The Way of St. James

I learned just yesterday that my second wife will soon be departing from the US to France to follow the 'Way of St. James'. This 'pilgrimage', featured in a recent movie with Martin Sheen, involves a  480 mile trek from the northwest corner of France to the northwest corner of Spain. A good way to lose weight, at the very least.

She seems to have been very sad and confused ever since our divorce, and has harbored a lot of bitterness and anger. I hope this experience will do her good. I think that it will, as long as she commits to walking with her soul rather than just her feet.

For the last nine years, I have tried to maintain a relationship with her, often visiting while still in America, and then often writing to her since I've been in Bali, but it has been difficult, sometimes impossible. She has more and more invented her own version of the story of our divorce wherein she plays the heroine who has been betrayed and misused. For her, the story of our troubles begins from the day we separated; for me, it began a year before. She will not remember now how often I tried to talk to her during that last year, how many times I warned her about the hole she was digging for us, how many times I asked her why she was doing this. It all fell on deaf ears at the time. Only after the end finally came did she want to undo it. But, of course, you can't undo what has already been done.

It's a sad story, really, which should not have happened. But in this world there are many things that happen when they should not.

So I hope that she can arrive, at the least, at some sort of philosophical peace. You cannot make perfect or proper what is neither perfect nor proper. You cannot right a wrong. All you can do is accept it, integrate it, and move on, though you carry it always in your heart. There is more to come. The story does not end with the end of an imperfect world.

Good luck, Georgia. God bless you.

Cataract Kerfuffle

So here's the thing - I need cataract surgery, and my wife's insurance will pay for the surgery, but not until after the surgery is done. That is, I must pay for it first, and then the insurance will reimburse. So ... forget cataract surgery. If I had the money to pay for it in the first place, why would I need the insurance?

It appears that the world must remain foggy, and I will have to continue to suffer the daily splitting headaches caused by constantly squinting. It is also becoming quite dangerous to drive, especially at night. Strangely, in the sunlight I can see better without the glasses I have, but at night I'm all but blind.

As a matter of fact, I've developed a headache while typing the above two paragraphs ... but still have four house of English First work to read. :(

The Return of the Sun

After two weeks or so of clouds and occasional rain (apparently scheduled somehow for those times during which I need to be out on the motorbike), the skies have finally cleared and the dry season seems to have returned. Back to the Bali I know and love. This spat of clouds and rain, however, seems to have left me with a sore throat -- typical when this type of weather comes along. So I guess I go buy some amoxicillan at the Apotek. Not that it's actually effective -- it's just the thought that counts.

So, another morning of doing EF work at JCO and waiting for the maid to leave the house so I can return home. I hate to be there when the maid is there. She seems ever to want to clean right where I'm sitting, no matter where that happens to be. Makes it hard to concentrate.

Had hoped to meet Mikey for our usual chat, but he is at the doctor, having fallen off his bike the other day and apparently fractured his elbow. A fracture is not a good idea, especially at the age of 75. His arm is about 3 times its normal size now. Poor Mikey.

As for me, the final scab seems to have finally worked its way loose from my ankle and fallen off. How long has it been?  Three months? Something really wrong there, if you ask me. But now all is well, and I have no plans for falling off my own bike in the near future (or ever again, hopefully).

Will get a 20 percent raise for my work at Bali Style Magazine, and so that's good news too. Almost breaking even now!

I just realized yesterday that I'm not 60 years old, I'm 59-1/2; which means that I have 2-1/2 years before I can collect Social Security, not 1-1/2, as I had been imaging before. Odd to find oneself in a rush to get older, ain't it?

Idiocy

Awaiting me this morning was a one word comment on my blog: "Idiot".

As a friend here suggested, the writer of this apparently accidentally deleted the body of his intended comment in full, such that only his or her own name appeared.

In any case, thanks for trying, Idiot.

Reminisce

I think that foot will never touch again
the land where I was born
nor ear will catch
nor eye will see
the bygone places I have been

Watch Out for that Tree

Hard to believe, but the wound on my ankle, incurred after being hit and knocked off my motorbike by a malicious tree, has still not healed, although the other wounds on my calf and knee have.

For a time, I had been going to the ER every couple days for wound scrapings and rebandagings, but the last time I went, they inflicted such extreme pain that I felt like I was going to pass out. So, no more of that.

They did, on that last visit, manage, as I believe anyway, to reinfect the wound as well as injure a nerve. I concluded that a better, possibly more effective and definitely more endurable course, would be to treat the wound myself with a different antibiotic (at my own expense) along with mega doses of prayer.

This wound was incurred more than a month ago, and now finally seems to be on the path to healing. The pain and almost constant aching within the ankle has now improved greatly, and the scab on the surface seems quite dry and hard.

Given the slow healing of the wound, it did occur to the ER staff to check for diabetes. I knew that I didn't have this -- since I raised a son who had it from a very early age -- but it did get me thinking about slow wound healing in association with MS.

And Lo and Behold, the same is associated with MS; which, along with the torments of the ER staff, would seem to explain the long life of this wound and its resistance to healing.

For some time, right up until recent days, I could not stand for anything to so much as touch or brush against the wound -- like the bedsheets, for instance. Anything -- even the wind -- that came into contact with it would send electric shock sort of symptoms through my ankle -- a very odd, very irritating sensation. Thus the suspicion of a damaged nerve.

Considering on top of this that the nerve reactions are messed up anyway due to MS, I guess it's not surprising that my system has reacted in such an inappropriate way. It's another new discovery for me in the wide and wild world of MS symptomatolgy.

Rules of the Road

Nyelip-nyelip. This is the word used here to describe the practice of darting in and out of traffic, a common and generally practical form of road trade for those who are driving motorbikes. We dart along the sides of larger vehicles, or in between larger vehicles, over the sidewalk and across the center lane when practicable, in order to make our way more quickly through the elephantine pace of traffic, much to the chagrin of those entombed in cars and trucks.

It all works out pretty well -- for the motorbike. But when the larger, heavier vehicles, such as SUVs, dumptrucks, even buses, seek to employ the same method -- well, it don't work out too well at all. In fact, it's downright dangerous. Just imagine the bus veering in and our of traffic, careening from this lane to that, bumping along the edge of the road, half in and half out of a ditch. Madness!

And then there is the driver of the full sized dumptruck who somehow believes that his vehicle can squeeze through the crowd by using the bike lane. What can one call this particular failure of perception? Other than simple stupidity.

Then again, that's a western notion. In Bali, it's simply called "normal".