FUNK

 I woke this Monday morning in a horrible blue funk, dreaming of fire lines approaching a city with a mayor who could or would do nothing, and images of a patio covered with fresh dog shit that no one had picked up. Sound familiar? The profound depression in my mind was matched by a body in pain everywhere, mostly (age-related!) aches in every joint, and muscles that felt depleted of all physical strength. 

Not a good way to wake up!

Meditation was a challenge, with words darting everywhere in my head--words trying to describe what it was I was feeling as I sat. Well, "writing." It's my mind's way of dealing with what's troubling it. Namely...

... a country in chaos, with one political party mindlessly obstructing every effort of the other to reach out and help the millions of Americans who are out of work, hungry and, too many of them, sick and dying; with a leader coming in from the golf course to issue senseless and unhelpful executive orders in an attempt to project the impression of powerful action; a leader who so badly needs adulation that he calls in dozens of his hundreds-of-dollar annual fee golf club members to applaud him loudly at a "press conference..."

... a country riven by discord, mutual hatred and mistrust, one-third of them fed on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour diet of misinformation and outright lies, and driven by a hateful fear of the invented specter of "liberals" and "socialism..."

... and a personal sense of dislocation and disorientation: what am I even doing here, in this, my adopted country, that now feels so alien? Where do I belong...? 

I breathe in, I breathe out. That's one saving grace. The other is more mundane: it is that I have enough "English" left in me to get up from my chair and head off to the kitchen to brew up the solace of a morning cup of tea.

A VERY ODD NIGHT

I tried a couple of Tramadol pills last night before bedtime, thinking to ease the neck pain that has persisted despite all efforts to dispel it--and the result was a very odd night indeed.  I went off to sleep just fine, and woke what seemed like many hours later, only to discover that I'd been asleep for less than an hour.  That heralded a night in which I woke at least once an hour, and seemed only to doze in between times.  Time seemed to stretch out immeasurably.  Minutes went by like hours.  I kept expecting the clock to show a much later time, but no, only minutes had passed since I last looked.

To add to this strange temporal experience, I had none of the fretful wakefulness that I normally have with time moving on in its usual inexorable manner.  I felt gently euphoric the entire time, released from the kind of anxiety that often accompanies sleeplessness.  My mind kept moving in and out of very pleasant dreams, seeming to connect them from one to the next; perhaps they were not sleeping dreams, but waking ones.  I scarcely know.

Clearly, this was a drugged state.  It was, though, nothing like a "high"--more like a persistent sense of cocoon'ed warmth and comfort.  Drug addiction has always puzzled and disturbed me, but last night's experience led me to understand a little better that a person who experiences this kind of pleasure and release from physical (or emotional!) pain might want to repeat it.  For myself, I'll avoid taking Tramadol again before going to bed.  Pleasant though the experience was, I'd not want to repeat it.  I'll get back to things like Aleve and Ibuprofin, which help with the pain but result in none of the effects I describe.

I wonder, do Buddhist monks allow themselves an aspirin once in a while?  After all, the practice is about learning to live with suffering.  Does that include headaches?  I know that pain is inevitable as one ages.  X-rays show that the pain in my neck is caused by arthritis--a condition that is not going to improve or disappear with the years.  Better than drugs is a practice that teaches the avoidance of attachment to that inevitable pain--a skill that has obviously eluded me as yet!

THE PREDICAMENT

It's a predicament.  I never learned to type.  For... what... ?  More than half a century, let's say, I have managed by looking down at the keys to type, then up at the text, then down again at the keys, and so on.  The system works, all other things being equal.  I do it virtually every day, and stuff gets written.  Now, though, with a pain in the neck that doesn't seem to want to go away, it has become a problem.  Even though I prop up my laptop at eye level, as my daughter suggests, I still have to move my head fractionally back and forth to look down at the keys.  Which results in... well, this morning, after only a few minutes, a nasty and persistent neck spasm.

As a predicament, it may not seem like much.  I think, for example, of Ram Dass and the catastrophic stroke that deprived him of his greatest gift, the ability to speak extemporaneously to eager listeners with wit, insight and wisdom.   But it's similar in that it challenges my deepest and most ingrained sense of identity.  I'm a writer.  This is what I do.  And when I can't do it, or can do it only at the cost of severe, not to say excruciating pain, this small predicament leaves me confronted with the prospect of not being able to be the person that I thought I was.  Even for a day--though it has been a full week now, not being able to write leaves me feeling empty, worthless, good-for-nothing.

Oh, I can manage to squeeze out a couple of paragraphs, like this entry.  But, worse than the mechanical problem I have described, the pain seems to drive all thought out of my head.  This morning I had intended, for example, to review an art show that I saw yesterday, but that requires the kind of attentive and sequential thought of which I seem to be incapable right now.  The attention is constantly diverted from the paper (I mean, of course, the screen) to the pain, and the mind blurs with lassitude in a kind of self-defense.

I don't mean to complain, though I'm sure this sounds like a complaint.  My purpose was merely to describe the predicament as best I could, so that I might better come to terms with it.  Like every other human predicament, it offers me the important (if unwelcome!) opportunity to learn...  I notice how I cling to that identity.  So what would it be like not to be "the writer"?  And what would I need to do to adapt to that new reality?  What happens if, and when, I begin to lose my writer's curiosity and intelligence?  The writer's ambition, which gives me a sense of purpose in my life?

These are tough, scary questions.  I have my neck to thank for bringing them so forcefully to my attention.