Helpless

Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome and Me

2011-04-29T20:59:00.004-05:00

Not long ago, I got a phone call from someone who read one of my blog entries. He's a young man suffering from chronic pelvic pain syndrome, or CPPS. Listening to his story, his frustration and grief, took me back to the point in my own life five years ago when I started experiencing CPPS symptoms, to when I received my diagnosis and was told there's no effective cure or treatment. The isolation, the anger and shame and depression and hopelessness--it all came back to me. I truly did experience helplessness at that time.

I muddled through the pain and the emotions, and somehow, I felt my way into a set of practices that slowly but steadily gave my life back to me. Feeling very fortunate, I put up a couple of web pages about my experience, in hopes that it might help someone else. So I'm very grateful to this young man, and to the handful of people who've emailed me about CPPS. I very much appreciate your feedback. As a result, I've revised, updated and expanded my CPPS web site--it's here. Thank you, all of you, for your helpful comments and questions.

CPPS is isolating. At the worst point, my CPPS kept me from traveling more than a half an hour by car. I had trouble sitting through movies. I didn't feel like going out. The isolation fed into the sadness and hopelessness. So, when I hear from anyone who has CPPS, I respond as quickly as I can.

If you're suffering from CPPS, please take a look at my CPPS web site. I hope you find something there that helps. At any rate, it's free, and it's the best information I have available to me at the moment, based on what works for me. And if you have a question or just want to communicate with someone who's been there, please write me. You should be able to find my email address on my blog.

What is the Alexander Technique?

2010-07-02T14:34:00.003-05:00

In India, sadhus (ascetic students of yoga) sometimes practice austerities, committing themselves to difficult, long-term observances. One example is hand raising. A devoted sadhu may decide to raise his hand and never lower it. We in the West look at a practice like hand raising and wonder how a person could do that. We would never choose to deliberately contort our bodies for years at a time.

But in fact, like the hand-raising sadhus, we do practice bodily austerities. The difference between us and the sadhus is that they consciously choose to practice mindfully. But we develop our bodily contortions unconsciously, mindlessly, seldom realizing what we are doing to ourselves.

As young children, we are taught to sit still for long periods of time, often in chairs or desks that don't quite fit our growing bodies. We learn to focus our minds and ignore bodily sensations. At home, we learn how to slump on the sofa and watch TV or play video games, remaining out of touch with our bodies as we lose ourselves in the sounds and images. We learn how to deal with tension and unwanted emotions by holding them in our bodies. We graduate and take jobs that demand continual repetition of bodily movements, maybe on an assembly line, maybe at a desk. If we have a career devoted to abstract mental tasks, we sit for hours at a time in poorly designed office furniture, working with our minds and ignoring our bodies.

In our 20s and into our 30s, our youthful bodies can adapt remarkably well. Somewhere in our late 30s, however, our bodies most likely begin to try to get our attention--a little twinge here, a small ache there. By the time we're in our 40s, after a couple decades practicing the Western equivalent of hand-raising, our bodies raise the volume of their protests. The aches and pains are more intense and last longer. We might have a sleepless night once in awhile or miss a day of work now and then. Pain relievers and sleep aids begin appearing in our medicine cabinets. A chiropracter or massage therapist might find a place in our address books.

And then one day, our bodies finally demand our undivided and complete attention. The pain reaches a level of intensity that cannot be appeased, and it does not go away. We discover that the medical community has no good answer for our suffering. We wonder how this happened, and we begin searching for a way out.

If you are as lucky as I am, you may find an Alexander Technique instructor. The Alexander Technique has been a very important part of my way out of chronic pain. An instructor can see unnatural patterns of muscular tension and knows how to help the student perceive them, too. She gradually, patiently guides the student to release muscles that have been held dysfunctionally for years. Instead of trying to teach an idea of correct or good posture, which really is just another form of bodily holding and rigidity, she instills the idea of ease of use, of the body as a dynamic, ever-moving system.

Much about the Technique seems counterintuitive or just plain wrong at first. The Technique is a form of undoing, of unlearning, of breaking habits, of changing the way the body is felt and perceived. When the instructor first helps the body release into an easier state, it often feels odd, or even wrong. Many times, my instructor has had to show me in the mirror that, no, despite the sensation that I'm leaning to the left, that I'm tipping forward, that my legs are bent, in reality, I am standing more nearly upright than I have in a long time.

The Technique can be an emotional as well as a physical exploration. The body can hold anger, fear, embarrassment, shame, guilt. Releasing the body can be like opening a shaken bottle of emotional soda. The emotions can bubble up, memories can gush into consciousness. The enhanced bodily awareness I've received from the Technique also is an enhanced emotional awareness. When I feel my left abdomen tensing, I know I'm becoming upset. When I feel my lower back become rigid, I'm aware that I'm feeling embarrassed.

The Technique is an ongoing education. The lessons continue out in daily life. I learn something new about my body and emotions nearly every day. The Alexander work has given me a sense of curiosity about my body and its relationship to my mind and the world around me. I'm feeling a pain in my jaw? That's interesting! I wonder what would happen if I invite my shoulder to relax? I'm feeling tension in my hip. Fascinating! Could it be related to this deadline I'm working under? What would happen if I took a short break and breathed deeply for a few seconds?

After a couple of years of working with my Alexander instructor, I am free of the chronic pain that led me to her. But I continue the work. As each layer of tension, each pattern of holding, peels away, I find a new layer underneath. Lifting away the pain reveals new possibilities of a visceral joy and ease. I can't wait to see what I'll find tomorrow.

Mortification in 12 Items or Less

2010-05-03T09:38:00.004-05:00

I enjoy grocery shopping. I usually run into someone I know and have a chance to catch up with them. The grocery store is a great place to practice mindfulness and patience. I'm rarely in a hurry when I'm at the store. It's a good opportunity to tune into the fact that everyone shopping is trying to feed a household, trying to make sense of the huge selection of foods, trying to balance quality and taste and budget.

Yesterday afternoon, I went down to the store to pick up a couple of items we needed for dinner. As I made my way through the busy parking lot and entered the store, I patted myself on the back for remembering the tote bag. I grabbed a basket and walked the aisles, patiently waiting for people, picking out the few things I was searching for--milk, bread, jelly--adding a couple things I knew we might need that weren't on the list--some granola bars, a pound of hamburger. I rechecked the list and headed for the check-out lines.

The store was busy, and all the lines were full. I counted the items in my basket--eight--and headed for the express line. The express line is served by two check-out stations, each with a sign hanging overhead that reads "Express line--12 items or less." I stopped behind a woman waiting her turn. To my left was a girl of about 12, pushing a cart that was sort of in the nearby line, but kind of angled into the express line. I looked at her. She smiled and said, "I'm with my mom," and nodded at the woman ahead of me.

That is when I heard someone's voice blurting out, "That's 12 items or less?" My voice. The woman ahead of me turned and looked at the cart, looked at her daughter, and looked at me and said, "No, you're right, we're in the wrong line." It seemed to me she spoke those words less than enthusiastically, with a smile that seemed a bit on the icy side as she maneuvered her daughter and the cart to the back of the nearby line.

As the cashier rang up my items, I had time to feel into what had just happened. All kinds of thoughts flew through my head. Despite all my midwestern nice-guy upbringing, I had corrected this mother in public, in front of her child. Sure, I was right. But I was in no hurry. I could have waited a couple minutes while her groceries were checked out. But I was right, damn it! I hadn't been nasty about it. But how would I have felt if someone had scolded me, even nicely, in front of my children? I let go of the train of thought as best I could and felt into the emotions running underneath, a rich stew of embarrassment and defensiveness, and even some compassion. Ah, mindfulness practice! So easy to do when things are simple and going well, so hard when I manage to insert my foot deeply into my mouth.

At that moment, in this busy store, somehow, the express line emptied. I was the only person at the express counter. The efficient young cashier at the next express register called out to the person at the end of the next line, "Ma'am, I can help you over here." The person at the end of the next line happened to be the woman with more than 12 items.

"Oh!" she replied loudly--very loudly--"but I have 16 items!"

"That's okay," said the cashier. "I'll check you out."

The daughter was grinning at her mom as she wheeled the cart up to the next register. I quickly picked up my tote bag and gallon of milk, sidled by, and headed out the door. The bag seemed a little bit heavier, what with the extra helping of mortification the universe had tossed in at the last minute.

Joy, Ambivalence, and the Quest for Rational Household Wiring

2010-05-02T10:55:00.001-05:00

It all started when our HD TV began misbehaving. A couple of years ago, Di and I bought a 32-inch Westinghouse LTV32w6HD LCD HD TV. It's a fine TV, doing exactly what we'd hope a TV would do: reliably display TV-signal content. Or at least it did, for quite awhile. But last year, it began having trouble displaying a stable picture. The problem went away on its own, but returned again this year. At first I thought the jitters might be related to a poor cable TV signal. But I noticed that the problem appeared immediately, while the set was warming up, and also when trying to watch DVDs from our DVD player.

So last weekend, Di and I looked at HD TVs on the web site of a big-box electronics store, found a couple we thought we might like, and drove to the local outlet. We chose a Sony Bravia KDL40EX400. We brought the new set home, moved the Westinghouse downstairs pending disposal, and installed the Sony in its place in the family room. I fired up the Sony, did an autoscan, and life was good.

Or so I thought. But on closer examination, the Sony had missed several HD cable channels that the Westinghouse had found. And occasionally, the few HD channels it did find were as jittery as the picture on the Westinghouse.

I began to suspect our home's TV cabling. We'd had trouble with our cabling before, when we'd had the cable company install broadband service. Much of the cable in our home was actually outside our home, run along the foundation and up the siding, from splitters near the point where utilities entered the house. I knew splitters were evil, so I disconnected all the exterior splitters to give the best possible signal on the cable we would use for broadband service. The cables off the exterior splitters all went to the bedrooms on the topmost level. Since we never watched TV in bed, this was not a sacrifice. We still had a cable signal to the two outlets we used, one in the basement and one in the family room.

But the cable installer told us the signal at the outlets was marginal for broadband, even after he cleaned up several issues with the cable plant leading up to the house. He was sure that there were several splitters buried inside the drywall that were causing the poor signal. He finally installed a splitter in the utility room, right after the point where the cable entered our home, and ran a new cable from the splitter to the cable modem. That worked. We had Internet service, we had a cable TV signal, all was well.

But now, I knew that our cable TV signal was marginal for HD service. I had two choices: Rewire the house, or try a cable amplifier. Rewiring the house seemed like an expensive, laborious process, and would probably require punching several holes in the drywall throughout the house, and then drywall patching and painting. An amplifier seemed like a much more reasonable solution--if it worked.

A little googling led me to the Radio Shack 15-2505 Bidirectional Cable TV Amplifier. At $32.99, it would be much cheaper and easier than rewiring. I went down to the local Radio Shack and bought one, and bought a couple of probably overpriced patch cables and a power strip. I drove home, went down to the utility room, plugged in the power strip and the amp, ran the patch cables, and presto! We had HD TV on the Sony. I did another autoscan. The Sony picked up all the HD channels and had a great picture. Success!

On a hunch, I plugged in the Westinghouse in the basement and turned it on. The jitters were gone! My best guess is that the poor signal affects the Westinghouse right at power-on, even if the input source is set to something other than the cable input. This makes the Westinghouse extremely sensitive to signal quality. But with a good signal, no problem.

Time to sit back, pop a cold one, and bask in contentment from a job well down. But... My sysadmin ethos would not let me relax. Not yet. Not with a rat's nest of cable and an amp and power strip sitting loose on a shelf down in the utility room. Long had the technophile half of me dreamed of some kind of elegant structured home wiring system--a beautiful home-run phone-cable TV-data plant centered around a panel in the utility room that would house some kind of phone distribution center, an Ethernet switch, and a cable TV amplified splitter. I'd fantasized about how to pull cable into various hard-to-get-at locations around the house, without breaking out the drywall. I'd spent lost hours googling for equipment, staring at the structured wiring center at a home improvement store, doodling cable runs on pieces of scrap paper. Yes--I admit it. I am a geek.

Here was an opportunity to do something along these lines, to clean up the mess in the utility room and create some tiny beginning, some small seed, of a sensible home wiring system. I grabbed the step ladder and a tape measure, headed downstairs to cries of "What are you up to?" from Di, took a few measurements, and headed out. First stop: Nagle Lumber, where I found a scrap of plywood just the right size. I bought some other items I needed--screws and some plastic cable clips--and headed home. Down to the basement again, and an hour or so later, I had the power strip and amplifier mounted on screws from the plywood bolted to the wall.

The patch cables hung from plastic clips.

Beautiful!

At last! Time to sit back and enjoy the fruits. But a couple things about this adventure diminished my contentment. For one thing, I like to spend money at locally owned businesses, but for various reasons, Di and I had bought our Sony at a big-box store--we hadn't even looked at a local appliance store. Slager's is the only one that comes to mind. I did go to Nagle's, a locally owned home improvement store. But that was depressing--it sure looks like Nagle's is not getting much traffic.

I'd tried placing the cable amp near the TV, in hopes that if it worked, I could put the power brick for the amp on the power strip for our home entertainment center. We like to turn the power strip off when no one is using any of the audio/video equipment, to eliminate phantom loads. The amp doesn't need to draw current when no one is watching TV. But putting the amp near the TV did not produce a usable signal. For the best signal, the amp needs to be placed before the splitters. This means the amp will be on all the time, even when the TVs are off.

Finally, all my effort produced a better TV signal. But is that necessarily a good thing? Now all the reality TV shows, the political mud fests, the stupid pet tricks--all that is now available to me in HD. Great. Okay, I do get a beautiful HD picture on our PBS channels, too.

I'm reminded of a passage from Shikasta, by Doris Lessing. She describes a typical middle-class mother in a developed country going about her daily routine, shopping for groceries and making a meal--but unlike mothers in ages past, her satisfaction in providing for her family is tinged with doubt and anxiety. She knows that maybe the food she's serving her family really isn't all that good for them, maybe it's laden with pesticides, maybe it's tainted, maybe it was produced in a manner that contributes to the destruction of the ecosystem.

Oh, but, hey! Look at that! Madonna is on The Marriage Ref! Honey, could you get me another brewski?

Transparency

2010-02-25T13:46:00.001-06:00

The folks at the Sunlight Foundation aren't putting virtual logos of contributors on speakers at the health care summit, but they have the right idea. As each person speaks, a list of their top contributors appears beside the window. Great idea!

Claire Davies Saves My Life--Again!

2010-02-21T08:12:00.003-06:00

What one book would I want with me if I were stranded on a desert island? Right now, that book would have to be The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook, by Claire Davies. I've been working with a chronic pain condition for the past four years. Self-administered trigger point massage is one of my primary tools. It's relieved my pain and given me back my mobility. Without it, I'd probably still be standing when I ride the bus, unable to drive for more than a few miles at a time, and swallowing handfuls of ibuprofen throughout the day.

And I wouldn't have healed enough to get back out on my bike last summer. My wife loves to bike, and she's missed me for the past couple of years. But last summer, I finally felt whole enough to dust off my bike helmet, pump up the tires on my Trek, and pedal. We had a great time riding around Iowa City on weekends.

On Labor Day, we were flying downhill on Dubuque Street toward Waterworks Prairie Park, when the lip of the pavement caught my front wheel. I crashed down onto my left shoulder and skidded along several yards of concrete. Di said I was going about 30 when it happened. I left a lot of knee and elbow on the road and had a lovely bruise on my left hip for quite awhile, but I didn't break anything. And my bike was fine! I had a little stiffness and pain in my left shoulder, which I figured would improve with time. But gradually, the pain has worsened, and my range of motion has become more limited.

My theory about my pain condition is that it's primarily a mental disease. The problem stems from the idea that the mind is primary and is the master of the body, that will alone can whip the body into line. When pain flares up, the mind goes to work, trying to solve this problem, trying to diagnose and cure, trying to fix things. But this approach almost never works with my chronic pain condition, and in fact, it can lead to worse pain and more limited motion.

After I'd been using trigger point massage awhile and had reduced chronic pain to a manageable level, I began seeing an ease of movement therapist. She's helped me unlearn some of the body patterns that contributed to my pain condition, which has improved my life considerably. With her help, I came to see that I'd been stretching incorrectly, tensing instead of relaxing into the stretch. I've had great success with stretching the way she has taught me; I'm probably more limber now than I was before the pain condition developed.

So as the pain in my shoulder grew and my range of motion decreased, I decided to try to stretch my way back to wholeness. I made what I thought to be an educated guess as to which muscles might be causing the problem and began stretching. I should have known better. This was my old mental pattern sneaking up on me again, convincing me that I could diagnose and fix myself. In fact, I was most likely making things worse. The pain continued to worsen, and I was having trouble putting on my coat or reaching for dishes in the cupboards.

Yesterday, I was on the road for four hours. As I got ready for bed last night, I knew I'd be up again in the dark, knocking back some ibuprofen and sitting down with the heating pad. And I was right. As I sat on the sofa and waited for the heat and the pills to kick in, I dug out my Claire Davies and flipped through the section on shoulders. For some reason, I spent some time with the section on the subscapularis. And there were all my symptoms--why hadn't I seen this before?

I looked at the treatment diagrams and worked my fingers into my armpit. A flash of excruciating it-hurts-so-good-I-can't-stand-it pain, and I knew I was onto something. After I'd worked on my subscapularis for a few minutes, the pain was gone. Remarkable!

So, of course, I've diagnosed and fixed my problem, right? Wrong! The tricky thing about trigger points is that the referred pain can create trigger points in other muscles, creating a complicated web of tension and pain. The pain and limited motion affect the way I hold and move my body, which can overwork other muscles and lead to more problems--which can feed back into the original painful area. I've learned from hard experience that searching for a single cause and a single fix is pointless and can in fact worsen the situation. What works much better is a sense of curiosity and exploration, a sense of acceptance of the body as it is in the present moment and a willingness to work with it just as it is.

Right now, I'm typing this blog relatively pain-free. My shoulder feels great! I'll continue working with the subscapularis. But I know I also need to continue massaging my other shoulder muscles, continue exploratory and tension-free passive stretching, continue checking in with how I'm using my body, with how my thoughts and emotions are interacting with my muscles. It's a way of life, not a quick fix, like a pill, but a very interesting and remarkable journey.

But Claire Davies, you have saved my life again! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Bye-bye, Brugh

2010-02-05T14:55:00.002-06:00

Last December, Brugh Joy passed away. Brugh originally had been a doctor. He'd interned at Johns Hopkins and finished his training at the Mayo Clinic. He was a practicing physician until a bout of pancreatitis steered him toward alternative medicine. Brugh dove into energy healing, Jungian work, and dreams. He left his medical career and began leading self-development workshops. Michael Crichton wrote about his experience at one of Brugh's seminars in his book Travels.

My wife and I do dreamwork once a month with a couple of friends who are students of Brugh's. In 2008, they got me into one of his weekend workshops, in Chicago. It was an amazing experience! At the first meeting, he led a heart-centered ritual that inducted everyone into the work for the weekend. I was amazed at how this one 80-something man could work with all 25 of us, taking each of us deep into the work.

In the evening, after the last session of the day, Brugh was chatting with me, when he casually put his right hand on my chest and his left on my back. I felt intense energy flow through my chest, blowing my heart open. Every morning, we'd do dreamwork. He'd call for dreams, and he'd go around the circle and got right into the meat of each dream immediately. And the dreams I had while I was there were very big, very vivid, as if Brugh's presence had evoked powerful forces from my subconscious.

This turned out to be my only chance to work with Brugh in person. Brugh had had pancreatic cancer sometime in the 1990s and had fully recovered. He was in such good health that he went on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet a couple of years ago. But in 2009, he was diagnosed with a recurrence of his pancreatic cancer, his third experience with pancreatic health issues. This time, there was no recovery.

The way Brugh worked with treatment for his cancer, and the way he approached his death, was a lesson in itself. He treated chemotherapy as if it were a holy sacrament. He was totally open to whatever happened, and he met his own death with a sense of wonder and curiosity.

Most of the people in the Chicago group had known Brugh for several years, some for a couple of decades, so I was surprised and grateful when I received email inviting me to a celebration of Brugh's life with the rest of the group. I went with my friends to Chicago last Sunday, and we all gathered again. We sat in a circle, conducted a Brugh heart ritual, and shared stories. Brugh was certainly there in spirit.

I'm grateful to have had the chance to work with Brugh. He helped me come to terms with my chronic pain condition. He showed me that working with the physical body is a valid spiritual path. His advice to find some type of body movement practice, such as dance or martial arts, led me to tai chi, which has been very good for me on a number of levels. So even though I knew Brugh for just a little while, I'm going to miss him.

Anathem: The Grand Unification of Theories

2010-01-22T16:48:00.012-06:00

While on vacation last week, I finished reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. And then when I got home, I started reading it again. I can't remember the last time I reread a book immediately after my first read. But Anathem is difficult for me to put down.

WARNING! There be spoilers ahead! If you haven't read Anathem but plan to, you may not want to read this post further until you've finished the book.

Thinking about Anathem after reading it for the first time, I realized that in some ways, it's odd that I'm so drawn to this book. For one thing, the book shares much in common with adolescent or young adult fiction. The narrator, Fraa Erasmas, and his friends are all young people about 18 or 19 years old, but as in much adolescent fiction, these youngsters embark on an important adventure. Those in power place these young folk in positions of great responsibility. Out of all the people available for a daring foray that affects the future of an entire planet, this group is chosen. And of course, they come through. I do like some adolescent fiction. I've read all the Harry Potter books, and I still have a warm spot in my heart for such great works of literature as Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert Heinlein. But I don't believe I've ever felt like reading any adolescent fiction twice in a row.

The book also could fall into the category of expository fiction, fiction written to inform the reader. I'm generally not a fan of exposition. I recently read Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan, and I felt that its plot was too contrived and the characters too weak to carry the exposition of the study of consciousness that obviously was the point of the book. The problem I have with the genre is that it's difficult to make exposition interesting. It takes a lot of literary talent to draw me into a story that basically is trying to teach me something.

The plot is nothing new. It's a first contact science fiction novel. There have been many before--H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds; Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End; Carl Sagan's Contact--and there will likely be many to come. Some are interesting, and some have new twists or approach the subject in a new way. But I've read enough of this type of book that I wouldn't expect another in the same vein to spark my interest.

So, what about Anathem has led me to read it again? For one thing, the 7,000-year history of the fictional world of Arbre mirrors that of our planet, which makes Anathem a roman a clef. Part of the fun of reading the book is guessing which philosopher, mathematician or physicist Stephenson is talking about when Fraa Erasmas mentions Saunt Muncoster, Saunt Protas, or Saunt Halikaarn.

Arbre as a reflection of Earth also allows for some almost snarky commentary on contemporary culture. The avout, the people who join the cloistered 5,000-year-old mathic order, have a very long-term view. This makes for much fun at the expense of the common conviction that whatever place and time we happen to be living is the pinnacle of human development. For example, when Fraa Orolo interviews Artisan Quin to learn what to expect the next time the gates are open to the public, he asks,

"Who decides who is and isn't a criminal? Does a woman with shaved eyebrows say 'you are a criminal' and ring a silver bell? Or is it rather a man in a wig who strikes a block of wood with a hammer? Do you thrust the accused through a donut-shaped magnet? Or use a forked stick that twitches when it is brought near evil?"

Some of the commentary is more pointed:

     "Are people starving to death? Or are they sick because they are too fat?"
   Artisan Quin scratched his beard and thought about that one. "You're talking of slines, I assume?"
     Fraa Orolo shrugged.
     Quin thought that was funny. Unlike Artisan Flec, he was not afraid to laugh out loud. "Sort of both at the same time," he finally admitted.

And some is just plain funny:

An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.

As a system administrator who provides computer support for a mathematics department at a university, I'm especially amused by the portrayal of the Ita, the IT support caste. They are seen by the avout as "sneaky, scheming, villainous Ita." Polluted by their contact with the world outside the concent--the Saecular world--and by their knowledge of syntactic praxis--computer technology--the Ita are untouchables, from the point of view of the avout.

The mathic order isn't just a device to set up cultural commentary. It's also a way of exploring a major theme of the book, the relationship between intellectuals--the avout--and nonintellectuals--the extras. In that way, it reminds me of Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel. In Anathem, the relationship between avout and extras has oscillated over several millenia, between assimilation of avout into Saecular life, and isolation in concents. The way the extras view the avout is a matter of survival to the members of the mathic order, who have endured sacks at the hands of the Saecular powers.

Anathem focuses on other uneasy relationships, as well. Within the mathic order, there is a long-standing tension between the syntactic faculties--mathematical formalists--the followers of Saunt Proc, who hold that formal reasoning is essentially devoid of meaning, and the semantic faculties--Platonic realists--the followers of Saunt Halikaarn, who believe that symbols do carry meaning. The majority of the avout exercise Sconic thought and thus are nontheistic, holding that theoretical speculation about anything that exists outside space and time, such as a deity, is out of bounds. They stand in opposition to the Deolaters, anyone inside or outside the order who believes in a god or gods. Within the category of Deolaters, there are Bazians (Catholics), counter-Bazians (Protestants), and other sects.

Like Fraa Arsibalt, one of Fraa Erasmas's friends, Stephenson's novel attempts to find common ground among all these factions. The Arbrean legend of Cnous, Deat and Hylaea mirrors the fact that on Earth, too, religious and secular thought share the same roots. Stephenson tries to unite some of these various points of view by mashing together the idea of other worlds found in physics, mathematics and religion. The novel leads the reader through a series of events that suggest that the world of mathematical ideal forms may be one of the other universes in the multiverse posited by such theories from physics as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics or various cosmological inflation theories. Somehow, Stephenson also manages to bring the Procians, in the person of Fraa Lodoghir, and the Halikaarnians, in the person of Fraa Paphlagon, into some kind of agreement. I'm a little hazy on that point--one of the reasons I'm rereading the book. This sounds like heavy stuff, and there's a danger, as with all expository fiction, that exposition will kill interest. But as Stephenson showed in his Cryptonomicon, he has a talent for leading readers through explanation in an interesting way.

Stephenson isn't trying to come up with some version of the one ultimate absolute truth. He paraphrases Emerson:

The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truth while it's true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.

I suspect that that's what I truly love about Anathem. Stephenson outlines his ideas in great detail, but without being dogmatic. Instead of a religious tract handed out by annoying door-to-door proselityzers, Anathem is more on the order of a beautiful chorale, an artistic work inspired by ideas but not beholden to them. And as Fraa Orolo observers, “Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.”

Another Step Along the Road to America, Inc.

2010-01-21T11:09:00.002-06:00

The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that is one more step toward a United States in which corporations hold citizenship instead of individuals. The ruling frees corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. It is a natural extension of Buckley v. Valeo, which holds that money is equivalent to political speech and therefore political contributions cannot be limited. We have gone from one person, one vote, to one person's dollar, one vote, and finally to one corporation's dollar, one vote.

This shift in power from the individual to the corporation might not necessarily be a bad thing, if the responsibilities of citizenship were being required of corporations, along with the rights of citizenship being conferred upon them. Historically, however, corporations have tried to steer government away from burdening them with responsibility of any kind. Exemptions, deregulation, subsidies, and immunity are the spoils that corporations gain from their contributions. The nuclear power industry is exempt from punitive damages in liability cases. Health insurance companies are exempt from antitrust action. And on and on.

As I mentioned in another blog entry, it looks like the only way to deal with corporate donations is to pass a law that requires elected officials to wear the logos of their donors. If the Supreme Court is not going to allow limits on corporate contributions, then the only recourse is to make sure that the public is aware of which politicians are in the pockets of which corporate entities. And besides, it would just plain be fun to see an elected body full of colorful, NASCAR-like symbols.

Taking One for the Team

2009-12-30T10:27:00.008-06:00

I got an H1N1 vaccination a couple days ago. No jack-booted storm troopers forced me to, no public health bureaucrat ordered me to--I did it of my own free will (if such a thing truly exists). In fact, I paid $10 for the privilege.

I'm not one who believes that the medical establishment has all the answers. Traditional Western medicine is not very good at dealing with chronic pain, for example. Western medicine has little to offer those who have the kinds of neuromuscular problems that can cause things like chronic pelvic pain syndrome--something I've experienced first-hand. I've had to search outside the medical establishment to find effective treatment for chronic pain.

However, there are many conditions that almost everyone would admit that Western medicine can treat very effectively. For example, I can't think of any of my friends in the community of alternative medicine who would not go to an emergency room for treatment of severe trauma. Nearly everyone recognizes that an acupuncturist or Reiki practitioner is not going to do you much good if you have a dangerous arterial bleed.

But for reasons that escape me, there seems to be a lot of resistance to vaccination. I am no fan of needles. I would prefer that my tissues remain unpunctured. Maybe the old country doctor I saw when I was a child is to blame. Whenever he examined me, I'd always whimper, "Am I going to need a shot?" and he'd always reply, "Yeah, and it's going to hurt!" And so it did.

It seems to me, though, that the practice of vaccination has been hugely beneficial to the human race in general. It's one of the few Western medical technologies to propagate throughout the world, reaching even the poorest areas of the least developed nations. Vaccination has eliminated smallpox. It has prevented polio from crippling multitudes of children. Or so I thought.

Recently, I was very surprised to learn that some in the anti-vaccination camp believe that the polio vaccine is a hoax. I grew up in the 50s and had friends who were mildly affected by polio, who spent several years on crutches, hobbled by the effects of the disease. After the polio vaccine became available, presto, there were no more crippled kids. That's a subjective impression, not objective research. But the denial of the efficacy of polio vaccination surprises me. And there are web sites that claim that smallpox vaccination is a hoax, and even rabies vaccination.

I understand that vaccines can have side effects, sometimes very debilitating side effects, which affect a portion of those being vaccinated. That's a fact that no one denies. Almost any traditional medical treatment can have negative as well as positive results. I know that the swine flu vaccine used in 1976 may have been associated with cases of Guillain-Barre paralysis. Some people have allergic reactions to some vaccines. Whenever I'm vaccinated, I almost always have a day where I feel achy and lethargic. When I was a kid and got my polio injection--always just before my birthday, for some reason--I would be sick for a day or two after.

I also understand the concerns about thiomersal, the mercury compound used as a preservative in some vaccines. Although there has been no proven link to autism, some people do believe there is one. I'm a father, and I can empathize with parents who have reservations about vaccinating their children. Thiomersal is being withdrawn from vaccines, at least in most first-world nations, so hopefully, this will be less of a concern in the future.

To my mind, the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks. The percentage of people who develop serious side effects is very small. When I am vaccinated against an easily communicable disease, I'm not only protecting my own health, I'm helping to protect the public health, the health of those around me, even those who choose not to be vaccinated. By exposing myself to a slight risk, I benefit myself and everyone around me. It's not like I'm throwing myself on a live grenade, but it's an altruistic act nonetheless.

The public health aspect of vaccination also seems to be another cause for concern among those who reject vaccination. There seems to be a fear that vaccination will be mandated, part of a larger conspiracy to use the threat of a pandemic to control the populace.

We have been fortunate to not have any experience with a widespread outbreak of a virulent disease for some time, not since the 1918 influenza pandemic. That pandemic had an estimated 10% to 20% mortality rate--somewhere between 3% and 6% of the entire human population died. More than 500,000 U.S. citizens were killed by the disease. In some places, there were not enough well people left to dig graves or take care of the sick. I suspect that when a similar pandemic strikes again, concerns about coercion will take a back seat to public health needs, at least for the moment.

I often ask people I know who oppose vaccination whether they'd be vaccinated if they were bitten by a rabid animal. While there have been reports of a handful of people who have survived rabies, rabies is, for all practical purposes, 100% lethal if the person bitten is not vaccinated in time. And rabies appears to be a very unpleasant way to die. Almost invariably, after some hemming and hawing, the people I ask reply that, yes, they would be vaccinated. So, it seems to me that, even among those who oppose vaccination, there is some recognition of its efficacy, despite all the claims about vaccination being a hoax.

I have run across one person who claims that she would reject the rabies vaccine. This boggles my mind! I hope that she never has to put herself to the test.

Tooth and Consequences

2009-12-03T16:00:00.005-06:00

About nine years ago, I had my first and, so far, only, root canal. Of course, beforehand, I had to hear everyone's horror stories. But I was pretty sure that, compared to my early experiences with dentistry, the procedure would be a walk in the park. When I was a boy in rural Iowa, my old country dentist drilled without administering novocaine! I was relieved that the root canal was anticlimactic. As expected, the procedure went smoothly, and I had very little pain. It took some trial and error to get what felt like a pretty good fit for the crown. But eventually all seemed well. The tooth occasionally felt a little odd, but not painful.

But earlier this year, I began to notice increasing pain in my jaw when I bit down on the tooth. I tried to chew on the opposite side of my mouth, but whenever I accidentally bit down on the tooth, a stabbing, hot, agonizing pain would shoot up into my cheek, as if someone were jamming a red-hot ice pick up through my molar and into my eye socket--or as if my old country dentist were drilling my molar again. The pain would last for a couple of hours. I finally had to admit to myself that I needed to have the tooth examined.

My dentist x-rayed the tooth and saw what seemed to him to be a little bit of swelling between the root and the socket, so he referred me to a periodontist. But the periodontist saw nothing unusual in the x-rays. He said he could redo the root canal and it might relieve the pain--or it might not. Back home, I decided I didn't want to undergo another root canal if there was little certainty of a good outcome. I returned to my dentist and asked him to smooth down my crown to try to get a better fit. He did, and I had some relief for a few weeks. But then the pain came back.

I was stuck. I was facing the prospect of having to live with increasingly excruciating pain, without any hope of an effective treatment. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this was a very familiar situation. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with chronic pelvic pain syndrome--constant untreatable pain in the hips and groin and low back. Thrown back on my own resources, I found ways of working with the condition that eventually resulted in my being able once again to be fully active without pain. I knew from personal experience that undiagnosable, untreatable chronic pain can be workable. So I sat down and began to puzzle through this tooth pain.

I used my mindfulness training to try to avoid chewing on the affected side, and to stay with the pain when I did mistakenly bite down on the tooth. As I sat with the pain, I tried to release any thoughts it spawned and to relax into the physical sensations. I gradually came to see that part of the pain involved muscle tension in my jaw and face. I tried to be mindful of this tension, even when I wasn't in pain. I soon saw that this tension was the result of a mistaken response to something my Alexander Technique teacher had tried to teach me.

I've been seeing my Alexander Technique teacher for nearly two years now. She's been helping me recognize and release places where I habitually hold tension in my body. My pelvic pain condition has melted away, and my sense of well-being and ease has increased. In the course of her lessons, she pointed out that I tense the muscles that make my lips thin. I responded by trying to force my lips to purse out more than they had, instead of trying to relax my facial muscles. This increased muscular tension in the face and jaw was what seemed to be associated with my tooth pain.

I massaged my jaw muscles and used the tools I'd learned from my Alexander Technique teacher to relax my face and jaw. The result was miraculous! The pain melted away, to the point where now, I can bite down on my molar and only occasionally feel a little, short-lived twinge. I remembered reading something about tooth pain in Clair Davies's book, The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook. I looked it up, and sure enough, Davies wrote that trigger points in the jaw muscles can cause sensitivity in the teeth.

I'm increasingly amazed at the interplay among my mind, body and emotions. Incidents like this are like windows into the connections among these aspects of self. I'd rather not have had to deal with chronic pain, but I have to admit that it's given me new insights and opened new possibilities of health and well-being.

The NASCARization of Politics

2009-10-29T08:39:00.005-05:00

I have a simple two-part solution for campaign finance reform here in the United States. First, remove all limits on campaign spending. Second, require that all elected officials, and all candidates for elected office, wear the logos or some other insignia that identifies each major organizational donor to their campaign.

Eliminating limits on campaign finances conforms with Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that holds that campaign donations are a form of speech and thus cannot be limited or regulated. Requiring office holders and seekers to wear logos makes good use of the growing cultural trend to identify with brand names and symbols. The resulting openness and transparency should make for better politics, or at least, great entertainment. Politics, sports, entertainment and business continue to merge into one gigantic amorphous mass. My idea is just one more stage in this grand fusion.

This win-win-win idea simply recognizes reality. Since 1976, Buckley v. Valeo has stymied efforts to reign in campaign finances. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, life in the U.S. has become more commercialized over the ensuing decades. Corporate logos appear everywhere now. People walk down the street wearing T-shirts and jackets proudly proclaiming their allegiance to Nike, Ford, Budweiser, and on and on. Stadiums and arenas are no longer named after heroic sports figures, but instead wear the names of Qualcomm, Target, Conseco, et al. Even colleges and universities are beginning to succumb to the trend. The University of Houston has an Enron Teaching Award. My own employer, The University of Iowa, recently considered naming their College of Public Health after the Wellmark Foundation, which is affiliated with Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa.

My admittedly brilliant idea will solve all our campaign finance problems, and I'm sure it will prove to be extremely popular. Politicians will love it, because it will do away with all those pesky campaign finance laws they have to follow. They'll finally be able to receive unlimited amounts of cash without the risk of penalty (not that there was ever much risk of penalty to begin with). The general population will love it because we Americans love to identify with large, extremely wealthy organizations. We proudly wear logos on our clothes, plaster them on our cars, hoist them above our sports arenas and even our institutions of higher learning. Organizations will love it because not only will they continue to be able to use political donations to exert influence--they'll also be able to leverage their donations to market themselves.

All those pickup decals showing Calvin peeing on a Ford-Chevy-Dodge logo (pick one) will now have greater political significance. As the idea takes hold and our elected officicals begin to look more and more like NASCAR drivers, I look forward to the day when I can turn to C-SPAN and watch a senator emblazoned with the Microsoft logo respond to a senator sporting an Apple emblem. I can only hope that some day, in the halls of Congress, we will finally hear the political debate that epitomizes our current system: "Less filling!" "Tastes great!"

I Didn't Read the News Today, Oh Boy!

2009-06-23T11:40:00.003-05:00

I have a confession to make: I've quit the news--at least the international and national news. I have stopped actively looking for and reading news online, viewing the news on television, listening to the news on the radio. I have turned on, tuned in and dropped out.

No, that does not mean that I have no knowledge about what's going on right now. I know about the election in Iran, the Metroliner wreck in Washington, the Obama administration's health care initiative. The news is a difficult thing to escape. It pops up everywhere. And I have not quit the local news--at least, I have not quit the less strident, less lurid local news outlets. But I have quit reading blogs, quit receiving emailed news bulletins, quit surfing over to the major mainstream web sites.

What brought me to this point? Why did I unplug? Simple observation. I realized that on days when for one reason or another I hadn't consumed the news, I felt better. I slept better at night. I felt much calmer and more focused. I slowed down. I listened more attentively. I was less combative. So, I began experimenting, deliberately avoiding the news for a day or two, seeing how I felt, then immersing myself in the news again and observing my reaction. The length of time I went without news gradually lengthened, until finally, I simply stopped reading the news altogether.

I could speculate about why disconnecting from the news would have an effect on me. A lot of news stories are framed in a way that invites a strong emotional reaction but actually have little direct bearing on my day-to-day life. The most complex and nuanced issues are presented in a dumbed-down, polarizing manner that invites me to choose a side and fight. Equanimity and compassion are not the realm of the news media. But whatever the reason, not reading the news has had a positive effect.

So I invite you to try unplugging, too. Take a day off. The world will continue to spin without us. Governments and families and athletes and movie stars and armies and the police and terrorists and religions will all continue to function (or maybe dysfunction?) without our having to form an opinion about their every action. And by the end of the day, maybe you'll find that you feel better for having disconnected.

The Muscle De Jour

2009-03-26T11:49:00.005-05:00

The muscle of the day is: the infraspinatus! I worked it with the tennis ball this morning, and wow, it felt so good! I can usually tell when I'm working an active trigger point. The pressure reproduces some of the pain, along with a kind of energetic rush or tingling sensation.

I'm coming out of my latest step back, in the two-steps-forward-one-step-back rhythm of my dance with chronic pain. I've been through this cycle so many times that now I do not become too anxious or upset when the downward swing happens. I know that I will pull through, and undoubtedly, I'll learn something valuable in the process.

This latest episode started the same day that I had a fantastic session with Rachelle, my ease of movement therapist. I'd felt incredibly light and loose that morning, on top of the world. But that afternoon, my boss handed me an assignment that boiled down to "justify your position." Times are tough economically here at the U, as elsewhere, doubly so because of the flood damage. As I worked on the assignment, I could feel the tension tightening my back like a guitar string. The pain also fed back into the tension. Every twinge seemed to birth a litter of anxious thoughts and emotions. By the end of the day, the last trace of the morning's bliss had evaporated.

Over the next several days, the situation worsened. The pain and tension affected my stretching routine. Releasing muscles was nearly impossible. I felt a strong desire to pull against the already too-tight muscles, which aggravated the pain whenever I mindlessly gave in to the urge. I could tell that a new stretch Rachelle had suggested was triggering something in my left shoulder that sent waves of tension outward, into my low back and hip. I knew I would have to back off, but easing up proved to be a struggle against a rising sense of failure.

Throughout my descent, I managed to continue my mindfulness practice, staying with all the sensations and emotions and thoughts as best I could. I continued practicing the inhibiting and directing I'd learned from the Alexander Technique. I knew that, as bad as I felt, I still felt much better than I had on my good days a couple years ago. And this time, I was able to consciously see what was going on during the entire episode, what had triggered it, what made it worse, what made it better.

Gradually, I found my way into a less painful, more relaxed state. And now, I have more insight into my condition, more confidence that I can work with it and can continue toward wholeness. And one of the good things that came from this latest bout with pain is the infraspinatus. I dug out my trigger point therapy workbook, got on the floor with my tennis ball, and experimented with my shoulder muscles, and now I know that the shoulder pain I've been living with for years can aggravate pain in my low back and into my hip, and I know how to treat it.

I know how to treat it for the moment, anyway. Dealing with chronic pain is like playing whack-a-mole. I've learned that if I let myself think that I've found the one true cause of my pain, the one thing that I can fix and make myself all better, that is when the trouble starts. The key for me has been to continue to listen to my body, continue to let it talk to me, and not let my mind get in the way. My mind wants to diagnose and cure, but chronic pain does not work that way, and in fact, the mind's need to be in charge and to fix things can lead to worse pain, not less.

So, the muscle de jour is the infraspinatus. It feels so good working with it. But it's just the muscle of the day. There will be another tomorrow.

My Perfect Moment with Wallace Shawn

2008-12-12T12:56:00.004-06:00

For some reason, last night, I found myself thinking about Wallace Shawn. Sometime back in the early 90s, I had to walk across campus to pick up some software. I was strolling down the sidewalk, headed west on Iowa Avenue by the English-Philosophy building. It was spring or fall, a bit crisp, maybe a breeze now and then. Someone was walking along the sidewalk toward me. I was enjoying the fresh air and the sunshine, not really paying attention to whoever it might be, when suddenly, I realized I knew who this guy was. It was Wallace Shawn.

I'd seen Wallace Shawn in movies and TV shows, among them The Princess Bride and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I enjoyed his quirky characterizations, the zaniness he always brought to his roles. I remembered him most from My Dinner with Andre, one of my favorite movies. I admired the courage it must have taken to write and star in a movie about two men talking over dinner, and the talent it took to make a great movie about a conversation between two people, with no action, no change of scene, no other characters. This was not just some U of I student or professor walking toward me. This was Wallace Shawn!

As the distance between us decreased, I could feel my mouth curling into a little smile. The Grand Nagus Zek! Vizzini! Right here, in front of me! Headed toward me! Looking at me! My face broke into a huge grin. And as Wallace Shawn saw the smile on my face grow and grow, a small smile sprouted on his face, and as we approached each other, it too enlarged, until we were two smiles walking toward each other on the sidewalk by Iowa Avenue.

And suddenly, he was beside me, and then we kept on walking, him eastward, me westward. I took a few more steps, maybe twenty feet more, and stopped and turned. And there was Wallace Shawn, who also had stopped and turned. We looked at each other for a moment, each of us grinning ear to ear. Maybe I nodded, maybe he gave me a short wave.

And then I turned again and walked on.

I've always thought about this moment. I've had a few other brushes with celebrity or near-celebrity. I was waiting for the bus one winter day when Al McGuire and Billy Packer, the college basketball announcers, walked by. McGuire was relaxed, smiling, approachable, comfortable with the looks he was drawing from everyone. But Packer had this nasty glare that seemed to have "restraining order" written all over it. Once, at a party, I got a beer for Linus Torvalds, the guy who developed Linux.

But this moment with Wallace Shawn was different, pregnant, ripe. I sometimes wonder, what if I had walked back toward him? What if I had said something? Whole universes germinate and grow from this soil: Wallace Shawn inviting me to dinner. Wallace Shawn asking me to read something he's writing. Wallace Shawn inviting me to New York. Wallace Shawn mentioning me on a talk show.

But there was something about that moment that was perfect, just as it was, just as it always will be. My perfect moment with Wallace Shawn.

Summer Pictures

2008-08-19T09:27:00.006-05:00

I've uploaded several photos from the vacation Di and I took in July.

I've also uploaded a few of the flowers and garden spiders around the yard. Fran said she'd like to see them.

The spiders are Argiope aurantia, completely harmless to humans.

It's been pretty quiet here, after the flood receded. Much of the campus is still off limits while disaster crews clean up the buildings and utility tunnels. A couple buildings are reopening just in time for the start of fall term.

Odds and Ends from the Trip

2008-07-04T19:22:00.004-05:00

Happy Birthday Shirt

Di wore a red top a couple of days, and we learned that when a Filipino sees someone wearing a red shirt, they will tell you "Happy Birthday." No one seems to know when or how or why this custom began.

Fresh Fruit

We bought fresh mangos and bananas a couple of times at the markets in Tabaco and Legaspi. They were delicious! The bananas had a more intense flavor than the bananas we buy here in the States, and the mangos were wonderfully juicy and tasty.

Kalamansi

Kalamansi are small green citrus fruit and are served instead of lemons and limes, with iced tea, for example. I ordered a lemonade at one restaurant and got kalamansi-ade. It was all right, different from lemonade, not what I expected.

Traveler's Tummy

None of us came down with traveler's tummy on the trip, even though we weren't completely conscientious about trying to avoid it. For example, we used tap water when brushing our teeth. American food did give me a little stomach trouble for a day or two after we returned.

Home Again, Home Again

2008-07-02T16:15:00.005-05:00

Monday, June 23--This is our last full day in the Philippines. I feel much better, but I don't push my luck. I stay at the Pepperland while Di, Fran and Ed hike up Lignon Hill, a high hill at the outskirts of Legaspi, with a great view of the city and the area.

In the afternoon, Fran takes Di and I for a massage at a place Lance recommends. Aaaaaaahhhhh!!! Then we all meet Helga and Leo downtown for a good-bye meal. The restaurant that Fran wanted to go to is not open yet, so we dine at the Jollibee, the Filipino version of an American burger chain. It's an emotional good-bye. Helga and Leo give us a bag full of gifts--pili nut candy, shoes, some key chains. And when Di admires Helga's bracelet--hand-made by Helga's sister--Helga takes it off and gives it to Di to keep.

Tuesday, June 24--Fran goes with us to the Legaspi airport. We've had a great trip, and we're sad to say good-bye. Soon, though, we're in the air, headed for Manila. Navigating security and immigration at the Manila airport is a real adventure, but eventually, we're flying into the night across the Pacific.

After 12 hours in the air, another layover in Vancouver, and a much shorter hop south, we're in the arid 104-degree heat of Las Vegas--and it's still June 24. The ways of the International Dateline are mysterious.

Our flight home doesn't leave until next morning. We've booked a night at the McCarran Best Western. The hotel van doesn't show up, and when we're finally in our room and order a room-service pizza, it's half an hour late. Says Ed, "Isn't it great to be back in the U.S., where everything works?"

Note: All the pictures from our trip are available here.

Missed It By That Much

2008-07-02T15:42:00.006-05:00

Saturday, June 21--In the morning, we learn that typhoon Frank veered westward overnight. The main part of the storm misses us. We did get some wind and rain, but nothing damaging.

We're determined to go to Rizal Beach. We've heard it's one of the nicer beaches in the Bicol region, which is not a touristy area and is not known for its beaches. We walk downtown, trike to the jeepney terminal, and take a jeepney to Gubat, where we get on another trike and head out of town for the ocean.

At the beach, we rent a cabana for a couple hours. The cabana has bamboo walls, a dirt floor, a shower, a comfort room (the Filipino term for bathroom), and even a little sink and wood stove. We take a long walk up the deserted beach. I've been spoiled by south Florida, and the trip is finally catching up with me and I feel exhausted, so I just hang out in the cabana while Di and Fran and Ed go for another walk and wade in the surf.

Then we head back to Sorsogon and rent another van and driver. We head back to the Villa Isabel, load our stuff, and motor up to Legaspi. We check into the Pepperland Hotel, the most luxurious hotel of our entire stay: huge rooms, bathtubs, and they even take Visa.

We watch CNN International and learn that typhoon Frank capsized an interisland ferry, and scores of people are missing and presumed drowned. We'd been watching CNN occasionally all trip--the flooding in Iowa has been headline news, even here. It was strange, seeing our hometown on the tube halfway around the world. But even with all its damage, the flood did not kill anywhere near the number of people that Frank has.

Sunday, June 22--As Di and Ed and I eat breakfast, Fran walks into the Pepperland with Marcus, a Peace Corps volunteer who lives in Legaspi and Fran's close friend. We all have breakfast, and then Marcus leaves and the rest of us head downtown for some shopping. The people in Legaspi apparently are used to seeing Anglos, and we don't get the stares and the "Hey, Joe" that we did in Tabaco and Sorsogon.

This is my worst day of the trip. I'm exhausted, and my throat is raw, either from the jet lag, or the trike and jeepney fumes, or both. I trike back to the Pepperland alone and hang out in the room. But I rally in time for dinner. We meet Marcus and his roommate, Lance, at the Small Talk Cafe and have a great time. The food is excellent, kind of a Bicol-American fusion.

The Coming Storm

2008-07-02T10:31:00.010-05:00

Thursday, June 19--We check out of the Gardenia Hotel. Our plan is to spend a couple days in Sorsogon, a town down the coast from Tabaco, and spend a day at Rizal Beach, near Gubat, a smaller town near Sorsogon. We've had a nice stay in Tabaco, but it will be good to get Fran away for awhile. She's been trying to please not only us, but also her host family and her principal. Away from Tabaco, we'll have her all to ourselves.

Fran gets us a van and driver, and we head for Sorsogon. It's some ride! In the Philippines, lines on the road and signs by the highway are just suggestions. Our driver passes vehicles even on blind uphill curves and uses his horn at every opportunity. Slower vehicles--jeepneys and trikes--scoot over and allow us to pass. The two-lane road becomes a three-laner at times. People--men, women and little children--walk on the shoulder, right next to the highway, as we zip by just inches from them.

In Sorsogon, we check into the Villa Isabel, a beautiful hotel on a back street. We have lunch and finally sample some San Migs--San Miguel beer, made in the Philippines. It's pretty good, especially on a hot day, and every day is hot here.

We walk downtown. A pili nut festival is going on. We've had pili nut candy before, sugar-glazed pili nuts. They're yummy. As we walk along the street, I look down into the gutter--a small water-filled ditch, actually. I see a thick electrical cable snaking through the water, and I wonder about the average life expectancy of Filipino electricians.

Friday, June 20--Fran has been texting busily. The Peace Corps has told her a typhoon is in the area. It's named Fengshen by the international body that keeps track of these storms, but it's Frank in the Philippines. Originally, it was supposed to scoot along off the coast, east of the Philippines. Now, we're told it's heading straight for us. But no one seems concerned. Many typhoons hit the Philippines each year, and unless the storm is especially potent, they're not a big deal--to Filipinos, anyway. Fran doesn't seem too concerned, either. So, instead of a day at the beach, we just plan for a day of hanging around the hotel, maybe taking a walk into Sorsogon, too.

The breakfast menu at Villa Isabel includes scrambled eggs and bacon, ham or sausage--and pancakes. Fran cautions us not to get our hopes up about the pancakes. She says we'll almost certainly be served corn syrup, not maple syrup. But, surprise! The waiter sets a small cup of maple syrup on the table. Fran is impressed!

In the evening, Fran and Ed go to a pizza place with Aaron and Whitney, two Peace Corps volunteers that live near here. Di and I go to bed and hope that the approaching typhoon is not too nasty.

A Walk in the Sun

2008-07-02T09:28:00.014-05:00

Wednesday, June 18--I get up and throw on some clothes and head out of the Gardenia Hotel on my own, on a mission to get some donuts and some fresh-brewed coffee. Di has been drinking instant so far this trip, but I'd spotted a Mr. Donut on Fran's map of Tabaco City. Determined to brave the streets on my own, I plunge out the door of the hotel and into the pounding heat and humidity.

I walk past the food market and make my way to the main street--Ziga Avenue, by Fran's map. A parade is inching its way down the street. I stop and watch one of the many marching bands. The bands are like any U.S. high school marching band, and for a second, it's easy to forget I'm in the Philippines.

I've been disoriented in Tabaco. There's something about the streets that makes me lose my sense of direction here, and even with Fran's map, I have to backtrack several times before I find my way to the Mr. Donut. Inside, it's like any convenience-store donut shop in the U.S., but staffed with Filipinas. I buy a dozen donuts and some coffee, and I head back.

Today, we take a jeepney to Malilipot and then walk up a country road to Busay Falls. As we walk past several homes, Fran points to the rebar sticking up from the concrete walls. Many Filipinos build this way so that they can add a second floor later when they have the money. Fran also points out that few of the houses are painted. Exterior paint is a mark of wealth.

We walk under the beating sun past rice paddies and into a cool, shaded valley. Busay Falls pours down into a shallow pool, cooling the air. We spend an hour or so enjoying the break from the heat.

After heading back to town and cleaning up, we go to Helga and Leo's again for a good-bye meal. Helga serves up a feast--baked fish; curried chicken; Bicol Express, a pepper, coconut and pork dish; a fruit salad; and several other tasty dishes. Afterward, we say our good-byes. Fran flags down a trike. Di, Fran and Ed climb aboard, but I have to step onto a tiny platform on the back of the sidecar, lean over the top, and hang onto a couple of rails on the roof. It's a fun ride back into Tabaco.

Halo-halo Time

2008-07-01T09:20:00.009-05:00

Tuesday morning, we groggily crawl out of bed and use our shower. The shower has an electrical flash water heater and a handset-type shower head. There's no enclosure--the entire bathroom is the shower stall. I just have to be careful where I aim. I take a stingy shower, soaping with the water turned off. As I adjust the water heater while rinsing, I wonder whether this is a wise thing to do, and for the first of many times this trip, I speculate about Filipino building codes.

After a light breakfast, Fran shows up. We all head out on foot and trek past the open market. We're greeted with "Hey, Joe!" from all sides. Filipinos still call Americans Joe, after GI Joe, from World War II. We walk to the Tabaco City LCC department store. The store has everything, and great service. We're continually surrounded by eager salespeople. We buy laundry detergent--a small brick of solid Tide; drinking water; and a few snack items. Then we go to the ChinaBank and use the ATM.

Back at the Gardenia, we unload our loot and hand-wash some laundry. We traveled light, with no checked-in baggage, so laundry becomes part of our daily routine, along with finding drinking water and a usable ATM--everyone wants pesos; no one takes credit cards. We also become used to taking multiple showers each day. Between the showers and the laundry, much of our hotel time is centered around the bathroom.

We go to Fran's favorite restaurant in Tabaco City for lunch, Solamente. It's an open-sided roof, basically, with a kitchen. They serve us a fish dish--fish "cooked" in citric juice--and a regional chicken dish. It's all very tasty.

Then we head to the San Lorenzo National High School, Fran's place of employment. We meet her principal, Rose, a very pleasant person who leaves no doubt as to who is in charge at her school. She treats us to colas and batter-fried bananas. Then Fran's co-teacher guides us on a tour of the school.

Fran leads us into a couple classrooms, where we say hello to the students and answer questions. For the girls, Ed is the center of attention. Apparently, it's the dream of many young Filipinas to marry an American. Ed is greeted with much giggling. One of the girls brazenly asks how old he is, and when Fran asks her how old she is, she replies, "Sweet sixteen!"

After the tour, Rose and Jai, her assistant, take us to a place in Tabaco City for merienda. We have pancit again, and then Rose orders halo-halo for each of us. We're each served a dessert bowl filled with shaved ice and topped with a glob of purple goo and grated cheese. There's a layer of syrupy-looking liquid in the bottom of the bowl, with some unidentifiable stuff floating in it. We each mix our halo-halo together with a long spoon--that's what halo-halo means in Tagalog, mix-mix. Then we eat. It's surprisingly good, very refreshing in the heat. I taste the cheese, a sweet coconutty syrup, and occasionally, peas and corn, maybe, and gummy candies.

After our good-byes, we head back to the Gardenia and off to bed.

Into the Soup

2008-06-30T13:37:00.015-05:00

Flying into Legaspi, we get some good views of Mount Mayon, a perfectly cone-shaped volcano that is a major attraction for the Bicol region. When the plane lands and we step off, the heat and humidity immediately hammer us. It's intense! We see Fran and run to hug her. It's early in the morning, Monday, June 16. Weird.

We all pile into a van Fran has rented to take us to Tabaco City. The ride to Tabaco is our initiation into Filipino traffic. As we pass vehicles on blind curves, it becomes apparent that signs and lines are suggestions, that the horn is the most vital part of the van, and that what seems like two lanes really are three or even four, in practice.

In Tabaco, the van creeps through a crowded market and delivers us to our hotel, the Gardenia Hotel. The Gardenia seems small and cramped from the outside, and the elevator is tiny, but the rooms are spacious and clean, and the bathrooms have Western-style flush toilets.

We rest awhile, and then Fran tells us it's time to visit her host family for merienda, the afternoon snack. We trike or jeepney out to her host family's compound and are greeted by Helga and Leo (pronounced Lay-oh) and their extended family. Helga and Leo both look much younger than their ages. Leo has just come back to the Philippines after working several years at Diego Garcia.

Helga serves us pancit, a noodle dish; batter-fried bananas; rice cooked in sweet coconut milk, almost like rice pudding; and coconut milk. Then Leo and Nair, one of the adult men who live here, give us a tour of the compound. Nair shows me the place he built for him and his wife after typhoon Reming (typhoon Durian) destroyed the house he used to live in. Their new home is open-sided and has a beautifully thatched roof and a loft. Nair tells me he loves the simple life. He asks me whether there's any place in the U.S. where people live as simply. I can't think of any.

We walk down the road to the San Lorenzo beach. Then it's back to the Gardenia and off to bed. I didn't realize that in the tropics, it always gets dark around 6:30 pm.

Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee

2008-06-30T11:24:00.024-05:00

Di and Ed and I are home from the Philippines. The short version: Our trip was a success, we had a great time, we saw Fran and met her host family and co-workers, and the whole experience was amazing. So now, I'm going to blog the long version, beginning where I left off with my previous post.

We'd booked a room at the Country Inn and Suites near the Eastern Iowa Airport for June13--Friday the 13th--in case we'd have to drive up early to avoid bridge closings. By Friday, rumors were flying about the bridge to the airport. We left work early, and as we hurriedly packed, Channel 9 News was reporting that the I-380 bridge over the Coralville Reservoir was closed. If the bridge were closed, we'd have to drive 5 hours out of our way to get to the airport. I began trying to plot a more direct route along the back roads.

Thankfully, we never had to try my alternate route. As we pulled out of the garage at 3:30 pm, I turned on KXIC, which reported that the bridge was still open but would close at 6:00 pm.Getting out of Iowa City was an adventure in itself. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on some streets, everyone trying to find a way across the Iowa River. We finally made it to I-80 and then onto I-380.

Water was lapping at the shoulders of the approach to the bridge over the Coralville Reservoir, but the bridge was still open, and we made it across. The bridge closed just an hour or two later. On the other side of the bridge, we were stuck in traffic for two hours, among people trying to cross the only bridge open across the Cedar River, the I-380 bridge in downtown Cedar Rapids. But we eventually made it to the hotel, checked in, and settled in for the night.

The next day, everything went smoothly. At the airport, I overheard someone talking about a wild taxi ride that morning along gravel roads from Iowa City to the airport--my alternate route. But we were glad we'd come up the night before.

Our flights to Las Vegas through O'Hare departed and arrived on time. At McCarran, we got our first taste of the Philippines at the Philippine Airlines (PAL) ticket counter. The counter didn't open until two hours before the flight was scheduled to take off. There was a long line, with many balikbayans (returning Filipinos) pushing carts loaded with big boxes full of goods. We waited patiently, the counter opened, the line moved smoothly, and soon, we had our PAL boarding passes.

I'd read horror stories about PAL, such as "PAL stands for Plane Always Late." But the flight to Manila via Vancouver was better than any flight I've had via a domestic carrier in a long time. We flew Fiesta (economy) class, but the legroom was good and the service was excellent. The seats may have been designed for someone shorter than me, but with a pillow behind my back, they were comfy.

The stopover in Vancouver was odd. We all had to deplane and bring our carry-on baggage with us. We were kept in a comfortable holding area, a little bit of nonCanadian territory, while the flight crew changed and the plane was serviced, and then we reboarded.

Back on board, we were given a pillow, a blanket, and an overnight kit--a blindfold, some socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste. We were served several tasty meals throughout the night, the best airline food I'd had in a long time, at no extra charge. With the excellent service and some sleep courtesy of a little lorazepam my doctor had prescribed for the flight, the 12-hour trip from Vancouver to Manila was not the ordeal I had feared.

We landed in Manila on the morning of June 16, two days after we'd left, due to having crossed the International Date Line. Ninoy Aquino International Airport has three separate terminals, and shuttling among them can be a nuisance. Booking our flight to Legaspi straight through via PAL, we stayed in Terminal 2, which simplified our trip. We still had to go through immigration and customs, and we had to exchange some dollars for Philippine pesos to pay the airport fee. The immigration official laughed at my virginal passport--"It's about time!" he said as he stamped it.

Soon enough, we were at the gate for the flight to Legaspi, the last leg of our trip by air. Aboard the plane, we knew we weren't in Iowa anymore when the cold air from the air conditioning condensed the humid Filipino air into rolls of mist.

A Little Water Over the Bridge

2008-06-13T13:15:00.003-05:00

Everything around me right now seems normal. It's just another day here at work, in my cubicle. But I know that down the hill, water is steadily creeping up the street by the Memorial Union. Rumors are flying. We're expecting that we're going to have to shut down all equipment here in MacLean Hall. We may be able to bring core services up at another site, but we might not.

Oh, and my wife and son and I are flying to the Philippines tomorrow.

Di and Ed and I tried traveling to the Philippines in March, but we had to abandon our trip when a delayed flight destroyed our tight schedule. We've been planning this second attempt since we came home. We padded our schedule, gave ourselves more time, more flexibility in case we had to rebook. Everything looked good. Now, though, we're wondering whether we'll get to the airport. Bridges are being closed, power is going out, drinking water is a concern.

I am caught between wanting to help, wanting to do something to keep services running, on the one hand, and wanting to get ready for the trip, on the other. We haven't seen Fran, our daughter, in more than a year. Our friends and neighbors and co-workers are laboring to hold back the flood, to keep power and water available.

Our own home is safe, far from the river. Even so, if and when we do make it to the airport and fly away tomorrow, my heart will be in three places at once--here, in the middle of the flood; on the plane, with my wife and son; and on an island on the other side of the world, where my daughter lives.

I Need a Fix

2008-04-16T10:57:00.008-05:00

I attended a Brugh Joy workshop over the weekend, a wonderful experience. It was my first Brugh Do. Working with Brugh and the group incubated a series of huge dreams for me Saturday night, which we worked with in group Sunday morning. I left the workshop with many new insights and a load of material to work with.

The first evening, Thursday, Brugh asked us to introduce ourselves and maybe mention something about the process that had drawn us to his workshop. I happened to be the person he picked to begin the introductions. I was new to Brugh's work and didn't know more than two of the other participants, and much of what I've been experiencing over the past couple of years has been physical and difficult to put into words, so I was not very forthcoming.

As the introductions wound around the room, some people would bring up some pretty big issues in their lives at the moment, and Brugh would work with them a bit, along with the group. They all seemed to be old Brugh hands, people he knew. For one person in particular, Brugh jokingly said he was going to have to hit her over the head.

Friday night, I had the following dream: I'm in a mall, vacant except for myself and a young man in black clothes. He seemed to be a high-school athlete. We stood beside a large pile of shipping cartons. I knew that each contained a large, black, soft, overstuffed toy, bats and boxing gloves, mainly. The man told me I had to donate a few thousand dollars to him, to buy the whole pile. He then would distribute all the toys among the townspeople, and they would hit me with them.

When I woke up, the dream didn't seem to make much sense. Saturday morning in group, Brugh asked who'd had dreams. As he began working with people's dreams, I leafed through my dream journal, looking for what I thought would be something deeper. But Brugh made it clear that he wanted only dreams from the night before. As he worked his way around the room, it began to dawn on me what my dream was about, so that by the time he got to me, the meaning was unmistakeable. As I related my dream to the group, everyone laughed, and I said, "And I know it's all about the fact that I need to share my process with the group"--which, in fact, was the whole point of the dream.

I did share with the group my struggle with chronic pain over the past couple of years, how it had drawn me into my body, and how that seemed very alien to me. And the sharing seemed to trigger a night filled with dreams, many of them very vivid and insightful and nearly self-interpretive, so that the next morning in group, when I related one of the dreams and Brugh and the group worked with it, I knew exactly what was going on.

One of the biggest insights I received was that in order to resolve the chronic pain, I'd had to move my mind out of the way. My body had had to heal on its own terms. It did not want to be diagnosed and fixed; it had to come into wholeness via its own internal wisdom. The pain condition was in one sense a teaching for me, that there are some things that are not resolvable mentally, and that throughout my life, in such situations, my mind had been more of an obstacle than a help. Thought can be seductive and addictive, but like all addictions, it creates more problems than it solves. This is maybe the largest and most difficult nugget I extracted from the workshop.

So, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Karl, and I am a thoughtaholic...

Neither Here Nor There

2008-03-24T10:19:00.006-05:00

A week ago last Friday, my wife and son and I started out on our big, adventurous trip to visit our daughter, Fran. Fran is teaching English in the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer. We haven't seen her since last May. Our son, Ed, has been overseas twice, to Spain, but my wife and I have never been out of the country, except for short stays just over the border in Canada. As we got ready for the day, the excitement built. I checked the weather one last time--everything looked good along the entire route, Cedar Rapids to Minneapolis to Tokyo to Manila.

But when we walked into the Eastern Iowa Airport and checked the departure monitor, we were greeted with the word "delayed" next to our flight. The ticket agents told us the plane hadn't made it down from the Twin Cities yet. One of them said we'd definitely miss our flight to Manila; the other said we might just make it. By the time our airplane arrived and we boarded, we were sure we'd miss the next flight. But we hoped we could reassemble our trip once we got to Minneapolis International.

In Minneapolis, the gate agent told us that the earliest we could get on a flight to Manila would be in two days. Worse, we learned that all flights from Manila to the airport near where Fran lives were booked for the first several days of the week. It was Holy Week in the Philippines, a time when the many balikbayans--Filipinos who work overseas--return home. If and when we ever did arrive in Manila, the best we'd be able to do would be an overnight 12-hour bus trip. The ticket agents offered to rebook our return trip on flights two days later, but that wouldn't work for Ed. So, reluctantly, we asked for a flight home, and we started the refund process.

We flew back to Cedar Rapids and got in our car and drove home. Pulling up to the house, we saw the lights on and cars in the driveway. Our house sitter was having a dinner party for a couple of friends. We felt very odd, ringing the door of our own home so as not to startle the sitter. We felt even stranger, trying to stay out of the way as the sitter and her friends cleaned up and cleared out.

We've been dealing with the travel agent and the airline, and it looks like we'll get a full refund. We're going to try again soon, and next time, we'll know a little more about the process. We won't book a connecting flight with a short layover, we'll go at a time when we can add more flexibility to our itinerary in case problems occur, we'll find a time when there should be less of a demand for seats.

The whole experience was a good opportunity to practice mindfulness, mindfully being present with all the big emotions and odd happenings of the week, the anger, the frustration, the sadness, the feeling of being a guest in my own home, of being a visitor in my own workplace. Being present didn't fix things, didn't magically pop me through the ether and into the Philippines, didn't smooth out my sleep or ease my stomach, didn't make me less upset or less sad. But it did help create more emotional intimacy with my wife, by staying with the emotions, instead of acting them out or suppressing them.

The entire past week felt surreal. Every so often, I'd find myself thinking about where we would have been at that moment, if we'd made the flight to Manila. Even though we never left good old Central Daylight Time, my wife and I both experienced sleep disruption and even stomach trouble, as if our bodies were trying to give us the whole international travel experience. We both went back to work the last half of the week. I couldn't bring myself to cancel the vacation autoresponder or change my voicemail message. I felt like I was in some odd half-world, not really here, but definitely not gone.

It's been strange, being present with the feeling of not being present. I'm reminded of what one of my favorite authors, Pema Chodron, talks about, the sensation of having the rug pulled out from under you. It's that helpless pit-of-your-stomach feeling that happens when things go wrong. But if i can be present and let go of the anxious train of thought, I can sink into a sense of great space and peace. I've been gradually returning from this non-trip, gradually feeling more and more here, more and more involved with what is going on around me at work and at home. Maybe the whole fiasco has been good practice for the real trip that still lies ahead.

Idiotes and Idiocracy

2008-03-21T09:11:00.004-05:00

I recently finished reading Peter Green's The Hellenistic Age: A Short History. Peter is my neighbor, and I could hear his voice as I read. Even though I have little background in ancient history, the book was very accessible, while also providing references to further study. The history of the ancient world post-Alexander and pre-Roman Empire has always been one of those muddled-to-blank spots in my own understanding of the past, which Peter's book helped fill in.

One interesting tidbit I learned is that idiot is derived from the Greek idiotes, which originally referred to a person who did not participate in the political or public life of the polis, or Greek city-state--in other words, someone who lived an individual life, unconcerned with larger affairs. Apparently, the Greeks looked back at the classical era as a golden age in which people were involved in civic affairs, and they viewed the development of the individual as decadent. In The Hellenistic Age, Peter speculates as to a possible link between the development of literature and the development of the individual.

Some time ago, I watched Idiocracy, a movie by Mike Judge. In the movie, the citizens of the United States have devolved into idiocy in the modern sense--the average IQ has plummeted. Perhaps self-referentially, the movie seems to associate this devolution with the rise of interactive, omnipresent, commercial entertainment and its penetration into every aspect of life. In the world of Idiocracy, the citizen is very involved in public life via something like our current representational democracy, unlike the idiote of the Hellenistic Age. But it's a very simple-minded, game show or reality TV type of involvement.

It's an interesting and maybe frightening exercise to compare Idiocracy to the current state of affairs in the U.S., where political talk shows more closely resemble pro-wrestling theatrics than real debate. Every issue is presented in terms of two very simplified, opposing points of view. You simply find out which team supports which point of view, and then you root for your team. News media, entertainment, politics and commercialism all seem to be converging, and I wonder how long it will be before our elected officials wear the labels of their big-money sponsors, like NASCAR drivers.

Ironically, anyone who does not participate in the two-party system is seen as at least eccentric or odd. Independents are fickle, the fans who root for whoever is ahead. Third parties are spoilers, the non-BCS teams in the bowl playoff system of big-time politics. Those who don't vote at all--the majority of the electorate--are lazy, unpatriotic, uncaring--modern-day idiotes. But maybe we're beginning to reach the point where a thoughtful person might suspect that the current two-party, megamoney political bloodsport leaves little room for intelligent participation. Maybe the idiotes of today are not idiots, after all.

Safety in Numbers

2008-03-07T08:48:00.001-06:00

This morning, on the way into the building where I work, I glanced up at the black tags above each door of the two-door entrance. I've worked here for, hmmm... 16 years now. Let's see... 16 years times, let's say, 47 work weeks a year (gotta love working for the U--five weeks of vacation a year!) would be 752 work weeks, times 5 days a week gives 3,760 work days, minus a fudge factor of, oh, 160 sick days would be 3,600 days worked, times 2 for walking through the entrance twice a day, would be a grand total of 7,200 times I've walked through those doors.

And that's while I've worked here. I also took several courses here while working on my computer science degree, so, let's add another, hmmm... say, 5 years times 2 terms a year times 3 months a term times 4 weeks a month times, say, 3 class days a week would be... 360 more times, as a student. So, a grand total of about 7,560 times I've passed through those doors. Rounding down, let's say, 7,500 times.

So, about 7,500 times I've walked through those doors, and every once in awhile, I happen to glance up at the black tags with white characters, above the doors: "Ent 2" and "Ent 3." Today, as I read these plates, a number of questions arose in my mind. Where is Ent 1? How many Ents are there in the building? And, most importantly, why on earth would anyone number the doors to a building? And, why number each door of a double-door entrance?

Granted, I work in the building that houses the departments of mathematics and computer science. Numbers are our business, and enumeration of any kind is probably good for business. In fact, maybe mathematicians and statisticians and computer scientists should think about some kind of marketing scheme, urging people to enumerate more things. Maybe we should be trying to get people to put little black tags with white characters above the doors of their homes. And windows--that's a completely unexplored, undeveloped market for enumeration. Windows--that's the future!

But I doubt that the doors were numbered at the request of the people who teach numbers here on campus. If the mathematicians here cared at all about the entrances, they'd be trying to do weird topological transformations of them. The computer science profs would be researching an algorithm to provide congestion control and prevent deadlocks at the doorways. Simply numbering the doors, that's a bit low-brow--except, maybe, for the people in the remedial math lab.

No, there must be some bureaucratic reason for those little Ent tags. Something like inventory, or public safety, or some such thing. Homeland security. "The terrorists have egressed the building via Ent 3! Not Ent 2! Ent 3!" Yes, that must be it. Somewhere on campus, there must be a Director of Entrance Numerology, I'd guess, with a big staff--there are lots of doors on campus! There must be a large entrance database. People probably have to have years of training and have to pass several licensure and certification examinations before they can be entrusted with the huge responsibility of enumerating doors. I hope so, anyway.

The thought of some highly educated and well-trained Director of Entrance Numerology managing a large staff of door enumerators gives me great comfort. I will sleep better tonight, knowing that all doors have been tagged, numbered, and recorded in some great doorway database here on campus. And if, after all, I can't sleep, I can always try counting doors.

Helpless

2008-02-28T09:32:00.001-06:00

I've always loved this Neil Young song. My wife and I saw Away from Her recently, and I loved K. D. Lang's version, too, which is on the soundtrack. The song speaks to me about the human condition, my condition, about how we like to feel we're in charge of our lives, of life, we like to feel in control, but in reality, we aren't, and there is beauty in that, along with the pain. The movie seems to be about all that, too, about having to face our own mortality, our own helplessness. The movie is about an extremely heart-wrenching, painful situation, a man having to come to terms with the fact of his wife's Alzheimer's disease. And in showing the painful truth, the movie is simultaneously heartbreaking and beautiful. I've titled this blog Helpless, because I like the song, and because that's how I feel, and it feels all right, it feels alive, to be aware that I am helpless.