Pardon my patois; as I hover at the cliffhanger edge of finishing the second novel I have read by Sir Walter Scott in three weeks, I’m beginning to think in Scottish dialect. For those who haven’t been tramping with me through miry holms and bogs, my title simply means, “My own way.”
The title came to mind as I was picking raspberries. I’ve no idea why the title occurred to me, but the reason I was picking raspberries was because it’s one of few things I can still do without wracking my RSI-burned hands. It’s also one of few things I can outside the confines of the interior of my own house. If I’m lousy at healing, which is what I’m supposed to be doing, I can probably claim average competence at picking raspberries, and maybe slightly better than average competence at picking titles.
But I’ve had little use for titles lately, because I’ve had little to title. Writing is arduous and tedious and frustrating with voice-recognition software. Writing used to be satisfying and a joy. It no longer is, and God has not seen fit to restore or replace this avocation.
I have found much and unexpected pleasure in reading Walter Scott’s historical novels. Perhaps they are something of a replacement for writing, at least for now, with an ironic twist thrown in. I used to rail against novels the way Scott’s Covenanters rail against his Jacobites — though the abolition of all novels would scarcely ever have been something over which I would have volunteered for the gibbet.
Lately I have pondered whether a Christian rightfully aspires to fun. I’m not sure I have ever understood fun, either in my pagan days or as a Christian, but I think in general I was too self-conscious to have fun. If I caught myself having fun, the fun was over. I can recall sitting at a pool, watching people having fun diving and splashing. I thought they were interesting life forms.
I’m in an awkward phase of healing. A long, long plateau stretches ahead, looming like a waterless world under a blistering sun. The physical condition is on its own schedule. And I, who have always scheduled everything and prided myself on my superior-being sense of organization, am at a loss to contrive a schedule for mourning. I resent the gnawing grief, but the loss of use, or at least, important uses, of one’s hands, is something one grieves. I rue very deeply the loss of the ability to type and to hold up a book in my own hands.
I need a time-out and I can’t justify it because I can’t identify what it is that I need a time out from.
I am unable to type these words and I can barely stand to hear them as I speak them to the inane, indifferent software that scrambles what I say. But for something inane, its algorithms can’t be much simpler than some algorithm that might have put a man on a planet of the Alpha Centauri system. Still, the word “some” took four tries. Bad, Dragon, very bad.
There are periods of mental agitation when the firmest of mortals must be ranked with the weakest of his brethren; and when, in paying the general tax of humanity, his distresses are even aggravated by feeling that he transgresses, in the indulgence of his grief, the rules of religion and philosophy by which he endeavours in general to regulate his passions and his actions. — Old Mortality
They aren’t much to represent a 500+ page novel as complex and exquisite as Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, but these quotes stood out to me as representing Scott’s character Douce David Deans, Scottish Covenanter, and his theology, as well as Scott’s own Calvinism. I trust you can make the gist of the Gaelic.
But I will bear my cross with the comfort, that whatever showed like goodness in me or mine, was but like the light that shines frae creeping insects, on the brae-side, in a dark night — it kythes bright to the ee, because all is dark around it; but when the morn comes on the mountains, it is but a puir crawling kail-worm after a’.
He was engaged in his devotions, and Jeanie could distinctly hear him use these words: ‘And for the other child thou hast given me to be a comfort and stay to my old age, may her days be long in the land, according to the promise thou hast given to those who shall honor father and mother; may all her purchased and promised blessings be multiplied upon her; keep her in the watches of the night, and in the uprising of the morning, that all in this land may know that thou hast not utterly hid thy face from those that seek thee in truth and in sincerity.’ He was silent, but probably continued his petition in the strong fervency of mental devotion.
‘…we wad rather gie a pund Scots to buy an unguent to clear our auld rannell-trees and our beds o’ the English bugs as they ca’ them, than we wad gie a plack to rid the land of the swarm of Arminian caterpillars, Socinian pismires, and deistical Miss Katies, that ascended out of the bottomless pit, to plague this perverse, insidious, and lukewarm generation.’
But the human mind is so strangely capricious, that, when freed from the pressure of real misery, it becomes open and sensitive to the apprehension of ideal calamities.
…the great truth, that guilt, though it may attain temporal splendour, can never confer real happiness; that the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, for ever haunt the steps of the malefactor; and that the paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.
Though my eyes become dust bowls, and my skin dry as driftwood, I love the desert, especially where resourceful drylanders have managed to irrigate farms, vineyards, and orchards. My passion necessitates pilgrimages from time to time to eastern Washington, and so on Saturday we took a long-needed road trip to Ellensburg.
As soon as we crossed the line from King into Kittitas County, we were comfortably, undefensively, officially in Red State country. My McCain hat was now a friendly greeting instead of a remnant of defiance.
Ellensburg has several of my favorite things: the Palace Café is my favorite diner; Bailey’s became my new favorite used book store as of Saturday, and Eastern Washington University boasts my new favorite student union building. Unfortunately, the university bookstore was closed, so it could receive no rating in its category.
We doubled the pleasure of the Palace by having breakfast there, and later, afternoon ice cream. They have only vanilla, but it is the best vanilla in the world. It was more than worth blowing my glucophobic diet.
We walked around Olmstead State Park and looked at supposedly pioneer-era farm implements, most of which my husband used in his own ranching days, the 1980s. We ate tractor dust as park staff performed routine trail maintenance while we ambled. The scent of human flesh on an 85° day aroused mosquitoes from their lassitude.
We drove through some neighborhoods in the hills and admired the broad valley vistas. But I thought of the winter wind and snow that would snag my breath were we to live in these beautiful hills.
The Puget Sound region where we live is a beautiful sector of the planet. Its downside is that we have never found a neighborhood anywhere in the entire Tacoma-Seattle corridor that combines the basic elements of attractiveness, decency, quiet, and convenience. The consolation the region offers for having to compromise essential qualities of life is its equal proximity to Washington’s outer coast and the dry hill country of Ellensburg and Yakima.
We travel to the outer coast at least once a year, usually to Ocean Shores, to walk through dunes and along long sandy beaches. We enjoy winter storms but wouldn’t enjoy the coastal weather on a daily basis. We wouldn’t enjoy anything about Ocean Shores on a daily basis. I’m sure we could enjoy much about eastern Washington on a daily basis, but summers are very hot and winters are very cold. The other drawback to eastern Washington is its distance from the outer coast, and I would miss day trips to the ocean.
Tacoma has the annoying habit of being annoying while at the same time being the perfect catch-all that our diverse tastes require. In other words, there are some things we intrinsically appreciate about Tacoma. This includes, but is not limited to our ability to travel to other places and be home in time to give the Cat his shot. And as with all other things, there are Other Considerations.
Wherever we live, I suspect that I will always be a happy day-tripper and a slightly discontented dweller. And really, my discontent has a low melting point. Just now, a flock of goldfinches are darting through the bamboo in my front yard. They’re even more fun to watch than Ellensburg’s windmills.
My Doctor began mobilizing an A-Team to resolve the pain and diminished use of my hands due to a repetitive strain injury three months ago this week. I put up with my symptoms for a couple of months before checking in, because other health care providers had been cavalier about the same symptoms in the past. This time, the pain was much worse, and much more limiting than ever before. I had the bonny notion that I had finally arrived at a sufficiently heroic stature to volunteer for carpal tunnel surgery. But I was mistaken; the EMG revealed no nerve impaction, and therefore no carpal tunnel syndrome, and therefore no surgery, and therefore no assurance, however qualified, of resolution.
I wrapped up a few weeks of physical therapy today. My therapist taught me to do nerve glides, which sometimes relieve the pain in my elbows. She did some muscle stretches in my neck, because she felt my system was too sensitized for trigger point work. Muscle contractures in my neck are the source of the pain and burning in my arms and hands. Today was my final scheduled appointment, and I decided, that rather than accepting a referral to another therapist, I would retire to our private practice at home. She agreed that was a good plan. My husband will proceed with trigger point work, using Claire Davies’s book as a guide, and I will faithfully execute to the best of my ability the neck stretches the therapist sent home with me.
I have made sufficient gains in the past months that ibuprofen actually is now helpful. It didn’t begin to touch the pain just a few weeks ago. Gains are slow with repetitive strain injuries. Symptoms like mine, with arm pain and burning hands, can require months, and even years, to resolve to a point where most activities are again possible without pain. Many people never type again, but rely exclusively on voice-recognition software, and I suspect that I will be one of those people. The software can be wretchedly frustrating at times, but what in life isn’t…. I suspect that many of us who acquire RSIs have a — er — low frustration threshold, which might have something to do with the origin of our injuries. We want it perfect and we want it perfect now, and if it’s not perfect now, we’ll pound away until it is.
I was talking with a friend about how easy it can be to use illness — and I mean illness in the broad sense that would encompass pain, disease, or any other physical limitation — sinfully. Think of all the excuses we can invoke to avoid people, places, tasks, and obligations. If we don’t use illness to avoid things, we may fall into sinful guilt over our honest inability to perform normally. If we don’t do that, there is always self-centeredness and self-righteousness, and the demands spawned by those states of mind that everything in our environment change.
There is certainly an upside to respecting one’s own limits. If we don’t, we take longer to heal, discomfiting everyone in our sphere. And there is much to be gained from advocating change in the environment. That is the wellspring of ergonomics, especially the incredible development of voice-recognition software. It sometimes seems like cuneiform, but when I think about it, the ability to dictate written copy into a computer is of no less magnitude than a manned moon landing. It certainly affects my life more on a daily basis.
Stewardship requires that we evaluate what is effective and what is not, and that we allocate resources accordingly. At some point, it has to be time to concede that if we are over about 35, we may never feel perfect again — if we ever did. We can’t perfect ourselves or the world; what’s it worth to us to keep trying? I think it’s good to have some kind of limit in mind.
I favor simple remedies and I favor remedies that I can do for myself over those for which I have to turn to others. I was thinking about Elisha, and his remedies for drastic problems. For poison in the pot, he used a pinch of flour. For bad water, a pinch of salt. To retrieve a sinking ax head, he tossed a branch in the river. I have no exegetical basis for this, but it does seem that these simple elements — salt, flour, and a branch — might be Christological and ecclesiological symbols: salt, the church; flour, the bread of life; and Christ, the Branch of Jesse. God moves in mysterious ways, his mercies to perform.
But we do not live in an age of signs and miracles, and we should avail ourselves of what is available. And we should know when to stop availing ourselves of what is available. Medicine is no different from shoes: it’s a lust-driven marketplace out there.
The bottom line is still a little wavy, but I’m beginning to discern that RSIs are like most other injuries: they do get better instead of worse. They take time and they do not always get all better. But better is better.
My husband is outside, butchering our chickens. They have outlived their usefulness as layers, and this is the next phase of their God-decreed calling. I will miss watching them flapping their wings and running about and jumping up to catch bugs in midair. I was so protective of them as chicks. I think I’m such a back-to-the-land person, and certainly I believe in stewardship and alignment with the economy of human-animal relationships ordained at creation. It’s just that I hate death.
My enjoyment of The Heart of Midlothian is unexpected. I’m one who normally does not enjoy novels, but I heard that Walter Scott was a Calvinist and so determined to read one of his. A couple of the librarians at my local library have degrees in literature, and I was soliciting their suggestions as to which of his novels to read. I decided on The Heart of Midlothian because both librarians considered it challenging. I’m finding it very engaging. Perhaps it would be difficult if someone lacked knowledge of the Bible, from which Scott draws copious allusions. Thoughtful editorial footnotes decode the Latin epigrams, and a glossary interprets most of the Gaelic. It’s rather wonderful to venture into the 18th century and observe common and privileged people alike recognizing the imperative of principled justice notwithstanding the limitations of human depravity.
We’re having a beautiful summer, and I am bummed that I cannot play croquet. Repetitive strain injuries are so ridiculous. I have days when I’m sure full resolution is imminent, and days when it’s hard to pull on pants. I can’t hold up a book or even a lightweight magazine. I have a versatile freestanding book stand that takes care of that, but of course I can’t take it with me anywhere I might like to read while I wait. I flunked Limits in pre-kindergarten, and I’m having to repeat the course now.
I hope for an Indian summer and healing. In the meantime, another road trip to river country sometime this summer might herald the former, and promote the latter.
I just received two portentous, if not amusing, things in the mail from two different MultiCare providers. I say amusing, because my autonomic nervous system converts to amusing what would otherwise incapacitate me with terror.
One message thanked me for my recent visit to Allenmore Hospital, and included a thoughtful two-page evaluation form. My most recent visit to Allenmore Hospital was four years ago, so you can imagine how thrilled I was that they finally asked. I would love to write them about my experience, but I’m afraid that my letter would only join the abyss of files from which the notion that I have recently been to Allenmore Hospital came. So I will write to them here, publicly.
Dear Allenmore Hospital,
Thank you for asking me to share my experience in your lavishly appointed ER. I was there with an incapacitating migraine four years ago. It was a completely avoidable problem. I carelessly ran out of Imitrex injectors. I waited five hours to see a doctor. But the entertainment was worth the price of admission.
After about two hours of staring at the tropical fish, I saw an undertaker, decked out in top hat and frockcoat, wheel a stiff out through the front door. A little while later, a fellow was brought in on a gurney, kiting on meth, three Taser probes in his neck and chest, cursing at the top of his lungs, with a police escort who was understandably not amused.
When it finally was my turn to speak with the triage nurse, I said, “Look, I’ve been here over three hours, and the only person I’ve seen leave this place was dead. Now what are my chances?” Your unflappable nurse said she thought they were pretty good. A good time was had by all. — Dutifully, Lauren B.
The other MultiCare advisory to surge my confidence in automated medical records efficiency came from my doctor, reminding me that she had no record that I had reported for the MRI to which she referred me. I can only wonder in that case why she called me two weeks ago to discuss my MRI results.
Dear Doctor,
I don’t know what to tell you. I really don’t. — Dutifully, Lauren B.
MultiCare is using Epic, an electronic medical records system, probably in order to get a toehold in the new mandate for universal automated health care records. Behold how well it works.
If you want to make a real difference in health care reform, quick: Run to a stationery department, while one still exists, and buy your doctor a pen and a pad of paper. Teach him or her how to use them. The life you save may be your own.
In my vigilance to identify routine tasks that aggravate the repetitive strain injury in my arms and hands and prolong its healing, I have learned more about myself and the way I do things. I am a tosser, a shaker, and a catcher. That is, I toss the chickens, shake the laundry, and catch my sleeve on door knobs.
It all comes down to finding new ways to do things. The chickens require tossing if they are ever to leave their roosts. Tossing chickens is an arms-length transaction, unless you want a face full of feathers. One by one, I pick each six-pound bird up from the roost to which she clings from some hormonal imperative, extend my arms so her flapping wings don’t graze my face, and propel her from the henhouse into the light of day and the realm of tasty bugs.
But picking up four, six-pound chickens, and extending my arms and propelling said chickens, aggravates my neck muscles, which retaliate by frying the nerves in my arms and wrists. The chickens need to be tossed, and I see no alternative means of tossing them ergonomically, so I have decided to pass this job to my husband, whose daily requests to take it up I have denied, protesting that I can do it because I am big: a prevarication at best on both counts.
I have long been of the habit of giving everything that comes out of the dryer a snappy shake in order to liberate any hostage socks or other small articles secreted in its folds. This action is not healthy for RSI-burned wrists. I can — I really can — remember to spread the article out on the bed and smooth it with my hands, rather than administering the snappy shake. This is simply a matter of mind over habit.
I have no idea how I acquired the knack of catching my sleeves on door knobs. The last time I did this, the resulting lurch undid the effects of a physical therapy session and my follow-up exercise session. The only solution I can see, besides removing all the door knobs in our house, is to declare anything with large sleeves a hazmat. I have never heard of any cure for spatial dissonance.
As if to compensate me for these lurking threats and dangers, a fragrant patch of the most wonderful oregano this side of Provence grows on the upper terrace of our back yard. Our friend Shirley gave me a slip from her oregano, which she started from a slip from her mother’s oregano, at the time we moved into our house. The hardy herb has prospered, and shares the shade of an aging apple tree with an equally prolific patch of spearmint. My husband cut several stems of mint and oregano and dried them in the greenhouse. After he stripped the leaves from the stems, I pulverized the oregano in the coffee grinder.
Mint, basil, and oregano are all related, and all make excellent tea. Oregano makes the strongest brew, and it is almost as pleasant to drink as coffee. It is nothing like coffee of course, but it is strong and aromatic, and good, in a green way. It is reputed to have good effects on the digestion. Whatever sort of variety it is, our oregano has a very robust flavor. Often I use nothing but salt and oregano in a stirfry, and it tastes as pungently seasoned as it does with blackening spices. In addition to oregano and mint, we complement our stirfry with dinner-time harvests of cabbage, radishes, and zesty mustard greens.
In a dangerous world, it doesn’t get much better than free food and mustard.
I probably just introduced myself to a whole new line of trigger points. Being a mobile unit, I wanted to try something more active to supplement my trigger point work and my physical therapist’s nerve gliding treatments. I walk every day, but I wanted to try something more exotic, as long as it would not aggravate my repetitive strain injury. So I went through the beginning section of a DVD titled, “Tai Chi for Arthritis,” with Dr. Paul Lam.
I have to say that Dr. Lam, who has an unspecified type of arthritis, moves like someone who has never had an arthritic molecule in his body. I knew that the Chinese have used tai chi to reduce the stiffness and pain of arthritis for centuries. But I also know that tai chi is one more reason it’s a good thing I’m not Chinese. I’d be a disgrace.
I attempted to follow 80-ish model student Sybil in a move Dr. Lam called, “waving through the crouds” — you know, those white puffy vaporous things. Obviously, Sybil did not have a microphone near her shoulders. When I began to wave through the clouds, my shoulders sounded like a piano trying to tiptoe down the stairs. I figured it was just trigger points.
It’s a stylish video. Standing on the grassy shore of a pretty Australian riverfront park, Dr. Lam demonstrates the full tai chi form as abbreviated for arthritis, clad in flowing silver satin pajamas. He can step to the left, bring his right arm up, and brush his knee, for miles. In my study, I get two paces before I run out of floorspace where I can still see the screen.
Tai chi is slow-motion precision, and slow-motion precision isn’t for everyone. Chinese people practice tai chi from the time they are toddlers, but their joints may nevertheless wear out or become inflamed.
My knee joints were shot by the time I was 15. I wasn’t a good ad for running, riding ill-tempered horses, folk dancing, tennis, or most of the other activities I got hurt doing. But activities like these are fun; they set character, and they are associated with growing up fairly normal in the West. Most importantly, a childhood that includes these things can compensate us for having to grow up. After all, we have the whole rest of our lives to be slow and precise.
A classmate from my junior high and high school era was killed in an auto accident this week. I think she is the first of my classmates to be the subject of an obituary since graduation day, when five kids died incredibly stupidly. My friend Nancy, the only person I’m still in touch with from those La Jolla years, e-mailed me the news. I Googled her obit, beheld a startlingly glamorous photo, and was overcome with a vaguely defined but sharply visceral despondency.
The dead woman had been a “typically exceptional” girl. Like most of my classmates, she was an alien to me, far wealthier than I; indeed, far more everything, and with an implicitly superior destiny. Even by La Jolla standards, she came from privilege. She was pretty, but she had a beautiful glow that came from deep confidence and natural grace. She was athletic and a cheerleader; a good student all around, a member of all the service clubs, and, as everyone knew, destined to marry her dashing male counterpart in our class and have top billing in the best storybook life ever, forever after.
And it seems from her starry obit that so it was. They married, enjoyed the earned wealth of her husband’s success early, and lived among the rich and famous in New York, London, and Tokyo, before returning home, where she was adored by all who knew her for her untiring efforts helping others, and by the love of her life and their devoted children.
The obituary mentioned a celebration of life in a beach park and invited everyone who had known her. Celebrants were asked to bring their own beach chairs. No mention was made of any church or any hint of faith at all.
I think of all the lovely people in their beach chairs and I think of the urgency that needs to accompany the thought that where there is breath there is hope. There is so much peril that, “where there is breath there is hope” can become hackneyed. The God in whose hand this woman’s breath was has no obligation to make us sick or afraid before he wills our breath to cease.
No deep thoughts here: there is no way to contrast my old classmate’s ephemeral wealth with the riches of Christ she never knew. I never stop being amazed that by God’s grace, I, her professing atheist classmate in those days, can know of the riches of Christ’s salvation. I just think of the girl I knew, and admired to the extent that I could believe she was even possible, whose charmed life of 57 years ended so suddenly and unexpectedly, eternally enduring the fruits of her self-justification. I’m sorry that I can’t think of anything more horrible, or anything less horrible.
One of my friends recently asked me whether I missed writing about politics and economics lately. My response was kind of perfunctory: “No, this is my exilic period.” I mean, by the time local businesses are, in effect, receiving pink slips from the President of the United States, who of course has a perfect right since he is, after all, auditing the company’s budget, I have to say that I no longer know how things work here.
Today, I listened to one of the most important sermons I have ever heard, one on justice, preached by Pastor Tom Chantry of Christ Reformed Baptist Church (link is on my Links page), expositing on Isaiah 1. It is imperative that Christians remember what actually constitutes oppression, their duty to stand against true oppression, and what it means to do justly and defend the weak. There isn’t much more I can say to this until I’ve thought about it for the rest of my life. Anyway, I think I’m more in a thoughtful, quietly active interlude than true exile. But listen to Tom Chantry.
It is true that I don’t know how things work. It doesn’t particularly bother me very much when I use Chrysler and GM interchangeably in the same sentence. I think it must horrify my husband, who stays on top of everything, but I don’t have to make excuses for myself; he gallantly makes them for me. “No one knows what’s going on with these things,” he’ll say. That actually seems terrifyingly plausible. So exile seems somehow more reputable a refuge than stupidity.
Speaking of stupidity, my elite professional version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 just crashed. It seems that the incantation, “minimize window,” which frequently triggered a freeze unto death when invoked in Internet Explorer in the regular version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, still works its evil spell intermittently in the professional version. This requires a fair amount of hands touching keys to perform the necessary end task routine, depress the button of death, and reboot. The whole point of using Dragon NaturallySpeaking in its finest form is to avoid touching keys, because such action fried the user’ s hands in the first place, plunging said user into the murky realms of reliance upon voice-recognition software.
No one sees what I see. If I’m trying to describe the location of an object, I’ll say, for instance, “mouse grid five.” “Mouse grid” is a Dragon NaturallySpeaking navigation command. Just to type those words, I have to give other commands to cause the program to type the command, rather than to comply with the command. I’ve also noticed that my voice, never particularly inflective, now tends to remain in a low monotone preferred by my voice-recognition software. However, when the mouse runs away and refuses to obey a command, I admit to yelling, “Stop!” repeatedly in a volume not preferred by my voice-recognition software. This is highly ineffectual. But it doesn’t matter, because there is no other remedy anyway. I just try to remember that cuneiform evolved into mass-market paperbacks.
Our garden looks more established than I feel. The grapevine my husband planted from a sprig and trained to our deck lattice two years ago is now a fruitful vine sprawling across the lattice, and we will be able to pick bunches of grapes from our very deck at summer’s end. Nasturtiums he started from seed in our greenhouse now bloom and trail from hanging baskets on the deck. The colors and the future fruits delight me. I no longer mind the weeds that prosper from my lack of puttering. My presence in the garden has simply taken on a new phase and I enjoy it in a new way. That is what limits teach us: that we have to find new ways to do things.
