Who did this, and how did this happen?

The dynamic is this: Helen is too sick to realize she can’t take care of herself and refuses to go to a nursing home — in this circumstance, however, every authority supports her instead of me. it’s as if you take your dearest loved one bleeding to a hospital and the security guards immediately start beating YOU with their nightsticks. I would say more, but a vital process is in motion. The fact is that no one can legally force another, not even a sick old woman, to accept care. As unbelievable as that sounds, it’s absolutely true. You can’t make them go to a nursing home or anywhere else, especially not her.

For the record, I was with her when she shit her pants in public, and she regularly pisses the bed. She moved into a dump, lost $2,500 in cash she had withdrawn, can’t really cook, can’t take a real bath, left most of her makeup and jewelry at the old house, needs new dentures and eyeglasses, and can’t walk farther than a few yards without resting. That didn’t stop her from cursing me and yelling for the police outside the doctor’s office this a.m. while trying to hit me with her cane.

You would think the above is evidence enough to get help for her, but you would be wrong. Not if she doesn’t want it. I broke down in the doctor’s office this morning because the doctor refused to do anything except recommend family counseling, and then she said: “I think YOU’RE a danger to your mother!”

Subsequently, I learned that the doctor had alerted Adult Protective Services about me! As I had an appointment with the lawyer I absolutely needed to keep, I packed all my clothes and things into the rental car and got the hell out of the house so no one could find and detain me. My attorney told me later that if APS did come around, they’d only ask questions first. But of course, I couldn’t have known that…

Her eyes turn black when she’s raving: small, shiny black eyes with a frightened fox-in-a-snare look. It’s like something is trying to escape, as if her soul is trying to leave her body but can’t get all the way out. I was able to talk to her about this, believe it or not, assuring her she wasn’t crazy but “different.” I told her that I wanted her to come to Taos with me (to a nursing home, of course), where I could visit her every day. She won’t come, though. She wants to stay in the grave of her dingy dead man’s trailer.

There are other solutions than nursing homes, but she would still have to agree, and there is no one to manage her care in Tucson unless I leave her in the hands of strangers — and she would have to agree, which she will not do. After this morning’s horror show in the doctor’s office, I’m not seeing her for a while. Who wants to talk to the police?

I will do what I can, EVERYTHING I can, and as completely as I can. I will follow through. I love her still, no matter what, even though she rejects me in her sickness, and I will not let her die alone if I can help it.

I’ve just discovered this new video, which I am told is “going viral.” I hope so, because it’s affected me quite strongly this morning. I hope you like it and pass it on:

My 86-year-old mother is in the hospital with pneumonia in Tucson and not making sense. It’s impressive, what that does to you. I might as well call this post “John Watch.”

My brother is worried that I’m not there and hopes I’m coming soon. That’s not how we do it, though. Just the sight of me might generate enough “crazy energy” in her to momentarily fool them into letting her go, and then where would we be? Haha. But seriously: no, not yet. And the doctor will sedate her if she tries to leave again.

My wife: ”Your mother can’t possibly ‘escape’ from a modern hospital. She’d never make it to the front door.”

Me: “Even if she could get out, it would never work. She’d have to take a taxi, and she’d never pay for one!”

She’s already convinced she’s dying. For all I know, she is. And it may sound harsh to strangers’ ears, but it’s like I can’t do anything for her until she does. Even if she comes out of this, she’d have to surrender and cooperate for me to get her into a nursing home, and that’s not going to happen. She isn’t rational any more. She hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t see how she’s managed to live on her own for the last 10 years, anyway.

I felt some pretty strong emotions today. Not sorrow, but more a reaction to the archetype, the elemental thing that’s going on with Death nearby. This is monumental with a parent, even one you’re not that close to.

My relationship with my mother is deep and dangerous. I could say she gave me birth and love, but then she tried to kill me (and never gave up). And yet, the more I glue the missing pieces back, there’s less need to blame her for leaving them out. I can talk to her openly and with compassion, from a distance, anyway, and sense the spirit of a person, not my “mother,” and that person is all right. The last time I talked to her was like that. I just ignored the crazy parts and the arrows bounced right off. Then she seemed to shift gears, maybe out of boredom, and we connected for a little while, as equals.

That might have been the last time. it’s out of my hands, for sure.

Interesting…

Example A: was $360K, now $279K and the owner will look at “any” offers. Example B: was $675K, now $395K. Whoa! That’s a drop of over 40 percent. The paper is full of ads with “REDUCED!” banners on them. And here the conventional wisdom was that this would never happen because Taos is an “end destination” resort, etc. etc. Yeah, yeah.

Looks like my wife has found a studio, by the way, so for now the pressure is off on the issue of moving from our scenic adobe hovel on the hillside. We’ll keep looking, of course, but the main job now is getting a certain baby grand down here from Dubuque. After that the snows will come, and we will move or not, depending.

One step at a time, but at least there’s movement.

The old lady [see previous post] was admitted to the hospital yesterday, and yes, she has pneumonia. She’s also tried twice to “escape” and almost succeeded last night in ripping the IV out of her arm and making it to the hallway. Urk.

So it’s come to this.

The next step is “chemical restraint,” i.e. sedation, and I think I know what comes next: she either eats or doesn’t, and then they ask us if we want to keep her going. She’s going to “escape,” all right, one way or the other, but I don’t think she’ll be coming home again.

Full circle in Tucson, AZ coming up, maybe. My oh my.

Mine turns 87 this year, and we forgot to stage The Intervention. Too bad, not that it would have worked.

She lives in a so-called “mobile home community” in Tucson. What that really means is single-wides and double-wides close together, baking in the sun below a mountain, an aluminum hive of isolation and prep for final staging. She decided she wanted to move from the home she’d occupied for 30 years and go live in a smaller place to makes things easier, which sounded dubious to me, but sure: buy another trailer, let me and my siblings clean up the old one with all the junk and get it sold while she’s still alive. Much tidier that way. Only she didn’t tell me the place she’d bought was furnished and even had all the kitchen equipment, glasses, and utensils! None of which she threw away…

What’s more, she had most of her own furniture brought over too. There must be hardly any room to turn around inside, and now she can’t even unpack her own kitchen things because a dead man’s plates are in the cupboard. Just another sign, as if I needed one.

I have a nearby brother who’s going through hell with this. For three days she lays there in here bed, depressed, and won’t get up, says she has trouble breathing. My brother tries to take her to the hospital, but she refuses to go. Then she calls him in the night and says she’s dying (can’t breathe), call 911. He does, they come, and she gets up out of bed to talk to them. They see she’s ambulatory and refuse to take her. This afternoon she calls to tell me she’s dying and that I have to come “take care of things.” She isn’t dead yet, though, just moving through the world without her mind and wants attention. She wants me there to clean the cupboards out, unpack her stuff, get tangled up in other people’s goods now, see lawyers, sign papers, put her old place on the block. But what she wants is out of sequence, and I see she isn’t really here much anymore. For all that, rational argument is a waste of time.

So now it’s come to this. Her way out, if this is what it is, will be a messy one. She refuses guidance, has no friends, and shreds your psyche if you try to help. My job is detachment and compassion. There’s a pretty 18-year-old girl from Middle River deep inside, red hair blowing in the wind. I’ve talked to her, too, in moments when the walls were down.

For now, I’m doing nothing. That’s all I can do until “something happens” and we step in to protect her. I’m certainly not going to Tucson, at least not yet.

(That way yields madness, and I’ve paid my dues already.)

“The planet is asleep and it’s the fault of musicians who are untrue to themselves.” (Sun Ra)

Is that COOL or what? I grabbed the quotation from the comments section of an article by ex-Fug and founding member of the False Prophets, Steven Taylor, at Reality Sandwich entitled “Is That a Real Reality, or Did You Make It Up Yourself?” Highly recommended, though I had to consult my MacBook’s onboard dictionary a few times! (limen, phatic, instantiate, etc.)

(Truth = flux, and boy is that ever a relief…)

Oh, what a grand few days…

We look at another place I know I won’t like — I’m one of those who know — and I’m not overwhelmed. Expecting the deal to crumble in the end regardless, I stay on my best behavior and pretty much keep silent. (Mistake!) But right away, in the absence of my all-knowing analysis, the landlord’s new refrigerator and a big sunroom have her heart racing. She doesn’t even mind that the wooded lot that starts 20 feet from the tall south-facing windows has just been sold — yet who buys a quarter-acre in town just to look at the bushes?

The house has forced-air heat with outlets way up near the high ceilings. The furnace uses propane. There isn’t a woodstove worth mentioning. I see money flying out the door and being cold to boot. “That little electric heater sure does a great job in here,” the owner says, pointing to a unit in the corner of the sunroom. She’s a very nice person, but I’m wondering why a sunroom needs a heater. At night, maybe, in the absence of insulating drapes, but still. All this I take in but keep to myself instead of sharing with my partner, who’s practically dancing a jig. Surely she’ll stop and see the bedrooms are too small, I think to myself.

Evening rain

In the end of course she’s flying high, so I have to come clean and do so about half a mile after leaving the place: basically, I hate it and we’d freeze to death. There’s a long ride home, if you know what I mean, on which I take silence for wanting to hear more. Yes, even after almost 30 years, I can still be that stupid. It isn’t hard at all. The biggest irony is that she’s fucking brilliant when cornered and almost always does the right thing: if I’d confided in her all along, she might have pulled the plug herself. We notice different things, though. On her own, she might have plunked her piano down in that sunroom, plugged electric heaters in all the rooms, and just kept on truckin’. Still, we just came through the longest, coldest winter of my life. I want a fire to get cozy with.

This morning I flip out and have to “do something,” so I drive into town to read bulletin boards for housing notices. Pretty lame, but it gets me off my butt. Trying to shake something loose, I take a short side trip on the way home to visit the Mabel Dodge Luhan House [historical site & conference center] like someone suggested. Just an intuitive thing. I walk inside, but there isn’t a bulletin board or anyone to talk to. The vibes are good back there in the compound, though, and I don’t mind.

The air outside is sharply cool and damp from last night’s rain. As I creep down the tight little alley in first gear on the way out, the sunlight is warm and welcome by way of contrast. Halfway down the little hill I stop, incredulous: sitting in the dirt road looking up at me right below the open driver’s window is a HUGE GREEN BULLFROG the size of a cantelope! We stare at each other for a long moment, and then I drive on, checking in my rear-view mirror that I haven’t seen a mirage. I can’t tell you how many decades it’s been since I saw a frog like that, probably not since the early days of my life. It’s been years since I heard one, too. I know there’s a big pond at a nearby gallery tucked back in the trees, but this is still the high desert, and I just saw a goddamn bullfrog in the alley.

Cocktail hour view

Very tricky afternoon on my own. I sit down to do some boring detail work for a client, but my mind is a limpet that won’t let go of where it shouldn’t be. Then I have an idea. (You don’t need to know what it is, it’s just an idea that comes from something I see.) But of course I can do that, I say to myself. It’s as obvious as anything. Something lifts, and it’s like I’m back. Hey, I feel — well, normal… no, better than “normal.” What?? I see What Can Be. Outrageous!

And then, at the same time, AT THE VERY SAME TIME, I’m aware of the pain. The big pain, the all-encompassing thing that tries to kill me. I’m okay and the pain is still there, but I’m neither one. I ease toward the hurt for a test, almost close enough to fall in, then pull back to where there’s both at the same time.

Both. At. The. Same. Time.

Sitting outside just before sunset, I notice the plum tree branches blowing in the wind, yellow-white light flashing on the leaves. The tree is a pulsating field I’ve never seen before. It wants me to promise to remember.

Maybe we won’t exactly move, you know. Maybe something else is going on.

A friend of mine called this morning and mentioned my (and his) “existential crisis.” He’s a stalwart fellow and I appreciate the sympathy, but I’m actually not having one. I did get a bit exercised over any number of thoughts during the last few days, and writing is frequently how I process all the stress. It must have worked, because today I’m fairly calm about the following:

1. The imaginary wealth of banks

2. Aging

3. Finding a better house & studio

4. My 87-year-old mother

5. What people will say about me when I’m dead

6. The false lure of “going back” (to anywhere)

7. Buying a dental implant instead of a new Mac

8. All my unused gifts & unfulfilled desires

9. Obama being swallowed by the Democratic establishment

10. The neighbors’ goddamned abandoned cats [oops]

11. Netroots as magic beans

12. Lumps

13. The irreconcilable death of American uniqueness

14. Losing weight

15. The shortest summer in the world

16. A pension fund collapse

17. Ecosystem death

18. Endless war

19. Money

20. Defrosted steaks going bad

21. Boring postponed Web work

Etc. etc.

I could go on, but it’s getting harder to think of things, which means I must be okay. And realizing yesterday just who (or what) is boss took tons of pressure off, naturally.

Well, crank up the worry machine. (Or not! read on…)

What I find most interesting about using the Internet for finding news is how much of what the rest of the world sees never makes it into American media consciousness. For example, all but a rear guard of 800 Australian troops just came home from Iraq to a joyous welcome in Brisbane, and I’ve only found mention of this at UK sites. (Folks are happy the troops are coming home? No news here, move along.) On the financial front, at least three European banks have issued dire warnings about the U.S. economy over the last few weeks, and that’s also been ignored — one authority flatly predicts a complete collapse of our financial system over the next few days or weeks, and I’ll bet you haven’t read that anywhere in these United States. In fact, the level of “serious” discourse on just about any heavy topic you’d care to name is so craven and bereft of elementary reasoning, you’d have to be some sort of chemically-reinforced Pollyanna to believe we’ve actually evolved at all over the last few hundred years. (And watch out what you put in your garden!)

My wife and I have this conversation frequently. The bottom line is that while some people have definitely experienced a growing peace, maturity and spiritual expansion, life in general has become more difficult and anxiety-ridden in our lifetimes. When I first joined the workforce after graduating from the University of Texas, incomes and expenses were much more closely matched, so much so that one simply didn’t have to worry if one had a job. In 1968 my first wife and I rented a wonderful home for $75/mo. (that was considered expensive), my car payments were $36/mo., and a visit to the doctor cost $5. I took home less than $500/mo. in salary from my college teaching job, we bought everything we wanted, and the money just piled up in my checking account, month after month. There wasn’t any need to save, because it happened automatically.

Late afternoon sun illuminating aquatic plants in mountain stream

The way things are today just isn’t going to fly. It won’t be “fixed” either, none of it, not until we start all over at the bottom, treat everyone as brothers and sisters, look each other squarely in the eye, and say something like, “Okay, what CAN you give me for these eggs my hens just laid? How much for this house, this car, my services? What do you need from me, and how can we help each other? How can we help those people in the next town who have no food or water? Can you give this teacher (doctor, policeman, farmer) a place to live so he or she can stay in the community?”

That kind of trust and self-reliance may produce miracles, but first one has to have an honest sense of “self.” That’s where inner work comes in. When you know you’re part of everything and simultaneously whole, you don’t need a guide for acting properly. It just happens automatically, like when my paychecks piled up in the bank. It’s like the Golden Rule and “all you need is love,” all rolled into one.

I don’t know what they are, but there they are.

Meanwhile, would we really be worse off without high-definition TV, the Internet, computers, air-conditioned cars, and microwaves? Would it really hurt to talk to ancestors in our dreams and fly to distant lands by willing it so? Do you really believe the energy that fuels your thoughts just vanishes with your body? Is there some reason our bodies “have to” deteriorate? — why can’t we just live until we die? After all, SOME FOLKS ALREADY DO!

And on and on and on…

We’ve been sucking up the patriarchal bullshit and imbalance for the last few thousand years — doing the best we could, you understand — and now it looks like something’s gonna blow, only maybe not all at once. I hope not. Frankly, I think it must have started years ago, because I’ve felt this way since I was in my teens. I never wanted the brick house in the suburbs anyway, much less the station wagon in the drive. Not only was it silly (to me), it was also built on sand.

That’s one reason why I wanted to move to northern New Mexico, where things have always been “blown up.” Not that far to fall if things go bad, in other words. Fewer people, too, just 14 per square mile on the average in Taos County, which by the way is just a little smaller than Connecticut. But I mainly wanted to live the last half of my life in a place where Nature dominates man, and not the other way around. That’s why I go walking in the mountains when I get the chance: something happens to me in the high country that never even registers amidst the mini-marts and parking lots. I sense things one can’t put into words without diminishing the experience, although I give it my best shot because I want to share this stuff. I don’t know what’s happening, either, but a hit of what’s above 8,000 feet makes me want to go back for more, and I think this is related to the bigger question.

It could be that everything will be just fine, after all, only…um… different.

Ya know??