Who Is This E@L?

Who is this person staring back at E@L?

The person in the bathroom mirror with the zipper line of scabs peeling from a scar down the middle of his chest. The person with the healing wounds where drain tubes once sucked out blood accumulating in the spaces between his heart and his chest. Who is the person who would submit himself to such surgical ignominy? Certainly not E@L. E@L would never let people hack at his sternum and prise open his ribs, nor let let them stop his heart, nor let them place a clamp on his aorta - the source of oxygen to his entire E@Lness. He certainly would not let them dig arteries and veins from arm and leg. E@L does not know this front-to-back reversed E@L.

Who is he?

What sort of person is he?

What sort of person is this E@L, who decided such violent effrontery was the best idea at the time. This acquiescent E@L, this bowed into submission by logic and research E@L. This E@L who knew that he might die, and comfortably made the choice to take the risk. This E@L who put thing in order: will and testament, bank accounts, password list. 3% is not an insignificant statistic when they do 60 of these a month. This E@L who really thought he was going to be the one in 33 1/3 who died, the one every month and a half. This E@L who shelled out $50k for the promise of staying alive a bit longer. The E@L who wanted to live but knew, in his cramping heart, that he could die: and die easily, quietly, quickly, never waking up. Death. If not now then eventually, and he couldn’t decide which would the be best outcome. The slipping into oblivion, into annihilation and pre-birth emptiness. Peace. Who is he?

Where is the E@L without these battle wounds? The E@L who feared the pain and dependence that would last for months after, should he survive those first few days. The E@L who said “No fucking way.”

Who is this E@L who dismissed the anxiety. Who is this E@L who knew what could go wrong, but shrugged. Who is this E@L who, while on the operation table, agreed to being intubated while still awake, because of his severe apnoea. The E@L who was hit with a massive headache that burst up the large muscle (sterno-mastoid) in his neck next to his skull, that went up into his brain when the central venous line was inserted, and who mentally shrugged and thought (he could still think!), well that’s it, a massive stroke, but whose both hands still felt strong when he squeezed them as he kept testing them.

But the E@L who joked with the anaesthetist about upgrading his ultrasound machine when he came through this, now that sounds like the real

E@L.

Bliss

Every (well, several of them) morning when E@L takes the excellent Singapore public transport to his office way up in the North-East, temptingly close to the airport, he walks down his street to the corner of the main road, to the bus stop (or to the train station, depending on his whim, and the weather), and he is confronted by droves of small children.

They are in their peak cuteness phase, toddling to keep up with their parent or minder, or scooting on mini-scooters (they are under 12, so E@L permits this). They are all tidily dressed in well-ironed pink checked gender appropriate uniforms: shirt with shorts, or a dress, shiny shoes. They are heading to the old building next to E@L's condo. It was refurbished into an upper-echelon pre-school a few years ago.

(E@L recalls it from when he first came to Singapore as a ramshackle old place, dark and a bit spooky, most likely destined, he wrongly assumed, for a complete replacement with a crappy modern, too-small roomed, over-priced, low-rise apartment (height restricted area!) abomination. But no, it was restored into a "Keeping those annoying creatures out from under mum's feet" operation instead, and it looks like it's doing well.)

~~~~~~~

Often E@L has seen one particular lad going slower than the others, on his way to the kindergarten. It's not for lack of enthusiasm though. He moves with an agitated gait; his arms splayed and flailing, his legs kick out in jerks and spasms. His head stays relatively still however, and he seems quite capable of keeping his balance for much of the time, teetering a bit, without his two minders, or maybe with only one.

(Birth trauma or prematurity or something, has left cystic gaps near the middle of his brain that have severed the pathways of his motor nerves to give him such a manifestation of cerebral palsy. For several reasons, E@L prefers to slot his small change into, of all the options, the box held out by the Singapore Spastic Society's porcelain leather and steel calipered girl who stands humbly, demurely, sadly, aching to be pitied, or forgiven, in a blue dress and white pinafore at the exit to the Cold Storage super[well, reasonable]market where he shops.)

This morning, the young boy has ventured from the concrete path, his two minders chasing him as he moves as quick as he can, unaided, on to the wide nature strip, under the lee of a tall tree. There, anfractuous roots are exposed, certain to catch his feet. But he easily skips over them and makes a clang on the steel cover of a concrete drain access. Perhaps he is heading to a small construction machine, a digger parked behind a safety barricade on the grass. (The area is always being dug up and restored.)

His face is aglow, beaming blissfully! His eyes wide and his mouth full of laughter - this was all amazing to him. What joy to see a digger! Look at it! All yellow, metal, angular, mechanical, and caked in mud! How awesome!

~~~~~~~~

This same morning, after 10 days of following his bosses advice: "Take it easy and rest at home, big fella", E@L has to go the office to get his replacement work visa. He is reluctant, like most of these little kids. His eyebrows are close together in a scowl, as they often are when he is outside (or inside). It may be that the sun had assaulted his eyes when came out of the apartment (he raises his arms across his face in a mock vampire pose and hisses, but no-one is there so the gag remains his own, for himself to enjoy with a sardonic grunt as he takes out his sunglasses), or it may be chronic misanthropy, but the permanent crease to the left of his glabella* is a reminder to him, in the mirror, of how little he sometimes admires the physical world.

Now, as he walks, head down, on his street towards the gauntlet of children, his sunglasses are on, his ear-pods are in. They cancel (at $400, so they should) the white noise of the planet, the chatter of the children, the roaring traffic, replacing it all with a left-of centre political podcast which is in the business of confirming all the nastiness and misery that pervades the planet. His feet ache already (still!) despite expensive medication. His chest feels funny. Is it another heart attack, more angina? Can he take another step without falling down dead? Shrug. So what? Or should he belch away some gastric wind; would that be the issues this time?

He knows he has limited time - a mild heart attack two weeks ago... Wake up call number two. But the arteries can't be stented this time. So it's next week for the big bypass operation. He wishes he didn't know so much about cardiac surgery.

He wishes he hadn't observed open heart surgery himself, seen the beating heart glistening in the space between the retracted halves of a split sternum, watched it slow and then pause as the heart-lung machine took over. He wishes he hadn't wondered if they would be able to start it up again.

He doesn't know everything about the procedure and its complications, but enough to scare the living shit out of him if he lets the thoughts creep in... And he knows exceptionally well how smoothly things go when they go right, and how quickly they can go wrong. He has worked in, or visited in his clinical/commercial capacity, hundreds of hospitals over the last 40 years....

He looks up to see a spastic child in rapture at the orange safety barrier next to a small dirty excavator.

~~~~~~~~

Hey, E@L, what's your problem? You're rich beyond your needs, you have a ridiculously untaxing job where you turn up, sit quietly and unobtrusively, keep your poppy-head down, and take home a packet of money each month. You travel extensively for work into fascinating places, stay in great hotels. You have all the books you (and 500 other people) would ever need, let alone read. Your domestic helper has been cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for you this last week - plus popping her head in at night to confirm you are still breathing.

You are a literate, well-fed(!), employed, home-owning, tertiary-educated, Australian, white male. You are well into the top 1% of the earth's human inhabitants.

You have friends and acquaintances coming out of the Whatsapp and FB wazoo.

What is there to melancholy about? Really. Why be sad? Harden the fuck up, snowflake.

Why worry?

Open heart surgery coming up next week, E@L points out. I could die. Really, I could. This is no joke.

Is that it E@L? Is that what you're concerned about? Everyone knows your heart will, literally, be in good hands, in a world class place.

Stop reading about Ivan Ilyich, and stop memorising those meaningless Japanese Death Haiku.

That 1-3% risk, does it really matter? Just because the previous 97-99 patient were fine doesn't mean you number is up. That's the Gambler's Fallacy: you know this. You're not a smoker, not diabetic, only 60.

~~~~~~~

As one of those Japanese poets says: If you don't wake up, you'll never know that didn't wake up. If you do wake up, even better.

~~~~~~~

Yeah, pain, pain, bad, bad, bad pain for a few weeks. Big man, be tough. It's the price to pay for the next 10-plus years of not worrying about any funny feelings in you chest, because you know all has been sorted.

Maybe even 20 years of getting back on track with your life. Writing (good, bad, crap, funny or not, who really cares?), travelling with friends, laughing, and enjoying great times those good people in amazing places with wonderful wine and food. Won't it be magnificent! Decades of it!

So wake up to yourself now, instead. Look at this kid on the nature strip by the digger.

Give the world a second chance, be thrilled by it. Jump for joy. Laugh. Crack a bottle of that 2006 Barossa Valley Shiraz tonight (and give me a call when you do).

Be the ecstatic kid with cerebral palsy, not your miserable old self.

Enjoy life. It's all you've got.

~~~~~~~

Good luck with the surgery,

E@L

and never refuse an offer of that blissful pain relief.



(* Look it up.)

Calculus

[NB: First written in July 2012. I was either in Sienna just recovering from my heart attack, or in Hamburg staying with friends right after that, waiting to be allowed to fly long distance again. This was amongst some (I think) unpublished rambles I found in Evernote while tidying up. . Maybe I used some of it in other posts, but I can't find evidence of that right now (and the swimming pool is beckoning). Some attitudes to life from that time are probably not well placed in a post "#metoo" context. Another one or two old unposteds to come, I hope.]

~~~~~~~~

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong -- acting the part of a good man or of a bad.
Schopenhauer.

~~~~~~~~

I'm not suddenly getting philosophical. I've alway been struggling to understand how a knowledge of philosophy can influence my actions (preferably for the better). It's more than just remembering which philosopher said what (and not a chance of me remembering anything correctly), but it's also the implementation of their philosophy into my life. Perhaps I mean the moral code (whatever that means - and epistemology is also an issue) they offer, suggest or demand. Perhaps I am referring to The Meaning Of Life, or perhaps my reasoning leads to that just because there is no god, and no meaning, and one needn't be polite and scrape the mud off one's shoes before entering another's sanctum.

However, in our second by second existence, life moves too fast. Often it is not until after a situation has passed that I realise an opportunity to make a philosophical decision has passed. Sigh. So rather than being proactive, my philosophical thoughts tend therefore to be post hoc, and I end the day contemplating my failures, and kicking myself for such moral recidivism, after the event. I look back at the muddy footprints and hang my head.

Essentially I see myself as a good man who occasionally plays the bad, and then agonises about it in the pub afterwards. Well sometimes I don't agonise, sometimes I tell everyone how brilliant it was, but that's not the real me. Really.

Writing a blog, a public diary, gives you a chance to examine yourself and your life, to lay it all out in public to incomplete strangers (I feel like I know you, all four of you - hey I do know three of you!), which is what I have been doing in many of my posts, whether you've noticed it or not.

And, now, writing after I've recently had a momentously memorable memento mori moment and was mere millimeters of coronary artery lumen from being no more, well, that is most likely to push a ruminative soul into thinking fuzzily about the otherwise petty matters of life and death, right and wrong, love and sex, and Woody Allen movies in general.

~~~~~~~

Am I lying when I write in my blog? I do try to be honest in essence, even when I am making things up, because it's the general mood underlying the exploits of the composite character that is Bruce that I most wish to convey. The tendency to anger, frustration, and recrimination when you are aware that you (or others, usually the others!) are violating codes that you once held as immutable, but now see as arbitrary. These are out there forever at least until the heat death of the universe, or until something better than the Internet comes along, whichever comes first, so it's too late to go back now.

Not that anyone in the future will give a flying rat's arse. There are already way too many physical books in the universe, let alone all this electronic verbiage. Who would bother? No-one reads the old plays of Voltaire any more, even though these were the basis of his fan base when he was alive (I heard this on podcast - fuck reading them). It cheers me to think this in a way. Because he didn't write Candide until he was 65, and here I am 55 and done fuck all.

~~~~~~~

"The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates

That old chestnut. The Unexamined Life - great name for a blog! Do you think about what you are about to do, what you end up doing, what you have done? More than just wondering what a certain hero might have done in a certain situation - what would Bryan Boytano, Jesus Christ, Tyler Durden, Atticus Finch, Timothy Leary, or Calvin/Hobbes do - are there any hesitation any more, any second thoughts? I wonder about my friends sometimes: Have they just given up on thinking about these issues. Am I Robinson Crusoe here? Was I right in doing that, was the outcome for the best? Primum non nocere? Was anyone watching? Is my reputation (hah!) tarnished? If you answer Yes to any of these questions, Press 1.

I don't necessarily approve of certain behaviours that humans get up to given the chance, though I groan at certain excesses, I don't condemn them out of hand and obviously I don't shy from the milder ones either. I just like to think about them. And sigh. And wonder. And take a Xanax if sleep won't come.

Bad is relative. I'm sorry, but it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Utilitarianism used to attract me. Simple rules: maximise pleasure and minimise pain, and not just personally but universally. If it doesn't hurt anyone and you are having a ball, why not? Or it does good and you won't injure yourself, (the other way round) why not? I think that utilitarianism is attractive because of my previous employment as a fetal deformity hunter-killer. Hunger Games with an ultrasound probe. For the best it was, Skywalker. The ostensible justification, to minimise suffering and grief, reduce the overall pain and infirmity in the world. The hidden agenda: save precious resources, defend hospital budgets, doctor's time, preclude those expensive surgeries to keep fixing things. (I am only half serious here.) Protect parents from unnecessary grief and diminished freedom or whatever you want to call looking a disabled child, or at least give parents the information to make an slightly less ill-informed decision.

There are so many "push the old man in front of the train to save five young lives" situations in medical ethics. After a while it gets to you. No, that's wrong. After a while it doesn't get to you any more.

[Don't misunderstand though, I am completely pro-choice and my old job - I still justify it this way - was to provide full and accurate information so that, if necessary, a genuine informed choice could be made.]

~~~~~~

So I am still happy with that part of my history, mostly. But in the rest of my life, now that these justifications are no longer required every evening as I look in the mirror? I am no longer convinced that the narrow moral calculus of Utilitarianism offers the most realistic way to live, despite its persistence into the present time, such with Peter Singer's tit-for-tat stance on how we should live in a practical, real world.

Kant, not that I understand much of this stuff, whoah, nothing really except this: he proposed a matrix of moral action. One was the Categorical Imperative which - I blur like sotong over this - means something like - whatever should be done when a certain situation arises, must be able to become a universal law: it must be done every time, for everyone, everywhere. (Categorical as in "complete" - I categorically deny those allegations.)

But who or what has the power to define what should be done? God? The Bible? Allah, The Q'uran? Calvin & Hobbes? Kant, being a good Christian, said God.

Are there any universal imperatives, however? Thou shalt not kill? -- Except in war, except in prison, except in self-defence. Not universal then.

Thou shalt not wear thy shoes in the house. Thou shalt not get a rub and tug. Thou shalt not take a girl (or whatever) home from the 4FoWs or Nana Plaza. Thou shalt not push in the train queue or overcharge for a taxi ride. Thou shalt not have sex with family members, or animals. Thou shalt maintain marital fidelity.

Believe it not, almost all of the dilemmas mentioned are taboo in one culture, but not in others. For example, the Targaryens marry siblings in order to keep the blood-line of The Dragon pure. Hey.

Kant also makes the point that it is the act itself which is under consideration for being a categorical imperative. The act of pushing of the old man in front of the train, not the resulting saving of other lives. (That would by the hypothetical imperative, I believe.) So killing, while always wrong, is not always wrong.

While I at once preferred Nietzsche's modification of Kant's CI - you should only do what you would do if you had to do it again, that is, if you had to live your life over again to bring you to the exact same point of decision making. Would you do it over and over again in a Groundhog Day scenario? We know what Phil Conner did. He kept modifying his behaviour until he got it right, and eventually managed to shag Rita. If that is what you consider a successful or ethical life, then there you go. (I'm no longer sure this works for me: Andy MacDowell has aged a lot since then. Those teeth, too?)

And if I was a superman, beyond good and evil, and god was dead, then I could easily and consistently commit an act that those who share my cultural capital (all the benefits that my upbringing in my society and culture has given me) would consider to be wrong, because my will dictates it. I want to do it, and I can do it because I am better man than you. Seig Heil! So maybe not taking it that far.

There are then relativities to Kantian categories - they are not universal, or imperative after all. The utilitarian equation is not straight forward arithmetic. The numbers are weighted. What if, instead of pushing an old man in front of a train to save five young people, you have to push a your girlfriend in front of the engine in order to save five Nazis?

I am not satisfied with Nietzsche or any of the rationalists now, because even when I can see in advance the decision points that are going to arise and I know what I should do according to my reasoning, what I would want to do if it came to this again and again, but I can't stop myself from transgressing.

I am merely the mahout of reason on a untrained elephant of will (desire, urge, emotion).

My elephant is bigger and stronger than me. Rationalizing is what most of the time we consider reasoning: Yeh, that's where I wanted to go anyway, because... *see utilitarianism, above. That rider/elephant metaphor is an old one, but recently reinvented in some books I just read; Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, and The Happiness Myth. Which is partly where this discussion originates, that and Michael Sandel's Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do. Light reading.

~~~~~~~~~

Why do I (or Bruce) go Orchard Towers or to Soi Cowboy, or to Kings Cross for that matter, when I know I'll feel bad after going there, for a dozen reasons previously described elsewhere in this blog? Why do I throw my conscience out the window when physical gratification is on offer for a price? The answer is, I try not to any more. And I don't mean any less either - OK, yes I do, I mean less. Not everyone is (i.e. me), wants to be (i.e. me), or can be (i.e. me again) in a sexually satisfying relationship. OK, not everyone cheats in one of those unsatisfying relationship but, in unrelated news, not everyone is happy with their lives (and the utilitarians would say get the fuck out of there - or get out of there and fuck). And when the social pressure is somewhat relaxed thanks to certain cultural differences (real or imagined) in certain parts of the world where concepts such as marital fidelity are not so important, or perhaps more correctly, where infidelity not so disastrously unexpected - every HK Chinese wife expects her man to have his little wife in Shenzen, and her job is to look after the kids, not give BJs all the time - and peer pressure (elephants follow each other) is high, the sprit is willing but the flesh is tumescent.

~~~~~~~~

So I am talking about looking at what you do and what you have done, analysing and judging it: is this the way you want to have spent your life? Is this the way you want to be remembered? When you look back, are you proud of everything? Could you survive a parliamentary enquiry?

Is this how I anticipated living when I was back in Australia? Aren't there better things for me to do with the limited time I have? And this limitedness is feeling particularly real - as I was so unpleasantly reminded a few weeks ago at the top of the San Gimignano tower in Tuscany when that elephant seemed to be standing on my chest.

Short answer: I have no idea. I balance pleasure with slightly less pleasure, I balance the exploitation of women with the exploitation inherent in my needing to pay for sexual release (not that the money I pay all goes to the person I just screwed) due to urges I have no control over. I balance my guilt at this with the knowledge that my abstinence is not going to change anything; I balance rampant gadget greed with charity; I balance visiting prostitutes with masturbation. Elsewhere in life I balance little white lies with truth; I balance my privacy and my frequent isolation (work travel or angina attacks in Italy) with friendships and Facebook; I balance my atheism with the belief that people are usually good whether they follow a religion or not; I balance the awareness that I am not perfect with the frequent confirmations I see that there a hell of a lot of people out there doing a hell of a lot worse or more outrageous things than I would ever consider.

~~~~~~~

"It’s only human nature!”
"Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were put on this earth to rise above!”

~~~~~~~

I thrash it out, but I do not despair that the answers don't come as easily as the questions. I relax. I shrug. I do what I can. I try makes others smile. I try to enjoy myself. I try to explain it to

E@L

Anchor

I used to love sitting here, settled in my comfy home-office-chair, banging away, letting the words flow as my ideas, like the soft inflated things they are, bounced off walls and down along strange dark pathways I might once have had the wisdom to not take. Before blogging.

Now, there never seems to be the time to blog. Hours have evaporated as I've distracted myself with FB and disgraced myself with porn and ended up lost in a labyrinth of click-on and click-backs, and I am eye-fuzzy and brain-glazed, yet fighting valiantly/foolishly against the call of the sleep faeries and a very very comfortable bed. And a very quiet CPAP machine.

Has the therapeutic catharsis which maybe fuelled them, departed from those confessions and musings? Let's see.

~~~~~~

When I am back in Australia, I try to follow my regime of, every other day at least, taking my cardiologist's strong recommendation for a one hour, or longer, walk. I go in the morning there (everyone else is still asleep, even if I set off at 9). Despite listening to podcasts or music, my mind looks for observations and reflections that might make me feel like I am not brain dead, that might sound good in, say, a blog. Walserian note-taking: of the way roses on a bush wilt here, yet bloom there, the way a large black dog tugs on the leash and pulls its small female walker to one side of the path and her scarf billows up.

I question myself, but on trivial things these days. Where will I end up? Where will I retire, should I live that long? The brooding navel-gazing of the man who nearly died three years ago has lightened somewhat - the soundtrack of my blog would no longer be Bjork's Anchor Song. Or would it?

~~~~~~~

In the time when I used to set off from my mother's house, I would take part of the route that brought me home from my primary school (imagine letting an 8 year old walk 2 miles home by themselves these days). And I walk up past the town's main cemetery and the stone-masons, and look for name I recognise in their windows. The past, in those paddocks (now low-rent housing estates - Commission Homes) where a friend saw a stallion with an erection and wouldn't stop talking about it for weeks. The past, in these houses nearer to school which are weatherboard, tiny, with knee-height steel bar and mesh fences, houses that never will be worthy of gentrification, house where school-friends, enemies, and bullies, liars, cheats and other genuinely bad people - both children and adults - once lived, perhaps still do, tragically trapped in small minds and small rooms. The past, now at the war-memorial in the middle of the roundabout, where up float thoughts of my father, a soldier in WWII, who served in Borneo, who died 58 years ago, allegedly from war-related malarial heart damage. I follow my shadow to the breakfast cafe, shut on Sundays, and enjoy toast and coffee when I can. That was a more sentimental journey.

~~~~~

Instead, now that mum's house has been sold, she and I stay in my sister's house in slightly a more rural environment (still there are paddocks of massive penises in nearby agistment properties), and my walks have no memories attached - I avoid the street where an ex-girlfriend lived. I pluck at one or two stiff leaves from various types of native trees that loom over the footpaths and snap them horizontally at small intervals. I smell them absently. I order a flat white from the cafe near the Coles supermarket, where two pleasant ladies serve me and we joke a bit, or from the McDonalds McCafe, where I am just a number to the busy, underpaid young girls who don't know that a Medium flat white is the same size as a Venti (and does not contain 20oz), if the other is closed.

I walk past the fading white fences of the horse farms and past the For Sale sign on a fire engine, mysteriously in an otherwise empty paddock, sipping away. Others are out walking. Many are overweight, some as big as me. They might have "heart conditions", too. They might be walking their dogs. They might be wearing annotated jerseys and be on bikes. I wonder at how many paces distant will the other morning walkers lift their head and greet me - a nod, a grimace-like smile, a barely audible "'Ning", or "'Day". FYI, it measures out fairly consistently at ten paces. Twelve paces seems like you're looking at them too observantly for comfort. Eight paces, and it's like you were thinking of ignoring them, or vice versa, with a sudden decision to recognise their humanity at the last minute.

Many other thoughts. Many other observations. Wind, clouds, trees, dogs, bitumen snakes that writhe in repaired cracks of the asphalt walking path that is the old Queenscliff railway cutting. Life, death, and other minor distractions. I buy the newspaper at the Chinese-run small supermarket - I'm almost back home now. We all read different papers - local, right-wing, left-wing. 谢谢, I try to say, but the owner never seems to hear or understand.

Eighteen years living in Chinese-speaking Asian countries and I can't even say "thank you."

~~~~~~


E@L

Contractual Obligation

I am sure most of you have given up on me posting anything substantial ever again. I nearly said "most of us," because I have been wondering the same thing too.

It's tough.

Every step I take, I listen for my heartbeat. Every time I sit back quietly, I listen for my heartbeat. Then I fall asleep and the receptionists wake me up, giggling, as my snoring is disturbing those genuine patients patiently waiting along with me in my potential customer's office.

If I don't hear my heartbeat that is a good thing - it is not racing or pumping, it is just ticking over, as it should. Good thing.

It's tough, you feel like you are waiting to die, that you have knocked and are waiting for the door to open and for the Reaper let you in: "Just a minute...!" If you hear those heartbeats, they are the footsteps approaching from the hallway inside.

You are expecting this hand-grenade, this heart-sized death device, to explode in your chest anytime. It nearly happened three months ago. It could happen now, in my sleep tonight.

You can't help but feel morose, down, sad, depressed, melancholy...

*aside* I just went to my Kindle Cloud reader app (I dropped my real Kindle and it died, slightly) to clip a quote from Robert Burton's Anatomy Of Melancholy at this point - any random quote would do, this is a brilliantly quotable book, words for any occasion), and of course the book wouldn't download. Because, the pop-up tells me, there is a network error. Network error? WTF! Sigh. I invoke Sturgeon's Law. */aside*

OK, using the Tab: here's one. It's as good as any another:

We are worldy-wise, admire ourselves, and seek for applause: but hear Saint Bernard, quanto magis foras es sapiens, tanto magis intus stultus efficeris, &c. in omnibus es prudens, circa teipsum insipiens:
the more wise thou art to others, the more fool to thyself.
~~~~~~~~~

And so you don't feel like writing. Or watching TV. Or turning up at work.

And no-one else you know has any idea how it feels.

Or that this apathy is how it feels.

"I could have died!" Silence.

"Dead!" Silence.

There are more pressing things to talk about.

~~~~~~~~~

Of course, seeing as how E@L has been prodded and punctured, injected and imaged, dilatated and stented, this moment of truth (death = truth, just as truth = death) may not arrive for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years.

~~~~~~~~~

And so E@L goes out to O'Bama's Irish Pub on Tras St to catch up with friends. Then to some cigar/wine bar on Club St. Then to some other cocktail bar on Club.

And there were so many tall, gorgeous girls to be seen...  Sometimes with a female friend and sometimes alone. And E@L just couldn't help but wonder...

~~~~~~~~~

NEXT!

~~~~~~~~~

Your day in numbers:

1.5
(2:40am to 4:10am) - Hours spent walking home from Tajong Pagar with the futile excuse of 'burning off' the night's alcohol.

71.
% of security guards still awake between the hours mentioned above. Hey, not all that bad considering, what?

12.
The number of people eating in Havelock Rd food court at 3am.

3.
The number of people dining alone in a food court at 3am.

1.
The number of people slumped unconscious on the table at a food court at 3am... (you will have to zoom in for this one...)

1.
The number of people taking photos of the people dining at a food court at 3am.

0.
The number of potential sex partners throwing themselves at E@L during the course of the evening (preceding and including the walk home.)

0
the number of... nothing whatsoever.

~~~~~~~~

NEXT!

~~~~~~~~~~

Addendum: Here is the quote I was looking for last night: -

But whereas you shall see many discontents, common grievances, complaints, poverty, barbarism, beggary, plagues, war, rebellions, seditions, mutinies, contentions, idleness, riot, epicurism, the land lie untilled, waste, full of bogs, fens, deserts &., cities decayed, base and poor towns, villages depopulated, the people squalid, ugly, uncivil; that kingdom, that country must needs be discontent, melancholy, hath a sick body, and need to be reformed.

E@L

Beautiful Ice-Cream - Ugly Baby Jesus - Unwell E@L

In the town of San Gimignano there are a lot of towers. It's famous for its towers. There are a few museums (like the Torture Museum, that I missed) and there are the some bloody good ice-cream shops.

This one sells the World Champion Gelato.

And just a few metres away, this one sells The Best Ice-cream in the World. Spoiled for choice.

The pistachio ice-cream here in the second place was truly beautiful and a joy to the palate. Miraculous.

~~~~~~~~~

In the next square is the Museo Civico in which there is quite a collection of frescoes of the Madonna with particularly unattractive baby Jesus's*, so E@L wandered around snapping pic after pic...

And E@L's personal favorite (this one is from the Duomo in Siena...)

When he left the museum - the three story part in the middle here, with the crenelated rooftop - he decided, after all those earlier misgivings and the others refusing to climb it, that it would not much of a problem after all for him to climb the Torre Grossa, (as seen in Assassin's Creed II apparently) on the right, and go way up there, 57m (177ft)... No problem...

Smart?

No.

Problem. So here's E@L on the top of the tower having some pretty fucking severe angina.

Famous last words? "Great view from up here!"

Cue: Ambulance to Siena, angiogram, stents, hospital for a week... And associated drama of logistics, etc... for Izzy and Danijel and Vicky... and then for myself to get home as I was not supposed to fly for a week after discharge.

~~~~~~~~~

Sigh. Why did E@L climb that fucking tower? What was he thinking? Maybe he was thinking that the PET stress test he'd had done two weeks earlier showed normal cardiac perfusion is maybe what he was thinking.

Cardiologist in Singapore yesterday says, "Mmm, that normal test, very high predictive value, this shouldn't have happened."

E@L says, "No it shouldn't have."

~~~~~~~~~

Expect E@L to be going on about this incident a lot in the near future...

* Not to be confused with uglyrenaissancebabies.

It Was The Salmon Mousse!

There was a small area at the bottom of the window, exactly at eye level, where I could see out, watch the not particularly interesting side of the road panoramas fly past. I was bemused, somewhat, as they say. Look at that high grass, those telephone poles, the square blocks of untended trees (perhaps olive trees), a nondescript building here and there. Not much of a view of Tuscany to take with you, wherever you are going.

It was cramped, my legs too long for the trolley, had to bend my knees a bit for the doors to be shut. The paramedic was chubby and was sweating, but she was nice. She told me her name. I can't remember it. She was fighting my adipose insulation to find a vein somewhere in my arm. Left, right, it didn't matter. I had them veins well hid! Something went in painfully and eventually some fluids started dripping in. (I am 30% bruised by area on both arms now). One of the fluids going in was morphine. Nice. It didn't even touch the sides, as they say, but nice.

I was calm. Unnaturally calm, you might say. Those were tough minutes, or should have been, but I was almost smiling. Maybe part of the sense of relief I had was due to the unassailable position I held, that this was not the end. Just a bit of chest pain. No collapse. No clammy sweating. No shortness of breath. Just a tightness, an interior tightness that is hard to describe. There was no elephant sitting on my chest, it didn't feel like that, it just felt like a bad back, but in the middle of my thorax. It was instantly worrying, but not threatening. Know what I mean? No? Neither do I.

There was also a touch of the SEP feeling. Whatever happened to me, it would be someone else's problem from here on in. I would be completely out of it. Something of the feeling I had when I left school and vowed that I would never attend church ever again and finally convinced my sceptical friends that I was unequivocably and inveterately atheist. All those pin-headed angel problems are not mine anymore. And so now. Porn on the hard drive? Meh. Weird porn on the hard drive? Meh. Three thousand books that nobody would want? Shrug. (Hey those Patrick Whites are all 1st Editions!) Burial arrangements: where, how? Surprise me.

However as I watch the concerned faces on Isabella, Danijel and Vicky disappear as the door to the ambulance closes, I sigh and I shrug. Guys, I didn't want to do this to you. To leave you in the Tuscan holiday idyll lurch like this. Shit, I feel my pockets, I have the car keys. These are problems I don't want to leave behnd. They are 60km from home. Danijel has not got a licence. The rental car is in the carpark, but I have the keys... My stuff is in our place (near Incisa Dell Arno - or something like that) and nothing is packed and we were to move to Volterra next day and OMFG...

But I am calm. There's nothing I can do, why fret overly?

I was calm, too, at the top of the tower, the tower we had all agreed not to climb. But I passed the gate to it as I left the chapel and museum (at least a dozen ugly renaissance baby Jesus's) and I just thought, hey, it can't be all that bad. And besides the cardiac stress PET scan I had last week was normal. It can't be that high. But it was, and higher. I made it: legs fine, breathing fine. I took a few photos and then the tightness began. It didn't go away. I sat down and waited. It didn't go away. It didn't get any worse. I thought, well, fuck them carrying me down 54 metres inside a 14th century, tight fit stone tower, I'm going down mysef as far as I can. If I feel faint, I'll sit down. I didn't feel faint at all. I started sweating heavily, but it was 36degrees and I had just climbed up the top of a mother-fuckin'g big tower. When I arrived at the reception, I told them to call a doctor. And my friends, call them please - the tall Bosnian hippy-looking dude, the small Chinese girl sketching the piazza, another one fast asleep on a stone alcove in the shade. They were found. Amazing.

Soon enough the ambulance ripped into the gelatteria (the best in the world, two of the shops proclaim) crowds, pistachio ice-cream fying, and took me away.

*insert Solzenhitzen's Cancer Ward*

So here I am, looking from the patio of my Sienna hotel, feeling fine, apart from the back cramps I'm gettting whilst typing on this awful chair, and looking at the Tuscan twilight panoramas with a shot of grappa.

And I do care. Mostly.

E@L