Four years ago last Tuesday

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Michele and I were working on the Obama primary campaign making phone calls into Iowa. We believed that Obama was the Change We Need and we were Who We Have Been Waiting For. We believed that one man could change the trajectory of the country, could change the world. This year, we watched the Republicans play a strange game of musical chairs – or last man standing, or something – where each and every candidate – except Huntsman who is probably conservative enough but not pissed at Obama enough – rises to be the top runner over poor, hapless, Willard Romney1 and then sinks back into relative obscurity.

There was a time, last year, when I was pretty down over the presidency being over Obama’s head, over his detachment, over the job that Obama is doing, and I am still disappointed but I have stopped looking to him to be the answer. I think that he is a better than average president, but not the game changer we thought we so desperately needed. Still, for me, this year seems strangely hopeful.2

I don’t think that government is going to solve Global Climate Change – shit! the Federal government might not even really admit it exists until the seas rise above the streets of downtown Manhattan – but change seems to be bubbling up. From states and cities. From the private sector. And we are going to adjust to the new, more intense, weather. My biggest disappointment is that we are trashing our education system – at one time not too long ago, California’s higher education system was the best in the world and almost free – and that sucks and is unbelievably short sighted  (with no “but”). Still, while our country has become unbelievably unequal, the 99% live pretty well compared  to almost any place and any time in history.

Our health care is a mess – except for people like me who have single payer, commy, health care – unless you are rich, but the real problems are really how we eat and how we act and that may be changing. Or not. One thing that I think that I learned from watching Obama during the last – almost – five years is how entrenched the system is. It is much more difficult to bring about change today than it was during Roosevelt’s time; maybe because the special interests are stronger – the barnacle theory – maybe because Bush handed off  the economy to Obama too early in the cycle so he ended up sharing the blame unlike Roosevelt who came in after three disastrous years.

And I am strangely hopeful, Still.

1 Who, when Wolf Blitzer said his real name is Wolf, couldn’t resist saying that Mitt was his real name also. The poor sad-sack can’t help but lie when it doesn’t even help him.

2 Maybe just because I feel better about myself and am projecting it out on the country.


Home, home at last

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A couple of  thoughts on leaving the hospital and coming home.

First, a hospital is a spiritual place. I used to think spiritual places were solemn. Solemn as in only solemn, solemn as in the hushed silence of going into a church for a memorial service or wedding. Then I spent an afternoon at a spiritual site – it wasn’t a church, actually it was a sort of anti-church that the Catholic church has been fighting for 500 years and temple seems way too grand – dedicated to Maximón.

It was actually a major rite of passage for me, I had gone there to photograph the site and, I am sorry to say, make fun of it. As soon as I got there, I started to throw-up and shake, after a session with the Tz’utujil shaman/priests, I felt great. Sitting around, I saw solemn moments, sadness and pathos, but more laughter and hilarity. It was eye opening on every level.

A hospital is like that: it is over- ridingly a spiritual place where life in all its forms is played out on steroids. The rooms may be filled with people in pain and distress but the hall are filled with joy and humor and that energy comes into each room dozens of times a day. Becky, an astoundingly black, astoundingly gorgeous woman from Uganda, coming into the room at 6 in the morning with a wide, infectious smile, glowing as she gently takes my blood; Sherry, an Indian from Fiji, spreading calm and peace as she takes my vitals; the lead nurse, in her hijab, serenely watching her wards.

If this is the future of America, sign me up.

Second, I have left the hospital and have come home. The hospital has so many advantages, and it isn’t home. Nothing beats my own beddy-bye. Even a great hotel. I look at the calendar and I have been gone almost a week, but nothing seems to have changed. Of course it has, Christmas is gone; time has continued to flow even though it didn’t in the hospital and I am ready to slip back into that flow. Feeling serene and grateful.

 

 

 

 

A thought at 5 AM

Medical, Politics,

After waking up at 5 AM with a throbbing pain in my knee, I started thinking about the Iranian woman who was going to be stoned to death for adultery. It seems the case has now been referred to the Iranian equivalent of the Supreme Court to see if the sentence can be changed to….wait for it now, reduced to, commuted to….hanging.

I am not sure if the court’s thinking – and I am using the term thinking loosely here – is supposed to be based on legal grounds or a religious interpretation of  God’s unboundless Love; either way it seems to me, sitting here in the dark, the decision will really be made by some old man pulling an old, predigested, opinion out of his ass.

And that got me thinking about how arbitrary those in power, even the elected ones, rule. Rick Perry – what an asswipe – can let a man be executed without looking at the new evidence that might show him to be innocent. Like George Bush – or Dick Cheney, if you prefer to see Bush the Younger as weak – going to war against Iraq. Or Bashar al-Assad hanging on to power in Syria.

I want to be outraged, and I am somewhat, but it is really like being outraged that some people have more power, more prestige, more talent. No outrage changes the fact that some people are ruling other people or that the rulers, in the end, are doing what the rulers want.

Boxing Day at Sequoia

Medical

I have been on a pretty heavy duty regime of antibiotics since Friday and it is now starting to pay off. For the first time in about three weeks, I don’t feel punk.

It turns out that I – or my blood atleast – have been the host to a growing colony of Enterococcus – that is its family name, I don’t know the Christian name – that is now being beaten back by heavy doses of Vancomycin HCL and Gentamicin Sulfate given through my new PICC line. How long the colony has been there is up to question as is how it got there

Being in the hospital over Christmas has been fine which is not the say that being infected is fine; that part has been a real pain in the ass. At first, the combination of the novelty, being scared, and feeling punk resulted in my having what I could pass off for having a pretty good time but now the novelty has worn off, I feel very safe, and I feel much better.

Part of why I feel safe, is that when I say My knee hurts, a doctor show up and says Let’s run a ultrasound to make sure you don’t have a blood clot, then, when that  ultrasound shows I don’t have a blood clot, the doctor says Let’s take a blood test to see if your who-haw level is high. In the meanwhile, they don’t want me to walk until they know what the problem is.

Of course this also why I also am getting bored. Everytime I involuntary roll my eyes, a battery of doctors show up to remind me that I have a aorta valve made out of cow parts and We want to be careful.

In the meanwhile, life in the hospital is different. The temperature doesn’t change, the light level in the halls doesn’t change, the sound level – pretty high, with bells, buzzers, and calls for Code Red to Room 274 –  doesn’t change; and the level of good humor and general joy of life is extraordinarily high. I think this is because everybody is in service and it really is better to give than to receive.