I ran across an interesting turn of phrase in a book I’m currently reading. The story takes place in Japan, and the prose is littered with bits of Japanese. The phrase mono no aware was translated as “the sadness of being human.”
Given all that has transpired in the last year and a half, this struck a rather deep cord with me. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but I can’t get it out of my head. Maybe I’ll figure it out eventually, but for now, I am finding some comfort in mono no aware
Over the long holiday weekend we watched several movies.
The Village M. Night Shyamalan’s wonderful movie about a remote village surrounded by a forest containing a secret enemy. We hadn’t seen this before and were expecting a “horror” type film. The twists and turns the plot takes are very good and ultimately the movie is very satisfying.
The Pacifier While this one was predictable and aimed at younger audience it was good for a laugh. Vin Diesel’s wooden acting actually makes him a good straight man for sight and pratfall gags.
Hotel Rwanda A powerful, disturbing, and moving true story about genocide in our time. As you watch with horror the killing and destruction you cannot believe that this happened only ten years ago and that you remember nothing about it on the news. Western “civilization” turned its back on the people of Rwanda ten years ago at a cost of nearly a million lives. Today we are again turning our backs on the situation in the Sudan. What good is it to be a superpower if all we can do invade and occupy a country we’ve been bombing for over a decade while ignoring mass killings in another country?
The Last Shot A surprisingly funny sleeper. We had seen a clip of this on “The Daily Show” when it was first released but never rented the movie. A very funny farce about a true FBI sting operation involving Hollywood and the mob.
I strongly urge the Senate to exercise its rightful role in the upcoming selection and confirmation process for supreme court justice. As Justice O’Connor was often the pivotal vote, her replacement needs to be similar ideologically.
With President Bush’s term still having over three years to run, he will likely have several opportunities to move the court towards the right - a move that will disenfranchise vast numbers of Americans and further erode our society by putting personal religious convictions ahead of our societies needs.
Replacing Justice O’Connor with a like minded jurist will keep the court balanced at a time when the rest of the government seems to be shifting towards the right. A conservative or, worse, fundamentalist jurist would not only move the court to the right, they would reverse the direction of the court altogether.
Please remember that although the current administration was elected by a majority of conservative voters, the majority of Americans are not conservative and do not want an ideologue turning their country into a restrictive society where women have no rights over their bodies, and where personal lifestyle choices result in loss of freedoms.
Again I urge the Senate to carefully consider the implications of this selection and confirmation process as it will shape our country for decades to come.
Sincerely, Mark H. Nichols
This may very well be one of the best things I’ve ever read about grieving. Having lost my sister when I was just twelve I could articulate how it felt and what I needed. Stacey Waspe’s words capture the truth of the process, simply and accurately.
In the last eight months my wife lost both of her parents. She is moving through her grief, and I am moving through my own grief process. Reading this posting helped to put into perspective what Michele is going through.
I am grateful for people who can articulate their deepest emotions and processes in the moment, and who are also brave enough to share with the rest of the world.
Michele and I went to see the new Batman movie (“Batman Begins”) yesterday afternoon. We noticed that our favorite multiplex now sports an IMAX theater, complete with a huge screen and over amped speakers. So we decided to see it there.
The matinée price was $9 each. Rather steep, but acceptable - after all we were going to see the movie in a special way. Right? Riiiight.
Arriving 15 minutes before show time we discovered that the theater was nearly full. Only single seats here and there between groups of people were available, and the only seats together were in the second row. Learn from my experience, do not, EVER, sit in the second row of an IMAX style movie. Particularly if you wear bifocals. The screen was so big and so close that I was unable to see all of the picture in focus at once.
Since the edges of the screen were beyond the range of my vision the action sequences were painfully disorienting to watch. I was unable to keep my focus on anything faster than a pan across the scene, so the fight scenes were lost in a multi-colored blur. Or would have been had the picture been bright enough to have color.
You see, viewing it from the extreme angle we had, the top third of the screen and outer quarter on each side of the screen, were dim, almost unlit. IMAX uses a curved screen, and is best viewed from some distance away. The local theater chain, in an effort to make money, gives up any shot at customer satisfaction, but putting seats so close that you can’t really view the movie.
Having seen many IMAX productions in the past from a proper seating perspective I know that it provides an unparalleled visual and auditory experience. However, the greed of the Hollywood movie industry was evident since the seating in this theater was designed for maximum sales and not viewer satisfaction.
We won’t be watching a Hollywood release in IMAX again any time soon.
A year ago this weekend (June 26th, to be exact) Michele and I abandoned our house in Illinois to move to Overland Park. On Friday afternoon we rented a 14 foot U-Haul truck for the one-way trip to Kansas. Friday evening was spent gathering those items we wanted for the two weeks before the movers would arrive with the rest of our belongings. I was up until well past midnight tearing down our computers and packing them for the journey.
Saturday was in a word brutal. Emotionally we were spent from our months long fight to stay in Springfield, to keep our house and pool, to not have to move again. Last minute phone calls to two separate consulting firms that had potential area jobs failed to rescue us from our fate. In order to ensure we had an apartment to move into Michele had to leave several hours before me - the apartment office closed at 5:00 and she had to make the 375 mile drive before then. Taz, our youngest cat, rode with her in the car. We were both bawling by the time she left.
I spent the final hours in my house furiously packing the items I knew we would want and need in the apartment. Nekko, the older cat, mewed constantly from the confines of her carrier. In the past she has not traveled well and I was worried about needing to get her a shot to ease her through the trip. By noon I was on the way to the dump with the last of the garbage, and to the cable company to turn in their equipment. Before I had traveled two miles Nekko was producing mucus and retching. After dropping off the cable boxes I went to the vet and they gave her a couple of pills that calmed my poor upset kitty.
With only one cell phone there was no way I could contact Michele or know what she was experiencing. I set off for Kansas almost three hours after she had left in a truck that whistled loudly above 45 mph. By six that evening I had made it to Overland Park, only to be halted by construction delays on the interstate bypass. I had called the rental office and left a message for Michele to let her know approximately when I would arrive.
I was never so happy as when I saw her again and knew she was okay, that the separate part of our ordeal was over. We spent the evening putting together our bed and setting up our computers. Sunday morning we ventured out for our first breakfast as Kansas residents. The rest of that day was spent in an exhausted haze putting the kitchen together, and emptying the truck for its return to U-Haul.
Thanks to “state trait” memory I have managed to forget much of the pain, emotional and physical, of that weekend. It is almost as if those two and a half days happened to someone else, not me. Ten days later our movers arrived with the remaining four tons (yes 8,000 pounds) of our stuff. The apartment was filled to the brim with furniture and boxes, our tiny garage stall was stuffed, and our storage locker was full. By August we had rented a second locker and filled it to capacity as well.
Over the past year we had adapted to apartment living again. It is tolerable if not livable. Over Christmas, when we returned to central Illinois to see my family, we drove within three miles of the Pawnee house; we didn’t stop to look. Even today, a year after I last saw it I have no desire to see it again. Especially now that it has been sold. That house was our first true home together, a place where we felt comfortable, a place where we felt belonging.
Today I find my belonging with Michele. The physical place we inhabit isn’t nearly as important has sharing that space with her, and with my two cats. I know that we will own a house again. I just hope that we can move in a far less stressful way to that place.
Go. Participate. Be the curve.
Several years ago I was depressed enough that I sought medical help in the form of Paxil. I was only on the drug for maybe 35 or 40 days. At the time it was enough of a boost to bring me back to a normal sinus rhythm of ups and downs. Since then I haven’t felt like I needed any assistance. The strength and depth of my relationship with Michele has given me a powerful tool to combat what I feel is my tendency towards melancholy. The past 15 months have beaten me down to the point were the joy and peace I find in my relationship with Michele is no longer strong enough to lift me out of depression.
In the past few weeks I have lost my appetite, and I am having increasing difficulty sleeping. My mood is foul all the time, and I am openly thinking about suicide again. I know that many people consider thought of suicide dangerous and an indication of mental instability. I believe that suppressing thoughts of ending your life ultimately cause more pain, perhaps even bringing on that finality. Open expression of all your feelings is the only way to remove their immediate hold over you. The trick is to express in a constructive, healthy way, and not in a manner that only adds to the pain.
Usually I turn to Michele and lean on her wisdom, love, and belief in me to get me past these moods. However, she is struggling with her own depression. With the recent death of her mother she is facing some incredibly difficult emotions herself. Coming at the end of a very long and difficult year that only gets us half way to daylight again, losing her sole remaining parent has had a huge impact on her. My fear is that together we may feed off each other’s pain and depression rather than providing the safe place to fall we are used to sharing.
I do not appreciate or believe in medical (i.e., drug) solutions to my problems. The drug-based medical model we have today supports the idea that issues should be reduced to something you live with rather than actually solved. Managed health care has reduced doctors to seeing patients for bare minutes at a time. Personal understanding of the entire history of a situation never happens. If a drug can reduce my dependency on seeing the doctor, then that solution is enough. I think this is wrong and I do not support this approach to managing my physical, mental, or emotional health.
Having said that, I do think that medicine provides some valuable tools, which, when used properly, can and do improve a persons quality of life. The trick is being an active participant in the process of selecting a treatment and following through on its delivery. In the fall of 2000 when I had an umbilical hernia I sought out a surgeon only after I knew what the recommended treatment options were. I controlled the treatment as much as he did. This partnership resulted in a very successful procedure that eliminated my problem.
Throughout the 1990s I tried to deal with difficulty swallowing. In this case I was not an equal partner in selecting a treatment or in following through on its execution. Ultimately the treatments (six out-patient surgeries) failed to improve my quality of life. In fact the idea of facing out-patient surgery every 5 months for the rest of my life was intolerable. With the support and assistance of my wife I have learned how to alter my eating habits, and how to address the causes of emotional stress in my life, so as to reduce my throat incidents in severity and frequency. Yes I still have to live with this condition, but now that I am actively participating in a course of action to deal with it I feel better all the time.
Recognizing that depression is a default emotional position for me is hard. It feels dirty and bad. My fears of losing my mind in the folds of the depression are heightened. Not acknowledging this truth is worse as I can then turn a blind eye to my situation, which allows it to grow unabated and unchecked. Taking an active participation role is hard as the very depression I am trying to overcome saps my will to change and overcome. I feel that this is a case where I need medical assistance in the form of a mood elevator. A month or two of elevation to a “normal” emotional sinus rhythm will give me enough extra energy to begin to address the unexpressed emotions that are currently cluttering up my life. Without some kind of active intervention I fear that I will continue to spiral down from my current dysthymic level to true clinical depression. Having fought my way up from dysthymia once before I have no desire to discover how tough it is to defeat clinical depression.
So I am off to find a pill pusher who will provide the mood elevator I need with the least level of invasion into my life.
How ironically depressing.
Michele is teaching an on-the-ground (as opposed to online) class Wednesday evenings this summer. The facility is a rural elementary school, complete with pint sized chairs and desks. Some of the taller students literally have the desk between their knees when they sit down.
As I thought about this I realized that my college experience was vastly different than the one people looking for a second career have. I went to a medium sized midwestern university complete with varied building architectures and a quadrangle. A significant part of my university experience was the setting; for the students hunched over tiny desks in a refurbished Quonset hut the focus is truly on the education.
My wife went back to school after working for ten years to get her degrees and a second career. Now many of her students are having a similar experience; an experience that I can only imagine. Having contemplated changing my career on more than one occasion I can and do respect the courage it takes to dedicate yourself to night school.
Having visited her classroom and seeing the challenges people will endure to gain an education, I have a new hope for the future of our society. Real change always happens from the bottom up and these students are making a difference by changing themselves.
I recently learned that my parents, who have lived in the same house since 1962, are considering the possibility of selling it. Without having talked to them in any detail about the reasons, I suspect that it is starting to become problematic for them.
The house itself was built in the early 1950s, so it is fast approaching 60 years of age. They have lovingly maintained it and updated it over the years, but as with all structures there is always one more thing that needs doing. As is typical in the midwest the house sits on a full basement, and in typical “man” design, the laundry is downstairs. Eventually having 13 steps between them and clean clothes will become an issue.
So I understand the reasoning behind thoughts of selling and moving into a maintenance free dwelling that is all on one level. But another part of me cries out at the thought of the only childhood home I’ve ever known being sold to someone else. I’d never be able to go back there again.
Michele has lived in 13 states, and perhaps three times that many locations within those states. Her childhood home is an idea that lives in her heart not a physical place she can return to and touch. The house I grew up in has always been there. I’ve never not had that as my childhood home. It seems odd that as a middle aged man I have to face for the first time losing my first home.
Ultimately it’s just a building. And I’ll learn to fill in whatever gap it may leave behind as it moves out of my life permanently. But the initial shock of no longer have that house to go to will be an interesting growth experience for me.