Update on the Jump Off

i cannot tolerate the taste of coffee.
i keep forgetting to take the rest of my medications.
i drop things. incessantly. it's about to drive moi crazy.
i cannot keep up my end of conversations.
suddenly, two out of three felines are afflicted with the dread klingon dirty butt syndrome (dkdbs).
more cow bell!
oh, didn't i tell youse guys? i love christopher walken.
doesn't ANYONE (beyond her grandparents and uncle) remember caylee marie anthony?
i'm sorry but arpad don't-make-me-say-"corroborate" vass wasn't in the least bit "sympathetic" as a witness!
i lost my sympathy the first time i heard his simpering giggle.
and if they make the jury sniff "dead air"? uh-huh, it's all over. (the jury is gonna resent the heck out of that!)
how is it that i went roughly 7 hours almost withdrawal symptom free, then got hit with the godawful leg seizures in the eighth hour? whywhywhy?
buddy the kitten has been seeking reassurance of our love today --
he has been repeatedly shooed away when we are enjoying The Dobster
and apparently, he is shaken to his kitten core by that.
i am the very definition of "bloated."

that's about all that's fit to note.

oh, and my vision is permanently blurry.
also -- i mopped the entire manor this morning (and you know how big marlinspike hall is!) (i did it during the above-referenced 7 hours.)

and when i say "bloated," i mean BLOATED.

The Jump Off

Well, this methadone addict "jumped off" last night at precisely 6:30 PM. I'm not at the 24 hour mark yet, 2 more of those hours remain. You wanna hear something crazy? I've now started the "jump off" for Percocet -- retroactive to 5 AM today. I'm about at the 12 hour mark for that bit of lunacy.

The 30 hour mark for methadone is notorious for its difficulty, so tonight at just half past midnight is when the toughest times are anticipated to *begin*. Is that scaring me? Yes. Do I think I will emerge victorious in my battle against the Demon Opiates? Yes, indeed. Else I would not have "jumped off" to begin with. According to the written schedule I drew up over a week ago, I was so scared as to give each new level of methadone dosage FIVE days... Yet I decided last night to give the 10 mg level short shrift and only ONE day of experience.

My hands are twitching so much that I may actually have to run spellcheck.

We won't discuss my legs except to say that were my feet able to stand the feel of shoes, balletic toe shoes (size 15) might just slip right on. My toes seem to fusing...

And my knees are somehow imploding, bending backward.

And, yep, I am testing those knees every time the half-bath -- just 15 feet away -- calls.

And, yep, Fred is up to speed and greatly encouraging. I believe that my earlier read on The Fredster was Demon-Driven. Was I setting him and myself up as the excuse of my failure? I damned well think I was. But no more. Let's just say that I remembered, just in time, that Fred was raised on cowboy movies and cowboy philosophy, and that he cannot be envisioned in anything but a white hat.

Possibly the weirdest symptom of this withdrawal is how COLD I feel.

COLD in terms of temperature, You Numbnuts! I woke covered by heavy blankets, something that I just don't do. Always, I feel HOT, stifled by CRPS and its attendant pains. I even dialed down the temp for the air conditioner, again something that I just don't do.

The worst symptom is exactly the reason for which I began taking methadone to begin with, and that is PAIN. I feel every ache, every lancinating bit of neuropathic sadomasochism. It's the only thing reminding me of the despairing truth -- that I will have to find a new way to control pain if the new ketamine regime fails. The only thing I know for sure is that it will not be what the doctor there wants me on -- Prialt. I cannot see having that stuff injected into my spine, and you betcha, I am scared to death of the side effects.

[Chief among them being an apparent predilection for suicide.]

Anyway... though I've much that wants to be written -- most of it about the French Open, some of it about the recent USAmerican drone strike that killed Ilyas Kashmiri -- my focus right now is laser lit on my various time pieces.

Because this methadone addict "jumped off" last night at precisely 6:30 PM.

Tinny Quavers: Ukulele Music

I was introduced to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole when the television show ER used his "What a Wonderful World/Somewhere Over the Rainbow" medley.  It was a beautiful pairing -- Mark Green's necessary death in Hawaii and Iz's pristine ukulele, his own gasps and sighs -- fitting, both, under a broad blue sky, floating above an ocean.



Madison Avenue was ahead of the game, casting the song in commercials for deodorant, in several soundtracks, including Meet Joe Black, Finding Forrester, 50 First Dates and IMAX: Hubble 3D. As different markets have been exposed to the medley over a disparate length of time, the work has hit high on various charts in a span as large as 17 years.  First released in 1993, it reached number one in Germany last year...

Beyond Iz, I've never gone out of my way to find the latest in ukulele music.  That truly seemed like a one-time thing, that venture into the guitar's subset.

Enter Eddie Vedder.

My introduction to Vedder as a solo artist came, once again, through television and movies -- Deadliest Catch, Into the Wild and the anthem "Rise."

And there it was, that damned uke.  Unlike a good many instruments, it gives off an aura of strict self-sufficiency -- and that is it's incomplete paradox.  It needs a counterpoint of voice, something to temper its tinny quavers.  Voice and instrument together?  Perfected melancholy, and those diminutive strings that had threatened to go off on their own, brought back in an homage to dispossession, to life on an edge.



I'd never have thought that a ukulele -- played beautifully -- could speak so perfectly to something within, some archetype that sleeps until teased, its strings strummed almost angrily or picked and plucked in a near simper.  It's the perfect vessel for folklore, and for the dispossessed. (Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘Aina i ka Pono, indeed...)

Based on I-don't-know-what, the uke has been classified in my sad head as a trite sound, as if it were a toy instead of an actual instrument requiring great skill.  It's one of those "idées reçues" for which I'd love to find the genesis.

Tiny Tim?  Maybe, though I was actually a fan -- a fan hoping to irritate the 'rents, sure, but still, a fan.  He was way more than "Tiptoe thru' the tulips." **

I woke up feeling mighty ill this morning, but musically inclined.  Nothing that I put my hands on fit the bill, however, and I was close to settling for local radio.  My detoxifying brain nixed that notion and I found myself on the NPR website, combing through entries to "First Listen."  

There it was:

First Listen: Eddie Vedder, 'Ukulele Songs'

May 25, 2011

For his second full-length solo album, Eddie Vedder has taken up one of the most useful creative tools available: limitation. It's embodied in a little finger-strummed thing that the Pearl Jam singer picked up during a beer run in Hawaii nearly 15 years ago, an instrument whose limits he never pushes, and which ends up refining and expanding his own range. Ukulele Songs isn't a novelty record; it's a statement of truth. Made calm and open by the ukulele's intimacy, Vedder sounds like someone getting out of his own way and discovering what really matters within his art.

What matters musically, as he's been saying lately in interviews, is melody. The baritone growl that not quite singlehandedly defined millennial American rock transforms here into the lullaby singer's murmur and a romancer's croon. Pearl Jam is a big, noisy band, and in many of its best songs, Vedder has ridden its big waves hard: He's helped many a fan safely unleash un-pretty emotions. Here, though, he asks the listener to pull back with him and pay attention to the tiptoe of his voice as he descends a scale, or the sweetness of slipping into falsetto.

Vedder's song selections are culled from more than a decade's worth of writing he's done on the uke. A Pearl Jam song, the driving "Can't Keep," opens the set and seems like a form of reassurance — Vedder hasn't gone totally soft, Ten Club members! But the craving for escape that the song expresses here seems like a bit of a fake-out. Everywhere else, from tearjerkers like "Sleeping By Myself" and "Broken Heart" to the more hopeful likes of "Without You" to the vintage crooners' favorites that Vedder covers, Ukulele Songs is about staying still enough to feel something calmly and clearly... READ THE REST *HERE*

You can listen to it in its entirety at the NPR website -- but when it is released for sale on May 31, remember to support the artist by buying/downloading it -- perhaps HERE.

I've had my musical fix for the day.  Uh-oh, I'm lapsing into more drug jargon... Mwa ha ha!

Seriously, though, I cannot see that there are any other musical contenders beating down my door to participate in the Ukulele Folk/Rock Division. 

How goes the methadone taper?  Famously, I suppose.  I am holding at 15 mg for a few more days, or for good, I haven't decided.  What I have done, I have done much too rapidly and my body and mind are determined that I should suffer for it.  Last night, around 3 AM, the urge to give up almost won -- due to my version of Restless Legs Syndrome (also known as Wittmaack–Ekbom syndrome).  Methadone doesn't bear the entire burden of blame here, as I inherited an affinity for "jumpy legs" from dear old Dad.  I can still remember him coming home from a mission, dead tired, falling into bed, only to be betrayed by the dread spasms and misfires in his legs.

Wikipedia opines that "[o]pioid detoxification has been associated with provocation of RLS-like symptoms during withdrawal," but what does Wikipedia know?  I also happen to have almost every pre-disposing malady it lists.  Still, the timing is kind of suggestive.  Oh, all right...

Anyway, I did what any person would do in that situation -- I dug up a bottle of trazodone and took it. 

Oh, all right...  I took a whopping 150 mg -- not the whole darned bottle -- which allowed for some sleep until pain woke me at 5 AM.  Got up, baked scones, in the process dumping half a bag of flour on myself and the kitchen floor.  Mopped, washed up, changed clothes, and slept wonderfully from 9 to 10:30 AM, at which time I began the aforementioned search for music, and began this post.

When next I attempt to sleep? I expect a hell of a soundtrack!




**  I can't resist.  This is one of my favorite covers by Tiny Tim (Herbert Khaury):