Tunneling and Faking

This week I finally came to terms with my addiction to narcotic pain killers. On Monday and Tuesday of this week I felt sick, as if I were getting influenza, and depression and insomnia were bad. There was also a very disconcerting sensation, like electricity in my muscles, that compelled me to flex and tighten my arms and legs. I was in a ha' penny place, to be sure. But at the time I stupidly didn't make the connection. There was probably some denial going on.

Now that it's Thursday, and I've been without a Vicodin for 4 days, I'm starting to feel better. I'm concerned that I don't see myself as a teetotaler when it comes to narcotics. The idea that I'll never take them again (unless I really need them) is hard to accept. I'm just going to give them a wide berth for awhile, and concentrate on the drugs I'm actually supposed to take. Drug addiction makes a person do things that they would never do otherwise, like faking an injury in an emergency room (yes, I've done that). And then there was the time I tried to tunnel under the local Walgreen's and drill a hole in the floor under the pharmacy. I missed and emerged next to the magazine rack in aisle four. I took a bag of Twizzlers and a Cosmopolitan and moled out.

More as this story develops.

Of Cat Temptation and Owen Wilson

Couldn't sleep last night, so I plucked Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome from off my bookshelf and read it. It's only 77 pages long, so it's not like reading Les Miserables in one night, but I'm happy that I finally did it. I bought the book when in college, after a friend of mine said that she couldn't stand it. So about 12 years ago, I bought it and never looked at it. Now it sits read and spent on my night table. I'm not going to write a review, but I liked it quite a lot. The scene where Ethan walks past a cemetery that just happens to have a gravestone with his name on it was strangely compelling to me. The stone reads:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF
ETHAN FROME AND ENDURANCE HIS WIFE
WHO DWELLED TOGETHER IN PEACE
FOR FIFTY YEARS

Excellent. I love gravestones, myself, so that might explain, on some level, why I paused and thought about that for ten minutes or so before I continued reading. Actually, I that was most likely the point that I also went to the kitchen for a glass of iced tea.

Riveting!

I'm sad to learn that Owen Wilson, the actor and screenwriter, tried to knock himself off via overdose and slashed wrists. He's an extremely likable fellow, and his choice of movies to get involved in is quite good; The Life Aquatic, The Royal Tenenbaums (also screenwriter) and Wedding Crashers. If he can't resist the urge to jump out a proverbial open window I'm not sure what chance I have. Then again, that's been true for years. Not knowing what chance I have, that is.

Thanks go out to Michael, who tirelessly puts together the blog Art Nudes. There's now a link to this blog from there. Please don't let the "content warning" turn you away, this isn't pornography. I'll provide a link to his blog, if I haven't already. He tells me that he is also an atheist cat lover, although he has merely three cats. But I'm sure he knows that if you have three, you can easily end up with another, and then another. It's so easy to imagine myself becoming a crazy cat lady. Not so much the lady part, but the crazy cat part. I have a stray cat I'm feeding regularly in addition to the four I already have in my flat with me. Do you want another cat, Michael? C'mon, you know you do.

Like A Bug

I'm not sure what is exactly behind the infrequent postings to this blog, except that my mental state is at least a little bit to blame. Therefore, I'm to blame, but I'm not going to apologize because there's only about a dozen people who read this thing. Part of my recent, particularly nasty bout with depression and suicidal thoughts is linked in a small way with my lack of money. I'm really not complaining, though. As a nihilist I have a completely illogical but very sinister fear that the universe will squash me like a bug if I don't appreciate how fortunate I am. I do, I really do. Every time I think about complaining, particularly about money (most people have little if any), I think about the fellow who tried to save his dog after it jumped into a hot spring at a national park. The dog died, as did the heroic owner, both of third degree burns over 100 percent of their respective bodies. So not having the price of a newspaper for the next few days shouldn't bother me that much.

And it doesn't, but a little bit, yes. I'm literally and figuratively hiding out in this flat, from people. That's a good thing when penniless. If I had a sudden strong desire to go to the symphony, or even get a damn cup of coffee in the square, I'd be unfulfilled. The bills are paid, there's food in the house, and I obviously still have Comcast. No small things, those. Mainly I wish I had a little disposable income for when I do things with my girlfriend. Ah, well.

A much bigger problem is my brain, and my mind. Depression is mean. It doesn't provide a struggle that can be romanticized, and one doesn't grow from it. My primary psychiatric diagnosis, bipolar disorder, has variants. Mine is "rapid cycling," which means I bounce between "clinical" depression and hypomania. I've spoken to people who suffer from unipolar depression, and bad, and they seem to think they have it worse off than people who at least get to go through periods of hypomania or mania. That may be true, given how perfectly awful is depression. But the bipolar aspect means heinous instability and makes social interaction so difficult. I wish I would, or could, just overcome it, perhaps with will and medication. I've been essentially trying to do that since my first hospitalization. I'm starting to feel defeated. This may not be a passage to another place. This may be the place. Ah, well.

Kent and Michelle will be celebrating their anniversary tomorrow. Happy anniversary.

Jesus Tiger Man

Earlier this evening I felt compelled to sit through two hours of Christiane Amanpour's "God Warriors: Christians" on CNN. It was very well done and informative, but that's also what made it scary and a leading cause of anxiety in my bedroom. The cats who were with me in the bedroom didn't seemed to be bothered one way or the other. So long there is cat food, wet and dry, and litter, all should be well. But for me, all the talk about evil "secular progressives" (just for the record, I'm at the very least a "secular progressive") made me want to try for the Canadian border. There, I could admit that I'm an existential nihilist, atheist, socialist, and believer in evolutionary biology safe in the bosom of a free country. The people in this country are fit to be tied, if Amanpour is at all correct in her portrayal.

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: The author will no longer take part in discussions about Jesus Christ, part of the Holy Trinity and Saviour of Man. He will, however, gladly talk about Jesus the albino tiger trainer and Jesus the IT guy at Salvatore's Jerks and Rubs out of Seacaucus, New Jersey.

Mind Blowing Blueberry Muffins

I've been terribly depressed and feeling a bit funky of late and haven't written much for Zeitgeist Expatriate. So in lieu of me babbling about chicken wings and oven mitts and what-not and hootinanny, I'm going to post this recipe for outstanding blueberry muffins. As a staff psychologist at The Arbour (a nuthouse in Jamaica Plain) once told me, "You don't have to blow your brains out, just make muffins."

A portion of the blueberries is mashed, to make these muffins very blue.
INGREDIENTS:

* 1/4 cup butter, softened
* 2/3 cup sugar
* 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon peel
* 1 egg
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 1/4 cups blueberries
* 1 cup plus 2 tbsp cake flour, sifted
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/3 cup milk
* 1/4 cup chopped pecans, optional
* Topping:
* 1 teaspoon sugar mixed with 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon or ground nutmeg

PREPARATION:
Preheat oven to 375°. In large bowl, cream butter, sugar, and lemon until light, about 4 to 5 minutes. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mash 1/4 cup of the blueberries and beat into batter. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

Fold dry ingredients into batter, a little at a time, alternating with milk. Fold in remaining 1 cup blueberries and the pecans, if using. Spoon into 8 paper lined muffin cups. Sprinkle each muffin with the sugar and spice mixture. Bake until muffins spring back when lightly touched, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Notes From A Nudist Camp

So the poll closed with Ann Coulter and Dick Cheney in a tie for Biggest Douchebag. In the event of a tie, I cast the deciding vote for who will win the "Douchey." But I find myself unable to choose at this point. Inititially, Dick Cheney had my vote just because he actually has the power to get things done; horrible, stupid, nasty things. On the other hand, Ann Coulter is just...wow. I'll vote later, right now it's on to nudism.

This past weekend my girlfriend and I went to a nudist campground in Western Massachusetts, which you may know if you read my little bloggie. It was our first time, as a couple and as individuals, and naturally there was a great deal of reticence. Many of our friends had difficulty understanding the appeal of such an endeavor. It's very simple, really. If you like camping and swimming, there was that. I figured that nudists would be especially inclined to accept people regardless of appearance, and I was right. Linda and I enjoyed swimming and relaxing on the beach in a way that would have been impossible (at least for me) had I been wearing a bathing suit. It's ironic that a fellow who despises his body would find solace hangin' with the nudies, but simply put that is exactly what happened. Naturally, it was hard at first (ha!) but after a very short time (a couple of minutes of exposure) we both relaxed and it turned into a fantastic experience. No point in worrying about how you look when you're buck naked, so you might as well enjoy the cool water, the hot sun and the welcome warmth of the fire pit.

If I had a choice right now to go swimming at a "normal" beach and swimming naked with other naked people I'd have to go with naked. Actually, it's not even close. So am I a "nudist" now? Should I put that in with atheist, socialist, meta-ethical relativist and existential nihilist? Probably not, just because I don't have the money to recreate and rusticate very often, not that it's any more expensive than any other campground. But I definitely wouldn't mind being called a "nudist" and Linda and I plan on going again. So there you go. I recommend it highly.

Last night I couldn't sleep for some reason but as I tried to sleep I thought about this past weekend. I took a little itinerary of all the things I hate about my body; man boobs, loose skin, short legs, surgical scar and lack of balls. The lack of balls isn't really visible unless you really focus on my package, but it bothers me for other reasons (a barren, sterile existence that ends when I die). So it's fair to say that there was something cathartic about the whole nude experience, and it was profound enough that it may even lead to a modicum of peace with myself over my appearance.

And bathing in the communal, open shower was a wild ride. The hot water in that cold, morning air felt so damn good. Another observation that I feel compelled to relate is that nudists are insanely friendly people. I'm sure they could tell by our alabaster white asses that we were new to the whole experience. My ancestry is Scottish, and Linda's is English, and we looked it. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of my beloved and become a little aroused, but not much more than it happens when we have clothes on. Sexual tension is just not an issue...it's a campground. I was at least as inclined to make a s'more or try to identify the tiny toads that hopped around our feet as I was to want to fuck. I understand that a few places fuse the nudist crowd with the swinging crowd, but generally speaking (from my research and this experience) it is two very different scenes.

A doctor we talked to has a package that looked like Jimmy Durante in profile; he had a fabulous penis for nudity. My penis retreated like a frightened turtle, which didn't bother me one bit. It never hides when I need it, and I didn't really need it for swimming or chilling by the fire. Generally speaking, people don't look all that great nude. I'll take nude over sweat pants or a Speedo. It literally just takes a few minutes to get over the strangeness of being (and seeing other people) nude out in the open. There's a sort of social contract about seeking acceptance and asking to be treated with respect. It's rather moving to surrender to complete strangers about something that is so personal, with such emotional currency, as seeking body acceptance.

Hawai'ian Shirt and Black Jeans

These past few days have found me relatively distracted, and I've been irresponsibly forgetting to take my psychiatric medication, namely lithium carbonate and gabapentin. The racing thoughts that keep my up at night, and often compel an early rise in the morning if I do manage to fall asleep, have done a good job of reminding me that I have to do better when it comes to popping my prescribed pills. Mental illness is like that, though. Every so often you manage to kid yourself into believing that medication is superfluous. It's not. Without it I become insanely withdrawn, very suicidal, prone to tears and irritable. I take so many damn medications; testosterone, levoxythyroxine, lithium, Neurontin, Zyprexa, Lexapro, lorazepam, cyanocobalamin injection, Zomig. I'm lucky to have the drugs I need, but it's still a hassle. The day will come when this soul-less lump of flesh will die and I won't need any fucking drugs then. I'm 35, and given the way I'm pounding my liver with all these drugs I shouldn't have too much time left. Probably more behind me than in front. That's what they call a tender mercy.

I had to get together some information from my telephone book thick medical record. I discovered an intake interview from Somerville Mental Health from about six years ago. Most of this stuff I'm taking with me to my grave, but some of it is amusing. Here's what the interviewer said about yours truly:

Patient presents at interview clean cut in Hawai'ian shirt and black jeans, has somewhat pressured speech, is anxious some of the time but mood changes to withdrawn and thoughtful rapidly. His affect is somewhat flat and complains of suicidal ideation, severe depression and has been isolating himself of late. His thought process is logical. Content is strongly guilt-centered and focused on severe self-blame that can lead to moments of paranoia. Concentration and memory seem to be good. Intelligence is very high, as is insight. Judgement, impulse control and reliability are good.

My favorite part is Section 10: Client Strengths and Coping Skills. It reads like this:

Client is likeable, very intelligent, creative, thoughtful, has a good sense of humor and is highly motivated to return to work and school. Suicidal ideation and a demonstrated creative inclination to act on feelings of profound self-hatred, including self-harm, make him a suicide risk in the near future.

It's true that this makes me look crazy, but that doesn't bother me. At least they say I'm not stupid! As for "motivated," I don't know about that. I guess it's true that I've always taken my "recovery" seriously. Back then I didn't know that it would only get slightly better. Slightly better, though, is better than nothing.

There's some other good stuff here in my medical record, but it's a little embarrassing. Even I have some scruples about sharing everything with you, dear readers. It's like how they release top secret documents many years later. Perhaps in five years I'll post what the psychiatric people are saying about me now.

The scariest part of my medical record was the notation surrounding my gastric surgery. When I read about how elaborate the procedure is and what they are doing to that poor patient, I get the willies. Then I realize it's me they're working on. Yeesh.

That's about all for right now. I want to mention to AC, however, that us Socialists have no problem with being called, "Commies." It's inaccurate, but not an insult. Actually, AC talked about a few things I want to write about, so I'll put that in the next post. I'm off!

A Distant August

Regular readers of my little 'blog have probably read about David McReynolds, and the admiration I feel for him. I call him a "friend" even though I haven't seen him in going on ten years. And when I did, in and around various Socialist Party conventions and whatnot, I'm sure it meant a hell of a lot more to me than it did to him. We do correspond, and that is how I stay in touch with most of my friends. He's also a comrade, in the Socialist Party and in the much wider socialist/pacifist movement worldwide.

In his essays and articles (including this one), he makes points that strike me as particularly salient. I read a great deal, and some of what I read is from activists who are much younger than he is (sometimes younger than I). That is part of the reason I know how valuable he is to every thinking, compassionate person, not just to socialist pacifists like myself. Part of what makes him so special is his modesty. If you've ever been a political activist you know how rare that is, just ask Cindy Sheehan. Just for the record, I worked a lot closer to Bill S back in the day (the man who founded the SP Boston Local and who is passionate about unions and the plight of workers) and he is also cut from that cloth. He never let his ego, or petty turf wars, get in the way. But I really haven't spoken to him in over ten years, and I think he wants to beat me with a sock full of nickels for my frequent, spectacular resignations from the party.

I urge you to read David's short article about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I'll leave it at that.

--------------------------------------------------------
EdgeLeft: An occasional Column by David McReynolds

As I write this, late on August 6th, 2007, it is already a day later in Japan. Sixty two years ago the people of Hiroshima, those who survived, were stunned and in agony. Nagasaki, the old Christian center in Japan, still stood, three days would pass before it, too, melted in an instant of fire.

That summer, on that day, I was at a Baptist youth camp near Los Angeles. Word of the bombing reached us and I knew what it was from an item that had been carried some time earlier in the old "Ripley’s Believe It or Not" which had reported that, "believe it or not" a weapon is being devised, based on uranium, that is so powerful than one pound of it would destroy an entire city.

However knowing what it was, and understanding it, were two very different things. I was not yet seventeen and, like almost all the youth in the United States (or in Japan or Germany or the Soviet Union) I was totally committed to my own country, and to the war in which it was engaged. I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Hawaii, so the date of December 7th, 1941, was not abstract but immediate. And in the case of Hiroshima there was also a special link - my father. Lt. Col. Charles McReynolds - had been with the B-29 command from its beginnings, and had been assigned as an Army Air Force Intelligence Officer to CBI (China/Burma/India). He had flown on the first bombing run of the B-29, over Bangkok. (And as he wrote us, he had chalked the names of each of us three children on bombs that were dropped there).

Only those of us who were children at that time can understand the "totalitarian" spirit loose in the lands of war. It is a tribute to the sense of what America is (and Great Britain) that pacifists were tolerated, jailed, but not executed. (And because that war was special - Hitler was not the Kaiser - even those who refused to join in the hymns to war also did not organize a resistance to it).

By 1951 I had become a socialist and a pacifist and finally, six years after the events of that August, understood what Hiroshima and Nagasaki meant. Let us clear up at once the notion that those two bombings were a unique barbarism. The allies had already laid waste to Dresden, a non-military German target, destroying it by fire. And the US had, in one night of fire-bombing, killed more people in Tokyo than were to die in Hiroshima. Rather, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the coda for the vast incomprehensible barbarism of World War II.

When that war began, before Hitler had launched the ultimate pogrom against the Jews, and before the US had been drawn into the conflict, the world was stunned at Hitler’s bombing of Rotterdam, in Holland. Rotterdam had been declared an "open city", which meant it was not a military target, and would offer no defense. When the Nazis launched heavy air attacks on the city it was considered an attack unique in modern history. Yet, modern war being what it is, the Allies proceeded, step by step, to make Hitler’s crimes seem mundane. (Except for the Holocaust, in which twelve million people were exterminated because they were Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Socialists, Communists, or simply old and sick).

The descent to barbarism had begun with Rotterdam. It ended with Dresden and then with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whatever moral difference had existed when the war began were erased by its end. The victors had been morally conquered by the enemy.

Let me pause for a moment to deal with why the bombs were used, since Americans have been very reluctant to confront this, despite substantial evidence that the bombs were not needed. We have been told that the sad choice of nuclear bombs saved perhaps a million lives - our own men and the Japanese who would have died in a final conflict for Japan. Certainly the Japanese troops were absolutely fierce in battle. (I’d recommend the remarkable film by Clint Eastwood - Letters From Iwo Jima - in which the epic battle for that island is shot entirely from the Japanese point of view, with English subtitles).

But the Japanese leadership knew they had lost the war. At least two, and I believe three, "feelers" were put out by the Japanese government to find the terms of surrender. One went via Moscow and may not have been delivered to the US, since the Soviets planned to enter the war at the last minute (as they did). I have heard some argue that the Japanese made impossible demands. The fact is they were asking what the terms would be, and were concerned that the person of the Emperor not be touched (something the US granted after the surrender).

My father, who job was to study the photographic evidence from aerial reconnaissance, told me shortly after he returned home from the war, that he was convinced the nuclear weapons did not need to be used - that while the air war against Germany had not achieved its aims, in the case of Japan it had. Rail lines were broken, ports closed, transport at a virtual standstill. This view was advanced by others in the US military at the time, and they expressed greater reservations about the bombing than the US political leadership. Why then, were these bombs used? One reason was clear - a shot across the bow of the Soviet Union. We were then allies with the USSR, but those who made US policy sensed a coming conflict and thought it wise to let the Soviets know where the US stood.

And the other reason was simply because we had the weapons and wanted to test them. There is something childlike about men, even in matters of war. Would Congress ever have forgiven President Truman if it discovered that a weapon developed at enormous expense had not been used?

What made Hiroshima and Nagasaki so urgent, a message sent by nuclear post, was that either war was over, or the human race was. Wars have continued, but not since 1945 has there been a conflagration such as World War II. (Though not because that notion did not have strong support among some intellectuals in the West who, having so little sense of what war really was, could rally around the cowardly slogan "Better Dead Than Red").

I have been to Hiroshima more than once in the years since 1945, to stand there in the peace park, to wait for the exact second when the bomb when off. The world owes a special debt to the Japanese peace movement which has never let us forget, which had reached out, year after year, to remind us of what nuclear weapons really mean. While US political leaders - in collaboration with the worst part of the Japanese political establishment - has pressed Japan to end the "Article Nine" of its constitution, which forbids Japan from making war, the peace movement there, from the grass roots on up, has resisted. Both the Socialists and the Communists in Japan have rejected the idea that "in the right hands" a nuclear weapon might be a good thing.

We have seen other nations acquire these weapons - Russia, France, Britain, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa (briefly - the only nation thus far to test a nuclear weapon and then discard the program) - and still other nations hunger for them.

But the non-nuclear wars we have seen since 1945 - particularly the US attack on Indochina in which over three million people lost their lives in Vietnam alone, or the current US and British attack on Iraq which has destroyed a nation - remind us of the fact that even the most "conventional" wars can destroy nations.

The danger is always there that nuclear powers will be tempted, in a time of tension, to attempt a first strike (are there any among us who have not seen Dr. Strangelove?). The lesson from the ruins of those two cities destroyed in the middle of the last century is not that nuclear weapons must be banned (though indeed they should be!) but that it is war as an institution which must be dismantled, and alternative means found to resolve the deepest conflicts between nations. Until that lesson is learned, the terrible pain of those days in a distant August will lack meaning.

(David McReynolds was on the staff of War Resisters League for 39 years, served as chair of War Resisters International and was twice the Socialist Party’s candidate to President. He is retired and lives with his two cats on Manhattan’s Lower East Side)

$8.99 Pissed Away

I'm not sure what compelled me to do so, but yesterday as I floated over the white linoleum, through the wide aisles, and under the crazy-bright lights of my local Walgreen's I picked up a Just For Men hair coloring kit. It would be a change in my appearance, and that alone made me think it was a good idea. The man on the box smiled an implicit promise that the product he was pitching would make me absolutely irresistable to women, and one out of ten men. His smile said, "Your hair looks ridiculous...come on, give me a shot." So I did. Well, not entirely. I shelled out the $8.99 but I never applied the patented sex-a-licious formula. Why? Two reasons. My father warned me that it would make my hair absurdly black, more black than it has ever been. I was pretty much born with gray hair, and the shock would be...shocking. And two, the color of the dye in the bottle made me think that my head would look like the tip of a felt pen. The picture below represents a rough approximation of what my noggin would look like after application of the Just For Men ink, er..dye. Notice that a tuft of jet black hair got in my cheese sandwich. Anyway, fuck up averted.