Descendants of Survivors

We are the descendants of ancestral human survivors. We can all agree with this statement (which I may have lifted, but don't remember the source) regardless of our confidence in the evidence of scientists or our faith in the dogma of theologians.

The conscious thought that we exist (at least until we no longer exist) is the raw material with which we establish ourselves as thinking, feeling, behaving organisms on a planet whose origin is unknown and its future unsettled. The only certainty is our past and maybe our present (except that as I typed the word "present," it, too, became part of my past.)

However, at no other time does the past assume such importance in our consciousness as when we acknowledge the passing of someone we love. This week, I attended a funeral service. During the meal following the funeral (there's always a meal because it take so much energy to survive the present...or was it the past?), my relatives (LOTS of cousins) and I talked about our past...mostly the silly things like the near-drownings as children, the joys of humiliating each other, and more somber events like remembrances of actual loss.

So much of the socialization of my cousins and myself (being shaped, poked, and cattle-prodded into adulthood) was a shared process and the process was influenced by so many of the same people. Yet the twenty or so people sitting around the table looked to me to be so different from one another (other than the baggy eyes, a persistent, pervasive family trait) and, in some ways, looked to be strangers to me. For all the talking, what do we really know about each other and what secrets will we carry with us until the time of our own passing and (bed, bath,) and beyond?

A few months ago, I tagged along with my mother to a writer's group that she has been attending for the last five months. During this same time, I was trying to start a local writer's group and was completely unaware of her group and writing activities. Isn't it ironic that two closely genetically related people, both interested in communication, both living in the same small town failed to communicate this information to each other before?

One of the most tumultuous relationships I was in was with a man who was a manager of human resource managers. At the time, I was working as a psychologist. In other words, we both worked in fields whose essential feature was communication. However, our relationship was stormy because our problem was a failure in communication. (Go figure.)

Back to the past, what exactly do we really know about our ancestral human survivors (cave dwellers or more recent twigs on the family tree)? Perhaps they survived because they wore masks, kept secrets, realized that the present moment (no matter how joyful or sorrowful) passes as quickly as it came, and because they didn't spend a lot of time dwelling on their awareness (unknown to other animals) of (bed,bath, and) beyond. The cave dwellers buried the dead, had a meal, and made a few markings on a wall...as I've just done...and hoped that their descendants treasure the past, enjoy the moment (now in the past), and try to not screw up the future any worse than they did.

To not communicate causes inconvenience at the least and failed relationships at the worst (though some of them ought to fail), but sometimes its better not to know too much. Knowing too much about each other and (bed, bath) beyond takes all the thrill out of survival.

There is an old saying that the shoemaker's children has no shoes. I think this saying may be applicable to communication, but I'm not sure how to say it. The End (but not yet bed, bath, and beyond.)

Foreplay Is Not Just For Sex

Writing coaches recommend journaling or some other kind of warming up activity before writing the REAL thing. Here are five other things that need a warm-up activitiy (besides sex.)

• Warm up before taking a prescription drug. Just pop a few of anything you might find in the medicine cabinet. Then try opening that child-proof cap on the prescription bottle. This sometimes works for celebrities and sometimes not.

• Warm up before brushing teeth; prepare the gums for the assault of bristles and sweet-tasting sticky stuff. Scrape the gums (gently) with a piece of fine sandpaper and rinse with Mountain Dew.

• Warm up before mowing the lawn. Push a lawn chair up and down the yard making sure that you are making parallel indentations as it flattens the blades of grass. This warm-up may actually delay the need to mow.

• Warm up before paying your bills. Shove other paper items addressed to your creditors into the big, blue mailbox and work on your technique. (Practice power walking techniques if the mail carrier approaches.)

• Warm up before asking for a promotion. Begin by asking for more toilet paper in the ladies room (regardless of your gender); work up to asking for more knee space under your desk, and eventually ask for the boss’s job.

Alrighty then, I’m ready to write (right after I take my meds, brush my teeth, mow the lawn, pay my bills, and apply for a publisher’s job.)

Mind-Catching

I hadn't intended for my blog to become a series of "book reports", but because I've been doing more reading than writing, it seems to have come to this (at least for now.) It wasn't until I finished Mind-Catcher by John Darnton, and then went to his blog, that I realized I had read the first of his books, The Darwin Conspiracy which was, at the time, another one of my favorites (overlooking the fact that it was truly a work of fiction, hardly biographical, except that he spelled Darwin's name correctly.) I humbly forgive Darnton his license to fictionalize Darwin (and to use the word opprobrium twice in Mind-Catcher.) So, here is a review of the most recent of my "personal favs," Mind-Catcher (2003) by John Darnton.

The personal appeal of Mind-Catcher was that it is a wonderful meld of my passion for the study of the brain from an anatomical, mechanistic point of view and my interest in whatever may exist beyond the physical, what some may refer to as the supernatural. Others simply state the meld as the "mind-body" problem. (This was also referred to in the non-fiction memoir My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor.) I don't remember who said it first, but I like the explanation that the mind is what the brain does. In other words, while the miracle of who we are results from the neural connections and electro-chemical processes, we are nevertheless the miracle.

The characters of the story are both miraculously good and miraculously evil. In other words, they are human. The father of the comatose son who has been the model single parent now wallows in an alcoholic cesspool and belabors his own self-centeredness in violence as well as verbiage. The villain in the story has his compassionate moments and I reluctantly sympathized with the villain's abused childhood which left scars on his adult intellectual genius.

For me personally, I felt most strongly attracted to both the egomaniac male neurosurgeon that unwittingly set the stage for the genius villain and the compassionate, spiritual, self-aware female neurosurgeon who was willing to set aside professional conduct for doing what was right for the father and son. The neurosurgeons are two sides of the same coin and if do-overs were possible, I would do whatever I had to to become a neurosurgeon. (Maybe in the next life.) Do-overs occur in the Mind-Catcher for all but the villain whose punishment perfectly fits the crime. Do-overs and justice sound like cliche denouements but this book is a thriller from start to finish. Yes, I know the last half of that statement also sounded very cliche, but most book reports are.

Baba WaWa and Other Important Voices

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HOMtOzoVM8 - (Barbara Walters on Gilda Radner's Baba Wawa Impression)

I recently finished reading Barbara Walter's autobiography, Audition; yes, I read all 600 pages and savored each page. It is a mix of popular and political history, a mix of the personal and the persona. It is about family and friendships, fortunes made and fortunes lost, and, of course, about the interviews of the famous and the infamous.

One of the couples that she mentioned who were among her favorite interviewees was not Brad and Angelina, but it was a couple whose names I don't remember (though, of course, Walters did.) What is memorable about them is that they are both blind and deaf. They are a successful couple that raised successful grown children. Nevertheless, the husband said that while losing his vision took away "scenes", it was losing his hearing that took away "people."

We often take for granted the subtle nuances of voices that cause us a shift of perspective, or a confidence and renewal in our relationships. A voice can endear someone to us. We are proud of the quiet one who, at last, asserts herself in a clear and confident voice. We wrap our hopes around the leader who, at last, shares her fear and uncertainty. We share and hold dear the whimper of regret and plea for forgiveness after a moment of disagreement with a loved one.

On the other hand, we question the future of a new friendship when we hear a groan of resentment or a slap of sarcasm. We listen more closely to know whether or not we want to hear still more. We note the pretentiousness of a lie and the squeamishness of deceit.

Remember that it was Barbara Walters who wrote the book "How to Talk to Practically Anybody About Practically Anything." Although I have admired her for a long time, I think she titled that book incorrectly. I think that what she could teach us and what we all need to improve is "How to Listen to Practically Anybody About Practically Anything."

Let's add a subtitle as well. "... And to appreciate it."

My Own Bucket List

Last night I watched The Bucket List. I especially like both actors, Jack Nicolson and Morgan Freeman, so I knew it would be good even if I had known nothing else about it. Of course, as most everyone knows by now, the movie is the story of two men who have each been given less than a year to live and their attempt to fulfill their dreams before they kick the bucket.

After the show ended and I had shed tears at the appropriate moments, I watched one of the special features on the DVD, the one that included an interview of the writer. I was a bit surprised to see that he was very young (or does everyone now seem very young to me?), but his "older" wisdom became more credible after I learned that he had interviewed several older people (including celebrities) about what they might include on their bucket list.

Reminded that I had created my own bucket list a few years ago, I pulled out the notebook that I had begun in 2000. Several things were going on that year. I turned 50 years old and celebrated 20 years clean and sober. I was also dealing with some age-related issues that included thinking about what possible reasons there were for why I was still alive and, at the same time, trying to accept the uncomfortable fact that I would someday be a corpse. It seems that it should have been either one issue or the other, but complex issues are rarely that tidy so I was working on both at the same time.

My "bucket list" was titled "100 things I want to do before I die." I only had seven things on the list, and there was some redundancy even among the seven. What I had in common with the characters in the movie was that I included skydiving on my list. In fact, skydiving was first on the list which is especially incredible because I have a psychopathological fear of heights.

Skydiving does seem to me to be the ultimate existential experience. I can imagine being suspended between life and death, simultaneously reveling in the thrill of life, the force of wind against my gravity-driven beating heart, while contemplating the possibility of becoming a crumpled pile of bloody flesh, bones, and excrement.

Existentialists consider the fact that we live "with a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world" according to Wikipedia (which someone pulled from a couple old, obscure textbooks.)

It is by embracing and accepting those very psychic conflicts that validates our free will, our choice of a world perspective, and the behaviors that are congruent with our individual Weltanschauung. (Damn, I love that big word!)

Skydiving, then, is the appropriate metaphor in action for the anxiety associated with wrapping one's arms around life. For a couple hundred bucks, I could not only mark skydiving off my list, but could move onto the rest of the list and accept those that are redundant as just part of the absurdity of being alive.

Demons, Overload, and Chilling-Out

Why do we do this to ourselves? If we are old enough to at least be out of high school and beyond adolescent angst, we should know how futile it is to do battle with demons whose only power is what we allow them to have.

And yet ... I can feel the paralysis beginning. The bottom of my right foot feels like its on fire and there is a mild tic beneath my left eye. The foot-thingy may be neuropathy and the tic-thingy may be Bell's Palsy. The mental paralysis itself (yes, it's all in my head) is not serious enough to warrant a diagnosis. It is, however, serious enough for me to take note of its onset and to think about an appropriate treatment plan. These "symptoms" are really just a physical acknowledgment of the fact that I'm feeling a wee overload of stressors.

Having recently been diagnosably ill, I feel like I have lost one entire week of my life and a second week has been reduced by the fatigue of getting over the first week. My students have less than half a semester remaining to fully benefit from my amazing instruction. I anticipated having several chapters of my Great American Novel written by the end of this week. Add the fact that I intend to move in less than a month (having a whole bunch of crap to unload or move with me) and I have stirred up a nice batch of demons.

In reality, most of these demons are bearers of good news disguised as demons. The good news is that I am recovering from a non-life-threatening illness; the semester is more than half completed; I have been writing more in 2009 than in previous years; and I am moving away from my neighbor-from-hell to a lovely, peaceful spot on a lake where I can de-stress on a daily (moment-to-moment) basis.

The treatment plan for dealing with the demons is the same one that I have known about for many years.

1. Change how you think and you will change how you feel.

2. Count your blessings.

3. Breathe deeply.

4. Know that this too shall pass.

5. Having done all that is possible, let a Higher Power do the rest.

Last but not least, share the blessings with others.

Central Illinois Writers Group on Facebook

I just set up a group in Facebook. The name of the group is Central Illinois Writers Group.

Hopefully, this isn't just another one of my attempts to find the Holy Grail of Writing in something outside of myself. I have another post on this blog about my pursuit of the Holy Grail; in that post, the Holy Grail I referred to was the attempt to find the "right" book about writing that would release my muses from hiding and set free my innate writing talents. Consequently, I have a couple boxes full of books about writing and not a single book on my shelves that I have personally written.

Between the search for the perfect book and the Facebook group was my registration for an online creative writing course. Of course, the course came with a textbook (as if I needed one more book about writing.) Worse, the book is the only source of information for how to improve my craft unless you count the other online students who have the same textbook that I have.

On a more serious note, I do have a great deal of confidence in the power of a group. Magical things happen when people come together that couldn't have occurred otherwise. When I think of this group-magic, I'm inclined to have a visual picture of the members of the group and I can hear their tone of voice and read their body language and facial expressions.

I've contacted a few people about starting an offline (face-to-face) group and have had enthusiastic responses until we discuss the actual getting together. I think the problem may be that they are on their computers with their Facebook groups and don't have time to go eyeball to eyeball.

It was over fifty years ago when the psychologist, Rollo May, said, "Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing." Today, May might have said, "Communication leads to Facebook." I don't know if he would have included the rest of his original statement.

It remains to be seen whether or not the community made up of social networks leads to understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing. We should hope that they do because there is no shortage of them and the numbers will continue to grow.

Their growth may validate another quote from Rollo May. "It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

(By the way, I took the above picture of the writing table in Lincoln's Home in Springfield, Illinois. It is the only home that Lincoln ever owned and the one that he anticipated returning to at the end of his presidential term. There are only a few items in the house that actually belonged to the Lincolns' and this writing desk is one of them. Most items in the house are from the Civil War era. It was well worth visiting and I will be visiting Springfield sites again soon.)

Dear Mr. Vidal

I'm currently reading Gore Vidal's memoir, Palimpsest, published in 1995. I can't imagine anyone having a more interesting life than his with his many personal, political, and literary connections. However, an interesting life must also include unhappiness different than that of an ordinary life. If there is no difference in the weight of unhappiness, there is a qualitative difference.

The thing about unhappiness in the context of an interesting life is that it has a sting that reminds a person that he or she is very much alive and that there is a discrepancy between where the person is and where the person wants to be.

The unhappiness in the context of the ordinary life is more like a case of having chiggers than having been stung. Chiggers have to be choked out, killed, suffocated, or covered by nail polish (the usual home remedy.) Then, the nail polish serves as a constant visual reminder of the ungoing assault. Of course there's the itching and the scratching, neither of which are particularly attractive for the scratcher or the observer.

Unhappiness in an interesting life resembles the sting of a bumblebee. A sting requires having the stinger removed and healing then can immediately begin.

One has to wonder about the accumulation of scar tissue at the site of the stinger, assuming that, as in real life, the person having an interesting life is stung more than once. Would that layer of scar tissue protect a person from future assaults or invert the pain at a deeper level rather than merely the surface level if the attack was by chiggers?

Perhaps, Mr. Vidal will provide the answer to that question before the last paragraph of his life.

Let's pandiculate!

Pandiculate may or may not be a verb. In any case, it has very little to do with a panda and, if it did, the meaning would be obscene.

According to dictionary.com, pandiculation is a noun and pandiculated is an adjective. There's no mention of a verb, but there ought to be. The noun and the adjective refer to the instinctive stretching (as while yawning) or is used to describe something that is stretched.

Pandiculate must be the verb form meaning to stretch. As long as this word is apparently my own creation, I am going to expand its meaning (to pandiculate its meaning?) to include going beyond one's comfort zone, to reinvent oneself as smarter, more important, and more, uh, pandiculated. To pandiculate is to be more useful, to more of service.

This was the message to Americans in Obama's Inauguaral speech. Beyonce tearfully said, "He makes me want to be smarter." I want Beyonce to be smarter, too, smart enough to not degrade women by looking like the women that some of the rappers are degrading. Anyway, I do understand what she was saying. I'm sure many of my own generation said something similar after John F. Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." This country has been yearning for a leader that asks us to give up our childish ways, to do something for one another. In other words, we should pandiculate.

So, let's pandiculate!

The Biggest Loser

The "You on a Diet" doctor/author got my attention

I was watching PBS when it featured one of the doctors of "YOU" fame (You: an Owner's Manual, You on a Diet, You Beautiful You.) It wasn't Dr. Oz; it was the other one. Let's call him Dr. R. So, Dr. R. said, "If your waistline (measured across the belly button) is larger than xxx (nevermind what that was; I don't want to fully self-disclose), then your health is as much at risk as if you were just told that you have breast cancer." Then he went on to say that if a woman received that diagnosis, she would want to immediately take some action, anything that is required. (He had a similar paradigm-shifter for men, but I don't remember what it was.) I have heard all the health crap from my own doctor, heard it in the media, read it in articles, but this statement by Dr. R. got my attention.

Then I watched The Biggest Loser last night and Bob the Trainer (kind of like Bob the Builder but taller and thinner) looked straight at me and said "America, why are you watching this show while eating ice cream? Put it down!" And he kind of yelled at me a little. So, I put the lid on the jar of peanuts. (I know better than to keep ice cream in the house.)

By the time I was watching Biggest Loser, I had already written a "food plan" to automate my eating as Dr. R. had suggested. Peanuts were on my plan as a snack. (Chewing reduces one's appetite and peanut-snackers lost significant weight during a study at Duke University. To rationalize further, I eat very little meat so I need the protein.) Nevertheless, Bob did not have to repeat himself. I heard him the first time, so I didn't have another bite to eat for the rest of the evening.

Julian the Trainer yelled at me too, but I think she is so hot and so cool (makes sense to me) that in my fantasies, she and I could share a banana split. However, neither Bob the Trainer nor Dr. R. are my type (yes, I do like men but not necessarily those two.) I'm not attracted to authoritative men, but I usually respect them as long as they remain authoritative and not too authoritarian. So, I respect both Bob the Trainer and Dr. R.

I also found it appealing that the Biggest Loser had pledged to donate to the nation's food banks, matching the pounds that Americans pledged to lose. I was conservative and pledged to lose 20 pounds by the end of April. I didn't want to fail in meeting a larger pledge because Bob the Trainer might yell at me again.

If you can be supportive in my weight loss without yelling at me, I'd like to hear from you.