tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55053675208316842872024-03-17T23:03:53.442-04:00Not ZenStories on life, death, enlightenment, zen buddhism, religion, philosophy, stoicism, meditation, daoism, kindness but not meekness, and samsara.Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.comBlogger707125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-3274572703606539472024-03-17T05:30:00.016-04:002024-03-17T10:15:53.064-04:00Not Even Not Zen 345: Biomythography - Note 87, Painful Relationships, Part I<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><b>Painful Relationships, Part I</b></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">In the spring of 1989, I was working at a full-time writing gig for the University Publications of America, which was in downtown Frederick. I walked to the UPA offices on bright, crisp mornings. Window panes reflected sunbeams down from the upper stories of the brick buildings along my way. The air was cool. The streets were paved. The sidewalks led my way unevenly, their cobblestones at weird angles beneath my shoes.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">As with most other small cities in America, Frederick's facades had cracked. Half the residents had fled. And literally, building fronts (although usually the sides) had fractured. Some downtown streets, long ago damaged by Hurricane Agnes, had been left unrepaired for decades. A few buildings on my path remained boarded and windowless on their bottom floors.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The town was poor but somehow, it remained cheery. The streets remained clean. The people I passed on my stroll smiled at me each morning. I waved. We traded comments about the spring weather. And eventually, after enough years, our optimism about our surroundings turned out to be justified.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The downtown revival was a decade away from starting, though. At the time of my UPA job, the city was desperate for money and I was, too. I was lucky to have the gig but my salary barely paid the rent for my multi-room apartment. It didn't let me build up my savings. All the math I did told me was headed into more debt, even beyond my weighty college loans. I needed car repairs right away.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">At the end of one of my many morning walks, I picked up the newspaper. Three copies of the Frederick News-Post and one of the Washington Post were delivered to our offices every day. Since I arrived second earliest, I often picked them off the floor behind the transom.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I marched to the front desk and leaned against the corner of it. There, I flapped open the News-Post. Next to me on a shelf by the desk sat sections of the Frederick News-Post from the day before. I could see the classified section on top. Plenty of the editorial staff had been scanning the classifieds for side jobs. I had, too.</span></span><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBv5szW-CmaVbLkfLbPIhdoXm_8IlBddEIANzDNv8b36KX_eqhlaFhns4VDaujErlHq0Ah1kuAdGNX0OfJsmzbZ2sBga_O8F_o2e7hgB-SxNgQoP5JMgWyyETx6vdOYYliKkMJrXupkbNmMO4Y2tCGGhX6BnYyfDf_NAGfiD_nCNg5eu12c97AQxhVfzw/s1842/NewPaper-GuineaPig-Banner1.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="1842" height="69" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBv5szW-CmaVbLkfLbPIhdoXm_8IlBddEIANzDNv8b36KX_eqhlaFhns4VDaujErlHq0Ah1kuAdGNX0OfJsmzbZ2sBga_O8F_o2e7hgB-SxNgQoP5JMgWyyETx6vdOYYliKkMJrXupkbNmMO4Y2tCGGhX6BnYyfDf_NAGfiD_nCNg5eu12c97AQxhVfzw/w320-h69/NewPaper-GuineaPig-Banner1.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Not the paper I was reading but a paper I was writing for.</span></i><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><i>Do you have two weeks of vacation?</i> read one of the ads. A pharmaceutical company was willing to pay young men to leave their families, a week at a time, for a two-week drug trial. You had to stay on their premises, which was a bit like a hospital. On the other hand, they would feed you. I'd been looking at the same deal for three days.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">It was right for me. Sure, it would be a harsh way to use vacation time. But I didn't have much choice. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I copied down the information.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /></span><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">#</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWLp88b7o9m24A-j86jjX0g48v5Y-PSHEMCRIk1kJeZ5a_dCDcIRs5-d9KtgDbnbMwXxBnP0DnFRaQPfUxKnvvY1p4s5DgAQ9usmlZpWPatLL2kjLFiMbZ8yfQBxf2KB1eCxOWZHwSwdjEcnQh9VMRNpwvq9rSaWzdQjRNUcXA-HnE1kAdplCktlEKt84/s1946/NewPaper-GuineaPig-Confess1.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1306" data-original-width="1946" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWLp88b7o9m24A-j86jjX0g48v5Y-PSHEMCRIk1kJeZ5a_dCDcIRs5-d9KtgDbnbMwXxBnP0DnFRaQPfUxKnvvY1p4s5DgAQ9usmlZpWPatLL2kjLFiMbZ8yfQBxf2KB1eCxOWZHwSwdjEcnQh9VMRNpwvq9rSaWzdQjRNUcXA-HnE1kAdplCktlEKt84/s320/NewPaper-GuineaPig-Confess1.png" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Somewhere in my notebooks are journal entries from the experience. At the time, I believed I would look through my records to relive the horrors of being an experimental subject. But why would I do that when the memories are so vivid? Besides, since then I've been spoiled by searches through local computer files and online archives. My forays into my paper notes have diminished. By a lot.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Fortunately, I used my journal notes right away to compose a piece for <i>The New Paper</i> in Frederick. I no longer remember what title I gave the article but I know it was not the one the editors decided on. They made it, "Confessions of a Voluntary Guinea Pig." (My paper records were good for this much; I found a copy of the printed article.) Even decades later, the title seems hokey. Did it pull in readers? Probably. But it didn't match my intent or tone.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The editors made me research a side story. It was less fun and they printed it in bigger type, like an ad. They chopped up the prose I'd written for the main Confessions, much to the detriment of the coherency of it, but I know they had to fit my prose into their January 3 edition. They cut their articles to fit, like all editors. My submission excited them but it was also bigger than they found comfortable.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">For the first week of January, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The New Paper</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> paid me more than usual. I think it was $95 for the pair of stories.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">As I re-read my article, I discovered I had forgotten a few things about my time in the experiment:</span><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih31iq3CN_XOa7aoVqZlctGjG7mjGdJUpZObBdeyCjSlUouoaXO9nnPxAtG95rOr5K5aRBGlwDI6bbOrBEAmIo8ogxwdZQe5MVcLsJIGKP_hmpcq0Tcz5cjNYfazOy9piLtlVDj8dfJ0_x6jSwfxL9FU5KyeFor2nJw-gVqkaJ7i5KqL7l5rYzbzBih80/s1434/NewPaper-GuineaPig-Confess2.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1371" data-original-width="1434" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih31iq3CN_XOa7aoVqZlctGjG7mjGdJUpZObBdeyCjSlUouoaXO9nnPxAtG95rOr5K5aRBGlwDI6bbOrBEAmIo8ogxwdZQe5MVcLsJIGKP_hmpcq0Tcz5cjNYfazOy9piLtlVDj8dfJ0_x6jSwfxL9FU5KyeFor2nJw-gVqkaJ7i5KqL7l5rYzbzBih80/s320/NewPaper-GuineaPig-Confess2.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><ul style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><li style="margin-left: 15px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We had to shave our chests. All the men objected to this until threatened with lack of pay.</span></li><li style="margin-left: 15px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We weren't allowed to eat meat or have caffeine in any form, not even in chewing gum. The company running the experiment checked on it.</span></li><li style="margin-left: 15px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One guy had abnormal ECG readings and a heart block before the experiment. We teased him. Eventually, he dropped out.</span></li><li style="margin-left: 15px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After the doses began, we laughed at one another for having heart blocks induced by the medicine.</span></li><li style="margin-left: 15px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Toward the end, the technicians woke us up to draw blood every two hours.</span></li><li style="margin-left: 15px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lack of sleep and hematomas made us lose our sense of humor. We weren't joking at the finish.</span></li></ul><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Most of all, though, I learned a stranger lesson than I wrote about for the newspaper.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>(to be continued)</i><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br /></span></div></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-58557666313342478752024-03-10T05:30:00.001-04:002024-03-10T05:30:00.135-04:00Not Even Not Zen 344: Biomythography - Note 86, Oppositional Thinking<div><b>Oppositional Thinking</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The fish I pulled from the pond next to my grandmother's house was bigger than my two hands together. Since I was six, that wasn't much, but it seemed huge at the time.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Fish don't feel pain!" my uncle Mike shouted. He danced around the silver carp. </div><div><br /></div><div>The carp flopped on the sand and rocks, where I had reeled it in to meet our lack of net. Mike skittered beside it, unsure of where to put his feet, unsure of even his hands. He waved his arms without making the move to pick it up. Clearly, I had upset him with my burst of anguish. I'd scowled and cried out when I found I'd caught a living being with a hook through its mouth. It seemed cruel, like a big kid sitting on a smaller one. This time, I was the bigger kid.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wasn't as big as my uncle, of course. Mike was around twelve, maybe thirteen. He had grown tall and thin with pre-adolescent vigor. Or maybe this was his early adolescence but acne hadn't set in. He hadn't reached his full height, for sure. He seemed to think like a big child, to me, rather than a young adult. He had volunteered 'to teach me how to fish' most likely because he wanted permission from his mother to go fishing. I probably had seemed underfoot, asking lots of questions. He saw it as an opportunity.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Save it!" I pleaded. I grabbed at the fish. The fins of the carp expanded suddenly in my hands. A spine cut my hand near the thumb. The fish escaped me. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm trying." He knelt. The carp flopped hard twice, three times, and eluded him. He looked at where I had dropped the fishing pole. He ordered, "Pick it up!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm hurting him!" I yelled. But I picked up the fishing pole. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Fish don't feel pain," he insisted. "They proved it."</div><div><br /></div><div>I stared at the flopping carp. It had started to tire. Its gills flapped more slowly. Its tail kicked its body over but no longer knocked it into the air. Mike was able to grab it. His fingers found the base of the hook. He started shifting the metal wire from side to side.</div><div><br /></div><div>While Mike worked the barb free, I gazed into the panicked eyes of the fish. That was pain, in there. And exhaustion. And defeat. I knew I didn't care what anyone said they'd proved. </div><div><br /></div><div>This was a new concept to me. I was starting to realize that people sometimes told me things that were wrong. People lied, and not just my little brother when I caught him sneaking a treat. My father told lies. My uncle told lies like this one, apparently. I was starting to sense a pattern. People lied when they wanted to justify something. If the world was a certain way and they didn't like it, they were going to pretend it was how they wanted it to be. </div><div><br /></div><div>Part of me, even then, dimly realised Mike insisted fish didn't feel pain because he didn't want to accept the obvious. </div><div><br /></div><div>He wasn't the only one. Even in school, I read lessons and talked with teachers about aspects of life that were written down but couldn't really be true. Among those were an insistence that animals couldn't feel pain. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are a number of other things I was taught that turned out not to be true:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Chicken bones</li><ul><li>The first time I heard chicken bones are dangerous to dogs, it upset me. A lot. I'd been feeding chicken bones to dogs for years. In my life, it was too late to hear it was dangerous. Since then, I've seen bunches of dogs eat bunches of chicken bones. There's never been a problem with it. My dogs have all been mutts except for one abandoned Brittany Spaniel but the Brittany Spaniel ate bones, too. And lived to a grey age. </li></ul><li>Animal pain</li><ul><li>It's not an "other" thing but if you object to this, you could be on the autism spectrum. It's more likely that you're willfully delusional, though. Also, just wait until the next item on this list.</li></ul><li>Plant pain</li><ul><li>It's obvious, if you watch plants, they have pain reactions. Even one-celled creatures have pain reactions you can see under microscopes, so this is nothing startling to hear about plants. On a multi-cellular (but largely invisible) level, cilantro, marigolds, and other plants exude scents to attract predator bugs when they are attacked by aphids. Acacia trees react by releasing tannins and ethylene when antelopes eat their leaves. Their tannins poison the leaves and the ethylene warns other trees. You may not feel empathetic towards plants but nevertheless, they have pain reactions. </li></ul><li>Slavery</li><ul><li>In elementary school, I was taught slavery had been abolished. Since I had read every book I could on Harriet Tubman and wanted the victory to be true and complete, I believed it. By junior high, I was starting to notice references in the newspaper to what seemed like slavery. By college, I understood a bit more about human nature. Also, newspapers had started to acknowledge slavery hadn't been wiped out everywhere. </li></ul><li>Blood plasma </li><ul><li>In my first EMT class and similar classes on first aid, I was taught that blood plasma infusions restore needed fluids to the body and keep veins from collapsing. In fact, administering "plasma first" was killing people at the time, lots of them. In the 1990s, Dr. Jeffery Kashuk and other researchers figured out the problem and proved it to such an extent that they changed the standard practices of trauma care. The death toll estimates from this single, bad medical practice soared into the millions. People started wondering if lawsuits were coming. Then the newspapers stopped printing anything more about it. </li></ul><li>The human brain</li><ul><li>In my youth, a debate raged over whether humans were effectively pre-programmed or the mind was a blank slate. We now know definitively the mind does not begin as a blank slate. Studies of language acquisition and other forms of cognitive development show we have hard-wired inclinations. The extent of what this means is still a great topic but the blank slate part is done. </li></ul><li>Continental drift</li><ul><li>When I was a child, the continents were static and unmoving in my textbooks. And in my school teachers. The debates over the topic raged even while the older generation of geologists died off and continental drift won acceptance. </li></ul><li>The land bridge</li><ul><li>Early studies showed the diversity of American Indian languages meant the group of people speaking them had been isolated from the Old World for about 60,000 years. I didn't know this particular fact when I was taught about the land bridge in elementary school. Even in fourth grade, though, the idea of an ice-free corridor seemed suspicious. The theory eventually turned out to be a weird sort of wishful thinking from scholars who couldn't stand to see the Americas having a long human tradition, sometimes for religious or ethnic reasons. </li></ul><li>Earthworms</li><ul><li>Everyone told me earthworms were good and natural when I was growing up. In the Americas, they are invaders and powerful predators in the soil. After the icebergs receded, there were no earthworms in the Americas until Europeans came and introduced them. American soils were a completely different biome from the Eurasian one. The toll on American microbes and other native life is still uncounted - and perhaps uncountable.</li></ul></ul></div><div>There are plenty of other examples but so many, in fact, I know I'll never remember them all. Lots of concepts I was taught in my childhood have not held up. It's easy to see the patterns of commercial interests and just plain wishful thinking that won people over to these views and makes them linger today despite the facts and obvious pains staring us in the face. I would attribute, in part, my "oppositional thinking" habits to observing so much wishful thinking from my friends and family. That, and my father being so quickly oppositional, himself. He set an example. </div><div><br /></div><div>Wishful thinking might not always win. It certainly remains a powerful force in our lives, though. It always will.</div></div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-4751310065591110732024-03-03T05:30:00.003-05:002024-03-08T10:22:54.378-05:00Not Even Not Zen 343: Biomythography - Note 85, Cultural Identities<div><b>Terminology and the Times We Live In</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Generally, people don’t have much emotional understanding of how great the differences are among our cultures. We don't get to live in different societies (there's not enough time nor enough travel in our lives) and, in particular, we underestimate the gaps in comprehension imposed by the eras in which we live. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>Nowadays, the linguistic terms for many aspects of life are changing. Having more gender terms is a big social movement. This sort of language drift is natural. It happens more or less constantly. Sometimes it leaves me behind or I find I've gotten too far ahead in some way. I have internalised Buddist, Stoic, and Daoist terms and definitions because they are appropriate to the way I think. For a while, this put me ahead of some American cultural shifts. Since then, a lot of our sub-cultures have adopted aspects of these schools of thought. They've added to the lexicons of them as well, so I find myself needing to catch up.</div><div><br /></div><div>It surprises me still how much the Buddhist outlook affects my everyday, moment-to-moment living. (Although I refer to Buddhism here for the sake of being understood, Daoism and Stoicism would be as appropriate. All three philosophies share a core set of values.) </div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes I hear trending phrases like, "I identify myself as ..." from a Buddhist perspective. A basic tenet of Buddhism is the need to erase the 'self.' Identity is not merely irrelevant; it's contra-indicated by the philosophy. This makes the current, popular obsession with identity seem like a wave of anti-enlightenment. Perhaps it is. </div><div><br /></div><div>We don't need to know a person's identity to treat them well. We don't need to know, maybe, even if they are a person or not.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, part of the difference in the context of 'identity' is generational. Maybe the trend in terminology represents a group of people taking an outlook in their sub-culture that I did not take, that was not even a concept when I was young enough to be influenced by it. Maybe I am bereft of modern conceptions, like my old boss was when I mentioned the term 'people skills.'</div><div><br /></div><div>Early in my computer science career, I had a supervisor who was fairly nice and constantly made a bad impression. He had a grating voice. You could hear him in a crowd of thousands without him raising his volume. He looked unathletic. He wore unfashionable clothes. Worst of all, in his conversations he always challenged everyone else's ideas. That was his conversational reflex, a habit burned into him by either his family or his academic environment. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you proposed a solution, he would say "No, that won’t work! This is how it works. Here’s why."</div><div><br /></div><div>He expected you to challenge him back. It was how he conversed. It was how he solved problems. If he was shown wrong, he changed his view to something better almost instantly - a highly admirable trait. To me, it became obvious how to challenge him casually. To his co-workers, apparently it was not so obvious. Many of the doctors he worked with hated him. His fellow scientists found him irritating. His bosses tried to fire him. </div><div><br /></div><div>He was so bad with people, I tried to coach him how to be better. (He accepted the coaching, too; he knew he had problems with his co-workers.) In the process, I remembered an odd moment from when I was growing up. One of the neighbors on my block turned to another and said, "Well, you are either good with people or you aren't."</div><div><br /></div><div>For a moment, I wondered why such an old memory would come to me. Then I realized: my boss belonged to that generation. He had grown up with the idea that you were either good with people or you were not. And he was not. Once he had understood his place, he never tried to change it. The idea that you are born a certain way is a self-fulfilling prophecy in that sense. Eventually, he didn't want to hear anything more about improving his people skills.</div><div><br /></div><div>Moving back to the concept of identity - the current emphasis on it can feel like anti-enlightenment activity but maybe it's really not. When people study Buddhism, Stoicism, or Daoism, they mostly focus on improving themselves. The canons of those systems focus on how an individual can be better. What they hardly ever mention is how cultures can clash, how one sub-culture might affect another, or any other aspect of people in large, organized groups. In the context of groups, using the term 'identity' may mean something different than it does in the context of individuals. Admittedly, it might not be different enough to avoid reasonable Buddhist objections. But still, subscribers to the Way may understand the word 'identity' in this group sense is meant to be interpreted as a place within a culture.</div><div><br /></div><div>Saying, "I identify as a Buddhist" might not signify anything more than "I am an office worker." There is not necessarily a problem with either statement. If one arises, it's likely to come from how the person making the statement is clinging to a sense of identity. No matter how noble, ignoble, or simply socially aware a sense of identity happens to be, the attachment to it seems, to me, to be the real issue. </div><div><br /></div><div>Picking up these senses of identification in their context and then putting them down when the context changes should be fine. </div></div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-46052856324971985122024-02-25T05:30:00.002-05:002024-03-01T11:25:37.327-05:00Not Even Not Zen 342: Biomythography - Note 84, Sadmares<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><b>Sadmares</b></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></div>The last time I had a nightmare sufficient to wake me, I was twenty-one. That fall, on the campus of Hampshire College, my girlfriend kept telling me about her dreams. Every breakfast for weeks, for months, I listened to those tales. My mind and body reacted oddly to the constant discussion of dreams. After enough time, a) I started remembering my own, b) I experienced more lucid dreams, and c) I experienced my last nightmare before having children. Those things changed our conversations.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">In my last nightmare, I ran from a monster, turned around, discovered it was a large dog, and killed the dog. It may not qualify as a terror dream but it was enough to wake me, heart pounding. There was a horror to the triumph over the dog, plus fear and anger. After I had children, of course, I experienced occasional nightmares concerning the death of one child or another. Every parent has those, I think, or at least they seem to be common occurrences.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Until the death of my mother, though, I had never experienced a dream so sad I woke up from the surge of emotion. I've never even heard of other people having those. I didn't know the experience was one of life's options. Or that I would not have any other real option, myself.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">My mother died on Memorial Day. The evening after was a long one, restless and full of family duties. When I finally felt I could sleep, the time was past midnight. I glanced at the clock as I forced myself to lie down.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I remained in bed for a self-disciplined minute, exhausted and fidgeting. When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep. I emerged into a blackness followed by a room with light green walls. I found myself striding toward a seat in the room. The furniture was white and cushioned. The area seemed a little like a hospital. But the room was quieter than I expected. The furnishings were in soft focus, glowing. Even as I took my spot, I didn't like the place. I knew I was waiting to receive news I didn't want to hear. In a moment, my mother came out. She was dressed in a green, short-sleeved shirt. She sat down in the chair next to me. Her eyes found mine. I stared back, knowing she was dead, knowing she had come to tell me about her death. Sorrow welled up in my chest as if I would burst. And I awoke.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">My arms turned my body. I rolled out of the covers before I was completely aware of myself. And I stood in such a pang of anguish that for a moment I couldn't breathe.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">My body heaved with slow inhale, deep and calm. I was awake. There was no question of getting back into bed. A sense of misery had enlivened every nerve in my body. In a minute, I got dressed. As I finished putting on my socks, I glanced at the clock. Ten minutes had passed since I forced myself to lie down.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The next night, I experienced more of the same. I slept for a few minutes at a stretch. Each time, I started doing something ordinary in my dream. My mother appeared beside me. Sometimes I spent a few seconds with her, feeling the grief well up inside and all around me. Then I awoke.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I rose, paced the room, and returned to bed to repeat the process. After about two and a half hours, I decided to stop trying to sleep. I started my workday early.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">On the third evening, I slept almost a full night. I woke once in a feverish bout of dream-sadness. After that, I dozed with the deepness of the merely exhausted.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">#</span></div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Four years later, my father fell and broke his hip. His doctors didn't want to operate because they thought anesthesia might kill him. They had to try, though, and he survived their operation. He felt much better after it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Then the hospital administered opiates. Everything started going wrong. As had happened to him before under opiates, his digestion slowed and part of his intestine died. This time, unlike when he was sixty, the doctors declined to try to stop the spread of sepsis. He was eighty-three. They felt sure he wouldn't make it through a second operation in three days. Instead, they committed him to dying as the sepsis took over.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">For a few days, he lay in a sort of in-between hospital care, not in a hospice ward but in a room posted with instructions on the limitations of his treatment. Instead of medicines, the staff increased his doses of morphine.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">On the morning he died, I made these notes after I woke to go see him:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I dreamt about seeing my dad in Holy Cross. It was room 10, all normal, but my dad was unconscious. I was out in the hall talking with my son, Dylan Kyle, watching my dad through the glass. Then my mom showed up in the hall looking about fifty-five. She had a baby carrier in her left arm and the infant Dylan Kyle in it. She was beaming, happy. But then I knew it was a dream. And I got really sad and woke up.</i><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The night after his death, which was the next night, I wrote about a different sort of dream to my wife.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I was walking on the street carrying groceries. My father called me on the phone. I looked up. Although he was calling over my cell phone, I could see him in an apartment high up above. I knew it was white and green on the inside.<br /><br />"I have done part of the crossword puzzle," he told me. He was dying. I knew he was dying. We had been through this before. He had been dying every night. Every night, over and over.<br /><br />My father knew that he was dying, too. I could hear it in his voice.<br /><br />"The crossword puzzle," he insisted. "Take a look at it when you come up."<br /><br />I climbed the stairs to the apartment knowing that he would be dead when I got there. A feeling of sadness swept over me, as I knew that it had before. But this time he had started the crossword puzzle. That was the thing. He had called because he had wanted me to know he'd left me something to do.</i></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" />Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-89793397139965626302024-02-18T05:30:00.002-05:002024-02-21T14:34:20.290-05:00Not Even Not Zen 341: Biomythography - Note 83, My Personality Type<b>My Personality Type</b><br /><br />The popular personality tests used in business - the Myers Briggs Indicator, the Eyseneck, the Hogan Personality Inventory, Keirsey Temperament - are all junk. Well, maybe that's too harsh. Maybe they are just misused.<br /><br />Underlying these measurement systems is the obvious ability of any quiz to classify people according to answers they give. Is the classification useful? The usefulness must be linked to the questions and whether they matter to why you're organizing or re-organizing your people.<br /><br />Why are you sorting people?<br /><br />Sometimes, you need to arrange individuals into teams. That's a time when we all want to understand who we're dealing with. A test can be useful in that situation. I admit I've met at least one good personality metric, a U.S. Army psychology regimen developed for building compatible teams. Long ago, the Army tried to build superteams of its best performers and they failed. Utterly. Gunnery squads from from tiny West Virginia towns, within which there were some members who couldn't read, were better than the superteams of best performing artillery gunners from across the country. Why? The Army tried to systematically uncover the reasons. They managed to do it, too, to a great extent. And they learned to build better teams.<br /><br />I'm not going to go into the how or why. I've noticed the information about the Army system has disappeared from the Internet so I'm going to assume the Army has quietly pulled it back - probably because someone thinks it's useful.<br /><br />Instead, I'm going to talk about DISC.<br /><br />DISC stands for Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. The terms could be anything, though; with the right questionnaire, sorting people into Hogwarts houses would be equally valid.<br /><br />"Boss, I don't like it. This is bullshit," one of my staff murmured to me as he accepted his paper copy. His face wore a resigned, unhappy frown.<br /><br />"Me neither." With an eye on our overboss, I sat down and started pencilling in answers. "Let's do it."<br /><br />He sighed. "Sure."<br /><br />My specific sub-culture at work consists of people who are notorious for not liking team-building exercises. Nevertheless, we were called upon to join in. We met in the main conference room with the rest of the staff and filled in our forms. My crew members whispered their complaints in low, careful tones.<br /><br />As with most personality tests, we had to answer different forms of the question, "what are people like?" I felt so tired that I didn't try to game the system by filling in answers I knew my bosses would prefer. It probably wouldn't have helped anyway, since the DISC survey addressed most subjects in a narrow fashion. For example, I remember "Do people turn in assignments late?" as one line. There were other, similar options posed in the same, constricted, yes-or-no manner. Because of how each had been worded, there was no honest choice. No one could have truthfully answered anything other than "people turn in work late" because people do, sometimes.<br /><br />The questions forced my answers and I didn't fight. I gave in to the over-simplified views even though I knew that each topic had to be used to categorize workers. So people must, as a rule, interpret the DISC questions and statements contrary to the actual words. I turned into a literalist, which is a very computer scientist thing to do, and finished my survey second out of a group of thirty even though I felt as if I had dwaddled through it, fuming about each wording and the inescapable logic of the narrow focus.<br /><br />"We'll be back with the results in a minute," said one of the organizers. Her team graded them as we handed them in. Since they were using an apparently customized DISC with forty questions, the grading didn't take as long as 'full DISC.'<br /><br />While we waited, I helped other early finishers adjust the labels for our DISC profile groupings. Following the guidance from a DISC moderator, we had posted signs around the room with eight designations. I moved a sign, found tape, and handed out pieces of tape to others who wanted to straighten up. The eight signs said, D (for direct/dominant), Di (dynamic), I (interactive/influential), Si (agreeable or trusting), S (soft-hearted), SC (cautious), C (reserved/unemotional), DC (disciplined and critical). We had them spread around eight 'corners' of the room.<br /><br />"We're ready to begin the grouping," the moderators said when they re-entered the room. Due to luck of the draw, or perhaps because they used a last-in-first-out system as they graded, the announcement for my assignment came near the end. First, I got to watch as each staff member in turn walked to a DISC category sign. Many of them ended up in sensible locations, I noticed, although a few seemed mildly wrong.<br /><br />"Eric," the shorter, darker-haired moderator announced. She picked up my paper and read from the top. "C-D."<br /><br />She meant the DC group, which was the disciplined and critical people. As I stood up, to my shock, several women hissed. I heard a gasp escape my boss before she covered her mouth. Another supervisor covered her mouth, too. I paused. Then I continued my stroll toward my group. It had taken me a second to understand why everyone had such a strong reaction. The DISC process had lumped me together with the two unfriendliest people in the office.<br /><br />These two stern women were both black and middle aged. They liked me well enough and I enjoyed working with them, too. Oddly, though, they didn't want to see me grouped with them. One of them crossed her arms and frowned. The other, shaking her head with a warm smile, leaned close as I arrived.<br /><br />"I think you might be in the wrong place," she whispered.<br /><br />"Maybe?" I allowed. I considered the reasons why it felt uncomfortable. Why were they perceived as unfriendly and I was considered warm and gentle? Being disciplined and being critical were both appropriate traits to assign to me. (So were the other categories, really, but that's how these exercises work.)<br /><br />I glanced around. Women and men seemed distributed fairly evenly in the room. Black women had a pretty wide distribution, too, and I knew them all. These two in the DC category really were the most stand-offish, except maybe with me. They were infamous for not being friendly to their co-workers.<br /><br />"He is really results oriented," the friendlier woman said to her more sullen companion.<br /><br />"Huh." The comment made the woman's shoulders relax. "Yeah."<br /><br />We talked about the questions for a few minutes. Maybe we should have been listening more to the moderators but we had gotten interested in what made us similar. And intrigued by what made us so different, too. Pretty soon, I realized that these women answered "people turn in assignments late" on the quiz with a sense of disdain. To them, other people weren't dependable. Ever. In fact, the reason they liked me was because I didn't over-promise things. I delivered what I said I would. They were prepared to be disappointed in me eventually, as they had been with everyone else, but so far, I was still acceptable. <br /><br />"Okay!" Clap, clap, clap. The taller moderator strode forward. She brought her hands together, trying to get our attention.<br /><br />"Okay, okay," said other women around our office, including the second moderator. The first moderator clapped three more times.<br /><br />"Some of the people here feel they have been mis-categorized," she continued. "It happens pretty often with mid-level DISC questionnaires. We have an approved method of dealing with it. The DISC certification authority said our method is fine."<br /><br />Her partner nodded.<br /><br />"What you do is, you can make one diagonal move. You can walk from the SI sign to SC or you can walk from SI to DI. That means you can change one letter if your measured DISC scale has two letters. You can't go to a neighboring scale because that's not the way the questions work. You have to move on a diagonal."<br /><br />I already knew where I planned to move. As I leaned toward it, the woman continued, "And you have to give a reason."<br /><br />That made me snort. I already knew my reason. I'd come to the conclusion while talking to the others in my assigned scale.<br /><br />At first, I was the only one to make a move. The call for a justification statement about the change made everyone else hesitate. But I already knew. And as soon as I'd moved from DC to DI, the moderators surged toward me. The exercise leader posed as if she were a reporter on the street who had caught a politician before he could escape to his car. Using her right fist, she leaned an imaginary microphone in my direction.<br /><br />“You left the antisocial group," she said. "I mean, the skeptical and critical scale. Can you explain why?”<br /><br />“People are awful,” I told her. A couple people gasped, including my boss. “But I love them.”<br /><br />This brought on a second gasp, which modulated into a collective sigh. The room seemed to breathe easier. I heard someone giggle. Everyone smiled except my interviewer.<br /><br />“Oh!” She cocked her left eyebrow.<br /><br />From another diagonal, I saw an office mate practically skipping towards me. She was making her move and she knew her reason. She grinned like she had just finished laughing, which maybe she had.<br /><br /><div></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-57380565926656734332024-02-11T05:30:00.007-05:002024-02-11T05:30:00.258-05:00Not Even Not Zen 340: Gentle into the Night<div><b>Gentle into the Night</b> </div><div><br /></div><div>Gaze with me into the darkness of the night</div><div>During our lazy stroll at the close of day,</div><div>Talking, holding hands in the waning of the light.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first star twinkles in a blue twilight</div><div>And beside us rests a glow of orange and gray.</div><div>Let us share a smile as we pass from dusk to night. </div><div><br /></div><div>We have not triumphed. We have not reached our highest height.</div><div>We have tried and we fixed things along our way,</div><div>Talking, holding hands in the waning of the light.</div><div><br /></div><div>In this trail of shadows, you are my heart's delight</div><div>You are the source of my excuses and delay</div><div>So I am amused by my dotage as I pass into the night.</div><div><br /></div><div>My body will cool. My limbs will lose their youthful might. </div><div>Still I am comforted by our habitual dance and sway,</div><div>Together, holding hands in the waning of the light.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the dusk I toil, my eyes failing their mortal sight.</div><div>Far from family, on rocky paths my footfalls stray</div><div>But with you in mind, I am at ease as I pass into the night.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I am blessed to be with you again, the evening set to right,</div><div>We shall in good company keep our work and play </div><div>Together, holding hands in the waning of the light.</div><div><br /></div><div>I will walk at whatever pace you need into the coming night.</div><div>Together, holding hands in the waning of the light.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>– Eric Gallagher, for Diane, 2024</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-87990309246637452842024-02-04T05:30:00.005-05:002024-02-04T05:30:00.144-05:00Not Even Not Zen 339: A Sort of Logic<div><b>Not Even Not Zen 339</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>This is a fragment of writing that will likely never appear in a story. I don't have a place for it currently, at least, and no plans to build around it. The dialogue would fit into a stage routine. Nothing else seems likely. The stage routine would likely have to be disjointed.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><u>The Process of Induction</u></div><div><br /></div><div>"Therefore an orbit is a rotation because it comes from ..."</div><div><br /></div><div>"A rotato?"</div><div><br /></div><div>The instructor lowered his arm. He looked at his student for a moment as if he did, in fact, believe his ears but he wished he didn't. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Perhaps I misheard," he said in a voice that reverberated with 'but I doubt it.'</div><div><br /></div><div>"You know ... a rotato? Using logic."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Pray tell, what is the logic you say you have involved?" The fellow's voice sounded weary but his upturned eyebrow revealed that he was curious. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Vodka is a potation because it is distilled from a fermented potato."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Odd, but I suppose that's true."</div><div><br /></div><div>"A rotato is implied. An orbit is a rotation because ..."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ah," the instructor interrupted. He didn't know quite what to say yet. "Ah. Aha."</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-54367208852686834122024-01-28T05:30:00.001-05:002024-01-28T05:30:00.135-05:00Not Even Not Zen 338: Biomythography - Note 82, Die Metzgerei<div><b>Die Metzgerei</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This is a fragment of a memory. </div><div><br /></div><div>Walking as a toddler was exhausting. When I recall details from incidents like this one, though, I'm surprised to rediscover my child-like sense of how difficult it was to move at the pace of grown-ups. In the last half of toddler-hood, it did get easier. Early on, when this takes place, my exhaustion was a burden on everyone, including my parents.</div><div><br /></div><div>My understanding that I was a burden was limited. I had a vague sense I should be faster. I should walk for longer without needing picked up or getting to rest on a bench. </div><div><br /></div><div>I may have been two, about to turn three.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Look, I'll give you a treat," my mother promised. </div><div><br /></div><div>We stood on the street, blocks from home. My legs ached. My eyes had fallen half shut. I'd missed my usual nap time an hour before. I had burst into tears twice on the shopping trip. But my mother needed to visit what locals called der metzger, the butcher. </div><div> </div><div>"Lollipop?" I asked. I knew the butcher kept a jar of them on the counter next to his cash register. My father had refused to get me one, last time.</div><div><br /></div><div>My mother nodded. I stifled my sobs and accepted her hand over mine. She guided me into the shop. A bell on the door rang. I shivered at the noise. </div><div><br /></div><div>Immediately, the scents of disinfectants and raw, red cuts of meat wafted over me. From experience, I knew parts of the butcher shop smelled weird and other parts were good, especially when I was hungry. Bright red cuts of meat lay behind glass cases. Most of them shone, they were so vivid, dramatic, and neatly done. The fat around the edges glistened white. Below the cases, the floor looked dull. It smelled of leaf dust and concrete grit tracked in from the sidewalk. The stone tiles of the shop looked clean, I knew, but I could smell the detritus from shoes. More, I felt the mustiness of centuries. This building had been around for hundreds of years. And as we passed near the register, I smelled sugar. </div><div><br /></div><div>The lollipops sat like a bouquet of perfect flowers in a brownish, clay jar. The jar rested on the counter. My mother let me gape at the arrangement for a few seconds, those yellow circles atop white sticks, each in a cellophane wrapper. Then she took a number from a machine that dispensed customer numbers and we waited. </div><div><br /></div><div>Rationally, I'm aware it must have taken time to get a cut of meat. It always did. But I don't remember waiting. I have a vague sense of dialogue above me. It took place in a mix of English and German. I may have fallen asleep on my feet for a while. I may have talked with another child in the line. None of it made much of an impression.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't remember getting the lollipop. Suddenly, I had one in my right hand. That part is clear.</div><div><br /></div><div>I gaped in wonder. I raised it to my mouth. When it hit my tongue, I shuddered. I was startled by the lemon, sour taste. A moment later, I slurped on it again, drawn to the sugar. I suppose I would have eaten anything mixed with enough sweetener. Above me, the conversations continued in English and in German. After a while, I got the impression that the butcher thought my mother and I were cute. Or maybe he was just being nice. He was a large, scary man. He had a dark shirt and a white apron, smeared with blood stains. Usually, his demeanor was stern and demanding. This time, he had decided to not to charge us for my treat. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Say thank you," my mother whispered down to me. Suddenly, she seemed embarrassed. It was certainly true that, by the rules of our house, I hadn't been polite.</div><div><br /></div><div>I took the treat out of my mouth. But the sight of the butcher, even when he was smiling, intimidated me. He put his hands on his hips. He tapped his foot once as he waited. Before I could speak, I had to step behind my mother's leg. I paused, trying to remember how best to be polite.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Danke shoen," I said. I'm not sure why I answered in German. It seemed the thing to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>The huge man could not have been more delighted. He must have expected an American toddler in his shop to issue a grudging word of thanks in miserable English. Instead he got a formal, extremely polite 'thank you' from me and it was in German. Startled, he roared with a laugh. His voice was so loud, it frightened me all over again.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Bitte!" he shouted.</div><div><br /></div><div>I burst into tears. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">#</div><div><br /></div><div>As usual, even this brief memory is more fragmented in my mind than it appears on a page. I'm guessing at some of the dialogue and inferring a sense of continuity for the event. Internally, the aspect of this that stands out most in my recollection is the deep voice behind the word 'bitte.' It frightened me so much, it made me remember some of the details leading up to it, I suppose. </div><div><br /></div><div>I notice in my description of the butcher shop and elsewhere, too, how the smells from my childhood seem exaggerated as I write about them. But I'm being true to my memories. </div><div><br /></div><div>Before we learn to make sense of the world visually and to describe it to others, again mostly visually, the rest of our senses may loom a bit larger. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I first saw spaghetti on my plate, I was five years old. The sauce-soaked pasta looked disgusting. I refused to eat it. I was risking a spanking when I said no. My parents weren't patient about food, usually. This time they were, at least a little. They waited. As the lump of leaking stuff sat in front of me, smelling better and better, I gained a different understanding of food. I learned the sight of spaghetti didn't have to be associated with the disgust reserved for entrails. </div><div><br /></div><div>The sense of smell won again.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-85993423020539346902024-01-21T05:30:00.003-05:002024-01-27T11:00:25.993-05:00Not Even Not Zen 337: Biomythography - Note 81, Schvartz Pater<div><i><b>Schvartz Pater</b></i></div><div><br /></div><div>For Germany and for December, the weather was good. There was no snow on the ground. My mother had dressed me warmly, in layers. The outer layer included my plaid driver's cap and heavy jacket. </div><div><br /></div><div>I squinted away from the sun as we walked. The sky was clear above except for a few, wispy clouds, which meant the day felt too bright. Breezes swept across the street. They came in gusts, always unexpected by me, and they chilled my ears and face. However, my mother kept my hand in hers. I constantly felt her warmth. Once or twice, she stopped to visit shops along the street. When she did, I took shelter from the wind behind her legs.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Home!" I begged as my mother engaged in a long conversation with another woman from the American military base. I pulled on her jacket sleeve. "Please home!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"I don't know where your father is," my mother sighed. "He should have met us here."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Home, please!"</div><div><br /></div><div>After I continued pleading for ten minutes or so, she nodded. She said goodbye to her acquaintance. We walked forty meters and turned a corner onto our street, only a few blocks from our home. There, we wandered into an unexpected throng of people. They lined the sidewalks on either side of the road. We heard noises from pedestrians striding up the middle of the asphalt. To my puzzlement, some of the people wore costumes, rough leather on the men, green dresses on the women. A few of the women sparkled.</div><div><br /></div><div>In my toddler range of experience, no one walked in the middle of the streets in Bitburg. No one wore outlandish clothes. Adults would shout if you tried either of those things. I stared at the approaching parade, fascinated.</div><div><br /></div><div>The rough-looking men passed through. A pair of wooden carts followed them, pushed by boys and girls, then the women who sparkled. A man in a blue and white robe marched toward us. Some of the Germans in the crowd muttered a phrase I knew, 'Heiliger Nikolaus.' Someone else said, 'Sinter Klaus.' I started bouncing on my toes. I wasn't sure about Nikolaus but I knew Sinter Klaus. He gave out gifts.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh, it's Saint Nicholas," my mother said.</div><div><br /></div><div>As the figures grew closer, I noticed how the saint looked thin and stern. He thumped along with a tall, golden scepter. Once or twice, he stopped to threaten us by waving it around. He seemed ready to bash anyone who didn't act pious enough.</div><div><br /></div><div>"He’s scary," I whispered.</div><div><br /></div><div>"He's fine. He's good," my mother assured me. "He's not going to hurt you."</div><div><br /></div><div>I remembered my father telling me that Saint Nicholas was holy and benevolent. One of his partners, though, was the dangerous one, Schvartz Pater.</div><div><br /></div><div>Every town in Germany and, in fact, every municipality in Europe had a different tradition for Saint Nicholas. I didn't know the differences then. Even now, the town traditions are changing slightly every year. I don't think anyone can really know all the differences in all the places in Europe. As a toddler I had a basic level of awareness from my parents. I knew Bitburg had a folklore about Schvartz Pater (here, I am spelling it the way I heard it as a toddler). I may be confused in my fragmented memory. I was seeing the pageant as a small group of volunteers in a relatively small town played it out in the middle of the 1960s. </div><div><br /></div><div>Behind and to the right of Saint Nikolaus strode the bad guy, Schvartz Pater. Pater was thin and moved in an exaggerated way. His legs took him on a course that weaved from side to side, not the straight path that Nikolaus chose. He wore a grey jacket, shabby trousers, and a bag thrown over his shoulder. In his off-hand he carried a thin bundle of sticks. He had smudged his face lightly with charcoal but he had neglected to smudge his hands.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even to my three-year-old eyes, Schvartz Pater was a chimney sweep. In this particular parade, he had dressed very much like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, a movie I had recently seen on German television. I didn't understand a lot of the movie but I loved the Dick Van Dyke character. The figure of Schvartz Pater was meant to scare children but the local actor who played him hammed it up so much that he smiled, enjoying himself. He seemed ready to burst out into a dance with penguins. I didn't find him anywhere near as threatening as Heiliger Nikolaus.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh, there you are, Ann." Apparently, my father had arrived. He didn't smell as much like cigar or pipe smoke as he usually did, at least not on a windy day in the outdoors. I hadn't noticed him approaching. Although I must have glanced at him, the sight of my father could not compete with the parade. I don't remember how he looked. When I noticed Heiliger Nikolaus looming close, though, I backed up.</div><div><br /></div><div>My parents chuckled. So did a few other adults nearby.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Be careful," my father warned. "If you're bad, Schvartz Pater will put you in his sack."</div><div><br /></div><div>Many of the Germans nearby nodded. They understood English well enough to hear the warning. They approved.</div><div><br /></div><div>My father had explained it several times before. If parents felt a child of theirs wasn't obeying instructions and needed a good scare, they could pay Schvartz Pater to pretend to kidnap him. The parents would act helpless, of course, as if under a magical spell from Heiliger Nikolaus. Schvartz Pater would put the child in his sack. Then he would carry him for a while until the child cried. Pater and Nikolaus, maybe as a team, would make the child agree to be good and listen to his parents. Nikolaus would order Pater to release the boy (well, it was almost always a boy) on the condition that he improve himself and listen to his long-suffering parents. </div><div><br /></div><div>The fact that my parents had explained this as I was reading (or, when younger, simply looking at) books of German fairy tales, made the sight of Schvartz Pater seem almost friendly. Heiliger Nikolaus strode by and he paused to berate someone for not being holy enough. His presence intimidated me but, fortunately, he kept moving. Behind him, Pater tapped someone with his bundle of sticks - or merely tried, as the boy dodged - and he chastised some other youngster. When he passed me, though, he crouched and gave me a big smile, just for an instant, then he rose and marched onward.</div><div><br /></div><div>I didn't want the parade to leave. Most especially, I didn't want to let the chimney sweep Schvartz Pater escape my sight. But I was surrounded by adults. They loomed. They seemed to exist in a huge, frightening world of walking in the street, shouting, and waving. It was all too much. I stood frozen, gaping at the characters as they left. If they had circled around the block, I could have gawked at the parade all day.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">#</div><div><br /></div><div><u><b>Zwarte Peter</b></u></div><div><br /></div><div>The above is my dim memory of an experience with a character I remember hearing as Schvartz Pater. The scene had to be from Bitburg or Hamburg. Those cities were the only two in Germany with army bases where my parents taught after I was born.</div><div><br /></div><div>Zwarte Peter, though, is a character I've read about as an adult. That makes him different. Do I need to have an opinion on customs in another land where Zwarte Peter is a black man, a freed slave who serves Heiliger Nikolaus? Not necessarily. I'm almost certainly under-informed. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm aware of the history enough to know Zwarte Peter was a character created out of good intent. An abolitionist wrote him into the Christmas Pageant stories to show that black men could be good, too. But he seems like a bit of an afterthought in most of the European celebrations, a token, and when he plays the role that Schvartz Pater or Krampus plays in other towns, well, it's confusing to outsiders, I'm sure. The only dark-skinned character is an enforcer for Saint Nicholas and kidnaps children? Great. You can see how any of the few dark-skinned immigrants to Germany might be bothered to see Peter as the only example of an African visible in the parade.</div><div><br /></div><div>You would think most German townsfolk would shrug and say, oh well, it's time to let this part if the story drop out. But no, once something is established for a generation, it's loved by anyone who grew up with it. People like traditions. They like obedience in children, too, and Zwarte Peter helps to reinforce it.</div><div><br /></div><div>One obvious solution to the European image problem with Zwarte Peter, if the various towns regard it as a problem at all, would be to include a number of other African or Moorish characters in the celebration stories. That way, Zwarte Peter would not be such an obvious token. It wouldn't play badly to have him an enforcer, even, if other characters who looked somewhat like him played the parts of (for example) Reindeer Herder or Spring Approaching. They wouldn't have to push out established characters. Add more in.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's worth pointing out that Saint Nicholas himself grew up in what is now Turkey. He was lean and pious, by most accounts, but surely it's reasonable to portray him as fairly dark skinned, too. </div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-59686986422200293062024-01-14T05:30:00.004-05:002024-01-20T21:29:40.262-05:00Not Even Not Zen 336: Biomythography - Note 80, On Novocaine (III)<div><b>On Novocaine</b> </div><div><i>Part III</i></div><div><br /></div><div>When my wife got fully employed, we switched to her insurance. We explored our new healthcare options. I settled on a dentist after years of searching. The reason I settled on one was unrelated to our insurance, unfortunately. (It was unfortunate for our finances, not our health. Our health improved with a better dentist.)</div><div><br /></div><div>We had moved from practice to practice while we tried to find dental care we could tolerate. Finally, through a recommendation, I located an excellent dentist. Unfortunately, he did not take any insurance. At all. I was shocked by how expensive he was. But despite his higher costs, I brought the family into his offices. I'm cheap, yes, but I wanted all of us to benefit from his care.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some professionals have a deft touch. They are so much better than others you would think they were in a different, higher calling. He was one. He also took a 'no pain' approach to his practice, which I felt was an impossible but noble goal. He came surprisingly close to achieving it. In retrospect, his personality helped. He talked me through the procedures. He acted as if I were interested in the art of dentistry. He made it interesting. With him, root canals seemed routine. Years ahead of anyone else, he declared that enamel fillings and caps were his standard. He studied the results of each procedure with care and taught me not to accept sub-standard work. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Speak up if something doesn't feel right," he would say. He knew from his first look into my mouth that I had a tendency to accept bad work. </div><div><br /></div><div>He also noticed my twinges of pain before I did during each procedure. He renewed my doses of novocaine when he felt it was appropriate. His careful attentions lulled me into feeling I was normal with respect to my body chemistry. Well, I mostly was, I suppose. But everyone responds a little differently to medicines. Everyone fits into the human range of reactions. It's rare to find a person who has the typical response every time to every treatment. </div><div><br /></div><div>Just as it turns out hardly anyone has a normal body temperature, it's unlikely anyone has a completely typical internal chemistry. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>The Final Clue</i></div><div><br /></div><div>After the birth of my third child, I talked to my doctor about getting a vasectomy. She gave me a referral to a specialist less than a mile away, a woman who did the procedures on an out-patient basis. (As it turns out, the operation is almost always done in an out-patient way. I had never given it any thought before.) </div><div><br /></div><div>I reported to my first appointment and found it was mostly an explanation. I had to listen and fill out forms saying I agreed to have the procedure done. I don't remember any other preparation. My second appointment with her was the operation. </div><div><br /></div><div>As with many previous procedures, all with dentists, this one started with a shot of novocaine. The surgeon did such a skillful job of it, though, I don't remember the injection. My first vague recollection is of her testing the results.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Do you feel this?" she asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah, a bit." I couldn't see what she was doing but I could tell the location on my body. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Huh."</div><div><br /></div><div>She administered another dose, possibly the third in her series. She returned a few minutes later.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Can you feel this?" she asked. She poked me where she was planning to make her incision. </div><div><br /></div><div>"A little."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Does it hurt?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"No." Now that I had an idea of what I should say, I tried to let her know it was fine to proceed. I wanted her to get on with the operation. "I can always feel pressure, heat, and cold after novocaine. But my dentist goes ahead and drills anyway. It's fine."</div><div><br /></div><div>She had finished her pre-surgery preparations earlier. She had tidied up around me after the last shot. There really wasn't much more for her to do except start cutting. So she positioned her chair, sat in it, adjusted her position relative to me, and made the first cut. I felt the pull of the incision but there was no pain. </div><div><br /></div><div>I smelled rather than felt the soldering iron when she burned the ends of the vas deferens shut. It was something I had expected in a rational way. The reality seemed a bit different, not bad but definitively medical. Five or ten minutes passed as she worked. I wasn't paying attention to the clock. After a while, she started on the other side. </div><div><br /></div><div>This time, I felt the cauterization. </div><div><br /></div><div>No location on a human body is a good one to feel searing heat. Places where lots of nerves cluster together are even less ideal. But as my awareness grew more acute, I surveyed my situation. I understood that the doctor couldn't stop. Today, she had to operate alone. For whatever scheduling reason in her small practice, she had no assistant to prep the equipment, to help her pause what she was doing, or to administer another dose of novocaine to me. There was nothing I could do except lean into the sensations, accept them, and keep as still as possible to avoid distracting her. </div><div><br /></div><div>The novocaine continued to wear off. After the first burn, there was a second. The sense of it wasn't much worse but it felt janglier, more alive in my nerves. When my flesh stopped searing, I shivered. The contrast in temperature felt so strong, I couldn't persuade my body to ignore it. Next, the doctor grabbed her needle and thread. At the first stab from her, my body shook. </div><div><br /></div><div>"You're feeling it, aren't you?" she lifted her head to grimace at me. </div><div><br /></div><div>"A bit, yeah." The needle jab had felt like a sewing accident.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Shit." She shook her head at me, reproachfully. She glanced around and performed the same mental calculus I had. She had no one to help her. By now, she had observed I was a hell of a bleeder, too. She had complained about it and made me realize I'd forgotten to mention it ahead of time. I should have. I had known how doctors sometimes found it inconvenient. If I'd been thinking better, more in advance of all this, I would have mentioned how fast novocaine wore off on me. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I don't think I can stop," she announced.</div><div><br /></div><div>I nodded. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Try to hold still."</div><div><br /></div><div>The next few minutes was a good exercise in accepting sudden pains. Although the novocaine hadn't worn off completely, I possessed the full range of sensations in my skin and the flesh underneath. I felt every pierce and pull for every stitch. The jabs produced the most reactions from my body, I thought, and I concentrated on holding still each time. I mostly succeeded in the aftermath to the reflex. But the pull of the thread through my skin produced its own teeth-jangling sensibility. It hurt but, more distinctly, it felt odd.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Wow," she said as she tightened the last set of stitches. "Wow."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Everything okay?" I asked. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah. We're good." She kept working on the tie-off or whatever the last step was. I couldn't see most of it. "You're really feeling this pretty intensely, I can tell."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You can?" I thought I'd been holding still. "I was trying to be really good. To stay really quiet."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, you were good. You held still." She finished and rose from her chair. She took a deep breath and relaxed into a smile. "But you made some noise."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I did?" I hadn't been aware of it but, thinking back, I definitely had heard myself emit some kind of sound. </div><div><br /></div><div>Just as with my previous injections, the painkiller for my vasectomy wore off early. At this point, I was sort of ready to learn the lesson. Although I'm happy with novocaine, I have to say it has a short-lived effect on me. That is, whatever a doctor or dentist seems to expect in terms of deadened nerves, my body gives them about forty percent of the time they're looking for. </div><div><br /></div><div>If they estimate correctly with most of their patients, I suppose that means something in my metabolism eats up the novacaine a little faster in me for some reason. I don't know why. I also don't know how often it happens but my impression from the vasectomy surgeon is that it's fairly rare. My impression from my best dentist, though, is the opposite. He recognized immediately when the painkiller was wearing off. So it can't be too unusual - just enough to surprise the doctors and dentists who haven't administered topical painkillers to enough patients. There must be a reasonably-sized minority of people who live on my end of that particular spectrum. </div><div><br /></div><div>The real lesson, maybe, is that I need to speak up. We all do. We need be convincing about our past experiences or at least coherent when we describe them. A doctor might not want to believe a patient who is unusual in some respect but, when you're the patient, you still have to do your part. </div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-51249371745271302802024-01-07T05:30:00.002-05:002024-01-12T11:51:44.697-05:00Not Even Not Zen 335: Biomythography - Note 79, On Novocaine (II)<div><b>On Novocaine</b></div><div><i>Part II</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Every teen sustains occasional injuries. And when I did, my parents talked to me about seeing doctors. Usually, they decided it wasn't worth the expense. From my parents attempts to medicate me at home, I learned that aspirin made me sick but didn't do anything for pain or swelling. Motrin (ibuprofen) didn't do anything, either. Neither did diluted whiskey. Or anything someone rubbed into my skin. </div><div><br /></div><div>The 1970s were an age when treatments for pain were considered suspicious. The nation's participation in wars had led doctors to administer opiates to soldiers, who then became addicted. For that reason and for others, the federal government launched multiple campaigns against drugs. News channels told us there was a heroin epidemic. Even most of the known over-the-counter painkillers were, at the time, still opiates. Everyone was aware how horribly addictive they could be. The next best known painkiller was cocaine, great for topical relief. But it made complaints about injuries seem even more suspicious.</div><div><br /></div><div>The societal opinion on pain was that it builds character. It's good. Individuals were responsible for their attitudes toward their bodies. You had to make your mindset a healthy one. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes my parents waited a few weeks to see if my fractured bone or twisted joint would heal on its own. If it didn't heal, they made sure I got medical treatment. These were a few of the things that required nurses or doctors:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div>A high ankle sprain</div><div>An asthma attack</div><div>A bone fragment that locked my elbow</div><div>Double pneumonia</div><div>A crushed knuckle</div><div>A dramatic allergic reaction</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>When any of these started to seem threatening, my mother packed me up and drove me to the Kaiser Permanente offices. Kaiser rented series of red brick and glass buildings in Rockville where they kept their cheapest doctors and dentists in their insurance plan. From the staff there, I learned how prescription painkillers didn’t do much for me either. Codeine improved my symptoms at the cost of brain fog. I hated it. Percocet and Vicodin didn't do anything at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>The doctors were awfully careful about the Vicodin anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div>Only one treatment worked. It relieved pain but it wasn’t administered for pain. It relieved symptoms for sprains, asthma, and hives. The treatment was steroids. </div><div><br /></div><div>On a couple occasions, I got steroid shots. Once, after our neighbors burned a pile of poison ivy as I worked outside, I arrived at Kaiser in such alarming condition I not only got a shot but a prescription of prednisone to ensure I could breathe and, hopefully, see. Nowadays, everyone connects steroids to professional athletes cheating but, when they first came out in medical treatments, they immediately showed they were obvious improvements over the medicines they replaced. </div><div><br /></div><div>During the 1980s and 1990s, I noticed the standard treatments for pain were getting incrementally better. A few of them, like the prescription steroids, improved quality of life by reducing negative symptoms. Some other advancements did nothing much, medically. When I finally got health insurance and, years later, returned to a dentist, I discovered the procedure now was to give novocaine swabs prior to administering shots. It's a trivial improvement. But painless injections sure made me happier to go for my procedures.</div><div><br /></div><div>Injuries that got no pain medication:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div>a broken bone in my foot</div><div>a fractured wrist</div><div>a broken metacarpal bone</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Procedures worthy of novocaine:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;">root canals at the dentist</div><div style="text-align: left;">a vasectomy</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>A condition worthy of trying everything, apparently:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">a zoster (shingles) infection</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>I didn't go to the doctor about shingles until it progressed so far I couldn't sleep. I was working multiple jobs and scheduling myself for five hours of sleep, maximum, so I really needed the unconsciousness part of my day to happen. But the disease kept waking me if I moved, eventually waking me even if I breathed deeply. (You know you've waited too long when the doctor brings in other doctors. The specialist even invited trainees to see my 'classic case.') At first, my GP prescribed tramadol for the pain and swelling. It did nothing. She upped the dose. I took four at a time. Still nothing. </div><div><br /></div><div>I returned to her office and told her honestly what I was doing and said I needed to sleep. She put me on hydrocodone. That didn't work, either. She moved me to oxycodone, the maximum legal amount of it. Again, popping them four at a time (the most I dared), I still felt no effects. I returned to her office.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I just need to sleep," I said.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, I agree." Hands on hips, she looked at my infection, which was improving a bit under the antiviral medications but still looked bad. "I wish the opiates did something for you. Clearly, they don't. I want to try you on something new, a nerve blocker."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Sound good," I said without asking questions. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Read the side effects carefully," she said. She handed me a prescription for gabapentin. </div><div><br /></div><div>Gabapentin works - for me, at least. Although it took a couple days to build up in my system, I got to the point where I could take gabapentin and sleep. I had to be careful with the timing and dosage because I certainly couldn't do anything else. I couldn't drive a car. I couldn't walk without a hand on the wall. Gabapentin gave me vertigo like I'd never had before. But it was worth it. I slept at night. </div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-90689609884486535562023-12-31T05:30:00.007-05:002024-01-06T11:01:19.345-05:00Not Even Not Zen 334: Biomythography - Note 78, On Novocaine (I)<div><b>On Novocaine</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>In the 1970s, everyone in the United States seemed to be suspicious of pain. Stating that you were in discomfort made your doctor's eyes narrow. He would put you on his naughty list right then. Pain was a precursor to demanding opiates, which led next, obviously, to heroin, which meant you were some kind of junkie. You couldn't admit to feeling pain without being a junkie any more than you could admit to being an atheist without being a commie. Culturally, your best bet was to let your arm fall off and hope a nurse would leap to the right conclusion from it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dentists were the one sort of medical professional who could admit their patients were in pain. In fact, they discussed it openly. One of them introduced me to novocaine. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>What a Pain, Generally </i></div><div><br /></div><div>I grew up with a lot of martial arts sparring sessions. They give you a nice approach to your body. Sharp twinges become less alarming. You learn the difference between a kick that stings and one that injures. Even in real fights with people hitting their hardest, a blow taken is usually not an injury (not a serious one, anyway) and it's good to know. You learn to see or feel the difference in other people, which is helpful.</div><div><br /></div><div>Endurance sports like swimming lend you a familiarity with aches, cramps, and soreness. You sense the difference between a muscle spasm and a tear. You learn to persevere when your arms and legs won't move. If you're persistent enough, you feel the differences between muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Humans have a wide array of internal chemoreceptors, cutaneous receptors, and stretch receptors. You can learn to pay attention to them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Being tormented by adults or bigger kids, the kind of sessions where a bigger person pins you and you can't escape, doesn't seem to give most people the same kind of physical insights. Yet the insights are there to be had. You can lean into the torture.</div><div><br /></div><div>My experiences with leaning-in led me in the wrong direction about novocaine.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>First Novocaine </i></div><div><br /></div><div>"My wisdom teeth came in two years ago," I complained to my mother one day. I was seventeen. She had herded me into her car to drive me to the dentist. I slumped in the seat and leaned into the corner by the window, away from the future. "They're fine. It's dumb to take them out."</div><div><br /></div><div>"The dentist says they're pressing against your other teeth." She always took the side of the medical professionals, no matter what they said. We'd had similar conversations before. I suspected the dentist was drilling and filling cavities that didn't exist. This extraction seemed like more of the same.</div><div><br /></div><div>(A year later, when the dentist announced I had twenty-two cavities, I refused to go back. The things he claimed were cavities looked about the size of dust motes, even when enlarged on my x-rays. Fifteen years later, I visited a dentist again. The next x-rays showed I had three cavities. So I think I was right.)</div><div><br /></div><div>I remember way too much about the extraction, so I'm going to skip a lot of details. You know the weird, half-clean, half bacterial smell of a dentist office. You've heard the banter between the assistants and the dentist. My dentist talked a lot that day because he knew I was suspicious of the extraction. He allowed how, yes, my enamels were fine except for my wisdom teeth. Then he warned me that my mouth wouldn't stay healthy if he didn't remove those last molars.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I've got great novocaine," he said. This was his selling point.</div><div><br /></div><div>"No laughing gas?" I asked. My previous dentist had used nitrous oxide on me for every procedure.</div><div><br /></div><div>"That's old stuff," he sneered. "It distracts you but it doesn't deaden the pain. Novocaine eliminates your nerve sensations. I'm going to have to break your teeth off from your jaw, remember. So no, no laughing gas."</div><div><br /></div><div>"But you're going to give me a shot in my cheek."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah." He nodded.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ugh." As a child and teen, I had gotten eight years of allergy shots. I took them twice per week at first, then once per week. The needles had entered the flesh of my upper arms, which is not a bad place. Nevertheless, they hurt every time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually, I sat down and let him give me the shot. It burned, of course. I tried to lean into it but the sensation was so sharp, it surprised me even when I expected it. A couple minutes later, the dentist returned to give me another in the same cheek. It didn't hurt as much because my jaw was numb from the first time. He inserted a bunch of clamps in the back of my mouth and screwed them down to my wisdom teeth. The clamps, as they went in, looked like medieval torture devices, thumbscrews for those pesky bits of wisdom.</div><div><br /></div><div>After the dentist got all the contraptions in place, he dipped into his supplies for another syringe. He sank a needle into my gums. It hurt like a needle. After the third shot, though, I finally grew numb enough for him to start his cuts. It wasn't too hard to move my spirit toward the remaining pain, to take it in and enjoy the living experience of it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The procedure seemed to involve a lot of blood. The assistant tried to keep me from seeing too much of it but there was enough to make her scramble for more equipment. Within ten minutes, the throbbing pains were back, too. Each time I got cut, it felt like a stab wound. I leaned into the sensation. </div><div><br /></div><div>The sensations grew. I leaned in more. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had read lots of old adventure stories, comic books, and war novels that featured torture. (Tintin had gotten thrown into a torture chamber, probably more than once. War heros suffered in them, too.) In all of the stories, the main characters remained fearless despite the torment. Mentally, emotionally, and physically I leaned in as if I were accepting my disfigurement and death at the hands of torturers. </div><div><br /></div><div>At some point, even though I had accepted the sensations and the dentist was chiseling out pieces of tooth without too many problems, he could tell I was feeling it. He administered another shot. He resumed the extraction of bone fragments from the upper right. By the time he got to my lower jaw, he could tell something was wrong with the novocaine.</div><div><br /></div><div>"It shouldn't wear off this quickly," he murmured to his assistant. "Isn't this the same stuff as yesterday?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yes. It was a nearly full tube."</div><div><br /></div><div>The dentist administered another shot. Out loud, he started to worry about how many novocaine dozes were advisable. He kept talking and blaming the assistant. He gave me another dose. He did it again. He administered the last of the tube. The remaining painkiller wore off quickly, too. By the time he broke off my bottom wisdom tooth, I understood pretty well why tooth pulling was used as a form of torture in so many countries. I felt everything clearly. Even the clamps on my teeth, although they sat unmoving, flared with their additions of misery. When the dentist started his stitching procedure in my gums, I felt every jab of the needle. I felt every flap of loose flesh. I leaned into every spasm. My legs and fingers twitched involuntarily.</div><div><br /></div><div>At some point, I became delirious with agony. My sensations got confused. Stabs of pain created swirling lights in my vision. The dentist, to his credit, ignored his circumstances and carefully finished his sewing of my gums, top and bottom.</div><div><br /></div><div>On my way out, he gave me more painkillers, which I dumbly refused, so he gave the pills and a prescription to my mother.</div><div><br /></div><div>Although the extractions may have been unnecessary (although certainly not unusual), in retrospect the pain was not his fault. It took me twenty-three more years to understand my body's reactions to novocaine and other painkillers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Back in 1978, though, the reaction most on my mind was my dentist and his assistant. I had to return a week later for more extractions. The team said they would remove my two remaining wisdom teeth. </div><div><br /></div><div>This time, although the novocaine would wear off quickly after every shot, I would expect it. </div><div><br /></div><div>The dentist would only half expect it. During the second procedure he would grow convinced that, somehow, it was my fault. He was right.</div></div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-34558980546212231512023-12-24T05:30:00.002-05:002023-12-28T12:04:59.821-05:00Not Even Not Zen 333: Biomythography - Note 77, Good (Enough) (Learning to be Mediocre, Pt. 6)<div><b>Good (Enough) at Basketball</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Part VI</i></div><div><br /></div><div><u>1998:</u></div><div><br /></div><div>The day was bright. The store was crowded.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I wasn't shopping with my family, though, the background of my life was different than in the years before. For a while, I had been working in the NIH Clinical Center. I was a contractor with them and I'd gotten fifty percent raises for two years in a row. My family had climbed above the poverty line. We didn't buy our groceries on credit anymore. We were still shopping for groceries three times a week, of course. We had a couple of kids. We felt the continual pressure to provide boxloads of crackers, juice, peanut butter, and diapers.</div><div><br /></div><div>As we pushed a cart through the local Food Lion, I saw a former Hood College student striding my way down the freezer aisle. To my surprise, he sprang forward before I could wave. He had recognized my family right away.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'd played with this guy during the Hood lunch hour basketball games but my wife didn't know him. She turned her attention to the kids, who didn't seem much interested in the strange, new adult.</div><div><br /></div><div>"How's school?" I asked as we shook hands. He was much taller than me but he managed to give me a shoulder hug.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, I just graduated," he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Great!" We stood with hands on shoulders for a moment. I congratulated him and tried to catch up on his life. We chatted long enough for my wife to decide she should take the kids to a different aisle where they could drool over the cereal boxes. That let her escape the overly cool air and the smell of frozen, stale food, not to mention a conversation about things two years ago she hadn't seen.</div><div><br /></div><div>After a few minutes, my old friend asked if I were still playing basketball regularly. He had been on the court with us when Jim Miller had died. I had to say, no, although I was trying to teach my kids to play. He said it was understandable. He'd liked the games, though. Then he really surprised me.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I think about you a lot, man," he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Really?" I leaned back, eyebrows up. This was a guy I'd liked. But we had only spoken on the court and in the locker room. He hadn't played with us for much more than a year. (Well, he had played for plenty of days per week but most of it was during the last year of the lunch games.)</div><div><br /></div><div>"The sessions kind of fell apart after you left," he said. He stepped back and straightened his blue, collared shirt.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Not enough critical mass, I guess."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Not enough something." He shrugged. "Anyway, I had to get serious about my classes. But I always felt like you had taught me something. You really believed in me."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, yeah." He had been a blonde, fairly tall, physically deft player but he had been awfully timid. With encouragement, he'd become one of the featured big men. He had shown us that he was quick, mentally. He could anticipate a rebound. He could lead another player with a pass. "Of course."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I hadn't run into that before. And you were fearless."</div><div><br /></div><div>I laughed. He was talking about a game, after all.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You were the shortest guy on the floor," he insisted. That part was true enough. "And you'd go into the center fearlessly. And you'd get stuffed. Whacked. Fouled, sometimes, right in your face. And you'd grab the ball. You'd wrestle it back. You'd fight the big guys and most of the time, you'd win. And you'd shoot it again."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah, sometimes, I guess."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm tall. But, you know, I'd always been afraid to look bad. You weren't afraid to look bad."</div><div><br /></div><div>Definitely a back-handed compliment. That was more like it. I laughed again. "Thanks."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You know what I mean." He stopped and put his hands on his hips.</div><div><br /></div><div>And I did know. I understood.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I wasn't getting any better because I was afraid to look bad." He touched my shoulder again. "But you have to go in there, don't you? That was my lesson. You have to mix it up with the others. You have to get rejected. That was good for me to see, man."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Good."</div><div><br /></div><div>We stood and smiled at each other for a few seconds. It was apparent this had been on his mind. And he'd said what he needed to say.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," he murmured in a resigned voice, "I guess I'd better find my girlfriend again."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Good for you."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah. Where did your wife go?"</div><div><br /></div><div>I waved in the direction of the cereal aisle. We parted, smiling and waving. I weaved through the aisles a little, mostly for fun and to find my favorite peanut butter, but I knew where I would find my family. When I did sneak up on their cart, my wife gave me a smile and handed me our daughter. Our girl launched herself at me, really, and I caught her.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Who was that guy?" my wife asked. She pushed the cart towards the line at the cashier.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh, he wanted to talk basketball."</div><div><br /></div><div>She paused for a moment. Her expression grew concerned. She had always liked seeing me play basketball and thought I was good at it. All the trick shots I'd done had deceived her. I'd trained myself up to my best level for a little while, yes, but it was a level of solid mediocrity. That seemed pretty reasonable to me as an accomplishment. I knew it would take more training to maintain that level. I had to make choices about my time. And we had kids.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I thought you were done with basketball," she said carefully. Even though she was a fan of me playing sports, I knew she couldn't love the idea of me devoting eight hours a week to it like I had before.</div><div><br /></div><div>"And I am." I nodded as we took our place in line. I bounced our daughter on my hip. "I'm done."</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-61827153049859853162023-12-17T05:30:00.007-05:002023-12-17T05:30:00.148-05:00Not Even Not Zen 332: Biomythography - Note 76, Good (Enough) (Learning to be Mediocre, Pt. 5)<div><b>Good (Enough) at Basketball</b></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Part V</i></div><div><br /></div><div><u>1997: </u></div><div><br /></div><div>This part is not about learning. It is not even about basketball. </div><div><br /></div><div>But it started with a basketball game. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the spring, I'd gotten my graduate degree. With it, I approached a headhunting company. They seemed eager to connect me to better jobs. My initial choices were a system analysis spot working for the Department of Defense or a programming position with the National Institutes of Health.</div><div><br /></div><div>I toured the defense contractor offices, where my job looked like it would take a lot of sitting in a light grey cube and revising analysis paperwork. In contrast, at Building 13 in the NIH I would work among the dingy green tiles from the 1950s. None of the furniture matched in Building 13. The rooms looked like the scientists had only decorated them under orders from the HR department. The place smelled like a machine shop. But the supervisor there told me I would get to stalk the corridors underneath the hospital to fix the back-end instruments and data servers. I would be allowed to help the patients at the largest research hospital in the world. </div><div><br /></div><div>Two years earlier, I'd seen the NIH cure a friend of mine of his rare type of cancer. The experimental medicines worked. I'd witnessed them. I accepted the spot in the NIH clinic. And I gave my notice to Hood College.</div><div><br /></div><div>My friends saw it coming. We had two weeks to say goodbye. They said they wanted to throw a going-away party for me. Of course, they wanted a basketball game to feature in it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Around noon on my last day, we started playing a half court matchup, four to a side. It was an cloudless June day, so the sunlight shone through the high windows of the gym. After the second or third basket of the game, we switched sides between offense and defense. As I took position just east of the three-point arc, I turned to look at our group. The men were chatting. A couple of them shuffled into position to set picks. Jim Miller, short and dark-haired, stood among them. Jim set himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then he collapsed.</div><div><br /></div><div>He had taken a spot among three others, facing his defender. His salt-and-pepper hair had flown loose. Otherwise, he had looked happy and fairly neat. He'd worn a smile behind his close-cropped beard. He hadn't had time to sweat into his light-colored jersey yet. </div><div><br /></div><div>But as I watched, he stopped moving. His face went blank. The muscles in his body slackened. He fell in a jumble, like a puppet with strings cut. His momentum flopped him onto his side, then his back. His body made a wet sound. His head hadn't bounced. He didn't groan. He didn't try to lift himself back up. </div><div><br /></div><div>He lay still. Even his chest seemed motionless. </div><div><br /></div><div>I started running before the men standing beside him realized what had happened. A moment later, I was holding Jim's wrist. He still didn't move. I counted the time I didn't feel a pulse. Twenty seconds, nothing. I pressed the vein on his neck, under his jaw. </div><div><br /></div><div>"He's not breathing," Bruce announced.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I don't feel a pulse," I said. I was pretty sure I was in the right spot. It's hard to miss.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Try the other side?"</div><div><br /></div><div>As I moved Jim's head, a slight huff of air fluttered his lips. I could hear the movement of his tongue, too. My first aid certifications had long ago expired but I had trained three times. I remembered parts of what to do. One of the problems for unconscious people is that their tongue slips back in the mouth to prevent breathing. Choking is pretty common even when the primary problem is a heart attack or stroke.</div><div><br /></div><div>After a few more seconds with my fingers on what I was sure was the right spot, I still couldn't feel a pulse. I started to turn Jim's head so he would have less of an obstruction to his breathing. It would be irrelevant if we couldn't get his heart started. It might be helpful then, though.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Help me turn his whole body on his side," I said. </div><div><br /></div><div>For a moment, I looked around. I had been so concentrated on Jim that I'd forgotten about the other players. They were standing in a rough circle. As soon as I asked for help, they relaxed enough that I could see how tense they had been. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's part of the training, too, I remembered. They say, don't try to do everything yourself. It's not possible. Other people want to help. Give them clear directions. Listen to their directions and follow them. Do your part. In an emergency, everyone wants some way to make things better.</div><div><br /></div><div>The other players started asking questions. I explained my ideas about Jim's breathing. We needed to keep his tongue from sliding down his throat. The others nodded. It seemed right to them, too. We rolled his body so that it held steady on its right side. I started feeling for a pulse again, wrist and neck both.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bruce crouched next to Jim's feet. He said, "What can I do?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"You can call 911."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Okay." He stood and started to leave.</div><div><br /></div><div>"We need someone to tell the athletic center staff," I announced to the others.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I think Henry took off to do that," said Allen.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Okay." That was smart. He hadn't waited. "Next, we need to look for a defibrillator."</div><div><br /></div><div>"That's a good one," Allen agreed. Everyone straightened up. </div><div><br /></div><div>"That would be the best thing." John, one of the security guards nodded. I could see him thinking about it. "This would be a building for one. I don't think there is one, though." </div><div><br /></div><div>"Does anyone know CPR?" asked one of the professors.</div><div><br /></div><div>"No." I shook my head. I had already been kicking myself about it, somewhere in the back of my head, but there wasn't time to wallow in my stupidity about not training for this. </div><div><br /></div><div>"No." Others started chiming in, too. They didn't know how to do CPR. I heard murmurs of 'no,' 'nope,' and 'damn,' and saw their heads shaking.</div><div><br /></div><div>I hadn't let go of the hope of finding a pulse. </div><div><br /></div><div>"If someone finds an emergency medical kit," I suggested after another moment of consideration, "that might have something to hold his tongue to the side. We can put him on his back and try artificial respiration or chest compressions."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Want me to look for a kit?" one of the professors asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Absolutely." Secretly, I was hoping an emergency kit would have a few pages of CPR instructions. I was willing to try.</div><div><br /></div><div>While I waited another fifteen seconds, I discovered that I could move air in and out of Jim's chest. Although I had to move his left arm first, I could make his chest expand and contract. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I found the coach." Someone raced back into the room. He talked while I tried to get Jim's breathing going. "She made the call. She says an ambulance is on the way."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Great." I nodded.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Should we try CPR anyway?" someone asked. It was what I had been wondering, too. Getting air into Jim's lungs didn't mean anything if the heart didn't pump his blood to move the oxygen around.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Is anyone certified?" </div><div><br /></div><div>I had to shake my head no again. The other men around me repeated the same sentiments they had before.</div><div><br /></div><div>"She said if no one was certified, wait. The hospital is right next door. I mean, we can see it from campus. The ambulance will be here within a minute." </div><div><br /></div><div>It had already been over a minute since Jim had fallen. I'd heard a human brain shouldn't go without oxygen for more than four minutes. Still, the athletic director had made a definitive statement. It seemed sensible in its way. We could go against her wishes and try CPR but that only made sense if we got instructions on how to do the procedure. No one had returned yet with a med kit, CPR instructions, or a defibrillator, which probably didn't exist anywhere on campus anyway. Those cost a couple thousand dollars, so apparently it was just a crazy idea I had.</div><div><br /></div><div>The longer we waited, the more it seemed like a bad decision to wait. Any pause in the action would be fatal. Having no defibrillator was another potentially fatal decision. If Jim's heart was stopped, and I thought it was, he needed the pads on him right away.</div><div><br /></div><div>I stayed next to his body and pumped air in and out. I kept stopping to feel for a pulse. He kept having none. His skin felt clammy and cool. Finally, someone said, "They're here."</div><div><br /></div><div>I rose. A glance at the clock told me it had taken five minutes. </div><div><br /></div><div>The two men in white jackets asked questions. I don't remember my answers but they seemed happy with what they were hearing from our group. They rolled Jim onto his back and, maybe due to my pleading or simply because it was the obvious step, they got out a yellow defibrillator.</div><div><br /></div><div>As I'm writing this, I know defibrillators have gotten smarter than they once were. They can listen for a heartbeat and respond. At the time Jim went down, the only feedback they provided was a readout of the heart signal. Humans had to adjust the settings and make the decisions. The medical technicians shocked Jim once, twice, and got no change in the broken, static pattern on their screen. They changed settings and shocked him again. On the fourth try, they got a heartbeat. I could see the waveform on the readout. I started to cheer a little. But the technicians ignored me. They didn't like what they were seeing in the heartbeat or maybe they were just going through the motions and not really looking at their readouts. They shocked Jim's body again.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Stop!" Even though they were ten yards away, I reached out my hand.</div><div><br /></div><div>The heartbeat disintegrated. The electrical signals in Jim's chest fell back into static, a non-rhythm. </div><div><br /></div><div>The technicians kept at it. They adjusted the settings and shocked him seven more times. It seemed to take them a long time before they gave up. </div><div><br /></div><div>They never got his heart to beat again.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure how we got to the hospital. Plenty of times, I've ridden in ambulances with friends and family. It seems unlikely in this case. I don't remember the ride. What I recall is pacing the halls. Eventually, we heard the doctor's pronouncement, passed by a nurse to a handful of us standing together in a waiting area with white curtains next to the emergency room. Jim was dead. I didn't feel defeated so much as defiant. I was angry the medical staff hadn't seemed to try much. (In retrospect, by then it was too late and the staff recognized the fact.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Later, at work, we straightened up Jim's office. One of our co-workers knew how to get Jim's family contact information. Our boss started the process of calling his family members. </div><div><br /></div><div>The next workday, a Monday, I reported to the NIH in Bethesda. My new supervisor showed me around the clinical center. He demonstrated how to start programming for the DICOM image servers. We hiked through the basement corridors between buildings. He logged into his dedicated image collectors. We inspected the medical images from CT scans, PET scans, and MR scans. It seemed like a different sort of world here, a bigger one.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-37857294133599891212023-12-10T05:30:00.003-05:002024-01-21T07:48:59.167-05:00Not Even Not Zen 331: Biomythography - Note 75, Good (Enough) (Learning to be Mediocre, Pt. 4)<div><b>Good (Enough) at Basketball</b></div><div><i>Learning to be Mediocre, Part IV</i></div><div><br /></div><div><u>1996:</u> </div><div><br /></div><div>The coach of the women's basketball team played with us at the lunchtime games. A hitch in this that I didn't understand at the time but realize now is: the coach usually quit when a woman from her team joined the game. The thought makes me I wonder if there's a NCAA rule involved. If the coach and players are on the floor together, maybe it counts as coaching time or something even though they're in a pickup game started by other people.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, our oversized group occupied an old, shiny, but age-stained multipurpose room with wooden floorboards. It had glass backboard hoops that didn't quite work - the mechanisms to raise and lower them had broken - but they were more than good enough for us. The college had no stands for anyone to watch games. There wasn't more than a meter of room between the edge of the basketball floor and the cinderblock walls. Every dive for the ball risked breaking bones. Despite these odd circumstances, the room hosted official college basketball games. It's what Division III is like, sometimes. </div><div><br /></div><div>Despite her oddly-timed visits in the ancient gym, the coach saw us playing enough to get the idea of hosting a student-faculty game. There's a long tradition of students versus faculty. The problem for us was, when the coach got the idea, the faculty said they could provide four players. The rest of us in the lunch group, all staff, not faculty, needed invitations too. So the coach waved us all in. </div><div><br /></div><div><u>The Problems: </u></div><div><br /></div><div>Our group had played on the full court a handful of times about a year before. That wasn't enough. I insisted on a practice game. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I want one, too," said Allen after a brief chuckle. "Only I figured I would have to talk everyone into it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"No. We need one," Bruce agreed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Everyone in our usual rotation was in. A week later, we all turned out for a full court practice. We had twelve guys, enough to practice substitutions. I had a lot of fun running the floor. Recently, I'd gotten back into a semblance of cross-country shape. It helped. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, I found I still had my "bricklayer" form from junior high school. While moving at full-court speed, my layup shots went hard to the backboard and bounced out. I knew there wasn't going to be enough time to solve the problem of this habit.</div><div><br /></div><div>During our regular lunchtime scrimmages, I had never shot a layup. No one built up the velocity to take one, really, except maybe the tallest two guys. In my case, even when I gathered enough speed I was too short to get over my defender. So this was a known problem and I hadn't fixed it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Adding the pace of a full court game to it only made the issue loom menacingly.</div><div><br /></div><div><u>The Student-Faculty Game:</u></div><div><br /></div><div>Here's how you get accused of showboating.</div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Be a part of the winning squad</li><li>Get underconfident about an easy layup</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div>By the time I stepped in, our best five players had already built up a lead for our faculty-staff team. I came in as a reserve point guard. Starting from the top of the three point line, I ran a few plays, defended, made a couple easy assists, and sank an open jump shot. </div><div><br /></div><div>During the next defensive play I knew a rebound was coming. From the angle of the shot by the opposing player, I knew where the bounce would go. I crouched to sprint for the other end. As the ball touched the fingertips of our rebounder, I took off. The man with the ball saw me launch. He lobbed in my direction.</div><div><br /></div><div>I caught his pass and dribbled once, twice. And I was already there. At full speed, hearing footsteps behind me, I knew I wasn't going to make the shot. Because it was a layup. Because I had already tried to do this. I tried again, anyway. My planting foot, my right one, came down hard. I tried to break my momentum with it. But my shoe slid on the forty-years-of-wax floor, as it usually did. And I knew that, if I jumped right then, my layup was going to pound the backboard. I had to stop my momentum or at least slow it a little.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I kept going. </div><div><br /></div><div>It was what I knew how to do. I dribbled in an arc. With my defender trailing me, I spun underneath the backboard for a reverse layup. Perfect. Easy. It was my most reliable shot. But a minute later, I got pulled out of the game. Apparently, I'd been accused of a technical foul. The women's team coach stormed over to talk with me about it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Somehow, mostly because we already knew each other, it wasn't too hard to have the conversation. </div><div><br /></div><div>"That's showboating! Showboating!" She mimed my spin under the basket. "There was no reason for that."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Sure there was. I don't know how to shoot a straight layup!" On the sidelines, I threw up my right hand in a gesture toward the basket.</div><div><br /></div><div>"What do you mean?" Her hands swept the floor, even bigger. "You play basketball three days a week."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You've played with me." Here's where the conversation slowed. "When have you ever seen me shoot a layup? How would that happen?"</div><div><br /></div><div>She took at long look at me, hands on her hips. She was not a tall woman. But she wasn't short, either. The top of her head was an inch or two above mine. Her mouth hung open for a moment.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You know," she said. "I don't think I've ever seen you shoot a straight layup."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah."</div><div><br /></div><div>After we talked a bit more, she rescinded her charge of showboating and we laughed about me not being able to shoot a layup. Bigger players could plant their feet and stop. The coach confessed, though, that she couldn't get that stop-foot action going, either. Our conversation got me thinking about the physics of it. To keep up with bigger players, my legs had to turn over at twice the speed. That shouldn't have made a difference to me planting my foot. But maybe it did. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Or maybe it's your shoes," she said, pointing to my cheap low-tops.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Eh, maybe."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Enough," she said. "Go play some more. I have to get back to coaching my team. I'm just mad. I thought we'd be better than this."</div><div><br /></div><div>The game evened out a bit but it's true that her side seemed overmatched.</div><div><br /></div><div>In retrospect, the woman's basketball team was fine that year. It actually proved to be way better than the season before. They played to a 9-10 record against their AWCCC schedule, a lineup of contests that included three losses to a top-notch Notre Dame (Baltimore) team, with whom they managed to hold respectable games in the first halves. No, the problem with the student-faculty contest was the staff. We had guys who never went to college but they could play at a low college level. They were literally heads and shoulders above the tallest members of the women's team. </div><div><br /></div><div>Some of the women had four or five years of experience. Some of the men had fifteen and they were in their twenties to mid-thirties. Basically, the best staff couldn't help being as good as they were. As for myself, I wasn't good enough for any sort of college level, not even our Division III women's team. But I was happy anyway. I felt more than fine with the mediocre competence I'd reached. I'd worked for it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, I had never thought someone would accuse me of showboating while not suppressing a laugh. So that turned out fine. </div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-63219689724013193092023-12-03T05:30:00.004-05:002024-01-21T07:46:19.913-05:00Not Even Not Zen 330: Biomythography - Note 74, Good (Enough) (Learning to be Mediocre, Pt. 3)<div><b>Good (Enough) at Basketball</b></div><div><i>Part III</i></div><div><br /></div><div><u>1995:</u></div><div><br /></div><div>All spring at Hood College, our lunchtime basketball sessions grew larger. Allen, our desktop support lead, took charge of the recruiting. Moreover, his newcomers pulled in more recruits. We got more staff and professors on board.</div><div><br /></div><div>When we had started the year before, we'd limited the games to 30 minutes. We got 45 minutes for lunch. Counting time to shower, our games were cutting it close to our technical limit. As we pulled in more professors, security guards, women from the basketball team, and regular students, the spans of our sessions grew longer. We took 40 minutes, then the full 45 for lunch as if we didn't shower although we still did, usually. It's hard to stop playing when everyone else wants to keep going.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually, the sessions started running as long as an hour. They grew more, too, reaching 70 or 80 minutes. Sometimes, I ran off the court, tossing off sweaty clothes as I sprinted to my work meetings.</div><div><br /></div><div>From the Hood physics professor, I learned how to do a reverse layup. From two students, I learned to crossover dribble. From one of the security guards, I picked up a fadeaway. From another, I figured out setting picks. Pretty nearly everyone taught me to how to shoot while changing my aim in midair. They didn't mean to teach me that. It was simply necessary for me. I'd go up for a shot. A tall player would rise up to block me. I'd need to double pump to shoot around them. And usually, I would fail.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes, of course, I couldn't learn the bursts of speed that other men possessed. I couldn't dunk. I mostly couldn't block shots unless I had unreasonably lucky timing. There were limits to where my learning would peak. I hadn't been playing long and already I was bumping into my low performance ceiling. </div><div><br /></div><div>The people we added from around our campus were better at basketball than I was. Fortunately, I kept improving in incremental ways. I practiced enough to get picked in the middle of line-ups in our lunchtime league. Mostly I got respect for passing and defense but, sometimes, when my shooting was good in one game, I would get picked first for the next.</div><div><br /></div><div>That was always a mistake. In the top two was not where I belonged. Mostly, my hot shooting didn't translate from game to game. Occasionally, yes, it did. The team captain would pat himself (or herself) on the back. Mostly, though, the captains shook their heads with buyer's remorse.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes the opposite team would solve my lucky streaks by putting Bruce, the best defender, on me. Unfortunately for me, Bruce kept improving his positions and blocking. He was already our best former high school baller. He shot well. He timed passes perfectly. When he was guarding in the key, he picked off more passes than anyone. In fact, his defense was responsible for me learning to sink a hook. </div><div><br /></div><div>He smashed back my shots back in my face so regularly, even with my double-pump moves, that I got desperate. I started on yet another dastardly plot. I knew no one took hook shots anymore. It didn't make any sense to me but there it was. Bruce and the other defenders had adjusted to my double moves. I needed an edge. I had to do something they didn't expect. I decided a hook was going to be it. </div><div><br /></div><div>I headed back to the playgrounds. </div><div> </div><div>After trial and error, I decided to practice hooks with my opposite arm upraised. That was the way I'd seen Kareem Abdul-Jabbar do it on old basketball game footage. He kept his defender off him with the opposite arm. It looked illegal but, at my height, I couldn't be shy about taking every advantage.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first game I tried it, everyone laughed. And I sank three out of five hook shots. </div><div><br /></div><div>The second game, I got a better defender. By the third, I had Bruce again. For almost two weeks, Bruce seemed mystified. He was taking my measure. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Don't let him shoot the hook!" shouted one of the security guards. "Don't let him shoot the hook!"</div><div><br /></div><div>He and Bruce took turns showing the others how to defend against my shot. Really, though, the first block came from Bruce. He had eyed my move for long enough. Now when he took an angle, he could get past my opposite arm and reach my hook shot. So, just for Bruce, I needed to try a hook fake. </div><div><br /></div><div>And the learning continued. </div><div><br /></div><div>"What the hell was that?" One day, in a small, pick-up game, Allen stopped everyone. He grabbed the ball under the basket after I heard a swish. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Did it go in?" I had to ask. </div><div><br /></div><div>"You didn't even look." His voice sounded angry but his eyes crinkled. He allowed himself an open-mouthed hint of a smile.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah." I had been practicing that, too, as stupid as it was. I sure got blocked a lot. This time, I figured a no-look shot would take everyone by surprise. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," said the security guard with a smile, hands on hips. "Then it didn't go in."</div><div><br /></div><div>"It went in," Bruce told me while everyone laughed. </div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-60270989831014695302023-11-26T05:30:00.011-05:002024-01-21T07:43:36.963-05:00Not Even Not Zen 329: Biomythography - Note 73, Good (Enough) (Pt. 2)<div><b>Good (Enough) at Basketball</b></div><div><i>Part II</i></div><div><br /></div><div><u>1994:</u></div><div><br /></div><div>Usually, I left the door to my office open. It was my way of encouraging people to drop by with their computer problems. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'd been working for a year at Hood College, where I wrote the code for a couple of the large, clustered minicomputer systems. When I wasn't programming, I walked around campus soliciting material because I'd written the systems to dispense information on campus life. Only when I was out did I close my office door.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes people came to visit. They'd stand in the doorway to talk over their coding requests. Occasionally, they'd sit and chat. My office was a large, imposing place, though. Whoever had occupied it before had stacked it with shelves and filing cabinets. They'd hung art on the wall, four framed watercolor flowers and a map of the campus. My desk sat on a swath of gray-green carpet in the middle. The oak desktop would have held three of me but it only held a microcomputer with access to the VAX clusters.</div><div><br /></div><div>This was a space created in the remotest corner of the library, near the data center.</div><div><br /></div><div>Occasionally, other computer staff would drop by. They had completely different jobs - none of them connected well with mine, exactly - but we kept track of one another. Sometimes I helped out the desktop repair crew by fixing the microcomputers that interfaced with my VAX minicomputer systems.</div><div><br /></div><div>Allen Sullivan, one of our IT staff, knocked on my door one morning. He leaned his head into the office.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Hey," he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Hey." I'd made a habit of finishing whatever line of programming I was on, so I kept typing. I always wanted to write enough to make sure I captured the essential thought. I hated to lose solutions that had come to mind but hadn't made it into my code. Allen knew how I worked, so he waited a few seconds. "What's up?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Lunch?" said Allen.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I was planning to hit the pool."</div><div> </div><div>"Do you have to go there every time?" Allen was the supervisor for our desktop service team at work. He and his crew ate together or played together on breaks. He had a relaxed, easy-going confidence and charming smile. "Why don't you join us in the gym?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"You guys play basketball. I don't play." For decades, I'd kept in shape by doing laps in the pool no matter what city or town I was in.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Can you dribble and pass?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Probably." I had doubts. It had been over a decade since I'd been on a court.</div><div><br /></div><div>"That's all it takes to be a teammate." His eyes crinkled as he smiled. He was tall and thin, with a gentle and fairly graceful sense of movement. His accent had a bit of Appalachian twang to it, which made sense to me because he commuted from West Virginia. "We'd sure appreciate it if you try."</div><div><br /></div><div>When I got to the gym, Allen introduced me to five other guys. That's not a lot, just a three on three half-court game. My intentions of hitting the pool faded. After Allen and another captain picked teams, they let me dribble the ball for a moment before we started. I took a practice shot. I missed.</div><div><br /></div><div><u>1995:</u></div><div><br /></div><div>Fourteen years is a long time to stay away from any sport. I don’t know why some are easier than others. Why does throwing a football or riding a bicycle come back immediately? Why does a basketball shot take practice? My touch, such as it once was, had disappeared before I resumed games at Hood.</div><div><br /></div><div>The main difference, as I restarted my learning process, was age. At this point in my life, I understood better how to learn. Emotionally, I let go of my preconceptions about sports and instead tried to maintain the mindset of being coachable. </div><div><br /></div><div>I hit the playgrounds, a thirty-two year old dad shooting games of horse. Even on the rare occasions when someone else walked onto the court while I was practicing, they drifted to the other end. The younger guys left me alone. I was free to be awful. And I was.</div><div><br /></div><div>One day, a group of young men on the other end of an asphalt court asked me to play. They had watched me shoot, which might have been deceptive. I'd been playing in the Hood College gym for a couple of months by then. I'd been shooting on playgrounds, too. Although I was still a generally bad player, I had re-learned my basic shots.</div><div><br /></div><div>Having me in their group made the teams even. Well, in number only.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the first match, I shot okay and I hit the game winner. The white guys in the group didn't seem to know they needed to guard me or that it would be easy for any of them to do. At the start of our next game, the best player, a muscular black guy, volunteered to 'stop' me. Which he did. </div><div><br /></div><div>When you're always the shortest on the court, it's vaguely insulting to get beaten by another short guy. He wasn't more than a head taller than me. Unfortunately, he was simply way better. He moved side to side with ease, possessed a bursty sort of speed that I didn't, and could shoot over me if I didn't foul him. He got so comfortable while guarding me that he started to criticize my game. </div><div><br /></div><div>"You got to dribble left sometime, man," he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>I shook my head. "I'm no good at it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Do you want to get good?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm practicing my left-side dribble."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You mean," he huffed, "you dribble when no one's guarding you?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah."</div><div><br /></div><div>"That's not enough, man." He gave me a knowing smile. "If you have to drive to the right every time, I can just step out father to my left and take the ball away."</div><div><br /></div><div>We started up again. The first time I drove right, I pulled up and passed. I'd been thinking about my defender trying to anticipate me but, even with my extra wariness, he barely missed the steal. The second time I drove right, I headed straight for the basket. Suddenly I had no basketball. He picked it away clean.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Goddammit," I muttered as I took position to guard him. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I told you. You got to move left enough so I don't know where you're going."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm not so good at moving left."</div><div><br /></div><div>After the game, he wanted to stick with the same teams again. My teammates rebelled for a minute but he talked them into it. He turned to me.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You got to dribble left, man." He tossed me the ball.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, I suck."</div><div> </div><div>"Sometimes you just got to go in and do it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh. You're going to let me move left?" I started to dribble left handed. </div><div><br /></div><div>"No, I'm going to stop you."</div><div><br /></div><div>That made me laugh. He chuckled, too. We were the only ones smiling, though. Everyone else wanted to play hard and win.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first thing I did at the start of the game was dribble left, hide behind a pick, and shoot. The shot didn't go in but it was close. </div><div><br /></div><div>"It's not going to be that easy, man," he said. His teammate had passed him the rebound. Now I was guarding him. </div><div><br /></div><div>All game, I worked on guarding my guy and, when I had the chance, worked harder on finding a way to drive to the left. We both knew his advice was spot on. Sometimes you've just got to do what it takes. There's no substitute. I was going to be terrible, at first. I was going to get stopped. And he stopped me, plenty. </div><div><br /></div><div>But it was always that way. I always got into trouble when I was too slow in basketball. It happens to everyone on every playground. You've got to be quick. That day, my defender stayed on top of me. He cut off my passing lanes. He harassed me when I picked up the ball. But there was no substitute for driving left and shooting or passing from the left of the key.</div><div><br /></div><div>After the game, we sat and chatted for a while. </div><div><br /></div><div>"You know," he said. "I can see you've got some ideas. You just need to do this, man, like, a thousand more times. Then you'll be all right."</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-88850975213003915892023-11-19T05:30:00.004-05:002024-01-21T07:39:54.767-05:00Not Even Not Zen 328: Biomythography - Note 72, Good (Enough) (Pt. 1)<div><b>Good (Enough) at Basketball</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Part I</i></div><div><br /></div><div><u>1977:</u> I was so bad, I'm sure the coach would have kicked me off the junior varsity team if he could. I scored two points in my maroon-and-grey colors during the entire season. I didn't make a field goal; no, I got fouled. Twice. I took two shooting fouls and, each time, landed one of the two foul shots. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had a bad attitude, knocked other players down on defense by accident (really - I had no sense of where I was supposed to be on the floor or whether someone was allowed to run by me or through me or what), and I was even bad at practicing. When I was thirteen, practice meant going through the motions someone else told me. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Hey, Bricks!"</div><div><br /></div><div>The coach said to run fast at the basket and hit a certain corner of the square painted on the backboard, so I did. I ran so fast, my layups bounced off the backboard to the top of the key. I acquired pretty much the nicknames you'd expect for that: Brickhouse, Brick Layer, Bricks Slayer (maybe after knocking someone down), and eventually just Bricks. </div><div><br /></div><div><u>1979:</u> Humiliated by being so bad at something that was otherwise fun, I started to really practice. After watching the University of Maryland games on television, I copied the motions of their best shooter, Brian Magid. To my surprise, I immediately improved. Aiming for the front of the rim actually helped.</div><div><br /></div><div>I already knew practice made me better. Now I learned something more about how to do it. I realized there was a different kind of practice, a kind where you actively tried to get better instead of just plodding through the motions. Admittedly, as a teen it helped to have a basketball hoop in the woods where no one could see me starting out so bad that the squirrels would laugh and, slowly, teaching myself to dribble and sink shots in an acceptable way.</div><div><br /></div><div>I still used the backboard on most shots, the way my junior varsity coach had said to do, but I also kept copying Brian Magid and thought about the way he described his shooting. I started to listen to what other shooters on radio or TV had to say. </div><div><br /></div><div><u>1980:</u> During a visit to my old school, a couple friends saw me in the gym and asked me to make their pickup basketball teams even. There was an argument about who had to take me, followed by a sort of compliment that was actually an insult delivered to someone else, "Well, at least he plays defense." </div><div><br /></div><div>Partway through the game, I realized no one was guarding me. I sank a shot, much to the dismay of my teammates, who were afraid I'd shoot again. Then I sank another. And another. </div><div><br /></div><div>At some point during the first game, my teammates started trusting me. They passed me the ball deliberately. The other team sent my first defender away to guard a different bricklayer and they put someone good on me. That should have stopped me. But it didn't. All my practices flashed through me, all the dirt floor and leaves, the slick surfaces in the rain, the ball as I dribbled it off rocks and tree roots, my awkwardness and my adjustments to unpleasant surprises. </div><div><br /></div><div>I kept adjusting. My team won. It meant we kept the court. And then we re-picked teams. There were more kids around, better players than me, but my captain picked me again. </div><div><br /></div><div>During the second game, a teen ran out of the gym and yelled to one of his friends down the trophy hall outside.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You've got to see this! Brickhouse can shoot now! He's hitting shots!"</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-33795906922521478472023-11-16T05:30:00.001-05:002023-11-16T05:30:00.150-05:00Not Even Not Zen 327: This Will Be Our Year<div><b>Listing to 'This Will Be Our Year' </b><b>by The Zombies</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I hadn't heard this song until a few months ago. It came out in 1968. </div><div><br /></div><div>In a way, I wish I'd heard it as a hit in the U.S., but it never was one. The Zombies band broke up before their last album, <i>Odessey and Oracle</i>, got released. Even when I learned about the band, long, long after, I never liked their music. This is it. This is their one song I like. So in a totally different way, I'm glad I didn't hear it until I had lived long enough for it to have meaning for me. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's a great love song. It's for couples who have gone through some hard times together.</div><div><br /></div><div>This Will Be Our Year is optimistic against all sense. “You don’t have to worry, all your worried days are gone,” is a ridiculous promise. The singer knows. But it's a beautiful thought. </div><div><br /></div><div>Apparently, this song now gets a bit of play at weddings, or so I've learned from bits of information online. If true, it's easy to see why. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>And I won’t forget the way you held me up when I was down.</i></div><div><i>And I won’t forget the way you said, darling, I love you.</i></div><div><i>You gave me faith to go on.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Now we’re there and we’ve only just begun.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>This will be our year. It took a long time to come.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSzU9Geg6jA</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-86912145680531358522023-11-12T05:30:00.003-05:002023-11-18T14:25:25.473-05:00Not Even Not Zen 326: Biomythography - Note 71, The Gifted Have Fallen (Pt. V)<div><b>The Gifted Have Fallen</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Part Five</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The Rest of Day Five: </div><div><br /></div><div>By the end of the week, the midshipmen on campus had noticed their gifted and talented visitors weren't all rule-keepers. The RA in charge of my dorm, an olive-skinned, dark haired man, a bit heavy for the military but strong, young, and confident, sat us down together in a lounge. He gave us a smile as white as his immaculate uniform. </div><div><br /></div><div>He took off his hat and gestured for us to relax. He described what a pleasant surprise it was to have us on campus. He said he hadn't been sure what to expect from our spring break camp. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I think it's time for a panty raid," he concluded. </div><div><br /></div><div>"What's that?" asked one of the other boys. </div><div><br /></div><div>The junior officer rolled his eyes and turned to me. But I didn't know what a panty raid was, either. He seemed a bit disappointed in me. As far as I could tell from his explanation, he thought we should break into the girls dorm, which I knew would be difficult, and steal at least one panty from one drawer. Given what I'd observed about their security, it would be a challenge. I wasn't sure what was in it for me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Conversely, I might have been willing to shoot half the young men in the room for a kiss from one of the girls, but even as a teen I knew stealing their underwear wasn't going to lead to them kissing us. What's more, the girls seemed constantly pissed off at the boys at camp now. Every meal in the mess hall, I continued with my efforts to make peace between the factions but with less and less success. </div><div><br /></div><div>"We'll raise the panties up on a flagpole," our RA cadet concluded. </div><div><br /></div><div>I hadn't been listening to him much as he outlined his ideas. Dutifully, one of the other guys grabbed a bunch of us and we cased the women's dorm halls for our proposed break-in. As soon as one of the other boys expressed skepticism, I blurted out it was easy to escape from the buildings but not get back in. I pointed out where the guards were posted. The other boys nodded. Some of them hadn't noticed, before.</div><div><br /></div><div>"So let's not bother," I said. </div><div><br /></div><div>My appeal to laziness won. We split up to go to our last, planned camp sessions and when we rejoined the main group, we played with a frisbee someone had been smart enough to pack. It was a nice way to end. Finally, our parents arrived to pick us up. A few of us waved goodbye to one another with a sense of relief, I could tell. It had been a weird week. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">#</div><div><br /></div><div>I felt a lasting effect from my attendance at the spring break camp. Mainly, it gave me the impression the U.S. Navy might be an option for college. </div><div><br /></div><div>My parents had always been opposed to the military, even when they worked for it as enlisted soldiers or as teachers at army bases. (The drafted military was culturally a different thing from the volunteer force we have now. Opposition from within was routine.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite my parents' attitude, military service seemed like an honorable choice to me. After the camp, I considered it seriously for the first time. I wondered if I would be a good fit. I still had an awful lot of impulses to kill myself and other people. I didn't trust myself around weapons. But I thought maybe I would get better as I got older. </div><div><br /></div><div>A year later, I got a scholarship offer from NROTC. It promised a full ride through college. The offer came with a price, of course, since the Navy had chosen my major, which was to be chemical engineering. When I graduated, I would owe them six years of military service as a chemical engineer. I pictured myself lonely on a college campus, taking orders, angry all the time, as usual, and with access to firearms. It still seemed like a suicidal or murderous idea. </div><div><br /></div><div>"You have to take it," my father said. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I think this is too good to pass up," my mother added.</div><div><br /></div><div>A few days later, I asked my girlfriend.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Of course," she said, nestled in my arms. She lifted her head to look me in the eye. "When will you get another offer? You haven't applied for anything else. So of course you should take the money."</div><div><br /></div><div>All the other people I asked thought I should take the offer, too. </div><div><br /></div><div>But I said no. </div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-43132082195778599072023-11-05T05:30:00.013-05:002023-11-16T21:09:59.069-05:00Not Even Not Zen 325: Biomythography - Note 70, The Gifted Have Fallen (Pt. IV)<div><b>The Gifted Have Fallen</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Part Four</i></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Navy Camp, Day Five: </div><div><br /></div><div></div></div><div><div><div>In my Naval Academy dorm room, I lay in the dark, half awake. Every now and then, I rolled over in the twin bed. My roommate's snoring had woken me again. Or maybe it was the car engine heard through the open window. Or maybe it was a rattling sound I heard once. An intermittent noise, it had intruded on my dreams. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>"Wake up, man." </div><div><br /></div><div>I blinked. I sat up. The Naval Academy had a lights-out rule. Normally, everything around me stayed pitch dark. This time, I saw a sliver of light under my door. Finally, I remembered: Dave from Boston had said he would wake me. This was it. </div><div><br /></div><div>As I got up, I watched a piece of folded-up paper slip underneath my door. It snaked around and tapped the floor a few times. That explained the rattling. I crept out of my twin bed. My roommate kept up his snoring. Nothing seemed to slow down his heavy breaths. At the door, I turned the knob and silently ushered Dave inside. He gave me a wide-eyed, startled look. When the door closed behind us, though, he grinned.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You were really sleeping!" he whispered with a chuckle. In his accent, 'you were' came out more as 'je're.'</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Holy shit." He glanced at my roommate. I could tell his surprise was about the young, blonde man's snores. Really, the sound seemed unnaturally loud. It made the dorm window vibrate. Fortunately, the repeated series of snorts and snuffles seemed good cover against any noises we could make. We kept our voices low anyway. </div><div><br /></div><div>"I scouted," Dave told me. "But you have to look and tell me what you think."</div><div><br /></div><div>With our swimming towels in hand and in relative silence, we crept through the halls of the Naval Academy dorm. Amazingly, to me at least, the Navy had posted guards. Midshipmen occupied posts throughout the building. They moved around, too. That proved to be to our advantage. I knew how to do it thanks to my playing flashlight tag for years. As the guards moved from spot to spot, we trailed them at a safe distance. We could go anywhere at all, almost, while keeping ourselves in the gaps of their coverage. </div><div><br /></div><div>I could see Dave's grin in the dark. He loved our level of sneakiness. At the front doors, though, we waited for the guards to move. And waited. And eventually, we figured out they weren't going to budge. We tried the back doors with the same result. Maybe there was no good way to sneak out.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Let's try this." Dave pointed to an emergency exit. </div><div> </div><div>He pressed. We heard no alarm. </div><div><br /></div><div>Laughing, we strolled out into the dark walkway next to the building. As an afterthought, Dave tried the handle when the door had already closed behind us. It wouldn't budge.</div><div>Staying would not end well.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Eh." He shrugged. "We'll figure that out when we get back."</div><div><br /></div><div>We followed the wide, concrete paths across campus toward the athletic center. Along the way, we passed a fountain in the middle of campus. The fountain glowed with the lights around its rim, so we stayed at the edges of its concrete border even though no one else seemed to be around. The fact that we were strolling through at about two-thirty in the morning probably had something to do with it. </div><div><br /></div><div>To our dismay, when we at last reached the pool building, we found it was locked tight. Even the windows of the place seemed dark and forbidding. </div><div><br /></div><div>Halfway back to our dorm, we spotted the well-lit fountain again. I had my swimsuit on already. I shucked off my clothes, took a dip, and paddled around for a while. Dave chuckled and kept a lookout. After all, the dormitories had guards. Someone might spy us breaking the rules. Soon enough, I toweled off and got re-dressed and we hiked the rest of the way. </div><div> </div><div>"Shit, those guards are pretty good," said Dave after we padded around the outside of our dorm for twenty minutes. "There's no way in through the doors."</div><div><br /></div><div>For me, twenty minutes of searching was plenty. I was ready to give up. Or to try to break in through a door or a window. Or to sleep in a bush until people started walking around and I could slip back in. Left to my own devices, I would probably have elected the latter despite the chill in the air. It might not have worked out, though. Dave was shivering already. A while in the cold is not super noticeable but, over time, even a little too much exposure can become unbearable.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was mad at the guards. They seemed much more alert for people coming in than going out. To my irritation, I believed they would question me and my beach towel entering the dorm even after the breakfast bell. And I had no great explanation for the guard about why I was a camp member coming inside from a campus that was supposed to be off-limits. </div><div><br /></div><div>"The first floor windows are locked," Dave concluded. He didn't give up until he'd tried them all. "We'll have to climb up. Hey, you left your window open."</div><div><br /></div><div>"So?" We strolled to the back of the building, next to the parking lot. My window had a great view of the lot and the guard house next to it. Fortunately, the guard house was empty. The parking area was, too, mostly. We had a clear line of sight to my partly-open window. My roommate liked it that way. I did, too, as a way to reduce his noise although on any other day of the week I would have gotten up to close it when the breeze got too cold. </div><div><br /></div><div>"We can climb this building." Dave's gaze narrowed. He had a determined look.</div><div><br /></div><div>"No way. I black out and lock up on unsteady heights."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Nothing unsteady, here." He gestured to the blocks of pressed concrete that formed the outer wall. "Look, I'll go first if you're scared."</div><div><br /></div><div>The word came out like "ski yard" but with a sneer, as if it was ridiculous to be frightened about falling to my death while scaling the outside of a multi-story building. And maybe it was. But I was keenly aware of how heights paralyzed me. They had for almost as long as I could remember. Already, my hands drenched with sweat as I contemplated the climb. </div><div><br /></div><div>The back of the Naval Academy dormitory was four stories high. As Dave pointed out, I only had to climb two of them. My room was on the third floor. The parking lot guard house, once we climbed to the top of that, would let us leap to the bottom of the second floor. From there, I saw I would have no real handholds except for the grooves between blocks in the building. Still, only two stories.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Hey up." Dave launched himself to the guard house. Seconds later, he helped me clamber up.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You're sweaty," he said, noticing my slick grip. He hopped from the guard house roof to the dorm. He made it look easy. His left hand patted a concrete slab. "No problem, here. Good grips."</div><div><br /></div><div>The fucker, Dave from Boston, scrambled upward like a monkey. Or like an experienced climber. I took a deep breath, wobbled, and nearly fell from the guard house. That would have broken my bones because a ramp next to the structure ran down farther away and deeper than I thought it should. Still feeling dizzy, I hopped from the one-story roof onto the second story of the dorm. I made sure my handholds duplicated what I had seen working fine for Dave. </div><div><br /></div><div>For a few minutes, I stayed where I was, in the wind. I felt the depths whisper beneath me. I heard Dave clambering up and up, farther away. </div><div><br /></div><div>After a while, I resolved myself to continue. I saw handhold after handhold. I did something Dave hadn't done and shimmied up between two of the concrete slabs. I'd known I was strong enough for it. But I reached a point where I couldn't see where to put my hand next. I froze. Above me, I watched Dave, a bright shadow in the moonlight, slip through the open bedroom window. That made me sigh with relief, although the feeling was momentary. </div><div><br /></div><div>I remember looking back and seeing my death. When I fell, I would hit the guardrail of the ramp next to the parking lot guard house. <i>The impact against the steel bar would crack me in half. Then the pieces of me would continue.</i> As I hovered there, frozen, afraid to move my grip, panting and growing more tired, I felt something bounce off my forehead.</div><div><br /></div><div>"What the fuck are you doing?" I hissed. My gaze shot up to Dave in anger. I realized he had thrown a wad of paper.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You have to keep moving," he said. "You've been hanging there forever." </div><div><br /></div><div>"I can’t move," I insisted. I hardly even thought about the sound of 'theah forevah.'</div><div><br /></div><div>"You have to or you will hang there until you get exhausted and fall and die."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Thanks."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You have to move," he insisted. "There’s a handhold right there."</div><div><br /></div><div>He pointed to the next corner of a block. To grab it, I would have to push off hard with my left foot, latch with the fingers of my right hand, and trust I could hold myself up with no foothold available for a second or two after that. I might have to shimmy along holding by just one hand at a time for a while until the next grip for my foot. It was a tiny leap of confidence I couldn’t seem to make. I hyperventilated for another half minute.</div><div><br /></div><div>Above me, Dave threw another scrap of paper at my head. It brushed my ear and sailed over my shoulder.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Go, goddammit," he hissed. His accent still almost made me laugh. It was so ridiculous. "Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it."</div><div><br /></div><div>For ten or fifteen seconds, he repeated himself. His voice grew more and more insistent as he continued. I wobbled, had a black-out moment, and realized Dave was right. I couldn't stay here. <i>Staying would not end well.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I howled and jumped for the corner. A second after, I pulled myself to the next handhold and the next.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh, shit!" Dave backed away from the window.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." A weird sound escaped from my throat. I felt like an animal, like a dog, trapped and trying to scramble out of a pit. <i>Handhold, handhold, handhold. Stand up. Dizzy. No! Go. Go! Hop up. Handhold. Handhold.</i> In less than half a minute, I slung my right arm over the windowsill and grabbed the opposite edge. I felt Dave's hands clamp down on my forearm.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Do you need to rest?" he whispered while I hyperventilated again.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Dave, man, I think if I rest any more I’ll get weaker. Ready?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ready."</div><div><br /></div><div>And then, oddly, I blanked a little and found myself in the room. I straightened up from the crouch I was in. I stared at my roommate. Unbelievably, he was snoring.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I know," whispered Dave. "How do you sleep with that in the room?"</div><div><br /></div><div>I shook my head.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Do you think he’s faking?"</div><div><br /></div><div>We stood between the twin beds for most of a minute.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Sounds real," Dave commented.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Can you get back in your room without getting noticed?" I asked him. "Do you need to sleep on the floor or something? No point in getting caught now."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I made it here without getting nicked, didn’t I?" </div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-63607150047611846872023-10-29T05:30:00.003-04:002023-11-08T09:38:09.969-05:00Not Even Not Zen 324: Biomythography - Note 69, The Gifted Have Fallen (Pt. III)<div><b>The Gifted Have Fallen</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Part Three </i></div><div><br /></div><div>Navy Camp, Day Two: </div><div><br /></div><div>In the morning, we rose at our assigned time and kept the appointments on our agendas. For me, that meant breakfast, followed by Navy sports regimens that gave me no lasting memories. Next, we re-joined other sub-groups and toured the computer center. Again, this made almost no impression on me, personally, but my roommate said he was interested in what he called ARPANET. His descriptions sounded okay, especially about the Star Trek game he played when he got computer time, except you had to sit down at a keyboard to do anything. I figured it wasn't for me. I didn't really pay attention to anything more than the enthusiasm of my roommate.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even then, my new friends pushed my roommate aside as we left the computer center. He was a tall, blonde guy, and nice enough but they didn't like him. He wasn't cool by their standards. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Those fuckers," Dave from Boston hissed.</div><div><br /></div><div>"What, the navy again?" I glanced backwards. The computer room staff had seemed fine. They had acted like our tour was an annoyance in their morning but I thought from their perspective they had it about right. </div><div><br /></div><div>"No, the wrestlers." He said it like 'rasslahs.'</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh, them." I sighed. Dave had mentioned the rasslahs on our first day. Apparently, a couple hundred of them from a bunch of high schools along the east coast were holding a different camp at the Naval Academy. They were here during the same span of days as our Gifted and Talented program. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Didn't you say you wanted to swim?" Dave shook a photocopied program in his fist. He'd gotten his hands on the wrestling camp handouts from a kiosk in one of the naval buildings. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah." I shrugged. "That's the only sport I'm good at. And karate, I guess."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Our camp doesn't get to use the pool because the rasslahs do." He opened the handout and jabbed the marked boxes on the wrestling camp schedule of events. Sure enough, they had reserved the pool. </div><div><br /></div><div>I changed the topic to how we could meet at lunch. Our sub-groups were different but everyone had lunch at roughly the same time. Plus we had class together afterwards. I thought that could be funny.</div><div><br /></div><div>At lunch, I re-discovered how the guys were trying to prove they were brainier than one another and also smarter than the girls whenever they sat in mixed company. How did these guys ever get dates? But after a while I realized, well, maybe they didn't. A bunch of them were my age, a year younger than usual for high school juniors. They had been at a disadvantage on the dating scene. On top of everything else, many of them couldn't drive yet. I couldn't either. I knew what a date-killer relying on parents to drive could be. Maybe these guys had gotten mad at the situation and given up before things even started.</div><div><br /></div><div>After lunch, Dave and I enjoyed one of our rare classes together. He shook his fist at the wrestling camp banners along the way. On the return trip, he slowed down and grabbed my shoulder. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Look," he said. </div><div><br /></div><div>"What?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"No one is watching. This is our chance." He gestured to the wrestling camp flags and welcoming posters. "Help me take this down."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Are you serious?" Even as I replied, he was grabbing one side of the main banner. I shrugged and accepted an end of the cloth from him. He sprinted to the other end and ripped it down completely.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Now we'll burn it." He cackled.</div><div><br /></div><div>"That's dumb."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then let's stuff it in a trash can."</div><div><br /></div><div>At dinner that night, a Navy cadet stopped by to talk to everyone in our dining hall. He described how someone had vandalized the wrestling camp. They suspected the culprit had come from the Gifted and Talented camp because, well, who else was there? As the young man lectured us, Dave kept laughing and punching me under the table. He was totally not playing it cool. </div><div><br /></div><div>But then the cadet swept the crowd with his gaze and described the vandalism. Partway through, Dave and I realized it wasn't us. No one had cared out what we'd done, it seemed. A wrestling coach had found the banner we'd stuffed into the trash can. No big deal. The wrestling camp was mad about much more serious damage. </div><div><br /></div><div>After a while of listening to the list of property destruction, Dave whispered, "Holy shit."</div><div><br /></div><div>There were other vandals in the Gifted and Talented camp. And they were more hardcore than us. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Navy Camp, Day Three: </div><div><br /></div><div>At breakfast, someone older and more serious than a cadet strode in. The other staff in the room saluted him.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Someone has changed the master password in the Naval Academy computers," he announced. "Those computers are networked to the actual Navy computers. About a third of the Naval Defense Network is down."</div><div><br /></div><div>He harumphed at his own statement.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, not exactly down. But we can't access our own network. And you know, we'd like to do that."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why are you talking to us?" asked one of the girls near the front. </div><div><br /></div><div>The officer barely glanced in her direction. </div><div><br /></div><div>"The time frame for the master password change is closely associated with the tour this group took yesterday. So I'll tell you what we are going to do. We are going to take your entire group on another tour. We are going to walk through the computer center together. All of us. And I hope someone is going to change the master password back to what it was."</div><div><br /></div><div>Someone chuckled.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yes, my staff thinks it's funny, too. But you know who won't? Anyone at Naval Command. They would want to prosecute whoever did it. Here at the Academy, we would rather treat it was a prank. It was a prank, right?"</div><div><br /></div><div>His tone insisted that it was going to be a case of high-spirited hijinx and easily corrected, or else. </div><div><br /></div><div>"It was your roommate," Dave from Boston whispered to me. </div><div><br /></div><div>"No way."</div><div><br /></div><div>"He went back to the computers after we took you away from him. I saw it. He's rubbish."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Who the fuck says 'rubbish?'"</div><div><br /></div><div>At the computer center, a bunch of the cadets who had ignored us during the previous day now stared openly at the collection of high school juniors who had apparently caused them trouble. Deliberately, they all turned their backs. </div><div><br /></div><div>"No one is going to see what you do," the officer in charge explained. He also carefully turned his back to us. "But it's still going to get done."</div><div><br /></div><div>Such was the finality of the officer's tone that we walked the first leg of the tour in silence. After a minute, though, Dave started talking about how he had idears (of all the r's to pronounce, why his accent chose an imaginary one I've no idear) about who done it. I could actually feel the cadets wincing, doing everything but covering their ears as they tried not to overhear him. Fortunately, the other students took a cue from Dave and started chatting, not only about the possible culprit among us but about everything they were doing in the camp. I don't think the computer staff heard from Dave how my roommate had a programming book and diagrams on his dresser (actually, 'dressa'). </div><div><br /></div><div>Navy Camp, Day Four: </div><div><br /></div><div>In the morning, we ran an abbreviated obstacle course. It was fun. We also reported for a physical, during which a medical corpsman measured me while I was waiting in line, leaning my shoulder against a wall. Since I hadn't been standing straight, I came in at less than 5'5". As a self-conscious teen, I protested and demanded the staff re-measure me. The doctor in charge laughed.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You're tall enough for the Marines," he said. He swept a white-coated arm around the room and the certificates hung up around the walls. They bore military insignia. "Marines and Navy, that's all we care about. Move along."</div><div><br /></div><div>At lunch, we sat at the mess benches and I noticed the groupings were different. Dave was no longer hanging out with all of his vandalism buddies. You would think I'd wonder what that was about but, mostly, I didn't. I was more preoccupied with the discovery that I'd offended some of the young women, who I liked and who I wanted to like me back. My problem was that I had tried to come to the defense of my male friends. We had already had a handful of heated arguments over whether women belonged in the military. To me, it was a non-issue because:</div><div><br /></div><div> 1) They were already in the military</div><div> 2) They had been in it for ages</div><div> 3) Their presence made it slightly more appealing</div><div><br /></div><div>There was no point in bickering. It's not like anyone was going to change anyone else's mind. These teens were smart and fairly tough. They had volunteered for a Navy camp. </div><div><br /></div><div>Nevertheless, it was apparent that some of the young men thought they could harass young women into changing their minds. My instinct had been to play peacemaker but that got me hated on all sides. About the young men, I found I didn't care. They weren't even fellow vandals. They were rule-followers and seemed to want to join the Navy. I cared about the young women, though. I didn't know precisely what I'd said to them that was wrong but I wanted to fix it. But I still felt I had to defend the idiocies of my male friends. </div><div><br /></div><div>At lunch, Dave bragged about our Gifted and Talented harassment of the wrestling camp. One of the girls at our table threatened to report me to my father. She had already told me she was a student at his school. </div><div><br /></div><div>By dinner time, I had made a sort of peace. A couple girls smiled at me. We had all together decided to ditch some of the worst young men even though I considered them fellow rebels. For sure, it made our conversation easier. </div><div><br /></div><div>Dave cut the women out of our conversation, though, as we picked up our dinner trays. </div><div><br /></div><div>"They ain't gonna kiss you," he remarked. </div><div><br /></div><div>I sighed. We tossed out the trash and headed for our dorms. </div><div><br /></div><div>"You know what?" he said. "We should break into the pool and swim."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Sure," I replied sarcastically, because this was obviously bullshit. I was used to other teenagers talking about things they couldn't do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Myself, I spent a lot of time resentfully doing the worst I could with what I'd been ordered to do. A lot of the time, I avoided taking the initiative because that led to fights and punishments and general life hassle. And as someone who had spent a long time doing nothing that I wanted to do, I found people who didn't follow orders and instead did what they wanted to be fascinating.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Great! I'll get you up at around two in the morning," Dave said. "We'll break in tonight."</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-8228708274022033252023-10-22T05:30:00.007-04:002023-10-28T10:43:13.440-04:00Not Even Not Zen 323: Biomythography - Note 68, The Gifted Have Fallen (Pt. II)<div><b>The Gifted Have Fallen</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Part Two </i></div><div><br /></div><div>My father gave me a curious look. I set aside the envelope he passed me without glancing up from my book. </div><div><br /></div><div>When my eyes got tired of the cheap, pulpy pages, I reached to the style section of the newspaper. From the bottom, I tore a scrap of newspaper to use as a bookmark. I slid it into place and shut the paperback around it. For a moment, I rested my eyes. But then I noticed the envelope to my right, grabbed it, and ripped it open. As I did, I glimpsed the return address, which read Gifted and Talented.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ugh." This had to be more unwanted college admissions material. </div><div><br /></div><div>Inside the envelope, I found a fancy page with a United States Naval Academy logo at the top. The printing was too good, as if it were all meant for someone else. Along with it, someone had included a computer printout generated by a fancy line printer with multiple colors of ink ribbons. Although the letters were a trifle fuzzy around the edges, they provided blue and black bolded words on the pink card stock. It was kind of cool.</div><div><br /></div><div>The text was full of weird, formal phrases. Gifted, gifted, gifted, it said. Come visit.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why would the navy invite me to spring break camp?" I waved the notice to my parents. "I don't go to camps."</div><div><br /></div><div>My father put his pencil down from his Washington Post crossword puzzle. My mother ignored us and kept on cleaning pots in the sink. So my father and I contemplated the message together. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Did you apply for something?" he wondered.</div><div><br /></div><div>"No."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, this looks real enough." He had worked for the military and later for a federal agency as a civilian, so I supposed he knew what forms the government used for these things. </div><div><br /></div><div>The more I re-read the letter, though, the more I became convinced the Navy had made a mistake. They really meant this for someone else, someone gifted and talented and nice and dutiful. Someone who wanted to be in the Navy, probably. I wasn't any of that. Of course, the camp promised a week away from my parents. They even said my parents were forbidden to visit. (They apologized for it but to me it seemed amazingly great, like a fantasy.) I wouldn't have to pay anything to escape my home. And my chances to escape had been rare so far.</div><div> </div><div>"I'm not skipping driver's education," I remembered. That would start at the local public school in the summer. Now that I was sixteen, I wanted the benefits of my four-year-long war of sleeplessness against my parents. I had made them drive me everywhere. I'd made them get up at four in the morning and return home, back and forth, all day for every day I could arrange things on my schedule. Finally, my mother had agreed I should drive. I was determined to make my parents let me take the class.</div><div><br /></div><div>"This navy camp is free," my father pointed out. "You don't have to wear a uniform. You don't march around. It sounds nice. I could move the driver's ed class."</div><div><br /></div><div>Wow, my father really hated the military. He hated letting me enroll in driver's ed. I could only guess that he really liked getting something for free. I did, too. </div><div><br /></div><div>"The dates don't conflict," my mother pointed out. She could read the notice from four feet away, apparently. She had been glancing in my direction as she worked. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Should I go? Maybe it's not real. It could be a scam." Although I didn't assume it was, the offer did seem outlandish. The Navy's description of the camp made it seem too good to be true. </div><div><br /></div><div>"They say your invitation is based on your PSAT score," my father murmured. "I don't think anyone not in colleges or military academies can see those."</div><div><br /></div><div>"It's real," chimed my mother. </div><div><br /></div><div>That day, I signed up. The pre-military experience was something I did to myself. It was all for a free vacation, a break from my parents. I didn't foresee how stupid I was going to be. </div><div><br /></div><div>Actually, I did have a sense of it. I dreaded my own social stupidity even as I filled out the forms. I anticipated the awfulness of my behavior with a gray-souled, spotty-visioned, hand-sweating feeling of panic. I endured flashes of the same panic, half-days at a time, during the months leading up to the camp. Even so, I didn't anticipate how closely my actions would border upon lethal. I didn't understand what I would do in front of other kids to prove myself cool. Or what I would do for them to be their friend. Neither, I would guess, did the military. </div><div><br /></div><div>When spring break came, I packed my bags the day before camp. My vague desire was to take as little as possible with me but the Naval Academy camp had supplied a list of requirements. I met them. The items, such as combs and toothbrushes, have left me nowadays with a vague memory of a backpack and a duffel bag, plus a sense of counting everything twice. The list was a long one. Fortunately, most of my transportation to the Naval Academy, even my arrival and escort through the process, is a blur. </div><div><br /></div><div>I must have visited my grandmother - she was five blocks away - but my anticipation of the camp erased my recollections of any other events that day. </div><div><br /></div><div>My first clear memory, after a vague sense of meeting other teenagers and standing in lines with them, is of Dave and another, taller young man. The tall one wore his clothes well. He had gotten a reasonably fashionable cut to his hair. The friendlier, more acne-scarred one, though, had scruffy hair and careless clothes.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Eric? Wicked." He stuck out his hand to shake mine. "I'm Dave."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Dave, cool." I had no idea what accent he had but it sounded like a bad imitation of British slang from a poor neighborhood. "Where are you from?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Boston."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Cool."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Where you from?" With his question, he dropped the 'are.'</div><div><br /></div><div>"D.C."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Wicked." Every time I would have said something was cool, Dave announced it was wicked. He was not much taller than me, so he was pretty damn short, but he was thin and athletic in his way. His brown hair was thick and his pale skin had freckles.</div><div><br /></div><div>The taller boy and I made fun of Dave's accent for a while and, to my delight, Dave made fun of us in return. Something about being insulted by him in his ridiculous accent made me laugh. Far from being offended, Dave liked me chuckling at the things he said. </div><div><br /></div><div>"You're all right," he decided. It was one of the few sentences he used in which he pronounced an 'r' sound.</div><div><br /></div><div>Together, because no one stopped us from self-selecting our acquaintences into a gang, we gathered two more young men and endured together what seemed like a many-hours-long afternoon of orientation. The navy announced their schedule for us. They gave handouts. They gave folders with more handouts. The read them to us, although they watched our faces and saw how we felt insulted as they read to us, and they embellished their detailed, long-winded plans. </div><div><br /></div><div>Our gang made a lot of comments about the plans. </div><div><br /></div><div>“They made a lot of mistakes,” Dave said. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah?" I was looking at the schedule. What I saw was a heavy load designed to keep us busy.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Yeah. They think smart kids are going to listen to them.” Dave paused, mouth slightly open in a cockeyed smile. A couple other boys glanced in his direction as they absorbed the criticism. </div><div><br /></div><div>I snorted because I knew what he meant. The military seemed to think that high achievers, if that's what we were, were inclined to follow the rules. They may have even gotten that right in a general way. After all, we had lasted long enough in high school to get good test scores. We had agreed to this camp. But some of us in this bunch of smart kids had gotten good at eluding and subverting authority.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kids are kids, smart or not. Bright young men and women who wanted to break the rules tended to get away with more than the average. Dave seemed to be someone good at subverting authorities. Or so I assumed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even at the time, I had the sense that Dave was acting extra badass for us. I'd seen it in myself at times and in other teens, too. We wanted to be admired and liked. As I glanced around at the other young men in our group, I realized we had probably assembled the most rebellious youths in the program. That wasn't saying much. We were, for sure, not as badass as we wanted to be. Already, Dave's background emotional simmer of being slightly angry at everything was making one or two guys nervous. </div><div><br /></div><div>My roommate seemed quiet and he was maybe a rule-follower but he was nice. Dave teased him a bit but gave up when he saw it bothered me. He headed off to tease his own roommate. We all bunked down to rest for the first full day, which included both sports and academics.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Day One: </i></div><div><br /></div><div>My favorite sport was talking to girls. </div><div><br /></div><div>I don't remember the actual Navy agenda for the day. What I remember was the girls. I made a couple snarky comments in the first class. I had to say them to no one in particular because my new friends weren't in the same classroom. Fortunately, two of the girls in the seats beside me thought I was funny.</div><div><br /></div><div>It would have been amazing to find rebellious girls among the camp attendees. But when the same girls came to chat with me after the first session, some of my buddies saw what was happening and stepped in to stop it. It was kind of weird. My new young, male friends were so awkward, I got the impression they didn't even like the idea of talking with the opposite sex.</div><div><br /></div><div>The girls got that impression, too. They gave me a pitying look and split off for their next activity. </div><div><br /></div><div>The same pattern repeated itself all day. I wasn't mad about it. I knew what it was like to be an awkward, teenage guy failing with women. But my gang was full of these guys and they couldn't even realize they were screwing up and fall back to what I considered level zero, which was my behavior when I didn't know what to say to young women: shut up and let them talk. I learned a lot from listening. But these guys could not resist spouting their opinions even if it led them into making insults or horrible, condescending comments. </div><div><br /></div><div>Amazingly, at the group lunch Dave and a couple of his acquaintances amused a few girls with me for half an hour. But toward the end of our free time, Dave got irritated about something and showed he was particularly good at driving the girls away, too. He couldn't resist doubling down on his insults. And yet, when he turned to me personally, he relaxed. He followed me to my next activity and keep cracking jokes until he made me laugh again.</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-54501675666634263472023-10-15T05:30:00.005-04:002024-01-21T07:37:03.925-05:00Not Even Not Zen 322: Biomythography - Note 67, The Gifted Have Fallen<div><b>Biomythography Note 67</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>The Gifted Have Fallen</i></div><div>Part One</div><div><br /></div><div>In the autumn when I was fifteen, I got a plain white envelope in the mail. It was addressed to me, personally, and according to the return stamp in the upper left, the contents came from the University of Connecticut.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I opened the packet, I discovered a small yellow slip inside. With my left hand, I pulled it out, puzzled over it for a moment, and noticed there was more. I dug into the envelope again and extracted one regular-sized, typewritten page. I unfolded it and read the University of Connecticut logo at the top.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Another college?" my mother said. I was at a seat by the dining room table. My parents were cleaning up the dining room and kitchen. They seemed to be preparing to cook dinner although I hadn't asked. "It seems early."</div><div><br /></div><div>This was the third university, I thought, and I was only a junior in high school. I hadn't applied anywhere. I didn't want to go to college. I was done with school. I desperately wanted to end it, to be completely done and free.</div><div><br /></div><div>After I skimmed through, I paused to reflect on how I'd basically understood nothing on the paper. I didn't want to go to school anyhow and the letter wasn’t telling me what I expected. I thought I'd hear about the campus. This note was different. It basically said, now, now, now.</div><div><br /></div><div>I checked the yellow slip. It had one of my breaststroke times on it, not my best one but my most recent. The writing marks of the digits were blue. I realized this was the middle page of a triplicate carbon copy. Someone had made a decision based on this. They'd sent me part of the triplicate as an explanation.</div><div><br /></div><div>With my left hand, I raised the letter once more and looked at it more seriously. I could tell by the first paragraph this was a recruiting message. The University of Connecticut was offering me a $2000 swimming scholarship. They didn’t mention the cost of tuition or room and board at the University. They just said I needed to decide now. I needed to join right away.</div><div><br /></div><div>“They want me to attend this semester?” I turned the page. The back was blank. I flipped it over to read again. Yes, the essential point was definitely that the college needed a breaststroker for their men’s relay team. If I applied to the University of Connecticut now, they would accept me for the next term. I'd start swimming as soon as I got there.</div><div><br /></div><div>Someone leaned over my right shoulder to look at the letter. From the nice smell and the padded sleeve of her white blouse, I knew it was my mother.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Does Connecticut have a university?” I asked her. She frowned at the short paragraphs in the recruitment letter. “Is it a real place?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"It might be," she said. She gave me a thoughtful look. Then she directed her gaze across the room to my father. Her uncertainty led me to a new line of inquiry.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Does every state have a university?" I called to him.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Maybe." He raised his eyebrows. After a moment, he made a decision and nodded. “Yes, probably. I'm pretty sure there's a university in South Dakota. That means every state has got one.”</div><div><br /></div><div>At the time, I didn't follow his reasoning. Nowadays, that sentence makes sense.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 1978, we couldn't look things up except by driving to a library and grabbing a bunch of college guides, which we weren't allowed to check out and take home. Plus we were all discovering, bit by bit, we had been taught a lot of traditional wisdom that wasn't true. We had doubts, generally, and always saw reasons to do further reading. But my father's logic was good. It seemed like a weird concept. But the University of Connecticut was probably real. </div><div><br /></div><div>As an aside, despite how I insisted to my parents that I didn't want to go to school, both of them were sure I was headed for college anyway. They were paying for me to go to a private prep school, after all, where I was doing well enough, in their view, to skip a bunch of required college classes wherever I went. That was the view of some of my teachers. It was the view coming back from a few placement tests I had taken. I seemed to be the only one who disagreed. I was a shitty student. And college was a shitty idea.</div><div><br /></div><div>I didn't want to see a classroom ever again. On the other hand, if I accepted a place at University of Connecticut, I could leave home. That had some appeal.</div><div><br /></div><div>"What do you think?" I asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I think you're fifteen," my mother said. Her cheeks flushed as she realized I was considering it. Her scowled deepened.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Now, Ann." My father, who I despised, tried to intervene. "He's going to be young when he goes to college anyway."</div><div><br /></div><div>"He's going to be seventeen, Bob. Not fifteen."</div><div><br /></div><div>My parents ignored me during their argument. They went on about college for a while and it gave me time to think. Although I hated school, at this point I hated swimming even more. I liked the other kids in the pool, of course. But the mindless laps and the boredom of actual swimming wore me down. These days, I worked out with the National Training Group in Rockville. There, my separation from the girls in the supposedly faster male-only lanes removed the one element to practice that broke up the tedium and made the hard slog through the pain seem bearable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, out of spite I didn’t want to come in on my dad’s side. </div><div><br /></div><div>"The girls in Connecticut wouldn’t like me anyhow," I rationalized.</div><div><br /></div><div>"They'll be nineteen." My mother turned on me. She didn't want to call me unattractive but she was happy to point out the fairly obvious social challenges of going to college immediately. </div><div><br /></div><div>"So?" I wanted to contradict her even if it meant turning back against my own point. "I'll be sixteen in a few months."</div><div><br /></div><div>"They will turn twenty." My mother folded her arms. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had to shrug. Probably women that old wouldn't even look in my direction. </div><div><br /></div><div>"At least I could see them," I responded. "I'm not allowed to see the girls here." </div><div><br /></div><div>That was an exaggeration. We lived surrounded by farms and forests. Our isolation was so effective that any level of hyperbole about it felt true.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I've driven you on two dates," my mother snapped. </div><div><br /></div><div>My mouth opened. I closed it. We seemed to be headed down a conversational road I hadn't meant to drive onto. My mother might win the argument even though I felt completely right. </div><div><br /></div><div>There were girls here, not far from me by car. I mostly wasn’t allowed to see them - although I suppose my mother did help me out by driving, sometimes - and they were my age. They sent me letters. I met young women on swim teams and through my lifegaurding jobs. I had gotten a dozen love notes from Mary, who had wanted to date me last summer (although my mom had refused to help out, then), and one from Jeannie, who still made my heart and head ache. And some of the girls, even at school, didn’t hate me completely, maybe. I was still trying to figure it out.</div><div><br /></div><div>"But Ann," my father said, "it's a scholarship."</div><div><br /></div><div>"He got one. He'll get more," my mother retorted. </div><div><br /></div><div>My mother ended up being wrong, though. No more swimming scholarships arrived. That may have been because I hated swimming and stopped improving. I didn't have the foresight, though, to point out that was the direction I was headed. The argument of 'I am determined to suck' does not inspire parents much, anyway. I'm not sure anything I could said would have carried much weight. </div><div><br /></div><div>"We can't turn down free offers," my father warned. "The next one that comes in, we should take it."</div><div><br /></div><div>We didn't know we would get another, decidedly non-athletic offer a couple months later. For better or worse, the notice would come from the United States Navy. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505367520831684287.post-67324821540990682622023-10-08T05:30:00.005-04:002024-01-21T07:28:40.698-05:00Not Even Not Zen 321: Biomythography - Note 66, Wrapped Up<div><b>Biomythography Note 66</b></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Wrapped Up</i></div><div><br /></div><div>From different sides of the small room, my wife and I leaned over the guest bed at my parents' house. Diane was judging the angles on a hardcover book she needed to wrap in gold paper. I was wrapping a shirt box in shiny, white paper with pink sparkles in it. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I finished taping the last corner, I turned the present over. I grabbed the red spool of ribbon and spun it out. With a measured eye, I pulled the coils to about three quarters the length of my outstretched arms and tested my judgement by wrapping it, corner to corner, around the box. It came out right to within an inch. I cut it, taped it, and moved next to unraveling a ribbon length for a bow. </div><div><br /></div><div>Beside me, my wife rustled through the box of bows, store bought and hand-made. She seemed to be looking for anything the color blue. She pulled out two of the bows I had made last year. We had cut them from the packages and saved them or maybe my mother had done it. After all, we were taking from my mother's collection of materials. </div><div><br /></div><div>Diane pulled out another bow. This one was larger, better made with heavier ribbon. It was a deep blue that almost matched the ribbon she was using. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Does this look good?" she asked. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Sure." </div><div> </div><div>If I remembered right, I'd made the large one, too. I doubted myself as soon as I had the thought. The fat loops looked awfully neat and careful. Plenty of times, that was me. But this time, maybe it had been my mother's work.</div><div><br /></div><div>My wife and I had spent three years wrapping presents together. We'd gone into our joint tasks with different approaches. As children, we had learned contrasting styles of folding and variant choices of decorating. But we were starting to develop a system we agreed on. </div><div><br /></div><div>While I finished making a couple smaller, red bows, Diane taped her choice to the top of her gift and moved on to her next package to wrap. She finished fast and slapped a pre-made bow on it. Done. She stood next to me, hands on hips while I finished the shirt box. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Where does your family get these bows?" she asked me. </div><div><br /></div><div>For a moment, I didn't know what to say. For years, she had worked in the same room as me as I'd made them. This time, she had stood four feet away. Her focus hadn't been on what I was doing but I took her peripheral vision and her general awareness for granted. Surely, in some of these years together, she had looked up as I coiled the final decoration. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Uh, I just made this." I poked the red bow. </div><div><br /></div><div>"You made it?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yeah." The red ribbon bounced under my fingertip again.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Your family makes bows?"</div><div><br /></div><div>This led to a long conversation about exactly how my mother taught me. Basically, she demonstrated how to a) grab a length of ribbon, b) weave it back and forth in a line, each time shaving off about a fifth of the previous length, c) make a neat loop for the center, and d) tape it all together. Several times, as I showed Diane, we stopped for her to gush, "This is why I never see them in the store!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Less than a month later, we had to wrap gifts for a birthday. We were working in our master bedroom in our townhouse. Diane finished wrapping a DVD. She reached into a gift bag we used to hold reusable gift bows.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Where did you get ..." she began. She shook her head at her thoughts. "Oh right."</div><div><br /></div><div>She turned to a cardboard box near her feet. Her right hand rummaged through it. Then she rose and handed me a spool of ribbon.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Can you make me a bow?"</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">#</div><div><br /></div><div>Where I was instructed by my mother, Diane got guidance from her father. </div><div><br /></div><div>Don Thornhill showed Diane how to make efficient use of wrapping paper and ribbon. He taught forming creases and folds. He didn't come at the chore from the culture of poverty. Rather, he simply liked to see jobs done well. For Diane, being efficient had a moral component, too. Using less of everything is better for the environment. </div><div><br /></div><div>Diane didn't recognize my family bows because she had learned two other kinds. One was a type I didn't see much because it requires cloth ribbon. The strips of cloth come from grosgrain, organza, cotton, or satin. We never had any of those when I was growing up. After Diane and I married, I laid my eyes on cloth ribbons for the first time when Diane bought rolls of them. She made a few of what she calls "floral shop" bows.</div><div><br /></div><div>She also made bows in a manner her father had taught. Those, I found fascinating. With a deft flick of her arm and wrist, she used the edge of a shear on a narrow ribbon to make it curl. It was like giving the ribbon a perm. The resulting bow looked disorganized but festive. </div><div><br /></div><div>This process works only on the narrowest of ribbons, however. As you might guess, I had only ever gotten the cheapest sort of ribbon, which is the slick-surfaced, plasticized stuff made from acetate. It's not the right consistency and, in any case, too thick for this type of bow.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sadly, our family doesn't put ribbons and bows on presents anymore. I suppose bow-making skills will be lost in the next generation. I'm not sure if this is similar to losing hoof-trimming skills because the family no longer owns a horse. Some people do still give nicely-wrapped gifts, after all, just not us.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">#</div><div><br /></div><div>In a world of so many possessions, the specialness of a seasonal gift has faded in comparison to all the other purchases. My grandmother felt her grandchildren were unreasonable to feel disappointed by getting the gift of socks. When she was young and got two or three hand-me-downs per year at most, a new pair of anything seemed special to her. She was happy even with a hand-me-down that she'd been eyeing for a while. In her era, there was nothing ironic about wrapping up clean underwear with a ribbon and bow.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the course of her life, my grandmother made sure her wrapping paper, boxes, ribbons, and bows saw as many as twenty special occasions with her family. Sometimes they reappeared as a complete set and made Lois or my mother exclaim, "Oh, I remember this."</div><div><br /></div><div>My mother passed down the tradition of re-use, at least for a while. She taught me to make bows for our gifts. When she was young, she regarded store-bought bows as a luxury. </div><div><br /></div><div>She never got as tense as my grandmother, though, when her kids unwrapped presents. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Don't tear it! Don't tear it!" Grandma Adele would bark. "Save the paper. Save the bow. How about the ribbon? Something that long is worth putting back on the spool."</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes she would comment on the ornate bows.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Isn't that a nice one?" she would say as she held it up for approval. "Ann, I suppose you made it. Can I keep it?"</div><div><br /></div>Secret Hippiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04268744646117371096noreply@blogger.com0