Collywobbles: An Outward-Facing Journal for Messages from the Flesh

WARNING! This page contains gremlins and demons and things about me you would probably rather not know. The old person's preoccupation and daily accounting of the crumblings. Transparency, you may see, is not always a good thing.

I am not by collywobbles.

Word                                                                                            23 June 2021                                                      

Word got back to me

roundabout way word goes

that you're feeling all contrite

and grovel-down repentetant.

Fossicking for the gold

on the spur of the momenant

has dropped you in the cold

now the naughty colt

creeps back in fold.

NOTHING SAID?

So what's different?

Make me some proposals

Reneging leads to regotionations,

new rules and regulations.

Friday, 13 March, 2020

Got little opportunity to add anytning today. Having an attact of the collywobbles plus too many distractions of daily living.

Typical collywobble symptoms: buzzing in the brain, lethargy, annoying to be upright. Certain sounds, like my dog's sudden high-pitched excited yapping I react with sudden anger, elevated pulse, everything closing in. I just want to be alone but they won't leave me alone, can't get even five uninterrupted minutes. I know this last is not true but it feels that way.

There are more details but no one wants to know about them. Maybe another time to dive into the ulcerative colitis (UC).

I am convinced all of my collywobbles are of an autoimmune origin. 

All of this against a background of Covid-19 on all the media, dominating conversations. All of that is really interesting. I feel strnagly that it is not about me, though I know very well it is very possible that it is something will land on me. 

Thursday 19 March 2020

Collywobbles going strong, wanting to write but it's a struggle to fight the fog. This week there is a strong GI involvement. At least it makes fasting easier.

I still cannot decide how much personal "medical" information I want to lay out here. I don't want to be that old person who goes on and on cataloguing all their ailments. Also known as a bore. But there is the warning at top, enter at your own risk.

It is the background noise of this whole enterprise. One if the things I want to get into writing has to do with managing gremlins. This is certainly a gremlin. Gremlins need love and attention but it has to be done in the right way.

So Penseroso

Come, megrims, mollygrubs and collywobbles!

Aroint thee, sweetness and light!

A problem I am having with collywobbles is that I now am never sure who they really belong to or what body domain sits the cause. Assuming they are about something, which they are just as likely to not be about anything. I'll get concrete.

For some time now my digestive tract––gastrointestinal  or GI system––has been amiss. This causes me some concern as I have been managing living with ulcerative colitis. This is an autoimmune disorder, which means I am attacking me; I have found the enemy and it is me. I've had this for many years and have had only two severe flare ups with little in between but toiet-related annoyances. Enough said there. I have been on a stable dose of medication––an antiinflammatory aimed directly at the bowel––an my GI doc in arecently taking a look in there has started me on an immunomodulating medication. "Hey guys, tone it down in there!" It's a bit of a process getting started on this, a bunch of complex lab work (I am a fast metabolizer, tests confirm what I told her, my doctor). Blood work every two weeks. All this suggests its serious business. 

Then along comes Covid-19 pandemic.

25 MARCH 2020 A RIDDLE:

Malthusians who may believe our current plague will dampen world population growth need to think it further through. What do people do when there's no shopping they can do? The answer will be revealed starting late December.

26 MARCH 2020

I'm not a dancer but I dance.

I'm not a singer but I sing.

I'm not a poet but I act it anyway.

I'm not dead and I'm dying.

I'm not alive and I'm living.

I don't exist and I become.

28 MARCH 2020

I am keen to write today, press forward on the writings. But I awoke feeling like I just wanted to go to sleep. Moving takes such effort. I was going to take Baudie out on a trail for a bit. Walking is an onerous chore. This is the gremlin sometimes called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. When I'm being more formal I call it by the name Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Some like systemic exertion intolerance disease. Mostly I name it Collywobbles. Collywobbles has many ways of expressing. 

You are very healthy, says my doctor, looking at my labs and not so much at me. In a way that's reassuring. I know what she means. I mentiong Chronic Fatigue, and she wordlessly conveys her lack of interest in that diagnosis. After all, it does not show up on any lab work and if it did, so what, there's no medication for it. It was she who also identified I'd had Hashimoto's Thyroid (wonder what Hashimoto was doing for a thyroid).

My neurologist looks at my MRI and sees something "consistent with migraine." She calls it atypical migraine and even though I comes without pain her pet name for it is Headache. "How's the Headache?" she always asks. It's kind of like the ADHD. "How's the Hyperactivity?" Never hyperactive is my reply.

My gastroenterologist is, of course, only interested in my digestive plumbing, mostly my colon. My Ulcerative Colitis gremlin goes to visit her. When I was first diagnosed with UC I knew nothing about it. What causes ulcerative colitis I innocently asked. He looked surprised and said, in his charming Indian accent, "Why, ulcerative colitis causes unlcerative colitis." I was no confident that this was the doctor for me. I also do not care for the parking at this clinic. I did learn though that it is an autoimmune disorder.

My neurologist also was not happy with my reports from GI and she referred me to another, in her building. I kept the appointment and was told by the office manager that the doctor would not see me because I had seen another doctor. She was not to be argued or cajoled out of this stance. A few days later my neurologist got a report from that office stating that I was not happy with their services and it was I who had refused to be seen.

It was also recommended I see an immunologist as I was having a growing list of autoimmune disorders. I went to one who has a reputation as the best immunologist. Intake forms had many questions about my pain. No pain. The doctor proceeded to ask me about my pain. He' clearly not glanced at the intake form; it was just a pro forma thing. I clarified as best I could that I have several autoimmune disorders but not rheumatoid arthritis. I was seeing him as an immunologist. He sat at his computer and questioned me without looking at me. As he entered my answers to his questions he spoke aloud what he was writing. That's not what I said, I had to tell him several times. I do not have fibromyalgia I informed him. The report that went to the referring physician quoted me as saying many things I never said, in fact the things I had corrected as he was writing. The main conclusion: the patient does not have fibromyalgia.

This took me back many years, to my first encounter, as a patient, with a neurologist. I was in my early thirties, sick with something I saw a doctor. He happened to notice I had fascilulations in my calves and got very concerned, insisted I see a neurologist. When I kept the appointment they wanted payment up front. "That will be $100." I had no insurance at the time. That was a lot of money for me then. "Cancel the appointment, then," I said. "Sure," she said. "But you will still owe us $100." I paid up and went in to see the doctor. He asked why I was there. I have fasciculations, and I showed him. He looked at the wormy twitching in my legs and then opined. "You have fasciculations. Come back when you have more money."

I like all the people on my current regular medical team. I've been with my primary care doc for 30 years. I like my gastroenterologist and hope she hangs around. I like my neurologist and would make appointments just to sit and chat but she has a busy practice (because she sits and chats). I like my cardiologist though I really have no need to see him but do the six-month follow ups just to keep in touch.

When the fatigue started they thought it was the low thyroid and B12. Those got corrected and the fatigue remained. The cardiologist reasonable thought it was the atrial fibrillation. We corrected that and the fatigue remained. So now it seems it's a matter of learning to live with a gremlin.

Ulcerative collitis (with its attendant osteoporosis), atypical migraine, chronic fatigue, thyroid and B12 have periods of waning. My opinion is that all of this is varous expressions of one thing, a general autoimmune disorder, my Collywobbles.

One thing I do to live with this gremlin is to do at least the least that I can do. I could not write the thing I wanted but I could write something. This is what the gremlin allowed. Maybe now pups (this is gremlin's pronoun: person of unknown pronoun). Maybe now I can continue on with the essay called Aura though that still feels like it will be work. 

20 MARCH 2020

A dilemma for Science. Science has learned that nothing exists but in relation to other things but it got there on the predication that things exist, in something they call space. Much of it works to hide that knowledge from itself. Curious how analogous to the workings of human consciousness, needing to run on hiding from itself.

02 APRIL 2020

I'm thinking about 'transparency.' Yesterday was not a good day. Collywobbles in revolt. Does anybody really want more details about that? Result here was that almost nothing got done on this webbook. It did lead to me resuming thinking about transparency and if it is really possible. The concept has an underlying assumption about the nature of things this is transparently wrong.

I did do considerable reading of a novel yesterday. I made it through Part 1 of the first book of a six-volume 'novel' which I find interesting in that it is almost lacking in interest and I keep coming back to it. I can hardly wait to find out what does not happen. The book, what is called an autobiographical novel, is My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard (translated from the Norwegian). I is being compared with Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. It is a sort of study in transparency, fine detail of a man's life. It is still detail that is selected, events chosen from a myriad of concurrent competing events. Will it reveal some Truth about the man? What are the selection criteria?

I knew very little about this book when I first picked it up. A "literary sensation," that was pretty much it. Mention of Proust pricked my attention; I am a fan. I did not have a glimmer of suspicion that it would fit so neatly into my own experiments in transparency (as did A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). What I am seeing in these attempts to locate a person, find her core, his essence, their true self, may be ultimately futile because the basic assumption is wrong.

03 APRIL 2020

THE QUARANTINI

Recipe

Pour equal parts gin and solitude into an ice-filled tumbler

use the most medicinal-botanical gin you can find

(but you are stuck with whatever flavor of solitude’s on hand)

toss in a dash or two of bitters

tansy and rue

(Tanaceta vulgare and Ruta graveolens)

preferred but this up to you

The real art of this cocktail

is in how you mix it up

and I can’t tell you how to do that

I can offer some suggestions

examples from the range of ways

sit and stare at the sweat beads forming and flowing down the tumbler.

follow the course of one rivulet and pour once it’s reached its destination.

or sit and stare—vacant—until you suddenly remember you’ve drinking to do

or dance a jig

dance a jig while holding the jug

(holding it snug as a bug in a rug)

or try stirring––

avidly or lackadaisically

stir with a finger a rod

(but spare the rod)

do it as performance or praxis

masked or unmasked

then pour

Alternatively you can just drink the fucking gin right out of the bottle.

©2020 Richard Valasek

I got that out of my system. I had a collywobbly night, sleep disrupted by interior grumblings and stupid dreams. During that time I saw how far I am strayong fomr my program. Too much on ornamentation, I deterimined to see if I can simply state the main points I want to make about orthobinomy and its possible role in keeping us ongoing in a thriveful kind of way. Tried to pick that up and instead that Quarantini thing was too insistent. Maybe that's the best I can do at the moment to move my program forward.

06 APRIL 2020

Had to go into town, Queens office building 3, for an ultrasound of my gall bladder. While waiting I opended my Kindle to Despret, What Would Animals Say.... The book is in the form of an abecedarium but I'm reading it randomly. It opened on the letter 'O'. O for Ouevres: Do birds make Art? Reading the chapter title I immediately thought of the bower bird. Specifically the bower bird nest I have visited over the years in the Olive Pink botanical garden in Alice Springs, then of an artisitic rendition of a bower bird nest I had seen in some Australian museum. And the chapter turned out to be a lot about the bower bird. But the real topic, what is art? And now I want to write about orthobionomy as an artistic expression, an ouevre.

14 APRIL 2020

Was getting nothing done on this front (due I am pretty sure to Collywobbles) I have had some motivation and energy to do puttering in the garden, a bit at a time. Sitting in the morning, waking up to my garden, it asked for more color. More accurately, a desire, even a cry, for color emerged. So I got more penta, durable here and prolific color fill of little red, pink, another pink, white stars. Then I saw a mass of blue. The garden has little blue: one small carpeting of dwarf morning glory. Labeled "Plectranthus," suggesting partial sun, I had the perfect spot for it. I'd never seen this plant before but one of its genus grows like a weed throughout the garden, commonly called Cuban oregano but this little bit of knowledge encouraged me that another of the genus could do well as well. As I was finishing planting and tidying I was thinking again about transparency. Maybe the added color aided here. I am settled for now on the conviction that what we call transparency (e.g., in financial matters, or sexual proclivities, a transparent self) the concept that one can reveal all the corners and recesses of the self and make them public is a fiction. Possibly a dangerous fiction. I know Nietzsche had said much the same somewhere, using an onion metaphor.

Autobiographical self, on which transparency must rest, is most definitely a fiction, the bulk of it foisted upon you without you noticing in the slightest you were being implanted. It is a constantly shifting chimera. It is the surround, the circumstance, the context that calls forth the moment's self. So I let go (more loosely) this project of transparency and ask, "What is asking to be written?" Or "What is it that is writing me?" Orthobionomy to the front of the queue. Go there.

25 APRIL 2020

The notion of laws of life crept into my thoughts on my Manana Trail walk this morning. I want to start a new list. I make no truth claims about this and know that down the road it all may revise, as it has been doing for years.

Life is coagulate in the capillaries of the universe. It exists on a most minuscule scale.

Number theory suggests that in order for meaning to exist a threshold N of four is necessary.

Life is a condensation of witnessing.

Requires reciprocal movement. A dialectic of care.

06 MAY 2020 

Lot's to write about here, much has happened, much change, since my last posting. There's a good chance my wife Karen and I have both had a version of covid-19. Karen had an unusual dry cough for a couple weeks and fever that would wax up to no more than 101, mostly about 100, and a tightness in her chest. She could not get tested, did not meet enought criteria. I on the other hand started having episodes of nausea vomiting, lots of diarrhea, vestibular disturbances, fatigue, loss of appetite and narrowed range of foods tolerated. Some of this familar, living with ulcerative colitis, living with something like chronic fatigue. The chronic fatigue I was making headway with. I had located a significant junction that was malfunctioning and head found a way to do repair on those junctions, using equipment in the gym. But then the gyms all closed.

I was really sick for 2-3 weeks. The tiniest effort in the garded and I had to crawl to bed. I did continue with walking, usually snail-paced. I consulted with my gastroenterologist right off the bat as the symptoms were mostly GI and she had been peering in there, from the top and from the bottom. Some of it fit with gall bladder. She was not convinced but we did ultrasound. Some stones (we mostly all have some), no blockage, no inflammation, gall bladder ruled out. Was it a side effect of the immunosuppresant medication she wanted me to try? We decided to put a hold on that for now. When I stopped that med though I was three days into normal GI funtioning, I was already in recovery. In fact I was starting to feel so good that I took on some major garden projects. 

One of the things I had discussed with my GI doc was migraine, wondering if this might be some aspect of my peculiar migraine. She is familiar with migraine in the gut. As I was doing some research I discovered vestibular migraine and that fit my symptoms pretty neatly. Long ago I'd coined the word dysvestibulation to to give a name to what I was experiencing. GI doc wanted me to see my neurologist with whom I'd already made an appointment. Then the appointment was moved back and then moved back again. As I read about vestibular migraine I found a list (on a reputable medical site) I learned there are no reliable treament options, it's mosly a matter of learning to live with it, adapting. Some medications reported to have shown some value to some people. One stood out to me, an herbal medication called butterbur. Though I had for many years studied herbal medicine I had missed this one. I found capsules on Amazon. After several days of one a day of these I realized my migraine had'nt been bothering me for a couple days. I am also seeing after several days of relatively heavy labor in the garden I have not been having the typical exertional malaise. I cannot attribute this to the butterbur*.

Back to my covid-19 hypothesis. I also read, in a reputable medical source, that about a third of covid patients present with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, vestibular disturbance, fatigue. No cough, fever, shorness of breath. The course if about three weeks. So as Karen was having a mild illness with cough and fever, I was having a more severe (though not serious) infection with GI symptoms dominant. A good chance we had covid-19 together.  

There's a rather old idea about certain viruses like corona- and rhinoviruses (common cold bugs) that they may actually be good for a person in the long run. They have an effect of tuning up the immune system. I have always found this an attractive idea, not caring much whether it's "true" or not. Believing this has made me much more willing to endure the unpleasantness of a cold. I am wondering if, while putting me out of commission for three weeks the exercise for my immune system. I sill get tired after a few hours of work in the garden but I am recovered after sleep and ready to do more rather than debilitated for three days after a little strenuous play.

The other exciting thng is that, since our summer travel plans have gone all pear-shaped we decided to auditon for the Hawaii Shakespeare Festival and Karen and I both got cast in Merry Wives of Windsor with our good friend Eden Lee cast as Falstaff. She was Fool to my Lear a couple years ago. This will be exciting. They are going to do the plays virtual and no one really knows what that will look like or how we will do it. Being in the Worship Team for the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu Karen and I have some experience in putting on a worhship service by Zoom, so we are comfortable with this platform. I have been cast as Host of the Garter and Karen is Justice Shallow. Plus, if we want, we can trade off.

18 May 2020

I got a momentous email this day from friend Scott McQuiddy in Canada:

22 MAY 2020

I have not been writing here frequently but want to write today in gratitude for a near perfect day, all the gremlins are in cooperation. The balance of activity is most appealing. I awoke early, 5:30 and was awake so got up from a complicated dream. Then I just sat, with coffee. Ater a bit I did some work harvesting and deploying compost. I did some reading, thinking, wrtiing (see Laws of Life in Stories), some garden work with Karen, more writing, cooking (I was happy to find rhubarb in the market so am making a Persian lamb and rhubarb koresh). It suits me to wander from task to task. 

10 October 2020

What is Minimum Me?                                                                                       

I am thinking about what I can claim as the barest minimum of what I can claim as being ‘me.’ I have recently become aware that my physical body has at least three pounds of microbes, what we call the microbiome, living on our skin, its orifices, in the gut, probably some intracellular. I know these invisible companions are absolutely necessary to my living. They have to be considered as also comprising what I call ‘me.’ The microbiome is intimately attached and constantly shifting. Strains get shared between other people (including non-human people).

I also know I have to eat in order to live. I have to incorporate other lives into my own life, transform certain others into me, move life from there to here. It may be the dream of some scientists to bypass this necessity and create all food in laboratories, built up from non-living atoms and molecules. They are not even close to achieving this dream and I will always need to eat life to live. Is there really a bright line separating ‘me’ from the life I will be eating? This morning for my breakfast I went into my garden and grubbed out of the ground a handful of sweet potatoes. They are now making their way through my digestive tract, being absorbed and metabolized: becoming ‘me.’ Were they ‘me’ when they were still in the ground? I like to eat mostly locally grown food but this is not exclusive (e.g., a tin of sardines from Latvia). Thus my body is spread throughout the world.

I have known for a long time that there can be no ‘me’ if there are no other humans in my life. Each if us needs the presence of other humans in order to exist. An individual, isolated human is an abstraction.

Is there some minimum number of companion species we need? Then look at any one of these companions and we will see that each of them has their own circle of relation, of other beings necessary to their existence.

Ones personal ‘aura’ could be thought of this way: the cloud of all creatures on whose lives yours depends.

10 October 2020

My Covid-19 Story

I'm pretty sure I had the dread covid early in March. They wouldn't let me have a test; I didn't have any of the classic signs or symptoms: no fever, no cough, no shortness of breath. Instead I had that set of signs and symptoms that about 30% of people have: gastrointestinal with vestibular with oculomotor weridness and crushing fatigue. With my gastroenterologist we ruled nearly everything out (like gall bladder). At the same time Karen was having a bout of something with mild fever, a persistent dry cough, and a tightness in her chest. She also could not get a test, signs and symptoms too mild.

Mine had a sudden onset. I had a hearty breakfast of oatmeal with stewed dried fruit, about an hour later I went to the gym. I had been developing a way to exercise almost opposite to what I had been doing; a way of working with resistance machines and weights that would not trigger a "post exertional malaise." I had been under the spell of some form of chroinc fatigue for over ten years and have all that time been struggling to keep up some exercise regine. I have come to be exploring movement itself, paying close attention to movement and the feeling of movement. 

This particular morning I was seated on a maching (one that allows many different ways of pulling) and moving the lightest allowable weight as slowly as I could. Anyone watching might think I was not moving. I have been learning a lot about movement and about scope/scale and meaning. Look somewhere else in this book to know some of what I have learned. Much of it has yet to be written. That was a digression, back now to covid. I was seated, moving very slowly, completely absorbed in the experience, paying close attention to every fraction. I began to notice nausea. I was losing track of which way was up. It was not passing but increasing. I was suddenly very weak, could hardly get myself to stand. I made my way slowly to the toilet (probably should have asked for assistance but did not want to draw attention). A stall was blessedly available and I let reverse peristalsis have its way. Good-bye oatmeal.

When the waves subsided enough I made my way to my car (stupid me, had no business driving; I’d called Karen, let her know what’s happening but said I was fine to make it home). At the first stop light I had to open the car door and hurl again.

Following two weeks frequent nausea with sometimes vomiting; constant diarrhea, unremitting weakness and fatigue, oculomotor disturbance (I would almost pass out if I moved my eyes far left or right); vestibular disturbance, always at risk of toppling over simply because up would move from its normally fixed direction.

I the third week all this slowly abated. But here’s the curious part. It not only abated it took a lot of stuff with it.

There is a relaxation process that’s been around since 1924, eponymously the Jacobson Relaxation Technique, better know as progressive relaxation. It involves tightening up a set of muscles then letting it go. As you tightly contract the muscles it takes up all the unnecessary tension hiding there and pulls it into your intentional tension so when you actively let go all that hidden tension goes, too. As I recovered I more than returned to how I was just before but some of my autoimmune disorders also let go their grip. Almost gone are the vestibular migraine and chronic fatigue. Now I just have what can pass as normal old fart fatigue.

The migraine is now mild and intermittent instead of constant. Before you get feeling too much pity for me you should know this vestibular migraine does not involve pain. Though I would wake most mornings with mild headache (hypnopompic headache?) it would fade as I slowly came fully awake. The ulcerative colitis seems also to be improved be I’ll spare you those details.

A common logical error goes by the fancy-sounding Latin title, Post hoc ergo propter hoc, after this therefore because of this. I cannot say that my having this acute illness caused me to recover from my chronic illnesses but it was a dramatic change. Whatever the cause I’ll take it.

At the end of August our son in Virginia asked if we could come help support him through a crisis. I flew to Virginia and spent a month with him. On the way home I made a three-day stopover in Sheridan WY, having been invited to teach a workshop there. This was a sort of test. This was the first workshop I have led since I had this illness. I was excited at how much energy I had. I flew on Friday, taught Saturday and Sunday, private sessions on Monday. I had maybe too much energy for teaching; I didn’t want to stop.

Flying home took all day Tuesday and I will confess the next three days I was lethargic, had some mild migraine symptoms. All this most likely due to the day of travel, jet lag.

14 November 2020

After more than two years of quiescence, the heart's atrial fib mode flashed forth. My blood pressure went way up. This eruption coincided with a coup being waged, which I try hard to not be too deeply affected by. It coincided with a pain syndrome chasing around in my right shoulder/upper rib cage. A-fib showed up and a few days into it and the shoulder pain all but disappeared. I make an appointment to see my cardiologist.

The day I go in to see her

3 January 2020I

have not visited this page for a while, and not that nothing's going on. Lots has transpired. Won't likely get up to date, just random dips of the bucket in the river pull up samples. 

I've been writing but not publishing. Still considering a separate web page, Linden Tree, not yet launched. There are too many technical mysteries. I have kept hold of the domain, can't quite decide, overcome techical issues and keep this site or create a corner of "atplayinthefield" to put this content––tangential as it seems to be.

Just now this came to me:

Please convince me otherwise.

The only corner of the universe harbors self-loathing

Is the human race.

Parenthetically the only place I’ve found

Squeamishness abounds.

Psychoanalyze these two together.

Where do I put this, in my attempts to categorize? I think I'd like it under the linden tree.

17 January 2021

Judgment

Why had you not availed yourself of the wonders of modern dentistry?

      You, a person of privilege?

                                                             Not near the privilege as I imagine you imagine I've had.

You abandoned the care of your teeth (your self) and now you come to me, want me to make it all better.

                                                            This was what my body was saying your body was saying to                                                                    me while rendering your assessment, your ‘judgment,’                                                                        following your exam.

I thought I was very even, perhaps a bit stern, applying my knowledge and skill.

                                                            It was my way of sacrifice to what seemed a greater good                                                                        and there is no need to try to explicate this to you.

Accept the judgment and move on.

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