December 2006 – pseudoisaac

bullet points

– Great aunt Betty much better; will recover and will hopefully live a lot longer despite what she’s been through with an ischemic small intestine.

– Not going to visit parents and Holocaust museum in Chicago due to unplanned stomach flu and planned four-hour long MCAT practice test on Saturday.

– Must find some way to spend $100 in gift certificates to Savers. Likely to possess thirty more pounds of clothing by the time all is spent.

– Went to church on Christmas and took communion despite utter inconsistency with beliefs; took comfort in thought of most others there likely not believing in spirits, either. Still, nice people.

– Why do I bother reading the stupid goddamn newspaper, anyways? I read the entire Strib this morning and now I can hardly remember a single article from it. What was the last really profound thing I read in a paper, anyways? Not only that, but I’ve been told that newspapers are written on a fifth-grade reading level, and that the articles are written in an inverted-pyramid fashion, with as much of the important stuff as possible as early in the article as possible. And I’ve heard that the best way to improve one’s reading skills is not to increase the volume but rather the difficulty of the texts. And I’m not planning on writing that kind fact-after-fact prose in my future, anyways. So the news is forgettable, it doesn’t help me grow all that much, it doesn’t contribute to my writing skills, and it stresses me out, anyways. I should subtract most of the time I spend staying current on the news and devote it to reading profound things like “House of God” and “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.”

Orion and me

I went for a run yesterday and it turned out to be the best run in recent history. The evening sky was completely black by the time I went at around seven, and it was so clear that the stars were stubbornly reaching out to this city dweller, for whom the airport to the southeast and downtown to the north usually obscure the rest of the galaxy. I was thinking about being more spontaneous in general and taking more risks, and then a suppressed elan du coeur expressed itself and I ran out into the lake. I couldn’t remember if the ice got thicker towards the middle of the lake or thinner, but I went for it anyways on fresh ice that had yet to be snowed upon, so it was slick as an ice rink. Had I fallen through, I might have thought, “So the Parcae spun.” In the middle of the lake I stopped for the first time to truly gaze at the stars, which refused to be ignored. I lay on my back on the frigid clear ice and let that old sense of wonder come back – the kind of awe that led me to plants and human bodies and rats and dinosaurs and all the other things I have ever been passionate about. I looked up at Orion and knew he would be around for billions of years after my death. I am an amalgam of matter imbued with a brief spark of consciousness, a tiny speck of thinking and knowing amidst this universe of mostly unconscious matter. Orion’s stars are just hunks of matter and yet they may give light and warmth to beings just like me, in a way coming to know itself. Then my ass and shoulders got cold and I had to get up and run back home. But still, this will stick with me.

Bullets

– Betty’s condition less grave than originally thought, still on the out-and-out; Hanson family Christmas likely to be held in a family friend’s house in M-Pizzle instead of Chi-town.

– Moved shit to Olaf; must find carpeting for cold Thorson ground-floor floor.

– Currently considering whether social ineptitude is a big detriment to becoming/being a good doctor, or whether it can be a good thing by allowing you to stay a step removed and look at things as an observer.

– Strange changes in the house, including the appearance of three glowing Ikea orbs in the living room, the sudden replacement of the shower curtain mildew farm, and the recurrent presence of a small cat. Cause of recent happenings still unclear.

Bullets

– Betty is out of the hospital and in the care center at the complex where she has lived for the past ten years. After the transfer the nurses were trying to put the IV’s back in her arms and having trouble finding a vein, and finally Betty decided to just say no to all the artificial stuff and allow herself to die. So, no saline solution and no dextrose aka no water and no nutrients whatsoever. What’s the rule of three? Three minutes without oxygen, three hours without warmth, three days without water, and three weeks without food. So, having gone without water for the past three days, she has little time left until she dies from dehydration. The morphine has helped, but she says today was the first day when her quality of life in dying has finally slipped, which is hard to hear. She’s ready to go and just wants it to be done with, but of course she can’t speed it up just by willing it. She’s been so level-headed and calm and had such lucidity in dying. I hope I have same grace when I finally snuff it, wherever and however it may be.

– Ochem final went okay. Stupid goddamn aldol condensation…

– Moved shit to Olaf on Sunday. Not much crap left to go.

– LOTR trilogy (all three in a row!) at Riverside on 28 Dec; considering attempting it.

Dashikis and white people, and religion

Are white people allowed to wear dashikis? There’s a really cool-looking green one at Savers and I was thinking, “If I had a nice collared shirt and this dashiki on over it, I wouldn’t look that bad. But I googled “are white people allowed to wear dashikis?” and one of the first results that came up was a comment on some message board that said “White people in dashikis look nuts…”

So that’s that.

On another note, I visited my great aunt Betty and she was doing well, though of course she’s on the out and out. Her pastor was there, a very nice St Olaf grad (aren’t they all nice over there at St Olaf?). The two of them sang some lovely hymns that they knew by heart. Betty, bless her 95 year-old heart, even did a blessing of each of her great-nieces and nephews. It was touching, and I’m so sad to see her go.

As I watched her sing those hymns, with my hand on her leg, I watched her closed eyes and her head, turned up to the sky. I didn’t know the words and could not have partook even if I had, but they sang hymns that dealt with life in ancient Israel, hymns about a people that thought themselves chosen by a deity and how the deity had led them out of bondage. It was obvious how much comfort Betty’s faith gave her in her hour of death. What kinds of images were in Betty’s mind as she sang those hymns, with her eyes closed? Was she imagining herself walking down a corridor of light, approaching the throne of Yahweh? Was she thinking about what it would be like to soon talk to the two husbands she outlived? Or thinking about being lifted up from her body in a pillar of God’s will and joining angels in the clouds (where heaven, of course, must be)? I immediately thought of Sam Harris’ book, “Letter to a Christian Nation,” in which he imagined elderly victims of Hurricane Catrina going up into their attics to slowly drown rather than doing all they could to survive, even when help was near. They perhaps clutched Bibles and imagined they were soon to be released from their toil, that God was choosing them or something. I couldn’t help but make the comparison.

But why can’t comfort and meaning come from elsewhere than delusion about big supernatural father figures in the sky, or any other fantasy for that matter? This simple thing, that is, giving solace and a sense of profundity to an old woman in the final week of her long life, why must it be based on ideas of a supernatural realm? For goodness’ sake, my great aunt Betty accomplished a lot in her life. She was born in a time when women were severely disadvantaged, and yet went on to become a leader in her synod and an excellent schoolteacher. She will have lived to 95 and been surrounded until the end by a loving family who are all torn up to see her go. So why, in her case and in that of so many others, is it necessary to fill one’s life with fantasies about supernatural beings, to have one’s thoughts far away on a spirit realm when the meaning and profundity are right here, in reality?

I’m almost tempted to say go ahead, believe whatever you want. It’s a free country. If something gives you comfort and support, believe it, even if it’s obviously false. But then I am reminded of the news headlines of the past week: young children assassinated in Palestine last week in botched infighting among Muslims; scores dead in mass inter-sectarian kidnappings in Iraq; rewards given (exclusively) to Christian inmates in US prisons as a result of “faith-based initiatives” under the current administration; a polygamist/rapist Mormon preacher finally on trial. And I say, no way should people be allowed to comfort themselves with false beliefs when people are suffering as a result of them. You can’t have the supernatural belief system without the real-life consequences of it. If you truly believe there are 72 virgins waiting for you in the afterlife, then of course you should blow yourself up in the market. If eternity really awaits, and it is like how the Bible describes it, then of course you should keep slaves, trade and dominate women like they are chattel, and kill and throw down the altars of anyone who doesn’t worship your god. You can’t have one without the other!

Damn it. Now I’m all worked up.

First post

To start on a morbid note (or should I say a mortal note?): when I got back from class today I found a brief email from my parents that went like this: “Great aunt Betty was admitted to the hospital with vomiting, diarrhea, great pain, etc. and likely had a “stroke” of the colon. She probably would not survive surgery and likely has four or five days to live. We’re leaving by car shortly to come to Minneapolis and will see you tonight.”

Wow. Just a couple of weeks ago, Betty was sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table, as spunky an old lady as ever, not having lived to the age of 95 without a fight. She still walked a mile each day and was as socially active as one can be at that age. But despite all she did to protect your body and her health, something could still go wrong in some corner of her body – an organ gone out of function, a normally ignored process or enzyme somehow inactivated. For Betty it was the colon, and what would be a matter of routine surgery for a young and resilient person is precluded thanks to the thinning of the colon that progresses with old age and makes recovery less and less likely.

I’m visiting Betty tomorrow. She’s lucid and says she’s ready for anything, including death. It will be sad to see her go. I’m going to tell her that her continuous growth throughout her life is the thing I would most like to have gained from having her as my great aunt.