You never know...

An amazing place to be, right now.

If MS were an entity, I would say that it had brought me to a very very amazing place. Since it doesn't exist, there is no "agency" to ascribe to it, but I am in a very amazing place, MS and everything.

Fortunately, through a combination of prudent investments, help from experts to survive the Various Kinds Of Insurance world, the gifts of the Spirit, and/or blind luck, depending on how one sees such things, I've got a house and medical care and the ability to support my wife in her endeavors (who helps me very sweetly in my own, when she can).

The job that I had for years turns out to have been bad for me. Leaving it was one of the best things I could ever have done, and my doctor/acupuncturist/spiritual advisor wondered why it took me so long to get out of it.

Typing, right now/today/this moment, is no fun at all. Use my right hand for anything, I spend more than half of what little time I have sitting at the computer just correcting WTF errors. Even using only my left, I spend nearly that amount of time with error handling/correction. Some days I try to write music... then bail, because manual coordination just ain't there. Or sitting at the computer ain't there. Or something else Medical needs dealing with now now now...

If MS were an entity, I would be stuck on things it has taken away.

And what do I have left?

Pretty much all I have the "anything" for... is working on the spirit. Meditate. Chant mantras. Just sit, perhaps not Zen-like but Zen-spirit-like, at least. Make tea. Look at the birds, the bees, the flowers, the... Everything of Nature, and specifically to seek out seeing things I've never seen before. As Emerson said, get my bloated nothingness out of the way of the divine currents.

The great jihad is the inner jihad. Yeah, instead of fighting with The Enterprise at my former workplace, I seek enlightenment, and enjoy the gifts that Nature gives.

A better pursuit, really... And MS and all, it's actually a nice life, living in pursuit of the Spirit.

Give it a try. You never know what you may discover.

A mighty gift indeed

One of my health-care providers likes to quote another of his MS patients, who says that the great thing about MS is that it makes you more sensitive to your body. The bad thing about MS is that it makes you more sensitive to your body.

But I will tell you, practicing sensitivity, just sitting and watching and listening and telling the truth to yourself about yourself, that has effects too...

And here's what I'm noticing more and more, every day...

The wonderfulness of... my wife.

She has had "caregiver" thrust upon her, which she has taken on with good cheer and good spirits, but every time I see her, it's... wonderful.

Some days, she's amazing; some days, she's radiant. Some days... she's both.

And this is definitely a gift of MS, to be showered every day by how [your favorite enthusiastic expletives here] wonderful my wife is. A couple of days ago, she was working on I forget exactly what, but man, her mighty mind was in 5th, 6th, maybe even 7th gear. Phenomenal, she was! IS!

So that's your homework for today, fellow MSers and all of us who "trod the boards" on this earthly stage... to see how wonderful the people right in front of you can be, and are.

As Rabbi Hillel said, "Go thou and study."

And, by the way, my wife doesn't look like this. She sounds like this; she is, after all, a voice actor.

But around the house, she's much nicer. Much nicer.

One look at that smile, and whatever the MS is doing that day... just disappears. Because that smile, oh that smile...!

She is a mighty gift, indeed...!

We'll see

It's amazing what I miss, and don't miss, now that I'm wheelchair-bound. Many of these things went the way of all things mortal, long before I was fully "accessorized" by the M.S. effects...

Organs. I used to play all sorts of organs...

The Ruffati organ at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA. I played that one a lot. Was also the first church at which I had to turn down an organ gig, because I couldn't deal with the pedals. At least the bench had a back so I couldn't fall off. Backwards...

First Congregational Church, Los Angeles CA. The largest organ installed in a church in the world, Makes a wonderful noise, it does; please enjoy my festival improvisation on that very instrument! I was for a while their "first call" sub, when they were between salaried organists; I understood the instrument well enough that with very little notice, just tell me what the hymns are this week and with a couple of days of registration tweakage/practice, I was all set. Just add water, instant service! Oh, those were the days.

I don't necessarily miss "being an organist." What I miss is being able to walk (yes, walk) up to the instrument, sit down at it, and just play it. And have fun. There are all sorts of quite glorious instruments here in LA, the Rosales organs in various locations, some really awesome instruments in unusual "what a wonderful surprise that you guys have one of those!" places.

None of these instruments can be accessed except by ordinary non-MS-style walking. The First Congo organ requires steps. And, if heaven forfend, you want to use the console at the back of the church, you gotta go up a whole bunch of stairs. I always used the front console, I never even tried the back one, I've never even sat at it. I'm sure they'd let me in to it, but... you gotta be able to get to it. Which, today, I can't. (And by the way, for those people who don't like me saying "can't"...  screw you. I've tried. I can't. As Dick Cheney is often quoted on Family Guy, go f--k yourself.)

So, why bring this up? First... I just found the photos on my computer, I figured I'd share them, what the heck. But being wheelchair-bound and stripped of a long-beloved way of life doesn't necessarily equal "regret." Such is the way of all flesh... things change. Or as some MD's concurred with my sporadic "vaso-vagal" near-fainting experiences... Yeah, that s--t happens, sometimes.

I still can, or at least I like to think I can, compose new music, if I can sit at the machine long enough to confront the composition process. But, today I've gotta do some cascada sagrada, a long-favorite herbal formula made out of what's basically just tree bark. What's precisely what's gonna happen is not clear, but I expect everything will come out all right, and I'm sure you can guess what I'm talking about, you don't want more details and honestly, neither do I.

So, off to sneak some lunch, then cascada myself, and meditate. Maybe work on music? We'll see what cascada has to contribute to the day... Who knows? We'll see.

That's pretty much the two most-often said words by all of us MSers, in ever so many contexts...

We'll see.

But as I always remind us, and myself, that's life, though, isn't it?