Window on the Soul

I wake up one morning, right myself in bed, and see an earwig wriggling across the tan linoleum floor.  Eew.  I don’t like earwigs.  I could let it continue on its way—or I could kill it.  I look around me and imagine it crawling where it will—the bed, the shelves of clothes, the bin of socks and underwear.   The vision is convincing. 

But, on the edge of action I hesitate with this sudden thought: I save every other kind of crawling thing.  What makes it okay to kill an earwig?  Just because its body arcs side to side, creepy-fashion, as it walks?   Just because it has those pincers on its rear?  Those pincers never hurt me.  And besides, I save creatures that do hurt me, like wasps, yellow jackets, and bees.  I never kill a wasp just because it mistakenly entered the house. I trap it with a plastic tub and a piece of cardboard and throw it outside.  Or have Larry do the same. And spiders… I put them out or let them be.  When I fail to rescue one from the tub and it drowns, I feel a cloud of remorse and wish the little thing was alive again.  But not with earwigs. 

How corrupt, I think, to spare life on the basis of personal preference. 

So I get up, find a piece of paper, and bend down to place it in the earwig’s path.   It crawls on and, as I straighten up, drops off.   I get the earwig on again, and we race—it towards the edge of the paper and me towards the door.  It wins.  Shit.  This is a lot of trouble for an earwig.  And first thing in the morning, too.  I try a few more times, but the earwig, older and wiser, turns away from the paper now. 

I don’t even think of getting a container to trap it.  I toss the paper aside, put my shoe down on the one inch life and say, “Okay, you die.”

Bye-bye October

In the flesh (as opposed to with Sharpie on paper) I went for realism this Halloween: I played a sick person.  I think it was quite convincing.  I’m a good actor.  My costume was very easy—I just stayed in my pajamas all day.

I had a cold a few weeks ago, and it seems to have precipitated a significant setback.  So, October has been a tad difficult.  November probably will be too.  I’m trying to roll with it.  This strange new possibility that I have an infection which may be treatable has been helping, even if all the new information is also wearing me out.

Too True

XMRV

So, wow—I mean, wow!  So, there’s this virus, a retrovirus to be specific, called XMRV—“xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus”—that was only identified in the last few years, and just super-recently, researchers with the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuroimmune Disease (my new heart-throb) have detected this virus in—well, lots of people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.  The study is published in Science—super-duper prestigious—go, go! 

I’ve never had that diagnosis, but looking at the diagnostic criteria on the Whittemore Peterson Institute’s website, it’s the best description of my whole problem I’ve ever seen.  These are the Canadian diagnostic criteria.  (Kisses to Canada.)  Most descriptions I see as I look around list “chronic sore throat” prominently and don’t mention autonomic dysfunction at all or often even pain.  No wonder I haven’t thought this was a very relevant category for me.  (Though I have doubted sometimes as I have encountered people very similar to me with the diagnosis.) The CDC criteria also come nowhere near encompassing my situation.  I haven't pushed for an encompassing diagnosis before because the available ones didn't seem very useful.  I'm hoping this news will change the picture.  Maybe, ME/CFS will get a better name too.

For me, the big wowser here is not only a possible viral cause for my trouble, but also the news that a diagnostic description that truly fits me exists at all.  And not only that, but there are people using that description as a basis for serious research. 

Here is another run-down on the news, which I thought informative.

(If anybody wants a PDF of the original technical article and the perspective essay that appeared with it in Science, ask and I shall e-mail: msleaf [ a t ] wildblue [ d o t ] net.)

We could do better than Columbus Day.

Of the Arawak Indians that greeted Columbus he wrote in his journal that they,

"brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells.  They willingly traded everything they owned . . . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. . . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance.  They have no iron.  Their spears are made of cane. . . . They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them and make them do whatever we want."

Log of Christopher Columbus, 1492, quoted by Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (HarperPerennial 1990), p. 1.








I actually drew this cartoon last Thanksgiving, and I think it works just as well for both holidays. Just for the record, I like Thanksgiving much more than Columbus Day.

And by the way, my cartoons are now legally portable, as long as you give me credit, link to heaveninmyfoot.com, and don't use them for commercial purposes. You also can't cut them up and make something else out of them. (That sounds like the seed of a cartoon itself.) See the right sidebar for my Creative Commons license and more info.

Kennebunkport, Late August

 An older woman, serving as official guardian of order on the beach, tells us she will intervene with negligent dog owners. “We don’t want you to get knocked down,” she says.  “Thank you,” I tell her.  I could easily envy all the healthy, running-about people, but I don’t.  Today they are ambiance and scenery, and my heart feels another pull.  I look past the figures in random motion to the water.  Low mist cuts through the late afternoon like the Milky Way across the night sky.  I want to put my feet in, but first I have to get there. 

I start across the sand, my legs wobbling more than usual on the shifty surface.  Larry steps away to take pictures, and I am suddenly overtaken by tears.  I’m not even sure why, except that it has been a long time since I walked on a beach.  For some, that would not matter much, but I grew up on a sandbar.  As I walk, I look down at the gray-brown grains, wet underfoot. The points of my walking poles and the soles of my shoes sink in with each step.  I pause to rest and lift my face to the soft scattered light.  All around me is the churning sound of ocean and wind, cut by breaking waves, the cries of gulls, and snatches of conversation as people pass by, call their dogs, run into the water.  The wave-riders are out in their wetsuits, and the Atlantic is obliging. 

Near the highest reach of surf I stop and lean my sticks on Larry while I roll my pants above my knees and slip off my shoes.  The sand feels hard.  It hurts, actually.  I doubt my mission for approximately three seconds, and then I’m off again.  As I traverse a band of rocks and shells I doubt again.  Ouch.  Ouch.  Ouch.  Finally, the water, warmer than I expected, cold but not frigid.  I brace myself with my sticks against the waves.  Damn, it feels good.  I’m tempted to walk all the way in, clothes and all.  But the ankle-deep tide is work enough, and I’m afraid I won’t be safe if I go much deeper, even if I am willing to drench my clothes.  So I stand and look about.  The waves roll in and out against my legs.  Under water my toes curl on smooth ridges of sand. 

I turn back, thinking I’ve gone deep enough and stood long enough.  The ocean, having reached its ebb, turns landward as well and wets my rolled-up trousers.  I hold myself against it, laughing, surprised—as much by my own strength as by the wave.  

In a few hours the beach will nearly disappear under water.  Larry and I will rest in our room, listening to wedding festivities down the hall, and talking quietly over the day while he sips a Baltic Porter.   I will tell him I think my fuzz-head hair, with my two sticks, completes the sick-person look and that I worry I’m giving the people watching me an exaggerated impression of how much trouble I’m in.  Larry will think this is very funny, because it is—as if that has ever really been a problem.  

We will talk, too, of my tears on the beach, so unexpected and sudden.  “It isn’t just that I miss the beach,” I will say, “though that’s true.  But there’s something else.”  The place where land and ocean meet has always been, to me, a place for grieving.  This will surprise Larry.  “Maybe I had less to grieve as a kid,” he will say.  For him the beach was only happy play.  I had that also.  I built drippy castles, hunted Wentletrap shells, ran, sunned, body surfed, worked as a lifeguard.  But the feeling I long for and miss is contemplative, consoling.  The ocean calls sadness out of me, like it belongs there, in the big water, and I need not carry it anymore.

 

 

Every so often...

For your auditory pleasure...

One of my basic survival resources is BBC radio.  There is nothing in the US to compare.  So let me just take a moment here to thank the people of Great Britain for funding such excellent listening.  Maybe in return we can do something other than get you into needless wars.  For anybody homebound, housebound, or with otherwise available ears, I highly recommend it.  All accessible over the web.  Shows stay up as streaming audio for a week after broadcast.  If you are tech savvy, like my Larry, you can record them as MP3 files and listen anytime.  I listen mostly to Radio 4.  I especially like the Afternoon Plays.  Sometimes the stories get into my cartoons.

Recently

Journal Scraps: Answering the Phone

CALLER: Hello, may I please speak with Larry Gilman?

ME: No, I’m sorry, he’s not here right now.

CALLER: OK, well, could you take a message for me?

ME: Yeah, sure [getting up out of bed, getting to the desk, getting paper and pen]

CALLER: Well, wait—is this Mrs. Gilman?

ME: Yes.

CALLER: Oh—well, maybe then you can help me.

ME: Sure.

CALLER: Hi, Mrs. Gilman, my name is Mike. I’m calling from Hyatt Grand Vacations.

ME: We don’t take grand vacations. I’m chronically ill.

CALLER: Oh—you mean you’re telling me that you’re not interested in a vacation because of your illness?

ME: Yes.

CALLER: Well, I can certainly understand that, Mrs. Gilman, because I was in the hospital for 18 months. I can certainly understand what that’s like. But I can also tell you that what I looked forward to was taking a vacation when I got out.

ME: I’ve been sick for 16 years.

CALLER: So—you wouldn’t like to go to Las Vegas?

ME: I’d like to be taken off the calling list.

CALLER: Well, I can certainly do that.

*click*