Log 5 July 2012

Dream: I was giving a performance in the Chinese district of Mexico City with my actor friends out of three books each marked with a Chinese character, one of which was based on the sound of Evanston Woman. But some criminals tried to get me to join them. I did but when I decided to leave the gang, to my surprise, they let me, but they watched me carefully as I changed out of the criminal clothes to make sure I didn’t try any funny stuff.

I walked down the street which was a set of steps down to a magnificent bay to which all the rivers of the USA drain. There was a Chinese school so I stopped in to learn more about the character and to teach an English poem.

No workout today need to rest. The weather has changed is now showery.

Noted that the architecture of my left foot is just as visible on arising as that of my right, which is unaffected by the sciatica. Feeling less pain as I cut back medication to Panadol only. Managing the sciatica will help with managing the cancer since I might be able to run again and this will build immunity and mood.

Acceptance?

Well, the sciatica may very well be here to stay alongside the Stage IV cancer diagnosis. “Acceptance is the key to all my problems”.

The facts are that my bones have thickened with age, which overall is better than the reverse process which happens in deep old age. My theory is that they have been so healthy and strong that they’ve continued to grow, and now are pinching in the nerve.

Pain control high enough to eliminate the pain causes nausea. This means I must accept a certain quantum of necessary pain.

This pain is a nerve report which releases endorphins and when it goes I have true moments of bliss. And unlike most pain, it’s bullshit. There’s nothing wrong down there save for the pressure on the nerve.

There are two possibilities. A herniated disk will self heal with time if I continue to exercise. If the bone is actually chewing on the sciatic nerve then I’m screwed. This will lead to equine caudal syndrome and emergency surgery.

But back surgery at my age is contra-indicated which means I should not get it to try to restore the status quo ante but will have to get it if I have equine caudal and its loss of bowel control. The results could be a wheelchair. Not very amusing.

But…the sciatica forces me to sit straight and meditate as I meditated at the pier today. I haven’t sat still and listened to God or Nature for years.

Deus sive Natura is hurling lightning bolts at me and laughing God or Nature’s ass off. The pain and the cancer diagnosis are forcing me to clean up my act.

And…there’s always the bonesetter sea. I am truly fortunate to live so close to two beaches.

Aldous Huxley wrote somewhere, “men do not thank God for cars, they just curse when the car breaks down”. That’s the whole problem the obverse of which is a solution right there. Our minds transform an empirical world of pain PA>0 and pleasure PL>0 into infinite pain = 1 when we refuse to recognize life’s pleasures or have insufficient endorphins.

But this afternoon, in pain while walking just before it was time to take a pill, I sat down on a sun warmed bench in front of the Wan or bay and was once again overwhelmed by the beauty of the world as the pain left my ass. Boom, as my kid would say. I saw it without thinking oh how sad it shall be to leave this world. Naw, I was just in the Now.

This is precisely what Spinoza is saying in the Ethics. We are constituted first to be pleasure seekers and only secondarily to be pain avoiders. Which means it’s licit in the nature of things to seek unlimited pleasure unless that implies later pain (or pain to others, although I can’t prove that). But we get no credit for pain.

Workout Log 28 June 2012: 20 minute walk with weights

…on a brilliant and fresh July morning. The June pattern (morning rain and later clearing) has ended and it’s usually clear in the morning now.

Sciatic pain during walk but not after. Decided unusually to walk through the pain because there’s a point at which you value the exercise that you take a risk.

Nausea which I think is from high levels of pain medication. Halving prescribed dosage. I took the normal dosage before the workout and was unwilling to eat breakfast after the workout although I was hungry. All I can think is that unless the nausea is due to the cancer, and this is unlikely, it is guiding me to a way to cope with sciatica long term.

The nausea and a weariness the last two days forced me to sit on a bench on the path into town and at the ferry pier. I didn’t want to, feeling that this was being an old man. But every time I sat and did nothing at all but breathe, and register the beauty of Lamma, I felt better. So let us be a geezer. “Men must endure their going hence”.

Workout Log 10 June 2012 1202

Listen! 30 minutes of free dancing with weights to music on arising. Ahhhhhh no pain now, right after. Dancing works but you must do it in the cool and easy style of a Moonwalk or the Madison (love how focused those kids are on getting the memorized steps right: I used to annoy my ex by always improvising on the printed steps).

Marxists forget that “in a world lit only by fire”, when “suffer” was a rough synonym for “experience”, aristocrats suffered almost as much as the common lot owing to the absence of medical knowledge, and what came to the low came to the man at the top, who roughly until the 19th century had to cultivate manly arts to survive and flourish.

That is (das ist): the people of olden times oppressed relative to us in the developed world, in the crude “objective” sense that we’re better off. The problem with a world of borders is that logically independent of the good intentions, say, of liberal Israelis, the line between Israel and Gaza is objectively a line between a country club and a concentration camp. Likewise the mute suffering of grandparents is although something we can do nothing about, a scandal.

Cf in this regard, Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History fable. It also puts us in mind of a Huxley figure of the late British empire who refuses his parents’ legacy

“Clawssical” music therefore to me is the truth of this world. Cf Le Roi Danse: found it on DVD, sans sous-titre, in the museum shop at the Louvre. During the first few minutes of this film I was like, uh oh, for I knew the story of poor Lully, beating time and impaling his foot. Le Roi Danse, using Baroque music in your face like rock and roll, communicates the truth of a world lit only by fire.

I have wasted quite a lot of money in museum shops from the Art Institute of Chicago to Hong Kong’s museum: they are their for the over-indulged bourgeois child, taken by her wealthy and most fond grandfather on an outing. Hmm, I still have to figure out the wealth angle. Times a wasting.

Sleepless in Sciatica

Some Amusing Poems Written During Lower Back and Leg Pain

A disobliging old Gentleman from Arabia
Said oh damn this painful Sciatica
The spongiform pressure on the blasted Nerve
Has drained me of my usual Vigor and Verve
Said that disagreeable old Gentleman from Arabia

Another gentleman from Attica
Said this tedious and persistent Sciatica
Has spread to my pubic Bone
Leaving me feeling rather alone
That desolate gentleman from Attica

A thick headed Dutchman from Pennsylvania
Said ach hier ist meine Sciatica
I shall go and dig a hole
And fill it with coal
To get my Mind off this verdammt Sciatica.

A fair lady of Alsace-Lorraine
Said, there is that wandering Pain
Sometimes in me foot and then in me Arse
Rendering me completely unable to parse
The prose of de Sade which many disdain!

Another Lady, an Incroyable of Paris
Said, I won’t bullshit you or put on Airs
But I have lost all interest in Fornication
Because the pain in my foot gives me consternation.
That unfortunate Lady of Paris!

THRENODY (Writ by MILTON)

Sing oh Muse, of the false Sciatic Nerve
Reporting false pain in the chambers of the leg,
Like unto the SIRENS which would ODYSSEUS deceive
With cries inchoate, cries of beings without souls,
Luring they would the Hero to a watery grave,
Or like Zeus when he took upon him the form of Bull
To rape EUROPA, island nymph fair of form and feature,
Rewarding she with the high and regal throne of CRETE,
And like, also, a lot of other high and CLASSICAL tales
Which I pondered when young was I, the Lady of Christ’s,
A promising Scholar as yet unattainted
By Sin, Death, Hell and treason to my martyred Liege,
Charles, who lost his head. Where was I. O yes
My nuts sometimes throb and then me buttocks
But as soon as I change my wonted position
My Foot becomes my Tutor, and I must cease
Writing Paradise Lost, and attend to the Brutish animal
That we all are condemn’d to be by high command,
And take another swig of Wine that clouds judgement,
And call to my Daughters for another heated Pad
Plucked from the flickering and hissing Fire
Like a soul freed from that more Venial punition
Which redeems through dampened flames the weaker sort
Who in life did fall yet did repent.
My ass hurts and so doth my Ball, but I must bear all
For SCIATICA is but a consequence of Adam’s fall.