Moods

My iPod has died.  Please don't tell me that it was meant to die, the battery having lasted three years, the device itself having been repeatedly dropped on the concrete of my carport while exercising...because I don't buy it.  No, I did buy it, that is the point.  Once bought, a thing should stay bought.  The demise of my iPod came just after Jane had clamped my feet onto the pedals of my exercycle, so I was stranded in a manner of speaking.  Exercise being essential, there was nothing to do but forge boringly ahead, watching the exercise-o-meter or whatever the thing is called, crank through sufficient numbers until I was done.  Or dead.  Whichever came first.  This blog is a testament to the former, but there were moments.  

It angered me to have a much valued part of my electronic life suddenly head for the scrap heap.  Worse, I was now left with nothing but my quadriceps and an hour's lactic acid, the BBC's podcast Reith Lecture by Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, having been my intended entertainment...and I must digress to denounce a very silly account of the lectures by Simon Jenkins in The Guardian...I really wonder if the man even heard Rees on science and the future of mankind.  The latter being not exactly a trivial subject.  Nevermind, for there is no possibility for intellectual back-and-forth at the moment, being deprived of Apple's electronic gift to the world, not to mention the BBC's.  I am angry.  In fact, I am very angry, and get so angry as I begin forcing the exercise bike's pedals, that I wonder at the cardiac wisdom in this adventure.  Not only am I 63 years old, the day is a warm one.  Jane has departed for home, and I spurned her last-minute offer to fetch my mobile phone.  I waved her away and went after the cardiovascular thing.  My legs are working the exercycle the way pistons in a locomotive work the wheels...ok, indirectly.  To be precise, and having been geared up for a lecture on science and believing in precision...my piston-like legs are pounding away like the diesel generator in a locomotive.  Angry and furious and outraged, and pedaling on and on.  I do what the digital display describes as 3 1/2 virtual miles in less than 40 minutes.  Trust me, this is a quadriplegic first.  I am exhausted, although none the worse for cardiovascular wear, when I tilt back my wheelchair for a rest.

What has got me so angry?  And now that I think about it, what got me so melancholy this morning?  I awakened in Jane's bedroom, summer light streaming in from upper story windows, one dog on the bed, a cat circling my face.  The woman of the house was downstairs making tea.  There was nothing to regret, everything to appreciate and enjoy, and it hit me, as things often do, how much I had lost.  Melancholy born of nothing.  Except perhaps, as Jane pointed out while we stared into our mugs of tea, habit.

We gravitate toward the accustomed.  A simple fact of human nature, that the known and familiar, however unpleasant or even self-destructive, has enormous appeal.  The comfort zone.  I am used to hanging in and hanging on.  I am not used to breaking the bonds and whooping with ecstasy.  The latter seems foolish and unwise, life having in store for us what it does.  I am aware, sometimes painfully, that life's joys are not to be trusted...therefore not to be experienced fully.  I have a sense of my personality on the 'mute' setting, particularly cautious about getting carried away by love.  Which is essentially what love does.  It transports.  It lifts.  And it frightens.

The next morning Jane has sped off to work early, leaving me with a cooling cup of tea and a pervasive anxiety.  I try to dissect this state.  The fear of getting involved with a woman, having seen the last one die.  The fear of women period, the first in my life having wavered between absent and explosive.  Hard to say what is going on, particularly in the emotional midst.  My socks are going on, that is the important thing.  It is a rare day that I do not have help with this...and actually I should give myself high marks for good self-mothering in this department...that I have acknowledged and bowed to the fact that many personal tasks annoy me beyond words.  Socks seem to be the worst, requiring both the ability to lift one's feet and maneuver two hands.  

An outsider might marvel at my neuromuscular adaptation in the sock department.  On the foot that can move, I one-handedly stretch the sock from one side to the other, wiggling toes to get the thing started.  Then I roll the half-clad foot across the carpet, the sock unfurling along the limb somewhat like a condom.  For the paralyzed leg, I sigh deeply, inhaling and praying at the same time.  For this requires crossing the bad leg over the good one, opening the sock with two fingers of the good hand and trying to ensnare as many toes as possible within the fabric.  The next stage involves trying to enlarge this toe-snaring maneuver to include all five, then working the sock up the foot.  On this particular morning I only call myself 'stupid' a few times, mostly in the course of making progress.

Now that I have both socks on, it is time to struggle with the shorts.  These do not peel on, but require a series of jerks and yanks.  Leaning against the front of my wheelchair provides a barrier to progress, however, which requires stepping forward, something of a dangerous maneuver with one hand and one leg.  There's more yanking, more shaking, more self-denunciation, but at last the shorts are on...and can the shoes be far behind?  Thing is, I feel like such a wilting violet, all aswoon over this or that emotion.  So I must have seemed to my mother, a woman whose own emotions rumbled away like a protracted Mount Saint Helens...a touchy and perceptive son being something of an impediment if one is simply trying to get on with suppression.  

I am having this thought, not a particularly profound one, while contemplating the issue of breakfast.  The latter is bound up with so many other matters, household maintenance being something along the lines of ecological science, everything interdependent, one affecting the next.  That's why it's not so simple, the food choice.  The housekeeper is coming today, her absence having been a long one...after a month in the UK.  This raises the issue of pots and pans.  One of the most essential currently being filled with refried beans which I realize, just after 8 AM, would be better in my stomach than in this precious stainless steel vessel.  Naturally, I place the pot on the stove, sprinkle some grated cheese on the top, and get things going.  Traditionally, this would be part of a larger Mexican breakfast, huevos rancheros, for example.  But in this moment of high anxiety and low energy, egg preparation is way beyond my grasp.  It's all I can do to grasp the stainless steel pan and place it before me.  I am so hungry, fear whetting any appetite in the end, I wolf the beans down.  This is one of the deathbed vows I made to Marlou...not to eat meals from a saucepan...and it has been broken far too many times.  But this is the whole point, that this shallow stainless steel pan is very much like a bowl with a handle, and designed for serving as much as eating.  I am convinced she will understand.

As I am convinced she will understand about Jane.  Isn't this one of the advantages of death, that we are transformed into a pure spirit or memory or idea?  Certainly, we have all the time in the world, or the universe, and no body.  And so it makes logical sense for those with bodies and little time to make the most of both.  While thinking these thoughts, I realize what a bachelor breakfast I have concocted.  Actually, the truth lies considerably beyond this...for it is an eccentric person's meal, both in content and style.  Jane and I both excel at eccentricity, and our challenge is more to mesh the details together than the larger plan.  Which for me includes often no plan, but the moment.  And the moment is sharp, has been growing sharper over the last month and now requires paring and filing...clearly the province of Sky Nails.  

I give the Vietnamese manicurists a call, and they urge me to rush over.  When I arrive, I can see why.  The place is deserted.  I am not only the only male customer, a status I've grown to expect, but the only customer.  Minh goes to work on my cuticles.  I ask about her Fourth of July.  She grins and nods.  Any fireworks?  More grinning and nodding.  She does not understand a word I'm saying.  Neither do I. I am piecing together a life, aware that my human attachments and general state are in flux.  There are losses.  The shirt I snagged on a piece of copper weather stripping at Jane's house comes to mind now, being illustrative of some larger principle.  I find it endlessly annoying the way I awkwardly proceed through the world, stumbling over things, scraping past others.  And in the case of the doorway, sidling through in a way that looped the cotton weave of my shirt against a metal point.  Which if I had gracefully accepted things, gently backed up, perhaps asked for Jane's help in unsnagging myself...would have prevented tearing the shirt.  Too late.  I have paid the garment price.  And now I am not pretending that I need to rush off...but letting Minh rub lotion in my arms.  'You put lotion,' she says, eyes seeking my agreement.  These are her only words, her wisdom for my dry middle-aged skin.  They are as wise as any I have heard, ever.  And I promise her yes, I will put lotion.

When the woman from MasterCard calls just before noon, I almost feel sorry for her.  She wants to speak to Ms. Mary Lou Imez.  Oh, don't we all, I say reflexively.  She goes on about wanting to talk to Ms. Mary Lou, and I go on about how she's hard to reach these days.  But my heart isn't in it.  I have other fish to fry.  Should she call back, the woman asks, while I am looking up the latest deal on chicken manure at the garden center up the street?  No, I suggest, it's a dead end.  The woman thanks me and hangs up.  A shift ensues.  As though one has hit the shift key on the great keyboard of life.  Things are now uppercase, all of them.  Which leads me back to the iPod.  There's a thing one can do, simple enough, which involves holding down the menu and start positions at the same time, which supposedly restarts the system.  Sure enough, the little apple logo pops up.  It's going to be an uppercase day.