A few minutes ago I realized that I’ve been wearing my bifocals almost all day. That is not good. They are essentially music glasses – for reading music as I sit at the keyboard. They are not for sitting on the sofa reading or sitting at my desk spending way too much time on Facebook and thinking about the things that simply pile up in my brain that I must Google or otherwise research. You know, important matters. Which of the Oscar-nominated films have I not seen (most of them)? What chaos has Elon Shgwu caused today? Do the cats need their vaccines updated?  

A couple of months ago – before I got sidetracked and forgot I was going to write here EVERY day – I mentioned that I had been diagnosed with a neurological disorder, that is, ANOTHER neurological disorder. Two is better than one, don’t you think? My neurologists have been, since about 1980, trying to figure out what causes my continuing experiences of depersonalization and derealization. For many years it was Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Then they ruled that out. I’ve been having CT scans and MRIs year after year for half of my life. My kind doctors assure me they believe me when I tell them how I experience the world, but there is apparently no cause of it.

Or there is.

Neurology is a giant fascinating world of knowns, unknowns, perhapses, guesses, science, and – well, you know – befuddlement. It has been interesting to work with doctors from Harvard Medical School and UTSouthwestern Medical School in Dallas. I take meds I’ve taken for decades to keep me more or less on an even keel. I try to keep this old body in shape – well, at least functioning.

So now there’s a new (we’ve known about it for about eight months) diagnosis. That fairly  common one – Alzheimer’s Disease. Don’t worry. I’m in the best care possible. I have infusions every two weeks of the drug approved last year by the FDA, MRIs, conversations with medical school professors, and the concern of my friends and family. You realize, of course, that it’s been only in the last five years or so that AD could be diagnosed before an autopsy. Well, I’m not dead yet.

So I’m living in Never-Never-Land and wondering what’s up. Do I have six months or six years? There’s no way to know.

And then there’s this bizarre – perhaps frightening – world now being run by Elon Shgwu and offering no sense of security or stability. Immigrant Shgwu is determined to reshape this country in his own image. And I have to worry about taking part in the defense of life as we’ve all always known it – both the good and the bad, and or simply keeping focused on the weirdness enveloping my brain. I don’t know.

Sorry, there’s no conclusion to this bit of thinking out loud. You’re welcome to follow along and see whether my brain or Mr. Shgwu wins out. Time will tell?

*The dictionary definition of “musk”:

NOUN: The scent of Human Genitals When Unwashed

The sun is about to rise this morning even though I can’t see it from my balcony. Rain – heavy rain – has been falling through the night. There’s no rain at the moment. My weather app says the rain will begin again in eleven minutes. I’m timing it. I just want to know if my phone is trustworthy.

Even the ubiquitous Muskovies are hiding this morning. You’d think a bunch of ducks wouldn’t mind a little rain, wouldn’t you? The Muskovy is a strange and – I’m told – not so wonderful creature. It looks like a duck and walks like a duck, but I’ve never heard one quack like a duck, so they must not be ducks. Everyone who lives in this apartment complex, or the entire neighborhood, knows the Muskovies. If you live anywhere between Dallas and the Amazon, you may well know some Muskovies.

They’re  IMMIGRANTS  from South America who have, for God-knows-how-long, taken possession of most of the United States that borders on Mexico. Damned immigrants! They really are a bother. This apartment complex has a nice fountain and pool at the front entrance, which has been turned off and dry for about fifteen years now because the Muskovies kept swimming (and shitting) in it. Damned immigrants!

I inadvertently read a news story in my email this morning. Before breakfast I try not to read the online news sources I subscribe to. But sometimes I can’t ignore the headlines. I keep telling myself I should unsubscribe from all of them. I can’t do anything about the dreadful disease that has once again taken over the communal/political life of this country, so why don’t I simply ignore it and fade into the demented old man my brain is determined to make of me?

Because the news, like the Muskovies, is everywhere.

A headline this morning declares that

WATCHDOGS SAY WORLD’S RICHEST MAN ELON MUSK HAS ‘DECLARED WAR ON SOCIAL SECURITY’

I shouldn’t have read it, of course. But Social Security pays my rent – NO, I get back some of the money I’ve been paying into Social Security for 65 years so I can pay my rent with the money I’ve invested.

I surely do wish someone would figure out what to do about that immigrant.

. . . . I don’t know. I keep thinking about – and sometimes writing about – what it means to be alone. That has probably been a theme song in my inner world for most of my life.

(Note: This is not a “poor me” bit of writing.)

When I was in junior high school – 1957-1959 – after I finished my classes, almost every day I walked the mile or so from school to the church where my dad was pastor. Alone. I was learning to play the organ, and the church, of course, was the only place to practice. (It had a Baldwin model 5 electronic instrument.) Besides, they were paying me about 10¢ an hour to play for some of the services. When I finished practicing, I walked about a mile in the other direction to get home. Alone.

I actually liked being alone, except when it was snowing (Far West Nebraska). I had many adventures in my mind. If I timed it right, after my practice I could walk up Sixteenth Street to the main street of the town and say “hello” to the cowboy man – you know, western style boots, 501 Levis, and a cowboy hat – who very often walked there headed my way. I suppose I could say I was in love with him.

And when I got to the end of the  main street (Broadway), I turned west (due west in the small Nebraska city, streets laid out along the acre lines of the surrounding farms) and walked to our street about half a mile away. Just before I turned up our street, I passed a large John Deere tractor store. Another man, dressed like the cowboy except for the hat, was always behind the counter there, and I could wave at him through the large storefront window. I guess I was in love with him, too.

This is not a pornographic story about a fourteen-year-old gay boy. Of course I never got closer to those men than walking by, and I’m sure they would have been horrified if they had known what I was thinking. No, I know they would have been.

I say all of that to try to give some indication of my experience of being alone. It’s not about feelings that I did not understand. It’s about my sense that there was something that made me feel disconnected from the world, that whatever I was feeling or experiencing was not real, that I was somehow an observer, not a participant.

Suppose that feeling is universal. Suppose everyone in their heart of hearts lives that way. Suppose we all – all of us – search constantly for connection. Suppose that’s the basis of – shall we say, for example – our political associations. We vote for someone who seems to make us feel not alone.  Even if they are as distant and unreal and confusing as those two men were to me. Even if, by all criteria, they are – in their own ways – willing and able to do ANYTHING that will make them feel connected. Or at least in control.

Do all people in their eightieth year on this planet wonder what has happened to humankind and its social structures in that time? My dad, when he was 90, did something he had never done before. He voted for a Democratic presidential candidate – Barak Obama! He was apparently much more in touch with change than I am at a decade younger than he was.

When I was a child about the time I was learning to read (it was before I started to school – my brother came home from school and taught me to read), our parents gave us a book I have remembered for seventy-five years. It was a picture book – black and white with shiny pages – about two brothers. Two brothers about the same age as we were. The pictures followed the boys through a couple of days doing pretty much the same sorts of things we did.

We thought they were so lucky! They lived in a big city – I’m not quite sure why I’ve always thought it was San Francisco – not a small city like the ones we lived in until I was in high school. I have wondered for decades where my parents got the book. I don’t remember any conversations we had about it – there must have been some – but I remember those kids. They were African American. Two white small-town boys about five years old fascinated by the adventures of two black city boys about five years old.

The only difference we cared about was that they were lucky to live in a big city instead of a small country town like ours. What fun they had! As I said, I have no memory of conversations about the book; however, I remember distinctly playing with the boys who lived next door to our grandmother in the big city we knew – Kansas City. And I remember that our uncle who still lived with our grandmother told us we should not play with those kids.

Whenever I hear Donald tRump or ImmigrantMusky talk about deporting 40,000,000 persons from this country because they are not like them, I remember those book friends my brother and I had when we were kids. And the kids we played with in Kansas City. And I am confused. I don’t get it. Do the tRump/Musky folks think my parents should not have given my brother and me that book? Or allowed us to play with Grandma Peck’s neighbors?

Some famous writer once said, “I write to know what I think.” I’ve always thought that was true [hence this bit of writing – it’s too early to know what I’m thinking]. Apparently these days I think about two things most of the time: politics and my slipping memory. Neither is particularly helpful for getting through the day, so I’ll think about something else this morning.

That quote, by the way, hangs around in my mind because I learned it when I was studying creative writing. The unfinished novel I was writing for my “dissertation” is lying around here somewhere on one of those relics – a floppy disc. [I think it’s about a gay kid from Iowa moving to Texas and discovering he has a gay uncle.] But who needs another degree? That is not, I hope, what I’m thinking about this morning. No novel – that one or any other – is floating around in my thinking today.

No. I’m thinking about how my cats know what time it is. Tomcat wakes me up between ten minutes before or after 5 AM every morning. I mean EVERY morning. Or about writing a novel. It’s a novel about an old guy about to turn 80 who lives with two cats (brothers about two years old) and can’t stop writing about writing. Or politics. Or about what it might be like to wake up every morning with my  mind already thinking about what I should write about.

About something important.

How does Tom know it’s 4:50 AM every day? Why didn’t I open the new bag of coffee last night so I wouldn’t have to do that at 4:55 AM today? What scary thing will President-elect Musky think up to do today? Will I, in fact, stick to the schedule I made up yesterday to be sure I play the piano two hours this afternoon? Is SMU playing football this afternoon so it will take me an hour instead of 20 minutes to get to the church to keep my fingers warmed up so I can play well tomorrow? Will I remember my appointment with my neurologist on Tuesday? Is it possible to think about something important? And what might that be?

So I’m writing about writing to know what I think. And obviously my mind doesn’t want to concentrate on anything except how it doesn’t want to think about a given topic. Joining the rest of my neighbors and friends who don’t know what to think about.

Is the day after Black Friday Black Saturday?

The heat is on in my apartment. I was without AC for most of the summer. It simply would not turn on. This old building is made entirely of concrete walls about a foot thick, and all of my windows face north, so I was comfortably cool this summer. A couple of days were warmer than I liked, but the sun went down, and the night air cooled things down.

Now, however, winter (such as it is in Texas) is fast approaching, and I need a bit of temperature control. I reported the problem to the office, and two days ago they showed up with a brand-new heat/AC unit. They had the old one out and the new one in within eight hours. The cats went visiting an old friend, and I sat on the sofa and read almost the whole time. Or worked giant crossword puzzles.

This structure was built in 1962. For many years it was THE place to live in this part of Dallas . . . [don’t worry; I’m telling you all of this unimportant history for a reason which I’ll get to momentarily]

               . . . but now it is not. The fourth-floor space where my apartment sits was for many years a popular night club. A late friend of mine was the locally famous bar pianist and told me stories about the rich and famous dancing and drinking while he was having a jolly good time improvising delicious dance music using the popular tunes of the ‘60s and ‘70s and ‘80s and . . .

You know: “Call me” by Deborah Ann Harry, “Little Jeanie” by Elton John, “No More Tears” by Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer. Back when music made sense. I can imagine the cool folks of Dallas dancing around in my living room with Barbara Streisand, can’t you?

I, of course, was a frightened junior in high school in 1962, having moved from a small city in Far West Nebraska to Omaha, from a small high school to Omaha Central High where my junior class had as many students as the entire high school in Scottsbluff. 

Oops! Now I am wandering away from my reason for writing. No! I am exactly on point. Frightened. I have not been frightened the way I am now since those days being the strange kid from the sticks plopped down in the big city school, alone, unsure of anything – as all gay high school juniors were then – and wondering what the . . . ?

Now, around sixty years later, Immigrant Musky is about to be inaugurated as President of the United States! He’s not even constitutionally allowed to be President, but there he is, about to take office. If I had dreamed in 1962 that the world (at least this country) would be as frightening as the Chemistry class at Central High School, where I knew no one and had to ride the city bus five miles simply to get there, I would have laughed. Me, with my PhD and sixty years of professional life including teaching at a first-tier university, me, frightened? Yes!

(See also: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/weaponized-lies )

(This is about the life and security of an old man although you may not see that if you read it. Sorry.)

Aren’t you amazed that we have finally learned that the main cause of trouble in this country is immigration? It took long enough to figure it out.

When I was a kid in Far West Nebraska, I knew many kids from Mexico, mostly in the summer but some year-round. Sammy Raymundo was one of my best friends. He lived in our small city with his parents. His dad was the pastor of the First Mexican Baptist Church. I’m pretty sure they were smuggling drugs. Most of the members of that church worked on the farms that were the basis of the economy and stability of our fair city. But harvesting sugar beets for the huge sugar refinery was just a ruse for their real purpose in this country.

I don’t know if Sammy’s parents were citizens. I assume they were in this country legally, or his dad would not have been able to be an important leader in the community. The church my dad pastored helped maintain and staff a large community center for migrant workers. It all seems so dangerous now. I am thankful that Mr. Trump is finally going to end all of that evil for good. (I don’t know if the danger has persisted in Scottsbluff all of these years, so perhaps I shouldn’t care or write about it. I’m not even sure if the sugar industry is still an important part of the economy, so I guess I should shut up.)

I was too young to understand the economic and political ramifications of the situation. I did understand that without the sugar refinery the city would have been much poorer and smaller. My dad explained that to me.

These days I don’t understand all of the scuttlebutt I read about immigrants and migrants and such. I do know that the guys who mow the lawns and do much of the upkeep at the church in Dallas where I am organist speak Spanish. We don’t socialize with them, of course, or even know their names. What if they started coming to our services?

So I applaud Mr. Trump for announcing that the day he is inaugurated he will begin rounding up and deporting people who are doing the jobs migrants who kept the West Nebraska economy alive used to do. As I said, I don’t know if it’s the same today as it was in the ‘50’s, but my guess is that there is an important connection between the folks from Mexico (immigrants or their progeny who were born in Nebraska and are, therefore, citizens) and the good ole regular Americans who live there.

I do wonder about one seemingly related problem, however. I hope Mr. Trump and his minions have figured out exactly what will happen to the economy of the region when all of those folks, citizens or not, rich or poor, are booted out.

___________A small postscript: The first wedding that I, an aspiring young pianist/organist, provided music for was in that First Mexican Baptist Church.

Last night I wrote what I thought I would post here today. It was an introspective piece contemplating my current situation and trying to make sense of it for myself – or for the two or three folks who might stumble upon it. When I read it this morning, I realized that it was simply too personal, that it shared too much information about my trying to understand and cope with my “disease”.

Disease: “When it comes to disease [early 14th century, from old French – literally ‘a lack of ease’] science often moves faster than language, and the words we assign to the things which make us sick are often stranger – and more revealing – than we realise” (https://www.gavi.org/).

It is “dis” ease. “Dis” is an ancient Greek word meaning “apart from”. So a person who has a “disease” is one who is “standing apart from ease”. I am standing apart from ease. It is not easy to stand where I am. I am (as we all are) “apart” from ease. I know, I know, if one of my university “rhetoric” students from years ago had repeated a thought so many times in one paragraph, they would have been invited to a private conference in my office or earned a grade that would not have helped them get into graduate school. (That grade would not, of course, have prevented them from working for ImmigrantMusky.)

You see, I cannot stand apart from my (probably absurdly incorrect) understanding of the world/society we’re living in these days. There is a great parting between ease and me. That parting does not bother me. However, I would like to be at ease when I consider, for example, the destructive instincts of ImmigrantMusky. But who could be at ease watching and waiting for the (at least attempted) destruction of the way of life they have experienced for eight decades?

This is not a political diatribe (“continued discourse, critical dissertation”  https://www.etymonline.com/word/diatribe). If folks want the world they have known from their births to disappear, that’s their business.  Along with approximately 6,000,000 others in this county, I will eventually be unaware of the drastic changes. Dr. Alzheimer discovered some time ago that we are the lucky ones. I do, of course, have to make a decision. Do I want to have that grand medical school continue to give me the new medication that will slow down my brain’s wandering away from memory, or should I just let the next few years in America recede from my awareness?

Yesterday, as far as I can recall, I put my phone down and had to search my apartment to find it only twice. That was a great day! However, I forgot to move my car so they could clean the parking garage. (They knew I was home – the maintenance guy came to fix the “on” switch for the heat in my apartment – and they could have reminded me.) And I forgot to check my mail – the fourth day in a row. (The mail room is four floors down and at the front entrance, nowhere near that parking space that didn’t get cleaned.)

So, you see, the beat goes on – the regular march of my memory away from my brain.

But wait! The first time I put my phone down and couldn’t remember where I put it was most likely the day I got it. What? Twenty-five years ago?

So what is this memory nonsense, anyway? I remembered to feed the cats. I remembered to get (somewhat) dressed up to go the Dallas Symphony concert last night. I remembered to wash my coffee cup so I wouldn’t have to do that this morning. I think I remembered to do my daily writing today – or is someone else writing this?

And the strangest memory yesterday!

When I read in the news that the Texas State Board of Education had approved the elementary school curriculum for next year, I remembered. Remembered the careful and consistent teaching I had as a kid that the Baptist heritage my family was part of included (or perhaps began with) the understanding of the precious freedom of religion that was so important to the founding of this country. (Read Roger Williams, or William Penn, or Thomas Jefferson, in case you’ve forgotten.)

Oh! The oddity of the septuagenarian memory.

I wonder why the first memory I had when I read the “news” was learning about the Bill of Rights for my high school American History class. And being tested on it (that is, required to write the First Amendment from memory) by my teacher who was Jewish, and whose Masters thesis was a study of the freedom of religion on the Native American reservations in Nebraska. I still remember it.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I suppose that, since the Constitution doesn’t say “the Texas Board of Education shall make no law respecting …”, it’s perfectly OK that they approved a curriculum that includes posting the Ten Commandments and The Beatitudes in every k through 12 classroom in the state.

Yes. The Baptist heritage be damned! Let’s force those children whose families unfortunately happen to be Hindus to learn OUR religion so they can be free to continue  their families’ heritage. Isn’t that what Thomas Jefferson meant?

O, how I wish my brain would be more careful about what it chooses to remember.

A memory:  August 8, 1974.

My late ex-wife and I were spending the night in a hotel in Lincoln, NE. We were driving across the country (half-way) from our home in Upland, CA, to our new home adventure in Iowa City, IA. I had finally decided, seven years after I graduated from college, that I did not want to spend my life as the in-plant mail deliverer at the enormous Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana, CA, driving from the main office building to the blast furnaces, to the cold-rolled steel plant, to the slag heaps, to . . .

Ann and I were headed to Iowa City, IA, where I was about to begin my doctoral program in organ literature at the University of Iowa. After all, I had my Bachelor of Music degree in organ performance, and my Master of Arts degree in composition, so why was I driving around all day in that ugly, dirty, little white jeep thing?

We had eaten dinner in the hotel dining room and had opened the door to our room. I had left the TV on, and as we walked in, some newscaster introduced Richard Nixon for a Presidential address. We were very much aware of what was happening. I had been in the employ of the George McGovern presidential campaign in the western part of San Bernardino County just two years before. Do I need to explain that I was INTO politics?

If you are near my age, you know that Nixon’s address was to announce his resignation from the presidency, effective the next day. We were joyfully giddy at the news but also – as I think nearly all Americans were – frightened of exactly what would happen. Would the government simply say, “Hail to the (new) chief” and go on operating as usual? Or would there be some kind of trouble the nation had never known? Would Nixon end up in jail? And so many more uncertainties.

[Non-sequitur: As I was writing the above, my brain was working overtime thinking about the logistics of my job as music director at Central Lutheran Church in Dallas. Should I play the piano for the whole service this Sunday, or should I play the organ for the first half? How many jumbled messes can go on in my mind at the same time? Perhaps this blog should be named simply Sum rabidus. I am crazy.]

And now we are in another time of governmental uncertainty. At least in 1974 we had my fellow Nebraskan Gerald Ford to hold things together. Now we have president-elect tRump nominating a man who is both morally and legally unfit to be the Attorney General, for example. This old man (me) is trying to imagine what the people of Ontario, CA, would have thought of our situation back then. [Non sequitur: in the section of the county where I was working for McGovern in 1972, we had the only precinct in California, and perhaps the nation, where not one vote was cast for Nixon.]

Where, you might be (should be) asking, is this little not-craziness headed? I don’t know except to say that my apprehension of the unfolding news of 1974 seems like a mere bump in the road compared to the apprehension I am feeling right now.

All of that is to ask if it has taken the same number years for the United States to develop its Alzheimer’s brain as it has taken this old man to develop his. Is there a cure? Not yet. But at least I know for sure that’s what’s happening. Five years ago one could not be diagnosed medically, only circumstantially.

Do you suppose this country will have the good luck to be diagnosed scientifically? Or will it take the old way of diagnosing Alzheimer’s? An autopsy.