Thursday 18 February 2021
Sunday 30 October 2016
End of an Era
I am coming to the end of an era personally, one way or another. I have been disabled for a decade and a half without any hope of a solution until now. I have what is known as 'degenerative bone disease' which basically means that your bones crumble and continue to disappear inside your body until you do not have a leg to stand on. Poor grammar aside, that was the surgeon's joke when he saw the films of my hips. Less than 20% of the bone remained, but the HMO would not cover the cost of a prosthesis because I was 'too young'. 'You will be a candidate for two hip replacements' was the verdict and no matter how I posed the question, I was not given an honest answer... even now, they have not admitted why they allowed me to drag on, disabled, year after year, old before my time.
While I sit in a recliner, having not seen my bed for almost six months, people round me are busy contracting cancers of various kinds. Getting cancer and being treated with poison for it. We go to the supermarket and buy foods that are imbued with various poisons. Our land is saturated with various poisons. The admosphere is posioned.... is it any wonder that our bodies cannot cope? I do not think I will opt for chemotherapy if I get cancer now. I will take the less traveled road and hope for a quick end.
Recently I have been watching series about the so-called 'Cold War' which was the era of my own childhood. I watched 'Deutschland83' and then I watched all available seasons of 'The Americans'.
The young star of 'Deutschland83' was born a couple of years after the Berlin Wall was demolished and yet, some ersatz intellectual asked him in a conference at the Goethe Institute what it was like to grow up in a divided Germany. People are pretty lazy and stupid sometimes. Even I, in a haze of severe pain, watching the thing, caught the fact that he was born AFTER the Wall fell.
What does it mean to have lived in the era of the Cold War in the West? What did it mean to be a small child with the threat of a nuclear holocaust always hanging like a giant mushroom-shaped sword of Damocles over ones head?
Well, we knew about it at the age of 5. Let me be quite clear about that. One of the first drills they ever taught us in school was 'duck and cover' and the reason for it was NOT earthquake, even in California but the threat of a nuclear attack.
You have small children quivering with terror under their little flimsy desks once each week knowing that they could be killed by something so huge, so unfeeling, so indiscriminate, in an instant... and that went on for some decades, actually.
I guess ultimately one becomes iniured to the fear to some extent, at least when one is a young child. I was more afraid of vampires really!
It was when I saw a British film called 'Threads' that the fear hit me again, and with more power. It was not instant death that one feared.... it was the poison that would cause a slow, lingering death with no place to run, no way to escape.
Initially, the so-called 'man on the street' believed, in profound but merciful ignorance, that he could build a 'bomb shelter' in his back garden, stockpile tins of food and wait out the global catastrophe. Chernobyl was a big eye-opener in that respect, when the winds blew the posion all over Europe.
At University, I saw a rather famous art film called 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' that was about the nuclear attack on Japan... I couldn't cope with it, I recall. I was not in the right frame of mind for it. I suppose I should watch it again someday as it is rather well-regarded, but the images were too much for me.
'Threads' though was far worse. One actually had to think about eyeballs boiling in the skull, of the effect on living skin and tissue of an atomic bomb. It was very real, even if fictional, and very graphic... and important, I thought.
Life goes on... the red buttons in Moscow and Washington D.C. rather amazingly remained unpushed through the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000, 2010 ... and now we are in the year Anno Domini 2016 with more threat to our planet from our careless consumerism than from nuclear holocausts... That is not entirely true, but the nuclear option is still hypothetical while the damage done daily to the planet is a creeping death that no one is halting.
My daughter's generation do not think about nuclear holocausts much. I suppose it is one of those facts of life like STDs that they simply would rather ignore until push comes to shove. No one reminds them of it in school the way we were reminded. Bad or good? I think it was unconscionable really to beat it into our heads as children that our lives could be snuffed out in a New York minute. The other aspect of it that was ethically wrong with the failure to let ANY ONE know that there was no place of safety in such a situation.
Now there are more nuclear warheads on this planet and more nuclear power than ever before. I do not know why it is considered worse or more dangerous for North Korea or Iran to have nuclear power than for the Israelis or the U.S. to have them. It only takes one finger to push the button in ANY nation. I do believe that the only reason Washington D.C.. never ofdered a full-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union was the fact that the Soviet Union had nuclear warheads trained on American cities as well. Otherwise, the U.S. government would have had no hesitation in murdering millions of innocent people on the other side of the globe simply as part of a power play. The nuclear option was what made Democracy a dirty word.
Descending from the general to the specific... I wonder what that knowledge of the possibility of instant death at any time did to my psyche. That, plus the Protestant fundamentalists on my mother's side of the famiy who always were carrying on in high drama about the 'End of Days', ever imminent, right round the corner, that would force them to 'flee to the hills' for safety.
Martyrdom is not a Muslim fundamentalist concept. The Seventh Day Adventists were keen to demonstrate their willingness always and that is a dangerous mindset for ANY ONE. As a matter of fact, if one views life in that way, it becomes easier in some cases to deal with every problem, for at the end of the day, none of it matters. Death is the next stop on the train so what difference does it make if you commit a crime, lose a loved one, lose your job or home or anything else that is part of this transient reality?
I feel that I need to put myself into that mindset to some extent looking ahead to the next operation, now scheduled for the day before the American Thanksgiving holiday. I have no faith now in the future. Nothing has gone right for a long, long time. So... I am not about to expend too much energy on the spurious business of HOPE. It is as likely that I could die on the operating table or far worse, something will go terribly wrong that will set me back and make me more rather than less disabled after the agony of that procedure. I am not a defeatist but I do not wish to stir up false expectations in myself. I did that for the first operation and look where that got me! The second operation was scheduled originally for the end of July. A blood clot and pneumonia put paid to that. Six months later, I am making no progress whatsoever and doubt any is possible unless the next operation is successful.
Why do I even bother? I suppose it is for the Cats. If I don't think about their helplessness, about the fact that there is no one else who gives a damn whether they prosper or suffer, live or die, I would not drag myself on from day to day, week to week. I do it for them. I make the effort for them. There is no reason to weigh their worth. That is irrelevant. They are living, beautiful, loving creatures who depend upon me and me alone. So that is reason enough to struggle on at this point.
We alll have to find reasons to live when things go terribly wrong. If we can't, then I suppose we die spiritually or actually commit suicide. I think more people probably would commit suicide if they were not so terrified of whatever happens AFTER that. Not to mention the moment of death, the mess it could create, the potential failure of it, a descent into a nightmare existence, brain-damaged or physically damaged.
This made me think of an interesting old phrase: 'he gave up the ghost'. It means that he died, but what an odd way of putting it! Gave it up to whom? To God?
While I sit in a recliner, having not seen my bed for almost six months, people round me are busy contracting cancers of various kinds. Getting cancer and being treated with poison for it. We go to the supermarket and buy foods that are imbued with various poisons. Our land is saturated with various poisons. The admosphere is posioned.... is it any wonder that our bodies cannot cope? I do not think I will opt for chemotherapy if I get cancer now. I will take the less traveled road and hope for a quick end.
Recently I have been watching series about the so-called 'Cold War' which was the era of my own childhood. I watched 'Deutschland83' and then I watched all available seasons of 'The Americans'.
The young star of 'Deutschland83' was born a couple of years after the Berlin Wall was demolished and yet, some ersatz intellectual asked him in a conference at the Goethe Institute what it was like to grow up in a divided Germany. People are pretty lazy and stupid sometimes. Even I, in a haze of severe pain, watching the thing, caught the fact that he was born AFTER the Wall fell.
What does it mean to have lived in the era of the Cold War in the West? What did it mean to be a small child with the threat of a nuclear holocaust always hanging like a giant mushroom-shaped sword of Damocles over ones head?
Well, we knew about it at the age of 5. Let me be quite clear about that. One of the first drills they ever taught us in school was 'duck and cover' and the reason for it was NOT earthquake, even in California but the threat of a nuclear attack.
You have small children quivering with terror under their little flimsy desks once each week knowing that they could be killed by something so huge, so unfeeling, so indiscriminate, in an instant... and that went on for some decades, actually.
I guess ultimately one becomes iniured to the fear to some extent, at least when one is a young child. I was more afraid of vampires really!
It was when I saw a British film called 'Threads' that the fear hit me again, and with more power. It was not instant death that one feared.... it was the poison that would cause a slow, lingering death with no place to run, no way to escape.
Initially, the so-called 'man on the street' believed, in profound but merciful ignorance, that he could build a 'bomb shelter' in his back garden, stockpile tins of food and wait out the global catastrophe. Chernobyl was a big eye-opener in that respect, when the winds blew the posion all over Europe.
At University, I saw a rather famous art film called 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' that was about the nuclear attack on Japan... I couldn't cope with it, I recall. I was not in the right frame of mind for it. I suppose I should watch it again someday as it is rather well-regarded, but the images were too much for me.
'Threads' though was far worse. One actually had to think about eyeballs boiling in the skull, of the effect on living skin and tissue of an atomic bomb. It was very real, even if fictional, and very graphic... and important, I thought.
Life goes on... the red buttons in Moscow and Washington D.C. rather amazingly remained unpushed through the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000, 2010 ... and now we are in the year Anno Domini 2016 with more threat to our planet from our careless consumerism than from nuclear holocausts... That is not entirely true, but the nuclear option is still hypothetical while the damage done daily to the planet is a creeping death that no one is halting.
My daughter's generation do not think about nuclear holocausts much. I suppose it is one of those facts of life like STDs that they simply would rather ignore until push comes to shove. No one reminds them of it in school the way we were reminded. Bad or good? I think it was unconscionable really to beat it into our heads as children that our lives could be snuffed out in a New York minute. The other aspect of it that was ethically wrong with the failure to let ANY ONE know that there was no place of safety in such a situation.
Now there are more nuclear warheads on this planet and more nuclear power than ever before. I do not know why it is considered worse or more dangerous for North Korea or Iran to have nuclear power than for the Israelis or the U.S. to have them. It only takes one finger to push the button in ANY nation. I do believe that the only reason Washington D.C.. never ofdered a full-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union was the fact that the Soviet Union had nuclear warheads trained on American cities as well. Otherwise, the U.S. government would have had no hesitation in murdering millions of innocent people on the other side of the globe simply as part of a power play. The nuclear option was what made Democracy a dirty word.
Descending from the general to the specific... I wonder what that knowledge of the possibility of instant death at any time did to my psyche. That, plus the Protestant fundamentalists on my mother's side of the famiy who always were carrying on in high drama about the 'End of Days', ever imminent, right round the corner, that would force them to 'flee to the hills' for safety.
Martyrdom is not a Muslim fundamentalist concept. The Seventh Day Adventists were keen to demonstrate their willingness always and that is a dangerous mindset for ANY ONE. As a matter of fact, if one views life in that way, it becomes easier in some cases to deal with every problem, for at the end of the day, none of it matters. Death is the next stop on the train so what difference does it make if you commit a crime, lose a loved one, lose your job or home or anything else that is part of this transient reality?
I feel that I need to put myself into that mindset to some extent looking ahead to the next operation, now scheduled for the day before the American Thanksgiving holiday. I have no faith now in the future. Nothing has gone right for a long, long time. So... I am not about to expend too much energy on the spurious business of HOPE. It is as likely that I could die on the operating table or far worse, something will go terribly wrong that will set me back and make me more rather than less disabled after the agony of that procedure. I am not a defeatist but I do not wish to stir up false expectations in myself. I did that for the first operation and look where that got me! The second operation was scheduled originally for the end of July. A blood clot and pneumonia put paid to that. Six months later, I am making no progress whatsoever and doubt any is possible unless the next operation is successful.
Why do I even bother? I suppose it is for the Cats. If I don't think about their helplessness, about the fact that there is no one else who gives a damn whether they prosper or suffer, live or die, I would not drag myself on from day to day, week to week. I do it for them. I make the effort for them. There is no reason to weigh their worth. That is irrelevant. They are living, beautiful, loving creatures who depend upon me and me alone. So that is reason enough to struggle on at this point.
We alll have to find reasons to live when things go terribly wrong. If we can't, then I suppose we die spiritually or actually commit suicide. I think more people probably would commit suicide if they were not so terrified of whatever happens AFTER that. Not to mention the moment of death, the mess it could create, the potential failure of it, a descent into a nightmare existence, brain-damaged or physically damaged.
This made me think of an interesting old phrase: 'he gave up the ghost'. It means that he died, but what an odd way of putting it! Gave it up to whom? To God?
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