When I went into the waiting room, I thought I’d be comically out of place as a twenty year old at the most heavily advertised hair replacement center in all of Metro Detroit – Doctors Tessler and Aronowitz, Hair Replacement Specialists. Imagine my disappointment when I entered the office in southfield only to find it filled with homely, badly dressed west bloomfield girls and their mothers. Perhaps the dermatology was a discretionary practice in order to disperse the excess of self-consciousness across a broader demographic of embarrassment.
The nurse led me back for my consultation after I had filled out a number of forms designed to determine my desperation’s depth and suggested I take a look at the booklets full of poorly printed before and after pictures. I quietly assumed the lackluster image quality was an intentional but gentle hand hold to lead the words hair and plus apart, to close the door softly after plugs. Dr. Arnowitz arrived a short five minutes later, which was remarkable for any doctor’s office, especially so because I was not paying for my initial examination. As I stood to shake his fleshy paw, I found myself puzzled with his counter-intuitive male pattern baldness, but refrained from commenting on the remarkable sheen of his liver-spotted scalp, although I may have reflexively squinted a little.
In addition to this concern kept company by buck-toothed dentists, overweight physicians, and male lesbians, upon squirming in his floppy handshake, I had a horrible thought. Maybe the softness of his skin was not maintained in the priestly regiment of non-scented, hypoallergenic hand creams so as not to abrade the comfort hungry parish, but instead a result of touching people’s greasy heads all day; this notion of a different type of all-natural moisturizer forced me to fake a cough while I actually gagged a little. While he flicked my hair around in search of the scar, I was a little jealous that he got to meet my bald spot when my acquaintance with that part of myself was essentially a glory hole finger fuck when I got nervous.
Maybe I wouldn’t have picked the scab so much if its single sense (touch) accessibility, or maybe limitation, wasn’t so fascinating, and sometimes it even felt like I was pulling out infant segments of skull. It got so bad and uncontrollable that nubs for fingernails wasn’t prohibitive enough, so my mother knitted me a tiny hat small enough to be mistaken for a misguided yarmulke. Two weeks earlier it had healed enough for my own dermatologist to deem that particular pasture of my head to be infertile and salted in the form of overabundant scar tissue growth, which is how I ended up at Tessler and Aronowitz. Upon his referral to the Hair Specialists of Metro Detroit, I saw the entire Bernstein family, even the cross-eyed one, in my head, and wondered how many people good ole Sam had sent over to T and A.
My inability to decide whether it was funnier to be a twenty year old with hair plugs or a twenty year old with a bald spot on the top of my head began to shift, as if Aronowitz’s description of the hair transplant process – involving slits with scalpels, microscopes, and tweezers – was easing out the clutch. It sounded gross and not at all funny in its pattern of two grand wait three months two grand wait three months two grand wait three months. Even though I’d never met the bottom boundary of my scalp either, I knew a change of location wouldn’t change that.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
sever the corpus collosum with
pruning shears you find in the
garage but wd-40 the blades first
so it is one snip and not a series of
nibbling perforations -
it is impossible to nest when
everything is so shiny
i've thought about the hypotheticals involved in the grief and in the end i see new figurines and rawly unapologetic manifestations that seem to reflect an unintended beauty of pain tracing effortless tracks dabbed by the presence of others and i think i don't want to watch but my vision is distorted enough that it becomes an obligation as if it is my duty to observe and take notes on the natural behavior of those who have themselves forgotten themselves and all others besides him and those who resemble him
but i thought mostly of you in the front seat like i was in october and what made brendan lose control - for mary it was a ladybug - and if you knew like i did of the imminent violence and i hoped to god that you hadn't and cried every time i imagined you pulling your legs down to protect yourself and how it didn't matter whether or not you had implored god to stop time or at least the forward momentum that would kill you because before your eyes could even track the halt your body removed your sense of perception there wasn't time to register or name the feeling of your squishy internal organs (you'd always had a soft heart) compressing unnaturally against the inside of your rib cage betraying the strength of the rest of you or maybe instead just a testament to the fact that you always drank your milk and i cried even more when i thought that you were so good that you wouldn't even be mad at god for being a fucking indian giver and i cried even more because that made me more selfish than god.
UPDATE
Leon Battista Alberti wrote in the early 15th century that, "a man can do all things if he will." This phrase, borne from the minds of Renaissance humanists, places humans as limitless in their capacity to learn and succeed across a broad variety of activities. These days, we use the term Renaissance Man to describe individuals who embody this principle. In thinking about Mark, it seems to be the only accurate way to describe him.
Mark's talents as an athlete, artist, and student are inarguable; he's always been good at everything he's tried. His exuberance for almost everything was nothing short of infectious, and he is inseparable from the adventures of my childhood. Although I probably wouldn't have thought about leaping down Sleeping Bear Dunes or building a hovercraft in the garage or trying to make an ice rink on the Rouge River, I was always glad I'd gone along with Mark's enthusiastic ideas.
Above all, though, Mark's greatest attribute was the sense of equality and fairness that guided all of his actions. Even at age seven, he was telling my younger brother and I to stop picking on our younger sister, and for my brother to stop being grumpy towards everyone. I am convinced that his kindness was not only effortless, but rather inherent, as evidenced by the turnout at his visitation and funeral. What I admire most is how blind Mark was to labels or prejudices of any sort, and how genuine his belief in the goodness of others was.
Mark truly was the type of person we all strive to be, and the world has lost a wonderful son, friend, brother, etc. The best way to honor him, I have decided, is to try and live my life with the love, compassion, and kindness Mark lived his with. I feel honored to have spent so much time with Mark Reedy, and give all my love to his family and all those who were as lucky as I was to have known him.
From The Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/forums/newstalk/lettersindex.php?relatedURL=http://www.detnews.com/article/20100217/OPINION03/2170332#ixzz0gCyRQKYt
pruning shears you find in the
garage but wd-40 the blades first
so it is one snip and not a series of
nibbling perforations -
it is impossible to nest when
everything is so shiny
i've thought about the hypotheticals involved in the grief and in the end i see new figurines and rawly unapologetic manifestations that seem to reflect an unintended beauty of pain tracing effortless tracks dabbed by the presence of others and i think i don't want to watch but my vision is distorted enough that it becomes an obligation as if it is my duty to observe and take notes on the natural behavior of those who have themselves forgotten themselves and all others besides him and those who resemble him
but i thought mostly of you in the front seat like i was in october and what made brendan lose control - for mary it was a ladybug - and if you knew like i did of the imminent violence and i hoped to god that you hadn't and cried every time i imagined you pulling your legs down to protect yourself and how it didn't matter whether or not you had implored god to stop time or at least the forward momentum that would kill you because before your eyes could even track the halt your body removed your sense of perception there wasn't time to register or name the feeling of your squishy internal organs (you'd always had a soft heart) compressing unnaturally against the inside of your rib cage betraying the strength of the rest of you or maybe instead just a testament to the fact that you always drank your milk and i cried even more when i thought that you were so good that you wouldn't even be mad at god for being a fucking indian giver and i cried even more because that made me more selfish than god.
UPDATE
Leon Battista Alberti wrote in the early 15th century that, "a man can do all things if he will." This phrase, borne from the minds of Renaissance humanists, places humans as limitless in their capacity to learn and succeed across a broad variety of activities. These days, we use the term Renaissance Man to describe individuals who embody this principle. In thinking about Mark, it seems to be the only accurate way to describe him.
Mark's talents as an athlete, artist, and student are inarguable; he's always been good at everything he's tried. His exuberance for almost everything was nothing short of infectious, and he is inseparable from the adventures of my childhood. Although I probably wouldn't have thought about leaping down Sleeping Bear Dunes or building a hovercraft in the garage or trying to make an ice rink on the Rouge River, I was always glad I'd gone along with Mark's enthusiastic ideas.
Above all, though, Mark's greatest attribute was the sense of equality and fairness that guided all of his actions. Even at age seven, he was telling my younger brother and I to stop picking on our younger sister, and for my brother to stop being grumpy towards everyone. I am convinced that his kindness was not only effortless, but rather inherent, as evidenced by the turnout at his visitation and funeral. What I admire most is how blind Mark was to labels or prejudices of any sort, and how genuine his belief in the goodness of others was.
Mark truly was the type of person we all strive to be, and the world has lost a wonderful son, friend, brother, etc. The best way to honor him, I have decided, is to try and live my life with the love, compassion, and kindness Mark lived his with. I feel honored to have spent so much time with Mark Reedy, and give all my love to his family and all those who were as lucky as I was to have known him.
From The Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/forums/newstalk/lettersindex.php?relatedURL=http://www.detnews.com/article/20100217/OPINION03/2170332#ixzz0gCyRQKYt
Sunday, February 7, 2010
the parents learned why their kids texted so much
i knew ten minutes ago that my parents had lost themselves in grief. nearly forty eight hours have scraped along since the schism separating life with mark reedy and life without mark reedy. we have cried in every space we have occupied since, unapologetically, but maybe just uncontrollably. my sister and i had gone to the mall to purchase somber funeral outfits (crying in the car on the way and in the jcrew dressing room), while my mother and father undertook the task of sorting through thousands of photographs to find just the right ones for a slideshow or a collage (it was still unclear then). as technology began to fail them, my parents grew more and more agitated, though we didn't realize the magnitude of their frustration and distress until we arrived home an hour later. both were shouting fuck and sobbing. it wasn't the fucking computer or the fucking printer or the fucking ink cartridges, and emily and i knew this and softly ushered them out, taking the baton for a brief shift as the semi-clear-headed representatives of the bodden family.
we have managed moments at best. i have felt as though i have toed the bordered of this thing in the past, looked out across it from its boundaries and envisioned traversing its space, and yet, my foresight was always flawed by its shallowness, or rather, by my unfamiliarity with the true nature of its terrain. friday night, around midnight, john and i were at the fleetwood; our food had just been set in front of us. my mother sent me a text message, and when i read it, i stood immediately and turned out into the parking lot. before the phone had begun to ring, i was already keening, unconsciously, maybe, ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod, suffocating dynamically and in real time, stumbling away, unconsciously, pleasecomegetme. it seems primal in its nature, controlled more by the limbic system than the cortex, distinct from us, impervious to such human constructed concepts such as social norms.
there are 1,194 members in the facebook group my brother created for his best friend. i can hear my mother talking to him through the wall, like when we were little and every night our parents would do the rounds and come and lay next to us in bed for however long that day's activities merited discussion. i'm not waiting for her to come in here tonight, though, because michael needs her more. in his devastation, he has questioned the existence of god and rationality and fairness, and in some ways, i think the heaviness clenching my ribs is a sort of protective response. he and matthew have never looked more like their five year old selves, but my older sister compulsion to keep him safe and away from pain isn't enough here, which makes me even more upset.
the machinations of grief are just beginning to unfold, each moment of recognition of a new implication adds a spinning particle to the disarray. i wonder when things gain enough momentum to find form and structure and when we will be able to stop crying all the time and when we will sleep without benadryl. these hours have shown some beauty in their tragedy, a certain pureness of emotion that seems without parallel in its unconditioned, ragged, and boundless glory. we have remembered so many ways of communication without even trying. i'm crying again. more later.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=307522046536&ref=nf
we have managed moments at best. i have felt as though i have toed the bordered of this thing in the past, looked out across it from its boundaries and envisioned traversing its space, and yet, my foresight was always flawed by its shallowness, or rather, by my unfamiliarity with the true nature of its terrain. friday night, around midnight, john and i were at the fleetwood; our food had just been set in front of us. my mother sent me a text message, and when i read it, i stood immediately and turned out into the parking lot. before the phone had begun to ring, i was already keening, unconsciously, maybe, ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod, suffocating dynamically and in real time, stumbling away, unconsciously, pleasecomegetme. it seems primal in its nature, controlled more by the limbic system than the cortex, distinct from us, impervious to such human constructed concepts such as social norms.
there are 1,194 members in the facebook group my brother created for his best friend. i can hear my mother talking to him through the wall, like when we were little and every night our parents would do the rounds and come and lay next to us in bed for however long that day's activities merited discussion. i'm not waiting for her to come in here tonight, though, because michael needs her more. in his devastation, he has questioned the existence of god and rationality and fairness, and in some ways, i think the heaviness clenching my ribs is a sort of protective response. he and matthew have never looked more like their five year old selves, but my older sister compulsion to keep him safe and away from pain isn't enough here, which makes me even more upset.
the machinations of grief are just beginning to unfold, each moment of recognition of a new implication adds a spinning particle to the disarray. i wonder when things gain enough momentum to find form and structure and when we will be able to stop crying all the time and when we will sleep without benadryl. these hours have shown some beauty in their tragedy, a certain pureness of emotion that seems without parallel in its unconditioned, ragged, and boundless glory. we have remembered so many ways of communication without even trying. i'm crying again. more later.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=307522046536&ref=nf
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
it's good to be a freak
even though I was only nine,
I knew it was not an appropriate solution.
we were out behind Adam and Ally’s pseudo-chalet house
swinging spastically at a Garfield piñata
while their mother of matching orange hair and
sleezy (though I was not yet familiar with that term) stepfather
with a cheap polo shirt stretched over his paunch
(it was difficult to determine whether her eighties blow-out or
his more-than-ample gut was more obscene), drank
red and white cans of beer and smoked cigarettes (which
I can now safely assume were probably Marlboro menthols,
the preference of trashy smokers everywhere),
neither of which seemed particularly adult or
even responsible, for that matter, activities for
the sole supervisors of fourteen obnoxious kids
to engage in, especially when a metal baseball bat
and blindfolds were being used in conjunction.
lucky for them, no one got pegged in the head. it
probably would have been as hard for them to
explain as it was after the mishap when someone
let Tommy Lee host and supervise a birthday party
for a gaggle of small children.
what actually happened was infinitely less tragic,
anyways, at least for them. I, on the other hand,
had a terrible realization forced unasked on me.
at this age, I was still at the mercy of my mother when
it came to dressing. Photographs from this stage show
me husky and all-around awkward, partly because I had
decided to cut my bangs and the growing-process was
not in any way cute (although it was worse when Emily
decided to cut hers alone in her bedroom and her little
kid hands using little kid round-blade safety scissors
kept trying to get them straight until her bangs weren’t
much more than a little fringy forehead border, but she
was only four so it was endearing), and partly because
overalls were such a prominent part in my wardrobe.
it was a great day for a birthday party, which was lucky
for the twins’ guardians because I’m not sure how they
would have entertained the lot of us confined in what would
probably have felt like a hamster cage at Petco.
when it was time to smack at a piñata, a debate always ensued,
because there had to be some way to decided who got the
coveted second hit after the birthday kid. sometimes it was
in order of age, which usually wasn’t advantageous for me given
my July birthday, but our squabble ended with height
ascending order. the parents always chose that because it seemed
fair, but it meant I always went last unless someone’s much
older brother was there, so i generally resigned myself to
the fact that I was not going to get a turn, though I always
held my breath hoping all the other kids would mess up
(the same way I do when I play Scrabble ).
I stood at the back of the line, behind J.D. Gurganus who
had just moved from Georgia so I didn’t trust him or want
to talk to him, scuffling my feet in my ritual nervous
alternating toe-taps. the grass was long, probably longer
than township ordinances allowed (Bloomfield Hills has a lot
of stipulations because its residents are classy and it is a
nice place to live and anyone who visits must recognize that
immediately, so grass must be neatly manicured at all times
or else they’ll send you a letter, and if it goes unanswered,
they’ll send the maintenance crew over to shear your lawn,
after which they will send you an absurdly high bill) and it
had been a hot summer and the Lightbody’s were poor and
couldn’t afford a sprinkler system that would ensure a green
as lush as a country club golf course, so when I felt a tingle
on the bottom of my foot, right in the soft arch part,
I immediately propped my ankle on my knee to try and
dislodge the sharp piece of grass that was surely causing
my aggravation. because I was only in fourth grade, I didn’t
immediately begin to shout WHATTHEFUCK?! as I probably
would now, but instead, silently cursed my mother for making
me wear those stupid, dorky velcro-strapped Tevas even though
I didn’t want to and now had a reason to never put them on again,
while doing a one-legged squat hop over to the “adults”.
when I tapped the stepfather on his hairy, fleshy bicep,
he chugged the rest of his beer and crushed the can before
turning to look at me to ask why I was hopping around like
a retard and could I please do that away from him. the mother’s
hair bounced as she waved her cigarette lazily to point me vaguely
back to the other annoying-but-far-away kids, and when I
whimpered a little and unvelcroed my sandal to show them the bee
that was still attached, she exhaled smoke as if to say ohhh goddd.
the stepfather belched loudly as if to say i’m just the stepfather,
this isn’t my problem, can you please deal with this so I can crack
open another brewski. the mother narrowed her heavily lined
cat eyes at him, so he groaned and leaned over to look at my foot,
affording me an overly personal view of his sweaty comb-over which
was only slightly better to look at than his sweaty, hairy asscrack.
the stepfather breathed hot and emphysemically on my ankle for
a moment and turned to the mother and asked her for a
cigarette, he knew what to do, he’d seen it somewhere that this
was how you deal with bee stings, could she please stop questioning
his authority and give him a goddamn cigarette already.
I was skeptical, she was not, and as he poured the dregs
from one of the ten beer cans littering the table onto the glass
and ripped open the end of the cigarette to shake its innards into
the puddle, I realized this was cause for concern. in my head
I tried to think, well perhaps I’m wrong, they’re adults, they
must know what they’re doing, but I was just lying to myself,
and I knew it as I watched the stepfather’s fat finger stir the beer
and tobacco bits together into some sort of nasty salve that I wanted
nowhere near my skin.
they made me sit there for a few minutes to let it soak in,
although what actually soaked in was that Ally and Adam
Lightbody probably sucked because they were being raised by psychos.
there aren’t any pictures from that party, but I will always remember
it as the day that I came to understand that when I said that my
parents were the worst, what I really meant to say was that they
were annoying because I knew they actually knew more and better
than me (I’ll grudgingly admit now that the despised overalls were
actually a little cute in their dorkiness).
I never went over to the Lightbody’s house again, because even though
I felt sorry for the twins, I didn’t feel sorry enough to subject myself to
the guilt I would inevitably feel about how much better my parents were
than theirs.
I knew it was not an appropriate solution.
we were out behind Adam and Ally’s pseudo-chalet house
swinging spastically at a Garfield piñata
while their mother of matching orange hair and
sleezy (though I was not yet familiar with that term) stepfather
with a cheap polo shirt stretched over his paunch
(it was difficult to determine whether her eighties blow-out or
his more-than-ample gut was more obscene), drank
red and white cans of beer and smoked cigarettes (which
I can now safely assume were probably Marlboro menthols,
the preference of trashy smokers everywhere),
neither of which seemed particularly adult or
even responsible, for that matter, activities for
the sole supervisors of fourteen obnoxious kids
to engage in, especially when a metal baseball bat
and blindfolds were being used in conjunction.
lucky for them, no one got pegged in the head. it
probably would have been as hard for them to
explain as it was after the mishap when someone
let Tommy Lee host and supervise a birthday party
for a gaggle of small children.
what actually happened was infinitely less tragic,
anyways, at least for them. I, on the other hand,
had a terrible realization forced unasked on me.
at this age, I was still at the mercy of my mother when
it came to dressing. Photographs from this stage show
me husky and all-around awkward, partly because I had
decided to cut my bangs and the growing-process was
not in any way cute (although it was worse when Emily
decided to cut hers alone in her bedroom and her little
kid hands using little kid round-blade safety scissors
kept trying to get them straight until her bangs weren’t
much more than a little fringy forehead border, but she
was only four so it was endearing), and partly because
overalls were such a prominent part in my wardrobe.
it was a great day for a birthday party, which was lucky
for the twins’ guardians because I’m not sure how they
would have entertained the lot of us confined in what would
probably have felt like a hamster cage at Petco.
when it was time to smack at a piñata, a debate always ensued,
because there had to be some way to decided who got the
coveted second hit after the birthday kid. sometimes it was
in order of age, which usually wasn’t advantageous for me given
my July birthday, but our squabble ended with height
ascending order. the parents always chose that because it seemed
fair, but it meant I always went last unless someone’s much
older brother was there, so i generally resigned myself to
the fact that I was not going to get a turn, though I always
held my breath hoping all the other kids would mess up
(the same way I do when I play Scrabble ).
I stood at the back of the line, behind J.D. Gurganus who
had just moved from Georgia so I didn’t trust him or want
to talk to him, scuffling my feet in my ritual nervous
alternating toe-taps. the grass was long, probably longer
than township ordinances allowed (Bloomfield Hills has a lot
of stipulations because its residents are classy and it is a
nice place to live and anyone who visits must recognize that
immediately, so grass must be neatly manicured at all times
or else they’ll send you a letter, and if it goes unanswered,
they’ll send the maintenance crew over to shear your lawn,
after which they will send you an absurdly high bill) and it
had been a hot summer and the Lightbody’s were poor and
couldn’t afford a sprinkler system that would ensure a green
as lush as a country club golf course, so when I felt a tingle
on the bottom of my foot, right in the soft arch part,
I immediately propped my ankle on my knee to try and
dislodge the sharp piece of grass that was surely causing
my aggravation. because I was only in fourth grade, I didn’t
immediately begin to shout WHATTHEFUCK?! as I probably
would now, but instead, silently cursed my mother for making
me wear those stupid, dorky velcro-strapped Tevas even though
I didn’t want to and now had a reason to never put them on again,
while doing a one-legged squat hop over to the “adults”.
when I tapped the stepfather on his hairy, fleshy bicep,
he chugged the rest of his beer and crushed the can before
turning to look at me to ask why I was hopping around like
a retard and could I please do that away from him. the mother’s
hair bounced as she waved her cigarette lazily to point me vaguely
back to the other annoying-but-far-away kids, and when I
whimpered a little and unvelcroed my sandal to show them the bee
that was still attached, she exhaled smoke as if to say ohhh goddd.
the stepfather belched loudly as if to say i’m just the stepfather,
this isn’t my problem, can you please deal with this so I can crack
open another brewski. the mother narrowed her heavily lined
cat eyes at him, so he groaned and leaned over to look at my foot,
affording me an overly personal view of his sweaty comb-over which
was only slightly better to look at than his sweaty, hairy asscrack.
the stepfather breathed hot and emphysemically on my ankle for
a moment and turned to the mother and asked her for a
cigarette, he knew what to do, he’d seen it somewhere that this
was how you deal with bee stings, could she please stop questioning
his authority and give him a goddamn cigarette already.
I was skeptical, she was not, and as he poured the dregs
from one of the ten beer cans littering the table onto the glass
and ripped open the end of the cigarette to shake its innards into
the puddle, I realized this was cause for concern. in my head
I tried to think, well perhaps I’m wrong, they’re adults, they
must know what they’re doing, but I was just lying to myself,
and I knew it as I watched the stepfather’s fat finger stir the beer
and tobacco bits together into some sort of nasty salve that I wanted
nowhere near my skin.
they made me sit there for a few minutes to let it soak in,
although what actually soaked in was that Ally and Adam
Lightbody probably sucked because they were being raised by psychos.
there aren’t any pictures from that party, but I will always remember
it as the day that I came to understand that when I said that my
parents were the worst, what I really meant to say was that they
were annoying because I knew they actually knew more and better
than me (I’ll grudgingly admit now that the despised overalls were
actually a little cute in their dorkiness).
I never went over to the Lightbody’s house again, because even though
I felt sorry for the twins, I didn’t feel sorry enough to subject myself to
the guilt I would inevitably feel about how much better my parents were
than theirs.
Friday, January 29, 2010
my body and i had a disagreement
i wanted to run a marathon; my femurs did not. the green arrows are pointing to half moons of increased bone activity. my legs had been bothering me for a couple of weeks and stretching hadn't been helping, so i decided to go see the sports medicine doctor i saw my junior year of high school (two stress fractures right tibia, one stress fracture left tibia). upon seeing that x-ray on the left, dr. moeller felt awful, not just because the half-moons indicated fractures in both femurs, but because he hadn't thought to x-ray above the knee on my first visit and had instead sent me for a bone scan, which was unnecessary intense radioactive exposure.
(quick aside one: i scoffed while my mother and dr. moeller went on and on about excessive radioactive exposure. i stopped scoffing when my mother told me the reason my cousins' grandmother had such bad arthritis, among other foot problems that resulted in the amputation of a few toes. when she was a child, her father had owned a shoe store, and apparently back in the day someone had decided that the best way to fit shoes was to measure each customer's feet with x-rays. little patsy mccracken (her real name, i promise, though she changed it to lynn when she was older) had come home from school and x-rayed her feet every day.)
(quick aside two: the bone scan did reveal a fracture in my ankle. in the only intermural soccer game i played in, i had accidentally tripped this guy really hard during a corner kick. it never occurred to me that i had tripped him hard enough to break my ankle...woops)
dr. moeller's mistake, if you will, is no reflection on his competence as a doctor. in addition to being the largest and longest bone in the human body, the femur is also, along with the temporal bone of the skull, one of the two strongest bones. the reason he didn't expect mine to be fractured is because it's pretty hard to do, given femurs can support up to thirty times an individual's weight.
the thing is, dr. moeller's reading and interpretation of those two little shadows only served to give a name to the pain i was experiencing. there's nothing much to be done about femoral (not in any way ephemeral) fractures. his advice: take two tylenol in the morning and walk it off. my legs hurt just as badly as they did prior to the sensation's categorization, but at least i had something to tell my friends who had described and mocked my labored limping gait as, "walking like [i] had a stick up my ass." their sympathy was fleeting and they still thought it was hilarious to imitate the way my knees didn't bend.
ha. ha. ha.
there is a larger point to all of this. what's fascinating about the human systems of spoken and written language is their use of abstraction. abstracts differ from referents in that they serve to represent things that may not exist in reality (physically), or, exist only as sensory experience. from an ontological perspective, abstract is about properties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, it isn't in space or time, but that instances of them can exist in many different places and times.
think about it this way. if an abstract is visceral (to know what red means you have to have seen something that color), until you've experienced it, the word is irrelevant and useless. imagine my situation. it demonstrates that it is also possible to have a visceral experience without knowing that a word exists to describe it, and that abstracts can be finicky because of their subjective nature. although the pain i described to the doctor was actually that of femur-stress-fractures, my lack of familiarity with the term necessitated an alternate means of communication or mediation (the x-rays) for us to understand each other.
let's go back to the ontological definition for a moment. abstracts don't exist temporally, but instances of them do. my broken legs taught me what femur-stress-fractures feel like, but i can't recreate that sensation. in fact, despite how awful it was to walk for three months, the physicality of the sensation is gone for good, unless i somehow manage to injure myself the same way again.
abstraction can be an excellent means of communicating about the conceptual aspects of human existence, but it's clear that there are limitations. i'm not worried much about the experience-dependent part but the potential loss of specificity troubles me a bit. our interactions with the world are mediated through our own specific umwelts, or self-centered worlds. the way we interpret or perceive stimuli depends on the structure of our semiotic world, which contains signs and symbols for all meaningful aspects of our world; when we interact with other individuals with their unique umwelts, we create semiospheres in which signs are simultaneously and continually creating a new environment. the single largest problem is that our signs and symbols are socially constructed attempts at describing sensation.
maybe i'm getting overly worked up about something that's not so important. maybe every experience does not need to be communicated in explicit detail, or maybe there just isn't language ready to do that YET. in my other project, which i'll go into more later, i'm trying to explore just that dilemma, or rather, how to navigate other forms and combinations of expression in search of some yet to be defined understanding of something yet to be defined. as far as i'm concerned, there are no limitations to human experience, only the ways we choose to describe or depict them.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
in the multi-planar sphere, all functions are simultaneously one and zero
last night, i had a dream about quantum physics.
when we lived in mexico, someone told me that you knew you knew a language when you dreamed in it. in mine, at the bottom circular drive at valle escondido, (if you chuckled, even a little, the other part of the neighborhood is hacienda valle escondido) monica was there, but her hair was still long so she didn't have cancer yet. it was easter.
my cousin goes through food in phases. they are always gross things, such as cheez-whiz and that yogurt that comes with a capful of little oreo pieces and is definitely not a healthy snack. well, neither is cheez-whiz, i suppose. you have to be careful with cheeze in strange states of matter, and make sure that when you look at the label it doesn't say "cheese food" or "cheese product". i think innovations in the field of cheese food are the reason we can buy a five dollar hot and ready.
it all started last thursday, when i decided to go listen to a guy called Christopher Payne talk about his book, Asylum. the premise of his lecture, as paraphrased by me, was that he was an architect who got bored and decided (thanks to an idle suggestion by a friend) that his new creative project would be photographing mental institutions/abandoned buildings. how original. before he opened his mouth, it seemed as if it would be at least slightly intriguing, but, unfortunately, not only was he irritating and slightly offensive at times, it was apparent that he was not really interested in what he was doing.
i stepped out for a drink of water and didn't go back in, partly because it was hot in there and we were standing awkwardly in the back of the auditorium and partly because i was busy thinking about what i had heard before leaving. Payne apparently spent a bit of time at the Pilgrim Psychiatric Hospital in West Brentwood, New York. he gave some historical background on the place, noting the thousand acres of farmland purchased by the state of New York in 1930 that would less than one year later open as the largest hospital of any type in the world (a size yet to be surpassed). bizarre sidenote: the largest haunted house in the world is abandoned-mental-institution-themed. it is in japan somewhere.
later that night, i decided to look into Pilgrim a bit more, largely because i'd spent an hour fuming about the guy's inaccurate portrayal of the historic trends of psychiatric care with a friend of mine (as an architect, she was particularly aggravated with his use of the word 'picture' rather than 'photograph', and postulated that he most likely had a trust fund, what an ass). as it turns out, the place was a spectacle in and of itself, without even considering its actual purpose.
essentially, it was a self-contained city, complete with police and fire departments, courts, post office, Long Island Railroad Station, power plant, swinery, potter's field, cemetery, and staff housing. at its peak in post-WWII 1954, Pilgrim had 13,875 patients and over 4,000 employees.
unfortunately, the 1960s brought about a shift in attitude in the field of psychiatry; institutionalization was losing its footing as the predominant form of psychiatric treatment as pharmaceutical interventions gained momentum (it's always about money), and the hospital was forced to downsize, even selling off some of the land to Suffolk County Community College.
what does quantum physics have to do with this hospital? maybe nothing, maybe everything. i got a little curious and decided to look into the concept of being a pilgrim as well as that of engaging in a pilgrimage. that story is worth holding out for.
when we lived in mexico, someone told me that you knew you knew a language when you dreamed in it. in mine, at the bottom circular drive at valle escondido, (if you chuckled, even a little, the other part of the neighborhood is hacienda valle escondido) monica was there, but her hair was still long so she didn't have cancer yet. it was easter.
my cousin goes through food in phases. they are always gross things, such as cheez-whiz and that yogurt that comes with a capful of little oreo pieces and is definitely not a healthy snack. well, neither is cheez-whiz, i suppose. you have to be careful with cheeze in strange states of matter, and make sure that when you look at the label it doesn't say "cheese food" or "cheese product". i think innovations in the field of cheese food are the reason we can buy a five dollar hot and ready.
it all started last thursday, when i decided to go listen to a guy called Christopher Payne talk about his book, Asylum. the premise of his lecture, as paraphrased by me, was that he was an architect who got bored and decided (thanks to an idle suggestion by a friend) that his new creative project would be photographing mental institutions/abandoned buildings. how original. before he opened his mouth, it seemed as if it would be at least slightly intriguing, but, unfortunately, not only was he irritating and slightly offensive at times, it was apparent that he was not really interested in what he was doing.
i stepped out for a drink of water and didn't go back in, partly because it was hot in there and we were standing awkwardly in the back of the auditorium and partly because i was busy thinking about what i had heard before leaving. Payne apparently spent a bit of time at the Pilgrim Psychiatric Hospital in West Brentwood, New York. he gave some historical background on the place, noting the thousand acres of farmland purchased by the state of New York in 1930 that would less than one year later open as the largest hospital of any type in the world (a size yet to be surpassed). bizarre sidenote: the largest haunted house in the world is abandoned-mental-institution-themed. it is in japan somewhere.
later that night, i decided to look into Pilgrim a bit more, largely because i'd spent an hour fuming about the guy's inaccurate portrayal of the historic trends of psychiatric care with a friend of mine (as an architect, she was particularly aggravated with his use of the word 'picture' rather than 'photograph', and postulated that he most likely had a trust fund, what an ass). as it turns out, the place was a spectacle in and of itself, without even considering its actual purpose.
essentially, it was a self-contained city, complete with police and fire departments, courts, post office, Long Island Railroad Station, power plant, swinery, potter's field, cemetery, and staff housing. at its peak in post-WWII 1954, Pilgrim had 13,875 patients and over 4,000 employees.
unfortunately, the 1960s brought about a shift in attitude in the field of psychiatry; institutionalization was losing its footing as the predominant form of psychiatric treatment as pharmaceutical interventions gained momentum (it's always about money), and the hospital was forced to downsize, even selling off some of the land to Suffolk County Community College.
what does quantum physics have to do with this hospital? maybe nothing, maybe everything. i got a little curious and decided to look into the concept of being a pilgrim as well as that of engaging in a pilgrimage. that story is worth holding out for.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
don't ask don't tell
we had already gotten spooked at a gas station that served as an end point for some kind of a strip mall resort schlumped around the border of a shitty, manmade lake. i had tried to beg dan not to stop there because i didn't like the way that only the end was lit up and i didn't like how much the mouse and cheesewheel statue felt a little too possum pete's. i never liked those jerky dancing robots. it was scary then, when the excuse of extreme overcaffeination fully covered such seemingly irrational paranoia, but when we (three, this time) accidentally ended up there in october, i felt just as bad about it.
it was too late, we had left too late, my exam had run too late, cleaning out my room had started too late, i turned in my room key too late. dan had just opened can number seven and i was shaking through number ten. the gas light had been on for awhile, so he decided to take the next exit off. there were no lights on the off-ramp, so he hit the brights, not expecting them to reflect back off a flash mob of traffic barrels, cones, signs. left, right, left again and neither choice seemed correct and both seemed terrifying. left was not the right choice.
they must have filmed house of wax at this exact gas station, and also that one movie where paul walker and that other guy had a ham radio and pretended to be into some truck driver's solicitations for sex. from a little ways away, it was possible, maybe, that the gas station was open because it looked like a light was on inside; it was one of those little tiny ones with a glorified shack for a mini-mart, the kind that only sold marlboro reds and cans of pop. we were both already speaking in the running donkey clip of auctioneers, the voice where calm has clearly been overshadowed by panic, but the only reason to try to control it is because it might be the only thing to control in that moment.
the lights were on in the gas station shack, but weren't nobody home. imagine the hysteria of teenagers watching a horror film. when we slowed next to the pumps, which were turned off and chained together, we looked across the street at the same time. it was a trucker's restaurant, an a-frame shithole with a five football field lot for the trucks that were bigger than it, just like the one in pontiac, by the silverdome. there was one semi, idling with its lights shining right onto our faces, which were slowly morphing with the frantic terror of tweakers, fully actualized the moment we both realized there was no one in the cab.
when dan screams, his voice gets higher and thinner, except when he does his yawp.
we were both screaming, and i was also flailing around, thrashing around in flight response.
WHAT THE FUCK DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK GET OUT OF HERE GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE I'M TRYING JUST GO.
as we were booking it towards the entrance ramp as quick as a 2005 nissan maxima (dan's sensible mother's sensible car as a sensible means of transportation), i jerked my head right for just a moment. i immediately wished i hadn't.
DAN WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WE'RE IN FUCKING COUNTY ZERO!!!!!!!!
after our screaming had slowed with our pulses, we decided. county zero was the scariest place we had ever been. ever.
it was too late, we had left too late, my exam had run too late, cleaning out my room had started too late, i turned in my room key too late. dan had just opened can number seven and i was shaking through number ten. the gas light had been on for awhile, so he decided to take the next exit off. there were no lights on the off-ramp, so he hit the brights, not expecting them to reflect back off a flash mob of traffic barrels, cones, signs. left, right, left again and neither choice seemed correct and both seemed terrifying. left was not the right choice.
they must have filmed house of wax at this exact gas station, and also that one movie where paul walker and that other guy had a ham radio and pretended to be into some truck driver's solicitations for sex. from a little ways away, it was possible, maybe, that the gas station was open because it looked like a light was on inside; it was one of those little tiny ones with a glorified shack for a mini-mart, the kind that only sold marlboro reds and cans of pop. we were both already speaking in the running donkey clip of auctioneers, the voice where calm has clearly been overshadowed by panic, but the only reason to try to control it is because it might be the only thing to control in that moment.
the lights were on in the gas station shack, but weren't nobody home. imagine the hysteria of teenagers watching a horror film. when we slowed next to the pumps, which were turned off and chained together, we looked across the street at the same time. it was a trucker's restaurant, an a-frame shithole with a five football field lot for the trucks that were bigger than it, just like the one in pontiac, by the silverdome. there was one semi, idling with its lights shining right onto our faces, which were slowly morphing with the frantic terror of tweakers, fully actualized the moment we both realized there was no one in the cab.
when dan screams, his voice gets higher and thinner, except when he does his yawp.
we were both screaming, and i was also flailing around, thrashing around in flight response.
WHAT THE FUCK DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK GET OUT OF HERE GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE I'M TRYING JUST GO.
as we were booking it towards the entrance ramp as quick as a 2005 nissan maxima (dan's sensible mother's sensible car as a sensible means of transportation), i jerked my head right for just a moment. i immediately wished i hadn't.
DAN WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WE'RE IN FUCKING COUNTY ZERO!!!!!!!!
after our screaming had slowed with our pulses, we decided. county zero was the scariest place we had ever been. ever.
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