The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland -- 1. In a Time of Confusion

It has occurred to me that we may be so confused about the present that we avoid it because it is not clear to us.  But why should that be a deterrent?  If this is a time of confusion, then it should be the subject of a good writer if he is to set down his time.

--John Steinbeck to Elizabeth Otis, 1954

In a Time of Confusion, acrylic on canvas, 14" x 10 1/2", Steve Brown  2022

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

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Somewhere in Ukraine:  An older woman, perhaps in her late sixties, wearing a baby blue flannel jacket, walks down a street strewn with metal fragments and bits of concrete.  She is hunched over, carrying a plastic bottle of water.  She could be almost any woman of her age, many places, including the United States.  She could be in a forest or national park campground headed back to camp after filling up the water jug.  In fact, she looks a lot like my stepmother looked later in life.  She could be my mom, but she's not.  What makes this apparent are the massive heaps of metal, which appear to have once been tanks, although that's not absolutely clear, as well as the unidentifiable bits of debris on what once was a lane lined with electrical poles on the left and fine straight winter trees along a park's edge on the right.  

Grappling

The scene is a fauvist nightmare, a vibrant vision gone wrong.  Spills and splashes of color are torn from the tendrils of reality--brick and biology, flower and foam packaging, steel panel and fine scarf--all genetic fabric stretched beyond capacity to repair--fragments of bright color everywhere, but no semblance to substance, to light, to what once was, or is, or should be.

Just a woman alone with a jug of water in a world unraveled.  If God shut off the switch to gravity, the rest of us would come unhinged as we floated away into a void too vast to comprehend while still mortal.  But she would hardly even notice.  The human mind can only handle so much disruption at once.  

A fauvist vision works based on light and beauty.  What is left when the black seed of Satan has stitched himself into the fabric of humanity and dislodged our spiritual tendencies--those beautiful flecks of light and color that unite and bind us to the beauty of us together as a whole?

Narrative

Salem, Utah:  It's a bright morning with a bitter wind. Marci and I walk across a parking lot to a new stone and glass building that looks more like a ski resort hotel than the hospital that it is, Revere Health.  A former architecture student, I admire the alternating horizontal runs of light and dark stone in the façade contrasting with the vertical runs of stainless steel in the huge plate glass window that showcases a strong diagonal in the two tier staircase on the other side of the glass cascading down from the third floor.  Also not to be missed is the prominent horizontal entrance canopy that seems to float above the ski-lodge-like wood posts that support it, all of which is topped by giant stainless-steel letters spelling out "Entrance".

The inside also resembles a fine hotel rather than a hospital, which, I guess is as it should be, as almost no resort can equal the cost of one night's stay in an American hospital.  Even a day visit is likely to set you back thousands of dollars.  I think all the rooms should come with hot tubs and there should be a 24-hour buffet and a cocktail lounge in the lobby.  Then, perhaps, we wouldn't always come out feeling as if we were asked to bend over in our open-backed gowns as something foreign and plastic is inserted very uncomfortably inside us.

We check in at a central station.  A receptionist sits behind a wrap-around counter behind wood divisions that form five or six semi-cubicles, each with a large touch-screen tablet mounted at a forty-five degree angle where patients enter their check-in information.  We pick one and follow the digital prompts, which includes scanning my drivers license and insurance card.  I like the process.  It's so much easier than filling out a bunch of forms with a pencil.  However, I'm also aware that it probably allowed personnel to eliminate one or two receptionist positions, and while that doesn't really impact anyone during this post-COVID boom, sooner or later, it will.  As a society, we are quickly automating our way out of livelihood and purpose.

After checking in, we walk up the long, two-tier cascading staircase that I so admired through the glass curtain wall and stop at the second level landing.  It's a long, airy hallway.  On the left are the offices, and on the right is a series of lobbies set against a ribbon window overlooking the Utah Valley and the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains, which even in this year of extreme drought, are impressively rugged and white.  The hall reception area is divided into four sections, each decorated and labeled for a season:  Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter.   Each section has an automated self check-in area like the one in the main lobby and a place to sit down.  However, the entire floor is void of a receptionist--a small glimpse of the future.  We sit down in comfortable silence in the Winter section and wait to find out if I have kidney disease as my lab tests have suggested.

After a few moments, a nurse comes out.  Angela, a friendly Hispanic woman.  She has me get on the scales.  It seems to me that I'm feather-light.  This may be partly from my new diet, but mostly it is just my perception.   I haven't adjusted to my weight in kilograms.  Every I time I go to the doctor, it seems I'm dwindling into a void, slowly vaporizing.  As I know this is not the case, my weight means nothing to me.  The scales could give me the mass of the moon, and it wouldn't be any more or less accurate than this new kilogram weight of mine.  It's the same with the blood results and urine analysis I received last week.  They mean nothing.  I don't even know what a healthy blood pressure score or pulse reading is.  They are just numbers I have always ignored because I never felt I needed them.  I have always been interested in the weight of a pigment or the bluntness of a word, the impact of a slight musical rest, or the singe of a a sharp orange marigold amongst a bed of deep blue baby's breath.  Art has been my interest.  My body, though I have not badly abused for most of my life, has never mattered much to me.  I took it for granted that it would always work.  I felt there was no need to understand it.  And I don't.  I don't even know how to read the meters and spinning dials, so to speak, that tell me whether or not I'm about to blow my engine.  It's a very, sudden and uneasy feeling.  I barely know how to change the oil in my car, but I have cared enough to watch the dials.  Not so with my own body.

However, one thing I've always believed in is specialization.  As a writer, I know working well with words doesn't fall into place over night.  People often get reasonably good at what they dedicate their lives too.  I don't know why in the hell a career politician is considered a liability in America.  Who wants a senate and congress comprised of members who know nothing about the law or the constitution?  I certainly hope the doctor I'm about to see is absolutely obsessed with dedicating her career to one thing, and one thing only--kidney disease.  I have no qualms about placing qualified people in high positions.  We should want smart, capable people running our country--people as well-trained and dedicated to preserving democracy as I hope this doctor is well-trained and dedicated to preserving me.  The problem is, instead we have people smart in propaganda running the country, and what they do best is flip the world upside down, and call good evil, and evil good.  Inquiry, thought, education, observation, humility, compassion and reason--these become vices.  Mindless rebuttal, close-mindedness, ignorance, disdain, arrogance and stupidity--these become virtues.  Democracy cannot sustain itself against such an attack on its foundational principles indefinitely.  I am aware my body isn't functioning normally.  I am aware my country isn't functioning normally.  I hold steady.  Usually.  What else is there to do?  I am not afraid of tears.  I am not even afraid of dying.  Release is release--but it should be for something.  Or should it?  I don't know.  Maybe freedom ultimately is just an acceptance of reality, whatever that may or may not be.  Enlightenment may have more to do with understanding than action.  No, that cannot be.  We do not exist simply to understand something that is beyond us, an observer only.  We are an intricate, if small part, of creation.  Doing has got to account for something.

Marci and I wait alone in a small room together in silence.  I'm not sure what she's thinking.  I'm not sure what I'm thinking.  This morning has been wonderful.  We went shopping at WinCo for our camping trip to California, which is to be an early celebration of our 25th anniversary, revisiting the places we inhabited fully for brief, glorious moments during our honeymoon all those years ago.  I see a golden light shimmering off the crest of waves as I hold my baby with the sea in front of us and a rock between us and the shore, knowing at any moment we could get soaked by an extra bold wave, and then it happens, and it is cold and sharp, and fun and glorious, and we laugh and head in to higher ground, a bit wet but not too drenched.

WinCo is a big store with lots of fruits and vegetables and things like cereal and grain and spices sold in bulk from bins.  It is why we have come here.  We are looking for foods that I can safely eat on our vacation.  I have spent weeks building the itinerary, making reservations, and planning a menu that will keep me here on earth as long as possible.  Now is the moment.  This is the day to select the biggest, greenest bell peppers I can find.  We have already stopped at the Red Barn, an orchard store in Santaquin, for apples--usually the best in the state.  Now it is time to pick through bins of green and identify all that is good and delicious to and for me.  When faced with immediate fear of dying, either every moment takes on significance or nothing has meaning at all.  It seems quite natural for a human under duress to fluctuate quite naturally between the two extremes, although I've been fortunate so far to spend most my moments bathed in golden light.  I'm not sure why.  I think it is probably the gospel because I haven't always been like that.  Much earlier in my life, I spent most moments under a lid of darkness even amongst the best of friends.

And then, now, there are moments of silence, of stillness, of openness to not knowing, like here in this office with my loved one waiting for a diagnosis--a moment that could confirm or deny that our lives have been changed forever.

The doctor walks in--Dr. Lyles.  She is sharp looking--thin, athletic, piercing blue eyes.  She radiates a casual confidence--nothing to boast about because there is no insecurity, and nothing to hide because she knows what she's doing.  She sits on a stool and tucks her feet casually in, resting them on that circular foot bar.  

I do not carry that confidence, and I never have.  I don't expect it in myself, and I don't expect it in others.  In fact, some of the people I love most in this world, including myself, wear insecurity like a badge of honor even though nobody enjoys doing that.   Yet, I admire people whose very body language asserts that they belong in any given social situation.  It must be amazing to always be comfortable with who you are and know your value regardless of the setting.  I dislike boasters--people so afraid or unaware of who they are that they have to hide below layers, although I do understand a pain deep enough to create that need.  But natural confidence is an amazingly attractive quality, even just visually. Still, I'm more comfortable around others like me, who aren't.   I love how gloriously Paul Simon captures being inhabited by uncertainty in many of his lyrics:

Fat Charlie the Archangel
Sloped into the room
He said I have no opinion about this
And I have no opinion about that
Sad as a lonely little wrinkled balloon
He said well I don't claim to be happy about this, boys

And I don't seem to be happy about that...

I have always known I'm smart.  I have always had strong opinions.  But there is a deep shyness in me that refuses to let go--a strong feeling that I just really don't count for much.  I get ignored easily.  Part of me hates that.  Part of me prefers it.  People listen most prominently to the sloping boy, as he is the most dominate part of me.  I once spent a few years trying to drink myself into someone more confident and outgoing.  Instead, I drank myself into someone mean and willing to compromise my principles in the moment with self-loathing and disgust.  Luckily, Marci pulled me out of that phase of life quite quickly when I realized she loved me for exactly who I was.  That has been the single most important event in my life--her full acceptance of me for who I am.  I hope I have usually given her that same grace.  Slowly, I have befriended the Fat Charlie in me.  In fact, I have come to love him.  He is the one most open to empathy.  

I receive the news I already knew I would.  Doctor Lyles confirms that I do have kidney disease.  Marci, I know, has been holding on to the hope it would be something else.  I wonder how she is doing.  My father died of Amyloidosis, which causes kidney disease, as well as the failure of other internal organs, and I am hoping that at least that can be ruled out.  Doctor Lyles lets us know that Amyloidosis is a rare disease, and rarer still in patients as young as me (in my mid-fifties).  Still, she notes, it can be genetic, and although unusual, her father died in his mid-fifties from it.  She definitely doesn't rule it out.  I know Lloyd, my brother, has been doing that.  His mind has been working out all of the reasons I cannot have Amyloidosis.  He's rational, so he's using numbers, and facts, and statistics, but his frequent return to the subject is to either reassure himself or me, or both.

Dr. Lyle's blunt dealing with the fact that Yes, it looks like you could possibly have Amyloidosis, actually provides release.  One of the hardest things to deal with is unnamed fears--things that scare you so much you aren't willing to name.  I have wanted to name this thing, to acknowledge that I had a higher than statistical average of dying soon, and to come to know exactly what that means to befriend death if I have to, to learn from it, for myself and others.  The comfort of others, though well-intended, stops that light from coming through.   Faced with imminent death, you want to choose how you spend every minute of your remaining days very carefully.  You have to be strategic: allocating enough time for others; enough time to help plan for the future of others without you (finances, etc.); but also enough time to relax, rest, and complete the things that are important to you.

Here is a doctor who seems to get the need to honestly name the possibilities without slanting things towards the most favorable outcomes.  When facing death, what one likes least of all is dishonesty.  What left is there to deal with other than an end to this life itself?  We all live and we all die.  Time, though relative, becomes everything.  There simply isn't time left for bullshit.