of the condemned killers come to terms with his execution. I figured that, if a shrink could make a fellow feel okay about being hung before dawn in a Kansas prison, he could make him feel okay about anything.

I didn’t burn the woods down, partly because I didn’t want to burn the woods down, and partly because I worried that I would be sent to a reform school instead of a mental institution. For years, I continued to feel alone. Other people didn’t seem to share my angst, and my ever deeper and ever more raging questions about ultimate reality made me feel like a freak. I imagined that everyone else must have already found the answers I was seeking, and that their lack of apparent depth simply meant they were miles ahead of me, as if the rest of the world knew something that I didn’t. But, if this were true, I wondered, why wouldn’t they share the answers, and why did most of them seem so unintelligent?

I still feel alone, but it has moved beyond what I had thought was a remediable defect and into what I regard as the human condition. If you’re congenitally cheerful or believe in Jehovah, you might not feel it. Otherwise…

I wrote at length to the teenage blogger, pointing out that impermanence need not imply futility, although it does, in my mind, lead to sadness. All that I treasure, all that I protect, will be lost in a mere two or three decades. My photos, my writings, and the other artifacts of my life will, likely as not, end up in a landfill. Peggy will die, either a few years before or a few years after me, and in a few more years, all that we were and all that we did will be forgotten. These things will occur in roughly half the time we have already lived. If you can remain unerringly cheerful in the face of such a future, I envy you. I also suspect that you have embraced answers that are as groundless as they are comforting.

Abandoned and naked with only a schnauzer for solace

A letter by a follower from Slidell, Louisiana, reminded me of the following true story.

In 1983, I got a pilot’s license and bought an airplane because I felt hemmed-in by the provincialism of southern Mississippi, and thought that flying would broaden my social and intellectual horizons while expanding my spatial ones. This did not prove to be the case because of the slow cruising speed of my plane (85 mph) and the influence of Mississippi’s frequent thunderstorms. Even so, Peggy and I took trips to Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. We had two engine failures and one electrical fire along the way, but I’ll save those stories for another time.

Ever on the lookout for stimulating places to visit, I read about a nudist camp called Indian Hills (an odd name in an area in which the highest peaks are I-12 overpasses) near Slidell, I proposed to Peggy that we fly down. When she expressed somewhat less than zero interest in going, I went by myself. I had imagined that nudists would be of a liberal and educated bent, but this was not the case. I had hardly been there an hour before a large, drunk, and completely naked redneck challenged me to a fight. His wrath had erupted when I said something about him being gay based upon my observation that he was wearing a single earring.

He vociferously informed me that merchant seaman—of which he was one—also wore single earrings, but in the opposite ear to that favored by gay men, a group that he held in extremely low esteem. I apologized profusely, not because I felt badly about my error, but because I would have apologized profusely no matter what I had said. For example, if I had called him a human, and he had preferred to think of himself as a three-toed frog from Mars, I would have apologized just as profusely. Maybe I'm vain, but if I’m to be beaten to death, I want it to be over something that matters.

I stayed the night, and flew home the next day with no plans for another trip. Several months later, I was telling my friend Woozy Toosh (not his real name believe it or not) about the camp. I had known Woozy Toosh for much of my life, and was well aware that he was an excessively timid person, so I was surprised when he asked me to go there with him. I said I would be glad to, and we agreed to take his car. He made me vow secrecy about the trip because he worried that he would lose his job as a school guidance counselor and that his fundamentalist Christian wife would leave him. These were realistic fears.

Woozy Toosh, my little dog Wendy, and I drove down one August afternoon and stayed in a Slidell motel before going to the nudist camp the next morning. I was a little—but not a lot—surprised that night when he brought up the possibility of him and me having sex. I politely declined.

The next morning, Woozy Toosh, Wendy (you can tell from her haunted eyes that she had seen things a dog was never meant to see), and I drove to the camp. He was reluctant to take his clothes off (he had mostly wanted to see other men without their clothes), and he asked me if it was strictly necessary. I said I didn’t think so, but that he might feel even more awkward if he kept them on.

Woozy Toosh finally did undress, but he used a newspaper to cover his privates as he made a beeline for a chaise lounge. I thought he looked like Inspector Clouseau who found himself in similar circumstances in one of the Pink Panther movies, but I didn’t say anything. After we had sat down, he lost no time in covering himself from mid-thigh to mid-waist with the same newspaper. Only then did I notice that it was in reality a National Enquirer. I could tolerate homosexuality, but learning that I had a friend who read the Enquirer was a bit much.

After an awkward half hour, Woozy Toosh asked if I was ready to go home. I had anticipated such an outcome before we left, and had exacted his promise that we would stay at least six hours. By the time another half hour passed, he had asked me twice more. When I became testy, he developed the sudden urge to spend the day window-shopping at the Slidell Mall. We agreed that he would pick me up around 3:00, and he left with my clothes in his car.

Just before Woozy Toosh was to return, two men got into a fight near the entrance to the camp, and the police were called. I worried that when Woozy Toosh saw them, he would think it was a raid, and not slow down until he was across the state line. Just in case this should happen, I thought it behooved me to make alternate plans for my return home. Okay, I thought, it’s a two-hour drive, and I’m butt naked with no clothes, no friends, and no money. Of course, I did have a schnauzer, but she hardly seemed like an asset. All I could think to do with her was to hold her over my privates while I hitchhiked, but that didn’t seem like really workable solution, even after dark. Besides, Woozy Toosh had left his National Enquirer in the changing room, and if worse came to worse, I figured I could take some string and improvise a skirt.

3:00 was long gone before the cops looked like they might even be thinking about the possibility of starting to think about leaving. It was my firm belief that they were actually a great deal more interested in looking at the women they weren’t arresting than in the men they were. In fact, they didn’t appear to be making much headway in arresting anyone. Their tardiness gave me a great deal more time to come up with a workable plan, but none was forthcoming. I could have called Peggy, of course, but she would have regarded the trip as an imposition and have undertaken it primarily for the dog.

Woozy Toosh returned a half hour after the cops left. I have never at any time wished that the trip had ended otherwise even if it would have made a better story.

I’ll tell you what I want out of life

I attended a Zen service Sunday. The temple is nearby, and I had long been curious about it though discouraged by the requirement that new people arrive at 8:00 a.m. for orientation. This Sunday I was up anyway because Peggy had to work, and I’ve become motivated by more than curiosity about Buddhism because of the pain that is ever with me.

I sat in a chair (most people were on cushions) in the geezers’ row, and was completely lost despite the orientation. We would sit, then stand, then bow from the waist, then sit, then stand, then bow with our faces to the floor. Meanwhile, there was a gong banging outside, bells ringing up front, bells ringing in the back, various hollow objects being struck, chanting in English, and chanting in Japanese. I had a chant book, but everyone else knew the chants by heart, and I had no idea where to find them. I was finally able to locate one of the Japanese ones for all the good it did me. I couldn’t talk fast enough to say the strange words, and there wasn’t even a translation with which I might console myself.

After everything else was completed, we sat perfectly still for forty minutes with our chairs (me) or cushions (most of them) facing the wall. The other thirty people were barefoot, but it was 50º F (10º C) outside, the room was unheated, and a window was open. Everyone else knew enough to wear jackets, but I was in short sleeves and would have gone home before I would have gone sockless.

When the bell rang to end the sitting meditation, about a third of us filed out while the remainder did a walking meditation. We were supposed to reassemble afterwards for a dharma talk by the resident priest. During the whole time I had been there, I had been cold, lost, and ignored by everyone but the lady who showed me around. None of this inspired me to want to know more, and hanging around to see whether the whole shebang was as bad as what I had already experienced just didn’t seem like enough of a reason to stay. It was only 10:15, so I went over to First Christian for its second Sunday school. There, I found a warm room, friendly people, comfortable furniture, pastries, and coffee.

I’ve been asked why I go to church when I don’t believe in Jesus. I’ve addressed this at some length, but the bottom line is that I value a shared spiritual dimension to my life, and I enjoy studying the Bible. I had actually rather go someplace other than a church, someplace where I could fully belong, but there simply are no such places. For several months (this was ten years ago), I attended the Self-Realization Fellowship, and liked it very well, but the more people accepted me, the more they talked about different things that their leader (Paramahansa Yogananda) was doing for them. Since he was DEAD, this weirded me out a little. Sure, a lot of people at First Christian believe that Jesus is present in their lives, but they don’t usually claim that he takes care of such minutiae as arranging bus faire to California.

There is also a Bahá’í group here. I visited it years ago and might go again someday, but in all candor I don’t fit in there either. The main difference between Bahá’í and Christianity is that most Christians believe God has already said pretty much everything he wants us to know (despite the fact that we’re killing one another because he failed to make it clear), whereas Bahá’ís think he’s still saying it. I differ from both in that I don’t believe God can help us out with our little problems because God doesn’t even know we exist. There are no perks to worshipping the god of pantheism aside from the worship itself.

I’ve also been to Sufi and Hare Krishna groups. You might say I’ve gone to damn near everything I was ever close enough to go to. Even when I lived in Mississippi, I attended fifty Christian denominations and a synagogue (the synagogue and the rabbi's home had been firebombed by the Klan a few years previously). To my surprise and delight, the people at Beth Israel just thought I was another Jew.

My lily-white Buddhist orienteer said that the priest had renamed her Yoetsu (pronounced Yo-Et-Sue). I thought it sounded like a sexual reference in Spanglish, but concluded that it probably had something to do with cranes or lotus blossoms. I used to tell myself, “Snow, you’ve got to start honoring this diversity crap,” but I never did. I look at it this way. When people take on foreign names, use foreign words, eat foreign foods, and wear foreign clothes as part of their religion; they can talk all they want about openness and inclusiveness, but are you going to believe their words or their actions? If you believe their actions, their goal is the rejection of their own culture in favor of someone else’s culture that is presumably more spiritual. They are, as it were, pointing their middle finger at the rest of us poor schmucks who don’t even know enough to pretend we’re from the Orient.

Sunday’s Buddhist group wasn’t that extreme. They had their funny names, and they dressed in clothes the color of leaf mold (this distinguishes them from Tibetan Buddhists who wear bright colors—god forbid you should get the two mixed up). These things separated them from most of America somewhat, but they were also separated within their own group by the black bibs that hung around the necks of the more advanced. Bigot that I am, I interpret such advertisements as plain old run-of-the-mill pride. There were other things too. For example, one man seemed infatuated with a piece of white cloth that he solemnly laid atop his head for awhile, but I had no idea what it meant. Again, bigot that I am, I just thought he looked rather stupid standing in the middle of the floor worshipping a handkerchief.


I’ll tell you what I want out of life. It’s simple. I want to be completely present. That’s it. How hard could that be? Well, I find it a little like trying to maintain good posture. Peggy sometimes tells me that I need to straighten up, so, I straighten up—for about two minutes. Then I forget about it, and I slouch again. Sometimes, I think that what I really need to do is to devote my every waking hour simply to staying straight until it becomes second nature.

Being present is like staying straight only a lot harder, because there’s nothing about good posture that precludes steely self-absorption, whereas being present means being truly open to what’s inside and what’s outside, and this requires that I relax my defensiveness. If I were less defensive, maybe I would feel compassion rather than contempt for the more outlandish religious groups I’ve visited.

After my surgery in March, I went through a period of feeling terribly hurt that people hadn’t been there for me in the way I thought they should be. Then, for some reason that I don’t remember, my heart opened. If you’ve ever taken the drug ecstasy, you know how I felt. It was like the lightness I used to feel as a boy when I set someone down after carrying them piggy-back for a few minutes—like I was walking on the moon. I didn’t think I had arrived exactly, but that I had made a quantum leap in that direction. I actually thought the feeling might last, or that I could at least remember my way back to it. Then, poof, it was gone. Again, it was like the drug ecstasy; you think you can hold onto your new enlightenment, but you can’t.

When I’m with people, I feel tense. It’s not that I anticipate them disliking me. It’s that I anticipate them (a) not really listening to anything I have to say, and (b) not really caring if I live or die. At best, I anticipate them seeing me as a rather uninteresting diversion. I also anticipate being annoyed by them, because I feel bored by most people. You might say that I feel about them the exact same way that I don’t want them to feel about me, but think they will.

I try to counter this by facing them full-on, looking into their eyes, and listening to what they’re saying instead of waiting for my turn to talk. None of this works very well though, and it’s not even that rewarding when it does. Like with good posture, I don’t really have it; I’m just faking it in the hope that someday I will really have it. But I lack the discipline to even be a good fake, and I’m not sure that discipline is the answer anyway. I suspect that what I need is a change in attitude rather than a change in resolve, but I’m at point A, and my new-and-improved attitude is at point B, and point B might as well be on the top of Mt. Everest.

Oh well, the good news is that I’ll die before too many more decades and won’t have to worry about all this anymore. And you thought I was a pessimist. Silly you.

I pet my blogging peeves and even think of a few nice things to say

Nice things first so as to throw you off guard…

1) Instead of a few words, people often respond to my posts with a few paragraphs. I ADORE knowing that I’ve inspired them to think and feel, and vice versa.

2) Blogging has brought me into personal contact with people from all parts of the English-speaking world. Britain, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and Australia, have become as one, and except for an occasional place name, no one could tell where any of us are from.

3) I like it when people challenge my opinions, but I also like it that no one has ever trashed me. The only off-the-wall comment I’ve gotten was posted anonymously on my blog in the mistaken belief that I would forward it to another blogger who didn’t accept anonymous comments!

4) I like having the opportunity to share my writing—and even my photographs—with a world-wide audience, and to have them preserved in cyberspace.

5) I like it that I never have to edit my words to please a publisher.

6) I enjoy finding great blogs that almost no one knows about.


Peeves and more peeves…

1) Bloggers who have more followers than I.

2) Bloggers who post graphics without labels (like the accompanying map of the Internet) because they don’t know how to make labels.

3) Bloggers who go by no name but the name of their blog, which is usually long. Ideally, people’s names (even when made up) and the names of their blogs would be the same, because it would help me to sort everyone out. It would also make it easier to respond to comments. For example, if your blog is entitled She Who Likes to Eat Cantaloupes in the Nude, and I don’t have anything else to call you, I have to come up with an abbreviation. Cantaloupy? Nudie Tahoodie?

4) Bloggers whose latest entry says they don’t have anything to say, so they won’t say anything. I spend three to twelve hours (sometimes more) on my every entry trying my damnedest to make it worthwhile, and I just hate being summoned to someone’s blog (by notice of a new entry) only to be told that they don’t feel like writing.

5) The fact that I spend so much time trying to perfect an entry only to see errors as soon as I publish it. Sometimes, I have to edit and republish repeatedly to get everything right, and I worry that people will think I just keep republishing to get their attention, as if I’m screaming, “Hey, look at me!” Believe me, I’m not.

6) Cryptic bloggers who say things like, “If I do it, it might not turn out well, but if I don’t do it, it might turn out worse.” Do what?! Why write something that no one understands?

7) Bloggers who say, “It’s my blog, and I’ll write anything I want to.” I interpret this as pugnacity or, at best, defensiveness. Our readers are our guests, and they deserve our respect and consideration even when they disagree with us. Yes, I know, some bloggers say this kind of thing because they feel attacked. Like I said, it’s at best defensiveness. I mean, they’re stating the obvious—assuming, of course, that they don’t live in some free speech hellhole like Iran or China.

8) Awards. I’ve received four awards from three followers. I remember who sent them (Jane at Gaston Studio, Joe at My Quality Time, and Lille Diane at This Time Tomorrow), and I remember the joy and gratitude I felt upon receiving them. Truly, these people have a special place in my heart. I don’t display my awards because (a) I’m a decorative minimalist, so I prefer my own blog to be sparsely furnished; (b) I don’t want to risk distracting my readers from whatever I’m trying to communicate; and (c) each award came with the requirement that I pass it along to five (or even more) people, a number that boggles my imagination. Let me explain. Here’s how many people would have received a new award after it had been presented to ten generations of recipients if everyone who received it gave it to five new recipients.

Gen one. I create the prestigious You Just Don’t Know When to Shut-up Award, and I present it to 5 people.
Gen two. My five grateful recipients pass it along to five other recipients: 5 (originals) + 25 (new people) = 30 total
Gen three: 30 (the total from generation two) + 125 (the number the 25 new recipients sent it to) = 155 total recipients
Gen four: 155 + (125 x 5) = 780
Gen five: 780 + (625 x 5) = 3,905 recipients
Gen six: 3,905 + (3,125 x 5) = 19,530 recipients
Gen seven: 19,530 + (15,625 x 5) = 97,655 recipients
Gen eight: 97,655 + (78,125 x 5) = 488,280 recipients
Gen nine: 488,280 + (390,625 x 5) = 2,441,405 recipients
Gen ten: 2,441,405 + (1,953,125 x 5) = 12,207,030 recipients

In ten generations (three months maybe?), there would be over twelve million recipients if everyone passed it along. I am very appreciative of my awards, but I can’t see how an award can continue to be meaningful if it covers the globe faster than Swine Flu. Besides, if I deserve a merit-based award, why should I be expected to pass it along? I won’t even mention how easy it would be to simply steal an award by copying and pasting, because only a truly evil person like myself would think to do such a thing.

9) Followers. Based solely upon my own experience, it is my sad conclusion that the number of followers a blog has is primarily a function of how much time its owner spends visiting other blogs. The first time I visited a blog that had over 500 followers, I asked the owner how the hell he did it. He explained that Google had for some reason listed his as a blog of note, after which people just came out of the woodwork. Most of them, he believed, weren’t even interested in his blog; they just wanted to have their blogs listed on his blog so that people would click on their link. Thus began my disenchantment with piling up oodles of followers.

Another problem with having a lot of followers is that I feel all but obligated to follow the blogs of people who follow my blog, and I can’t adequately do that with even the 70 followers I now have.

10) Musical blogs. I had rather drink Drano. I hate musical blogs so much that I pet this peeve more than I pet all of my other peeves together. I can only give you 100% of my attention, so if someone is singing while I’m reading your words, your words get less attention. Besides, your writing has its own tempo, and I often feel as if I’m reading William Shakespeare while listening to Jimi Hendrix. It’s worse than fingernails on a chalkboard.

If you want to share your music, please create a playlist, and give me the choice of playing it. Yes, I could mute my speakers. This takes eight seconds followed by another seven seconds when I turn them back on. Rather than take the time (often with multiple blogs) and feel bummed about it, I tend to read fast, write fast, and get out of there. Yes, this IS a pain, and if I didn’t value you above health, money, and sex I wouldn’t do it.

Sometimes, I will have read a couple of paragraphs before the music starts. Because I’m deep in concentration, it just scares the hell out of me (when you drink too much coffee, you scare easily), and this pretty well ruins the rest of my visit. One reason I don’t go to bars is that I hate straining to hear people talk above the music only to miss half of what they say anyway. Music on a blog is like music in a bar.


Well, that’s about all I can think of, but before I close, I would just like to say a brief word to all those whom I have offended: FOR GOD’S SAKES DON’T LEAVE ME! I spent about a million hours piling up 70 followers, and I am too tired to look for replacements. Besides, I actually like you, even the ones with musical blogs. Surely, our friendship can include saying what we don’t appreciate as well as what we do.

Credo est

Part 1

Pretend that I am right; that our every thought and action is determined by the unalterable laws of cause and effect; that we are like so many rocks being tossed about as they roll down a hillside.

Peggy returned from settling her mother’s estate in Mississippi with a collection of family photos. Among those photos were school pictures from the 1940s of Peggy’s aunt for whom Peggy was named.

When she was in her forties, Aunt Peggy shot herself while lying in her bathtub. Her family came home to find her helpless with a collapsed lung. She recovered.

Aunt Peggy soon shot herself again. This time, she was left a quadriplegic. Several years later, she died.

Had I been a boy in her school, I would have tried to date Aunt Peggy. I know this because I like the way her eyes look in those old photos—mischievous, sensual, flirtatious—qualities irresistible to young males... Would you want to know how you will die?

I look at Aunt Peggy’s old photos, so filled with promise and life, and I wonder what she would have said had an angel offered her a vision of her final years? Among all possible lives, hers would have been among those that might be described as purest hell.

I knew her before she shot herself, but having moved to Oregon, I never visited her afterwards. It would have meant a long trip and, knowing something about her life, I had no thought that she would talk to me openly.

Her family blamed Peggy’s husband for her attempts at suicide. It’s easier to blame someone, anyone, other than your daughter or sister, I suppose. But if I am right, she had no choice. She never, from the foundation of the universe, had any choice. Would it have mattered? Unless we were able to know where our choices would lead, the freedom to make different choices would be of questionable benefit. I’ll give you an example.

A local man was a professional bodybuilder. He wasn’t among those who are pumped up on steroids, but a man who was sincerely devoted to healthy living. One day, a squirrel ran into the spokes of his bicycle. When he woke up in the hospital, he was informed that he was now a quadriplegic, and that he might never be able to live without a respirator. He insisted that the respirator be removed; it was, and he died.

Two people on opposite routes reach the same end; the one who never wanted to die chose death, while the one who longed for death continued to eat, and by eating, to live. I can make no sense of this, and if I am right, there is no sense to be made, because neither really got to choose. Their paths were determined from the foundation of the universe.


Part 2

I’ll tell you something that I have learned about suffering. Suffering admits no visitors. No matter how much you want to be understood, you cannot; or at least, I cannot; or at least, I feel that I cannot. This is mostly bad, but it is not altogether bad. Sometimes during the day, I will be thinking about the hours I lie awake hurting, and there will come to me a certain nostalgia, an almost glad anticipation of the coming night. Yet I would not for the space of a heartbeat choose to suffer. It is another irony to see some poorly defined good in that which I wish with my whole heart to avoid.

What is this good?

The recognition that I am thrown back upon myself to survive such nights. I subsist on hope for a better future, it is true, but I cannot help but think I would want to survive even if I knew I would suffer equally every night for the rest of my life. I cannot explain this except to say that suffering brings the possibility of redemption. But what is redemption? Redemption is freedom from appearances. Redemption is to know reality at its worst, yet to still love reality. Or so it comes to me. Maybe I am insufferably pollyannish; I suspect I am.

Why?

I knew a man who lived across the street from another man whose wife died. No one saw the bereaved for weeks after the funeral, so they finally broke into his house. He was there, in his chair, still dressed in the clothes that he wore to the funeral. He had sat, and he had urinated, and he had defecated, and he had eventually died.

If Peggy were to die, I would know suffering. I often think to myself that my situation is bad, but I know that it is merely a stubbed toe compared to her death. The sun can revive or burn. Suffering can strengthen or destroy. There are no guarantees. There is no rationale. There is no benefic plan. There is only death after life, but not, so far as I can see, life after death. When the boulder reaches the bottom, it stays at the bottom.