Five Dollars an Hour

I've got the Neil Young of "Harvest" and "Comes a Time" in my head, impossible tasks at hand, and late night coffee on the way.  There's a heartfelt post waiting for the courage of a button-push that likely won't come.  In a majorly disappointing show of personal weakness, I've allowed people who toss around the word "love" and "God" as the predictable preface to condemning me to those warmer climes of fire and brimstone into my space, even into the holy interstices.  More personal weakness -- I fed the "love/God" Trolls.  These Trolls are already overweight, either in body, in malice, or in avarice, so I did at least limit their kibbly treats to low cal, tartar control, high protein pork products.

What has their "love" and public references to "God"schtuff taught me?  Well, there is the reminder that stress is terrible for CRPS, and derails my neverending efforts to control soma with psyche. It might be better put to say this instead of alluding to "control": Nothing can squelch my ardent desire for soma and psyche to so ardently entwine as to fog the view from these formerly sparkling big baby browns.

Actually, the glaucoma meds have these neat side effects!  No, not the itchy, redness and blurry vision, you jokers!  The double ring of beautiful greens that now surround my previously ordinary iris of backroad mud.

If you've never indulged, indulge -- take a look at your iris in a hand mirror.  It's a thing of beauty, no matter if brown, blue, or some exotic blend.  There are feathers in there, and light.  Infinity. The iris of a living eye puts the most masterful kaleidoscope to shame.

This will sound morbid, and for the longest time the memories were used in morbid fashion against me by that previously mentioned actor, psyche, but if you ever are with a being as life leaves his body, keep talking, and keep watching the eyes.  They are always beautiful and they always fade, sucked inward, subsumed, gone, at the moment of true death.  Keep looking as long as the situation allows, for the iris remains beautiful, and a marker, worth remembering.

In any event, maybe I just wanted the distraction of Trolls -- they're easy; they're stupid; they feed that misguided sense of "mission." Anything to avoid thinking about whom and what matters.

I don't think I've published this poetic effort before.  Don't much care because it brought me joy and back into contact with, as just stated, that which matters.

It was written "for" an unimportant poetry contest about three years ago. There was a time when my brother Bob ("shrink, tunors, shrink!"), my stepsister, and I were, all three, of "babysitter" age. Our dad was in Vietnam and, sad to say, that was the happiest year of our lives. The street we lived on -- off base, in civilian freedom for the first time ever -- was full of fun, young families. A big need for babysitters!

My sister and I earned a fair amount of spending money as run-of-the-mill, adequate sitters, but you know who everyone really wanted? Bob! Six foot four, a pony tail, and a kid magnet. The softball games he organized after dinner were the stuff of legends. A fielding position for everyone in the neighborhood, a turn at bat that always produced a play, if not a run. Sudden new rules!

He would pick up toddlers, carry them over his head and run them around the "bases" -- a telephone pole, the fender on The Rabbi's station wagon, the Smith's holly bush, and all the way to someone's front door home. He cooked, he cleaned, wore everyone out (clientele or not), and even groomed pets. I used to stay awake, waiting for him to come home and turn his evening into a bedtime story. I remember falling asleep to the soft cadence of "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..."

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Five Dollars an Hour


My brother Bob was the most popular sitter,

the Vicar of Fitzgerald Street,

as baseball runners coasted home, zig-

zag tagged lamp posts, car bumper bases,

magic places, all, triumphant!



Hitters held their crouch,

proud of his boast of "way to watch

the ball, there, buckaroo!," suburban

cowboys and girls, night's gloam

softened even in Baghdad, believing

beloved and loving because of his six

foot four, pony-tailed dominion

over locusts and Pentecost.



The birds, most house sparrows, moved

stumbling, criss-cross clawed and closer

to his soft "hey, batter,

hey, batter" banter poise of noise,

to roost and erase the day's

gateposts, attacks, door

posts, counterattacks, lacy graces,

and atlases with their gridded ghosts.



Because Bob was big and strong, scooping

gurgle-bubble babies, carried directly

from danger straight into fun [aloft! the roosting

birds approved with rustles!], to dunk them

in bathtubs and sinks, have them dreaming,

scrub-dub, of outrageous happy endings

to farflung bedtime stories

begun before tater tots,

strumming guitars through broccoli

-- "the giant's shrub" -- and after asking,

"Are the pets all fed?" -- it was off

to bed, exhausted, safe, fear quashed,

memories of catching, hitting, chasing

balls, and phrases of soft praise.



Monsters and thieves ran fast away

when Brother Bob flew front doors open:

Dismayed and afraid -- though a few came to stay,

reformed by joshing scoffing and the fun

of washing cookie sheets and tossing

foil wrap in the trash, "Three pointers!"

But then they'd loiter, unsure, until by his pied

piping, terror's buffer, they slipped, too,

far from suffering, ushered, sliding into dreams'

home plate, like cloud cover, while he surveyed

the kitchen, stowed the butter,

and swept the floor. Big-handed

tender, he was the favorite, too,

for brand new babies, newer-than-new

preemies, who soaked the august promise

of sun, chrome fenders, and one-

day line drives from his slender fingers.



I would wait at home to hear the tales

of naughty boys and bawdy daughters,

dogs that nipped and cats that scratched,

or -- giving up all that -- I would

wait at home for my turn, my viewing,

my comfort at his comfort, my turn

at his standing tall, the flash of

his "I know you" smile,

his "What are you doing up, kid?"



My beloved own once-in-a-while,

never bitter sitter...






© 2013 L. Ryan

It's important, so do it.

Quick, note the day and time:  I'm having a productive day.  Two loads of laundry, the weekly refilling of the med box, several psychological evaluations of the Feline Triumvirate, orientation of several new Marlinspike Hall Manor Gift Shoppe volunteers, coffee -- perfectly strong and I did not pour boiling water in my lap in its making!

Sure, there were errors, flukes, lots of pills on the floor, and the Gift Shoppe may be in retail peril, but there is an abundance of clean covers, ranging from light and kind to tender skin to heavy and cold repellent. None of the cats aberrant behaviors have improved but we have lowered alert levels to DefCon 2, hoping that we can continue to deescalate tensions and avoid Buddy killing Marmy, or Marmy shifting from clawing defense mode to slashing aggression.  Most of all, we would like Dobby to retain some fur, as when the little guy is stressed, he releases all of his hairy hairs, usually on my clean clothes.  And, if we put all our desires out there, well, we'd like him to shut up, as well. He's the Town Crier of our world and, honest to God, it sounds like a nonstop tirade of a lisped "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!"

Ahem.  Yes, I'm having a day!

My right foot is probably as small as it's ever been in the past 12 years. If you ignore its purple and frigid state, well, hell, it almost looks like a doggone foot!

The claw phenomenon is, indeed, spreading to two fingers on my left hand, but rather than cry over that (we now cry for an hour when the lights go out at day's end), I am forcing that hand to do extra duties.  I suppose someone without CRPS would call the doctor.  I have been taught not to, trained better than a seal.  Oh, how to stave off the urge to balance a beach ball on my nose?

I am daring to see another Kaiser Permanente neurologist next Thursday.  Yesterday, if you had dared to ask, I'd have told you it was a hoop to be leaped through, or thrown through (by the neurologist, or Fred, perhaps... maybe even Lumpy, if he could work up the strength).  Today, I've decided to focus on researching these sudden and completely un-freaking-expected changes in my upper extremities.  Research as only I can.  I have awesome research powers, friends, and they, coupled with unerring insight, rarely lose me in a corn field.

Don't know where that came from, that whole "lose me in a corn field" thing, but I like it. So it stays.

So next Thursday, yes, we slough off the history of Kaiser Permanente's abysmal neurology department (though I hear that EAST of the Lone Alp, they have better staffing) and we politely make the focus saving my hand function.  The OT kept concentrating on the pain of it, not hearing my oft-repeated: "I can handle the pain... what I cannot handle is losing the use of my hands."

It's easier to focus on the amorphous and try to score points for ass-kissing empathy, sympathy, compassion rather than brainstorm with me how I am going to toilet myself, wash, and manipulate forks, knives, knobs, buttons, cats, Fred, paperwork, pens, computers, car doors, seat belts, coffee cups, telephones, and pills, pills, pills!

Much better to wheedle: "It must hurt a lot.  Does it hurt a lot?"

Button my shirt, bitch!
Dice the Holy Trinity of onion, bell pepper, and celery.  Or the required base to a magnificent, fragrant stir fry:  ginger, garlic, and several optional thirds -- onion, chilies... none of that to be confused with the saucing options.  Don't get excited, Therapist, about a perceived ease to the saucing, because the saucing involves mixing, and the opening of many tiny bottles, and the outpouring -- precise outpouring -- of fish sauce and sesame oil and the many variants of soy and chili and sweet/sour viscous liquids.
I had trouble washing my face last night and dropped my toothbrush in the toilet.

But that was last night, and the OT was Tuesday, and won't be seen again until a few hours after the neurologist next week!

I've a firm grip on this day, still.

Part of that vise-like hold has been enabled by merely turning off all the phones and watching a few episodes of what I call a soap opera, but Fred insists is a "drama series." Yay for solutions, because they're solutions!

Clearly, giving my brain, such as it is, and these hands, such as they are, access to a keyboard has not been conducive to what pop stars like Dr. Phil might call "self talk." Dr. Phil is a marketing genius and a professional fraud.  I know the difference between what I type and what I actually feel.

Harrumph.

Time to finish my chores, turn the phones back on, be an encouragement to Fred and the hulking, skulking cats.  The genetically indentured Domestic Staff Executive Committee has requested a meeting with the Haddock Labor Relations Board, and judging by the steely glint in a few eyes, there are more issues than territorial disputes and genetic engineering snafus on the table. I think, I am guessing, I assume... that they want a bump in salary, an expansion of benefits, and some minimization of their essential serfdom.

I could be wrong.

Last night, when I turned off the lamp beside this godawful hospital bed, after I threw the stupid washcloth gripped by my right claw all of three feet (after a full wind-up and high kick), before I picked the 90-minute "sleep" music option (which started with dear Simone's "Go to Hell"), I spent an hour crying.  I didn't time it, the hour is a guess.

All I could see was Lumpy's sweet face, his eyes gone deeper than deep seems possible, and dark, much darker than seems fair.  I don't see the two lumps he says are there -- in his skull, one on the left hairline and the other at the base of his jaw.  Granted the jaw is disfigured and I can actually see it, but I like to pretend that I don't, and that his well-trimmed beard just has an inexplicable scruffy area.

To me, he is beautiful, handsome.  And, damn it, other worldly.

Can I convince you, you who are as mortal as he is, that he does not deserve death, that the world needs him, that nothing will ever be the same when he dies?  That a whole generation of mediocre writers will not have the touchstone of his classroom f-bombs and hilarious illustrations of rhetorical fallacies by the citation of the authority of South Park and The Simpsons?  They won't learn the crucial life lesson, the crucible of working life, that he models when explaining, over and over: "I grade what you put in front of me."

You haven't seen him mime gold medal winning Olympic ski jumpers.  He's a little over 6' 4" and could launch himself off the icy ramp, and extend his upper body, straight as a rail, over his legs until his slightly Roman nose seemed (and therefore, was) mere inches from his skis.

A Normal Hill specialist, his split leg landings, with arms making delicate ballast adjustments, would be the envy of any world class orchestral conductor.  The arms part, not the leg part. Unless we're talking some sort of weirdly energetic orchestra conductor, or perhaps an afflicted one, suffering from neurological tics, Parkinson's, or Tourette Syndrome aggravated by the brass section, probably the tenor trombones.

So tears turned into giggles in the dark.  And each cat came by, politely following their peculiar rules of Buddy first, Marmy second, and -- everpresent, very somber -- little Dobby.  Dobby never leaves me when I cry, though he may position himself so as to be unseen.  On the top edge of the pillow, perched on the corner of the bedside table, alertly upright between my feet.  He didn't learn the "don't stare" lesson in kittenhood, so he stares, and mewls softly.

Like I said, the hour was just a guess.  I also visited with some other beloveds, before relaxing my mind into the recurring memory of me, seated on Lumpy's shoulders as he walked, slowly, from the shallow end of our swimming pool to the deep end.  Yes, that put him under water for about a third of the journey, but never did he hasten the pace, break the rhythm.  Sometimes the tipsy Happy Hour boozers at poolside noticed, sometimes they did not, but it was something to behold.

Well, I just promised Fred, The Castafiore, Sven and his son, Cabana Boy, a healthy dinner of roasted organic vegetables and some sort of fish.

A chance to wield knives and cavort with a very hot oven!  Now, THAT is what I call Occupational Therapy. No co-pay and a delicious pay off at the task's end.

Readers?  Love the ones you're with, and find ways to transmit, send, convey, and give away the love you have for those not within your wily grasp.  It's important, so do it.








© 2013 L. Ryan

Animal Horns and Conch Shells

I'm watching, semi-watching, the semifinal match between the man of my almost dreams, Novak Djokovic, despite his horrid haircut and ultra-slim cut wardrobe, and the tenth-ranked Kei Nishikori, who seems extremely self-possessed, given the situation.  It's fairly early in the first set, I just got here, my attention waylaid by a fine early performance of Detective Goren in one of the first episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

You know back when he's still considered a nut job with nothing to offer.  As opposed to the later episodes where his status as a proven nut job has morphed into a touch-not reputation for pulling the improbable out of his ass.  His invasions of personal space, violations of suspects' DSM oddities ("pushing their buttons"), his empathetic powers that would render your average NYPD dick insane within the length of one long day, they can be sufficient grounds for keeping the television tuned on L & W: CI for a background marathon while I research the various and the sundry, in distress, in pain.  I can eyeball whatever suspect is being Gorenized in the Interrogation Room, and remind myself that things could be worse.  I could be in a room with gray cinderblock walls, a mirrored window, locked door, and Detectives Goren and Eames, his head cricked, all jazzy-handed, her neat, under-made self smiling at me like a hungry anaconda.

Nishikori is pissing me off. After a LUCKY first set win, despite his excellent play, and Novak's plethora of stupid errors, Djokovic handily stepped up and took the second set 6-1, at which point I indulged in a D'Onofrio rêverie of tics and lightening strikes of vulnerability.  Suddenly I discern a tiebreak going on, and in a ridiculous way, in the third set.  It is now set point, and I can't watch.

"Third set to Nishikori."

Bite me.

I know it means something when a person feels feverish but is in no way even close to being so.  I've felt weak and wiped out, working my way up the pain scale as if it were the easiest of climbing walls, with wild, nuclearized, toxic colors, grips of Seussian shapes, all horns and Roman clown noses.  I am broken. My instructions on being discharged Wednesday were to check back in at a local ER to resume intravenous antibiotics if (and we all thought "when") I had a fever of 100.4.

100.4 is nothing for me, or maybe the marker of a damn fine day.

I haven't been above 98.4 since we got home.  Despite chills, the aforementioned claymation approximation of a wild cartoon vertical cliff of pain, a weird appetite, the death of Brayden Martin, the relapse of Kate McRae, deep and abiding concern for my brother GB, weird episodes of suddenly passing out, having an arm not respond to my iron will, deciding that calling a doctor would just make everything incrementally worse.

I was explaining to one of the HMO doctors at their "overnight observation" facility how this all started with what looked like a huge abscess on the top of my foot, that presented itself as a volcano.  I apologize to you, as I guess I should apologize to the doctors for having only the word and image of "volcano" come to mind, as hard as this brain tries to offer another descriptor.  It looked like a freaking volcano, such that I thought, and hoped, that it might burst while I (again hoping) slept.  Instead it melted and turned the top of my whole foot red and painful, swollen and angry.

Her response?

"Do you have a picture of that?"

Did I have a picture of that?  No, I didn't think to capture that painful moment -- LIE.  I would have snapped it if I had two working hands and a camera that had not been dropped in soapy water!  Mostly because it's a weird thing to see a bluish/purple, slightly square-sided volcano sticking out of one's foot.  But over the past 12 years of having CRPS, seeing my legs and arms do weird things became normal.

Djokovic lost.  Rather, Nishikori did a fine job of winning.  Yes, Djokovic played badly, but had every opportunity to raise his game, and proved it.  He was out-played.

Now, to complete my accumulation of bad karma for the day, I am going to root against Roger Federer.  Or really screw myself over and wish him a tiring 5-setter with heat cramps, and an inexplicable case of recurring wedgies requiring the assistance of court side trainers, with Roger carefully hidden behind a wall of towels as he switched from wedgie shorts to wedgie shorts -- and then moves on to the finals only to lose against this very talented Japanese young man, Nishikori, in straight sets.

Yes, you read correctly.  The brave and steroid-bloated baby of an old soul, Brayden Martin, fell to an opportunistic pneumonia after being ravaged in brain and spine by odious cancer. I think he was all of six. I know he was wholly happy and attracted others who were happy, or needed to be.  He was a gifted air guitarist and was a freaking rock star. He needed to die and though I'm sure he'd have loved to stick around to watch the antics of his darlin' mother Maranda, and girl-magnet brother Mason, and nuggle in the arms of his grandma Robin -- he had plans for heaven.  Unfettered tricycling, soon to be a two-wheeler with snazzy training wheels, then, baby-wheels gone, pushed by angels with feathers flying wildly in the ether, finally pulling up alongside his buddy Nolan, lad by lad, finally free, finding the first off road exit from that boring cloud.  Thumbs-up all around, and a Di Fara pizza stand, straight from Brooklyn's Avenue J, perfect foldable plain cheese slices inhaled by these boys as they explore the lay of their new land.

There is a rain delay in Queens. So they are showing Federer and Monfils from... Thursday? The quarters, the round of sixteen?  Ah, Monfils, about whom I have conflicting feelings.  Sometimes, he cracks me the hell up, as he just did, calling for a review of a point he'd just won.  It looks as if the goofy, hot-and-cold Monfils is about to go up two sets to love. Federer had to dig himself out of a ditch, apparently.

I cannot sustain visions of an earthly heaven, not even to honor Brayden.  He's somewhere, and he's fine. His family has to stay here a while and right now their paradigm has been woefully insulted, and hearts, broken.

Kate began having seizures several weeks ago, after what seemed to be an uneasy good time, mostly filled with settling in a new place near L.A., new schools, therapists and doctors, and that weird feeling that something was wrong.  Every time they sought answers, problems were attributed to post-radiation and post-chemotherapy syndromes, sets of symptoms that complicate and depress, but do not threaten life.  But the seizures were different and the MRI was finally moved up, and showed new brain cancer, her third relapse.  Her spinal fluid showed no cancer cells.

These kids.

Ah, the rain delay is over, and Federer meets Cilic in real time.

I fret over sadness, and frustration with hands and legs, burning pain, and spasms, and whether I want to bother with continued treatment, anywhere, by anyone.  I think of the week my brother just had, and how I want to hold him in a way that would be foreign to us both -- but to which I'm sure we'd adapt easily.  I can't hang on to another soul for any meaningful length of time, and lord knows, he'd be darned uncomfortable. Just grant me a hand on his brow, a hand held briefly to hand.  This part of me does not work, whole sections of him are nothing but pain, it could be the weirdest of Twister configurations ever. Fitting!

And I dream every night some version of TW flying here, then having Captain Haddock ferry us from our murky moat, currently home to a sweet pair of beluga whales, to that Sweet Spot that heralds the worm hole entrance that loves to welcome Haddock's sweet pink miniature submarine, taking us there where we need to go.  "Ahoy!  I bring the siblings lost and found together again..." he hums as he pretends to navigate from our unmappable home to Grader Boob's hideout.

I cannot make it happen.
But it could happen.
That an accretion of stupidity and the idiocy of idiots gone before should hinder the reunion of such sweet souls?  I don't understand.

Good news.  My left hand has ceased copying my right, so I've a functional hand again.  I think I hear trumpets -- you know, the long silly ceremonial kind, or natural, chromatic.  Maybe animal horns mixed with conch shells .

Cilic is up 3-1 first set.

© 2013 L. Ryan