South Park; Zen; truth

Continuing the "truth" sessions, here we go.

Not a "rant," I think, but simply being truthful. Because dealing with anything can only begin with truth.

Having to "structure" my life around a petulant and completely unpredictable bladder; making decisions about what I can do and where I can go based upon whether I'll be able to get at a bathroom in time to keep B-san (Mr. Bladder, for non-Japan-o-philes) from just cutting loose and literally leaking... Or maybe not "leaking" but "gushing"... That, I can live with. I'd rather not, but I can. An annoyance, but not a "show stopper."

Weakness, of all muscular kinds, is hard. Wall-walking becoming more difficult. (That it sets off B-san's petulance-cum-leakage is another issue, but the difficulty is a show-stopper.) I have just purchased a very fancy, very light-weight, custom-fit to me, which is vastly easier to use than my old one. It's really quite a wonderful wheelchair. When Wheelchair Guy did the initial fitting/demo, I had him take me to the parking lot so I could see whether I could put the wheelchair into the truck by myself. A month ago, only a month ago, it was no problem. Today... I honestly don't know if that's gonna be possible.  I'm actually quite afraid to try it, even with someone nearby to spot me. (Wheelchair Guy tried to take me through how to disassemble and take the whole chair in through the driver-side door and store it in the passenger side... which isn't possible, with my truck not having angle-adjustable steering wheel and with my currently increasingly-weak state; not sure which is worse, but even the trying to do this was horribly wracking.) So now I'm willing to go places by myself only if I can be sure someone will help me put the wheelchair back into the truck. Or do it for me. Which cuts my "it's OK to go there" down to maybe three places. Maybe. If I have enough energy to go there at all, which nowadays, I don't. Speaking of which...

I'm really quite amazed that I can sit at my studio computer (as I am as I write this), just to write this. To pay bills online. To look stuff up. To correspond. All those things have become nearly insurmountably huge.

I haven't written any music for days. Weeks, maybe. Because I just don't have the juice to sit at the studio computer and write it. I don't have the energy, and I don't have music trying to burst out of me like it used to. Yeah, there's stuff that I wish I could write, very specific things. But I just don't have it within me.

hat's hard. That's very, very hard.

The inability to control my legs, not quite mathematically-zero control, but pretty damned close. Makes things like standing up to get up from at the toilet challenging. Stand up to get myself to the toilet. Put my legs under the sheets, while lying in bed. Which I do way more nowadays than I ever have. I sit on a rolling chair in the kitchen, so I can brew herbs or tea, or wash the teacup. I can't keep my legs under control enough to keep them from tying themselves into knots, my feet slide sideways and my knees go wherever they go and there's nothing I can do to control it.

I had to have my wife help me put pants on, the other day, because I couldn't control my legs well enough to do that, even while sitting down. I had to have her help me put on underpants, because I couldn't control my legs well enough to do even that. God bless my wonderful, wonderful, wife, for putting up with a withering husband with so much grace.

I find all this zero-means-zero control to be, at best, unbelievably disheartening. Moments of "not being able to [whatever]" have been wracking enough to make me cry out in despair. In terror, even. In frustration. Of all of the above, simultaneously.

Sometimes, I'm able to go "all Zen" and just say, "Well, that's the way it is, right now." Just observe and acknowledge. However... A lot of time, and nowadays more than ever before, I go all Stan Marsh from South Park: "Dude, this is really f**ked up." I guess that's good, to acknowledge my emotional response to difficulty, but who wants to live in a Stan Marsh-style "Dude, this is really f**ked up" state, 24/7?

My friend with an artificial leg has an easier time getting around than I do. My eighty-plus-year-old father has an easier time getting around than I do, and for him, "getting around" includes chasing after charming grandchildren, as they scramble all over everywhere. But as the Good Book says, "All flesh is as the grass, and the goodliness of man is as the flower of grass. For lo, the grass withereth, and the flower thereof decayeth."

Yeah, I know all that. But this is all happening so f**king fast. Everything is degrading so fast. Withering so fast... I filled out a couple of checks this morning, addressed a couple of envelopes, and the way my hands are operating right now, I feel like even my scrawl-called-"printing" is gonna be outta my reach. I'm dropping things. I'm mistyping, even at this very moment, making typing errors that I thought I just "never" made. I make all the time, now, and wonder how long I'll be typing. At all.

I'm gonna have to call Geek Squad to come to my house and fix some stuff. Which really pisses me off... Dammit, I've been doing tech stuff all by myself since what, 1979? That's thirty-four years, for non-math-majors (like me). It's an easy problem to diagnose and fix. And I can't, because I can't deal with the physicality of just getting at the cables. This pisses me off... it's definitely in the category of "adding insult to injury." (Actually, I think it left "insult to injury" in the dust. Dude, this is really f**ked up.)

And yes, I know, I know... ; t; tThis is what faces all of us, who are incarnate in what we call the "here and now"... We all, eventually, have to come to grips with "too soon, too soon."

And so, the truth is both Stan Marsh and Zen.

Dude, this is really f**ked up.

Well, that's the way it is, right now.

If there's nothing else we can do, at least we can tell the truth.