I'm still fascinated by some ideas I got from watching a TEDtalk on happiness. Gibson spoke of two people they had on file in their research department from their participation in some previous projects. One of these two people had won the lottery for millions of dollars, and the other person had been in a car wreck and become paralyzed from his neck down. The orator spoke of how after just four months both people had adjusted to their new situation enough to resume their search for the bright side of their experiences. They made lemonade. The speaker seemed convinced it's what we all do as homo sapiens. Eventually, however, we are not gonna get over what happens to us, and are gonna die like a dog in a ditch. So?
"Self-conversation is held in contempt by some pundits, but I strongly disagree with them, and would be glad to take a walk on the wild side with my detractors to see who comes back from what's out there.
Nothing is out there, either usually or generally, but you and I, and the fence post. Ever."
This is just crazy. I wrote the first paragraph to set up the quote I wrote somewhere else this morning, in order to put it here to continue to explore the "Ever." bit. I've spent so much time alone for my whole life. I'm alone now. I haven't been in the physical, face-to-face presence of another human being for a couple of days now since my next door neighbor and sister-in-law stopped by with her grandson and asked me to keep an eye on things while she went to Wilmington to be with her daughter while she took an operation involving gender problems.
More than I really wanted to know, but since I've vaguely known her daughter from a previous marriage just about all her life, I had to act concerned, when I was only resorting to cultural patterns we both had ingrained in us since childhood. This is the kind of decision-making that's sometime offered to us in a way that seems to force it upon us despite the form used to make it look like an opportunity-for-life.
It's difficult to pin down, but I'm almost giddy from the results I'm getting from the prescribed medicine I'm taking. I'm pretty sure it's the prednisone steroids the rheumatologist ordered for me after consulting right there in front of me with his supervisor. "They" decided to "bring me down off the prednisone" by giving me more than I've ever had before, and for three whole months duration.
The amount of prednisone I'm taking by doctor's order is nowhere near too much according to what I've read on the internet. They started me out on 20 milligrams a day for seven days, etc., and it can easily go up to 200 milligrams a couple of times a day, but since it lowers the immune system it's still dangerous because it makes the consumer of it vulnerable to other diseases.
The swelling in my wrists and hands has gone down dramatically. I may be as giddy about that pertinent facticity as my being on legal steroids is giddy-ish. Now that they've shrunk in size I realize how swollen they've been for a long time. I just ignored it like any other abnormality, and pretended to be Teflon Man. There was a crisis point that lead to the obvious diagnosis of arthritis that I didnt "see" myself until they proved it to with rituals designed for just that. I was on the inside of what they saw that convinced them my joints weren't supposed to be that... hmmm... large. Now that much has been previously, but tactfully mentioned for a good long time now. The fact that I have large joints is not a new conversation bit.
The fact that my large joints were not large naturally is somewhat of a surprise, but not really, arthritis, specifically rheumatoid arthritis runs in my mother's side of the family. Physically, I look more like them than my father's siblings and their genetically depleted families. Really. My younger brother has a son, who went for the ROTC college deal with the Marines, and he's it for my father's side of the family on all sides since the Civil War.
In a way though, these people, including myself, have always been bon vivants, and that kind of blood line has never been properly recorded. Nobody knows. It only takes an afternoon nap by poppa, and a visit by momma to the woodpile, ooooooh-la-la, and "... life goes on, even after the thrill of living is gone."
I'm really whipping it up playing the piano scales now. By that, I mean that along with the swelling in my hands and wrists going down I can play the scales and mess around with the blues with no pain for a satisfying period of time. I'm making hay while the sun shines. I've been through this routine before. When the prednisone wears off I won't be able to rip through nothing on the piano, and be lucky to hunt and peck these blog entries on this computer keyboard. But, until then I'm cutting the fool 'til I drop from exhaustion.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
