April 28, 2004

• I expect….
  

  I intend….

  My friend Michael Big Bear, a shaman I met when we worked together at a
  psychic fair in Sedona, AZ, was the first person I heard say, “Wanna
  make God laugh?  Tell him your plans.”  Now I hear it a
  lot.  When a true and clever saying gets around, it really gets
  around.  Yesterday when I sat down here to save the pictures from
  the water run and blog
  about it, I intended to write a much different blog.  Pipsqueak’s
  comment diverted me onto the paean to all the things Alaska doesn’t
  have.  It was easier and more pleasant than writing about my pain
  and frustration.  Without really thinking or planning to, I shifted to a more pleasant topic.

  Overnight, Alaska hasn’t changed.  My neighborhood remains the
  sometimes stark but always beautiful edge of the back of beyond that I
  love.  There is beauty out there, in little patches here and there
  even now among the muck and grayness.  Particularly, the returning
  waterfowl and songbirds, and the big and little birds that stay through
  winter with us–ravens, eagles, black-capped chickadees–are beautiful
  to me.  As I was loading water buckets into the car yesterday, the
  high-pitched cries of an eagle distracted me.  I straightened up
  and spotted a golden eagle circling above us.  I’m convinced she’s
  the same one I see around the waterhole frequently.  She is truly
  beautiful and seeing her–but mostly hearing her, which is unusual–was
  the high point of my day.

  After a full night’s sleep, although it was not uninterrupted, some of
  my pain has eased but I still have the full load of frustration. 
  Since becoming somewhat enlightened I manage even to feel frustrated
  over feeling frustrated.  I know the futility of expectations, and
  the reward for transcending them:  no more frustration, an end to
  disappointment.  I achieve that nirvana of acceptance from time to
  time, and live in it sometimes for days at a time.  What often
  brings me down from that is my failure to live up to my own
  expectations.  I am
  getting better, I guess.  Fewer failures now, at least in the
  mental/moral area.  I used to binge on drugs and food-drugs
  (sugar, starch….) and then hate myself for it later.  I have, at
  least for now, conquered the binge part of that cycle, but I still tend
  to get down on myself when I’m not up to the standards I set. 
  Getting better at living up to my standards is not transcending
  expectations, is it?

  I know that expectation is hardwired into the human animal. 
  That’s what conditioning and learning from experience are all
  about.  With repetition, we come to expect… whatever… to be
  repeated.  Maybe that comes from having evolved on this rotating,
  revolving rock where day follows night which follows day through an
  endless cycle of seasons.  It is not the sameness we notice. 
  We perceive only change, only boundaries between things, the edges of
  things.  In the light, it is darkness that draws our attention; in
  the dark, even the tiniest speck of light changes it all from darkness
  to dark no more.  To draw an analogy here, for me it seems that I
  spend the whole night remembering the pleasant days of the past and
  wondering if light will ever return.  When it does, I tend to
  forget about night until the next one overtakes me and leaves me
  stumbling and fumbling in the dark.

  You’d think–well, I
  would think, anyhow–that half a century of this disease with an
  endless but irregular cycle of remissions and relapses would have
  taught me something, but I’m still the bastard child of Candide and
  Pollyanna.  I rode high through last summer’s remission and now in
  relapse I seem to live only for the next remission.  Yesterday was
  a killer.  I drove to the old “home” place across the highway so
  Doug could check on the feral cats’ food supply.  While there, I
  went in and salvaged some more books, tools, first aid supplies and a
  few old clothes I’ve now lost enough weight to be able to wear
  again.  That place is still home to me, and this one on the power
  grid is but a trap with attractive lures.  It hurts (Doug said he
  feels the same) to see our home falling to ruin, being reclaimed by
  nature.

  While our load was still the light one of empty buckets and jugs, we
  had gone to Camp Caswell, where he rented a video and bought an ice
  cream cone.  As we passed Sheep Creek Lodge on the way to the
  spring, I said I wanted a bite.  He said, “You can’t eat
  this.”  I said I knew, that I had said, “wanted,” not “Gimme a
  bite.”  I said it looked tasty, and then went on to point out that
  I said, “tasty,” not “good.”  I had felt shaky, stiff and sore
  upon awakening, and tired by the time we got the car loaded with
  buckets.  At Caswell, after that trip to the old home place, I
  felt exhausted already.

  I washed buckets and filled them, took a few pictures, and then sat in
  the car out of the rain to wait for Doug to finish.  When he was
  done, I got out and helped him load the full jugs and buckets into the
  car.  My helping makes sense a couple of ways.  My spatial
  perception seems a bit better than his.  I can see where to shift this one so that
  one will fit, and he has chronic fatigue, too.  He was whimpering
  by the time he got the load of full containers into the house.  I
  said, “I’ll see you that *whimper* and raise you a
  *whine/moan/groan*.  He told me that was too rich for his
  blood.  That we can still joke about our pain seems to be a good
  sign of something, maybe, anyway.

  I spent most of my afternoon yesterday on the couch, intermittently in
  odd moments that the game on the PS2 didn’t absorb all my attention,
  trying to decide whether I really have to go to town tomorrow. 
  Greyfox called after 9:00 last night, when the cell phone minutes
  become free and unlimited.  Our conversations tend to run long and
  we’ve learned it’s better not to start one when the meter is
  running.  I told him about the fatigue and pain, and about my
  attempts to weasel a way off the hook for the town trip Thursday. 
  He listened to only half of what I said, disregarded the part about
  having rested up and gotten to feeling better.  He assured me that
  I didn’t have to go down the valley this week.  I asked him to
  check his supply of “med packs”, the bottles of amino acids, vitamins
  and minerals I make up (as I do a similar set for myself) to balance
  his brain chemistry.  They help us stay abstinent and recovering,
  make the process painless, take the cravings away.  I knew he’d
  been running low last time I was in there and that I was supposed to
  make up a new batch before I went in again.

  He looked, and found that he had only one bottle left.  That one
  is today’s dose.  He will need one for tomorrow so my need to go
  down the valley this week is clear.  It took until midnight for me
  to get the next batch of bottles filled, and after the lids were on I
  remembered (as I was putting away the stock bottles and noticed one I’d
  missed) that I’d left out the chromium.  He can take it separately
  or add it to his bottles later.  It’s not a big problem, just
  another lapse I started to beat myself up over until I realized the
  futility of that.  At least I got the job done, even though it’s
  only half-assed done.  Mixed blessings are better than no
  blessings at all. 

  The trip down the valley itself is a mixed blessing, not an unrelieved
  curse.  It forces me to get the studded tires changed over before
  the legal deadline.  It gives me a chance to be with Greyfox and
  all my new friends in NA.  It gives me innumerable chances to see
  a spot of beauty around one bend in the road or another, to see raptors
  and waterbirds flying, maybe even moose.  It’s time for the bears
  to be up and about, and I might even see one of them.  It’s better
  than staying home, fershure, but gawd I’m tired already and getting
  exhausted just thinking about it.  I’ve got that appointment this
  afternoon with the tire guys, and have to go to the laundromat sometime
  today for a shower at least.  I guess I can put off the laundry,
  but that means wearing some not-favorite clothes….  I’ll
  survive.  I really don’t know what to expect, so I intend to make
  the most of it.
  

   

  • 2:44 pm
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