P52 Week 34 - Disgust

I am disgusted by U.S. politics! And I can apply each and every synonym of disgust to describe my feelings: revulsion, repugnance, aversion, distaste, nausea, abhorrence, loathing, detestation, odium, horror. The political climate in America turns my stomach.

An image comes to me of Donald Trump as Nero, playing his fiddle while Rome burned.

I don’t want to go into all the particular ridiculousness of what’s happening with election campaigning. More than enough is being touted and I don’t want to add to the plethora of rhetoric.

I have a dream:

-       - An election campaign that is limited to six weeks, like in Britain.

-       - A party platform like one in Denmark that includes

o   Telling the truth

o   Transparency – where candidates freely disclose their mistakes

o   Prioritizing the short and long term needs of the community and the earth

-       - That the millions of dollars currently spent on campaigning are diverted into pre, perinatal and early childhood development, and into education – or at least to paying off the huge student loan debt.

It is sad but true that we, as a national collective, are supporting our current political climate. It could not exist otherwise.

What will it take to shift the American collective consciousness to a better functioning governing process? It is my dream that we will accomplish this.

What is your dream?

P52 Week 33 - Photographer's Choice - Traffic Revisted

A meditation and a short, early workout at the gym – taking care of health. A few emails and phone calls – taking care of business. A much anticipated interview with the editor. It went surprisingly well and I felt buoyed up. Mailing a birthday present, buying printer ink – taking care of errands. So efficient!

What next? How about taking care of toenails? They are outgrowing my polish. Why not hit my favorite nail salon? It’s on the way home. I easily weave through traffic – across the University Bridge, along Eastlake, down Mercer. A perfect parking spot awaits.

I choose a lighter, pinker color to replace the dark purple. I smile at my operator. She’s Thai and hardly speaks any English. She massages my legs and the chair massages my back. I am softening. The woman across from me is harping at her operator to cut more here – and here. I notice. I barely react. While my nails are drying, I pull out my iPad and read a few pages of my library fantasy novel.

Afterwards, I scoot across the street to the ATM machine. The man ahead of me is taking forever, even with the coaching help of a bank employee. He turns to me not once, but twice to apologize. I give him a faint smile, but in truth, I am miffed. He’s finally done and I manage to regain my equanimity.

It’s 3:30 when I climb in my car – the same time as the traffic anger explosion a month ago. Traffic is backed up – again. I sigh.

This time I brave Mercer – the street I had avoided before. I hang a left and a right and merge onto Highway 99. The freeway traffic is crawling, cars are butting in ahead of me, but I manage to inch along.

I remain calm and relaxed. On this trip, I have avoided the anger explosion that marred my last pedicure adventure. I am humbled.

What made the difference? Was it the position of the planets and stars? Was it that I was more centered? Was it that my spirits were buoyed up by my conversation with my editor? Was it because I had taken care of business? Had I been graced by the divine?

It may have been from a combination of all these factors. For now, it is enough to have experienced the shift. I continue my spiritual practice, and I am filled with gratitude.

P52 Week 32 - Fear

“Here, watch me,” little Tommy yelled as he hurled himself off the post, over the wide privet hedge and landed and rolled on the soft grass below. “It’s easy, see?” He laughs as he runs back up the steps.

As a nine-year-old, I was mortified that my brother, three years younger, was able leap with abandon.

I gingerly climbed, yet again, onto the stone fencepost. It felt safe: solid and wide enough for both feet with room to spare. I studied the wood slats that shimmied into the stone posts, two of them, a high and a low. I studied them to avoid the expanse of the hedge in front and the lawn six feet below. My mind whirled: “I can’t do it. I can’t jump. I need to jump. I need to do this. I can’t be a scaredy cat. I can’t be a wimp.”

“You can do this sis, really you can. Don’t even think about it. Just jump.”

My mind blanked and I dropped into an abyss. No thinking. No emotion. I found myself flying off the post into emptiness. I soared over the hedge, landed on the grass six feet below. I rolled over. My legs hurt a little from the jolt. I broke out in nervous laughter. I was alive and hadn’t broken any bones.

“Do it again,” Tommy urged.

I ran up the steps, climbed on the rocky post and with a rush of adrenalin, jumped again. This time was scarier. I felt clammy, and the landing was heavier.

I lept a third time and that was enough. No more. I had no desire to push myself any more. Been there. Done that. It was enough to know that I was less of a chicken.

*       *       *

When I was in my thirties, frustrated with clothes still damp after hours of tumbling in the dryer, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I edged the stepladder to the side of the house, and climbed eight feet to the rooftop. With glee, I pulled the huge plug of lint that had collected in the mesh covering the dryer vent.

I peered down at the stepladder and the deck below and froze. No way was I going step off the roof without some help.

No one was at home. I panicked. I would be stuck up here for hours. Then I heard landscapers in the garden next door. Abandoning my usual shyness, I called out for help. Two brawny guys with big smiles help me down.

*       *       *

In the middle of the night when I was in my forties, a high-pitched low battery beep screeched on our smoke alarm. I set up our eight-foot stepladder and climbed to the fifth step, but that wasn’t high enough to reach our vaulted ceiling. I balked.

“I can’t wake Joseph. He just had chemo,” I said to myself. “I’ll cover my ears and wait till morning.” The beep shrilled again. I became more and more agitated. I climbed one step further – the sixth step – and reached up on tip-toes. I still wasn’t high enough. I sobbed in frustration and fear and went to wake my husband.

*       *       *

In my sixties, I hiked Mount Pilchuck with my daughter. The trail narrowed with a huge drop off as it circled the tip of the peak. I grew dizzy and fear gripped me. I balked. “You go ahead, Steph. I’ll wait for you here.”

When it comes to mastering my fear of heights, I don’t have much of a learning curve.

P52 Week 31 - Photographer's Choice - Computer Magic

My new computer is doing exactly what I tell it to. That’s right! I speak to it and it takes dictation. Now, how wonderful – how magical is that?

How amazing it would have been to have had this in my medical practice years ago, but back then voice activated dictation was a long way from being perfected. Back in those dark ages, I dictated my chart notes into a designated phone line and then medical transcriptionists – real people – listened to the recordings and furiously typed away. The transcripts were made available in two to three days. Too bad if the patient was seen again before the dictated note got into the chart: the new clinician assessing the patient didn’t have much to go on. If the dictation was tagged as STAT – as for when I was admitting a patient into the hospital and the inpatient staff needed the information immediately – I could get the transcription back in a couple of hours or so.

Look at me now! Here’s me dictating. The computer is writing whatever I say. Holy cow! I can’t stop from grinning as I see my spoken words instantly set down in Times New Roman fourteen-font text. This is quite a trip!

I wonder if this dictation process can pick up different accents? Should I do an English accent? I’m doing an English accent now. And now I’m doing an Eastern European accent like my mother’s. This is unbelievable! I actually said, “Zees ees unbeleeevable,” and the computer captured it with correct English spelling. So this dictation application can even work with thick accents. Unbelievable indeed!

It may come down to it that I never have to type another word again.

I’ve practically given up pen-writing, replacing it with computer typing. Now I may take yet another step, bypassing the typing and just dictating my journal and everything else that I write. This feels surreal.

There have been a few glitches with the dictation, printing right spelt alright G HT instead of WOR I TE. Wow that came out really screwy! But for the most part it’s remarkably accurate.

I wonder if the dictation process captures song?

Saw where me so

Skies blue

Been good dreams to you today to dream really do come.

These are the first lines of Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Here’s another singing attempt…

do idea of female DA

Ray drop of golden sun

Can you guess which song this is? Yep, it’s “Do re mi” from The Sound of Music.

So the dictation application doesn’t do so well with transcribing singing, but I suspect that that function may well be perfected on the next upgrade.

The miracle of technology! I am in total awe!

P52 Week 30 - Anger

Last week I got stuck in traffic.

I am used to Seattle traffic, after all it’s reported to be the third worst in the country. I usually suffer through the snarls and jams and idiot drivers with equanimity. I always allow extra time and crawl along the endless serpentines with the radio blaring, singing along with Maroon Five – Sugar, Yes Please – Taylor Swift – Shake It Off, Sam Smith and Pharrell Williams – Because I’m Happy…

Last week I got a pedicure. I’ve tried many local nail salons, but my favorite one is a little further away, the other side of Downtown, by the Seattle Center and the famous Space Needle.

Happy with my dark purple toes, and my loosened back that was pounded and slapped as I sat in the massage chair, I plop into my broiling car to head home.

“I’m good,” I think. “It’s mid afternoon. I’m ahead of the traffic.”

But Mercer Street is backed up all the way from the freeway to where I’m parked.

“I’ll go down to Elliot and take Hwy 99. That’ll be quicker,” I smile, congratulating myself for my ingenuity.

But every intersection is jammed. I inch along at a rate of one car length a minute.

“No worries,” I think to myself as I grip the steering wheel and perspiration pours down my back. I hate to turn on the air conditioner when the car is mostly idling – my car is older and I like to baby it.

“I can shake this off. I don’t have time constraints,” I reassure myself. “I can take in the surroundings. I can sway with the music, demonstrate to the drivers around me how relaxed I am.”

It takes me twenty minutes to drive five blocks and to merge to onto Elliot.

I’m no longer swaying to the music. In fact, I’ve shut the radio off. I’ve closed the windows and turned on the air conditioning. My shoulders and jaw have tensed.

I’m by the Old Spaghetti Factory on Elliot Avenue where I had dinner when it first opened decades ago.

I’m still by the same restaurant ten minutes later. It was a crap dinner and I’ve since divorced that husband, and the couple we dined with got divorced as well.

My lane of traffic hasn’t budged. The lane next to me is inching along. Grrr.

I boil over and smash my horn with a long blast. My lane begins to creep.

Several minutes later I have moved five more blocks and am approaching the Highway 99 entrance. I nudge my way into the onramp lane between two cars.

The woman I try to squeeze in front of blasts her horn, screams at me and gives me the finger.

Instant Karma.

I am humbled and I relax. My anger has completely dissipated.