Thursday, June 9, 2011

Blank Brains and Bug Bites



Blank Brains and Bug Bites


For today's musing, lemme talk to the guys for a couple minutes, if I may. You ladies may read on, of course – you're always welcome - but let me hunker down with the males for a bit.


Did you guys ever have someone walk up to you and ask what's on your mind? Or say, “A penny for your thoughts?” Or have your spouse say, “What're ya thinkin' about, honey?” These queries seem to be invariably posed by a women. And you almost always turn to them and answer, “nothing.”


And mean it?


I know this a subject for stand-up comedians and we've all probably heard variations on this theme – how guys usually aren't thinking about anything and women are always thinking about stuff. Always. At least I know I have.


And I think there's way more than a grain of truth to the jokes and stories on this subject. You see, there are vast stretches of time where I'm not really thinking about anything at all! Nothing. Nada. Zip. Most every day. Oh, yes, there are some lights still burning in there. This is where I live and I gotta keep the machinery working and all that stuff. But actual thoughts? Naw, not really.


Maybe it would behoove me at this point in time to break down brain activity, at least my brain activity, into two categories. High-level and low-level. High level brain activity could be defined as where I'm actively speaking to myself, mentally, in English words, or working on a solution to a problem, or actively planning something, or learning something. If I'm trying to write a blog, like I'm doing right now, that takes a lot of high-level thought. Putting words together coherently, phrasing, deciding whether I want to talk about this now or that now. In what sequence I want to put my thoughts. How is the flow going and am I done with my present topic.


That's, to me, fairly high level.


Am I in that mode all the time? Of course not. If I hit high-level an hour or two a day that's probably about par for the course. The rest of the time? Low level. Just on cruise control. Just basic maintenance stuff – hungry/not hungry, thirsty/not thirsty, hot/cold, tired/energetic, sleepy/awake. Make the muscles do this or that. Eat. Doze. Maybe I've got an ear-bug and am hearing a song repeat over and over. Maybe I'm just in receive mode and am just soaking up the environment without making any judgments or internal dialog. Or reading and letting the words just soak in without pondering them. Or listening to music and just grooving. Or watching TV, the old mind number itself.


Or just in a pleasant fog with nothing much going on at all.


These low level thoughts, if thoughts they really are, generally are short and unfocused. They don't generate any spark or response and come and go like a variable breeze on a summer day. Oh, and sex of course. Gotta mention that. That crosses the male mind... fairly often I'd say. Maybe not every seven seconds, or fifteen seconds, or five minutes, or... well, you fill in the number. The rumor mill abounds with assertions on how often it happens. Suffice it to say, from personal observations, it's fairly often.


I have no idea whether this high-low thing is genetic, or something to do with the Y chromosome or possibly both sexes do it. But if women go low-level, they don't seem to talk about it much. At least that I can recall. When you ask them what they're thinking about, they'll tell ya!


So when a woman asks a man what he's thinking about and he says, “nothing”, you can generally take that answer to the bank.


He's telling the truth.


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I can be really, really stupid some days if I set my mind to it. And those episodes of stupidity invariably lead to unpleasant consequences. Always. I've been lucky that most of the consequences I've been subjected to, at least recently, haven't been in the life-threatening category, but there is usually some uncomfortable debt to be paid.


For instance...


Last week I went geocaching with my wife. We do this a lot in the summer time, usually on weekends when we can get together. On Sunday last week we headed out to search for a dozen caches or so. One of the first ones that we looked for was about a half-mile down a paved bike/hike trail in the county just south of our home. Since my wife had a buggered-up foot, she was basically just along for the ride. She didn't want to aggravate the injury, so she just sat in the car while I went searching. Like I said, one of the first caches to be found was down this paved trail, then off the trail a hundred yards into the bush, across a small creek and up a slight embankment. It was late spring and the woods that the trail passed through were beautiful with the trees all in full leaf, the birds singing, the air quite warm and the sun beaming down. We'd had a lot of rain the previous weeks and it was great seeing a day with no rain for a change. When I'd traversed the first half-mile, left the paved trail and started back into the bush area, I realized that I had forgotten to perform an action that I knew I should have performed.


I'd neglected to spray myself with bug dope.


I looked back down the long trail I had just walked. That'd be another mile or so and, as lovely as the day was I didn't want to have to walk that far again. So I decided I'd just get this one and spray myself when I got back to the car. Since we'd had so much rain recently, the insect population in the bushes was plentiful and joyfully waiting for me. The mosquitoes were thick and very, very hungry. I spent some long minutes swatting the blood-suckers while searching for the “treasure”. And ruing my lapse in preparation. Finally I found the cache, signed the logbook and returned to the main trail and thence back to the car. I was scratching a number of skeeter bites the whole way and mentally kicking myself for stupidity.


The rest of the day was similar but I was heavily lathered with repellent for those quests.


Unfortunately there were more vermin in the bushes on that fine Sunday afternoon than just mosquitoes. The next day I found myself itching again and I examined where the sensations were coming from. I found a number of reddish blotches and immediately identified them. They weren't mosquito bites. I'd got into some chiggers again.


Rats!


I'd had chigger bites in the past and knew I had a number of days to come where I'd be one miserable son-of-a-gun. And I have been. It's been about 5 days since the “infestation” and the incessant itching from the miserable little bumps is starting to ease off now.


Almost.


And so I guess I have to say, once again, lesson learned. Of course I said it the last time I got chigger bit.


Maybe if my brain wasn't in low-level all the time I'd have applied some high-level bug dope before leaving the house!




Monday, June 6, 2011

The Hunger



The Hunger


I finished my dinner tonight, laid down my fork, took a last swig of the soda I was drinking and then looked around. I felt like I was still hungry. Sort of. I thought about what I'd just eaten and realized that I shouldn't be hungry. I'd had more than enough food. But... Dammit. I felt like I was still hungry. But, for what? I had some fruit and yogurt for later in the evening. Didn't need it now. Didn't want it now.


Then I realized what I was hungry for. I hate to admit it and I hate to have to admit it.


I wanted a cigarette. Sure as hell, a cigarette would taste just fine right about now.


Let me collect my thoughts for a moment while I take a couple deep breaths.


OK, let's continue.


To begin with, you have to realize that I'd quit smoking over 20 years ago. More like 22 or thereabouts. I haven't taken one puff since then. Not one. I know myself and I know how damn hard it was to get off them. I can even recall the process that I went through to get that particular monkey off my back like it was yesterday.


I'd tried to quit a number of times. I really did. Tried cutting down. Tried the gum. Tried cold turkey. And also tried most of the other ways that were in vogue two decades ago. Nothing worked. I always returned to the comforts of my old friend tobacco. I finally had a conversation with a man with whom I worked who'd quit by using the patch. I knew the guy and I knew he smoked LOTS more than I did. He was a veritable chimney! And he'd quit using the smoke-cessation patch.


So I thought, if him, why not me?


At my next visit to my doctor I told him I wanted give the patch a try. It was a prescription item back in those days. He was a bit hesitant as my other attempts had ended so ignominiously. But he acquiesced and wrote me the script.


I remember the day I quit. I'd picked a day about a week after I had visited the drugstore and had the patches in hand. I had a little less than a pack of cigarettes left at the end of the day before, so I smoked one more before going to sleep and pitched the rest into the trash. I think I slipped a patch on before going to bed so I'd keep my nicotine level up. I woke up the next morning and suddenly remembered that I had quit.


It wasn't the best morning of my life.


First off just let me say that it was really, really weird. I won't say my life before that day revolved around smoking but, when I actually thought about it, I realized that yes, it did.


The feeling was exactly like a dear friend had died. That's honestly how it felt.


That day and for many days afterward my body was being delivered a dose of nicotine by the patch on my arm. But the patch was just an alternate delivery system. My normal delivery system, the big hit from a cigarette, was no longer available. Come to think of it, weird doesn't even begin to describe it. The psychological crutch that smoking is was gone and I had to “walk” without that crutch. I remember that one of the oddest part about those first few weeks was how strange my hands felt. I had realized that there is a lot of ritual involved with smoking. The handling of the cigarette, the lighter, the motions involved with smoking it, flicking the ashes, blowing out the smoke, putting out the butt. Etc. and etc.


My hands felt huge and useless hanging on the bottom of my arms. They had nothing to do! A large part of their previous life had been involved with the rituals of smoking.


And those rituals were now gone.


I made sure my patch was changed at exactly the correct times. I knew that my body still needed the drug and I knew that was the only way it was going to get it. I was crabby, I admit. Maybe more than I like to recall. I'm sure my wife and son could add some side notes here on my behavior during those weeks and months. The addiction to nicotine is powerful, more powerful than that of cocaine according to some accounts, and it had its claws in me deep. But I soldiered onward. I chewed on toothpicks by the boxful. And ate carrots and celery until I could hardly look at them. Anything to keep my mouth and hands busy while the bad habits of many, many years slowly dissolved. Over time the strength of the patches decreased and finally, one day I peeled the last one off. I was free!


But to say the urge was gone would be untrue. I missed smoking pretty much every day. I did finally get to the point where the smell of someone else smoking was starting to be a bit unpleasant. But that came a couple years after quitting. Before that the smell of smoke was still intoxicating, still a siren's call. I'd go out with friends who still smoked and sit downwind from them to make sure I got a whiff of their smoke. But I knew to never touch one. That'd lead to another and another and... I'd be a smoker again at once. Couldn't chance it.


So I've been off the drug for a couple decades. And the urge to smoke is gone. Or, to be honest, almost gone.


But... But... Every now and again my mind or my body remembers. And it remembers how simply marvelous a cigarette tasted after my evening meal. How it provided an end cap to the meal and satisfied a hunger than wasn't satisfied by food no matter how much you ate.


And that is what I think I was missing tonight.


Of course I'd never dream of getting a smoke now. That'd be ludicrous after all those years. Besides being incredibly expensive compared to what I used to pay.


But that ol' urge likes to pop up now and again. It likes to step in the door and say, Hello my old friend. How are you doing? How about you and I going down memory lane for a bit, just for old time's sake. And while we're there, how about a smoke?


So I sit here and smile at my old desires kicking in. I imagine the silky feel of the cigarette between my fingers, I hear the distinctive sound a cigarette lighter makes as the flame jets out, I hear the hiss of the tobacco as it feels the heat of the fire, the blue-gray smoke curling up from the glowing tip and swirling in the air currents. I imagine the feel of the dense smoke as it slides down my throat and how the smooth bite of the smoke feels as it goes into my lungs. And I can still feel the kick of the smoke as it hits all the needy spots in my body, lighting up all the receptors and feeling so damn good.


It's almost pornographic to imagine!


And tonight, as the minutes pass, I feel the urge die away. It always does now. Always. There's really no need for the drama anymore. That stuff is way, way in the past.


Uh-huh. Sure...


I remember my father saying something in his last year of life. He said that if he knew he was going to die sometime soon, he'd start smoking again. That day. And he'd been off cigarettes for many, many years at that time.


He missed it that much.


I remembered his words.


I hope I never say them.


But I still remember them.


I still remember.