Peter Clothier's Blog, page 3

SO LET IT BE WITH CAESAR...

Eli Broad, who died on Friday, was the only billionaire I ever knew in person. I interviewed him in his home, many years ago. He invited Ellie and myself to join him and his wife, Edythe, for dinner at a posh Italian restaurant. In person, he was courteous, charming, at once himself interesting and interested in others--an important quality in my book. I'm well aware of his reputation as an autocratic philanthropist whose ego matched the scale of his ambitions; and even though many of those ambitions were for the city that he genuinely loved, they were perhaps, as Shakespeare's Mark Antony famously said of Caesar's, "a grievous fault." Certainly, they were held against him by many critics and many who matched wills with him and came off the worse for it. As for Broad, he brushed off such criticism, cheerfully calling himself "unreasonable" and attributing his success to that very quality. "The evil that men do lives after them" continued Mark Antony in his funeral oration. "The good is oft interred within their bones. So let it be with Caesar." In Broad's case it is perhaps the opposite: would we have Disney Hall, for example, without his sometimes bullying efforts? It's in part his philanthropy that turned the once widely mocked Los Angeles into a world cultural center to be reckoned with. May the emperor that was surely a good part of him be buried with his bones.

LUCKY

 I met with my surgeon yesterday, a full three weeks after the surgery to replace my right hip. It was a good moment to thank him, and compliment him on the orthopedic surgery team that has taken such good care of me from start to... well, not quite finish, because there is a way to go before full recovery, but I'm headed that way. He told me he was "lucky" with the people he works with.

Which reminded me of what I always think--and try to remember to say--when I hear people say they're lucky: that what happens in our lives has little or nothing to do with luck. In the case of my surgeon's team, his "luck" is the expression of everything he puts in to the work he does--the intelligence, the recognition of the skills and dedication of others, the demands he makes of them, his own love for his work and compassion for his patients; all these combine to create his "luck" in having such a team to work with.

He was pleased, I think with the recognition and appreciation, just as I was pleased with the reminder that luck plays only a small part in my recovery. What counts is the extent to which I have taken care of myself in the past and have worked to maintain my strength and keep my weight in at least manageable bounds; and everything I do now to speed recovery, in following the guidelines and practicing the exercise routine, in being as conscious as I can of my body, its limitations and potential, its needs and cautions. 

I watch with amazement and respect as the body works to heal itself, and do everything I can to help it. The doctor, yesterday, suggested finding a new "project" every day to challenge its recovery, and that seems to me an excellent idea. It's early morning, yet, but I'll need to think up something for today. It should not be hard. There's still a long way to go!

DOG FIGHT

We had quite a scare yesterday.
It was my first outing since surgery, now nearly three weeks ago. That homebound feeling was getting to me, and I needed to get out of the house and into the world out there, so it was my idea to head over to Highland Park--a twenty minute drive--to visit our daughter and grandson and see the new balcony and French doors she has had installed at her house.
I put my new skills and mobility to work to climb into the car--in the passenger seat, of course, since I'm not yet allowed to drive--and we set off on this significant adventure. (I'm a terrible passenger. Even though Ellie is a seasoned driver of many years blameless experience, I had my foot on the brake for the entire journey!)
So we had a delightful visit. The new addition to Sarah's home brings light and space into her bedroom, and the balcony connects to an existing one outside the kitchen, significantly expanding the area overlooking her back yard. Sarah was in good form, and it was great to have news of Luka's first three days back at school in more than a year. He's thrilled to be back in the classroom, and proud to have been assigned a desk in the front row. Class time is restricted to three hours, to allow the teacher to spend the rest of the school day with the children whose parents have chosen to keep them home until they feel safer, with the pandemic not yet fully contained. 
It was when we left that the trouble started. I headed out to the car first, needing more time to climb in and make myself comfortable. Then Ellie came out with Jake, the dog, and all hell broke loose. I was first only dimly aware of the racket--the barks and snarls and yelps of fear and the sounds of a terrible scuffle round the other side of the car; but soon promptly forgot all the instructions I'd received to take care of my hip and, abandoning all precautions, hauled myself precipitously out of my seat with my cane and hobbled furiously around behind the car--where I found Ellie and another woman struggling to pull apart two dogs engaged in mortal combat.
Jake is not a big dog. He's strong, for his size, but King Charles Spaniels are pretty much gentle, inoffensive little creatures. He had been set upon by a powerful, mid-sized, grey pit bull, off leash, which had spotted Jake on the street and dashed out from its owner's house when she opened the door to take out the trash--with every apparent intent to kill the intruder on what it obviously deemed its territory.
I joined the fray. Wielding my metal cane--and bending far below the limit for one in my condition--I managed to grab on to Jake's collar while the two women pulled the dogs apart. I dragged him forcibly around the back of the car, yelling out for Sarah to come out and help get him in through the rear door. The pit bull's owner, meanwhile, was struggling mightily to restrain her dog and shouting at me to put ours in the car--without knowing, of course, that I was incapacitated by the surgery. 
Well, Sarah came rushing out and we got a visibly angry and shaken Jake shut in on the back seat of the car, while the neighbor led her dog back into her house. Later, that evening, Sarah called for a report on Jake, and told us that the pit bull's owner was accusing him, Jake, of having bitten her dog! Said she'd had to take it in for an emergency visit to the vet. If so, we thought, it was clear that Jake was acting only in self-defense. The encounter was not without repercussions for him, too, having caused a recurrence of a problem with his back. Last night he was unable to jump up on the couch unaided, and this morning he has had trouble climbing the stairs. 
Having heard so many reports recently of small dogs being attacked and mauled--and in some severe cases actually killed--by pit bulls. we consider ourselves lucky. This episode could have ended so much worse than a bad back. We have come to treasure our little Jake. He has been the best of pals throughout the period of this pandemic, and a great comfort for Ellie while I have been out of action. It would be terrible to see him badly injured or, unimaginably, worse...
I'm not one to approve of violence in any circumstance, but it's hard not to feel proud of him for having put up such a good fight!

BODY AND MIND

It has been only two weeks to the day since the Kaiser surgical team removed my old hip and replaced it with a new one. I walked in from the street to the orthopedics department today with only a cane in hand for a post-op session to check up on progress and remove the staples.

I'm pleased to know that I am "well ahead" of many people who have his surgery. At home, I scarcely bother with the cane, let alone the walker--which sits neglected in a corner of the bedroom. I also no longer need to take the stairs one at a time; I'm not exactly bounding up and down, but I'm amazed that my right leg can already lift my body weight and take me up the steps. I follow the regime of exercises and am delighted with the tangible growth in strength and range of movement.

Having taken reasonably good care of health and strength as I continue to age (85 in a couple of months!), I'm now more convinced than ever that it pays to take good care of this vehicle we're given to occupy for the length of our current life (I can't speak for other lives!)

The last line of the metta practice which has become an important part of my daily life is this: "May I look after myself with ease." My main fear in growing older is less the prospect of death than illness, enfeeblement, incapacity, dependence and the loss of mental acuity--and of course the indignities that accompany them. Knowing that I may yet be confronted with any of these, it's well to prepare both body and mind for them in advance.

GRATITUDE

So yes, they gave me a new hip. Remarkably, a week ago Monday, they had me out of surgery and on my feet within an hour... and home a couple of hours later.

I understand what they mean--those well-meaning friends, especially the ones who have experienced the same--when they say it's easy. It is. Remarkably. But the nitty-gritty truth is that it's also hard. There's a good deal of pain involved, though mine has been absolutely manageable. I took myself off the narcotic medication a couple of days after surgery without severe repercussion, and have done pretty well instead with regular doses of Tylenol. The sharp, burning pains that accompany awkward shifts in position have largely subsided now, eight days later; they have been replaced by a deeper, more persistent pain around the hip joint. None of which is surprising, given that the surgical team cut their way in through flesh and muscle, sawed off the old, grating joint, and hammered in a new, prosthetic one. Hardly the recipe for comfort.

Harder to manage is the difficulty moving and the (now decreasing!) need for help. Simple things that you normally take for granted--things like sitting down and standing up, getting in and out of bed--become huge challenges requiring inordinate amounts of time and effort, not to mention pain. To put on a pair of underpants or pants required, initially, the help of my wife, Ellie, because I had been cautioned not to bend. Within a few days I learned to operate the "grabber"--a stick that allows me to reach for things on the ground and manipulate them into place. With this, I can now once again manage to dress myself--a skill I surely learned at the age of two or three and have been doing these past 80 years without a break!

I think perhaps the hardest challenge I was confronted with in the first several days after surgery was the inability to get a decent night's sleep. Impossible, first, to even get into a comfortable position. I am used to sleeping on alternate sides; now, unable to sleep on either one and forced to attempt it on my back, I struggled to find a position where I could conquer the pain and fall asleep. This was complicated by the constant, almost hourly need to pee. I soon resorted (excuse this intimate detail!) to the use of a bottle, which filled up all too soon and left me with the need for an in-person visit to the bathroom. It was a twenty minute operation--I was about to say "ordeal"--to get myself out of bed and into the frame of my walker, across the bedroom floor to the bathroom and back and finally, painfully, inch by dreadful inch, back into bed. The first couple of nights I had to call for help from the ever-patient Ellie; but her need for sleep is no less than my own, so we found ways for me to negotiate this particular challenge without help.

It took, I'd say, about a week to be restored to some semblance of independent movement. For several days, while I could manage the stairs (fifteen of them, in our house, one at a time, right foot first, descending, left foot first ascending) I needed to have Ellie in front of me, going down, or behind me, going up, just in case I stumbled. Yesterday, for the first time, my visiting Physical Therapist conceded me the right to take on the stairs alone. And yesterday, for the first time, he helped me begin the transition from walker to cane. This morning, instead of hobbling along, I was striding along manfully with a cane! Well, at least making appreciable forward motion. So there's progress every day, increasing strength and mobility and decreasing pain. It's truly remarkable.

So yes, I have much to be grateful for. First for Kaiser and its orthopedic surgical team, who were brilliant from start to finish--from the people in the prep room, to the anesthesiologists and the surgical gang, to those in the recovery area who woke me up and got me on my feet. Everyone was kind, without being patronizing, respectful, appropriately informative, and efficient. I have nothing but good words for these dedicated people. And then there's Ellie, who has been with me all the way, supportive and loving, working twice as hard as usual--and that's a lot!--to keep up with things around the house and at the same time cater to my reluctant but unavoidable needs. At a time when I needed a trusty guardian angel, I had one close to hand. 

The improvement continues, the strength continues to return. I keep busy with my prescribed exercises and, under Ellie's watchful eye, take walks on the street outside our house. Today I learned how to navigate another of those tasks we perform every day without a second thought: getting in and out of the car. I have applied for a handicapped parking placard, and look forward to getting out and about before too long. I know it will be a while before I return to "normal", but at least I know I'm on the way!

FLOWERS!

 What a gorgeous bouquet! Sent by friends in metta. So much to be grateful for after surgery! Blessings to all

PALINDROME

I did not sleep well last night, and for a particularly ridiculous reason: I became obsessed with a palindrome. It started, I suspect, with a dream in which some genius wordsmith had come up with a palindromic version of a highly technical medical instruction--something to do with my imminent hip replacement surgery--which was a whole paragraph long, surely one of the longest palindromes ever created. I was so impressed with this prodigious act of alphabetical prestidigitation that I became obsessed, between dream and waking, with trying to remember and describe it. I must have settled on "prodigious act of alphabetical prestidigitation," because there it is. I was pretty pleased with myself for having come up, if not with the palindrome, at least with its description. But I lost a lot of sleep trying to work it all out.

TODAY IT STARTS

Today is the first in a five-day preparation for hip replacement surgery next week. It starts with the daily application of a disinfectant soap.

I will confess to having some anxiety about the surgery for which I'm scheduled next Monday (I have to show up at 5:30AM for the procedure!) I think I'm not so much concerned about the surgery itself; I am assured --and not only by the doctor who'll be performing it, but by numerous kind friends who know from experience--that it's an easy, fast, in-and-out process these days. They aim to have you on your feet and walking within an hour after surgery, and send you home as soon as possible once the effects of anesthesia have worn off. 

So, no, it's not so much the surgery, though I don't relish the thought of being drugged out of consciousness and sliced open with a scalpel. It's more the recovery period that I anticipate with some anxiety. And even then, not the pain. Pain is somehow private, a transaction between mind and body that I believe (hope?) I can negotiate with some dignity thanks to the years I have devoted to my meditation practice. What provokes the anxiety has more to do with the physical incapacity and dependence, the difficulty in getting around and performing simple, daily tasks without needing help. It is perhaps a rehearsal for still more advanced old age--though I trust, now, without the incontinence that can sometimes accompany that time of life and which I truly dread. (It would be a good time, perhaps, to re-read Ram Dass's book, Still Here, written after his debilitating stroke, in which he writes about the need to learn a dignified, even joyful acceptance of dependence). 

There's another, deeper fear. It's that the surgery will succeed in relieving me of the pain in that one part of the body, but leave me with the knowledge that the source of the pain I have been experiencing of late--physical, yes, but also (related, surely) emotional and spiritual--is more than just one wonky hip, and will not miraculously produce the bright, pain-free "new man" that well-meaning friends have been promising me. Suppose I find out that the "old man" walk--that slow, hesitant, tottering forward motion I have been observing in myself, to my distress--turns out to be endemic to my advancing years, and not merely attributable to that one bad hip? Suppose I find out that this old, deteriorating body is really who I am? And that I have to learn to live with it? 

So there's the rub. There's the source of the anxiety. Next challenge: to address it!

KNOTS

I found myself thinking, this morning, of the feats of manual dexterity required of me before being sent off, as a very young boy, to boarding school: I had to be able to tie my shoelaces and tie my tie. The shoes, of course, were the basic black leather Oxfords; and the tie was woolen, with horizontal black and white stripes, squared off at either end. 

It seems odd, from the long perspective of life today in contemporary California, where my 9 year-old grandson wears neither lace-up shoes nor tie and looks askance at me when I tell him that I did, that little boys should have been required to perform this daily ritual. But there you are. Every single day at school would start with the same ritual: once the underpants and prickly undershirt (the "vest") were on, and the grey short pants and the gray shirt, and the grey pullover with black and white trim, and the knee-length grey socks with the same black and white trim, it was time to tie the shoelaces and tie the tie. 

Shoelaces first, first right, then left. One lace over and under the other, pulled as tight as you could in opposite directions. Make a bow with one end and hold it firm while you circle it with the other, then poke the second bow through and under the first, pull tight again, and adjust. If it's too loose, of course, you have to start again. 

Then the tie. Flip up the collar of your shirt and slip the tie around your neck, then over and under, up and around and through and down and pull it tight, but not too tight--and not too loose, of course--to make the knot. Then slip the knot up to cover the top button of your shirt. Last thing, turn the collar down again all around the neck to cover the tie and check that the knot is neatly placed in the triangle made by the tips of the collar. Pull it up further if necessary to look neat. 

There, you're done. Ready to run down the long flights of stairs from the dormitory on the top floor to the dining room in the basement, where you'll find a steaming pot of porridge ready for you to fill your bowl for breakfast.

THE OTHER SIDE (OF THE PLANET)

I have a friend in Sydney, Australia, whom I first knew more than sixty years ago. I remembered her as an early great love of my life; she remembers me, well... less well! But at least she remembers me. It's an interesting story for another time. Anyway, we renewed contact about five years ago, and then lost touch again until more recently. I have enjoyed getting a view of America from the other side of the world--and also trying to summarize what's happening around me for the benefit of someone who lives so far away. I thought it might be interesting, here on The Buddha Diaries, to include you, even in mid-conversation. Here's my latest effort:

Hello again, Susan,

Thanks again for yours. Such a lot to respond to… and maybe more to add, after these two latest dreadful shootings which I’m sure you’ve read about. Our media seems intent on asking: Why? I think the question should be: How? How do we continue to make it possible for such obviously deranged young men to acquire the kind of weapons that can destroy so many lives in so few seconds? It seems beyond belief to people like myself (old lefties, liberals, whatever) that our government is so paralyzed by fear of the NRA and subservient to the Second Amendment (the “right to bear arms”) that was written, for God’s sake, at a time when “arms” were front-loaded muskets, one shot at a time, and time for reloading in between! Did you know that we now have four hundred million firearms in private hands in this country—more than actual people!
Which brings me to one of your questions: the filibuster, which has been paralyzing the US Senate for years now. It’s an arcane rule that allows any senator to hold up any bill until he/she finishes talking about it. Originally that meant actually standing on the Senate floor and haranguing on forever, or until everyone gave up and let him/her have his/her way. But that rule was changed and all they have to do is announce an intention to filibuster and the whole works get gummed up. The mere threat of a filibuster is enough to prevent any action. The result is that absolutely nothing gets done in the US Senate. Now that it’s a 50-50 split, one conservative Democratic senator (Manchin) has the yea-nay power on every single piece of legislation. And he won’t budge on guns, voting rights, or any other major issue. It is, again, beyond belief, in this supposedly most powerful country in the world. I think I would be inclined toward some other place to live if I could find one; and if we weren’t so settled (and, yes, I must admit it, so comfortable) here.
We (the “right”ones, of course!) are much relived that the Covid relief bill has passed—though without a single Republican vote in House or Senate—and that Biden and his team are finally doing such a fine, and remarkably speedy job in vaccine production and distribution. I’m surprised to hear about your own delay. We hear generally such good things about Australia’s handling of the virus. Obviously, at least until now, you have done a far better job that we have. Trump, as I see it, is becoming increasingly irrelevant, even though his supporters (even those in Congress) refuse to give up on the Big Lie that he won the election. Thanks, I think, in good part to social media, the QAnon faction and its close cultural relatives remain absurdly influential, and it’s disturbing to see elected officials cowering before the nonsense they promulgate. The media are already talking about the 2022 mid-term elections, which will be a test of the remaining power of Trump and Trumpism. It pains me to say that we could still swing further to the right. But I’m hoping not.
I’m interested to hear that your friend in India could not get into The White Tiger. I found it quite compelling reading. I’m now engaged in a powerful book coming from “the other (i.e. Muslim) side”. It’s called Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar, and (thus far) it’s mostly about the life of a Pakistani man growing up in America. But the family also visits relatives in Pakistan, and the tension left behind by the British Raj is a part of the story too. What a mess the rich and powerful countries have created in the world—and what a potential disaster we have prepared for our (only!) planet! You mention the devastating rains in New South Wales which, yes, I have read about; and we have our own climate extremes over here. Again, we have to rely on Biden and his team to change our course—and perhaps the world’s. 
Mentioning the Raj reminds me of another of your questions—about the Oprah interview. I thought the young couple came across rather well, even though their privilege makes their complaints sound somewhat self-serving. Many Americans, these days, seem more royalist than the Brits! For myself—I wonder if it’s so for you, too—I’m old enough to remember the importance of the Royal Family during World War II and to respect the poor old Queen’s unswerving sense of duty to “her people.” I think I feel more sorry for their rather ridiculous predicament than eager for their removal. But would be interested to hear more of your thoughts.
Did I cover everything? You wrote such a long and interesting email, provoking lots of thoughts. It is—have I mentioned this before?—especially interesting for me to see this country from the other side of the world, so I look forward to your insights. 

With love, as always, and excuses for the typos, Peter