Lab rat

It reminded me of the back room of casinos where people are taken when casino bosses cut off their debtors' fingers and beat them.  Ducting showed below the ceiling.  Lights dangled from the ceiling on poles. The plastic on the machines used were of the old beige variety of the 1960s and 70s.  Wires snaked along the floor everywhere like the ones from the 1990s connecting electrical guitars to speakers strung across a concert stage.  I was on the table.

First they had to map the nerves down the side of my knee by using electrical shocks.  Supposedly, I was not to have felt the shock.  But, a number of the buzzes sent my leg to shivering vigorously.  Then, they went in with very thin needles to areas that had been mapped in order to find a nerve root in the subcutaceous region.  Now, that was electrifying.  I was supposed to call out when I felt a sensation with one of three terms - local (meaning the pain was felt where the needle was stinging), sharp pain (yep, the shock felt the entire length of my leg), and twitch.  That was the term they wanted to hear so that they could stop and hear the brain's signals to the nerve.  Strong signals would mean there was too much pressure in the vein along which the nerve root was located.  Normal signals would indicate normal pressure.

This went on for one hour.  Mostly I used the word local, but a good number of times I felt the sharp pain from the shock down the length of my leg.  Only once in a blue moon did I say twitch.  The net result was that the doctor couldn't find enough nerves that told her that there was pressure being affected.  Other "noise" interfered with the signals because the muscle wan't relaxed enough.  Imagine that.  Pain locally and sharp pain down the length of my leg for the better part of an hour, and the doctor thought I wasn't relaxed enough for her to hear the signals clearly from the nerve root.  I kept telling myself that this was experimental after all, but this was really on the inexact science side of things.  The doctor told me she wouldn't continue after an hour - good news.  Oh, but that was followed by, "Schedule another appointment and we'll try in the other leg."  Now that was comforting.

Faith, rain will come

In the hilly areas of the country, streams bring much needed water to plants, animals and humans living in lower lying areas. But these streams only run after a rain. Most of the year, they are merely dry, cracked stream beds. I have been through several spells of drought in my life, one of them for the last couple of years.




But I know that at some point the streams will swell again to bring life. I can't always see or smell the refreshment promised by gathering dark clouds, but I know they will come. The beds are carved into the ground because rain has filled the streams many times before. So, I watch the skies and wait... with anticipation.

A miss in guidance

It's always interesting to hear what people say about the languages of the Earth.  Having a cozy conversation with language teachers the other day proved to be enlightening. The conversation began by three teachers talking about how some people were able to learn several languages while others sputter to master their native tongue. Finally, one said that languages have the same patterns, so finding the universal pattern used in languages enables them to quickly learn many.

Wel-l-l-l, not exactly. I let it go at the time it was said because the two other teachers agreed with the notion. A little reading about that subject would have helped them have a more fine-tuned view of the subject, but they had not read, nor did they plan to read more, so this was not the time or place to comment on what was common knowledge for those aware of the field's literature. Right, universal grammar is the holy grail of linguistics, but to date, the grail has been illusive. Maybe a philosophical comment will be appropriate someday, just not this day.

But therein lies a point. A person only learns (or in this case, dispels a common notion) when the context for learning has produced a desire or need. Those contexts are not continuous nor related to routines. But these 3 teachers were products of the system that touted continuous learning, continuous improvement, and repetition. I'll check their students for fluency in about a month, but I already know what I will find because the system they think gives progress, has a long track record of failure to achieve its goals.
What a different story for their students if they would read about the brain's workings and the purposes for needing and developing systems for communication.

Being true

I have heard the advice frequently given, "Be true to yourself." Socrates is many times credited with saying this although his literal words in translation were, "Know yourself." Shakespeare put the words in the form of advice from his Hamlet character Polonius when bidding bis son farewell. His exact advice was, "To thine own self be true, and it will follow as the night the day, thou canst then be false to no man."

Call it wisdom of the ages, I guess. But the same advice is still being given. However, competing advice is also heard these days in the form of, "Consider the audience and act accordingly," and "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face."

While it is important in daily interaction to listen and not to be offensive, it is still good to stand for your own beliefs, make every effort to achieve your own goals, and stand alone sometimes , not acquiescing,  when you have more knowledge of something than others or when you know your own desires better than others who only think they know you well. An exception is when you have expressed your desires to someone else so that they know you as well as you know yourself. But that kind of transparency is rare, as rare as the true beauty of the person with whom the transparency is a shared commodity.

Guineas and changes

The diagnosis was hyperplasia from one doctor, hyperaldosteronism from another.  It's one of the newer conditions treated by specialists because no one knows what all exactly it affects or what all affects it.  It's somewhat rare now, but specialists don't really know how many people might be affected because the condition goes undiagnosed for the most part.

So, it was no surprise when I received a call to ask if I would be a guinea pig.  Not literally, of course.  Specialists wanted to sample my blood using a special procedure so that they could see what areas of the body were contributing to the condition.  Well, it's ok by me.  Why not.  It's all for the cause of progress and medical advancement.  And, who knows, it might promote a more normative condition once they pinpoint the cause, remove it, and take a sampling of the blood after removal.

Before and after is definitely a part of the scientific process.  And, it's a part of my own life story.  I have seen my life's trajectory before certain events and seen the line after.  Definitely a trajectory change.  What's even better is that I know the cause for the change, so I don't have to go searching for it or isolating probable causes and retesting.  I am thankful tonight for the one who brought such a trajectory change, who reversed a declining curve, whose essence is restorative.

A number of deep meaning

Numbers take on symbolic status in a great number of cultures both ancient and modern.  The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest story on record.  It is a story by the Sumerians that shows how culture was born through an involved series of symbols, some through worded analogies, others through numbers chosen to represent special actions.  One such number was 10, especially for distances in the story.  Another number was 7, used for meaningful forces.  Both heighten the experience of the characters in the story.

Other stories from the old world have survived as well.  The number 3 was important to Egyptians and Akkadians alike because it represented the fullness of the mystic forces early people had no understanding for.  Classical Greek records the numbers 2 for happiness, sometimes discord, and 3 for strength as did the Hebrew records.  Romans lived in a dichotomous world, one world of practical, utilitarian living, the other world for the great secrets of life and mysticism.  Their symbol of strength was the number two, represented by their consuls during the days of the republic and by their founding mythical fathers, twins, Romulus and Remus.  But they also loved the number 10 and its powers of 2 and 3 (100 and 1000) for overwhelming, unbreakable, impenetrable force.

Religion through the ages has also developed its own number values for symbols.  3, 4, 7, and 10 have been their old reliables.  From the Christian age onward, 3 has represented the deity.  Four has represented the four elements of the Earth or the four corners of the Earth, depending on the era.  7 often represented completeness, and 10 represented something with force or something in an absolute form.

For me, the symbolic number is 5.  It doesn't match anything from literature, modern or ancient, but it does symbolize complete happiness and satisfaction from every fiber of my being.   It provides strength during difficult times, vitality during peaceful times.  5 is every bit as significant to me that 3 is to Christendom, 10 is to the Romans, and 7 to the Sumerians.  My life thrives on five.  It is my special number and heightens my experience.

A priori

Rank ordering is a simple exercise, but I find that many cannot rank their days or their emotional meanderings.  Sometimes people find that they can set a goal or two, but watching their actions to obtain the goal they have set shows that rank ordering is not something they are accustomed to doing.  Too many other desires pull them away from what they say is important.

Higher education helps to a degree so that people know that they really can't achieve something unless they rank order.  And certainly, advanced studies or successful entrepreneurship prove the necessity of rank ordering in order to achieve what one sets out to achieve.  Watching the most recent superbowl showed the importance of rank ordering for sure because the quarterback with no superbowl, or playoff experience for that matter, didn't know to rank order clock management as an a priori task in his preparation.  The other quarterback did, and the game came down to managing the clock well.

Since my 30s I have rank ordered my life, and when the circumstances allowed for unilateral control of a situation, I have done exactly what I have wanted to do.  That's not the whole story, though.  Circumstances seldom allow for unilateral control.  I didn't order the death of a beloved professor that, had he lived, probably would have changed the path I took.  But he died, and I went about my business bettered by his influence, but not bettered by his direction.  I didn't order my son's death at a young age, and that altered my path over time absolutely from the trajectory it was on. 

As I consider the rank order of my top five desires, I know what it takes for each item to be realized.  Not any of them are wholly within my own ability to realize.  So, I am setting out toward the realization of the top ranked item first, knowing that, with faith in the part not dependent on me, its realization will bring me the greatest of earthly happiness.

Mid-winter dandelions

The groundhog predicted an early spring for this year.  As I look out my window, I can confirm that the spring will come early.  Dandelions dot my yard.  Dandelions only show up in mild temperatures indicative of spring.  It has been a mild week for temperatures in the dead center of winter - 80s last week, 70s this week.  So, seeing dandelions makes me know that the trees will be ready to bloom in about a month.  I know this because the round head of soft fuzz replacing the dandelion after its flower is gone, is ready for a strong wind to spread the dandelions across my yard to neighbors' yards.  This means that February will have one or two cold spells of slightly under freezing, but after that, the winds of March will be ushering in the spring weather.

Because of an early spring, then the usual "April showers bringing May flowers" will not occur.  Rain events will be split between March and June.  It's all about watching signs and having gone through the cycle before.

Life offers its set of patterns also.  A book from the 1980s called Passages helped me see these patterns.  That is not to say that life is predictable.  It is to say that large patterns tend to guide people through the decades of their lives.  For the people going through the decade, everything happens fresh and new as if they are the first to ever experience life in their own unique ways.  While that is true on a day-to-day basis, a larger pattern follows certain guideposts.

So, I am going to sit back, enjoy the spring when it strikes early, and enjoy my life knowing what the big picture is about to bring.