Some initial thoughts about purpose

Only three entries so far bespeaks my difficulty with maintaining a clear focus as well as momentum for this “blog”. Sometimes, maybe even often, I can feel my impetus for writing it become softened and flaccid. Those are the moments when I need some literary Viagra, or at least good jolt of caffeine, or weed perhaps….though weed can also push me into reveries and feverish longings that wander through the past rather than scavenge the present or anticipate a future. According to the cadre of therapists among whom I hung for a while, my “issues” were part of a lifetime pattern of avoidance of commitment and a persistent persistence problem. Hmm. Okay. Off the track I am. I began this riff considering intentions and motivations. Let me address that. Indeed I will wade into the murky fen of purpose, but I don not expect to find an answer yet.....

First off there is the matter of context. Life in general in this age of technological toxicity and the apparently genial and unthinking corporate crushing of the planet, has so befuddled my mind that any previous clarity has become cloudy. I often find myself drifting in a miasma of existential angst. All of my previous certainty of my life’s purposes has become increasingly vague and spongey. My existence often seems picayune and pointless. As I have become more and more aware of my own minuteness, I have become, ironically perhaps, more easily distracted and susceptible to promising seductions of the senses and the brain. The weather in my gut, the tone of day set by a sticky lingering dream, or the intrusion of external chaos around the house or around the world, just to name three potential generic disrupters, can easily muscle aside all of my good intentions. These days it doesn’t take much to nudge me “off message”. All too often, instead of smelling the roses and enjoying the rejuvenating breath of a caressing breeze, I feel, in addition to gluey ennui, a generalized pressure, a franticness, fanaticism and agitated despair of a culture in decay and decline. Though I look for the songbirds of happiness I usually see no birds at all, except black birds of prey and swarms of grey drones. In fact, the last truly colorful bird I saw, was a Baltimore Oriole. It appeared to have battered itself to death against the window of an earth mover and was lying in the mud next to the machine’s tire and a smushed coke can. Its appearance was so stunning it took my breath away.

And yet, there are also days when the sun touches my face with the softness of a lover’s caress. I can smell the soil warming into a sweet frenzy of living perfume. I can sense the vibrations of the microbes adancing and the earthworms waltzing to the rhythm of cosmic turnings. In those moments Gaia herself struts and stretches, her naked beauty irresistible, mesmerizing, lush and creamy. On those nights, the Coyotes howl, owls hoot, and luna moths congregate in congress on the window sills; all seems for the moment balanced and luscious, right and fit. In those moments I feel I am an inseparable, essential part of it all. I am loved to my core by a benevolent spirit. In those moments I am absorbed into Gaia’s embracing grace and experience peace, place and purpose. Even with my stiff limbs and crackling joints,in those moments I can dance. SO I guess it’s time to pick up the bone of “why?” and chew on it for a while.

Why, why, and again why am I writing this at all? I suspect mostly to please myself, to see my thoughts laid out in words and marvel at their aptness or its absence. I take a soupçon of selfish delight in my occasional cleverness, or elegance and grace of expression, and just as often I cringe. All of it is a constantly leavening growth. A lumpy, doughy neediness to “express myself” lodged in my psyche, like an undigested potato. I suspect you’re familiar with that feeling too, that churning desire to spout off about “things”. Coupled with this, and to take a therapeutic tack, I share with most men a compulsion probably more peculiar to our gender than to women. This compulsion is initially honed and encouraged by our parents or guardians. What is it? Simply to be the alpha male in at least some arena or other of our lives. All of this bespeaks a hungry ego which I am unable to cleanse from my psyche. But then, why should I really? Is it necessary to purge myself of this sometimes dodgy desire, or should I just let it be part of who I am. After all, I am no saint or bodhisatva, nor do I strive to be one. I was indoctrinated into mild-mannered and self-effacing Christianity, not the muscular, boisterous and belligerent Christianity that to seems to me to be more devilish than godlike.

Like most writing of this sort, and perhaps most writing in general, is that it is basically an act of vanity of a sort…the vanity of giving voice to individuality. And like all acts of individuality, though it be constant, and loud or soft, it is as certain, as malleable and as changeable as water. 

Next time around I’ll get back to geezer-ness….maybe….though

Bladder adventures

A day in the life…for now at least

Awoke at 6:10. Laid in bed for a while. It was warm but empty. I thought about times when it wasn’t empty. The house was cold, the floors were cold, my brain was cold. Though there was a blooming bright line of rosy orange arising over the trees toward the east, it was a cold fire. Shrugging off the warm bed clothes I went to the kitchen, put some water in the kettle for coffee, set it on the stove, turned on the flame and then headed for the bathroom. Images abound in my head: I am a pinkish sack of yellow fluid waiting to be drained, an old wine cask that needs to be flushed, and old tree needing to be tapped. And like trees of whatever age, the sap is always running.

Conditions being what they are at the moment, i. e., my prostate having blossomed to a size large enough to block my bladder, I am compelled to push a plastic tube up my penis. All the way up. Like praying to Allah, I will repeat this activity five times each and every day for a while. Though I don’t face east towards Mecca, like a faithful pilgrim I am striving for salvation, relief from internal pressures and the soothing balm of release. “Magic 3: Please deliver me over.”

I have found it is best to make the catheterization a ritual. That way my mind and my body are composed and calm. Here’s the set up of the bathroom and its contents: There is a wide sliding wooden pocket door to the room, which was originally designed for someone with ALS. The floor is tiled, small squares with pastel colors, there is a railing next to the toilet, and there is one in the shower as well. You could roll right into the shower if you were on a wheelchair. So far I am still walking. As I enter the bathroom, there is a cube shaped basket on the right. It’s where I will sit for the catheterization ritual. It is about 18” wide, 14” deep and 15“ high. There is a towel-covered, 3”inch thick piece of foam inset into its top. It’s a welcoming soft green color. There is a pull-out drawer beneath this which holds extra towels and wash cloths. It's quite comfortable an commodious. The catheters are three or four steps across the room on a similar cube basket next to the bathroom sink. In their box they look like a bouquet of thin grey snakes. 

The devices that have been prescribed for me are “Magic 3, intermittent catheters with Sure-Grip™.” This latter little gismo is merely a funnel shaped, green plastic thingy that slides over the shaft of the catheter. It has some sort of markings and or sticky materials on its insides that allow it to clasp firmly to the catheter tube. The “Magic 3” is made in the USA by the Rochester Medical Corporation of Stewartville, Minnesota. While I can’t exactly say that I love these catheters, I sure am grateful for them. They are made of hydrophilic coated silicone and the ones I use have a “coude” tip. This feature allows the catheter to ease more smoothly past my puffed up prostate. The whole thing is 16” long and is 4.7 mm in diameter. Looking at it, it is hard to imagine pushing something that long up my dick, but, I can and I do. Each catheter comes in its own individual package like a Slim Jim. There is a 2”-long silver lozenge-shaped envelope of sterile water in each package that must be squished open before using the catheter. It lubricates the whole thing.

It looks like this. 

the "Magic 3"

Here’s the procedure: I grab a catheter pack, an alcohol swab, a plastic portable urine bottle with handy gradations marks on the side like a measuring cup, and a towel. I set the catheter and the swab pack on the cube-shaped basket seat. Before I sit down I loosen my belt, lower my jeans and my underwear, boxers of course. BTW: some shade of blue is the dominant color. Next I sit and settle in. It is important to sit with your nut sack dangling over the edge of the seat. This keeps the testes out of the way and makes the penis more freely accessible. Of course the nut sack will only dangle if the room temperature is above at least 62. If it isn’t the scrotum will pull toward the body and the nuts will clump. Only happened once, but that was enuf. I think we keep the house too cold. Next I push down the clothing rumpled between my ankles to make a little “pocket”. I lay the towel over this and tamp it down too. Then I nestle the urine collecting bottle in the pocket, aiming the slightly crooked, gaping open neck towards me. An image of hungry baby birds flashes across my mind. Next I open the swab pack, remove the alcohol soaked fabric and clean off the end of my penis. Though I know full well where its been, I don’t want any opportunistic microbes carried up the urethra by catheter and setting up housekeeping in my urinary tract. I set the swab aside. Next I pick up the catheter package and, before opening it, squeeze the foil envelope of sterile water inside until it bursts. I tip the catheter pack  back and forth a couple of times to spread the water along the shaft. Now it’s time to separate the flaps at the end of the pack and peel them apart. This exposes the green Sure Grip ™ which I pinch between the fingers of my right hand. With my left hand fingers I pull down one flap exposing more of the catheter. Keeping a firm grip on the Grip with my right hand I pull the catheter from its sheath of plastic, tugging the sheath down with my left hand. I do all of this with a methodical pace. I learned from one night’s rushed attempt that being deliberate and relatively slow is the way to go. That night I lost my hold on the Grip and in some spasmodic gesture that I still can’t figure out, the entire catheter squirted out of the sheath as the Grip flew off in another direction and landed somewhere else… under a shoe I later found it. The catheter itself dropped and flopped once on the rug like an exhausted, limp eel.

After I have pulled the Grip down to a point about 6 or so inches from the end and peeled back the flap some, I pull the whole catheter out. Now its insertion time. At this point it is essential that the coude tip, which is canted at a slight angle, is pointed upward at my nose. If the tip is tilted down or angled to one side or the other the catheter will not only not go into the urethra smoothly, when it reaches the prostate it will cause a sharp pain and probably scrap the prostate enough to cause it to bleed. This has happened a couple of times during my efforts and it is always unsettling….pain and blood are not results you want from this procedure. I adjust the angle with my left hand.

I insert the catheter, slowly, a couple of inches or so at a time, pushing with my right hand. The oddness of the sensation of an object, even a slender, slippery one sliding up inside the penis never quite goes away. When I reach the prostate there is a sudden resistance and a twinge of pain. This is the only tricky bit. It always takes a little effort to get the tip of the catheter past the prostate and on up into the bladder. If the angle is off on the catheter it will not move and will even resist going on up into the bladder. But once it is in the bladder, the urine begins to flow. At this point I put the open end of the catheter into the plastic container and wait for the piss to stop. It doesn’t come in a gush but in a steady yellow stream. It makes soft splattering and dripping sounds. A joyful noise actually, that I have come to welcome. After some seconds, the time varies depending on the amount of urine in the bladder, it suddenly stops as though a spigot had been turned off. Using the Grip I slowly pull the catheter out until it is free of the penis. Pulling it out quickly is uncomfortable and certainly unnecessary. Every step done slowly and deliberately will ensure a smooth and successful draining. With my left hand I remove the container from its place between my ankles and set it aside. Holding the used catheter in my right hand I walk it over to the trash and put it in a plastic bag together with the other discarded materials, the sheath and the alcohol swab. Tidying up done, I pull up my shorts, tuck down my shirt, pull up my jeans and buckle my belt. Ever the naturalist, I then note in my iPhone the time of the catheterization and the amount of urine I have collected. Soon I will be saving it to make fertilizer for this year’s seedlings, but not quite yet. 

So it is ta ta for now. My ablutions and my ablations done, I’m now ready to stomp out into the world. I’ll be sitting there again in a few short hours, facing south, day or night. I have once again been delivered. Amen.