Deterioration.
Old houses which need painting.
Our house.
The kitchen cabinets and drawers ordained with smudges and nicks.
Same with the bathrooms.
And interior and closet doors.
The door downstairs with exposed scars where our grand dog, Yerba, scratched it eight years ago.
Stacks of to-dos all around the house remind me of my body's deterioration in the last seven years.
The over thirty boxes behind the living room couch that contain lord-knows-what...
Books and trinkets and photos and dvds and tapes from when I cleared the rooms on our ground level for the installation of hardwood floors, in 2009.
Boxes of stuff from Mom's home after she died, in 2009.
I have three king-size sheets thrown over the boxes.
Which makes the area look like an ongoing project.
A project I've not touched since 2009 when the boxes were loaded.
So much stuff to be organized...
The strewn stacks downstairs in the so-called office, which I avoid.
The somewhat-orderly stacks in the dining room which is now another office space.
The deeper stacks in Daughter's old bedroom, which is now another office area.
The few small stacks in Son's old bedroom, which in my mind, I plan to make the office.
While convalescing after my revision hip replacement surgery in August, 2016, I mentally went through the whole house figuring how I'd rearrange and decorate.
I even tore out a wall and added a bathroom and partial kitchen on the ground level.
A library.
I'd love to organize all the books I have.
Many are in those boxes behind the couch.
Including a set each of The Annals of America and The Great Books from Britannica.
I've thought that I'd like to read all The Great Books.
But I'd probably get bored with them.
When I was in elementary school Mom sold Compton's Encyclopedias.
Mr. K recruited her as a salesperson.
He was the principle at Oakwood Elementary where all my siblings and I went to school.
Mr. and Mrs. K used to come to our house and play bridge with Mom and Dad. Their daughter, Margaret whom everyone called Bunny, would come with them. She was one year older than me. We would play in a room away from the adults, but I don't recall what we played. I do remember when she got a straight pin stuck in her ankle. The pin was hiding in the shag carpet, and when Bunny sat down cross-legged, the pin lodged in the soft spot of her ankle. One of the adults pulled it out.
Mom became the number one salesperson for Compton's in the United States.
I think she held that spot for five years, into the early 1970s.
She sold Avon before she sold encyclopedias.
Compton's got bought by Encyclopedia Britannica.
Mom then sold Britannica, but she wasn't the number one salesperson.
Still, she sold plenty of books.
That's how I got my set of Great Books and Annals of America.
And a set of Encyclopedia Britannica.
All of which I still own.
This all happened years before Dad's wreck, before he became a quadriplegic, in 1983.
After the wreck, when Dad was rendered paralyzed, upper management at Britannica called Mom.
"Rae," they said, "If Ted will fly up here [to Chicago], we have a cargo van that we'll sell you for a dollar. It's not plush, but it can be converted so you have a van for Albert."
The van served well until Dad's death almost thirteen years later, in 1996.
March 22, 2018
March 19, 2018
Jefferson Starship - Miracles
Last week as I worked as the sole human in the art studio while listening to Pandora on the computer... Miracles played.
It'd been a long time since I'd heard it.
The song began to take me away, and I obliged.
I stood up from my chair, closed my eyes, swayed to the rhythm, and my arms danced.
I was still dealing with vertigo, so I couldn't move too much.
After it ended, I clicked replay on the computer screen.
And again, I "danced."
Toward the middle, a second human entered the studio.
I stopped my dance and looked at Clark, and we both laughed.
Ends up, it's one of his favorites too.
I sat back down for the rest of the replay, and for another replay.
But still I danced...on the inside.
Starship's mesmerizing tune...
Seven minutes of bliss...
It'd been a long time since I'd heard it.
The song began to take me away, and I obliged.
I stood up from my chair, closed my eyes, swayed to the rhythm, and my arms danced.
I was still dealing with vertigo, so I couldn't move too much.
After it ended, I clicked replay on the computer screen.
And again, I "danced."
Toward the middle, a second human entered the studio.
I stopped my dance and looked at Clark, and we both laughed.
Ends up, it's one of his favorites too.
I sat back down for the rest of the replay, and for another replay.
But still I danced...on the inside.
Starship's mesmerizing tune...
Seven minutes of bliss...
March 14, 2018
Substance - Frankl on growing old...
"I should say having been is the surest kind of being." ~Victor Frankl
***
In a previous blog post I quoted a paragraph on "transitoriness" from Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning.
Not until a day or so after I blogged that paragraph did I read beyond it in the book.
As I read...
My heart grew wings.
My being was lifted.
My cares were lighter.
I felt at peace with the past and the present and the future.
A line from John Denver's song Rocky Mountain High rolled through my head, "you might say [s]he was born again."
Frankl's main theme on life is finding one's purpose and meaning, even in suffering.
The question is not, what is the meaning of life?
But rather, what is an individual's purpose or meaning?
In the Life's Transitoriness section, Frankl shares an analogy of a person figuratively tearing off calendar pages day after day and writing a few notes about one's life on the back of each torn-off page, and then filing the page neatly away with its predecessors.
When I read his analogy I thought, "I've done that, literally...with journaling."
In that moment, my journals meant something.
They have substance.
They aren't meaningless and nothingness.
It's okay that they sit on my book shelves.
It's okay that I don't commit them to ashes, as some well-meaning people (and I mean that sincerely) have suggested.
Frankl's words give my past a substance I don't think I'd previously felt.
In a sense it's like one can live in the past, present, and future simultaneously.
All three happen almost simultaneously.
Below I've transcribed the section entitled Life's Transitoriness from Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.
***
Those things which seem to take meaning away from human life include not only suffering but dying as well. I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from tansitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.
Thus, the transitoriness of our existence in no way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities. Man constantly makes his choice concerning the mass of present potentialities; which of these will be condemned to nonbeing and which will be actualized? Which choice will be made an actuality once and forever, an immortal "footprint in the sands of time"? At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
Usually, to be sure, man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full granaries of the past, wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds, his joys and also his sufferings. Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.
Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activistic. To express this point figuratively we might say: The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reason has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think.
"Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy."
***
[Victor Frankl developed "logotherapy" which is "a form of psychotherapy that is based on helping clients to find a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives."]
***
In a previous blog post I quoted a paragraph on "transitoriness" from Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning.
Not until a day or so after I blogged that paragraph did I read beyond it in the book.
As I read...
My heart grew wings.
My being was lifted.
My cares were lighter.
I felt at peace with the past and the present and the future.
A line from John Denver's song Rocky Mountain High rolled through my head, "you might say [s]he was born again."
Frankl's main theme on life is finding one's purpose and meaning, even in suffering.
The question is not, what is the meaning of life?
But rather, what is an individual's purpose or meaning?
In the Life's Transitoriness section, Frankl shares an analogy of a person figuratively tearing off calendar pages day after day and writing a few notes about one's life on the back of each torn-off page, and then filing the page neatly away with its predecessors.
When I read his analogy I thought, "I've done that, literally...with journaling."
In that moment, my journals meant something.
They have substance.
They aren't meaningless and nothingness.
It's okay that they sit on my book shelves.
It's okay that I don't commit them to ashes, as some well-meaning people (and I mean that sincerely) have suggested.
Frankl's words give my past a substance I don't think I'd previously felt.
In a sense it's like one can live in the past, present, and future simultaneously.
All three happen almost simultaneously.
Below I've transcribed the section entitled Life's Transitoriness from Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.
***
Life's Transitoriness
Those things which seem to take meaning away from human life include not only suffering but dying as well. I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from tansitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.
Thus, the transitoriness of our existence in no way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities. Man constantly makes his choice concerning the mass of present potentialities; which of these will be condemned to nonbeing and which will be actualized? Which choice will be made an actuality once and forever, an immortal "footprint in the sands of time"? At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
Usually, to be sure, man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full granaries of the past, wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds, his joys and also his sufferings. Nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with. I should say having been is the surest kind of being.
Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activistic. To express this point figuratively we might say: The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reason has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think.
"Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy."
***
[Victor Frankl developed "logotherapy" which is "a form of psychotherapy that is based on helping clients to find a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives."]
March 9, 2018
What do you want to be....
Sometime last week I said to Hubby, "When I think of my childhood, I don't think of what I did in school. I don't have a lot of 'school' memories. I mainly recall playing outside and riding horses. Us kids in the neighborhood playing pick-up rolly-bat and football and riding bikes and sledding. I don't recall playing often with Barbie dolls; most often I played with model horses. I don't recall reading a lot. I don't remember many of the books that I did read. I remember Misty of Chincoteague, about horses, and Ruffian, about a dog."
I can't recall exactly what prompted that discussion.
But I think it was all the recent news about school shootings.
***
Victor Frankl developed logotherapy.
When I first saw the word "logotherapy," I thought of the Greek word, logos, used in the New Testament.
Logos means "word" and is used in reference to Jesus Christ (the Word in the flesh), the written Word (the Bible) and the spoken Word (when a believer speaks by revelation/inspiration).
But that isn't what Frankl means by the prefix logo.
Logo means "meaning or purpose."
Logotherapy is "a form of psychotherapy that is based on helping clients to find a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives."
I've struggled with purposelessness often since the onset of polyradiculitis and continuing thereafter as I'd experience one loss after another due to the disabilities brought on by the illness.
Naturally I thought, Hmmm, logotherapy might be useful for me.
A few days ago I searched online for a workbook about logotherapy.
I found a free online pdf version, downloaded and printed it, and am giving it a try.
One of the exercises, which is labeled "expanding your conscious awareness" is to think of your earliest recollections of what you wanted to be.
My first recollections are...
A pirate, an American Indian, a dancer where I choreograph my own moves, a performer in musicals, and a boy.
As I got older the list expanded...
A visual artist, a teacher, a wife, a backpacker, a naturalist, a healer, a counselor, a transcendental meditation instructor, an organic gardener, a Peace Corps or VISTA worker/volunteer, a believer, a mother, a philanthropist, a life coach and...the list probably isn't finished.
I recall some of my earliest times...
When I stood on the side bar of the backyard swing-set looking for land.
The swing-set was a ship, and I was a pirate.
When I dressed up in costumes of my own design to dance and sing with Dad's 45-vinyl LPs playing on the record player: "Winchester Cathedral" and "King of the Road" and "Big Bad John."
Mom and Dad were my audience.
It's been fun to do this first workbook exercise, "expanding my conscious awareness."
I wonder if I'll actually finish the workbook?
I can't recall exactly what prompted that discussion.
But I think it was all the recent news about school shootings.
***
Victor Frankl developed logotherapy.
When I first saw the word "logotherapy," I thought of the Greek word, logos, used in the New Testament.
Logos means "word" and is used in reference to Jesus Christ (the Word in the flesh), the written Word (the Bible) and the spoken Word (when a believer speaks by revelation/inspiration).
But that isn't what Frankl means by the prefix logo.
Logo means "meaning or purpose."
Logotherapy is "a form of psychotherapy that is based on helping clients to find a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives."
I've struggled with purposelessness often since the onset of polyradiculitis and continuing thereafter as I'd experience one loss after another due to the disabilities brought on by the illness.
Naturally I thought, Hmmm, logotherapy might be useful for me.
A few days ago I searched online for a workbook about logotherapy.
I found a free online pdf version, downloaded and printed it, and am giving it a try.
One of the exercises, which is labeled "expanding your conscious awareness" is to think of your earliest recollections of what you wanted to be.
My first recollections are...
A pirate, an American Indian, a dancer where I choreograph my own moves, a performer in musicals, and a boy.
As I got older the list expanded...
A visual artist, a teacher, a wife, a backpacker, a naturalist, a healer, a counselor, a transcendental meditation instructor, an organic gardener, a Peace Corps or VISTA worker/volunteer, a believer, a mother, a philanthropist, a life coach and...the list probably isn't finished.
I recall some of my earliest times...
When I stood on the side bar of the backyard swing-set looking for land.
The swing-set was a ship, and I was a pirate.
When I dressed up in costumes of my own design to dance and sing with Dad's 45-vinyl LPs playing on the record player: "Winchester Cathedral" and "King of the Road" and "Big Bad John."
Mom and Dad were my audience.
It's been fun to do this first workbook exercise, "expanding my conscious awareness."
I wonder if I'll actually finish the workbook?
March 8, 2018
"Rethink Possible"
I've had a rough time since Monday, February 19.
Ongoing vertigo, like I've never experienced before.
In the past 2+ weeks I've had only 2-1/2, non-consecutive days where I haven't been spinning or swimmy.
I've seen my GP and my neurologist.
I was hoping my routine epidural on 3/05/18 would stabilize my stance.
But it didn't.
The experience has jolted me, once again, into thinking about how I managed my life in my previous decades of chronic illness.
From 1982 through 2005 I managed asthma, sinusitis with polyps, hives, and other immune dysfunctions.
Though I don't recall ever feeling that I'd actually get well, I kept trying.
It was when I listened more intuitively to my inner GPS that I found answers.
And I got well.
I got well.
It really is pretty incredible.
I thought on how I've managed life since April, 2011, when the polyradiculitis began.
Polyradiculitis means my nerve roots are swollen at my spinal cord affecting all sorts of functions.
This is like my second life of chronic illness.
To my recollection, I never labeled or thought of the first one (in those previous decades) as "chronic illness," even though it was.
In the present I find myself thinking/feeling that I may never get well from the nerve damage and its repercussions.
At times I accept that.
Other times, I don't.
And, just like in the first chronic-illness life, I keep trying.
Because I continue trying, does that mean I think I will get well?
Or rather am I learning how to manage life but not necessarily with complete wellness in mind; that is, do I keep trying in order to learn how to thrive despite the dis-ease adversities?
It's probably a mix of the two.
Trying because I have to cope with it day-in and day-out.
Trying because maybe I can get well.
I think of the serendipitous events that have presented themselves along this journey with polyradiculitis.
They are like stepping stones.
And I have significantly improved in some areas.
But, even if I do get completely well, I'll be hitting 60 years old in 2020, and aging is a factor as to how well I will function compared to when I got well at age 46 from the first chronic-illness life.
***
In our home, we don't have WiFi or dial-up internet.
To connect to the internet, we use a hotspot device from AT&T or the hotspot function on our cell phones.
"Rethink Possible AT&T" pops up on the hotspot-device screen every time I turn it on.
I never paid much attention to the phrase.
I felt that it was just a phrase to motivate a consumer to buy more digital stuff, more ways to supposedly stimulate the imagination.
But yesterday, the phrase caught my attention.
I wasn't thinking about electronics or digital life; but rather, this life in which I live and move and breathe and be.
Carol, why not "rethink possible" in this 3D life of substance, instead of limiting it to the 2D life of the digital world?
But does the digital world have substance?
On the surface, I don't think so.
But on a deeper level, I think it does.
The results of the 2D certainly manifest in the 3D.
Does all 3D life have substance?
I think so.
***
I'm continuing to read Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning.
It's a short book.
I started reading it in December, but set it down for awhile.
I picked it back up last week.
Following is part of a paragraph I read this morning from a section entitled Life's Transitoriness.
I'm pondering it and it's practical application in life; especially in regard of a way to think about the past, where and how to file the past, and how the past fits into life in the present.
Ongoing vertigo, like I've never experienced before.
In the past 2+ weeks I've had only 2-1/2, non-consecutive days where I haven't been spinning or swimmy.
I've seen my GP and my neurologist.
I was hoping my routine epidural on 3/05/18 would stabilize my stance.
But it didn't.
The experience has jolted me, once again, into thinking about how I managed my life in my previous decades of chronic illness.
From 1982 through 2005 I managed asthma, sinusitis with polyps, hives, and other immune dysfunctions.
Though I don't recall ever feeling that I'd actually get well, I kept trying.
It was when I listened more intuitively to my inner GPS that I found answers.
And I got well.
I got well.
It really is pretty incredible.
I thought on how I've managed life since April, 2011, when the polyradiculitis began.
Polyradiculitis means my nerve roots are swollen at my spinal cord affecting all sorts of functions.
This is like my second life of chronic illness.
To my recollection, I never labeled or thought of the first one (in those previous decades) as "chronic illness," even though it was.
In the present I find myself thinking/feeling that I may never get well from the nerve damage and its repercussions.
At times I accept that.
Other times, I don't.
And, just like in the first chronic-illness life, I keep trying.
Because I continue trying, does that mean I think I will get well?
Or rather am I learning how to manage life but not necessarily with complete wellness in mind; that is, do I keep trying in order to learn how to thrive despite the dis-ease adversities?
It's probably a mix of the two.
Trying because I have to cope with it day-in and day-out.
Trying because maybe I can get well.
I think of the serendipitous events that have presented themselves along this journey with polyradiculitis.
They are like stepping stones.
And I have significantly improved in some areas.
But, even if I do get completely well, I'll be hitting 60 years old in 2020, and aging is a factor as to how well I will function compared to when I got well at age 46 from the first chronic-illness life.
***
In our home, we don't have WiFi or dial-up internet.
To connect to the internet, we use a hotspot device from AT&T or the hotspot function on our cell phones.
"Rethink Possible AT&T" pops up on the hotspot-device screen every time I turn it on.
I never paid much attention to the phrase.
I felt that it was just a phrase to motivate a consumer to buy more digital stuff, more ways to supposedly stimulate the imagination.
But yesterday, the phrase caught my attention.
I wasn't thinking about electronics or digital life; but rather, this life in which I live and move and breathe and be.
Carol, why not "rethink possible" in this 3D life of substance, instead of limiting it to the 2D life of the digital world?
But does the digital world have substance?
On the surface, I don't think so.
But on a deeper level, I think it does.
The results of the 2D certainly manifest in the 3D.
Does all 3D life have substance?
I think so.
***
I'm continuing to read Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning.
It's a short book.
I started reading it in December, but set it down for awhile.
I picked it back up last week.
Following is part of a paragraph I read this morning from a section entitled Life's Transitoriness.
I'm pondering it and it's practical application in life; especially in regard of a way to think about the past, where and how to file the past, and how the past fits into life in the present.
I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from tansitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.
~Victor Frankl
~Victor Frankl