Another Shower, More Chicken Soup

I ran into another person.  No, let's rephrase and reconstitute that!  

I came across another situation peopled with idiots, and the situation does not allow for the differentiation of the well-meaning idiot from the uncaring idiot from the trained monkey with flat affect.  

That's right!  It was a lawyer.

And it made me think of this post, written last October 23, and the poem which concludes it. 

You can't tell, but the air here today is rank with that smell peculiar to desperation.  It's in the sweat, it flits from the pores, the lightest of emulsions.

There is not a story behind every poem.  Every poem is not "true." Not all writing is autobiographical.

Because of my "success" in typing through the minefield of the ACA online Federal Marketplace, actually succeeding in finding very good and very affordable health insurance that will maintain my near poverty very well, my name has been given to several media outlets.  Among them, CNN.

The reporter who interviewed me, twice I think, if we don't include today, does not listen.  He wants a certain response, of course, and steers his interviewee in that direction.  You can tell he is not listening because he often begins his "next" question while you have not finished, adequately, the answer to the current one.  And by the tone of voice, and by the fact that he does not seem to retain the information you have given.  But, who cares?  It's his métier, let him be good or bad at it, and let that be his choice.

So I did my part.  Never was there a mention of actually being recorded for televised broadcast -- nothing beyond audio, I presumed, since it never came up.  I assumed that I sucked so much as a subject that it just wasn't even a viable issue.

And besides, life has gone on in the interim.  Damn it.

I had a bad night last night.  You know.  Screaming, which oddly enough assumes more and more dreamlike status, whereas gentler moans will actually wake me from real sleep.  Lots of pain, lots of infection symptoms in the shoulders and hips, and so on and so on, ad nauseum.  You know the Punch Line:  the screaming ninnies of spasticity.  I didn't even bother with meds, just put in the earbuds, sang my heart out between yelps and sometimes must have slept... if those moans really did bring me back to consciousness.

Concern for Fred.  Concern for me and Fred.  Regrets.  Wishing I would die before sun up, so that my room might be redolent with the odor of roses.  That's right, you reprobates, I fully intend to die a sainted death.  I like this new pope and have already put in the paperwork for sanctification.  You laugh now, but one day you won't.

So I finally get the screaming meany ninnies to stop, close my eyes, rest, and the phone rings.  As I am waiting for several important calls -- maybe even El Papa, himself -- I pick up, something I never used to do before the crisis with the Mother-Unit.  Now I am a true adult, ready to speak to anyone, medical bill collector, Mother-Units, veterinarians, friends (ha!), insurance company, or rambling, ambling CNN reporters.

My "Hello" might have been deceptively bright -- the sure way to know if you have awakened some poor soul at the other end of technology.

Anyway, he yadda-yadda-ed and then asked about bringing a crew over for a quick recorded interview.

Now I had given this journalist person full access to this enlightening blog -- such a simple document -- and even suggested a few of my pristine video selections on YouTube (channel "profderien"), not so much because I was whoring myself, but because I figured he needed to understand that between being butchered half to death these last few wonder years, and having CRPS in all limbs, including my frigging face, that I would not be given to appearing on television.

I cry when I see myself.  I can handle the CRPS update videos, done mostly for the CRPSers in my small but dedicated audience, because it is piecemeal, it is abstracted, somehow, and I can include touches of minute humor.  But... take the elevators in my go-to-guy doctor's building.  The doors are mirrored.  So there I am, in my wheelchair, surrounded by normal looking folk, looking... grotesque.  Seen as a whole, I do not recognize myself.  Not just from the CRPS, not just the wheelchair, the legs, the hands, the face, but also the impact of over 15 years on steroids and clothing that was designed for gimps.

You'd have to be an idiot to read this blog and not know that every mention of high-powered italian leather shoes reflects my love of shoes.  I haven't been able to wear shoes for over a decade.

I mean... I thought a reporter would GET IT.  But then, I made an assumption based on narcissism (a decent definition of "hubris," really).  His story is not about me.  It is about "Obamacare," something I desperately want to support, and had been handed a mighty vehicle with which to do my small part.

I love my step-mother with a full and aching heart.  But I would never let her see me.  Not now.  I love TW with a heart more than full, more than aching... and never will he cross the threshold of The Manor's Bronze doors.  I will let Grader Boob (the other Brother-Unit) in... but only because he was wily enough to stop by once already.  And because he's been here, or there, through it all, anyway.  Because I don't think there is much left that can shock him -- more is the pity.

So something led me back to that freaking file of writing that I did earlier this year, and to this poem written kind of for Fred and kind of for the new friends I was making, who were wearing me out with suggestions for cures.

People don't GET IT.

This is the poem I wrote, for people who don't GET IT.  There is no imperative that they should, but there'd be a deep water well full of gratitude if they did.  So, in this unimportant instance, "A Shower and Chicken Soup" is dedicated to John Bonifield and Elizabeth Cohen, with all due respect.



A Shower and Chicken Soup

"Have fun," she called, and waited
for the sound of the key in the lock
to ready herself for a walk.

"Just do it.  Just do it.  Just do it,"
she said, eyeing the clock.
Not exactly scared -- more properly
put -- she was reticent.
"Don't dare mock me,
cats, and don't dare
get underfoot..."

Transfer from bed to chair using
one step with the right leg,
which leg is the right leg?
(they are easily mistook
these dread and crafty limbs,
one for the other, just look
at 'em) add a table grab-'n-push
with the right arm,
find the cane! find the cane!
then pivot, pray, and sit,
stare straight ahead,
it will ease, it will away,
will it away. where is that
leg now, cagey bastard?
It can stray, did it stray?

We said we'd walk together baby come what may

That come the twilight should we lose our way

If as we're walkin a hand should slip free

I'll wait for you

And should I fall behind

Wait for me

Reach to retrieve three towels from the half-bath,
folded earlier today, towels in waiting,
attendants all. Remove the Fentanyl pain patch,
dispose of it carefully, lest you kill a small animal.

(By accident.)

Take off the pink metal-studded hairband,
that wonderful confusing message!
You stall as you recall, you stall as you recall.

Gather the grabber designed for water,
aquamarine with finely molded tips, the three towels,
a clean pair of scrubs and the veterinary formula
of skin cleanser prescribed by the infectious disease specialist --
because you cannot afford the stuff made for people
and, it would appear, there is no difference.
This is labeled: For Horses.

It lacks in fragrance. It's not honeysuckle, trenchant lemon,
clement cucumber, or any of the serene green teas.

Poured in an old spray bottle accorded precisely
scored markings of perfectly proper proportions,
add the fragrance of the week,
something he deplores but you love:
Lavender.
(I picture fields of flickering blues;
I don't like the smell, either.
It smells too much.)

I shower in his bathroom.
The chair won't fit the door.
All these fine parameters, tincture of this,
precious local provender,
And the chair won't fit the door.
Grabbing on to sink and towel holders,
using my peony-decorated cane,
I lean on the tile at the shower-and-bath
combination corner, keening, keening,
so afraid, leaning, keening.

Toss the towels, the grabber, the cane,
the clothes, all, all of it goes, flying and clanging
into the bathtub, as you inhale
and search for sane,
focus on the pretty pretty cane.

Lift in the right leg, drop it,  scream,
and grab for the stabilizing bar
on the opposite side, my guard, above
the soap dish, with my right hand,
half pull, half fall inside,
the abattoir, hips on the shower
chair that stays in there,
that stays in there.
There is a screw poking through
the plastic, you said it did not match
the pre-drilled hole, and I always land on it,
ripping my clothes, scratching my right thigh.

I never tell him because this piercing keeps me focused

-- spastic and sarcastic --

this is what keeps me from screaming more:

the mean cost of a small scrape.

I cannot reach the mat that keeps me
from slipping; it's now on the left,
therefore unreachable.
If what I need is not within
the right's realm,
it cannot be mine.
She sighs, she cries,
she stops, she stops.

She stops,
thinks of the clock
and how there is no time
for this sighing, this crying.

Now for the undressing, the easiest part:
The few moments of liberation,
nothing touching the skin,
and I would sit there naked all day
except that he'd come home
and I'd still be unclean,
my hair a fated mess, and my legs... my legs.
My hated fenestrated legs.

Right arm tosses the dirty clothes
just to the right of the sink,
but not too far, not to block the way
out, not so the door won't open.
I'd be trapped in here,
and that would defeat
almost everything.

Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true

But you and I know what this world can do

So let's make our steps clear that the other may see

And I'll wait for you

If I should fall behind

Wait for me

Use the grabber to put the clean clothes over the shower rod:
This will take time and patience.
Put one towel on the tub floor
in lieu of the non-skid plastic mat
that is too heavy to lift.

Put the veterinary antibiotic spray poisoned
with lavender on the tub floor
between the feet.
Use the grabber to retrieve
the shampoo and conditioner,
the purple "pouf"
from the shower caddy.
Pick up the pumice stone and loofah
that you knock
off by mistake,
and replace.

Brace yourself and slow your breathing.
Turn on the hot water first; it takes 20 seconds to warm up,
then adjust the cold so that the water becomes lukewarm
to your body, to your chest;
do not trust the readings of your legs or hands,
your face.

Hold the shampoo bottle in your left hand, and be glad that it naturally
tilts downward so your right hand can catch the coconut (for extra body) white
pool, slap it on your head, one more time as fast as you can, and catch the shampoo bottle before it falls on your feet -- your foot,
because that right foot is like a magnet.

Lather, being as attentive to each side of the head as possible,
grab the grab bar, lean forward into the spray, get all the shampoo out.
Apply the conditioner in the same manner.  Start your mental clock.

While it's making your hair luxurious and smooth,
spray your body with the antibiotic cleanser meant for horses.
Don't rub or scrub it in, just let it sit, keep spraying until time to rinse
that lovely head of curly hair, about three minutes
(an extra minute for luck).

Rinse the conditioner from your head, try to stop crying,
because looking down you see red streaks in the froth
of the foam
and feel your skin splitting,
small tears in both shoulders, the thighs,
the right shin, the feet,
and maybe that spot on your butt
from the poked-through screw,
but probably not,
there's actually a callus there now.

Bend and twist and let the water rinse away the spray
then lather the purple pouf with soap
and gently gently wash every place that you can reach
from head and bloody ears to bloody toes.

Gasping now, wanting so to take the memory of a lovely warm shower
coursing down skin so silky, relaxing muscles tight from a day in the sun
playing pick-up tennis at the park courts downtown,
pausing to cool down with wall ball now and then,
cramming the car full of kids to drive to the last surviving
pharmacy with a fountain to get real lemonades, limeades.

Holding my face right up into the spray, hands over my head,
running through my hair, short then,
the idea of standing through a shower
now as foreign as saffron.

Rinsing, she has learned, is crucial, as she's never
terribly dirty, just a mass of dead skin and sweat that her twice
sometimes thrice cleansings per day obliterate, but the lotioned,
medicated cleansers so recommended leave traces, traces,
bits, hints, lint, evidence, of themselves
and her inabilities.

Her stepmom used to comfort her when the flu would hit,
bustling about efficiently, able to do a sickbed mise en place
but lost before the recipe ingredients in her huge kitchen.
equipped with culinary's finest stainless.  She bears bedside
basins and washcloths, clean gown and sheets, and as she talks to you
about the plans for redecorating the breakfast nook, she
untucks the top sheet, helps you off with your gown,
and, keeping you covered and warm,
she washes and rinses clean your face, your arms,
your arm pits, wipes down your legs, but really scrubs your feet.
A matter of fact, she hands, at the last, two wash cloths,
one soapy, one rinsed, to clean between your legs
while she gathers up all the dirties, holds out the basin
to collect those last two cloths, and takes it all away --
but is back in a flash, saying, "That takes care
of the hot spots, you see.  Always wash the hot spots,
and always wash your feet, you will feel so much better.
Now don't you feel better?"

All in her sweet southern lilt that belies
the swift efficiency
of a born nurse,
if not a mother.

She slips the clean gown, your favorite, blue with blue ribbons,
over your head, helping with the confusion of arms, laughing,
and simultaneouly removes the dirty, now damp, top sheet.
She pulls the wing chair she says is for "reading" close and
before you know it, you're ensconced in it, and on the bedside table
is her famous Campbell's Tomato Soup and whole
wheat toast, for dipping.

You can't eat it all, that's fine, and look, the bed's all made,
amplified with extra pillows, the sturdy kind, the kind
that have you sitting up and doing crosswords, or reading
(outside the reading "chair"), and looking out the windows --
(when did she open the drapes?) and looking out
to see the woods.

You notice that she's gone.  You cannot remember if you thanked her.
The house is huge but even in huge houses, you know every sound and
you detect the tiny click of the other wing's separating door
and laugh, hearing the advancing, slowly speeding click-click-click
of the small thing they call a dog, coming to amuse you.
Oliver, half cocker spaniel, half poodle, sweet and small
and not ingenious.

There is nothing for it but to do the feet,
let the tub fill up six or nine inches, try to move
them around a bit, take the pouf by the grabber --
now that is a saying wanting wide adoption:
take the pouf by the grabber, lads --
and gently scrub unless too much skin
slides off and pinkens the six or nine inches.

When the water drains, give the feet a good spritz of Magic
Lavender Lavage and do what you can to make it seem
you'd never been there.  Grab the grabber, lads,
and take up the sodden towel, wipe and spray,
wipe and spray, leave no microbes
alive.  Die, pathogens, die.  Disappear,
O Flakes of Me, down the drain.

And now you fold up, you ball up like tissue paper, lose
form,  lose patience with yourself and this, your accomplishment.
Dizzy, naked, and still clothes to wear and hair to do,
and my, you are aromatic.

It takes two towels and a method:
Dry the hair, gently, and toss the towel in a slap
to the back as many times as you can, then
rest.  Without giving it much thought, pull
up on the steadying bar, and stand.
Put the towel on the seat and sit back on it
as that is how one dries the derrière when
exhausted and the right arm ready
to give out.

Take the second towel, toss it over your legs,
gently, gently, stop, stop, stop.
Grab the grabber, lads! Grab the grabber, boys!
The clean top pulls on, hitches where the skin
is still wet, damp, humid. so be
patient. Be patient.

Grab the grabber, lads!
Grab it, boys!  Unfurl the scrub pants
that always look so huge until you have to put
a foot in, matching right foot to right pant leg,
left foot to left pant leg, yelling, screaming,
rivulets of pink, mostly sera now,
mostly lymph, but every inch aflame.

Scan your area. Is all that can be in place
in place, is there no embarrassment left to shame
you?  Your top is on, your pants around your ankles.
Hang the blessed grabber on the caddy, grab the bar
and stand again, yelling, screaming, those noises cannot
be my bones, mobilize your self, girl, get the waist
of the pants with ye olde grabber, pinch them with your left
hand, finally good for something, and use the right
to pull them up and fashion loops resembling a bow.

We swore we'd travel darlin side by side

We'd help each other stay in stride

But each lovers steps fall so differently

But I'll wait for you

And if I should fall behind

Wait for me

Hug the wall, no other description writes, hug the wall,
the hooks there mere inches from your eyes and every time,
every time, you think my eye my eye my skull my skull
impaled on this hook, and after I've done all this?

Crying, sobbing, more because you are almost done and
because you can, because he's not here to hear you,
you edge to the door, using grabber and cane, both
for crutch, then fall into the chair, waiting there
like an old hated friend, with two cats, big-eyed and
scared by all your noise, and about to be crushed by your
descending butt.  They run, squeaking, happy
that you made it out alive, in time
to feed them.

The cane now more useful held by the bottom end,
using the handle to hook all the towels and clothes,
pulling them to you, then bending, if you can, to grab them
up, pile upon the bed, ready for the washer.
You're almost done, you're almost done,
you're almost done, stop talking and breathe,
stop crying and breathe.

Comb out your wet hair,
and there's a memory of normal,
clean, fresh hair,
a touch of mousse --
shake the can in the right hand,
spray it into the left, scoop it out with the right,
smear it on the parts of the head you
can reach as the muscles seize, don't take
the pills, not yet, you'll hurt more later,
and they really don't help, it's more a crutch
but far less useful than cane and grabber.

Music, music, as loud as can be.
You've got a half-hour,
at least, love, play your music loud, raucous,
scream that and not despair.
Bruce, "If I should fall behind,"
Nina and "Mississippi
Goddam!" and I am suddenly sure
that I am an outraged black
woman, singing my piece, and I enunciate,
with incredibly sober drunken dignity:
"This is a show tune

But the show hasn't been written for it, yet."

Then I hear that earliest of bonny Bonnie

Raitt, so clear it breaks my heart, and I am
young (coveting that head of red hair),
singing with blue's greatest
in my parents' garage.

I put on my armor,
my three rings, my three bracelets,
my four earrings, my kickass hair band,
pink with rivets. Each thing a touchstone,
a meaning that I must wear, touch, and see.
I wish to God I could pluck this unibrow
but I cannot see well enough to do it,
nor control the hand enough to pull out
hair by hair, those straggling hairs.

But enough of what you can't do,
princess, look at what you've done:
you are clean, deloused, and you certainly smell
interesting.  There's a load of wash going,
and if you don't allow yourself to slow, to stop,
there's a chicken with some meat still on its bones
the start of a marvelous stock.
We've carrots, celery,  onion, garlic,
dried and earthy things --
squashes and four kinds of peppers.

I'll wait to see what you'd like for starch, perfectly diced
potatoes or the weight of brown rice or aromatic basmati
or jasmine, maybe beans (I vote potato).There is,
not that we can find, no Italian in you, anywhere,
but you will likely ask for noodles, without encouragement.

I stir in, at the last, my great love, musty lusty
mushrooms, buttons and baby bellas, and when you ask me
if I washed them, amplifying, eyes all squinty, adding "with care?"
I turn away and lie, like always:  "But, of course,"
having wiped each one with a clean cotton cloth napkin,
having pared away the stems you so fear
(scary, scary stems).

You're afraid of strange
things, but I respect your fears,
because I have seen your courage --
still, your terror of my green Amish bentwood rocking
chair amazes me, and the sweat of your upper lip
at mere mention of hot air balloons, and, of course,
being killed by a dirty mushroom.

Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees

I'll wait for you

And should I fall behind

Wait for me

When you come home, I hear the key in the door,
the ever hysterical "Honey, I'm home" done in bad Arnaz.
And I am so glad you never notice that I've showered,
though you usually call from the back, "Do you want me
to put your the wash load in the dryer?  When are we
eating?" And I remember to inquire about potato,
rices or beans, know to pause and wait for "how about pasta?"
I pick rotini instead of egg noodles, cook them separately
so as not to muck up my perfect broth,
and remind you to be better about buying
canned tomato products with added salt,
and spices.

I want my tomatoes unseasoned.

I add my own seasoning, and I love you,
and I will shower, dress, and adorn myself
with clean clothes, aromas,
talismans, prayers, and cries to the sky
as long as I absolutely can, for you.

]with thanks to The Boss]

© 2013 L. Ryan Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Draft Scat

so i thought that cleaning out accumulated drafts would be a semi-useful activity. 

 it sounds focused and goal oriented, right?  but i keep running into funny little starts, 

some funny enough to evoke a snort, even after two years of storage.  like this, 

the beginnings of a favorite rant topic -- BHL.  so on the off chance that you carry 

benadryl to fend off unexpected exposure to bernard-henri lévy, this is for you!

I have mixed feelings about Bernard-Henri Lévy, that "public" philosopher, one of the roughly ten self-proclaimed nouveaux philosophes --  facile contrarians with an affinity for cameras and microphones. Nothings bests Cornelius Castoriadis' description of the New Philosophers moniker as a rare example of "double antiphrasis."

There's a marked tendency among the membership toward being former Maoists, and a marked approbation of Late Capitalism.  I ask you:  Among the Maoists of your acquaintance,  is there even one who doesn't sheepishly cite "the spirit of the times" as what led them so astray?

On the one hand, he is a buffoon.
On the other hand, where else can I get my necessary supply of  "trademark panache: crisp, unbuttoned white Charvet shirts, golden tan and a windswept silvery mane of hair"?

I see his name these days, and I usually smile.  Someone once described this reaction as "delighted disbelief," a deep amazement that there are publishers out there still willing to air the easy quibbles and antiblahblahs of BHL.  My official stance on Lévy, as on all those who have made the choice to dig their own graves, is that he should remain interred, undisturbed by media attention or any other backhoe.

Impervious, however, to public ridicule, BHL rises again and again, a sophist zombie.  That thoroughly explains his persistent returns;  What explains ours?

Things like this have made me chuckle:

In his newest book, Mr. Lévy attacked the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant as a madman, and in support cited the Paraguayan lectures of Jean-Baptiste Botul to his 20th-century followers.

In fact Mr. Botul is the longtime creature of Frédéric Pagès, a journalist with the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné...

Mr. Pagès has never made a secret of his fictional philosopher, who has a fan club that meets monthly in salons throughout Paris.

Mr. Botul’s school of thought is called Botulism, his followers are botuliennes and they debate such weighty theories as the metaphysics of flab. As they describe it, Mr. Botul’s astonishing ideas ranged from phenomenology to cheese, sausages, women’s breasts and the transport of valises during the 1930s.

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Eric Carson, Doctor God

Due to an assortment of reasons, delay in diagnosis of CRPS is probably the foremost cause for treatment failure.

That's why I wish the diagnostic criteria were clearer, physicians and nurses were better informed, and, in those cases where litigation over injury/negligence/malpractice is ongoing, disinterested medical care were made available concomitantly.

There's nothing quite so demoralizing as having a competent physician, experienced in CRPS treatment and research, interrupt your Castles in Spain presentation to say, "Retired Educator, there is nothing, no treatment, no drug, left for you to try... It's not going to get any better... It's only going to get worse." That ranks up there with the doc who muttered, "If I had CRPS, I'd kill myself."

In my case, a group of doctors (Carson, Sween, Kelman and friends) and a hospital (SJHA) kept me undiagnosed and untreated long enough for the CYA statute of limitations to kick in after I developed CRPS after a fall in the ICU.  In lieu of suing, I asked for an investigation by the state, who uncovered enough details that investigators declared the 2002 clusterfuck a "Sentinel Event."

Dearest doctors, dearest hospitals!  You'd be surprised at how far honesty and compensatory action in good faith would get you.  And by "compensatory action," I mostly mean just doing your best to make things right.  Like providing prompt and appropriate treatment.  That kind of stuff.

So, my longtime readers are rolling their eyes in boredom, with thoughts like, "grow up and get over it" quite rightly popping up in between their ears.

I had been wondering why my first visit to my new Pain Management Dude last week was "off," beyond the significant impact of his radiating body odor -- which I am willing to attribute to an overnight shift and hard labor.  When he inquired about the genesis of my CRPS, I began to give him the extreme short version, but even that was cut off.  This is what I got out of my mouth before he gave a huge cough and began shuffling papers:  "I fell while in ICU and broke..." From there we went directly to his predictions of doom and hopelessness, with well-placed exclamations of "oh, my God" when he pried the slippers off of my feet.

His name was so familiar.

I deposited that name into the wondrous search function of my browser and voilà... he is part and parcel of the offending and offensive orthopedic group that spearheaded the 2002 ClusterFuck.  That's why there was no need for me to finish my story, provide my medical history -- because he already knew it. He clearly could not bear to hear it again.

Recently, during one of those late night screaming orgies we so love, I sent an email, between spasms, to Dr. Eric Carson, egotistical major mover of the 2002 SNAFU.  It's gone unanswered, which is good, as there's no appropriate response.  He's now attached to the University of Virginia, practicing Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Surgery.

People have asked me if I don't fear reprisals from people like José "The Turd" Ochoa, or Sween, Kelman, and Eric Ward Carson.  No, I don't.  Were I posting lies, yes, I suppose I'd be scared.  But since it is just the sad truth that I present, I doubt any of them have the courage to look in the mirror.

Dr. Carson,

This coming May will mark the twelfth year I have been living with CRPS.  It has spread to all four limbs, and part of my face.  The pain is unrelenting, the disability total and permanent, and no one told me about the likelihood of spasms.  But then, not telling me anything was a major goal at the time.  The failure to administer stress dose steroids pre/peri/post-op, the ensuing adrenal failure and fall, requiring further surgery, and the evident development of CRPS -- followed by a malicious attempt to avoid prompt diagnosis and treatment -- it's still beyond the pale.

I developed chronic and untreatable osteomyelitis, and eventually, that left shoulder prosthesis had to be permanently removed.  Despite 5 years of surgeries and PICC lines, intravenous antibiotics, the infection remains, believed to be in the form of a "biofilm" community.  It spread to the right shoulder, as well.

I need to let go of the rancor I feel at the mention of your name or every instance requiring an explanation of the genesis of the syndrome, or the infection.  It's hard, for you have essentially gotten away with murder, and apparently are unrepentant.

The often repeated lie, that hubris is necessary to be a top-notch specialist, is the only thing I can imagine at the root of your psychopathologies -- which I suppose would be better described as your "alleged personal problems." 

Please don't allow your ego to so get in the way that you ever disable another patient like you did me. Mistakes happen, and then should simply be acknowledged and addressed.  Covering things up, dismissing your patients as ignorant wastes of your time -- that's where you do enormous harm.

I will never forgive or forget you, but I have to trust that the "system" keeps an eye on you, and that, in spite of your natural proclivity to refute any insinuation of error, you've traveled the length of a helpful learning curve. 

I know you're scoffing at this email.

I hope you've changed.

Sincerely,

The Retired Educator

Well... time to move on.  Try, try, to fake it 'til I make it!  I've some chores to do, some lovely creatures needing me, and the promise of a kickass fish dinner to fulfill.

I am grateful and happy for and about many things and relationships. For instance, Marmy has so come around in her feelings for me that I'm perpetually gifted with a soft 8-pound wad of fluff attached to my midsection.

The sun does shine, the flowers do bloom.  The kids break into a run for no reason, and Fred is as sweet as only Fred can be.


© 2013 L. Ryan Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Romance Studies: Memory Lane Repost

This was published a year ago, and is one of those pieces that has the germs of several good short stories scattered about -- so many fine characters, such unique situations.  But mostly it serves as a reminder of the importance of friends, in all the classifications and confusions inherent to those relationships.  From demanding divas to mealy-mouthed geniuses, make the time to swipe a bandanna stained with their salty sweat, or maybe a sweater as soft to the skin as that friend was to your fragility, in some truck stop before dawn.
Just don't take anything that they need.  Or divulge what you all pinkie-swore to protect as private.

Faust poster, Milan, 1863

Hello, Dear Readers!

I've been quiet here, but pretty darned loud, elsewhere.  The mapping coordinates of my new "elsewhere"?  Ha!  What do you think I am, gullible?  Excuse me one moment, la Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore calls -- she is down with The Crud, from which Fred and I are just now escaping, and the poor child needs fresh, microwaved arboreal rice heating packs, wrapped in the organic flannel of my favorite old shirt. Apparently there is no softer organic flannel in the world... than my favorite... old... beloved... shirt.

It's over-sized, not being really mine. Over-sized soft things are perfect for CRPSers.  And, until The Milanese Nightingale made me wash it ten times straight,then douse it with Snuggles laundry softener, it still smelled like the man I "borrowed" it from.  Okay, so some people leave relationships with pre-fabricated legal divisions, half of the children, the beach house but not the in-town condo.  I leave with pieces of favored fashion -- in this case, Matthew's well-worn plaid organic cotton shirt.

Matthew vies with Brother-Units Grader Boob and TW for Total Sweetness Quotient.  No offense to TW, but as I recall, he is on the normal side of height, and no offense to Grader Boob, all of six feet and four, but if Matt didn't slouch, he topped The Boob by another good four inches.  And while years of grading have added girth to The Boob, Matt is genetically determined to skeletal aspirations. Also, he forgets to eat.

Matt had no love relationship with me.  He may have secretly hated me, but I'm pretty sure that'd be both beyond his capabilities and just not the case, being unwarranted.  So how dare I have stolen his long, soft, well-worn organic cotton blue plaid shirt?

Okay, and a V-neck sweater, baby blue.  That's it.  I swear.

Well, I had a huge crush on him, of course.

Matthew mumbles.  Probably not now, as he's established as a biggie in the academic world, is a father and a husband -- to a strong, beautiful woman who just wouldn't tolerate mumbling if that mumbling were controllable.  She's also a doctor, and so I think Matthew gets a Mumbling Pass due to some mild condition, maybe an oral deformity of some kind, or larynx liabilities.  Cathy wouldn't spend her life with a Mumbler-By-Choice.

Cathy was there when I met Matt, fell head over heels for Matt, and knew, as did I, the complete impossibility of my infatuation.  I liked her a lot.  Smart, calm, swift, pretty, private.

The thing is, you get used to it, Matt's mumbles.  Also, he garners a few benefits from this minor affliction.  People shut up when he speaks, the better to hear him.  And thank the Lord above, he doesn't waste the opportunity with a bunch of yaddayadda.  Unfortunately, the Devil on his broad shoulders has him convinced that he can tell a good joke.  Ay.  Oy.  The Devil double dogged him, too, as Matt thought he played a decent hand of poker.  We wagered match sticks, poverty-stricken academics that we were.

Matt hosted prodigious dinners, always themed by color.  White dinners were good, and pretty easy to digest.  Orange dinners called for antacids.

Those broad shoulders.  That beautiful long black hair, always one day late for a shampoo, in a pony tail.  Speckled with grey back then, probably all grey now, though I hope not.  A bodacious beard, neatly trimmed.

No butt, but legs from here to there.  I never saw him on a bed that didn't look like a fun house set up, his knees usually marking the end of the mattress, his honker feet hanging in the air. Unfortunately, unless Cathy was there to shape the spoon, he liked to spread out in sleep, no curling up, no tucking of those grandaddy long legs.

I met him at my first campus Amnesty International chapter meeting. New to the Gothic Wonderland, I wanted some activities outside the scintillating world of Romance Studies, something I think anyone could understand.

Romance studies is an umbrella academic discipline that covers the study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of areas that speak a Romance language. Romance studies departments usually include the study of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Additional languages of study include Catalan and Romanian, among others.
Romance studies departments differ from single- or two-language departments in that they attempt to break down the barriers in scholarship among the various languages, through interdisciplinary or comparative work. These departments differ from Romance language departments in that they place a heavier emphasis on connections between language and literature, on one hand, and culture, history, and politics on the other hand.
Because most places in Latin America speak a Romance language, Latin America is also studied in Romance studies departments. As a result, non-Romance languages in use in Latin America, such as Quechua, are sometimes also taught in Romance studies departments.

For some reason, I remember one moment with the intricacy of a sharply focused journalistic photograph.  There were five us crammed inside the car of our recently deceased boss -- she was killed in a car accident while vacationing in Portugal, and we inherited her car, her overwrought, shrill coven, and her tribe of feral cats.

Along with her life, the semester had just ended and we had an unmet grading deadline or something -- for some reason, we were frantic to get to the Languages Building, do whatever it was needed doing, pile back in the car, and be on our own way to vacation, which, if I recall correctly, was a Latin American studies conference in New Orleans.  We were flying in our own booze, being universally broke.

The campus was empty, bereft of rich kids, void of harried profs, a sucking vacuum free of administrative types -- though somewhere was a woman tapping her long, well-kept fingernails on the thin veneer of a big desk, waiting, waiting, waiting for those Romance Studies ne'er-do-wells who owed her a printout of grades.  Tap tap tap.

So being stopped by a campus cop was not helpful.  The Dead Boss' parking decal was out-of-date and no way were we going to be allowed to park in front of the bleeping chapel, just a hop, a skip, and a frantic sprint from the Languages Building.  Please note:  there were maybe four cars in sight and there was no way Mr. Campus Cop could know about the vodka bottle leaking on my underwear in the baggage crammed inside Dead Boss Lady's trunk.  Not that my drunk underwear should keep us from parking in front of the chapel but some people are judgmental.

Clearly, Campus Cop was bored, and we were the cure.

"So, where are y'all heading in such a hurry, anyway?" he asked, leaning into my space through the open window.

Like trained seals, we answered as one:  "205 Languages Building..." after which our chorus broke down into cacophonous parts of differing lengths and stresses.

I said, "...so that we can finish some important business for the Dean."
Alice said, "...'cause we gotta empty our mailboxes."
Alejandro added the ever useful "and we got schtuff to do!"
Scott, whom few managed to understand, tossed off a friendly "...and we have to deconstruct Calderón's historical adaptations of..."
And dear Valérie, a Phys Ed grad student from France, summed it all up with: "I have the besoin, the growing need, to use the Romance Studies' salle de bains... You must let us pass, you flic, you feuk...

Before Valérie's full bladder led her to further announcements in verlan, we regained our choral strength and declared, in striking unison, "We're faculty with Romance Studies!"

He pulled his considerable girth out of the car window, stood up straight, one hand on the radio clipped to his belt, right where one would expect a gun, and chuckled.

"Y'all are messed up.  You want me to believe they teach romance here?"

Anyway, it went on and on, we weren't able to get Valérie to shush, and it wasn't all that funny.  I can't even manage a "you had to be there!" -- because what was more memorable was how time froze and I saw the place for the first time in years.  Maybe because it was empty, maybe because we were driving a dead friend's car, anxious to get away from her coven mates, her feral cats, our grief.  Maybe because I could hear tunes in my head, mixed by a mean DJ -- "a winter's day.." and "Monday, monday, monday..." and various Jim Croce tunes, the most oft repeated being "I've got a name, I've got a name..."

The sky was grey, the trees and dead leaves were of no color at all.

Dana, our dead boss, had begun the transition from Romance Studies to Primatology, which makes a sort of sense.  The nattering of lemurs.

Matthew's clothing smelled like work.  Like his stories of raking cranberries in Wisconsin, harvesting blueberries in Maine.  Like his waking just minutes before his classes were to begin, dunking his head in water, shaking off excess with the vigor of a damp dog, running out the door in the same clothes he slept in.  A plaid blue shirt, covered by a misshapen baby blue v-neck pullover.  He taught philosophy and was finishing his dissertation, and saw brilliance in most every student he met.

He's the one to whom I gave the canvas, the huge canvas, that bore the explanation of my near death experience on the cliff -- do you remember, Dear Reader?  It doesn't matter, really.  What matters is that he is the one whose understanding I valued the most.  He hung it in his office, despite the fact that much of the "paint," not being paint at all, began to fall off the ill-prepared painting surface -- the gold hair foam, for instance, and some of the kaopectate.  It would have held up better kept horizontal, flat.

Matt and I shared something else, that we, in turn, kind of kept under wraps -- our attempt to help a battered woman that I'd met while in the hospital.  It helped that Matt was so tall and broad, the prominence of his skeleton hidden by the bulk of shirt, sweater, and a weird black raincoat.  But she couldn't leave, wouldn't leave, despite our two trips to free her.

There was a custom in Matt's house, one that I picked up, of welcoming visitors who tend to stay, on average, for three years.  So always have a house with a porch, and hang on to the hammocks you collect, because they're perfect for 3-year visitors -- who will all be, I can assure you, Buddhists.  I don't know why.

Our battered woman was an evangelical Christian who still loved the man who had left old scars and new welts on her back from his predilection for belts with big metal buckles.  When I was helping her pack during our first visit, she packed several of those belts and cowboy buckles, rolling them up to save room, her hands lingering on the leather with a soft passion.

Matthew always loved Cathy;  Cathy loved no one but Matt.  But, and this is the one area in which we all snickered at Philosophy Boy, he did not believe in monogamy.  Despite remaining monogamous after meeting Cathy, if you don't count the sex he had with other women. They managed marriage after I left that scene, but I would love to have heard the reasonable conversations that had to have taken place.

Oops, Bianca is yelling -- to me, a sign of recovery and hope for a rapid cure for her beleaguered voice, her operatic instrument -- for another "hot flannel." Another bit of Matt, cut into strips, then basted together to make pockets for the arboreal rice The Castafiore insists upon as the best heat-retaining rice.

Believe it or not, Gounod's Faust is on the schedule at The Met, beginning Thursday, March 21, with the final production on 5 April.  It's been envisioned in a setting that encompasses our most recent World Wars, which I think suits the story well.  Bianca is cast as first understudy to Marguerite, Marina Poplavskaya.



Most importantly, not only will the Milanese Nightingale enjoy a fine time in New York City, but we will be free of Marguerite's Jewel Song for weeks, possibly even a month should the show tour...


It's expensive business, opera.  I just checked the cost of an orchestra seat, specifically Row Q, Seat 111 -- $235.  But "day of" standing room tickets go for between $17 and $40.  You'd have to really love Gounod to stand through 3+ hours of his Faust.

What's that?

The sweater?  Well, the night that Marmy Fluffy Butt decided to give birth to five kittens, though she quit in exasperation after four, leaving Fred to birth little Dobby, I grabbed the first, warmest, softest thing I could find, and that was Matthew's sweater.  The kittens, no offense to Marmy, seemed to love the sweater more than her own unreliable fluff, and so the sweater was donated to the cause.  When they finally were weaned and confident enough to travel any-and-every where, I retrieved it, washed it.  But the clawed holes and stains were permanent, as were my memories of my marble-mouthed philosopher friend, so I threw it away.

Well, she's launched into what might be considered a scream, so I'd best be going.  Please support The Met in this newly envisioned version of Gounod's Faust... as we would be both proud and just plain old ecstatic were it to hit the road in May for say, a six month university tour.  Yes, we'd miss Bianca's help during ManorFest 2013, when she's usually anchor to the night Rescue Squad that retrieves lost Maze Runners.  And I know the Manor Staff would regret not having her here to wax both the marble and the wood steps to our many magnificent stairs.  But as it is for the greater good, we will pull together and get by.

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CRPS Update

I should let you, Dear Readers, know upfront that this is an update on the personal level -- although I've been doing a fair amount of reading "in the field," the reading is mostly above my head or personal interest stories.  Why share that with you when I can bitch and moan on my own?

Remember the fundamental principle here at Marlinspike Hall:  Whose blog is it, anyway?

Since life switched from our Renaissance King-sized bed to my single hospital contraption, decorated with an understated trapeze attachment in matte black, I've been in a steady decline.  Well, it's not much of a leap to needing to ask for a hospital bed to that assumption, eh?

Not that my Purple Prose Gratitude Journal is getting fat with loopy handwritten entries, but I will admit that when my body goes into spastic mode, the understated trapeze attachment softly jingles and jangles, calling up memories of one of my favorite Southern Tête de Hergé's front porches and its many gentle wind chimes. Those same spaz attacks bring waves of desire for the blueberry moonshine that also rise up in memory of that ivy-covered porch.  Ahem.

Many is the time I've sworn that it is the spasms that will one day make me paper my body with Fentanyl patches and mix up a chocolate pudding laced with lethal doses of a dozen sweet drugs.  If I did not think that a peaty single malt would make me lose the pudding, it'd replace blueberry shine as my favorite strong drink.

Ah, ha ha, just joshing.

In any event, I've now become the Manor Resident who grabs sleep where she can, and that usually is long after dawn.  This is something I intend to change, and soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.  Tomorrow may also see me pitching in to help the Genetically Indentured Manor Staff, as so many have taken vacation time to warmer climes.  A little vacuuming, mopping, laundry, poofing and fluffing never hurt anyone.

Fevers are up about a degree and I blame those mo'fos for my general decline.  A febrile state makes for great melodrama (Oy! I am burning up, as if in the very flames of Hell, and so on, and so forth) and laziness (Is that cat hair clinging to my electrostatic hospital bed rails?  Ew, gross.  SOMEONE should do a bit of dusting around here, damn it!).

But, fevers also are truly... tiring.  Mostly the parts where they're going up, and the parts where they're going back down.  The steady heat is not bad.  Kind of energizing, even.

CRPS is not causing the heat waves, of course, it's the untreatable osteomyelitis, perhaps a touch of lupus. And yet, CRPS so hates to be excluded, and so tends to get nasty during a persistent fever.  So it's spazspazspaz and burning neuropathic pain married to the deep ache of the bones.

I've mentioned before, or hope I have, that I employ more than a bucket load of drugs to handle these things. Heck, I got me a graduate degree at Berkeley, so you know I turn a quick eye to all that is alternative, complementary, or adjunctive therapy.  What works best is ice... until those medical sadists, the Physical Therapist Gangs, beat it into my head that cold is bad, bad, bad, wrong, wrong, wrong.  So I moved on, but how many times can you watch repeats of Downton Abbey?  So I began an incisive, lighthearted study and practice of mindfulness.

The initial forays into mindfulness for CRPS led to anaphylactic shock until my mentors made an adjustment and removed any references to the "happy place."  Once that was taken care of, it turned out to be pretty simple.

You don't run away from the pain.  Like a cat, and some dogs, you circle three times, wiggle your butt a little, and curl up smack dab in the middle of that pain.  There you stay until you're through it.  You don't speak much about it, beyond what may be necessary.  But you snuggle into it, stare at it, see it, observe it. Thank G_d, you don't analyze it (until pressured by such asshats as physicians).

For long term and unending severe pain, like mine, you mix in the occasional distraction, and that would be best defined as whatever works at the moment.  Mahjong, when played in a zen state, can be very effective. The vogue of marathon reruns of classic television might fit like a glove one day, and repulse the next. Law and Order SVU, for example, has no usefulness any longer in mindlessness/mindfulness sessions, whereas the Criminal Intent version, or the early original shows -- the variety pack -- are entertaining.

When mindless mindfulness is flat out denied by a pouting, infantile CRPS patient, that's when such an ingrate should opt for a comedy genre (literary or televised/streamed) or the infallible humor of felines.  Being fussed at by Marmy Fluffy Butt because you dared shift her tiny frame a few centimeters gets a belly laugh every time.  Dobby in a box is hysterical.  Buddy the Maine Coon cracks a person up just by facial expression. And all three have extensive nursing backgrounds.  A kitty massage is a better soporific than anything Big Pharma can dream up.

Music requires a careful touch.  The mp3 player yields mysterious tunes in shuffle mode, sometimes so eerily reflective of one's severe pain that it's simply not a decent option.  Unless, of course, you need to cry and have not been able to produce tears, either due to the constant dehydration from the constant fever, or due to the aridity of my heart.

Most of the time, though, music is a great aid to treating pain, especially in those 20-35 minute periods before the breakthrough meds kick in.  Also, when the dark is terrifying -- you know, when the threat of dawn edges into the window pane and you think: "No, not again, not another night of no sleep."  Then you must make yourself circle thrice, settle in, and call up Nina Simone and Eric Clapton, certain bits of Neil Young, ending with the Brett Dennen of around 2004.  That's this week's menu.  Last week saw more of the Decemberists, my beloved John Hartford, and the Wainwright family, Loudon, Martha, and Rufus.  I am finding great focus for my pain in Johnny Cash's American Recordings and the very sweet beginnings of Bonnie Raitt, from a very sweet album recorded in her parents' garage, with their supremely sweet jazz musician friends.  She sounds so wavery and young, so un-twangy, that knowing every bit of her later sounds is enough to make me weep.

I'm undergoing a good many variations in the CRPS experience, feeling stuff that I thought would never return, rapid cycling from red to deep purple, cold to hot, electric strikes that produce yips of howls. The everpresent, though, is what makes "suicidal ideation" something to ridicule.  The deep, deep pain, the burning bones that are somehow also ice. The "movement disorder" -- but we've covered that.

On the up-side, I have lost most of my decrepit fingernails and the regrowth seems healthier.

Where did I put that Purple Prose Gratitude Journal?

As for how it's going, breaking in my new Obamacare doctors -- last Thursday, I met the doctor who will be my Primary Care.  She put together a hasty Problem List.  I decided CRPS should top it, and so mentioned it first.

Blank look.

Okay, so I reverted to "RSD" and before I could unpack it, she said, hand waving in the air, "Oh, I know. Something Sympathetic Something."

I shot her a bright smile. "Right!"

And when they gave me their efficient printout record of our brief initial alliance, I saw that my primary problem was "CLPS." Fred giggled.

Sorry, loves, but I have to go.  I feel a need for Townes Van Zandt.  twitchtwitchtwitch.  I think I hear his clunky cowboy boots out on the Front Porch... and the gentle call of windchimes.

© 2013 L. Ryan

REPOST: john trudell, courtesy of the family blog whore

First published on 2/24/2013

Tip of the hat, finger aside the nose, to TW, as I steal from his Valentine's Day post: "They Didn't Listen" -- and thank him for the find, and kiss the very center of his forehead.

Uploaded on Jun 27, 2009 by NancyRedStar·

"These Memories"


In the reality of many realities
how we see what we see
affects the quality 
of our reality 

We are 
children of earth and sky
DNA descendant and ancestor 
human being physical spirit 
bone flesh blood as spirit

We are 
in time and space 
but we're from beyond time and space 
the past is part of the present 
the future is part of the present 
life and being are interwoven

We are 
DNA of Earth, Moon, planets, stars 
we are related to the universal 
Creator created creation 
spirit and intelligence with clarity 
being and human as power

We are 
a part of the memories of evolution
these memories carry knowledge
these memories carry our identity
beneath race, gender, class, age
beneath citizen, business, state, religion

We are human beings
and these memories are trying
to remind us
human beings human beings
it is time to rise up,
remember who we are
~ John Trudell


Lyrics: John Trudell 
Music: Mark Matson & Hayley Hutt 
Vocals:John Trudell & Hayley Hutt 
Additional Vocals and Harmony:Deirdre Radford
Keyboards and Drum: Mark Matson 
Guitars: Byron Roberts
Produced and Engineered by: Mark Matson
Executive Producer: Nancy Red Star 

i don't think he likes it one bit but that's just too doggone bad.  someone in this family must be shameless, and i volunteered long ago ----->> if you love the land, this country, the solid comfort of the amazingly real, the white skull recognition of all that you forgot.... go read, revel,  and rest at TW's american idyll.

The Amazon Cloud Robbery

This is here because it is the only song from this album that will successfully load onto my Major Pain Management Treatment When The Manor Is Enveloped In Darkness And Swathed In Silence, that being my mp3 player.  Were it not a vaporous thing, mere wisps, I'd be tempted to shoot the Amazon Cloud.  Because I've tried everything...

Album: Peace (1999)

I've Tried Everything

The truth of life is the greatest gift

But I don't think, I can make it fit

And who would guess it would come to this

When I've tried everything

And I should know, but I can't explain

The endless noise sounding in my brain

Who would've thought that you could feel such pain

When you've tried everything

Ooh, you're a loser now

Yeah, you're a loser

Yeah, you're a loser now

La la la

La la la

La la la

I should be cool, but I'm burning hot

I should be good, but I fell apart

Don't look at me, now don't even start

'Cause I've tried everything

Yeah, I've tried everything

Ooh, you're a loser now

Yeah, you're a loser

Ooh, you're a loser now

Yeah, you're a loser now, now

Songwriters
LENNOX, ANNIE / STEWART, DAVID ALLAN

"You Have A New Follower!"

Twitter politely informed me, via email, that I had a new follower.  Still woozy from yesterday, I dove headlong into today's wooz by googling the name of this person, found him, found him, also, to be seemingly aboveboard and legitimate.  That's where most people would stop, having better things to do.  But by then I was in wooz up to my belly button and had consumed three scones.

I started looking at other guys using the same name.

The first laid me low in the land of woozy laughter.  He has a Wikipedia entry.  So gasp or something. No, a gasp might be excessive.  A brief intake of breath might be more appropriate.  His entry is just a stub, a mere nub, under the categories of "Israeli linguists, Israeli expatriates in Japan, Jewish Japanologists, Living people, Lexicographers, Asian linguist stubs, Israeli academic biography stubs."  

Slightly jealous, I found myself wondering if, one day, provided that I play my cards right and meet the right people, I might be a stub.

Listen to what Stub Man has done, how his life is beautifully wrapped in that exotic Asian yellowish orange tissue paper, secured with a miniature obi:

Jxxx Hxxxxxx (春遍雀來, ハルペン・ジャック) is an entrepreneur and linguist specializing in Chinese characters or Kanji. He is best known as Editor in Chief for the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary and the New Japanese-English Character Dictionary.
H is CEO of the CJK Dictionary Institute, offering electronic resources for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean dictionary data. Hxxxxxx is also a Fellow at Showa Women's University.
Hxxxxxx also is the founder and current Executive Director for International Development of the International Unicycling Federation. Hxxxxxx is a major contributor to the Lifeboat Foundation, a project which aims to build a space colony so that humanity can survive in the event of the Earth's destruction.

My actual new follower, of the same name, is also a wonder of a person, even if there's no mention in his pedigree of unicycling or 4-man bobsledding. He is an advocate for old people and the families of old people, who usually meet him at a point of crisis and agitation.  Elder Care, it's called these days, a subset in the economy of gerontology.  He hates bed sores and is apparently a knight whose shining sword swiftly slices through the sticky webs of red tape at nursing homes, "rehabs," hospitals, and inappropriate home health set ups.

I'm thinking of "following back," since I'm closer to the bed sore scene than the many Seas of Tranquility awaiting humankind after the zombies, werewolves, and nuclear disasters have sent us fleeing this benevolent home.

Funny.  In my wooziness following a long and difficult day yesterday, I immersed myself in Le Petit Prince, available now through the Gutenberg Project (isn't that wonderful?).  In fact, here at the end of today's wooz -- there's been a considerable time lapse between beginning and end of this fascinating entry, mostly spent sleeping and reading a newspaper, the real kind, that folds and rustles, and smells all newspapery -- I think Antoine de Saint-Exupéry developed the single most meaningful test of our individual lucidities, stripped of space colony escape pods and nursing home neglect, being fourteen or ninety.

And he was kind enough, before politely disappearing in the sky or in the sand or in the ocean, wherever it was he ended up, to make this single most meaningful test of our individual lucidities a test that cannot embarrass us.

Aren't people, generally, wonderful?

illustration from Le Petit Prince

© 2013 L. Ryan

A Moment in Time

I love this photo.

It's of a friend and her horse, Flea Bag, as they round a barrel.

There's such a oneness in horse and rider, horse and friend, that the barrel had not a chance in this world -- they make that barrel about as inconsequential as spit.

Look at the lines!  The speed!  The trust!

I could do without the hat, would rather see girly curls in the breeze, but I'm told that, like the wind in those parts, it's something I just don't understand.  Something to do with "culture." Harrumph.

Please do not reproduce this photo.
If you do, Flea Bag will run you down.

On Barrel Racing


© 2013 L. Ryan

Physicists are killing the dream of suicide

Square, Cube, Tesseract
 "the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square"

************************************************

I'll be straight up with you, Dear Readers.  I've been suicidal.  No, not mushy-mushy "suicidal ideation," give your belongings away trite and tripe, but stone-cold "I feel nothing compels me to stop any longer" days and nights.  Because anyone with a bad case of CRPS for longer than, say, three years, thinks about suicide every morning they are unlucky enough to wake up.  Morning, afternoon, evening, whatever.  And three years is equally arbitrary.

This is when I'm supposed to tell you what stayed my hand.

Except that nothing has.  It hovers, instead, shaking in midair.

Not even the usual stuff could stop me now.  That being::  the accrual of sufficient funds to support Fred in his final years, as he winds and wends his way around the grounds of these grand Haddock Family holdings. That being:  teaching him (or Sven, Bianca, or maybe even the Cabin Boy) to clear the kitchen counters, do the dishes, and put everything back in its place once clean and dry.  That being: paying off my debts so that my departure is not the kerplunk of a tiny pebble in our moat, but the gentlest surface addition of a dandelion parachute and seed, a complement to the naturally accruing muck of the moat.  Only I would think to think "Ah, le futur du dent de lion..."  But I have been neither perennial nor herbaceous.

That being:  the desire to know how things turn out for my family members and the people who fell into my gnobby spider's web and became my friends.

The old concerns of the novitiate died with my solemn vows -- I don't care who has to find me, who has to do the cleaning up, who has to make a phone call or two.  It's not that difficult, and no soul known to me would be shocked.  The even older concerns of the narcissist don't keep the heart contracting, the thought of how some would be hurt, some insulted, some angry, some mildly disappointed.  Will the truth of my life come out, every secret, every fault, every unknown success?  I murdered narcissism about a decade ago, with lapses, true, but that's no longer the darkest stain on my soul.  (The secret to getting out most organic stains is the oxygenating action of hydrogen peroxide.  And, by the by, an excellent help to CRPSers out there with feet that make passers-by cringe in revulsion?  One cup hydrogen peroxide and one cup Epsom Salts, diluted to an amount that seems practical.  Oh, but first take a handful of pain meds, say 25-40 minutes beforehand, because the use of an old toothbrush is required.  If someone really loves you, they'll do that part while you smack some gum and watch "Duck Soup.")

Again, what has my hand jangling so in a jello-shimmy just short of suicide, since nothing has changed the sieve envy of my mind?  Mine own anger, that's what.  Not yours, the possessive referring to none of you, Dear Readers, but the "yours" that designates the Usual Suspects, more precisely, the You the eye and mind of Keyser Söze would flit upon, briefly, not to concoct a credible story, but as the world's best annihilator of essence, a succubus of haloed ringlets of shades, lengths, and quality to rival Joseph's ridiculous coat, a precision parser of your particular sentence.  Everything is a circle, isn't it?

So now I must pretend.  Pretend that that is not my hand jazz dancing near hot flame, that that is not furor lighting up mine eyes, but joy at seeing you again.

It's nothing to do with being happy or not, or any other sentient commonplace.  I've explained, even, that it is not self-pity.  I recognize that there are people who suffer beyond my wilds.  I am sorry for them and do what I can, when I can, to alleviate their situation -- though usually that alleviation is so abstracted it will do the individual inciting it no good whatsoever.

I can see the goddamned glass is half full.  Three-quarters, even, if you press me, and if we can chat physics and the effects of modifying the shape of the eye's boundary.

Fred delights in the notion of a holographic multiverse.  Would you believe that I find most succinct the explanation given by the Physics section of About.com?  (Especially in comparison to the hair-raising versions Fred blurts out as he rocks in the green rocker by my bed!)  Here! I've stolen some of "About"'s explanation:

The holographic principle is a mathematical principle that the total information contained in a volume of space corresponds to an equal amount of information contained on the boundary of that space. This dependence of information on surface area, rather than volume, is one of the key principles of black hole thermodynamics.  

In Brian Greene's 2011 book The Hidden Reality, he suggests a tightly interlocked Holographic Multiverse:

the holographic principle envisions that all we experience may be fully and equivalently described as the comings and goings that take place at a thin and remote locus. It says that if we could understand the laws that govern physics on that distant surface, and the way phenomena there link to experience here, we would grasp all there is to know about reality.

Now, here is where "About" dumbs it down, and pretty much says what Fred, a-rockin', also says, but degarbled. Speech going back and forth in space, combined with smug glee, is not conducive to teaching. The sound is aimed all over the darned place, distorting the waxy protective vernix of my immature comprehension.

According to the holographic principle, there should be a physically-equivalent parallel universe that would exist on a distant bounding surface (the edge of the universe), in which everything about our universe is precisely mirrored.

What exactly does this mean?

Well, we live in a three dimensional universe. If you have a 3-dimensional region then the edge of that region would be a 2-dimensional surface. For example, if you have a solid rubber ball, the 3-dimensional object has a 2-dimensional spherical surface.

The holographic principle suggests that this surface would contain enough information to perfectly represent everything that takes place within it. Think of it kind of like a reflection on the surface (although this is only a useful analogy, the precise formulation of the holographic principle is a mathematical relationship based upon quantum physics).

If this highly-theoretical conjecture is true, then that means that our universe exists in two different forms, though those two universes are completely identical in every respect. As Brian Greene explains in his 2011 book, The Hidden Reality:

Our experiences here, and that distant reality there, would form the most interlocked of parallel worlds. Phenomena in the two - I'll call them Holographic Parallel Universes - would be so fully joined that their respective evolutions would be as connected as me and my shadow.

This is, in short, the origin of my anger.  I want to object, as if these worlds retained any proper respect for Robert's Rules -- using a diaphragm-controlled stage voice to call out, "Point of order!"  That would stop everything -- EVERYTHING -- until I could get everything -- EVERYTHING -- figured out.  Because my understanding, at this point, is that, while I may exist, how, where, when, and why I do has less force of impact than my dandelion fluff coalescing with our algae-rich moat water.

It seems that for my suicide to be a true thing, I must first strive to be one-dimensional, a pair of points whose surface has no dimension.

Rocking beside me a few days ago, happy as a clam, Fred marvels, to and fro, that we've found the Higgs boson and now he puzzles at its lightness.  Particle physics has gone red with the shame of its insufficiency to explain the 85% of matter that we cannot find, dark matter, and over the purple prose of the new fictive string in the narrative, that of supersymmetry, which posited an undiscovered doppelganger that is, for symmetry's sake, much heavier.  Elegant mathematics and no proof, string theory, and now... mucking up my suicide, extra dimensions, microscopic, and always, evidentiary failure of tests of "existing" models.

Fred sounds so content, excited.  Like one of those people who will live, old, bent, and aching within that contentment, and will greet death as a passageway, a chance to morph into some of that formulaic elegance, that chalk eeked out across green slate, erasable marker on white board, those old dreams, smashed to smithereens in search of God.

Physicists are killing the dream of suicide.


© 2013 L. Ryan

"The Beast in Me," sans commentaire

Nick Lowe

Written for, and about, Johnny Cash, his ex-step-father-in-law (for genealogy experts!)

The beast in me

Is caged by frail and fragile bonds

Restless by day

And by night, rants and rages at the stars

God help, the beast in me

The beast in me

Has had to learn to live with pain

And how to shelter from the rain

And in the twinkling of an eye

Might have to be restrained

God help the beast in me

Sometimes 

It tries to kid me that it's just a teddy bear

Or even somehow managed 

To vanish in the air

And that is when I must beware 

Of the beast in me

That everybody knows

They've seen him out dressed in my clothes

Patently unclear

If it's New York or New Year

God help the beast in me

The beast in me

Performance from the 1994 Montreux Jazz Festival

American Recordings is the 81st album by the country singer Johnny Cash. It was released in April 1994 (see 1994 in music), the first album issued by American Recordings after its name change from Def American, the album being named after the new label. In 2003, the album was ranked number 364 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Cash was approached by producer Rick Rubin and offered a contract with Rubin's American Recordings label, better known for rap and heavy metalthan for country music. Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded the album in his living room, accompanied only by his guitar. For years Cash was often at odds with his producers after he had discovered with his first producer, Sam Phillips, that his voice was better suited to a stripped-down musical style. Most famously he disagreed with Jack Clement over his sound, Clement having tried to give Cash's songs a "twangy" feel and to add strings and barbershop-quartet-style singers. His successful collaboration with Rick Rubin was in part due to Rubin seeking a minimalist sound for his songs.

The songs "Tennessee Stud" and "The Man Who Couldn't Cry" were recorded live at the Viper Room, a Sunset Strip, Los Angeles nightclub owned at the time by Johnny Depp. "The Beast in Me" was written and originally recorded by Cash's former stepson-in-law Nick Lowe.^[1]

The video for the first single, the traditional song "Delia's Gone" (directed by Anton Corbijn, featuring Kate Moss), was put into rotation on MTV, and even appeared on Beavis and Butt-head, Beavis asking if Cash was Captain Kangaroo. The album was hailed by critics and many declared it to be Cash's finest album since the late 1960s, while his versions of songs by more modern artists such as Tom Waits and Glenn Danzig (who penned a song called "Thirteen" specifically for Cash, in just twenty minutes) helped to bring him a new audience. American Recordings received a Grammy forBest Contemporary Folk Album of the Year at the 1994 Grammy Awards. The album cover was photographed whilst Cash was visiting Australia, at Werribee near Melbourne.^[2]

Wikipedia File Photo -- Album Cover, American Recordings

Joshua Messier: Murder Victim at Bridgewater State Hospital?

Source and hat tip for spreading the awareness of this apparent murder to Patrick Tracey, author of "No Family Madder" blog.





From Patrick Tracey's blog entry, "Exposé Questions Death of Young Man":

Judge for yourself from this video showing the final moments of Joshua Messier’s 23 year-old life in state care.

After being restrained by all these big guards at Bridgewater State Hospital putting all their weight on him, you can see him turning blue and die.

Read for yourself today’s expose in the Boston Sunday Globe.

It begs the question: Was he killed by the state just for exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia?


As the video suggests, the man with diagnosed schizophrenia–the most severe mental illness dealt with in psychiatry–is having a psychotic episode, hearing voices, seeing visions, when state prison guards subdue him, hands and feet, in four-point restraint.

Ten minutes later, turning blue as his guards chat to each other beside him, he’s gone.

The explanation of the prison guards transcends belief. They know nothing about schizophrenia. They’ve had no meaningful training in mental health disorders. This at the state of Massachusetts’ prison for the mentally ill. (Despite its name, Bridgewater State Hospital is a medium-security prison.)

No Arrest, No Reprimand

The newspaper couldn’t get to the bottom of why no one has been arrested, prosecuted or even reprimanded.

Internal Affairs cited two guards for putting pressure on a restrained inmate’s back, but that was it.

Why? Because the state medical examiner called it homicide, then changed her mind.

Why? We don’t know that either. She wouldn’t respond to the Globe investigation either, but it’s highly unusual to have homicide listed as the
cause of death with no additional court action.

The video shows medics were called when Messier’s pulse had stopped, and not before a crowd of guards  had been standing idly by, chatting as he lay dying.

In the surveillance video, two guards are also seen pushing down on his  back as he sits in handcuffs and leg irons on the bed, crunching his chest toward his knees.

The practice, known as suitcasing, is banned in Massachusetts prisons because it can cause suffocation.

The medical examiner called in for the autopsy found his heart had stopped beating during the guards’ effort to strap him down, but she couldn’t say exactly when.

Her autopsy also found internal bleeding on Messier’s brain, and blunt force injuries to his neck, torso, arms, and legs, suggesting that he was beaten before he was dragged into cell 13.

In the Globe piece, the prosecutor who won’t call a grand jury to consider a manslaughter charge comes across as the final word on weakling. Either that or a law enforcement authority trying to protect fellow law enforcement authorities, almost as a professional courtesy.

The bizarre unwillingness of Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz to at least call a grand jury to decide if a trial is warranted is so unusual that it’s raising eyebrows.

Cruz claims the medical examiner told him she couldn’t tell exactly when Messier expired during the ten minutes that he was turning shades of blue in cell 13.

All righty, then. So when it comes to mental illness, it’s the age old story: Close the curtain and darken the room. Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along.

Read the rest of this blog entry HERE.