The Boredom of Healing

The healing process of my broken shoulder is coming along nicely, it seems, but still it is frustrating to be grounded from the use of my motorbike. I don't like just sitting around the house (no doubt the day will come for that in the future, but not yet), so I am left with calling for a grab car everyday if I want to go anywhere (which I do). I must now wait for yet a third x-ray on July 9th before the doctor will determine whether or not I can drive. Two of the bones have healed, he tells me, but a third not yet. Were I to drive the motorbike, I would risk re-injuring this bone. So, erring on the side of caution, I must wait. 

In the meantime, I have begun reading two new novels - - the Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk, and the Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Steven Graham Jones. 

I have chosen the first because I enjoyed the Netflix series taken from the novel, and the second because I had read something by Jones in the past and seemed to remember liking it (I think it was The Only Good Indians). 

I am finding The Museum engaging on the literary level - - an interesting filling out of what was presented in the television series. In many cases, I am reminded by the telling of the social conditions in Turkey of these same conditions in Indonesia. 

Buffalo Hunter, disappointingly, strikes me as boring and silly, but I will struggle on through it anyway. 

I've just enjoyed a week with Evelyn, who, sadly, had to leave sooner than expected. But it was nice to have help with taking care of things around the house while my right arm was still basically immobile, and of course, as always, her sparkling presence made everything more cheerful. 

Now it is back to the old grind. I am eager to get some things done, which I am nonetheless unable at present to do. I need to take my motorbike for repair, for example. Apparently it also was injured in the fall, such that something is leaking from the bottom of the bike and the engine does not sound well. This is going to cost me, I reckon. Evelyn feels that this type of motorbike is now too large for me, as I have shrunken in the past couple years, and certainly I am not as strong as I used to be; but on the other hand, what am I to do? I just recently renewed the registration of the bike for the next 5 years, and I don't really have the money to purchase a new, smaller bike. 

Ah well, life is costly sometimes.

Face It

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but my Facebook has become absolutely worthless, crammed with one extreme partisan post after another, one divisive hate mongering site after another, so much so that I've decided there's no point in even looking at the app anymore. It is one big invitation for people to hate on each other, and it is both depressing and exhausting to look at. I suppose some of these sites may be coming from foreign countries and paid trolls, but surely many of them are originating right here in the good old USA. Perhaps I have invited this trash through my own innocent interests. I am interested, for example, in politics, and I am interested in religion, and I'm even interested in a discussion of atheism versus religion, as long as there is some actual substance to it, and some civility. But perhaps I have unwittingly created a toxic algorithm that brings me all this poison. There is no exchange of ideas, no room for learning new things or discovering other meaningful points of view. No, it is all insults and curses and foul language, and most of all stupidity. I am endlessly astounded by the deplorably low level of intelligence displayed. Are Americans in general really this dumb, or is it just that Facebook particularly attracts the dumb among us? I don't know. It didn't used to be this way. But it is irredeemable garbage at this point and so I've decided to move my Facebook icon to an inferior screen on my phone with the other apps that I do not use and did not ask for. So goodbye for now, Facebook. I will check in once a month or so to see if anything has changed for the better.

A Holy Fool and his Followers

"Literature is a particular type of knowledge ... it is the perfection of imprecise forms." 

--The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

I have finally finished this inventive and intellectually stimulating fictional documentary of the life and times of Jacob Frank, known to his followers simply as the Lord. The story ranges from Turkey to Germany and everywhere in between, most especially Poland, winding about like a mouse in a maze, meeting up with Muslims and Jews and Christians and Jewish converts to Christianity and stubbornly talmudic Jews as well as people pretending to be one or the other or the next for mere convenience sake. And then there is Frank himself and Frank's ever obedient followers. One might call it a cult and not be too far off. Frank, who started out Jewish, then became Muslim, and then converted, at least in name, to Christianity, was at base an anti-Talmudist, and ultimately, in many ways, pretty much anti everything, and yet he managed to manipulate the powers that were in force during the various periods of the 18th century, both religious and royal. Nor was he any stranger to the love of money. He was both a fool for God and just a plain fool. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this sprawling novel and will miss living between its covers.

Frankenshoulder

Back to the doctor yesterday. Bandage removed. Wound looks good (really cool, Frankenstein type scar). Doctor says that I cannot lie on my right side for 6 weeks, which is a bummer because that means I cannot do the back exercises that might help the pain from pre-existing disc disease because they would put too much pressure on the shoulder. Boy this world gets ya comin' and goin', don't it? One more visit scheduled in 2 weeks for a final post-operative x-ray. Two months before I can drive the motorbike again (if I am brave enough). I mean, Grab car is okay, but you kind of have to go just one place, and I am used to going here and there on the motorbike to get my various errands done. But the cost of going here and then there and then the other place using grab which soon become unmanageable. Ah well, such is life for the time being.

Allen Somebody

After coffee this morning at my favorite spot, I walk up to the nearest Kimia pharmacy. I have decided that methylprednisolone will assist in the healing of my shoulder. I also found last week after meeting the surgeon once again that the pain in my right mid back is from yet another broken bone. This one was not broken so badly as those in my multiply fractured shoulder, and yet it is causing much more pain than the shoulder. It is a stabbing pain, much worse when you get up or sit down, or certainly when you try to get out of bed in the morning. The doctor, last week, gave a pain medication that has proven completely ineffective. Pretty much the only way I can sleep at night is by taking Xanax. The main problem with the shoulder is frustration at the limited motion along with the need to sleep only on my left side. At night also there are shooting pains in the shoulder and twitching nerves in the arm. 

So from the Kimia pharmacy, I call for a Grab car. 16,000 rupiah going and 16, 000 coming back. Not bad. Together, the price of an evening coffee  somewhere, which I no longer enjoy, staying home instead. So that I break even as far as cost goes, for the two Grab trips are equal in price to one coffee at the beach.

On the way back home, the Grab driver plays country music on his stereo. Allen somebody, or somebody Allen. I don't know him, but he's pretty good. He's got the twang going, and it's hard not to sing along -- which the driver does. He is a mustached young man and has a deep, pleasant voice. He sings along about love gone wrong. What else can you do? 

The driver really likes this Allen somebody. He searches for another tune which he sends to the stereo from his phone. There is no tape, no disc, no radio dial. I guess this is the way they do it these days. I don't understand how it works. 

I'm thinking that I am pretty much cooked. I'm thinking that I'm about ready to clock out. Punch my card. 

What now? TV news that I can't bear to hear. Old movies that I have seen before. Books. Coffee. Medicine. Sleep. Half-hearted physical therapy. Maybe there's a cookie somewhere. Popcorn. The popcorn is always more entertaining than the entertainment.

Salvation

The Messiah is something more than a figure and a person - - it is something that flows in your blood, resides in your breath, it is the dearest and most precious human thought: that salvation exists. And that's why you have to cultivate it like the most delicate plant, blow on it, water it with tears, put it in the sun during the day, move it into a warm room in the night time. 

---------

My death, which until now has lurked somewhere in the distance, offstage, dressed up and made up, has now cast off its ball gown, and I see it before me and it's true form. I am not frightened, and my death brings me no pain. It only seems to me that the months and the years are now moving contrarywise. For how can an old person be permitted to go on, while the lives of the young are cut short? 

--The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk 

And thusly should we live. This I say of the first quote, and a beautifully expressed thought it is. Especially coming from a writer who is an atheist. That is my understanding anyway about Tokarczuk.

I get the second quote too. My death also has lurked somewhere in the distance, but at 72, going on 73, its carefree lurking days are definitely over. Relatively speaking, the time is upon me. It cannot be put off. It cannot be negotiated with. It is just there, having thrown off that old ball gown (🤭) and appeared in all its glory, naked as the day I was born, peering around corners, ducking behind trees, stepping on the heels of my shoes, knocking me off my freaking motorbike. Ah, still here are you? it says. Well, so am I. But, you know, even when you are near the end, it is still hard to take it quite seriously. It is still hard to grasp the meaning of finality. And that brings me back to the precious thought expressed in the first quote: that salvation exists. 

Original Sins

The cow and the horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there - - the vastest things of the universe imaged in objects so mean.

     --Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate; 

Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate. 

For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain; 

And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain. 

     --Atalanta in Calydon, Swinburne

Well, appearances may be deceiving (and usually are when it comes to the first phase of romantic love), and sin, like equality, when portioned out may fall in unjust measure, particularly when it comes to the male and the female of the species - - sin being more sinful and equality less equal where the woman is the object. These are the dynamics at play in Tess of D'Urbervilles. 

It is a rather slow novel, and often needlessly so, as Hardy by the time he wrote this later novel had become enamored with naturalism, a school of literature particularly popular in the late 19th and early 20th century and known for such literary midgets as Theodore Dreiser and Hamlin Garland. Gone with the wind, those two. Happily however Hardy does retain a special talent, so ingeniously conceived in his earlier works, for interweaving nature and setting with character and narrative, and thus keeps his head well above the shallower efforts of others. At the same time, it is my feeling that he loses focus in many passages of this novel, and rather than working a magic of clean strokes and swift sleight of hand, gets too often stuck in a quicksand of mere nature, impressive for its detail but tedious for its delay of the tale. The story has finally picked up pace at around page 200, but too late I think to rank with the other three Hardy novels I have recently spoken of here.