The patient succumbed to complications....

In following a news story about someone's demise, we often come across something like, "He succumbed to complications following routine surgery." The truth is that anyone undergoing surgery of any kind faces at the very least a one percent risk of never making it home again.

One percent might not seem much of a risk, but then we tend to think such things happen to the other guy, not us. Unfortunately, life is replete with the improbable and unanticipated every morning we get out of bed, and death has its way of cornering us in unexpected places.

I still remember a chance conversation I had many years ago with a custodian at Harvard who told me of the loss of her child during tonsillectomy. As I was very young, I don't think I took in its resonance as to the freakish nature of life itself, contributing not only to its mystery, but underscoring its frequent tragedy. I think it was Thomas Wolfe who wrote that a young man at 25 thinks himself immortal. (Say that to Keats, who knew better.) In my case, I was just 22.

A little more than a year ago, model and actress Mia Amber Davis died following knee surgery. She was 36. Dying from knee surgery? Yup, it happens.

There was also the unanticipated death of author Olivia Goldsmith, 54, whose Wives' Club became a popular movie. Following plastic surgery, she went into cardiac arrest, possibly induced by anesthesia. For me, the latter has always been the spookiest element in any surgery I've undergone. To borrow a phrase from poet William Carlos Williams, "so much depends on" an anesthesiologist.

Then there was the widely reported death of prominent Congressman John Murtha, 77, during "minimally invasive surgery" to remove his gall bladder. A close source told CNN that doctors accidentally "hit his intestines."

While natural causes such as a weak heart or allergic reaction to medication may often be factors in surgical mortality, the human capacity for error through misjudgment or negligence always looms, increasing the risk. Even good doctors make mistakes. The quandary is the more you do something well, the more the law of averages kicks in. Let's hope your surgeon is having a good day.

The bottom line is that our bodies treat any surgery as invasive, and human error compounds the danger. Surgery may be necessary, but it's never really "routine." Consider the case of Jenny Olenick, 17, who died of hypoxia (deficient oxygen to the brain) while undergoing anesthesia to have her wisdom teeth removed. While very rare, it's not unknown.

Of course, you can help lessen your risk by choosing your doctors well or considering a non-surgical alternative.

Unfortunately, we seldom get the choice as to the anesthesiologist. They just happen to be there, often rushing in from a previous procedure, and know precious little about us.

Next to death, surgery may be the ultimate in loss of control.

rj

Time for a new toy

I've just learned Target and Walmart have locked out the Kindle, including Amazon's most recent and innovative offering, the Kindle Fire HD. Some speculate these chains are clearing inventory to make way for both the hot selling iPhone 5 and the much anticipated mini iPad, though Apple remains mum on the latter.

Probably what's really happening has to deal with profit margins. With Amazon promoting its Kindles via low profit margins, there's little left over to entice the box stores. No evidence yet, however, that BestBuy and Radio Shack will follow suit.

As for a mini, rumored to be released in time for Christmas sales, it's not improbable. I wonder, though, if it would mean the demise of the larger screen version, which I prefer. One thing I have to admire is Apple's uncommon ability to keep a secret. Seems our government could learn a thing or two.

In the meantime, I've finally thrown in the towel and am upgrading to the iPhone 5 with its wondrously fast camera, enlarged screen, retina sharpness (18% more pixels to play with), vastly improved saturation, 4G LTE access, and alluring svelte slimness. I hear the improved Siri will even open up your applications. Hey, how good is that!

English is still number one

We hear a lot these days that we're transitioning from the American Century to a Chinese one. In my own lifetime I never anticipated the current groundswell for Chinese language classes. I grew up with the emphasis in schools and colleges on Spanish, French, and German. I hadn't thought about it until just now, but my high school didn't even offer Spanish, let alone an Asian language, though it did offer four years of Latin. The times certainly are a-changing.

While I'm strongly for learning another language in a world of shrinking distances and expanding global interchange, I still think English will remain the closest we have to an international lingua franca for some time to come. Even in China, English is seen as "the ticket."

Language domination does shift over the centuries with the wax and wane of primary empires and modern nations. Before the rise of Latin, the language which defined linguistic universalism in the Western world was Greek, so much so that the New Testament was rendered in Greek to promote the new faith. Its antecedent was the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek.

We all know about the spectacular spread of Latin with the rise of Rome and its shaping several of Europe's primary languages, including English.

With the reign of France's Louis IV in the 17th century and the nascence of the Enlightenment, French began its ascendency as the language of diplomacy until English began its challenge with the birth of the Industrial Revolution in England and the growth of its Empire. English received a further boost with America's emergence as a superpower in the 20th century.

While Chinese may have far more speakers than English, its users are primarily geographically confined, unlike those speaking English, a truly international tongue based on geography alone--UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Guiana, former African colonies, and much of the West Indies. We tend to forget that more than 300 million Indians use English daily.

In all of this, that so many opt for English as their second language doesn't mean they like us anglophones, but that they find it the most useful for world communication.

What principally inhibits Chinese is its notorious difficulty as a tonal medium, despite a relatively simple grammar, and the virtual impossibility of mastering its written language. The Chinese, along with the Japanese, would do themselves a huge favor by transitioning to the Latin alphabet, as did Turkey in the last century, but they aren't going to do that.

English musters a terrific advantage in its being largely inflection free, unlike German or Russian with their formidable declensions. While English features some irregular verbs, a vestige of its Germanic origin, it doesn't exhibit the complexity of verb conjugations found in the Romance languages. Nonetheless, I've always maintained that while English is easy to learn, it's hard to speak well. Only a relative few native speakers know how to distinguish lie and lay, farther and further, amount and number, etc. Then there is the challenge of its non-phonetic spelling. Imagine the challenge this poses for non-native speakers. Still more, there are all those nasty homonyms: horse vs hoarse, and the infamous to, too, two, etc.

Nevertheless, English remains relatively easy to speak, with only the Scandinavian languages approaching it in leveled or near absent inflection. Their speakers, however, are too few for it to matter. In fact, English has become so dominant in Sweden that a new language law was recently enacted (2009) to protect Swedish. In Sweden, virtually everyone speaks English well and you'll find it abundantly in public ads and English language television and movies, which are seldom dubbed. Many young Swedes prefer English as more expressive and practical. If this is Sweden, can you just imagine the consternation of the French?

So despite what you may be hearing, English is still number one and likely to remain so for a long time to come. But do the language a favor by learning it well. After all, it's the language of Shakespeare.

Promises to keep

In 2008, an intelligent, compassionate, and eloquent Barack Obama was swept into the Presidency, becoming the nation's first Black president, auguring a new day and "promises to keep" (Frost) for a better America.

Unfortunately, our president made some 500 promises he hasn't kept . Here's a composite of the better known ones:

Create a tax credit of $500 for workers

Repeal the Bush tax cuts for higher incomes

Train and equip the Afghan armed forces

End the use of torture

Close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center

Restrict warrantless wiretaps

Seek verifiable reductions in nuclear stockpiles

Centralize ethics and lobbying information for voters

Require more disclosure and a waiting period for earmarks

Tougher rules against revolving door for lobbyists and former officials

Secure the borders

Provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants

Reform mandatory minimum sentences

Secure nuclear weapons materials in four years

Strengthen antitrust enforcement

Create new financial regulations

Sign a "universal" health care bill

Create 5 million "green" jobs

Reduce oil consumption by 35 percent by 2030

Create cap and trade system with interim goals to reduce global warming

Cut the cost of a typical family's health insurance premium by up to $2,500 a year

Now our President wants a second term. He'll probably get it, considering the power of incumbency, with more broken promises to follow.

When Elephants Weep

I have always had this love affair with elephants, these gray, wrinkled, lumbering mastodons, survivors of a primordial past, trunks swaying, gentle creatures, yet fearsome when provoked.

Among animals, they're probably the most attached to one another. What surprises many is the social sophistication of their matriarchal society characterized by close relationships with all herd members, many of them related. Herds, sometimes numbering up to a hundred, are headed by the oldest female and calves are raised and protected by the entire matriarchal herd. (Males generally leave the herd at about 15 years and live apart.)

Elephants are found in Africa and Asia and it's easy to tell them apart, as the Asian species is smaller. When I see the large ears, I know at once it's an African elephant.

Both male and female African elephants have tusks, to their own undoing. In contrast, only the Asian male has them.

Highly intelligent, elephants can communicate messages over long distances with their feet.

They are also endowed with prodigious memory, as I think most of us know.

Elephants have the longest noses of any animal, for that's what their trunks really are. Some sport trunks up to seven feet in length, yet they never get in the way, as they're used to grasp as well as feed. With this tool, they've been known to assist calves to stand or pull them up over an embankment.

Their ivory tusks are actually teeth that never stop growing.

Lesser known is the elephant's capacity to mourn their dead.

Population growth has reduced its habitat inexorably, resulting in elephants invading villages in search for food, in turn, leading to hunting parties. Immense poverty has triggered poachers to seek quick Asian money for ivory. Even reserves, dedicated to wildlife safety, are violated and any elephant, mother or calf, is gunned down for its tusks. African governments lack the financial resources needed to upgrade security. Reserves themselves are a last ditch effort to provide sanctuary but, unfortunately, often conspire against elephant interests, blocking off migration routes when they need to mate or find new food resources.

Just over a century ago, several million elephants roamed Western and Central Africa's savannahs and dense jungles; today, about 300,000 remain. In Asia, their numbers have dwindled from 100,000 to 35,000, all of them domesticated.

Often weighing up to seven tons, their sole predator is Man. In Cameroon, 300 elephants were recently slaughtered, their bodies left to rot. Such slaughters are likely to define their future, given the nature of Man's capacity for ruthlessness for the sake of coin.

To fully appreciate elephants, I highly recommend Jeffrey Moussaleff Masson's moving book, When Elephants Weep, an exploration of their capacity, along with other animals, for emotion.

Conrad had it right about the ignominy of Man, his ruthless capacity, hidden behind his civilized veneer, for retrogression to a latent savagery taking many hues.

When elephants weep, I weep with them. I weep for a vanishing legacy that our grandchildren may never know: the cry of elephants, the thunder of their feet, the mystery of their dark eyes.

I weep most for a declining vestige of a once garden world distanced from Man's malevolence, a fall from grace into the heart of darkness.

I find it horrendous....

Mountaintop Removal

I find it horrendous that we continue to rely upon coal as a primary energy resource. Here in Kentucky, a major coal producing state, those who protest dirty power plants and the state's reliance on coal are treated as alarmists, if not environmental extremists, who will take away jobs and inflate energy prices for consumers. As such, they constitute "an attack on Kentucky's way of life" (D-Keith Hall). Kentucky, by the way, subsidizes coal to the tune of $115 million annually.

In Kentucky, coal is king and a driving political force as shown in the $40,000 contribution the industry has made to Andy Barr's renewed efforts to unseat 6th District Congressman, Ben Chandler. Lexington, the heart of the district, just happens to be the home of the Kentucky Coal Association and several mining companies.

One of coal's biggest friends in the state is the University of Kentucky, which recently accepted $20 million from coal interests to build a lodge facility for its basketball players. Money, in short, has defined the issue for the University, not public health or global warming. The University even has a Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. The University might learn a thing or two from many of its students who have called for transitioning its power plant to a more efficient energy source.

One Kentuckian, noted author Wendell Berry, stood tall in all of this, resigning his teaching position at the University and taking his papers with him, which he has donated this week to the Kentucky Historical Association. I wish there were more like him.

All of this reminds me of the days in Kentucky when tobacco was also a power broker, with government and higher education aligned with its interests. Despite evidence slapping one in the face, for years they denied tobacco's heavy toll on the public's health.

Coal won't be losing its clout anytime soon, at least in Kentucky, given the just announced $7 billion deal made with India for 9 million tons of Kentucky and West Virginia coal, a deal principally involving a Kentucky lawmaker from Pike County, D-Rep Keith Hall. Like many developers, coal advocates often seek elective office to further their business interests. Hall sits on the board of FJCS Energy, the New Jersey company that signed the agreement.

While the U. S. as a whole is making its slow transition to cleaner fuels, the coal company again resembles the tobacco industry in its emphasis on exports to shore up its sagging profits at home. The hell with what happens to the health of those in developing nations.

Worse, is the industry's blatant indifference to global warming and its consequences to all life. What matters is profit. How many more mountains will be leveled and how many streams contaminated? How many toxins belched into the atmosphere?

As they have it, coal is very much a part of our future. Land reclamation has brought benefits such as creation of new forests, recreational areas, housing development, and facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, and even airports. It's cheaper to store coal than alternative fuels such as wind or solar, geothermal or nuclear. New technology has improved the efficiency of coal fired power plants in reducing carbon emissions. Alternative sources, moreover, can't keep pace with projections of a future doubling of worldwide energy needs. As is, coal is one of the most regulated industries, providing the public with ample protection.

The real story is that we've seen 300 mountaintops leveled, 600,000 acres of hardwood forests permanently decimated. As for reclamation, only 4% of any post-mining productivity has been confirmed (EcoWatch). Mining violations and watershed violations are in the thousands, with little state enforcement. Instead of the promise of diversification to remedy Appalachia's enmeshed poverty, the region faces a future of moving to the forefront in black lung disease and no appreciable amelioration in chronic unemployment, where 60% of mining jobs have been lost to mechanization, not EPA regulation.

Meanwhile, the National Resources Defense Council recently designated Kentucky as the most polluted state in the nation from coal field fuel plants, largely because of the state government's failure to clean-up the industry. As with Keith Hall, Kentucky government continues to be dominated by coal interests. Hall, by the way, is co- chair of the National Resources and Environment Committee. He has said, "I 'm not just a friend of coal, I'm coal's best friend."

As Hall puts it, "I believe in states' rights." Me thinks we've heard all this before and that the Confederacy is alive and well. As with slavery, tobacco, and now coal, Kentucky needs to disengage from an economy that exacts profits from human misery.

Instead of the ubiquitous Friends of Coal bumper stickers, Kentucky would do better with say, Friends of People replacements, and in green, not black, the color of death.

rj

i want to follow-up....

I want to follow-up on my last post dealing with our economic prospects in the coming year, exacerbated by Sequestration, or mandatory across-the-board budget cuts, beginning in January, 2013.

Things to ponder:

Whatever one's politics, the Obama administration, in its doubtless sincere efforts to stimulate the economy, may have actually done it harm by adding $4 trillion to our national debt, now over a staggering $15 trillion. Nearly a trillion was spent on bailing out the banks, largely responsible for our economic meltdown.

These increases average a trillion dollars per year since this administration has been in office, with little to show for it. In fact, our stagnant economy may well plunge again. Last month's economic figures, while showing a 180,000 job increase, did not alter the grim unemployment fallout, which remains at 8.2 percent. With more than 5 million unemployed, we have to do much better to make this sorry mess go away.

Certainly, this present recession, perhaps a euphemism, invites comparison with the Great Depression of the 1930s. While the latter was the mother of all depressions, with unemployment reaching a 26% level, making our present crisis seem puny, it does resemble our situation in its stubbornness, despite the Roosevelt's fervent efforts, to yield results. What most people don't know is that unemployment had actually increased under Roosevelt when he ran for reelection in 1936. It would take a world war to purge our economic woes.

I must confess I don't think anyone has a definitive solution to what ails us, despite the heated rhetoric in an election year. Simple answers won't do more than sugar coat a complex problem.

What's more, our fate in a global economy isn't entirely within our hands.

What if Israel attacks Iran?

Or if the economic malaise in Europe has no bottom and nations like Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal default? Like the tsunami debris from Japan now washing-up on our West coast shores, we can't escape the tidal impact of a European collapse resulting in reduced imports of American goods.

Back to our own shores again, if automatic cuts affecting defense go into effect next year it's estimated that a million jobs will be lost. That's more than all the projected jobs created in the American economy this year!

It seems a given that without confidence in the private sector, which is our primary catalyst for job creation, we're doomed to a tortoise pace in achieving remedy.

And there are yet other mitigating factors that may compromise economic recovery. Although the health care reform measure has several desirable features, it may be the wrong time for it in a down economy. A recent survey indicates many employers anticipate costs increases with its implementation, so add this to the mix. If I were an employer, I'd certainly opt for caution when it comes to hiring or expanding inventory.

To be sure, economics has rightly been called "the dismal science," except I'd underscore "dismal," and eliminate "science," since that implies probability corroborated by empirical data. Again, no one has the definitive answer, so be wary of snake oil formulas in this election year.

It's all like some devastating disease that, despite our best efforts, defies our remedies. Much as we'd like, there's no quick fix.

rj

A day of financial reckoning will soon come....

A day of financial reckoning will soon come to America, resulting in a substantial redistribution of income and entitlement payouts. It will see its genesis early in 2013, or shortly after this fall's election.

We've already witnessed the opening skirmish of this inevitable transition to a more restricted access to America's economic pie, beginning with the recommendations of the Congressional appointed Joint Selection Committee on Deficit Reduction, more commonly known as the "Super Committee". The Committee, however, failed in its mandate to reduce the federal deficit by 1.5 trillion over the next decade, triggering automatic cuts (sequestration) to the tune of 1.2 trillion to be divided between Defense and other programs. Partisan politics had intervened, denting courage, and the chasm between Democrats and Republicans couldn't be bridged.

The truth is that the economic meltdown we see in Europe is theater for what's coming here. Thus far we've been able to either borrow or print money to shore up our stagnant economy. We've even cut taxes.

We've become like irresponsible credit card users, postponing tomorrow's reckoning, to meet insatiable wants. Ultimately, we'll have to pay our bills or close up shop. Presently, our national deb stands at a staggering $15 trillion and we pay $200 billion interest on that debt annually.

In January, the cuts will go into effect. When you take defense and entitlement programs into consideration, you've only got $600 billion left in the kitty to spend elsewhere.

Do we really want to cut our defense budget in an unsafe world or Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?

The social and political ramifications promise to be enormous and tax revenues will need to be raised. Ultimately, the poor and low wage earner will be sheltered, and while the rich will see higher taxes, the declining middle class will continue to bear the brunt.

Actually, things have been eroding for several decades. As a serviceman, I was once guaranteed health benefits. Today, a sliding wage scale applies, ruling out the middle class.

Each year, a retiree's costs for Medicare increases, ultimately compromising monthly Social Security checks.

As for Social Security, after payroll deductions for over forty years, I pay out several hundred dollars in taxes on the rather paltry sum I receive.

And more is coming. Social Security outlays will be reconfigured. Age eligibility for full benefits will advance to 67.

You will pay more for Medicare while getting less coverage.

Let's take some specific examples of the potential fallout for education, based upon current sequestration projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CPO):

ESEA Title I,Part A):: Funding cut: $17,958,000 affecting 27,660,000 students. Potential job losses: 280,000.

Special Education Grants to States (IDEA-B-611): $14,316,000 affecting 5,900,000 students. Potential layoffs: 230,000.

Head Start (HSA, section 639): $9,841,000 affecting 1,340,000 students. Potential job losses: 440,000.

Even for the financially marginalized, the slice of the pie is getting smaller, particularly at the state level, where budgets have imitated the faulty federal model, forcing cuts in Medicaid and welfare outlays.

At the state level, too, an ominous trend has begun of cities declaring bankruptcy, three in California this year alone. Much of this comes from budgets overburdened with generous retirement obligations to public workers.

The times are a-changing and we may find ourselves entering into an era of social rancor not seen since the Vietnam debacle. The battle will spill over into the streets,
and all, all will be utterly changed. It all comes down to who will pay and how much. (Most people think it's ok for the neighbor to pay more, but not themselves.)

The great challenge is mustering cuts without dampening the economy. That's been what's gone wrong in Europe: austerity without stimulus.

Yet like your credit card balance, the bills will have to be paid.

I hadn't realized until recently....

I hadn't realized until recently just how much politics has intruded into medical  funding. And I'm not writing about the controversial "Obamacare," recently validated by the Supreme Court and set to go into full implementation in 2014.  This intrusion has its genesis through several administrations, going all the way back to the early 80s. Consider that current government bio-medical allocations by the National Institutes of Health include the following 2012 funding:

Heart disease: 2.2 billion (Deaths annually: 771,100; expenditure per patient: $27).

Diabetes: 1 billion (Deaths annually: 70,611; expenditure per person: $42).

Breast cancer: 778 million (Deaths annually: 41,049; expenditure per patient: $3,721).

Prostate cancer:  337 million  (Deaths annually: 28,517;  expenditure per patient: $177).

Obviously, men are being short-changed. But that's not the worst of it. Both sexes suffer dismal funding when you take HIV/AIDS funding into account:

.

HIV/AIDS: 3.2 billion (Deaths annually: 10,295; expenditure per patient: $3,047).

I find this shocking. But there is more to this egregious funding for a disease that pales when it comes to the mortality rates for our primary illnesses.

In addition to research allocations for HIV/AIDS, 15.6 billion has been designated for housing and cash assistance to HIV/AIDS patients. All of this pales when you consider our government, beginning with the recent Bush administration, has pledged itself to spending 50 billion on global AIDS.

Since1981, we've spent 170 billion on AIDS and continue to spend 20 billion annually on it, not including 24 billion in last year's budget.

Currently, there are about 81 million Americans with heart disease, according to the AHA.

The CDC's National Vital Statistics Report says that there are 24 million of us with diabetes, not including a larger number who are pre-diabetic.

Presently, some 1,200,000 of us have cancer.

It should be obvious that our health budget is out-of-wack when it comes to AIDs and blatantly unfair to the vast majority of us threatened with diseases vastly more dangerous.  

How did it get this way? When AIDS first became prominent in the early 80s it was, indeed, a hideous disease growing exponentially. Since then, mortality rates have declined nearly 18% and new medications have made HIV manageable.

At present, government health allocations are skewered and blatantly unfair, as well as injurious to the vast majority of us.  

Can anything be done? Unlikely, for it would be deemed PC, or anti-gay.  

One way out might be doubling the allocations for the 16 diseases with higher incident rates of occurrence and mortality than AIDS such as hepatitis and Alzheimer's. Not likely in a nation still reeling from a stagnant economy and its future enormously compromised with an ever increasing national debt.

Resources: 


Fair Foundation


Centers for Disease Control

Lately, I've taken a strong interest in....

Lately I've taken a strong interest in meditation to escape stress and feel more relaxed.  From the medical sources I've read, I'm convinced it has a lot going for it. If you're depressed or anxiety prone, meditation may be more helpful than Zoloft or Valium and the like. In his book, When Panic Strikes, noted psychiatrist David Burns, argues that the new research isn't gung-ho anymore on the assumption of chemical imbalance in the brain, resulting in serotonin deficiency.  What success SSRI's seem to have may really be the placebo effect in action.  Control groups in which placebos have been given have shown virtually the same results. Of course, this is bad news for the pharmaceuticals, who keep pumping out their propaganda across the media and offering perks to physicians.  Alas, there are even those in the FDA who have had strong links with the drug companies. One thing we do know:  while meds can be necessary for many, they all have potential side-effects that can do great harm.

Burns eschews the psych meds, favoring the cognitive approach with its advocacy of getting rid of emotional distress by adopting alternative, more positive thoughts in handling stress. It takes work to reprogram your responses, but it can be done. Cognitive therapy now dominates counseling, replacing traditional talk therapy. I agree that it can be helpful.

In the hard scenarios, something more is needed.  (Here I'm writing about anxiety, not depression.)  That something may well be meditation. In the last several months I've been trying out what's called restorative yoga, which consists of simple breathing, visualization, and meditation exercises. I'm not a champ at this kind of endeavor. I can't even say I've got the breath thing down right. Books and videos can help, but ultimately, at least initially, you need a good teacher.

Clumsy as I may be, I know that when I retreat to my sunroom hideaway, unroll my mat, and lie down, beginning with breathing from the stomach up through the nose, four seconds in, six seconds out, I sense my body unwinding from its tightness. I follow with body visualization, letting each limb "fall through" into the mat. Then I transport myself mentally into bliss, a scene that brings pleasure. For me, it's usually my wife and I walking up the steep, narrow pathway of rugged Ben Nevis, the valley below a dense green, splattered by the white wooly sheep grazing contentedly in a rolling landscape fenced by stone walls. I am there again in Scotland, that dear country of green mountains, twisting by-ways, lakes and bubbling brooks, and friendly people. I am at peace.

I follow with actual meditation, or at least the attempt, with the aid of my mantra, the psalmist's "lead me by the still waters," emptying the mind, though it keeps insisting it's the boss.  Whatever my failed attempts, I feel relaxed.

Recently I was virtually mesmerized in reading Tim Park's Teach Us to Sit Still: A Skeptic's Search for Health and Healing.  He could have been writing about me. Both of us have been profs, working with language and literature. Both of us are into the mind thing, analytical and suspicious, reserved in our allegiances.  Both of us were raised in a religious context, which we've now abandoned. Both of us have suffered the same physical ailment with its ubiquitous fall out, always there, seemingly beyond remedy.

 Parks, in his desperation, suspends his cerebral dissonance, to try meditation.  It comes hard.  It's all about breathing.  Though the mind resists emptying, Parks knows there's something to it. He attends a five day retreat.  On the fourth day, it happens. He feels the breath flow across his upper lip.  Heat radiates through his body. And the pain? There is no pain.

Of course the conscious world will bring back the pain with its culminating anxiety. You're not there in a day. But Parks knows now, though he may not understand it fully, that mind isn't separate from the body. The mind and body are one.

The seed has been sown and Parks persists, each attempt in overcoming the chattering mind becoming easier.  

Parks finds his way ultimately to permanent relief from his physical pain.

Nonetheless, as a rationalist, he still finds it paradoxical,  He's a writer with twenty books published, and on one occasion, short-listed for the Booker Award, Britain's highest award for literary achievement.  Words, after all, not only give him employ, they are the essence of what make us human.

And yet there is that world beyond words, vast and ineffable, removed from the mind's ceaseless chatter, bringing us in to touch with our full selves.  Integrated, mind and body become amalgam, and reconciliation grants equanimity.  No longer two selves, in our found wholeness comes peace transcending time and space, circumstance and pain.

Teach us to be still.

rj