Monthly Archives: April 2016

by

Q is for querulous

Welcome back to 7 sins and friends…. Have you ever felt querulous?

1. full of complaints; complaining.

2. characterized by or uttered in complaint; peevish:

a querulous tone; constant querulous reminders of things to be done.
Querulous is like a sophisticated version of whiny.
I used it in an alphabet poem, for querulous quail. And the truth is that I thought of myself and my sister as the quail. Right before that was One old orangutan’s pompous pronouncements were being ignored by many merry meercats. My sister and I and our cousins again… and the orangutan was my father. My mother did the illustration…. and it does look like my father when he was in THAT mood….
Alphabeasts

ambulating antelopes
bellies bearing beer
carrying cantelopes
deride damp deer

elegant elephants
feeling fitly fat
give generous gifts
handing hippos hats

ignorant iguanas
jealously jeer
keen kindly kites
lilting laughing leers

many merry meerkats
nearly never notice
one old orangutan’s
pompous pronouncements

querulous quail
reject reports regarding
shimmering snow snakes
tearing through tunnels

undulating ungulates
veer vivaciously
wondering why whales
xerox xylophones

yellow yaks yell
zip zap zoo!

Q

by

fraud in medicine: cow thymus guinea pig

We are making a change in clinic. We ask all new patients to bring ALL the pills they take. Prescription, vitamin, supplement. Most of them don’t. So now we are telling patients that they need to bring all pills or they will be rescheduled.

I want to know what my patients are taking. My town is a delightful spectrum mix from very conservative to very liberal and some libertarians thrown in. But I look at the ingredients of the bottles.

With prescription medicines, people will say “I am on metoprolol.”

“What strength?” I say, “And is it the short acting, middle or long acting?”

Some patients: “Uh…. it’s blue. It’s a small blue round pill.”

Eye rolling would be unprofessional. I pick the lowest dose and type in “unsure dose”. “Bring it next time.”

I examine vitamin bottles. Some contain multiple herbs as well as vitamins. Most people don’t seem aware of this. Sometimes people have four different vitamins with vitamin A in them. “The fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K can build up in your tissues and people have managed to kill themselves. I would recommend you take less then you are taking.” And then there are the high dose vitamins: one with 3999% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A. Hello. Why is this being sold? I guess people have the right to take things that can kill them. But I wish they wouldn’t.

Supplements. I read the ingredients. One ingredient is cow thymus. “This has cow thymus in it.” I say. Medicine seems a bit vague on what the thymus does, though it is involved with myasthenia gravis: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/myasthenia-gravis/multimedia/thymus-gland/img-20007802

“Oh.” says my patient.

“I am very unenthusiastic about taking cow thymus.” I say. “Unless you are working with a naturopath who has prescribed it for a compelling reason. Who prescribed it?”

“Uh, it’s not prescribed. It’s made by a good company.”

Right. Like I trust corporations. Scamming thieves and liars. Sell anything that isn’t nailed down in pill form. Including cow thymus.

My medical philosophy is as few pills as possible. Prescription, vitamin or supplement. Eat food, exercise, make friends, work well, be kind to yourself and others and avoid pills unless necessary. We don’t know how cow thymus and metoprolol interact. The FDA considers supplements to be natural, like a carrot. A pill is not a carrot. It doesn’t grow on a tree or in the ground. It has to be made by people. The supplement companies do not have to do any testing for medical safety and efficacy and I frankly hate the pills with multiple herbs in them. They have to use ingredients that are “generally recognized as safe” which is pretty lukewarm: http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/. Also, kidney failure is on the rise from too many pills. Everything is metabolized by either the kidneys or the liver and kidney failure is in the top ten causes of death in the US.

And I don’t want to be a guinea pig. I don’t want to be the personal home chemistry trial of cow thymus plus metoprolol. No way. And I will bet that you don’t want to be a personal home guinea pig either.

I took the photograph with a zoom lens looking down from the dock in Port Townsend Bay in 2014.

by

P is for pride

Pride is the fifth of the seven sins, in our seven sins and friends.

Which of the following is a sin?

1. a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.
2. the state or feeling of being proud.
3. a becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one’s position or character; self-respect; self-esteem.
4. pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself:civic pride.
5. something that causes a person or persons to be proud: His art collection was the pride of the family.
6. the best of a group, class, society, etc.: This bull is the pride of the herd.
7. the most flourishing state or period: in the pride of adulthood.

Two quotations come to my mind:
Pride goes before a fall.
Death be not proud.

Pride goes before a fall: Proverbs 16:18, King James Version, Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Here is the whole chapter: http://www.christianity.com/bible/bible.php?q=Proverbs+16&ver=kjv

Proverbs 16:5 is also relevant. Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.

And then Death be not proud is from John Donne: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44107

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

___________________________________________

I am ambivalent about pride. I have mixed feelings. I find it easier to be proud of my children than myself. I am aware of my faults. Also, when I am really proud of something, I am more liable to mess up! To say something arrogant, to not pay attention, to lose my keys, to hurt someone’s feelings not on purpose! An analyst wrote that in their household, whoever has the best week, the most accolades, has gotten a prize or had a really good week: that person is in charge of the cat litter box for the next week. I think that is so sensible, to keep everyone grounded and connected to the daily tasks and remind us that even if we do something brilliant, the cat litter box still needs attention and the bathroom still needs to be cleaned. It is hard to keep a swelled head while scrubbing the toilet. I am proud that my children both did chores every weekend and my son still pitches in when he is home from college!

And now… the cat is reminding me….

I took the photograph in 2012 and came across it yesterday. Sometimes we get lost in a fog of pride or fantasy or emotion……. service to others and basic tasks like cleaning ground us again…..

 

 

by

sing for the girls

Sing for the girls who grow up in war zones.
Sing for the girls who grow up scared.
Sing for the girls who grow up abused.
Sing for the girls unprepared.

Sing for the girls who grow up with alcohol.
Sing for the girls who grow in broken homes.
Sing for the girls who don’t tell anyone.
Sing for the girls alone.

Sing for the girls who grow up beaten.
Sing for the girls who grow up raped.
Sing for the girls who care for siblings.
Sing for the girls who learn to hate.

Sing for the women who now look frozen.
Sing for the women who now look old.
Sing for the women who survived it anyway.
Sing for the women who told.

Sing for the girls who grow up broken.
Sing for the girls who break everything.
Sing for the girls who break the silence.
We are broken and breaking: sing.

I took the photograph at the US Synchronized Swimming Nationals in 2012.

by

O is for open

O for open.

What does feeling open mean to you?

Dictionary.com lists 42 adjective meanings, including:
34. not constipated, as the bowels.

That one made me giggle, but I am thinking of open as in open to other people and open to discussion and open to change. Walking outside and seeing birds and deer and the spring here exploding in flowers and small new leaves opens me. I get tired in clinic and by the end I am grumpy and think: no more people. Ick, people. But I love clinic and miss it when I have been off and sick. I missed hugs from my patients!

With 42 different adjective meanings, think about how amazing it is that we think we know what someone means when they use the word open…..

 

O

With all of the discussion generated by the US presidential election, I am also thinking about an open society. A friend said that we have to be open to discussion but we also have to listen to each other. And listen to feelings.

I think of Sweet Honey in the Rock singing “Would you harbor me?”

Would you harbor me?
Would I harbor you?
Would you harbor a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew
a heretic, convict or spy?
Would you harbor a run away woman, or child,
a poet, a prophet, a king?

The lyrics are here.

I took the photograph yesterday. I was trying to focus on my neighbor in the background, but I am open to seeing the grasses instead….

 

.
by

N is for normal

N is for normal. How often do you feel normal? Are your feelings normal? Are mine?

I kept my books from when I was little and I have some of my mother’s too. Some we wore out. I am thinking of Nobody is Perfick, a book by Bernard Waber. The illustrations are fabulous as are the sentiments from a kid’s point of view. Peter Perfect is held up as a model to all the other children: he is polite, he says thank you, he says please, he doesn’t roll in the glorious mud….. but…. the ending is very satisfying.

Does normal mean average? No one is the perfect average. Does normal mean the cultural norm? Are animals normal? Maybe we are all normal all the time: if a sparrow is normal and a deer is normal and a cat is normal even when she is acting like there is a phantom in the house…. maybe we are all normal too….

N

And since we’re on children’s books, I started playing with N words, inspired by another great children’s author….

Normal is nice, normal is nutty, normal is naughty and nasty and new. Maybe it’s nearly narcissistic to need to know that no one is not normal. It’s nasty to natter that Norman’s not normal. It’s naughty to name a normal nematode Abnormal Norma. Nodes newly known nearly never need normalcy. It’s not nice to knock nude nuts. Knight knapping is not as nice as night napping… nighty night!

Bernard Waber’s website: http://www.bernardwaber.com/

nematodes: http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/nematode/soil_nematode.htm

I took the photograph of my daughter and two friends at an October beach Hawaiian birthday party…Β  the coldest Hawaiian birthday party I’ve been to, so the girls were gathering wood for the fire.

 

by

M is for mourn

M is for mourn. We mourn for losses. Mourning is part of being human and we have to give grief room and space. How can we love and feel intimacy without also feeling grief and mourning?

M

I wrote a poem the day my sister died. I had flown home four days before, after seeing her in hospice, 7 years of cancer. I flew home the day before her birthday. My birthday is three days after hers. She died the day after my birthday. It has now been four years.

An apology, a love note and a remembrance

I step outside into a fine mist rain.

I am enfolded in cloud.

The dog still wants to be walked.
The cats want their treats.
The bunny rattles her cage.
The fish will want feeding at the usual time.

My heart lies stunned in my chest.
The dog does not pull.
I walk measured.
He waits.

The rain comes harder.

I hope that where you are, is joy.

The crows harsh caws comfort me.
I answer.
They watch from the tree tops as we circle.

I am enshrouded in cloud.

We are back to the house.

I try to remember.
I have the birds.
I have the trees.

We go in.

first published on everything2.com with other poems for her here: http://everything2.com/title/An+apology%252C+a+love+note+and+a+remembrance

I don’t know who took the photograph. Probably my grandparents.

 

 

 

by

L is for lust

L is for Lust, another of the 7 sins.

I’d better talk about the photograph first! I took the picture of my son, playing outdoors before my friends’ wedding! He volunteered to play as the guests arrived and played from memory, dressed in his grandfather’s tuxedo. L is for love as well as lust….

I have said that we are all human and all have the potential for all feelings. But lust… now that is complicated to write about.

noun
1. intense sexual desire or appetite.
2. uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.
3. a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually followed by for): a lust for power.
4. ardent enthusiasm; zest; relish: an enviable lust for life.
5. Obsolete. pleasure or delight.
desire; inclination; wish.

Now those aren’t all bad. And don’t we as a culture celebrate sexual desire in the “right” context? We don’t agree on the “right” context as a culture or a world yet.

verb (used without object)
6. to have intense sexual desire.
7. to have a yearning or desire; have a strong or excessive craving (often followed by for or after).

I am reading four books concurrently. Perhaps I have a lust for books. Is that a sin or a feeling or an exaggeration?

I found a mystery called The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl. This is set right after the civil war and is a murder relating to the translation of Dante’s Inferno. The characters include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD. Part of the plot includes the Harvard Corporation putting pressure on to stop publication of the translation because many of the Harvard faculty and alumni don’t approve. “Modern” Italian is scorned compared to Latin and Greek andΒ  there is argument about whether it is too Catholic. Discrimination all over the place.

And what does this have to do with lust? I came across my copy of a translation of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, translated by John Ciardi, and started reading that. The circles of Hell as he describes them don’t exactly match the 7 sins: he has nine. The Second Circle has the souls of the “carnal, those who betrayed reason to their appetities and who abandoned themselves to the tempest of their passions.” The dead people are insubstantial and are blown about by the winds, forever denied the light of reason and of God.Β  There are couples there. This circle has less suffering and Dante feels compassion for the lovers.

But further down is Circle Eight with the panderers and seducers. These are punished much more cruelly and suffer more deeply. And Dante feels that it is more deserved…. Circle Eight has many others: flatterers, hypocrites, thieves, evil counsellors, sowers of discord. Each level descends and indicates a worse sin.

L

The third book is Come as you are by Emily Nagoski, PhD. A friend gave this to me for my birthday and it’s a wonderful book about the myths, mysteries and current science about sexuality, male and female. She writes that we have ideas that are NOT borne out in scientific testing and that many people who feel sexually “broken” are not broken at all. We all have the same parts, just arranged differently, and then our family and culture and experience add to that, and it becomes confusing!

Currently, she writes, 30% of women in testing have responsive desire. That is, they don’t have “spontaneous desire”. Our culture is still getting over men owning other people and owning women, so the cultural “ideal” is that we all have spontaneous desire. But it turns out that we don’t all have it, and there is nothing wrong with those who don’t, including the men! She writes about everyone having both an accelerator and brakes related to sex and that some people have a strong brake and others have a strong accelerator. Above all she stresses that the best thing is for each person to experience pleasure and their own definition of pleasure! That can be complicated for a couple, especially when they expect the other person to be a certain way…. the most loving thing is to find out what a person is really like, not pressure them to fit a cultural idea.

And lastly I am reading a romance, by Nora Roberts. It is very interesting to read it concurrently with the other three. Especially when the couple is “overcome” by “desire”. Certainly the romances I have read nearly all have the same idea about the heroine: when she meets her soulmate, her body knows it and she will be overcome with desire. What’s more, her body is always right even though the two of them argue and resist their true love! This is the myth in romances and it doesn’t match Dr. Nagoski’s book at all! She writes about nonconcordance: that is, that the brain and the body are not always in agreement. Men have a genital response which agrees with their brain response of “sexually appealing” about 50% of the time. Women’s genital response agrees with their brain response of “sexually appealing” only 10% of the time. And if you want to have a happy spouse or partner, it is the brain that you want to appeal to, not the body. If you think about it, there’s not much more of a bigger turn off then someone saying “Your body isn’t responding the way I expect it to and therefore you feel x.” That’s silly, isn’t it? If we want to know what someone is feeling, aren’t we all more complicated then pure body language? Dr. Nagoski also distinguishes between “sexually relevant” and “sexually appealing”, which are not at all the same. An ad for a car with a nearly nude female model draped on the hood may be sexually relevant and not at all appealing to me… I think, yeah, using lust to sell cars and objectifying women again. Unappealing, in fact. I think we have to get past the terrible damaging myth that if a woman is interested in sex with someone, that indicates true love — or that a woman will only be interested in sex if it is true eternal love!

John Ciardi: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-ciardi

More on Dante: http://www.worldofdante.org/inferno1.html

Mathew Pearl’s website: http://www.matthewpearl.com/

Nora Roberts: http://www.noraroberts.com/

Dr. Nagoski’s blog: http://www.thedirtynormal.com/

 

by

K is for keen

K is for keen.

Welcome to 7 sins and friends, about feelings and whoa, am I behind! I am supposed to be up to N! Time to catch up and I am keen to do it! Hopefully my words will remain keen and entrancing.

1. finely sharpened, as an edge; so shaped as to cut or pierce substances readily: a keen razor.
2. sharp, piercing, or biting: a keen wind; keen satire.
3. characterized by strength and distinctness of perception; extremely sensitive or responsive: keen eyes; keen ears.

Now the folks in the picture are very keen as well: they are trying to win theΒ  Kinetic Sculpture Race. The winner gains the title of most mediocre. The kinetic sculptures are human powered and have to travel on land, by sea and through mud. The water here today is 50 degreesΒ  and is not much warmer at the end of the summer. They have to be keen to paddle through that water! Every sculpture has to carry a teddy bear and bribes for the judges and officials… it is kinetic madness….

4. having or showing great mental penetration or acumen: keen reasoning; a keen mind.
5. animated by or showing strong feeling or desire: keen competition.
6. intense, as feeling or desire: keen ambition; keen jealousy.

K

7. eager; interested; enthusiastic (often followed by about, on, etc., or an infinitive): She is really keen on going swimming.
8. Slang. great; wonderful; marvelous.

I am still keen for this contest, even with catch up due! What are you keen for? And of course it’s a keen contest with lots of keen contestants….