March 2006 Archives
For the last week, I've been up and down the wellness rollercoaster, but mostly I've been flat out sick. Today I finally got an appointment into the doctors, where they gave me the grand poo-bah of all antibiotics (ZithroMAX) and now I'm on the road to... well, something. I'm in a feverish daze right now, so it should be interesting to read this later....
...what was my original point?
...Oh yeah, being sick sucks. I mean, I've had the 'oh, I stayed out too late last night so I'll call in sick and sleep in', or the 'I feel really crappy, but it'll pass in a day or two', or the 'I just really need a freakin' day off and I don't want to burn vacation on it', but this is the 'dude, I am completely laid out and can't think straight' kinda sick, and you know what's worse? I worked through every single day of it except for today, which is a Chancellor's office holiday, and so I'm sick on my vacation day.
I've had it all, too. Sinus infection, sore throat, fever, cold, stomach ache, chest congestion, coughs, stuffed-up nose and ears and sinuses... Now I'm just raw. That, and the antibotics gave me crazy dreams. I was in some crazy amusement park in the midwest that would just drop you off from your rollercoaster ride wherever it liked in the park, and you had to figure out where you were and how you got there.
yeah, i'm delusional.
but hopefully the magic of modern allopatic medicine will kick in and it will be all recovery starting tomorrow. Mostly, I'd settle for this sore throat going away, and the reclaiming of my brain from the fever monsters. I took some Tylenol, so hopefully that'll come true soon.
And I need a shower.
But mostly, I need to thank Julie for letting me sleep for hours today, and taking care of the kids, and letting me be grumpy and sick even in the face of her own grump and her own sick. I'm not usually this sick, and it takes me by surprise whenever my immune system doesn't work in the super-duper fashion that I've come to be accustomed to. I think that's why I tend to be less sensitive with people that are sick than I could be -- I just don't have the experience. But, with the super germs we've been breeding, and with global warming helping to increase the prime conditions for bacterial and viral breeding, not to mention having two kids in the prime vector for contagion, perhaps I'll learn that compassion and humility soon enough.
Now I just need to chase the purple bunny out of the living room...
3/14 - Pi day, Einstein's birthday, and Isaac's first birthday this year. While many may choose to think of the digital representation which inspires the date (This year, the Exploratorium had a celebration starting at 1:59 PM), I find it more spiritually satisfying to go back to the Pythagorean definition of the circumference divided by the diameter of a circle (also defined by the ratio of the area of a circle to its bounding square). 22/7 is one famous ratio which gives rise to an approximate of Pi, and yet the number is in truth irrational -- that is, it cannot be rationalized, or written as the ratio of two integers. The formula for the area of a circle depends on Pi, but Pi itself is transcendental cannot be constructed (there is no number for which Pi is the root), and therefore you cannot create a square that has the same area as a circle with straight-edge and compass alone. Also, there is no closed expression for the number in terms of algebraic numbers and functions. All numeric calculations of Pi depend on approximations. Of course, all of this can be found, and more, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi.
But of course, I choose to look at the esoteric, personal meaning of the concept of the circumference divided by the diameter. One way to internalize the concept is to consider all that which surrounds us, envelopes us, in juxtaposition with that which goes through us or spans us. When we try to look at our essence in entirety, our being, that which is us, in a complete sense, it is difficult at best to try to describe it, but we know that if we could exhaustively describe all of our qualities, all of our internal moments, everything we perceive, or do, eventually, we might be able to say -- "there, that is me. That's me in my entirety." We can for argument's sake, just imply that there is such a full and complete description that exists in the realm of the possible. We will call that complete description, the inclusive 'I' or 'Me'. Now, in light of that full and complete description, we make the attempt to find that one singular dimension which crosses the sum total and in a very sharp and definite way, explains the essence of who we are -- the 'Us'ness of 'Us'. To define that which spans us and summarizes us, one might argue that is a task magnitudes greater in difficulty, and perhaps outside of the realm of the possible. What is for certain, is that the answer would never be something we could draw a neat box around and say 'this is the essence of me.' There is always more to strive for, more to reach for, it is irrational to believe we could summarize our existence in a single quality, and yet we and those in our lives are accustomed to making constant approximations of who we are, and for what we stand. We are used to telling our 'story'. When someone asks us who we are, it is this singular slice that we attempt to show, like the plane of a movie screen or the page of a book. And so, we approximate, we proclaim and project an incomplete and often inaccurate picture of ourselves to others, in an attempt to hint at the real us, the totality, that which cannot be described, only circumscribed.
And so, on a day such as this, with the birth of my second son high on the horizon of my consciousness, who do I say that 'I' am? What is my 'story'? Am I a father? Am I a Software engineer, husband, slacker, cook, spiritual seeker, skeptic, philosopher, human soul lost in the wilderness of existence? What is the one slice I can pick out for you that approximates who I am? All I can do is say, I am today. I am now. Take a look at me, talk with me, and only through that can you see the clearest possible value of my own personal Pi. Anything else is algorithmic sophistry.
I was sitting eating breakfast with my boys last lazy Sunday morning, contemplating the chicken I was poking my fork into; how easily the meat rips away from the bone, and I mused -- I'm made of meat not much different than this chicken, though decidedly less cooked. These bodies we have are so incredibly fragile that it takes no more than a sharp edge on a piece of metal, rock or bone, and we are undone. One poke or prod by the wrong thing in the wrong place, and the damage is fatal and irrevocable. For a creature that lives in the world of hard things, our substance is decidely flimsy. Most days this simple and immediate fact is transparent to my everyday workings, but there are some days when it becomes so glaringly evident that it can become crippling, especially in the light of being a parent and custodian of two soft fleshy boys. Of course, while nursing an ailing kitty for the last few months has been a definite reminder of mortality, what's had my heart wrenching recently is the news that one of Eli's preschool teacher is fighting/dying from advanced stage bone cancer. He's got a family with several children of his own, and it breaks my heart to think of him wasting away from what is supposedly a very painful form of cancer, with the high potentiality of leaving wife and kids behind. I think about my own health, and wonder if I'm doing everything I can to try and prevent such a catastrophic event, and yet -- can you ever truly guard against something like cancer? It's a force of nature, part of the fragility of our design. Not only can we pierced and damaged from without, our own body can turn against us from within.
And yet, in the face of our own fragility, we're also incredibly resilient. As long as we stay within the bounds of irreparable harm, we can recover. Wounds heal themselves in our bodies like magic -- even stone and metal can't heal themselves in the way that our body can. Our bodies are constantly building and rebuilding themselves, fighting off an onslaught of environmental attacks. Once the spark of life leaves us, it is very quickly that our bodies are invaded and consumed by pathogens in our environment. These spongy bags of water aren't a fragile as they might first appear, in fact, they're quite durable... for a time. Eventually, however, the thresholds of damage are overcome, and age reduces the body's resilience, until finally, we break, we die, we disappear. There's no avoiding it -- it's a fact of life, of existence. We are living in our own death every single day. What supreme irony that we live complex, beautiful and detailed lives avoiding danger and building an entire set of life experiences, only to disappear at the end of it all, becoming so much soil.
All we've got is right now. Right here at the breakfast table. We can trust in our resilience to give us the courage to walk out the door. For most of us, a fall and a scrape on our knee is inconsequential. We get up, we brush off, we keep going. I get to witness this every single day as a parent. Childhood is nothing if not a practice in wound recovery. And yet, we just pray that the injuries stay minor, though there's no guarantee at all. Life is risk. We just live each moment to each moment, and if we're lucky, we can savor it. More often than not we find ourselves missing it, for plans of the next moment, or regrets of the one just past. Though, so often we can chant this mantra to ourselves and we miss or ignore the counterpoint to the 'live life now' mentality -- it takes careful planning and retrospection and learning to keep us alive for the next set of moments. Some of our now must be donated to the future, or we will end up on the streets, wondering where the house and job went. Some of the now must be donated to the past, to remember those who lived such rich lives before us, whose time here on the planet intersected ours, but who have now passed. They live now only in our memories and our stories, may they be a blessing. Today, I am living my life, I am remembering my forebearers, I am building memories in my children that hopefully they will take with them beyond my grave. That's about all I can ask or hope for. The rest is mythology. I pray that on my journey, the intensity of injury and ailment stays shallow, and yet we cannot avoid fatality. It happens to us all, but for most of us, blessedly only once.
I'm still holding out for science to figure out a way to upgrade this model, and make us more resilient. I'd like at least to be able to combat the injustices of age and disease. Decline is a bad idea -- I'm going to take it up with the intelligent designer.
I can't sleep.
Tonight was a tough one for me. Without going into any details whatsoever, there was a decision that had to be made, and a process that had to be gone through, and it wasn't easy. The answer was an obvious one, and yet the process behind getting to the answer left me feeling a little empty inside. Perhaps in another six months I can blog about particulars. For now, suffice to say, I'm in an altered state and I am grieving in my own way for the opposite of the right decision. And, I'm on a path that isn't at its end. There is follow-through and fallout that I yet have to persevere. So, if I'm moody, or distant, please have compassion. I'm gonna be okay.
