An afternoon dream during a nap meant to make up for last night’s lack of sleep during the bout of burning pain . . . I don’t remember the details; I’m not sure that there were really that many in this dream, but it felt surreal in some way while I was having it. There was something in the ocean we were looking for, and I was in a plane or helicopter with my brother, who was piloting. We were flying low over sparkling water on a bright, sunny day, looking into the surface for something, something, something . . . In my dreams, the world is a more wonderful place filled with surreal marvels, and I have opportunities for adventure.
Monthly Archives: March 2002
Easter memories
As a young girl, I engaged in what is surely a quaint, discontinued custom (or perhaps not?) of getting a new, light, springy dress to wear to church on Easter. I also had two straw hats; one was blue and one was white or pink, if I remember correctly. They were uncomfortable, hot, and scratchy, but I thought I looked elegant in them. I looked forward to having a reason to wear such a hat.
My favourite Easter dress, or the only one I remember, was solid pink with plain lines. It was very comfortable and simple. It came to a sad end. A long time afterward, while we were out driving around, I found some chlorine bleach in the car and accidentally spilled some on the dress, creating instant white blotches. It was a moment I agonised over long after, wishing I could take it back — partly at the loss of the dress, and partly because I felt it must have upset my poor mother as much as me.
On Easter, as on birthdays, we used to sit at the kitchen table and pose for a photo with our filled-up Easter baskets. Mine had broad bands of straw in natural, blue, dark pink, and yellow — again if I remember correctly — and had a handle I’d tie bows and other things to. Virgil’s was smaller, had narrower colored bands, and had no handle. We both had had our baskets for as long as I could remember — that is, I don’t remember acquiring them. They were kept in my closet the rest of the year, along with colored plastic eggs which, at Easter, would be placed in the baskets empty and found the next morning filled with jelly beans or M&Ms.
I associate the baskets and the eggs strongly with the happier aspects of my childhood, which made them a little magical and mysterious somehow. Knowing now that they were just things that were bought at the store in the plaza across the highway has diminished the emotional resonance but little. I sometimes think about whether today’s kids have things that they feel the same sense of wonder about, or are they all so in tune with advertising, marketing, and shopping that every childhood belonging is a mere object with no emotional meaning.
When my dad had to move out finally and we had to decide what to keep and what to get rid of, I thought about saving the baskets and plastic eggs. But space did not allow me to, and to this day I wonder if the actual objects would help me preserve the memory and the feelings any better than I have — if I would be able to look at them now and remember those Easter Sundays and how I felt then. I do not know.
Just when it couldn’t get worse
Just as I thought advertising could not find any more lows to hit, this appeared in News of the Weird.
Pushing the Advertising Envelope
A State University of New York at Buffalo professor, in a recent ecology journal, expressed confidence that eventually butterflies could be genetically altered to permit advertising logos and other designs on their wings.
And in March, the British video game company, Acclaim Entertainment, announced it would “raise advertising to a new level” by offering to pay relatives of the deceased a fee if it could put small billboards on gravestones. [Trends in Ecology & Evolution-Chicago Sun-Times, 3-13-02] [The Guardian (London), 3-15-02]
Dream: Bicycle
This was a sweet dream, for I was out in the country. There was time before dinner for a bicycle ride, so I found myself riding endlessly along gentle hills and curves under the grey skies and softly falling rain of a late western New York evening. And I seemed to go on forever, until it was time to turn back so as not to be late for dinner, and somewhere I ran across someone with a long, wide strip of leather — some kind of device that made perfect sense — that was a relic from World War II. I did not make it to dinner before waking up. For all I know, I am still riding, riding, riding through the sprinkles . . .
The pain, the pain . . .
There will be nothing deep today because I’m in pain. The kind of pain I can’t describe to someone who’s never experienced it. Shoulder pain. Rotate your arm with your elbow straight out and your hand pointing down. Easy enough? For me, that movement feels like being stabbed in the shoulder, then having the knife twisted. I can feel the movement grinding, then a twinge sharp enough to make me feel faint. The pain makes me obsessive about it.
Easy enough to avoid it, you say — after all, who walks around with their arm making a square with the ground, anyway? Except that that rotating motion is something you do all the time in the normal course of living. You’re not conscious of it until it hurts. And then you’re aware of every slight movement. Even breathing can hurt.
I tried to keep my shoulder moving because that sometimes seems to help, but this time it got worse overnight. Now it hurts constantly, and my arm and hand are achy, yet numb. To move my hand, I have to pick it up with the other one; it is that weak.
I don’t know what’s wrong with it; I forget to mention it to my doctor when I see him because it’s usually not bothering me then. I must remember in May . . . Once it was so bad, though, I went to him especially for it, and he sent me for X-rays, that showed the shoulder is fine, but I have arthritis in my neck — my neck, which doesn’t hurt and remains strong and flexible.
Bursitis? Rotator cuff? Pinched nerve? I don’t know; I do know it used to be mostly my left shoulder that felt it, but last weekend, my right shoulder was aching, too.
Today, this isn’t an ache, though, in my left shoulder; it’s stabbing pain, weakness, and numbness all rolled into a debilitating package. I know I did something to cause it; for one thing, I tend to rest my head against my hand, like the Rodin sculpture, The Thinker, and that jams the shoulder and seems to cause it or exacerbate it.
They say shoulder pain is among the worst types. I believe it; an acquaintance once dislocated his shoulder sliding into second base and promptly slipped into unconsciousness. I am not at that point yet, however. Sleep is impossible because the pain keeps waking me up. Unconsciousness would be a blessing.
Appreciate your joints when you are pain free. I pulled a hip muscle a few years ago; I don’t even know how, except that it seems to have happened in my sleep. It took at least 10 minutes to walk a block to catch a cab to the hospital. Muscle relaxants and a strong prescription for ibuprofen were an immediate help. But during the two days I spent in agony before seeking help (hoping it would heal on its own), I realised how much we rely on things like hips and knees and shoulders and how much work they do — and what it’s like when they can’t work.
The last time my shoulder hurt this badly, the pain lasted 10 days, and the whole arm was so numb I couldn’t move it. After three days, when nothing worked, I told my brother that if this were an incurable/untreatable condition, I would kill myself. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t function. I had to do everything one handed, but every movement still caused pain. It suddenly started to fade, through no intervention, and then I began to wonder if that wasn’t an infection of some kind. The timing seemed right, as did the onset and disappearance . . .
If this is what my dotage has in store for me as a “normal” part of aging, I am beginning to wonder if a 45-year lifespan isn’t such a bad idea . . .
Postscript added 23 May 2003: This problem turned out to be what the orthopedic surgeon described as a “relatively common” condition known as impingement syndrome that can lead to tearing of the rotator cuff. He gave me a cortisone shot in the left shoulder (which was not as bad as I anticipated), and I had physical therapy for a while. The pain has come back in both shoulders once in a while, but not as badly, and aspirin helps. Now if I could just be disciplined enough to do the physical therapy regularly to strengthen the rotator cuff . . .
Advertising II: The (Brief) Sequel
I remembered another way in which advertising has become ubiquitous and insidious. It’s in more than newspaper, TV, radio, movie theaters, trains, buses, elevators . . . how about restrooms?
Last year, I was having dinner with a visitor from the UK at my favourite downtown Thai restaurant in Chicago when the urge struck. (I had to pee.) I went to the ladies’ room, naturally, and closed the stall door, naturally. And what should appear on the back of the door? A full-color poster and acrylic brochure rack for a form of birth control! Needless to say, here am I, a captive audience and compulsive reader, stuck in a stall with an ad and forced to read. Within moments, I knew everything there was to know about this particular form of contraception. Had I been amorous, I wonder if I could have found a 24-hour clinic at which to procure it, driven to such by advertising. “Hey, a new lead!”
I try to imagine the ad rep selling the restaurant manager/owner on this concept. “We’ll pay you to put our posters and brochures in your ladies’ room! On the back of every stall door! I’ll have an audience in thrall to my ad, and your patrons will thank you for keeping them informed about the latest prescription for avoiding getting knocked up! It’s all the perfect compliment to the pad thai!”
Suddenly, what had been a pleasant dining experience had become a rather crass one — albeit with a touch of humour. I wasn’t there to be served; I was there to be sold to. I asked my friend to check out the men’s room, thinking perhaps to learn about emperor-sized Trojans or somesuch. Alas, the men’s ad wasn’t quite as interesting — it was for Men’s Health magazine.
We left, not particularly wiser about conception prevention or health, but about how to avoid advertising. Crawl into bed and hope that the comforter manufacturer didn’t attach an ad to the underside . . . I’d go online, but advertising is of course all over the Internet. One of the most egregious examples is ICQ (chat client) for Windows. Every message window — every single one — has an ad. Many for something to do with Britney Spears . . . Is there some sand I can bury my head in now?
Killing our children
I’ve been away for a few days, and came back to hear on the radio in the cab two news stories about children in Chicago — three who’d been burned to death in an arson fire by a man seeking revenge on a roommate, and another whom I think had been killed by a parent (couldn’t quite hear the details).
Local stories that unfortunately won’t get the attention Yates did, but food for thought about how many children are killed by adults in this country one way or another. If everybody knew everything about these cases and their causes, could they be prevented or at least slowed down? My impression is the scope is horrendous; just that most make the news a day or two and then are forgotten.
In a graphic ad on DC’s Metro system, there’s a black-and-white photo of a teeny infant with nose tube and all kinds of equipment attached, with a headline to the effect that he is a “Shaken Baby.” Shaken by an unlicensed day-care provider reads the copy.
More people, more child abuse? We can cure pneumonia, prevent/treat the flu, but childhood death is still a fact of life. At our own hands . . .
Metro
I haven’t posted in a few days; I’ve been in Chevy Chase, Maryland, for work and also for a little bit of time to myself. I thought of several things to write about while on the Metro, then promptly forgot them. And they would have been good topics, too. I hope they are still somewhere in my memory banks.
Speaking of the Metro, it was odd taking it without my aunt. She lived in DC for close to 50 years if not more, and since the mid- to late 1980s I’d visited her at least once a year, usually in July. The last time was several years ago, in October, because she had developed pancreatic cancer and I was helping her to pack so she could move closer to her family in Pennsylvania. She died the following February 14. That last time we did not take the Metro so much because of her health; we went to a few places she needed to and a few restaurants, but that was it.
Before that, she had been a very healthy person. I have many fond memories of us doing things together. She rarely got tired or needed rest stops to sit down like I did.
My favorite memory is of Rock Creek Park. I spotted what looked like an interesting path, and we took it. A serious hiker would not have found it a challenge, but I’m not a serious hiker, and I was also lugging a camera I was petrified of dropping. My aunt, who was very short, climbed over all the obstacles quite easily, but not me. At one point, I was straddling a huge log that was lying across the path at a sharp angle, with the downward end toward the creek, and telling her I didn’t think I could make it across it without falling down the incline. I believe I also begged for a helicopter. 🙂 She waited for me patiently until I got myself over. Then we realised she could have at least taken the camera off my hands. We realised she could have taken a priceless shot of me straddling a huge log and looking terrified. 🙂 How embarrassing — to be physically bested by a 65-year-old.
We took the Metro to the Smithsonian, the zoo, the airport, the July 4 concert on Capitol Hill — everywhere. I took it a few times by myself, to visit friends in Vienna. But mostly she was with me.
It feels very odd to be here without her now.
Dream: Underground boat
I was in one of my favorite dream places, a subterranean cavern with boats and a handful of people that seemed like a crowd in them.
The water/areas were divided into quadrants, and the empty boats were all submerged to some degree. But this didn’t give me any concern as to their ability to float. I got into one and paddled around for a bit. I also walked through some water. The water was oddly green, and I had this feeling that came from somewhere it was magical in some way. Then someone from somewhere gave me quite a lecture on not stepping into one quadrant of water, then stepping into another. Somehow, this would be very bad. I defended myself and said I hadn’t, even though I hadn’t known.
Although this seemed at first to be a confined area, in a dreamlike way it expanded, and I came upon a cave filled with all kinds of showman-like stuff, including guitars. I started to count them, but there would always be one I missed. They were guitars that belonged to famous rock bands. An old, white-haired, bearded man who made me think of Burl Ives said if I counted them right I could have one. I never did get the count right, but he gave me one anyway. It did not look or feel anything like a guitar — the strings weren’t metal, but a clear nylon-like ribbon. Skeptically, and knowing that I don’t know anything about playing guitar, I started playing — and out came a perfectly rendered “Crocodile Rock.” I sat in the boat and played.
I came to an overpass or archway, and there was a young Elton John himself. I felt guilty to have his guitar (yes, I know he’s a piano man) and to be playing his song, but he just waved in good cheer and continued to perform. I really wanted to meet him and talk further — but I woke up.
End of the line
My parents were in their 40s when I was born in 1961, so they were of a different generation than the parents of most of my friends. In addition, my mother came from a small town, my father from a farm, so they had not grown up in our urban/suburban wastelands. My father especially did not have much as a child — newspapers, but no radio and no luxuries. His days were spent working on the farm and driving the two mules; I think he told me he went to school through eighth grade, but his sisters said that he often didn’t go at all so he did not have a steady education although I know he would have wanted one. My mother left school in 11th grade. I don’t know what all she did, but I do know she spent some time working as a maid for people who treated the dog better than they did her.
It’s interesting to think how the world changed in such a short time for people of my parents’ generation. By my friends’ standards, we were poor; by my parents’s standards, my dad’s job at Ford Motor Company had made them more affluent than they had ever been, even living in a mobile home as they did. By 1961, when I was born, they could even afford to buy a new, bigger mobile home. They had things they could never have imagined — refrigerator, camera (a $3 black-and-white Kodak), black-and-white television, radio (kept on the kitchen counter and often listened to during storms and blackouts), vacuum cleaner, and so forth. The day we got a telephone was exciting — my mother was so amazed that I memorized the number immediately — but not nearly as much as the day the color television arrived. (As an aside, I was heartbroken over getting rid of the black-and-white TV, and to be honest I never warmed up to the colour one. To this day, I don’t like colour movies or television nearly as much as black and white, and the overexposed sunniness of an Ingmar Bergman black-and-white film or the surreal black-and-white Mrs. Peel Avengers episodes still evoke a kind of joy in me that I can’t explain — perhaps it does have to do with them feeling like they take place in a different world that I feel closer to.)
My parents (and, I think, their generation) loved gadgets and all the newfangled time-saving devices. My mother in particular always wanted to go shopping (something she normally didn’t like) if she thought she was going to end up with, say, an electric can opener.
It’s hard to say about her because she passed away relatively young (64), but at some point technology outstripped my dad’s ability to understand it. I tried to explain computers to him and even showed him my notebook, but he could never quite understand how the words got to the screen or how they got on paper, or how my brother and I could send messages back and forth instantly, or how I could get the news online. It confused him since he didn’t witness it every day, although I think that he, like many older people today, would have embraced it given the opportunity. At a certain point, though, he did learn some of the capabilities, and he would occasionally say, “Can you email your brother such and such?” His younger sister has a better grasp since her son got a computer and she sees him and his wife working on it.
I could talk about how the country has changed since my dad was born (1913), including the population explosion. But what this was all really leading up to is . . . the caboose. Isn’t that a wonderful word? Ca-boose. Say it. Savour it. Listen to its improbability as a word.
I grew up with cabooses. When at a railway crossing, you always tried to count the cars, and you always tried to be the first to spot the caboose. I think there were even some caboose games with rules, although I no longer remember what they are. I remember most cabooses I saw in New York and Pennsylvania being brick red or a green. Sometimes you could see a man or two hanging out the windows and wave to them.
The caboose is now long gone, having been replaced by safer (it is claimed, anyway) technology. The railroaders protested, the old-timers protested, but it was, like the demise of my black-and-white television, inevitable. It occurred to me one day that I wasn’t seeing as many cabooses and that more and more trains looked “naked” without an end in sight. This was going to be a battle that the railroaders wouldn’t win. I later read in the news it was the end of the line for the caboose.
I was thinking about cabooses the other day for some reason, and then I realised that this is the kind of thing that makes one feel “old” or at least out of place. People 15 years younger than I may never have seen a caboose, except perhaps mentioned in a book or at a museum. People my own age may remember them but not feel the emotional appeal that a memory from youth can have. And, as with my parents, people my age may be the first to wish to discard the old and embrace the new. I doubt there are any 10-year-olds now collecting train sets who insist on a caboose.
Savour that word. In my 40th year of life, it — and I — are anachronisms.