Slowly I Turned

Managed to get out of the house a couple of times today as my zombification from the flu slowly recedes. Exhausting still, but better than lying in bed all day or otherwise staring at the rather uninteresting walls in my house. Perhaps I should decorate a bit in order to provide myself with something more interesting to stare at next time I'm down with the flu? Nah.

So, I had to go down to Sanur this morning anyway to pay my electric bill--God forbid I should be without the AC and feverish at the same time--and took that opportunity to stroll shortly on the beach. Good just to be out among the living with my feet in the sand and the breeze in my hair and the sun baking my skin to a bubbly crisp (though it was slightly less searing today than, say, a cigarette lighter--one of those old fashioned sorts that they used to have in cars). Met a dog down there with a particularly pleasant disposition, who decided to sit with me in the shade for a spell. I didn't catch his name. 

Collapsed for a time upon returning home, but then later in the afternoon was inspired, perhaps by delirium, to go for another walk, this time down to the neighborhood store, and then to pick up my laundry on the way back. This was a bit more challenging and less pleasant than the earlier morning walk, as of course the city streets are much hotter than the open beach. But it was necessary, I felt, to purchase a new package of cheap chicken sausages for the big fat brown dog, as she would certainly be upset, upon her next visit, to find that I had neglected to keep her in supply. 

At the store, I also bought a little bottle of super-vitamin-C drink--one of those pointless, completely superfluous things that come, nonetheless, with a psychological boost--and found a little spot in the shade where I could quaff the thing. 

Now here's something that does not happen in America, folks. As I sat on my little stone with my drink, two different vehicles slowed as they passed by just so that the driver could eagerly wave his hand out the window and sing out "Hello, Mister!" It's a common enough thing here, but I just never get used to it. In America, one will generally be ignored. That's the best scenario. Alternately, someone in a passing car might shout a curse, or even throw something. But 'Hello, Mister'? No. It just doesn't happen. 

Anyway, I've topped this whole dezombification venture off with a coffee at my favorite spot in Renon, and I'm feeling about 50 percent more alive than I felt yesterday. At this rate, I should be well (or at least in my customary state of poor health) by the time September lurches over the horizon. 

Brain on Vacation

I am aware lately of a lamentable inability to express myself in a very articulate manner. I'm hoping that this is just a brain fog arising from the flu and its attendant trickle down of mental and physical fatigue. On the other hand, this sort of brain fog is of course common in MS and comes with a range of cognitive challenges and deficits. I am very much aware of searching for the proper word, and very often failing to find it, and of struggling to put sentences together, not only on the level of simple grammar but as parts which combine to convey a process of thought from beginning to end. More often than not, I find myself forgetting halfway through what the thought was supposed to have been. This is all particularly frustrating for me, as it is the general hope and expectation of one who has spent his years writing things down that he will have become ever more cogent and precise rather than less so. It is a bit like trying to play the piano as I did when I was in my 20s but with hands that are now numb in the fingers and as dumb as ham hocks. My apologies, therefore, for the clumsy performance. I am hoping that my keener faculties will soon return from vacation. 

The Atheist Delusions

In a marathon reading session yesterday, thanks to feeling too lousy to go anywhere or do anything, I finished David Bentley Hart's fascinating book, The Atheist Delusions. This is much more than an examination of modern atheist ideology. The book title itself is more of a playful swat at Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion) and his New Atheist cohorts, and in fact Hart, through his customary clarity of intelligence and grasp of the sweep of philosophy and history, dispenses with them rather perfunctorily in order to delve into the meat of his examination of the pre-Christian, Christian and post-Christian eras. 

Most of us no longer have any concept of how the pre-Christian era looked. We are so used to the patterns of life and society that arose from the Christian movement that we kind of assume things had always been more or less this way. Not so. We do not remember, for instance, that it was once common for newborn babies to simply be put out to die through exposure to the elements and wild beasts. We do not remember that huge groups of people were not considered "persons" at all, in a legal or practical sense, and enjoyed no "rights" whatsoever.

Into this world, then, there suddenly came people who took in the babies, to nurture and care for them with the conviction that these lives, and that each individual life, were precious members of the Creator Himself. Here were these strange new people who devoted themselves to caring for the weak and the poor, the orphans and the widows, lepers and blind and crippled, and for each other. This was a revolutionary, world-changing alteration in the way things worked. 

These new behaviors did not arise as a natural progression of mankind, as some sort of next step on the evolutionary ladder, but rather from a Savior, from transcendent love. Of course, the usual evils of power and greed and prejudice attended the new system along the way as it became admixed with old structures of dominance and violence; but, here, Hart is looking at the big picture, at the sea-change that transformed the ancient world to the new world. It is not too much to say that much of what we now ascribe to ourselves as being human, of having individual identity and worth, describes a condition that did not before the Christian era exist. 

As we see in our time the power of the mythology that made us begin slide into the realm of forgetfulness, replaced by the supremacy of the individual will, without need of reason or restraint, one cannot help but wonder whether the goods we take so for granted can be sustained, and if so, by what? Hart ends his book, therefore, on somewhat of a gloomy note.

“A civilization, it seems obvious, is only as great or as wonderful as the spiritual ideals that animate it; and Christian ideals have shown themselves to be almost boundless in cultural fertility and dynamism. And yet, as the history of modernity shows, the creativity of these ideals can, in certain times and places, be exhausted, or at least subdued, if social and material circumstances cease to be propitious for them. I cannot help but wonder, then, what remains behind when Christianity’s power over culture recedes? How long can our gentler ethical prejudices—many of which seem to me to be melting away with fair rapidity—persist once the faith that gave them their rationale and meaning has withered away? Love endures all things perhaps, as the apostle says, and is eternal; but, as a cultural reality, even love requires a reason for its preeminence among the virtues, and the mere habit of solicitude for others will not necessarily long survive when that reason is no longer found. If, as I have argued in these pages, the “human” as we now understand it is the positive invention of Christianity, might it not be the case that a culture that has become truly post-Christian will also, ultimately, become posthuman?”

Good question. 

Morning

In the early morning an unseen starling speaks of things that are in the past. The faded brown shirt on the clothesline stops waving its arms a moment to listen, for it, like the starling, remembers something. Silence takes shape in the thin light of the sun. Three chairs recline for no reason at the table. This world is made of absent things and mourns a thousand tiny deaths. And the starling poses his question again--Hello? Who is there? Is someone there?

Fatigue and More

One of my more consistent MS problems over the past couple years has been fatigue. You all know the drill. It's like the engine of your body is constantly running too hot. The gauge creeps relentlessly into the red and you soon begin to sputter and chug, such that you finally have to pull over to the roadside, turn the thing off, and just sit for a while. 

Well, this generally lamentable situation grows much, much worse when combined with the common flu illness. Now you're not just running hot and tired. Now the damn radiator is steaming, boiling over, and the engine block has cracked and you are dead on wheels. Ugh. 

So that's where I'm at. The flu has kicked MS's ass, once again demonstrating that things can be worse! I'm on hold. The virus god has pressed the pause button. And repairs are bound to take days to happen. 

I have made it out for coffee this morning--unlike yesterday, when I did not leave the house at all--but so has what seems to be a pre-school class, each member of which knows no vocal tone other than the shriek, nor is subject to any form of control by the accompanying adults. The earsplitting cacophony, therefore, is blaring within the feverish recesses of my congested, cotton-packed brain, adding a whole new level to the general misery of the morning. 

Again, ugh. 

Methinks it is time to go home. 

Cells and Apps

Sitting outside this morning, smoking a cigarette and sipping a coffee, scrolling through Facebook posts, I suddenly thought: Why? 

It seemed a pertinent question, pressing enough, as it were, to pierce the fog of daily habit. Why, in fact, do I have a phone at all, loaded with all the apps, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facetime, YouTube, for which I pay around 100.000 Rupiah a month? The fact is, no one ever calls me, unless they've dialed the wrong number. I rarely receive a message through any of the services. Why do I have this iPhone loaded with all these apps sitting with me at the table every morning? Is it just a habit, like smoking itself, or like coffee--a pleasant, cozy, meaningless habit? 

There was a time when I used Facebook to connect with friends--to post and comment, to share ideas and humor--yet for a long while I have done little in the way of posting, or of commenting either. What I have done on Facebook since November 2016 is to scan the news for some decisive correction of our current national disaster. Yet I must admit, finally, that what I see day after day is merely an ongoing description of the disaster, enlarging, expanding, filling in such that disaster becomes only more fully a disaster. The more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same. So tragic, so lamentable, so deplorable. And so what? So nothing. 

And so Facebook itself becomes tedious, boring, an uninterrupted parade of repetition. The story of the story of the story that has no end. 

Why do I have this phone? 

Maybe the flu is just making me feel sluggish and discontented. I don't know. Or maybe I feel that since I have such an expensive phone, I must properly apply the phone, whether the application has any meaning to me or not. 

And now let us imagine that I have put the phone aside, retaining only a bare bones plan that will allow calls in and out in case of emergency. What then?  How will I know the good news if there is good news (for you see I hope despite the growing proof of the hopelessness of hope)?  How will I receive a message if not through Messenger? How should I find such total silence bearable?

Well, hell--what is it we did when there were no cell phones and apps?!

Sweet Dreams

I've been knocked out of the game (of life as we know it) by the flu, otherwise known as masuk angin hereabouts. This is exacerbated, mood-wise, anyway, by ceaseless rain for the last two days. Just about like being back in Oregon, except that the weather in Oregon would likely be quite nice just now. Beam me over, Scotty! It's not supposed to be raining here, actually. That should not start until October at the soonest. So the weather is really transgressing against the seasonal rules. But as Mark Twain said, regarding the weather, everybody complains, nobody does anything about it.

But of course the cabin fever hits me eventually just as hard as the flu, and I must get out for coffee, come hell or high water (both of which did show up in some form along the way). So here I am kind of sopping and dripping in my seat at Starbucks and feeling kind of nostalgic about the dry pleasures of cabin fever. I did remember to bring my rain smock this time around--although fat lot of good it does, because of course as one rides the motorbike through the weather, the rain comes down and sideways and up, finding ways of either dripping down or splashing up into any open area, making the smock more of a fashion statement than a useful device against the rain. It is sitting in the chair opposite mine just now and looking equally drippy and miserable. 

But here's the good news: I read this morning that cinnamon is good for MS, possessing properties, according to the science, that decrease symptoms. This is good news because I love cinnamon! Really. I have a piece of cinnamon toast nearly every day. I hate to think how I'd feel if I didn't.  

Cinnamon has long been known in general for its medicinal qualities. It is high, for instance, in antioxidants (and one does not want to be too oxidated, right?).  It has anti-inflammatory properties, helping to fight infection and to repair tissue damage (although for these maladies, I do not know whether it should be swallowed or bodily wallowed in). It may cut the risk of heart disease (not worried about that). It can improve sensitivity to insulin (something my son may want to consider). It lowers blood sugar levels (again, beneficial for my son). It may have beneficial effects on neurodegenerative diseases (that's where I come in). It may protect against cancer (well, I've been eating my cinnamon toast and I don't have that problem so far, fingers crossed). It helps fight bacterial and fungal infections (although, again, I do not know if one is supposed to eat it or rub it on the fungus in question). And lastly, cinnamon may help fight the HIV virus (although abstinence has also been found to be helpful). 

Finally, it is very tasty on toast with sugar and goes well with a plate of bacon and eggs.