The Bear in the Yard

A long time ago, when my second wife and I used to run an adult foster care home, one of the old ladies imagined that a bear could often be seen in the yard. Or in any case, she herself often saw the bear.

That bear is in the yard again, she would say.

Well, my mom, who eventually moved in as well when her condition with Alzheimers worsened, believed in this bear just as firmly, although she had never actually seen it.  She simply took the other old woman's word for it - and from that time on, she would not let her poor little poodle dog go outside without an escort. 'Where's Teddy!' she would exclaim in panic. "Is Teddy in the yard with that bear?"

"No, Mom. Teddy is right here," I would reassure. "Teddy's right under your chair."

"Oh, thank God. I just don't know why you keep a bear in your yard, Preston."

She called me Preston, you see. Preston was the name of her brother.

For a long time I tried to convince her of her mistake, but I finally gave up and simply became Preston for the sake of convenience.

What's in a name, anyway?

Principalities and Powers

There is a proclivity among people, and a distinctly modern one, I think, to see others, especially those possessing money or power, as sinister, devoid of natural affections or a common moral sense. These are the puppet masters, who scheme and manipulate from high places, with a motive to betray and control through any and every means. To me, this picture is fatally flawed on a number of levels. It demands an intricate cooperation in the face of the chaos represented by the stubbornness, the contrariness of the individual. It requires us to believe that mere power and riches have the ability to unite, to suck the very essence of a man's soul from his person, such that he may become, in order to be truly sinister, devoid of the most basic components of civilized existence - love, compassion, community, conscientiousness - a mutual agreement that we must survive not alone but together. We may disagree politically, but that doesn't make our opponent a monster. It merely makes him a Republican ( ;) ). We may define the fine points of morality in different ways, but we do so from the inescapable basis that there is such a thing as morality to begin with, and that its key components remain eternally intact. There is no living person, man or woman, rich or poor, strong or weak, who doesn't know what love is. The power of evil, with which we are at war, resides not in man-made plans and institutions, but in high places, in cosmic principalities and powers that are far beyond the ken of mere men.

Gay Marriage

The Supreme Court decision to universally legalize gay marriage was really more complex than many people allow. With some states legalizing gay marriage and others not, all sorts of legal and social difficulties were lining up for the future, in court rooms and in conflicts between state law and federal law. In order that the country may proceed as a union united under common laws, either one case or the other had ultimately to attain. The Federal government has been the supreme and the final authority ever since the Civil War. The rule would have to be collective, not fragmented - pertinent in one place but not in another. The decision, therefore, really had to pose one law for all. The most logical, least troublesome decision was legalization throughout the states.  It was neither a moral nor an immoral decision. It was merely a realistic decision. Everybody prefers his own spin on the thing, but the preference of the court was for practicality, pure and simple. So it's not the beginning of an age of universal tolerance and love. That will never happen in this world. Nor is it the end of the world, as some loudly proclaim. It just is what it is.

Love

Love is known best, most keenly, in its absence.

I wrote this first sentence late last night, hardly knowing why, or what it meant. It just came into my head. Reflecting on it now, it strikes me that the best way to know the full reality, the full force and meaning of love, is by losing it. Only then do we see the preciousness laid bare - and only too late.

The brother, the father, the mother lost. The wife, the husband, the lifelong friend. Immediately, one strives to touch, to embrace what cannot be regained. Now we know, and would act, and speak. Too late. Too late.

We see the things that were left behind, and clutch them to the breast as if they might magically become corporeal - the shirt, the hat, the coat, the glove. The scent is there, but no sentience. Everything has become invisible air, and every thought, every feeling, every word  made empty by the emptiness we could not have ever imagined, yet should have done, by the hour, by the day, by the year. Now gone. Time itself has been annulled and no longer exists.

Remember, therefore, in every present moment; remember while it matters; remember while love yet resides in the human form, for once it departs, it departs once for all. No magic can revive what was magic itself.

Treatment Plan

Rather than continue to patiently trust in winged ministers of health from above, I decided, yesterday, to formulate and carry out a sure fire, 'scientific' plan for self medication and eradication of the ceaseless ringing in my ears.

As it seemed to me, the problem had been insufficiently addressed from the beginning. In America, an MS relapse accompanied by significantly severe symptoms will be treated, first off, with an intravenous dose of steroids followed by a course of p.o. (by mouth) methylprednosolone. Here in Bali, all I got was the latter. This quieted the ringing, but did not stop it, so I was given Clonazepam to be used p.r.n. ( as needed). Additionally, it had always seemed to me that there was an element of congestion in the head or sinuses related to or exasperating the overall condition, which had never been treated at all.

Therefore, having made my diagnosis, I arrived at the following treatment plan: 1 tablet clonazepam at night, 1 tablet methylprednisolone in the morning and 1 tablet pseudoephedrine in the morning.

In fact, this had a definite effect. It put me to sleep for most of the day and caused me to run into various walls or pieces of furniture when awake. It did not alter the ringing in my ears, except, perhaps, to make it a bit louder.

So I'm keeping an eye out for that little bird that visited from the heavens the other day swooped away with my plague of headaches.

I wonder why he didn't take the ringing, too. Ah, but one should not question these things. This thorn in the flesh may have its own reason. His grace is sufficient for me.

Diet

It occurs to me that, once my son has gone back to America, and whilst my wife is traveling about the world on business, I will need to come up with a reasonable plan for feeding myself in a reasonable way. Although I have cooked meals for some forty years, I have never liked to cook. I have always done so out of necessity. There were always other people who needed to eat. Left to my own devices, I am most likely to eat whatever can go direct from the box to the mouth. My dinner tonight, for example, was a raison nut brownie from Circle K and a bowl of Wheatbix. Oh, and half a banana. That was the healthy part. Chances are, this diet is not going to work well in the long run.

Bathroon Troubles

I had one of those rare experiences tonight of the type that strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest of men, that challenge the will to survive, test the limits of faith - akin to being buried chin-deep in an ant hill or stretched on the rack or cast overboard into the depths of the sea.

In short, I locked myself into the bathroom and could not get out.

The doorknob, a rusty, dilapidated, reliably useless bit of garbage that had never worked before, suddenly did work - after a fashion, anyway. It worked to the extent that the bolt went into the slot and would not retreat from thence no matter how you turned the wobbly knobs on either side of the door.

Luckily, my son was at home and, also luckily, did not have his ears plugged with his earphones at the time, which would be the more usual case. So at least I had someone to communicate with.

Fortunate, also, was the fact that the landlord, who had promised to replace the door in February 2014, had never done so, and therefore it still retained the eaten away portion at its base. Through this convenient fissure, my son was able to pass various tools - a screwdriver, a hammer, a knife.

He pounded, screwed and stabbed from the outside while I pounded, screwed and stabbed from within. And yet the door was stubborn, unbeatable, proving itself, despite appearances and the unkind judgements of the past, to be the strongest door that has ever been or ever will be made.

I thought then to attack the thing from the flank, so to speak, and remove the hinges with the hammer and screwdriver - yet, again, the door had me flat beaten, for the hinges, over time and under the influence of daily dampness and rust, had been transformed into impenetrable spikes, solid adamant iron from top to bottom. I succeeded only in breaking the head of the screwdriver.

Now, a cubicle sized bathroom gets pretty hot in Bali, such that, within a half hour, I was dripping with sweat and feeling breathless and exhausted. Shall I end my days here, sitting dejectedly on the toilet, exchanging my parting thoughts with someone who really just wanted to get back to his video game?

No! No, it shall not be. As much as I hated to expose my stupidity, it would have to be done. I would send my son next door to Vyt's house. I have long known Vyt to be a man of high intelligence and practical abilities, and, moreover, a man not likely to be surprised at my incompetence.

Although Vyt has been suffering from a cold, he came right over and began to pound, screw and stab with true expertise. At last, he was able to pound the doorknob right on through the door, and I was free at last. My imprisonment had lasted perhaps an hour. It seemed like ages.

His first comment, in customarily sage manner, was that it was a good thing that the landlord had never replaced the door, else I would have had no tools to work with from the inside.

A blessing in disguise, surely enough. Yet, undisguised is the goodness and readiness of my friend.

As a postscript, I could not help but imagine, somewhat later on, what my predicament would have been had my son already returned to America and had my wife been away in Java or Timbuktu, as she often is. Should I have died an ignoble death, sprawled on the bathroom floor, one hand still clutching that fatal knob in its death grip?

Ah, praise God for His attention to the stupid and His protection of the simple-minded!