Flushmeister 2000

Went to see an orthopedist today, the goodly Dr. G...spousal unit was hoping he'd write a 'script for Vicodin...me, only trying to get some relief from an increasingly problematic left shoulder. So, off I go, gimpy arm and all....
After a half hour wait in the examining room deftly completing a crossword in he comes...quick discussion of my orthopedic woes...and then to my utter surprise,

"So, have you given much thought to intellegent toilets? They've really come a long way, technology and all"

say whut?

"You know, the day may come when reaching back to wipe...'not gonna happen. Never too soon to prepare the plumbing...."

say whut?

"Yup....down the road without one of these babies your only hope is to go for the shower..."

say whut?

"Here, look this over" as he hands me a glossy tri-fold brochure on the Flushmeister 2000, with a rent-to-fucking-own option.....and off he lumbers to get the big needle....

Now, I got some problems here, yes. I'm not in 'freaking denial, but I do believe that living as fully in the moment is what's called for to cope...and in THIS moment I am, thankfully, fully capable of wiping my own behind, thank-you.

Seeing my reaction, the good Dr. takes a different tone, and says "look, I'm only trying to get out information that you might find useful, if not today, well, maybe next Thursday"....
"Patients don't always like to hear the truth. Like last week....I got a 500pound whale of man in here 'needs an MRI....but he'll never fit in the machene...so I write him a special admission to the LA Zoo Large Animal Medical Unit....now, no one likes to hear this stuff but....well look me up if you ever need more info on the options"

Which one, the auto-asswipe or large animal MRIs? Sheesh...

So, to cut to the chase...I get a cortisone shot the size of a yardstick in the back of my left shoulder....a new script for physical therapy....and a glossy trifold brochure on the wondrous Flushmeister 2000, with a rent-to-'fucking own option....

And, failure of a spousal unit that I am, 'failed to get a 'script for Vicodin.....
there's still hope...next week I go to the perio-freakin-dontist.....

say 'ahhhhh!
ModemDavid

Up the Down Staircase

Watching a child grow is like watching a flower ever-so-slowly unfurl and grow - and I'm blessed and fortunate to see this process in the growth of my two daughters, a toddler and part-time terrorist and a first grader. As an adult, and as a parent, you watch your kids knowing that much as they love you they cannot possibly know you in a pers0n-to-person way at this stage.....whatever they see you as is to irrevocably clouded by your role as parent, and especially with those of us who put off parenting till we 'found ourselves' -whatever that now means - with 40 or more years difference in age, the temporal distance is very real and extensive - room for a whole 'nuther generation in that gap.
So, its later in life for me to watch the early life of my girls unfold - I'm reminded of the old wooden escalators at Macy's 34th street, which provided endeless hours of cheap thrills and near-death-experiences when we were kids, trying to evade holiday shoppers and store security for the thrill of running up the down escalator.... or just watching the people move up as you are automatically moved down the down side....
On the down side is where I is....not to be morose, but this is chronic, decline sort of stuff -
and as I watch my kids move smiling up the up side I cannot but wish that I could somehow
make it stop....to meet them at the middle, and just stay there, here, with all their grace, beauty,
potential ...(just not the whining...:) and enough of my facilities to be here fully, to have that longed for time when you are young enough and your kids are old enough to really fully encounter each other as fully human beings, not just as a parent or a child.

Still, mercessly, efficiently the escalator moves and snatches me from my reverie....kids moving up, I'm on my way on my way. The words of Frank Zappa, that iconoclast from the last century, come to mind though, a quote from his Studio Tan album, subtitled "The Adventures of Gregory Peccory".........where he brilliantly defines chronologic time as

"eternity and fractional divisions thereof"

What is a fraction of the eternal? Equally eternal, no? So, maybe there's hope - that in that one moment, that fractional division of eternity, where I meet my children, my wife, and all who I encounter on the metaphorical escalators, that in that moment, secreted, are all moments, timeless, wholly, present, now.....

go figure....:)

Parkinsons Patients: A Logical Choice for the Advant Garde in Virtual Reality!

So, where are you? I mean it….literally. Just where does your consciousness reside? To what dimensions does it expand itself, and to how small of a non material ball can it become? Like a hermit crab, can it move into any vessel that comes its way?

I’ve been pondering these questions more of late, as I’ve noted with growing concern the gradual seepage of PD symptoms into, what till now, has been the safe harbor of my right side….so long as I could do the hang over there, I’ve been able to compensate fairly well for the interminable tremor and rigidity which Increasingly characterizes my left hand, arm and now leg.

I’m starting feel like I’m being leveraged the ‘hell out of here….here being the body I’ve generally regarded as something ‘I’ fully own. Not the case, as is increasingly more obvious, and clearly a new tenant has taken up occupancy and shows the same singlemindness of purpose that drove our forefathers across the plains in fulfillment of their vision of manifest destiny.

So, I think and I ask: if not here, where do ‘I’ go? And where have ‘I’ gone before…and I think, first about driving.

My dad’s classic ’68 Plymouth Belvedere that I learned to drive…and how difficult it all was to manage up until that magic point where ‘I’ became one with the car….my consciousness expanded to reach to the rusty bumper and back to the tailpipe hung with a hanger which in a previous incarnation held a newly dry-cleaned tweed coat with a cigarette burn on the lapel. That’s when you can drive – when your essential awareness of whatever your driving expands to the full contour of what you’re piloting. Till then – better have some good insurance and a hard head – I remember a few good run-ins with the immovable train trestles of the uptown number 6 train on Westchester Avenue, indeed I do.

Over the years my driving consciousness has contoured itself to operate other memorable vehicles, including a 1973 monkey-shit brown Buick Century (yes, the ‘Kojak’ car), a Chevy Nova, my old favorite ’86 Celica and my current family man sedan, a 2001 Mitsubishi Galant with a skin condition….don’t get me started ‘bout the Mitsubishi. To move on….

I’ve had some fascinating recent experiences futzing around with 3D virtual reality community….second life…...and the beginnings of the strange realization that, yes, it is possible to conceive of – and, even now to actually experience – the beginnings of the porting of your consciousness into an online avatar – and just as the compentent driver is ‘aware’ of his car body, so to does the online avatar become the fringe, and as technology improves no doubt, the focus of consciousness.

So, in recent weeks I’ve experimented with letting my consciousness seep (…hmm…sounds messy) into a variety of avitars including bodies of a winged animal, a Blue Tuxeoed Elvis, a provocatively attired female avatar, and George Bush’s worst fear – a human animal hybrid! What these characters seem to do best, thanks to some amazingly clever programming efforts – is

Dance, dance, dance, with ease and grace and, at times, depraved abandon.

You try that with PD sometimes…..

I remember some time back, maybe around 2000, trying an early 2D chat program and, after a brief interest ( ~ 10 minutes) found the paucity of movement so completely inferior to ‘real’ reality that it held no lasting interest.

But now, two trajectories seem to have crossed – the technology has gotten to a point where it has impact and the movement through the 3D terrain and interaction with ‘others’ has the beginning of depth.

Any my ‘technology’ – i.e my failing wetware which increasingly has difficulty in processing signals in the necessary ways to allow for ease of moment – is on a decline. So as these two trajectories cross the prospect of critical mass – ie. Where an improved virtual reality becomes more enjoyable and compelling than the real thing – a tipping point appears, where, if not just yet, soon we could all be living in a radically transformed reality, with the most disabled here the most ardent adventurers there. Dancing, dreaming, and moving with ease……when this stuff is fully merged with the new field of teledildonics, all bets are off....

Ray Kurzweil, a major figure in modern computer science ( voice recognition software, music synthesis, and futurist extraordinaire) in his provocative “The Age of Spiritual Mmachines' posits that soon…sooner than most think,we will bear witness to the full porting of human consciousness into software.It’s a fascinating premise which, the more I experience the things I’m experiencing, start to seem plausible, possible inevitable.

So, what does the future hold? Stem cell cure? Or maybe a relatively painless decline, drooling and shaking on the outside, while inside, deep with dancing …dancing…dancing with myself…

so till then or something better in day to day reality, on with my virtual blue tuxedo jacket and back to the dance, already in progress…….

Blue Elvis :)

….

.

…

Banzaii!!!

Dancing in kitchen

Look! An Angel masquerades

As my sweet daughter!

Yesterday pm had one of those moments…..when, when the delicious, mindnumbing and tunnel-vision inducing busyness of being busy with being busy…

It all faded to black me exposed to my feelings and fully confronted by an awareness of what has changed, what is changing and likely will change in the time-arrow of my life.

And it hurt….

.it was/is/ more likely than not will be more difficult, burdensome and burdening that anything that I experience now, which, while problematic at times, in the larger schema of things still ain’t but a pimple on the behind of a giant wooly mammoth.

Its said in the Pirke Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), a book of distilled communal wisdom of Talmudic sages, that there are 3 ‘stances’ between the Buber-esque ‘I and Thou’ one can adopt:

“whats mine is mine and whats yours is yours’

The hallmark of the average man

“whats mine is mine and whats yours is mine”

The credo of an evil man, most 2 year olds, and the IRS.

“whats mine is yours and whats yours is yours”

The operating stance of a Tsadik

AND, curiously, the ultimate ‘stance’ we must all take when, as ever it comes and for the mortal among us come it will, IS the last …i.e. between oneself and the Power-that-be /ribbono shel olum (master of the universe) an ultimate acknowledgment is inevitable that everything that I have that I can lose….everything- from the most tangible to the most ethereal, each and every ability that within a normative healthy phase we fully is assumed as granted….all of it….is/was only on loan.

So, stupid!, why cry over the loss of what you never really had?

BANZAI!!!!!

One little word, how can it mean so many things? "Graceful acceptance of ones destiny"…..still easier said than done.(thanks, Amparo!)

So there I was, momentarily hit/hurt/by the suck-i-ness of this all when, serendipitously, I remembered to put on a new CD with a wonderful Klezmatic version of Shalom Alechem I planned to sing with the family for Shabbat…hit the wrong track and played a hot Eddie Palmieri salsa number----the kind of Bronx Puerto-Riceno soundtrack of my youth sort of thing….

and just then a little angel impersonating my youngest daughter took my hand and led me to the white-tile dancefloor that is our kitchen and there we were, back in Orchard Beach, on a sunny day with Salsa blaring from competing boom boxes to the smell of roasting g-d knows what in the warm setting sun. I was summoned back to earth only by the pungent smell of yellow rice burning to black...

Banzaii!!!

The Patience of Parkinson's.....scary!

Chronic, progressive,

As water saps strength from stone

Cliff breaks as I tremble

I like my politics progressive, thank-you - not my ailments if’n I had my druthers.

But my druthers are handled by others, largely at least in regard to PD..….and this time around I’ve taken on a partner who’s calmly steering the ship to a rocky shore . One of the things you can learn by experiencing the slow creep of Parkinson’s is the power of patience and persistence – at least from the disease process itself. It's in no rush, hakuna matata, and while you don’t have all the time in the world, it does. So things change, slowly, subtly and seriously…

Still doing better than not in all regards, but I note some disturbing new symptoms – occasional involvement of my right arm, till recently not at all involved and – equally if not more troubling, some difficulty swallowing. Swallowing is not the type of thing you think about very much, till it becomes less than fully automatic. And, believe me, you start thinking a lot then. So, tell me, how do you swallow?

Peristalsis….(add short segment here)

So, while the disease won’t officially off you itself, it sets up a myriad of ways to deliver your
demise (we deliver!)….falling without reflexes to recover is a popular one, choking growing out of swallowing difficulties, also a perennial, or complications from pneumonias becoming more common with progression of disease all among the top ten ways to check out growing out of this withering away of motor control we call Parkinson’s.

As the process commands and deserves great respect for its patience and persistence, so too must I gird myself to be strong enough not to yield my center, my power to resist that which I might and accept unavoidable changes as they occur, the strength to open a tremorous hand and release with the appreciation for having had them the powers the precious capabilities that collectively form the dowry of health which the more fortunate among us bring to each earthly incarnation.

Prius Envy....

So, I gets the Mitsubishi back from the shop with the shiny new tranni and within a days it's stalling, and jerking 'n huffing and generally not behaving the way a satisfied car with a new transmision ought to act....so I hoof it over the a local car rental place at 7pm just in time to snag the sorriest and very last rental on the lot...a shiny red DaeWOOO! mini....hot damn.

Drove this clunker for two days while the garage celebrated their good fortune at finding a new donor for thier slush fund...people treat you, well, different, yes....thats the word, different in a daewoo! (there's the marketing pitch .....daewoo......different!)... heres how...

othewise courteous little-biddy old lady drivers feel suddenly free and empowed to drive by you and give you the finger.....not a single, but a triple-thrust fuck-you gesture....for no apparent reason

little children know its ok to toss old soda, or diapers at you as their leer down from towering hummers and suvs, while the dad looks on, winks as if to say, 'thattaboy!"...

people will cut you off without compunction in this thing.....
looking forward to getting the mitsubishi with a skin condition back soon!

Prius Satori Moment..

When it goes, it goes
When it stops it just stops: silent!
Prius Satori...

'Been an up and down week - down: transmission died / up: rented a Prius.
The three day repair puffed out to six, so in that time I had a good opportunity to get familiar withe the electric/gas hybrid. The amazing thing about the technology is how completely silent and still the car is waiting at lights when the engine disengages - unlike traditional cars, which even stopped always have an agenda of 'go', eternal automotive manifest destiny, if you
will the
Prius just hangs there, state of quiet and complete stillness, an unexpected moment of simply
being there rather than going there.

So how does this relate to PD.....well, it doesn't, not in any meaningful way - other than a reminder to live consciously in the moment you're in -- good things open up unexpectedly, Prius Satori.
And now, everybody into the full lotus position, deep healing breath in, now.....

"oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"
Yiddish trancendental mantra"