My Kingdom for a Pensieve

Thoughts.  Too many.  Once again, I find myself wishing for a Pensieve, à la Dumbledore.

It was only a few days ago that I learned "dumbledore" was not just the name of Hogwart's best ever headmaster, but also designates a bumblebee.  One day, this will pay off in a fierce game of Scabble. Or maybe Scrabble.

"Scabble" has the sound of a promising game, but more of a physical one, involving grabbing, slinging, or incessant itching, than a sanitized board game.

Or it could all be more fodder for the Pensieve.

I wonder if geniuses (of whom we are aware) -- who always seem to have a little extra cranium working for them -- have less need of a Pensieve than those of us with normal sized heads.  Ah, but sometimes their lop-sidedness makes them tip over, endangering their expertise in areas like... Scabble.

Yeah, so the big news in the smallest hectare of Twitter is that I confessed to bullying a person.  She made the mistake of being a prissy-panted smart-aleck who is more passive-aggressive than even... Fred.  She's mean.  And I'm a bully!  I love algebra, and mathematics, in general, and I am pretty sure that together, she and I are Low Common Denominators, as well as, on occasion, rational and irrational -- but above all, in algebraic language, she is a constant and I, a variable.

What I haven't confessed to are my feelings of real friendship, and even kinship, for the person she fearlessly picks on -- not to elevate things too suddenly (Word: They say that applying a cold spoon to your upper back will help to stop sudden nosebleeds brought on by incredibly ridiculous unexpected ascensions... Where the hell is that Pensieve?).  Where was I?  Ah.  Not to elevate things too suddenly, but I, like Saint Peter, denied -- and a good deal more than three times, always out to fool that triune-obsessed crowing cock -- my friendship.  Did my friend suffer for it?  I don't really know.  Because we are a lot alike, it may actually have helped her, as anger is an unparalleled fuel for some of us.  Just think of Mitt Romney's clenched jaw and alien, half-choke of a laugh in interviews when he's p.o.ed at the small-minded, repetitive questioning, and I think it will become clear to you that he is running for President because he is so intensely pissed off, he just can't stand it anymore.  I await Chris Matthews call -- put me in, coach, I'm ready to play Hardball.

Right, so, summing up:  There is a passive-aggressive bully that I have bullied, and a woman that I would like to befriend but don't really have the required strength necessary to be her friend.  She is high-maintenance, and since I am, in Fred's lexicon, "overwhelming," this looks like another case, Batman, of a Gordian Knot.

Okay, since truth-telling is the order of the day, the Milanese Nightingale jiust jabbed her knife pointy nails into my thigh -- her favorite acrylic nail style, with glitter and artful white patterns over a black base coat of shellac so brilliant and intense that her nails cease to grow out at all, but do, in fact, retract.  The truth is that Gordian Knots are a breeze to undo and I have simply chosen to stay all tied up.  It's easier that way.  "You want me to do what?  Sorry, can't, I'm all tied up..."

The appearance of complication, in other words.  The last refuge of the boring.

Aw,. I'm depressing myself and that might mean a trip to the helpful and uplifting Dr. Phil's Depression and Grief "Support" message board, where I'd undoubtedly run into that paranoiac, who would both anger and make me bust a gut laughing, and then where would I be?

But I might also find news from the almost-friend, whose husband is dying of lung cancer.  They are all still smoking, but even that doesn't arouse enough rage to stop my caring.  I mean, a good deal of my bone issues were brought on by corticosteroids, and were they forced down my gullet?  No, I took them, I took them eagerly, even, at times, as sometimes they were the only workable solution against pain.  I figure that cigarettes have the same function for some.

Shoot, I remember sitting on the back steps at our Mathews Avenue back yard (which you had to see to believe... we could have supplied a panda clan with bamboo), smoking one short, fat fag after another -- Gauloises, back when they were still a French cigarette.  Now, I'd have to boycott them, because they use Syrian tobacco.  (Pensieve!)  I'd be armed, as well, with high-octane italian roast or a Diet Coke.  And the pain that brought me to perch on those warped wooden steps was rapidly subsumed -- or sublimated -- by the better feelings of nausea and dizziness.   Then, as soon as I was able, I'd jump up, refreshed, ready to go impart knowledge of French nineteenth century literature to young minds, or wash the dirty clothes of homeless men, or maybe cook Fred a real American breakfast, or prepare a revelatory reading lesson for my literacy tutoree. You get my self-sacrificial drift.

The better thing woulda been to grab our well-maintained kaiser blade and sling blade the hell out of the bamboo, and haul it to the panda exhibit at the zoo, coughing and puking all the while.

I don't *feel* any different for having confessed to bullying this delusional and nasty woman.  I am so far from an apology, at the moment, that images of what form my Citizenship Award will take is far more interesting a train of thought.

Ah well.

It's a quiet Saturday morning here in Marlinspike Hall -- at least, once I escaped the moral rectitude of The Castafiore.  Sven came in for some refreshment -- he's trimming some of the Labyrinth that tends to get a bit wild in the final days of ManorFest -- and the two of them promptly disappeared into her private apartment.
Fred is fast asleep, having been up all night playing his new ukulele and tending a sick cat.  The Genetically Indentured Domestic Staff has the morning off, and almost everyone, it seemed, headed for the underground tunnels, the straightest distance between The Manor and Tête de Hergé's best West Lone Alp pub.

I haven't been able to bathe -- not even take a thorough sponge bath -- in two days, so that is on my mind.  Oh, I used medicated wipes around incisions and what my dear StepMom called the "hot spots," plus I did do a half-hearted treatment with hibiclens here, and with acetic acid solution there -- but all in all, I feel gross.  But as I have again begun to do headers into the walls, getting in the shower hasn't seemed wise.

Ah, but cut the Gordian Knot, eh?  I am going to take both cane and grabber with me into the torture chamber and darned if I will climb out before every bit of not-me detritus is washed away.

That's the attitude!

I also need to clean a bookcase, and somehow, the paperbacks that were stored there.  As I was culling offerings to the Militant Lesbian Existential Feminists' annual book sale, I arrived at one of the old Mission book cases that is rarely visited, and stuck in a corner.  It seems that this must have been one of Sam-I-Am's favorite spots to mark, that dear dead feline, and it has dried to a gummy and thoroughly gross consistency.  The bookcase I can clean, easily.  But what to do with the books?!  It feels a sin (more sinful even than bullying that Dr. Phil Fanatic) but I may have to throw them away.  By which I mean, of course, carting them to the paper recycling bin.  The books Sammy so loved seem to be an odd mix of Maeve Binchy (bless her dear departed soul), Dean Koontz, and, sadly, some Dennis Lehane.

Today's mail may bring something I've been dreading.  Brother-Unit Grader Boob informed me recently that my stepmother intended to write me a thank you note for the card and the boxwood I sent her when my father died in early July.  As I told him, receiving a thank you note for *that* may well break my heart.  But it is Her Way, and therefore I will take the nasty tasting medicine in one quick gulp.

I kind of hope it rains.  The Cistercian's orchard needs it badly, and maybe the drone drone drone of it will keep the household either asleep or happy to remain perched on a bar stool.  After I clean me, the bookcase, and any salvageable novels, I think another cup of coffee and a chapter of the book I just started reading will be lovely.

Bully and Pseudo-Friend, signing off.




Uploaded by boredjoewo on Nov 16, 2011

Brother-Units: Pro or Con?

What a silly title!

I am peeved at both of my full-blooded Brother-Units, something that's rare and usually built up over time.  When I had but seven or eight years under my belt, they used to do things like begin a rousing game of Hide-and-Seek, and then leave -- one off to play baseball, the other perhaps to steal a car.  I was good for at least an hour of unrequited hiding -- probably longer, in truth, because I loved and trusted my big brothers.

My first memory?  The two of them on the floor with me -- I'm not sure where, what country -- and me with saggy diapers.  I remember the saggy diapers clearly, as they distressed me, and troubled my sense of fashion decorum.  They had a paper cup-- I remember a pattern in orange and white, I remember its coat of wax -- and were calling me, urging me on, telling me to sniff the cup's contents.  I loved and trusted my big brothers, and dutifully took a deep whiff of the ammonia, which left them rolling around, hooting, guffawing, and -- probably -- farting.  The memory ends with my present-day eyes stinging and watering, as much the result of that long ago prank as the deleterious effects of my glaucoma drops.

My next memory -- well, it's short and they're not in it.  I was in Turkey, seated on the curb in front of our apartment building, and I was engaged in eating gravel from the gutter.  I looked to my left and saw the departing end of a donkey.  I looked to my right and saw a large tortoise -- well, maybe it wasn't so large, as a quick bit of research tells me it was probably a spur-thighed tortoise (Testudo graeca ibera), which is not one of your bigger tortoises.  There were people, too, I am sure, but I don't remember them -- just the flavorful crunch of gravel recently flavored by a passing turtle and an ass.

Okay... fast-forwarding... still in Turkey.  We'd been left by a Mother lacking the least bit of  maternal instinct.  It was something like the third day that the three of us had been on our own.  She wasn't so lame as to have left us unsupervised -- No, we had Ali, a neighborhood teenager who was serving as our babysitter.  We were out of food and about out of sorts, so Ali had appealed to a neighbor woman, who very much enjoyed feeding us and then contacting our clueless Father, letting him know where our family sedan was parked, and had been parked for several days.  (There is nothing like learning that your wife is cheating on you with her gynecologist and has abandoned her three children when you return early from a trip in order to surprise her -- and your daughter -- on their birthday!)

So... before the memory of being under the dining room table crying at the sound of raised angry voices and shattering dinner plates, there was the memory of Playing Chicken -- Ali and I against my Brother-Units.  I was way-y-y tall on top of Ali's shoulders.  Brother-Unit Grader Boob was years away from achieving 6' 4" and Brother-Unit Tumbleweed has always been, well, short.

I suppose those were our last moments of innocence -- me, with my eyes closed, giving them hell by swishing my arms around in the fashion of a girly windmill; they, just boys, somehow trying to give it to Ali without doing serious damage to the blinded whirligig on his shoulders.  It was noisy, we knocked stuff over, it was fun. 

Gold damask bolsters with tassels.  (Is that possible?)

Stupid gossip of a neighbor. 

Somewhere in all that is the origin of my ambivalence about birthdays and mothers.  I was her "29th birthday present," mostly due to a hit of pitocin.  And then, bam! our collective birthday also commemorated the discovery of her wanton whoring (What do you think?  Too strong?  Just right?  I live for le mot juste.)...

Other Brother-Unit memories?  Grader Boob telling me my pet miniature turtle looked a little pale and needed to be put out into the hot summer sun.  That's right, baked turtle.  But it allowed for the fun of a hot summer funeral.  I am told that I kept digging that turtle up to see what was happening to him.

Then there were the Various Teachings.  Like How To Ride A Bicycle Without Training Wheels.  The boys had been requested by the Father Unit to please take my bike riding training in hand.  He gave them permission to remove my training wheels when it seemed I no longer needed them.  They didn't hear the end of that sentence, apparently.  He left on yet another trip -- but, wise man that he was, now left no wanton whore of a wife behind.  He was barely out of sight when off came the training wheels and I was plopped onto my bike, walked out to the pavement, and then -- knees pumping, knees pumping -- pushed to top speed... and released!  I'd never even accomplished the length of our driveway alone, never built up enough speed to have to apply brakes.  I'd never used the brakes!  This fact didn't dawn on anyone in sufficient time to stop my close encounter with, first, the big blue official mailbox, and, second, the light pole, the trusty anchors and landmarks at the end of our block.

Brakes?  We don't need no stinking brakes...

It's apocryphal, and probably revisionary, too, but word is that I also lost a tooth in that training run -- and that the Brother-Units got to play Tooth Fairy after bandaging me up.

In other injurious episodes -- one of them threw a dart into my upper arm.  I caused the accident by coming around the end of a fence while they were having target practice.

Just as I caused the Louisville Slugger, a nice bit of ash, to connect with the back of my head as Grader Boob took a healthy psych-out warm-up swing.  I had a neurologist who thought that particular loss of consciousness might have been a factor in my subsequent development of epilepsy, but we've not shared that tidbit with GB -- who was mortified at the time and would be more than mortified now. 

A shame, because if ever there was ammunition for emotional blackmail, getting knocked out by your brother's macho swing of a baseball bat... and then developing a freaking disease -- well!  But no, we don't do that.  Our reticence probably can be traced to the shenanigans of our Mother, the Wanton Whore.

I have a great deal more stories about Grader Boob than about Tumbleweed, of course, because Tumbleweed departed our family for healthier social units, and for girls and marijuana, too, I suppose.  He was a frequent and determined runaway who didn't, of course, really want to run away. 

I've told that story before and don't feel like telling it again. 

I started this blog entry with the intent of digging these boys out of the holes they've dug themselves -- for they've reverted to the Bad Old Ways, it seems, of keeping quiet when they should be talking, of bottling up that which is corrosive and without value.  They're not talking to me.  Not as in... I did something and they're mad and therefore we don't speak.  No.  More like, communicating makes me nervous, makes me vulnerable (sorry -- vulnerable is about as bad as artisinal), so I'll just go to ground...

I started this blog entry with the additional intent of scoping out birthday present options for Tumbleweed's upcoming Big Day on April 20.  If you think that's kind of silly, it's just a birthday, just a stupid present, and so on, well, then, you need to read the first post in a series on "gifts."  It's cleverly called The Gift and dates from December 19, 2009.

Yeah, somehow Tumbleweed is at the heart of so much.  Not his doing and certainly, clearly, not his preference.  He's lived, I think -- and my information is minimal and minimalist -- a good life and is a good man.  It's been pure self-deception for me to have spent so much time in my less well-lived life convincing myself that Tumbleweed was a survivor. (Survivor is about as bad as artisinal and vulnerable.)  Tumbleweed, my friends, is and always was... just fine.

Arriving at "fine" is not a bad result for me here at the end of a Friday blogging segment -- but it's probably one more hell of a blur for you, Faithful Reader.  So I dug up Tumbleweed's first substantial entry into the lectionary here at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle.  It was called Split Infinitives and was published January 25, 2009:

Yesterday was my mother's birthday, and mine. Once upon a time, I was her 29th birthday present, even if I was induced and hastened with pitocin. She has great stories about my birth and my brother Grader Boob's arrival -- but I've never heard a peep about my eldest brother's début, the child she so adored. He no longer uses his given names. He asks to be known as TW, for Tumbleweed.

I will have to find the cover to Dylan's Nashville Skyline, because there is a moment, truly frozen in time, when he adopted that same stance, guitar slung over his shoulder, hat tipped back, gunny sack at his feet. He stood next to a basketball goal we had at the end of our driveway and was looking out toward me and Grader Boob -- we were playing softball in the back yard.

I just happened to turn and look. I was too young and stupid to understand what I saw. But I did *see* him. He was old, so young, and sad, so sad. He had traveled cross country in one of his attempts to find our mother, to draw her to him in his need. He would go to her parents' home, hoping she would come back to the States for him. But she was busy with Litter Number Two and her new husband -- a lovely man that I wish TW had met. Necip would have been very kind to him, would have given him the world. Necip died a few years ago. He was a wonderful person. He would have wrapped TW in love and safety, as he tried to do for me. As he *did* for me!

The forever mystery is: What happened to all of her adoration? There are missing passages to the story that it seems I will never know. When I reunited with her, she was shocked to learn that TW was not with us, that he had been gone for many years. She broke at the news. It seemed to deepen her love for him -- he was all she could think about, all she would speak of. Yet, when I found out he was alive through a moment of indiscretion on the part of my half-sister, it was made clear to me that she wanted nothing to do with him. What happened?

You are probably rolling your eyes and thinking "Why not just ask?" I don't know the answer to that; I don't know why I cannot just ask.

As Nancy, the aunt, noted a few weeks back, what in the world does TW, the Elder, have to apologize for? His mother left him, his father never searched for him when he ran away from home -- in fact, his father took the family and left the country! He told me and Grader Boob that TW would be joining us in three months. Three months came, three months went.

I will never forget the confrontation -- Grader Boob, in the midst of the growth spurt that would eventually make him 6'4", in front of the Father, who sneeringly attested that he had no idea where TW was -- and the fist, rising, rising. It's imprinted in my brain, burned into the grey matter, dancing along neural pathways.

I cannot escape my own guilt. I searched for him -- for years -- but did not find him. Yet, when I was told where he was, he wasn't hiding. I don't understand why my efforts failed. I *did* make contact with someone who knew him -- my first semester of grad school at UC-B -- but it never went further than this person who responded to one of my ads. If TW was hiding, he hid out in the open.

[That was a long and nervous week, that week of fielding this woman's phone calls in response to one of my newspaper ads. She definitely knew him, said he was in Oregon "overseeing some property," and that she would have him call me in the next few days. I canceled all my classes, skipped my own seminars, took the phone off the hook whenever I had to run to the bathroom. I prayed and prayed, I was so sure that this was it -- that I had found him.]

TW had me tell Grader Boob that he was so sorry, that he wished things had turned out differently, that if ever he wanted to talk, he would be there, ready. Hear the echo of Nancy's rage -- what does he have to apologize for? We all owe him a debt that is impossible to quantify, a debt that should be recognized and paid down, crime by crime. I owe him. And if Grader Boob would get his head out of his ass, he would see that TW did what he had to do, and extend him the graciousness and understanding he deserves. Again, I just don't understand. Grader Boob is the sweetest person in the world -- but hard as a rock in these instances. Why? [I *have* asked! The answer is a terse "he could have found us anytime." Maybe, maybe not -- and might he not also have been somewhat deterred by past experiences with the family unit?]

TW was homeless and eating out of garbage cans when he was 15 years old. He sent a love letter to his mother, far away then, in Ankara, saying "come to me and I will make you beautiful with mine eyes." (Okay, so he was well read.) He lived in the drug culture, was shot, fathered a child with a porn actress, a child that he really doesn't know (but I heard his pride through the telephone line), living with her mother now in Bangkok. Somewhere in there, he found himself, fell in love with the Grand Canyon, knew it intimately, and became an expedition guide. "In order to feed the cats," he works as a bookie. When we found each other, late in 2007, he had broken his shoulder after falling on an icy sidewalk, and lost (or quit, I am not sure which) his job in Vegas. He painted houses in Lake Tahoe over the summer, and recently was part of a start up betting operation... but has been "replaced." He hints that he is ill but will not tell me anything specific. He is extraordinarily kind, dedicated to what he believes is right, and funny as hell. We were talking about the health history of the people to whom we are related, because his daughter had some questions about the prevalence of breast cancer and diabetes, and I asked him, "How are your eyes?" -- because our grandfather went blind from glaucoma, which I also have. Without missing a beat, TW answered: "My eyes? Small, dark, and suspiciously beady."

My brother Grader Boob was born in a London cab. TW, age 4, was in the back seat with her and when they arrived at the hospital, he attempted to commandeer the taxi, refusing to let anyone out until the new addition was adequately explained. "He was not here when we got in the car..." is how his spotless logic worked.

But nary a word about TW's birth. "I know he was born, because -- after all these years of studied neglect -- he is still here" is how my spotless logic goes.

Somehow the accretions of the past year or so made celebrating my birthday impossible. No, that is not true. Not impossible. More like obscene. I was in a great deal of pain, to the point where making it to the bathroom and washing up was almost too much. It hurt so bad that I couldn't find sleep until 4 am this morning, and then was up again at 6 am -- but happier, because my birth day had passed. My shoulder feels close to exploding, but I forced myself to clean the house -- a clean start to this new age of mine. I needed to do something nice for The Fredster, who was so understanding of my depression yesterday.

The mother had her daughter email me, belatedly, with the familiar message that she would get "something in the mail to me tomorrow." I so wanted to respond "don't bother."

But I want her to bother. I want her to very much bother.

I want to split her infinitives.

photo credit

What a mess...

It's a crazy time.  Given the extent of the wackiness around here, and the opportunity for more, I'll not be blogging for a few days.

Today I see the orthopedic surgeon, my old friend.  (I slept last night with my mp3 player set to repeat and repeat a Michelle Shocked album... "my old friend" is running around my brain to the tune of Anchorage... anchored down in Anchorage....

I took the time to write to my old friend

I walked across the burning bridge

I mailed my letter off to Dallas, but

Her reply came from Anchorage, Alaska

She said Hey girl it's about time you wrote

It's been over two years now my old friend

Take me back to the days of the foreign telegrams

And the all night rock 'n rollin' hey Chel

We was wild then

Yeah, well. So I'll be humming and buzzing along with the x-rays today.

Then we are rushing about Tête de Hergé like freaking maniacs, getting groceries (I am on a goodly dose of antibiotic and we are out of plain, lowfat yogurt.  Also vanilla extract, bread, and milk.  Not to mention caffeine-laced diet colas...) and a few other items of a more esoteric nature.

Then we are flying home to finish disassembling our wing of The Manor, Marlinspike Hall.

Why?  Are we being thrown out onto the streets?  If so, wouldn't The Brotherhood down the road take us in?  Yeah, couldn't we just crash at The Monastery?

No, we're not imminently homeless, we are just having some 16th century reclaimed beams and timbers -- heart of pine planks, specifically -- put in as "new" flooring here in our tiny section of the world. 

And don't knock The Cistercians, even in jest, because they're doing the installation...

What I really wanna know is:  Who bought all these damn books?

I have so much to do and such little space and time to do it in.  Also, I tend to injure myself.  Immediately.  Within five minutes of packing and piling and sorting and moving...  Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with tears rolling down my red, red face,  while putting my arcane collection of Objectivist Poetry into flimsy bags and boxes. 

When I was done, I heard this from My Darling Cohort:  Sweetie Pie?  Are you okay?  Do you need any help?

Wrong!  Well, only partially wrong.  Wrong in the sense that I implied that My Darling Cohort was not assisting.  Because he did.  A lot.  As in, a whole lot. 

Okay, I lied.  His offer to help preceded my headstrong and tearful attempts at packing up my tiny office. 

He's a good boy, is Fred!

The Felines are freaked and part of today's plan entails finding three carriers that we can safely stash them in, as the monks, who love them to pieces, tend to try and sneak them over the orchard wall, tucked in their voluminous robes.  When we retrieve them they reek of incense and garlic.

I have beaucoup medical stuff on tap for Monday and Wednesday of next week, too.  ["Too"?]  The thoughts and worries about the subanesthetic ketamine treatment never really leave my mind.  I am pinning a shitload of hope on this procedure.

So. Be good out there.  Stay warm, stay well, be happy.

The next time I talk at you, I will be able to zip around the place without the wheelchair meeting so much impedence in the form of medieval tapestries and persian rugs.  I'm gonna redefine the speed of light.

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

Okay, so... here I am blogging again, less than a day after swearing off the activity.  I've said it before, and look!  I am saying it again -- I need one of those pensieve thingies, like Albus Dumbledore had stashed in his office.  The basin with swirling, shimmering vapors.  Thoughts as strings to be pulled out of the head, twirled on the end of one's wand.  Though I suppose a chopstick will do, in a pinch.

The Pensieve has multiple functions.


At times, when one's head is so full of thoughts that one cannot hear oneself think, it is useful to be able to take some of those thoughts and literally set them aside. The practiced Wizard can extract a thought from his head and store it in a phial or in the Pensieve for another time. If it is in the Pensieve, it is possible to stir the thoughts stored there together and look for patterns. It appears that the wizard has the choice of extracting an entire memory, leaving no trace of it in his head, as Professor Snape does in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, or extracting a copy of a memory, retaining the original, as Professor Slughorn does in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It is also apparently possible to edit these extracted memories, though it is a difficult task and one which is often not done well.


If one places one's head within the Pensieve, one becomes immersed in a memory that is stored in the Pensieve, and is able to relive it as if one was living that time over again. Harry experienced Professor Dumbledore's memories of the Wizengamot trials of several Death Eaters this way in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Professor Snape's memories of Harry's father in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.


A thought or memory stored in the Pensieve can, with proper stimulus, appear to nearby viewers as if standing on the surface of the basin. Professor Dumbledore used this technique to show Harry the prophecy that had been made about him, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and it is used in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when full immersion in memory was not needed.


It is also possible to take another person's memories, place them in the Pensieve, and then enter them to relive them as if one were the person whose memories you have just added to the Pensieve. Harry and Professor Dumbledore do this a number of times in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in order to determine the salient points of the early history of Tom Riddle, or as he later styled himself, Lord Voldemort.

This blog is my pensieve.

So... although we spoke of it briefly the last time I saw him, it sort of blew my mind -- and all its twirling little vapors -- when the surgeon offered up an inverted total shoulder arthroplasty as my sole option for my left shoulder.  He is fabulously talented, so to hear him call something "difficult" was scary.  It looks like this... and this looks WEIRD!

I guess I sorta didn't believe him in October when he first pitched this.  Or I developed amnesia.  The Good Doc says I've not much left to work with -- remember (someone has to), I have rampant avascular necrosis going on as well as osteomyelitis.  Oh, and I am now missing one rotator cuff.

No problem!

He's been such a savior to me, this guy, that I simply don't believe there is a technique or an obstacle that he cannot conquer or overcome.  I mean, he's done... let's see... 8 of my 9 shoulder surgeries. 

We were doing a pre-exam chat -- I was bemoaning the mess at the manor, the monks and the flooring... then the ketamine infusion therapy popped in my head, and consequently, out of my mouth.  But instead of giving him some background, or even notifying him that we were leaving the discursive region of home improvement and religious adherents for the vague regions of dissociative drug therapy, I just blurted:

"Guess what!  I'm gonna do ketamine!"

And his eyes bugged out.
And he opened, then closed his mouth.  Several times.
I could see the confusion and what may have been a burgeoning certainty of my extreme moral turpitude spread across his usually composed visage...

So I explained.

Which made it worse.

He thinks I am nuts for doing this.  Well, ptooey on you, Fabulous Orthopedic Surgeon!  Ptooey, I say, on you!  Then he went on and on about this upside-down, spikey prosthesis -- only an option, of course, if the joint space and long bones are free of infection.

Why am I always so confused?  (No, I am serious.  Why?)  Is there a cumulative but late arriving deficit that hits a person after so many surgeries, after so many foreign bodies are implanted, after nine years of insufficient sleep?  After all the pain, fevers, sweats?  How is it that I can block out such important information?  Denial?  I don't think I am in denial about anything, but then who does?  Do you know that last week, I managed to forget entirely that I have an "aortic root dilation" of growing dimensions -- now sitting right at 5 cm..  I got there because of a run of something or other, that ended in about an hour of trigeminy, and this thought:  "It would be so nice to have a heart rate under 112..." We are so wrapped up in stopping this infection that we haven't even scheduled an echo.  The last one was in ICU back in... July 2009.  Whoa.

Just what I need to indulge in:  more catastrophic thinking!  (Thar she blows!)

See?  I DO need a pensieve -- just to get rid of boring, scary, fruitless thoughts about stuff I cannot do crap about. 

Okay... I feel better.  The reverse shoulder option will only come to be when/if we rid my body of sneaky pathogens and the pain reaches the I-CAN'T-STAND-IT-ANYMORE stage.  With careful coaxing, I can stand a whole hell of a lot!

The title of this post stands unchallenged:  What a mess...

Re-Post: In Loving Memory of Gérard Jian - Substitute Teaching

O, quelle tristesse!

It feels like a sucker punch, a physical blow. Just one minute ago, I cried out loud, I called out, I said, "No!" I had no such reaction to other much more personal losses -- a lovely great aunt, doting grandparents, incredibly kind stepfathers, a few dear friends and lovers, other former profs (dead far too young, and close, whereas this little man was over eighty years, and distant).

In addition to being strangely affective, this death is haunting, as I have dreamt and thought about Gérard Jian several times in the past few weeks, the result, I thought, of trying to remember some of life's finer moments -- which I had allowed to fuzz-up a bit.

[Please keep your finer moments unfuzzed-up. Sometimes, when you've nowhere else to go, taking out the pensieve can be life-affirming.]

I doubt he remembered me after I left Berkeley. He made his contribution to the requisite file of Letters of Reference, and had nice things to say. I sometimes wondered if he remembered me when I was standing right in front of him, until some smart-ass crack -- always in the target language! -- made it clear that yes, he knew who the hell I was, and I had better straighten up and fly right. Weird that he used odd, uptight Air Force expressions, this blustery little Frenchman, charged with the task of turning out profs who might not bring shame down upon the reputation of the various Universities of California. It would seem more likely that he was quoting Nat King Cole's original song, except that I knew his entire "méthode d'enseignement" was based on a French curriculum he'd developed for tiny military brats -- in kindergarten. This was a fact we tried to keep hidden from the intelligent, extraordinary, and oh-so-mature undergraduates.

Way back in 1972, he garnered the University's Distinguished Teacher Award -- no easy feat. That year the honorees also included Paul Alpers, required reading in order to fathom the Faerie Queene, and Howard A. Bern, de rigueur for a decent understanding of comparative endocrinology. My personal favorite is Gardner D. Stout, Jr. -- his mother, the privileged Clare Kellogg; his father, "president of the Board of Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History in New York from 1968 to 1974. Before that, he had been executive committee chairman of the Audubon Society," and is the exalted editor of the authoritative Shorebirds of North America. His son, the award-winner, went on to speak, hilariously, of Sterne, Swift, and Rabelais.

And then there was Gérard Jian.

His textbook, Découverte et Création, co-authored by Ralph Hester of Stanford, was our Bible. As mentioned, the incredibly effective method Jian developed was based upon theories of childhood learning and language acquisition. The mostly 18 to 24 year olds who peopled his Master Classes never seemed to "get" that he slaved to make the challenging task before them child's play. He forced them out of their comfort zone without discomfiting them -- by being hilarious, by tucking his meticulous pedagogy inside rapid fire give-and-take, by somehow being as disinhibiting a force as a shot of tequila. (What? You expected merlot? A COTE DE BROUILLY beaujolais?) His students, and subsequently my own, were not "allowed" to speak anything other than French. Or, at least, anything other than their bravest efforts at speaking French! I was no Jian; I came to allow, after the onset of burnout, brief conversations in English, so long as it was outside the classroom door. You'd be amazed at how quickly students relinquish their need for English when provided with a wealth of cognates, and a receptive, laughing prof well versed in the methodology of inductive presentations.

And all that wine.

I taught summer school one year -- the level of the course evades me, all I recall is that it was intensive, and that I had an unbelievably diverse class in terms of ages and backgrounds. It was the first, and last, time I ever "partied" with my students. Talk about something getting out of hand... And I did not even consider the ramifications of having a 14-year-old Genius Wild Child of a Faculty Member leading the way into an afternoon of inebriation under the beautiful California sky -- one of *those* days off the bay, blue, blue, and windy. Afterward, I worried myself silly and everytime I ran into Jian (was it happening more frequently? was he giving me dirty looks? did he know?) my tongue tied itself in knots. No one turned me in -- indeed, my cool factor attained new heights. Whew.

[Of course, Jian knew I had... predilections. After my very first semester, I left the International House, a wonderful place I had fought to get in, and moved in with one of my students. You may remember him -- the Great American Writer? No? I thought not. After wowing me, it turned out he was nothing but a handsome derivation.]

Like a thread running through that long, strange trip out west, Découverte et Création was always there. Eventually, whether I was in tiptop form, hungover, pregnant, tired, happy, stressed, what have you -- I could teach from that text without missing a beat. As far as textbooks go, it is quite good, though I am probably greatly influenced by having had the author as my own preceptor.

I just checked out Amazon.com and enjoyed another belly laugh -- this is the evaluation/rating given by one Cathy Sahu, back in April 2000 [Bless her bones! I confess, I almost did that "ROFLMAO" thing.]:

First of all, let me make clear that I'm writing about the "cinquieme" (5th) edition of this textbook. The earlier editions aren't, I think, too bad.
This is a shockingly miserable textbook. I've been jotting down its faults as they crop up while I study 1st semester French. Here are some of them, though definitely not all (and no, this isn't sour grapes -- I'm getting an "A"):

Firstly, all the grammatical explanations are in French, and thus, very difficult to understand for someone learning beginning French. I realize the theory of language immersion is currently in vogue, but this is a ridiculous application. Students of French need to learn common vocabulary, not words like "preposition" and "pronoun." Even if they are cognates, it's still hard to understand and a source of extreme frustration, even for me, though I've taken French before. Also, while the student is stumbling through these explanations, he's probably also mispronouncing them, and memorizing his own mispronunciations. Then, to avoid English, the editors resort to all sorts of extremes, like the silly picture on p. 119. And, at the end of it all, they still end up having to use English footnotes, anyway (p. 114, etc.)

Another problem is the choice of vocabulary. They use irregular words (like "oeil" and its plural, "yeux," introduced too early on p. 20) in examples of grammatical rules, making for more confusion than if they'd used simpler, more regular words. (Vocabulary words, in fact, are thrown in almost without context: there are some 100 vocab words listed at the end of each chapter, many of which have only been used once in the chapter, and not at all in any exercise. These lists have no accompanying English translations, so you have to flip, flip, flip to the back of the book, a big waste of time.)

The dictionary is not good. There is no English-to-French section, and in the French-to-English, some words are missing ("demon," for instance, used in an illustration on p. 49 but not in dictionary, and "choque" is not defined - does it mean shocked, or shocking?). And of course there's no pronunciation key, a problem common to many language texts nowadays but still bad news for the student of a language that has many irregular pronunciations. Also, there are problems like the fact that ce/cet/cette/ces are all listed together in the dictionary, so if you look up "ces" and don't remember it's the plural of "ce," you won't be able to find it.

Oh, my God, I cannot stop laughing. This has touched that special spot in my hard heart reserved solely for French students.

What is more amazing is that one of the people leaving a rating turns out to be a long lost friend. In the post-Great-American-Writer period, she actually set me up with a UC-B alum who had done graduate work in physics, and went on to a rewarding career as a... banker. He was so sweet to me, and very patient. Even did the dangerous things: the long rides up the coast, attending weddings, dinner with the 'rents. All during the time I was writing my thesis and preparing for exams, living up on Kentucky Avenue, lost in the Berkeley Hills.

I could see five counties from my window.
I spent a lot of time, rocking and rocking, in front of that window.

Anyway, I am very sure that Ms. Sahu was, as alleged, a stellar student and hope she came to, at least, tolerate that sorry text...

Jian gave me, of course, the most memorable advice about teaching -- but I cannot quite figure how to tell that story. It could be summed up as "there are no bad students, only bad teachers," but that would be to do violence to what he really meant. Forgive me, I am tired and wound up -- yes, I am playing my Sad Sack Tune of Excuses again. I need to get back in bed for a rest.

Hmm. This just popped into my head. Those of us monitoring his Master Classes all sat in the back of the room, obviously. Although we weren't supposed to, it was inevitable that we developed relationships with Jian's students who sat around us. One guy was simply an awful foreign language student (That's right. I don't believe "there are no bad students," nor do I think there are no stupid questions.). For some reason, and there MUST have been a reason, three or four of us degenerates in the back decided to help him through a test. There was much coughing into fists and notes flying back and forth, as well as an unprofessional spate of giggling.

And Jian didn't kill us on the spot. Good man.

I will always remember him gazing fondly out the window of the first floor Dwinelle Hall classroom, confusing his entire class with a soliloquy on the Tour de Coïtus, or asking the beautiful blond coed if she was sure that "il t'a baisé... pas seulement une fois, mais deux, et devant ton père, même!"

I repost this very small essay on teaching in loving memory of Gérard Jian, who taught me to teach, and to let most transgressions go. I wonder how he would manage in a class full of angry, depressed kids, to whom French is rightfully without importance, and who use textbooks as a weapon?

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

After teaching at the college level for 17 years, there came a period of time where I was unable to work. It took a few years to get myself back into circulation. Still not able to handle a full time teaching post, and having moved a state away from my university home, I discovered the wacky world of public school substitute teaching. I took whatever job was available, and so taught a host of different subjects at a host of different schools.

Substitute teaching paid roughly $100/day. I didn't have a teaching certificate or any official training except for a few methodology courses back in the early 80s, which largely consisted of sitting in as an observor in Gérard Jian's Master Classes, sucking down lattes. Needless worry, as it turns out, since the minimal credential is a high school diploma or GED -- so long as I was working as a day-to-day sub. For extended jobs, usually to fill in for someone on maternity leave or in the event of serious illness, certification was preferred. They ended up giving me provisional certification.

My 17 years experience of teaching 18 to 22 year olds, all of whom chose to take my class, did little beyond give me a phenomenal preparation in my subject matter -- behavior issues? I didn't even know what "Classroom Management" was!



No problems for me -- I would just dazzle the kids with my target language only style and the many fun and painless activities in my arsenal. (Are you snickering yet?)

I was just beginning to have problems with my mobility, but was still able to hoof it, and so I could rely on public transportation. When the automated call came the night before, I would bury my nose in the various bus and metro maps to figure the most expeditious routes so as to be at the school in time to have at least a few minutes to orient myself to the who-what-and-where of a new environment. (You know, like where was detention held, which Assistant Principal had my back, where were all the Diet Cokes, and the location of the nearest School Resource Officer, avec Taser.)

I usually had to leave the house at about 5:30 am in hopes of arriving at school around 8.

Kids love to play tricks on subs, I knew that from my own experience as a student -- but I was ill-prepared for the level of sophistication that has been achieved since my matriculation. For instance, in my day, *not* being in the classroom was sort of the goal -- meaning that I would skip out, and usually go to the park across the street from my high school, where I would play tennis all day. It was like hiding in plain sight. I would cut school, pick up a few sets, and hang out until it was time for tennis team practice after school. These days, though, instead of having few students in the sub's room, there were often more bodies present than names to match them to! Apparently, students float from one room with a sub to another, and so escape the attentions of whatever administrator is trying to catch their sorry asses. I remember once taking roll, and recording perfect attendance for my class of, say, 29 students. A short while later, I would look up to find insufficient seating, and a class of 35! The theory is the same as in my time -- hiding right under the nose of authority -- but the technique? Much more refined.

There were three experiences that profoundly impacted me during that time.

The first was a simple reality check. I was offered a week's job at the roughest high school in the system. Let's call this school Frontier High. The teacher left *no* instructions and no *work* of any kind for her classes. I believe it was a history class -- I remember scrounging around, trying to duplicate enough resources to make a reasonable go of it. The school itself was situated on a huge treeless campus, that was beautifully landscaped -- except for the missing tree thing. The interior also had that "new" look, minimalist concrete that was painted institution grey on the bottom section of wall, divided by a slash of yellow at waist height, topped by streaky sections of off-white. It took a few minutes to figure out what was so unnerving in the environment: There were no doors, except for the entrances to the Office, the Media Center, and the Gymnasium. Yes, even the bathrooms were robbed of their civilizing thresholds. Apparently, bad stuff was going on behind closed doors at this "urban" school, so in an effort to address the rotten behavior, they took down every door they could. As you may have guessed, *that* was really effective! *Snark*

The bell schedule is a little different from one school to another. The first day at Frontier High, I spent a good amount of time trying to understand the considerable ebb and flow that a certain short bell cycle seemed to cause. It was easy to see that the kids weren't pulling a fast one on me -- their coming and going was unselfconscious and orderly. I was, in fact, greatly impressed by the... placidity? Yes, the placidity of the student body. It was as if everyone were floating and not grounded midst all of that concrete.

Then I saw the cooing little aliens. Turns out that Frontier High was experimenting with more than stripping away doors -- the students there were all parents, and a huge section of the school had been dedicated as a nursery and child care facility. Three times a day, the student parent went to interact with their progeny, volunteer time to the nursery/day care, or take a parenting class.

It was weird. I think I would have been excited, enthralled, perhaps, *if* the academic part of the experiment were even being half-heartedly pursued. As it was, there were no academics going on. Classes were an opportunity to kibitz and to rest, because most of these young Ozzie and Harriets worked after school, and given the realities of their lives, were severely sleep-deprived.

I made an attempt during that week to actually "do" a chapter from their history text, and it was successful to the extent that they jumped through the hoops of worksheets and group presentations. They seemed to enjoy applying their minds to something outside of the grim set of circumstances they were in.

It was about a month later that I received a phone call about another substitute job that was available at Frontier High -- yet, it was not the usual automated call. The opening was on the same campus but was considered separate from the main school -- a place called "The Academy."

These were students who had been suspended so many times at their home schools that there was nothing left in the discipline arsenal except expulsion. The Academy was trying to be a new resource, a better answer. The building that housed these kids was made of cinder block, had *plenty* of doors -- but no windows. No windows anywhere.

The gift of hindsight tells me that the most needed windows were those that typically are placed in classroom doors!

I was given Social Studies classes. Because The Academy followed a block schedule, I only had two classes that first day -- two l-o-n-g classes. The first went off without too many difficulties. They were exceptionally sullen and I did my best to liven things up. We were covering a chapter on "ancient civilisations," certainly something that they found useful at that point in their oh-so-sucky teenage lives.

Students there were not allowed to have any textbooks for take-home use -- because enrollment fluctuated from day-to-day, as some managed to place successfully back into their home school, as others managed to place themselves into less optimal situations -- jail or permanent expulsion. So I passed out and then collected the massive book being used there for social studies. It was an occasion for eager students to help out, to stand out -- there were some very nice kids caught up in this terrible situation and I made sure to note names, so that brownie points might be awarded when their teacher returned.

The second class of the day came after lunch -- which was a *silent* lunch, as no talking was allowed. There was no going outside and the whole affair was done in about 10 minutes. It was eerie.

Cinder block holds heat really well. Any breeze that might have mitigated that was impossible to harness given that we had no windows!

It was hot. Very hot.

Several girls helped me distribute the textbooks again. I made the reading and work assignments, and did what all lazy subs do -- plopped myself in a chair and sat, with great aplomb...

I really spaced out. Suddenly I was aware of a rising murmur and saw that several of the larger boys were having a verbal go at one another.

Did I mention that each classroom door was shut, and locked with a bolt?

Before I could think to get to the door, unlock it, and call for help, my students went ballistic. Someone else, it turned out, decided that near the door was the right place to be, because the next thing that happened was darkness. Complete and utter darkness. I tried to feel my way to the door, and kept one hand on the blackboard as a guide. Using my best voice, I was demanding order and calm -- thereby telegraphing through the gloom exactly where I was.

That was when the textbooks went airborne.

The corners? They really hurt, especially when they land point forward.

I am not sure how many books hit me. I made it to the door and found the light switch. Fiat Lux.
My fingers managed to throw the bolt and jerk the door open.

Somehow it seemed impossible that the world just outside that room should know nothing of what had just happened. The first person to walk by me -- I stood there, mute, with who knows what sort of look on my face -- almost did not stop. I remember seeing a polite smile start to form on his face, then crumble, as he took in my abrasions and budding bruises. At that point, I think, he pulled out his walkie-talkie and issued a call for reinforcements. All hell was breaking loose behind me -- and all bets were off for the kids who were itching to fight, because now the weight of authority was bearing down, and they knew they were in serious trouble.

I turned and went back in, trying to become what I was supposed to be.

Four large men, administrators all, demanded, and received, order. They lined the class up, and everyone fairly goosestepped out of the classroom and into what can only be described as a pit area -- a kind of carpeted theatre in the round. I went back to sitting (it had worked so well for me before!).

When my knees stopped knocking, I began trying to clean up the enormous mess of books and shredded paper -- the bulletin board had been pretty well disassembled. I lost track of time.

My darling Fred had decided to surprise me by picking me up. He was parked outside at the curb, where I guess he figured I couldn't miss seeing him. He told me later that he was astounded to see an official police paddy wagon pull up in front of him. A uniformed officer came and asked him to please find a parking spot. When he saw students being lined up -- he figured that he *really* wanted to come find me!

I knew that I did NOT want to tell Fred, or anyone, really, what had happened in that classroom, and was considering what lie to tell when I managed to get home -- and oh, was I dreading the two and a half hours that was going to take. So it was quite the shock to suddenly hear Fred's voice in the hall -- one of the V-Ps was telling him how embarrassed and upset they were that I had had a rough time. Etcetera. I turned toward the bookcases in the back of the room, still panicking (over how my face looked, primarily).

He proved to be very calm, although I know *that* calm -- and it isn't really calm! It is *controlled*. We stood together in the back of the classroom, he hugged me, and then we went to work getting the place picked up, the desks back in rows.
A student came shyly in. To be honest, I did not even remember her as being part of that second class, but she was. She offered to help us clean and straighten, and then did just that. At some point in those next few minutes, my adrenaline deserted me, and I began to cry. I didn't want to be seen and so stood, once again, facing the bookshelves, with my back to the room.

Fred took my elbow and said, "Future Retired Educator? I think she has something she wants to say to you -- why don't you turn around?" Yes, I was beginning to wish that The Fredster had stayed home!

Bless her heart. She apologized on behalf of everyone in the whole wide world. She did not want me to think badly of them, of her. I wasn't able to respond but I hope she saw how much her efforts were appreciated.

This substitute assignment was a two-day affair. As we were leaving, the principal told me that I should take the next day off, and launched into yet another apology. It was going to be necessary for me to make statements to the police and to the appropriate administrators. I was too pooped to talk or do any reportage at that precise moment and was grateful to him.

And so he was very surprised when he saw me the next morning, something of a stiff-walking swollen purple eggplant -- but ready to teach. (Cue moving music)

A year or so later, I decided to go back to full time teaching. I was hired to work at a high school that had magnet programs in International Studies and Theater -- as well as offering the International Baccalaureate. It was the perfect match for someone like me.

As it happened, the last time I worked as a substitute, it was in the same school that ended up hiring me. You, Reader, are probably nodding, glad that I managed to finally find a school that was not only normal, but slightly exceptional, as well!

Well...

That would be the day when a male student pinned a (profoundly deaf) female student against the wall, lifting her in the air by her throat. That would also be the day when Future Retired Educator paused not at all, but fairly leapt upon the guy's back, visions of homicide dancing in her head. To her credit, the girl was doing a great job of kicking him in the balls. Between the two of us, he didn't have a chance. He ended up taking off, with administrators in hot pursuit.

Was it something about *me*? I was beginning to be a fixture down at Juvenile Court. The kicker about that incident was that the girl dropped the charges at the last minute, and the school decided not to pursue it, as well. And when I ended up with several French Two classes that Fall, who should be in one of them but both combatants. Best buds.

And if you are wondering what a profoundly deaf student was doing in a French class, you are not alone. I failed her three semesters in a row before someone finally pulled her out of foreign languages.

[originally posted 7/2009]

Rope

Shhh. Don't tell Fred, but I am having a very good morning. I promise to tell him later -- *after* he has brought me another wonderfully brewed cup of coffee, in bed! To me, this is the height of luxury -- to have slept five hours without interruption and to wake without my first thought being that of pain medication, and then to have this sweet man offer me caffeine.

I need a better adjective than "sweet."

It's hard to accept gestures from him.

There is so much in my head and heart right now that I once again wish for Dumbledore's pensieve:

The Pensieve has multiple functions.

At times, when one's head is so full of thoughts that one cannot hear oneself think, it is useful to be able to take some of those thoughts and literally set them aside. The practiced Wizard can extract a thought from his head and store it in a phial or in the
Pensieve for another time. If it is in the Pensieve, it is possible to stir the thoughts stored there together and look for patterns. It appears that the wizard has the choice of extracting an entire memory, leaving no trace of it in his head... It is also apparently possible to edit these extracted memories, though it is a difficult task and one which is often not done well.

If one places one's head within the Pensieve, one becomes immersed in a memory that is stored in the Pensieve, and is able to relive it as if one was living that time over again...

A thought or memory stored in the Pensieve can, with proper stimulus, appear to nearby viewers as if standing on the surface of the basin.

It is also possible to take another person's memories, place them in the Pensieve, and then enter them to relive them as if one were the person whose memories you have just added to the Pensieve...

Most interestingly, the memories viewed by the person watching in the Pensieve are more complete than the person's own observations.

Ah, the coffee? I just dumped a few good gulps down my shirt. It's lovely what the tics and spasms of CRPS can do. I remember making an ambitious meal one evening -- cooking from a wheelchair in a kitchen that isn't handicap-friendly can be a challenge -- and as I was carefully lifting some filet with my spatula -- ticticticspazspazspaz -- and the fish went flying through the air backward over my head, landing with a satisfying *SPLAT* next to the catfood bowl, which of course determined its destiny.

At least the italian roast provides me the incentive to get out of bed, wash up, dress, and put the pensieve back in the closet. Throw in a load of wash --

Ah, the laundry? I have it on the brain. I was up at 3 am doing laundry because Sam-I-Am decided to piss on my dirty clothes again. This threat that he feels from Little Boy is getting serious -- as in: I cannot deal with any more cat piss. There are worse odors in the world but none that can line the sinuses quite the way that acrid, oily smell does. Bleck. Little Boy is the big-balled stray who is Marmy's brother, Dobby's uncle, and who is continually lurking around the exterior of The Manor. He has been injured recently -- it looks, Fred says, like it might be a bite on one of his rear legs -- but he is walking and feeding/drinking well, so I think he will be as "all right" as a stray cat can be in this cold-hearted world.

Marlinspike Hall has a few chinks loose here and there, especially in those wings dating from Medieval Times -- and Little Boy finds every little hole and access and marks, marks, marks with joyful abandon.

Following impeccable feline logic -- it only makes sense that Sammy, threatened by this virile male, would then do the expected: seek out my dirty clothes and piss all over them. No, I don't leave dirty laundry strewn about -- not when Captain Haddock might pop in at any time (for I do NOT believe he's still with that Swearing Bongi, photographic evidence be damned). I keep a clean Manor, thank you very much. But I will be keeping my laundry in some new, highly classified, secret spot.

A FEW HOURS LATER: I was planning to blog a bit about John McCain's performance on Meet the Press. Dick Gregory is doing a great job of making the show his own -- he is comfortable in his own skin, up on the topics -- Tim Russert must be smiling. McCain seems to be somewhat returned to his old self -- the man obviously does not fluorish when under the thumb of those political advisors and bobbly-headed pundits that the presidential campaign forced upon him. Forced upon him? Whatever. So now he thrives as part of the "Loyal Opposition." He is right to be angry about President Obama's failure to pick the pork out of his legislation, for not going with a line-by-line veto, as he promised. It is a bit of a pain, though, to listen to things like how McCain is anxiously waiting for guidance on Obama's plans to revamp immigration policy; Yes, it needs to happen, but can we decide once and for all whether he is doing too much too fast, the wrong things too soon, the right things too slow, or -- O, hilarity! -- whether he is doing everything just right, the Socialist Mad Man? The funniest moment of the show, was Gregory asking McCain if he planned to support Sarah Palin for President in
2012. It was hilarious. I haven't seen lips flap that fast in months. Why, surprise, surprise, it appears that there are many fascinating and qualified potential Republican candidates emerging!

He put the mark of approval on the new administration's foreign policy decisions and gave a smarmy yellow-toothed grin at being reminded that the fundamentals of our economy "are sound."

He plays the statesman well when he is not called upon to lead -- and just as I will never forget to remember that he was a brave man and that he served his country, and now suffers for it, physically, daily, I will also not fail to recall the seamier, steamier details of the man's life. I need to dig out that Rolling Stones' article from last Fall... it was an eye-opener.

Found it. Make-Believe Maverick: A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty
By TIM DICKINSON, posted October 16, 2008

Yeah, so I was going to say a word about McCain!

Fred has gone to church and is staying afterward to give some sort of guidance about the lighting changes the congregation wants to make. Yes, I still have trouble with meanspirited jealousy. I long for the days when I woke up (Odd. I see myself as *single*, too.) early on Sunday morning, threw on some jeans and walked the grounds for a bit before hopping in the car and going and doing whatever the hell I wanted. But I am doing better in that I know my feelings have nothing to do with The Fredster's doings, nothing to do with him at all.

He helped me out the other day. Hmm. This won't make much sense to you, or seem at all important, but it was A Moment for me, somehow. We were flying down the highway to a doctor's appointment, it was pouring rain, I had not slept, my legs were enjoying some wild myoclonic jerks, and the allotted doses of pain medication had all been taken to little effect. The night before I had made noises about wanting to get my hair cut after the appointment -- since the route we had to take brought us near the hair place that knows how to tame my tangles and love my locks.

After seeing the PA (God forbid PainDude should pop his head in), while we were loading me back into Ruby the Dutiful Honda C-RV, Fred asked if I still wanted to get my hair done -- it was fine with him, said he.

And in that little moment, my world caved in. It just did. The fatigue of -- the shit of -- the large and total crap of it all. I kept hearing the voice in my head repeating ad nauseum -- Why does everything have to be so hard? It's an unfortunate mantra of late. I am trying to keep it unuttered. You know, think before I speak, edit what comes out of the mouth -- that sort of self-improvement [?] project.

I ducked my head and was searching for the ability to just do it (this would be others' mantra for me -- it bleeds out of their eyes, it is so obvious. Shut the fuck up and just do it. Anyway, strength of character can sometimes be found on the car floor mats.)

Ignoring me (or whatever), Fred said, still in that detached but kind monotone: "You just can't do it today. You hurt too much."

You know -- kind of like how you might say, "Well, skinless boneless chicken breasts are on my shopping list but I don't like the looks of these, so we'll just move on. I am more in the mood for a salmon salad, maybe with capers and some really finely minced scallion anyway."

It mattered that he didn't interrupt his movements to make an announcement; It mattered that... what? That he seemed confident that soon I would be able to do it, that soon I would not hurt too much.

He threw me a rope.

As today takes shape, it turns out to be a normally bad day -- which is, oddly enough, fine. The only things making me wince are these damned spasms and jerks (remember the coffee down the shirt?). And the thing fuelling my energy? A fever of 101.2. It really can give me the energy to get a lot done. I think Iwill surprise him with a lovely dinner.

I feel like cooking.

I hope I don't toss the food across the kitchen.

Oh! Do you remember The Turtles song -- no matter how they toss the dice/ it had to be/ the only one for me is you/ and you for me? Being just a wee lass, I "heard" that lyric as "no matter how they toss the tights..." Don't ask. I guess I kept an image in my head of everyone throwing leotards around.

This is a terrible post. Sorry. Maybe I'll come back to it. Likely not. Sufficient unto the day, and all that jazz. My goals remain modest -- a *deep* clean of the kitchen (as in, take off the grill from the bottom of the fridge and wash it; as in, pry the knobs off the stove and soak the suckers; as in, wash the trash cans!) and a lovely supper for the guy that throws me rope.

Doing It Twice

The next surgery is scheduled for Monday, February 16, at an as yet undetermined time. I know that they prefer to do "dirty" cases last, so I anticipate a late afternoon start time. Due to Fred's hectic schedule this week, the only day we can get the pre-op testing and all the admission details done is Friday. Cutting it close, but the nurse said it would be okay.

She hugged me again.

Everyone is hugging me. It makes me nervous.

The PA was sweet -- a tough adjective for such a big, tall guy to pull off, but he does. The two of them sort of crashed in my exam room -- I am like a comfortable piece of furniture over there -- and I was surprised to hear them violating HIPAA all over the doggone place, much as they did last week. Not that I remember, or even care to remember, any of the patient names they tossed around. They were not badmouthing anyone (except for the occasional raised eyebrow and shift in tone of voice) and they were clearly exhausted. Dr. ShoulderMan is running them ragged. Red-rimmed eyes, the both of them.

This was my informed consent: "You know the drill, right?" Actually, I am fine with that, though I did have a moment of feeling pissy about how blasé we all are now about slicing me open. This will be the fourth major operation since the end of August, the third on my right shoulder. They anticipate removing the spacer that's in there and either giving me another (if still infected) or if everything is pristine, giving me another prosthesis.

NOTHING showed on the x-rays of the left shoulder -- which absolutely blows my mind, because I cannot even use the damned arm, and the slightest jostling causes intense pain. The PA will show ShoulderMan the films today or tomorrow, to see if the Master has a different interpretation.

And so they "consented" me for bilateral shoulders on Monday, but with no real intention to do both -- the two of them said it was definite for the right side. In the interim, I am to try taking more muscle relaxants, and doing "whatever works." God, I wish ShoulderMan had been there. Not that I don't trust the PA and the nurse -- they are excellent -- but he is supposed to be the freaking orthopedic genius. And as nothing is working, I am kind of clueless how to help myself. Maybe I will slap the stupid TENS unit back on and groove to the funky beat...

Okay, so maybe he was busy, off somewhere saving limbs and lives. Or attending a conference full of ultra-important information that he really needs to know. Possibly, he is delivering a paper of earth-shattering significance, being the Bone Sage.

This morning, I tried using the arm, with no improvement and excessive pain. So I switched back to one-arming it with the infected-as-all-get-out right arm. [We all know it is still infected, or re-infected, if one wishes to engage in semantics. My fevers, white count, C-RP, etc. all are screaming to be acknowledged.]

And then I blithely, unconcernedly, stupidly, picked up the full carton of milk. No, that wasn't so stupid. What was stoopid was doing it twice. (Back on 22 May 2002, after falling and fracturing my leg and other skeletal parts, the Evil Deaf Asshole Nurse made me stand on it -- slamming the door to the hall shut and hissing "It's not broken, stand up, standupstandupstandup!" And so I tried, falling back to the floor with another loud c-r-u-n-c-h sound. With such a great initial result, of course I tried it again -- at her effing urging. By then, my entire foot had rotated to an inhuman angle, the leg was purple and swollen, and, unbeknownst to Evil Deaf Asshole Nurse, unbeknownst to me, CRPS had begun...)

Ummm: Flashback.

{Who is that screaming? And is it now or is it then?}

I am prone to flashing back with doing-it-twice pain -- stoopid pain that could easily be avoided -- also when I am fearful.

Erin was my physical therapist -- home visits -- back in 2002. My left arm was messed up (nothing like falling on a freshly operated body part) and immobilized in a sling. My right foot and leg were in a cast, non-weight-bearing. My right arm was kind of bad off -- it had initially been scheduled before the left for replacement and I don't recall why the switch was made. So when the time came for me to try standing up, with Erin and Fred right there, I could not do it.

It felt physical. I simply could not do it. I was weak, the one leg would not hold, it was impossible.

There surely was no relationship between my hyperventilation and shaking, and the impossibility of standing beside the hospital bed that completely took over the bedroom. So when Erin began asking what I was afraid of, I had no clue. I kept trying to stand, then sinking back onto the bed, more and more approaching real exhaustion.

Once Erin elicited the underlying truth -- that I was not just afraid of falling, but that I knew with complete certainty that I was going to fall -- she and Fred got so close to me, so obviously had control over anything that might happen, that I conquered my fear just long enough to quickly stand, then sit back down.

Erin cheered. It wasn't easier after that, but I began to make some steady progress. Now and then, I would still get "stuck" by memories. Don't ever forget that fear is powerfully paralyzing. Fight fear at all costs, Dear Readers.

All of which to say that I could learn to appreciate black coffee.

Still, I am a coffee fanatic; I like it the way I like it; The rest of the day is instant doodoo if I cannot get properly prepared bean juice.

Good thing I am not nervous about Monday. Good thing I got over that stoopid fear of falling. And of doing it twice.

Pensieve

For you to truly have a pleasurable reading experience, I need to encourage a certain frame of mind. The fastest and least painless way to achieve this proper receptivity is to repeat the following, adding an extra five repetitions until you feel it:

They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.

Despite the fact that everything I write here, in these rarefied environs, is little but a hodge-podge of emotion, factoid, and self-reportage, now and again I will actually TRY to extract the loose ends of my brain.

Ever since reading about Dumbledore's pensieve*, I have wanted one!

If you are unfamiliar with the Harry Potter series, you may be cursing me under your breath (for you are ever circumspect). This stone basin apparatus, covered in runes, is filled with a silvery fluid or gas, wisps of which are always swirling and threatening to escape its bounds.

Here is an elaboration that may help:

The Pensieve has multiple functions.

At times, when one's head is so
full of thoughts that one cannot hear oneself think, it is useful to be able to take some of those thoughts and literally set them aside. The practiced Wizard can extract a thought from his head and store it in a phial or in the Pensieve for another time. If it is in the Pensieve, it is possible to stir the thoughts stored there together and look for patterns. It appears that the wizard has the choice of extracting an entire memory, leaving no trace of it in his head, as
Professor Snape does in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, or extracting
a copy of a memory, retaining the original, as Professor Slughorn does in Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It is also apparently possible to edit these
extracted memories, though it is a difficult task and one which is often not
done well.

If one places one's head within the Pensieve, one becomes immersed in a memory that is stored in the Pensieve, and is able to relive it as if one was living that time over again. Harry experienced Professor Dumbledore's memories of the Wizengamot trials of several death eaters this way in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Professor Snape's memories of Harry's father in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

A thought or memory stored in the Pensieve can, with proper stimulus, appear to nearby viewers as if standing on the surface of the basin. Professor Dumbledore used this technique to show Harry the prophecy that had been made about him, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and it is used in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when full immersion in memory was not needed.

It is also possible to take another person's memories, place them in the Pensieve, and then enter them to relive them as if one were the person whose memories you have just added to the Pensieve. Harry and Professor Dumbledore do this a number of times in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in order to determine the salient points of the early history of Tom Riddle, or as he later styled himself, Lord Voldemort.

Most interestingly, the memories viewed by the person watching in the
Pensieve are more complete than the person's own observations. For instance, in
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bob Ogden visits the Gaunt family.
Morfin speaks to him only in Parseltongue, which Ogden does not know; yet Harry, reliving Ogden's memories, not only understands what the Gaunts are saying in Parseltongue, he is able to perceive things happening outside Ogden's range of vision.

Spacing out in front of the television this morning, I found myself weeping at the images and sounds of yesterday's inauguration, thinking of my friends who can finally look to the seat of this country's power and see someone who looks like themselves, someone who can reference black history with both the dignity of higher office and the intimacy of personal truth -- which surely extracts much of the paralyzing venom from our past that keeps us from addressing the persistent conflicts and politics of race.

The most astounding thing I've heard thus far? There were no arrests made at the event in Washington, D.C. yesterday. That is an incredible commendation of the security force that was so very apparent and of that huge celebratory crowd.

If it is true. I have a hard time believing that no one got drunk or high, then predictably stupid, in all the revelry -- that there were no instances of "terroristic threat" -- that John mumble-tongued Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was able to leave the area unscathed!

Between them, Obama and Roberts managed to absolutely mangle the Oath of Office. Fred and I were at the Infectious Disease Infusion Center -- he was asleep in the Magic Chair while I was having blood drawn and the PICC line dressing changed. It is a miracle that Christina, the nurse, didn't stick the slumbering Fredster by mistake, as her head was swiveling back and forth in an effort to watch the inaugural festivities on the T.V. mounted in the corner of the room. As noon approached, the room filled with doctors, nursing assistants, pharmacists, secretaries, and one ancient gentleman there for chemotherapy -- two, three people piled in each of those magic recliners (everyone glaring at the now loudly snoring Fred), twirling around on those round swivel stools, holding up the walls. We were all circumspect for the initial five minutes or so, and then the commentary started to fly, beginning with the aforementioned ancient gentleman patient, who said, "I have voted in every election since Truman and Dewey in 1948... and never have I wanted someone to be out of office as bad as I want Bush gone, today." I had the impression that we all relaxed after that pronouncement. I was surprised to hear the clearly partisan chatter become uninhibited, wild -- even woolly.** Christina made several lame attempts to be fair to Bush, but the crowd just wasn't feeling it, and she came clean, eventually.

The best comment about the screwed-up oath? From one of the I.D. doctors -- a severe woman whom I saw a few times in the hospital, with an equally severe jaw and angular Eastern European haircut:

"That's okay. He'll get it right next time."

Anyway (Choo choo! train of thought?) -- so there were no arrests reported. I wonder if there were any detentions or similar euphemisms for being tossed in the slammer.

big house, calaboose, can, clink, cooler, hoosegow, house of correction, jail, jug, pen, penitentiary, pokey, prison

So it turns out that the PA I so admired is perhaps as smart as a stick. And I pay for it. Shoot, you pay for it! My insurance company pays for it. Literally! For a reason we cannot fathom, she has decided to be resistant to the idea that the pus flying out of my joints and from the interior of my bones is the result of infection. She badly wants it to be an inflammatory process.

Last week, I let her do the "gout" dance, and order diagnostic tests -- despite a long, intervening conversation that included reading the operative reports where infection was clearly what was going on. She even said something like, "Okay, so it isn't just an inflammatory process... but when I attended that lecture [on gout] last week, I thought of you!" A friend wrote me Monday night, saying that she can't wait to find out what classes or lectures the PA attended last week, because she surely would test me for it!

Ah, but this scream rises from the depths of my soul, or the chambers of my large intestine: Who pays for the tests that she orders without knowing what she is doing? SHE OUGHT TO PAY FOR THEM! She even was told to refocus by her "boss," the head I.D. guy -- she spoke to him last week and again yesterday.

My problem, and it is my problem, is that I lack mental clarity to such an extent that I can no longer advocate for myself. Truly. I am not kidding. The PA could depart from the Path of Logic and Reason and I am so incapacitated by pain and lack of sleep that I don't catch half of it. Bring someone with me? I do! That guy over there asleep in the chair!

Hell, this post is not what I wanted it to be.

"My" CRPS is worse -- particularly on the right side of my body. I was ready to jump out of my skin while Christina was searching for a vein (my PICC wouldn't give any blood, darn it all). Like so many of her compatriots, and in spite of me telling her otherwise, she thinks that gentle stroking of my skin feels good. I will ask her to please not touch me unless it is part of the procedure. She will always ask "why." I will explain CRPS again to her. She will say something that she thinks is compassionate and empathetic and will simultaneously, while wearing gloves, pat and stroke my right arm. The gloves catch and pull on my skin... and it all sends me through the ceiling because of the ensuing pain. When Fred is awake to witness it (this weekly event), I swear that he is ready to kill. She also insists on rotating that right arm out and away from the body, despite my protestations and explanations about there being no shoulder, about the distinct sensation of tissue being torn and ripped, to which she always replies: "They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right." When I rotate the arm back to a less painful position, she insists I turn it out again, else she won't be able to properly dress the PICC line. She has a point, but barely.

"They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right." My sentiments, exactly, and perhaps my motto for years to come.

This morning I learned that I am developing quite the vocal dream life, judging not only by the yells reverberating in the chill air when I jolt awake, but also by Fred's faithful transcriptions. So this is what he does while I sleep!

The most recent pronouncements?

"Ears! There are two of them!"

"I can do it. I can do anything." [Said conversationally, after sitting upright and looking around the room]

"313 Fitzgerald. 8260 Southwest 145th Street." [Old addresses]

and my personal favorite:

"Excuse me, but Derrida is down the hall." [Well, he once was! His son, too.]

Conclusion? I am awfully boring, decidedly literal.



Of course, I cannot give proper shrift to the screams. The screeching scares the whole Marlinspike Hall household half to death. Cats scatter --save Marmy, who, oddly, advances. The Castafiore comes flying, the swirling hues of what can only be called a housecoat -- not so much a peignoir, really, as a kimono-inspired wrapper -- contributing to the squirrelly after-impressions of a pastel dream gone wrong.

So long as no one interrogates me about why I screamed, I usually settle back down. A few times, still caught up in the Terror of Whatever, all I perceived was a blacked-out figure bending over me and pretty much squealed -- but it was Only Fred Freaking Out [OFFO]. What a sweetie.

Hmmm. What else remains in the hodge-podge pile? Would you believe that I have at least three blog drafts written while hallucinating?

No elephants, by the way. Rather, dainty rhinos, and more aubergine than pink, with swirls of paisley in deep burgundy, offset by green forest tendrils, and small stray flecks of gold.

That's a lie!

It is not at all visual.

Rather, there seems to be a talk radio show ongoing between my ears. I suspect that I pick up the background noise of the television, the ambient noise from the street, the cats' purring, the coffee maker, the microwave.

I hear the darnedest things. Some of the broadcasts are in warm, familiar voices -- the Grader Boob's, for instance. The dulcet tones of my stepmother, I think I recognize, I am not sure. Content is the determining factor, and as I hear her recount afternoon teas and toast, being tossed in the gales, and swimming alongside our little overturned Sunfish sailboat as the dark clouds loom, thunder audible, with lightening just a promised thing -- as I hear these details, I welcome her, just as water laps against the shell.

Since my visit with Aunt Nancy a week ago, my stepmother has been almost constantly on my mind. Nancy, herself, peoples my day fantasies, these visions, my noisy dreams, as a young girl in petticoats, scared, lying under the bed, waiting for cruelty. No, no -- back to 301 Walnut Creek Drive, my glory days.

Mom reminds me how to make the toast. It matters. In the rushed early morning hour, two extra pieces of whole wheat toast are buttered, placed in that tired old pie pan recycled from the Sunday morning Sara Lee coffee cake. The bread sits for about an hour at a just warm temperature of maybe 200 degrees before we turn off the heat(never ever open the oven door before being ready to eat them, usually, Mom and I would surely agree, with afternoon tea). So we conveniently "forget" about those extra toast slices, and as we go running out the door into our day, turn the heat off. Don't dare open that oven door until you go there in surprise late that afternoon.

Crispy, aromatic, buttery, cut into triangles, served with Earl Grey or whatever was on hand. It felt civilizing. Better than Melba toast but not a telltale vice like a scone or... a cream horn. Cough. There was a bakery downtown, across the street (and believe it or not, the street was Main Street) from my stepmother's grandfather's jewelry store. This bakery made the most beautiful, light, slightly sweet cream horns and my stepmother and I would buy five -- eat two on the way home, have two with tea... and offer my father the leftover one, which he invariably refused and which we then tastefully halved! Ah, but the toast was still a wonderful accent to the day. 2.5 cream horns a day would've eventually worn us down...

Ugh. Fred just reported a "huge dead rat" in the front pasture, just beyond the Moat to Marlinspike Hall, where he was out cavorting with a friend's dog. Yes, to the three cats, he wishes to add a dog. I am a dog person, never even entertaining the thought of having cats until I met him. We had a dog together but that story is not one I wish to revisit today. Suffice it to say that I will never again subject a dog to the wiles of his temperament. He thinks he has changed and that were he to pick the dog, all would be well. I hope so, because if not, he may find himself alone in all kinds of ways.

It was only a week or so ago that I ever saw the show "The Dog Whisperer." Strangely enough, like The Boutiqueur, The Dog Whisperer advises, over and over, living in the now. I like that he does this without overburdening his subject with whatever that might mean. It may sound snotty, but it is what it is. Maybe it is not that radical a notion, eh?

"You live in the past, you get what you had in the past." I love Cesar -- when he speaks about humans, you can almost sense how frustrated the species makes him. Hence the blurb for the show "I rehabilitate dogs. I train humans."

Persistent patience. "Calm assertive."

Oh Mom.

Nancy was right, and I can no longer block what Mom said, nor should I. Why have I pretended that these things had never been said? To what end?

"[Future] Retired Educator, don't make me choose between you and your father, because I will choose him every time." And so it has gone.

Soon, in a matter of days, I am thinking, I need to honor this aunt of mine who has blown in and out of my path by allowing my mind to think about my grandfather, the sainted child abuser, the orphan who grew up knowing no one knows what. He and I rescued countless animals together
-- he helped me hand raise a blue jay that was deliberately pushed out of its nest. That bird stayed for about a year before being killed by a hawk. "Squawky" and I played outside, the jay hopping from tree to tree, yelling and laughing with me, but he usually came in at night, at least in the first months he could fly.

Oh, and if you did not know, teaching a wild baby bird to fly is perhaps the most humbling of activities. You are familiar with the scenario of a kitten up a tree? Substitute a baby blue jay who was taught to fly by hand flutter techniques, managed to land -- okay, more like crash land -- on this high branch, and now is stuck here with no notion what to do except to call for his largish and clumsy mother, who doesn't have a clue except to turn to her gently smiling grandfather, who quietly went and got a ladder.

My nightmares, my fevers, these hallucinatory days? I hope they will lead me to dream of Granddaddy as he might have been as a small boy -- intelligent, lovable, loving, and orphaned. Maybe I will understand how he could beat his children, but probably not. It's not something I am seeking to excuse or deny, but I know that it is important for me to accept that it happened, and to be less shocked by the many permutations it has had, as it rippled forward in time.

They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.
They oughta do sumpthin' about that. That ain't right.



*A Pensieve is a stone receptacle used to store and review memories. Covered in mystic runes, it contains memories that take physical form as a type of matter that is described as neither liquid nor gas. A witch or wizard can extract their own or another person’s memories, store them in the Pensieve, and review them later. It also relieves the mind when it becomes cluttered with information. Anyone can examine the memories in the Pensieve, which also allows viewers to fully immerse themselves in the memories stored within, much like a magical form of real world virtual reality.


Users of these devices view the memories from a third-person-point-of-view, providing a near-omniscient perspective of the events preserved. This, of course, raises questions of how they are able to see things beyond what they have remembered. Rowling answered this question in an interview, confirming that memories in the pensieve allow one to view details of things that happened even if they did not notice or remember them, and stated that "that's the magic of the Pensieve, what brings it alive". The "memories" contained in the Pensieve have the appearance of silver threads. Memories that have been heavily manipulated or tampered with to alter perspectives, or are simply aged and gone-spoiled (such as Slughorn's), may appear thick and jelly-like and offer obscured viewing. Memories are not limited to just those of humans, since at least one house-elf (Hokey) provided Dumbledore with a memory as well.

** "Wild and woolly"
Meaning: Lawless and uncultured.

Origin: This expression is of American origin and came into being to describe the 'wild' west of the country sometime after the Californian Gold Rush era of the 1850s. The US publication The Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review and Church Register, 1855, included a reference to the "wild and woolly-haired Negillo", which is almost there.

The first example I can find of the precise phrase in print is in the Missouri newspaper The Sedalia Daily Democrat, December 1875:

"W. A. Palmer, the South Bend, Indiana, murderer and paramour of Dolly Tripp, was for several years resident of Clinton. Bill always was one of the 'wild and woolly' kind and would associate with the demimonde."

[Hmm. From further reading, I presume that "negillo" means "negrito," a reference to "pygmy."]