It ain’t poetry, but maybe it can soothe

I have been in bad pain now for six days.

This is where I would put the cliché “pain and I are old friends,” but you know what? Pain and I are long-time enemies. Pain is mother-fucker, a bastard, a son-of-a-bitch, an asshole. I hate pain. Pain is a demon that has been torturing and tormenting me, regularly, for as long as I can remember, from the usual childhood injuries of course, but mostly through the agony of migraines that started when I was a teen and continue to this day, and post-surgical chronic pain from nerve damage to my spinal cord that requires daily doses of opioids and regular steroid shots and radio-frequency “nerve burns” to keep at bearable level. But it never, ever, ever goes away. Pain has been pounding at the inside of my left eyeball and eyebrow, and clawing at the back of the base of my skull on the right-hand side, for longer than Gen Z has been alive. My neck pain is old enough to vote. My migraines should start getting mail from AARP any day now. Fuck pain.

And for six days now, I’ve been in pain where my migraines are alternating with a flare-up of my neck pain for supremacy. And you might wonder why this is. Well, it’s because I’ve been tensing my neck and shoulders and clenching my jaw.

From the stress.

You feel it too, don’t you? There’s a friggin’ pandemic outside your door. You can feel it, can’t you? Like a damn Stephen King monster, waiting out there for you to make a false move. You just want to walk the dog, or pick up a gallon of milk, or get a 4-pack of toilet paper (good luck with that!), or grab a box of tampons, or whatever, and you feel like you’re taking your life in your hands just by stepping over the threshold, don’t you? Hell, just opening the door! It doesn’t matter that your rational mind is telling you that the virus isn’t airborne and there’s no darn way you can get it just walking Fido down to the mailbox and back. Your panicked lizard brain is screaming at you, all the time. Someone touched your door handled! Someone brushed against your car door! The mailman wasn’t wearing gloves! That cat brushed against an infected person! Unclean, unclean! Stay inside or die!

Pretty stressful.

Right? You hear that voice; you know what I’m talking about. You’re stressed to the gills. My body is expressing it with tense muscles and a clenched jaw, translating to (goddammit) massive fucking pain.

But you don’t have my issues. So maybe you’re sleeping 12, 14 hours a day and thinking, “WTF is wrong with me? No on needs this much sleep!” Or maybe you’re obsessively watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. Or your favorite anime. Or playing Animal Crossing 10 hours a day. Or have read 4 volumes of Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and are halfway through volume 5. Or have been playing your piano so much your fingertips are dry and cracked. Or have completed 127 new cels for your next animated film. Or like me, have poured out thousands of new words of text.

(Or on the dark side, beating your partner or your kids. Or buying 20 sacks of potatoes at the grocery store. Or having long talks with your dead father. Or something even worse.)

Stress manifests in different ways in different people. I carry mind physically, partly because that’s how I’m built, and partly because I have an autistic son who needs me to keep it together and so flipping out is really not an option.

I can’t help much if you’re in the darker category other than to urge you if you’re locked down with an abuser to get out. I know it isn’t easy, especially now, and I speak from experience. But please try. Please. You don’t deserve what’s happening to you.

And for the rest of us—those sleeping 14 hours, or watching Cowboy Bebop on an endless loop or re-reading their Jane Austen collection for the ninth time or whatever—I would urge you to have some patience with yourself, show some kindness to yourself. You are going through a period of (literally!) unprecedented stress right now. Unprecedented! Cut yourself some slack. Adjusting to such stress is not something you can do by flipping a switch. If you need to take it slow, take it slow. After all, if you force yourself beyond your limits and snap, you’ll be no good to anybody, especially yourself.

And then, set yourself reasonable goals. This won’t last forever (there; I fell into a cliche, but it’s true), and keeping that in mind will help. You can’t control it, so deal with the stuff you can. Cook. Shower. Eat regularly. Brush your teeth. Sleep regularly. I’ve worked from home a lot in my career, and it’s the little regular things that keep you going, believe it or not. Getting up in the morning. Having breakfast. Showering. Lunch. A break in the afternoon. If you need a nap to recharge, then take a damn nap. There’s a pandemic on, FFS; no one is going to begrudge you a 30 minute break. Bring in the mail. Empty the trash. Walk the dog. Feed the cat.

Anchor yourself in these mundane but very real tasks, because they are stuff of life, the tiny threads that can help hold you grounded to the world, help prevent you from coming untethered. Life is a series of moments, many of them mundane, almost all of them completely unrelated to anything to do with the virus. So do those, and think about them while you’re doing them. Yup, I know it sounds silly, but it’ll help.

This is not profound. This is not the universe in a grain of sand, nor am I the Dalai Lama. This is a time of huge fear and transition and stress, and I am a terribly right-brain, rational person. But it seems to me your dog needs someone who is worried more about feeding her, and your lawn needs to be mowed, and isn’t it time you vacuumed because that carpet is starting to make that awful crunching noise, don’t you think? I mean, yuck, right? And maybe in the mundane, you can find a bit less stress, and a bit more peace.

(Image courtesy of CrossPointMinistry.com)

Today I was noticing the quiet.

I have unusually acute hearing. When I was last officially tested in my teens, my dad was still in the Navy and they used one of those soundproof booths where you face the wall, put headphones on you, and have you raise and lower a finger when you hear and stop hearing a sound. My hearing was charted as above average in most ranges and, literally, off the charts in some frequencies. That is, I was hearing sounds before you were supposed to be able to at certain frequencies. And at other frequencies I could hear sounds humans normally couldn’t. Not a dog levels, of course not, but an unusually broad range, and unusually acute through that range.

Mostly, this is an annoyance. It makes it hard to hard to sleep. It makes concentrating difficult, especially during tests. I’ve (unfortunately) passed it on to my daughter, who had to be tested for her dyslexia in a room lit by natural light because the humming of the fluorescents distracted her. I tend to speak so softly sometimes people say I “mumble.” Warning sounds and signals cause my actual physical pain. And so on.

Now sure, this has changed over the years. For one, loud music has dulled my hearing somewhat over time. And of course I’ve learned to live with it. Sami and the kids encouraged me to speak up. You can’t mumble in meetings if you want to be heard. You learn how to deal with ambient noise if you want to sleep. The invention of the Walkman and later things like the iPod was a godsend. But a world filled with a monstrous amount of noise pollution is kind of tough on those of us—for I’m sure I’m hardly alone in this—who have sensitive hearing.

And now, everyone’s quarantined-in-place.

Have you noticed the quiet? The streets are almost empty. Planes are hardly flying. Fewer buses, fewer cars, fewer trucks. Fewer people driving. No teens driving around in big trucks with spinning rims, windows down, blasting out their favorite music turned up to 11. (“Why do they do that, Dad?” Joseph asked me once. “Some of them are just being jerks, honey,” I said. “But some of them just love their music and are wanted to share their joy.”) It’s a lot quieter. Everywhere.

I didn’t really notice that until I went out today to pick up some meds and continue my (still fruitless) effort to buy more eggs. Sure, I had been turning the sound down on my headphones and small speaker that I listen to music on, but I hadn’t been thinking about it consciously. It was when I got into my car for the first time today and my iPhone automatically connected and the next song on my playlist queued up and I actually winced that it made me think.

We all know what it’s like to have been listening to music on the freeway and then the next time we get in the car to have to turn it down. But this wasn’t one of those “turn it down a couple of notches” type deals; I had to cut it in half. I had to turn it from 18 to 9. And even 18 is low for my car. I know these numbers mean nothing, of course, but I usually listen to music with the volume set to 20, sometimes up to 24 depending on road noise, whether it’s raining, or whatever. This would be wimpy by a head-banging metalhead with leather ears, who would crank it to 35 or more on my system. But even so, driving down the freeway on an ordinary day, I would find anything below 16 essentially inaudible.

Today I couldn’t bear to set it above 10. 12 actually hurt my ears.

It’s the quiet, you see. I’ve gotten used to the quiet. To quiet streets, quiet skies, a quiet house. Quiet music on my headphones, quieter shows on my speakers, a lower volume of life. Living in a quieter world. Even the dogs in the neighborhood seem quieter, seem to be barking less. It’s as if my—as if our—collective ears have unclenched from the ambient noise and are able to hear soft voices easier than shouts again.

In amidst the loneliness and fear and incompetence and panic-buying and worry, some amazing things are going on around us. Today, I noticed the quiet. Maybe you noticed it, too. And if you didn’t, maybe now you can, and it will give you a little boost during this tough time.

“Social distancing” doesn’t have to mean actual distancing
(photo courtesy of Times of India)

As a rule, I’m a pretty upbeat, happy person. You might not get that impression from reading my blog posts, in which I tend to rant, but it’s true. My friends and family sometimes describe me as a goof, or a dork. I like to joke. I like to deal with difficult situations with humor, defuse tension with comedy. That’s the way I am.

Here in my blog, you’ll see my more serious side, even my angry side, some of my frustrations. Right now, when the world—I mean, jeez, the world!—is facing a deadly pandemic, I want to share more of my upbeat side in the hopes it’ll help.

People talk a lot about how technology atomizes society, how it creates a distance between people. How Millennials are always on their phones instead of talking to each other. How couples go out to dinner and are checking their Twitter feeds instead chatting about their day. How offices are filled with folks with headphones on instead of chatting with each other at the water cooler. And so on. I personally think this is overstated, but I understand the fears.

Technology atomizing society—in the 50s

Now we’re in a situation where not only are people needing to be careful with their physical contacts, but are actually being urged by government entities to engage in “social distancing.” This can be difficult if you’re like me, and a lot of your loved ones—your family, your friends, your family of choice—are hundreds or even thousands of miles away. I’d like to hunker down with my beloveds, but they live in San Francisco and Oakland and Olympia and LA and New England and Georgia and Maryland and Colorado and Montana and England and Vallejo and Santa Cruz and Lake Charles and all kinds of other places not exactly two streets over.

But you know what? We have cell phones with video capability. We have Skype and FaceTime and Zoom and Webex. We have Kik and Google Hangouts and FaceBook Messenger and WhatsApp. We have blogs and FaceBook and Twitter and Twitch and Instagram. We have MMORPGs and online DnD via Roll20 and virtual bridge and chess and backgammon and every other virtual interactive game you can imagine. I played Gō with a guy who lives on the shore of Lake Baikul, for the love of Pete! The very technology that everyone has complained has been atomizing and isolating us can be used to help us stay in contact, can be used to draw us closer together.

Yes, we are in a crisis. People are out there hoarding paper towels, TP, and vegetables (what they’ll do in three weeks with 200 rotting onions and potatoes I don’t know). But we don’t have to be isolated completely just because we’re forced to be isolated physically. Gather together around our technological fire with me and warm yourselves. Share our collective company through this amazing miracle we have wrought together. It is ours to share and celebrate. So let’s do so.

Let’s share it. Together. Because that’s how we survive.

Image courtesy of NewFrame

For several years I’ve been making the point that capitalism is amoral. Not from a Marxist, “evil, evil!” PoV, but merely as an opening observation to help explain why so many rich people (and the politicians who serve them) are evil. I want to be clear that I mean capitalism is not immoral, but amoral. Capitalism has no moral code, good or bad. It is solely about the accumulation of capital, ie money. You can go about that in moral or immoral ways, but the system itself has no moral code. We—the human beings using the system—have to impose that. (Side note: Communism is the same.)

The weakness of that kind of system is when a person or group of people become rich, they become powerful. And if they are evil/immoral, the system becomes immoral, and good/moral people are screwed. Why bring this up (again) now? The pandemic, which I call the beer virus. Yes, it’s a bad joke, but it’s my nature to joke about serious things, and in this case the topic is, quite literally deadly serious, and all the more reason to joke.

At times of crisis, the flaws and strengths of any system (and it’s leaders) are magnified. Right now the leaders of our country are selfish, immoral, power-hungry Republicans. And they are reacting in demonstrably evil, selfish, immoral ways. They have demonstrated this in multiple areas, more happening every day, but for me the classic and most telling is the response of the Federal Reserve Bank, or “the Fed”.

For years progressives have proposed various programs Republicans & “moderate” Dems have insist are “too expensive”. Better healthcare coverage. More generous care for the elderly, poor, homeless, & jobless. Etc. The programs have always been deemed “too expensive.” “Where will we get the money?” “We can’t possibly afford those programs.” “We have too much debt already!” And other similar excuses. (Which always fall by the wayside when they need to finance another war, but let’s set that aside.)

Currently, of course, the world is experiencing a pandemic. China, where it began, has a bizarre mix of a Confucian, authoritarian, pseudo-capitalist system. They are making progress in fighting back the disease. We on the other hand are the most capitalist country in the world, with the most capitalist-friendly government in 100 years (since just before the depression, ironically). And in our response, we’re flailing. Badly.

At first, Trump, his Administration, the Republicans, and his backers on Fox News declared the pandemic a hoax and a plot to throw the election to the Democrats, and the federal government did nothing. Until the stock market dropped a huge amount in a few days. Then the government took action. Not when people were dying in China; of course not. Not when deaths started occurring in Europe. Not even when they started happening here. No; they were bestirred when plutocrats and oligarchs started seeing their funds shrinking. And what did they do?

Trump announced several absurd measures (such as closing the boarders to people traveling from Europe; a textbook case of “closing the barn door after the horses have escaped”), including a tax cut. In other words, he wants a monetary solution to a health crisis. As if you went to the doctor’s office for a measles vaccine and he gave you a Starbucks gift card.

The Fed, meanwhile, promised to pump $1.5 trillion into the economy to bolster the stock market. Again, during a health crisis. People are having to stay home from work, yes. They are being forced to stay home, actually. Will this money help them? Um, no. Again, this is like you going to your boss and saying, “Boss, I need money to tide me over for the next three weeks,” and her saying, “I’m sorry, Nahrain, but the Fed decided to give that money to your bank to keep them afloat instead.” I mean, nice the bank’s still afloat, but doesn’t help you too much in paying the electric bill or buying bread at the grocery store.

So to repeat: Rather than address a health issue with health measures, Trump did so with money. And while insisting we can’t afford to help the sick, the poor, the jobless, and the elderly because “we don’t have the money,” we somehow found $1.5 trillion for the stock market. When the choice came down to helping your elderly mom, or your granny, or your sick cousin, or your brother-in-law with the missing leg who’s homeless because of PTSD after his six tours in Iraq, Trump and the Republicans decided the stock market needed it more.

And the stock market went down the next day anyway.

And this is what happens under a capitalist system. And how it infects and warps everything. It puts thoughts of money first, and of people last. By design. It’s there on the tin: “Capitalism”. “Capital”, ie money, is right there on the label. Sorry to bang on this so hard, but right now we are seeing an extremely stark example of exactly what this kind of amoral system, when left in the hands of immoral, selfish, evil people, can lead to.

Trump and the Republicans have shown the ugliest side of capitalism. They have shown their preference when it comes down to it, down to the basics: Your family, or the stock market. It’s clear by how he’s panicking over perception (instead of the citizens of the country) that Trump is petrified over how people are thinking about his and the Republicans choosing stocks over people.

So ask yourself: Who do you want to live through the next few weeks: Your mom? Or the stock market? I know what my choice is.