Little blue pills

I just put Marie on the plane to fly home, after she visited me here for a couple of days. This makes the ... what? fourth? ... time she's visited me. I've visited her once (twice if you count the trip to her family's vacation home). I'm sure she has noticed the discrepancy and is mulling it.

It was fun having her here. Two nights ago we had my neighbors over for dinner, drank plenty of wine, and talked for hours. Yesterday she and I had lunch with one of my friends from work (well OK, my only real friend from work) ... and again, talked amiably until I had to get back for a meeting. She liked all of them; I haven't heard any feedback on her yet, but everybody seemed positive enough. It was all good.

The sex was mostly good, but I use the word "mostly" with care. As I've mentioned before, I've broken down and gotten a prescription for Viagra. And the erections have been great: solid and very durable. Marie, who is in her 50's but never had much of a sex life before getting together with me, was ecstatic. Many times, and very happily. She keeps making discoveries that if she moves like so and I pitch the angle there, ... oooh, aaah, that's really nice!

What I didn't do was come. Ever. I don't know if it is old age, or the medication, or one of my other medications, or just that I wasn't in a sufficiently rutting state of mind. But whatever it was, I could keep going until after a while I'd kind of lose interest and stop. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Last night Marie asked me if I thought I'd ever want to live with someone again. It sounds like she really hasn't given up wanting to be "Mrs. Tanatu". I told her I couldn't vouch for the future, but today No. Today I love visiting with people, having them over for dinner, talking long into the night, even fucking ... and then having my own private space I can retreat into, where I can rest and recuperate. She sighed and said Yes, she'd read advice that when you enter a romantic relationship you should never do it with the expectation that the other person is going to change in this or that way for you. I agreed, adding only the modification that the other person might indeed change -- but it's still a bad idea to hope that that change is going to be in the exact direction you want. So we cuddled until we fell asleep, and this morning she caught a plane home.

But yes, I think that's what she wants.
    

Thinking like a Tanatu

Son 2 phoned me from school about an hour ago, in high dudgeon. He said he was mad and had to vent steam at somebody. What was he so mad about? He had just gotten out of his freshman humanities class, where they had had a discussion about the Euthyphro, the Apology, and the Crito. Son 2 had tried to make an argument about how people’s understanding of justice depends on the government they live under … and nobody understood what he was talking about. Literally nobody. He said he was frustrated to the point of bursting at “trying to make them think like a Tanatu.” (Not that we Tanatus have any corner on that market, of course, but I guess in his class it was starting to look that way.)

 

I told him that actually I could see some nits to pick in his thesis, and he accepted that. Of course there are nits to pick! That’s what drives the conversation forward. But that nobody could even understand him …!

 

So then I went on to add two other comments. (1) Welcome to large public universities. (2) Not to put too fine a point on it, but … welcome to [the state where he’s going to school]. Yes, they have a fine agriculture program. But they’re not known as a beacon of philosophical learning.

 

Meanwhile his best friend from high school is attending a liberal arts college in California, and says people introduce themselves with both their name and their preferred pronoun (he or she) … rather than leaving it to you to guess, I suppose.

 

That may encapsulate the whole red-state/blue-state thing right there ….

 

 

Pay attention, dammit!

About a month ago, I tripped and fell on my way home from my volunteer work. Here's how I described it to Marie:

I tripped and fell while walking home from [my volunteer work]. More exactly I was watching a CNN segment on my iPhone and not watching where I was going, so I set my foot down wrong and my right ankle folded under me the way it did in Peru. (I told you that story, didn't I?) So I landed on my face in the middle of a residential side street. Fortunately there were no cars coming by. I pulled myself up, retrieved my phone (which had skidded a couple feet away, still playing), turned it off, and walked slowly the rest of the way home with exaggerated caution. The end result was a bruised and bloody nose (though it's not bleeding any more) and one scraped knee (which actually looked worse once I cleaned off the dirt because you could see the blood). I wiped the knee clean with a washcloth and put a bandage on it. My nose has stopped bleeding.

The moral of the story is to watch where the hell you're going. Also that I am not immune from damn-fool stupidity and inattention.

Since then I have been walking much more slowly and attentively. But do I sometimes think of other things? Of course! I've always thought about things while I walk! So it happened again last Thursday.

... I fell again. I was looking for a place to cross the street in the middle of the block, didn't watch the unevenness of the curb, and crumpled. It was better this time: I was moving a lot more slowly so I had effectively no forward momentum, and my hands were free so I could cover my head. I just crumpled in place, right next to a sign giving the parking restrictions. A man was unlocking his bike from the same sign, and he helped me right up. I had banged up my left knee again, but it wasn't bleeding this time. 

So I made my way on to Sangha. [One of the two that I try to attend weekly, when I'm in town.] And that was a good thing, because it gave me space to calm down. Because while I was physically in much better shape than after my fall 33 days ago, I was upset and scared. Twice in just over a month? What's the common factor? I have NOT been having more generalized balance problems. In fact I have walked on dirt trails between then and now, just fine. But also in the last month I have been far more aware of the pavement under my feet; I have walked a lot slower than before; I take more care to look where I'm going. And I still fell, because I was watching the traffic and not my feet. Do I have to watch my feet for every step? Ain't gonna happen. Or just never step off sidewalks into the street? Intriguing idea but still impractical. Do I need to see a foot specialist? And do what -- encase my right ankle in a brace that prevents it from bending? That doesn't sound right. I don't know. I'm very confused and still a little bit scared of it. 

Marie is very worried, because she doesn't want me to faceplant in front of oncoming traffic. I told a friend at work and he just kidded me about it. What do you want, a walker? Trust me, it's just that you weren't paying attention. It's nothing worse.

Yeah, I'm sure he's right. So this evening I was walking home from my volunteer work again, paying exaggerated attention to the sidewalk (or so I thought) but also mulling how to respond now that Wife is demanding more money again ... and I stepped in a pile of dog shit. With the same foot that twice crumpled beneath me ... three times if you count Peru.

Somebody is trying to get my attention -- a Somebody with a remarkably sophomoric sense of humor. And I think the message is, Watch where the fuck you're going! Pay attention! Be mindful!

I'm starting to think that I need to turn every walk into Walking Mindfulness Meditation. Just bloody wonderful.