beginning

“There is no beginning too small.” This is a bookmark I’ve had sitting on my desk for over a decade now. It’s faded and warped and a cat has given it what looks like two little staple holes in the upper right hand corner – uniform and a quarter inch apart. I’m late for my departure to go up to my brother’s to help them all move into their borrowed house while he builds another one. The boy is airborne at this moment in his five thousand nine hundred mile journey to the Middle East. Big beginnings work too.

bye

The boy leaves tonight for the Middle East. Even though he left here twelve days ago at least I knew he was on the same continent. But tonight he flies 5900 miles away to a very different land. I hope he will be safe and happy. I hope his experiences will be engaging. I hope he will allow himself to be present and paying attention.

I’m sure his adventures will equal the adventures of the woman in whose life I am entangled: Belle. She, too, went East. And also Doreen, who just a few years after Belle, sailed off to the Middle East. The boy will be jetting, not sailing. And adventures now feel both more tenuous and dangerous. Tenuous because the adventure part feels secondary to the grind of finding an existence. The girls went off in search of adventure, not required to work or attend in any way to the requirements of their lives. Doreen was with a group of girls living in a hotel and attended by many “brown” men as she lovingly calls them. Although she was already ten years out of college, Belle was simply searching for something to do and wrote on her passport application that she was traveling for leisure. Dangerous because that part of the world is so much more volatile today than it was 75 years ago when the girls went. At the time of their stays the world was simmering – about to erupt in the conflagration of WWII. But the Middle East still had some years to go before the carving up the West had done burst into the firestorms of today’s poisonous environment.

He has rules for his existence in the Middle East: answer all emails promptly, stay in touch generally, if anything happens within 500 miles of him he must get in touch immediately to say he is OK. And I sent him off with my current words of wisdom. First from the Dalai Lama: whenever possible, be kind. It is always possible. And from me, the three things to guide a good life: Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth.

Godspeed.

phone bank

Phone banking for Barak Obama tonight, I just can’t imagine how this makes one scintilla of difference. I hate receiving those phone calls and the only good thing about making them was that most people I called were not home. It was leave-messages night, though, so I had to continually repeat that there was to be canvassing in their area this weekend if they’d like to “get involved.” Maybe this calling makes a difference. Maybe some people are pried off their seats by receiving a phone call from a stranger cheerfully offering them the opportunity to canvass. Maybe. But I just can’t imagine it.

vegetarians

Last night was the finale of The Next Food Network Star. (Another television admission. I do enjoy the reality competitions where people must actually have skill: Project Runway, Shear Genius, Design Star, Top Chef, et cetera.) I’m sure Aaron McCargo Jr.’s new show will be delightful. I’ve recently found myself addicted to the Food Network and I’m loving learning something about cooking with every show I watch. But I have to say I absolutely incredulous that an entire network devoted to shows about cooking doesn’t have one show about vegetarian cooking. Not one single show.

Every chef’s show on the network presents two or three dishes in each episode and they always have a vegetable. But almost never do they have a vegetarian entrée. I’m pretty sure the number of vegetarians in the country is increasingly rapidly. And even meat eaters are advised to not eat dead animal daily. How is it that a network that focuses on preparing food doesn’t address this growing segment of the population? Do vegetarians not watch television? How can they have missed this segment of their audience?

A letter must be written.

sick, postscript

To finish up with my West Nile Virus tale, I must add a postscript. I spent last summer recovering from my encounter with this exceedingly unpleasant virus. I slowly got back on the treadmill, starting at a crawl and working back up to the low speed I normally do. I jog on the treadmill, but my jog is about the same as my quick walk. I went back to the gym and started climbing again; it took several months to get back to where I’d been before and eventually I surpassed it and started getting better again. Climbing is hard to take time away from – you begin to lose endurance and strength almost immediately. My exhaustion dissipated slowly I could get through an entire day without hitting a wall of “omigod, I’m just done.” One moment I was awake and active and the next moment I had to put my head down and nap, totally beyond my control. By the time school began again in the Fall I was better – just as my doctor had predicted, a little less than three months.

In early September I looked at my email one morning and saw the name of one of my brothers in the subject line. I thought “oh this can’t be good,” and it wasn’t. The email was from his 9-month-pregnant wife telling us that he’d been admitted to the hospital with a mystery virus that a couple of days later was diagnosed as viral myocarditis. It’s a virus that causes inflammation of the heart muscle. When I told my doctor friends what he had, they all said “oh, that’s serious.”

The very next September day I got another email from my other sister-in-law with my other brother’s name in the subject line saying it was his “turn.” Oh, that can’t be good either. And it wasn’t. He was in the hospital with viral meningitis. So one heart virus, one brain virus.

Both boys (middle aged men, really) made full recoveries. But they had the same recovery experience as I did. It took far longer than expected and the reignition of the energy was a slow and ponderous process. Viruses are serious business.

My brothers and I don’t live anywhere near each other, and besides all three viruses are totally different. But somehow we managed to all get so ill we needed to be hospitalized within three months of one another – the two guys at the exact same time. A particularly odd coincidence.

As a postscript to the postscript: This summer I was nervous about mosquitoes – the beasts from whom I’d gotten my virus. I asked several doctors whether I was now immune to West Nile Virus and they all uttered exactly the same sentence in exactly the same intonation: “I think so” looking up and to the right in an unnerving wondering tone.

visiting Belle's brother, part I

On November 18, 1996 I visited with my Uncle Sam and Aunt Mollie about an hour north of Miami, Florida. I wanted to get at information about Sam’s older sister, Belle. Instead, as I should have expected, I was treated to a parade of family disagreements and a tattler’s tale of Belle and her beau. First the tale.

According to Belle’s brother Sam, Belle and Gabriel Welter had an 8-10 year relationship. He was a scandalous individual, Belle and Sam’s father would have been ashamed. But, said Sam, Belle didn’t know about all his terrible deeds. Only some. He was a quisling and Belle didn’t know about it. Although Sam supplied only vague details of Welter’s quisling-ness, he was certain of it. Belle and Welter had entertained all of Hitler’s henchmen in their house. (I can see it now, Goebbels, Göring, and Hess marching up the dusty road to Belle and Welter’s home on the tiny island of Aegina, taking tea – teacups balanced smartly on their knees. It seems unlikely.) Sam felt certain that Welter had promised to deed to Belle the land upon which she’d built her Greek home, but that he’d never actually turned over the land. Welter had been a close friend of the Kaiser’s.

The strength of his opinions about Welter were belied by his lack of specific knowledge about the fellow. I needed to find out more…much more.

BN, page two

The next entry in the blue notebook is a chat I had with a friend who was working on her own book. She gave lots of advice on approach strategies. For interview requests: always write first and give your phone number – people don’t like to be surprised by phone calls. Transcriptions of interviews are best – listening and taking notes is second. Try not to take notes while the interview is being done, eye contact is more important. Then listen to the tape immediately and make notes.

Use a magnifying glass to get clues from photographs, there’s a lot of tiny detail not obvious to the naked eye. Think about other people who might have been impacted by her life, like other archaeologists. Start with small goals. Research all organizations and people she knew or mentioned. Set aside specific chunks of time and keep to that always.

However, I’ve done almost none of this. I’ve used the magnifying glass on the photograph, but much of the rest of it I’ve done differently and with somewhat less vigor than my friend. The many notes of many interviews performed follow in the three blue notebooks. To be remembered here.

blue notebook, first page

I have three small blue notebooks containing notes pertaining to Belle. None is completely filled. They are numbered, and some of the notes have dates. I’m starting with the first one here. Going back to the beginning of the project to try and figure out where I am. This reconstruction will be a chronology of the discovery – usually not how texts are constructed. But in it I might find a clue to the trajectory of the narrative.

The first page in the first book is dated 5/9/96 – 12 years ago. It begins with the simple question “what’s in the box?” And then asks other questions: what’s the theme, what about the German guy…and then a bunch of possibilities for finding the German guy? The German guy, time-wise, is a minor part of Belle’s story. She lived 85 years, and knew him for maybe 15 at he most. It’s certainly possible that his presence colored her life for many years afterwards. She once told me he died in prison. “Better to die like that than to be killed by the Germans like a dog,” she said. But that’s the only mention of him I recall. Besides, it’s not even true. He didn’t die in prison. And the Germans were not set to kill him.

After the question about the German guy I have a few suggestions for how I might find him: the library, the German Archaeological Institute, a woman teaching Ancient Studies at UMBC, someone at Princeton, a question about Brits that might have known him. Oddly, I think it several years later I contacted the woman at UMBC. I also tell myself on this page to Xerox everything, which I did. But these first couple pages of notes are scattered – vague and general ideas on how to get started, meetings with friends who’d done projects of their own, broad suggestions on where answers might lie, and a reminder that the Biblical town of Shechem is now Nablus.

storm

Thunder is rumbling through the area. I wish some rain would come along with it. Thunder and lightening woke me up last night, but I’m pretty sure there was no precip to water my thirsty flowers. They’ve promised rain today – 90% chance – but so far just darkening skies and big noise. Some sort of cosmic warning system: the skies are about to split open. Take cover or just put on a swimsuit. My satellite dish loses its signal at the slightest storminess. The installer said “oh they barely have that problem any more” when I wondered about weather related outage. But, of course, he was pretty far wrong. It goes out when it’s just raining, let alone a major storm. I’m grateful for two winters of almost no snow. But that’s bound to change (and I shouldn’t be grateful for global warming so I can have a television signal) and I’ll be up the creek with no TV. And I am pretty attached to television, I have entirely too many shows in my regular weekly schedule.

broke toe (cont'd)

Wow. The Traumeel I’ve been putting on my toe has really worked miracles with the bruising. It’s been only four days and it’s almost all disappeared. But it’s like that Mandrake cartoon satire I saw years (and years and years) ago and still, to this day, remember. Mandrake the magician and his crew are on the side of the road looking at their flat tire. He’s telling them that he can hypnotize them into believing that the tire is not flat, and he can even hypnotize himself into believing it. But he can’t hypnotize the tire into not being flat. I’ve gotten rid of the bruising, but the toe is still broke. It feels like a foreign object attached to my foot. I put a sneaker on today for a short walk and it felt pretty crowded in there. I am determined to climb tomorrow even if I have to climb in sneakers. Yeah, it’ll be clunky. But it’s been so long since I climbed I’d have to drop so far back anyway, some clunkiness probably wouldn’t impact the climb anyway. We’ll see how it turns out. In the meantime, my friend who broke her foot has removed her cast. “I went swimming. It got wet.” “Well of course it got wet – you went swimming!” She just took the thing off because she couldn’t stand wearing it and has decided to find a doctor who she can “work with” – in other words someone who’ll confirm her diagnosis. “You’re not a doctor.” I say. “Yes. But I could be,” she replies.

houseguest

My good friend from many years ago – so many years ago that I met her in a totally different part of my life – has been visiting for a few days. I enjoy having her here, we always commit a whirlwind of shopping, usually at antique and consignment stores. Even though it is wearying, the hunt for the perfect set of candlesticks that someone else once used and that I absolutely do not need is great fun. I’ve developed the ability to use shopping trips as gallery expeditions so the actual spending is only a tick or two above necessities. One more day and then she’ll return to the north, the opposite direction of her origin.

double letters

I’ve noticed on my new computer that the keyboard doesn’t like to type double letters. I suppose it could be my fingers hitting more softly on that second strike. But I think it’s actually the keyboard saying “are you sure you want two O’s in this word?” This results, for instance, in good often appearing as god – a particularly odd transliteration of my intention. It’s, perhaps, the beginning of artificial intelligence. It often corrects my spelling (I know this isn’t the keyboard, but the machine’s thinking is all of a piece), which I like (since I was born without a spelling gene). But the spellcheck is limited and it often, as we all know, wants words it doesn’t know to become words it does know. I’ve often thought we should simply adopt the spellings it suggests to us so we can avoid the continual argument that such a thing is a word (I refer you to my complaint about the spelling of Obama in the June 6 spellcheck post). The double letter thing feels even more AI-ish as it seems to be making a judgment not just about spelling, which can be mechanically hooked to a dictionary, but about typing skill. Is my keyboard calling my typing dexterity into question?

the toe

Well, that toe is definitely broken. It’s entirely purple, all the way around. Looks like a nice ripe little grape. Blood from the bruise has spread about two and a half inches down into the foot, making a nice moon of faint blue under the skin. The swelling makes it feel like a foreign object attached to the side of my foot. I’ve been putting Traumeel on it – a homeopathic lotion containing a lovely combination of ingredients including arnica, the magic homeopathic bullet. I think it’s actually helping.

This is not the first time my little toe has been so abused. I’m reduced to flip flops since managing the toe into anything even remotely closed feels like a stretch. I won’t be climbing for a bit. And it’s already been something like three weeks since a serious climb.

in the house

Well, the guy living with me just left for his worldly adventure. I will miss him greatly. I wish him godspeed on his exciting journey. He’s off to two states North and then to the middle east. He will learn Arabic, meet fascinating people, start a new way of life, and become. I miss him already. Plus, as I walked by his bag I stubbed my toe; it’s swollen as a little grape. Just in time for walking-around-houseguest weekend. She arrives in two hours. Next!

presentations

Well the semester has ended but now I have to actually read all the papers I collected. The final presentation today was painful, poorly conceived and with almost no organization. Although I could see what was in her head as she presented it, none of that “planning” made it to the way she actually thought about the paper. It was such a sad and ordinary problem – all the folks who want to go on the last day of presentations do so because their work is poor in every way. Poorly conceptualized, poorly written, poorly presented. All kinds of problems in every crevice of the presentation: Powerpoints that don’t work, movie clips badly selected and improperly imported, written portions of the presentation that make little sense, speeches with large words that don’t even begin to mean what the presenter thinks they mean. The first day, when the people brave enough to go early and first – that’s the day to hear presentations. I detest grading papers.

hot night

My three year old nephew must have given me that cold that made him sick for a single day during our reunion. I feel miserable. I couldn’t sleep last night and kept wandering around the house looking for a cool spot to land. The inside of the house simply wouldn’t get as lovely and cool as the outside. I would go downstairs, open the front door, and just stand there breathing in the delightful night air. But my bedroom was like a hotbox, no circulation and a top-hat of hot air in the attic. Now that I have my new windows – which I absolutely adore for the light they let in – I can no longer fit my fan in the window where I used to put it to draw in outside air. Finally, around 3 AM, I found a tiny fan for the window and it helped. But what I really want is one of those double window fans – one that draws in, the other that pushes out – next week I’ll go searching for one. I fell asleep fitfully for a few hours, tossing and waking up all through the night. Now I’m spent after driving two hours for work today. Hoping tonight at least the temperature can be better.

speed hump hell

I’d like to return to Baltimore traffic policy for just a moment. We live in an ever increasing one-way hell here in this town. Regularly, streets are turned into one-way streets forcing traffic to find another way into where it needs to go. Then the side street that is suddenly being used to get from point A to point B gets annoyed and asks the city to install speed humps. Which it does. But traffic is like a balloon – you can squeeze it off in one place, but it needs to find another place for the air to go. So the major traffic that’s been sent packing from what used to be a regular street is now shunted off onto a side street which complains of suddenly finding itself a cut-through. Speed humps are multiplying like mice here in Baltimore. I walked to the farmer’s market one Saturday down one street and when I walked home a half an hour later it had speed humps. Some sort of solution must be found that satisfies both the neighborhoods and the traffic that Baltimore requires because it has no decent public transit. I wonder when that’ll happen.

return

Oh dear – two days in a row unblogged. Was very busy with the family reunion weekend. We had one sick child, one very complex and overdeveloped meal, many bottles of wine, the happiest baby in the family, tours of the new borrowed house and the new lot to be built on, plans of the other new house, a wonderful day at the pool after a poison ivy-aborted walk in the woods, and early to bed every night.

I’m not quite ready yet to write about the nitty gritty of the weekend –that may come later. The moment I arrived home was hit with a little bit of shopping necessity. So out to the store to buy some work clothes for the guy going to Jordan. Still more needs to be done so we will again to the stores today. He leaves Friday. I’m going to miss him.

outta town

I'm north at my brother's for a family reunion of sorts. It's a short weekend because one brother can tolerate family only in brief doses (sometimes made even briefer by his inviting other people to join us). I wish we could be together longer. I really enjoy seeing the kids and generations all together. But this is all we can manage and I'm grateful for what we have.

sick, part VI

I asked how long it’d take me to feel normal again. “Well, we say under 30 six weeks, over 30, three months.” That didn’t seem fair and I was determined to be better immediately. But age betrayed me in a big way. I was nervous in the shower because sudden moves – we make them more often than we think – caused unsteadiness and I really didn’t want to be found naked in the bathtub with a broken back. Just walking out to my car exhausted me. Because I had to pay such close attention through my exhaustion, everything felt foreign, as though I were doing it for the first time with my new handicap. I’d go to the office and after an hour and a half of doddering effort I’d be done. Just done – could do no more. And I’d have to drive home very carefully so I wouldn’t have an exhaustion-caused accident. I was sick long enough for people to bring me food and send cards.

Slowly, I did push myself. I started going back to the gym and climbing baby climbs, walking on my treadmill at a snail’s pace, trying to stop watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Twice, my cardiologist (I did not want to have a cardiologist, and told him so) made me wear a holter monitor to measure my heart rate for a full day. Clean slate. I saw a rheumatologist who agreed the virus had left no lifetime scars – no arthritis, no deadly time bomb. When we went to his office for the final consult he looked at my test results and matter-of-factly said I’d had West Nile Virus. I was just a little bit stunned. The next day my own doctor called me to tell me I’d had West Nile Virus. He was disappointed to hear he’d been scooped.

West Nile Virus. I looked up more about it on the CDC website: 80% of the people who have it never even know they have it – some don’t even develop symptoms, others just have a cold. A few people die. And then, among that other 20%, some people get really sick. Like I did. I was a statistic.

I did make a full recovery, no lingering effects – a common problem with viruses, no worries about re-sicking. Here, a year later, it’s hard to imagine I was ever that ill. But boy oh boy, was I ever. A tiny little virus, an organism we have no defense against, tried to kill me. I understand how a less healthy person could have died from what I had. I felt lucky to have made it through. My symptoms were innocuous: fever, blurred vision, exhaustion. Anything else that happened to me happened invisibly. And even after I was better it still felt like something of a sham. But I became acquainted with being vulnerable and it was a frightening, aging feeling.

sick, part V

The nurses got over their shock that I was being allowed to leave, but as I wheelchaired down to the lobby I was having second thoughts. The exertion of gathering my things and riding the chair downstairs just wore me out completely. I couldn’t even wait outside because it was too hot. Getting into the car was a task and when I was finally in the front seat I was totally exhausted. My front stairs felt like Everest. I was so tired by the time I landed on my couch I thought I’d just moved the Great Pyramid.

It was amazing how diminished my energy level was. I could not get above empty. Taking a shower – something I was so looking forward to because I’d been trapped in the hospital for 4 days – was an ordeal. I was so unsteady I wasn’t sure I’d be able to shower without passing out. I needed one of those shower stools that old people use. Since I didn’t have one the experience was pretty dicey. I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes at a time. Sitting down, or even moving around in the shower was kind of frightening because of the slippery factor. I was pretty sure I’d fall and break my neck. I couldn’t make any sudden movements, not because of the slipperiness, but because my energy level wouldn’t accommodate that sort of thing. Everything was in slow motion. And everything was done with no fuel. I was always exhausted.

Just to show me who was boss, that night I got a bad case of hives. Big huge ones. Itchy beyond belief. My nurse neighbor gave me some Benedryl and it made me feel drunk on top of the exhaustion. The hives made me look like Richard Nixon, all jowly. I wondered what I’d look like if this thing ever went away. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be able to go up the stairs without having to stop and rest halfway. I wondered if my fever would ever go away. I wondered if whatever virus this was – they’d finally decided on viral – would leave a bad calling card if and when it finally released me. I wondered if I’d ever have my appetite back. Although it concerned me the least, I wondered what in the world I had.

sick, part IV

I donated many little bottles of blood for testing. I was awakened at 4 AM as a matter of course for bloodwork and just more crap. However, I couldn’t get them to come when I wanted them and my many tubes and monitors kept setting off alarms that they never, ever responded to. I figured out how to unhook myself to use the bathroom. I’d call them when I got back to bed and say my monitors were unhooked. That way if they wanted them hooked up they’d have to come do it and I got to go to the bathroom without having to wait for them. What a bunch of bozos they were. Yet still, I felt safe in the hospital. Like maybe I wouldn’t die, or if I came close to dying someone could stop it. Since no one had any idea what was wrong with me, and I didn’t feel sick except for being totally wiped out and having a fever I couldn’t get rid of, I wasn’t sure what would happen. And now this heart thing. My normally hands-off doctor kept ordering tests, winding up with a CT scan that I almost refused.

I entertained a continual parade of specialists. The drugs they were giving me were making me sick. The infectious disease doctor med students trolling along behind came every day to tell me he’d no idea what I had. The two students would stand quietly looking very solemn in the background as he grilled me and then say “hope you feel better” as they left. The cardiologist ordered an echo, I was hooked up to a heart monitor three of the four days I was there. I slept in a different room each night – moving on that first ward to a private room on night two, and then to a regular ward the third night. It was hard to find me.

All I could do was watch television. My fever sapped me of the ability to concentrate for more than a few moments and unfocusable vision was one odd effect of whatever I had. One of many visitors brought me coloring books, which I’d thought would be fun. But I couldn’t focus well enough to see the intricate pictures she’d brought. These were very complex draw inside the line drawings. I think I saw every episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Too many people were visiting. I’d said I’d love visitors, but I didn’t think when I’d said that that I’d be so frigging exhausted.

The last indignity was that CT scan that my doctor made me undergo. I knew it’d find nothing. But some test had indicated possible X (probably low crit, but I can’t quite remember). And even though X was a possible side effect of medication Y, which I had been fed intravenously in large doses, my doctor insisted that we needed to check for X with a CT scan. I pretty much lost it that last morning as I called him in tears and insisted that I didn’t want the damned scan. But the deal was I could be discharged if I had it, if I didn’t I’d have to stay another night. The nurses couldn’t believe I was going to be allowed to go home because my fever was still spiky and my heart rate still badly elevated. But was adamant. I wanted out. Since no one knew what was wrong with me, other than it was viral not bacterial (the only thing they’d settled on), I saw no point in staying. Being hospitalized did nothing for me, I was miserable away from my couch and TV, and it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to die.

A small child was ahead of me in the CT scan room. I didn’t even care that she had some kind of broken leg and threw up most of the CT-prep liquid she was forced to drink. I wanted to throw mine up too. I was mad that whoever had sent the orders for the scan had written them incorrectly and I had to wait until they found someone to rewrite them. When I got back from the procedure I started packing up all the crap I’d collected in the three preceding days waiting for my discharge. A nurse came in to take my temperature and pulse and insisted that my doctor would not discharge me in this condition. I sat on the edge of my bed waiting for the CT results. I’d made a bet with the resident that it’d show nothing. She arrived bearing chocolate. We were both right. It showed something, but it was pretty close to nothing. I could go home, she’d write me out.

sick, part II

My doctor ordered me to the hospital when he heard I had a sore neck and headache. The headache, I was convinced, was from severe dehydration. I hadn’t been hungry in days and drinking was difficult. But never tell a doctor you have a sore neck and headache – he was afraid of meningitis, but when I got to the hospital everyone was distracted by my elevated heart rate of 175 – more than double what’s normal. They tried everything to lower it, including stopping my heart. The nurse in charge said “You’re going to feel a little flush.” What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I’d like to know exactly what they’re thinking when they say “flush” in a situation like that. What I felt is that I was dying – couldn’t breathe, everything in my chest seized up. They didn’t even tell me they were stopping my heart – yet another example of hospital personnel giving out falsely sunny information.

But backtracking a moment: before I wound up in the hospital I’d emailed my doctor saying I’d had this fever for several days and asking if I should be worried. I went to see him. He thought I might have Lyme disease and gave me fluids and antibiotics. The next night I collapsed in the bathroom in the middle of the night. I laid there a long time trying to figure out whether I cared. The moving friend that I wasn’t help move was staying at my house in between apartments and so there was someone there I could yell to. I was lying on the cool part of the floor reeling with dizziness and feeling particularly nauseated. It didn’t seem to make much sense to call out for help when I was just going to want to stay in the bathroom. After I’d laid there for a while and felt pretty certain I could go back to bed without throwing up I summoned my friend who was pretty alarmed to find me on the floor (“where are you?”). When morning dawned that next day I dictated emails to her for me because my fingers were too swollen and stiff to type. I could barely make it up and down there stairs by that point and really sympathized with my friend who’d complained years ago that I didn’t have a bathroom on the first floor (her paralysis from a high school car accident makes stairs a bitch). The email I sent to the doctor was what made him order me to the hospital. When my staying-here friend came down stairs with the phone in her hand I knew I was in trouble. I argued that I did not want to go to the hospital. And when I finally gave in, I insisted on having spaghetti first. I knew I’d not get any good food there, and I was finally a little bit hungry.

So after spaghetti we went to the hospital where my elevated heart rate had everyone running around madly. I went in through the emergency room and I have to admit that when I was finally hooked up to fluids and in that tiny room where you hold court I did feel some measure of relief. The exhaustion and the dehydration were really flattening me and I knew I’d at least be taken care of there. No one ever figured out why my heart rate was so rapid, several doctors and nurses told me I’d have to worry about it for years. No one could figure out what was wrong with me and when I finally went into the actual hospital part of the hospital I was on the one-step-down from intensive care ward. Because they didn’t know what I had. They figured I had some kind of infectious disease, but which one? There are so many.

sick, part I

As I was putting a blanket down for yesterday’s picnic my host pointed out the poison ivy. “It won’t matter if you cover it up.” I’ve never actually had poison ivy, and I hope to maintain that record, but I was reminded of our fragile relationship with a natural world that’s trying to kill us. Last summer I rode my bike to a memorial service at the Meeting House a little over a mile away from here. Throughout the set-up, the service, and the reception afterwards, I never recovered from that short ride. I felt exhausted, hot, and not fully present for those four hours. When it came time to ride home, I wanted to be home, but I really didn’t want to get back on the bike. I was resentful, almost as if the bicycle had caused my exhaustion. At home I felt tired, very, very tired. And after two or three days of this I wondered if I was sick and took my temperature – I needed the confirmation of an outside source to believe something was actually wrong and I wasn’t just shirking. My good friend was moving and I thought I might just be playing tired to get out of helping. Would that be just like me? (Would it?) I had a fever. Not a high one, but a fever nevertheless. On Tuesday, the second week of summer school, I bought a large freshly squeezed orange juice at the restaurant next door to my office and went to class. I told the class I wasn’t feeling well and would make it as long as I could. That was about half way through the class – I just put my head down on the table and told them I was done.

It was sort of amazing how sick I got. And how there were not symptoms other than exhaustion. I wound up in the hospital with mystery disease. Just the sort of patient everyone loves. Not that boring, every day illness, but who-knows-what and who can figure it out first. A medical student followed me from room to room wanting to take my history, all manner of specialist came to see me every day – usually with medical students in tow, my usually very reserved doctor suddenly became an aggressive seeker of answers. But none were forthcoming. Infectious diseases specialist, rheumatologist, cardiologist, residents of all stripes, attendings, med students: I was very popular.

To be continued....

tree

The limb that split off from the master trunk in last week’s thunderstorm is beginning to die. I look out my window and see two different shades of green: the lush deep green of the living leaves and the fading, dehydrated green of the cracked limb. The branches are all twisted among themselves and I know the best thing would be to take the tree down entirely. But, although I would love to never have to rake up those monstrous leaves once more, I know I’d hate to have a clear vista into my neighbor’s yard and them into my office. I’d detest seeing the depressingly disintegrating alley every time I sit at my desk. It’s the lovely green wall between me and across the alley. One winter day, although of course the tree wasn’t green, I had a moment of great grace looking at the tree through a thick fog. It’d been raining slightly, but more than rain the air was dense with impenetrable fog. Only about ten feet away, I stared into the tree as I avoided whatever was on my desk. Slowly my attention started to focus on the tree and I saw a beautiful morning dove hunkered down on a branch, its head drawn deep toward its body, motionless on its perch as its branch swayed. It warmed me to see how this bird took shelter against the storm. And then, as I was focused finally on the tree, I slowly noticed another dove, and another, and another. Until I realized the entire tree was filled with doves waiting out the rain. Through the fog I counted about fifteen doves attached firmly to their branches in the winter drizzle.

declaring

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

So yeah – if events compel us to change our ways, we should inform those folks we’re changing from. And then, following that: this is what we think, if the guy in charge tries to bend us over a barrel we have a right to kick out the barrel. We know we’re more likely to just stay bent over, but let’s have a little guts, shall we.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

two nevers

Dinner tonight with a mortician friend and his partner. “Everything is always death this, and funeral that… Could we not talk about dead bodies, please?” But I think it’s interesting. It’s not that I’m so interested in anal leakage or vacuuming out the thoracic cavity, but I do like a good story and what better than the end? One thing we learned is that you should never embalm a friend. Did that once and it was much harder than anticipated and gave him nightmares for weeks. Another thing we learned – Clay Aiken is having a baby with a good friend. Artificial insemination. So, never personally impregnate a friend either. Don’t get personally involved at the beginning or at the end, its simply too much entanglement.

eye doctor: part dos

A follow up on June 25, eye doctor. I’ve decided to go ahead and get glasses for distance. They will not be strong, but they will make things clear. No longer will I be unable to see street signs until I am to close to change lanes. I’d asked the eye doctor if I could get them just for driving at night, movies, and such and he felt convinced that I’d never wear them. “You’ll put ‘em in a drawer and it’ll just be a waste of money.” I’m middle aged enough to know that when someone says “in my experience” they probably know what they’re talking about. When I say it I know what I’m talking about. So when he thought I’d never wear them I decided he was probably right. Then I talked to a friend who agreed. “You’ll probably never wear them. I mean, I have glasses that I just wear when I’m driving at night or in the movies.” Then we just looked at each other. She has glasses just for those times and she wears them. I know I’d love to see the street signs especially at night. I think I might wear them too. Movies could be clearer. I know see names of streets instead of estimating word length. It sounds like it might work out. So I called and had them send me a prescription. I will get those glasses. And I will wear those glasses. Yes sireebob.

not much...

Tree in the yard is precarious. Course is heading into final stretch. New technology is coming online at work. People are leaving. Others, we don’t know them yet, will arrive in the future. Eyes are dry and tired. Energy draining quickly having been up since 5. Why? Cannot answer that, although I wish I could.