On the Law of the Harvest (Blog #822)

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Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

The above poem is part of A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (a long-named fellow). I memorized it in high school because my English teacher was a Nazi about her students memorizing poems. We’d start every class by reciting them. One line, two lines, one paragraph at a time. Each day or week we’d add on until our entire class had an entire poem memorized. Then it was on to another. Anyway, this particular poem has been on my mind the last few days because I heard someone on a podcast mention it and looked it back up. Sure enough, after just one reading, my mind remembered the whole thing.

Thank you, Mrs. Shipman.

In yesterday’s blog I said I wasn’t feeling great. Well, damn it, I woke up today with a sinus infection. So after breakfast I went hunting for kimchi, since it contains a bacteria (if you’re lucky enough to get a recently-made batch) that’s helped me a number of times in the past . Anyway, we’ll see what happens. If things don’t improve within the next two days, I’ll know I need to go a different route.

Recently I read a book about how to cure, or at least dramatically improve, essential tremors, an inherited condition I, well, inherited and basically amounts to involuntary shaking. My dad’s case is pretty bad–sometimes he can’t hold a cup of coffee–but my case isn’t as severe. Still, I don’t want it to get worse, so I’m trying to learn about its causes and treatments. Back to the book, the author suggests cutting out or drastically cutting back on–coffee, alcohol, liquids stored in plastic containers (like bottled water or milk), and all products containing heavy metals like aluminum (for example, most frying pans, soda cans, and deodorants). And whereas I’ve been thinking about attempting this plan, I haven’t quite been ready to bite the bullet because–in a word–coffee.

Y’all, I gave up coffee after my knee surgery last December for a few months. It wasn’t terrible. I drank a lot of tea. Still, I fundamentally enjoy coffee, so I let it creep back in. By creep I mean that I at first had a couple cups a week, and for the last three months I’ve had–on average–a pot a day. By myself. This, of course, doesn’t help the shaking, nor does it help my sleep patterns. Oh well. I’m not a perfect person.

All this (and I know it’s a lot) to say that when I woke up with a sinus infection today I thought, Let’s give up coffee! Because coffee doesn’t sound good when I’m sick, and if I’m going to go through caffeine withdrawals, I might as well do it when I’m already sick. You know, just suck it up and be one miserable-ass sonofabitch (nothing personal, Mom), which I’m quite sure is what I have been all day today. This afternoon my family had a cookout, and I don’t think I said three words to anybody. Still, this was authentic for me. I felt cranky. I acted cranky. To minimize the fallout, I kept to myself.

After the cookout, I took a nap. That helped. Then I painted a friend’s cabinets for a couple hours, long enough to apply one full coat over the already applied primer. Alas, I’m sure another coat will be needed. Now I’m blogging and doing laundry. Just before I sat down to write, I moved my clothes from the washer to the dryer and hung my shirts to air-dry on hangers. Whenever I don’t feel well (or am going through caffeine withdrawals, or both), I feel generally overwhelmed, so I keep thinking about all the projects I’ve started I haven’t finished–books I’m in the middle of, weight I haven’t lost. I’ve especially been worrying about the short story I started that I’ve yet to complete for the writing class I’m taking and is technically due this Tuesday. Seriously, it may not happen.

Who wants to write when you’re sick?

The line from Longfellow’s poem that’s been stuck in my head is “learn to labor and to wait.” In my experience, the waiting is the hard part. For example, with my sinus infection, there are certain actions I can take, but ultimately I have to give my body time to (hopefully) rebalance itself. With my essential tremors, the lifestyle changes may help, but nothing’s going to happen over night. Like painting cabinets, washing clothes, reading a book, or writing a short story (did I give enough examples?), everything is a process. Poems are memorized one line at a time. And whereas I wish almost everything happened at a faster pace, I’m learning to trust that if one is willing to both labor and wait, the desired results will come. This is the law of the harvest. You reap what you sow.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. And whereas it's just a single step, it's a really important one.

"

On Dog Crap and Conflama (Blog #756)

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It’s ten in the evening, and I’m house sitting for a friend. Periodically their sweet dog comes into the room where I’m glued to my laptop (reading, browsing, downloading, liking), climbs onto the couch with me, and licks my fingers. I mean, she really gives them a good cleaning, gets under my fingernails and everything. How thoughtful. It’s gross and kind of tickles, but I enjoy it. Probably the most affection I’ve had since I don’t know when, and who couldn’t use a little affection in their life?

Or a good hand washing?

I’ve read a number of times that having a dog is good for your health because they introduce new bacteria into your household. That is, they go outside, dig in the dirt, then come back in and spread around all the little critters they’ve picked up. They lick your fingers. My parents’ dog licks my dad’s nose. And whereas it’s like, ick, this is apparently a good thing. From what I understand, bacteria in and on our bodies are responsible for a whole host of beneficial activities, so it’s good to be exposed to a variety of them. Despite most people’s paranoia about “germs.”

So bring on the licking.

Apparently my friend’s dog is too good to pee in her own front yard. Talk about uppity. So the routine is that we go for a walk twice a day, and she pees in OTHER PEOPLE’S front yards. This seems passive aggressive to me, but I’m not getting paid to judge the dog, just to walk the dog. Anyway, despite my bum knee (which really is so much better), I took “the long route” today in order to let my friend’s dog explore a wooded area. This sounds sweet of me, but it wasn’t. I had an ulterior motive. I thought, If the dog craps in the woods, I won’t have to pick it up with a plastic bag. (The crap, not the dog.) So into the woods we went, and I swear to high heaven, that dog spent fifteen minutes eating grass, chasing rabbits, and tinkling on every shrub and patch of mud she could find.

But did she crap? No, no she did not.

I can’t believe I’m talking about this. But seriously, it’s stressful when you take care of other people’s animals. You think, What if something bad happens on my watch? WHAT IF THIS DOG IS CONSTIPATED?! (What then?) So it’s this big relief, um, anytime there’s a big relief. You think, Phew. My work is done here.

Frustrated with the dog’s inability to poop on my command, I led her out of the woods. Two minutes later she stopped on a neighbor’s freshly manicured lawn and did her business. Twice. And whereas I was relieved that she was relieved, I also had to pick it up. (The crap, not the dog.) Fortunately, I’d brought plastic bags (pooper-scoopers) just for this occasion. Good lord. What has the world come to? Human beings are the pinnacle of creation/evolution–we’ve put a man on the moon–and yet we’ve nothing better to do but follow around our little canine friends just waiting for them to take a dump so we can pick it up with these thin little crap sacks? Talk about the royal treatment (for them, not for us). And our four-legged friends aren’t even appreciative. Oh no. They poop in one yard and pee in another, never grateful or even mindful that we’re behind them cleaning up their messes.

Granted, they do lick our fingers.

Lest it sound like I’m bitching (and what would be so wrong with that?), I’d like to be clear–this is part of my current job. Plus, it could be worse–my friend could have a pet horse. Can you imagine taking Mr. Ed for a walk? Hell, I’d need a Glad Bag to clean up the mess.

Now my friend’s dog is asleep, and I’ve been told she’s going to wake me up at six-thirty in the morning to go for another walk. I am not looking forward to this, but again, it’s part of the gig that I’ve agreed to. Plus, I can always take a nap later. I really have no idea what tonight’s blog is “about.” I sort of went on a tangent. That being said, there is this. My friend says they’re a bad dog parent. I guess because their pup still chews on shoes and–I don’t know–won’t crap in their own front yard. Whatever, dogs are dogs. But it does make me think that as humans (the pinnacle of creation/evolution), we often end up leaving messes in other people’s yards, metaphorically speaking, because we haven’t learned to pick up after ourselves.

My therapist says she when she was deep into her own therapeutic work, she didn’t have many friends. (This may still be the case.) But she said that was (and is) okay because she doesn’t have a lot of conflama either. (Conflama is conflict-and-drama, Mom.) In other words, she’s cleaned up her messes (she’s clear that she’s never been a perfect person), and also set boundaries with others (like one of the neighbors today who put a sign in their yard–please keep your dogs off my grass). This has been my experience too. The more I do The Hard Work, the less conflama I have in my life. Looking back, I see that so much of my suffering (anxiety, stress, nervousness, tension, strife) was, well, optional. Now when I see friends and family putting up with people who take advantage of them I think, You know you don’t have to do that. But no one could have convinced me of this truth before I was ready to live it, so I try to keep my mouth shut, pick up my own crap, and not worry about anyone else’s.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"I believe we're all courageous, and I believe that no one is alone."

All Things Great and Small (Blog #415)

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Tonight I’m afraid to write. I can’t say why. I’ve been sitting here for forty-five minutes browsing the internet, the whole time thinking, I have nothing to say. I didn’t do shit this afternoon. I read a book and drank a cup of coffee. How am I supposed to blog about that? This isn’t the first time I’ve thought something like this. Tonight’s blog is #415 (in a row), and I honestly have no idea how I’ve managed to “fill the page” time and time again, since the details of my day-to-day life aren’t that exciting. Like I said, today I read a book and drank a cup of coffee.

Woo-who.

The book I’m currently reading is called I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong and is about all the Little Critters that live on, in, and around us. I’m a hundred pages into the book and am riveted. According to the author, there are more germs living in and on one human body than there are stars in the galaxy, although “germs” is apparently not the best term to use, since it implies bad and nasty. As it turns out, the vast majority of bacteria in the world are either harmless or beneficial. Many help break down our foods and fight off disease. Quite literally forming communities in our mouths, guts, and private areas, these bacteria can influence our moods, weight, and even our personalities. (There’s a bacteria that, in order to survive, turns some insects into lesbians! Well, at least it allows female wasps to clone themselves and therefore have no need for males, which is sort of like being a lesbian.)

Since each of us is home to so many different species of microbes, Yong contends that any one of us, rather than being “an I,” is really “a we.” Here’s how he says it: “When we eat, so do they. When we travel, they come along. When we die, they consume us. Every one of us is a zoo in our own right–a colony enclosed in a single body. A multi-species collective. An entire world.”

Isn’t that beautiful?

Since being introduced to this book recently (it was a gift), I’ve started thinking of myself as a collective, an ecosystem, a rainforest, if you will. Granted, I’ve never been to a rainforest (other than Rainforest Cafe), but I can imagine–tigers feed off their prey just as lush trees feed off decaying plants, all in a complex system of give and take, life and death. Likewise, I’m teeming with a whole universe of lifeforms, and together we’re engaged in a great balancing act. For years I’ve struggled with sinus infections but have recently seen improvements by introducing a single strand of bacteria (l. sakei) into my nostrils. (This apparently works because l. sakei keeps other bacteria “in check.”) It sounds weird, I know, but now it makes more sense than ever. It’s like the scales were tipped in the wrong direction “up there,” and I just needed one heavy hitter to help even things out.

Way to go, fellas.

What’s amazing to me is that one little bacteria (the one that started the infections) has been able to cause me so much misery and that one little bacteria (the one that ended the infections) has been able to cause me so much joy. L. sakei isn’t a panacea for all my health problems, but it truly has changed the landscape of this rainforest. So often we think of ourselves as powerless or without influence, but my God, if one little bacteria can do that–wreak havoc or bring joy–how much more can I do? How much more can you do? I think about my therapist, how knowing her has completely transformed me for the better. Four years into our work together, there’s not a relationship in my life that hasn’t improved because of her, even the relationship I have with myself (and all my microbes). It’s funny, right? I had no idea the day I met her just how much my world would change.

Now our world is more magical.

Earlier I said, “Nothing happened today. I read a book and drank a cup of coffee.” What I meant to say was, “Everything happened today. This morning my entire rainforest came to life, and this afternoon we drank a cup of coffee, and a million microbial and chemical reactions made it possible. At the same time we read a book and may never see ourselves the same again because of it. Now our world is more magical, a mysterious place where everything somehow works together, where nothing and no one is without influence, where all things great and small can make a difference.”

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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You've really got to believe in yourself and what you're doing. Again, it comes down to integrity and making something solid of yourself, something that's so well-built on the inside that it can handle any storm.

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