And Portland's Top Blunderer Award Goes To ...

News of the day: Providence Health Systems shoots itself in the foot. Again. Having in 2006 lost private information on some 365,000 plan members from a car trunk, they have once again bungled into the release of the private details of some 6500 State members. The printer got stuck, they say.

Note of interest: I work for Providence Health Systems, and have for some 18 years.

Good time to retire. Which is exactly what I've been planning anyway.

An official spokesperson commented "We feel very badly."

I'll bet.

And here's the kicker: All this happens just as Providence takes over administration for the Oregon Public Employees Benefit Board--enrolling more than 100,000 workers and dependents.

Imagine the magnitude of possible screw ups in the future (i.e., stuck printers).

Now here, as everywhere, trickle down is the key phrase--for this betrayal at the hands of batch printing will surely, somehow, become the fault of lowly transcriptionists such as I.

Like ... I ... said ....

Time to retire.

What Is So Happy About New Years?

Well that's over. Christmas, I mean. I suppose if I had to compare this Christmas to the last 55, I'd have to say it runs about dead last, though in a neck to neck race with the one I spent alone (save for the dog) in my transitional sort of apartment, pining over lost love, hobnobbing with the ghosts of Christmases past, becoming at last deathly ill on rum and eggnog. (Honestly, a wave of nausea passes through me even as I remember. Gak).

Time to change the subject.

How about New Years Eve. Actually I've always pretty much hated New Years. To me it seems somehow endemically depressing--not just this year, but every year. To rate the last 55 New Years on a comparative scale would be very difficult indeed, for the graph would depict a fairly perfect flat line.

This may have started at a very early age. What I remember now is my parents, stable, reliable, Cleaver-like 364 days of the year, turning suddenly into complete idiots, along with all of the friends who had been invited to the house. We--my brother and I, and whichever hapless other children had been compelled to attend--would be quarantined to a second story bedroom, tied to a television set (and believe me, folks, in the late 1950s there wasn't a hell of a lot on late night TV), and the expectation was that we would remain fairly quiet, preferably invisible, whilst the raucous celebrants on the ground floor cavorted. Roars of laughter climbed up and down the staircase, the sound of something shattering, the sound of someone falling, followed by another chorus of roars. Always, at some point, one of us would quite accidentally cause a disturbance of some sort--decide to wrestle, for instance; or break something, or knock over the TV, or suddenly vomit 7-Up and Summer Sausage--and my father, in his hard soled dress shoes, all rubber mixed with iron, would pound up the staircase, thumping between banister and wall, and demand in an outraged though bleary, slurry sort of way what the Goddamn son-of-a-bitching hell had happened.

Fun stuff.

I think now that the whole thing frightened me. My young life was one of security, predictability, sobriety, and so this once yearly departure from all that was safe and familiar was disconcerting at the deepest level. Always, deep down, despite the general mirth that seemed to be expected, I just wanted the thing to be over--to close my eyes, to sleep, and to return next morning to the status quo.

By the time I had grown old enough to be a complete idiot myself, the damage had already been done--such that complete idiocy, though freely, even eagerly sought on many of an evening throughout the year, retained a particularly distasteful quality on New Years. Most often I would just stay at home, and watch the big ball descend, you know?

Descending. What's that all about anyway? Does it not strike you as peculiarly depressing?

Once I went to a party at a club. The girl I was with busted out the back of her dress (apparently a bit too tight), and then later started crying because she was in the midst of separating from her live-in boyfriend, and then got angry at me because . . . well, because it was all my fault.

Later I married that girl and she became my second wife.

New Years is expensive, overly hyped, generally cold, and cannot live up to its own expectations. Rather, to ours. To mine, that is.

So Happy New Years! I shall hope it passes quickly.

Twas the Night

Oh holy night ... the stars are shytely bryning.

Sound like something out of Chaucer, don't it?

Anyway, it's a good example of the way in which my tongue has begun to twist simple phrases. But of course it's not really my tongue that is at fault, but my brain. Poor tongue, I apologize.

Nonetheless, linguistics remain intact, so we're safe, it's all good.

So this is Christmas. Well, Christmas Eve anyway. As it has happened, we (by which I mean my wife and I) didn't really do Christmas this year--if one takes being done to mean the whole thing with glass bulbs and lights, trees and bells, flock and tinsel. There is some talk in the air of putting up our Christmas tree tonight, and I think the talk is probably reliable--but other than that, Christmas will have come and gone without the customary fanfare. Nor do we have much in the way of presents, for we shall soon be traveling to the other side of the world and must do our best to travel light. A fly by night sort of business is this.

So this is Christmas, and what have we done? Well, not a whole hell of a lot. The usual, you know? But that won't be lasting much longer (there! you see, I just typed longing much laster, and then corrected it). So we've been just about to do something for some time now. We as a family, we as a couple, and then also I as an individual. I've been just about to really seriously write a second book now for about the past 6 months. What's keeping me from it? Maybe waiting for the first one to find a home? Maybe waiting for my mind to clear? Maybe waiting for my energy to revive. Or maybe just waiting to retire, to sail, to settle, to soak up the sun. Maybe something is waiting for nothing so that something itself can ensue.

Merry Christmas to the few yet well loved. Merry Christmas, cousin David. Merry Christmas to my best friend Marc, together again after so many years. Merry Christmas beloved Hasan, and salute--I wish you all the best, along with a full bottle of Black Label. Merry Christmas Roy, wherever you are--and may many baskets of food fall from heaven to your lap. Merry Christmas dear readers of all these poor scribbles--your visits are my daily bread. Merry Christmas lovely Manitobians. Merry Christmas Enero, Valeria, Susan, Becky, Jamie. Merry Christmas Abdul and Saiid. And to you also, Neil, saddled with so many hopes--may your energy never fail.

Merry Christmas to all ... and to all a nood gyte.

Skating Into the Holidays

Learned a rule of thumb yesterday. If you have MS, and can't walk very well to begin with, don't take up ice skating.

Now, I am not new to ice skating. I used to ice skate quite often. When I was 12. My wife thought this would be a fun sort of holiday thing to do. And I figured it this way (always inclined toward the positive viewpoint): Even if you have trouble walking, ice skating ought actually to be easier, because the ice itself will move your feet--you will be sliding along rather than walking. Kind of like swimming--wherein, of course, you simply float.

Well, it's not so, folks. That's the honest truth. I was in fact surprised at how very weak my legs and ankles have become. All that wobbled to begin with now shook and shimmied, and all the while ached in protestation. I'm sure I must have looked like Elvis in the Ice Capades. Oh yeahhhh, I'm all shook up.

But it was fun, I'll have to admit. And my wife certainly enjoyed the show.

This Is The End

More and more often I feel like I am in a race, and though the destination is near, I must drag my body and mind along--the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and has in fact become dead weight. The legs of determination grow wobbly, vision clouds and my whole spirit squints to keep fixed on the goal.

I bear an expiration date, like a common bottle of milk--and though the numbers are smudged, the milk begins to smell sour. How long? Long enough?

If only I could lie down for a moment. Sleeping beauty. Rip Van Winkle. This is the end, beautiful friend, this is the end, my only friend, the end . . .

I forget the most essential things and find myself captive to worried fantasies, waking dreams which conspire to convince the rightness in my mind that to struggle is fruitless, to sleep is inevitable.

I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee, and they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, and sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep . . .

But I will not, no, not yet.

Pensee

Funny thing about Pascal's Pensee--no matter how many times you read it, it remains almost wholly unread. This may be partly due to the abbreviated nature of much of the material--a jotting down of notes and reminders, suggestions and hypotheses. One finds himself included in the author's thought process, filling in, groping forward, linking this which is partial to that which is more fully developed. Because of the spaces we become in a certain way more fully involved. The picture takes a more vibrant shape because of the fragmentation itself. Curious experience.

Well, this week, once again, I am sick with the cold. Seems like I just got over one. I guess that's because I did. Great year for colds, 2009. And I am indescribably fatigued.

I have heard it said before that a person with MS is less likely to become sick with common illnesses because the autoimmune system is overactive and thus attacks actual invaders as energetically as it does the healthy systems.

Wouldn't it be pretty to think so.

But as is often the case, what seems neat in theory often fails to play out in practice.

Thus it happens that I have heard it said also that people with MS are more likely to suffer from common illnesses simply because the body is worn out and haywire, and the overactive immune system does its intended job just about as well as a fence made of Tinker Toys.

(my apologies here--because I could not think of a good simile, I used Tinker Toys).

The fact is, those with MS eventually die not because of MS itself, but from some other illness they might otherwise not have succumbed to if not for the MS.

(weird sentence ... like I said, I'm tired ... so shall I desist for now).

Farewell

Our beloved student, Hassan, is gone--having left yesterday, along with Prince Fahad, for Spokane, and thence to Saudi Arabia. We shall miss you dearly--your laughter, your songs, your good heart. A presence has left our house, as if by a wind through the chimney, and has left behind the sort of deafening silence that most commonly follows only a death.

Last night we walked together, I and my wife, at the mall, doing nothing, holding mittened hands, and you seemed to walk with us, all the more present for being so absent.

We sat down for soup and salad at Stanfords, and Sant ordered a tall drink, as if in your honor. She changed the subject again and again, only to find herself reinitiating the same. By and by the tears she had been trying to avoid welled above willpower and tipped the edges of her lower lids, glistening like a silver thaw. She excused herself from the table, so that she could return anon and claim to have cried not at all.

Hassan our friend, our gentle giant--this uncommon mix of men great and small--part Falstaff and part Steerforth, part Shrek and part St. Nick, part troubadour and part court jester--a catcher in the rye, the Samaritan who passes by on his mule, the spirit of Christmas present, dispenser of abundance, Pied Piper and St. Peter.

We shall see you again in Paradise.