Over the hump

I'm pleased to report the worst time of year (in my existential experience) is done, finished:

1. Winter solstice has come and gone.
2. Christmas, that annoying, overly-social, intrusive sensory event, is over.

It drives me nuts, every year - but this year the place I've been going to daily to work out played loud Christmas music, mostly Kelley Pickler, country music singer who was an American Idol contestant a few years ago. That, plus all the usual - TV ads selling stuff, news reports about retailers feeling anxious, sparkly glittered-up bling all over everything, light displays - all of it made me deeply empathize with autistic kids who don't deal well with over-stimulation. Uck. 

3. My birthday, which was yesterday, passed by uneventfully and non-socially, and is now over with! Yay!

Anyway, back to point 2. for a moment; sensory overload got so bad at that little gym that I decided to skip last week. Plus I indulged in Truffles, eggnog, and Bailey's. Oh, and an omelette with cheese, tomato, and buttered toast. And I ate some delicious dates. Plus other holiday food, like stuffing. And I did not exercise, at all, for a week. Up by a few pounds. Back at the elliptical  this week. My stamina has increased - up to an hour on that thing - probably had to do with being able to watch uninterrupted, Australia, with Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Brandon Walters. It's not just interesting, it's well done, and a lot longer than most Hollywood movies. So, it has kept me going all week. I've watched large chunks of it for three days, and there are still parts I've yet to see.

Speaking of movies and cognitive distraction, I saw this awhile ago, How muscle fatigue originates in the head. Rather than blame the mesoderm (muscles) for fatigue, researchers are starting to look elsewhere, and have noticed how the nervous system inhibits muscle at various levels. In the brain, interruption occurs when the thalamus and insular cortex decide they have had enough. I seem to be able to shut out the din my thalamus and insular cortex try to mount, by watching 'Australia'. At least for a little while. Then I will need another movie I've not seen before.

From yesterday, The Fat Trap: It seems a bit depressing, but before I started all this business 3 and a half years and 40 pounds ago, I knew it meant:
1. I could never eat (completely) unconsciously ever again as long as I lived
2. I'd have to move a lot more, learn to sweat, learn to get my heart rate up, learn to like it. Somehow.

I had a long plateau in there, a couple years where my weight went up by ten, down by ten, but never went completely out of control. It was always around this time of the year, this nadir time. So, I'm pretty sure I can reach old age in fairly good shape, plus all the exercise is not just for weight loss but is good for a bunch of other stuff that has to do with health, brain function, etc.etc. Nowadays, I'm on the other side of the year's nadir, and (even with my dive off the wagon for a week) my weight is still lower than it has been in 15 years. I take heart from that.

I'm pretty sure, that like pain, obesity is biopsychosocial. It's not strictly a fault in character, or strictly about genes, or hormones, or strictly about bad habits (see picture). A calorie is a nebulous thing depending on what kind of human organism ingests it, what sort of food it comes in, and why it is being consumed. Everything exists in a multiply-leveled context, including a conceptual entity known as a calorie.

This notion, Fat may put the Hypothalamus on the Fritz, needs more work I think. It suggests that ingesting fat "causes" inflammation in the neurons around the hypothalamus, but Harriet Hall says, inflammation isn't always a bad thing.  Gumming up Appetite to treat Obesity proposes that special hormone-laced gum should be helpful. But I doubt there will ever be any kind of easy answer.

If I were to pick a single brain region to target, to investigate, to spin a theory around, it would be the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). In fact, I already did. It has to do with sleep, with light levels, circadian rhythms, depression, hypothalamus, all sorts of things that are regulatory. The pituitary, part of hypothalamus, has to do with thyroid, which has to do with a bunch of hormonal and metabolically important outputs. I moved myself physically back to where my own humanantigravitysuit, myself as a human organism, grew up. Environmentally, climactically, photonically, my brain feels better here. This is what it remembers from its youth. The long slow dawns and dusks, bright fiercely blue skies, brilliant reflective surfaces, deep blue shadow. Sensorially, and socially, the surroundings are kinda dull, but frankly, I don't much care about lack of sensory or social stimulation; I'm used to it again; furthermore, I like to be by myself anyway, except on the internet, which is where I live, mentally, most of the time, so it doesn't matter. (Plus, I lucked out joining a weight-loss outfit that happens to suit me to a tee, and happens to ALSO be the only one of its kind - in the whole of Canada so far - imagine, humble little old Weyburn, Sask. has a one-of-a-kind thing that suits me to a tee, and I just happen to live here where it is. Amazing happy co-ink-a-dink.)

But back to causes of things, no one thing causes obesity, and everything combined causes obesity. Actually, the pursuit of "cause" in science (pharmaceutical science at any rate) seems to be a bit endangered in and of itself, according to Jonah Lehrer.

So, what then is "obesity"? Well, I would ask, what is a relationship that an organism of any mammalian multi-cellular sort has with its whole bio-psycho-social environment? What is stress? What is pain? What is learned helplessness? What is failure to move one's physicality sufficiently? All these things are "caused" by everything simultaneously, often overlap by a lot, and all influence each other. Mostly, we are biologically active bundles of multitudes of proteins without distinct boundary (other than those we dream up then feel compelled to defend fiercely), with a big microbiota with a big microbiome (especially in the gut tube) that tends to run our lives more than we care to admit, probably... all the single-cell critters of which evolve, have lives, reproduce and die according to what they get (what we give them) - to eat. It seems likely that they might have evolved ways of trying to harness us, their big vehicles that lumber forth to get groceries, so that they might get what they need in order to keep going. Not that we are obliged to feed them endlessly.. just knowing that the mammalian multi-cellular organism is more an ecosystem than it is a discrete entity gives me hope that I can explore, map, cultivate and tame my own - in the end, it's all I've got.  I live on a little mountain-top in there with a pretty good view. At least, my "I"-illusion does. It's a welcome bit of conceptual structure; another bit is provided by the idea, that biochemically their lives are completely controlled, attracted to, or repelled by chemical gradients, described in pretty good detail in Into the Cool. This knowledge makes me feel powerful, or at least, enough of an independent, detachable agent to be able to manage my own small corner of the universe, my body, to my own liking.

There is a psychological aspect to all this that must be mentioned - eating consciously means tracking what's ingested, counting calories, including those sweated off, and attending daily to all of it. This could lead to either OCD, or anorexia, or both. Yet, those are cognitive-behavioural constellations one must approach in order to lose weight/become healthier. What I've learned is that you can learn how to dance with these two things, but you must always be in the lead, never the one who follows. It's kinda goes against dance training in general, for females, but I seriously recommend remaining in complete control of everything, including short breaks like the one I just took.

Now I must go and drown my microbiota yet again in a whole bunch of vegetable matter, which I know it doesn't like much, and which will likely kill off some more of it, making evolutionary space for new kinds that might actually like vegetables. (AHHHHGH! Hulk destroy bad microbiota!)

And here we go again

... Another trip round the sun.

I suppose, if we have to mark time, watching axial tilt of our "ship", and changes in sun-shinage upon its surface, isn't such a bad way to mark it.

1. If you click on What Christmas Is All About, some money will go to Doctors Without Borders. Yeah, it's from last year. I like it.

2. Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson on how we're all stardust, so considering the universe should help us all feel expanded.

3. Goodbye to Lynn Margulis, microbiologist whose work on symbiosis helped move evolutionary theory forward, and mother of Dorion Sagan, son of Carl. Goodbye to Christopher Hitchens, who lived life the way he wrote, fast with a lot of mistakes according to many.

4. Have I left anything out? Oh yeah, tons. But it's all fine. It's all stardust. It will all recycle itself unendingly.

Longest darkest night of the year

I have this week and next almost all to myself. Such a treat. Life, on the whole, is getting better as time goes by, I'd say. For such a lot of years it got nothing but worse, and I used to simply ignore by what extent it was getting worse, and just carry on.  I speak of my own seasonal affective disorder.
This time round, things are upswung: I'm half way to the arbitrary weightloss goal I set back in September, when I started exercising, and I can actually feel some ab strength. So that's nice. I almost have my new place to work at set up, so that's nice too. The new year will freshen the page.

Most stuff just floats by in this flood called life and the way it interacts with my soggy winter brain, but once in awhile something sinks in and leaves an impression;
Lately on FaceBook a dustup occurred on my page, to do with craniosacral treatment. The pattern of kuffuffle that ensues with alt-meds has become predictable. I take no offense anymore, just wait for it to blow past and be over. Each time this happens more and more people seem to come out of the woodwork and identify themselves as anti-woo, so that's good. 


The first link, the one that upset a few folk, was to a post by Mark Crislip at ScienceBased Medicine, about craniosacral therapy: Alas poor Craniosacral. A SCAM of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy, was pointed and funny and skewered CST completely and deserved more publicity. I posted the first FB link without comment, and moved on. But before long, there were 83 comments.


Deciding to continue with the topic I posted a second link to a report from a few years ago, about an infant who had died while undergoing "craniosacral" treatment. That one got 107 comments. 


I put up a third link to a very fair objective overview of it all written by a massage therapist, 

A case of moral distress: defending counterfactual anatomical claims in CST

 It's still perking right along. 
........


None of this is novel, so it doesn't interest me as much as the perspective offered by Mark Changizi, in his recent blogpost, "How not to get Absorbed in Someone Else's Abdomen". 

"Synposis: Anglerfish are metaphors for how creative communities can eat your brain and kill your creativity."  

That's what happens to us, as humans. Exactly. You could even say the world humans have created has become one big abdomen with many entry points into which we dive willingly for safety and so we don't have to think anymore, and can let our brains resorb. 

"Communities of people have bulls-eyes on them that are irresistible to us humans." 

Read it! It's a great blogpost. Changizi compares the behaviour of the anglerfish (the male one, anyway) to the way humans (neotenous apes that we are) need to have approval and feedback and support and eyes on us for every little thing we do in the world. Our need for external approval overwhelms our need to stay connected to our own cognitive linkages; all too easily are we severed from them, led into believing whatever somebody says is true, whatever nonsense they might be selling. We default straight to trust. We believe purveyors of nonsense, because they said it was science-based and why wouldn't we accept what they say? They're the teachers, right? 
........


And I saw this: "Doctors disagnose diseases as if recognizing objects", by Mo Costandi. It stuck in my head for some reason. I figured out, oh, it stayed in my head because they (doctors) are themselves lost in the abdomen of their own profession. Ah. No wonder we're in such trouble, us PTs who try to balance all the biomedical whatnot with our own whatnot. Because, what about pain? It has to be diagnosed, but it isn't "objective". It's not an "object". It's biopsychosocial. It's not physical. Pain science is the keen edge of the knife separating us from that abdomen we thought was "real" and "safe" but instead is a big (biomedical) fish net capturing health care dollars. We need to be discerning. We need to know what's useful for us, compared to what's useful for them. Not get mixed up about our role. Swim outside that big medical belly our profession seems to like to mix it up with. But never ever get sucked into/attracted toward other nice-looking abdomens. 


That default move (diving into a pre-existing conceptual abdomen) is not the best default move, but it's the quickest, and it's understandable: Why? Because we have huge, probably mostly unmanageable brains. Our executive function (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) isn't even fully myelinated until we're close to thirty years old, then it takes awhile after that before we learn how to use it properly. Seth Grant says, 

"it has been said the number of synapses in the human brain is about a million billion, but something we’ve discovered about the molecular composition of the synapses, is that they have over 1000 different proteins within this, and we have done sort of a back-of-the-envelope calculation about the computational power of the human brain, based on what we know about the molecular circuits and these neuronal circuits, and we’ve come up with this very simple estimate: and it is that one human brain is more powerful than all computers on the internet put together, times one hundred."

That's a lot to keep any sort of handle on, seems to me. Seems to me, insecure humans diving for the nearest collective conceptual abdomen is like iron filings diving toward magnets - automatic, pretty much irresistible. Not to excuse those who lazily persist, who don't learn to resist the compulsion.


.....

Finally, on a seasonal note, I read and very much liked Less Wrong's solstice celebration blogpost: Ritual Report: NYC Less Wrong Solstice Celebration. 


It sort of puts the whole thing into a bit more perspective. The whole notion of sharing stories and candles going out until only one candle was lit, enough light to read the last story, dredging up enough collective courage to face what could be a long hard winter. 

"We honor those people, those first astronomers, and all the laborers and scientists and revolutionaries who have come since, for creating the world we have today.
And then we look to our future. Tiny stars in the distant sky, unimaginably far away, surrounded by black seas of infinity.
We will stare into that Abyss, and the Abyss will stare back at us. But we will go crazy-meta and challenge the Abyss to a staring contest and win the hell at it, because we’re aspiring rationalists and good rationalists win."

.....
And, to tie all this in once again to craniosacral therapy, I leave you with this video, which reminds us all of how vertebrates are often extraordinarily kind to one another and anything with sensitive paws can do cranial effectively - it isn't necessary to imagine a lot of complicated implausible mechanisms, when you care enough to want to do something helpful with another nervous system you can sense is not very happy with itself. 

Have a nice smooth holiday, an uneventful exit from this year to the next; may your next trip round the sun also be uneventful or maybe even growthful. 

A little bit closer..

I blogged a bit about my new space, Almost there. It's the time of year when I feel the most blah, and I feel blah, even though I do seem to have enough steam build-up-ability to get through the days. The weather's pretty good, above zero and dry streets, blue skies, so that helps, a lot..

Today it occurred to me I'd need business cheques, so I stopped in and got a new business account started. It also occurred to me I was going to need a phone for that groovy new phone number I'm supposed to be getting tomorrow, so I stopped in and bought one at the local Sask-Tel store. I got new business cards and new stationary and three signs, one for each outside door and one for my own door, ordered.

On the whole, a busy day and a fair bit accomplished.

Yet I feel so blah. On the inside.

I suppose it doesn't matter two slices of bread around the outside of a sandwich how I feel, inside. The miracle is, I can function OK. I can get up early on a Monday, go to the "gym", work out, come home, go out and do errands, on foot, remember things that need to be done, do them, come home and sit and puzzle over why it all feels so.. blah to me. I just do not feel any thrill inside about any of this. I think part of me is still disgruntled at myself for having caved 4-5 years ago with SAD, and for dragging it back to a place it thought it had escaped and would never have to go back to except to visit.

Whatever. I'll get through this. I usually do. None of it really matters, what matters is that I create a new frame around what it is I do, treat pain in other people, and get on with it, and not ruminate on any small bits of it overmuch. Because, really, none of it, in and of itself, matters much at all. In the treatment moments, when someone will come in, and I treat them, and they get that "aha" look over their face, that will make all of this worth it.

I could have just continued treating other patients for other people and letting those faces show me their "aha" looks. But you know what? I really do not like working for and around other people much at all anymore. I don't have much to say to them, I'm kinda-sorta not very interested in whatever it is they think they have to say to me, and I'm not especially interested in any deep bonding with any of them. The only thing I live for anymore is that "aha" look on my patients' faces. And I can arrange my life to have less intrusive interruption, more quiet space for "aha"'s to appear. So, that's why. That's my motivation. No-frill, no-thrill (for me) motivation.

In other news, I've been going to the "gym" every day. I've lost 25 inches, about 15 pounds. So that's nice. It would be nice if "feeling great" would kick in one of these days.

Weather report

View from hotel room, Whistler BC, July 15/11

Chair lift in the background. 

Horrible cloud; cold, windy, November weather in mid July

So, here I am at CPA Congress. So far Congress has been brilliant, with great food and fabulous presentations. Can't say the same about Whistler weather. It's like going back into the cave, coming here. Hard to get here, very long trip. Next year I hear Congress will be in Saskatoon. That will be much better. 

So, what am I learning? 

Day I

All day Thursday, Pain Science Division presented "Clinical Chronic Pain Management: Practical Strategies for Everyday Physiotherapy" which was fabulous; Neil Pearson talked about neuroplasticity, how it required 90 minutes a day for a month to change anything in the brain, but that change was indeed possible. He showed a list of pain mechanisms; nociceptive, peripheral neurogenic, central neurogenic, autonomic/motor, and affective; he said that the MDs learn that list, and then they learn from pharmaceutical companies that there is a drug or class of drugs for each (and that that's ... about it). He discussed chronic pain in general, what it meant, etc. There was much more from Neil, but my notes are sketchy and handouts will be emailed out later, so, don't have those to refer to.

Deb Patterson talked about how everything that hinged on change in pain hinged first on developing a good therapeutic relationship and projective goal setting. She explained the SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goal-setting model. She had a few videos of patients she had treated, including with DermoNeuroModulation (my thing), and how the therapeutic relationship had turned out. One was a woman whose ends of fingers had been amputated, traumatically, and the woman had developed horrible phantom finger pain. Previous (failed) treatment had been "desensitization" but it had backfired - tapping and stimulating the ends of the finger stumps had revved up pain instead of reducing it.  After Deb had treated her face the phantom finger pain had disappeared, briefly, giving the woman an opportunity to realize she was capable of "no pain." Deb used mirror therapy with her too.  In the video we could see how Deb had moved the woman carefully through just looking at an intact right hand in the mirror box (stimulating visual cortex), to stroking it lightly and VERY gently with a cosmetic brush (stimulating affective somatosensory cortex), to asking the patient to thoughtfully and sensitively move her fingers, watching them move in the mirror (somatosensory and premotor and motor cortex). The swelling and pain went away. Now she could now tolerate wearing her finger prostheses, and as a result was going out, was being a lot more social. Absolutely brilliant clinical intervention.

Lesley Singer talked about having chronic facial pain herself, stemming from surgery to remove a brainstem tumor; what having chronic (centrally generated) pain was like, from a patient's perspective as well as from a clinician perspective, treating other people with chronic pain. 

Dave Walton discussed measuring pain with pain scales, and scales for all things related, such as depression, catastrophizing, anxiety, locus of control, readiness to change, fear, kinesiophobia, coping behaviours and strategies. 

This day long workshop is going to form the backbone of an entire Level II of the Virtual Pain Symposium we put together a few years ago.

Day II

The plenary session this morning was by Lara Boyd of Brain Behaviour Lab at UBC. No time to discuss it right now, must run off to the next event. More to follow.

Vancouver weather

This is from Oatmeal, and is about Seattle weather, but really, Vancouver and Seattle are conjoined twins when it comes to weather.

The 4 Seasons of Seattle Weather

(Today in Weyburn, brilliant sunshine.)

All the Hawaii vacation posts

This post is just a collection of all the blogposts I made about or while I was in Maui.
There is no new content here.

1. First day of vacation
2. My old friend Sleep! Welcome back!
3. Photon therapy
4. same shot different day
5. Scary road in Maui
6. Day 6
7. Ocean at dusk
8. tourist shot
9. Kona Storm
10. Luau
11. Luau 2
12. Luau 3
13. Vacation time share pitch
14. Vacation time share pitch II
15. Vacation time share pitch III
16. Gecko invasion
17. palm tree picture
18. turquoise and purple ocean
19. Day thirteen
20. lavender dawn
21. lavender and lace
22. Dawn day 14
23. Thoughts on Solstice Eve on Life's Absurdities
24. Solstice Greetings
25. Solstice Greetings II
26. Solstice greetings III
27. Solstice greetings IV
28. Solstice greetings V
29. A touristy day in Lahaina, Maui, Part I
30. A touristy day in Lahaina, Maui, Part II: Monster of the plant world
31. A touristy day in Lahaina, Maui Part III: my salute to the Hawai'ian flag
32. Exercising permeable boundaries
33. Surf's up 
34. Last day  

Noticeable improvement

A lot of what this blog is about is to be a place where I can roar and kvetch and indulge myself when I need to, and track my own state.
I don't mind if others read this stuff, but it's not polished and I make no apology. It's a journal for petesake.

Anyway, I have noticed as November slogs on, a wonderful and welcome relief from seasonal affective disorder this year. Last year, I had already moved back into the light but I don't think my brain adapted immediately to the absence of Dreariness - it was still anxious and all hand-wavey and -wringy for a long time, even though it didn't feel as disabled as it had in previous Novembers.

This year I'm burrowed in and have my mental canines embedded in a juicy course which (while some of it gives me fits, as I've expressed in the post previous to this one) I am really loving;  and I love the way my brain is sucking up this stuff as though it were starved for it, and I'm loving the feel of the motivation it has for the project. My brain works properly again! Yay! And it's November 20! And I don't care! I don't feel it! I'm happy for a change in November, cognition not buried by some uncontrollable natural light level. There is plenty of light now. And I could not care less that it's minus 15 Celsius, because I'm warm and comfortable in my high-up condo from which I can see the sky and all its light and the backdrop it provides for wicked blizzards or sparkling frozen water vapour or intense sunsets. I love to attack the snow on my balcony, fight it, keep it swept away. I feel like such a hero cleaning off my deck - during the recent blizzard I cleaned it off three times in one day - no way is snow going to win! - I am the captain on my deck! (Yeah yeah, I know, it's lame, but hey, a woman about to be 60 in a few weeks still needs to feel victorious about something so chooses her battles effortlessly and only the ones she knows she will win. Schmutzhaken is my snowhook. )

I feel vindicated for having moved at the right time to (apparently) the right place or at least "a" right place. I moved before it was too late to extract myself. Good on me.

Lull

A lull and a kvetch.

It's almost the middle of June.

I've been out running every day. I think I'm trying to get rid of stress from a year ago, still.

The weekend before last I spent five rain-sogged days in Vancouver shutting down my practice there. It wasn't much fun, but it also didn't hurt very hard. It was just an annoyance to have to go do that instead of being able to do something else. It wasn't all bad - I stayed with friends who are lovely people, saw some others I hadn't seen in years, met a new friend that I'd only had online contact with prior.

The city has changed a lot - I rode the new rapid transit line to downtown. Very swift. It goes underground, so not a skytrain, a subway. I barely recognized downtown. Well, really it was Yaletown, not downtown... I've only ever been to Yaletown twice before, so no wonder I didn't recognize anything. I met Paul Ingraham, the skeptical massage therapist/writer, for the first time (once we found each other) - for lunch. I have no idea what this statue is about (outside the subway Yaletown station), other than that I liked it visually. It reminds me of me, little pointy head, all tied up on a horse (instinctive self) that has a big curious nose, going nowhere, huge heavy feet welded to the floor.

I think what I feel is sort of like post partum depression. A highly anticipated event associated with a lot of preparation and organizing and execution ends, and what's left is... a void. Oh well. We carry on. It's not like I haven't had this feeling for years already, in different guises, with my left frontal cortex slapping on different meanings one after another as it tries to alleviate concern... It ALSO doesn't help, however, that for whatever strange reason, the weather in Weyburn has been cloudy and rainy! In June! This is bizarre and insane, and NEVER happens. Well, until now I guess. I have sheepskin slippers on my feet, which is riDICulous foot apparel for Saskatchewan in June. Ridiculous! It should be hot and sunny and sweltering outside. Instead I might as well be in f****** Vancouver. I don't get this and I hate it, but it is what it is. Jokes are being made about the fields under water, having to plant rice for a change, etc. Really, it isn't funny. It wasn't funny last year when farmers were still taking off crops in mid-November. Very weird climate changes. There is nothing like having one's expectations of sunny bright weather and the busy-buzzy feeling of increased energy it gives me be cancelled by cloudy rainy day after cloudy rainy day - SAD on the prairies!?
Sheesh.... Where can I escape to now for some decent sunny Canadian weather? I've used up my options.

OK, rant over. I'll have to dig around for some inner motivation instead.

Anniversary reactions

So, I thought back to where my life was at a year ago, which in some ways feels like just yesterday; I reminded myself that only a year ago I was dismantling a lifetime, not just a practice from which I have been detached - still responsible for but emotionally detached from - for about 9 months.

I was faced with jettisoning a lot of belongings, books, purging and cleaning and scraping and painting and scouring and selling and usually fell into bed at night exhausted.

I realize that some part of my brain still feels open raw places from having undergone that experience, even while other bits are ecstatic to be back under big bright empty sky. When another stressor comes along, I realize that the reverberation of a year ago is like an echo chamber. I realize that as a brain ripens and ages through a life span the echo chamber doesn't go away, in fact it just gets bigger and bigger as years and anniversary reactions accumulate. If would be lovely if there were a delete key on stress, something easy to simply click and make the anxious stuff disappear. That isn't the case. So I go for long walks instead. It helps.

As I walk I think about how I'm helping my brain produce the millions of different kinds of neurotransmitters it needs to remain healthy and help me, its "I" illusion, to remain calm and content. I think about how lucky I am that I'm on the eve of 60 years old and am in a body, with a brain, and feet, that don't hurt me, that let me walk pretty far (3 or 4 km) without getting the least bit tired or sore. Bored a little, maybe, sometimes, but not in any pain. I think about how nice my nerves feel, sliding around in my body, first one side, then the other, how my spinal cord is slightly rotating within its canal, how blood flow is being engaged to feed it generously through mechanical stimulation. Yeah, mechanical stimulation is a stressor, but it's the right kind of stressor, and I remember that all this slidey motion will spur it to stay juicy and healthy and functional.

As I relax into the rhythm of walking I try out different things to challenge my brain, just a little, try a bit more novelty, explore my body adapting to it. I see how tall I can be as I walk along. I feel the difference between using abs and not using abs while walking. I notice what happens to my breathing. I work with breathing. I place my feet on a narrower trail with out breaking stride. I play with stride length without breaking stride. I experiment with which edge of my feet I'm walking on. I run a little. I play. I stride. On the outside, I am just a woman walking, but on the inside, I'm engaged in a process of discovery and comparison and full body sensing.

I think about how lucky I am to not have to carry a little roof all the time, called an umbrella, shutting out the sky, bumping other umbrellas, being bumped by other umbrellas, or, the alternative, rain on the top of the head - ceaseless remorseless rain. Seventy-five different kinds and sizes of rain.

I note the lack of other people and feel grateful to be in a place where there are no drug dealers being obvious or their customers reeling around or shouting at each other or at nothing at all or thick knots of tourists standing and gawking everywhere or beggars asking me for money or trying to sell me something - people crowding me, people who represent huge obstacles, both physical and psychological, to navigate through and around. I am alone with my own thoughts, and all around is just empty space I can relax into, nobody nearby I have to worry may knock me down and steal my wallet, or knock me down because it's a gang initiation ritual, or knock me down because they are bigger and taller and didn't even know I was there.

I always see a little something I never noticed before, even on familiar routes. I am free to gaze around at sharp contrast of light bouncing off surfaces, at the brightness of snow (well, not lately - it has developed that cavitated, dulldarkgrey look as spring arrives..) at the brightness and blueness of the sky, and think, this is all very good for my brain. I tell myself, it will synchronize and neuroplasticize itself in a positive direction. I tell myself that its emotional buffers will continue to improve every day in direct proportion to increasing clarity of thought and access to cognition and sharpness of logic. I realize these are beliefs, but I also know they are beliefs based on science. Science is my comfort and strength. It always changes but its changes are always for the better, provide ever more solidity.

I go home, look at the pedometer and how many steps I took. I think, OK, I can do better than that. Tomorrow I'll go again. Life is a series of small steps, physical and metaphorical, that accumulate over time, will add up to something, positive or not. Every step should be consciously chosen or result from a habit consciously chosen and feel like the right step to have made, no matter how tiny it may have been. With each step I take, I'm putting distance between myself and what I've left behind; with each step I'm coming closer to whatever it is I want out of life, whoever it is that I am becoming.

Every walk I take is a victory, my pitting of my own life against everything that would do my life harm. I have synchronized myself with me, as best I can, and after, I feel ready to read a paper and make a few slides and write a few thoughts down on a file card. My new life.

I'll deal with that recent workquake in Vancouver as I can, when I can. It's not my life. Not really. Not anymore. I'm not there, not anymore. I'm Here. And this is Now. Things could be much worse.

Nucleus Accumbens

There is not very much written about this particular brain region, nucleus accumbens, in any of the four volumes of the massive Encyclopedia of the Human Brain.

It seems to be a bit of brain involved, importantly, in staving off depression, or as Heller notes, in the PNAS open access paper (6-page pdf), Reduced capacity to sustain positive emotion in major depression reflects diminished maintenance of fronto-striatal brain activation,

"While up-regulating positive affect, depressed individuals failed to sustain nucleus accumbens activity over time compared with controls."

Any structure that can help stave off "Major Depressive Disorder" is one I want to know more about. There was a look taken at "the fronto-striatal network in anhedonia" also.

"These findings support the hypothesis that anhedonia in depressed patients reflects the inability to sustain engagement of structures involved in positive affect and reward."

Also:

"Our study examines the ability of depressed patients to sustain engagement of the NAcc while enhancing positive affect in response to positive images embedded within a stream of stimuli that included both positive and negative images."

Sounds like depressed people can kind of fake it for a little while, but their/our nucleus accumbens tuckers out easily, can't continuously rejoice over life's simple pleasures. From the paper:

"...in everyday life, individuals do not generally encounter uninterrupted positive stimuli. Negative experiences often intermix with positive ones, and the ability of individuals to heighten and maintain positive affect in the face of negative stimuli is vitally important for health and well-being."

Sheesh, you can say that again. Mine feels as though it is perking up fairly well with the help of increased photons in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Still a fairly long way to go however.

Equanimity

Boxing day 2009 - I think I've finally achieved this elusive state. In order to get here, I had to spend nearly 30 years in the dark cave of Vancouver, going with low photon levels in exchange for useful tools and skill sets that are coming in very handy as I navigate life with mom, life in a small city where boundaries are very different than what I became used to, yet eerily familiar at the same time. Who said you can't go back home? I did, and feel much better for it.

Yesterday, I went to my mother's condo at her invitation for a Christmas dinner and present exchange. I gave her, she who loves Christmas bling, a Christmas floral arrangement, professionally produced and delivered locally, way last Monday, on Solstice day. This was my way of spreading the festivity out a bit more so that something important to me (solstice, photons etc.) would be symbolically included in a gift extended by me to her; so that the connection, the buried verb lying within my reach outward to her through a present, could be meaningful to both of us. It was a low montage of cedar and other coniferous greenery, red and white carnations, with a tall red candle sticking up out of the center. She thought it was beautiful and was glad to have it come a few days before Christmas so that she could enjoy it as part of her anticipation of the whole event. Win win.

We ate turkey breast cooked in the oven in a casserole dish, nestled in a bed of stove-top stuffing, to which she had added mushrooms (real, not from a can, she pointed out), onions, butter (not margarine like they put in the stuffing at the Wheatland, she pointed out); it was tasty for sure. Baked potato, half an acorn squash. Ice cream and apple-pear crisp for dessert. Some chokecherry wine. A lovely meal. Over the meal she reminisced about trips she had taken, funerals she had attended, music she liked, a cremation ceremony she'd been to recently. I noticed something in my brain not just nodding along dutifully, politely, but actually listening for subtext from her. "Do you want to be cremated?" I asked. "Yes," she said unhesitatingly, and laughed. "The church lets people do that now. None of this cold six-feet-deep needed if you're just ashes. At the graveyard the undertaker and the daughter together lowered a little square box into a shallow hole in the ground and put a piece of turf over the top." This led into a long side-topic about how dad used to tease her about how she parked. "He used to say, "You always like to leave a way out for yourself, don't you?"" And then she laughed again at the memory. Her way of parking is to leave a huge space beside her and whatever big four-by-four she has to park beside, even if her car sticks out a foot into a laneway, over-riding, or even parked squarely on top of, do-not-obstruct yellow hatch marks in the parking lot. She simply ignores yellow hatch. When it comes to parking, she appears to be yellow-hatch blind. And ticket-proof! The woman takes her space. Always has. I think she feels a touch claustrophobic at the thought of being in a coffin, buried...

Her boundaries have always been thick and tough. My experience as her only child (for the first 3.5 years at least), with her as my mom, was that approaching her was like approaching a large invisible deflector shield, one I bounced off almost every single time I ever tried to get close. After awhile I didn't bother trying anymore. She was never as approachable as she tried to portray herself as being. She wanted contact only whenever she wanted contact, and I was forced to accommodate myself to her. I was treated as her project, part of her bling collection, something she could dress up and curl the hair of and take out and show off. The rest of the time I was to be quiet and unobtrusive. I learned nothing of how to be a truly social human from her, not really. Anyone reading this will be relieved to learn that I did my therapy time and that this is all "water under the bridge," a phrase she likes to use, and that I won't bore readers with too many details.... long ago I asked for, and received in writing, an apology for her physical abuse dished during my childhood, but to try to explain any maternal emotional dearth she might have also dished is something she would find totally incomprehensible. She is confident that she did just fine, thank you very much. I turned out OK, didn't I? Is that not proof? So we go on.

What can I say, except that I need photons, especially in winter? I did not really need to be around my mother. At least huge parts of me did not. However, that having been said, I'm not one to pass up any last chance to understand, maybe, in retrospect, how life came to feel so pointy and sharp my whole way through it. While I'm here enjoying the feeling of having my personal brain photon tank slowly filling up again, I am cautiously exploring this old, painful, resurrected relationship with the one person in the world to whom I owe everything and nothing, depending upon which side of myself perceives her.

Anyway, so far, so good. Exercising psychic integration could feel worse. Whether my mind frames it as dragon-slaying or merely as sedate familial adjustment, I'm sure it will all be of personal benefit at some point. Something in there is feeling successful about something, and just now that's all that matters.

I opened up a gift from her, a huge box, inside which was packed a slow-cooker. Perfect, because I usually get distracted and burn things when I cook, which is irregularly. Thanks mom. Also, she gave me a set of 24 Sharpies with fine tips. She had seen me admiring them in Walmart. I make a lot of doodle drawings. I go through a lot of Sharpies. So this was a great present.

I gave her a big shiny green gift bag full of edible things - a Christmas pudding, a box of Christmas cake, some candied ginger, some halva (which I remember her enjoying from when I was a child), some boxed truffles, and a set of one-handed salt and pepper grinders I have had for absolute ages, complete with little bags of extra salt chunks and pepper corns for refill. She thought this was all too much. Maybe it was. I've given her nothing but a card for years and years and years, and for a long time before that, nothing, not even a card. So it didn't seem extravagant to me, not for a first Christmas spent together in decades, and just her and me to boot. But I may have over-compensated. Maybe there is still a pocket or two of buried, unearthed guilt to deal with. I'll find and deal with it consciously, rather than continue to buy her too many Christmas presents after buying her nothing for decades.

She was anxious to open a large box from my sister that had arrived addressed to both of us. We opened it up, and it contained a necklace for her, a framed photo for her of my sister and her husband, and for me a large plastic recycle bin and some home-made chutney. On the card attached to the recycle bin, she had written my name and that it was one of the "plunge buckets" she had used to help her foot feel better, after fracturing a few bones in it last summer, at my urging to do contrast foot soaks. Mom called her, and we each talked to her for awhile. It had a nice connecty family feel to it.

About 9:30PM, the evening wound down, and I packed up my things for the walk home just up the block.

Zeitgeber

Learned this new word today: Zeitgeber. My definition: a recurring clue from one's environment around which one's brain can develop synchronized optimized neuroplasticity.

So, this week is solstice, a week marked by collective yearning for more light expressed in many ways by many cultures, and often religiously.

I must say, I feel pretty good this year. I've failed to note any of the usual drag on me and my mood, function, no urge to hibernate, no letdown, no dread, no anxiety... Nothing. I feel "normal". Back in Saskatchewan where my brain matured in bright sunshine year round. How it is enjoying its revel in photonic bliss, even while the rest of me still looks for ways to adapt to new surroundings and people and wonders what it will do with the rest of my life.

One thing I know is that the long rest and exposure to real light "cure" will help the rest of me figure it all out as time goes along. So I'm not particularly stressed about any of it. I'm content to just wait and see what reveals itself during the cold time fast approaching. Yeah, it will be shockingly cold, but I'm pretty sure I can adapt to it swiftly. I have marvelously thermo-efficient outerwear and a new pair of those wire rigs that provide increased traction to help people walk on ice - when it gets windy I expect they will help a lot.

Further reading:
Sensorimotor modulation of mood and depression: An integrative review.

May your days be merry and bright

This has to be the most stressful time of the year for social and symbolically afflicted animals like us, when we are trying to change our way along. But I am pleased to be able to say that this year the stress is much less.

I went to a party last night, 16 people, a catered turkey dinner at the senior drop-in center where I go and volunteer, peel potatoes etc., the local good churchwoman (best friend of my mom) said grace, there was a party afterward in my mother's living room, most of the people there in their 80's, some corny games, some Christmas carols accompanied by one of the 80-somethings on a portable piano, a present exchange, three people (women) wearing identical red vests (- I was one - guess I'm blending in well around here, the kid of the bunch at not quite 60 yet). It all feels a weird combination of surreal (this is not my life, surely) combined with acceptance (really, it's not so bad, a bunch of older folk all living independently, manufacturing for themselves and apparently enjoying simple social pleasures, keeping each other going and cheered up in a safe, humble little prairie community). There were four men and a lot of widows. My own father checked out 9 years ago.

It's a nice gentle way to be passing time, hanging out with advanced seniors. Which is odd, because at younger ages I would have been bored out of my mind by this sort of repetitive socializing for the sake of socializing. I would have felt myself trying to burst out of invisible cages.

Instead I feel very welcome and nurtured by this group. Its members find lots of little ways to let me know that they like and appreciate my being there with them. I find myself open to accepting this without feeling uncomfortably vulnerable at the same time.

I have what I consider to be my "normal life," which to them is strange since none of them use computers, lived virtually, being online, studying, thinking, conversing by email/writing. The inner world of me.

I have this weird (to me) and yet oddly comfortable outer life now, my only peer group at the moment comprised of people my mother's age or close. Preferable IMO to living in an increasingly nasty urban jungle, full of darkness, lack of sun, fighting every day just to make myself stay there. I seem to have created a symbolic "child" world again, and my own mother is actually still physically present in it, part of it. I can feel long-lost parts of me lapping up this nurturing environment like thirsty camels lap up oasis water.

It slowly is dawning on me that it barely matters anyway, what I am or what I make or don't make of myself in the world. I never thought I'd see the day when personal existential angst would appear to comfortably recede or dissolve. Maybe it has to do increased light levels. Maybe with having managed to revisit "child" mode once again for a little while. Maybe a combination. Whatever. I remain acutely aware that one day I'll just slide right out of existence, but I feel detached about this in yet another new way for now, even as I anticipate attending many funerals in the coming years. Which won't involve fun probably. So for now it seems important to just relax, support these people and their gentle socializing for all the camaraderie and fun it seems to bring them, all I can, just for now. It's what is right under my nose at the moment. I can always go back to paid physical human primate social grooming, later.

Light, let there be.

I need to rave on a bit about how much I am enjoying the light levels here in Saskatchewan. My own particular very bossy suprachiasmatic nucleus loves being "home" again. Let me try to explain. This first picture is my view of the sky, looking west, about 5:15 PM. We don't change the clock in Sask. That's just point 1.

Where I live is situated 1850 feet above sea level. It's like living at the top of a very very large hill. When the sun comes up, or goes down, the light changes ever so gradually. There is nothing abrupt about this process the way it is at sea level. The sky takes a good half hour or longer to brighten or dim, both before and after the sun has come or gone. I think this gradated dimming/brightening, the slowness of it, the gentleness of it, the non-abruptness of it, is crucial - at least to me. I think it might be why the big fake sun-lamp stopped working for me. My particular suprachiasmatic nucleus took all this for granted the first 33 years of its existence. Then for the next 26 years or so, it had to put up with sudden light changes. They really are more abrupt when there are mountains and sea level blocking light as my brain had become accustomed to it, a brain used to a sky that faded or brightened slowly, so slowly, from very dark to very, very bright. And big. Huge. Dome. Sky. Sky that actually dips down on all sides below the horizon line, letting the sun smoothly illuminate it even when it isn't directly visible. How cool is that? This second picture was take at around 6 PM! There is still enough light in the sky to take a picture without any fancy equipment, just a handheld camera. Not much, but just enough.


Halfway through November, and no SAD. Not one bit of it. Just greater and greater decompression noted each passing week.

Selves and selves and selves

By happy fluke a friend, Jon Newman, posted a thread on SomaSimple about Sandeep Gautman's blog, The Mouse Trap, and links to several posts about the many selves we each carry around. I was delighted to learn that someone has bothered to study their existence, hypothesize their functions - I don't have to do it all by myself (haha, lame joke).

Listed below are the particular posts Jon found, and thought were compelling enough to bring onto a physical therapy board. They are compelling, because even when we are tootling along in a well-integrated, functioning state, working for a living providing services to health consumers, etc etc., we are dealing with psyches which might seem glued together on the outside but which might feel shattered to pieces on the inside. I've preferred to see this shatteredness as merely kaleidoscopic, interesting and even lovely, but I can appreciate that a sudden plunge into the depths of self/selves might feel shattering to people at first exposure to it. It was that way for me at first, too.

Anyway, for those interested:
1. Development of Infant Consciousness
2. Splitting of the self: "me" and "I"
3. Five kinds of self/self/knowledge

I had no idea there was a field called Philosophical Psychology, with its own journal, but there is. Someone named Ulric Neisser wrote a paper way back in 1988 and delineated Five kinds of Self-Knowledge. In his blog, Gautman has outlined them:

•The ecological self is the self as perceived with respect to the physical environment: I am the person here in this place, engaged in this particular activity.
•The interpersonal self, which appears from earliest infancy just as the ecological self does, is specified by species-specific signals of emotional rapport and communication: I am the person who is engaged, here, in this particular human interchange.
•The extended self is based primarily on our personal memories and anticipations: I am the person who had certain specific experiences, who regularly engages in certain specific and familiar routines.
• The private self appears when children first notice that some of their experiences are not directly shared with other people: I am, in principle, the only person who can feel this unique and particular pain.
• The conceptual self or ’self-concept’ draws its meaning from the network of assumptions and theories in which it is embedded, just as all other concepts do. Some of those theories concern social roles (husband, professor, American), some postulate more or less hypothetical internal entities (the soul, the unconscious mind, mental energy, the brain, the liver), and some establish socially significant dimensions of difference (intelligence, attractiveness, wealth). There is a remarkable variety in what people believe about themselves, and not all of it is true.

No mention in there of the over-extended self.. which women end up becoming a lot of the time.. I think (with my private self) the over-extended self may house a bunch of the subselves which can cause trouble. Perhaps it depends on the sort of "specific and familiar routines" in which one engages. I think it's the one our "role" is housed within. Of all of them, it's the one that changed itself right under my nose, and seems like is busy plotting a coup with my conceptual self these days.

Also, no mention that I can find of how each of the discretely labelled selves experiences time passing. I have a hunch that a key to re-integrating them is to get them all back on the same clock again somehow.

As an aside, recently neuroscientists found brain cells that keep track of time with extreme precision in macaque monkeys. Everything gets a time stamp. See MIT news story, A Head of Time.

If the brain is an oscillator, predictor and simulator, I can see how easily one's sense of self/selves can develop a few timing problems and need "tune-ups" on occasion.

Looking after me

Once in awhile, a little, formerly struggling part of myself surfaces and breathes, then disappears again for ever-lengthening periods of time. It surfaced this morning, and we took a look at our life together. I found I could understand and look at life from its perspective better than I could before.

It is the anxious part. It's the part of me I fought to stay married to, the part I turned my whole physical existence upside down and inside out to accommodate. I didn't blame it when it threatened to explode - I listened, stayed connected, tried to understand, then analyzed, and then acted. I thought things through while in Hawaii. I related to this part of me.

I do happen to view my "self" as a committee comprised of different characters, a choir of different voices, a community of selves apart from the one I normally inhabit as "me." I'm not sure this is pathological, although it might seem a bit odd. I have always seen my"self" this way, as a group of individual proclivities and interests, some of which can interfere with others at times. I've always seen my "self" as a collective comprised of "selves" of different ages and capacities and likes and dislikes and abilities and inclinations. I do feel like I have to actively integrate all of it ongoingly, most of the time, and need a lot of alone time to deal with it. I do sometimes resent the disproportionate amount of time this seems to take me, compared to how easily others seem to hold them "selves" together, but usually don't allow it to particularly bother me.. I just plug along with whatever I've got going on at the time. I do wonder about aging, how this process will be affected. Will it get easier or harder? Maybe every person feels like a whole tribe on the inside. Maybe others have brains that do this integrating effortlessly and non-consciously (it seems that way from the outside, at least..). Maybe this is way more information than anyone else needs to know about what goes on in my particular head.

Whatever the case, back to the anxiety "self":
It poked itself into my conscious awareness today, to announce that it feels better now, thank you. It noted that it is Hallowe'en today, which means that it's nearly November, a time when life would normally be dark and rainy and foggy, that it would ordinarily be fixated on the weathercaster's daily announcement of time of sunrise and sunset, would be poking me frequently, as daylight shortened and darktime lengthened. It noted that here, in the new place, in the 'land of living skies', the land of planetary hemisphere-size sky, it could care less, pointing out that it has paid almost no attention whatsoever to weather reports. It doesn't care anymore. It has more light and that's all it ever wanted, so thanks. It doesn't feel it needs to intrude on me anymore about light level issues. I agreed. The thank you was mutual. Both of us love the fact that we do not have to re-set the clock, now or forever more, if we don't want to. Saskatchewan very sensibly did away with this noxious stress-producing, imposed from without, jet-lag producing practice many decades ago. Such a relief.

Meanwhile, there are other internal fires to fight... The part I normally regard as the working part of me is still healing from the rippage away of what was once ordinary existence, and sets of daily habits. It has yet to find a new rhythm in life that is as productive as life used to be, but slowly it feels better and better. It knows that the only way to get through the rest of this year will be to get through the rest of this year, doing little more than attending to each moment as a suspended entity, experiencing life as a crawl by.

The part that had been longing for a sabbatical now has one, but experiences time as whipping by too fast to be enjoyed. It's the part which, if I allow, thinks it needs markers, things to weigh time down, to slow it down. Material objects and bought items, "stuff", money-wasting burdensome symbols of ownership, permanence. I've put a stop to most of that. It will have to find some other way to express itself. I cannot even buy a book right now - the wounds of having had to scuttle almost my whole library are still too fresh. I am firmly convinced that, on the whole, simplicity is preferable, but the acquisitive "self" is having a few issues with me over that. So, I might take it out today to purchase some winter boots, get it a flu shot, buy a bottle of aspirin to feed it, one per day, so it feels provided for and I will have simultaneously reduced the statistical probability of this "self" giving us both/all of "us" a stroke.

What I once felt was a somewhat budding and growing intellect is dormant for the time being. I'm still tending it, but it is ignoring "me" at the moment - it seems to need to compost for now. I hope it springs back to life someday. I see no reason why it won't. It's time for engine maintenance, is all.

Life and jigsaw puzzles

What the heck.
I am back to add my thoughts on this after all.

.........

How life is like a jigsaw puzzle

1. You are born without knowing how to do one.

2. Your job is to complete your puzzle before you die.

Symbolism

Every piece represents another person in your life. Each piece is equally precious, uses equal space, and will be important in some way to the final result. Keep this in mind. Always.

Overview

Your job will be to figure out all the relationships appropriately, guide the pieces to their spots. To do this it will be necessary to develop your powers of discernment and perception. You must learn to see things from different focal lengths.

Practical tips

1. Be sure you have adequate lighting. Sufficient table space. Take care to not drop pieces on the floor where they could become lost or dragged off by the cat.

2. Build the boundary first. It will save you loads of time and angst, and possibly regret.

3. Be gentle with the pieces. They will have to be handled many many times by you, and by others who do the puzzle. Don't create unnecessary wear and tear on anything.

4. Always work from easiest to hardest. You'll gain confidence and experience that way.

5. Go ahead and group your pieces by color, by shape, by orientation. This is not equivalent to political or economic discrimination, this is just you sorting things out for yourself privately in your own personal life. You ARE allowed to have a personal opinion on your own life. On your own puzzle pieces. From your own perspective. On absolutely every issue/aspect. In fact it's a requirement if you are to become a thinking person.

6. Keep the boundary between a) your own discernment and b) unfair social discrimination, clear, clean and separate, and refuse to tolerate any unfair institutionalized structured discriminatory practices in outer life. (See "Symbolism," above.)

7. Take your time grouping the pieces, laying them out carefully. You can do this any way you want. It will save you time in the long run. And you've got lots of time. A life time.

Along the way

1. You'll naturally be drawn to some pieces more than other pieces. Don't worry about it. Just remember that you'll need every piece eventually. Consult the 'big picture' frequently.

2. When you get stuck, you'll finally start to widen your visual field, and will notice some little humble piece that you had totally overlooked because it just never stood out for you. This is natural. Don't worry about it. It will be exactly the right piece for that spot where you tried some other piece umpteen times already and it just wouldn't fit.

3. You'll get a nice burst of pleasure out of each tiny victory. Savour the pleasure.

4. When you get frustrated, work on a different part of the puzzle, or else just go do something else for awhile and come back later. Your refreshed retinal receptors will see details they couldn't when your eyes were tired.

5. Invite others to help you if you wish. If you'd rather do it all by yourself, that's OK too. Your choice.

6. You will have a chance to enjoy, sense, experience and integrate all the instinctive emotions that came for free when we were born. You'll experience everything from the slog of repetitive drudgery and continuous frustration to the thrill of the hunt and the sense of triumph. The glue that holds all this together and keeps everything moving along on track is hope. Hope is really all we have for motivational fuel. Nurture hope. One day your puzzle will be complete.

Valuing the inner life

I'm in one of those periods when everything feels like swimming through peanut butter. There is no motivation and no energy to do anything even when there is some motivation. I'm truly in the swamp of myself at the moment.

On the outside things are settled safely - still in visual upheaval, with a dresser half made all over the living room floor, and the red rug I brought from Vancouver (now a rolled-up red albatross also lying on the floor of the living room, because only too late did I realize it really is too large for the room and doesn't suit it anyway). But I don't care right now. I sit on the roll while I build the dresser from a kit. I step over it to open the balcony door. I am careful not to lose screws or screwdriver or hammer in its folds. I don't care how long it lies there because I'm sucked down into the muck at the moment. I'm the engineer, off my own train, having to build more track out front before I can get life moving again. My attention has been sucked down into someplace I can barely apprehend. For now.

I don't care about any of this actually. It feels fine, or perhaps I'm just kidding myself about that.. I don't know. All I know is that I'm in the nadir place again. I've been here before, at least three times in my life. I recognize the territory. I recognize that I'm depressed. I saw this coming and arranged outer life to accommodate it, rather than let it crash me into a ditch. I've acquired a useful illusion of control. I can anticipate my own crashes and prepare appropriate landing places.

Furthermore I know what I have to do. I went out yesterday and found a gym about 6 blocks away, right beside a beautiful indoor swimming pool. I plan to join it. I have absolutely nothing else I have to do with my body, because I'm not working at the moment. I can work with it, as opposed to using it to work. It is now about 35 pounds lighter than it used to be, and I want it to feel stronger; I want it to sustain me better. I want to work with what's left of it. I do want to feel "better." Physically. I don't feel bad, physically. But I also know I can feel "better," physically. Regular exercise is a mood-enhancer. I've used it on and off over the years like other people use drugs. It works for me.

I have never wanted to do exercise in anything more than bouts, a few weeks or months at a time, and only when necessary. I've always been afraid of dependency. Worse, I've seen how exercise addicts tend to ruin their own bodies through excessive dependence on strenuous behaviour to feel "good." They turn exercise into a religion, feeling guilty when they don't do it, instead of using it carefully as a medicine, and only when necessary, to feel "better."

On the way back, I dropped in at the Wheatland Center, for the first time under my own steam. I headed immediately for the jigsaw puzzle room. Instantly my brain wove this room into a self-construct for therapy. My jigsaw therapy room.

I worked for a little while on the puzzle that was out yesterday - a snow scene with deer, lots of deep blue colours. While I puttered finding pieces with bits of antlers on them, I chatted with a few of the seniors there. A woman named Helen works there everyday, is the caterer as well as the main administrator/treasurer. She rents the place out for events, and takes care of organizing the monthly dinners. I agreed to help out with the one at the end of this month, a turkey dinner. I am to arrive at 9 AM and help with potato-peeling, etc., leave for awhile, come back in the afternoon and set out desserts. After she left to go do some banking, I met her husband, whose health has declined. He walked in heavily, and we introduced ourselves to each other. He went to sit by the window, told me about his experience having to let go of one of his favorite past times, bridge. He has acquired a speech difficulty which creates pauses that are too long to be able to feel comfortable holding his own in a bridge game. He's had some surgeries which he didn't tell me about but which his wife had mentioned before he came into the room, and about which I didn't ask for detail. He chatted randomly about himself, how he feels his life closing in around him, how he was going along just fine, then suddenly his health seemed to collapse on him all at once. He said to me, "When you have your health and everything is going along fine, like how you are now, you just don't know what it's like when it's gone." I found exactly the piece that I needed to finish both a blue hill in the distance and a chunk of deer butt, put in in its spot in the jigsaw. "Well.. I guess sooner or later we all get to find out what that feels like." I replied cautiously. He seemed satisfied with that.

I started doing jigsaw puzzles a few years ago because I find them soothing, relaxing, refreshing on some deep brain level or other. They help me disperse inner fog. They help me re-establish, at least temporarily, some illusory sense of control, or order. Moving here to Weyburn and being able to access this jigsaw puzzle room freely will be perfect. There is no system (I don't know where I got that idea from - maybe my brain just made that up). You can borrow as many puzzles as you want, take them home, do them, bring them back. No one asks you to sign them in or out. Marvelous. All social interaction here, with the seniors, is a sea of personal and interpersonal trust. I love that.

I've changed my whole outside context, quit work, moved home, moved away from the outer fog - now I can start tackling this inner fog. Jigsaws will help me kill time while my brain gets itself back up on the track.

I plan to pick up this book, the Red Book, by Carl Jung, as soon as it makes it onto the shelves. Here is an article about it in NYT. The Holy Grail of the Unconscious, by Sara Corbett. Caution - it's a really long article.

I am going to read about Jung's adventures while inside his nadirs. Maybe it will be full of useful travel tips.

Letting go

I have been stressed out all week, fighting a bug which put me in bed all day Monday, made me cough (and have to wear a face mask) Tuesday, went into a lull Wed and Thur and came back with a vengeance Friday, putting me into bed directly after another face mask wearing day at work.

Adding to the stress of meeting immediate obligations while feeling sick has been the stress of trying to hold together a condo deal at the Weyburn end of this time of transition. It all climaxed in this same week, in the form of a time-sensitive binder full of complex legal documentation that I was required to read through, then initial off as having read and understood, and return.

I hit my own wall. I looked at page one, and realized that I was too stressed (too sick maybe) to be able to make any sense out of the written material. Which of course means that I'm too stressed to actually know if I do, truly, understand it, agree to it, and can sign off that I do.

When I get stressed, I get mad. How dare that real estate agent load me down with such a herculean task the very week I'm sick and have enough to do, trying to keep mere ordinary life on the rails? How dare she not be there to reply to my email or pick up the phone? (Seriously, someone who ignores one of each from me, AND a phone call from my notary... , well... , just what should one think? Just where should one place her on the sliding scale of slackdom?)

When I get mad, I get decisive. So I phoned my mother this morning, whose money represents the deposit on this condo in Weyburn, and is refundable up to the end of June. I told her my misgivings, told her how stressed I was getting about it, and that I wanted her to go get her cheque back and let the deal fall apart.

As I spoke, I could feel clarity reemerge into the dim dark recesses. I could feel certainty return. It's all relative of course; it might seem odd that letting go of something that's nearly in the bag would be less stressful than seeing it through, yet, that's how it is. I feel way more relaxed with the zen of Not Knowing, than I am with the stress of trying to pull something together that seems difficult and for which I find vanishingly small support to accomplish, but would result in a sure address to forward my mail to.

Instead, I'll just get my mail forwarded to my mother's address, until I have one of my own.

The stress level is down palpably. I'm breathing easier and I can focus on what's in front of me instead of feeling obliged to try to advance stick-handle what lies ahead.

When I leave Vancouver it will be like driving into the void. I won't have any preconceptions of where I'll be living, because I'll have no idea where it will be, for sure. I'll be more relaxed, with no time pressure on me about getting money transferred by a certain date. I'll be able to just leisurely open a new account, and have money sent from the old to the new, the old ones closed. So much easier.