Clearly I need to purchase my own table at Starbucks. They could do that, couldn’t they. Kind of like the way people used to buy pews at church, and then slap on a brass placard bearing the family name.
The three problems with Starbucks are these:
1. There are not enough tables.
2. There are not enough wall sockets.
3, If you frequent the same Starbucks often enough, you end up making acquaintances with people who would otherwise be perfect strangers, and therefore find yourself compelled to actually visit with these people instead of applying yourself to the main purpose that brought you there (which, in my case, is to write questionably worthwhile blog entries).
I have tried to expand my area of coverage, as well as to explore new options, but my success has been minimal.
At one Starbucks location I very often end up helping Tseng, a middle-aged Laotian man, with his English. He has been studying English grammar for a while now (about 30 years, I believe), and continues to have some trouble. I am a good teacher, he says. It’s kind of like when I tell my dog that he’s the best dog in the world, both of us knowing full well that he is the only dog I own.
At another Starbucks I consistently run into my stepson’s old girlfriend. I think she lives there. Or maybe she works there. And I think she holds a torch. I haven’t seen or talked to my stepson for quite a long time now, so we run short on material. For this reason, I’ve taken to making things up. That Preston is going into NASA, for instance, or that he just got back from Manchuria, or that he’s dating the bearded lady from the circus currently passing through town. I don’t fault myself for this. After all, for all I know, these things could be true.
The problem with some of these places has not so much to do with people, but simply with location. The Starbucks on Gleason, for instance, crowds so closely to the busy road that I was actually splashed by rain water once—while sitting at a table inside, mind you!
On the West side of town there is a Starbucks that is very large indeed—plenty of room—with easy chairs and cushioned footstools, comfy looking communal areas, and lonely tables lurking in corners for unsociable people like me. But where are the wall sockets? They are on one wall only, five of them, lined up beneath a high counter. One sits on a bar stool in order to reach the counter top, feeling rather as if he is on stilts and ought to have a foamy Budweiser at hand. Not to mention an ashtray.
My wife and I went to the same Starbucks, to the same church, and frequented the same nightclub long before we actually met one another.
Strange.
Perhaps you will say that I ought to just stay home, drink my own coffee, sit at my own table in my own chair, and compose these pearls of wisdom and profundity in the comfort and solitude of my own domicile. And that may be right. It may be so.
Still and all, it wouldn’t be quite the same. Would it?
Visits
Friday, November 7, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
When, How, Why--Part II
I guess you could say I had a nervous breakdown. It seems perfectly appropriate, in hindsight anyway, to describe it as such—for MS is itself a breakdown in the proper functioning of the central nervous system, the autoimmune response.
October 2004 marked the end of my 13 year long second marriage. The ensuing months were filled day by day with the strongest, most active sorts of emotions. There were accusations and bitter words, betrayals, anger, sorrow, tears and sobbing that racked the body physically and clutched deeply to the soul, wrenching it from peace, from rest.
There was confusion, guilt, exhaustion, regret. There was the love for another woman admixed with self-hatred. All the new hope of love struggled with all the powers of dissolution and recrimination. My heart sought asylum among the unforgiving fires of hell.
I began to drink again, for the first time in 10 years, an effort at self-medication, I suppose. And that made things even worse, as had always been the case.
Psychically, I suffered an existence defined by an insurmountable sort of irony: I was living both in the bosom of love and in the dungeon of sorrow. And here, in this place, most certainly the center cannot hold.
And so I broke down, from top to bottom, from inside and out. The circuits fried, the system crashed. Multiple sclerosis, dormant through all these years, awakened at the core of my existence, stretched its arms and legs, and began its business in my brain and spinal cord, and from thence throughout my body.
This is my theory, based on theories.
I have emerged, yet as through fire. My health was left behind. My children were left behind. A lifelong friend, a 13 year marriage, a family, left behind. A wonderful young woman, an angel of patience and compassion, lost.
My peace is found in the purity of those things that were set to flame and yet survived—the essence of what was, is, and always will be best.
Faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
October 2004 marked the end of my 13 year long second marriage. The ensuing months were filled day by day with the strongest, most active sorts of emotions. There were accusations and bitter words, betrayals, anger, sorrow, tears and sobbing that racked the body physically and clutched deeply to the soul, wrenching it from peace, from rest.
There was confusion, guilt, exhaustion, regret. There was the love for another woman admixed with self-hatred. All the new hope of love struggled with all the powers of dissolution and recrimination. My heart sought asylum among the unforgiving fires of hell.
I began to drink again, for the first time in 10 years, an effort at self-medication, I suppose. And that made things even worse, as had always been the case.
Psychically, I suffered an existence defined by an insurmountable sort of irony: I was living both in the bosom of love and in the dungeon of sorrow. And here, in this place, most certainly the center cannot hold.
And so I broke down, from top to bottom, from inside and out. The circuits fried, the system crashed. Multiple sclerosis, dormant through all these years, awakened at the core of my existence, stretched its arms and legs, and began its business in my brain and spinal cord, and from thence throughout my body.
This is my theory, based on theories.
I have emerged, yet as through fire. My health was left behind. My children were left behind. A lifelong friend, a 13 year marriage, a family, left behind. A wonderful young woman, an angel of patience and compassion, lost.
My peace is found in the purity of those things that were set to flame and yet survived—the essence of what was, is, and always will be best.
Faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
When, How, Why--Part I
When does MS enter the body? Or is it just there to begin with, as present yet hidden as ones own skeleton? Does one catch it somehow, or is it merely activated at some point? And then by what?
There are enough theories to go around, of course. One theory says that MS arises as a result of Epstein-Barr Virus (mononucleosis). Although the person so stricken recovers from the initial illness, something in the meantime has happened in the autoimmune system, which may or may not rear its head in the future (whether it does or does not being another mystery leading to another set of theories).
Some say that the cause of MS is to be found in viruses and bacteria rather than in a malfunctioning immune system.
On the fringe of reasonable sounding scenarios are, of course, the wacky theories—the conspiracy theories, if you will. It is all because of cow’s milk, for instance. It is because of childhood immunizations. It comes from air pollution. It is a result of child abuse.
Does it matter? No, not really. Not for we who have it and are living with it.
And yet we ask the question, we want to know, for there is nothing more frustrating, or unfair, we think, than having to poke about in the dark for the shape of ones own life.
My favorite theory, and the one I currently subscribe to, is this: MS may lie dormant in the nervous system for many years, or even forever. In order to manifest it needs a key, an event, a jump start. Some researchers have raised the notion that this start-up, this critical event, may be actuated by a correspondingly significant stressful event in the life of he who bears the disease.
This critical event may have come in the form of a severe illness. It may in fact have been born out of trauma of any sort—including emotional trauma.
So here’s the long and short, in my case. When I was 17 years old I contracted a severe case of mononucleosis. Though I recovered and was well for many years afterwards, MS had nonetheless been conceived. It had, in other words, become a potential, like the universe before the big bang.
Now, what was the key that started its motor, what was the word that called it forth—Rise and walk!
It happened in late 2004.
And I’ll tell you about it in Part II.
There are enough theories to go around, of course. One theory says that MS arises as a result of Epstein-Barr Virus (mononucleosis). Although the person so stricken recovers from the initial illness, something in the meantime has happened in the autoimmune system, which may or may not rear its head in the future (whether it does or does not being another mystery leading to another set of theories).
Some say that the cause of MS is to be found in viruses and bacteria rather than in a malfunctioning immune system.
On the fringe of reasonable sounding scenarios are, of course, the wacky theories—the conspiracy theories, if you will. It is all because of cow’s milk, for instance. It is because of childhood immunizations. It comes from air pollution. It is a result of child abuse.
Does it matter? No, not really. Not for we who have it and are living with it.
And yet we ask the question, we want to know, for there is nothing more frustrating, or unfair, we think, than having to poke about in the dark for the shape of ones own life.
My favorite theory, and the one I currently subscribe to, is this: MS may lie dormant in the nervous system for many years, or even forever. In order to manifest it needs a key, an event, a jump start. Some researchers have raised the notion that this start-up, this critical event, may be actuated by a correspondingly significant stressful event in the life of he who bears the disease.
This critical event may have come in the form of a severe illness. It may in fact have been born out of trauma of any sort—including emotional trauma.
So here’s the long and short, in my case. When I was 17 years old I contracted a severe case of mononucleosis. Though I recovered and was well for many years afterwards, MS had nonetheless been conceived. It had, in other words, become a potential, like the universe before the big bang.
Now, what was the key that started its motor, what was the word that called it forth—Rise and walk!
It happened in late 2004.
And I’ll tell you about it in Part II.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
You Too Can Be a Master Blogger
So here we are—up and running for about a week now, right? I’m a blogger. I blog. I think along bloggish lines and I often feel rather bloggy, especially in the morning. I have a blogover, which is preferable to the hangovers I used to subscribe to.
Sadly, though, it seems that people seldom leave comments. I wonder why? Could it be because I’m so damn blogging, I mean boring? Oh well, I can’t keep it a secret forever. People are bound to find out.
Today I went to the dentist, and the only thing that hurt afterwards was my entire body. Not my teeth. I don’t know if there is an official medical term for this, but I’ll just call it turning to stone syndrome. If I try to lie prone for any significant amount of time my muscles tend to freeze in that fashion. When called upon to resume movement they object and cry out in disbelief.
I feel like the easiest, least painful way to get back to my feet would be for someone to stand by with a giant spatula and kind of flip me upright; but of course this method, particularly within the space available in the dentist’s cramped examination room, would be less than practicable, not to mention embarrassing.
But at home, when getting out of bed for instance, it works. I just drop and roll. This, I know, is what the experts advise in the event that one finds himself on fire, but I can confidently attest that it works just as well for MS. Moreover, if I ever do find myself aflame, I will already be well practiced in self-extinguishment. This is but another of the many beneficial things one learns from having MS.
These are the fringe benefits of our disease, the silver linings, the tidbits tucked into the small print.
Riiight.
But to return to blogging—I find that my pages have been downloaded not only in the US, but in Scotland, and in Canada, and in Turkey! Now that’s what I call exotic. I find myself eagerly anticipating a hit from Fiji, or Kuwait, or the Himalayas. I am suddenly a citizen of the world. In my own mind, anyway.
Seriously though, I do believe that each connection, each communal gesture is precious. Here is a greeting from an MS sufferer, and here a nod from a brother, a sister, a fellow member of the human race.
God bless us, everyone.
Sadly, though, it seems that people seldom leave comments. I wonder why? Could it be because I’m so damn blogging, I mean boring? Oh well, I can’t keep it a secret forever. People are bound to find out.
Today I went to the dentist, and the only thing that hurt afterwards was my entire body. Not my teeth. I don’t know if there is an official medical term for this, but I’ll just call it turning to stone syndrome. If I try to lie prone for any significant amount of time my muscles tend to freeze in that fashion. When called upon to resume movement they object and cry out in disbelief.
I feel like the easiest, least painful way to get back to my feet would be for someone to stand by with a giant spatula and kind of flip me upright; but of course this method, particularly within the space available in the dentist’s cramped examination room, would be less than practicable, not to mention embarrassing.
But at home, when getting out of bed for instance, it works. I just drop and roll. This, I know, is what the experts advise in the event that one finds himself on fire, but I can confidently attest that it works just as well for MS. Moreover, if I ever do find myself aflame, I will already be well practiced in self-extinguishment. This is but another of the many beneficial things one learns from having MS.
These are the fringe benefits of our disease, the silver linings, the tidbits tucked into the small print.
Riiight.
But to return to blogging—I find that my pages have been downloaded not only in the US, but in Scotland, and in Canada, and in Turkey! Now that’s what I call exotic. I find myself eagerly anticipating a hit from Fiji, or Kuwait, or the Himalayas. I am suddenly a citizen of the world. In my own mind, anyway.
Seriously though, I do believe that each connection, each communal gesture is precious. Here is a greeting from an MS sufferer, and here a nod from a brother, a sister, a fellow member of the human race.
God bless us, everyone.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Before It Is Too Late
I am not dying. Not because of MS anyway. Or of anything else that I know of at the moment. But I am living more vitally, more completely--and that is because of MS. It's an irony, yes? A paradox.
Illness and disability have a way of making mortality more real, more immediate, than it had seemed before. The motions of time have entered me physically, flowing now in my blood, buzzing in my extremities, burning little holes in my brain.
What I do not do today may not have time for being done tomorrow. I am pressed, impatient, frustrated by the notion of proper channels and appropriate emotions. I want to connect, today, this minute, for I have come to realize that time has never been a thing that could be spared.
I want to retrieve the embers of all in life that has been best, to catch them up, still glowing, from the dreary depths to which they had been sent by weakness, by pride, by wounded love, and hold them again--not to remember, but to see, to touch, to redraw the very breath of conception.
Please believe me--the past is not so very important that it should accompany the future to its death. Here is where all the chances are stored up--here, now, in this time, this life. How sad when even a single one is let slip between our fingers.
Illness and disability have a way of making mortality more real, more immediate, than it had seemed before. The motions of time have entered me physically, flowing now in my blood, buzzing in my extremities, burning little holes in my brain.
What I do not do today may not have time for being done tomorrow. I am pressed, impatient, frustrated by the notion of proper channels and appropriate emotions. I want to connect, today, this minute, for I have come to realize that time has never been a thing that could be spared.
I want to retrieve the embers of all in life that has been best, to catch them up, still glowing, from the dreary depths to which they had been sent by weakness, by pride, by wounded love, and hold them again--not to remember, but to see, to touch, to redraw the very breath of conception.
Please believe me--the past is not so very important that it should accompany the future to its death. Here is where all the chances are stored up--here, now, in this time, this life. How sad when even a single one is let slip between our fingers.
Language
Multiple sclerosis, writing, family, work, etc. Life in general. I guess that leaves a lot of room to write about things other than MS. It does, after all, get old. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. MS gets old.
Just now I’d like to talk about language—specifically the dueling tongues that are presently battling for the upper hand in my home. We have me speaking English, Sant Louis speaking Bahasa Indonesia, Albert speaking both, and Mamdouh speaking Arabic. If you count in the dogs, we also have Labradorian and Chihuahuan.
I believe that the dogs are showing the surest grasp of communication in this multilingual environment. They seem to know when they have done well or done badly, whether they are to come or to go, whether they are to sleep or play, no matter what language is being spoken at any given moment. They know when to eat. They know when to come inside. They know when it is time for a walk. The only thing they don’t know is when to be quiet.
Now, if Albert speaks to Sant Louis in Indonesian, only the two of them (and the dogs, of course) know what is being said. This is because they speak very rapidly and almost completely in a sublanguage of slang.
If I say something to Sant Louis in Indonesian, only I, Albert, and Sant Louis (and the dogs) know what I am saying. Of course, much of my Indonesian is so bad that it may as well be Martian, in which case I am on my own, shared meaning being a prerequisite to communication. I may as well be speaking in tongues, which only God Himself will understand, assuming He has the time to sort it out. Who knows, maybe my tongues are just as bad as my Indonesian.
Now, if we, any of us, speak English in addressing Mamdouh, he both understands and does not understand. Here is where he and I are similar, both of us able to receive some portion, able to impart some fragment of personal intent, yet forever lurking at the hazy edges of useful comprehension.
If Mamdouh speaks Arabic, he and the dogs are on their own. Only they among all in our household know what he is saying. It may be that he is complaining (to a friend on the phone, for instance) about the lousy dinner we served him last night. It may be that he is expressing his awe at my intelligence and wisdom. It may be that he and his mates are addressing the fine details of a plan to blow up some city structure of high profile.
It is all a challenge, all interesting, all perplexing. We move about in a world of noises, a world of whispers and shouts and everything in between, a world of endless conflict and resolution. And words are not enough. Even if two and three people speak the same language, words are still not enough. We rely more on a sort of poetry than we like to imagine or admit.
Just now I’d like to talk about language—specifically the dueling tongues that are presently battling for the upper hand in my home. We have me speaking English, Sant Louis speaking Bahasa Indonesia, Albert speaking both, and Mamdouh speaking Arabic. If you count in the dogs, we also have Labradorian and Chihuahuan.
I believe that the dogs are showing the surest grasp of communication in this multilingual environment. They seem to know when they have done well or done badly, whether they are to come or to go, whether they are to sleep or play, no matter what language is being spoken at any given moment. They know when to eat. They know when to come inside. They know when it is time for a walk. The only thing they don’t know is when to be quiet.
Now, if Albert speaks to Sant Louis in Indonesian, only the two of them (and the dogs, of course) know what is being said. This is because they speak very rapidly and almost completely in a sublanguage of slang.
If I say something to Sant Louis in Indonesian, only I, Albert, and Sant Louis (and the dogs) know what I am saying. Of course, much of my Indonesian is so bad that it may as well be Martian, in which case I am on my own, shared meaning being a prerequisite to communication. I may as well be speaking in tongues, which only God Himself will understand, assuming He has the time to sort it out. Who knows, maybe my tongues are just as bad as my Indonesian.
Now, if we, any of us, speak English in addressing Mamdouh, he both understands and does not understand. Here is where he and I are similar, both of us able to receive some portion, able to impart some fragment of personal intent, yet forever lurking at the hazy edges of useful comprehension.
If Mamdouh speaks Arabic, he and the dogs are on their own. Only they among all in our household know what he is saying. It may be that he is complaining (to a friend on the phone, for instance) about the lousy dinner we served him last night. It may be that he is expressing his awe at my intelligence and wisdom. It may be that he and his mates are addressing the fine details of a plan to blow up some city structure of high profile.
It is all a challenge, all interesting, all perplexing. We move about in a world of noises, a world of whispers and shouts and everything in between, a world of endless conflict and resolution. And words are not enough. Even if two and three people speak the same language, words are still not enough. We rely more on a sort of poetry than we like to imagine or admit.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Are You Sleeping?
Here’s another thing that I don’t understand. How does one know if he has transitioned into secondary progressive MS from relapsing remitting? I have not had an attack since May 2007, as far as I know (and as far as the MRIs show). I have not awakened blind in one eye, or dead in one arm, or unable to defecate, or unable to walk.
Yet these would all be new symptoms, and rather profoundly severe ones. In short, it would be obvious that I had suffered a new attack, and therefore also obvious (as far as I understand it) that I still have RRMS.
But what about the quieter damage that occurs over time? No major events, and yet something may be happening. Am I getting worse? I don’t know. Some days I would believe it to be so, especially where my cognitive functioning is concerned. Do I become simply more aware of a baseline failure to perform, or are these the baby steps my central nervous system is taking on the road of progressive deterioration?
MS is stealthy. It mixes in with the crowd. Where’s Waldo?
Even now I cannot say exactly when it began. Generally I tend to think of events in the spring of 2005 as the beginning. Something had changed significantly enough to cause me to seek answers from my physician. I could not think straight. I would end up in supermarket aisles suddenly wondering why I was there and when I had come there. I would try to open my apartment door with the car beeper. I was light-headed and spacey, drifting in and out of a pervasive fog.
Still undiagnosed, I had my second obvious attack in May 2007. Driven again to see a doctor because of numb and tingling feet and legs, I was sent yet again for an MRI, and this time diagnosed.
You all know the drill.
But here’s the thing--between spring 2005 and spring 2007 I had no noticeable symptoms at all. Clearly something had happened in my body, and had continued to happen, or be, at a low level between times.
Relapsing remitting, right?
And then nothing. One and a half years out now from my second attack. Am I due for a relapse? Have I graduated to SPMS?
As with so many things, not only where MS is concerned, but about life in general, I just don’t know
Yet these would all be new symptoms, and rather profoundly severe ones. In short, it would be obvious that I had suffered a new attack, and therefore also obvious (as far as I understand it) that I still have RRMS.
But what about the quieter damage that occurs over time? No major events, and yet something may be happening. Am I getting worse? I don’t know. Some days I would believe it to be so, especially where my cognitive functioning is concerned. Do I become simply more aware of a baseline failure to perform, or are these the baby steps my central nervous system is taking on the road of progressive deterioration?
MS is stealthy. It mixes in with the crowd. Where’s Waldo?
Even now I cannot say exactly when it began. Generally I tend to think of events in the spring of 2005 as the beginning. Something had changed significantly enough to cause me to seek answers from my physician. I could not think straight. I would end up in supermarket aisles suddenly wondering why I was there and when I had come there. I would try to open my apartment door with the car beeper. I was light-headed and spacey, drifting in and out of a pervasive fog.
Still undiagnosed, I had my second obvious attack in May 2007. Driven again to see a doctor because of numb and tingling feet and legs, I was sent yet again for an MRI, and this time diagnosed.
You all know the drill.
But here’s the thing--between spring 2005 and spring 2007 I had no noticeable symptoms at all. Clearly something had happened in my body, and had continued to happen, or be, at a low level between times.
Relapsing remitting, right?
And then nothing. One and a half years out now from my second attack. Am I due for a relapse? Have I graduated to SPMS?
As with so many things, not only where MS is concerned, but about life in general, I just don’t know
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