Hummingwolf at Home

... so all the money I save on bus fare can be spent at local farmers markets, apparently.

Note: Never listen to a spiel about hand-rolled fresh mozzarella if you are not prepared to pay for it. When a vendor chirps, "If you have questions about anything we have on the table, just ask," and your response is "Why don't you tell me about everything?"--you are probably already in deep trouble. On the plus side, deep trouble can be tasty.

Today on the Christian Conservative World Magazine Blog, someone asked:

Alzheimer's drugs could be used to heighten the attention and concentration of airline pilots or similar jobs, or to improve the memory of students studying for tests. Amphetamines in small doses have been shown to improve motor learning in stroke victims--why not use them to help people learn how to swim or play the piano? Treatments for depression could be adapted to help put people in a good mood. Drugs to combat attention-deficit disorder could be adapted to help students study more effectively. Beta-blocking drugs that blunt the emotional effects of traumatic events could be used to reduce the negative memories that can cause stress at a family reunion. Already actors and other performers are reportedly using medication to keep them from being nervous. Do you see anything wrong with such "quality of life" medication?

The blogger included a link to Beauty and the brain, which includes the statement "Chatterjee said in the future it's plausible that neurologists will become 'quality of life consultants.'" (It also includes the horrific phrase "large gray area between normalcy and abnormalcy," but let's ignore that abomination for now.) The abstract for the Neurology article ends with the sentence "Neurologists and other clinicians are likely to encounter patient-consumers who view physicians as gatekeepers in their own pursuit of happiness."

Really, I just have to ask: How many of the people going on about the quality-of-life enhancing possibilities of these medications have ever taken the medications? Even patients who acknowledge a need for some kind of change in their brain chemistry complain about nasty side effects; what kind of effects will people suffer if they muck about with the chemistry of a so-called normal brain?

Also: Those of you who have ever had to deal with a doctor for any kind of chronic or long-term illness: Do you believe it's an even remotely good idea to view physicians as gatekeepers in your own pursuit of happiness? For that matter, as an adult, do you want anyone else to be a gatekeeper in your own pursuit of happiness?

I have the feeling I'm not supposed to be comfortable right now. This annoys me. Isn't it time for me to be able to relax, to rest for a while? How much endurance do I have to have? How much patience do I have to use up? But no, it's not even an external pressure: inside, as much as I want to relax, to cocoon, to curl up and ignore the world, I also feel the need to stir things up, to change, to whirl around in some new motion I swear to you I don't have the energy for.

Cocooning, making a place for myself away from the world, is often a necessity or at least a very good idea. But not today. Why not today? I don't know, but not today.

I want to not think any new thoughts. I want to not experience any new experiences. I want to curl up with a book I've read before and see nothing new in it. I want to listen to old favorite songs and pay no attention to the lyrics, ignore the music trying to pull me into a different world. Books are dangerous. Music is dangerous. People are dangerous. Listening to soccer players in the field nearby might make me feel or think something uncomfortable. Looking at a flower might take me places I don't want to go.

If I were a person who liked to drink beer and watch television, that's what I'd be doing now. "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream..." but I don't want to go downstream. I don't want to go anywhere. Why can't I stay in place for a little while? Just for today? I know things in my life need to change--I want things to change, desperately--but not now, thank you.

I want to eat lots of chocolate chip cookies and go to sleep and not dream. But that isn't going to happen.

Maybe it's the weather. Windy days always did make me restless.

Libraries are dangerous. Even though you have seven books already checked out and no chance of finishing them all by their due dates, more books will call out to you from the shelves, nonfiction tantalizing you with knowledge of all the wonders of the world while fiction piteously cries out to you, "Read me! Read meeeeeeeeeee!" Even books in foreign languages may seduce you, leaving you overcome by desire to learn Serbo-Croatian.

Celestial Seasonings Tuscany Orange Spice tea is dangerous. With 40 milligrams of caffeine (compared to, say, 160 in a double espresso), it gives you a little lift without startling you in any way; so you, beguiled by the delightful taste and seeming harmlessness of the brew, keep drinking and drinking until you are bouncing off the walls and caroming off random pieces of (now-broken) furniture.

Pop music is dangerous. Cute little tunes get stuck in your head and you find yourself singing

Hey
You know you're gonna live
To fight another day
It's just today things ain't so good
Get yourself back again
You've got so much love
That you can't afford to lose

Goodbye heartbreak
Don't look for me 'cos I don't need you now
So long, heartache
Don't look for me 'cos I don't need you now

I don't need you now
I don't need you now
I don't need you now
Hey-heeeey

and getting strange looks from your fellow Safeway shoppers because the Muzak isn't even playing the Lighthouse Family.

With such grave dangers in this world, it truly is a miracle the species survives at all.

Woke up this morning sometime around 4 or a bit later and began to panic (not for the first, or, I'm sure, the last time) about my financial situation. If I don't get some money in the next 3 days, I'll reach the third month straight of not paying my rent. Landlord's understanding, but even the most understanding person would be thinking of ways to get rid of me by now.

Oh joy, isn't it fun to be jobless and poor?

Anyway, I never like panicking for long, so I distracted myself by reading a bit of Tom Lutz's book Crying: The Natural & Cultural History of Tears. Haven't gotten very far, but have so far read a little about the physical pleasures of tears, the relief, the satiety of a good cry.

Hmph. All my life I've been a crier, and all my life I've never been allowed that kind of pleasure being spoken of. Like most folks who can't keep their faces dry on demand, I've been accused of being manipulative or told that big girls don't cry. (The obvious exception here being when my mother died and a friend of hers told a friend of mine that I wasn't crying enough at the funeral--"People will think she didn't love her mother." Yeah, the fact that I was half disbelieving that Mom was dead and half relieved that she was out of her pain didn't matter, I was still supposed to be able to control my tears on demand for the public's sake.) So I'm only allowed to feel guilty for my tears, or at the very best feel like a pathetic useless slob for not being able to stop them.

Y'know, I feel terribly cheated.

Anger is terribly seductive, particularly the varieties of righteous indignation. Some people react to anger the way they do to falling in love. They think of nothing but the object of their affect. They savor every nuance of their emotion like a grand feast of delectable morsels. They nurture their feelings like a spring garden, sparing no effort and little expense in making it grow lushly, luxuriantly.

Other people are afraid of their anger. They repress it, deny that they ever felt it, pretend to have nothing but happy fluffy bunny feelings for the whole world around them. Sometimes they admit to sadness over the misery in the world, but never anger.

I am not afraid to admit my anger. At the moment, I'm afraid of how unafraid I am of my anger. I have been seething with rage at any number of things. Some of the anger is perfectly justified, of course; perhaps most of it is. But I have never wanted to be one of those people who nurture their anger 'til it grows into hatred, and I have been in danger of becoming one this week. This descent into mad fury must stop. I have far better things to do with this energy.

God help me, I don't think I can last another night without sleep. I pray that I can do something productive tomorrow.

Many of you have been writing wonderful, thought-provoking posts which I would love to respond to in detail. Unfortunately, aliens have abducted the vast majority of my brain cells and they (the aliens) refuse to return them (the brain cells) until I--

Sorry, I have been informed that I may not reveal what it is the aliens would have me do if I ever want to see my brain cells alive again. However, since I like you people, I will warn you that you must not snort garlic salt up your nose while humming the theme tune to Bonanza until after June 4, 2002 or you will regret it.