Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

Discerning Friendship—One Introvert’s Take

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , , , , on 01 Jul 2025| 2 Comments »

I’ve never had a lot of friends. My cadre of close friends in school could usually be counted on one hand. Even now my FB “Friends” list barely hits triple digits, and few of those are close friends. It takes a while for me to form a friendship with someone new, both because of my innate stand-offishness, and because—I’ll admit—I’m an acquired taste.

Despite this, I do have some close friendships, and it’s not surprising that, now that I’m in my 60s, most of those are measured in decades. However, it’s a fact that over time people change, and that sometimes relationships require work, need recalibration, or simply cease to function altogether. It is also a fact that sometimes those troublesome changes are in me and are not my friend’s responsibility.

Recent events—and the reality that I and my cohort have begun to grey and stiffen—have led me to take a long look at the nature of my friendships, primarily to understand why some have begun to falter, but also to understand any changing dynamics, and to set my expectations at realistic levels. I need to know on whom I can rely.

I am a 100% introvert and was also the “invisible” child in my family, the kid my parents rarely had to worry about. As a result, I’ve always been self-reliant (often to a fault), I rarely ask for help (even when it is needed), and I navigate my social world in such a way as to create the least disturbance in my wake. This last one means a few things: I strive to take genuine interest in my friends’ lives and activities, to be generous with my time and resources, to be a reliable supporter and helper in time of need, and to be a relatively drama-free addition to the friendship.

And thus my issue, for when I do ask for help, I really need it, and when I raise concerns of a perceived imbalance, it’s serious. However—perhaps due to my pattern of self-sufficiency, or because I have misjudged the reciprocity of the relationship—responses are often muted and my requests easily shrugged off.

It is this level of reciprocity, I have discovered, that is a critical factor. Now that I recognize this, it is easy to see the difference it makes. Does this friend reach out to see how I’m doing? Do they express curiosity about things that are on my interest list but not on theirs? How well does the other know me, and how well do I know them?

In many friendships, this is irrelevant. Our interactions are cordial, conversations rarely dive deep, and we have large gaps in our knowledge of one another. But we enjoy our visits and interact over mutual interests. We’re not close, but we’re definitely friends.

In close relationships—my inner circle, if you will—my expectations are higher. Conversations are often more deep and detailed, and my knowledge about the other’s life is more extensive. I expect we have greater consideration for one another, a deeper knowledge of likes and dislikes. And I expect that we have a strong mutual concern for each other’s well-being.

When difficulties arise (I now realize), it is when this reciprocity is not present in what I had considered to be a close friendship. It is here that my expectations have proven to be too high, which has led to disappointment, strife, and ruptures in relationships.

Social relationships and etiquette are fuzzy things with few definitive boundaries. They are usually founded on tacit understanding of the rules, rules discussed more in the breach than in the observance, and they are rife with particulars unique to the friends involved.

But it is neither fair nor reasonable for me to expect a friend to do all for me that I might do for them. One can rarely know the depth of a friendship until it is tested, but I believe I have found a tool that I can use to better judge my position as seen from another’s perspective.

Friendships can be marvelously resilient or shockingly fragile. They can survive long neglect or require constant maintenance. None of these traits are any better or worse than the others; they are not flaws, but mere attributes of the relationship. Denying their existence is fruitless, but while we must accept them as facts, it does not mean they are satisfactory to our needs.

The key—for me anyway—is being honest about the relationship; that way, I can avoid critical misunderstandings and failed expectations. My hope is that I can avoid mistakes such as I’ve made in the past and the heartache that often came with them.

 

k

 

Read Full Post »

Patient 3914744

Posted in Health, Seattle, tagged , , , , on 28 Jun 2025| 2 Comments »

On Tuesday, I said two words that I had never spoken to anyone before.

“I’m scared,” I told Matt.

Matt was a giant. At 6’8” tall, with a firefighter’s physique, he was an imposing presence. He’d had to duck to enter our front door, and when he knelt down in front of the couch on which I sat, to apply the electrodes to my chest and arm, he still towered over me. A phalanx of men surrounded me, all of similar build but of mere mortal height. The cul-de-sac was filled by a massive fire truck that dwarfed the ambulance, both with red lights spinning, engines purring at poised rest. My wife had been on the doorstep, directing them toward me—“Upstairs, and to the right”—and was now providing one of the human-sized EMTs with info on what had preceded our call to 911. But despite Matt’s outsized frame, he was a calming presence, a rock of competence and confidence, spiced with a soupçon of humor that evoked a brotherly trust within my rapidly pounding heart.

Of course, I’d been scared before, but I’d never admitted it aloud, in the moment. Car wrecks, sudden job loss, a rock climbing accident, nearly losing a hand in a newspaper web press, a myriad injuries and mishaps, a televised viola solo in Vaughan-Williams’ “London” Symphony No. 2—I was no stranger to fear, but never had I given voice to that emotion, that primal, skin-tightening, gut-loosening feeling that strikes out of the storm like St. Elmo’s Fire.

This time, though, with a kernel of blue-white heat burning in my chest a centimeter above my heart, with my body pulsating at every heartbeat like an over-filled balloon, with the numbers on the BP monitor angrily flashing “248/195 . . . 248/195 . . .”, the fear was existential.

Matt winked. “Of course you are.”

What followed was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride to the hospital, an hours-long session of “hurry up and wait” in the ER, an uncomfortable and sleepless night followed by an early morning angioplasty, and then by an echo-cardiogram and more poking, tapping, prodding, squeezing, injecting, testing, and monitoring.

In the end, obviously, I survived. Compared to some folks I know, my experience was relatively minor (one artery blockage, handled with one stent and a few angioplasties, no permanent damage to the heart), and the only true casualty was my illusion of invulnerability. I may have been a 66-year old male, non-smoker, active, with no daily meds and no chronic illness or history of heart trouble, but that didn’t matter. Matt, the herculean EMT, perhaps he was a demigod, but I . . . no, I was mortal.

Some friends really came through for us, while others (sadly) disappointed. Helpful advice came in from many quarters, as did well wishes. And I will forever remember all the professionals—a cadre of EMTs, four MDs, a half-dozen RNs, a score of technicians, and support staff uncounted—who all, with professionalism and kindness and competence and humor, kept us going, instilling hope, calming fears, and distracting us at the trying points of our journey. To them, my eternal thanks. You saved me, in many ways.

Admitting my fear to Matt was a turning point, a true and unvarnished admission of my own mortality, and it affected not just this experience, but the rest of my life, moving forward. I am not immortal. I can be broken. I do need to take specific care of myself, rather than trusting in my innate constitution and past record of good health.

It’s not that I will be living in fear, constantly worrying that Death waits around the next corner, but just as I check my side-view mirror before changing lanes, there are simple precautions I can take to keep myself in good nick as long as possible.

Onward.

k

Shout out to the staff at the UW Medical Center – Northwest ER and SCU, and to the great guys at SFD Station #65. You were all wonderful!

Read Full Post »

Anticipation

Posted in Books, Creativity, tagged , , , , , on 16 May 2025| 1 Comment »

There is something special that happens, something ephemeral and transitory, when I approach the end of a good book. It can go one of two ways: I either rush headlong toward the conclusion, driven forward by a thirst for the sweet wine of revelation and release, or I hold off, pacing my approach, lingering over what has come before whilst imagining, wondering, whetting my hunger for the last few chapters. It is a magic, specific to books, this control, this opportunity to choose.

When we watch a movie, the pace is set for us, as we experience the timing, the focus, the framing decisions of director, cinematographer, and editor. The Pause button is analogous, but a weak shadow, often used merely to grab a nosh, hit the loo, or tend to a load of laundry in the dryer. One does not pause a film in its approach to a climactic scene merely to reflect on all the scenes that have come before.

But with a novel, we are the director, we frame the shots, and we flesh out the rooms and towns and landscapes—sketched by the author—with costumes and onlookers and paths of our own fashioning. In a book, we are the collaborators, assisting the author in their work. We bring the words to life in our mind’s eye, and in the case of a well-written book, it is a joy, this work, this journey, so as the pages tick past, from recto to verso, as the end-papers grow nearer, we must choose: race ahead? or slow-walk our way to the last page?

(For those of you who read the ending of a book first, no judgment—okay, a little judgment—but I think you’re missing out on one of readings truly great pleasures. That’s not to say I’ve never read a book that didn’t go along swimmingly only to have a massively sucky ending, but I’ve only thrown a handful of books across the room for that reason, so for me, knowing the ending ahead of time would ruin far more than it would preserve.)

The decade past, my fiction diet has been lacking. The ongoing stresses of work, coupled with what I perceive as the slow (and now much more rapid) deconstruction of our national norms, left my brain ill-equipped to concentrate sufficiently on a novel. The run-up to retirement was anything but stress-free. Disappointingly, the first year of retirement was likewise fraught with unexpected challenges, from dealing with new insurance carriers to a cancer scare to dealing with large household projects and more. So, my first year as a retiree was not just me, lying in my hammock, a novel in one hand and a wee dram of whisky in the other.

Since my recent non-diagnosis, however, I’ve redoubled my efforts on the fiction reading score, and once more I find myself in the delicious dilemma described above. I purchased several books that were on sale, titles and authors about which I knew nothing, the sale decision made solely on the strength of the blurb, and so far I have two titles on this year’s list of Books Read. One turned out to be a mystery, and I found myself wholly absorbed as I read to the conclusion; the other was a surprisingly twisty bit of magic realism, and for that my pace slowed, savoring the last chapters.

I plan to foster this renewed joy of reading books, physical books, in the months (and years) to come. It used to be that I never walked anywhere, stood in any queue, or waited for any bus without having a book in my hand. I took a book with me from room to room, catch a page or two while the tea water was heating, or read a chapter before sleep. I’m hoping that, like riding a bike, these habits will return, that the tablet I have been carrying with me everywhere is exchanged for a dog-eared paperback with a tattered receipt as a bookmark. It’ll take some effort, but I suspect it’ll be worth it.

k

Read Full Post »

Soft Reset

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 29 Apr 2025| 5 Comments »

For about three months there has been one main question on my mind: What grade of cancer is it?

For the past 65+ years, my body has been pretty reliable. Aside from bad eyes, soft teeth, and legs too short for my height, it has performed well. Oh, there have been episodes—a back injury that plagued me for decades, a stress level that led to a barrage of investigative tests, a critical bout of appendicitis—but I’ve reached retirement age without needing any prescriptions and my main complaints center around stiff joints and thinning hair.

In short, my body has been a real trouper.

I’ve also tried to approach life with a “data-driven” mindset, where study and expertise gather and analyze information in order to formulate probable outcomes and guide my actions. Just as I trust that someone who has studied turtles for thirty years knows more about turtles than I do, and that someone who restores cars knows more about internal combustion than do I, so too do I trust that medical professionals, who have years (sometimes decades) of study and experience under their belt, who are steeped in the knowledge and research of their chosen field, are better qualified to interpret the results of medical tests than I am.

So, in January, when blood tests came back that showed an elevated PSA level, and my doc was concerned that this indicated a 25% chance that I had developed prostate cancer, I was likewise concerned. A 25% chance wasn’t big, but it wasn’t nothing, and we agreed that further investigation was warranted.

Then, in February, when the MRI she ordered showed a lesion on my prostate, and that lesion was determined to have an 80% likelihood of being cancer, my data-driven mindset accepted a cancer diagnosis as the most likely outcome, and the only thing left to determine was what “grade” of cancer it was. Was it the “low” grade type—not aggressive, slow-growing, low risk of complication/metastasis—where the consensus recommended monitoring rather than any active measures? Was it the “intermediate” type, where risks increased, treatments became more active, and outcomes a bit more squishy in predictability? Or the “high” grade, where invasive, sometimes radical treatment was indicated?

Looking deeper into these grades, I learned that about half of such cancers were in the “low” group, and 40–45% were in the “intermediate” group. That left only 5–10% of cancers in the “high” group. To know what grade of cancer, though, required a biopsy and because of the lesion’s location, not an easy biopsy. I will not go into details.

And it was in that month, waiting to have the biopsy, and then the near fortnight between biopsy and results, that my data-driven mindset failed me.

Cancer is not a fun word. It does not wrap one up in a warm blanket of fuzzy good feelings. Having friends and relatives who have battled and (thankfully) made it through their cancer treatments, I know that cancer is not a death sentence. However, having had a mother and step-mother die of cancers, I know that this is not a given. Cancer can and does kill. Often. And though I’ve long heard that “If you get cancer, prostate cancer is the one you want to get,” that men with low-grade prostate cancer often live for decades and usually die of something else, and though I was looking at a 90–95% chance that this cancer was low or intermediate grade, none of that mattered as my data-driven mindset was overcome when my reptilian brain took charge and spent those six weeks between scheduling the biopsy and receiving the results in a fight-or-flight battle with the 5–10% probability of a “high” grade diagnosis.

And I mean a serious battle. Like, a Why bother planting those roses? battle. A No point outlining that novel now scale battle. An I worked so fucking hard to make a safe retirement for us and now this? cage-match battle.

There was no 90–95% chance. Try as I might, despite desperate attempts to focus on the real probabilities, there was only the 5–10%.

During those six weeks my fears blossomed, unfurling their cankerous petals, until Week Three when they began to wither and fade as within me there began to grow a stony, reluctant acceptance. “Worst-case scenario” began to preface much of my thinking, and I started the process of evaluating my life, cataloguing faults and failures, strengths and successes, all in neatly-ordered columns. Aside from the fact that I was really really looking forward to having another quarter-century (give or take) to doink around on the planet, if I did have to “get my affairs in order,” I felt like I’d done a pretty good job of it, overall, and those who depended on me would be taken care of.

It wasn’t a peaceful state of mind, it wasn’t pleasant, but it was acceptable.

Yesterday, the results came in. No cancer. None. Nada. Zip. Due to the difficult position of the lesion, he’d taken three times the usual number of core samples he usually took, just to make sure. All came back negative for cancer.

Remember, up top, when I mentioned that the lesion seen in the MRI had an 80% chance of being cancer? The 80% that has driven my thinking for months? Turns out I’m in the other 20%. Probabilities are just that: probabilities.

Do I regret my data-driven approach to all this? No. Concentrating on the most likely outcomes, while remaining cognizant of the outliers, was a gentler journey than driving blithely down the “happy path” only to smash into a brick wall, should my diagnosis have gone the other way.

I am grateful, exceedingly grateful, that it worked out as it did. I’m grateful for the strength and steadfastness of my wife. I’m grateful for the caring and empathetic treatment from my medical team (nurses absolutely rock). And I’m actually grateful for the opportunity I was given, to see my life from a new perspective, to evaluate my existence in the aggregate rather than the discrete, and to experience this “soft reset” that will now color and inform my approach to what I hope is another quarter-century (give or take) to doink around the planet.

Onward.

k

Read Full Post »

Disappeared

Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 17 Apr 2025| 1 Comment »

William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”

More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

Setting aside my opinions about the real Sir Thomas More, I have always found the above exchange (spoken by characters in Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons) to be a powerful reminder on the importance of the rule of law.

It is a particularly relevant exchange, today, when we have this same argument playing out in America. Why allow a terrorist to defend himself? Why allow a criminal the benefit of the law?

You may have heard of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man from El Salvador who had been living in the United States. You may know that he entered the U.S. illegally after fleeing gang persecution in his native country. You may have heard that Mr. Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang. You may have heard that his wife (a U.S. citizen) at one point received a Temporary Restraining Order against her husband. You may have heard Mr. Garcia referred to as a “terrorist.” You may also have heard that Mr. Garcia has always denied being affiliated with any gang, and that he has not been charged with any crime. And you may even have heard that the Trump administration admitted in court documents that Mr. Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error,” but that they don’t plan on doing anything about it. “Oopsie,” as the president of El Salvador said, with a nod and a wink.

You may have heard all of that. But all of that is irrelevant.

What is relevant is that Mr. Garcia was living within the jurisdiction of United States and was therefore subject to our laws—all of our laws—when he was taken into custody and deported without a hearing, without any charges filed, without a chance to challenge the assertions leveled against him. Based solely on an anonymous tip, he was designated a member of MS-13 (and thus a “terrorist”) and summarily sent to a notorious gulag in El Salvador.

So, why should we care if an alleged terrorist and gang-banger was “accidentally” deported to one of the worst prisons in the Western Hemisphere? Why should we care if Mr. Garcia didn’t get to mount a defense, to challenge the accusations made against him, to have his day in court?

Why should we care if our government has “cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

Consider this: It was only this February that the Trump administration designated MS-13 as a “terrorist organization,” making members subject (tenuously) to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Pursuant to that designation, in March, Mr. Garcia was picked up as an alleged member (and thus, a terrorist), and renditioned without charge or trial to the prison in El Salvador.

Within six weeks, that happened. Also in that time, Mr. Trump has referred to protesters against Elon Musk and Tesla as “domestic terrorists,” and has mused publicly that next he wants to send “home grown” criminals—meaning American citizens—to that same Salvadoran gulag. Do you think, with “the laws all being flat,” that you or I or our outspoken friend or our activist cousin would be allowed our right to due process if we were deemed “terrorists” by this Administration? If anyone—including an American citizen—can be falsely designated a terrorist, would there be any laws left to protect us? Even if that accusation was merely an “administrative error?”

Our Constitution, in its Fourteenth Amendment, guarantees everyone person living within our nation’s jurisdiction—that’s every person, not just every citizen—equal protection under our laws and equal access to due process of those laws.

If it does not apply to Mr. Garcia, the it does not apply to me, and it does not apply to you.

Now, Mr. Garcia may be all or none of the things he’s accused of being. Though I have an opinion, I do not know for sure (and neither do you), because Mr. Garcia has never had a chance to face his accusers to defend himself, and the government has never provided any evidence—inside a courtroom our outside—to prove their assertions.

Mr. Garcia may be the Devil the Trump administration says he is, but I would still give him the benefit of the law.

For my own sake.

k

Read Full Post »

The Lesson

Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Politics, tagged , , , , , , on 31 Mar 2025| 2 Comments »

What you are trying to teach me?
To harm? To hurt? To hate?
That a worthy reputation
is only built through fear?
That honor is irrelevant,
an antiquated ideal?
That rules, golden or base,
apply only to governed
and not the government?

What do you want me to learn?
Cruelty +  Money = Power?
That everything, even a life,
has a market value?
That caring for others’ well-being
is a sucker’s game?
That discord and outrage
are the privilege of the rulers
and not the ruled?

Because that is not the lesson
your actions drive home.

The lesson I am learning,
the lesson that you teach, is
that bullies have no friends, only sycophants,
that predators prey on individuals, not unified fronts,
that small-minded men use power as a weapon, not as a tool,
that loyalty born of fear lasts only as long as the loyal are afraid,
that plans of destructive intent always birth unplanned consequences,
that masses move slowly, react slowly, but once in motion, stay in motion.

The herd now smells the wolves.
Tick-tock.

Read Full Post »

MRI Playlist

Posted in Culture, Music, tagged , , , , , , , on 20 Mar 2025| Leave a Comment »

It was during a recent MRI that I discovered how much my relationship to music has changed.

I’d just been informed that this imaging session would include the use of a contrast agent, gadolinium, which was unexpected. I’ve had MRIs with contrast agents before—specifically back during our search for the cause of my TIA—and I find them annoying, not only because of the (admittedly slight) discomfort, but also because stating that “Heavy metal is in my blood!” is never as funny spoken out loud as it sounds in my head. And so, I was a little off my game, what with the plastic shunt in my arm, the supposedly noise-canceling cans over my ears, and my head deep inside the tube upon which angry ogres would soon begin to pound with ill-tuned hammers, when the technician spoke into the cans.

“Would you like some music?”

“Sure.” Music is almost always a good idea.

“What would you like to listen to?”

It should have been a simple question, and there was a time when it would have been a simple question, back in the day when I actually bought albums and played them so often that, even today, if I were to hear Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick, I could tell you the exact spot where my LP used to skip. But I don’t buy albums anymore. I stream them. More to the point, I rarely queue up specific albums, but rather I stream individual songs, lists of similar-sounding tracks, all curated by an algorithm. I don’t even know the names of many of the artists I listen to; their songs play past without my knowing who they are or the albums they’ve released. (That is, of course, if they release albums, instead of a long parade of singles and EPs.)

This simple question caused my brain to seize up. I tried to think of one of the artists I do know, but I also needed one whose name was easy to relate from the inside of a torpedo tube. The only names I was able to recall would either require that I spell them out—Halestorm, Les Friction. Ursine Vulpine—or were names that I didn’t even know how to pronounce—Nemesea, SVRCINA—so, instead of simply pulling up one of the clearly-named bands from my youth (Genesis, Yes, The Beatles), my brain went to its default, the music to which I was first introduced.

“Classical is fine.”

Turns out, J.D. Vance isn’t the only one who finds listening to classical music unusual, because as my little cubbyhole began to hum and whir and thump and bang, my technician treated me not to Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, but to orchestral renditions of popular songs—at least I presume they were popular songs; I only recognized one of them—which is rather like watching a very self-conscious person try to dance for the first time.

Thankfully, the supposedly noise-canceling cans over my ears didn’t, so the music was mostly drowned out by the MRI’s percussion section, and I found my toes tapping to the ogres’ hammers rather than to the milquetoast rendition of Sia’s “Chandelier.”

Thus, my Twenty Minutes in a Tube ended and I was released from my purgatory, free once more to return to my scattershot playlists of jumbled songs from artists I cannot name.

Progress? I’m not so sure.

k

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »