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.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Addicted to information?
Scientific American has this little item: The Chemistry of Information Addiction: A new experiment reveals why we always want to know the answer
Dopamine reward pathways appear to be involved. This ties in with Robert Burton's ideas in his book, On Being Certain. Certainty becomes a rewarded cognitive behaviour, and voilá, becomes an end in itself.
Excerpt:
So here's a thought, based on something else I read today, Scientists Locate Literacy In The Brain With The Help of Former Colombian Guerrillas, which I think ties in.
(Why they kept referring to the subjects as Guerrillas, instead of referring to them as formerly-illiterate subjects learning to read, I'll never know. Of that I am quite certain.)
Anyway, language is intrinsic. Children left to themselves soon figure out some sort of "language" in which they will be able to communicate. Even deaf children. Such made-up languages will have grammar, structure, meaning, etc.
Reading, on the other hand, is tuition-intensive learned behaviour. It changes the brain. Excerpt:
In lots of other posts here I've taken a close look at this idea, that the brain is a simulator, plays a predictive role based on previous experience. It is the standard science-based working model of the brain.
My thought is, "making stuff up" to satisfy information hungry and addicted pathways, would likely represent the default human capacity.
Science and learning to think scientifically, like acquiring literacy, requires much more input and effort, initially.
However, the acquired skill is self-rewarding, in the same way as reading is.
Reading has become the norm. Like reading, science must be taught, conveyed, and ultimately learned. It's a transmission of "information" between two people, a teacher and a learner, like any sort of information exchange is but more formal - the people are in roles. Effort expended to either learn or teach is considerable.
Something is wrong with how science is taught these days. Perhaps teaching science as a "tool" seems boring and laborious to a child or teen. Perhaps the teachers themselves find it boring to teach science, or can't quite see the point of trying to pound science into what seem like thick heads.
Does anyone else think science could or should be reframed as an exciting, cognitive, future self-rewarding behaviour?
I will lay odds that if teachers took on their task of teaching science as enthusiastically as they take on teaching basic reading, fueled by the same motive, soon there would be a leap forward in percent of population able to steadily access their own information-seeking/gathering reward pathways. New habits of thinking would emerge. Culture would change. There would be no more need in life to support institutions that "make stuff up" just so they can feel they can help people get by - everyone would be interested in investigating the truth as closely as scientifically possible.
Additional Reading:
1. Harriet Hall's review of On Being Certain
2. Ginger Campbell's BrainScience Podcast and shownotes about the book, Episode 42
3. Ginger Campbell's BrainScience Podcast and shownotes, interview with the author, Episode 43.
Dopamine reward pathways appear to be involved. This ties in with Robert Burton's ideas in his book, On Being Certain. Certainty becomes a rewarded cognitive behaviour, and voilá, becomes an end in itself.
Excerpt:
QUOTE
"It has long been thought that there are two levels of decision-making: a conscious level taking place in the cerebral cortex and an unconscious level in the basal ganglia. The story is not so simple, he says, because these two systems are connected via the midbrain dopamine neurons. Perhaps future work will reveal how our conscious and unconscious decisions are influencing one another, all due to this very busy population of dopamine neurons.
It’s often remarked that “ignorance is bliss.” However, when you look at ignorance from the perspective of the brain a very different picture emerges. Our brains, and the brains of other animals, have evolved to find information rewarding. In fact, not knowing is stressful, which is why we strive to decrease that uncertainty whenever possible. We want the information and we want it now!"
So here's a thought, based on something else I read today, Scientists Locate Literacy In The Brain With The Help of Former Colombian Guerrillas, which I think ties in.
(Why they kept referring to the subjects as Guerrillas, instead of referring to them as formerly-illiterate subjects learning to read, I'll never know. Of that I am quite certain.)
Anyway, language is intrinsic. Children left to themselves soon figure out some sort of "language" in which they will be able to communicate. Even deaf children. Such made-up languages will have grammar, structure, meaning, etc.
Reading, on the other hand, is tuition-intensive learned behaviour. It changes the brain. Excerpt:
"Previously, it was thought that the angular gyrus recognised the shapes of words prior to finding their sounds and meanings. In fact, the researchers showed that the angular gyrus is not directly involved in translating visual words into their sounds and meanings. Instead, it supports this process by providing predictions of what the brain is expecting to see."
In lots of other posts here I've taken a close look at this idea, that the brain is a simulator, plays a predictive role based on previous experience. It is the standard science-based working model of the brain.
My thought is, "making stuff up" to satisfy information hungry and addicted pathways, would likely represent the default human capacity.
Science and learning to think scientifically, like acquiring literacy, requires much more input and effort, initially.
However, the acquired skill is self-rewarding, in the same way as reading is.
Reading has become the norm. Like reading, science must be taught, conveyed, and ultimately learned. It's a transmission of "information" between two people, a teacher and a learner, like any sort of information exchange is but more formal - the people are in roles. Effort expended to either learn or teach is considerable.
Something is wrong with how science is taught these days. Perhaps teaching science as a "tool" seems boring and laborious to a child or teen. Perhaps the teachers themselves find it boring to teach science, or can't quite see the point of trying to pound science into what seem like thick heads.
Does anyone else think science could or should be reframed as an exciting, cognitive, future self-rewarding behaviour?
I will lay odds that if teachers took on their task of teaching science as enthusiastically as they take on teaching basic reading, fueled by the same motive, soon there would be a leap forward in percent of population able to steadily access their own information-seeking/gathering reward pathways. New habits of thinking would emerge. Culture would change. There would be no more need in life to support institutions that "make stuff up" just so they can feel they can help people get by - everyone would be interested in investigating the truth as closely as scientifically possible.
Additional Reading:
1. Harriet Hall's review of On Being Certain
2. Ginger Campbell's BrainScience Podcast and shownotes about the book, Episode 42
3. Ginger Campbell's BrainScience Podcast and shownotes, interview with the author, Episode 43.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Weather
It's excellent novel stimuli to this brain that houses me.
Brain food.
Today, outside my window, a blizzard! a real, honest-to-goodness prairie blizzard! ...rages.
Maybe it's the exciting descriptors that pull me so much into this situation, back to living in a little prairie city that has nothing much to distinguish itself.. where any architecture the least bit interesting dates back to the 40's, or 30's.. 20's..
No matter - the weather is wild, the weather is fresh, the weather is waking my brain back up. I do not fully understand why I feel like a coma survivor - I just know that I feel something waking up in here. I'm going to go walk around a little bit out there.
Brain food.
Today, outside my window, a blizzard! a real, honest-to-goodness prairie blizzard! ...rages.
Maybe it's the exciting descriptors that pull me so much into this situation, back to living in a little prairie city that has nothing much to distinguish itself.. where any architecture the least bit interesting dates back to the 40's, or 30's.. 20's..
No matter - the weather is wild, the weather is fresh, the weather is waking my brain back up. I do not fully understand why I feel like a coma survivor - I just know that I feel something waking up in here. I'm going to go walk around a little bit out there.
Friday, October 09, 2009
First snow
I feel like a kid again. Just for this feeling, it was worth moving back to Sask. Snow fell last night and this morning, not much - just a skiff, but it feels good. I can feel my sympathetic system stirring after a long long time of not having been stimulated kinesthetically in this way, expecting to have to struggle just a bit. The light levels are strong. So the accommodation reflex of the parasympathetic system of the pupils is back in charge, telling the sympathetic system to not dilate pupils. What a kick this is, light-wise. My brain likes this.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
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
Symbolism
Overview
Practical tips
Along the way
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.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Down a long grey road
Here is a picture of what I've been working on lately.
It took a weekend. One thousand pieces. As I worked I thought about all the ways jigsaw pieces are like people and putting jigsaws together is like life, but then I googled "life is like a jigsaw puzzle" and found that since jillions of others have arrived at similar conclusions, I would refrain from boring anyone with same-old.
Let me just say that the puzzle matched my mood - a long grey road to nowhere except into the future in a grey world which, although it had beauty, was cold. It was a hard puzzle for being
a) monochromatic
b) no straight lines anywhere
I got it done. I got my mood externalized, defined.
I felt more in control after, but still felt pretty monochromatic, bleak, difficult, etc. on the inside. Current blahness stems from the fact that the organizational part of me is very burnt out from the prep for the move, the move itself, and is finally taking a break from life. Also, I recognize how depressed I've been, and have suppressed, for years, thanks to low light levels. (At least that's what I choose to pin blame onto. It's all Vancouver's fault.)
My self-therapy job right now is to stop being concerned about the fact that I can't seem to make much of a plan, or study, or work on my projects, or be social, and just let large chunks of my brain take their time coming back to normal. Meanwhile I occupy myself these days going to the gym, Lu's Train Station. It has the vibe my brain seems to need right now - life is material, so push against it. Very physical. Nothing to distract.
.........
However! .....
Yesterday I cheered up pretty good and I want to share why - someone posted links to Hans Rosling TED talks. I got into them and found myself entranced. This guy, a Swede, a medical doctor, statistician, professor of global health at the university which has a committee which peruses the annual candidates for Nobel prizes in medical physiology, a co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, has managed to create the means by which anyone who cares to can look at data collected painstakingly over decades by the UN, on the economic and health of many many countries, and compare them visually. His system is called Gapminder. He designed the visuals to be colorful, fully manipulable bubbles with size comparable to population, which rise to the left when health improves and which rise to the right when economics improve. It's the most lovely way I've ever seen, to look at statistical data.
In a number of TED talks, he explains his system and uses statistics to show how the world has improved in the last couple centuries. His enthusiasm for this adventure and his optimism based on his datasets is completely infectious. I felt oddly buoyed up by all this. It's good that someone out there, so clearly brilliant and beyond kidding anyone, sees the world in this way. It just plain makes me feel better about the planet and about the people on it and about my own being here. It's not like there aren't still lots of problems out there but I can see how breaking them up into little bits gives a better overall picture.
Here are all his TED talks I could find. Each are about 20 minutes.
1. 2006: Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen
2. 2007: Hans Rosling's new insights on poverty
3. 2009: Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset
If your outlook on life happens to be underwater and you need to breath some life back into yourself, the hour it takes to watch all three is well worth it.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Silvery bright skies
New pictures.
The large clouds topped with light look like big soft boats, viewed from below, sailing along in some sort of sky flotilla. Living on the prairie is quite a lot like living on the floor of a sea of air in continuous motion.
Even on a cloudy steel-grey day, the sky is bright and silvery, with movement and form and edges and brightness.
I really appreciate how even when the sky is cloudy here, it's still exciting, different all the time, never in the same mood twice. And no matter what the day has been, the sunset is always beautiful.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Whole new take
So, here it is, Labour Day 2009, and I live in Weyburn, Sask. instead of Vancouver BC.
I can't get groceries today, as the main food store is closed on a holiday, and on Sundays is open only between noon and 5PM. But I don't care about minor inconveniences, because I feel new stirrings. New old stirrings, rather. Old sensations but with new brain cells.
In Vancouver, it would likely rain or be cloudy. Here, it rained in the night and is cloudy today. So, what is the difference? The difference is, I can feel crispiness in the air, here, that I could never have felt living in soggy water-logged Vancouver. I feel anticipatory autumnal crispiness in my blood, in my brain. It feels good.
I wouldn't feel this good, physically, emotionally, if I were living in Vancouver. There, I would feel a sense of doom, of winter descending, a sapping away of vitality. Here, I feel as though I have energy. Of course, not having to go out to work to support a life that feels like it erodes faster than it can be shored up, is helping - I can't discount the side effects of having the luxury to laze around, relatively guilt-free. Also the expectation pathways are heavily primed with the serious intention that moving has pumped them full of, so one cannot discount placebo response either.
As a response to being here, now, and liking it, and in anticipation of feeling more alive this coming winter instead of more dead, I am taking on learning about the consciousness system of the brain. I will post about this here and in the Neurotonics blog as time goes by. So far I've closely studied Chapter 10 from Mayo Clinic Medical Neurosciences 5th Ed., one of the best organized texts I've ever had the pleasure of learning from. I made extensive notes and will be layering in information from other books and texts.
I will luxuriously wallow in the information, enjoy the feel of my brain sponging it all into itself. Then I will try to make sense of it - my sense of it. Then I will try to write about it.
I can't get groceries today, as the main food store is closed on a holiday, and on Sundays is open only between noon and 5PM. But I don't care about minor inconveniences, because I feel new stirrings. New old stirrings, rather. Old sensations but with new brain cells.
In Vancouver, it would likely rain or be cloudy. Here, it rained in the night and is cloudy today. So, what is the difference? The difference is, I can feel crispiness in the air, here, that I could never have felt living in soggy water-logged Vancouver. I feel anticipatory autumnal crispiness in my blood, in my brain. It feels good.
I wouldn't feel this good, physically, emotionally, if I were living in Vancouver. There, I would feel a sense of doom, of winter descending, a sapping away of vitality. Here, I feel as though I have energy. Of course, not having to go out to work to support a life that feels like it erodes faster than it can be shored up, is helping - I can't discount the side effects of having the luxury to laze around, relatively guilt-free. Also the expectation pathways are heavily primed with the serious intention that moving has pumped them full of, so one cannot discount placebo response either.
As a response to being here, now, and liking it, and in anticipation of feeling more alive this coming winter instead of more dead, I am taking on learning about the consciousness system of the brain. I will post about this here and in the Neurotonics blog as time goes by. So far I've closely studied Chapter 10 from Mayo Clinic Medical Neurosciences 5th Ed., one of the best organized texts I've ever had the pleasure of learning from. I made extensive notes and will be layering in information from other books and texts.
I will luxuriously wallow in the information, enjoy the feel of my brain sponging it all into itself. Then I will try to make sense of it - my sense of it. Then I will try to write about it.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
My new writing room
I made my dream come true. I moved, have a new, uncluttered, more zen-like existence. Here is a picture of my little writing room.
Here is a picture of the view out the window, from where I sit. The light comes in from my left. There's nothing beautiful or captivating about the view. It's a humble view, a humble house below, an alley.. but the big green tree is nice, and I especially love that I can see over it!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Does depression have an upside?
Maybe it does!
Check out Depression's Evolutionary Roots, a SciAm article.
Maybe depression and introversion are connected somehow. I'm quite "happy" to be introverted if it will help me avoid being or becoming depressed.
Check out Depression's Evolutionary Roots, a SciAm article.
Maybe depression and introversion are connected somehow. I'm quite "happy" to be introverted if it will help me avoid being or becoming depressed.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Settling in
Weyburn has been "home" for over a month now, and I've been in my own place for two weeks. Yesterday a desk I ordered finally arrived, a $149.00 special from the Brick, made in China, espresso in color, with a keyboard drawer. This morning I managed to put it together, working entirely from pictures that gave me no clue as to which way the boards should face, the way Ikea does.. but somehow I got it all together, with only once having to take apart the box which holds the drawers, as I had screwed it together entirely wrong first time round. Whatever. At least I have a desk again, one that I do not hate too much; it lacks a hole for cords to slide through/hide in, and the keyboard drawer doesn't slide particularly easily, but getting it together and functional makes me feel like finally I can relax out of moving mode and get busy again.
Slowly I'm getting used to this place that is so leisurely and devoid of stressful excitement that I'm reminded of swimming through molasses. At other (younger) ages, this would have made me scream with boredom and a sense of life passing me by, me not able to participate in it. Now, I feel it's the perfect speed for me to regather my wits and soften up around the edges once again.
Last night was the monthly dinner at the Wheatland Centre, Weyburn's drop-in centre for seniors. At the age of 58, I'm a kid there, but I was invited to join ($20 for a year's membership) so that I can participate in all the exciting events that go one there, like the monthly dinner. If you are not a member it costs $10. If you have a membership, it costs $8. I guess saving $2 each month will pay for the membership before the year is out.
It's a fairly large building, for Weyburn, one story but with several large rooms that can accomodate many people - one hundred twelve people sat at three long tables last night with some room to spare. Nice efficient systems are in place so that lines for food are orderly and swiftly flowing. The food itself is in another room on 3 more long tables, with room for 6 lines of hungry seniors to pile their plates. Last night's menu included roast beef with horse radish, mashed potatoes and gravy, some slightly overcooked vegetables, salad, and saskatoon crisp with a dollop of dream whip. I'm looking forward to the turkey feast at the end of next month. Now that I'm a member I was warned that I may be called upon to help the ladies with various food catering events. Okeydokey. I guess I'll get to know more people that way.
Why I finally joined, really, is because there is an entire room devoted to jigsaw puzzles. A whole room. With a big table and good lighting. And in the corner, stacks and stacks of 1000- piece jigsaw puzzles, hundreds of puzzles I've not yet put together. My aunt and I turn out to both be jigsaw puzzle lovers. She and I snuck away from the table as soon as we dared last night, after the meal, and headed off to the puzzle room to work on the puzzle that happened to be out. We got some pieces together before the meal started, too. The puzzles can be signed out by members, three at once. I can see myself busy writing all morning, then puzzling away in the afternoons while listening to CBC radio.
There are other rooms there - one huge pool room with four large tables. Apparently there are card sharks who attend the Wheatland regularly, and games are scheduled several times a week. Several people have mentioned this to me. Seems it's the "single ladies" who are the most dedicated card players. I'm clearly a "single lady" so I suppose it's out of kindness they are pointing me toward the peer group they most see me fitting into. However, I have never been attracted to card playing.
At least once weekly, a bus picks up seniors either at the Wheatland or else in the mall parking lot, to whisk people off to casinos dotting the prairies. My mother usually goes on these junkets and often wins some money. Mostly she gets her free lunch (included in the excursion) and has fun.
Now that I have a new nest to settle into, I'll be looking out the window lots of evenings and seeing lots of sky scenes, like the one I have added to this post. I confess to having photo-shopped the moon to make it look bigger in the picture, more the size it seems in real life to vision centers in the brain. Otherwise, the color and everything else is the way the camera saw it.
Slowly I'm getting used to this place that is so leisurely and devoid of stressful excitement that I'm reminded of swimming through molasses. At other (younger) ages, this would have made me scream with boredom and a sense of life passing me by, me not able to participate in it. Now, I feel it's the perfect speed for me to regather my wits and soften up around the edges once again.
Last night was the monthly dinner at the Wheatland Centre, Weyburn's drop-in centre for seniors. At the age of 58, I'm a kid there, but I was invited to join ($20 for a year's membership) so that I can participate in all the exciting events that go one there, like the monthly dinner. If you are not a member it costs $10. If you have a membership, it costs $8. I guess saving $2 each month will pay for the membership before the year is out.
It's a fairly large building, for Weyburn, one story but with several large rooms that can accomodate many people - one hundred twelve people sat at three long tables last night with some room to spare. Nice efficient systems are in place so that lines for food are orderly and swiftly flowing. The food itself is in another room on 3 more long tables, with room for 6 lines of hungry seniors to pile their plates. Last night's menu included roast beef with horse radish, mashed potatoes and gravy, some slightly overcooked vegetables, salad, and saskatoon crisp with a dollop of dream whip. I'm looking forward to the turkey feast at the end of next month. Now that I'm a member I was warned that I may be called upon to help the ladies with various food catering events. Okeydokey. I guess I'll get to know more people that way.
Why I finally joined, really, is because there is an entire room devoted to jigsaw puzzles. A whole room. With a big table and good lighting. And in the corner, stacks and stacks of 1000- piece jigsaw puzzles, hundreds of puzzles I've not yet put together. My aunt and I turn out to both be jigsaw puzzle lovers. She and I snuck away from the table as soon as we dared last night, after the meal, and headed off to the puzzle room to work on the puzzle that happened to be out. We got some pieces together before the meal started, too. The puzzles can be signed out by members, three at once. I can see myself busy writing all morning, then puzzling away in the afternoons while listening to CBC radio.
There are other rooms there - one huge pool room with four large tables. Apparently there are card sharks who attend the Wheatland regularly, and games are scheduled several times a week. Several people have mentioned this to me. Seems it's the "single ladies" who are the most dedicated card players. I'm clearly a "single lady" so I suppose it's out of kindness they are pointing me toward the peer group they most see me fitting into. However, I have never been attracted to card playing.
At least once weekly, a bus picks up seniors either at the Wheatland or else in the mall parking lot, to whisk people off to casinos dotting the prairies. My mother usually goes on these junkets and often wins some money. Mostly she gets her free lunch (included in the excursion) and has fun.
Now that I have a new nest to settle into, I'll be looking out the window lots of evenings and seeing lots of sky scenes, like the one I have added to this post. I confess to having photo-shopped the moon to make it look bigger in the picture, more the size it seems in real life to vision centers in the brain. Otherwise, the color and everything else is the way the camera saw it.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Controversy in British Pain Society: PT president ousted
BPS = British Pain Society
BMJ= British Medical Journal
NICE = National Institute for Clinical Excellence
Here is NICE outraged by ousting of BPS President in the BMJ, dated July 23.
"We write to express our outrage at the British Pain Society’s vote to force their President, Professor Paul Watson, out of office because some members disagreed with a recommendation in NICE’s recent guideline on low back pain which he helped develop.The BPS’s sustained campaign against this highly respected pain management and rehabilitation expert is professional victimisation of the very worst kind. That it has now culminated in the BPS forcing an exemplary expert out of office, is shameful.
All NICE guidelines are developed by independent clinical and patient experts who give up their time and expertise, over a two year period, to produce robust, evidence-based guidance. It is totally unacceptable for guideline developers to be singled out in this way and have their professional integrity called into question, simply because some groups don’t like a robust, evidence-based recommendation that has been developed by a group of independent experts.
The guideline developers’ only aim is to help improve the care and treatment of people with specific conditions by highlighting gold standard approaches based on the available evidence. The BPS is clearly admitting that they do not accept evidence-based medicine. Moreover, the Society’s actions fly in the face of the comment made in a recent High Court judgement. At a judicial review of NICE’s chronic fatigue syndrome guideline in March this year, at which the judge dismissed the claims in their entirety, he particularly highlighted the importance of health experts to be able to express their opinions without fear of retribution.
The BPS has acted dishonourably in making their own President a scapegoat for the fact that some of its members refuse to accept that there is not the scientific evidence to support their interventions. It is a sad day for freedom of experts to express views, for evidence-based medicine, and for the ideals of the medical profession.
Yours faithfully,
Sir Michael Rawlins, Professor Peter Littlejohns"
It's worth reading through all the letters in the BMJ link. Rarely are PTs involved in public politics and turf battles at levels such as this. The story involves a PT and it involves pain, so I find it all very interesting. There appears to have been somewhat of a coup by an organized group of doctors concerned over supposedly evidence-based guidelines which might have affected their own livelihoods, or at least what they consider to be their turf...
I find it all a bit bewildering at the moment, as I only learned about it this morning. But I'm curious and plan to read through it all again.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Weyburn Skyscape
This was the view from my new 4th floor balcony this morning, at dawn. This is what I came back here for. This is what I was homesick for.
I confess, I'm not getting a lot done these days. I feel lazy. All I want to do is drink in views like this, enjoy the infinite focal length out all my windows here.
If not now, when?
The rooftop in the bottom right corner is the condo building where my mother lives.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Home at last
I'm sitting in my new living room, on a new couch, looking out a new patio door at a new scene.
From this fourth floor level, the scene is a cloudless blue morning sky above rooftops. The rooftops come up to the top of the railing, and above that... endless infinite blueblueblue.
My view is west, so I get reflected light in the morning. In the afternoon/evening I get lots of direct sun, then a sunset. Every day. So pleased about it.
Looking around there is still a lot to be done to make the place more livable, but it's coming together quite well - slowlyish, putteringly, the way I like to do householdy stuff. Contemplatively. It's my zen, and there's no rush. It's a process. Do I mind the mess and clutter? Yes I do. Am I making progress? Yes I am. At exactly the right speed for me.
And I take lots of rests and breaks and do plenty of out-the-window gazing. This is why I moved, so I could have a focal length that goes all the way to infinity. It will take a little while to get there, so I have lots and lots of time.
I'm liking this whole living in utter silence thing I've got here, too. I can't hear any of my neighbours, as the building is concrete. I don't have to actively filter out my mom's country and western music, or her soap operas, or her football games, or chatter about whatever. I can think here. At least I hope I'll be able to think here. That's the plan.
From this fourth floor level, the scene is a cloudless blue morning sky above rooftops. The rooftops come up to the top of the railing, and above that... endless infinite blueblueblue.
My view is west, so I get reflected light in the morning. In the afternoon/evening I get lots of direct sun, then a sunset. Every day. So pleased about it.
Looking around there is still a lot to be done to make the place more livable, but it's coming together quite well - slowlyish, putteringly, the way I like to do householdy stuff. Contemplatively. It's my zen, and there's no rush. It's a process. Do I mind the mess and clutter? Yes I do. Am I making progress? Yes I am. At exactly the right speed for me.
And I take lots of rests and breaks and do plenty of out-the-window gazing. This is why I moved, so I could have a focal length that goes all the way to infinity. It will take a little while to get there, so I have lots and lots of time.
I'm liking this whole living in utter silence thing I've got here, too. I can't hear any of my neighbours, as the building is concrete. I don't have to actively filter out my mom's country and western music, or her soap operas, or her football games, or chatter about whatever. I can think here. At least I hope I'll be able to think here. That's the plan.
Blogger is acting weird
I can't blog from my iMac at the moment, because everything I type turns to squares as soon as I type a period. None of the other places I visit or post at seem to be affected. This MacAir laptop seems to be working OK for blogging, so I'll have to blog with it.
Update: It must be Firefox - I'm using Safari now, and it's fine. No boxes.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
A welcome time-out
My mother climbed on a bus today, with her cousin (the one whose garage is currently holding my stuff in storage), to go off on one of her regular casino excursions. Earlier this morning she got up and showered and dressed. When she goes out, she always looks well put together. Anything she puts on always matches, and she always puts on a watch from her vast collection of watches to match her clothing. My mom and Joan Rivers, two watch queens. Before she left, she pulled my attention away from my computer to comment on how great she looked, how summery her shirt was, and seek my confirmation of her visual congruence. "Uh huh. Looks nice" I said.
Such a relief to have her be out for the whole day. My inner space can expand outward once more to envelop its surrounds. Mostly it doesn't care what those surrounds are, as long as they are unpopulated by other humans. The only thing still noisy and interruptive around here at the moment is the clock my Uncle Peter built and gave to her as a gift. A Dutch immigrant to Canada long ago, my Uncle Peter is now gone but managed to live a long and healthy life. He married my dad's sister, the youngest in a family of nine living siblings, the second-youngest of which was my own dad. My dad and aunt were from a dirtfarm family, born between world wars, the tail end of a succession of children made to toe stiff lines by parents who were sternly religious in a Calvinistic sort of way. Dour. No fun allowed. Lots of work. So many older siblings. No particular personal attention. Lots of physical punishment. Lots of churchy activity.
My dad rebelled by learning to play music on a violin. He would sneak away and go for music lessons from his high school teacher who lived a few miles away. If he came home after 10 PM he could expect a good thrashing from the stern patriarch of the family, my grandpa Carl, who brooked not even a slight hint of disobedience. From anyone. My dad grew up stunted in many ways from this lovely upbringing he had. I think he was likely chronically depressed from birth, but faked his way through life, mostly adequately. He got away with being stoic and quiet, because when he lived, that is what men were supposed to be anyway.
My Aunt Ella, the one who married Uncle Peter the Dutchman (so handy with tools and able to build anything out of anything), was the closest to my dad in age and close observer of his treatment by his father. On the day of my dad's funeral, when I asked her how she had felt when her own father had died, she disclosed that she had felt quite fine, was glad to see him gone, that he had been a real tyrant. It was then I found out, for the first time, that all my dad's life, pretty much, as a child, he'd been especially singled out to be physically abused by his father.
The things you don't learn about your own family by attending funerals, when everyone's guard has been lowered, or else breached, by grief.
My Aunt Ella, unlike my dad, has been an endlessly cheery person, extroverted enough to keep up with my mother. In fact they are quite good friends, these two old women. Aunt Ella's rebellion was to cut her hair and wear a bit of make-up. Both of which were taboo in her family of origin, and both of which were adopted by only one other female sibling out of five.
Anyway, Uncle Peter came along and managed to charm the old patriarch, Carl, with an old-fashioned approach - asking for Ella's hand in marriage from her father, maybe even before he asked her. Uncle Peter cracked, then translated into English, coded messages during the war for the Allied forces. He was highly mechanical, understanding heavy equipment well enough to be able to maintain a whole isolated prairie power station, himself, for decades, employed by the province. In his spare time he built things, useful items, from scratch and from kits.
The clock he gave my mom is one of his many constructed contributions to the world. It doesn't run on time anymore, as he is no longer around to maintain it periodically, but it still sounds nice, chimes out the hours abut 10 minutes before the actual hour. A clock like that is nothing I'd ever have in my own place, as I would find it too intrusive, but my mom likes it because she liked Uncle Peter a lot, and because she likes noise. She's extroverted. Noise feeds her brain. Her brain organizes itself around externalities whereas mine organizes itself around the still place in dead center of its own quiet world, inside its own inner space. Which, when I live alone, I can easily find and orient to. Living with my mom, not so much.
Temperamentally I am more like my dad was, although outwardly I'm like a carbon copy of my mother. She is a "field-marshall" type, in the Myers-Briggs sense. Me, I'm more an INFJ. What I find irritating is her need, compulsion really, to organize every breath I draw, in advance, as though I was still 3 years old. She always has. It has taken me a very long time and a lot of space between her and me for me to find a good boundary to erect between my life and her version of it. Staying in her spare room for three weeks has been quite a test for that boundary - it's still holding but I can hardly wait to move into that place of my own on Saturday, and I'm so happy to have this day - this precious day, to myself. Well almost, except for the clock sounding, reminding me every 15 minutes that this is not my space.
Such a relief to have her be out for the whole day. My inner space can expand outward once more to envelop its surrounds. Mostly it doesn't care what those surrounds are, as long as they are unpopulated by other humans. The only thing still noisy and interruptive around here at the moment is the clock my Uncle Peter built and gave to her as a gift. A Dutch immigrant to Canada long ago, my Uncle Peter is now gone but managed to live a long and healthy life. He married my dad's sister, the youngest in a family of nine living siblings, the second-youngest of which was my own dad. My dad and aunt were from a dirtfarm family, born between world wars, the tail end of a succession of children made to toe stiff lines by parents who were sternly religious in a Calvinistic sort of way. Dour. No fun allowed. Lots of work. So many older siblings. No particular personal attention. Lots of physical punishment. Lots of churchy activity.
My dad rebelled by learning to play music on a violin. He would sneak away and go for music lessons from his high school teacher who lived a few miles away. If he came home after 10 PM he could expect a good thrashing from the stern patriarch of the family, my grandpa Carl, who brooked not even a slight hint of disobedience. From anyone. My dad grew up stunted in many ways from this lovely upbringing he had. I think he was likely chronically depressed from birth, but faked his way through life, mostly adequately. He got away with being stoic and quiet, because when he lived, that is what men were supposed to be anyway.
My Aunt Ella, the one who married Uncle Peter the Dutchman (so handy with tools and able to build anything out of anything), was the closest to my dad in age and close observer of his treatment by his father. On the day of my dad's funeral, when I asked her how she had felt when her own father had died, she disclosed that she had felt quite fine, was glad to see him gone, that he had been a real tyrant. It was then I found out, for the first time, that all my dad's life, pretty much, as a child, he'd been especially singled out to be physically abused by his father.
The things you don't learn about your own family by attending funerals, when everyone's guard has been lowered, or else breached, by grief.
My Aunt Ella, unlike my dad, has been an endlessly cheery person, extroverted enough to keep up with my mother. In fact they are quite good friends, these two old women. Aunt Ella's rebellion was to cut her hair and wear a bit of make-up. Both of which were taboo in her family of origin, and both of which were adopted by only one other female sibling out of five.
Anyway, Uncle Peter came along and managed to charm the old patriarch, Carl, with an old-fashioned approach - asking for Ella's hand in marriage from her father, maybe even before he asked her. Uncle Peter cracked, then translated into English, coded messages during the war for the Allied forces. He was highly mechanical, understanding heavy equipment well enough to be able to maintain a whole isolated prairie power station, himself, for decades, employed by the province. In his spare time he built things, useful items, from scratch and from kits.
The clock he gave my mom is one of his many constructed contributions to the world. It doesn't run on time anymore, as he is no longer around to maintain it periodically, but it still sounds nice, chimes out the hours abut 10 minutes before the actual hour. A clock like that is nothing I'd ever have in my own place, as I would find it too intrusive, but my mom likes it because she liked Uncle Peter a lot, and because she likes noise. She's extroverted. Noise feeds her brain. Her brain organizes itself around externalities whereas mine organizes itself around the still place in dead center of its own quiet world, inside its own inner space. Which, when I live alone, I can easily find and orient to. Living with my mom, not so much.
Temperamentally I am more like my dad was, although outwardly I'm like a carbon copy of my mother. She is a "field-marshall" type, in the Myers-Briggs sense. Me, I'm more an INFJ. What I find irritating is her need, compulsion really, to organize every breath I draw, in advance, as though I was still 3 years old. She always has. It has taken me a very long time and a lot of space between her and me for me to find a good boundary to erect between my life and her version of it. Staying in her spare room for three weeks has been quite a test for that boundary - it's still holding but I can hardly wait to move into that place of my own on Saturday, and I'm so happy to have this day - this precious day, to myself. Well almost, except for the clock sounding, reminding me every 15 minutes that this is not my space.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
My new place
Somehow events transpired to permit a barely 5-year-old, two bedroom condo, gently used, to fall straight into my lap, for a very very good price. I didn't hesitate, not even for a moment. I bought it as fast as I could. It will be perfect. It faces west, is on the fourth floor, plenty of sky (sunsets) to watch. I move in just a week, out of my mom's spare room.
It's been interesting, living with my mom, age 85 and still going strong. I do not feel as invaded by her anymore, have more patience with her, can see all sorts of similarities we have. However, she's extroverted and I'm introverted. Right there is the origin of most of the issues I've ever experienced in our relationship. She talks almost non-stop about everything, including topics as diverse as who might belong to the truck parked outside to making gingerbread cookies to the best way to make Saskatoon crisp, has the soap opera going on TV while the country music is still playing in the kitchen, wears dual hearing aids but still doesn't hear very well. I don't hear all that well myself, and am used to living in a completely quiet environment. So we are joking about having to yell everything at each other twice.
She endlessly ruminates aloud, I figure, to keep her own brain organized. She drives too - a nice fancy new car ("not a Cadillac, but the next thing to" she commented), even if her destination is only two blocks. "My car needs the exercise!" she declares. I realize she needs to keep driving or she might lose the ability to do so. She carefully parks in the underground, not letting her shiny car bump into anything. She wants to drive me around Weyburn, which is a real pain, because I like to walk, am used to walking everywhere, kilometers a day, and here the downtown core is a mere six blocks in diameter, and we are living right on the circumference. Yes, I'll be glad to move out. Again.
The last time I moved out I was just seventeen, and it was to go to university. This time, I'm pushing sixty, but I remember exactly how I felt over 40 years ago. What a gift, to be able to revisit that ground.
I will be living just down the block from her, on the same block actually, but on the other side of the street. We can see each others' balconies from our own. I can keep an eye on her without having to be directly in her space. She can phone me everyday to let me know how she's doing, and I can write my brains out while looking at ferocious prairie skies. At least that's the plan. For now.
Somewhat unfortunately, the weather here isn't how I remembered it. This year south Sask. weather has been cloudy and cool, more like Vancouver weather. The good thing, though, is that the sky is so big there is still lots of light even with thick cloud cover. Yesterday we were out shopping at Canadian Tire, where I bought four new bookcases and some new clothes (in Weyburn, Mark's Work Wearhouse and Canadian Tire are under the same roof). As we walked back out - to the car - we noticed that there were patches of blue opening up. Mom remarked, "My Aunt Hattie used to say, if there was enough blue to mend a Dutchman's pants, the sky would clear." And there was. And it did.
It's been interesting, living with my mom, age 85 and still going strong. I do not feel as invaded by her anymore, have more patience with her, can see all sorts of similarities we have. However, she's extroverted and I'm introverted. Right there is the origin of most of the issues I've ever experienced in our relationship. She talks almost non-stop about everything, including topics as diverse as who might belong to the truck parked outside to making gingerbread cookies to the best way to make Saskatoon crisp, has the soap opera going on TV while the country music is still playing in the kitchen, wears dual hearing aids but still doesn't hear very well. I don't hear all that well myself, and am used to living in a completely quiet environment. So we are joking about having to yell everything at each other twice.
She endlessly ruminates aloud, I figure, to keep her own brain organized. She drives too - a nice fancy new car ("not a Cadillac, but the next thing to" she commented), even if her destination is only two blocks. "My car needs the exercise!" she declares. I realize she needs to keep driving or she might lose the ability to do so. She carefully parks in the underground, not letting her shiny car bump into anything. She wants to drive me around Weyburn, which is a real pain, because I like to walk, am used to walking everywhere, kilometers a day, and here the downtown core is a mere six blocks in diameter, and we are living right on the circumference. Yes, I'll be glad to move out. Again.
The last time I moved out I was just seventeen, and it was to go to university. This time, I'm pushing sixty, but I remember exactly how I felt over 40 years ago. What a gift, to be able to revisit that ground.
I will be living just down the block from her, on the same block actually, but on the other side of the street. We can see each others' balconies from our own. I can keep an eye on her without having to be directly in her space. She can phone me everyday to let me know how she's doing, and I can write my brains out while looking at ferocious prairie skies. At least that's the plan. For now.
Somewhat unfortunately, the weather here isn't how I remembered it. This year south Sask. weather has been cloudy and cool, more like Vancouver weather. The good thing, though, is that the sky is so big there is still lots of light even with thick cloud cover. Yesterday we were out shopping at Canadian Tire, where I bought four new bookcases and some new clothes (in Weyburn, Mark's Work Wearhouse and Canadian Tire are under the same roof). As we walked back out - to the car - we noticed that there were patches of blue opening up. Mom remarked, "My Aunt Hattie used to say, if there was enough blue to mend a Dutchman's pants, the sky would clear." And there was. And it did.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Small bits of progress
So, by now I've been inside several of these little charming-looking on the outside, cottagey homes, and have seen how how ramshackle the walls and ceilings, how flimsy the windows, how old the furnaces and scary the basements, how dangerous the stairs down into them, how buckled up and damp and cracked and upheavaled the floors and basement walls are, how desperately people tried to reinforce them. Hmmnn.. don't think so.
On the bright side, I got my big computer up and running (so much faster than the laptop), and will have tethered internet installed this afternoon, with my mother's consent. I was so glad to find out it had been tough enough to survive the trip to Weyburn riding on the floor by the front seat, clad only in a couple taped-on recycled grocery bags, with lots of stuff pressing against it and a lot of bumpy fast driving.
I will be able to get a lot more of my regular stuff done now, plus I'll be able to preview properties way easier.
On the bright side, I got my big computer up and running (so much faster than the laptop), and will have tethered internet installed this afternoon, with my mother's consent. I was so glad to find out it had been tough enough to survive the trip to Weyburn riding on the floor by the front seat, clad only in a couple taped-on recycled grocery bags, with lots of stuff pressing against it and a lot of bumpy fast driving.
I will be able to get a lot more of my regular stuff done now, plus I'll be able to preview properties way easier.
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