John Swinburn

Like clockwork. Fortunately, I went to bed very early again (around 9), so I got a few hours sleep before cramps and insomnia conspired to wake me. At my brother’s suggestion, I drank tonic water to ward off cramps; apparently it didn’t work (though I had some after I got up and the quinine may have done some good). It’s not just leg cramps. It’s snapping wide awake at 2:00 a.m. and feeling like sleep is not in the cards in the immediate future. Argh.

I’ve been up for two hours now and doubt I’ll try to sleep any time soon. Yesterday afternoon, I think I napped a bit, though my intent was only to relax in my recliner. I may have dozed. So maybe I’m getting adequate sleep, just on an unusual schedule.

The dream is only a vague memory now, slipping fast, but I dreamed I was involved in some way with a magazine about the Texas border with Mexico. The few scenes I remember make no sense to me. I should have written it all down when I woke up.

I don’t feel like writing. I think it’s obvious. So I’ll stop.

Mugs. Lots of mugs. Fifty of them, more or less. Many of them mementos of our travels over the years. The first time we hung this enormous mug rack (the photo captures only a tiny piece of it) was when we lived in Arlington, Texas, between 1990 and 1997. I don’t recall whether we hung it while we lived in Dallas; I don’t think so. But we finally hung it in our house in Hot Springs Village, thanks to my niece and her husband, without whose help the mugs would remain in moving boxes.

The only wall in the house that is suitable to the mug rack is in the guest bedroom that doubles as my office. (There’s a long, tedious explanation as to why the “sky room” next to the master bedroom does not fill that role; I’ll not dwell on that here.) So, any overnight guests who visit now have the pleasure of viewing our many mugs. Several of the mugs are from my unicorn-collecting phase, a long-since abandoned endeavor. When I first started collecting unicorns, unicorn figures and figurines (and mugs) were rare; today, they are as common as toilet paper. As we continue collecting mugs from travels near and far, we’ll replace the unicorn mugs with more memorable stuff. And we may eventually replace the mass-produced mugs in favor of one-of-a-kind, hand-made works of art (or even just works of craft).

The concept of collecting for the sake of collecting occupies opposing places in my brain. On the one hand, the mementos give me pleasure; on the other, they represent mindless, conspicuous consumption. I view our mug collection as an early symptom of hording behavior. I’ll admit that I’ve not given any thought to it until just now, but I suspect the psychology of collecting and hording both relate in some fashion to an unhealthy attachment to “things” that represent an experience with some form of anguish in one’s past. Probably a childhood trauma indelibly etched in brain tissue.

In the case of our mugs, I wonder whether the decision to collect them involves an effort to reduce the likelihood that we will forget the experiences that led us to purchase them? That is, if we have a mug from Barcelona, will our memories of the brief visit there so many years ago retain their brightness, as if the experience was recent? The answer to that, incidentally, is “no.” I remember seeing La Sagrada Familia and I have vague recollections of seeing Gaudí buildings; maybe a visit to a famous artist’s home, but not much else.  I have never been very good at taking photographs while traveling. I would rather experience the sights and sounds of a place through my own eyes than through a lens. But that preference allows images to fade much faster than those one captures with a camera. So, I sometimes regret not taking pictures. I used to think mugs were stand-ins for photos; no more. Now, I think old-fashioned picture postcards might be the way to go. Forget the photos until you’ve seen things you’d like to have photographed. Then, find a picture postcard rack and buy cards that reflect the places you’ve seen. Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? Somebody could make a killing out of selling postcards. And they probably will.

But we’re here to talk about mugs, aren’t we? Indeed. So I shall. One day, if the mood strikes me at just the right time, I will photograph each mug on our rack and will record (to the extent memory allows) where we got it and what I recall of the place. Assuming each mug will require at least sixty minutes of viewing, recalling, photographing, and writing, I have around 50 hours of work to do before I realize it’s a pointless exercise. Actually, I suspect I’ll catch on much sooner than 50 hours in; perhaps 15 minutes, instead.

It’s nearing 5 o’clock in the morning. I’ve been awake for hours, having been ripped from a fitful sleep by horrific cramps in both my legs, beginning sometime between 1 and 2 a.m. The first time, the cramps resolved themselves relatively quickly and I was able to get back to sleep. Not so the second time. The 20-30 minute period of off-again, on-again cramps was enough to keep me up. Finally, about 4, I decided to make breakfast; two thin patties of Jimmie Dean hot sausage between two pieces of sourdough toast, dressed with sliced tomato and a bit of my tomatillo-based salsa verde. The house now smells like a small town diner crowded with farmers waiting for sunrise, thanks to those sizzling sausage patties.

The weather today and tomorrow promises to be brutally hot and humid. Even at this hour, the outside temperature is roughly 80 degrees and the humidity is probably about the same. Tomorrow’s heat index, according to weather forecasters, will exceed 115 degrees; that’s the stuff of heat stroke and heat exhaustion. We’ll spend most of the day indoors, crossing our fingers that the excessive heat doesn’t fry the HVAC system. Extreme hot weather tends to put excessive stress on air conditioners, it seems; either that, or karma is vindictive.

Odds are good that I will nap at some point today, provided the combination of air conditioning and fan can keep me sufficiently cool to permit me to sleep. I am not a fan of naps for many reasons, most of which are irrational. Chief among my complaints about naps is that I might miss something while sleeping. The same could be said about the almost universal practice of going to bed each night, though, so my argument against naps is flimsy at best. And, despite my objection to the practice of napping, I sometimes enjoy a good nap. Usually, that happens the day after a night like the one just now coming to an end; a night during which sleep was a rarity.

All right, then. I’ll give sleep another try.

At some point, it becomes obvious. “I’ll get back to you” becomes an unfulfilled promise. Sure, there are reasons. But they’re never especially strong. Certainly not strong enough to merit trust. Believing them. Accepting them. And, so, you move on. You find someone else worth your time. Eventually. Or you don’t. If you don’t, you come to realize what you thought were trust and friendship and dependability are just myths. And you harden, if you can. And you withdraw into the shell that has been your protection for so long.  The only thing you can count on, really. The only dependable, but tolerable, pain is recognition that the old camaraderie is part of a grand show, an elaborate put-on designed to follow a script written as a ruse. The rehearsals for this spectacular production have taken place over the course of a lifetime. Every day is practice for the next, each scene carefully crafted to slide flawlessly into another act, as if the entire farce were designed to manipulate the audience, of which you were a part, into believing. You are not blameless, you know. You engaged in that time-worn undertaking, the willing suspension of disbelief. The ticket for admission comes at a cost; the pain of knowing, in the end, that deceit is just part of the plan. Everyone has his own pain; but not everyone has to share it so freely. Or is that the price one pays for engagement?

A friend was to have arrived today, planning to stay several days. But her elderly dog got sick, so she had to postpone the trip. And, then, a wine tasting a nearby couple had planned for later this week had to be cancelled due to medical issues. So health-related matters have again interfered with our social lives. Such is life. That’s the way things go. My cancer and related maladies had the same impact just a few months (and weeks) ago. Life goes on. But the lessons associated with such detours ought not be ignored: we must be flexible; we must respond to deviations in our plans by adjusting without irritation, annoyance, or otherwise getting upset. That’s a lesson that took so bloody long for me to learn. I finally got it, but it took a good sixty years or so to get there. That’s so unfortunate. Life is so much easier and more accommodating when we can adapt to the environment in which we find ourselves.

Changes can present opportunities, too. For example, I’ll now be able to focus more attention on my deck; getting it scraped and sanded and painted. While I’d rather visit with my friend, I’ll adjust and adapt and give my experience a comforting massage. Now, if only I can adopt these smooth attitudes across the board, I’ll be a happier human. I’m trying. At least I am for the moment.

I distinctly remember, when I was young and learning about management and supervision, being taught that “your employees are not your friends!” The message was that one should not allow one’s relationships with employees to become too casual for “obvious” reasons: discipline, termination, and other unpleasant experiences in the workplace are more difficult to cope with if one is dealing with friends. So, the advice went, “keep your distance.” Memory tells me the lessons were not just delivered from my own management mentors but also were taught through courses available from the American Management Associations. My employer at the time put a great deal of stock in those courses; the inexpensive indoctrination they provided served my employer’s objectives.

And I did what I was taught for the most part. I blindly accepted the idea that one did not become friends with someone one might later have to fire or discipline in some other way; because that quite likely would end the friendship. The warnings were clear: don’t get too close to people at work, for that could complicate matters later.

I remember, too, that my relationship with people who had been friends, or at least close acquaintances, changed when I was promoted to supervisory positions and they became my subordinates. Ach. Even the language carries the stench of privileged hierarchy and inferior submission.

Thinking back on the advice, it was clearly meant to protect the manager/supervisor and not afford the employee any safeguards. In hindsight, it seems to me it was an effort to train into the manager/supervisor a weakness; one, though, that offered an easy-out. Employees were not to be treated like other people in general were to be treated; employees were to be treated as performance assets that could and should, if necessary, be replaced with higher-performing human resources. The term, “human resources,” sounds to me a little too much like owned assets. I don’t like it now.

But it’s too late for me to treat many of the people I managed over the course of my career as more than assets used to accomplish objectives. If they under-performed, I attempted to correct their performance; if that failed, I replaced them. I never enjoyed it and often anguished and agonized over it, but I did it because that’s what one did with under-performing assets. And I acknowledge it was far more difficult when the “human resource” with whom I was dealing was someone I liked from a personal perspective. But I carefully tried to avoid becoming a “friend” with those people, even those I liked. I slipped past that boundary more than once but, fortunately, never had to (or chose to) fire someone  I called friend. Perhaps that’s because I was/am very careful about who I call friend; they are very few and quite far between. I suppose the story of my self-protection is a tale for another time. Suffice it to say it’s easier to make friends than to lose them. So to avoid losing them, one might opt not to make them in the first place.

The lies of supervision can insinuate themselves into one’s personal life, I think. Though relationships outside employment are quite different from those in an employer/employee accord, the discomfort or outright pain that arises when those engagements split apart resemble one another. So, the rationales behind supervisory training can creep into the amicable bond between people outside work. The purposive distance, meant to lessen emotional pain in the event of a “break-up” in an employment relationship, places a wedge between people outside work life, too.

I’m just thinking with my fingers here. I don’t know whether my off-the-cuff assessments have any merit, but I think they might. I think they describe, at least to some extent, my own personal history, both inside and outside the work relationship.

I see evidence, though, that change has taken place in the workplace and continues to redefine work relationships. Employers increasingly understand that employees are valuable and deserve supportive emotional environments. That goes beyond supevisor/ subordinate relationships. Supportive emotional environments can be pervasive throughout the employment environment. Should. I think I see more evidence of that taking place as a younger workforce begins to assume greater influence over company culture.  I hope my evidence is not just a misinterpretation of interactions I see and hear about.

I read a question on Quora, which asked whether octopuses might ever evolve into sapient creatures. An answer—suggested as the “best” one—said it would be impossible because of the short life-span and mating practices of the creature. The original question, I suspect, was prompted by the understanding that octopuses are extremely intelligent; that it, they can learn rather complex responses to solve problems in their environments. Whether the original question, the featured response, or any of the follow-up answers contain elements of truth, they teem with curiosity.

Curiosity is an interesting characteristic. Or is it a trait? The question intrigued me, so I explored it a bit. I found (on a subset site of the How Stuff Works website) the following explanations about different types of curiosity: 1) “The fleeting arousal of curiosity that would evoke curiosity as a reaction is known as state curiosity.” 2) “The concept that curiosity resides within is known as trait curiosity.” Elsewhere on the same site, I found another intriguing concept: that curiosity is the “urge to gain information we don’t really need.”

Basically, the descriptive theories suggest that state curiosity is triggered by events, whereas trait curiosity is an inherent interest in learning. As I ponder my own curiosity, I think both types are at work. And, I suspect, that’s true of most people. Other thoughts presented in the series of articles about curiosity imply that curiosity may be increased or decreased by the rewards or penalties attached to its display. In other words, positive feedback tends to cultivate curiosity, whereas negative feedback tends to stifle it.

A quote about curiosity I found online intrigues me: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.” The original “curiosity killed the cat” warns of the dangers of unnecessary exploration. The rejoinder (according to Wikipedia) suggests resurrection awaits those who take the risk of exploration.

I wonder about the rewards of exploring the possibilities of a cephalopod’s sapience. What are those rewards? Are they purely intellectual? Does curiosity stimulate the brain physically in some fashion? Or is curiosity purely a mental exercise? I miss rigorous exploration of such concepts, the kind of rigorous engagements one gets in college courses. But I don’t have the discipline or the intellectual stamina to get engaged. I want knowledge, but without the effort. I’d be satisfied with an injection in my arm, filling me with all the information I’ve ever wanted to know. I suppose that’s an invitation to hallucinogenic drugs. Probably not good for me, not at this age and stage. Yet hallucinations can, I’ve been told, lead to both intense knowledge and intense curiosity.

Hmmm. More to ponder.

It’s a shade after 3:10 a.m. I’ve just now finished my shower and made my first cup of coffee. I thought, when I got out of bed, it was nearing 5:00 a.m. I was wrong. I jumped in the shower almost as soon as I awoke under the impression dawn would break in the near term. It was only after I become conscious of my surroundings that I realized I had jumped the gun. Crap!

The thing that really set the realization in motion was a glance at my pills. I keep my pills in a monstrous container that further containerizes my pills into day-part compartments. The first one is labeled “MORN,” followed by “NOON,” EVE”, and “BED.” Naturally, I can’t rely on those labels because they do not correspond to the timing of my pill consumption. Instead, I pretend the labels read “FIRST THING,” ‘MID-MORN,” “NOONISH,” “AFTERNOON,” and “BEDTIMISH.” I further refine the meaning of NOONISH to mean EARLY NOONISH and LATER NOONISH. I have to do that because my latest prescription calls for a five-time-per-day schedule. Crap.

And one of my prescriptions, it seems, has an impact on my sleep schedule. I can’t quite comprehend my early rising today. I thought I’d looked at the clock when I got up. But apparently the view was blurry. Based on how long I normally spend in the shower and other factors, I have to assume I stepped into the shower about 2:30 a.m.; I went to bed at a normal hour (more or less), so I must have popped awake at a completely unnatural time. For me.

I have yet to take my pills. The schedule today is pretty important, I think. I have to take the pills designed to knock down my Herpex Zoster, AKA, Shingles, soon. I must do that; no playing around. My left eye and the skin on my face surrounding it will, I hope, appreciate my insistence on sticking to the schedule. Assuming, of course, the medications work. I hope they do. The pain I feel, though not awful, is beginning to bother me. Shingles needs to be gone, and soon.

We went out last night (call it late afternoon) with some people from church. One couple picked us up at the house. Another couple and a woman whose husband was traveling to meet relatives he had not heretofore known, met on at our destination. We explored the “happy hour” marketed by 501 Prime, a high-end steakhouse and all around fancy restaurant in Hot Springs. My wife and I both ordered a starter of six fried oysters; they were good. I, then, ordered the special charcuterie board, for which I had to wait quite a while because we arrived around 5:00 p.m. and said “special” dish was not available until 6:00 p.m. In the meantime, I ordered a local beer that was acceptable but not special. When my food finally arrived (my wife’s chicken fried steak came earlier), I was surprised as the “charcuterie board.” It consisted of fried duck skin, a fried duck leg, two slices of fried green tomatoes, a few thin pieces of what obviously were “house made” crostini, and a few olives. None of the sausages I expected. The food on the board wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t particularly good. And the charcuterie board was accompanied by a tasting of five bourbons. The five glasses of bourbon had, obviously, been exposed to some whiskey; but the whiskey had all but evaporated by the time it got to me. That is only a slight exaggeration. There was enough of each whiskey to barely taste it. Afterward, I was invited to pick one of the whiskeys, which then would be used to make a cocktail of my choice. I chose a Jim Beam whiskey as my mixer and a 501 Prime Manhattan as the drink of choice. Later, I realized I would have much rather have had a shot of the Jim Beam all by itself. Though I was happy to have gone out with the group of five other adults, I wish the food and drink had been more appealing. And I wish we’d all be just a little “looser” than we were. At least I wish I had been. I would have like to have conversed a bit more with some of the other folks at the table, but my introversion kept that inclination in check. And if my introversion was in full throat, my wife’s was even more obvious. Another drink or two might have fixed that. Maybe.

When we got back to our house, I was tempted to invite our hosts in for a glass of wine, but I did not. I sensed my wife would not have appreciated it. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. I never mentioned it to her, but the fact that she decided to go to bed very early told me my inclination to just leave it was the right one. And then I woke up after a short night’s sleep. And here I am. I watched the debates (well, most of them) last night. I learned very little, other than the debaters seemed more interested in attacking their Democratic opponents than in arguing their positions. I’m still undecided about political positions; on the one hand, I think a moderate who would not be anathema to Republicans would have the best chance at overcoming the irrational 45 base, but on the other I feel pretty strongly that a radical departure from business as usual is what the country needs. I’m talking enormously bold changes from the status quo, like Medicare for All (or some variation thereof) and social engineering capable of changing the face of American society. I’m leaning toward the latter, I think.

The clock now tells me it’s only a few minutes shy of 4:00 a.m. I’m a bit slow in documenting my thoughts. But I shall stop for the moment anyway. My first cup of coffee has largely disappeared and my mental condition has solidified a tad. I’m no longer in immediate danger of swallowing a large number of pills in the hope that they might solve my dilemma of choosing life over death or vice versa. It’s not quite that hopeless. But neither is it something I can readily ignore. These thoughts do not belong in my head, regardless of the time of day. They are dangerous but appealing. The idea of no longer caring that Trump is alive and in charge of wrecking our democracy appeals to me. I’d like, though, to solve the problem before I take the final nap. Snap out of it! Christ! I still have pills to take to resolve my problem with shingles. There’s plenty of time for morose moods after shingles has been overwhelmed with medicines. And with that, I’m going to go in search of ingredients for an unusual breakfast.

Scattered scraps of translucent grey clouds blur the hills and valleys behind my house this morning. Bright pink and orange tufts of cumulus clouds—the only evidence of sunrise except for a brightening sky—tower far above me, barely visible above the grey layers closer to the ground. It’s hard to tell at this hour what the weather will be like today. It may be dreary, grey, hot, and humid or it may change to clear and breezy. Time, alone, will tell. My questions about what weather I can expect an hour or two from now won’t change the outcome. The weather will be what it will be. It’s always like that. I am as utterly unable to control to control the weather as I am unable to control my moods. Well, I may have slightly more control over the weather.

“Mood.” The word is in common use, but we mean such different things by it. It can mean emotional tone or quality or frame of mind. It also can mean sullenness or gloominess. On the contrary, it can mean cheery and bright. “He’s in a good mood.” “Her mood could bury an entire generation under its bitterness.” “The mood of the country shifted from fearful and dejected to one of pure, unbridled optimism.” I suppose all of the connotations suggest, at its core, emotional tone and frame of mind. So it’s not such a schizophrenic word, after all.

I can’t tell the mood of the day by looking out the window. There’s not even a hint of a breeze to give me a clue as to what the day has in store. Is it odd that I’m anthropomorphizing “the day?” As if “the day” shared with humans the emotional upheavals of daylight and dark, joy and grief? Odd or not, at this moment I think the day is undecided about the course it will take. The absolute stillness of the leaves in the trees outside my window could mean I’m looking not at living trees but, instead, at a painting of trees. There’s absolutely no motion outside. Every leaf on every tree is petrified in time, captured by an artist’s brush. And it just occurred to me that I haven’t seen the usual squirrels dashing about on the forest floor of late; I bet it’s been three or four days since I’ve seen them darting around, their movements frenetic in one moment and frozen the next.

I’m trying to decide whether I should plan to go to the nearest urgent care clinic today or, instead, attempt to get an appointment to see a dermatologist and/or an ophthalmologist. Night before last, I noticed some odd skin eruptions on the side of my face, just under and the side of my left eye. They have grown progressively larger in area since then. And one of them seems to have crept into the corner of my left eye, causing it to swell and itch. And my vision in that eye is noticeably fuzzy. Bodily decay and dysfunction is unpleasant. And it’s a reminder that, at some point, recovery begins to slow and even reverse itself. Skin lesions start to take longer to heal. Aches and arthritic pains don’t disappear with movement the way they once did.  As my favorite poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen once wrote, in, “Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in the places where I used to play.”

Outside my window, the air remains dead still, as if the planet has taken in a deep breath and is holding it, holding it, holding it…in the hope that time will make breathing easier. Either that, or the wind has abandoned this part of the planet, seeking comfort elsewhere. But, wait! I see movement. Not of leaves, but of what I assume is fog. Wisps of vapor drift slowly behind statues of trees; vapor barely more dense than the empty air in which it slides. And now I see, for the first time in days, a squirrel. And leaves begin to move. The still life has morphed into a moving scene, though it is slow to change.

The sky remains uncommitted, though. There’s no indication that it has made a decision about what it will do for the remainder of the hours of daylight left in this day. I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe, if the sky cooperates, I’ll be able to slap some more paint on the deck today. That may be unwise, though, given that a bit of rain would not be good for freshly-painted decking. That reasoning may give me sufficient reason to remain lazy, to walk slowly through this day. To “slog through the porridge,” as I once said (or periodically say) in fits of incoherence.

Except for my skin distemper and my itching eye, my sensations seem to be characterized by anesthetized inertia. I could use a long embrace. Or a longer nap. I rarely take naps. Or so I say. Lately, though, I’ve found myself sitting in my electric recliner, my feet up and my head back, eyes closed and imagination wandering. That’s not really a nap, I suppose. It’s more like a structured attempt to escape reality.

I’m hungry. I think I’ll go forage in the kitchen, looking for something appealing and easy and unlike a “typical” breakfast. I no longer enjoy “typical” breakfasts. I crave stuff that rattles the taste buds into a state of surprised attention. Pasta arrabiata, for example, would be good this morning. Too bad there’s none in the house and I’m unwilling to invest the time and energy in making any at this hour. Jalapeño potato salad would be good, too, but I’m afraid the time necessary to cook the potatoes, coupled with fact that we’re dangerously low on my jalapeño paste, would make that a near impossibility. So many things sound appealing but they are unavailable. I may have to resort to satisfying my hunger with something mind-numbingly dull. Living in the heart of a cosmopolitan city has extraordinary advantages. Were I in New York City this morning, I suspect I could easily find a Korean restaurant open for breakfast (but serving from a full menu). Even in Dallas, I could go to an Ethiopian restaurant in search of kitfo; I’d find the restaurant closed at this hour, but if I were patient, I could go in for lunch after 11 or 11:30. I can’t do that in Arkansas. The closest Ethiopian restaurant is in Memphis. There is at least one (and probably several) Korean restaurants in Little Rock, but none open at this hour. And I suspect no such restaurant would have as extensive a menu as I’d find in New York.

The fog seems to have lifted and the trees have returned to their comas. Time for me to explore what else awaits me on this odd morning.