“SO HOW ARE YOU FEELING TODAY?...

“How the fuck should I know you just woke me up!” was always the answer in my head as they roused me from sleeping at 7AM every day. As I fought to gain consciousness I would mutter something like “fine” and my day would begin anew… sort of. Let me bring this into perspective here before I go any further. It has all of the makings of a great “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay if I were still in school. My “Vacation” started Monday morning May 20th and would continue until Friday afternoon May 24th. During this time I would be subjected to a series of tests for epilepsy in an effort to find the cause of the seizures I still have despite the fact I’m taking enough anti-seizure medication to tranquilize an elephant. Seems simple enough right? But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO… They fail to tell you a few things until you can’t escape. Shortly after arriving I was escorted to my eerily quiet room, changed into my PJ’s and then played twenty questions with a couple of doctors and nurses and being instructed to sit in a chair where they super glued thirty little wires to my head after drawing a jigsaw puzzle on my bald head in blue marker (they were thrilled I have a shaved head) then they put a yellow wrist band on me that said “Fall Risk” on it. Then they bound all of the wires together with that tape they use on you after you get a blood test which made me look like a really ugly Hare Krishna guy or one of those big blue character in “Avatar”. I didn’t know if I looked like a science project gone wrong or a piece of performance art, but it was interesting. After that I was buckled and LOCKED into a padded bed for the entire week. When I had to go to the bathroom I had to flag someone down so that they could unlock me long enough to do what I needed to do then re-lock me again. I’m pretty sure that wrist band was some sort of entertainment for the staff… I mean REALLY…where could I go? I’m plugged into a monitor with a bunch of squiggly lines on it and a live video feed of ME on it 24/7. It was like having my own personal podcast. Every time I blinked, burped, coughed or whatever one of those lines would do a different dance. When I moved the camera mounted on the ceiling for follow me to make sure whatever I did was visible. The tests were interesting… not. Sleep deprivation, Cognitive tests (boring), adding and subtracting meds, and (my all time favorite) flashing strobe lights in different speeds and patterns which are supposed to induce an epileptic seizure. All it succeeded in doing was taking me on a trip down memory lane to high school and college. (I kept waiting to hear Jefferson Airplane or Pink Floyd on the speakers every time they did that.) The only thing all of that managed to do was give me a case of the munchies and verify that neurologists use too many of their own sample drugs. Every day it was more of the same, always starting out with “How are you feeling today?” which would be asked again, and again, and again about a dozen times each day. Each day there would be fewer and fewer answers as to what the problem was, but I did get to learn a few things while I was there. The hospital I was staying in was Good Samaritan. For those of you unfamiliar with Phoenix it’s the hospital they used in the movie “Waiting to Exhale”. (I learned that by accident when it was being filmed. I was there to see some friend or relative and got off on the wrong floor and was me by two mountains masquerading as security and put back into the elevator to the right floor.) I had only been a patient there once… the day I was born. The first few days of my life was spent in the pediatric ward there in the old hospital. They tore that hospital down a long time ago and built what is there now. Interestingly enough, I was able to find out through conversations with my dad and hospital staff, we were able to determine that the bed I had been strapped into all week was about eighty feet directly above where I was born (give or take a few feet in any direction). There was something strangely comforting about knowing that. Other than that, all I learned that week was I don’t have epilepsy, I don’t have cancer, I visited where I was born but, now I have a whole bunch of other tests to take… lucky me. Well, I must be going. Next week I get to… you guessed it… start another new “Vacation”.

JAZZ HANDS

I’m impressed at how silent the world is these days. In spite of the traffic, the sirens, the bombs, guns and the screams it’s become comfortingly quiet… because nobody is listening. We have become talking Mimes. Our mouth’s move, but nobody hears us. They’re blocking out our words as they attempt to talk over us… or through us. It becomes a battle of expressions. Jazz Hands moving in a pathetic game of “charades” as we strive to show our level of intelligence and righteousness while showing how unimportant everyone else is to us. We search for our mark under the spotlight and hold tightly to that space. A social filibuster until we run out of words and ideas. We walk down once noble streets that were then only defaced by the occasional dog marking its territory. The brick and concrete edifices that line the street are now marked by spray paint as young punks dressed like clowns with needles in their arms and guns in their belts lay claim to it as THEIR territory as they stand nearby and flash their Jazz Hands at people who show interest in claiming what belongs to NEITHER of them. People have turned their homes into fortresses to protect themselves, their families and their belongings from the violent vampires of the night who want everything you have… and more. They chant their vile poetry of false poverty while taking needles and putting more drugs and ink into their bodies before heading back into the night in expensive vehicles for more blood from all of us and blend in with the hipsters searching for their next victims. The disenfranchised, delusional or completely discarded will cower in the shadows of the doorways sometimes wondering why they’re still there and who forgot them. They hope only to be remembered and cared about like not so long ago. Once again the Jazz Hands will come out and lull us into submission. We will dance, we will sing… badly and if it happens to be a karaoke bar… sing even worse, because nobody is still listening really and being drunk is actually the important part anyways. It’s so much easier to forget we’re not human anymore when we’re that drunk. We will, eventually, find our way home to where we pretend to live normal lives. We don’t travel as much as we used to because, regardless of what country you’re from or live in, everyone HATES you. We pretend not to notice or hear, but we’re reluctant to venture out too far anymore. Instead we’ll stay in and watch how dysfunctional we’ve really become on TV. Life has become both a circus and a zoo; it all just depends on which side of the cage you stand on. We’ll reduce ourselves to becoming armchair critics and quarterbacks and stand in judgment of everyone and everything without hearing, seeing or researching a fucking thing before offering our opinion… but the Jazz Hands will still keep moving… even though no one is listening. We will continue to hate people not like us, justify our existence, maintain and armory of weaponry for our own personal use and belligerently explain why we shouldn’t compromise in the slightest, but those Jazz Hands keep dancing and our ego’s will continue to grow. We’ll pay exorbitant amounts of money for artwork the quality of a third grader and call it a “bargain”. We’ll also pay more for “VIP” treatment at parties and events while trying desperately to forget that if you really were a VIP they’d be giving it to you for free. We stress about being “Green” but only when it’s convenient to do so and have assumed that food can only be good if it costs three times what it should. Everyone has become a “gourmet cook” because someone showed them how to cook a recipe on TV but, as usual, WE know better than THEY do so it’s OK to over spice the dish. A restaurant can’t be great unless it’s owned by a celebrity chef and/or shown on TV. The hospitals, sanitariums and “rehab” centers will continue to be overflowing with people so over medicated, self-medicated, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed that half of the population cannot function and fall through the cracks and into the shadows. All the while the politicians of every stripe break out the Jazz Hands as they tap dance around the issue and do nothing… again. We didn’t have to stand up and recite “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening” or “Two roads diverge in a yellow wood” at our graduation. Partly because we don’t have snow or woods where I live, but mostly because Robert Frost wasn’t our guest speaker nor did we have to recite “Buffalo Bill’s defunct” because e.e.cummings wasn’t there either. It’s unlikely that students today will have to sit and listen to the poetic resonance of Russell Simmons, ‘Lil Wayne” or “Snoop Dogg/Lion” for much the same reasons along with the fact they can’t read anything. What they will probably hear is some “suit” tells them they’re under-educated, the most indebted generation ever and have no chance of getting a job in their chosen field but should “go forth and be happy”. …And the Jazz Hands will, once again, wave along even though they didn’t hear a word that was said.

…”WHO ARE YOU?”

…Asked the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied very shyly, “I…I hardly know sir, just at present… at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” “Alice in Wonderland” Chapter V By Lewis Carroll I’m sure it would be impossible to remember how many times people have asked us “Who are you?” not to mention how many times we’ve looked in the mirror and asked ourselves the very same question. Each time the answer was, more likely than not, different than the last time you were asked. If you’re a normal human being you’ve continued to grow and change daily… if not minute by minute. The interests and beliefs you had yesterday may not be the same as today yet sometimes some of us manage to never really know, or understand, who they are as a person. They may have a vague idea of who they’d like to be or who they think people want them to be but they really don’t know themselves or what THEY want in actuality. Sometimes they may catch a glimpse of their inner self and may be terrified of what they saw and done everything in their power to prevent that from rising to the surface even going so far as to lie to themselves and everyone else as to who they might really be. Sometimes people catch that glimpse and are shocked, but curious and cautiously explore that part of them, some just jump in with both feet and hope they don’t drown. Many of us do a mixture of all of that depending on the situation. Then there are people like me. I’m more of a “Damn the Torpedo’s” type of person which can easily put me in some interesting situations when I least expect it (and then I wonder why I have heart issues… but that’s another story). Regardless… life can only be an adventure if you know who YOU are and are brave enough and honest enough to follow the path you choose to take.