A truly terrible cold

There are truly terrible things in this world: war, greed, climate change, abuse in all its forms and guises, corporate entities more powerful than any government, collusion, the cult of celebrity, rabid nationalism, illiteracy in all its forms, commercials for drugs, fundamentalism, right-wingism, oppression, an uninformed, uncaring public; cancer, hate, power struggles, terrorism, the stock market, shareholder value, downsizing, competition in the workplace, isolation, operating on irrational fears, having to deal with the public, bad drivers, narcissism, helicopter parents, the sociopath in the next cubicle or corner office, mean people, and all forms and manifestations of addiction.

Shall I continue? Didn’t think so.

There are also absolutely amazing things in this world: freedom, acceptance, rights, safety, having enough food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, a place to live, sunlight, smiles, love, friends, learning, open hearts and open minds, music, poetry, art, babies, animals, nature, trust, wonder, moonlight, rocks, laughter, colours, touch, heartbeats, connectedness, the smell of fresh water, a home cooked meal, a bottle of wine with friends, holding hands, cuddling, silence, helping someone, reading, listening to stories, a job well done, a clean bed, great conversation with interesting people, acceptance of difference, respect for life, gentleness, helping out, falling asleep, feeling safe, being healthy, dancing, sitting on the porch, watching the street, sharing, community, hanging at the dog park, making music with little kids, and going on an adventure.

I could continue, but the point is that there are terrible and wonderful things in this world. We all know them. And live with them.

But today I am on day five of a truly terrible thing: a nasty, horrible cold that I swear is trying to kill me.

Image via Wikipedia

Apparently, this is not a run-of-the-mill, garden variety kind of common cold. Nope. This is one that took two weeks to break. This is one that’s taken my voice away. This is a cold that has caused sneezing and coughing fits so bad that there isn’t a muscle on my body that doesn’t hurt even when I’m standing still. This is a cold that causes night-time sneezing and coughing so bad that it inevitably bothers the dogs and they leave: one goes to another bedroom, and one goes to the downstairs couch. Last night I left the bedroom rather than continue to disturb the dogs.

I can’t give anyone a hug or a kiss, can’t hold hands, and I can’t cuddle. My nostrils are red and my eyes are watery and puffy and rather sad. It’s quite pathetic really, me and this cold. Hot, cold, sore head, weak, unable to breathe and unable to talk and sleep deprived to the point of hallucinating. I’m sure if I could talk, I’d be talking gibberish.

<sigh>

This cold has been fed with so many homemade soups and lemon-ginger teas that I am about to turn into some sort of creature from the soupy lagoon. If I see another bowl or cup of any kind of hot liquid I shall faint in the fashion of the princess I avoid being.

In addition to soup and teas, I am also full of immune support stuff, vitamins, meditation and reiki and a few sinus and cold pills. One night, I had a half a glass of brandy with cinnamon — no apple cider because I was all out of that. Wooooo! Made me giddy. That night was also the last time my voice worked.

Sadly, there is no cure for a cold. There are simply symptom suppressors, which I am somewhat opposed to since they just prolong everything, and some can have curious side effects. For example, let’s say that you are a woman and take extra strength sinus and cold tablets to ease your congestion. Let’s say you take them for a little while. Well, let me tell you this about that: those pills dry up everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING in our female body that requires moisture to function optimally. If you are ever interested in losing your sight, nasal sprays that contain steroids can cause cataracts.

Since I can’t fight this cold and I can’t talk, and prefer to not spread it around I have been doing what is called resting. All I have to show for that is a pulled back muscle from coughing. So I engaged in my own version of resting: I played with the dogs, caught up on all the back episodes of Sanctuary and NCIS/NCIS LA (both for the science and tech geeks) and hunted through all the tools in the basement to see if there was a drill fine enough to do some self-surgery: nothing too complicated, just a little hole in my head to let out some of the congestion or whatever it was sloshing about and making me miserable. Unfortunately the only hand drill I have is one from the 18th century. It’s big and has antique rust on it and it would take hours and my arms would get sore.

The next part of rest consisted of me feeling somewhat defeated, sitting on the couch, thinking deep thoughts in between coughs and sneezes and chills and more sneezes.

Tweety (the bird) seems to think that when I sneeze, I am speaking in a dialect unique to Indian Ring Necked birds. He answers each of my sneezes with a tweet equal in tone and force to my sneeze. I usually sneeze three or four times in a row (oh joy oh bliss) and Tweety is right there with me.

Me: “Achoo!”

Tweety:  Tweeeet!

The dogs look at both of us. It’s as if we are creating a kind of in-situ Dada music piece that I am sure John Cage would have appreciated.

Image via Wikipedia

Because we live in a world where everything’s an opportunity to make money, I bought stock in a company that makes kleenex to recoup the money I am throwing away on kleenex: so far, six huge garbage bags full in just five days. (Hmmm, so that’s what I’m full of?) There are two boxes in every room, and I carry one with me to make sure I do not sneeze all over everything or anyone.

Some people say to use toilet paper. I say, um, no thank you.

In terms of recuperating from a cold, it is important to drink a lot, keep warm, get lots of rest and keep your nose hydrated.

So I am going to the gym, hang out in the sauna, drink gallons of blood orange juice, snort saline water and hope to be back to normal sometime in the near future and back on track to ponder the truly terrible and truly wonderful things in this world of ours, like life without a horrid cold.

Find a way

a dream.

~~

~~

This way: a maze more than a labyrinth. Heading up would be good, in the air, where wind drafts play. Or up higher, where the North Star and Little Dipper and Orion and Pegasus live.

It’s okay to be lost, wandering the hinterlands of some galactic spiral.

Lost? Yes. Lost.

This way. Go along until something says stop. Turn corners. Find treasures. Learn something. Find a new thought to think. Be with your own mind, body, heart and if you have one, soul. See no clear path, no signs pointing to anything — not what’s up ahead in the journey or a direction toward a destination. No hints, nothing about which way to go. Unearth what seems long buried.

That way is there. There is always that way. Tried and true and somnambulistic. That way is everyday, a filing cabinet of all the days and ways of your discontents. The mapped way; the predictable way full of signposts, what you’ve headed into every day of your one and precious life, until now, because now, that way is disconnected from everything about you.

That way is no longer the way you want to go, although the way and where you want to go isn’t yet clear. You catch it in dreams, in a place you know and as you look around, everything comes to life, turns to you and whispers, “move!”

A move compelled by a dream feeling? A hunch? A restlessness? A longing? Don’t call it intuition: that’s as muddied a notion as rational thought in every single human mind on the planet.

Which way to go? This way or that way or here or there. Then or now. Or all of it, together, in a different way altogether?

Hold a moment. Notice the place and space of standing still, where you weren’t where you were, but where you aren’t on your way to where you’re going to go, either. Between this and that, here and there. Who’s here, who’s not, who’s leaving, who’s entering. You’ve landed at the outskirts of a life you thought you were making and the one you hadn’t planned on needing, wanting, finding.

Found at http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/08/atlas-of-imaginary-places-11-tube-maps.html

There you are, wondering about finding a way through feeling lost which is turning into a feeling, growing exponentially, of being lost, not knowing which way to move. Far away, out of sight but not out of consciousness, in a small town not far from Vancouver, standing in the wings of the stage is a director and she’s sitting on a big stool and there’s a trumpet player sitting at her feet, quietly playing My Funny Valentine with a muted trumpet. The director opens a random page from a script and starts to read:

“Let all hearts break. All of them. And walk away. Then wait for as long as it takes.”  

The director stops a moment and looks out at where an audience might be sitting, if there was an audience. She turns her attention back to the script.

“Wait for the sound and sensation of one heart beating. Wait for it, this one heart beat. When you hear it, when you feel it deep inside, go. Go until you feel all hearts beating.”

The director throws the script away and the trumpet player stops playing and the scene that’s out of sight but not consciousness fades away as it’s time to find a way.

~~

NB: About heart energy, heart and feelings. There’s some crazy, albeit thought-provoking research. It is ‘research’ only in the sense of exploration and discovery around questions that tradition science has yet to answer, and the findings raise some provocative questions that will ideally be looked at with further research. Gotta start somewhere if we’re ever to find a way.

Those Abandoned Places

this was a dream

Source: http://awesomator.net/content/abandoned-places

~~

Cities, mines, tracks, amusement parks, buildings, rooms, trains and planes and ships and cars and tires, cell phones, computers, wires and plastic. The detritus we make left in place as they fell, as they landed, as they existed in that eternal moment of being abandoned, as they were when what was alive and moving and thriving and breathing vanished, disappeared, transported, relocated, moved to parts unknown, merged with other life forces, walked away and into some place new. Nothing left but what remains: monuments, no memories. Blood and sweat and tears: invisible DNA of the madness of creation, disavowed.

Enter the gods of the elements, that which persists and succeeds in breaking down fabrications, lifting the paint, scorching the ground. A never-ending process to wipe away the colour, petrify the wood, degrade the leather, rust the steel, impede entrances, spread layers of dust and dirt, disperse and absorb and repurpose energy of unheard stories, unwhispered hopes and invisible loves; the moments that muffle the sounds and let in streaks of light and wild winds, water filling, washing away and leaving pools full of new life forms.

Enter the Empress of Time, elegant enabler who echoes across the ages: all that is abandoned is taken by the nature of its creator.

in Turkey

Ruins in Sorrento, Italy

Wishful thinking

~~

He comes walking along the path, licking his lips and I look at him as he looks at me and as he catches my eye he gives me that quizzical look.

Wishful thinking. So I ask him, pointedly:

“What did you just eat?”

He looks at me, still licking his lips. Says nothing. I turn around and keep walking. Of course he says nothing. He doesn’t talk. The reason he doesn’t talk is because he can’t talk: he’s a dog. My dog, and a smart standard poodle dog, but a dog nevertheless.

Contrary to the growing cadre of animal communicators having fireside chats with countless critters and the explosion of videos on YouTube that show all sorts of animals talking in mostly English let’s be crystal clear here: animals do not talk. What they seem to do is convey information to each other and to others in the vicinity, although vicinity is relative since sound and vibration that we can’t hear is transmitted over a fair number of kilometres, and underwater too. So while we talk, animals communicate.

As an aside, if you do not believe that animals communicate, might I suggest spending time with an open mind to check the last few years of scientific research?

Beyond communication, some species seem to exhibit behaviours that we interpret as reasoning, problem solving, happiness, fear, boredom, contentment. There is now serious credence being given to the notion of animal suicide. Some like to play games. Some are in the business of prediction — that famous octopus, for example. Some can use sign language and are teaching their offspring to sign. It’s not that researchers are humanizing animals; it’s more that researchers are not taking received wisdom as gospel any longer to bias their perspectives. Which is not to say that their perspectives can’t be biased in other ways.

So the evidence is fairly straightforward: animals cannot talk, use words the way we do. And why would they want to? Words so get in the way some days. Curiously, knowing that does not seem to stop me from behaving as if they do. The truth is that in addition to many hand gestures, kneeling down to their level for some one-on-one cuddle time, I regularly talk with my both of my dogs and ignore the look that passes between them when I do.

I ask them what did you just do? Or I tell them please walk on the boulevard and not on the lawns. Or we’re going out the front door, not the back door. Or some particularly exciting things to them seem to be would you like to go in the car? and which cookie would you like? and guess who’s coming over? When I ask them to walk on the boulevard, they do. They seem to know the difference between the front and back entrances. They make a choice of which dog cookie. They never guess who’s coming over.

And every day, it seems they find a way to let me know what they want and how they’re doing without speaking my language.

Big poodle does ‘speak’, making sounds that people in the dog park say they have never heard a poodle make. He makes ‘gestures’ too. And uses his paws to indicate what things he would like. Little dog is a quiet but persistent communicator. Big yellow bird is full of words and sounds that he’s learned, but I can’t say he knows what they are. At the same time, he’s quite capable of letting me know what he wants, or needs, including his need to be grumpy at times. I would say how human of him, but that’s a silly thing to say. We’re all of the animal kingdom, and some of us are grumpy.

The question about what’s so special about us, what distinguishes us from other animals is not what it used to be: other animals use tools, some seem to take pleasure in non-procreative sex, some are good at solving problems, some are bullies, and there are ranges of personalities within groups and tribes. Perhaps the difference between homo sapiens and others might best be a question placed within the realm of ethics and philosophy rather than the physical sciences. Or perhaps it’s the wrong question entirely. In some instances, there aren’t any discernible differences.

Kid Logic

When I was a kid and full of kid logic, I thought Dr. Doolittle could be a true story. I wanted it to be, talking to animals would be cool. I thought superheros were real and that I could grow up to talk to the animals and have some special power, that I could somehow get pointy ears, and work on a starship in space and never come back to earth and along the way, become a superhero too. Other times I wanted to be a robot and spend my time wondering what it was like to be human.

Then I grew up. I had to face the truth: animals do not talk to humans. Not only that, they don’t talk at all. I would never be a robot, superheroes are all only children and orphans or aliens, and I would never qualify. I wouldn’t have pointy ears and superior logic no matter how hard I tried. I would never travel on a starship. Yet out of some rebellious petulance, I didn’t abandon all that my child self believed. I figured that adults might be wrong. In fact, I desperately wanted them to be wrong about everything because I knew in my heart of hearts that it is possible to know things that people don’t say out loud; it is possible to have pointy ears and not be burdened by silly emotions and it is possible that animals are not dumb, unfeeling, unknowing, creatures. It is possible.

To my kid mind, there was no way that adults — mostly teachers — were right when they said animals, including fish, do not feel pain, and animals do not experience what we would say is fear, or contentment, or fun and play. No way: adults were wrong, wrong, wrong a gazillion times, flat-out and plainly wrong. No one could convince me otherwise, which was no mean feat given that each of my parents were born under the very stubborn sign of Taurus, the Bull, although secretly, my mother, who went through life with her own special brand of kid logic, supported my belief about animals.

And science is finding stuff, too: seems kids can understand dogs better than adults can. Vocalizations of other animals are being studied as well and raising questions about what it is that we believe about our fellow creatures. We now know fish do feel pain when they’re hooked.

Of course, learning more about all the different creatures in the world won’t necessarily translate into more humane behaviour and treatment by us: agribusiness and the meat, fowl and fish industries and outsourcing of some things is leading to practices that I can’t think about without ending up in tears. And it’s growing. Let us not speak of that.

Let us not speak either of our fellow humans, those people whose brains lack something called sensitivity or empathy, or common decency sometimes result in strange and horrific cruelties: like those two men in British Columbia who purposefully starved, then hung a horse. (Which is not to say that there aren’t people who do strange and horrific things to other people, but that’s out of scope for this post.)

I wish I had a wand. I wish I had a wish that would end all of that cruelty and deprivation. Now. For all creatures including human creatures, including the living, breathing planet. Are we not all in this together?

~~

These days, as winter steps in to take over from fall, I am making a big space for my kid self with her stubborn wish for magic. The magic to make bad things go away, to fly with the birds and ride with the unicorns and step into a time machine, an invisible cloak in my purse just in case, and land somewhere to sit for a while and have tea with my mother, wherever she is, who will say, “Nice ears” when she notices that my ears are pointed, and we’ll laugh at something silly and maybe we’ll talk. I’ll tell her how the last few years have been. Maybe my father will wander over for tea too, and he’ll tell us more stories that I once called lies, but would now say are just not true.

Allie the little red poodle will come running full speed from the rainbow bridge, all happy to see me, and ask me to take back a special word to a special someone and of course I will. From there, I’ll step into a starship and gain some very cool superpower when a star goes nova right in front of us, and that superpower means I can help people and creatures when they need it, and then go back to my quiet, unassuming life in a neighbourhood filled with lots of other superheroes.

Then, when that wishful thinking — that dream — comes to an end, I’ll sit cuddled up and close, and have another sip of wishfulness, not thinking about time, place, space; feeling the magic of life and heartbeats and breath as I listen to my dogs and my bird tell me about their day in their very own language that I, as one who carries on with Dr. Dolittle’s methods, actually and instantly understand. And I will be content with that magic, too.

Gia in her sweater, exhausted after helping me write the post

Sleepy Parker, indicating he has no intention of getting up

Tweety did not wish to pose for the camera. We used a stand-in:

Tweety looks like this, or at least he would if he deigned to pose for the camera

A day in the life of a writer

~~~

There it is, in my inbox: a note from the magazine editor. First the good news: the magazine continues to do exceptionally well and is climbing the international magazine charts. This success is creating more demand and this greater demand is translating into more distributers and that means changes to the magazine’s distribution schedule for electronic and hard copy.

Then the other news: a changed distribution schedule means a changed production schedule and a changed production schedule means that deadlines for final proofs has changed and that means final copy is needed sooner by many days; as in, (let’s talk about me shall we?) I have an earlier and therefore less flexible deadline within which to get final copy to her.

I read the note with widening eyes. Pushed-up deadline? Oh no. Less time to write. Less time to produce something brilliant.

She says she hopes that the changed timeline isn’t a problem but if it is, can I please let her know because she’s sure she can come up with something to fill the space. My space.

Problem? Not at all. As much as I might be drumming my fingers and mainlining dark chocolate and espresso <harumph> I do not miss a hard deadline. And I certainly do not miss a hard deadline for work that carries my byline.

Besides, if CERN is ready to announce its findings on the existence of the Higgs boson, surely I can meet a deadline that’s been pushed up. Now all I need is that little thing to write about that I like to call, a better idea than the one I currently have.