Diagnoses & Cures

For as long as I have known her, my wife's eyes have itched. In college I remember her enjoying a good eye rub the way a dog enjoys a belly rub for as long as you'll give it. There were times when her groans of pleasure as she rubbed her eyes were almost obscene. Her eyes, almost always behind glasses or capped in contact lenses, have never been kind to her though I've always found them lovely, penetrating, and warm.

Lately though her eyes just hurt. Something has been really wrong. After rubbing she clenches them closed, grits her teeth, and shakes her fists, pain radiating from the sockets. Often, reaching to rub them, she catches herself and its as if she's tying herself to the mast. Must not rub, she tells herself. The pain and burning go on and on.

We had a snow day this week. She and I are paid to teach and did the usual dance of having a surprise day off. I sat down to write (trying to write my way out of teaching) and she grabbed her phone, called the eye doctor, and asked for an emergency appointment. They had one that morning and she took it, got ready and went out into the horrible cold.

She has long figured she's allergic but a downside to living in Syracuse is that we don't have the best doctors. So far no one had determine that she is allergic to anything. But just look at the skin all around my eyes! she says. The doctors shrug and leave her worrying that she's making it all up, that she's weak, or that this is just bad luck. She knows it's not make believe but hasn't found any help.

At the appointment, the eye doctor figured it out: contact lenses. She is allergic to the contacts she has worn nearly every day. They've aggravated her condition like tearing at a scab every day. The doctor prescribed drops, daily (disposable) lenses, and a return in a few weeks. We picked up the prescription at Wegmans and she started on the drops right away.

Oh my God, she said. My eyes don't itch. They don't hurt.

There weren't the moans of her eye rubbing days, but the relief and wonder were a magic to behold. One trip to the right doctor, a few drops, and already relief. So simple yet so elusive.

---

I have taught in the same school system since 2001 and felt it to be the wrong place at least since 2006. Sunday through Thursday nights I get maybe five hours sleep and wake often, sometimes restlessly shifting from two until four in the morning when I finally get up to write. I wear a nightguard at night because I have ground my teeth down measurably. Since September I have gained up to fourteen pounds. I've seen my therapist every two weeks for more than a decade because I feel anxious and removed from real contentment and balance. I sink regularly into depression, sometimes for weeks.

I feel these things except when school is on break. Summer, I'm a healthy man. Christmas, February, and April breaks I'm a happy man. On the weekend I'm almost happy and healthy but the school week looms large and I cannot come all the way down from anxiety. This seemed like regular life.

My new dentist mentioned my grinding. I asked, "any ideas what I can do about it?" He said, "reduce stress?" I rolled my eyes and, now that I think of it, clenched my jaw. I'm clenching now. A previous dentist suggested a glass of whiskey before bed. There doesn't seem to be enough bourbon in all of Kentucky.

No amount of rubbing makes it any better.

Two weeks ago, writing an assignment from a book, I decided to quit my job. It won't take effect for a few months, but I won't go back next school year. I felt better. Suddenly. Measurably. That feeling surprised me enough I stopped writing and sank warmly into that feeling. The clouds parted. Blue sky. Sunshine. Warmth.

I told my wife and kids. I told my brother and mother. I told friends. I told colleagues at school. This is it, I said. I revised my resignation letter. Each mention of my plan was frightening but leavening. I felt myself rising, buoyed up toward the surface. I ordered business cards to hand out at my next writing conference and will no longer introduce myself as a public school teacher affiliated with that job. Every step felt like a release, a benediction, a healing.

Oh my God, I think. I'm not filled with dread. I don't hurt.

Friday night I read Dani Shapiro's Devotion until I was tired enough to turn out the light. My wife dropped medicine into her eyes. "How does it feel?" I asked. She said, "it burns a little, but the relief—" she shook her head and smiled. I closed my eyes. My thoughts drifted away. I was quiet. The night was still. I slept through the night and rose Saturday morning ready to write, feeling no pain.

Head In The Sand

Alan Jacobs writes in his January 23, 2019 newsletter:

"On Tuesday morning, January 22, I read a David Brooks column about a confrontation that happened on the National Mall during the March for Life. Until I read that column I had heard nothing about this incident because I do not have a Facebook account, have deleted my Twitter account, don’t watch TV news, and read the news about once a week. If all goes well, I won’t hear anything more about the story. I recommend this set of practices to you all."

My first thought is to agree with this but that's followed hard upon by the notion that Jacobs and I have our heads in the sand. It can be some of both I think. There may be benefits to having my head in the sand when it comes to the news which often has the appearance of and is as insubstantial as gossip.

Like Jacobs I also wrote about that confrontation on the National Mall and have since avoided all news of it. My brother brought up a couple points about it but that has been the sum total of my reading, listening, or viewing of the event since the morning after it happened. I liked what my brother said about it being the perfect news story for our times because absolutely no one, not even the participants, can say for sure what happened and there is nothing we can believe about it other than the assumptions we brought to it. My experience with difficult students colored how I saw and reacted to the situation. The story wasn't about anything that happened far away. It was all about what I feel is happening near and to me.

Look at me with my head in the sand. Alan Jacobs is there with me somewhere. Neither of us deny the crises of the moment, the evils perpetrated by too many in power, the problems plaguing our world, but rather than focus on the minutia of whatever just happened I want to consider a longer view if for no other reason than I have felt how easy it is to be manipulated by this Republican administration that distracts from their intentions with antics and ridiculous rhetoric.

Jacobs quotes Brian Eno:

We don’t yet, however, live in The Long Now. Our empathy doesn’t extend far forward in time. We need now to start thinking of our great-grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren, as other fellow-humans who are going to live in a real world which we are incessantly, though only semi-consciously, building. But can we accept that our actions and decisions have distant consequences, and yet still dare do anything?

and responds:

My question for Eno: Is it possible to think constructively and empathetically about our great-grandchildren, and their great-children, without also thinking constructively and empathetically about our great-grandparents, and their great-grandparents? I suspect it is not possible — that without understanding our past we will be unable to wisely direct the future — and that’s one reason why I’m writing the book I’m writing.

I like the idea of considering this moment in terms of the far future and distant past. I like imagining my great-grandchildren and great-grandparents neither of whom exist in the world in this moment. I never met my great-grandparents and don't even have grandchildren yet. Holding these people in mind is a challenging act of thinking, imagining, and empathizing. It requires I thoughtfully consider my place in a very large world one that not only extends around the circumference of the Earth but reaches far back and forward in time. It affects how I feel about even mundane things like shopping.

Friends wonder why I link to Indiebound.org books when I would likely make more sales through Amazon. I avoid Amazon because when I consider the times of my great-grandparents and the lives of my great-grandchildren I'm disturbed by the ideas Amazon represents. I don't want to get on a soapbox (not today anyway) about Amazon but thinking long-term has me shopping elsewhere (or not shopping at all). I've long been a person unwilling to delay gratification and so everything Amazon does satisfies those desires. Resistance isn't easy but neither is it futile.

I've recently made a big decision about my future. I considered how I was feeling in the present, what my past has indicated, and what I want from my future. The decision has been made difficult for years because of everyday distractions some of which are important (paying bills, providing the family with healthcare, saving for retirement). Being in the moment when I'm holding the bill or looking at our checking account balance, I haven't been able to think past those immediate emergencies and have pushed the decision to a time when I'm not distracted, a quieter time. That quiet time has yet to come but I've been brought to thinking back on the example of my father and forward to the examples I want to set for my children. I have been confronted by my long-term desire. It's not enough to be concerned with whatever happened ten minutes ago on Instagram, in The New York Times, or along the National Mall. There are larger issues to address and on which to focus especially in the locus of our individual lives.

There is no shortage of crises. Even with my head in this sand I can still see and feel that. The crisis on which I'm most focused at the moment has little to do with the morning news or anything on Twitter. It stretches from a much more distant place and out into the great unknown. Instead of the news I'm listening to jazz on vinyl from 63 years ago. It sounds good and clear. No sand in my ears. Maybe I don't have my head in the sand so much as I'm lying somewhere on a beach looking up into the infinite sky and listening to the waves which have pounded that sand seemingly since time began.

Clear Behind, Work Ahead

I got a message that an old email account of mine had been used to send spam. Well, that's disconcerting. It's an account through an organization I'm still part of but I no longer use that address. I logged in, changed the password, then looked through what had been sent. Russian spam, God love those little bastards. Scrolling past those I saw messages from the past showing all the ways in which I used to be logged into the web. It got me working.

Years ago I had accounts on so many things I can no longer remember a tenth of them. Many of the sites are defunct or have been largely forgotten. One, of which I was an early subscriber, had a couple million members then but gets fewer than a thousand hits today. I still have the account. Finding all this was like that moment when the closet is so full it won't shut. I started clearing, removing the breached email account from my online presence, learning what trails I have left behind.

The process is tedious but I don't mind tedious sometimes. It reminds me of a summer I rooted out the grape vine in our backyard, cutting, digging, clipping, pulling, ripping, and carrying brush to the curb. That summer I needed a project. I sweat and swore at it for hours at a time over a week or two and when it was done I smiled. Two years later the whole thing was back as if I had done nothing because there's no getting rid of grape vine without lethal doses of roundup or napalm. I'll never clean up my online presence either. The roots go too deep and have spread. Still, it's a useful exercise.

For some reason the work got me down. The hacked account, when I first created it, was going to be my way forward, my way out of a job I'm still in. It was to connect me with bigger, better things. It did that, but I got involved with idiocy and foolishness which became a total mess and near disaster. These kept me from doing my best work, from believing in myself, and from making good choices. Cleaning out the old online roots could have felt empowering as if I was starting anew but I felt depressed over mistakes I made, opportunities I missed, and the feeling that I won't ever get where I want to go. A couple hours into pruning and pulling internet roots, I took my depression to bed and sleep. I dreamed of being lost in a house the size of a shopping mall filled with people I don't want to know. I kept trying to get away but was called back again, again, and again while the lights in the mall/house grew dimmer and darker.

It snowed hard that night and I woke to eight inches of heavy snow in the driveway and on the sidewalks. I made coffee, took that and my pen to the nook to write Morning Pages, and found myself having an idea for the future. I wrote it on a post-it noteand finished Morning Pages. The idea still percolating, I pulled on boots, coat, gloves, and wool hat, walked out to the garage, pushed the button for the door, and grabbed the shovel. Before the door had opened all the way I dug into the snow and counted "one." It was nine degrees with a stiff wind and snow still falling. "Two," I counted as I threw the next shovel of snow up and over the wall.

I imagined a clear driveway but it takes a lot of shoveling and the snow was still coming. One hundred strokes in I had a section cleared to the blacktop. "But there's so much to go," I thought and began figuring how many shovels of snow it would all take. I stopped halfway through the figuring and looked back at the area I had cleared. It was already well dusted with snow. "I will never be done," I said in a Charlie Brown voice. A thought came to me and when I said again, "I will never be done," the tone was different. I've cleared snow out of that driveway for eighteen years. I pushed the shovel in and threw snow up over the wall. "One hundred one," I said into the wind and snow. "One hundred two," I said throwing another.

It took 941 shovels-full to clear the driveway and all the sidewalks. I took a break to pet the big black dog who is the neighborhood mayor and speak to his owner. I took another to say good morning to my wife and our smaller black dog as they went for a walk/run. I took several short breaks to recall my father clearing snow when I was a child and checking on me clearing snow from the parking lot of his funeral home when I was in school. I imagined him in the driveway, me telling him to just talk and not worry about helping me shovel. I kept counting each full shovel of snow as I shifted it up onto the banks.

When I finished the sidewalks I put the shovel on the wall of the garage and took down the scraper. An inch of new snow lay where I had begun shoveling an hour before. I scraped back down to blacktop then stood in the open garage to consider what I had done.

The snow was coming down and would cover the driveway and sidewalks. In two hours I would shovel again but the snow would be lighter than the overnight accumulation. "I will never be done," I said again looking up into the infinite grey.

This spring the grapevine will come back. I may rip it out again. I could use that kind of project, something long-term, difficult, and with no hope of being completely finished.

I may try to clean up my online profile some more, deleting old accounts, unsubscribing from more and more clutter. There will remain fragments of me out there and every so often some cretin will hack in and spam people. That's just one way in which the world works.

Looking over my shoulder I see the stuff of my past: mistakes, projects that didn't work out as I hoped, the continuing misery of my job. But I also see that I clear down to the blacktop in places, make piles of brush at the curb, and delet some of the detritus of my online past. I nod twice at that view over my shoulder, turn around, dig the shovel in and resume counting as I push on through whatever comes down, clearing a wide path to wherever it is I'm going.

"I Used To Hurry A Lot, I Used To Worry A Lot"

(I still worry but don't hurry so much)

Back when I had a forty-minute commute on I-81 South I used to drive really fast, pushing the car up past seventy and toward eighty, often going fast through terrible Upstate New York weather. I white-knuckled the wheel even in good conditions worrying that sirens and lights would appear in my mirror. The commute filled me with anxiety but each day I tried to shave a few seconds off the drive. It seemed necessary to get there fast and faster.

One day I did math in my head as I often do when I'm driving. How much time, I wondered, was I saving by going seventy-five instead of sixty-five? I thought about it from Lafayette to Tully, but the numbers were all wrong. I figured it again through the wind shear roaring across the flat straight-away in Preble, getting the same results but not believing them. I couldn't possibly be saving only six minutes. No way. That couldn't be right. At school I worked it out on paper, incorporating the fact that I'm not on the highway the whole time and found I was saving at most only four minutes. That was the sum total return on my anxiety and risk-taking.

I slowed down the next day.

Later I figured out that my car gets its best mileage around sixty miles an hour. I found the right lane and let traffic pass me by. The first day going slowly I had a thought which got me laughing: Why the hell am I hurrying to get to a job I don't like? I mean really. I asked the question out loud alone in the car and laughed for a mile. It was easy to go slowly after that.

Since my first teaching job I've come to school way early so I can enjoy peace and the quiet. I love being in school alone. Sometimes the hall lights aren't even on. I've kept to that tradition even though just walking into my school pulls my mood down no matter how buoyant I hope to be. It's not like I need to be there early or that I'm doing school work. Most times I'm writing or reading. There's no need to go in early and every reason to stay. This morning, despite anxiously feeling I was late, I sat on our couch, opened my book, and read for twenty minutes instead of going in early.

Like my slow drive, a question came that made me happy. This time I smiled instead of laughing because by I'm no longer shocked at the revelation: Why would I leave my book early for a job I don't like? I mean really.

I can't quit the job yet, but I can confine it to the smallest space necessary and lock it up. Driving fast and leaving home early allow the job to take up too many hours on the clock of my life. There are better ways to spend my precious time and invest in a better life.

Friday morning because I left "late" I was still on the couch reading Jeff Tweedy's memoir when one of my daughters came down to get ready for school. A sleepy teenager, she didn't have much to say, but I kissed her head and there's no way to measure the impact that had on my day. At the job I still felt the warmth of loving her carrying me through to quitting time.

Of late I'm asking how do I want to live this life and at what pace? Sometimes it amounts to almost nothing. Friday, I folded the blanket after reading on the couch. I enjoyed taking a moment to fold and slow down. I felt no need to hurry. Talk about being on time.

I don't want to be late to my own life just to arrive early at my job. There's time to slow, to read, and fold a blanket. There is time to kiss my daughter's head, to say good morning, to feel love in my life, and to go write about it.