Either this ad is the funniest thing you've ever seen, or it means nothing. If it means nothing, leave it that way.
We go to the miscellany...
- I had my first root canal this week. It sucked. As it turned out, it was a week of firsts. Prior to that, I had my first time winning 2 sessions of poker in a row at the local card room (this after winning when in SoCal.) I needed every dime of it to pay for the emergency root canal and crown, but it is serendipitous that I just happened to have won a nice little knot when I would need it. Naturally, this will fuel fantasies of playing poker just enough to liberate myself from my financial and professional miseries, which really is just cruel, because nothing is less likely than me becoming a poker player capable of making life-changing money. That said, I am very tempted to try. I am getting better, and I believe I understand the math. It is the people I don't understand!
- I have decided to formally adopt the new house doggie, Chiquita. I will write about the how/why in detail in time (I kinda dabble in it below, and did in the last entry too.) Just know I am going back on my word. This time I was gonna be all tough and not keep her unless she is perfect. She is perfect, but to a different need than I thought I had. I now need her, so here we go. It will make sense eventually.
- I am going to be car-less again come October/November. I need to walk more and I can leave the doggies home now that they are a fun-lovin' pair. I also plan on getting my bike out of mothballs. Now THOSE will be some funny ass photos for y'all to see. I promise to suck down my pride and allow you to see my fat ass on two wheels.
- Back to super cold weather, which cinches it, I am going to spend the holiday weekend down in SoCal. I can't deal with having to run the heater in late August, yet here it is and the heat is back on. I go back and forth about moving to Chicago or settling down here. Right on the cusp of the awesome fall weather and I am being driven batty by having to wear layered clothing before Labor Day! Trading tundra for desert isn't a great trade, but every second I am not in shorts and sandals feels like the absence of vacation, and I want to as far from workaday tedium as possible.
I have completely flaked out on the plans I had for late summer to visit back home. I am still trying to get back to the Midwest for prolonged visits with friends and fam. I also want to get to Nippon to see that new nephew of mine. Complicating that is that we have the Japanese relatives coming back for Thanksgiving. Plus, my youngest sis is getting married to her long-time beau then too (making me an official old maid and the only of the siblings to not wed. Sign...) I still have enough vacation time to pull these things off, but it will take some doing. I have been a bad friend to many of my Midwestern peeps staying away and flaking as often as I have. I am grateful y'alls been good about my ample flakage.
- I also went to church for the first time in a long time. I belong in church. I am gonna try another church this week to see if I can find one I like. The denomination I was confirmed in, prefer, and visited this week is precisely the type Glen Beck decries as being bad Christianity (this from a Mormon convert! ha!) I will confess, going to a very liberal church near the Berkeley-Oakland border put me in contact with a type of service I am not familiar with. It isn't bad, it isn't wrong - it also isn't what I am used to. I really would prefer a more traditional service - or at least one in which the organ is at least turned on! I have always felt disappointed that churches are usually very segregated. Worse, I have always been repulsed at those who want to act like sinners need to be kept away from God's house. For me, Christ's teachings are not always simple, but in a macro sense, there are some very basic themes which appear over and over again, and one I have always seen is that it is not for us to judge the sin of others since not one of us lives up to the standard (thus, the gift that forgiveness represents means more than simply being a cosmic "Get Out Of Agony Free" card.) We are all equal before God - undeserving, but still offered, redemption. This church would definitely be seen as unGodly among the megachurch crowd, but again, I have always wanted to see sinners like me in the pews, not going only to be made to feel I am the only one!
I am going to do my best to keep up with attending. I need to get myself spiritually organized. I feel the cosmic connection and the touchy-feely stuff easy enough, but I have long been quite sure something is off when I walk around telling myself I am a Christian, but I never step foot in a church. I too believe, as Don Williams does, that heaven does not wait for only those that congregate, but I also suspect that the deity who built the universe isn't going to be moved at the notion I might have been too tired to get up and admire his work and help with what I can.
(Be forewarned, this isn't going to be a warm-n-fuzzy parable, and probably should be avoided if you are looking for something specifically and/or immediately uplifting.) Nick Cave is no Don Williams, but I agree with him when he said "I don't believe in an interventionist God". Even so, sometimes when I ask a cosmic question, or just pray, if a thought comes quickly into my mind, I do attribute it to God. Usually, I know better than to get hung up on such things (again, I don't think God grants touchdowns, makes cancer go away/make it show up, strikes the wicked dead with lightning, etc.) Even so, I have been haunted by an episode from praying over the weekend. Actually, that isn't really right - I wasn't really praying per se, but more meditating during the (excellent) sermon. I was wondering what possible purpose there could be for me losing almost my entire 30's to my medical woes. I don't think God gave me my burden on purpose, nor did he alleviate what has been alleviated because I am a nice guy, a member of a favored group, etc.
In the instant I wondered to myself "Why would I have had to experience pain in that way, and with such consequences? What possible good could have come from it? What am I to do the improvement?" I was struck by a simple reply that popped into my head: "To prepare you for worse to come." Not cool. For me, I think of terminal cancer as being the standard for nightmare scenarios of this type, and that is what came to mind. Obviously, this wasn't shaping up to be a warm-fuzzy visit to God's House (which is fine, I understand that every song can't be Kumbayah.) A little unexpected, but not out of left field I guess. Half the reason I feel I need to be in church was that I am starting to get better and improving, but feel like I am not doing as well in spirit as I am in body or even emotion. In a way, such thoughts should be soul-crushing, but it doesn't necessarily work that way for me. It doesn't really work that way. It isn't that I love a challenge - it is that I am still hanging on to the childish idea that my entire life can't just be leading up to some humiliating horrific end. There has to be something of value that will be generated by my having lived. This is a notion that lives in competition with some (strong) others.
For a long time, I thought there is no way I would allow such a thing to happen to me. I am pretty sure I don't (now) have the perspective or ability to go back in for another bout with the soul-sucking nightmare of something like a long bout with cancer, or even a return visit to the kind of thing I have already experienced. I thought that the minute I got any sort of nasty prognosis, I would be moving to Portland OR and getting hooked up the assisted suicide machine; however, in going through the grief with my cat Sue's passing this year, I came to see that I could not do this. I could not do this because to do that would be to play God, and give to myself a decision that is not really for me to make. I have come to see that life is too important to not defer to it. I know that seems the most obvious thing in the world for many, but it hasn't been for me. * This is why I remain so self-absorbed and prone to melodrama around being sick...I literally hit a point in which my life meant nothing to me, Only now am I coming around to understand the full implications of that. I am far enough toward understanding how bad that is to know that if I were able to get myself fully back to even keel somehow, it will be a major achievement. I certainly couldn't return to any sort of cavalier outlook about life.
I am pretty sure these are things "normal" people figure out by having children, if indeed they don't come wired that way. In my case, I had to use myself as a guinea pig, and I had to rely on pets. Between the sad demise of my cat this year and the happy arrival of my little Rat Terrier, I have been able to meditate on the cosmic stuff. Seeing the new doggie live through what I know she has, and to remain an enthusiastic booster for any and all life-pleasures, no matter how small, is nice and life-affirming and all, but as much as anything, it shames me in those instances where I let myself get too carried away with the dour stuff (I have been influenced too, in no small part, by the recent arrival of the Iggy Pop song A Machine For Lovinginto my headphones - which is a tough way to get to a nice thought.) Everything that isn't love has a long wait for time with her soul's processor. Love isn't just joy, but also means the absence of the kinds of horror that can keep you pounded flat.
While I think my opinions on these matters are starting to harden a bit, I am not so calcified of mind that further experience might not change things. Keep in mind, the American approach to pain management is ghoulish and sadistic. From the sadists manning the Walgreen's Rx cash register to the insurance companies who automate what happens to your life (meaning they just say "no" if you need anything but what the automation says to pay), make no mistake about it, no one gives a shit if you are at the end of the line and destroyed by misery. The doctors are really better only because you get them one on one for a spell, but even then, the power dynamic favors them, and in my experience, doing one's homework before a visit is as likely to end up making them think of you as a difficult patient, and that will not work in your favor. Don't like it? HA! Just try getting a second opinion in pain management! If you can even get the appointment when you need it, expect the DEA on your door if you do it more than once! More than the pain or even dying, it is the grief of trying to get medication in the amounts and varieties I know I need that is where the grief comes from. Don't get me wrong, pain sucks. Powerlessness in addressing that pain is where the degradation and anxiety really come from. Knowing what is needed, knowing it exists and isn't cost-prohibitive, yet no amount of attention on my part, obvious difficulty heaped upon me, or human-to-human pleading can get around an asshole at Walgreens, phone-answerer at a clinic, or indifferent paper-shuffler at some boiler-room insurance company call center. This is the thing where the strength gets sapped and can't be replaced.
My point is that it is easy for me now to be brave about bad health prospects - but if things really do go bad, it will be very hard to endure. I know what is coming, I know it doesn't get easier, and if I remain single, I will again be doing it largely alone. Sitting through these things again holds nothing positive for me. Nothing. If I was sure that all that awaited me after death was nothing, I suppose this would all be easier
As you can see, I have much room to grow on these things, even if I never get sick again. Even if the church is the place I go to improve, yet find myself having to deal with phantom specters of deep grief to come, the only hope I have is to regenerate my spirit and my strength. This has always only been possible for me when I eschew my cynicism and look for beauty and continuity between myself and the things in the universe that generate beauty.
*Now - I don't want this construed to mean I am to be kept alive by machines indefinitely if I am in a vegetative state. I don't want that. Saying that I don't wish to have my organs operated by a machine is not the same as saying "I want someone to assist my suicide". I don't consider them even close. If machines can bridge me over a rough spot, or get me to a place where I can heal and have life return to me, fine. If you are not preserving my life, don't do it. If a machine is causing my organs to function, and any function not-machine assisted is not going to happen, then I do not want to be given that treatment. I wish to be unhooked and not resuscitated.