Psychic Anesthesia

Posted on September 10, 2020 by John Swinburn

Psychologists may have a word or a phrase to describe the state of mind—perhaps ‘longing’ is more apt—but I do not know what that word or phrase might be. The longing, if that’s what it is, is a desire to leave oneself and move on to become an anonymous stranger. The “old” me would continue to exist, unaware of the “new” me and its departure. And the “new” me would be unaware it had emerged from someone unknown to it. But this set of circumstances does not translate into a dissociative disorder, in which multiple personalities exist in the same brain; instead, it more closely resembles cloning. The “new” me would have no memory of its past, though, because it would have no past earlier than its emergence; and even that moment would not imprint on my brain.

I suppose what I am describing is a wish to become two people, unknown to one another. The “new” one, though, would become the one I want to be, not the one I have been. An anonymous stranger who can’t remember his past because he doesn’t have one. But he would have to manufacture an artificial history in short order so he could answer questions about his evolution. And that obligatory life-building would shape his future; that blank slate would test his creative ability to craft a person whose behaviors and beliefs attract genuine interest and, eventually, admiration by his new network of acquaintances.

There’s so much to be done in life-building, especially on the limited timeline remaining so late in life. So many details to create and weave together into a credible mix. Place of birth. Parents and their careers. Siblings. Extended family. Schools. Education. Interests. Volunteer and work history. Marital status and history. And on and on.

But I wonder whether all that would be necessary if one chose to live a life of geographic and social seclusion? If the “new” me opted to live in the rural back country near Skinners Pond, Prince Edward Island, might I find it unnecessary to have a history? Might I be able to claim permanent amnesia after being found floating, unconscious, in an unregistered boat near the shore of the village of Portapique on Cobequid Bay? That might be all I would need to tell. I would claim to be a lost American who somehow managed to find himself without a history in a tiny village; an American who then made his way north to a remote outpost where fishing and farming are among the few ways of making a living. Somehow, though, I would need a reliable income. These details need to be worked out. There’s always some intractable restraint that gets in the way of impossible fantasies, isn’t there? I can’t claim, even surreptitiously, my Social Security benefits; I left those with the “old” me. It would unconscionable to try to take them with me, leaving the “old” me penniless and destitute; I could never do that to anyone, so income remains an obstinate roadblock to achieving the impossible.

As I was roaming the map, seeking places to live out my fantasies, I came across Burnt Church Indian Nation, New Brunswick. I suspect many of the Indian Nation lands may be hostile outposts to American interlopers; that’s pure conjecture, though, and probably illuminates an unintentional bias. Ach! How does one become a citizen of the world with no innate prejudices, no superficial biases, no preconceived judgments? Perhaps a fresh “new” me would be capable of leaving those ugly flaws to wear away as the “old” me ages and allows his blemishes to dissolve into love near the end of his life.

I am fully aware that the visions I have of remote Canadian villages and uninhabited rural lands are distorted by a deep rose tint embedded in my glasses. That’s where fantasies live; in rose-colored glasses that blur the images of trash left along the roadside. They block out the view of dilapidated old houses situated on lots strewn with old cars and unkempt weeds. They hide from sight drunken unemployed husbands beating their innocent children and desperate wives. This is not to say those bleak portraits resemble remote Canadian villages any more than they represent the norm in the U.S. or anywhere else; but those ugly images exist everywhere people exist. Maybe that is why I am so drawn to desolate areas of uninhabited wilderness that stretch in all directions.

I am aware, too, that as attractive as I find desolation and isolation, I need at least some close, intimate human contact with someone with whom I share some core commonalities. The “new” me would have no real commonalities to share, having unknowingly emerged from the “old” me as a blank slate. Everywhere I turn I find impossibilities, suggesting the only viable option is to live with myself, my past, and my future. As unappealing as that sometimes is, I suppose the choice is either to live with reality or die from it; the latter would be unacceptably cruel, so that’s out of the question. These thoughts trigger the words of a song I’ve heard only recently. Coincidentally (or, perhaps, not), the singer is a Canadian, Ken Yates. The song, Surviving is Easy. Here are the words to one stanza of the song:

Who gives a damn about a broken heart?
Who gives a damn about a couple new scars?
But getting by will only get you so far
Surviving is easy
But living is hard.

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This morning, work will begin (or continue, depending on perspective) on repainting my deck. I’ve hired someone to do the work, having given up on doing it myself. I might just as well have left out “doing it” from that last sentence. I hope this will be the last attempt to make the deck attractive and livable. If the contractor gets here early enough and does not need me around, I will go to the Thursday morning parking lot gathering at church. Then, I will meet my wife at her cardiologist’s office to get some direct feedback from the doctor on her condition. And, this evening, I probably will attempt to dull the edges with some wine or gin or whiskey or even beer; something modestly anesthetic.

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I just got an email that, on first glance, seemed to read “Your Autopsy is scheduled for 10/26/2020.” On closer reading, it was a notice from Entergy about my electricity bill: “Your Autopay is scheduled for 10/26/2020.” It worried me for a moment.

Posted in Fantasy, Just Thinking | 2 Comments

The Majesty of the Commons: If Only

Posted on August 31, 2020 by John Swinburn

I remember reading about the “tragedy of the commons” many years ago, probably originally in a sociology class. The “tragedy” was offered as a common grazing area that, if used collectively to its best limits, would provide adequate grazing for a sufficient number of animals to allow each owner’s animals to be adequately fed. But when individuals realized they could benefit financially by putting their interests above those of the collective (by grazing more than their fair share of animals), the result was overgrazing which ultimately led to insufficient nutrition for all the animals and a barren, useless commons. At least that’s the way I remember it; it may have been slightly more sophisticated than that. The tragedy of the commons was presented as an economic problem that led to the creation of governmental restrictions and a host of other societal restrictions to control over-consumption. These strictures were technical solutions to what amounts essentially to a social behavioral problem.

But I wonder whether the problem would have been more permanently resolved through mythology, as opposed to regulations and restrictions. My proposed solution is, in essence, the technique used by religions to establish baseline “moral” behaviors. Many behaviors we consider “moral” today have no compelling basis other than as elements of a moral code. We adhere to the code not because we have evidence behaving outside the code is harmful but because of the fear of censure by a “force” beyond ourselves. Communism is an as-yet-unsuccessful attempt to replicate the success of religion by regulating behavior through belief and mythology (“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” or, in the original German, “Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen”). [Author’s note: No, I did not know the German version; I looked it up.]

Really, though, if we could inculcate in people from a very early age a fervent belief that great good would arise from equality, sharing, and careful stewardship of all our resources (versus a belief that incalculable harm and societal collapse would follow behaviors associated with greed), perhaps decency would be pervasive.

Unfortunately, I think the evidence today suggests there’s a flaw in that thinking. People claim to believe in and to follow the admonitions of religious prophets, but their behaviors suggest otherwise. I’m not convinced Marxism failed because it was based on flawed thinking; it has not worked because it depends on people living according to a philosophy that can too easily be abused through corruption and greed. Capitalism, on the other hand, rewards corruption and greed in the same way it rewards hard work and creativity.

The problem is people. In order for a collective system to work effectively and efficiently, greed and the superiority of self-interest over group-interest would have to be eliminated from the system.  But people are people. Some people are greedy and self-interested by nature; you can’t change them. So, for a system to work, you would have to remove those people from it. You’d have to change…I should say exchange…them. Didn’t I just write something like that a short while ago?

Wouldn’t our lives be more satisfying without unvarnished greed? Wouldn’t the collective commons be more majestic and fruitful if we all simply agreed to share and be satisfied that our share was sufficient? If only. If only.

Posted in Economics, Greed | 4 Comments

Meandering Through the Morning

Posted on August 30, 2020 by John Swinburn

Shortly after I became enamored with Scandinavian films and television series, my wife suggested I would enjoy watching Dicte. By that time, though, the Danish television series was no longer readily available; I looked, to no avail. Recently, though, I stumbled upon it again; I discovered it is available on some obscure add-on pay-TV service connected in some fashion to Amazon Prime.  And that obscure add-on pay TV service was available for free for seven days. So I took the bait. Very, very bad decision. I cannot possibly watch the entire three (or is it more?) seasons of Dicte within the seven-day trial period. Yet, after watching three or four episodes, I cannot envision abandoning the series. The bastards who market the obscure add-on pay TV service willfully get people hooked; it’s like offering samples of addictive drugs in the hope of creating a “user” who unwillingly becomes a customer, only this form of criminality is legal.

Dicte Svendsen is a recently-divorced crime reporter who returns to Aarhus and gets involved in what will no-doubt become a never-ending series of adventures involving, what else, crime. Immediately after the series begins, a host of subplots emerge. For example, on her return to her hometown, her parents (both Jehovah’s Witnesses) reject her.  And a cloud of suspicion about the relationship between a very pregnant friend and her soon-to-be-husband arises. And Dicte’s ex-husband shows up, presenting issues that will almost certainly invade the rest of the series (or, at least, the first few episodes), creating tension between Dicte and her daughter and her other friends. In other words, this series is a Danish crime-drama soap opera. And I love it!

This morning, I read a bit about the series. Apparently, certain aspects of the series were panned by critics and the Danish viewing audience. One aspect has to do with characters’ accents; though set in Aarhus, some characters apparently have Copenhagen accents. And some people think the accents of almost all the players are hideous parodies of real Danish accents. Frankly, I’ve never even thought about geographically-specific Danish accents; but it makes sense, doesn’t it? If we can have Brooklyn accents and southern drawls, Danes certainly have every right to have their own linguistic tattoos!

At any rate, I think I’m going to have to subscribe to the obscure add-on pay TV service whose name I cannot remember (and which is damn near impossible to find on Amazon Prime). At least until I watch the entire three-season series.

For the record, some of the Scandinavian television/films I have enjoyed are: Occupied; In Order of Disappearance; Department Q Trilogy; The Wave; and, now, Dicte. Among others.

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I got the unpleasant news by mail yesterday that my car insurance premiums are increasing, due to the fact that the discount for having taken a driver safety course for geezers has expired. So, I signed up online for a four-hour AARP course to reacquaint me with driver safety tips for the elderly. I spent about an  hour and a half watching and listening to the program yesterday. I expect to force myself to continue watching and listening today; I may be able to finish it today or tomorrow. Whenever I finish it, I should be able to print a certificate, which I will then take to my insurance agent and ask that my discount be reinstated.  Despite my annoyance at being forced to take the course, I have to admit that some of the information included in the course is quite useful and very probably helpful in avoiding accidents, etc. That having been said, and despite noticing that parts of the course have been updated since the last time I took it, much of the course content is old and outdated, both in appearance and in presentation style. I think it needs more than a refresher; it needs to be replaced. Unfortunately, I suspect the cost of producing a brand new course would be considerable. And, at only $16+ per person for registration fees, it might take AARP and the insurance companies quite some time to recoup their costs. Oh, well. That’s not my concern; I just have to finish the course, print my certificate, and watch my insurance premiums (obscenely high even with discounts) return to tolerable levels.

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I bought avocados recently. Two of them. They were not ripe, of course, so I stuck them in a kitchen drawer to ripen. And I promptly forgot about them.  Fortunately, I remembered them this morning. They are just now ripe. So, in a while, I will remove the nice, ripe meat from one of them, smash it into a paste with a fork, add some lime juice, salt, and jalapeño paste, and spread it onto a piece of toasted black & white swirled rye bread. And that will be my magnificent breakfast. I don’t mind eating foods that others classify as long-outdated hipster snobbery.

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And, now, here are the first three stanzas of a poem I wrote about five years ago. I read it again this morning and these stanzas stood out to me:

Armature

You and I have lived this life for an eternity,
detritus of our dashed dreams serving as bricks
and the two of us as mortar, cobbling together
this fragile, monumental tower where we reside.

We have scuffed our emotions against sharp
sentimental objects so many times they have
shredded into strings like worn cotton,
as soft and ephemeral as clouds.

The scowls and snarls of daily battles
between us have become so comfortable
I know I could not live without them and
the easy fit between us they concede.

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Sentimentality is both joy and heartache. The tender emotions make one more susceptible to injury than the ones fashioned from leather and stone.

Posted in Film, Poetry, Scandinavian, Television, Television series | 2 Comments

Dimming of the Day

Posted on August 26, 2020 by John Swinburn

This song has been playing and replaying in my mind for days, though I do not know why. It is among my most favorite pieces of music. Because it has been so prominent in my recent thought processes, I thought I’d memorialize that fact on my blog.

Posted in Emotion, Music | 3 Comments

Armor Disguised as an Attitude

Posted on August 26, 2020 by John Swinburn

Flippancy, often taken as frivolous insincerity, can serve as a protective façade; an emotional cloak that behaves like a dam against tears. That hidden function can mislead the casual observer, and even those intimately familiar with the purveyor of flippancy, into thinking flippant remarks offer evidence of good humor and strength. In fact, the opposite may be true. Glib comments may be used as armor, providing protection against an embarrassing meltdown in the face of high-tensile stress. The more confident and brash the speaker, the greater the likelihood he feels that fissures are beginning to form in the skin of his protective shield.

Yet flippancy does sometimes confirm hard-nosed impudence. It is impossible to look beneath the surface to see motive. Context becomes critically important in differentiating fortitude from fear. But even in light of context and intimate knowledge of a person’s circumstances, the odds of misreading—in either direction—are high. Probing and sometimes awkward and uncomfortable questions may lead to the aforementioned breakdown (verifying the use of flippancy as armor) or to the anger one might exhibit in the face of accusations that he is lying.

So, how is one to deal with flippancy? Perhaps the safest and most compassionate thing to do is to walk on eggshells. Neither accept flippancy as genuine frivolity nor classify it as armor. Tread lightly. Do not be quick to assume a person is sheathed in either an impenetrable steel-hard case or in a fragile shell on the verge of explosive collapse. Be observant and, if reality reveals the latter, available to help pick up the pieces. That’s my advice to myself.

Posted in Emotion | Leave a comment

Kiwi Dreaming

Posted on August 24, 2020 by John Swinburn

I found myself sitting at a long table in a New Zealand restaurant. The menu was a confusing patchwork of dishes I did not recognize, presented in haphazard fashion. Different fonts were used on different sections of the menu, but the menu did not seem to be organized by food type or even by breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I could not understand what ingredients were included in most dishes. One item on the menu was, I thought at first glance, octopus but on closer inspection it was skate prepared like or flavored like octopus. I remember thinking it might be awkward to eat the dish, as I expected it would be laced with cartilage. The waiter, a middle-aged man dressed in regular street clothes, stopped to inquire what a few people at my table wanted to order, then left our table to visit with others nearby, chatting a length with other diners he apparently knew personally. I knew some of the people at my table, but I do not recall now who they were. Most, though, were strangers. The experience at the restaurant was confused and disappointing; I felt stupid that I did not know whether the waiter’s inattentiveness was simply a natural Kiwi process or whether our table was being singled out because I was an American. I thought the latter, though someone seated near me assured me that was not the case.

During another stretch of what I believe was the same dream, I was with another group of people (or maybe the same one) who were planning to interview someone; the purpose of the interview eludes me now, in my wakened state. I remember, though, that another person who was not part of the original group was to join us by telephone, I think. She showed up just as we were about to leave. She wrote her address and telephone number on a sheet of paper; the address was many lines long and the telephone number had a New Zealand country code (though I don’t remember now what that code was). Just before the group left for the interview, we agreed the woman would join us by “videotext” from a nearby stadium with videotext capabilities. I have no idea about that technology, if in fact it exists.

I felt out of place and uninformed for the entirety of the dream. I did not know why I happened to be there, nor what my role was supposed to be. I looked for clues in the behavior of others, but the others seemed to think I knew what I needed to know. I did not.

The remainder of the dream, if in fact there was more, is gone. Since waking, I have had brief flashes that I believe were memories from the dream, but they evaporated before I had a chance to try to explore them.

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So, it’s interesting that I recall so much of this dream, even though I did not get up and immediately write down what I remembered. I had a conversation yesterday about dreams and how remembering them after waking is greatly aided by writing them down upon waking. It’s as if writing about the dream experience stitches the dream into one’s memory. Failure to do so tends to result in increasingly vague recollections until the whole of the dream soon disappears into vapor.

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Aside from the accents and the “knowledge” that the dream took place in New Zealand, none of the scenes from my dream stand out as obviously taking place in New Zealand. I have been to New Zealand (many years ago), but recall very little of the whirlwind trip to Auckland, Christchurch, and Wellington. This dream, it seems, had nothing whatsoever to do with that trip. Perhaps it arose in response to a television series I’ve been watching; I think an episode or two mentioned or took place in part in New Zealand. But maybe not.

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Enough of this. It’s nearing 7:00 and I have only had one cup of coffee (the remnants of which are now ice cold) and no breakfast. I must have a bit to eat, shower and shave, and ready myself for a visit with my wife “through the glass” at the rehab center. Today is the first opportunity I’ve had to see her, save for a brief visit as she returned from a doctor’s visit in Hot Springs, in more than two weeks.

Posted in Dreams | 2 Comments

Let Us Prey

Posted on August 12, 2020 by John Swinburn

Give me a minute. I’ll get to my point before long, but I have to set it up, first.

According to the app on my smartphone, it took me only a minute to fall asleep just over half an hour after midnight, after which I slept soundly until a little after 4:00 a.m. But after returning to bed following an early-morning pee break, I was restless. The app tells me I had four hours and fifty-eight minutes of restful sleep, thirty-five minutes of restless tossing and turning, and that three minute bathroom break. The late-to-bed experience led me to get up a few minutes after 6:00 a.m. When that happens, I feel like I’ve wasted an especially valuable part of the day. But not this morning. This morning, during that restless tossing and turning, I composed an essay in my head; one day, if I remember what I “wrote,” I will document it here. This blog post, I hope, will be a sufficient reminder to enable me to do that.

Unfortunately, the piece I composed in my head shares a title with a 2014 British-Irish horror film, “Let Us Prey.” My essay, though, is far-removed from the horror film genre. It addresses the manner in which humankind has collectively allowed the human condition to degrade, beginning with our abandonment of the core of our morality. Though the thinking behind the essay has been brewing in my head for a very long time, I think the spark that ignited my blaze of near-sleep creativity erupted from an excellent article that appeared online in Rolling Stone. The article, entitled The Unraveling of America, by British Columbian anthropologist Wade Davis, argues that COVID-19 ” has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism.” Though he supports his argument by pointing to a number of missteps the USA has taken over the years, I think he misses a key cause of its decline. He touches on it when he says “At the root of this transformation and decline lies an ever-widening chasm between Americans who have and those who have little or nothing.” But, in my view, he doesn’t address the core moral failing responsible for the end of not only an empire but, quite possibly, civilization as we know it. I recommend reading the article; it’s very long, but worth the read.

My unwritten essay ignores individual mistakes and missteps, instead focusing on the transformation of our human culture, worldwide, from one in which the collective community is more important than the individual to one in which selfish individualism is valued more highly than human life. I won’t write the essay here, but I will argue (as I have done many times over the life of this blog thus far) that community and collective action have always been at the root of human advancement. A couple of years ago, embedded in one of my rants on the subject, I wrote the following:

Agricultural co-ops. Buying groups. Condominium associations. Home-owner associations. Apartment dwellers, for god’s sake! Cooperative engagements are all around us. People recognize the fact that we’re stronger together. But the myth persists. Fear-mongering about communism and socialism persist, even in the shadow of grand socialist experiments like Medicare and Social Security and the tax code!

That was just a splinter from a larger log that finds itself attempting to resurrect a society that seems to have transformed from a familial model to a collection of self-sustaining hermitages. The working title of my essay, “let us prey,” suggests that the human family has devolved, becoming sociopathic predators instead of social creatures bound together by common concerns. I suppose it is possible that this massive swing from caring community to hard-nosed individualism may be reversed, but I see little evidence of it. Oh, it exists in little gatherings scattered all over the world, but self-centered greed and predatory lifestyles dwarf those tiny pockets of decency.

I suppose my longing for collectivism and community and compassion is based in part on a utopian vision that never truly existed. But humankind once was much, much closer to Utopian than we are today. Today, entire economies and societies thrive (though that’s not really the right word) on a framework of greed, selfishness, instant gratification, rejection of self-sacrifice, and predation.

I do so wish I could look at the world through a different prism, one in which all I see is rose-tinted. But that’s not happening this morning. Aside from the emotional wreckage scattered all around my head at the moment, this vision of social wreckage seems overwhelming. If I could snap my fingers and make the world a better place, I would. If I could entreat others to snap their fingers with me to accomplish that aim, I would. But those fingers have other, more miserly things to do.

Narrow self-interest at the expense of others is almost a religion. Let us prey.

Posted in Essay, Philosophy | Leave a comment

Was It a Bad Choice?

Posted on August 8, 2020 by John Swinburn

My wife’s first evening in her new temporary home (a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility) did not have a pleasant start. Once she was situated in her room, she did not see anyone for several hours, even after pressing her call button for more than three hours. She finally called me to ask me to look up a phone number and call the facility to tell them she needed assistance; she was not sure whether the call button worked.

So, I called. I was told the call button did, indeed work and that the nurse was going into her room at that very moment. I called my wife back and listened as the nurse spoke to my wife and took her vital signs. I overheard the conversation and made notes about it.

A few minutes later, I called the facility again and asked to speak to the person in charge. I was put on hold for a moment, then told that the nurse was speaking to a doctor, but I could hold. I chose to hold. The nurse who had been with my wife came on the line a few minutes later and I expressed my concern that it took three hours for my wife’s need for assistance to be acknowledged. She said she had been on the telephone with the head nurse about staffing. The nurse was apologetic, saying the shift she was on was seriously understaffed, in part because of “no-shows.” She went on to say the upcoming shift and the weekend shifts were much more fully staffed. I told her I wanted my concerns passed along to the facility administrator; the nurse (I’m not using her name here, but I know it) said she would tell Phyllis (the administrator) and would have her call me on Monday. She also said she would record my complaint for the record.

After having heard very positive comments about the facility, I am now extremely concerned that those comments may have been based on past experiences that are no longer valid. I am concerned that I have to closely monitor my wife’s treatment and the responses to her requests for assistance. The fact that I cannot to into the facility, physically, due to COVID-19 concerns makes my concerns doubly difficult.

This morning, I came across Medicare information that rated the facility where my wife is now; unlike other information I had found, this information, directly off of the Medicare website, ranked this facility as “Average” to “Much Below Average” in three of four important areas, with only one being “Average.” I feel helpless; I don’t know what I should do. I want to protect my wife, yet I don’t want to create more problems for her by interfering in ways that could inadvertently be harmful to her care.

I hope—so very, very deeply—the experience last evening was simply a “glitch,” an unfortunate circumstance that coincided with my wife’s admission. All I can do, I suppose, is wait to hear from my wife about her ongoing experiences, since I can’t even visit to witness for myself what is going on. Ach!

Posted in Family, Health, Love | 3 Comments

Trying Times

Posted on August 7, 2020 by John Swinburn

The past several weeks—approaching a month, now—have seemed impossibly long to me. That span of time must have seemed far longer for my wife. Since she tripped on July 14, she has been poked and prodded and exposed to X-rays and otherwise subjected to invasive and intrusive procedures more times than either of us could count. She has made two trips to the emergency room and has been admitted to the “regular” hospital twice. Between those hospital admissions, she was admitted to a “rehabilitation” hospital for a ten-day stretch. The day after her release from that hospital, she developed an enormous “blister” where fluid from her leg, injured in the fall, collected. That blister was drained during her second trip to the ER, when the medical staff also cut away the skin that had covered the blister, leaving a massive wound that must be treated as if it were a burn. Now, a tad over a week after she was admitted to the “regular” hospital a second time, she will be transferred to a skilled nursing facility for an stay of indeterminate length. The transfer could take place today or tomorrow or two days hence; she awaits the results of her second COVID-19 test within a month. At that facility, she will convalesce so she can return home, where I can care for her. Because of her weakness and severe edema (related to other health issues),  I cannot care for her until she regains her strength and the fluids her body is retaining are reduced.

With the exception of one day, when her sister visited her, I have been to the hospital to see her every day (due to COVID-19 precautions, patients can receive only one visitor per day) since her initial admission. But, in the skilled nursing facility, visitors are not permitted. Contact by phone, video calls, etc. is allowed, but no face-to-face contact. With adequate planning and scheduling, a visit that allows telephone communication while viewing one another through a window is permitted.

Even though both my wife and I are introverts, and she is considerably more private and introverted than I, the separation will be hard. I hope it is not as hard on her as I expect it to be on me. Forced separation by medical necessity is quite different from tolerated separation by work requirements; I know this because we once were separated, with very rare face-to-face encounters, for almost a year when I took a job that involved moving to another state for many months. This time, though, being unable to see her because of COVID-19 precautions (which are absolutely reasonable, in my opinion) is hard, even before it has begun.

Several people—friends and acquaintances and others—have generously offered help and support. Some have dropped food by the house and others have generously offered to deliver more. I’ve been invited to relax with neighbors, properly distanced and all wearing masks, to get my mind off “my trouble.” As truly wonderful as those expressions of support are (and I appreciate them far more than I could ever say), they cannot reduce the sense of impotence I feel. The only thing that will do that is her release back to my care.

My memories of having spent time in the hospital are of discomfort, fear, and boredom. In most cases, I was considerably younger than I am now. I think fear would play a greater part in the emotional brew today than when I was younger. The older we get, the greater the likelihood that hospitalization can be a preview to decline. I hope my wife is not feeling that right now, but I fear she is. And, as one of the world’s consummate introverts, she keeps whatever she feels bottled up inside. I rarely get a glimpse of it, so my compassion is for a presumed emotional state.

I’ve packed a suitcase for her, with clothes and toiletries, for my wife’s transfer to the skilled nursing facility. She has a few books she hasn’t opened yet during her already lengthy stay in the hospitals. I will deliver more to the nursing facility, which in turn will deliver them to her, when when she wants them. All I can do, I think, is to respond to her requests. Maybe I can deliver some flowers or plants or something else that might minimize the stress of being away from home.

I feel guilty for only assuming how she feels and only guessing what I might do to minimize the ongoing strain of hospital confinement. I should feel guilty. In forty years of marriage, I should have learned how to unearth her state of mind. I have not, though, so I have to continue to depend on suppositions and assumptions.

I suspect it will take a month or more for her to recover her strength enough to allow her to return home for me to care for her. If it happens sooner, I will be delighted. All I can do is wait and watch, from a distance, how she progresses. Maybe I can send her cards, so every day she has something new to read, a reminder that she’s on my mind. That might help spur her energy toward regaining her strength. It’s worth a try.

Posted in Family, Health, Love | 6 Comments

Journeys by Chance

Posted on July 28, 2020 by John Swinburn

Wikipedia says this about Corb Lund:

Corb Lund is a Canadian Western and Country singer-songwriter from Taber, Alberta, Canada. He has released nine albums, three of which are certified gold. Lund tours regularly in Canada, the United States and Australia, and has received several awards in Canada and abroad.

I have no idea how old or young he is; the paragraph above summarizes almost all I know about him.  One other thing I know about him is that he produced an album entitled Agricultural Tragic that includes a song entitled Old Men.  Even though country and western music is not among my favorites, Corb Lund’s brand of music in that genre appeals to me. At least what I’ve heard appeals to me.

It’s rare for me to pay any attention, beyond their music, to recording artists. Their personal lives simply hold no interest for me; I guess I assume I will never know them personally, so their biographical details are irrelevant. That having been said, I was a little curious about just who this Corb Lund guy is (which I how I found the Wikipedia entry), so I did a bit of digging. I learned that he is from Taber, Alberta, Canada. Taber is a very small town about fifty miles north of the U.S./Canada border, north-northwest of Great Falls, Montana. Its population of roughly 8,100 is employed primarily in agriculture. Again according to Wikipedia:

The Town of Taber gained notoriety when it adopted [in March, 2015] a bylaw on February 23, 2015 that granted the police and bylaw officials the authority to levy fines for controversial actions including swearing, public assembly, spitting and applying graffiti on one’s own private property. The bylaw also implemented a curfew.

As one might expect, the bylaw was challenged as unconstitutional, violating freedoms of expression and association protected under Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I do not know whether the challenges had enough traction to be upheld. The fact that the governing body of the town saw fit to pass such a law seems utterly bizarre, until one digs a little deeper into the rationale for it.

According to a May 16, 2016 article in the Calgary Herald, “Southern Alberta is home to thousands of Mennonites who’ve emigrated from Mexico in recent decades and settled in Taber and nearby hamlets and villages, including Enchant, Barnwell and Grassy Lake.” The article goes on to say that Mennonite young (mostly male) gather on Sunday, after a week of hard work, following church in the Walmart parking lot on the edge of town to socialize. Some of the Mennonites (and others, apparently) claim the law was aimed at curbing those gatherings that some people in the area found disturbing.

The 2016 census (Canadian) reported that 43 percent of the residents of the town of Taber report that German is their mother tongue and Mennonite was the most frequently reported religion among townspeople.  The Calgary Herald article goes on to say, “The gatherings are simple. Some sit on the backs of their pickup trucks, while others light cigarettes, look at cellphones and talk in English and Low German as families trickle into the shopping centre.”

I make a number of assumptions about the culture of small towns in the U.S. I assume the populations of small towns are, by and large, fundamentally conservative. I assume small towns have deep, if not direct, connections with agriculture. I assume people who live in small towns are more likely to be bigoted than their more worldly big-city counterparts. I wish I could erase these biases from my brain, but I cannot seem to get them to disappear; I encounter too much evidence that supports them. Even when I come across progressive/liberal people in small towns, people who are open-minded and tolerant, I assume those folks are aberrations.  More bigotry. Those biases apply to small towns in the U.S.

I make an entirely different set of assumptions about Canadian small towns. I assume their populations are largely liberal, well-educated, tolerant; but also connected in some way to agriculture. Anecdotal data suggests those biases and assumptions are misplaced, though. While Canadian small towns may (or may not) be more liberal than their U.S. counterparts, they are not necessarily progressive in the sense that my mind has heretofore decided them to be. It’s wishful thinking, I believe. I want to believe all manner of positive things about Canada because I have found so many legitimate reasons to believe so many other positive things about Canada. Biases and bigotry work in odd ways. They may be based in part on facts and experience, but they transform personal interpretations of experience into evidence in support of perspectives that have no real basis in reality.

Let me add that the comments I’ve made thus far about small towns, the populations of small towns, the philosophical leanings of people in small towns (whether Canadian or in the U.S.), etc. are based more on a flash of personal assessments than on facts. I cannot seem to stop myself from making assumptions, even after considering that they may be based on inaccurate interpretations of slanted information. While that flaw is one I wish would dissolve into a mist of regret, at least it might offer a cautionary encouragement to look for evidence of unwarranted assumptions in my thinking.

So, how has it come to pass that a post that began as a contemplation on a Canadian country-western music artist turned into a musing about bias and bigotry with respect to my feelings about a small Albertan town? That’s just the way my mind works. Or doesn’t work; the rust may prohibit linear thoughts from taking hold.

A few more things about Taber, Alberta. It claims to be, or is called, the corn capital of Canada. There’s a cenotaph in the center of downtown Taber. And there’s a place called the Aquafun Centre that features a 200-foot water slide, a sauna, a steam room, and more. I would not have thought a small town would have such an entertainment feature. That’s not my bias speaking; it’s my assumption (perhaps faulty) about the size of population necessary to support such a venue. And it’s my assumption, based on virtually no knowledge of the area surrounding Taber, that the area has an extremely low population density. Why do I think that? I don’t know. I just do. Or I did.

It’s my understanding that Corb Lund still spends his time on the family farm outside Taber when he’s not touring Canada, the U.S. southwest, Australia, and Europe. By the way, how do I know of Corb Lund? I heard one of his songs, Old Men, on Sirius XM radio several times as I drove to and from CHI Rehabilitation Hospital to visit my wife. It’s intriguing, to me, how chance experiences can trigger mental journeys like the one I’ve just documented.

I just heard from my wife. She is awake and waiting to have breakfast and take a shower. I should do the same.

Posted in Culture, Demographics, Music | 5 Comments

Future Present Imperfect

Posted on July 27, 2020 by John Swinburn

At some point in the future, I hope a significant majority of humankind simultaneously will come to realize the futility of conquest. They will once again understand, as our ancient ancestors probably did, that serenity depends in part on leaving others alone and being left alone.

Not long ago, I read that the dictum live and let live is a “concise idiom of humane mutuality.” It’s such a simple expression of acceptance, non-judgmental tolerance, and—on some fundamental level—respect. The concept has been expressed over the millinnea through philosophy and religion. In what culture is there not a core belief in the idea that we should treat others the way we wish to be treated?

Norman Rockwell, the famous painter, addressed the issue when explaining the idea that prompted him to paint The Golden Rule” a painting depicting a representative tapestry of people who follow all the world’s prominent religions.  Here is what he said about the painting that would become the cover of the April 1, 1961 edition of the Saturday Evening Post:

I’d been reading up on comparative religion. The thing is that all major religions have the Golden Rule in Common. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Not always the same words but the same meaning.

Conquest, on the other hand, rejects the ways in which others live their lives; it is judgmental, intolerant, and disrespectful. In the U.S., we have molded and shaped and nurtured a culture that is individualistic and materialistic, promoting competition far more than cooperation. Competition is anathema to cooperation; it is central to conquest. Competition rewards judgmental behavior and punishes tolerance of individual and cultural differences. The fact that the U.S. has grown into a superpower explains, in part, how individualism and competition and conquest have spread worldwide; others emulate “strength” when “strength” conveys a sense of power and prestige. Ego usurps the more deserving appreciation of compassion.

If the realization, that conquest is futile, is ever to come to pass, embracing the concepts of “live and let live” and the Golden Rule must occur first for individuals. Individuals, after all, are necessary components of societies and cultures. But it is so much easier to wax philosophical about “humane mutuality” than to practice it. Our own stubborn egos, coupled with fears that we will be at a disadvantage to others who do not embrace it, work against its practice.

Those of us who, like me, speak passionately in support of the Golden Rule (give it whatever name you like) but whose behaviors are at odds with it are, at the core, hypocrites. Apologists for us hypocrites suggest none of us are perfect; all of us are works in progress.  I wonder, then, will the work ever be done? Or will we use that convenient excuse to justify our perpetual failings? Do you see what I did with the words I just wrote? I abandoned the Golden Rule and its “live and let live” corollary in favor of using words as cudgels, attempting to beat and shame into submission people, including myself, who do not behave as I say they should.

Circular reasoning with an unhealthy dose of judgment and intolerance. I began by saying humankind “will once again understand, as our ancient ancestors probably did, that serenity depends in part on leaving others alone and being left alone.” I wonder, will that ever come to pass?

Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments

Night Walker

Posted on July 25, 2020 by John Swinburn

Earlier this year, in one of my stream-of-consciousness blathers, I mentioned the idea of mounting a television to a treadmill, enabling me to watch an odd mix of television series and made-for-Netflix movies while getting some exercise. If I did this at night, as well as during the day, I could do a lot of walking. My mind has been massaging that idea for six or seven months.

First, I will create a character who does precisely what I have contemplated doing. He will walk only at night, in the wee hours, when almost everyone else in this part of the world is asleep in bed. While the sleepers dream, my character watches television and walks. He walks through the desert. He walks the Appalachian Trail. He walks north from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Fort Frances, Ontario and continues his northward trek through Ontario to Vermilion Bay. He walks through Colorado and Utah and Arizona and New Mexico. He takes these long walks while watching Scandinavian crime series and Spanish murder mysteries and British dramas. On rare occasion, he switches to HGTV to watch shows about building and outfitting tiny houses. Regardless of where he walks, he avoids densely populated areas. Even when in the Twin Cities, he skirts the edges, keeping his distance from crowds and heavy traffic.

My character will be modeled after the me who could have been. I will make considerable adjustments to his personality and appearance, portraying a character readers might admire and appreciate. He will live his values, rather than simply clinging to them mentally while wishing he could embed them in his behavior and thoughts. He is complex, but simple. He is broken, but repairable. His walks, of course, will be imaginary; no one travels the Appalachian Trail on a treadmill. But in his mind’s eye, he will see every vista and every tree root he would encounter on the actual 2200-mile trek. And he would experience every footstep of the 464 miles between St. Paul and Vermilion Bay. He’ll stop for breakfast at the Comfort Table Bakery, where he will enjoy an egg and sausage calzone. His exploration of the Chihuahuan Desert will feel absolutely real as he wanders south from El Paso, through Ciudad Juárez, and into the realm of dreams. He will stop for a time in Delicias, which was officially designated a municipality on January 7, 1935. Time stands still in some places around Delicias; my character will find those places on his walk. He will explore the Museo del Desierto Chihuahuense for a look at the past and he will stop briefly at the Parque Acuatico El Paraiso for a look at the immediate future; the future before water is so precious no one can justify a water-based entertainment park.

His walks through Colorado and Utah and New Mexico and Arizona will amount to a farewell tour, an opportunity to say goodbye to another dream world that cannot survive the onslaught of tomorrow after tomorrow after tomorrow. He will contemplate the words of Georgia O’Keefe when she said, in response to a question about why her paintings of flowers were so large, “so they will be noticed.” Tears will fall as he muses about Georgia O’Keefe; just like the tears that accompany his long, expansive stare into the past as he watches an old Mexican great, great grandmother, older than the sky, make her last batch of tortillas, in her time-worn hut on the outskirts of Delicias.

My character does not yet have a name. The names I’ve given to my alter egos heretofore do not fit this night walker. He may never get a name, because the act of naming him could ruin the mysticism of his journey. I purposely chose not to make that word—journey—plural because his nightly wanderings consist of one long single expedition that’s broken into segments. “Broken into segments.” That’s fitting. Shattered might be a better descriptor. His journey emerged from a shattered life, a life lived too close to the fringes to be “normal” but too far from the fringes to be “bohemian.”He was like a malformed supplemental piece of a paperboard jigsaw puzzle; carved from a piece of petrified mesquite long after the puzzle was manufactured and shipped. That hard puzzle piece was dropped on a concrete floor; broken and swept into a corner and forgotten.

So, I’ve created the outline of my character. Now what? I think I’ve answered that question. Drop the outline onto a concrete floor, where it will be shattered and swept into a corner. One day, I may retrieve the broken shards and attempt to piece him back together. Or not. Either way, though, for what purpose? Almost all the characters I’ve created in my mind have a common thread; they are broken. And they share another commonality; in spite of their flaws, they are worth salvation. Not in a theological sense; more like secular redemption. That is, their lives have value despite their faults; regardless of their very visible (or sometimes completely hidden) blemishes, at their core they are good, decent, worthy human beings.  But that may be wishful thinking. The stories have to be written, and completed, to know that to be true. Or not.

Maybe I should just force the issue and buy a damn treadmill. It’s not like I haven’t been looking, though. I just can’t find one for a reasonable price. And where would I put it? I have expectations of a treadmill. It must be a very  high quality product, equipped with at least some of the more important and useful technological gadgetry. And it should run as quietly as possible. Enough about treadmills. This began as an outline of a story. It has turned into something else; something that does not resemble the outline of a story.

There’s light in the sky. Light from the sun, hidden by a haze of low clouds or high fog. The distant hills behind the house are not visible; I trust they are still there, but I have no proof of that. Everything outside the realm of my vision could have disappeared overnight. The leaves on the trees are almost still, but occasionally they move, just slightly, suggesting a very light breeze is blowing. I just saw a man walk down the street for his morning exercise, the exercise I want to get on a treadmill. If I were still in Dallas, I would be out walking, I think. But the inclines here are too steep for my lungs to take; I should take my friend’s advice and drive to a flat place where I can walk. Maybe drive to Dallas? That’s too far and would require too much gas. Maybe a walk to the Chihuahuan desert is in order. But probably not. It’s daylight. My walking is meant for the wee hours, when no one else is out walking.

Posted in Philosophy, Writing | Leave a comment

Icelandic Diversion

Posted on July 24, 2020 by John Swinburn

I am sitting in my wife’s room in the rehabilitation hospital while she is off undergoing therapy of one kind or another. A short while ago, after she was wheeled away for her two back-to-back sessions, I wandered through the BBC website and found an intriguing video about Icelanders’ “free spirit.” Actually, the video was about Icelanders’ attachment to swimming and swimming pools, but someone in the video suggested a connection with free-spiritedness.

The fact that people must strip down to being “almost naked,” as one character said, equalizes people. Near nudity (but not really…their swim suits cover more of their bodies than most of the ones we see in this country) does not permit assertions of status; even cell phones must be left out of the pool area.

One of the people interviewed for the story suggested that swimming pools are almost required in Icelandic communities. I’ll try to remember her words: “In small communities, you have a church, a museum, and a swimming pool.” In context, that suggests that swimming pools equate to Ray Oldenburg’s “third places.” I definitely can buy that. It’s not just swimming pools, either. It’s hot tubs that provide the hot contrast to the cold ocean swim (or simply to the cold air).

Though I’ve never been an aficionado of hot tubs, I think I could become one if I were an Icelander. We had a nice hot tub years ago, when we lived in Arlington (TX). I spent quite a bit of time in that hot, restorative water. I suspect that hot tub (or any other one, for that matter) would do wonders for my tight neck and shoulder muscles. But strong and willing hands would be more likely to loosen this damn tightness, both in my muscles and in my mind.

For some odd reason, I keep drifting, as if I could fall asleep as I type these words. “As if,” like hell. I have fallen asleep within the past two paragraphs. So I’d better stop before my head hits the keyboard.

Posted in Nudity | 3 Comments

I Can’t Write this Morning

Posted on July 24, 2020 by John Swinburn

I can’t write this morning.  Writing suddenly seems a luxury, a shameful waste in the face of real necessity. My mood will change, I’m sure. I am fortunate, in that it always does. But maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe the escape of writing is an unearned respite from the real world.  Enough of this. I can’t write this morning.

Posted in Emotion, Writing | Leave a comment

Demands and Tension

Posted on July 23, 2020 by John Swinburn

One more week. That’s what the rehab hospital is saying. My wife will be there one more week before she is discharged, assuming she is ready for discharge then. The idea, they say, is for her to be as self-sufficient upon discharge as she was before entering the hospital. That will depend in large part, I think, on her medications and the extent to which their dosages, etc. have been properly adjusted. I’ve seen little evidence that doctors have spent any time with her; not even reviewing her charts. That upsets me; I expect physicians to actually see patients, face-to-face, and to ask questions and make personal observations, rather than rely on recorded observations of others who may or may not have engaged in sufficient personal assessments. And even that arms-length interaction seems to be missing.

I do not know, though, what questions I should ask, what demands I should make, what I should do to ensure my wife is treated as more than just another in a long line of patients. She is not just another patient; she is a crucially important patient, a patient as important as any a hospital staff can possibly encounter. I just don’t know how to make that point. I don’t know how to insist that she be given extremely focused, precise, caring attention; not artificial attention prescribed by protocol or quota.

I have been in hospital settings before, and I’ve always judged people who demand more attention than I think reasonable.  As if I knew what was reasonable. As if I had even a bloody clue what was reasonable. But I felt comfortable judging people who wanted personalized attention beyond what I thought was sufficient. I always gave the healthcare professionals the benefits of the doubt; patients and their loved ones, I assumed, were panic-stricken and overly-demanding.  That assumption no longer squares with me; I was among the pricks who failed to deliver sufficient compassion where it should have been delivered. I thought patients and their advocates were over-reacting or were arrogant in their demands for more attention than they were being given. Now I understand, far better than before, how fear and concern and hope all conspire to make patients and their advocates seem unreasonable. I understand, too, that the appearance of irrationality is a fractured reality that does not encompass the real world of fear and concern and hope.

It’s not that I think her care is lacking. It’s that I want her care to be more intense, more personal, and I want those who care for her to acknowledge that she has been under the care of a cardiologist whose prescribed care seems to have been thrown out the window. Perhaps I’ll call her cardiologist today and insist on talking to him. Maybe I’ll do that.

I will not visit her today. Instead, her sister will go see her. I suspect that will be a welcome change of pace for my wife. I will devote my time today to other responsibilities and obligations. Among them will be a call to the “case manager” who discussed with us after-care. I did not write notes about our conversation, like I should have done, so I am not sure of what she told us about when to select a home-health service; I don’t recall how long we should expect assistance, what they can do, and a host of other matters I should know. My notes are inadequate; it’s as if I wrote my notes in an abbreviated foreign language I never mastered in high school. I wish I could record the call and have someone else transcribe it.

This single-minded focus on matters over which I have little direct control is not particularly helpful. If I had a magical little pill that would loosen the grip around my own neck I would take it; maybe two. I can feel the tension, especially in my neck; it’s as if I flexed my muscles too intensely and cannot un-flex them. I suppose that’s why massage is so popular; it releases the physical strain and transforms anxiety into a byproduct of stress that washes away with the strain. At least that’s how I perceive it at the moment.

One’s perspective changes as the day progresses. This morning, the rain and thunder and lightning combine to form tight balls of anxiety in the air. I can hear the raindrops hitting the windows and I can hear the sounds of water surging through the rain gutters, then the constant drip, drip, drip of water pelting aluminum downspouts. When the rain clouds blow away, as they surely will, my perspective will change. The sun, or at the very least its light, will begin to fill the sky. The rain and thunder and lightning will become memories that no longer matter because they will no longer manipulate the way I see the world outside my window.

But maybe I’m wrong about that; I just turned out all the lights and gazed out into the darkness that is just barely beginning to transform into a dim glow. The glow is, I think, sunlight filtered through thick fog and heavy clouds and light rain and blowing mist. Maybe that’s what this day will bring; just more of the same. Perhaps my perspective will remain fixed on a grey blanket of unpleasantly warm, humid air. My forecasts are notoriously inaccurate; when I predict rain, the drought begins and when I expect the drought, epic floods wash away centuries of topsoil. If that were true, the expectations would simply need to be adjusted to reflect reality; then, the predictions would be precise and correct. It is, after all, just a matter of perspective. Or, more precisely, a matter of interpretation of what one sees and feels and senses.

If rain and thunder washed away muscle tension, I would gladly dance on the deck this morning. The base of my neck feels like it is made of a massive cable, the kind used to support bridge structures; twisted strands of thick steel braided into rope impossibly heavy and unbending. Perhaps by being overly dramatic about the tension in my neck I can bring myself to laugh at my own silliness, thereby releasing at least a little of the tension. It hasn’t worked so far. Maybe I need to go full-on Shakespearean, or take on the attributes of daytime soap operas, pretending the weight of the world is on my shoulders. I don’t like daytime soap operas, though, so it would be hypocritical of me to adopt the style of their writers. Actually, I do not know what daytime soap operas are like these days. Maybe they have changed since I was a kid. I remember viewing them then, when my mother watched them from time to time. I did not like them then. I suspect they’re still the same; overly-dramatic, formulaic swill that for reasons unknown sometimes appealed to intelligent people like my mother. Am I drifting? Yes, apparently I am. I have not only drifted to the edges of the channel in which I’ve been floating, I have gone aground on a sand bar and made my way up the steep banks into the thick, snake-infested forest through which the stream flows. I think I’ll stop writing and prepare something to eat; something so distant from typical breakfast food it will confound me into thinking I am having dinner in another country.

And that’s it.

Posted in Anger | 3 Comments

Swerving into Philosophy

Posted on July 21, 2020 by John Swinburn

I woke up late this morning, sometime around 6:45. The fact that I was awakened in the middle of the night probably contributed to my late rising. Or maybe I was just tired and needed more sleep than normal. Whatever the reason, I woke up in daylight, an unusual and disconcerting experience; I feel like I’ve missed a significant chunk of the day when I sleep late. I don’t like it.

My wife’s therapy sessions will take up the majority of the morning today, so I will wait to go to the rehab hospital to see her until after noon. Then, she has another session during the mid-afternoon, so I suspect I’ll head home early. On the one hand, I’m glad that they are piling on the therapy; on the other, it infringes on my time with her. And I don’t want them to overdo it.

I got a text from my wife around 5:30 this morning, before I was awake, in which she told me she had just been weighed. They weigh her every morning, which is part of the process of monitoring the status of fluid retention connected with her congestive heart failure. The CHF is not new. She has had it since she was in college; but it apparently has gotten worse lately and, therefore, she must be more closely monitored. Changes in weight, especially weight gain, are among the concerns that may warrant changes in treatment. I really wish her cardiologist were involved in treatment decisions, but I was assured by the rehabilitation doctor yesterday that a team of physicians is involved and they take into account all aspects of patients’ health, including details assessments of cardiac issues, etc., etc. They had damn sure better pay close attention and take into account her cardiologist’s assessments.

My sleep last night was awash in dreams I cannot remember with sufficient clarity to make any sense of them. The one element I vaguely remember is that I was advised by someone to sleep on my side for several hours, then to sleep on my other side. I think I recall additional fragments, but I’m not sure whether they were part of my dream or interpretive add-ons delivered by my brain as I tried to make sense of the situation. One’s brain is odd, isn’t it? It volunteers counterfeit context when context goes missing, and then conceals fabrications by interweaving them with reality. Or, in the case of dreams, artificial reality. That’s so very strange; meshing two versions of “reality” manufactured in the mind—crafted from fantasy and context—to form yet another alternative reality. I wonder if that bizarre sensation is anything like the experience of ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms? I don’t think I’m going to find out anytime soon.

Tomorrow morning, I am scheduled to record the introduction to the Insight service that will be posted Sunday as a video on the church website. Last night, before I went to bed, I wrote the ceremonial words associated with lighting the chalice; I found no chalice-lighting words, written and spoken by someone else, on the UUA website that quite fit the situation. I wanted something that spoke to UUA heritage (the theme of the months of summer for the church) and to the content to be delivered by the Insight speaker: the words of Chief Seattle when invited to sell his tribe’s land to the United States.  I think I succeeded in writing something that acknowledges both. I hope I did. These are the words I plan to speak for the video introduction, unless I change my mind between now and then:

As we light this chalice, may it inspire in us
a thirst to strengthen our commitments to
one another and to our Unitarian Universalist faith and
heritage, to heal the wounds of both past and present, and to create a future fueled with love.

As I consider the fact that I am involved in this church ritual, I am once again surprised at myself. A few short years ago, and all the years before that, I would have scoffed at the idea that I would be involved with any church in any way. Yet, today, I am more than casually involved in a church. I sit on its board. I chair a committee involved in long range planning. I sit on a committee that plans programs that would, in normal times, be held in the sanctuary (but now are recorded for video “broadcast”). And more. All of this since joining a church on June 3, 2018; just  a tad more than two years ago. I joined a church? What? Four years before that, I attended the same church for the first time: June 1, 2014. Prior to that, I had not been in a church, except for special occasions like weddings, since I was an atheist child coerced (basically) into attending Sunday school.

I should not be surprised, though. A few weeks ago, I (again, for the umpteenth time) searched my blog for instances in which I mentioned either church or religion or otherwise addressed philosophical matters that mirror the moralities often promoted (but not necessarily practiced) by churches.  I found many, many instances in which I expressed an interest in and even support of the philosophies of religions. I also expressed frustration with their insistence on divinity as reality and with their hypocrisy and with what I considered their bizarre rituals. Yet even in the face of those frustrations, I always noted a seed of possibility. I wished I could find a fellowship (I loathed the term “church”, which I associated with hypocrisy and inflexible religious dogma) that focused on humanity, compassion, and other attributes I felt were central to living a life that mattered.

Writing a blog has helped me record my evolution as a human being. It has, inadvertently, enabled me to capture how I have changed in my viewpoints about many subjects, including religion. I have mellowed, morphing from a rather strident, mocking atheist into a much more tolerant, understanding atheist. But even my atheism has changed. Though I remain thoroughly convinced that there is no divine God in the traditional sense, I now consider the possibility that many people who say they believe in God do not necessarily believe in a supreme being. Instead, they define God in ways that I did not, heretofore, understand (and may not, still). They do not necessarily define God as a being with intent, but as a manifestation of the majesty of everything around us. I might be able to get behind that concept, though I don’t think I’ll ever call the awe-inspiring “everything” as God.

Someone suggested to me not too long ago that I should present “my UU journey,” which gives members of the congregation an opportunity to explore and explain how they came to be involved in Unitarian Universalism. At the time, I laughed it off. But since then, I have decided that, if I were to do that, I have an enormous volume of “stuff” I’ve written that essentially documents how I came to be a “card-carrying” member of UUVC. So, I may one day write a brief synopsis of the intellectual evolution that led me from being a shrieking atheist to someone more tolerant, understanding, and in some cases appreciative of religion and how it can positively influence the lives of people who want and need it. I’ve also come to the understanding that “church” is not limited to the buildings in which religious services are held. “Church” embodies the collective engagement of people who share some core commonalities. A church is more a community than an edifice. That fact once again came home to me during this last week, when several members of that community rushed to offer support and assistance when they learned my wife was in the hospital. Their offers sprang from them automatically because of the kinds of people they are. That, alone, expresses the powerful humanity that resides in church, as least in this church.

Once again, I drifted out of the lane I was in, then swerved sharply into a completely different one. I don’t know quite how I drifted from my wife’s hospital/rehab stay to my dreams to my history of religious skepticism into my “spiritual transmogrification.” But I did it, nonetheless. But, now, it’s almost 9 o’clock. I should shower, shave, and otherwise get presentable. And breakfast wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

Posted in Church, Dreams, Religion, Secular morality | 6 Comments

Friday Evening Roundup

Posted on July 17, 2020 by John Swinburn

I delivered Janine to CHI Rehabilitation Hospital (AKA Encompass) this afternoon about 6:15 p.m. It took all day for the process of referral to CHI to play out, I guess. By the time she was formally discharged (the paperwork said 2:48 p.m., but the reality said close to 6:00 p.m.), the van transportation that normally would have taken her was no longer available (the driver gets off at 5) and the other option (aside from our own vehicle) would have been an ambulance. Janine preferred that I drive her, so I did.

She hadn’t eaten at the hospital, so I was supposed to tell the Encompass greeting staff she needed to have food. I forgot. So, as I was a mile or two away, when I remembered, I called to tell them I was supposed to let them know. They claimed they already knew.

Several minutes later, as I left the north/east section of Hot Springs on Highway 7, Janine called me. I picked up, but the call disconnected. This happened a few times. Finally, I got through to her and started talking over some odd background noise. She said, “John, shut up.” I said, “What?”

\She repeated it. Maybe twice. I stopped talking. I listened as I continued to drive. I continued hearing the odd noises and indistinct voices; a few “crashes
and sounds like pieces of tableware banging against one another. This went on for several minutes. During those minutes, I began to have strange and awful thoughts: “What if she is being abused by staff?” “What if telling me to shut up was a signal that something is wrong?” I turned around and headed back, all the while hearing this odd cacophony of noise from the phone. I broke several speed limits on the way back, taking the freeway instead of driving through town. When I reached the place, I went to the call box on the front door and said I had dropped my wife off a short while earlier, but had been unable to reach her by phone and was worried. The response was that visiting hours were over.

“I know, but I am concerned that I have been unable to reach my wife and I want to be sure she is okay.” She put me on hold.

A moment later, Janine came on the phone. She assured me she was fine. I asked her to confirm that she was really fine by telling the name of my nephew. She gave me the right name, so I was confident all really was well. I turned around and drove home.

When I returned home, I had two messages from friends from church, offering support and assistance if we need it. The outpouring of support from people near and far has been heartwarming in the extreme.

I spoke to Janine later, at home, when she called from the facility’s phone. The problem was, apparently, just a matter of poor cell service. Plus, she had been unable to disconnect the call. I listened to 26 minutes of odd noises because I was worried she was being abused. After the fact, of course, I came to my senses. Abuse might take place in nursing homes, but I have not heard of such things happening in dedicated residential physical therapy facilities. But, God, I was scared to death for her before I came to my senses.

We do not know how long she might need to stay. The nurse at the hospital said the shortest stay she knew of was four days and the longest fourteen days. At least that’s a range to ponder.

Until Janine returns home in substantially better condition than she left, and until we know and agree to a plan for continuing her rehabilitation after returning home, I will be in worry mode. I know worry does not good; but at least it puts me in a state of readiness to act if things don’t seem right.

I’ll go up again tomorrow (I wasn’t even able to go inside to see her room because visiting hours were over). And maybe I’ll learn more about what to expect.

For tonight, drinking a gin & tonic by myself will be on the agenda. If it concerns anyone that I’m drinking alone, I’m not; I’m having conversations, in my head, with a lot of people.

 

 

Posted in Family, Health | 5 Comments

More News

Posted on July 16, 2020 by John Swinburn

The only significant matter to report is this: the hospital seems to be leaning toward releasing Janine to a residential rehabilitation facility, where she can get ongoing care and rehabilitation physical therapy. But that will depend on several issues, including:

  1. What the PT assesssment undertaken this afternoon reveals;
  2. The availability of residential beds (Good Sam, her first choice, does not have a bed and will not for at least a week); and
  3. The acceptance of a recommendation for inpatient rehab from both the “receiving” center (where she would go) and Medicare.

Because Good Sam is unavailable, she selected Encompass (formerly CHI Rehabilitation). Now, we’ll wait and see whether she will be accepted and authorized and, if so, when this will take place and for how long.

It’s possible the PT department will recommend home health care, instead; I hope not, in that I think she would get far better treatment in a facility designed for it.

Time will tell. I hope not too much time.

Posted in Health | 3 Comments

Where Decency Thrives and Compassion Flourishes

Posted on July 16, 2020 by John Swinburn

A friend left a comment here recently, suggesting that some countries’ cultures have a gentler view of the world than ours. That is so true. Our culture evolved from hard-nosed individualism, shedding compassion along the way as if the desire to be helpful in the face of others’ suffering was a weakness. The culture in this country and too many others elevates individualism and views selfishness as a characteristic to be sought after. Concern for the greater good is frowned on in many ways in these cultures. The idea that our collective concerns should guide us to a greater extent than our lust for individual achievement seems, to me, to be a sickness. Individualism cultivates disdain for the greater society from which the individual emerges. It’s an odd expression of self-indulgence that borders on matricide; and we have grown into a culture that promotes and applauds it.

I’ve written before of the struggle between individualism and community. My thoughts on the struggle continue to evolve, but I think these words from a post three years ago still apply: “Individualism is self-responsibility taken a step too far, a step beyond non-reliance into selfishness and penurious thrift.” Two years later, I was more strident in my assessment: “I believe the legend of the rugged individualist should be allowed to die or, if it won’t go quietly, be killed. ”

Perhaps the fact that my longing for a gentler world-view embraces a certain form of violence against a different one is odd. But I don’t necessarily think so. It’s much like the concept that tolerance must have limits; endless tolerance enables the breeding of intolerance, which is intolerable. Similarly, individualism must have limits; endless individualism promotes the unraveling of civil society, which also is intolerable. The delicate aspect of the equation is found in defining the points beyond which grey areas morph into brilliant red lines that cannot be crossed.

On one end of the spectrum, a utopian social order exists in which concerns for the collective take precedence over individual desire. At the other end of the spectrum, a dystopian nightmare exists in which individual desires always triumph over the needs of the collective. Of course, I realize there may be some who would disagree with my characterization of extreme individualism as a dystopian nightmare. It’s a matter of perspective. Ultimately, it’s a matter of whose perspective will win in an evolutionary timescale. I won’t be here to witness it, unless Trump steals another election. In that case, my argument about a dystopian nightmare will have been horribly and irrevocably proven.

Such are my thoughts on this Thursday morning. My pondering about individualism versus concerns for the greater good are only half-hearted this morning. I wish I knew more about my wife’s condition. I wish I could escape the nightmare of COVID-19 and Trumpism and a world on fire, fleeing with my wife to a magical land where a pervasive sense of collective goodwill is in the air. Canada is the closest place where that dream, as distant and unreachable as it may be, might have a chance of survival. Maybe we can go there after she gets out of the hospital. Or maybe we can just embrace a society in which decency thrives and compassion flourishes.

Posted in Compassion, Health, Kindness, Philosophy, Selfishness | 1 Comment

Update

Posted on July 15, 2020 by John Swinburn

I’m tired, so this will be brief.

Janine was moved out of ICU this afternoon to a regular room on the floor below. A while after the move, though, her blood pressure dropped precipitously, so the nurse said she may need to be moved back because she would need far more intense scrutiny and monitoring than would be possible on a regular patient floor. However, her blood pressure improved and he said she should be fine to stay where she is.

The hospitalist came by around 11 a.m. and said he was concerned about blood pressure, anemia, lethargy, and her leg, though her leg was not the major issue (though it bears close watching). He said he wanted to continue a dopamine drip and wanted to give her two units of blood; both should help boost blood pressure and the blood should begin to address the anemia and, therefore, the lethargy. Because something (I do not recall what) was increasing her blood sugar level, he decided to give her insulin, as well. The rest of the day was spent as usual in the hospital: blood draws, injections, medications, regular checks of vital signs, etc.

Janine ordered lunch and ate the partial breast of an old, tough chicken that looked to me like it had been starved to death. She also had salad and chocolate pudding. I ate nothing because I did not bring anything with me and they did not offer anything. It’s not like I’ll starve simply by missing a meal or a month’s worth of meals.

After the room move, a nurse (new to the job) suggested I call and order dinner for Janine and ask for one for me. I did. The meal service happily agreed to a meal for Janine, but the guy said he was afraid he could not give me one, as much as he’d like to. He seemed genuinely sorry he could not feed me.

I left sometime around 6:45. Since then, I’ve eaten and spoken to a couple of folks on the phone. My sister-in-law, good person that she is, took care while I was out by taking a box from Green Chef into the house (and refrigerating/freezing what needed those treatments) after it was delivered, along with a new modem.

I may know more, but I don’t recall what it is. It sounds to me like the doctors are planning on keeping Janine for another day or two, at least. We shall see.

Posted in Family, Health | 4 Comments

Relief

Posted on July 15, 2020 by John Swinburn

Yesterday was impossibly long, beginning when I went to sleep after midnight, awoke at 3:30, and then played out during a day that stretched out almost to midnight again.

My wife’s sister helped me get my wife to the nearby urgent care clinic, where the medical professionals judged their facility incapable of doing much for her swollen, purple leg that she injured when she tripped and fell on the hardwood floor. They suggested I take her to the emergency room at CHI St. Vincent Hospital in Hot Springs, which I did. We arrived at 10:30 a.m.; I left at 7:45 p.m., when they were readying my wife for transfer to the ICU, where a room had been assigned. They opted for the ICU because the hospitalist, Dr. Osborne, wanted to put her on a dopamine drip; apparently, that can be administered only in an ICU, for some reason.

During the course of the day in the ER, the doctors and nurses drew blood, took urine samples, X-rayed her leg, chest, and arm., fed her intravenous fluids, and administered various monitoring tests (e.g., EKG, blood pressure, respiration rate, heart rate, etc., etc.). While my wife’s blood pressure is historically low, yesterday it was extremely low, which was of concern to the medical professionals. Very early on, the nurses vocalized about the “rash” on my wife’s arms, upper chest, belly, and back; they called it petechiae (pronounced puh·TEE·kee·uh or puh·TEE·kee·ee, depending on where you look). The little red dots are caused, according to online sources I found, by intradermal hemorrhaging (bleeding into the skin) and may be attributable to any number of things including liver issues, use of anticoagulant drugs (like some my wife takes), and various other root causes. I found it interesting that, in a few seconds, these ER nurses diagnosed the “rash,” while the APRN at the dermatology clinic my wife had visited had no idea what they were. Maybe the ER nurses were wrong; I suspect we’ll know by the time my wife is released to return home (in a day or two, I suspect). Another diagnosis came during the afternoon; she has a urinary tract infection, which might be contributing to her weakness and some other symptoms she had displayed. For me, those findings alone justified spending some time in the hospital, versus getting piecemeal feedback from various doctors who may or may not be talking to one another.

On the way home last night, I received a text message that two items we had ordered from Best Buy had been delivered: a 43-inch television and a sound bar. I was surprised that two pieces of moderately pricey electronic equipment would have been left without even a signature as proof of delivery, but when I pulled into the driveway, there were two big boxes (with photos of their contents splashed all over the packaging) waiting at the front door. I hauled them inside and decided to leave them for setup another time. I was ravenous (I hadn’t eaten all day), so I fed on various foods in the refrigerator, finishing off a few remaining hot dogs and some Canadian bacon and munching on some raw cauliflower and drinking the two remaining cans of Dirt Surfer IPA beer. And then I did a couple of loads of laundry.

My wife called me last night, just before 11. During the course of our conversation, it became clear to me that she thought she had just awakened after sleeping until almost 11 in the morning. I told her she had slept no more than just under three hours, at most.  She mentioned a few things she wants me to bring to her. I was glad she was situated in her room and was being looked after by medical professionals instead of by me.

I watched a little television, beginning to watch an Australian TV series called Wanted. I was too tired to follow the action, so I finally went to bed just after midnight. I woke up almost seven hours later; I guess I needed that extra time in bed after a fairly stressful, sleep-deprived period.

More people I know than I thought read this blog, it seems. Several people reached out to me between the time I published the most recent post and yesterday afternoon. I can’t adequately express how extremely grateful I feel to have heard from people who wanted me to know they are available to me if I need help.

I’ve written a post here when I did not think I would. I’m off to take out the trash, make breakfast, and take a shower, not necessarily in that order.  So begins another day. I will be the sole visitor to my wife’s bedside a little later (she can have only one visitor per day while in ICU, and I have asserted that it will be me). I’m feeling much better about everything than I did yesterday at this time. And that, my friends, is an enormous relief.

Posted in Family, Health | 5 Comments

State of Mind

Posted on July 13, 2020 by John Swinburn

For a brief while this morning, the outdoor temperature will be tolerable. At the moment, according to my computer and according to my thermometer, the air temperature is 72F. I can vouch for that; I went outside earlier, where I found the air moderately cool but quite humid and deathly still.

While I watered my grown-from-seed tomato plants, I heard something shuffling through the leaves below the deck, so I stopped my chore to take a look. I expected to see a deer but, instead, saw a very large armadillo scurrying along. It disappeared from view for a moment, under a thick clump of weedy shrubs, but it reappeared in an instant, traveling at the same pace in the same direction. The creature looked like it was in a hurry, but its speed was quite slow, as if its short legs could muster only enough energy to propel it forward only so fast and no faster. Despite its slow-motion scramble, it disappeared from view into the forest in a matter of thirty seconds or so. I wander where it was going in such a leisurely rush?

I mentioned the grown-from-seed tomatoes. I doubt I’ll get many tomatoes, perhaps none will endure to maturity. I have not taken the trouble to stake the plants, nor to tie them to cages that would keep them upright, so several of the plants look drunk, leaning toward the deck with their stems akimbo. Despite that, though, several of the plants have very small tomatoes attempting to survive. I mentioned yesterday to my wife that all of the little tomatoes are shaped liked little thumbs. That’s odd, inasmuch as the tomatoes from which I collected the seeds were, to the best of my recollection, “normal” in shape; that is, they were little globes.

I believe the tomatoes from which the seeds came were imported from Canada. I tend to look at the little stickers attached to vegetables I buy from the grocery store; I’m curious as to their lineage. My memory tells me I gathered seeds from Canadian tomatoes. That makes sense, in that I am a serious Canadaphile. I would have worshiped seeds from Canadian tomatoes, hoping I could create a tiny piece of the nation right here on my back deck. The thumb-shape, though, cannot be explained by the origin of the seeds. I have no way of knowing the explanation; it will remain a mystery.

Canada’s tomato crop yields significant rewards for Canadian farmers, thanks to their southern neighbors’ insatiable appetite for tomatoes. Canadian tomato exports, almost all grown in huge greenhouses, are world-famous, at least to me. And now I have my own miniature tomato forest growing on my back deck, twenty feet above the mixed pine and hardwood forest floor. If I were to name my tomato farm, I think I’d call it Hudson. Hudson just sounds Canadian, doesn’t it? Well of course it does! I hope Hudson survives and delivers to me a crop of succulent Canadian-bred tomatoes. But I wonder whether the beastly heat of Arkansas is just too much for Hudson tomatoes? Perhaps I should have moved to Wisconsin, instead? Yes, I think so. I should have moved to that state, so I could be closer to Canada. Maybe even Canada itself? Swoon! Oh,  yes, I could have actually become Canadian. Life would have been so much sweeter as a proud Canadian. A maple leaf tattoo would have looked better on me in Canada, too. I can’t have a maple leaf tattoo in Arkansas; Republican nationalists would have me skewered with spears for such a transgression.

Even the English language is more mellifluous in Canada. The Oxford English Dictionary, which calls itself the definitive record of the English language, would agree, I think. Just ask; it will tell you.

Back to the tomatoes. I am anxious for the little thumb-shaped tomatoes to ripen so I can evaluate their flavor. Will they taste like Canadian tomatoes? Will they make Canadian noises when I bite into them? Will my disposition improve when I eat them? So many questions, but very few answers.

If I were Canadian, my indiscretions would be forgiven. Arkansans tend not to forgive indiscretions. Torrid love affairs are punished by hanging in Arkansas. In Canada, it’s just a slap on the wrist and a sharp word or two. Not that I’ve had torrid love affairs in Arkansas. Yet. But if I lived in Canada, oh the excitement I might have experienced! I would be younger, were I to live in Canada. People just tend toward youth there, even in old age. I think it’s the tomatoes. Canadian tomatoes add years to one’s life and they subtract years already lived. Canadian tomatoes improve one’s vocabulary, too.

There should be a word in the English language that means “a yearning for a gentler nationality that yields a more fulfilling life experience.” If there were such a word, the Thesaurus would suggest synonyms like Strathcona, maple, and neighbourhood.

My mind takes me such strange places. From armadillos to tomatoes to the prairies of Alberta. I am ready for a road trip to Canada. I think I’ll have to make it alone, though. I am crazy enough to do it, but not persuasive enough to lure anyone to come along for the ride.

Time to return to the harsh reality that is Arkansas in July. And to think, I could have been in Canada all this time.

Posted in Just Thinking | 2 Comments

When Life and Death Were Simple

Posted on July 12, 2020 by John Swinburn

In my mind, I picture an ancient cave-dweller, a man in his early twenties. During the time he lived, the average lifespan of humans was only twenty-six. The rare thirty-year-old or rarer forty-year-old were considered extraordinary. And they were. They managed, somehow, to escape the diseases and infections that came from living in the face of Nature and the danger Nature presented.

But my man has managed to live into his early twenties with almost no serious injuries or illnesses. He lives in a protected cave on the sea-coast, where food is plentiful. His diet consists of an assortment of plants and the bounty of the sea: clams, fish, crabs, shrimp, scallops, mussels, and various other sea creatures. It is a healthy diet, though he does not think of it that way; to him, it is merely sustenance.

One morning, I see the man bring in from the water several blue crabs. He puts them in a shallow pit filled with glowing embers and weighs them down with rocks. After a few minutes, he pulls the cooked crabs from the fire, rinses the ash from their shells, and crack them open. He picks out large chunks of meat from the broken shells and eats it. This is not an unusual sight; he follows a similar routine most mornings.

But this morning, something is different. Soon after he swallows the last bit of crab meat, his face begins to swell and turn red.  He struggles to breathe. He stands up, looking frightened and confused, and pulls at the skin on his neck. He pants and sweats and shakes his head fiercely, as if doing so might cast off whatever demon has his throat and his breath in its clutches. It does not work. In a matter of seconds, his energy is sapped; he sits on a rock, trying to breathe; his trachea is so swollen air cannot reach his lungs. Suddenly, he stands up erect. He puts one foot in front of his body, but it cannot hold him. He collapses. After a minute or two of tremors and seizures, he stops attempting to breathe. His body goes limp. He is dead.

No one witnesses this tragedy. No one but I. And I can do nothing because I see it from the distance of a thousand miles and tens of thousands of years. I cannot send anything to counter his anaphylaxis. I could not foresee it, nor could he. He developed a deadly allergy to a protein he had eaten hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times before. The protein in crab meat suddenly, and without provocation, turned against him. The man’s death in his early twenties contributed to the short average lifespan of his brethren.

The man’s mate, a woman roughly his age or a little older, will find his body in a short while. Returning to their cave near the water, after taking a bath in a cool stream nearby, she will see his body on the sand. She will go to him and attempt to revive him, but her efforts will be futile. She will sit on a rock and cry for a long time. Eventually, her tears will dry and she will do what must be done. She will fashion a sled from palm fronds, vines, and tree branches. She will roll the man’s body onto the sled and pull the sled along the beach about a mile. There, she will dig a hole in the sand, where she will deposit his body. She will cover it with sand and put the sled on top of the mound. Distance and sand will protect her from the odors as his body decomposes. She will return to the cave and seek out food. For that’s what she must do to survive for at least a while longer.

The woman may live to be forty. Or she may suffer the same fate at her mate. She may one day discover that shrimp, too, or mussels or clams can bring on anaphylaxis. But she will never know what killed her mate. She will have no way to “connect the dots.” His death was, to her, simply an unfortunate experience with no known cause. She may find another mate or another mate may find her. She may wither away or be swept away by a ferocious storm. We have no way of knowing.

I know only that I have lost sight of her. My mind’s eye has gone blind.

Posted in Fiction, Writing | Leave a comment

Inside Stories

Posted on July 10, 2020 by John Swinburn

If I wrote what’s really on my mind this morning, people who read it might feel compelled to alert the authorities that they think I might be suicidal. I am not. If I wrote what’s bothering me, I might be dragged away for my own protection and for the protection of anyone within reach of my influence or my voice. I would have to work to convince them that I’m not a danger to myself and I’m not a danger, at least physically, to anyone else.

After reading, people might wonder whether they are in some way the causes of my angst. They are not. They are not to blame. I, alone, am responsible for the jumble of exposed nerves that crackle like bare electric wires on wet streets. But I can understand how my demeanor, both in words and in reality, might suggest responsibility falls to someone else; my reaction to the world around me might make it appear so, though that’s not it at all. The responsibility is all mine. It’s all driven by those sparking wires touching conductive emotional surfaces.

It’s fortunate that most of us have limited spheres of influence. Otherwise, our personal volcanic eruptions and our magnitude 8.0 mindquakes could cause substantial intellectual and emotional damage in a broad area. Our hurricane-force expressions of anger and offenses taken could be far more damaging if we mattered to the wider world. But, for the most part, we live within our own tiny circles; our own tiny little minds whose limits do not exceed the boundaries of our own skulls. We live in private little worlds that, to us, seem enormous but to those around us are invisible. The torrential rains and tectonic shifts and  fierce winds are, in fact, holograms of artificial events only we can see.

One day, I will gather the shards of my unseen internal emotional outbursts and try to piece them together so that they might make some sense. They could become inside stories of the creature who writes all of this crap but who can’t seem to bring himself to write the real stories that matter. Ultimately, though, the stories matter only to me, I suppose. And that means they don’t really matter much at all. They just take up space that could be used for more productive things. Spikes and spirals. Spikes and spirals. I get so damned tired of spikes and spirals.

Posted in Emotion | 4 Comments

Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

Posted on July 9, 2020 by John Swinburn

Back to my old habits. Up before 4:00 a.m., ready to face the day. The tune and lyrics to an old song were among my first thoughts this morning:

Well everybody’s heart needs a holiday, some time
And everyone of us needs to get away, some how
Some laughing light-hearted moods
Oh, sight seeing afternoons
And telling a joke or two
‘Cause everyday invites you to find your place in the sun

It’s time to find your place in the sun
Find your place
Find your place in the sun
Its time to find your place in the sun

Every so often, that music invades my head for a while. The song is “A Place in the Sun,” by the California soft rock group “Pablo Cruise.”

This morning, after the music took over my brain (with no help from outside sources; that is, I wasn’t listening to it or reading about it), I decided to explore when it was released. I assumed it was when I was still in high school, but I was wrong. It was released two years after I finished college. I finished my degree in December 1975 (I started the summer after high school and ripped through in 3.5 years); A Place in the Sun was released in February 1977. So, I would have already been working for Birkman & Associates and the Birkman-Mefferd Research Foundation by then.  The dates are a bit fuzzy; that was roughly 43 years ago, after all.

Those moments from 43 years ago began to coalesce, though, as I listened to other tunes from the album of the same name, songs like Whatcha Gonna Do, Raging Fire, and I Just Wanna Believe.  I suspect I still have that vinyl album, still neatly placed vertically on a bookcase. I haven’t owned a working turntable since I moved away from Chicago in 1989, but I still have a moderate-sized collection of records; maybe forty to sixty? Why I haven’t sold them or given them away is beyond me. I’m relatively sure every piece of music on them is available digitally now and the vinyl is just taking up space. That’s true of me, too, though, so I don’t want to be too quick to discard something old and essentially useless for fear of getting into a habit I wouldn’t have the option of breaking.

My sentimentality sent me exploring other music from 1977, songs that would have shaped me in ways that music seems to shape young people (usually earlier than it shaped me, I suppose). That was a year Fleetwood Mac was big and I loved their music: Dreams, Go Your Own Way, Rhiannon, Don’t Stop, You Make Lovin’ Fun.  I remember Don’t Stop being used during Bill Clinton’s celebration after winning the White House. It was a forward-looking anthem of hope that a new generation had taken charge of the country’s future. And now, here we are. Christ. We need to revive that anthem…like right now!

What I don’t recall, but what I read about Fleetwood Mac this morning, are the tales of infidelity and band infighting. Apparently, those issues were making tabloid headlines at the time (and, I gather, still are). I didn’t read the tabloids, I guess. The personal lives of rock stars have never held any particular appeal for me; it’s their music I want, not the drama entangling their lives.

Another song I recall from that period is Barracuda by Heart. I think it must have been mostly the rhythym I appreciated about the song; I remembered few of the lyrics and, when I searched them out this morning, they said nothing to me that made any real sense. I think that was true of a lot of the music I listened to. Another piece I listened to a lot and absolutely loved was a tune from considerably earlier, White Rabbit, by Jefferson Airplane. Google told me this morning that the tune was released in 1967 and first included on the Surrealistic Pillow album. It was just a few years ago that I learned a segment of the lyrics that I had never understood before: “tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has you given you the call.” I did understand most of the lyrics as a retelling of an experience with LSD or mushrooms or some such hallucinogenic.

I am sure I had a crush on Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane and Ann Wilson of Heart.  I was attracted to women who I assumed, because of the roles they played, were strong and unconventional and willing to confront and challenge traditional perceptions of women. I think that’s what attracted me, anyway.  Interesting that thinking of Pablo Cruise, an all-male band, led me to thinking about women rock stars this morning.

Before I leave music, I listened to another track from Surrealistic Pillow this morning that I do not recall hearing before: J.P.P. McStep B. Blues. It was written by Alexander Skip Spence, who I learned was the drummer (at least for a time) for Jefferson Airplane and who also was a singer/guitarist/songwriter for Moby Grape. I looked him up because I like the music; the lyrics for J.P.P. McStep B. Blues appeal to me.

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And what else is on my mind and my agenda today? Well, I am scheduled to go to Grove Park this morning to pick up an order of veggies from Ouachita Hills Farm: okra and radishes. Then, I have a little gathering of men in the parking lot of the church for pastries and conversation, then a Zoom conversation with other people who attended the UUA General Assembly, then a Sardicado Sandwich Gathering; I’ll write about that another time. It’s a busy morning, that’s a certainty.

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And, finally, this morning, I think I’ll work on shedding some weight (not physical, though that would be a welcome thing); some things that I have allowed to saddle me with emotional burdens that I’ve hidden reasonably well, though not always. Life is too short to permit stupid personal imperfections—mine or others’—to stand in the way of happiness. That’s sufficiently opaque to be impossible to understand for others, but it’s sufficient for me to get me through the day; by tomorrow, I’ll have forgotten what I meant by it and, when I read these words a year from now, I’ll wonder what in the hell I was blathering on about.

+++

You, who have stayed with me this far, are a treasure worth far more than gold.

Posted in Memories, Music, Philosophy | Leave a comment