Managing my drug habit, and other summer adventures

 

Well, this should be interesting. I have asked for Siri’s help in writing this post. Any weirdness that ensues should be blamed on her, since my Neuro chemistry seems to be pretty much back to normal.

First of all, it has been a long long time since I tried to write anything. I’m not sure why, maybe I just didn’t have much to say. but the boredom of recuperation from surgery has led me to a state of desperation, I suppose I just want a way to organize what’s on my mind.

Our story so far: 2025 has been a heck of a year, not just for our country, which appears to be held, bent on self-destruction, but also for me personally. This is the year I turned 65, and my body’s sense of humor has been on full display. I had another little episode of a fib at the beginning of the year, met a new cardiologist, and had the old ticker shocked back into rhythm. It sort of reminds me of my old radio that would tune in if you just slapped it on the side hard enough. In Midsomer, I had a string of fainting spells that culminated in a trip to the emergency room, where the doctor admitted me for a couple of days while I was bled and tested, and a radiated to no avail. They found a neurologist who specializes in my particular condition, And I was able to get an appointment for March 17, 2026. I’ll update you…

Then, a couple of weeks ago, at least I think it was a couple of weeks, I was out for a late night run when I felt a twinge in my left Achilles heel. I decided not to be stupid and stopped running. As I walked home, I felt what I thought was the concrete breaking under my foot. But with my next step, a searing pain shot through my leg, and I realized that what I had felt was that famous tendon popping. I was about a half mile from home, so I limped to the house, wrapped up in ice, and sat quietly debating whether or not I should go to the emergency room. That question was settled when I tried to stand back up out of my chair. Based on the shrieking, the neighbors must have thought that someone was torturing a puppy in my house. I managed to limp to my rental car (oh, did I mention that my own car had been totaled a few days earlier by a hit and run lunatic?) And drove myself to the ER. There I was once again bled and tested and a radiated  The handsome young doctor looked at my foot, and in his best clinical bedside manner, whispered the words “uh-oh.” The only question that remains was whether or not the Achilles tendon was just torn or completely ruptured. Subsequent MRI and orthopedic surgeon consultation led to the conclusion that the tendon was not only completely ruptured, but broken in a really unusual way. Ordinarily, the tendon snaps somewhere in the middle, and the surgeon can sew the ends back together. In my case, the tendon had snapped off at the Heel bone. The second surgeon, I talked to, one who specializes in such things, described the process, as installing some kind of hardware that would be screwed into my heel, giving him something to sew the frayed end of my tendon down, connecting my foot to the rest of my leg once again. It is a fascinating and slightly miraculous procedure, and one for which I am grateful.

The surgery was last Tuesday, (I’m writing this on Saturday afternoon), and my instructions are to spend the next two weeks “sitting in a chair like a slug.“ Other than occasional trips to the bathroom and the microwave, I have done my best to obey those instructions. Which leads me to the aforementioned  drug habit. 

The doctors sent me home with a potent anti-nausea drug to offset the effects of the notorious opioid they prescribed for my pain. Considering the damage it has done to my home state, I was a little surprised that you could still get OxyContin in Kentucky, but there it was: a little white pill that had brought about so much damage, not just in the Commonwealth but all over the country. I was suspicious, but advice from my friends and the throbbing in my foot led me to cautiously begin using the medication. To be honest, I’m not sure yet did much to reduce my pain– but it definitely made me care much less about how much my foot hurt.

I took the pills every four hours, as prescribed, for the first two days, then backed off to one in the morning, and one before bed. Today I have not had one at all, and while I am certainly aware of unpleasant sensations under the bandages, I would not describe what I’m feeling as severe enough to require medical intervention. So it seems I have escaped Leif as a geriatric junkie. At least for the time being. 

So, how does one spend one’s time under the kind of restrictions I have? I have been sleeping a lot. I have been reminding myself to eat, because I know how important that is to healing and… You know… Staying alive and every day. I have been Meditating. Practicing mindfulness and quiet contemplation. I have a short stack of books. I’m reading, one on the teachings of the Buddha guy techno Han. OK, Siri. That’s not funny. That should be Thich Nhat Hanh. Siri’s Vietnamese is sorely lacking.

 I am also skimming around in the manual for my new car, a 15 year old Honda that I hope to be able to drive sometime in October. As I said… it has been a heck of a year.

I did not intend for this post to be a novella, so I think I’ll wrap up for the time being. If nothing else, it will help loved ones to catch up and help me to . Keep my memories organized. I hope you are well, dear reader. We’ll catch up again soon.

Meditations on Desire, Ice Cream, and Freedom

Buddhist teaching asserts that desire is the cause of all suffering. This principle is so fundamental that Siddhartha Gautama made it part of the very first sermon he preached after his long vigil under the Bodhi tree where he is said to have attained enlightenment. He made it one of the Four Noble Truths that describe reality. The more time I spend with this idea, the truer it becomes to me.

What does it mean to desire? To me, it means to want what you haven't got. Food, drink, sex, excitement, power, wealth: sure, but those are the easy ones. We can be just as consumed by our desire for health, a happy family, long lives for loved ones, peace. Desire is natural and can be motivating. We may desire success in business or athletics. Maybe we want to write that novel or make that pilgrimage or lead a revolution. The question is, once the book has been published, the marathon run, or the government transformed, are we any better off? We may be smarter, richer, more confident, more respected, and those are all good things. But will accomplishing our goals make us more free? Or will we weep with frustration like Alexander the Great when he realized, "There are no worlds left to conquer?"

So what's the solution? Can we be free from suffering? Maybe, but there is a trap waiting. Our thirst for freedom from desire, is itself a kind desire. Far from freeing ourselves from slavery, we have simply found another master. Wanting to let go just isn't enough, because that very wanting causes us to suffer disappointment when we fail. I am reminded of Paul's brilliand ad maddening letter to the Church in Rome. 

Paul's dilemma was a brutal one: 

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (Rom 7:14,15)

The problem tortured him;  

Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24 NRSV)

Paul's answer was to exhort us to find salvation in the Spirit, turning our backs on the things of the flesh. I am new to all this Eastern stuff, and won't presume to say how the Buddha might have responded to the old preacher's cry for help, but Paul and I are old friends, and I can imagine mustering the nerve to follow the Apostle's answer with a question of my own. "Dear Paul, having loosed the bondage of fleshly desires, how will you free yourself from slavery to spiritual ones" Won't they bring you as much  frustration as you suffer now, my poor, wretched brother?"

My impression is that Paul did not suffer fools gladly, and might have been a little put out by a heretical time-traveler interrupting his train of thought in such a familiar manner, just as he was revving up to that grand climax at the end of Chapter 8. I'll have to be satisfied without his answer, but I can reflect a little on my own.

A dilemma is often a choice between two difficult things: a lesser of two evils kind of thing. It is  a charging bull whose horns offer no really satisfying solution. It seems to me that a toreador's best choice when faced with a charging bull is to elude the horns entirely. What if a pilgrim chose not to a) do battle with fleshly desire, or to b) surrender to some other, more spiritual one, but rather chose c): to accept desire as part of the ever flowing, ever changing stream of things as they are? Rather than trying to defeat the bull by letting it gore me with either horn, what if I stand aside and watch it run past?

Sooner or later, the damned thing is bound to get tired, or at least bored.

My question - and lord knows I've taken long enough to get around to it - is this: what if suffering doesn't come from my desire, but from the things I do to try to satisfy it? Am I fat because I want ice cream, or because I eat ice cream? The simple and obvious answer is that my actions lead to my suffering. It's the beautifully Newtonian principle of karma - cause leads to equal and opposite effect. I know that my uncomfortable craving will pass in time. I can sit with that temporary discomfort while it lasts, or I can ignore the laws of thermodynamics and karma and bury my craving under a few scoops full of mint chocolate chip. And tomorrow, I will be a little bit fatter and hungry again. 

Look, I'm fully aware that there is nothing profound here. I'm not trying to be profound. Frankly, I'm feeling old and tired and haven't the energy to be deep. But I am contemplating a kernel of truth I find simple and beautiful. I have is a fascinated curiosity about life as it is. It pleases me to be alive, and to draw the world in like breath. And I wonder at all the things I can do with that breath as I hold it and return it to the universe. 

Maybe that's all any of us can really do. Breathe in life, and breathe out... What?... Kindness?... Cruelty?... Mercy?... Vengeance?...Fear?... Love? Or, maybe just Compassion. Maybe just a breath that says, "I see you. I accept you. I think you are valuable and beautiful and am sorry when things go hard for you and I am so very happy when they are light and easy." Maybe that's the key that unlocks the chains of desire: to see, accept, and love the deeply flawed, perfect creature who shares our breath for a time.

I see you. I love you. I am grateful for you. And we are free.

And if once in a while we share a whiff of mint chocolate chip - I don't see much harm in that, either.

Father and Son

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a  man;
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

William Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up," 1802.

I don't expect to hear from you this Father's Day. That's not your fault. Old men can travel through time as easily as boys ride their bikes to the swimming pool. You haven't learned that magic yet. (But you will!)

Besides, you never really got to know me, even though I know and love you with all my heart. As I grow old, I am coming to love you more each day. This morning, as I meditated with Sophie, (whom you would have adored,) we thought of you and so many of the things you lived through. 

I wish I could have been there when you were small and so alone. I would have held you in my arms and told you, "It's OK. It's OK to be different and it's OK to want to find your own way. But it's OK to ask for help, too. You don't have to be the hero in every story." It took me a long time to learn that lesson. I wonder if hearing it from me would have made it easier for you.

I would have walked with you on the brick streets where we both grew up, and listened to your dreams and told you some of mine. I would have tried to explain how sadness, your kind of sadness, was a treasure. It made things hard for you, but it gave you a heart that could feel things that some other people missed. Your sadness, which felt like the end of the world sometimes, would always come and go, like waves on the beach, but it would teach you to care about people in a way that would make you very special, if you let it.

I could have told you that I understood what it was like to feel ashamed sometimes. To have secrets that you hope nobody will ever learn. I would have tried to show you that you were not alone, not even in your guilty darkness, and I would have told you how very proud I am of the way you always kept getting back up, even when life seemed determined to keep you down.

We would have talked about girls. I remember your first kiss and how amazed and confused you were under that streetlight in the snow. The softness of her mouth and the sparkle of snowflakes on her eyelashes. I wonder if I would start to get misty as you told me about all the thoughts and feelings you had on the long walk home that December night. Would you have laughed when I told you that almost 50 years later, girls are still as amazing and confusing to me as they were to you?

I have learned so much about so many things. Could I have helped you to be less afraid of life? To be more curious? To find your confidence and courage a little bit sooner? I don't know. I wish I could have tried. 

A strange thought just came to me. Could I have been a better father to you than our Dad was? It feels like I'm betraying him, even to ask. Dad loved you, and I believe he would love us both, if he were still alive. But Dad had his own life, his own father. He prepared me the best way he knew how. When he died, he left us to take care of each other. Maybe that's what being a Father really means. Preparing your children to become the best parents they can be. 

He was my teacher, my first, best teacher. I will always love him, but never be him. I will love you in my own way, but my love is built on the love he gave me. I'm glad I've lived long enough to realize what a rare gift that is. 

When I look at your picture, I don't really see myself. I see "Bobby." There aren't many people left who call me that these days. Strangers call me "Robert." Friends call me "Bob." A handful, random ones who love me dearly call me "Bobbo." I have no idea where that comes from, but it always tickles me. Believe it or not, there are people calling me "Mr. Bob" now. You can't imagine how much I love that. Or maybe of all the people in the world, you understand.

Mr. Wordsworth says that you are my father. And so you are. In many ways, I am what you made me. But I am your dad, too. Even if you can't know me, I am here to know you. To understand you. To accept and forgive and remember. I am here to love you. And I always will. Just as our Dad always loved us. Always. We are "bound each to each" in ways no one can see and nothing can undo. I hope that makes you feel a little less alone. Because I am grateful for you and so very proud of you.

I have an advantage that you don't, you see. I know your future. I know that you are going to do some horrible things, worse than you can imagine. You're going to hurt and fail people in ways that will make you wish you had never been born. You will be sicker and sadder and sorrier than anybody has a right to live through. But you will live. And in living, you will bring light and love and hope to lonely places and comfort to badly broken hearts. You won't be a star, but you be a helper. And on the days when despair seems like the only rational path, I hope that helps you, my beloved child.

Happy Father's Day, Bobby. I'm glad you found the strength to stick it out. We have so many adventures ahead of us. 

You done good, Kiddo.

#609: Bon appétit

Sitting quietly, my morning ritual. Moving gently on the glider rocker that Mom would have loved. Plate on my lap

And on that plate

Is the world.

The little circle of flaky bread claims to be a croissant, though I doubt any patissier would honor it with the name. Still, it is my breakfast, and deserves attention.

It connects me to eternity.

As I eat, my mind turns to the young cashier in the grocery store who sold it to me,

and the woman with the rack of frozen food who stocked them in the freezer where I found them. 

Someone loaded them off of a truck that another drove from a warehouse to the store. 

Creative people designed a box, developed graphics, invented machines to pack and preserve this little sandwich.

Engineers and chemists turned to forests and laboratories to create the ink the printer used to decorate the package. 

Somewhere, eggs and flour and salt and sugar were assembled in a recipe devised by artists whose medium is the food we eat. 

The flour was milled from wheat harvested by giant machines driven by people whose paths are guided by ancient skills, and by technologies that did not exist 5 years ago. 

The roots of that wheat stretch like loving arms into the soil to drink of her water and feast on her minerals. 

Matter that was created before Earth was formed lies just beneath her surface, ready to play its ever-changing role in the ever-changing universe.

Today, I will eat this little piece of eternity, and it will help me to live and move and be in the world. 

Some of it, I will use. Some, I will store. Tomorrow, I will return some of it to the earth where it will become a new part of creation. 

One day, I will do the same. My muscles and organs and breath and bones will return to the earth and sky and sea. Maybe I will help to feed a small part of a field of wheat. 

And in that shaft of grass or squirt of ink or drop of machine oil or somewhere else I cannot imagine, I will be born again.

Bon appétit.

#608: our last breath

dying beloved

wordless beauty

exhausted and numb

breast rattle and chuff

 

so much 

time

lost

imagine her squeezing my fingers

murmur useless prayers into

deaf ears

but you

my old friend

you found her parched lips and she gasped you in

like one drowning 

from too much 

life

if i could

i would have exchanged my breath

for hers

but, no

you stayed with me and she left us alone

together

#607: Loving Me, Loving You

 

"Would you ask someone else to obey that rule?" My Shrink asks me questions like that. "Would you treat one of your patients (he uses the language of his own discipline, here,) one of your "patients" to live up to that standard? Is that the advise you'd give someone who came to you looking for love and compassion?"

No. I'd listen. I'd accept. I'd sit with them, and walk beside them.

Like a warrior.

Like a neighbor.

Like the kind of friend I hope I'd be.

Like the kind of friend I need to be...

To myself?

I've been wondering if my life might be different, if my path might be wiser if I committed less energy to condemning myself and my neighbors for the imperfections we share. I wonder how much my own capacity to love others is limited by my contempt for so much in myself?

Its a strange business: self-love. It feels immodest. Un-Presbyterian. Un-Christian. We are supposed to hate the way we are, aren't we? We're supposed to abhor our sinful nature, and be grateful for a God who is willing to forgive and perfect us through Grace and the sacrifice of his Son. I know that's a distorted way of looking at the doctrine of salvation, but I have to admit that thread got woven into my faith tapestry somewhere along the line. 

What if I've got it all wrong? What if what I really need is not condemnation but Grace? What if I could forgive myself? Accept myself? Allow myself to be seen as imperfect, and sub-standard, and, well... human? Might I find whole new reserves of love and compassion for the people I serve? 

What if I loved myself the way I wish I could love other people? Would that help me to be more kind to the geezer whose stories never end or the granny who miseries and grievances well up from a bottomless pit? The ex who decided I just wasn't the one she was looking for? The never-ex who didn't requite a passionate offer? These people don't get my best. Sometimes they get my worst. 

No. No, they don't get my worst. I save that for the one it hurts the most.

I save my worst for myself. And I can't help but think that unkindness is keeping me from giving others my best.

Something has to change, but what? What to do differently? What would I do for a neighbor, hell, for a stranger who needed me? 

Listen, Accept. Sit with them. Walk with them. Like a warrior. Like a friend.

I have a feeling that my meditation practice can be helpful here. What is meditation if not listening? When I listen to my body and my mind, my imagination and my emotions, I find that I frequently don't like what I hear. Often when that happens, I give up on the practice. "Not a good day to meditate, I guess." 

Maybe I need a different approach. What if I heard those thoughts and feelings? Those shameful memories and frustrations? What if instead of making myself busy, finding something else to do, I sit with myself like a friend, and share the unpleasantness? Maybe, instead of giving up on my friend Bob, I could wait with him while he goes through the hard times, and then get up and walk beside him as he gets on with the life through which he carries his burdens. Maybe I could fight the fight alongside him, because his fight is also mine.

Maybe then, I could fight beside you. Because sometimes your fight is also mine. 

I know it sounds crazy to talk like an observer who stands outside himself, loving himself. But how is that any more crazy than standing out there passing judgement on myself? 

Maybe it's time to embrace the crazy. Try finding ways to forgive, accept, and heal the well-intentioned yet deeply flawed, loving and deeply loved old man in the mirror. He may have a lot to teach me. Maybe we can learn from each other.

That's the advice I'd give to someone I loved.

 

#606: Slivers of Hope from the Sky

August 12, 2045. That's the next time a solar eclipse will be visible across the continental United States. That will make me 85. No out of the question, I guess, but I'm glad I caught a peek at this one, just in case. It was the third time I've witnessed an eclipse in my life. I'm grateful. 

The first was in New York City, of all places. I was building a really strange set piece at the Classic Stage Company just south of Union Square. 13th street, maybe? The piece was a giant whimsical bust of Moliere that I think was the set for a production of The Misanthrope, but I could be wrong. When the eclipse started, we all grabbed dark blue gels from the lighting kit and I think I may have had my welding hood with me. I've told the damn story for so long and in so many ways, that I'm really not sure. Anyway, we went outside and the street was an eerie color - that strange greenish light that you see before tornados in the midwest. I remember looking up and seeing the corona through whatever shield I had improvised. Then I looked down. There on the sidewalk, beneath the ginkgos, millions of tiny eclipses were projected onto the concrete. Each gap between leaves became a tiny pinhole projector, and the ground was covered with sparkling sunbursts. I had never read or heard anything to prepare me for this. There were fairies dancing in the gutter and it was as miraculous an emotion as I've ever felt. 

Then, a few years later, in Kentucky, I saw them again.

Thursday, August 21, 2017; 2:35 PM
Lexington KY

It's hard to picture 2017. So much has happened since then. These were the years BC - before COVID - and nothing back then seems real to me. The country had put a gun to its head the November before, and we were not yet used to the finger resting on the trigger. It had been 4 years since Mrs P decided she was done waiting for me to finally grow/show up. Thursday afternoon... I bet I had just driven home from teaching that wonderful water class at the Beaumont Y. This shot was underneath the big maple that grew outside the window of my divorced incel's cell. Not a lot of happy times in that place, but this was one. The August sun blazed far too brightly for any but the dimmest of bulbs to try looking at it. I didn't have my welding hood anymore, but I did remember the fairies. I looked down, and there they were. Dancing on the sidewalk. Beautiful crescents of hope that covered the concrete and the mulch and the clover. Hopeful slivers were hard to come by back in those days. I was so grateful.

August 21, 2017, Lexington

Today was different. The overcast was so heavy when I went to the stoop with my book and my chair that I doubted I would see anything at all.

April 8, 2024; 1:58 PM

It looked like another April downpour blowing in. I think we were all preparing ourselves for disappointment. Then, across Broadway, a door burst open. I never see these people. No, that's not true. I see them at the Y. They workout and swim and the Mom took my CPR class once. The kids were all home from school, and Mom was home from work and they had their dark glasses on and were craning their necks toward the clouds. They looked up. They looked at each other. They looked at Mom. She shrugged and sat down on the porch steps with her littlest, while the rest of the kids went back inside to watch Rugrats on their gigantic living room TV. 

It made me melancholy. How many chances would these kids get to see a total eclipse? In their lives? What might it mean to them to see the corona and to dance with the fairies under the maple trees? Would they ever have another chance? Or would they spend the rest of their lives rolling their eyes at old people who told stories about falling stars and tides that glowed and a thousand suns turning Greenwich Village into Narnia?

It made me feel gloomy, so I started reading Thich Nhat Hanh to distract myself. He was talking about suffering. These frigging Buddhists are always rattling on about suffering. I read this...

Love cannot exist without suffering. In fact suffering is the ground on which love is born. If you have not suffered, if you don't see the suffering of people or other living beings, you would not have love in you, nor would you understand what it is to love... Do you want to live in a place where there is no suffering? If you live in such a place, you will not be able to know what is love. Love is born from suffering.... 

Because I suffer, I need love Because you suffer you need love. Because we suffer, we know that we have to offer each other love, and love becomes a practice.

I looked across the street again. There they all were. So sad. I raised my eyes to the place where the miracle ought to be.

There! See it?

Monday, April 8, 2024; 3:10 PM, 
Lexington KY

At first, I thought I hadn't been able to snatch it with my phone's camera. Then I looked up until the cloud had covered it again. I did the little two-finger zoom thing, and there it was... a single crescent, a lonely fairie, dancing in the clouds, peeping in and out like Puck and Ariel and all the wonderful imps Shakespeare taught me to love so long ago. Old Sol had come through. I looked across, and the kids were hypnotized. They were gorgeous. I didn't even look at the ground. I saw the light on every one of them. What seeds did I see planted during that moment? What will this memory become? What will they do with a holy afternoon whose visions will stay with them for the rest of their lives? 

So, there it is. My third total solar eclipse. If this old house I'm walking around in holds together for another 21 years and a summer, I may get to see my fourth. They won't be easy years. That's a lot to ask. There will be hard nights and heart breaks and break downs and funerals. I'd like to say I wish there wasn't ugliness in the world. But I think I know what the Thich Nhat Hahn would tell me. I know what the fairies would tell me.

They would remind me that all those things are real, but they are not alone. Leg cramps are real. So are finish lines. Shadows are real. So is moonlight. Loneliness is real. So are arms that pull you close. Grief is real. Love is real. We suffer. We love. Both are true. Truth is both.

Each of my precious eclipse experiences has left me with rich memories. I remember the ginkgo fairies from 13th Street. I remember hope scattered on the ground in front of my sad single bedroom apartment. And today? Today, I think I'm going to remember something really odd. I'm going to remember the couple, walking their obese, oblivious, hopelessly spoiled pit bull. She was carrying the phone. He was carrying the leash. He had an enormous umbrella. And both of them... the humans, I mean... both of them had a pair of eclipse glasses dangling carelessly from one hand. It was as if they were saying, "yes, it's a miserable looking day, and yes, we have shit to take care of... but you never know when something amazing might happen."

And so it did. 

I will always love them for that.

And I am so very grateful.