Author: djgourdoux

A Happy Anniversary

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of my heart bypass surgery.

I am fully recovered and have made significant changes to my diet and lifestyle. I’m maintaining my weight at about twenty pounds less than before the surgery, and I’m exercising every day.  I’m feeling well enough that without calendars to remind me, I forget that I ever had the procedure.

When one of those significant dates arise, I look back on the events with a vague sense of detachment, like they happened to somebody else, and I have to work hard to remember what it was like falling asleep in the hospital bed the night before, with a nagging fear of never seeing my home or my family again playing in my head.

There are so many important things that we see, feel or touch every day that we don’t appreciate the value of until we are confronted with the real possibility that we may never experience them again.  The night before, when I thought of the things that the last time might have already come and gone for, it quickly became overwhelming.  From the helicopter seeds that take flight from the big maple tree just outside my back door to the sound and smell of bacon frying to the shadows at the end of the hallway that remain just beyond the reach of the midday sunlight, it didn’t take me long to realize that there were far too many things for me to list.

Now I am back to taking all of these things for granted again.  There are so many things that as I was experiencing them I swore I’d never forget that now, only a year later, I’ve already forgotten. And while I lament the loss of the heightened awareness I experienced through my little ordeal, part of me also celebrates the return of preoccupation and blindness to these things, because they are symptomatic of living. To be alive, in the present, is to not have time for such contemplation of the miraculous beauty that is always within our grasp.

Daily routine, the marrow of everyday living, seems trite and trivial compared to the revelatory truths that define the universe until they are taken away from us.  Only then can we see that the mundane is the most profound, and that the mechanics of living a life, the forces that prod us to go to work, to make out grocery lists, to even brush our fucking teeth, are the real things that matter. These are the things that keep a life alive, where dignity and truth reside.

I am so happy and grateful to be alive, for the opportunity to once again obsess over the trivial.

Daily Miracle

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Let me start by describing how a typical day for me begins:

I wake up, stiff and rigid and most mornings sore, but not too bad. I move slowly, and that has nothing to do with being or not being a morning or a night person or how much sleep I did or didn’t get, it’s just the speed I move at.

I’m usually up between 6:30 and 7:00.  I shuffle downstairs, take my morning Parkinson’s meds and my heart meds and my acid reflux pill – it borders on the ridiculous, the desktop in my office looks like a pharmacy – and grab a cup of coffee and see my wife off to work.  Then I go in my office and log on to the computer, checking out e-mail and Facebook and reviewing any writing I may have done the night before.  The point here is to kill enough time, thirty to sixty minutes, to allow my Carbidopa / Levodopa pills to kick in.  Until they do, the rigidity is pretty bad, and I feel pretty crappy, and a little bit nauseous until I eat something.  I’ve found that waiting a half hour to an hour after taking my morning blends of pills and caffeine before eating seems to work best, and I usually have something very light, like a cereal bar or a clementine and a glass of juice.

Then the “dopas” kick in and most of my rigidity goes away, and I’m loose, too loose.  I flop around the house, my head bent over my torso like Groucho Marx, and my legs try to keep up with my head and the more they try to keep up the more they fall behind and the more out of control I become, my momentum finally stopped by  crashing into walls and doorways.  I overshoot targets and narrowly dodge furniture.

Then, at about nine or ten o’clock, I get up and get in my car and drive myself the seven miles to the hospital in Kenosha where, just about a year ago now, I underwent triple bypass surgery.  As a result of being a Cardiac Kid, a member of the heart disease fraternity, I am eligible (for a reduced annual fee) to use the rehab center at Kenosha Memorial Hospital. I go every day and work out for an hour to an hour and a half, and almost every morning, when I get up, I don’t feel like going. But I drag myself up and out of the house five or six days a week, reminding myself how out of shape I was in when my heart issues hit last year, and how much I want to avoid a repeat of that whole experience.

So I get there and I work out.  I still start by loosening up with the same basic stretches and hand weights I learned when I was still recovering from the surgery. I know from a cardio pulmonary standpoint they aren’t required anymore, but they loosen me up and shake off some of the residual Parkinson’s rigidity, and while I can’t quantify it, I believe they’ve helped me increase my range of motion.

Then I do thirty minutes on a treadmill, every now and then graduating to an increased incline and speed. I’ve kind of reached a limit on these settings due to my floppiness – often tines, the first ten minutes or so are dominated by my stooped posture and impaired balance, and it can be a struggle to keep up.

Then, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I hit the weights.  There are seven machines I do twenty reps of differing weights. I only do these every other day to give my muscles a day to rest.  I find my strength has increased since last summer when I started – recently, less dramatically and slower than at first, but still increasing nonetheless.

Then I do one last activity, experimenting on different equipment, recently settling on a rowing machine, which I currently do five minutes on every day, counting in my head the number of strokes I pull.  At first, the five minutes was wiping me out, but now, I set a personal best on the number of strokes almost every day, and even though I’m doing more faster, I’m not nearly as fatigued as I was at first, and soon I will up the number of minutes,

Then I cool down by walking a few laps on the corridor surrounding the facility when it happens.  Every day, at some point, I notice that I’m walking in a straight line, with my arms swinging, my head erect.  None of the stooped posture and flopping around like a fish on the end of a line. For at least an hour, on good days up to two or even three hours after exercising, I move about normally, and while Parkinson’s still annoys me with constant salivation and impaired speech and incomprehensible handwriting, its primary symptom, the impact on moving, is gone.

The really great thing is that every day, at some point, usually while still walking my laps, I become aware of this phenomenon, this daily miracle, and every day, I am truly appreciative and thankful for its occurrence.  I don’t know how long this will continue, if eventually it won’t occur anymore, but for now I could care less.  All I know is that when it does occur, I feel amazed and blessed, and for that moment, I take nothing for granted.

                Don’t it always seem as though /  You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone

–  Joni Mitchell

Parkinson’s disease sucks and I wish I didn’t have it.  I have to confess I ask myself, more often than I should, why me?  Pure bad luck is the best answer I’ve come up with so far.

But then I ask myself, how many other people are made aware of how beautiful and wonderful the ability to simply move freely is, and I realize that luck, good or bad, is a double edged sword, and that curses and blessings are often wrapped in the same package.

The Temple of Air

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One of my favorite books is The Temple of Air, a collection of interwoven short stories by the Chicago writer, Patricia Ann McNair.  The book continues to have an impact on me because of its profoundly rich and deep sense of place.  I’m finding that as I grow older my relationship to places, whether it’s where I come from, where I am, or where I might be going, is for some reason becoming more and more important to me. The stories in The Temple of Air all take place in the fictional and isolated small town of New Hope, Illinois, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the town I grew up in, Union Grove, Wisconsin

But it’s not the greatness of the book or Ms. McNair’s evocative prose or the nuanced and substantive characters she draws that has me thinking about her book tonight, although that’s where these things normally end up. Instead it is quite literally that last word in her title.

Air.

This is where things get a little bit weird, and where I’m going to reveal what a real flake I am.  But I swear, this is true and real, even though I know I can’t adequately describe it, and I have no idea what if anything it means.

About a year ago, I had triple bypass heart surgery.  Although I was 99% blocked in one artery, and about 90% in a couple of others, it’d be disingenuous to call it a near-death experience. But while it may not have been in the room with me, I think it’s safe to say that death was in the neighborhood, and was on his way, in his big, blue 1969 Impala, stuck at a light with his left turn signal on, waiting for the arrow to turn green.  He was close enough for me to feel his presence more acutely than at any other time in my life.  Fortunately, everything went well, and now the old ticker is just plugging along, and having missed his exit, ol’ death is back on the outbound interstate.

But here’s the weird part, and I swear it’s true.  Ever since the operation, I’ve had brief moments, about two or three times a month, where I feel the air in a way I’ve never felt it before. Usually it happens when I step outside. I feel its coldness or warmth, I smell it, I taste it, just like everybody does, just like I always have, only stronger and deeper. It becomes overpowering.

But it’s more than that. It’s very strange. When these moments occur, they establish a connection to something and sometime in my past.  Most of the time I can’t name when or where it is, but I get the sense that it’s connecting me to some point in the past, usually in my childhood, unlocking  a  brief moment where the air felt exactly like it does at that precise time in the present. Usually the flashbacks triggered in these moments are vague and shapeless, and impossible to make out the connection, but I feel it, and I know it’s just beyond my grasp.  A couple of times, they’ve been vivid enough to present to me, like a movie playing in my head, complete scenes.

The most vivid of these flashbacks occurred just a couple of days ago, on a warm March day when I stepped outside to let the dogs out.

Suddenly I saw myself, six or seven years old, on the front porch of our house in Union Grove, on a warm spring day. And I more than just saw myself, I saw the world, through my young child eyes and body, and everything felt different, except for the air, the air felt the same, it was my portal into the past. And I walked through the screen door into the living room of my childhood down the hallway into the bedroom my brother Don and I shared.  Don wasn’t there, our bunk beds along the near wall were empty. The plastic model of the Japanese Zero plane that Don had assembled hung from the light shade, suspended by a thread tied to its front and back that was looped over the shade. It was late afternoon, the pre-dusk shadows advancing across the room.  My little bones ached, so I lay down on the bottom bunk and stared at the mattress springs of the top bunk above me.

And then I was back, fifty years later, in the present.

The title and final story in The Temple of Air is about an adolescent girl who is painfully neglected by her divorced and hopelessly shallow parents, and how she is finally able, for at least a brief moment, to literally rise above her circumstance.  I was lucky enough to have no such hardships.  My childhood was nothing if not idyllic. It never occurred to me that there were other people who suffered tremendous pain and anguish. I took my good fortune for granted, and thought no more about it than I thought about the air I breathed.

Tonight I’m thinking that when my last story is told, when air is no longer available to me, I’ll kneel before  the aggregate of all the air I ever breathed in, and I’ll rise above but not too high, tethered to this world like a model airplane suspended from a ceiling light.

 

Problem Child

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The Republican establishment is beside itself, trying desperately to figure out a way to deny Donald Trump the presidential nomination. Truly mystified, they ask themselves, “How did this happen?”

Are you kidding me?  Even the Republicans can’t be that stupid.

Donald Trump is the love child of the Republican Party and the toxic wack-a-doodles known as the tea party. Having given up what was left of their virtue in return for easy votes, the extremism and radical rhetoric spawned by their unholy union has taken the form of the orange-headed fascist mutant. It’s disingenuous for the Republican leadership to come out now and blast Trump for being too extreme, for inciting violence and hatred, when their entire agenda for the past seven and a half years has been to obstruct and destroy the elected president rather than govern. Even in this past week, as they decry Trump’s unfitness to govern, Mitch McConnell announced that he will not allow a vote on President Obama’s nominee for the supreme court, despite there being no historical precedent for denying a vote in an election year, despite polls showing that by a two to one margin the public thinks a vote should occur, and despite the responsibility spelled out by the constitution of the Legislative branch to advise and consent.  But, hey, not doing his job is nothing new for McConnell.  This is, after all, the same man who said, in 2010, that his “top priority was to make sure Barack Obama is a one term president.” Given his failure in this regard, one has to wonder why he still has a job.

Obama’s approval rating is currently at a three year high.  Therein lies the main problem for both parties.  For the Republicans, it shows that all of their hate filled vendetta against Obama isn’t working, and people who don’t belong to the tea party are tiring of their antics.  This has been the one same shrill note they’ve been sounding for years now – Obama bad.  They’ve even intentionally sabotaged key legislation and then brazenly blamed Obama for is failure. One example of this:  I heard Ted Cruz, one of the most extreme obstructionists, blame Obama for cutting the military, when the cuts were actually mandated by sequesters that were part of the Cruz engineered government shutdown.

Obama’s approval rating also points to the main problem that Trump presents for the Democrats, and that is he’s not running. If he were, I have no doubt he’d sweep the floor with the puffy haired petulant little brat.  It would be the clear contrast between mature adult and spoiled child.  Obama has weathered seven and half  years of vile hatred and lies with grace, dignity and good humor, while Trump has blown his stack over a couple of soft ball questions lobbed at him from a Fox News reporter, resorting to sophomoric and ugly personal attacks.

The problem for the Democrats is they are running two politically flawed candidates, both of whom will be easy targets for attacks from the right. Fair or not, Hillary Clinton is going to have to fend off attacks against her character, as she’s already been branded as “untrustworthy.” For Bernie Sanders it will be how he’s embraced the term “socialism.”  And trust me, I know, there’s nothing really to fear in the term; that “democratic socialism” really refers to a return to a fairer economic model, where the distribution of wealth isn’t tipped to the top one percent to the degree it is today. That doesn’t matter. Any kind of nuanced discussion always loses out to the Pavlovian fear-inducing emotional responses triggered by the sound bite definitions assigned to such words.  Just as “liberal” has come to mean “weak,” “socialism” is code for “communism” and “untrustworthy” means, well, “untrustworthy.”  These one word character assassinations are extremely effective and easy, especially when relentlessly hammered into our brains.

A friend of mine posted “If voting really mattered, they’d make it illegal” on Facebook yesterday. If ever there were a year to prove that sentiment wrong, this is it. The stakes were high enough with an on-going health care crisis, global unrest, environmental disasters, assaults on individual rights to privacy, and the potential for another economic collapse hanging in the balance.  Throw in the front running candidacy of Trump and his growing fascist following, the racism and misogyny of his rhetoric, and his advocacy for violence and his followers’ willingness to engage, you have the greatest threat to American democracy in my lifetime.

Above all, Trump must be stopped.

So it turns out I agree with Republicans on something.

 

 

 

Vindication

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(I’ve recently taken the first draft of my second novel, “I Don’t Know Why,” off of the shelf and started working on re-writing the second half.  Thanks to my wife for the idea that might just save the whole thing from the trash can. What follows is a brief excerpt:)

Vindication had been a long time coming.. It’d been something I dreamed of for so long that at some time, I stopped believing it’d ever occur, and  in the lowest depths of my despair I’d even joined in with the chorus of the non-believers in questioning the veracity of my recollection.

Now that it was here, in the form of the fading and weathered image of the rail thin kid with the wavy black hair and the bright blue eyes, the same eyes that were missing, that had been taken from him on that first day we met, the moment I’d so eagerly anticipated for so long filled me with an overwhelmingly heavy sense of sorrow.

Sorrow for the kid, for Sam Richter, for my parents, for Kathy Harris and Tom Musgrave and the people we all would have, should have become. Nine years came to a head and culminated in that moment on the entrance to the Orchard Depot Public Library.

I tried to speak to answer Angela, but I couldn’t. Instead I started choking on the tears that were forming in my eyes and throat. I looked at Angela, and I knew from the expression on her face that even though I hadn’t said a word I’d answered her question, and I knew this was the end of a long journey for her, too, and while the moment may have represented vindication for me, for her it was the realization of her deepest fears, and the destruction of her last and fragile frayed threads of hope.

I looked at the photo again and I looked at her, and I recognized the same high cheekbones, the same nose and chin, and the same color hair.

‘Your brother?” I asked.

She was wiping tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand, “Yeah,” she said,

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Political World

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When I started this site, I resolved not to get political.  But since we live in a world that’s becoming more and more political by the day, and the stakes are getting higher even as the politics get stupider and more surreal, I can’t help but react.

And trust me, while I know that the Democrats have some serious issues, the bulk of the idiocy belongs with the Republicans.  The clown car wreck that is their field of candidates this year would be hysterically funny if not so scary.

For the life of me, I can’t understand what makes so many normal and good people support these clowns and believe in the same tired clichés.  Like:

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people:”

This one is getting into semantics, as most murders require a weapon. As weapons go, nothing is as cheap, efficient, or as effective as a gun.  Case in point:  I’m not aware of there ever having been a drive-by stabbing, or a mass strangulation.

On why we don’t need universal background checks: “We just need to enforce the laws that already exist.”

The problem is, if I am murdered by a deranged psychotic who would have been denied a gun purchase had background checks been conducted, good work in arresting and convicting the murderer. The only problem is this is all a bit too late for me, as I‘ll be dead and unable to join in the post-trial cake and ice cream celebration.

“There will always be bad people who do bad things, there’s nothing you can do:”

I heard this from a gun-rights enthusiast immediately after the slaughter of 26 innocent victims, twenty of them children of six or seven years of age, at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. This same guy is also a vocal anti-abortion, or “pro-life” advocate that is in favor of criminalizing women and health care workers who participate in abortions.  Apparently, they are pro-life until the child leaves the womb; once they are among us they are on their own.  I’m sorry, but any society that can’t take care of six or seven year old children is a complete and total failure.  Plain and simple. And when the anger and horror we feel when such an incident occurs is overridden by ideological or political talking points, then we are no longer human.

From the only consistency is in our inconsistency department – perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the modern Republican is how easily they give up on supposedly deeply held convictions.  Some examples:

The constitution is sacred and must be protected against knee-jerk activism.

The second amendment is feverishly defended against any proposed legislation that might in the broadest imaginable interpretation have the slightest impact on the public’s right to bear arms, yet calls by candidates to ban Muslims and to deny citizen ship to “anchor babies” that clearly violate first and fourteenth amendment rights, go unchallenged and have become key planks in the evolving 2016 Republican platform. Donald Trump has actually spoken out in favor of the state sponsored murder of innocent family members of suspected terrorists.

Big government is not to be trusted and has no business in the private lives of citizens.

A long held fundamental tenet of U.S. conservative political philosophy that is conveniently overlooked when it fits the narrative they want to tell.  Fears of terrorists that are spread and exaggerated are used as excuses for the government, who supposedly can’t be trusted with the simplest administrative duties, to collect private information (see the “Patriot Act”) of private citizens.

The real question should be which should we distrust more, big government or big business? With the legalized purchase of our government, the lines between the two have been blurred to the point that government of, by and for the people doesn’t exist any more.

Fear mongering

I swear, despite all of their tough talk, Republicans have to be the biggest wimps in the world.  I’ve never met a bunch that is so afraid of so many different things.  From having to take a gun with them everywhere they go for fear of an encounter with the menacing hoody wearing black man to violating basic constitutional rights at the sight of a man wearing a turban, there is nothing (except, strangely, guns) they aren’t frightened of.

Misplaced fear

Of course, not all fears are irrational.   For example, what should be feared more:  the gun violence that caused 406,496 American deaths between 2001 to 2013 or the acts of terrorism which caused 3,380 deaths (more than 2,900 of them on the same day, 9/11) over the same time frame? It seems obvious that the one that is more than 100 times larger, the one that killed more than 84 Americans per day in that time frame, should get the bulk of the attention.  Yet, for example, in the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino tragedy, when the fourteen people killed were still thought to be victims of another random mass shooting, the silence of the Republican presidential candidates was deafening.  Once it was determined that the assassins had ties to ISIS, the reaction became loud and shrill.  Republican leaders only care about victims when they can be used to spread their false narrative,  that people of darker colors and different faiths are to be feared, when actually it’s their own divisive and careless policies that have left so many of us isolated and divided, and armed and dangerous, distrustful and afraid of one another.

There’s a reason they want us to be afraid of each other – it’s the divide and conquer strategy. If we fear and distrust our fellow citizens, it makes it easier for the rich and powerful they serve to grab an even bigger share of the pie.  We the people are right where they want us to be:  fighting each other for the crumbs that fall from their overstuffed mouths.

I’d argue that if we ever sat down and talked with each other, and listened, really listened, we’d realize we’re much more alike than different.  We’re all getting screwed, we’re all working harder and earning less, and we’re all paying more for basic services and falling deeper into debt.  It isn’t the hoody wearing black man or the Muslim or the Mexican we should be wary of, it’s the bankers and corporate officers who have put everything we own and value, our dreams and our future, our health and our families, up for grabs in one last fire sale. They are betting on their ability to keep us divided and hostile to one another until they can grab everything and leave us only the chewed and charred remains of heir gluttony.

We have two choices:  remain stupid and willing victims to their avarice and greed, or recognize what is being done to us and unite in opposition.

Revelations

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Amidst all of the childish name calling and foot stomping that passed for the Republican debate on Saturday night, there were two revelatory moments, both courtesy of the front runner, the one and only “the Donald,” Donald Trump.

The first came in a confrontation with Jeb Bush, for whom Trump appears to have an almost pathological hatred. In the middle of the by now familiar “he’s so weak,” “he’s a loser” rants we’ve all come to know and love, something startlingly coherent came out of Trump’s mouth:  the fact that 9/11 occurred on George W. Bush’s watch, despite the fact that he’d been warned several times by intelligence reports that a strike from Al Qaida was imminent.

Now, outside of the Republican universe, none of this is news.  Everybody knows that, just like everybody knows that 15 minutes could save 15% on your car insurance.  But inside that fantasy world, where prosperity trickles down from the wealthy to the poor, where climate change is just a concoction of corrupt scientists, hearing these facts from the Republican front-runner was outrageous blasphemy.  “But George W. kept us safe,” has been the party line, somehow denying the undeniable fact that dubya was President in 2001.

The audience booed and hissed, and the candidates stumbled over themselves in response. Marco Rubio, perhaps the most deluded of the bunch, said in response that it was all Bill Clinton’s fault for not killing Osama Bin Laden when he had the chance, forgetting that in his eight years in office, Dubya didn’t kill Bin Laden, either, leaving that mission to Barack Obama, who finished it in two years or so.

The second moment came when Trump raised the issue of Sperry closing its manufacturing plant in Indianapolis and moving its operations to Mexico. Plant closings and their subsequent job losses are never discussed in Republican debates.  To do so would be to challenge the validity of the trickle-down anti-labor economics that remain the heart and soul of their free market faith, despite thirty years now of contrary evidence of the falseness of these theories.

Make no mistake about it – I think Donald Trump is a monster and a fascist, a megalomaniac who cannot be trusted with any power, let alone the presidency of the United States.  But even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then, and it’s inevitable that a blabber mouth like Trump will eventually stumble upon and utter some truth. The question is will his legion of brain dead followers wake up in time to question these and other tenets of their blind right wing faith.

Like the one where everything is Barack Obama’s fault.  How dare he sign those executive orders! That’s no way to govern!  When, in fact, it is the only way to govern, when the radical extreme right that is the Republican controlled senate refuses to do something – anything – to fulfill their constitutional obligation.  For example, in the past couple of weeks. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan told Obama to not even bother submitting a budget, because his party will not even read it yet alone vote on it.  In the debates you hear Ted Cruz lamenting the shrinkage of the military, when it‘s actually the sequesters he engineered as a part of the government shutdowns he proposed that have cut military funding.

Now it’s the Supreme Court vacancy left open by Justice Scalia’s passing.  Senate leader Mitch McConnell, who in the past has said his top priority was not to govern or serve his country, but to make sure that Obama was only a one term president, has already said that Obama shouldn’t even bother nominating a replacement for Scalia (per his constitutional duty) because the Republicans will shirk their constitutional duty and not even allow a vote to confirm or deny.  Cruz, McConnell and others have said Obama should pass on nominating until after the election, so the American people can have their say.  But they already did have their say, in 2012, when they elected Obama president.  The constitution is very clear on the responsibilities of both the executive and legislative branches in the process, and when he nominates a candidate, it won’t be Obama who is guilty of not faithfully executing his sworn duty.

It’s high time we recognize the damage that the Republican controlled senate has and continues to enact on our country. Like the spoiled children they are, they continue to throw their political tantrum over Barack Obama being elected president.  It’s been going on for almost eight years now, and the only way to shut them up will be to vote them out of office this November.

The Ideas of February

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“Beware the Ides of March”

–  From Julius Caesar

It’s February again, and although it’s the shortest month of the calendar in terms of days, around here, with winter usually in its third or fourth month, it often feels like the longest month.  It’s the month when winter loses all of its romantic charm, and the white Christmas we dreamed of becomes a dirty and monotonous tedium.  The few days when the sun shines and thaws some small portion of the frozen landscape are cruel teases of the spring that will eventually come, and just when we’re given a tiny remembrance of the warm green season, a minuscule spec of hope, a February blizzard or bitter cold snap or both moves in, as inevitable as taxes, which we also begin preparing in February.

February is the month when cabin fever starts to set in, and we are left alone with our thoughts, which, for a brain like mine, is a dangerous thing.  You see, I’m nothing if not an ideas guy. I take pride in thinking outside of the box, although it’s cold out here, and I wish they’d let me back in.  I refuse to give in to the melancholy of the season and instead use this time to mediate deeply and harvest the fruits of the fertile garden, or compost heap (sometimes it’s not clear which one I am laboring in), that is my brain.  Here are some of the better ideas and keen observations I’ve come up with in Februaries past. We can only wait and see and hope what precious gems this February’s harvest will mine:

Idea #1, for law enforcement:  Develop a version of Crest or Colgate (whichever company outbids the other for my idea) with the added ingredient of Sodium Pentothal. It would be known as “Truth-paste”

Idea #2, for treating mental illness – A sanitarium for psychotic Orthodontists – a “Dental Institution”

Idea #3, product development / marketing: an all-natural, no preservative ingredient for baking called “Yeast of Eden.”

Idea #4, Quantum Physics: A ship capable of independent operation under water that is powered by a nuclear generator and shrunk down to a size smaller than an atom. It would, of course, be “a sub-atomic atomic sub”

Idea #5, service, marketing: A service for working parents where we provide an owl to look after their children. The name of the service would be, “Hootenanny”

Idea #6, health care for literary types: – a thin tube that is surgically installed to inject stories of pioneer life on the great plains directly into a patient’s bloodstream – a “Willa Catheter”

Keen observation #1: When one gets overly stressed by adorable kittens or playful little bunnies, they would be suffering from “Acute Stress Disorder: “

Keen observation #2:  A person with an unrealistically elevated sense of self who is also obsessed with frozen waffles would be an “Eggomaniac.”

Keen observation #3:  An example of a repressed memory would he the time twenty three years ago when I paid twice for having my dress slacks ironed

Keen observation $4: A person obsessed with ventilation fans in the very top story of a home would be an attic fan fanatic.

Keen observation #5: Further proof that I am a rare and wonderful human being: This morning, I bought a block of Cheddar for no reason but to provide some companionship for the Provolone in my fridge. Now, it’s ProIHaveaFriend cheese

Keen observation #6: A person who suffers from an irrational fear of leaving the house while wearing a wool sweater would be suffering from angoraphobia

 

Winter Camping

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(A short fiction I’ve been noodling around with)

I woke up in the dark coughing, my eyes and throat burning, the blue tarp I’d fallen asleep under having caved in over the bottom half of my sleeping bag. It felt heavy, and I knew instantly what’d happened, where I’d screwed up, and that I had to get out right now.

I pulled my legs up and rolled out of my sleeping bag. I tried to open my eyes, but the best I could manage was narrow slits that presented, out of focus and dim, what I’d already smelled:  thick and cascading smoke. I could hear the wind howling and snow pelting the other side of the tarp. I couldn’t see but I remembered that the opening to my little lean-to was to my right.  I pulled my feet up and swept my hand across to where the opening should have been, where there should have been air, but there was only snow.

It was obvious now, and I felt embarrassed that it hadn’t occurred to me before, that the lean-to I’d fashioned with the tarp wouldn’t be able to bear the weight of the heavy snow coming down that I’d blissfully fallen asleep under.  Not only did it collapse the tarp, but as the drifts accumulated outside it had sealed most of the opening I’d used to vent my campfire.  Had I slept for another five minutes, I’d be dead, choked by smoke and buried by snow.  As it was I couldn’t stop coughing, and I couldn’t open my eyes, but none of that mattered.  I had to get out.

I reached out and grabbed for my boots, from next to the fire, where I remembered I’d set them to dry.  I held them in my left hand and sat up and with my right hand reached for and found the tarp, and followed it until I got to its edge, where the tarp met the snow. My eyes still burned, my vision reduced to a thick and indistinguishable blur. I rolled over, my boots in my hand, and tried to pull the tarp up and roll my body underneath it. All I could feel was the snow against my long underwear and the black hoody I had on over my thermal under shirt.  It was cold and wet.

I rolled out into the snow, outside of the tarp now, in the snow, lying on my side.  I pulled myself up onto my two feet just as the mouthful of the clean and cold air I breathed in met the thick smoke that filled my lungs, and I started coughing again.  I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t breathe, and I became dizzy and light headed and collapsed into the snow.  I laid there until I stopped coughing, until I could breathe again, taking in only shallow gasps of air, my throat burning every time I inhaled.

I finally sat up and tried to open my eyes. They burned, too, and I still couldn’t’ open them any more than a narrow slit, for more than a couple of seconds, after which they’d start burning again and I’d have to close them.  For the brief period of time I could leave them open, through the narrow slits, I couldn’t really see anything, nothing would come in focus, just the blurred white of the ground and the blurred black vertical columns of what I assumed were trees. I slipped my boots on and struggled to my  feet.

I could smell the smoky remains of my campfire, and I knew they were coming from under the collapsed tarp, and I knew my lean-to opened to the east, so I was standing on the east side of the tarp. I turned in the direction the smell of the fire was coming from, and I knew I was facing west. I knew that home, my dad’s farm, was about a mile west through the woods from where I’d camped.  I also knew that once I started west, I’d be walking into the wind and I’d quickly lose the smell of the fire, the only compass I had.  Unable to see, all I’d have to go by was the wind pelting me in the face, and I really didn’t know if it was blowing straight from the west or if it was coming in from the northwest.  It wouldn’t take much to make me drift off track, because the woods were big and swampy. I tried to open my eyes again but they weren’t getting any better, and if anything burned more that the last time I tried. I stood there in the dark, in my thermal shirt and long johns, wet, blind and cold, the snow at my feet getting deeper. A sense of panic started to settle in, a sense that I might die.

Nobody knew I was out here, and I cursed myself for being arrogant enough to think this whole winter camping thing was a good idea. My dad was always reminding me that I was just a kid, just fourteen years old, and that I was “Getting too big for my britches.” But I’d spent many nights sleeping in the woods, and it was one of the things I loved most in the world. The stillness, the purity of the air, the rhythm of crickets, the night sky that would fill up with a million stars, all within my reach, the silver moonlight.  I’d slept out in the woods dozens of times before, always alone, but never in the winter. I knew from the summer and autumn nights I’d sampled that being out in the woods at 2:30, 3:30, or 4:30 A.M. was a completely different experience, that everything looked, smelled and felt different, and I was eager to discover what new worlds winter would bring to the woods in the deep heart of the night.

I started to move, took a step in the direction I’d convinced myself was west, when I heard, in front of me and to the left, the sound of something in the woods, something alive. I stopped and listened and soon I heard it again. It was the sound of a snort, and then I could hear the sound of a hoof pounding the frozen ground, and before I even opened my eyes I knew it was a deer.  I opened my eyes and everything was still a blur, but at the center of the blur I could make out something dark and wet, shimmering in my blurred view.  I blinked my eyes open again and this time I could see the outline of a deer, a doe, against a solid white background. The white background went up above the deer, it was elevated, and I knew it was Musselman’s Ridge.  I adjusted the direction I was facing so I’d be walking directly in a line to where I’d seen the deer. A soon as I took my first step, I heard her snort again, and I heard a branch break as she ran away.

It didn’t take me long, walking with my eyes closed, to reach the steep incline that marled the bottom of Musselman’s Ridge. I tried ascending the angle, but with my eyesight blinded it was difficult, as the side of the ridge was thick with trees and underbrush. I tried to open my eyes, but they still burned. I knew that there was a fire lane cut through the woods that traversed Musselman’s Ridge at a point where the incline was less severe. I was completely disoriented, though, and had no idea where I was in relation to the fire road, and was convinced I didn’t have time to look for it.

As I stumbled trying to get up the hill, colliding with trees and brush, I found at my feet a thick stick, about four feet long.  I picked it up and used it like a blind man uses a cane, swinging it in front of me to find where my next step would fall, then planting it firmly on the ground to help me maintain my balance.  I was creeping along when I swung my stick in front of me only to hear the sound and feel the vibration of it hitting what may as well been a solid wall of trees and brush.  I opened my eyes and I could make out enough detail to tell that I had stumbled smack dab into a thicket, dark and steep and impenetrable. I held my eyes open long enough to look around, and off to my right, I could make out the blur of movement, silent, like a ghost floating on the frozen landscape. I was able to get my eyes open wide enough and long enough to recognize a deer, the same doe I’d seen before, about thirty yards to my right, ascending the ridge without a sound, when I realized it was walking the fire road, the path that would lead me to safety.

I stumbled my way out of the thicket and made it to the fire road.  It was still snowing, but not as hard, and the doe’s tracks were still readable.  I walked up the incline with my walking stick in hand, every now and then opening my eyes and looking down to make sure I was still on the fire road,  still  following the doe’s tracks, until near the top of the ridge where the tracks  veered off  of the path to the right, to the north. I stayed on the fire road.

I made it to the top of Musselman’s Ridge, where the fire road takes a sharp turn to the north and runs for a while along the top of the ridge before turning west again and descending the ridge where the woods grow bigger.  It was the point I knew I’d have to leave the fire road to walk the last stretch home.

At the top of the ridge, the wind slowed down for a moment and the snow stopped. I tried to open my eyes and I was able to widen them enough to see clearly the familiar landmarks of the vista I’d looked out on hundreds of times before. They were all simultaneously familiar and new, the dark woods that abruptly stopped on the flat edge of our cornfield, white and flat and bright, the stems of its cut stalks buried beneath the snow. I saw the fence line that marked the other end of the field, and I could make out the gate that opened into our yard, where our house stood, strong and silent and dark in the night, gray smoke billowing out of the chimney and up into the night sky until it vanished, giving way to millions of stars that hung low against the black ceiling of the night sky. And I could see, off to my right,  the fire lane where it briefly exited the woods before reentering them at the far corner of our cornfield, and standing there, in the fire lane, I could see the doe I’d been following,  made tiny by the distance between us.  She was standing there, looking back at me, and I could clearly see, even though it was too far away, her dark and moist eye, locked in with my eyes, before she turned and stepped into the woods.

Able to see and breathe, my survival now rested on one thing:  staying warm long enough to make it down the ridge, across the cornfield and into the house. My hands were like clubs, I could barely move them, the fingers on my right hand somehow shaped to wrap around and clasp my walking stick.  My face felt swollen, cracked around my cheekbones. My throat was dry and scratchy, and every muscle in my body ached, cold and rigid. The snow had stopped but the wind persisted, blowing raw and cold in my face as I started out down the ridge. I started out slowly, maintaining my balance, taking big steps in the deep snow, when, about halfway down, my right foot caught a stray and dead vine buried beneath the snow and I fell, hard on my side, cushioned by snow, and I slid down the ridge, small twigs of dead underbrush scratching and cutting my face, ripping a hole in the thigh of my long underwear.  I slid down until I was twenty feet from the bottom, coming to rest when my rear end harmlessly met he trunk of an oak tree. I collected myself and took a quick inventory of my scrapes and scratches, then I got up.  I’d lost my walking stick somewhere in the fall. I managed to keep my balance and made it to the bottom of the ridge, where just a narrow stretch of woods heavy with undergrowth separated me from the cornfield.  I walked on, shielded by the trees from the full brunt of the wind.

Then I was out of the woods, into the cornfield, face first against the howling wind.  It blew steady and strong, skimming the top of the snow off of the field and hurling it into my face.  It thundered like a freight train in my ears. Gusts blew so hard as to literally knock me over three times.  Each time I’d struggle to stand back up, my legs cold and raw and stiff and heavy.  It took every ounce of strength I had left just to lift them high enough to keep moving forward.

Eventually, I made it across the field and, just after I passed through the opened gate into our yard, I collapsed in the snow, no more than ten yards from the house. I was unable to move, frozen, as I stared at the house, at the upstairs window to my room, then I started to see things, some real, some not, spinning around in the wind.  I saw the weather vane on the barn, I saw my Science teacher, Mr. Morgan, I saw the blue tarp I’d made my lean-to out of, I saw the doe and her shiny dark eyes. And then I saw my dad.

He was shaking me awake, his hand on my shoulder, saying “Bill, Bill.” The sound of morning songbirds became clear. I opened my eyes and could see bright sunlight streaming through my windows, and I could see my dad, bent over my bed, his face inches from mine.

“Come on, Bill,” he said, “you’ve got to get up. The service starts in about an hour.  Aunt Mary’s made us a big breakfast.”

I could smell the bacon frying, and I could sense that the house was full of unfamiliar people, of guests who’d spent the night.

“Okay,” I mumbled.

“Get yourself in the shower,” he said as he headed for my door. He was holding the door, about to close it behind him.

“Dad?” I said.  He stopped and stood in my doorway.

“Yeah?”

“I already miss her,” I said. It surprised me, because I hadn’t even been thinking about her.

“I know,” he said.  “Me, too. “ He stood there for a minute, neither one of us knowing what to say, when I threw my legs over the side of my bed and sat up.

“Okay, I’m up,” I said. Dad smiled and left, closing my door behind him. Something lying on the table at my bedside caught my eye. I picked it up and looked at it.  It was a photograph, the last photograph, of my mom and dad and I, sitting with her in her hospital bed, all three of us smiling.  Mom’s smile was a little weaker, but her eyes, dark and moist and penetrating, were alive, shimmering and shining.

Heroes

/ djgourdoux / 3 Comments

Late last year, I was selected to the Board of Directors of Society’s Assets, a company that was formed in 1974 in Racine, Wisconsin by and for people with disabilities. The mission of Society’s Assets is “to ensure the rights of all persons with disabilities to live and function as independently as possible in the community of their choice, through supporting individual’s efforts to achieve control over their lives and become integrated into community life.”  They are governed and operated by a board and staff comprised of a majority of people with disabilities.

I attended a couple of hours long orientation session for myself and the other new board members late last year. It was very interesting and filled in several gaps in my knowledge about the company.  I met the management team and was very impressed with their levels of expertise, their ability to clearly articulate the company’s mission, and mostly with the passion they displayed for their work and their clients.

Then I received in the mail an invitation to a reception to honor the organization’s award winning aides. I figured an award ceremony in one of the company’s conference rooms might be a good opportunity to fill in any blanks I may have still had in my understanding of what this organization is all about. Never mind that I didn’t know a soul there – I put aside my inherent social awkwardness and shy nature and sucked it up for a couple of hours.

And am I glad I did. The people I met were all friendly and personable, unpretentious and real.  They made me feel instantly comfortable as I sat with them, the only male in a room full of women, and I  helped myself to cake and snacks.  During our conversations I learned several important facts about the awards that were being presented, that they were granted by an independent, state wide organization, The Wisconsin Long Term Care Workforce Alliance.  In other words, these were much more than employee recognition awards – these awards are given to caregivers from any organization who went above and beyond in meeting the needs of people of all ages with disabilities.  The  Alliance has been giving these awards since 2005, and every year Society’s Assets has had at least one winner (out of only four state-wide winners).  In fact, as I sat there, I met the first two winners, from 2005 and 2006 – how cool is that?

The time for the awards presentation came and we moved to another room, the board room, where this year, with two new award categories having been added, four of the six awards went to caregivers from Society’s Assets. As each award was presented, part of the story behind the nominations was read, and I got an idea for just how special these people and this organization are.  As I listened to the stories of personal sacrifice, energy and enthusiasm, passion and commitment,  I thought of the recent passing of the great rock and roll icon David Bowie and my favorite Bowie song, “Heroes,” and it occurred to me that’s what each of these and the countless other caregivers out there truly are.  Whether it’s running a simple errand or providing intimate personal care, helping those who need help the most and preserving their sense of dignity and self-worth strikes me as the noblest of gestures.

We find ourselves in the beginning of an election year, with the television and radio constantly telling us how divided we’ve become, and how great the distance and irreconcilable the differences between us are. But in the unconditional love and respect they display for their fellow human beings, caregivers shatter these divisions and instead celebrate the core humanity that we all share. They demonstrate through their actions that we’re all in this thing together, and I can’t think of anything more inspirational or heroic.

While I’m still learning exactly what my role as a board member is, I look forward to humbly serving these great people and their indomitable spirit in any way I can.