A Life of Illusion: Chapter 3: The House of the Rising Sun

 ...Continued from A Life of Illusion: Chapter 1: An American Tune

 

Pre-pandemic, on a typical morning, Dot would awaken and head straight downstairs to break her fast as soon as possible. At that point in the day, cortisol is the highest, and cortisol happens to be the root cause of most illness. In fact, Dot owns several books about how cardiovascular disease is not related to cholesterol in the way the pharmaceutical companies would have us believe, but rather is predictable by stress hormone levels.


Dot found this out the hard way when she was in the midst of one of her biggest battles with Zuul. She and Bert had just moved from their new house in a small town in Southern Colorado to a small apartment in a larger town in Northern Colorado. The apartment had a fresh coat of paint and new carpet, and was about 700 square feet in size, about the same size as Dot’s childhood home until her parents put on an addition. There were two bedrooms - one which simply contained a king-sized mattress on a box spring, and a small dresser. There was about one foot of walking space on the right side of the bed, and three at the foot by the door. They all slept together in the bed, Bert, Dot, Lily, who was two at the time and still nursing, and her brother Henry, who was just five. Henry got the nickname “H-Man” because he had the special ability to attack the kidneys of two adult human beings simultaneously in his sleep. Lily had the super special ability to detect, in her sleep, the disappearance of Dot’s nipple, which means that Dot had to get comfortable sleeping with a nipple out at all times, just so everyone could sleep.


The second bedroom was used for storage of the boxes containing most of their household belongings for when they finally found a new home.


The small bathroom was carpeted, as was the small galley kitchen. The kitchen is where Dot spent most of her time, cooking, shopping for houses and learning about nutrition on the internet. The kitchen looked into the tiny living area, where they had a card table for dining, two adult-sized recliners, two child-sized chairs, and their large entertainment unit with a 28” cathode ray tube television on which the children watched hours and hours of PBS while Dot stood in the kitchen. Just off the kitchen was the utility and laundry room, with a stacked washer and dryer unit. When they weren't hanging out in the living area in the small apartment, they were making trips to the park, grocery shopping, and house hunting. It was a pretty simple existence.


During this time, the kids left a lot of food on their plates. Dot actively avoided shaming them for not eating, because she learned that was predictive of children developing eating disorders and Dot sometimes wondered if her reading was disordered from her mother ranting about how she needed to clean her plate because of the "starving kids in China." Her mother had grown up poor and so waste was a big concern. They were already on such a limited diet because of the food intolerances. Both the kids had reflux as babies, but it wasn’t until Lily came along and nursed that the need to restrict Dot’s diet became apparent. Dot had read quite a bit about the factors that underlie eating disorders, and was cautious to not call foods “healthy” or “unhealthy” at that time, or tell the kids to finish their food and interrupt their connections to their own satiety mechanisms. What this meant is that because they left so much food behind, Dot stopped making herself plates of food and just ate whatever the kids hadn’t. While doing this, and nursing 2 year old Lily, she lost a tremendous amount of weight in a short period of time.


What also happened is that Dot started having deep depression and memory lapses. She found a new holistic M.D. to see, who suggested that she see a shaman. She was curious to see the shaman, but it was a 45-minute drive (one way) and she had to find someone to watch her kids in a new town. So, the therapist had actually been Dot’s compromise. She found someone with a Ph.D. because she wanted to have a therapist who would understand her need to research things. Plus, the therapist she found was only 10 minutes away from their apartment, and so Bert could come home and watch the kids on his lunch break.


The therapist practiced Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. It was the first time Dot had seen a therapist since she was a teenager, and even though she was a psychology major, she didn’t understand that therapists are all different, or that there are different styles of therapy. She just wasn’t that kind of psychology major. Her studies had been on physiological and sociological psychology, not clinical psychology. So, it happened that the therapist would explain that EMDR involved making a list of one’s past traumatic experiences, and then she would help Dot go through an eye movement exercise which would desensitize her to the traumas, one at a time. But when Dot started making her list of past traumas, she realized there were a lot! And two of them were near death experiences from brain trauma.


Apparently it is common for people with mirror touch synesthesia to have had near death experiences. Mirror touch synesthesia is a state of increased empathy, causing the person with the mirror touch to “feel” what another person is “feeling.” It can be extremely overwhelming. Dot knows now this is a facet of her clairsentience. There is hyperconnectivity in the white matter of the cortex, meaning it can be really difficult to get one’s brain to turn off. It means it’s always wanting to work on something - to chew on some sort of problem. So, mirror touch synesthetes worry about and notice anything and everything, and in that way, they become expert fortune-tellers, because they can easily see others’ patterns that others can’t see themselves. It’s a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse!


Dot understands all this now, as a mirror touch synesthete, but the reason Dot was open to seeing a shaman is because she is and always has been highly spiritual because of her near death experiences. They opened her to her clairvoyance. It means she has a different view of death; to her it looks like a comfort. Because she has been so close to death, she is less concerned with personal achievement. When she does things for herself, she does them so she can be a better person, so she can be a help to others. She understands that it’s not how much money you have, but who you are to others that matters. She thinks love has the power to heal, too. But it’s exceptionally rare. It’s rare because it has to be unconditional. Most people don’t know how to communicate unconditional love.


*****


The holistic M.D. ran some tests, including a CT scan of her head and found her progesterone to be low, but also her cholesterol was only around 160 mg/dl. What she learned from the research she did at that time is that low cholesterol (under 170 mg/dl) increases death from all causes significantly more than what is considered “elevated cholesterol.” She also learned that what is often considered elevated (say between 200 - 275 mg/dl) are actually the levels associated with the greatest longevity, especially in women. Cholesterol is an important component of brain tissue, and it turns out that risk of death by suicide and accident is highest at levels under 170 mg/dl.


Every day, Dot was learning more about nutrition on the internet. She learned about the importance of the different vitamins, especially for neurological health. She referred to the Linus Pauling Institute’s website a lot, and she sees that they have been updating their information in the years since. So Dot started taking a coenzymated B-vitamin complex, niacinamide, methylcobalamin, magnesium, zinc and fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K2, and she started feeling better.


Consequently, the EMDR kind of went on the shelf.


Plus, their old house sold, so they ended up being able to move into a “new to them” house. She looked at a lot of houses during the process, and it was a buyer’s market at the time, so there were a lot to look at. They ended up choosing a neighborhood which rarely had houses come up on the market. The house payment was a smidge more than they wanted to pay, but well within their budget. They had managed to keep their mortgage payment about the same since they purchased their first house in California, and it would be a little more. When they first got married, Dot’s father had counseled her not to spend more than 30% of her monthly income on a house payment. They had kept to this rule with their first house and calculated the 30% based on Bert’s salary alone. Bert got a raise when they moved to Colorado, but they made sure to keep their house payment the same until this house. But this new house has plenty of room for each of them to have privacy as the kids got bigger, and a yard that affords them just enough privacy from their neighbors, with well established trees. They have beautiful views of both sunrises and sunsets, and there is no HOA, but everyone still takes care of their property.


Bert and Dot did have a problem with weeds in their driveway. Dot is on the Pesticide Sensitive Registry for the State, and gets calls when her neighbors are having their properties sprayed. Over the years she ttried cooking vinegar and salt to get rid of them, and just pulling them, but the truth is she just hated having to think about it. They tend to be at their wildest when her health is at its worst in August. Much of what grows is purslane, which is edible, but not considered pretty by most gardening types. She had heard that concentrated vinegar would work and looked one summer to find it locally to no avail. But because of the pandemic she ended up finding it online, and it solved a long battle! She still doesn't think that stuff is important, and is a pretty big waste of time to people who do not find joy in it. Battles with nature are usually of the losing variety.


After a little while in the new house, Dot began having episodes every time she did the laundry or ran the dishwasher. It took a while to see the pattern, but then she realized that when they moved out of the newly-painted and carpeted apartment, they discovered that the dryer had been venting right into the utility room and kitchen, and not the outside of the apartment.


A switch of dish and laundry detergent to something more natural, plus supplementation with progesterone eliminated her episodes rather rapidly. There were a few times that they got hand me downs from a friend that she would feel the strange migraine come on, and the mood drop. Dot discovered that it took ten washings in various combinations of borax, baking soda, and vinegar to get the feeling to go away when she smelled those hand me downs. She could also get the feeling walking through the neighborhood on a laundry day or walking through the detergent aisle at the store.


She began to make her own all-purpose spray and glass cleaner. She had never used air fresheners, because she had never been able to tolerate places in the mall that sold smelly things like bubble bath and candles. For years she avoided even essential oils as research had shown they could cause feminizing effects in males. Plus there was the whole misogyny of how multi-level marketing companies (including essential oil manufacturers) preyed on housewives. She is not sure if she needs to be worried about essential oils now, and she uses them sometimes.


She saw alternative health practitioners and discovered many non-western treatments that were effective for her symptoms. And when she says that, she means she saw energy healers. The difference between eastern and western medicine, at the root, is seeing things from an energy standpoint, vs. seeing things from a pathology standpoint. They have different answers regarding what can be changed and what must be accepted. Eastern medicine is more focused on prevention, targeting disturbances in energy before they manifest as pathologies, ideally. There is a lot of power in complementary medicine which combines the two, and is where Dot sees the future of medicine. Effective healers know that there is not one right answer for all people. A person is a unique product of many environmental factors. It is going to take any healer a long time to see the whole picture. This is why we must learn to heal ourselves, and we must do it by really knowing ourselves.


It’s not an easy task!


*****


Things went on like this for a while, with Dot visiting alternative healthcare practitioners. She had a chiropractor who also did acupuncture. She also tried a type of energy medicine, coupled with digestive enzymes, to relieve food intolerance, and she also tried classical homeopathy. Everything she tried helped on some level. Those, coupled with the nutritional strategies she was trying increased her energy a lot! Around the time of ovulation, she became a lot more interested in sex than usual, and so she became nervous that she might get pregnant.


So, she decided to get a copper intrauterine device (IUD). It seemed like the safest thing, because she had experienced a lot of health problems after taking various incarnations of the pill. Plus, she even knew a woman who had a stroke in her 30’s from taking it. Later on she would read about the history of the pill and its earlier versions’ direct associations with uterine and ovarian cancer, and later versions’ associations with stroke, and decide that it was the biggest lie that had been sold to women. In fact, there is a book about it entitled The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women, by Barbara Seaman. Women essentially end up trading their health for their freedom! But little did Dot know that the copper IUD worked in the same way - it just caused endogenous estrogen release by generating abrasion on the uterine tissue, rather than releasing exogenous estrogen. Furthermore, it was not a good solution for uterus-owning people with nickel allergies, which Dot is, because the device is made of copper-coated nickel. And within a year of having it put in place, she was realizing it was time to take it out. Besides a lot of her symptoms coming back, she lost her libido, anyway. Being bloated, achy and grouchy will do that to a person.


Consequently, she had the device removed, and over some time she began to feel better again without changing much else.


But then she got greedy. She felt like a million bucks, and she wanted to look like what she thought a million bucks looked like, too. So, she threw caution to the wind and went on a very restrictive diet.


*****


It seems appropriate now, since Dot has just returned from upstairs where she whipped up a bowl of mashed potatoes quickly for a “linner” or “lupper” or whatever you want to call it - “foursies?” - to talk about the wrongly maligned potato. Eaten for centuries by the Irish, and such a staple of their diet that a blight on the crop caused famine, the potato contains 7.5 g protein per serving - a sixth of the daily allowance. Moreover, it contains about half the recommended value of vitamins C and B6, as well as potassium. It contains a fifth of the daily allotment of niacin, folate, magnesium and phosphorus. The people of Scotland and Ireland lived almost exclusively on potatoes, oats, and seafood for centuries.


Because she was finally feeling well a while after having her IUD removed, Dot decided to go on a very low carb diet and live without potatoes for a year. Yes, one could probably argue that the other carbohydrates she gave up were not as good for her. But that was before she understood the importance of carbohydrates in metabolism.


Dot should have known this. She should not have gotten swept up in the rantings of New York Times-published writers who fancied themselves authorities on metabolism, but she did. So she went balls to the wall, because she can be kind of like that. A little more than a year went by, avoiding even fruit, and her hair was falling out and she became depressed again. Her doctor was at a loss, because she appeared to be physically fit and her laboratory results did not indicate that anything particularly concerning was going on. But when the nurse drew her labs, her blood was thick and brown, which was something she read could happen with high estrogen. She also found some information online that said a low carb diet could slow down metabolism. Sure enough, when she went back through basic metabolism - specifically, the mitochondrial processes involved in energy production - what she had studied in graduate school - it all added up. A low carb diet was bad for metabolism. Specifically, it triggers the type of metabolism - oxidation of fats, rather than carbohydrates - that is the root of both diabetes and cancer. Well, actually, in cancer, cells will use whatever is available for fuel. Fat does just not burn as cleanly as carbohydrate, and creates toxic metabolic byproducts like aldehydes, alkanes, ketones, formaldehyde, and oxalates which further slow mitochondrial activity. So one will have to eat more with a high carbohydrate diet as mitochondrial function improves.


Type of fat also has great influence on metabolism. Tropical oils, which are low in volatile polyunsaturated fatty acids and higher Vin saturated fat were initially used in the US with the intention of fattening cattle to marble the meat, but were found to do exactly the opposite. Vegetable oils were found to be more effective, and are high in polyunsaturated fats, which because of their proneness to oxidation can interfere with election transport in mitochondria. This is also true of the much praised omega-3 fatty acids. Population studies of the Inuit who consume large amounts of "brain-healthy" salmon show they have one of the lowest life expectancies on Earth. The deposits left in the brains of dementia patients are largely composed of "age pigments" like lipofuscin which are complexes of oxidized polyunsaturated fats, cholesterol and minerals, much like those found in atherosclerotic heart lesions. Research has shown that omega-3's like those found in fish oil promote growth of individual adipose cells, and omega-6's in vegetable oil cause increased adipose cell population growth. It is thought that our adipose cell number is largely set, so this may be the primary reason for America's obesity epidemic. It turns out it was the kranch all along!


Fortunately for Dot, Bert, Henry and Lily, when Dot’s online warehouse order was being filled for their self-imposed quarantine, her orders for the processed carbohydrates they had become dependent on when they were busy couldn’t be filled because the store was all sold out. Dot had communicated to the person doing her shopping that she and her family had a medical condition that required more carbohydrates, and the wonderful person who had a significant physical limitation of her own suggested two bags of potatoes as a replacement. She and Bert both independently thought to plant them, but haven't gotten to it yet. Dot had done this once before as an experiment with some health food store purple potatoes, and they had lovely crops of purple potatoes for a few years after.


Luckily, they also purchased 25 pounds of rice fairly recently. Lots of people around the world have to live on rice every day, without much else. Making up caloric needs with rice helps the other food go further. Dried or canned fruit and tomatoes are good sources of vitamin C. Dried mushrooms are a good source of ergocalciferol, the plant version of Vitamin D, and are antiestrogenic. Not everyone can convert this form of Vitamin D efficiently, though. Canned tuna is a good source of protein, and oysters are the best source of zinc, which is an important cofactor for many processes in the nervous system. Liver and egg yolks are important sources of B vitamins, but one could get some B vitamins from yeast and yeast extract. Yeasted breads and beer would count for this, too, but might not work for everyone. Gelatin is a good source of anti-inflammatory protein, low in the anti-thyroid sulfur-containing amino acids methionine and cysteine which are high in muscle meats. These amino acids interfere with the conversion of the inactive T4 version of thyroid hormone into T3, or tri-iodothyronine. Longevity studies in mice continually point to stress, malnutrition, and dietary methionine as factors which significantly decrease lifespan.


Dot has a theory that a certain ubiquitous herbicide that is basically an augmented glycine molecule may interrupt glycine metabolism and cause a lot of the eosinophilic disorders that seem to be so common now. There has been at least one study to that effect. Dot is mentioning this now because some people find themselves sensitive to gelatin and collagen, and glycine is the major amino acid component in gelatin, and it is also the parent molecule for heme. It is important in single carbon metabolism, meaning folate metabolism. This may be an important part of some folks', excuse Dot, MTHFR-ing problems (snort!), which may be at least in part worsened by the ubiquitous use of this particular herbicide. And people don’t really talk about drift, but it’s a thing.


From her educated standpoint, organic is best, if one doesn’t have a source that is close to organic. And mulching that garden with grass that has been treated with weed-and-feed doesn’t count as organic.


*****


Dot made the difficult decision to get some plants from a friend for her indoor garden just before the quarantine. She was really nervous about this because previous experiences with many people over the years, especially during the holidays when people were tired and starving for connection, taught her that she couldn’t always trust people to be honest about how they were feeling. Maybe they just didn’t know. But she and her friend arranged a front porch trade, and this friend had showed equal concern, so Dot was able to drop off a bottle of wine for her friend and pick up the plants without coming into contact with her friend. Dot sprayed the plastic cups the seedlings were in with alcohol in the garage when she got home, and waited for a minute before wiping them. She made sure not to touch her face, and she carefully washed her hands when she returned home. This was the process she was using at that time. Now she wipes items down with soapy water or leaves them in the sun. So that leaves just the problem of having to disinfect non-porous items in the winter on cloudy days. Smaller items, depending on material, could be done in an electric pressure cooker.


Dot had started wearing masks in public in mid-February. As a biologist, she watched what happened in China and knew there was no way that testing was going to be able to keep up. She knew that a single positive test result actually represented dozens or even hundreds of actual cases. She knew that supplies for testing were probably in very high demand, too. She was having tremendous difficulty communicating this to Lily, who was rightfully feeling robbed of her independence. They now at least understand each other's perspectives, but that had been a bumpy road. The virus had really highlighted a lot of ageist tendencies in their family, but they were actively trying to identify and work through them.


She was on occasion going around and disinfecting the light switches and doorknobs in their home with soapy water. They had only been quarantined, technically, since March 20th, because that was when Dot and Henry had to go back to the University to empty his dorm room. How strange to be a college student right now. There were strict procedures in place for getting moved out. No more than 49 people could be in a building at a given time, and each student could only bring one helper. The whole place was like a ghost town, save the few cars parked on the road with their lights flashing, and a few maintenance workers, and a graduate student from Asia. She wondered if the grad student had been persecuted. She wondered if he was separated from loved ones suffering from the virus.


When Dot and Henry went back to the University to get the rest of Henry's belongings, they wore gloves and masks. Henry’s roommate lived up in the mountain resort where the virus was most rampant, and was planning to come empty his part of the room in two days so they wanted to v be sure they got into the room first since they had no known exposure. They brought a dolly and got it all in two trips. They left most of it in the car for a few days in case of contamination, but disinfected the items that needed to be brought in right away.


Being ill in the time before the pandemic actually prepared Dot quite well. She had already had to order groceries online, for one thing. And, she had been forced to slow way down, so their consumption had, too.


The monster she really had to tame was her constant need to do things.


For this, she needed the Tarot, meditation, and lots of cannabis.


She still needed those things.


*****


At precisely 7:00 am, a week after Henry had moved home, Dot’s phone blared a reminder that there was a “stay at home” order.


There had been notifications over the last day; the first one had come just as she pulled into the driveway from picking up plants and seeds from her friend via the “milk box swap.” It was the first time she had left the house since helping Henry retrieve all of his belongings from the University six days earlier.


She had tried earlier in the day to get Bert interested in sex. She knew the dopamine and oxytocin would lift their spirits. Normally, he doesn’t have any problems, which she understands is rare for a man in his 40’s. Under the circumstances, it was understandable. She was an expert for herself, however, on how to get in the mood, because as a woman in this world, you either figure this out, or you don’t. Not figuring it out has some of the more saddening sequelae of life. The top reasons people get divorced are problems with sex and money, so Dot was really mindful of those things.


There had been some challenges in those departments over the years like most people have, all on her end, not his, but they were able to navigate them creatively, and with a little patience. When the kids were small and shared a bed with them, they actually stayed in bed once they settled down for the evening, rather than crying or having trouble staying down. The whole family would lay down together in the big bed in their pajamas and either Bert or Dot would read a story. Then they would turn out the light and fall asleep together. It was very much a ritual of love, helping the kids to fall asleep safe and sound all together. After some time, when the kids were in a deep sleep, Dot or Bert or both could slip out of bed and go to another part of the house, and the kids very rarely noticed.


They used this time for all sorts of things. Bert would play online games with his family and friends. Dot would do things like quilt, read books, or binge-watch TV shows. And of course, occasionally they had made love. Over the years, through chatting with her other mom friends, Dot figured out that she and Bert had a more active sex life than most people.


Their lives continued like this until Bert’s family moved back from Colorado. Initially the interruption started with phone calls before 9 am on Saturdays. This is when Dot and Bert would have otherwise woken up slowly and had a morning conjugal visit. Over time, they stopped connecting in this way except once in a blue moon.


Gradually, many of their weekends became dedicated to spending time with extended family. The extended family liked to spend their time trying different wines. Initially, Dot began to find that after visits to her inlaws’ home, she would wake up in the middle of the night with a panic attack. Otherwise, Dot was a great sleeper. She found that this greatly impacted her energy levels.


Dot may have developed a subconscious block around scheduling anything with friends or community on the weekends, because she never knew when they were going to get that 8 am Saturday morning call. This had the effect of eroding her connection with her community. Because her in-laws didn’t have a connection with the community, either, the pressure became greater and greater to spend time with them. This had a terrible effect on Dot and Bert’s sex life, and their trust of each other.


Bert worried about his mother a lot because she was so solitary. They didn’t know why she was so afraid to go out and make friends.


When Bert’s parents would leave town, Dot and Bert’s relationship was great. They started feeling more rested without the early morning phone calls and pressure to visit. The whole family got along better. Bert’s parents left town a lot, so it was easy to see the pattern. Bert’s parents liked to think of themselves as footloose and fancy free, but they still came back for holidays and birthdays. It seemed sometimes like they were only around for the good times, and that when Bert and Dot had struggles, they were nowhere to be found.


None of his family members ever asked her what was going on in her life.


Moreover, her sister-in-law said things over the years that made her feel she was resented. Any effort on Dot’s part to protect her own energy or health was seen as malicious. She didn’t know if she didn’t matter in Bert’s mother’s or sister’s eyes because she didn’t bring in a paycheck, or because she wasn’t related by blood. It felt a little bit like Game of Thrones. Dot feels guilt for having purchased a larger home and contributing to the confusing values.


Bert himself had given up on religion, and all faith. Dot never gave up on faith, but stopped praying.


Every Christmas became increasingly more stressful. Dot just couldn’t seem to catch a break. It didn’t matter that they were non-believers. The family was still expected to take part in the holidays, and their scheduling preferences were not considered. Dot remembers one Christmas when she was in the shower around 12:30 pm thinking she had a few hours to get ready for dinner, when Bert knocked on the door and told her his parents were expecting them at 1 pm. Seriously, this was how the holidays went. Most events were planned by Bert’s mother and sister, and seemed relatively inflexible, even though they said they were flexible. It was probably just a matter of the two of them being so close that nobody else could really be included in their relationship. Sometimes they talked in disappointing ways about other family members who struggle with substance abuse, but never recognized the part that family and conditional love play in the addiction cycle.



It was a real energy and libido killer.


*****


So, Dot and Bert have a chance to get their family back on track. They have a chance to find themselves and figure out what they want to do with their lives. Balancing college and family life had been really challenging for Henry. Neither of Bert’s parents had gone to college, so they did not understand how much time and energy studying took.


Bert never could have taken the path Henry did, because his parents always had an agenda for him regarding their remodeling projects, and those things took precedence over his studying. It was the American Way, or so they thought.


Bert’s parents used to love watching The Apprentice, and they loved spending time with Bert’s conservative aunt and uncle. Dot, Bert and Bert’s liberal siblings were all confused about why Bert’s now supposedly liberal mother would work so hard to maintain the relationship with her conservative brother, and she had explained that it was because he had brought her groceries during her divorce. Bert’s parents’ friends over the years had all been conservative, owing to his parents’ connections in the real estate business and old churches they attended. But they had moved around a lot, and changed a lot in all those years. They had even expressed that there was less and less they could talk about with their conservative family and friends since both of Bert’s siblings were married to immigrants, and one sibling was even gay.


This dynamic made Dot question everything about family structure and hierarchies. It helped her to see that worship of matriarchs and patriarchs keeps people locked into old value systems concentrated on intolerance, wealth, pride, and power.


It certainly made her wary of her kids feeling like they owed her anything in her old age. She didn’t want them to feel kept like Bert and Dot did.

 

...Continued in A Life of Illusion: Chapter 4: Five Raccoons in a Trench Coat

A Life of Illusion: Prologue: We All Live in a Yellow Submarine

Is the road to hell paved with good intentions?

Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t the major lesson of my lifetime. I have tried so hard to be a good person, but who actually decides these things?

A lot of acts of goodness have unintended consequences, and right now, because of the situation our world is in, a lot of people are pretty certain they know what good is, and they’re willing to go to the grave defending what they think is right, whether it is or not.

Writing is one such territory; I never know who is actually reading my blog. I only see numbers. I know not how my words and ideas are taken. All I can do is speak the truth the way I see it.

I get frustrated by the mindless chaos I see in the world, like many people do. I think some people like to have me around when I’m in this frustrated state, because I can be quite entertaining, but I can go away from those experiences feeling miserable for what I let escape my mouth. Yes, it is kind of a personal hell in that regard. It’s why I don’t post here much anymore. Who am I to proclaim myself an authority on anything besides myself?

But I can say that I have had some experiences around infectious disease and the behavior of others that have given me unique insight on that critical line of whether our “good” words and deeds are healing, or destructive. It’s never entirely one or the other; that is the way of the Universe.

I will be honest and say that I was an early mask wearer. This is because I am a cystic fibrosis carrier. For most of my life, being just a carrier didn’t mean anything. My doctor doesn’t even take it seriously, as far as I can tell. But I met a pulmonologist from National Jewish at a barbecue once who says he sees carriers all the time - they just get less sick, and later in life. People with CF catch things fairly easily, and it’s generally recommended that they not be in proximity of each other because it is so easy to catch disease. And just this past winter, science finally decided that maybe Mendel made some mistakes, too, and that the holy child of recessive inheritance was actually just a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Cystic fibrosis is the most commonly inherited deadly disease. I didn’t even know I was a carrier until I did consumer genetic testing in 2012, and while I have plenty of the symptoms, the medical establishment doesn’t consider consumer genetics tests to be valid.

So imagine you’re a little family of four. And you have family nearby, and they consider themselves quite tight. Half of them aren’t carriers, and they don’t care enough to figure out what that means. They are extremely social, and not particularly honest about how they are feeling, ever, because they were raised to feel shame about being anything less than perfectly healthy.

Then you have the other side of your family, at least half of them carriers. Two of them are doctors, and all of them are die-hard churchgoers and volunteers.

Now imagine that you have been silently poisoned in your home, and you don’t know for how long. Imagine that you discovered this via becoming extremely unwell whenever you visit the “perfectly healthy” family because their professions revolve around real estate and interior design, their self-worth is directly tied to interior fashion trends, and they were always painting the walls, getting new floor coverings and furniture, and remodeling kitchens. One of them was even LEED certified, and yet they did not know how dangerous their behavior was, even for their “superior genetics.” Imagine you didn’t know how to say this to them, even though they had unexplained seizures, and even cancer, and you had even found research explaining the whole thing. But somehow, even with all that research, you just couldn’t find the words to explain this in a way that they could understand, without bumping up against their cultural values. They also value health; they just didn’t know how they were undermining it, with what seemed to have become an addiction.

Out of that addiction sprang many others in the family, to cope with the emotional and physical pain.. Mine used to be community.

That is my CF-carrying family’s addiction; service to the community. They always have something going on, and so I rarely get to see them. I actually share those values, but because of my illness, I have to be isolated.

Any change I wish to see has to start inside me.

My gateway into self-transformation was through contemplative yoga. I have a friend who calls it “sleepy yoga.” These classes are typically attended by older people who are dealing with chronic pain issues. It is a process by which one is able to achieve healing from pain through actions of the mind. Much of the worst part of pain is the belief that it will be interminable. This tenses the body, which increases the pain. By focusing on each part of the body and “reintegrating” the energy network within our own body - waking up all our sensory neurons to the reality of this exact moment - we can release natural endorphins. This is achieved through moving into an entirely different state of awareness, leaving all that does not have direct bearing on the present moment of reality in another realm. But don’t be fooled - this is not playing ignorant. Our brains are amazing things! While we are taking care of our immediate needs for pain relief consciously, things are free to then bubble up from the subconscious, revealing to us truths we may have been suppressing.

Pain can have a tremendous effect on mood, and vice versa. In order to get out of that kind of loop, when my mind machine just wants to keep playing the same story over and over, sometimes I desperately need to try something new - anything - to get a broom handle into the clockworks and get it to stop. This is what meditation can do.

Remember I said my family was addicted to service to the community. I suppose you could call some forms of service to the community, “love addiction.” I have a strange astrological secret. I was born on “The Day of Popularity.” My birth buddies are Bob Marley, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ronald Reagan, and, my daughter’s favorite to bring up, Rick Astley. Yes, you just got Rick Rolled. It took actually reading that to see it. I always felt like an odd bird, because I am. But that feeling of being unloved or unappreciated was something that just wasn’t true. It was all a story my monkey mind made up. My monkey mind is a glass-half-empty kind of gal. Oh my God, if she would just shut up! She is always telling me ridiculous stuff, like so-and-so is going to make a mistake, or that there are things that I need to do to be “good,” or judging others for their attempts to be “good.”

When I was a social butterfly, this made for a kind of psychological hell. I became a little bit obsessed with health, because when I’m not, I can become sick easily. The state of the world is actually a big part of my wellness. I have a different view of wellness than most people, because of my professional background, and being a mother. A couple years ago, I thought I had healed myself, and so I got busier in the community again, and stopped paying attention to getting enough food and rest. This was all going on in the midst of some chemical exposures, which I did not figure out until I stopped going to the remodeling family’s house.

Right before Thanksgiving, I went back. I had not seen them in a long time, and I thought that they might be worried that I did not like them. I still rode in the same car with my family, so that nobody would think I was itching to get out of there for emotional reasons. I have wanted to leave for emotional reasons in the past. I think if one needs to get out of a place for emotional reasons, that is perfectly acceptable, and other mature human beings will let that occur without shaming the other person. I had driven separately before and that wasn’t a problem, but Erick was worried about how it would look. I had a gut feeling that I could not stay longer than 2 hours, and so made the agreement with him that if we rode together to their home, we would come home at that point. Here is the level of problem we had with people-pleasing. We went for lunch, which was served relatively promptly, but still took two hours. I often lose track of time when I am with others, especially if engaged in deep conversation. All of a sudden, I started getting a headache. I looked at my phone and saw that six hours had transpired, and asked Erick if we could please go. We gathered up our immediate family and left right away. When we got home, we both had headaches, and our thighs had terrible pins and needles. I ended up struggling with fatigue and shortness of breath for three weeks after that. He recovered more quickly. It was a physically painful holiday season for me. Luckily, I didn’t catch any respiratory or GI illnesses since I was largely isolated from others for… well… over a year. I have only spent quality time with one friend ONCE since before Thanksgiving last year. Once I finally got well enough after the next things that happened, the virus hit American shores.

What happened during that painful time after Thanksgiving was an incredible odyssey.

I am writing a novel about my journey. It was a painful one. I had to face a lot of devils lurking inside my own home that I encountered every day - volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and formaldehyde. They may be in many American homes, too, even if you think you are being careful, like I did. I am fairly well educated on these subjects, too. This information is just not well publicized in the United States. I don’t know why.

If you want to join me on the odyssey, you can read my upcoming novel, A Life of Illusion, which I will post in installments here on my blog. There will be ample coverage of how I deal with pain and being alone, in various contexts. It will cover caregiving, and self care. I am taking artistic license with the situations.

 

...Continued in A Life of Illusion: Chapter 1: An American Tune

The Roof is on Fire

I know it is not a particularly useful reaction, but I have spent the last week struggling with what to write about the racial violence that is going on. I cried several times, too, because I am actually in a better place to say something now in terms of my recovery of my verbal ability, but things are still happening faster than I can process them emotionally and get out anything useful. Luckily, the recovery of my writing has been faster than the recovery of my verbal speech.

I feel like this experience with loss of language is really crucial to share with someone, anyone out there who will listen, because I think what I have been enduring gets to the root of why humans struggle so much to live in peace with each other. The Universe gave us all different experiences which showed us different parts of humanity and being human, and mine, like most folks’, has been one of incredible joy and incredible pain, despite appearing unassumingly suburban.

When I say I am struggling with recovery of my verbal ability, I mean that quite literally. Over the course of my life I have suffered several life-threatening episodes of a psychological and physical illness which included hypertensive crisis, epigastric pain, kidney pain, joint pain, difficulty breathing, panic attacks, anxiety and depression. Only there was another component that I couldn’t talk about before, because whatever is happening is also affecting my ability to communicate. It is terrifying. Years ago, I had these stroke-like episodes where I couldn’t remember the things I needed to do and sometimes couldn’t recall my name. I have had difficulty understanding people through my left ear for years, but when I recently did two online hearing tests, there was no problem with my hearing. I think I have a problem with auditory processing on the left side. So, it ends up having the same effect as partial deafness for me, socially, except there is no cure. I often mishear people, and substitute words with different meanings or choose the wrong meaning for a word and get an entirely different message out of what someone is saying. It is incredibly isolating. I don’t know if I was always like this. I have had a few head injuries, and have had two near death experiences, which were brought about through brain death. Having brain death is like letting a plant go without water for too long. It actually causes death of brain cells. If it goes on for too long, the parts of the brain that control basic functions die. The first near death experience was as a young teenager when I hit a rock in the road while riding my bicycle. I had purchased the bicycle myself at a garage sale with my own money. It was a 3-speed and the gears were difficult to switch, and that’s what I was trying to do when I hit the rock. I wasn’t wearing a helmet because I didn’t have one. Helmets weren’t common for non-competitive cyclists at that time. When it happened, I was elsewhere in the neighborhood after school. My parents were both at work. I was with a friend who somehow got an ambulance to come. When I woke up in the hospital, my mother was there with my favorite teddy bear. She told me that I had been in a coma. I did get some visible damage to my brain from that event, and I have mirror touch synesthesia, and I have this strange mix tape in my head. Additionally, the auditory processing disorder makes me inclined to mirror people and try to formulate a map of myself from what is mirrored to me, which is an exhausting process. So I have decided I don't particularly care for groups, because they are too confusing.

Then, I had a near death experience during the birth of my second child. I am not sure exactly what happened, because it could have been so many things, but I have my suspicions. I think this is related to an undiagnosed sensitivity to many pharmaceuticals. Right after our umbilical cord had been cut, my blood pressure dropped to 60/30 and I lost consciousness. I had to be given epinephrine to restart my heart. The experience was so terrifying that I wanted to go home the next day after her birth, rather than stay the two days, but when I went home, I had a hypertensive crisis. I had read everything about natural childbirth for my second child, and had read a lot of it with my first child, but I had blood pressure irregularities in that pregnancy, too, and so I had to deliver at a hospital. With my second child, I knew I would have difficulty finding a midwife who would deliver my baby, so I sought out a seasoned obstetrician who was educated about natural childbirth. She let me go 48 hours unmedicated, on pitocin, before she started bringing up the possibility of a c-section. And even then, she was willing to try something else, which ended up working. She ordered a bunch of tests after the fact, because my case of hypertension did not come with the usual elevated liver enzymes, but the only thing we found was some kidney damage. So, I have been dealing with a mystery my whole life.

Additionally, I know that because of whatever this is and its effect on my blood pressure, I am at much higher risk of death due to coronavirus. I am prone to encephalopathic effects of viruses and have had some pretty awful anxiety and nightmares when sick. Sometimes I can have suicidal ideation when I am really sick or under intense stress. I had my first episode of that after my bike accident, so I think it is related to having had a traumatic brain injury. I otherwise have a really good life, and am not even prone to nightmares otherwise. I have been reading a lot about populations at risk of coronavirus, and how to reduce risk. The behaviors of people out there are giving me pause. Only half of the people I saw at the post office and grocery store were wearing masks. I understand the need for the protest. I wish everyone was wearing a mask and was spaced appropriately. Because of my disability, I will not be able to participate safely. I feel like I can make a bigger difference with my writing, anyway.

Because of what I have been enduring, and how it is aggravated by stress, there have been many things I have wanted to say, but it is so difficult for me to express anything, let alone my complicated feelings about racism. A couple years ago I posted on my Instagram account my desire that people be happy with “good enough.” I had reached the end of my rope with some things about society, and while I thought I was targeting perfectionism at the time, I realized what I was really targeting was ableism. This often comes with the cloak of perfectionism, and often has racist roots.

These things are difficult for me to write about, not just because of the problems I am having with language processing in my brain, but also because I am not accustomed to writing in an educated way about societal issues. I am not sure I know how to discuss my own disability and use of cannabis to combat my anxiety, which I realize is a great privilege to be able to do. There are many people of color in prison for a lot less. Plus, I am a mother and the ethics of using cannabis in the context of being a parent feels convoluted, even though there are blogs out there about “Stoner Moms” and articles in the New York Times about how it will make you a more easy going parent (as long as you don’t have to drive anywhere or manage myriad details, which tend to be the things that we don’t have choices about). I have an extremely progressive stance on the use of cannabis due to my experience as a neuroscientist, and for reasons that will become apparent in my writing on consciousness and inflammation. If it was possible, I would stick with CBD, but there are too many benefits from THC’s entheogenic properties with respect to the antidepressant effect for me to cut it out completely.

That being said, everything I write is personally sourced through a lot of painful learning experience. Reliving it through writing about it unfortunately sets up a cortisol feedback loop for me which makes the language processing more difficult. I end up in a state like this Oscar-winning short, The Stutterer, and in a tremendous amount of pain. I have mentioned elsewhere that I have PTSD, and it unfortunately has a gnarly crosstalk with my erythropoietic protoporphyria which aggravates my auditory processing disorder. Cannabis helps me stop this cycle.

So, yes. What to say next. That’s the thing, isn’t it? What do we say when we are desperate and out of words?

Elon Musk is a very wealthy mostly self-educated man who has, through technocracy, in the interest of “protecting the light of consciousness” brought us renewable energy and electric transportation, and self-landing people-carrying rockets. Lessening pollution through reducing the use of fossil fuels certainly aids consciousness as physics defines it, and so he is certainly already protecting consciousness, without space travel.

If we equate consciousness with the capacity for compassion and creativity, we are getting at the essence of the magic of being human. This capacity, therefore, is made possible by the brain, making brain health the most important and overlooked issue in society. It’s pretty clear that brain health is not a priority in our society; our national pastime is watching athletes get brain injuries as if they were modern gladiators.

The human capability for compassion is made possible by glucose oxidation by the cerebral cortex of the brain. The cortex of the brain controls such higher-consciousness states as empathy, executive function, pleasure, storing memories, hearing, and auditory processing. These brain functions are critical for peaceful interactions between people. So what do we do when there are deficits in these cognitive functions, which can occur transiently, or more permanently, depending on our condition? How do we know what kind of condition our condition is in?

Being in a state where one is forced to take action or speak when one is not prepared or in the right condition, can, in a hypometabolic state, make a person feel quite desperate. I think a lot of the “evil” in the world is due to this. George Bernard Shaw said “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” For as long as humans have been able to communicate, our tribes and societies have had moral stories we have passed down to understand how to behave in such situations. The problem is we never had anything to tie all the moral stories together, so some people like their stories more than they like other people’s. Nevertheless, humankind has relied on organized religion to embed these compensatory mechanisms into our collective psyche enough so that we can move toward something resembling peace.

When moral teachings fail, we have the police force which is made of human beings prone to acting out subconscious programming. Subconscious programming doesn’t have to be intentional. To compound the problem, because of the corporate influence on the prison system and an educational and social system set up to keep young people of color in that prison system, we have ignored an entire segment of humanity. It is not until we recognize and correct this injustice that anything will change. Everyone deserves equality.

This oppressive cycle is supported by the American househunting ethos in cooperation with the educational system, and is explained well in this PBS Newshour video (2:22) and this New York Times book review. These are the primary ways that the majority of white people unknowingly participate in a system that treats people of color unfairly.


*****

Thank goodness my period has started. I say that not for the usual reasons, but because this episodic condition I have is greatly influenced by my hormones, and now I can breathe a sigh of relief that the words should come easier rather than harder until the next lunar cycle. My health seems to ebb and flow with my menstrual cycle, which is closely tied to the lunar cycle. I suspect this is because for the last 14 years, moonbeams have come straight through my bedroom window onto my bed.

I discovered years ago the connection between the ease of my menstrual symptoms and my general psychological state, and figured they must be responding to the same thing. This is something that is taboo to talk about in polite society, but understanding menstruation is quite important in understanding the health of humankind. Menstrual health is reflective of fertility for our species. In the US, the rate of infertility has crossed thirty percent, from what I can remember. My early life was punctuated with a lot of menstrual irregularities, until I learned about nutrition and started cooking for myself.

Because these menstrual irregularities are often coincident with these lapses in consciousness that I can have, I decided to look more closely at hormones and their role in consciousness. My body makes some hormones, but I am also exposed to some in my environment. I am exposed through plastics, construction projects, nearby pesticide and herbicide applications, and restaurant food. We are all exposed to these and other chemicals, and they all affect us in the same ways by blocking the oxidation of glucose. Additionally, estrogen affects membrane polarization, increasing excitability and lengthening reaction time. This is how my attacks feel - like my system is radioactive. Consciousness at that time can feel elusive. So consciousness becomes more difficult with more exogenous chemical exposure or stress.

The volatile compound ether works by disrupting the lipid bilayer of the nerve cell and preventing the nerve cell from effectively conducting electricity. That’s likely why restaurant foods make my symptoms worse. Restaurants tend to use a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids (industrial seed and vegetable oils) in their cooking, which have a different three-dimensional shape than saturated and monounsaturated fats, which makes for a more “leaky” cell because of the way the lipid molecules fail to line up next to each other neatly. I have been eating a diet low in polyunsaturated fatty acids for the last decade or so. I read somewhere that the halflife in the body is 4 years. Anyway, I did this because during my graduate research I was studying dementia and antioxidation in the brain. I measured oxidative changes in the brain that occur through lipid-mediated mechanisms, because that is the most significant source of oxidation in the body. And, of all the types of fatty acids, only polyunsaturated fatty acids are capable of oxidation, due to their exposed hydrogen atoms. So, to be blunt, our brains are all kind of on fire, because brains are lipid rich, and the American population has been eating most of their fats in this highly oxidizable form since the 1970’s.

This widespread societal inflammation is a major threat against consciousness that we did not have earlier in history. Many people of color live in food deserts where getting higher quality food that is not laden in polyunsaturates and other toxic fillers can be difficult. There are large parts of America with regional culinary dishes that rely very heavily on these oils, and these areas tend to be conservative and have higher poverty rates.

All this time I have had in isolation (over a year now) battling this aphasia has been an interesting opportunity to examine my relationship to the American Dream. Last summer, I saw an anthropological study of California middle-class households done by the University of California Los Angeles. In the study, it was found that the more things a family owned, the higher the circulating levels of the stress hormone cortisol could be found in the mother. Since I had been having episodes resembling stroke off and on since 2005 (I think; I’m just not sure if I can’t recall yet), I decided it was time to get rid of a bunch of possessions, hoping that would help my health improve.

I did a lot of meditation on materialism during this time, going through all my stuff (and oh my gosh there is a lot of stuff) and thinking about how it came to be in my possession. I have this friend and she and I talk about how our jobs as mothers basically boil down to being able to manage resources. It’s a frustrating thing as it takes a disproportionate amount of my time, and my life is only going to be so long. In that light, I looked at each thing in my possession as something another human being had to give part of their life to create. So that thing should be pretty darn special. I’m not sure I have a lot of things I could categorize that way, at least for the value they provide to me. It is such a shame that we as human beings mindlessly create products to glorify ourselves rather than considering how those products will impact humanity and consciousness.

Unnecessary material objects are a drain on consciousness because they use energy and material resources, and the time and attention of human beings to manage them once they are created. The creation of many things in this modern era produces toxic byproducts either through the initial collection of the materials, or through the gradual release of toxic constituents of the final product throughout its lifespan. I think it is that knowledge that generated the biggest barrier for me as a creator. I tend to put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to not waste resources when I create, which can make it hard to actually create anything. In this way, human beings are all a bit like Dr. Frankenstein, unleashing monsters on the world that have to be maintained until their deaths.

It has been very difficult in my lifetime to get things that are made well, in part due to what I wrote above. But another big factor is the effect the stock market and other derivative markets have on capitalism. Companies need to show non-linear quarterly financial growth in order to attract investors, so they have an impetus to plan obsolescence into their products to increase demand. They also need to keep their bottom line low to maximize profits, so that means keeping recurring expenses like labor low. Some companies put more and better resources into their labor and final products, and thus make better products, but they aren’t always affordable. This refusal on the part of corporations to admit wrongdoing in their management of Earth’s resources and the lives of human beings is unacceptable.

I have thought to commit metaphorical seppuku around my struggle with consumerism, but I am as much a victim as I am a transgressor. What would that entail, anyway? It would entail detailing the sense of isolation or need that caused me to feel like I wanted all this stuff in the first place. I think I already illustrated the point that I have invisible challenges which make a sense of wholeness elusive, even though I am in every sense whole. I am thankful that I am more aware now. It’s hard enough to make good choices about the things we need, let alone the things we buy to soothe ourselves. When we purchase anything nowadays, there is no informed consent regarding the true cost of an object on our, our neighbor’s, or the Earth’s energetic resources. I was always concerned about this while I was shopping, but there was no way I could understand everything about a product until I actually had it. I tended to buy things because they would make my life easier or safer somehow, or improve my mental or physical health. I didn’t spend a lot of money on luxury items, and tried to buy some things used. When the kids were little we spent a lot of time at thrift stores. In fact, even my wedding ring is used, which I insisted on because of the tragedy of the diamond industry. I was trying to do the right thing, but I missed the opportunity to do something totally different. You wouldn’t know that my original ring was used by looking at it. Because of some misgivings about my lack of creativity and wanting something flashier after I had my first child, I asked for a moissanite anniversary ring (when moissanite was newer and less expensive). For about the last decade, it has made me uncomfortable to wear it in public because people treat me differently in a way I find upsetting (they are overly nice). And so, more recently I switched to wearing the opal ring my grandmother purchased for her mother so it was something obviously different.

That wasn’t my only reason, as I was also dealing with some heavy feelings about my struggle with being a wife and mother and how for so many years I let those functions define me. My biological grandmother Charlene Ellison had an interesting story. She was born in 1925 just before the Great Depression to her mother Adah Wilson, who had arrived in Colorado from Sheridan, Nebraska by covered wagon with the rest of her family around 1910. Adah would meet and marry Grafton Ellison, who had arrived with his parents from Illinois. At some point in Charlene’s childhood, at least by 1929, her father Grafton came down with Tuberculosis. I know this because I found his name listed in the 1929 Colorado Springs White Pages at the Modern Woodmen’s Association of America Tuberculosis Sanitorium. We were always told he died of tuberculosis, but as can happen with genealogy, I discovered through his death certificate that he had died of a revolver shot to the head in 1934. My grandmother was just nine when this happened.

When I found this, I knew I had stumbled onto something that might explain a lot of what I went through as a child because of the fracturing of my family, and the isolation involved in the stigma of having a family member do something as sinful as commit suicide. Or have tuberculosis. There was a total stigma around that, too, which prevented the ability to get jobs. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I can tell from the small blurbs that got put in both the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post at the time that the family was all home when it happened, and that he was alone in the bedroom. My second great-grandmother Edith was there helping care for Charlene, and Adah had just returned home from work, presumably from her job as a book binder. Two years later, Adah would marry George Graves who was a house painter just like Grafton had been. Adah’s father had also been a painter, and had died after a fall from scaffolding while painting the interior of the Paramount Theater. So George and Adah continued their jobs and raised Charlene.

What happened to Charlene during the time after her high school graduation was somewhat a mystery to everyone in the family, at least until her marriage to my “Uncle Fred.” We all knew she had gone during World War II to be a secretary in northern California at the Kaiser Shipyards, and at some point after that, she had to return to Colorado where she gave birth to my mother, who was adopted by George and Adah. This was really scandalous back then, but it was happening left and right. I was able to figure out sort of what happened during that time - she had met a handsome young machinist at work - she was 18 when she got pregnant, and he had just turned 17 when my mother was born. The Social Security Death Index gave me the next clues about what may have happened. She had at least two other married names, and I was able to find that my mother had a half-brother from one of these marriages. We all got to meet a few years ago, and get caught up on everyone’s lives and find out that we had all been impacted greatly by Charlene’s story, in different ways.

It didn’t end there. We learned during that time that Charlene and my uncle Fred had been swingers while my aunts were young. My aunts saw things that disturbed them. But they also had a relationship with this other couple who kept a pony for them to ride and brought them Christmas presents. I get the feeling it was pretty messy. I don’t know much more about the other couple. I am pretty sure that my grandmother struggled on some level because she was an alcoholic for the rest of her life.

That is kind of a depressing place to be, honestly. I’m not the only mother who has struggled with this feeling of ennui. I read of it in Betty Friedan's opus The Feminine Mystique, that to be an educated housewife caused women to struggle with depression. It’s like as a suburban housewife, my potential in life has been reduced to a tombstone with, “Here lies Stacy’s Mom. She had it goin’ on.” Because seriously, it’s all I can do to keep this family of four fed. And I am a privileged person! I think about this all the time, and I think about the anxiety I have all the time trying to do this with just one other person. The emotional labor takes a lot of time and energy. Nobody could have prepared me for that before having children. It is too much for two people, even. And then, what if one or multiple people in the home have disabilities? That is kind of the situation I am dealing with here, if I’m being honest. My husband lost the use of one of his eyes when I was pregnant with our son. He is thinking about protesting, but if he gets sick, it affects a lot of other people besides just him, because he is the main technical expertise for a company in Asia. I know this makes a lot of things harder for him. We all struggle with sensory integration issues and being easily overwhelmed when out of our element. None of us have ever had any professional help for these things, so all we have ever known is ableism and shame. I think this might be the case for a lot of people out there, and a big reason why it is so hard to be interdependent. Many of us are just barely getting by energetically, even if we are doing okay financially (and what “financially okay” is is up for debate). I honestly don’t understand how a mother works and really takes care of the needs of a family. Kids constantly need things and advice. As I wrote in my first novel, I feel very strongly that monogamy and real estate are a big part of what keeps us enslaved to consumerism.

So, my resource management mom friend lives in a neighborhood much different than mine where the neighbors cooperate more. My neighborhood, at least when we first moved in, was mostly people who had built these houses in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, who had empty nests when we moved in. Technically, they are mostly baby boomers, and so accustomed to that lifestyle which meant being self-sufficient and shiny. I feel like I am neither of those things. I don’t feel like I belong here, and except for making the interior of my house consistent with my values, I have never felt “at home” in my neighborhood. It’s like the neighborhood of Joneses, because most people are decades older, retired, and can focus all their extra time and energy on yard work and house projects. It is a losing battle. I know this for a couple of reasons. First, I am on the Pesticide Sensitive Registry, and I get notified whenever the city or one of my neighbors is going to have a commercial pesticide application, and it happens a lot. I cannot use herbicides on my lawn because of my porphyria and it’s hard to get all the weeds by hand. I haven’t found a good alternative for the driveway. My husband had another neighbor give him a tongue-in-cheek comment about picking weeds by hand several years ago. “You know there are easier ways to do that.” The State of Colorado provides me with fluorescent signs to post all over my property, but since I live in an area with so many pro-petroleum people, I am afraid that advertising my weakness will be a problem somehow. Another reason I know I can’t keep up is because one year I got the brilliant idea to turn on the sprinkler system before Mother’s Day. Several other neighbors had done it, so I figured we should, too, but I was rewarded with a busted sprinkler valve and a flooded crawlspace, the fallout from which has still not been entirely mitigated, as I need to reapply the vapor barrier. This would take someone who does it all the time about an hour to do, but will take me several. Sometimes it feels like a dark Swiss Family Robinson over here. What’s funny is this place is *not* a money pit, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just that home ownership is a constant battle against nature for most people, with the way we live in the modern era. The real tragedy of this story is the loss of all the water, just to keep up appearances. Companies know this and troll my neighborhood like ambulance chasers. Roofers were some of the first to come around, *without masks* when the stay at home order was lifted. And that is what my neighborhood is like.

Right now I am relying a lot on Amazon to get me things I haven’t been able to get safely locally. It troubles me that Amazon is not practicing good social distancing, and that there have been many other problems with their employment practices that unfairly target people of color. I don’t know how to solve this problem except to not order more than I need. Everything I buy represents potential exposures for someone along the supply chain. So I really want to keep it to the bare necessities. Plus, I just don’t have the bandwidth for more than that. I’m still struggling with myself in being honest about what I can handle.

My vision of The American Dream greatly changed on 9/11. I still think a lot about what I thought it was, and what I think it still can be. As much as I have complained about my health problems and how they keep me from connecting with others, and not feeling at home in my neighborhood, these were not the major barriers I had to happiness. The Universe was incredibly kind in helping me figure out what the barriers were. As I purged items from my home last summer, my mind was gradually freed from anxiety. I began to understand my relationship with the material world and why I purchase things. I learned what I see as valuable in material objects, and what I was holding on to out of obligation. I took a big risk and used the Tarot because I had no clue where to start and was overwhelmed. And it was magical bliss. I developed a closer relationship with my home and got rid of some of the existential guilt I had around all the things I never used. I was reminded of all the things I wanted to do someday. I was finally in a place where all I had to do was be there for myself, my husband and my kids, and I had time to create! Bye-bye, ennui! So, I painted and painted this body of work that grew out of my several-year-long dream of painting an academically-sized grisaille painting of an important moment in my life and got myself sick again.

When I got sick again, I never would have thought I could get as sick as I got. It really ended the illusion of what's important for me, not that I was terribly misdirected before, it's just that there was an even greater letting go. Sometimes I have trouble breathing when I am having an attack. Nobody seems to understand how serious this is. I wish I could say it was just me, but my son lost consciousness one day during the quarantine. I really wish I was in a position where I could protest, but I am just not. I have, however, stumbled upon something extremely disturbing about modern life and the toxicity it entails which has bearing on all of our interpersonal dealings, as well as our respiratory and cardiac health.

If brevity is the soul of wit, and a picture is worth a thousand words, then an artist is a magician. To be able to transmute the ineffable into something experiential is alchemical bridge-building. It is in the interest of peacemaking and consciousness.

I believe that all racial injustice arises from lowered states of consciousness, in which empathy is not accessible. So, that is what I want to write about to try to help. I have learned that the ability to communicate is really precious, so while I still have it, I want to use my words to shed light on the myriad barriers to consciousness we fight as human beings every day.


If I had a hammer,
I’d hammer in the morning
I’d hammer in the evening
All over this land.

I’d hammer out danger
I’d hammer out justice
I’d hammer out a warning
I’d hammer out love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land. - Pete Seeger & Lee Hays, 1949

This is consciousness.

It is the transmutation of our sorrow into something beautiful by believing in each other. It is the ability to think, perceive and act in accordance with compassion.

African Americans are most likely to be subjected to social exclusion. To really understand what Black people are facing everyday, we actually have to make an effort. Checking out this Wikipedia entry on Social Exclusion might be helpful. Also, we should be paying attention to the media we consume, so that we are not rewarding unfair stereotyping of people of color in media.

Water quality is terribly important to consciousness, and the ways that water quality is not protected in poorer communities of color is particularly horrific. But, I think we are learning that it is not protected anywhere very well. Neither is our air quality. My personal learning experiences with environmental illness have been heartbreaking, and much of my writing will be about these experiences. My writings are not the musings of a hypochondriac or a blame-shifter; they are a record of very real environmental illness. Environmental illness is a very real threat to people of color, and is an outcome of the mindless consumerism espoused by the media conglomerates.

Oh my gosh, I can’t express how good it feels to write something. I will try to write more about my own experiences with racism in another piece, but in this one I am trying to concentrate on how my life choices as a white person impact the system, and the relationship I have with that system. I have been holding a lot of this inside (about inequality and health) for quite a few years now, and it has made some of my relationships rather challenging because my health is so fragile due to the way my PTSD interacts with my other health issues. Nobody I know has had any advice for me so I just have to rely on past experience and hope I continue to get better. I have to avoid metabolic challenges for that to happen, because it is in anabolism that healing occurs. It is important not to confuse anabolism and obesity. Anabolism is the metabolic state of healing and stress resistance. Dieting is thus a way that perfectionism undermines our self-efficacy and compassion. To understand the long-term effects of chronic starvation the studies of Ancel Keys are helpful. I had some of my worst episodes when I wasn’t eating enough carbohydrate, and I can often come out of an attack by eating carbohydrates. I have tested my blood sugar when I am having these episodes, and they are not the result of hypoglycemia. I think what I have is actually easier to treat than diabetes; it just means taking care of my basic needs, avoiding chemicals, and undue stress.

I have always been big into n=1 experiments, and accordingly, I have been researching the connection between my libido and mental health. Generally speaking, I have found my libido to be inversely proportional to my anxiety level. I have a theory that libido is a reflection of metabolism, and thus consciousness. So, after my kids started sleeping in their own bedrooms, we went through a bit of a dry spell, and it was hard on our relationship. I realize that sounds kind of backwards, but when they slept in our room, they generally “stuck” in bed better than when they transitioned to their own rooms. Heh. I’m just remembering that I used to do this whole routine with them where I would pretend to duct tape them into their beds. Anyway, when they were in our room, we could make love in other creative places in the house because they rarely got out of bed. We were both told that marriages often fail due to sexual neglect, so we tried to pay close attention to that part of our relationship. So, I got this crazy idea one day in the shower a couple years ago during the dry spell that if I just tried to masturbate several times a week that I could force my libido to return. And you know what? Gradually, it worked. It was like this magical cure for my depression. When my husband and I met back in 1993, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It was really bad. And we aren’t PDA type people.

Orgasm stimulates the release of many hormones, including dopamine and oxytocin. Dopamine really gets a bad rap. These hormones are pro-metabolic and therefore healing. Being mindful of my biological need for dopamine and oxytocin has helped me through a lot of hard times. It feels strange to write so clinically about something we do that is so beautiful, that creates life. But, I have found that in overcoming the stigma, and getting these hormonal needs met, my mental health is a lot better. Through all of this and meditation, I found the tantra. And that is like Pandora’s Box.

We contain multitudes.

In this vast collective, our purpose is simply to propagate consciousness. We are electrical beings made of consciousness. Our internet has become a mirror for our consciousness, and so now we are able to change rapidly. Simply sharing our stories will help consciousness evolve.

I suppose maybe my aphasia could be related to having to be silent with all of these truths. And this is the tip of the iceberg.

So, anyway, I am a disabled person who is ineligible for disability because I have not had a job. I do a lot of emotional labor, for which I receive no compensation, which doesn't leave me a lot to show for my work. I have to pay very close attention to my health, and I need to do things I enjoy which do not cause me to have attacks, like make art and write. And make love!

What I am describing is sex positivity. I believe sex is a natural drive, and when it is suppressed, if it is not channeled into more productive behaviors, it becomes anxiety and fear and all of the maladaptive behaviors which arise from those feelings, which work against libido and creativity. From this standpoint, organized religion, through stigmatizing sexuality, has done us a great disservice. They did it for a couple of reasons, though! Creating children creates karma, which creates suffering. The suffering is not being able to live in the Garden of Eden anymore. Well, the job we do taking care of our children determines our karma. Children don’t have to be actual children, but anything that comes out of our creative mind.

I had a friend once who asked me if it was all about sex and making babies. I said that it was not, that it was about being a good person. But now that I have examined the subject further, I think that he was right. It’s just that I was right, too. Sex and babies was actually just code for “consciousness,” and consciousness is also what helps us understand what good is.

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I’ve been for a walk
On a winter’s Day

I’d be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day

Stopped in to a church
I passed along the way
Well I got down on my knees
And I pretend to pray
You know the preacher likes the cold
He knows I’m gonna stay
California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I’ve been for a walk
On a winter’s day
If I didn’t tell her
I could leave today
California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day - The Mamas & The Papas

I have a good friend who grew up on a commune, and I am helping her edit her manuscript. I am fascinated by her descriptions of the parenting ethos, which she had described to me in years past, but maybe because of my auditory processing challenges, I didn’t really *get.* There was clearly some trouble balancing the care of the manifestations of the love made with the love making. You know, just like the rest of society. I have another friend who grew up on a commune where not knowing how to care for the children in the context of sexual freedom ended up being a really traumatic thing for the entire community. And how do we talk to children about sex, especially when we only have our own experiences to draw from? How do we get our own needs met in the context of being caregivers? If destigmatizing sexual pleasure can free people of depression and anxiety, it seems like a potentially transformative experiment. We just need to figure out a way to do that in the context of raising children.

I don't know. Thank goodness for door locks, because we all need to get a little bit of some pleasure.

But no, seriously. There is some really great content coming out so we can educate ourselves about the invisible burdens people of color unfairly bear. I am going to watch it, and encourage my kids to watch, too. I feel like I have a duty to learn and reduce my impact on others, because as long as people are suffering at the hands of others, we will not have peace.

On the willows, there
We hung up our lyres
For our captors there
Required
Of us songs
And our tormentors, mirth

On the willows, there
We hung up our lyres
For our captors there
Required
Of us songs
And our tormentors, mirth

Saying
Sing us one
Of the songs of Zion
Sing us one
Of the songs of Zion
Sing us one
Of the songs of Zion
But how can we sing?
Sing the Lord’s songs?

In a foreign land? - Stephen Schwartz, Godspell

Reconciling Materialism

Everything is weird. It's strange to see so many people panicking about having to live the way my family and I have been living anyway. It's not without its challenges, sure. Coexisting in a home can be difficult at times, and sharing the workload is one of the major challenges. My own generation has some odd issues in that regard. We grew up in bedroom communities - in houses which were largely vacant during the workweek, so it's hard for us modern folks to know how to relate to our families during that time. It's one of the challenges families face when they first begin to homeschool.

I remember when growing up, we were all tired in the evenings. My dad had a job he really enjoyed, thankfully, but my mom worked for the school district and as terribly underpaid office staff, a person who had to interface with "the public." I had a lot of homework, but not the amount the kids have now. As my sister and I grew older, it was difficult to feel the togetherness we had as a family when we were younger. We all became a lot more independent, and so to foster togetherness, and take some pressure off my mom, we ate out a lot. We had a small kitchen, so it wasn't practical for everyone to help cook. But if we went to a restaurant, we could talk about what was happening in our lives as a family and reconnect somewhat.

We weren't big vacationers in my family when I was growing up. I know people now who fill every single federal holiday and school vacation with exotic trips, and I think about how hard they work to earn money to maintain a home that they never really want to be in. Maybe these people will be finding out right now, during quarantine, why they haven't wanted to be in their homes. Hopefully they are really little reasons that can be addressed easily!

I confess, I did my fair share of running around, until the Universe put a halt to it. I got sick from it! I actually needed to stay at home to get better. And in that time, I was able to gain a new appreciation for the home I had made, and care for it and myself better.

Our house is probably too big. When I was looking for it, I was looking for a home in our budget that would provide space for solitude for each family member, and also space for creation. I didn't want the yard to be too big, but we wanted privacy. The yard we have isn't too big, and grass is relatively easy to care for, but mowing in general is a waste of resources. I feel like I actually chose pretty well, even though because we have all this space, I have the tendency to forget what we already have and hoard things. So, after I rested and recovered enough last summer, I started tackling my overabundance of stuff. Over time, as I went through the various rooms in my house, I realized that I was essentially reconciling my relationship to the material world.

My mom was raised by her grandmother, who was born in 1901 and lived through The Great Depression. My impression of my mother's childhood is that she didn't have a lot. Her "mom" was a bookbinder, and her "dad" was a house painter (there were a couple house painters in the family, actually). When she has spoken of this time, she tells me that she did not have her own bedroom. She slept on a convertible sofa in the living room. I know at one point, she had a turtle named Tippy, and she also had a small teddy bear, and she has also mentioned quite a few times that she had a Toni doll, which she would sew clothes for. Sewing was an important part of her childhood - a skill she learned from her great-grandmother, who was a constant presence. It sounds like it was a pretty simple, non-dramatic childhood, and they didn't have an overabundance of things. They never owned their home.

My dad's parents were born in the 1910's, so they also lived through The Great Depression. I get the sense that his family had a lot of ingenuity. His father spent time as a brick layer, an electrician, and a house painter, depending on the era. I don't know if he had his own bedroom or if he had many toys. I am sure they had a lot of tools around, and I know my Mom's dad did, too, because we inherited a lot of them. My dad said he spent a lot of time at the library. His parents actually did purchase a house, and it sounds like it may have been pretty large for the time, but was in a small town with not a lot of work, so his father was away quite a bit.

So all of that is to say that sewing and tools have always had importance in my mind, and that making things, without some of the difficulties I had growing up in our smaller inner city home, was important to me when I was purchasing this house. The kinds of things I collected in abundance over the years were largely books and art supplies, and I was a bit of a clothes horse because my weight can change so drastically. There's too much stuff in the kitchen, and a lot of that was gifted to us.

I have a hard time throwing broken things away, because I imagine some day I might make something with them. When life isn't going at the speed of light, sometimes we even fix things! Some people might see this as a problem, but what with all this apocalypse stuff, I'm seeing a lot of my trash as treasure, again.

When I was growing up, the spaces we had for making things were the partially unfinished basement where my mother keeps her kiln and wheel for throwing pottery, the small area at the end of the basement stairs where she keeps the sewing machine, and the small one-car detached garage which back in the day was storage for a lot of things that might otherwise walk off in an urban setting. That meant that some of my dad's projects were done in places my mother really didn't like, but they were usually projects that were improving our lives somehow, so she learned to deal with it, and now he has an old wooden picnic bench he can work on and a clean garage.

Our accommodations for making things in my house are a lot more elaborate, and we still don't use them as we could, because up until now, we always had too much stuff, and not enough time.

*****

I don't really know where all the time went. I spend a lot of time wondering about that, actually.

I'm currently smack dab in the middle of my 40's, and something kind of frustrating is happening. I am losing a lot of days to hormonal issues, and my doctors haven't been a lot of help. In retrospect, I think this has been going on for quite a while, but because I was so socially active and had lots of distractions, I didn't see it. When one's life gets pared down to its basic components, suddenly, one becomes acutely aware of how one is feeling.

Take, for example, the certainty I felt that I was coming down with coronavirus the other day. Saturday, I started getting a headache, and then by the evening, body aches had set in. And then I got a sore throat and felt feverish. In the past, I have described how I feel around ovulation and the end of my menstrual cycle like I am getting the flu. Also, I have allergies to some things that are popular to grow in Colorado yards, and it's that time of year again. I have been largely home bound for quite a while, and frankly haven't been exposed to many people. None in the last two weeks, from the onset of my symptoms, in fact. Everyone else in our house seems okay so far.

My hormonal symptoms can vary a lot, and when we're not in the midst of an apocalypse, I have a pretty good handle on them. During my isolation, I was actually able to figure out some significant factors which make them worse. Stress is a big factor. I have PTSD and a brain injury, so sometimes little things can stress me out, particularly if I am dealing with other larger stressors not under my control. And, I generated a whole bunch of karma by getting married and having children, so larger stressors not under my control are occasionally a part of my life.

Right now, there's obviously a lot more stressors. We all have a lot more stressors, now! As if there weren't enough before! Right now my family is trying to stretch our food further, and that causes metabolic stress. It's harder to think straight, which means it is harder to feel confident. I'm having to learn new ways just to go to the toilet because of the "toilet paperpocalypse." I'm having to get more creative with feeding us. For example, I knew people would balk if I fed us tuna sandwiches again, so I cut up the dregs of the celery and rescued a turning cucumber to make a tuna salad instead, and served it with toast points and some fruit that really needed to be eaten the day before. Ordinarily I am not good at catching food before it is too far gone. But when I was growing up, we ate a lot of stuff that was "going bad," because since we ate out at restaurants so much, it was a thing that was always happening somewhere in the refrigerator.

I do cut the mold off cheese, and apparently my daughter did not know that this is okay. A lot of things I have done over the years in the name of sustainability, I didn't make obvious to the kids, so this is going to be a real learning experience for them.

On the financial front, it has been a little scary. Our revenue stream comes from Southeast Asia. But our customers went to a work from home model, suspended travel early on, and have otherwise encouraged their employees to be safe, so that is encouraging. My partner was supposed to travel, but that got canceled, which was a great relief to him and us.

This situation is easier for one kid than it is for the other. My son had been attending a local University, but was struggling with his health because of the food on campus. So we had already discussed with the University what we could do if for some reason he couldn't live on campus anymore, before this whole coronavirus thing happened. And now all 30,000 students can finish the semester online, anyway! So now he's having to do college amidst all the distractions we have here, but he has some practice with that because he already has his Associate's Degree.

My daughter, however, has been sitting tight for a long time while my son was getting his 2 year degree, and was ready to start taking classes this summer. She was ready to not be at home all the time, so I really feel for her. We were hoping she could get out and meet some new people. That's what you're supposed to do as a young person, right?

Other than my health issues and trying to keep the house supplied with whatever we might need, my biggest challenge is our insurance. It is a policy I found before the Affordable Care Act, which got grandfathered in. I kept it for a long time because although it is high deductible, the deductible for a single person is the same deductible as for the family, and after that, 100% is covered. The only hitch is that mail order prescriptions aren't covered, which I felt was an okay compromise when I chose the plan, but during this pandemic it is proving to be a real hassle. I would really like to be able to get my prescriptions by mail right now, or at least only have to go to the pharmacy once every 90 days, rather than once every 30 days. When I call my insurance company, the person I talk to on the phone is just the messenger, not the person in control of the terms of my policy. At least they decided to cover COVID-19 testing.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if we made a lot less money so that we could have socialized medicine, because my friends who are less economically privileged have a lot less stress about seeing the doctor than we do. A doctor's visit used to cost us $172USD, without any tests or prescriptions. We don't get compensated for benefits like a traditional employee does, so there's no Social Security, disability, health insurance, pension or 401k matching. We do have an odd situation where we get time off, but that's been really difficult to quantify and use effectively the way the arrangement works. I read somewhere that these benefits are about $40,000USD per year, so if we actually purchased these things ourselves, it would be like we made $40,000USD less. Our health insurance cost actually went up a lot last year, despite the fact that we have avoided going to the doctor for many years, and the plan hasn't improved.

What this means is that I had an exceptional amount of pressure on me as a mother to also be a healer, and that we also have to take extra care not to get injured in order to save us money, so that maybe, someday, we can retire. Talk about stress! This takes a lot more time than one would think, especially in this day and age, because one has to be fully educated about the risks to health that exist in every day life. This cuts into my time and energy for creativity and friendship.

*****

There's a great article in the Atlantic, written by Rebecca J. Rosen, Money-Rich and Time-Poor: Life in Two-Income Households covering a 2015 Pew Study of division of labor in families with children. My very favorite part is the end where she references a 2013 article about tranquilizer use in the 1950's by housewives, which has been taken down, but can still be accessed using The Way Back Machine. I find it particularly interesting, given my observation early in parenting that most of my stay-at-home mom counterparts were on some sort of antidepressant, and I have struggled with depression off and on for most of my life, and more recently, anxiety. Betty Friedan wrote about educated women who lost their minds in the 1950's while trying to stay at home in her epic work The Feminine Mystique, which was quite eye-opening.

But anyway, along the lines of Rosen's article, it became pretty apparent to me early on that my role as a stay-at-home parent was to essentially "patch holes in the ship." The special benefit of me staying at home was saving us both time, and money. Over the years, through observation, I became more aware of where the biggest holes were. They were medical costs, car repairs, and overdone birthdays and holidays. (Should it cost $500USD to barbecue for extended family at a child's party? This happened more than once). Beyond that, we got a lot of our furniture used, and don't remodel or move much, and that saved a tremendous amount of money. We never got involved in club sports, and for many years didn't use much in the way of cosmetics, so that saved more money. I cut the boys' hair for many years, until I decided I wanted a break and that it would be good for my son to get used to someone else touching his hair, because we were so isolated from the touch of others. For a little while I made my own cleaning products from things like baking soda, borax, vinegar, club soda, and "natural" liquid soaps, and used simple alternatives for things like shampoo (baking soda wash, vinegar rinse) and lotion (coconut oil).

Elizabeth Warren made a compelling argument for single income households, or at the very least basing a family's spending on just one income rather than two, so that if there is job loss, the effects are less disastrous. While my income after staying at home for 18 years may never approach that of my husband, we have tried to live such that if I had to go to work, I could make enough to support us, albeit more meagerly. At this point, if we sold our newer car and got a roommate, I feel like we could weather whatever happens to the US economically with mindful use of our resources. We all have marketable talents, too.

I am not a coupon clipper. I feel like coupons are inhumane, and I don't like to play inhumane games with my intellect. I feel like couponing in general has a sexist history, and is used to market products to people (specifically women) which may not even be good for them. I feel like wealthy people who play into the game are hurting us all, to boot, by creating demand for things there might not otherwise be demand for. Coupons, in my mind, feed the green-eyed monster.

Someone may have asked me once if I was a prepper. I really was just trying to get the best bang for my buck, so I bought things like grain in bulk, and even used to have a grain mill, until I discovered that I have big problems with whole wheat (not celiac). I gardened for a few years, but had a lot of frustrations with it, and ultimately decided that for the number of calories I was expending on the garden, I wasn't getting enough in return. In the face of this pandemic, I am re-evaluating that, and am considering planting more root vegetables for their nutrient and caloric content, as well as their ease of storage.

The only low-calorie things I am considering gardening are peppers (because I have had tremendously good luck growing them hydroponically) and herbs, because they make everything taste better. If I plant squash, there is a good chance I may be murdered in my sleep, but I haven't had good luck with these anyway, and I suspect there will be an overabundance, as there always is, on both the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 local gardening trade markets, since gardeners in general seem to plant way more of this awful stuff than they actually want to eat. Okay, I don't think it's that awful, especially if it is in a nice muffin. But weeks on end of sauteed squash at the hottest part of the year is... yeah. No thanks. That's one of the things I would like to leave behind on the Old Earth.

There is just a lot about domesticity that feels kind of hellish to me, like a never-ending Groundhog Day. I really don't know how some people do it.

*****

A wonderful article by Dr. Raymond Peat about the Dark Side of Stress and learned helplessness, offers a timeless look at how forced boredom and busyness affects us on a neurobiological level. It is an argument for enriched environments and autonomy, and I feel, important in the context of the above discussion on the frustrations of being a stay-at-home parent, but also existing, as we all do, in an increasingly institutionalized society. An excerpt:

"Geneticists used to say that 'genes determine our limits,' but this experiment shows that an environment can provide both limitations and opportunities for expanding the inherited potential. If our environment restricts our choices, our becoming human is thwarted, the way rats' potentials weren't discovered when they were kept in the standard little laboratory boxes. An opportunity to be complexly involved in a complex environment lets us become more of what we are, more humanly differentiated."

Besides collecting a lot of books, art supplies and tools, we also collected a lot of media over the years. We got the game consoles, and many of the games for both those consoles, and the PC. I collected a small number of our favorite movies, too. There is always something to do. Despite having collected many books, I haven't read a lot of them. In my mind, it's a really luscious collection, a complex environment of its own. When I was growing up, the most interesting people I knew were makers who had cluttered environments. I have trouble relating to people who don't read and who aren't interested in creating things. It seems like discussions with these people tend to circle around discussing purchases and politics, and I prefer a different kind of show and tell.

Relating this back to being stuck at home and the use of substances, I'd like to bring up the work of Bruce K. Alexander who did the famous "Rat Park" experiments on addiction. For those not familiar with his work, he also raised animals in either standard laboratory conditions or enriched environments, and found that animals raised in enriched environments were much less likely to self-administer addictive substances. For those who like cartoons, here is the famous cartoon explanation of his work.

As a side note, the majority of animals used in experiments for behavioral and medical studies are not in enriched environments, so the validity of such studies as they apply to a human being with free will is debatable. They may be more applicable to potatoes.

Anyway, the whole point of this is that staying home with kids, or even being stuck at home can be a real challenge for mental health if our environments are too sterile. So moms, you might want to take that Real Simple magazine with a grain of salt, and embrace a little weird.