2006 Updates

My sweetheart Joyce introduced me to Zhuangzi in 1973. I was 33 and she was only 21. She told me I saw life as a struggle but she saw life as a dance. Our affair only lasted 10 days--though that was long enough for me get herpes (we were both careless). I was entranced by her playful singing--drunk, but not really.

It was meant to be brief--she didn't resonate to my dark intense side, and with my concerns as an activist and a parent. But she had a deep intuitive understanding of Zhuangzi and taught me something important, though it is hard to say what.

Zhuangzi lived in China more than two millenia ago. He was a Taoist genius who wrote about naturalness, freedom, and spontaneity (the first chapter of his book is titled "Carefree Wandering.") He was sensitive to how language could imprison us.

Here is his most famous parable:

"Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering buoyantly; a butterfly, fully content being himself. He knew of no Zhuangzi! Suddenly, he awakened. And plain-old Zhuangzi doesn't know if he's Zhuangzi who just dreamt a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi or a butterfly? There must be a distinction. This is how things change."

The parable purports to explain how things change, but does it? Perhaps the point is that pondering such parables and sensing the creative spirit behind them changes the reader.

Zhuangzi was a precursor of Zen, and I think of the koan: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Meditating on such absurdities is supposed to purge one's mind of its addiction to logic and control, so that one will finally see mountains as mountains, rivers as rivers, and butterflies as butterflies. I'm unconvinced. The flavor of Zen is too arid and static. But Zhuangzi is like a cool stream in summer.

I met Zhuangzi 32 years ago. Since then every so often I've dabbled in his world but was dominated by other concerns such as contributing to society and such as finding lasting love. Now in my old age those passions have receded. I now have leisure to engage with Zhuangzi and see what happens.

MARCH

Now (Feb. 3) I'm 66. 65 was on the cusp of being old. 66 is old. Not that that's so bad--I'm grateful I've lived long enough to be old--but it's different.

Happy Birthday? It’s nice to get presents. But my boat is inexorably closer to the rocks and the shore. Whereas the winter solstice, which I also feel is a special time, is more comforting--as part of an eternal cycle.

2005 was a good year. My health and my cognition were stable. There were no major losses in my life. I had substantial healing from codependency in my relationship with Andrea, and gained a new confidence that my marriage won't be shadowed by issues analogous to those in _Saving Milly_. (See last year's Updates.)

In January, however, I came to see that I still have a pattern of codependency with one of my daughters. Though I feel sad about this, I also feel confident about resolving it and moving on to a healthier relationship--as I did with Andrea. One source of my positive attitude is the "spiritual energy" surrounding my mother's death in 2003, which changed me. I have not yet written coherently about this, but a memoir that I basically composed two years before she died provides background.

Who am I, really? An important benefit of a relationship of deepening intimacy, such as I have with Andrea, is that it challenges one to ask that question of oneself. But is the pursuit of "who am I really?" an exercise in narcissism? I recently read _The Gift of You_ by Bill McCord. It argues convincingly that when you say "I love you," if you also have said what matters to you and why you live the way you do it adds to the power and meaning of those three precious words. "The gift of you" can be a legacy to your descendants. Andrea's Bitter Persimmons is such a legacy. And Andrea has a 19th-century ancestor, Gideon Lincecum, who was a pioneering frontier naturalist. Writes Edward O. Wilson: "Gideon Lincecum was an American original, expansive, passionate, and prone to make science out of what he could see with his own eyes." Lincecum could also be an opinionated jerk, but his autobiographical writings depict a powerful and unique personality. I'd like to leave a legacy like that (minus the "opinionated jerk" element).

I've been with Andrea 4 years. Who was I before that? Here's what I posted to the DASNI list, on Feb. 13, 2002, just before I learned of Andrea's existence:

The subject line was "romantic relationships for single pwids [persons with dementia]."

"Valentine's day is at hand. Sigh.... It is hard for a pwid to find a sweetheart. I've been without one for two years now. And how many years do I have?...

"How can I escape from this prison of solitude? this question has always been at the back of my mind (and there isn't any front of my mind any more). I could place an ad on the Internet: 'Dementia advocate seeks soulmate. Slowly losing my mind but great long-term memories. Walk with me hand in hand into total oblivion.'

"I have a friend who's a woman 18 years older than me, and I've learned from her how difficult it is for a woman in her seventies to find a satisfying romantic relationship. I sometimes wondered what I would do in her position.... [Ruth died the next year.]

"There isn't any logical argument that makes [the quest] worth the hassles and the vulnerability. But there's a certain craziness deep down in people, including disabled people and elderly women, that could make them try for the 'impossible' rather than 'maturely accept reality' and content themselves with pets, TV, etc...."

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I hadn't expected that any woman on the small DASNI list would take a personal interest in my lament. Little did I know that I had a secret admirer. On February 17 Andrea replied: "But Morris, I am absolutely your Valentine!" And that was the beginning of a new life for me.

What did I mean by "Walk with me hand in hand into total oblivion"? I didn't clearly know. Partly I meant that we should be supportive companions, like Hansel and Gretel walking into the fearsome forest. But there was also an indistinct erotic tinge.

"Everyone wants to know the details of dying, though few are willing to say so. Whether to anticipate the events of our own final illness or better to comprehend what is happening to a mortally stricken loved one--or more likely out of the id-borne fascination with death we all share--we are lured by thoughts of life's ending. To most people, death remains a hidden secret, as eroticized as it is feared. We are irresistibly attracted by the very anxieties we find most terrifying; we are drawn to them by a primitive excitement that arises from flirtation with danger. Moths and flames, mankind and death--there is little difference."

Nuland is probably exaggerating, but I believe he's on to something. Toward the end of his book is a moving personal confession of how he failed to ease his brother's pain in the final months before his death from cancer. They colluded to deny the seriousness of his condition despite Nuland's extensive background whereby he "should" have known better. Nuland writes: "Harvey had very blue eyes. So do I and so do all four of my children.... I saw in those wondrously blue eyes a look that had not been there since we were two kids playing stick ball in the Bronx.... I could not face my brother and speak the words that should have been said."

I believe that if we can better understand the mysterious relationship between love and death we can be empowered to grow in compassion.

Wagner's Tristan and Isolde is widely thought to say something important about love and death. Wagner, however, was a despicable anti-Semite. After the Holocaust his music was informally banned in Israel. Here is an ethical dilemma: If Wagner's music is merely entertaining I should, as a Jew, ban it from my life--in honor of the six million. If, on the other hand, it is life-enriching I should perhaps listen to it--in conformity to the Biblical injunction: "Choose life!"

On July 7, 2001 Daniel Barenboim, conducting in Jerusalem, proposed to play an extract from Tristan and Isolde. He opened the floor to a discussion, which ensued with people for and against. In the end, Barenboim said he would play the piece but suggested that those were were offended could leave, which some in fact did. By and large though, the Wagner was well received by a audience of about 2800 Israelis.

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Generally my life has been spent not in romanticizing death but in defiance of it--in the quest for passionate love and for significant achievement. Death would come when it would come, but I did not want to die without having lived. I pretty much agreed with Spinoza: "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death, but of life."

This didn't mean that I only cared about healthy wholesomeness. Corky (1937-1997, my first wife and my children's mother) was my shadow. With her I could at times live vicariously in realms of lurid darkness:

O rose, thou are sick;
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Freud's thanatos, the death-wish, discredited as a scientific theory, interested me little. Freud posited thanatos as the antithesis to eros, the outgoing and expansive energy of desire. It could mean the surrender to entropy, the wish to cease to worry and to care, the longing for an oceanic feeling, the yearning for oblivion. Freud also associated thanatos with aggression, which to my mind is quite a different subject. Putting aside the question of aggression though, Freud was on to something... the moth and the flame... one wouldn't call the moth aggressive....

Tell it to no one, tell it only to the wise, for the mob will only mock: I would praise the living thing that longs for death by fire.
In those nights of love, when your ardor has been slaked and cooled, begetting you as you begat, the gleam of the silent candle fills you with a strange emotion.
You remain a prisoner no longer in the shadowing darkness, and a new desire snatches you upwards to a higher union.
No distance can weigh you down, you come flying, fascinated, and at last, greedy for the light, poor moth, you perish in the flame.
And until you possess it, this commandment: Die and become! you will be but a dismal guest on the dark earth.

I'd say the thanatos poem that most personally appeals to me is Swinburne's "The Garden of Proserpine." Since adolescence I have liked its languid music. It is too long to fit in this essay--besides, rather than copy it I should take it as a challenge to write my own poem.

Last month I went for my annual neuropsychological testing. No significant change. Continued ambiguity as to whether I have AD pathology. Baylor is participating in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, and hopefully I can be a subject in that study, get more definitive testing, and also contribute to science.

I'm concerned with my codependency on my adult children. Several months ago my daughter Julia began undergoing an extraordinary stress when her daughter, Amy, severely disabled and epileptic, suffered a downturn, posing difficult and ongoing medication and behavior-management challenges. I worry that she (my daughter) may not be handling the stress well. One of the first things I do when I have a problem is to look for books on Amazon, and I found Jane Adams, _When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us: Letting Go of Their Problems, Loving Them Anyway, and Getting on with Our Lives_. Generally the cases it described were more worrisome than my daughter's but I recognized myself in the picture of a parent whose happiness and self-esteem is excessively bound up with his children's success in life. Adams concludes: "Laying down our burden of disappointment in our kids, we liberate them from it, too. And hoping only that our love will support them in their efforts--sometime, if not now--to get on with their lives and make the best of them, we get on with our own." In my case it is not so much disappointment as vulnerability to disappointment--nevertheless I'm challenged to grow.

My own parents' attitude was sort of: "after you're 18 we wash our hands of your problems." I disapproved, and I think I overreacted. One of the most difficult battles of my life began in my twenties--to quit smoking. I would have liked it if my parents from time to time said encouraging things (e.g., that they remembered being proud of me when I persisted in struggling to learn how to ride a bicycle--balancing was very difficult for me, but I finally made it}. And if they had had occasional helpful suggestions that would have been nice too (it was a book on behavior therapy that led to my ultimate success in quitting smoking). I would not have liked it if they had said that every year I continued to smoke they felt more and more that they had failed.

My problem of codependency on my adult children is neither unusual nor severe. But the best thing I can do for them and the best thing I can do for myself is to heal from it. If they have rough times I want my emotional reactions to be genuinely supportive rather than be part of the problem.

Judaism (whether my liberal or Julia's Modern Orthodox variety) ought to be a powerful resource for us. It teaches that one does not have be burdened for life with one's failures, whether imaginary or real. After doing the best you can to assess your responsibility, you can make appropriate amends and then turn to God for healing. You don't need to feel your life is forever tarnished. (Christianity teaches the same lesson.)

I just read Philip Roth's new novel, _Everyman_--it is a grim statement about aging, ill-health and failure in relationships without the consolation of religion.

Whenever I talk about religion I want there to be no doubt that I'm aware of its frequent toxic side-effects. Can one find redemption in religion without also finding arrogance, prejudice and insulation from life? I think so.

DECEMBER

Cognitively, I’m still hanging in there. As I wrote in June, I had hoped to be a participant in the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, but 75 is the current age-requirement. I’m still in limbo as to whether I have Alzheimer’s pathology, with MRI, PET and qEEG indicating “probably” and neuropsychological testing indicating “probably not.”

I haven’t resolved the codependency issues I’ve written about, but feel good about the progress I’ve made.

In September Andrea and I enjoyed a week at the Campbell Folk School in the hills of North Carolina. She took drawing and I took nature writing. Beautiful country--and my teacher had a delightful enthusiasm for butterflies. No one suspected that the slow way I wrote was a neurological issue and not just a thoughtful personal style. The experience confirmed that, although slow processing speed impairs my conversational ability, sharing writing is a way I can satisfyingly connect with others. (By the way, Davis (ed.) Alzheimer’s Talk, Text and Context has a nice chapter on “Writers with Dementia.”) Here’s one poem I wrote:

“The thing is to live in the now,” she said.

And I: “The thing is to dare to dream.”

But what does the winter say

When mittens of snow cover the aspens?

What words slide

Over the frozen pond?

Under gray skies the forest softly breathes,

And in their cocoons a million tiny denizens

Wait for something interesting to happen.

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In November the Democrats won!

And just a few days ago my daughter Leesa brought my seventh grandchild, little Jonas, into the world! He looks particularly alert and intelligent, as if he’ll start reading any day now (LOL).

It’s been, on the whole, a good year.