Good News Never Hurts

The video - it just puts me in good spirits to see an old guy up there with his grandson, still making music.  In fact, the existence of Pete Seeger cheers me up.

I thought you'd like to know the followup to my last post.  If you're new to this blog, maybe you should scroll down and read that first.

Okay, welcome back.

Not long after I put up the previous post, the Good Doctor did call.  I call him a Good Doctor because -
(a) he did call, and
(b) he started by explaining why it took him this long to call and apologizing.  A doctor who apologizes for your wait.  On Facebook, I'd punctuate that like this.

Here are the notes I typed into my computer as we talked, though it hurts my poor cervical spine (neck) to do things like that.  I need to have Tom find that clunky shoulder rest I used to have on the phone, when I used a landline more.  You can be sure he will have saved it, and be able to stick his hand into a heap and pull it out.  That's the difference between us.  Two differences, actually.
1.  I occasionally throw something out or donate it.
2.  What I didn't get rid of, I can't find.
So, my notes:

he began with apologizing for taking so long, and explaining that he’d been trying to get hold of the radiologist, and finally did
neck pain is from narrowing of neck, like stenosis
there may be some leakage of spinal fluid around T8, but it would cause headaches standing that go away when you lie down (so be aware if that begins).  Or it could be a glitch with the test.  (Idiots would not strap me down, and I moved a couple of times just a little. Plus, do I ever really get still?)
B12 normal
TSA a bit elevated, but thyroid fine
so go ahead and schedule the PT, and they will tell me what I need to use to walk safely
I had a stunning release of anxiety, and did the hokey pokey, holding on to things.

Thus you can see I am downright optimistic, though that is probably temporary.  Still, it is an upside to bipolar disorder that we delightful, fun, creative people need to remember when we don't feel fun or creative, and perhaps are not acting as delightful as usual:  our moods change.  Everything does.

You know, a great many American women describe themselves as depressed.  My crazy friends and I agree, people who have never been disabled by depression have no idea how bad it can be.  My Buddhist friends and I suspect that most of what passes for chronic depression is actually the dissatisfaction that comes with human life, especially in developed countries today, where people have too much time to think:  the craving to Be Somebody you're not, to have More Love than you're getting from your kids, your family, the opposite sex, your boss, etc; to not age, and certainly not die.  And there are the miscellaneous delusions, such as the well-established belief that wine really isn't alcohol because it's made from a plant.  (I had to tell the woman who told me that, so is vodka.  So is bourbon.  Etc. Somehow, we don't get together anymore.)

But life does have its rough spots, and sickness, aging, and death are big ones.  Next thing you know, you're learning to meditate lying on your back in bed with a tiny heated pillow under your neck.  I may well be the world's foremost Zen expert in that particular unconventional posture. 

I saw this amazing thing

The above photo is of the catacombs in Paris, always a tourist attraction, I understand.  I learned recently that flash photography was invented in order to photograph this dark tunnel. This is not your blinged-up  Halloween.

There is a lot written about the moment of your own death.  Buddhists desire to be lucid and conscious of entering the great light.  But we have a chance to practice confronting death numerous times in our lives - the deaths of others.  I think that's what bothered me about the most recent funeral: everyone quickly pulled down the iron shield.  There is a way to use Christianity to step away from this material world of loss and into talk of heaven and how special we are, the ones who believe the right thing. And the preacher used that to the fullest.

But the real magic trick was what the family did, elevating Dad (I wish I could artistically show the aura around that honorific that I heard in people's voices) to this wonderful fun person.  Erasing 95% of his personality and 99% of the truth of his life, the mundane, the sad, his frustrations, his limits, the long, sad decay of his body and mind.  Firmly putting in a beautiful walnut box with a brass plaque not only our personal loss and sadness, but also the fact that we, too, will die.

A death ought to leave us feeling like we are in the funhouse, the part where you're suddenly in the dark and the wooden walkway keeps shifting under your feet.  Death is sobering.  And people don't like it.  I've seen many people jump right over that initial moment of tears and start writing the fiction and planning the big party.  What a mess.

Awareness makes death hard for me to take.  At the same time, I know that Buddhism has it right:  life is  dukkha, life is hard.  Unsatisfying.  The very nature of life is constant change, and change means loss as well as gain.  You will lose people you love, and you will lose your own life in the end. Figure that out and maybe you'll stop spending every fourth Saturday in the beauty salon getting artificial.  Don't figure it out, and you will feel dissatisfied at the very moments of life that "ought to" be gratifying, the Thanksgiving meal, the wedding, the birth.

Change is hard, is both death and birth.  Birth - awareness - is hard, painful and messy.  Sometimes I wish I could give it up.  That makes me think of another of my favorite poems about the difficulty of giving up magic and theatre and pleasure, and acknowledging reality.  "Journey of the Magi" was written by a devout Christian, T. S. Eliot.  You can both listen to and read it here.

The Truest Thing I Know

I know lots of important things, like Do the most important thing first  and There's always time for what's really important.  But the most important thing I've learned this last decade or so can be phrased in a piece of common folk wisdom:

It's always something.

Therefore, I make a point of enjoying the gaps between those somethings.

Buddhists may be noting already that this is a rephrase of what is called The First Noble Truth that Shakyamuni Buddha realized as he sat under the evening star:  Life is hard.  The word is dukkha, and I've most often seen it translated as suffering, anxiety, stress.  There are good reasons human life is hard.  All good things pass.  We pass, and we know we will.  We lose loved ones, friends, beloved pets, our health and vitality, our able-bodiedness, even our ability to think and recognize our world - and we know we might.  I know I probably haven't touched on the problems you and I have seen in our lives, and that you may be experiencing right now.

When I'm in a balanced mood I accept all that with the sort of equanimity with which we grandmothers sometimes say,  It's always something. (sigh)  If you can't accept this fact of life's difficulty emotionally, you can work on understanding that it is true.  Whether you like it or not.  And yet, this moment is safe.

Here I'd like to mention that these thoughts are growing out of me having a very good day.  A nice, quiet day following a lot of work yesterday, and some real visible progress on the major clean-this-house project, working right along with Tom, no conflicts.  I have seen enough suffering in life to realize the abiding pleasure of an agreeable relationship.  Today it is hot outside and the air quality bad, but we have electricity back, and our air-conditioner and Hepa filter are doing a good job in here.  My back doesn't hurt too much, and in a minute I'm going to prop up on a heating pad that works wonders for me.

I do live in an emotional hurricane zone, as Readers know.  I have a bipolar-ordered mind.  Right now I am neither depressed nor anxious-angry-manic, just right in that lovely middle.  Creative but not driven.  Not sick; maybe I've found the key steps to avoiding UTIs, maybe I can keep avoiding them. My history tells me those unlovely mood states will return and everything turn sludgy and gray, though I don't want to believe it.  I know it is my nature to get sick this way, that way; illness cannot be avoided (I know The Five Remembrances. which are at the bottom of this blog, by heart).

But today I can look around and run the mental gratitude journal.  And am not even arguing with the koan I have found most difficult of all:  Every day's a good day.  There it is, on the right, in calligraphy.  I am working on accepting that, preparing to see the shades of gray on those not-so-easy days.

The First Noble Truth, Again

My life

Day by day the depression has retreated, like a dark smog going out to sea.  I am not so bad this morning, but left with the realities of illness in both mind and body.  This mind has resumed an active ability to be depressed that I haven't had in many years, just the way my body has revealed weaknesses now that I have the energy to use it more.  (Back story: kidney transplant 11 months ago; age 68).  When Sleeping Beauty wakes up, it is to a mess.

This morning an image came to my mind, of life as a hooded Torturer who says to me, "This is the way it's going to be from now on - always some new disability or loss, some new pain.  Maybe several things at a time.  You will never know what it's going to be or when, sometimes it will be very hard.  And the only way out of here is death."

I say, "But I didn't do anything to deserve this."

He shrugs.  "You were born."

"I didn't ask to be born."  The adolescent cry, meaning, I wouldn't have bought a ticket if I thought the ride was going to be like this.  (Manic-depression has something in common with adolescence, heightened emotions connected with internal, maybe hormonal, changes. Also, an adolescent is being born out of childhood into a different less-fun world, new ways of seeing.)

So the question becomes, How do you live in prison for life under these lousy circumstances, knowing the torturer can visit anytime?

First, get with the reality; cultivate awareness of the reality, the kind of food you can expect here.  This was the Buddha's First Noble Truth - Life sucks. If you don't like this reality, you'll have no trouble finding people who want to feed you sugary pap.  That's their approach.