September 18, 2004

• FRAGMENTS

  I woke earlier this morning than I really wanted to, got only about 4½
  hours of sleep.  I tried to get back to sleep, but it wasn’t
  happening.  My mind was abuzz with a jumble of thoughts. 
  Some were fragmentary memories from the 1960s, from my first “real” job
  in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1961, up through when I got pregnant with my
  first son in Wichita in ’64, to some things about the biker years in
  Eugene four years later, and something that happened while I was out
  during my pre-sentence investigation on the pot bust in ’69.  I
  took notes and will flesh out the memories for memoir blogs –sometime,
  not now.

  It seems that every time I post a memoir blog someone comments on the
  details I remember, and often someone asks how I recall so much
  detail.  I got to thinking about that as I lay there this morning
  trying to sleep.  Recall comes in flashes, scenes that I suppose
  are triggered by some association or by a randomly firing neuron. 
  Then a series of associated memories follows, if I stop and think about
  it and allow them to.  Since I’ve begun writing the memoirs, I
  pursue those chains of association, try to recall where, when, and
  whatever else I can tie to the fragment.  Chronology matters, I
  think, when I’m trying to write a coherent personal history, so I try
  to sort out what came first, and place each fragment correctly. 
  That’s not always easy, and sometimes the fragments remain isolated and
  unassociated.

  When I’m stuck, if I remember to, I’ll do the memory trick:  one
  thumb on each temple and the first two fingers of each hand over my
  third eye (middle of my forehead).  The single-handed version of
  it is a universal gesture for trying to remember, and it gives a
  “jump-start” charge of body electricity, the ki or chi energy that
  emanates from our fingertips, to the brain.  Many times as I write
  the memoirs, I sit here with my elbows on the computer desk, head
  supported between my hands that way, remembering.  Then I
  straighten up and write it down before the memories fade again.

  I
  heard Doug go, “Ooooh,” and then he said, “sunrise.”  I turned my
  head and caught the red sky, jumped up, grabbed the camera and went
  out.   It was a quick trip, in my pajamas at 23°F.  I
  shot 6 quick pix, and this is the best of the lot.  The color had
  faded as I unplugged the camera from the computer, checked the settings
  and went outside.  You shoulda seen the sky that got away.

  Another thing on my mind as I lay in bed this morning was dogs. 
  Koji was there, being his sweet affilliative self, snuggling up to me,
  jumping off the bed when I turned over, then back up to curl up beside
  me again:  our usual nightly routine.  I recalled some of the
  comments on dog mushing from my last blog, and thought about how
  ridiculous it is to call it animal abuse.

  There has been, to my knowledge, one incident of abuse associated with
  the Iditarod.  A musher was suspended about fifteen years or so
  ago, for hitting one of his dogs.  The man lost his temper over a
  fight between some of his dogs, and the race officials kicked him out
  of that race and said he couldn’t race again until reinstated. 
  Mushers don’t beat their dogs or force them to run.  Have you ever
  known a beaten dog, seen it cower and cringe?  Beaten dogs really
  don’t make good competitors in a race.

  A musher who knows his or her business won’t even try to run a dog
  that’s not in the mood to run.  It’s a fairly certain bet that one
  who has finished any of the lesser long-distance races to qualify for
  the Iditarod knows the sport and knows dogs.  They select puppies
  to train by observing their behavior.  Dogs that aren’t eager to
  run don’t make the cut.  In a race, the musher may devise a
  strategy for winning, but the dogs decide the tactics.  I’ve heard
  Martin Buser explain how he won one recent race because the dogs wanted
  to keep on going when he had planned a rest stop.  He went along
  with them.

  When Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the Iditarod, there
  was a big storm on Norton Sound and the mushers who were ahead of her
  in the race holed up at a checkpoint to wait out the storm.  Libby
  was in home territory, in an area where she had trained her dogs. 
  They knew they were close to home and wanted to go, so she went with
  them.  The more experienced men at that checkpoint talked about
  that crazy woman and half expected her to get lost in the storm. 
  The rest is history.  Dogs are known for their homing instinct,
  and I’ve heard several stories from people traveling by dogsled who
  became ill or injured and just curled up in the sled and the dogs took
  them home.

  When the dogs decide to stop, they stop.  If it’s a race and the
  dogs
  decide to quit, the musher scratches and musher, dogs and sled get
  airlifted back home.  It happened to Dee Dee Jonrowe a few years
  ago. 
  It was while she was sick, and many people have expressed the thought
  that the dogs decided to quit because Dee Dee was having a rough time
  of it.  That wouldn’t surprise me.  I’ve seen how Dee Dee’s
  dogs feel about her.  They adore her and it is obvious that the
  feeling is mutual.  Likewise with Martin Buser and his dogs. 
  Those two are neighbors of mine, and I’ve seen them with their
  dogs.  I get warm fuzzy feelings just thinking about it, the same
  feelings I get when I think about my Koji-dog.

  The other thing on my mind this morning when I should have been asleep
  was the difference between addiction and chemical dependency. 
  That’s a very fine semantical line there.  The brain chemistry
  involved is identical.  The health consequences of both are quite
  similar if not absolutely identical, and many of the social and
  economic consequences are the same.  Depending on the substance on
  which one is dependent, there can be quite strikingly different legal
  consequences, but that’s (or, in my far from humble opinion that SHOULD
  BE) irrelevant.  Many of the addicts I know started out by
  becoming dependent on some prescribed drug and then moving on to
  self-medication with the same drug or different ones when the
  prescription ran out.

  That’s the ONLY difference between chemical dependency and
  addiction:  chemical dependence happens when a drug prescribed by
  a doctor triggers the neurobiochemical mechanism of addiction. 
  There is a different term for it only because the hypocritical medical
  community felt a need to distinguish between the addictions they caused
  and the ones people get themselves into.  And just don’t get me
  started on the topic of iatrogenic disease… I’ve had it.  Come
  to think of it, I still have it.  I was talking about chemical
  dependency and addiction to Doug the other day, and he said, “There’s a
  joke in there somewhere, about the Hypocritic Oath.”  Yeah.

  The subject came up for me at a Double Trouble meeting months ago when
  one of the addicts there bridled at identifying herself as an addict
  and said she was “chemically dependent.”  Then just a few days
  ago, I caught a local radio call-in show where doctors were talking
  about pain management and the subject of addiction versus chemical
  dependency came up and one of them tried to define the
  difference.  It became apparent that one has to be either ignorant
  or cynical to believe such sophistries.  The doctors who believe
  it are either arrogant victims of the god complex or self-deluded and
  defensive, unable to face the fact that they create addicts.  The
  patients who fall for that bullshit are just pathetic.  How much
  better this world would be if so many ordinary people didn’t believe
  that other ordinary people were somehow superior or infallible by
  virtue of a medical degree!

  Okay, enough of that rant (for now).  Thank you, PhuYuck,
  for the birthday wishes.  In terms of physical celebration, it’s
  just another day around here.  No party is planned, no gifts in
  the offing that I know of.  I’m
  expecting a firewood delivery later (not a bad birthday present, but
  I’m buying it for myself), and I intend to keep working away
  at my housecleaning.  If I get a space cleared to lay out my Tarot
  cards, I may do a reading or two today, unless the mind fog is too
  thick.   I baked muffins yesterday and spent a lot of time on
  my feet, which is probably why my sleep was disturbed last night. 
  Chronic fatigue is like that:  when the fatigue goes too far, it
  starts to spiral out of control because I can’t sleep.  I skipped
  my regular weekly trips to town this Thursday and the one before,
  because I’ve been too fatigued to handle the driving.  By the
  way, next week is National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week. 
  I’m not planning any special parties to celebrate that, either. 
  But for my birthday, inside where it doesn’t show, I’m whooping it up
  in celebration.  I’m sixty.  That’s a nice round
  number.  Six is rounded and zero is round, and I’ve hit the big
  six-oh!  I really didn’t expect to live half this long.  What
  a pleasant surprise it has been.
  

  • 12:44 pm
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