Archive for March 2009
Timing
It’s all in the timing. The trick is, each of us measure it differently. Some people become fixated on it and others make a conscious decision to disregard it. My time that remains prior to departure for the Himalayan trek is now inside 2 weeks. I’m hoping to pull together the many little things I’ve been doing to prepare and this weekend maybe even pack as if I were leaving, in order to better sense if there is something I have overlooked. This would give me time to take care of things if I find I don’t have what I need or want. I guess I am also interested to determine whether I have too much. Not too much time, but too much stuff.
I’ve made time to watch some basketball of the NCAA Men’s Tournament. As with almost all sports, time is all-critical. Obviously, there is the shot-clock to be managed, repeatedly throughout the game, and then the final buzzer to be beaten. But most importantly, the timing of each and every decision, as well as the athletic ability to respond in critical time to each decision, reveals outcomes of success and failure. For me it provides the beauty or the banality of the game. There are many times when players are so totally open to receive a pass, yet that moment is so incredibly short, infinitesimally small even, that completing it doesn’t happen. If their timing is off, the game can seem boring as hell. And when it is on, I find it a work of art.
Some athletes speak of slowing the action down in their minds, or of feeling as if that is what happens to them when they get in a ‘zone’. But I think the real secret is in the ability to think ahead. Anticipate what is about to happen and you just might be ready when it does. Maybe that is just another way of describing the same phenomenon, I don’t know. Makes it pretty fascinating with regard to team sports when you think about the nuances of timing and are able to witness a group of individuals mesh in ultimate synchronized anticipation and micro-second reactions, to achieve success. Especially when they are doing it against another team of individuals employing the same skills and effort to thwart them all the while.
I measure the time in two ways: the time remaining is getting short and yet it is still a long time until I leave. It is all relative.
Random Writing
- What if I simply wrote about it
and when you read it you were moved
by its inherent tendency to apply
rendering all your suppositions proved
not like the tacky film of ad campaigns that try
no farther
much farther away than that
down where involuntary doesn’t even begin to exist
and up into the stratospheres of our existential bliss
where the vibrations of our ever present song
invigorate our reasons to believe
which we do
and have been all along
neither color nor flavor
but both all that and more
where nothing else disturbs
the focal distance from before
the shoelace became frayed
and elastic recoil happens not
sickly film forming over soup in pan
as simmer faintly fades from hot
beneath the late afternoon’s waning light
revealing brilliant yellow gold
where moments ago there was only white
there’s both new and also something old
already been here, already done all that
it’s the same as what already was
as if that’s some bright new found fact
a digression from a fear
accessory after the act
it fascinates and it bores
though mostly alluding every grasp
like a meaning getting briskly stamped
upon our spongy blue-green minds
and we wile away while we can
or is it them or me or you?
flailing away in attempt to understand
both a meaning and intent
focused solely on the only thing that
hasn’t even happened yet
slippery sliding down a slanted slope
of largely hypothetic tries
to heap ungodly piles of healing balm
on swollen red and tired eyes
and waiting ’til the late of any night
as if waiting makes it all alright
seeking not that phantom wisp of what
it is that starts
and stops
this unattainable freight in flight
which circles round upon
the very path
it paved away from here in desperate fright
a feeling not so bad in fact
except for when it lingers far too long
draining out the last of tact
struggling grip on flowered teacup
steady enough to avoid
stuttering clatter as you sup
a smile and a worry that have grown together
as if wed years ago
when nothing that has happened
had even begun to happen yet
wonder what
if any
silly significance lies
in the way that some people skew their words
to pronounce the “th” sound
as if it were a “d”
and say with cultivated aplomb
dat dem’s da ones dat up and died.
As of yet untitled… originally composed February 2003.
Side Effects
I am one of those people who doesn’t take much in the way of medications. If I get a headache, I figure I should drink more water and maybe rest a bit. It rarely occurs to me to take a pill for it. Symptoms of a cold have to get pretty severe, or interfere with my ability to function at work, before I reach for the throat lozenge or cough syrup or decongestant. But after a required physical to get clearance from my doctor to participate in a high altitude trek, I was informed I needed to treat a partial airway obstruction. Of all things, it involved a twice-daily dose of medication. I figured that since this was directly related to my breathing, and I would be needing all the breath I can muster on my planned adventure, it would be logical to follow through with the prescribed regimen.
It has been 10 weeks now and I have been tolerating it pretty well. Maybe even noticed the improvement, although I was quite unaware before all this that I was experiencing anything less than optimal. The information provided with the drug indicated that some people experience positive results right away, but it is more likely that it will take 2-4 weeks for the medication to begin to work its magic. My experience has been undefined in the timing of ultimate sustained positive result, but it has been gradually becoming apparent to me that I am developing side effects. And, that they are increasing in number and intensity.
I dug up the literature and revisited the details about side effects. I was a bit surprised to see how many applied. Not all of the listed possibilities, so that is good, huh? But, oh my, look at that. Eleven very recognizable issues, all listed under contact your physician immediately. Not the kind of thing that helps me reduce anxiety of preparing for my big trip.
Didn’t get any specific trip-planning tasks accomplished today, but not because I wasn’t working on anything valuable. Filled out the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bracket. I’m pretty sure I got all the correct teams. Now I just wait for the side-effects of that effort.
Preparing for a trek in the Himalayas
What might be the next best thing to climbing the mountain called Everest? I suggest, for the non-technical climber, it could simply be standing on a nearby summit to enjoy a first-hand view of the highest mountain on Earth. In Nepal the head of the sky is called Sagarmatha. In two weeks, I leave home in Minnesota, U.S.A. to participate in a 7-person, 3-week trek in the Solu Khumbu of Nepal with a goal of reaching Gokyo Ri (17,500 ft.) to view the Earth Mother.
For some perspective, let me point out that Nepal is pretty much on the opposite side of the northern hemisphere from me. I was born and raised in an area of approximate altitude of 700-950 ft. above sea level. I travel very rarely and have never experienced the degree of cultural and economic disparity that I can expect on this trip. This can be called a trek for me in more ways than one. Preparations have been in process for months, but it feels like it is getting down to the wire now and there is an increasing level of anxiety that is showing up.
Today, I picked off some of the little tasks. I laminated some ID and medical information and used a permanent marker to write my name and address on the inside of my bags. Every little step accomplished helps keep the task of preparing from feeling overwhelming. You know, as in, fooling myself. In the mean time, I am becoming increasingly reverent about every visit to a toilet that offers a seat, to a hot shower of unlimited duration, to my bed; well in advance of how much I will grow to appreciate them in the weeks to come.
On Thursday, April 2, I fly to Los Angeles and then on to Bangkok, Thailand, and after a night’s layover there, to Katmandu, Nepal. After two days, we fly to Lukla, either by Twin Otter or helicopter (I’m leaning toward wanting a ride in a helicopter, but either one sounds “exciting”). We’ll tread the same path as those whose goal includes the death zone at the top of the world, visiting places like Namche Bazaar and Tengboche Monastery. There will be prayer wheels and flags and mantras of ‘om mani padme hum’. Our ultimate elevation will be higher (should I be allowed to achieve it) than Base Camp of the climbers of Everest. Cerebral Edema will not hesitate to take a life at lesser heights than this, if one disregards the signals.
I intend to actually write by hand in a journal during the weeks of the trek to capture details of our adventures. I am sincerely looking forward to being beyond the reach, and for me, subsequent lure, of my usual technologies. So, upon my return, I should hope you will find a series of posts on this site describing the wonder of it all and that you will be intrigued enough to return and explore them with me here.
Namaste.
Glimpse Depression
Depression stalks like a predator and looms large on the brink of moving in for the kill, but it never does. That is what is so insidious and debilitating. It feels like a constant unseen threat. It is like the incredible effectiveness of a torture method that relies on perceived threat, while never crossing the line to following through. It is so intolerable that when individuals can no longer endure the constant feeling that depression is going to move in for that kill, they take care of it themselves. There should be no question why someone commits suicide in that light. Being stalked is worse abuse than experiencing the ultimate confrontation. The confrontation is actually freedom from the burden of stress of anticipated confrontation.
Just like it is too bad that broccoli doesn’t taste like chocolate, it is too bad that the ongoing anticipation that any second will reveal the news of winning the grand prize of our dreams doesn’t loom large on the fringe of our essence day after day after day after sunny damn day. They would need to devise a drug to give us to help us normalize from that constant state of OH MY GOD I’m about to win it all!
I am continually fascinated by the tenacity of depression to cling to the fringes of those of us who experience it. I am never surprised when a person who knows depression reports its incidence. We have periods of respite and feel right with our world. Others are able to enjoy our success. When I see a report of one who is under the oppression, it saddens me for their suffering, but never surprises me that it has occurred. We get to treat it, but we don’t always get to eradicate it.
I have potions and exercises to dispatch it, yet still, in the middle of an otherwise successful amount of healthy activity, I have seen it peek in, as if lifting a facade to reveal the dismal void – a striking contrast; a hilariously out of context glimpse of its threat – that almost make me laugh at the ridiculousness, but for the lethal threat it offers and then find myself back at the task at hand, engaged in the otherwise healthy world all around me. I am duly warned of what waits on my fringes if I ever choose to disregard the conscious decisions I make to walk a path alternate to that possibility.
Maybe I should look at being grateful for the glimpses and for awareness of what they really are. Mostly, I consider them unwelcome interruptions and jarring for their shock value. A lot of, “What is that doing here right now, in this otherwise pleasant moment?”
I think I will begin framing them differently in the future.
Welcome to this place
The time has come. Or, I have arrived at the time that is now. Regardless, I intend for this to be a last attempt at editing the first post and get on with writing what will be my blog. I really wanted to put that word, blog, in quotes, but am going to let it be and give in to the fact that that is simply what this is.
For readers who have arrived here at my invitation, thank you for stopping by. The primary, near-term value that I would like to offer up for you all is my attempt to capture the planning and preparation and eventually the actual accounts of my trek to the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal. The trip is going to be from April 2 through April 22, 2009.
If you have happened here of your own accord, you are no less welcome. I will occasionally tinker with the details of formatting this blog as I learn the ins and outs of what WordPress offers and journey beyond the realm of blog-newbie. Ultimately, the content will become a collection of whatever it is I find myself compelled to write about, mixed with some ramblings composed somewhere in my past. A combination of my perspective on anything and everything as well as narration of experiences of mine and a few others.
I expect it all to be relative to something, and hopefully, more often than not for someone who is reading, something relative.
Relative Something 