"Lazarus! Come Back!" ( and he did ! )

In a sane world, it was going to be an insane night.  The signs were everywhere.  The relentless, driving wind was buffeting the building like a summer storm, it blustered and it blew, but no rain fell.  Where was the rain I sensed was on the way?  The "mid-day"-level moon glow made landing lights  unnecessary on the hospital heliport.  What time was it, really?  1:01 am.

"Oh, God!  Another night on call and I can't sleep.  I'm not even getting calls to keep me up.  Someone!  Please!  Call me with a problem so I have reason to be conscious."

Want to know how to make the phone ring?  Put your head down on the pillow and actually doze off.  It works every time.  Just like getting in the shower or sitting on the pot.

"I'm well acquainted with the way the nurses do it.  They sit at a south-facing window on the fourth floor and watch the Call Room curtains for 'lights out,' then wait 10 minutes and start dialing the phone."

I pulled the pillow under my sore left shoulder, wiggled and Jiggled and adjusted the covers, inserted ear plugs to block out the laughter coming through the tissue paper wall between the nurses lounge and my call room.

"Damn!  The wind, the noise.  I'm beat, why can't I sleep?" Who the hell are you talking to?  I'm aware you can't sleep.

Who's here besides you and me anyway?  I AM paying attention, you know.

"So what do I do now?"

Resign yourself, Insomniac: pace the hospital corridors and count sleeping patients.

"Damn them!  Why do they get the sleeping pills when I'm the one who needs the rest?"

You could go raise hell on all the wards and wake the patients up.

"Don't tempt me.  I'm close to something wacky like that now. "

The voices in my head customarily began after 24-plus hours on emergency call, like it was a job they had to do.  They couldn't be stopped.  Who wanted them to anyway?  They were the only company I had during the 60 hour Friday-night-to-Monday-morning stretch as the only doctor in the house:

If you're going to leave the Call Room, put on a clean scrub suit.  The one you're sleeping in has blood on the leg from the last IV you started.  My hands flew up to cover my ears, fingers straight up, curving slightly to allow the nails to dig microscopic trenches in my scalp.

"Shut up, just shut up, would you please.  Goddam, I wish I knew if I should take more medicine or stop it altogether!"

I found some old, clean scrubs, velvety from being washed for years in boiling water, pulled them on and reached, without looking, behind the door for my white lab coat.  After fifteen years of weekend confinement in this isolation cell there were certain things I didn't have to look for, they were at my finger tips, where they always were when I reached out, like the coat behind the door, the phone next to the bed in the middle of the night and the goddam desk chair that was always in front of my left big toe when I got up without turning on the light.

The "Son-of-a-Bitching-Chair" was Alive, I knew for certain. Yes it was.  There was no doubt about it.  The chair had a secret life.  It was an agent provocateur.  It had a Chair Control Agent, telling it when to move, how close to creep to the bed, instructing it on how to rotate its five legs around so my left big toe was in the greatest danger of hitting at least one, if not two, of the destructively sharp casters jutting out from the legs, ready to slice my foot if it came within destructively sharp striking distance.

"Hah!  The light is on!  You missed me, Bastard Chair!"  It didn't answer, but I heard it hiss ...

... that was the gusting wind outside, Nit Wit ...

... and I was positive it heard me as I swore and stumbled passed.  I cursed the Chair and wandered out, unquestioned, through the places where Security Guards require Visitors to show passes.  Bet you didn't know you could be drugged by sleeplessness?

"Be quiet!  It doesn't make sense to be drugged by the LACK of something-"

The strong Atlantic wind caused the hospital walls to creak and groan as they pushed against the huge east wall, six stories high and as long as a football field, bending to the unrelenting pressure for minutes on end.

Administration has been off-center for years, opposed to change, recalcitrant, I say!  If the gale keeps up I'll get my wish and they'll rename this place The Leaning Hospital of Our Father of Disinclination.

Administration never understood the feeling, the mood, of the structure.  They were only there during the "normal work week," which is akin to diving on a Caribbean coral reef in broad daylight.  Oh, yeah, you see a fish and turtle or a sting ray now and then.  But dive the reef at night and it's ALIVE with crawly creatures and monstrous monsters who see, but are unseen by ordinary fools.

"The night is the Last Frontier for real people.  Sure, sure, Space is a frontier, too, but not for wholehearted night owls.  Just for astronauts worth billions to the Air Force brass who trained them.  Night is when the critters come out and the monsters of the health care hallways roam the corridors, the beasties doing beastly things.  You have to fight them in the dark, no light to guide your way.  It's tough to spot them 'cause they're Just around the bend or in stairwell, underneath the landing, making plans."

I'm sure I heard one moan and grunt, behind you, there, he's primed to pounce and eat your brains for dinner.  (Figuratively, Man, figuratively, not for real !)

"Dammit, will you PLEASE, SHUT UP?!!"  (Sometimes the maneuver worked, you know, thinking in CAPITAL LETTERS; and sometimes it didn't.)

As I was saying, "... after 31 hours into this 60 hour shift, the hospital becomes more than a 'building,' because we have labeled it a 'hospital.'   The word is Magic.  Buildings are only buildings, but Hos-PIT-als are  More, they Help, they Cure, they Make You Feel Better.  Pure poppycock, of course.  They're just concrete and steel, filled with uncirculated, triple-used, moist air and wheezing sounds from closets or from empty patient bathrooms down the hall."

The majority of patients believe the poppycock, you know. They can't 'forget' pit is a hos-pit-al's middle name because they never knew this was a pit, The Colossally Expensive Health Care Coliseum, where the docs and nurses are the Christians who the bureaucraps throw to the lions in the middle of the night.

"A noise!?  Listen!  Where'd it come from?  I thought we were alone."

We are.   Let's go check on a room upstairs I think you ought to see.

"Wait!  A body, that's a body in the elevator by the CCU.  What the hell ... ! ... lying there on the floor?"

Gray hair?  "Yep."

Female?     "Yep."

Ancient?    "Yep."

Look at the bracelet on her wrist.  It's got to say Lucy-something from 4-South.  It was a Tuesday night.  Before they could get her to the Coronary Care Unit she had a cardiac arrest in the back hall elevator.

"Where the pregnant 7th grader delivered in a wheel chair?"

Yep.  Same elevator.  Same spot.

"The kid was so scared she couldn't stop straining with her contractions.  The doors opened, the little mother pushed and out popped what's-her-name, to the amazement of three bewildered Visitors who had been told to use the Lobby elevators, not the ones in back. "

A dead white lady Tuesday night and a brand new 7-1b, 6-ounce black baby girl Wednesday morning.  Too bad Lucy's soul had to queue up in the elevator all night waitin' for the kid to come along.

"I spent a year one night waiting for the same elevator. The delay is built into the passenger flow management computer."  Must 'a been terrible when Ammonia Joe mopped up old Lucy's mess then turned on the noisy fan to dry the elevator floor. 

Yep. That was 5-1-2.  The Torture Chamber where we beat them up if they don't behave.   A part of me recalls it well.

"Oww!  Goddam!"  The paging system battered my ear drums.

"Code Blue 512! Code Blue 512!"

I do believe the old grouch likes to scream the calls for Cardiac Arrest to protest the perceived injustice done to her.  Since the hospital changed to silent pagers three years ago (to keep the general noise level down to a dull roar) "calling a Code" is the only time she is allowed to use the overhead paging system.  That put a big muzzle on the self-styled, Audible Performance Artist with the underlying sociopathic personality.  She has never forgiven Administration.  Now she takes each opportunity to belt it out with volume that could cause cardiac arrests in patients who don't even have heart trouble.  'Red Alert! Red Alert!'  she bellows.

"What's next: the Russians are coming?"  No.  Shut up.  Red Alert!  It's just a fire alarm test.

"It makes me vehement, being at Ground Zero under the speaker, when her damn voice explodes above my head.  Vehement, hell!  What it really does is piss me off."

Well, if you wouldn't make a fool out of yourself jumping out of your skin and running before you know what direction you're supposed to go maybe you wouldn't be so embarrassed and angry, I mean vehement.

"So what?  I recovered my composure.  The blast was just the start.  Don't you remember?  She called the Code when I was on the second floor and the patient was up on five, which made it fairly painful.  Further to go, more steps to leap two at a time, more burning chest pain with each gasping breath.  Trying to win the race against the Grim Competitor can be strenuous!"

You poor dear.  If you're so goddam frail, why don't you quit and get a day job?

"Piss off.  I was civilized, sophisticated and urbane when I made it to the floor.  I just headed for the door that looked like an Astronomer's Black Hole, sucking in everything within black, hole-sucking distance."

Too bad you didn't get guzzled up yourself.

"I'm tryin' to tell you about Lazarus, you stupid shit.  You want to hear about how people come back from the dead or not?"

Not really.  Lookin' at you at 2:30 in the morning when you haven't slept is close enough for me.

"Well, tough.  I can't stop thinking about it anyway, so I'm gonna remember it for you, like it or not.  They were all there, see, nine members of The Team, converging on the same door from different directions.  The only thing stronger than the Irresistible Force sucking them in was the Immovable Object, the New Security Guard with an I.Q. equal to his shoe size, trying to keep people out.  He thought they were frightened family members.  We, of course, set him straight."

Of course you did.

"No.  We really did.  Remember John Brown?  Respiratory Therapist.  6-foot 4, 305 pounds, ponderous and powerful, with a sense of humor based on terrorizing society.  He never cracked a smile.  He pushed the portable defibrillator up behind this guy, turned it on and handed me the paddles while the charger wound up like a jet plane gettin' ready to take off.  I grabbed them from him and said 'What are we doing with these charged out here in the hall?' and John says to the new guard 'If you don't move your ass, the doc is going to zap you into next week, understand?'  The guard's unheavenly body moved away with enough force to escape from a real black hole ... and John was standin' there tryin' to decide if he was gettin' more excitement out of watch in' this guy hightail it or watch in' his own 300 pound gut bounce up and down as he chuckled.  It don't take much to entertain some folks."

So, Lazarus was lying there, expiring, in 5-12 while you guys joked his life away out in the hall?

"Yeah, sure he was.  Well, NO, not actively expiring!  Now, get this.  The guard wasn't the only new face in the crowd.  Earlier some Newbie female from Respiratory Therapy slipped by the guard and made it to the head of the bed, she had a mask on the patient's face and was squeezing the black rubber ventilation bag for all she was worth.  I mean pumping, pumping, pumping, to bring him back to life.  Scared to death she wasn't going to do it fast enough, I guess."

Good.  At least you jokers got him ventilated.

"He had an I.V. in and running.  That got pulled out by accident in a sec or two.  John Brown was giving CPR like one of those machines that compresses cars into squares of squashed steel four feet square; effective, but excessive.  I shouted at him, 'Leave two, whole ribs unbroken and I'll buy you coffee after this is over, John!'  He backed off a little."

"The New Girl with the bag and mask was still pumping oxygen into the withered, 76 year-old remnant of a man. I grunted and got her attention, then moved my hand up and down slowly like I was patting a baby on the fanny.  She slowed down, squeezing the bag in time with my hand motion.  I felt like Leonard Bernstein, no, Seiji Ozawa; no, Leonard Bernstein (I decided I couldn't be Ozawa because, at that moment, I couldn't spell his name correctly."

And we all know correctness is essential during a Code.

"Right.  So, the EKG monitor leads were on his chest, the monitor screen lit up, everybody stopped bagging and pumping and shouting and fell silent for the count of three, watching expectantly.  And what did they see?"

NOTHING.

"Right!  You remember now?  No cardiac squiggles on the screen, just a straight line on the monitor.  So, I shout 'GO!' Like releasing Stop-Action on a DVD, the crew goes into violent motion again.  Little paper boxes full of drugs almost tore themselves open, vials pulled themselves out of wrappers and needles shoved themselves onto I.V. tubing.  Big John kept pumping, ribs kept cracking, sweat started rolling off people who only 'glow' at any other time."

"STOP!"  I shouted.  The word is magic.  It's like I pressed the DVD Pause Button again, the Action stops.  Nothing again.  No monitor pattern.  No palpable pulse.  No pressure in the cuff. Then the looks began.  I checked the nurses.  The nurses checked each other. The Head Nurse nodded agreement.  The New Girl wanted to start again. I nodded "No" and everyone agreed.  No use.  The Code is "called" again, but this time "called" means "stopped."

The papers were signed, the switches turned off, the sighs of resignation filled the air.  The sheet was pulled over him and shattered nerves begin to mend themselves.  No one noticed, until the silence let us feel it.  Our bending backs and arching necks and pumping arms had worked for ninety minutes ... it had seemed like seconds.  We had worked so hard our lives stood still a while, and in the end his life stood still forever.

"We're crazy, huh, for thinking we could bring guys back like this.  Oh, well."

Go downstairs and go back to bed.

"I'm not through yet.  Don't you want to hear the end of the story?  I started to leave the floor.  The elevator door slid open, like the entrance to a mine shaft.  I wanted to crawl in and have it take me to a secret Call Room in a subterranean sanctuary, solitary and sleep-o-pedic.  But what to my wondering ears should occur, some idiot screaming ... "

"Wait!  He moved, My God, the patient moved!"

Yeah, sure he did.

"No.  Really, he did, look!"

"It ain't enough we've damn near killed ourselves work in' on this guy already, now here we go again.  It seemed so violent before, yet moved at twice the pace this time the Black Hole sucked us in.  We had pumped and bagged and prayed, and now we stood in disbelief.  The patient moved, he spoke, he looked around and made a feeble try to reach his chest where John had caused his sternum to nearly touch his spine more than once this evening."

"What happened?"  He spoke with difficulty.  "What'er y'all doin' heer?  Ah din't call no Nurse nor none of you."

"He coughed and winced.  He hurt.  The pain he felt was very real for those of us who caused it, too.  We held our breath collectively and then we exhaled.  Does he remember, is he aware we gave him up for lost, we stopped and he restarted on his own, does he know how it happened?  An LPN in the back giggled.  The New Girl cried. I laughed and didn't believe my eyes.  We have truly seen Our Lazarus return, just like the Good Book says.  It made us fantasize that other forces might assist hard science with its work throughout the universe."

In a sane world, it had been an insane night.  The whole episode came back in painful detail as I walked by the door.  Now, two years later, I still recall my speech to the New Girl From Respiratory Therapy:

"You're right, of course. You pump the bag real fast, you blow more oxygen INTO the patient's lungs. But each time he exhales he will blow off too much carbon dioxide, you know, C02. If he blows off all his C02, he won't have any left to stimulate his respirations.  He won't take a breath in or blow one out.  So it will look like he has died."  She vowed she wouldn't bag too fast again.

If I have told you twice, I've told you once too often ... "Oh, no.  You're not going to lecture me again, are  you?"  Yes.  I do repeatedly thanks to your short attention span: I only hit you verbally because you need it.  It always hurts you more than it does me   ...   uhh, sorry, it always hurts ME more than it does you ... whatever ...

The Lessons  …

            Don't forget to watch what everyone is doing all the time,

don't forget to make sure every  job is being done right; and,

don't forget that nothing's really over until  ...

"I know, I know.  'Nothing's really finished until the Overkill Official doing chest compressions has broken every rib so the Fat Lady couldn't sing if she wanted to.'  Now can we stop?  I think I am getting tired enough to go to sleep if I can find the Call Room."

If you want to.  Not that you'll be able to sleep, but you may have forgotten the Total Hole Count in the ceiling tile, so you can start counting all over again.  Bet you won't bag it until dawn.  Wanna lay five bucks on it?

"Plug it up, will you.  For your information I'm not a betting person.  Besides, I'm NOT stopping my medicine, I'm going to take MORE.  Maybe then I can get rid of you and enjoy some silence on the Night Frontier alone for once.  Now go away."

I pulled the bottle from my lab coat, took a pill and turned and felt alone.  I looked around and Lazarus was gone, 5-12 was empty.  But, I was not alone and never would be in THIS hospital.  I have company galore.  Patients long-gone, but their stories endure in every passageway, about the lives of patients permanently admitted to the rooms of the "mental" hospital in my mind.

It's Not the Hurricane That Will Kill You!

Hurricane Irene August 2011, mid-Atlantic Coast area, USA
We have talked a lot about PTSD in the past few days.  I.e., Post-Tropical Storm (Stress and) Depression.  Here, first-hand, back from our recent travel in-land to protect ourselves from the first hurricane land-fall of the season are some of the factors that can precipitate PTSD:
HYPE: The Weather Channel / Media Hype / Tension / presentation "as if" yikes! help! we are all going to get washed out to sea and never be seen again;

WAITING: unlike explosions, tornadoes, motor vehicle accidents and other disasters that HAPPEN - BANG! and are OVER, with hurricanes we have WAITING:

WAITING for the next Storm Track Update, 

WAITING to see if it is coming in two or six or nine days ... (or more), (or fewer)

WAITING to see if it is coming closer to us, or is it going to go further away, 

WAITING to see the next set of pictures from "our local TV reporter on-scene in Kaka Waka Island just off the coast of So. Carolina"  … it seems like he relishes showing the chilling destruction, the bloated bodies, the houses and cars floating down the out-of their-banks rivers; 

WAITING ...

RE-CAPS: helplessly surfing from one channel to another seeking a respite from the on-rushing disaster, only to find that RE-CAPS of the 1891 Storm of the Century, the 1906 Building-Buster Hurricane and Tornado, the videos of the 20xx (fill in any date you like)  Monsoons, Cyclones, Tornadoes and Volcanic eruptions around the world ... followed by the talking heads saying that The Committee to Scare Your Pants Off has predicted that what will hit us could probably be even worse than all of these put together; RE-CAPS could be avoided if we were at home because we would pull out a DVD of James Taylor / Carole King live performance to soothe our souls and calm our nerves ... but we are at the house of a "friend" who keeps flipping from one news channel to another and hasn't yet installed the DVD player that their kids gave them for Christmas last year, so that relief is no where in sight;
VERBOSEST HOSTESS (nervous chatter): Rather than just admit that the Committee has succeeded in actually scaring our drawers right off our Bee-Hinds, our hostess rejects all rational conversation to divert us from thoughts of the storm and rattles along incessantly (when did she take a breath in the three days we were there?) about her son, his new wife, their marriage, their honeymoon to Italy, where they met, how they both work in the film industry and myriad other details about a raft of people we don't know from here to California and back; and the words all come in TV-like 30-second spots, intertwined with a genuine Flight of Ideas and repeated offers of food of all sorts, the offer (e.g., of pumpkin muffins) being immediately followed by her jumping up and running out to the kitchen, returning with a Thanksgiving-sized turkey serving platter filled with said muffins, before she even heard "no thank you" or "pumpkin makes me break out in hives" or "my best friend choked to death on a pumpkin muffin so I kind of don't eat them any more;"
NON-RESPONSIVE HOST: having heard all the stories from the hostess 'til he could repeat them all verbatim, the host does his: "She's the Shakespearean Foil to My Helen Keller's Deaf-Mute Brother Impression."  Fixed, immovable, seemingly untouched by the almost-visible shotgun blasts of polysyllabic verbiage being fired at us, he sits in the only comfortable plush Lazy-Boy recliner and dozes, slipping in and out of consciousness, unaware that we even exist.  When he snores I am soooo close to ... well, never mind so close to What ... I didn't do anything, but I sure was thinking about it.  The question is: did I not do or say anything by using my superior will power, or was I just soooo enervated by that time that I couldn't move?
SLEEPLESSNESS: (And we didn't even get to wait it out in Seattle): Everyone should stay overnight in someone else's house once a year ... one night is plenty.  But once per year is mandatory.  That one-night stand will convince you to go back home, lay down on your own guest bed and honestly appraise the quality of sleep you would get if forced to sleep on it yourself.  There is nothing that makes coping with PTSD during the acute exposure than really lousy, partial, interrupted sleep;
Aside from the bed you may end up in during a sleep-over, there is the potential for an additional eerie experience: to wit, sleeping the the bedroom of a recently-deceased live-in relative (e.g., mother, daughter, son).  On the vanity were all the personal items (e.g., hair brush (with hair), comb, personal health and beauty items partially used, various items of clothing all washed, ironed, folded and stacked, ready to either put on or put away in the dresser) … a Kleenex on the floor behind the waste can … two white (probably aspirin) and one, small red pill (unknown drug) sitting patiently on the bedside table with a small water glass (empty).   The whole room looking like the rightful owner of the items could walk in at any moment and indignantly blurt out “Who are YOU and what are you doing in my bedroom?”   I tried to ignore the whining wind and rain pelting the windows and tried to doze off, but kept waking up thinking about what I would say if the person actually showed up;
As for the bed itself, you can be sure that it will not be like home.  Our Scandanavian Queen-sized bed is barely 18” off the floor, has a TempurPedic mattress and, from the hospital where I used to take night call, old, super-soft sheets that I rescued from the laundry discard pile before they could be burned.  Those sheets were originally 600-thread-count, but had been washed and boiled and steamed and run through a flat mangle ironing board so many times they are now pushing 200-thread-count and see-through-soft against one’s skin.  No way anyone’s guest bedroom is going to sport anything even close to that kind of comfort … it’s the comfort you long for every time you roll over in the night and are awakened by the sand-paper stiff, brand new sheets scratching off another microscopic layer of your skin;
The Guest Room bed is roughly 36” off the floor, has a mattress like a brick, was the bed the hostess slept in as a child and is barely wide enough for one kid, let alone two adults.  And those two adults are known to turn from one side to the other all night long, which posed a risk more immediate than the storm itself and the 12-to-18 inch diameter tree branches that hang over the roof of the house … more specifically … hang over the roof of the Guest Bedroom.  If a branch falls, at least we had the roof and ceiling structure to break the fall.  If one of us rolled “over-and-out” we would have been picking solid Oak hardwood splinters out of our face for weeks.

All things considered, the odds are against your ever reaching anything near Stage 2 sleep … and you can dismiss completely the chance you will ever enjoy refreshing REM sleep until you have been back home for two or three days after the storm.


RECOVERY: Five days now separate today from the exit of the hurricane, the 105-115 mph winds, the flooding and the manic TV newscasters.  

We have had time to formulate a conclusion about our experience: it’s not the hurricane that will kill you, it’s the mute host, the muffins (we still have a baker’s dozen left) and the mattress!   

We have also had time to formulate a plan of escape from the oceanfront to someplace more secure, which does not involve "friends" ... we say Vive la Holiday Inn Express
 * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
110914 Addendum: It should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer that this summary tells you nothing at all about the people we stayed with, but reveals everything about the inability of the author to cope with the waiting, the uncertainty, the lack of control (of anything). There are insights that will help one cope with waiting. Or, at least, help one understand the common reactions to imposed waiting.

The longer we wait, the greater the value we impute to the act of waiting. I.e., the more we pay for something, the more pressure we feel to justify the investment, so the more we feel it is worth. The longer we have to wait (i.e., the more time we invest in the waiting), the more it was "worth the wait." 
Except when we believe that all is lost, e.g., in the case where the Weather Service Tracking Radar shows clearly the Category 3 hurricane passing directly over our city, or worse: over our subdivision; or even worse: right over the street on which we live). The point at which we feel "all is lost," that is the point at which waiting switches from an investment to an expense.  Instead of investing a little time waiting to find that our lives have increased in value, we feel that the storm is going to cost us everything: all of the material things (home ... we designed and built it ourselves; furniture ... we picked it out together; pictures ... of all the good times; computers ... with all the documents we slaved over; clothes ... our newest shoes to our oldest, favorite, thread-bear shirts ... and on and on). 
The storm is going to take it all away from us. Is it any wonder that nerves turn squiddly and we amplify the insignificant quirks of our hosts into major character flaws?

Being stuck in a crowd causes people to chose a more isolated spot to give themselves more "personal space." This helps maintain a feeling of identity and distance from the crowd. As the crowding becomes more apparent, their discomfort becomes amplified. Even if the "crowd" is only four in number, your spouse and the other couple, the forced interaction is a growing burden. The threat of the raging storm outside makes it improbable that you will break out to relieve the pressure ... like a "jail break" from the "incarceration" ... so the walls close in, you feel more trapped and your agitation rises ... and your "jailers" are demonized.

Coping is not easy. I don't have the answer to how you do it. All you'll find here is just a description of the situation and an explanation of the possible causes. How you cope is your problem. What do you think you will do differently when the next disaster bears down on you? You should think about it, because there will be another situation in the future.

OK. I am thinking about it ...

How Does and Era End?

According to playwright Arthur Miller, an era “can be said  to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.”
      
       Hasn't an era ended if I can put Pat McCullough's (pseudonym for client) info off to the side and not write anything for her ... and not have anything “bad” happen to me.  I need to write and tell her that I am not going to do any work for her.  She now has millions and should hire someone else to do it for her ... and when she figures out why I am doing this she should call me and come down and I will buy her lunch at the Ramada Inn and I’ll explain it to her … or she can explain it to me.
      
       Hasn't an era ended when I don't want to be a physician anymore?  When I am not afraid to hire a consultant to go after new contracts to expand my company and shoot for triple the income by the end of the year?
      
Passages, Crises, Stages and Eras

The October Syndrome:
the leaves fall,
the body fails.
the mind deserts us.
we need jails
for the body, not the mind.

the mind is free
of worries and
cares and
of woe is me.
it's backwards, the world,
I've thought that for years.

when you ought to be
laughing you are
shedding tears.

when you ought to be
crying you
are racked with pain
from the humor of circumstance:
               a pig in the rain,
               an Eskimo's ice box,
               an Arab's space heater.

it's queerer and queerer:
the rich man's a cheater;

the poor bastard gives away all that he has,
then goes to earn more
to feed starving lambs.

the ones who have "everything"
really have nothing.

the ones who are struggling
are swaddled in bunting
of red, white and blue
or today's favorite colors,
by grateful receivers of
staples they're hunting.

you win, but you lose it,
you fail to succeed.
you get what you want
but don't have what you need.

you strive for a goal and
make fun of the gooks
who don't have objectives,
who don't have roots
in the ground, and
no plans for the
future, tomorrow,
they just go on living,
without joy or sorrow,
just living and dying without direction,
Free Spirits wandering
without a connection
to anything I can see anywhere.

can it be,
I'm afraid to ask,
does a life without tasks
well-defined, planned,
scheduled and ordered,
hold the answer to structure,
the solution to boredom?

Is the real answer "living,"
not looking for "life,"
is it doing, not thinking,
is it fun and not strife.

if winning is losing and
losing don't matter
and neither does "don't"
as opposed to "doesn't matter,"
then I've missed the point,
I've been led astray by
illusions and
mystique and
power and play
as in:
play with my mind,
don't tell me the truth.
tell me what I "should say"
and starting from youth
tell me how things are done
and what things we say,
and what we don't do
'cause our kind's not that way.

so I'll grow up with
curtains and
screening and
blinds and
dirt-covered windows
that I'm stuck behind.

I'm trying to see out,
but what the hell,
there is so much damn filtering
how can I tell
what is real,
what is fake,
what is true and
what's not.

I'm so confused hereabout
I can't use
what I've got
in the way of skills,
to sort it all out.

from the top of this tower of bullshit I sit on
       and
       look
       down on
                    real things
                                    miles down below,
it's so far away
how is a person to know

what is real,
what's made up,
what's right and
what's wrong.

is it right 'cause you told me
or now is that wrong?
is it wrong cause you told me
and now it's all right?
or will all of my days be spent
walking in night-
like confusion and
darkness and
worry
about who is the Judge and
who is the jury?

which one is properly prepped
for the task?
it's no wonder so many
men take up the flask or
the  pill bottle, needle or
gun at the worst,
       (the quickest if you prefer
        your death in a burst)

nary a day-to-day
slaking of thirst
which grows larger and drier
as suns rise each day,
'til you think that the bottle or
pill won't belay
the pain and the hurt.

but, then, big surprise!

you're dying!
it's working!
in front of your eyes
a real death is lurking!

it's working, the pain's gone,
oops, so is your liver,
but the hurt is a dream,
and you're life's
just a sliver
of memories.

painful, yes, ahhh,
but now waning,
episodes recalled,
       (but only with straining)
                         (and effort)
                         (and energy),

god how you work, but now back-
wards to subdue
the slivers
that lurk
in the cracks.

The Beauty of Backwards
 
the beauty of "backwards"
is that it says you have finally made it to the point where
you can enjoy life
because
you have to expend more energy
trying to remember the by-gone slivers
than
you used to spend
trying to forget the chunks.

one switch like that and
you can begin to see
a hundred of them a day,
everywhere.

nothing is really what it seems,
not even you.
you're what you
think
you are, but that's not
really what you have
become.

to discover what that is,
turn your head upside down and
see what you find.

most of us find that we are,
when upside down,
looking up our own
asshole,

which may have been what we were doing
all our lives
and didn't even
know it until
now.

or worse yet, someone else turned
our heads upside down a long time
ago
and we have been looking up
their asshole
all this time not realizing it,

you know,
like when you  “are only doing
what your
father
wanted you to do."

then you find out
he didn't even care, never cared, still doesn't care to this day,
what you do or how you do it.

"minor" shocks like that cause people to start wars or
        spray a MacDonald's restaurant in San Diego / San Ysidro
with three
semi-automatic weapons,
splattering
Big Macs and Large Fries all over
the ceiling and
the walls, to say nothing of
the additional pieces of tissue,
brains
hair clumps,
eye balls and
other assorted body parts of 21 people killed and 19 injured all over the
                                 "Over 164 billion Sold"  sign (*)
hanging on the wall.

I  wonder  if
that MacDonald's closed down or
if it is back
in business? (**)

      (*) 247 billion as of April 30, 2010
     (**) addendum: it was closed and bulldozed; a new one was built two blocks away.

The Decision

I haven't decided:

is the October Syndrome (*) the end of an age
or the beginning of an era.
(*) http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The--October--syndrome-5723

it certainly marks the end of an era, since
all of the previous basic illusions are exhausted by
the occurrence.
but the flip side of the
coin has interesting words
and pictures printed on it too:

is the onset of The October Syndrome the start of
a new era and if so can we figure out
what the Basic Illusions of the new era are and,
in so doing,

either,

postpone the passing of that new era or hasten
its demise in a conscious manner?

it does follow logically,
doesn't it,

that if "we are finally free of the illusion" that our father controlled
us, then we have to
ask the questions:

free from what?
free to do what?
really free or just apparently free?
or just free of that one parental figure and now
controlled by some other parental surrogate or
substitute illusion  ...
when will this new era end by our becoming "free of"  ...
or by exhausting ...
this new illusion?

The Waltz With Death Effect
                    —> Transition
                           —> Transformation
      
"It goes like this: one, two, three, one, two, three CLICK !   ..."

you are  a cop and you are depressed.
you are Catholic, have two kids, an ex-wife, a girl friend who lives with you,
you see your kids on alternate weekends and you want to kill yourself.

so you go see a therapist and talk about it, but nothing gets any better and you report that you are getting more and more depressed and are fearful of becoming suicidal.

you think about suicide more frequently each week.

then you get a call one night on duty, a domestic situation.

a father has called because his son has gone berserk in their two story farm house just outside of town.  the kid has threatened the whole family and has fired a couple of shots from the 38 in a random fashion inside the building.  the family is out of the house and you are called to check it out.  your partner checks the yard and the back door while you go around the front, in the door and through each of the downstairs rooms ... but you find nothing.

you mount the narrow, central stairway which rises from
the entry foyer
straight up to the landing
on the second floor ...

with your service revolver cocked,
held upward in firing position.

as you near the top step you see
a shadow
coming from your right side,
not moving,
but in the hallway on the second floor.
you step up,
aim
scream "Police! Freeze!"

you hear

the CLICK ! of a double-action
revolver being cocked,
pointed at the space between your eyes.
as if in slow motion your mind knows
you have heard one click
and you must hear two before the revolver can be fired.

without further thought you sense
his revolver has not
clicked the second time,

you round the corner toward the click
but you have already BANG !
fired your service weapon and
are sure that the bullet has
covered at least 6 of the 12 inches separating you
from the gunman
before he even knows what has happened.

in the next limitless instant
he is hit
pulls his shot skyward,
blows a very large hole in
the ceiling of the hallway and
has a grand mal seizure as he falls to the floor.

your shot has penetrated his skull with
unerring precision.
it takes  minutes,
apparently two or three full
minutes for him to
instantaneously
hit the floor as you watch in amazement.

as he falls    s l o w l y,

gracefully,

jerking arms and legs
going in different directions
from the neurological shock of the missile that
tumbled
and
slashed
its
way
through his
gray matter

(and now lies firmly embedded, almost two thirds of the way through
a two by twelve in the frame of the house!),

you are aware your depression is
melting in an almost visible,
physical,
palpable
way.

you feel it either
draining
out of your body or
being lifted off your shoulders in a musical, lyrical way.

there can't possibly have been time to think of all this,
but you did:
as if both you and the rapidly dying gunman are dancing with
death.

Death spins you,
his former partner,
around,
twirls you to the point of throwing
off the weight of his presence
with which you have had to cope for
so long ... and .. .

waltzes his way over to the
bloody,
grotesque
form,
dancing in its
tonic
clonic,
jerking,
dissonant,
uncoordinated way toward the
sanded … polished ... hardwood ... so ... as ... to ... catch ... him,
unite with ... him ... just ... before ... the ... foundation-shaking ...
                                                                                                                               
                                                                thud !
to dance the last few  bars with the
former son,
former gunman,
former lunatic
to keep him from having
to dance alone this one last time.

Death takes his victim to another ballroom
down below and you are left
                                               alone
without a partner,
without the weight of depression,
without the suicidal thoughts and
with the recognition that
if you had really been suicidal
you would have let him
shoot you.

but instead you won the Quick Draw Contest handily ...
automatically ....
instinctively .... and,
believe this ...
so gracefully
with one of the smoothest, most coordinated and on-target fluid
point-and-shoot motions you can ever remember having put together.

Killing another man in self-defense is not suicidal behavior.

Waltzing with Death had definitely made him a transformed man.

Waltzing with Death was definitely a dance of                    
                                                                           Transfiguration.

       The message that he heard when he listened to the voices inside was suddenly different than before.  He didn't hear depression and despair.  Now he heard "Live! I want to live!" He felt so good he never did go back to see his therapist again. He was too busy living.
      
       The feeling of how bad things were was gone.  The illusion that the feelings were so bad the only solution was to kill himself had disappeared.  Nothing was that bad.  All of the sudden he knew all he had to do was cope with each problem, one at a time ... and he knew he could do that,
but only if he was alive.

        Dead he couldn't cope with anything and dead he wasn't.  Dead was the only way he wouldn't be able to cope, since he now knew, being alive, he could cope with anything . . . if he could cope with this he could cope with anything.
      
       The era of his depression was over the instant the hammer of his gun dropped, sending the 230 grain ball spinning like a rocket down the barrel of his 45, taking the midbrain out of that maniac and, in the process, exhausting the last breath of the cop's illusion that he was now, or ever would be again, suicidal.

The "Infinite Now:" A Clue to Finding Forever

In the beginning
THE was the word and
the word was THE and
it was an Object and
the Object was good.

THE Object was the center and the focus.
The light which shone from it was the light
that was shone upon it,
the light illuminated
all that it touched and cast deep, black shadows
upon all that was
behind it and
under it and
darkness was there.

But when we had THE,
we had Everything and
we were good because we had it.

THE was all we needed and if we had THE our lives were complete and we were better than anyone around us and they envied THE Object and admired us.

But faded THE did, and waned THE did and lost its luster and attraction and the feelings faded and THE was no longer the Object that it once had been,

causing us to search

for an Object to be found that would be THE Object, and we would
be restored by it and we would
keep it glistening, never to let it get
dull and fade as had the olde one, THE . . .  such a THE which we had revered, but had now revealed to us as never we thought it would that it had:
Finiteness,
a limit,
an age or
eon, through which it would serve,
but then would pass and like a long, long play upon a stage,
surprise us with a dropping curtain when just
we felt that it would never end, but entertain us
throughout all eternity,
or least-wise 'til we dozed The Sleep,
bigger than all other sleeps combined,
whenever that transpires, "Later,"
sometime amidst the infinite years.
 
So THE becomes a Finite THE,
THE With and End, to our befuddlement, but why?

We should have known that Infinites need Finites to exist or How can they?
(Exist, that is).

They have no foil against which they can ring the trueness of
their depth, save when compared to
Things that never end.

And that's the Object of
The Story of THE, An Object,
with a start and end and a life unlike all others.
It exists and fades, no matter that we hold as tight as ever.

THE has held us and we it,
THE slips away in spite of all, and we
are left with empty hands,
a state for which we weren't prepared, but which prepares us
for the coming phase,
unlike our previous plans which have prepared us
for nothing, save
frustration that our energies all went for
naught.
We "should have stood in bed" for all the good it did.

We watch THE Object go and realize that We have Not.
(Gone, that is, with it).

We're left behind to watch THE go,
to watch another THE appear as though a Grand Supply of THEs
was just behind the hill,
awaiting Time
or Chance
or Grand Design
to give the cue for it to show its Face.

We watch THE come and go and, disenchanted by the passing line,
seek refuge in a place that's more akin to our
felt needs
and wants
and longings, deep, primeval, for a womb, a cave, a hideaway.
So,
crazed,
we wing our way from here to there,
then stop.

We realize THE's gone,
in decadence it's disintegrated right before our eyes and  . . .
wait.

We're not only still bemused, but also back from one full circuit 'round the castle, moat and all, and right back where we started from.

How nice.

The path is Infinite,
a circle
without ups and downs
or corners sharp
or curves all winding.

Arcing slowly to the left
or right,
I guess we could decide,
but always coming back to Here,
much better than Olde THE, a Finite Cuss who always disappointed us
by crumbling in the End.

So now we know:

the game's to Play ... to PLAY, not THINK ABOUT.
The Game's to Play for Playin's sake,
the opposite of "Play to Win" or
"Play to Lose" or
"Play to Smash Someone to Smithereens."

Who cares about Them anyway?
We've got Our Game to Play
and
They
have
Theirs.

Save passing in the night,
the twains shall never meet,
and that in darkness,
not knowing what transpired,
except for wind and dust and
clacking clicks of wheels on steel
defining cracks between the rails
by beating out a rate-dependent rhythm of
"clickety-clacks mean
steely cracks:
you'd better not
fall in one."

THE seems to be forgotten now as
Play we must at new-found games.
Who knows their names, or cares? No one I see,
although I can't see everyone, so
someone,
somewhere
might know what to call this, but
The Game
is good enough for me.

The Game; it energizes and it teaches as we Play.
There's no way to lose except to stop,
because
the Playing of the Game is Winning and
the Winning's in the Playing
not
the start or
middle or
the end, like THE, Olde THE, Olde Useless THE,
whose passing never indicated Joy was on the way
to take the place of Long-lost THE.

Well, not so much was Joy the
real replacement for Olde THE,
as was Relief,
my God! Relief!

I never thought there was so much to feel
when THE was gone
as when I first met true Relief.

With Happiness so uppermost in song and story,
fable,
lore and
Constitution
who would think Relief would hold a candle to
Pursuit of Happiness?

The thing about Relief:
when it comes, it's Now,
not later,
not tomorrow,
after meals, when meat and spinach are all
gone and then
dessert
is carried in.

No, not Relief.  Relief says:
"Hey! I'm here! It's me, right Now,
                                       right Here,
                                       let's Revel,
                                       God I'm such a Party Person!

"Don't you get it?  I'm Not This,
                                     not That,
                                     not THE
                                     or Them
                                     or anything External.

"Just Relief, in Here, down Here in inside from top to toe I'll
make you feel content, serene and calm.  And that, along with
Common,
Unexciting and
Ordinary beats
Happiness
hands down."

The outcome of the process is to realize a Truth:
we've gone from THE to THE and found that THE is wanting
by itself,
it ages, dies and leaves us
seeking yet another THE to take its place.

But, as a word alone, THE's not a strong contender.
So then we went for Infinite,
since THE was Finite,
endings leaving us non-plussed,
empty and
anxious for
"some more" of This or That.

However, with its Infiniteness, the Infinite leaves
a big, black
Question Hole:

"Infinite" in what direction, where, when, how, with whom and why?

The answer is, of course, Right Now.

The Infiniteness is greatest use to us Right Now.

It turns out that, alone, the three are
of no use to us
or to each other.

However:

Combining THE with Infiniteness, with Now and,
like a three-leg stool,
they hold each other up,
supporting THE with Infiniteness
at just the time we need it,
Now,
since that is
all we have.

You can't sit on that stool tomorrow and
if the date's "today"
you've missed your chance to do it "yesterday,"
but Now You Can,
forever Now,
and ever.

No time constraints,
no limits
nor no bounds.

THE Infinite Now permits you, in its wisdom (and hopefully in yours), to take a chunk of time so big you can't imagine where it ends or starts or where the middle is, because it doesn't have those parts to worry you.  It doesn't start, it doesn't end, it just IS, and since it IS Right Now, let's use it, but don't rush, no need, I'll give you one Now at a time and if you need another one I'll give that to you too.

Time to get to work.
Gotta go.

See you "Later,"
whenever That is.

Why "Life Stinks" doesn't

Comments on “Life Stinks” which, your mother will tell you, you should get the DVD of and watch, while contemplating the message(s) for you it is sending (already) !

            Mel Brooks is not wrong.   The Critics are wrong. The Critics say Mel brooks stinks.  Mel Brooks says life stinks. I say The Critics stink and they have completely missed the point of the movie,  del Brooks did not stink as the 2,000 year old man or in Blazing Saddles or High Anxiety or ...

            He is one of the world's funniest people and a comedic genius.  So let's think about this for a minute.  Do you really think that the comedic genius who has either written or picked the successful scripts like the ones above over the years would be blind to the LACK of humor in this work? Do you think someone who loves being the Best Buffoon would unconsciously pick a Non-Boffo showcase for his talents?

            After all, this man does not have to say to himself "let the Schvartz be with you," He IS THE SCHVARTZ! And the Schvartz, take it from me (and you ought to because I don't deserve to have it) . . . The Schvartz Never Does Anything Unconsciously . . . sooooo I think you should weigh the idea that when The Schvartz, who has been funny for 2,000 years, does a piece that EVEN HE CAN'T MAKE FUNNY, then maybe, just maybe (which, of course, means For Sure!) he did it to sensitize us to the things around us today which are so bad, need so much attention and are being ignored by so many ... to get us to think ... to fill the intellectual blind spot into which we shove the homeless, the poor (urban and otherwise), the poor (urbane and not so urbane and otherwise), those people in whom a sane idea could not find a home (a slightly different kind of "homeless" person).

            What if we reject the hypothesis (which is even difficult to write about it is so ridiculous) that some mindless twit in the finance department of the studio has been told "Give Brooks whatever he wants, $10, $20 million, whenever he wants it."

            He would probably get a bigger laugh from the request for $20 million than he would for the jokes in a bad script.  These are the times when 8, 10, 12 writers go over and over a script before it is produced.  So I personally think we have to reject the hypothesis that the picture was produced by zombies in their sleep spending down overflowing money coffers to avoid paying tax on earned income.   

            Anyone who has ever tried to tell a joke, write a skit or get a laugh at a party knows two things: 1. you have to think hard to get it right; and, 2. thinking is hard work.  So this movie didn't just "happen," it was created by hard-thinking people who know two more things about comedy than we do: nobody likes pain of any sort and all good comedy is based on suffering, hopefully the suffering of someone other than ourselves.

            Therefore, assuming that the apparently mindless comedic genius of Brooks has to have a mandatory sense of the painful, then what kind of movie would he produce if he wanted to talk about suffering to an audience that doesn't even want to THINK about the pain and suffering of others, let alone DO anything about it?   VOILA!  "LIFE STINKS! Already !! "

-------------------------

Life Stinks: IMDB pages: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102303/