My friend Ocho was dubbed Slam Champion last night.
Here is a sample of his work.
Word.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
TWO SCORE AND TWO
In five months I will turn 42.
Ouch.
I'm not too worried about it, though; a while back somebody on the Today Show said something like, "42 is the new 27." So, it's all good.
I mean, even though I do tend to grunt when I stand up, my pant size hasn't grown lately. I could still pull off a red convertible without looking totally pathetic. I don't yet begin all my stories with "Back in my day...." And, all but one of my teeth are original equipment. I've never been one for daily shaving, but now when my beard starts to show, my chin looks like I grazed it across a bowl of whipped cream. People will nod and wipe around their mouth sometimes say, "You got something on your...oh...er...nothing" before they walk away embarrassed.
Yes, I am aging. I check my retirement account frequently. I have various hitches in my git-along. It's cold in here, and "You kids better STAY OUTTA MY DAMN LAWN!" But I have not yet switched to elastic waistbands.
I have an alarm on my cell phone that reminds me on Tuesdays and Thursdays that it's my turn to pick up my daughter and the neighbor kids at middle school. I started using the alarm after a couple of panicked calls I received 30-45 minutes after school was dismissed.
"Um, Reacher?"
"Yeah, Barb, how are y-- Oh, crap!"
I have alarms for everything now, and my shirt pocket is perpetually full of notes reminding me what to do, where to be, and who to call.
I was on the phone the other day with a representative from the company that administers my 403b account. The call was taking longer than I expected. I realized that in a few minutes my alarm would go off, and since I intentionally programmed it to be loud and obnoxious, capable of distracting me from whatever I happened to be doing at the time, I got really worried. (You'd think I would have quit caring what people thought so far this side of adolescence.) So I started a frantic search for my cell phone so I could disable the alarm before it sounded.
The time was approaching. I couldn't find the phone.
"From a customer service standpoint, sir, is there a reason you wish to transfer these particular funds?"
Don't have time for this. Must end call.
I used shorthand, and probably lied a little to quicken the transaction.
"Is there anything else I can do for you today, Mr. Reacher?"
I rushed to finish the call. "Nope. Thanks. Bye."
Click.
As I ended the call, I saw my cell phone. There it was. IN MY HAND! I had been using it to place the long distance call.
It's a wonder that I still know how to breathe.
Ouch.
I'm not too worried about it, though; a while back somebody on the Today Show said something like, "42 is the new 27." So, it's all good.
I mean, even though I do tend to grunt when I stand up, my pant size hasn't grown lately. I could still pull off a red convertible without looking totally pathetic. I don't yet begin all my stories with "Back in my day...." And, all but one of my teeth are original equipment. I've never been one for daily shaving, but now when my beard starts to show, my chin looks like I grazed it across a bowl of whipped cream. People will nod and wipe around their mouth sometimes say, "You got something on your...oh...er...nothing" before they walk away embarrassed.
Yes, I am aging. I check my retirement account frequently. I have various hitches in my git-along. It's cold in here, and "You kids better STAY OUTTA MY DAMN LAWN!" But I have not yet switched to elastic waistbands.
I have an alarm on my cell phone that reminds me on Tuesdays and Thursdays that it's my turn to pick up my daughter and the neighbor kids at middle school. I started using the alarm after a couple of panicked calls I received 30-45 minutes after school was dismissed.
"Um, Reacher?"
"Yeah, Barb, how are y-- Oh, crap!"
I have alarms for everything now, and my shirt pocket is perpetually full of notes reminding me what to do, where to be, and who to call.
I was on the phone the other day with a representative from the company that administers my 403b account. The call was taking longer than I expected. I realized that in a few minutes my alarm would go off, and since I intentionally programmed it to be loud and obnoxious, capable of distracting me from whatever I happened to be doing at the time, I got really worried. (You'd think I would have quit caring what people thought so far this side of adolescence.) So I started a frantic search for my cell phone so I could disable the alarm before it sounded.
The time was approaching. I couldn't find the phone.
"From a customer service standpoint, sir, is there a reason you wish to transfer these particular funds?"
Don't have time for this. Must end call.
I used shorthand, and probably lied a little to quicken the transaction.
"Is there anything else I can do for you today, Mr. Reacher?"
I rushed to finish the call. "Nope. Thanks. Bye."
Click.
As I ended the call, I saw my cell phone. There it was. IN MY HAND! I had been using it to place the long distance call.
It's a wonder that I still know how to breathe.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
HEAD NOTES
It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it wasn't really stormy, but it was a dark night. Not particularly dark I guess. And, actually, it was about 1:00 in the morning, on July 11, 2002. I was fast asleep, until I was strangely awakened by an overwhelming sense of disorientation and numbness in my limbs.
I woke to the most frightening experience of my life.
For two days previous, my friend Todd and I had been holed up in a friend's river cabin on the Niangua, recording about 10 songs for a self-produced CD. We called ourselves "Brother Wiley" back then, and you won't find the disc anywhere, unless you ask me for a copy. We had a very productive session, thriving on very little sleep and original musical elixir. When I returned home, I recounted the stories to my family, then promptly collapsed in bed, exhausted.
"Messy," I slurred to my wife, Betsy. My speech was nearly gone.
She rolled over, in the throes of her own peculiar diorientation that comes from interrupted REM sleep.
"What?" she asked lazily, blinking.
"I can...I cn...Som...Somes wrong," I managed to stammer, my eyelids fluttering.
She bolted upright. "What? What's wrong? What's wrong?"
"I jst...I ngh...I jss...I ono...can think"
I managed to get "call 911" out somehow, then thickly rolled out of bed and started to stumble toward the bathroom. I don't know what I thought I was going to do there. I guess it's just where we go when something is wrong with our bodies. I discovered, when I got there, that I had an overwhelming urge to urinate. I did, then collapsed on the floor, moaning and slinging verbal nonsense. Betsy had run to get help; so, for a few moments I was alone.
What was happening in my mind was, "I'm dying. This is it. I don't know how or why, but this is it--the end of my life." I always thought I would face death calmly. "I'm not afraid to die." Lived with no regrets. Got my spiritual ducks in a row. Bullshit. I was terrified. "What would happen to my daughters? Will my wife remarry? Is there a hell?"
Amidst the blathering, I managed to get out, "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus..." not as a mantra, or even a prayer. It was just all I could think to say. All my talk about radical grace and learning to accept forgiveness, and I realized I didn't really believe it. I was a liar. When it came my time, I was not saturated with sweet assurance, I was tripping in a panic unlike anything I had ever felt before.
By the time the paramedics arrived, I had stabilized quite a bit. I was still weak and dizzy, but the severe disorientation and most of the numbness had passed. The immediate thinking was that I had experienced a TIA, or mini-stroke. The ER docs ordered a CT scan and blood tests. Normal. They did some other tests (thyroid, blood sugar, etc.), but everything came back fine.
Over the next few weeks, I had an MRI to test for MS or a brain tumor. Normal. An EEG to test for seizure disorders. Normal. A lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to test for things like encephalitis, Lyme's disease, West Nile, meningitis, etc. Normal. Normal. Normal.
It was mid-August and the new semester was upon us, and I was normal. I was so normal, I walked with a cane much of the time, and my incredible father drove me the 65-mile roundtrip commute each day, because I was experiencing too much vertigo to drive a car safely. I'm sure my classes were the height of academic stimulation: teacher talks in a monotone while staring at us like he is drunk.
Eventually, through my own research, I raised the possibility of low B12 level to my neurologist. He checked me and found that I was right at the dangerously low threshold. I began taking B12 injections right away and experienced a dramatic improvement. I was able to function normally, but the lightheadedness and loss of balance were still with me. I think I have progressively gotten better, or I am just learning to cope with it. I still have "bad head" periods, where I experience pressure, a cognitive fuzziness, fatigue, a loss of balance, and a variety of other symptoms.
Over the course of the last--soon to be--four years, I have had two more MRIs (the brain pics are from the last one), numerous blood tests, a full allergy panel, an inner ear exam, and I've worn a heart monitor. I've been examined by three ER docs, three primary care physicians, four neurologists, an ear, nose, and throat specialist, an allergist, and two chiropractors, one of whom also practices acupuncture and Chinese medicine. I have discussed my case with at least three lawyers, several English professors, and one landscaper. No one seems to have a clue. The result of every test and medical visit: I am in perfect health.
Two different doctors essentially told me I should quit being a baby and get over myself, suggesting it was all in my head. I guess that's what medical dumbasses say when they are too stupid to figure out what ails their patients. "It's not in my handy-dandy medical differential diagnostic guidebook, so you must be cuckoo."
I don't happen to believe that mental illnesses should be stigmatized, so I even went through a mental screening with a psychiatric counselor. After 30 minutes of insightful probing like, "Are you under a lot of stress at work?" the therapist declared my problems to be purely physical, rejecting me as a psychiatric patient.
As a longshot I tried two different selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). One made me much worse, and one made me happier...but I still had all my normal symptoms. I'm not a fan of long-term medicating, so I punted the depression pills. I took sleep aids for quite awhile, since I had taken to sleeping 3-4 hours a night. I have since quit that, and my slumber has improved a bit. I tried various herbal remedies that either did nothing or exacerbated my symptoms. So, no medications have worked.
I struggle with my memory sometimes, and I still tip over sometimes. But, since I have passed 4o in the interim, I don't know how much of it is aging and how much is bad head. Overall, I can function normally, I'm just not always doing so well behind the veil.
So, why am I telling you all this?
Sympathy. I want to be showered with well-wishing and pies. Warm pies. Mmmm, warm pies.
I'm really not fishing for encouragement. Please don't leave comments about how you are praying for me. There is some question about how effective that is these days anyway. I'm not really looking for help. If you want to pray for me, just do it; don't tell me about it. However, your time would be better spent if you prayed for them.
I suppose this is partly an exercise for me to try to understand things better by telling the story. Maybe some aspiring medical genius will read this and figure out what's wrong with me (there's a pie in it for you if you do). Maybe I would like to use this as an excuse for why I haven't posted anything in a month. It has been a bad head couple of weeks, but that's never stopped me before.
Some have suggested that I should be careful telling this story publicly, since employers or other interested parties might be tempted to discriminate against me because of my health condition. I have serious disagreements with some of the folks at the University, but I must say that no one there has ever been anything but kind and supportive regarding my health.
Maybe this is the reason for this post: I have been a little discouraged about my spiritual vibrancy lately. I begin to wonder sometimes if I am just kidding myself, that I really don't believe, and that I am a terrible person, husband, father, friend, teacher, musician, writer, etc. But, I am encouraged when I remember that when I was "dying," it made perfect sense to me to cry out the name of my savior. Nothing else came to mind. The only hope I saw in the face of certain ruin was the One. It's a no-brainer as a Sunday School answer, but the name came to my lips automatically, in the time of my greatest fear.
I don't know if he saved me that night. Maybe things just happened the way biology dictated they should. I must confess that it pisses me off sometimes that my so-called savior hasn't fixed me completely. I sometimes wonder how much good I could do if I didn't fall into an occasional brain cloud. I am selfish and spoiled. I want to be fixed and I don't understand what the hold up is. Then I listen to how I talk to my daughters sometimes, how I ignore the poor, how my dogs go unwalked when I don't feel like getting out, how I cut people off in traffic, how I snicker at the misfortunes of others, and I think: It's a wonder that I still know how to breathe.
I woke to the most frightening experience of my life.
For two days previous, my friend Todd and I had been holed up in a friend's river cabin on the Niangua, recording about 10 songs for a self-produced CD. We called ourselves "Brother Wiley" back then, and you won't find the disc anywhere, unless you ask me for a copy. We had a very productive session, thriving on very little sleep and original musical elixir. When I returned home, I recounted the stories to my family, then promptly collapsed in bed, exhausted.
"Messy," I slurred to my wife, Betsy. My speech was nearly gone.
She rolled over, in the throes of her own peculiar diorientation that comes from interrupted REM sleep.
"What?" she asked lazily, blinking.
"I can...I cn...Som...Somes wrong," I managed to stammer, my eyelids fluttering.
She bolted upright. "What? What's wrong? What's wrong?"
"I jst...I ngh...I jss...I ono...can think"
I managed to get "call 911" out somehow, then thickly rolled out of bed and started to stumble toward the bathroom. I don't know what I thought I was going to do there. I guess it's just where we go when something is wrong with our bodies. I discovered, when I got there, that I had an overwhelming urge to urinate. I did, then collapsed on the floor, moaning and slinging verbal nonsense. Betsy had run to get help; so, for a few moments I was alone.
What was happening in my mind was, "I'm dying. This is it. I don't know how or why, but this is it--the end of my life." I always thought I would face death calmly. "I'm not afraid to die." Lived with no regrets. Got my spiritual ducks in a row. Bullshit. I was terrified. "What would happen to my daughters? Will my wife remarry? Is there a hell?"
Amidst the blathering, I managed to get out, "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus..." not as a mantra, or even a prayer. It was just all I could think to say. All my talk about radical grace and learning to accept forgiveness, and I realized I didn't really believe it. I was a liar. When it came my time, I was not saturated with sweet assurance, I was tripping in a panic unlike anything I had ever felt before.
By the time the paramedics arrived, I had stabilized quite a bit. I was still weak and dizzy, but the severe disorientation and most of the numbness had passed. The immediate thinking was that I had experienced a TIA, or mini-stroke. The ER docs ordered a CT scan and blood tests. Normal. They did some other tests (thyroid, blood sugar, etc.), but everything came back fine.
Over the next few weeks, I had an MRI to test for MS or a brain tumor. Normal. An EEG to test for seizure disorders. Normal. A lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to test for things like encephalitis, Lyme's disease, West Nile, meningitis, etc. Normal. Normal. Normal.
It was mid-August and the new semester was upon us, and I was normal. I was so normal, I walked with a cane much of the time, and my incredible father drove me the 65-mile roundtrip commute each day, because I was experiencing too much vertigo to drive a car safely. I'm sure my classes were the height of academic stimulation: teacher talks in a monotone while staring at us like he is drunk.
Eventually, through my own research, I raised the possibility of low B12 level to my neurologist. He checked me and found that I was right at the dangerously low threshold. I began taking B12 injections right away and experienced a dramatic improvement. I was able to function normally, but the lightheadedness and loss of balance were still with me. I think I have progressively gotten better, or I am just learning to cope with it. I still have "bad head" periods, where I experience pressure, a cognitive fuzziness, fatigue, a loss of balance, and a variety of other symptoms.
Over the course of the last--soon to be--four years, I have had two more MRIs (the brain pics are from the last one), numerous blood tests, a full allergy panel, an inner ear exam, and I've worn a heart monitor. I've been examined by three ER docs, three primary care physicians, four neurologists, an ear, nose, and throat specialist, an allergist, and two chiropractors, one of whom also practices acupuncture and Chinese medicine. I have discussed my case with at least three lawyers, several English professors, and one landscaper. No one seems to have a clue. The result of every test and medical visit: I am in perfect health.
Two different doctors essentially told me I should quit being a baby and get over myself, suggesting it was all in my head. I guess that's what medical dumbasses say when they are too stupid to figure out what ails their patients. "It's not in my handy-dandy medical differential diagnostic guidebook, so you must be cuckoo."
I don't happen to believe that mental illnesses should be stigmatized, so I even went through a mental screening with a psychiatric counselor. After 30 minutes of insightful probing like, "Are you under a lot of stress at work?" the therapist declared my problems to be purely physical, rejecting me as a psychiatric patient.
As a longshot I tried two different selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). One made me much worse, and one made me happier...but I still had all my normal symptoms. I'm not a fan of long-term medicating, so I punted the depression pills. I took sleep aids for quite awhile, since I had taken to sleeping 3-4 hours a night. I have since quit that, and my slumber has improved a bit. I tried various herbal remedies that either did nothing or exacerbated my symptoms. So, no medications have worked.
I struggle with my memory sometimes, and I still tip over sometimes. But, since I have passed 4o in the interim, I don't know how much of it is aging and how much is bad head. Overall, I can function normally, I'm just not always doing so well behind the veil.
So, why am I telling you all this?
Sympathy. I want to be showered with well-wishing and pies. Warm pies. Mmmm, warm pies.
I'm really not fishing for encouragement. Please don't leave comments about how you are praying for me. There is some question about how effective that is these days anyway. I'm not really looking for help. If you want to pray for me, just do it; don't tell me about it. However, your time would be better spent if you prayed for them.
I suppose this is partly an exercise for me to try to understand things better by telling the story. Maybe some aspiring medical genius will read this and figure out what's wrong with me (there's a pie in it for you if you do). Maybe I would like to use this as an excuse for why I haven't posted anything in a month. It has been a bad head couple of weeks, but that's never stopped me before.
Some have suggested that I should be careful telling this story publicly, since employers or other interested parties might be tempted to discriminate against me because of my health condition. I have serious disagreements with some of the folks at the University, but I must say that no one there has ever been anything but kind and supportive regarding my health.
Maybe this is the reason for this post: I have been a little discouraged about my spiritual vibrancy lately. I begin to wonder sometimes if I am just kidding myself, that I really don't believe, and that I am a terrible person, husband, father, friend, teacher, musician, writer, etc. But, I am encouraged when I remember that when I was "dying," it made perfect sense to me to cry out the name of my savior. Nothing else came to mind. The only hope I saw in the face of certain ruin was the One. It's a no-brainer as a Sunday School answer, but the name came to my lips automatically, in the time of my greatest fear.
I don't know if he saved me that night. Maybe things just happened the way biology dictated they should. I must confess that it pisses me off sometimes that my so-called savior hasn't fixed me completely. I sometimes wonder how much good I could do if I didn't fall into an occasional brain cloud. I am selfish and spoiled. I want to be fixed and I don't understand what the hold up is. Then I listen to how I talk to my daughters sometimes, how I ignore the poor, how my dogs go unwalked when I don't feel like getting out, how I cut people off in traffic, how I snicker at the misfortunes of others, and I think: It's a wonder that I still know how to breathe.
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