So, its almost a year later and, "I'm bbaaacccckkk!" And what a year; lost three of our four Pomeranians, and had our home broken into with thousands of dollars worth of belongings stolen. We just had a wildfire go ballistic five miles from our home in the forest, but the winds blew it the other way. So I choose to look at it like we had some major good luck blow our direction, for once, and we Andersons are still truckin' along! The second half of Voodoo Priestess won't be as detailed (or hopefully as long) because, though the account is quite bizarre it's also quite past history for me now, something I've worked hard to get beyond.
Leaving off with John recovering from his re-attachment surgery, four days after the surgery was the weekend, when John's regular surgeon was off-duty. The staff doctor heard some 'gurgling' sounds in John's intestines and decided to take out his stomach drain tube, but too soon. His intestines apparently went 'back to sleep,' which they can sometimes do. Within hours he had violent hiccups and began throwing up repeatedly. And his incision started draining out blood and fluid in increasing amounts as time went on. Monday morning at 3:30 am he called me frantically, asking me to come to the hospital and get him a doctor . . . he was dying and no one was helping him. He had been throwing up all night and the nurse would only give him a couple of Tums and refused to call a doctor. His sheets had needed to be changed twice that night because of the blood and fluid pouring out of his incision and onto the floor. In I ran, and once I got there the nurse assigned to John immediately called John's surgeon, who directed the drain tube to go back in. John balked over having this nurse do it, though. I turned to the nurse and apologized for his actions, telling her he was just so stressed over had had happened. She said it was okay. I calmed John down and with me beside him this nurse re-inserted the tube. Instantly John's hiccups and throwing up ceased, but he filled up three large containers with stomach acid from the tube in just a few minutes. I spoke with nurse "Marie" for a brief period before she got on with her duties, and found out she was from Haiti. She'd been in the U.S. for about twenty years and 'moved around a lot' when I asked her where all she'd lived. After she left the room John's eyes went round as saucers and he cursed, saying she was never to touch him again. I was dumbfounded at his reaction and asked him why?
He relayed to me the following: Before he called me he had been in more than one altercation with her that night, begging her to call a doctor for him; any doctor on call that night would be fine. He needed help. Her last answer was: 'No, I won't. But you need to call everyone you know, friends and family, and get them to pray for you! For you have an evil spirit visiting upon you that means to do you harm, maybe kill you!"
Needless to say I was in shock when John told me that. This is the 21st century and we live in a modern civilized country with civilized doctors and nurses, so I'd thought. I reported her actions to hospital management, who were equally as shocked. Neither John nor I ever saw her again after that.
When John's surgeon appeared days later to inspect his incision, I voiced my concerns over the large amount of fluids still draining from it, which seemed to irritate him. He took staple cutters and opened up John's wound to the size of a salad plate, mumbling he wanted to make sure there was no infection going on. There wasn't, but what there was, come to find out a couple of months later, was a complete hernia of his abdominal wall, from all the vomiting he did. The inner incision of his abdominal muscles had ripped totally apart. We found this out on February 20th when John sneezed after eating his breakfast and his intestines blew out the front of his healed-up incision because there was no abdominal muscle to hold them in. Three big holes in his intestines. His entire breakfast dumped out on a towel. Just like that he had to be put on a TPN line for four months; no eating until his intestines had time to really heal this go-around.
The TPN line failed twice in that time, causing severe blood infections that landed him in ICU for days, the sugar in the fluids gave him temporary diabetes as well as gall-bladder attacks. John's final re-attachment surgery (at a different hospital and under a different surgeon) happened on Monday, June 6th, 2011, and it worked! Heart-breakingly I had to put my favorite Pom to sleep the Friday before that, but in all, now that we've known two people since then who had intestinal complications and died from their surgeries, I can look back on the experience and say that, despite the 'Voodoo Priestess' and all else that happened, John was lucky. Our family was lucky. It's all in how you look at it! Bye for now, all.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Twenty-First Century Medicine and the Voodoo Priestess
I've had many people listen as I've given the day by day blows of the past few months, from the bizarre to the completely unbelievable, and most have told me; "You should write about that!" I have to say, if some of the experiences John and I have gone through were put into a television show the TV audience would shake their heads and exclaim; 'There's no way." I will attempt to start sharing a few stories here on my blog, but for right now just thinking about what went on frustrates and infuriates me to no end. And I don't see how writing about it will be the soothing balm people claim it is. But I'll go ahead and start this show, and wait to see if the flood gates open . . .
Our latest ordeal started while on our vacation last September, with John complaining of severe intestinal pain and cramping when he'd eat certain foods and particularly when he'd drink a new found lime-infused beer (which items he continued to eat and drink, despite the pain.) This must be a 'man' thing. Any woman I've ever known, when confronted with the knowledge something they were eating or drinking was going to plunge them into unbearable pain and cramping, would immediately throw any of these unused items in the trash with a snap of their fingers and a 'good riddance!' John continued to eat and drink his poisons, followed by a Pepcid, explaining away everything with; "I must be getting food allergies." Of course. Right. I never saw such stubborn denial in my life. BTW: Stubborn denial and testosterone also seem to go hand in hand.
We arrived at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and John's condition worsened. I took him to an urgent care facility there and they ran some blood work-ups. Unable to find any infection, they concluded John probably had kidney stones and prescribed him muscle relaxants and an antibiotic. Before we left Myrtle Beach I also had to take my Pomeranian Gidget to the vet with medical problems she was having. They didn't find anything wrong with her, either. We left Myrtle Beach for Savannah, Georgia to continue our tour. By that time John could barely walk, so we said our good-byes to family touring with us and hightailed it back to Arizona, putting in over 500 miles a day in our motorhome, worried John was going to need hospitalization and we needed to get back in network for our insurance.
We arrived in Phoenix on Saturday, October 2. We were three hours from our home and had four Pomeranians with us. Going home where there wasn't any medical care available wasn't an option, and wouldn't be for several months. So we immediately found an RV park and set up, then rushed John to the local hospital emergency room (I'm not going to name names because what happened at that hospital was so unbelievable and ridiculous, if I publicly called them on the carpet my life would be full of more managers calling and stacks of reports to be filled out. Been there, done that. No more, thanks.) Because of John's prior history of heart attacks they got him seen fairly quickly . . . one good thing I will say about the hospital. Blood tests followed and this time it was found he had a raging infection. More tests . . . scans . . . he was diagnosed with acute diverticulitis. The surgeon assigned to his case said they were immediately pumping him full of antibiotics, and they'd re-evaluate him in the morning after the antibiotics had 24 hrs. to start bringing his white cell count down. Next morning the surgeon brought the bad news that the antibiotics weren't making a dent in the infection . . . they were going to have to operate that morning.
Two hours before the scheduled operation the surgeon examined John one more time, brusquely probing his fingers into John's lower left abdomen right where, we were to find out later, he had a goose-egg sized hole that had been eaten out of his colon. Gangrene had been eating it away, and the gooey necrotic tissue around the hole actually stuck against his inner abdominal wall, so only a tiny amount of intestinal waste had been leaking into his abdominal cavity the past few weeks, which was what had been causing all the pain. But in the surgeon's rough exam he broke the hole away from his abdominal wall, and John's condition went from painful to life threatening instantly. By the time they could finish prepping him for surgery between his yelling and writhing on the bed, he had a small pumpkin-sized gourd swelling out of his lower abdomen where the hole was spewing out the contents of his intestines. Nice.
The surgeon consulted with me when the surgery was over, pointedly stressing the point of how severe John's situation was. He'd had a ' Very impressive goose-egg sized hole in his lower colon which necessitated several inches of his intestine being removed, the gangrene and infection some of the very worst he'd ever seen or smelled- John’s intestines had to be stretched out, hosed down and scraped as clean as they could get them - no possible reattachment of his intestines for two months. A very difficult case.'
Then started the ordeal of recovery and the colostomy bag for two months. John thought this was hell to have to deal with . . . it was child's play compared to what was coming.
The intestine reattachment surgery was scheduled for December 1st. John came in to get prepped for surgery, excited and nervous as a young boy at his first baseball game, beyond ready to get put back together and his life back to normal. In he went to the operating room. Unfortunately no pre-surgery scans or tests were performed to see just how ready he really was. Mentally he was great. Physically, not so much. Again the surgeon came out to consult with me, stating John's case was one of the most difficult reattachment surgeries he’d performed. He’d seen worse in his years of surgery, but it was rare. John’s intestines looked like a plate of spaghetti that had Superglue poured all over them. Inflamed scar tissue everywhere, and once more he’d had to stretch out intestines, wash and scrape away remnants of gangrene infection. Sections of his intestines were distended around and stuck to each other as well as his abdominal wall again. Oh, joy.
But at least the colostomy bag was gone. He had the hope of recovery and back to life as usual. Funny how hope can be so all-consuming, yet so elusive sometimes. Life as usual was a brass ring kept out of John's grasp for several more months. Now his supreme test of mental and physical strength was about to begin, as was mine. More, later. Love to all.
Our latest ordeal started while on our vacation last September, with John complaining of severe intestinal pain and cramping when he'd eat certain foods and particularly when he'd drink a new found lime-infused beer (which items he continued to eat and drink, despite the pain.) This must be a 'man' thing. Any woman I've ever known, when confronted with the knowledge something they were eating or drinking was going to plunge them into unbearable pain and cramping, would immediately throw any of these unused items in the trash with a snap of their fingers and a 'good riddance!' John continued to eat and drink his poisons, followed by a Pepcid, explaining away everything with; "I must be getting food allergies." Of course. Right. I never saw such stubborn denial in my life. BTW: Stubborn denial and testosterone also seem to go hand in hand.
We arrived at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and John's condition worsened. I took him to an urgent care facility there and they ran some blood work-ups. Unable to find any infection, they concluded John probably had kidney stones and prescribed him muscle relaxants and an antibiotic. Before we left Myrtle Beach I also had to take my Pomeranian Gidget to the vet with medical problems she was having. They didn't find anything wrong with her, either. We left Myrtle Beach for Savannah, Georgia to continue our tour. By that time John could barely walk, so we said our good-byes to family touring with us and hightailed it back to Arizona, putting in over 500 miles a day in our motorhome, worried John was going to need hospitalization and we needed to get back in network for our insurance.
We arrived in Phoenix on Saturday, October 2. We were three hours from our home and had four Pomeranians with us. Going home where there wasn't any medical care available wasn't an option, and wouldn't be for several months. So we immediately found an RV park and set up, then rushed John to the local hospital emergency room (I'm not going to name names because what happened at that hospital was so unbelievable and ridiculous, if I publicly called them on the carpet my life would be full of more managers calling and stacks of reports to be filled out. Been there, done that. No more, thanks.) Because of John's prior history of heart attacks they got him seen fairly quickly . . . one good thing I will say about the hospital. Blood tests followed and this time it was found he had a raging infection. More tests . . . scans . . . he was diagnosed with acute diverticulitis. The surgeon assigned to his case said they were immediately pumping him full of antibiotics, and they'd re-evaluate him in the morning after the antibiotics had 24 hrs. to start bringing his white cell count down. Next morning the surgeon brought the bad news that the antibiotics weren't making a dent in the infection . . . they were going to have to operate that morning.
Two hours before the scheduled operation the surgeon examined John one more time, brusquely probing his fingers into John's lower left abdomen right where, we were to find out later, he had a goose-egg sized hole that had been eaten out of his colon. Gangrene had been eating it away, and the gooey necrotic tissue around the hole actually stuck against his inner abdominal wall, so only a tiny amount of intestinal waste had been leaking into his abdominal cavity the past few weeks, which was what had been causing all the pain. But in the surgeon's rough exam he broke the hole away from his abdominal wall, and John's condition went from painful to life threatening instantly. By the time they could finish prepping him for surgery between his yelling and writhing on the bed, he had a small pumpkin-sized gourd swelling out of his lower abdomen where the hole was spewing out the contents of his intestines. Nice.
The surgeon consulted with me when the surgery was over, pointedly stressing the point of how severe John's situation was. He'd had a ' Very impressive goose-egg sized hole in his lower colon which necessitated several inches of his intestine being removed, the gangrene and infection some of the very worst he'd ever seen or smelled- John’s intestines had to be stretched out, hosed down and scraped as clean as they could get them - no possible reattachment of his intestines for two months. A very difficult case.'
Then started the ordeal of recovery and the colostomy bag for two months. John thought this was hell to have to deal with . . . it was child's play compared to what was coming.
The intestine reattachment surgery was scheduled for December 1st. John came in to get prepped for surgery, excited and nervous as a young boy at his first baseball game, beyond ready to get put back together and his life back to normal. In he went to the operating room. Unfortunately no pre-surgery scans or tests were performed to see just how ready he really was. Mentally he was great. Physically, not so much. Again the surgeon came out to consult with me, stating John's case was one of the most difficult reattachment surgeries he’d performed. He’d seen worse in his years of surgery, but it was rare. John’s intestines looked like a plate of spaghetti that had Superglue poured all over them. Inflamed scar tissue everywhere, and once more he’d had to stretch out intestines, wash and scrape away remnants of gangrene infection. Sections of his intestines were distended around and stuck to each other as well as his abdominal wall again. Oh, joy.
But at least the colostomy bag was gone. He had the hope of recovery and back to life as usual. Funny how hope can be so all-consuming, yet so elusive sometimes. Life as usual was a brass ring kept out of John's grasp for several more months. Now his supreme test of mental and physical strength was about to begin, as was mine. More, later. Love to all.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
M & M: Menopause and Me!
Hello all: Long time no hearing from me. I've been asked why. I have a husband who blew out his intestines in February, whom I take on weekly, sometimes daily jaunts to the emergency room, a favorite doggie who's in renal failure, one of two favorite daughters who's leaving the state and I'm now going through that. God has a sense of humor. I prayed for 2010 to end so I could get on with 2011, and it hit me square on the head like a sledgehammer. What was I doing before this? Oh, yeah . . . I was reworking my book. That is very important to me, to be sure. But other things more important to me, dearer to my heart, have had to take center stage for just a little while. I'm good . . . I'm hangin' in there . . . I'll blast back into action just as soon as I can come up for air . . . I promise! Love you all!
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Back to the Drawing Board
Hello all: Well, I'm down but not out. After preliminary feedback on my book "I've Come Home" I've decided to 'unpublish' it for now and rework, rework. This is a learning process and I know I've got a durn good book in there somewhere between the first and the last page, I just need to do some major tweaking of the pages in-between. My husband has always joked about my vocabulary and how 'verbose' I am which is apparently working against me when it comes to hooking the reader in. All right, like the country's workforce has been facing, time to downsize. Urrrgh. Now that my husband has gotten to the point he'll probably live for five more minutes, I have work to do. I'll be back . . .
Monday, November 29, 2010
Read a Sampling of my Novel!
Hello all! Just posting a quick note that I'm still plugging away attempting to get my book published in physical book form. I'm covered in eBook format . . . between Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Smashwords.com my book is available (at the modest price of $3.99) for pretty much any eBook format. And each of those web sites allow you to download a free reader to your PC if you don't have an eBook reader. Sweet! To give you a little sampling of the flavor of my book I just posted another page on my blog titled; 'An Excerpt: 'I've Come Home' amounting to half a chapter. Hope you'll give it a quick read and that it kindles your curiosity. I'm also hoping to line up an interview with the radio station Jonelle works for in Prescott, to get some publicity out there . . . yes, I can use as much as I can get!
On another note: John goes in for his 2nd surgery this Wednesday . . . thank you family and friends for keeping him in your prayers! All my love, J.J.
On another note: John goes in for his 2nd surgery this Wednesday . . . thank you family and friends for keeping him in your prayers! All my love, J.J.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
My eBook Bases are Covered!
Hello all: I'm happy to blog today that as for my eBook, I now officially have all bases covered. No matter what type of eBook reader you may have, from Nook (Barnes and Noble) Sony IPad or IPhone, Kindle (Amazon) PC or anything in between, you can find my book. For reading devices not supported by either Barnes and Noble or Amazon, go to Smashwords.com and you should be able to find a reading app for whatever device you have. Thank you friends and family, as always, for your love and support! Getting a printed book is proving to be more challenging . . . but I'm still going after it. Jimmi
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Where DO I Get My Ideas?
Hello All! Happy November! Brrrrrr . . . living at 7,000 elevation, we basically pole-vault from hot summer right into winter most years. This one doesn't seem to be an exception. Almost overnight the leaves on our trees decided to make a run for it. They were just there the last time I checked! We also had a pretty catastrophic tornado right in the vicinity. No one was killed, but the multiple areas hit lost thousands of Ponderosa's, Oaks and Junipers. A tornado? In Northern Arizona? Not likin' the changing weather patterns I'm seeing the last few years. We're not prepared for riding out a tornado. The house sits on top of a rock mountain, so not much chance of us diggin' out a storm cellar. Okay, I'll save my off-the-wall opinions about changing weather patterns for another post. I did have another off-the-wall subject matter when I started this one . . .
I've been asked how I come up with ideas; for my plays and for the story lines for my book, and to answer that sends me off into a little bit of uncharted territory. First of all, for my various teleplays, I was following along with the television shows I wrote submissions for and the ideas just kind of came to me. Same with my screenplay; "Mexican Vacation," following the Griswalds and combining that with all the experiences I'd had in Mexico up to that time. With my screenplay; "Fugitive Child," well that was interesting . . . it was a timely subject that had been coming up repeatedly on the news and it hit me at some core level that got me furiously writing. I had it finished, edited and submitted in three weeks . . . but it still wasn't fast enough. Someone else got their version out there first: As for "I''ve Come Home," I actually dreamed it. Them, I should say. Two complete and separate dreams I had that ended up coming together to form my book.
Back when the girls were in high school I was doing quite a bit of writing; exercising my mind on a daily basis in the regimen of putting pen to paper, or in this case fingers to keyboard. We took a month-long vacation in our motorhome back to Florida in the early Spring of 1998, a time during which I thought I would be taking a break, but apparently my subconscious didn't agree. Two weeks into the trip I woke up one morning from dreaming the storyline of Spencer and Savannah, literally shaking my head going, Where on earth did that come from? I got busy jotting down a detailed synopsis of the dream just in time to have the second one: the ghostly story of Garrett and Belinda. These two dreams were unreal . . . because they were so complete. Mostly when I dream I remember bits and pieces at best, but not these two. By the time the trip was over I had a detailed synopsis of the two story lines, deciding later to merge them into the book as it reads now.
I do have theories about the experience; and it's these theories I think people might find interesting, to see how my mind tracks just a little 'outside the box.' First of all, I firmly believe that the mind is just like any other muscle of the body in that it desperately needs exercise. The more it's exercised the sharper it focuses. Beyond the stunning example I was given above, I cite back to my biggest confirmation of what for me is irrefutable truth: my music. When I was young and practicing hours a day at the piano, it wasn't only my fingers getting a workout. My mind had absolute clarity for music, for notes on a page. I may have been a bit of a drooler in other aspects of my life, but not that. So burned into my mind were pieces like "Claire de Lune", "Liebestraum," "Moonlight Sonata" and many others, that to this day I've never needed to open the music to sit down and play. It sounds strange, but I call up the sequence of notes to my fingers from a place I can't point a finger to and say from right there. It's somewhere deep in my subconscious. In fact, if I let my mind, my thoughts, get in the way when I'm playing, most often it trips me up. Those many pieces were written to some kind of hard-drive inside me and the only way I can tap into it is to just 'let my mind go.' Play from impulse only.
The most striking example of that was after I'd officially 'quit' taking piano lessons at sixteen and was then asked to perform for the national 'American Medical Association' convention in Phoenix at the Camelback Resort. I worked up the most difficult piece I'd ever attempted to perform all on my own to entertain them with, and I think because I didn't have my security blanket there (a piano teacher in the background) my mind was fighting me on it. I was introduced, came up on stage and sat down at the piano, placed my hands into position . . . and froze! I couldn't remember anything beyond the first chord. I literally sat there for over a minute, until I started hearing some mumbles from the crowd. I almost got up with an apology and walked off the stage. Last second I made the decision to just play the first chord and then 'let it go.' See what happened. It worked. That internal hard-drive took over for me. It was the weirdest thing.
Writers say; 'Keep writing every day!' Musicians say; 'Keep practicing every day!' Fitness experts say; 'Keep exercising every day!' and I think that holds true for everything you do. Because I also happen to believe something else: 'You either use it or you lose it.' Just as the gifts of your life, the accomplishments, come to fruition equal to the effort you put into them, they can also fade without it. And before you say, 'Hey, you're contradicting yourself;' yes, it is harder for me to get through one of my classical pieces now versus twenty/thirty years ago . . . I'm thinking maybe my hard-drive's gotten a little corroded. But all is not lost or forgotten. Just, er, a little rusty. And here's another theory I have that ties into the above.
It's about creativity. I've long speculated that perhaps creativity is a quantifiable, physical element, a gene you either possess or you don't, like any other gene you have in your body . . . for blue eyes, or the ability to roll your tongue. And I think it can be exercised as well. Here's what I theorize this potential gene might actually do. I imagine that as it's exercised and gains strength, it draws energy, inspiration from a source of frequency in our surrounding universe mankind has yet to label or identify. It taps into that band, which if I'm correct and it's out there, is just another version of the ones that carry radio waves or WIFI. Four hundred or so years ago people thought the world was flat. A hundred years ago people would've laughed themselves silly if you'd talked of radio waves or WIFI. So, who knows? Perhaps that band, that frequency captures and stores the energy we generate from our use of creativity; our ideas, our physical efforts using it; making like a mega hard-drive that all someone who was born with the 'creativity' gene has to do is tap into to make use of. It might explain how three or four different writers come out with almost the identical movie or song or book at the exact same time. Maybe they tapped into and downloaded the same file folder, because that idea in particular was being given a lot of mental energy and power to it at that time. Exercising their creativity by using it everyday gave that gene within them the strength to stretch out and connect with that mega-hard-drive. Just like some people have a gene that makes them more prone to a particular disease, or a gene that makes them more psychic, some people, I believe, are more sensitive to the source of energy where creativity is stored.
In a roundabout way my mother used to theorize on this herself, advising me that if I had something significant I would invent/create that I wanted to be mine, to claim ownership of, don't weaken or corrupt the energy of it by advertising it ahead of time, or even speaking of it out loud. She said it would weaken its power and I'd be apt to find the rug pulled out from under me. She was a firm believer in keeping silent as the grave until the right moment . . . keeping the focus, the energy internalized until finished and ready to unveil the masterpiece. Too weird, I'll bet you're thinking right now. But if you think about it in the context of above; maybe that was her way of saying; the more you externalize the creative process with verbal words and energy, the more the mega hard-drive gathers it in, making it accessible to others who are tapped in as well. Real Twilight Zone kind of stuff, right? Well, mom was very much into Metaphysics. I've never formally researched the principles put forth by it, but I'm fairly sure a lot of her advice to me in our brief time together came from their ideologies.
So, there you have it. I don't look at myself as any different from anyone else. I believe I happened to have inherited the 'gene' for creativity. Luck of the draw, I guess. I had relatives upline that were dripping with it. I also inherited the gene for gray hair, mondo oily skin, pesky extra fat-cells and a double-chin. I had relatives upline that were dripping with those, too. It's all relative. Take care all . . . talk to you soon!
I've been asked how I come up with ideas; for my plays and for the story lines for my book, and to answer that sends me off into a little bit of uncharted territory. First of all, for my various teleplays, I was following along with the television shows I wrote submissions for and the ideas just kind of came to me. Same with my screenplay; "Mexican Vacation," following the Griswalds and combining that with all the experiences I'd had in Mexico up to that time. With my screenplay; "Fugitive Child," well that was interesting . . . it was a timely subject that had been coming up repeatedly on the news and it hit me at some core level that got me furiously writing. I had it finished, edited and submitted in three weeks . . . but it still wasn't fast enough. Someone else got their version out there first: As for "I''ve Come Home," I actually dreamed it. Them, I should say. Two complete and separate dreams I had that ended up coming together to form my book.
Back when the girls were in high school I was doing quite a bit of writing; exercising my mind on a daily basis in the regimen of putting pen to paper, or in this case fingers to keyboard. We took a month-long vacation in our motorhome back to Florida in the early Spring of 1998, a time during which I thought I would be taking a break, but apparently my subconscious didn't agree. Two weeks into the trip I woke up one morning from dreaming the storyline of Spencer and Savannah, literally shaking my head going, Where on earth did that come from? I got busy jotting down a detailed synopsis of the dream just in time to have the second one: the ghostly story of Garrett and Belinda. These two dreams were unreal . . . because they were so complete. Mostly when I dream I remember bits and pieces at best, but not these two. By the time the trip was over I had a detailed synopsis of the two story lines, deciding later to merge them into the book as it reads now.
I do have theories about the experience; and it's these theories I think people might find interesting, to see how my mind tracks just a little 'outside the box.' First of all, I firmly believe that the mind is just like any other muscle of the body in that it desperately needs exercise. The more it's exercised the sharper it focuses. Beyond the stunning example I was given above, I cite back to my biggest confirmation of what for me is irrefutable truth: my music. When I was young and practicing hours a day at the piano, it wasn't only my fingers getting a workout. My mind had absolute clarity for music, for notes on a page. I may have been a bit of a drooler in other aspects of my life, but not that. So burned into my mind were pieces like "Claire de Lune", "Liebestraum," "Moonlight Sonata" and many others, that to this day I've never needed to open the music to sit down and play. It sounds strange, but I call up the sequence of notes to my fingers from a place I can't point a finger to and say from right there. It's somewhere deep in my subconscious. In fact, if I let my mind, my thoughts, get in the way when I'm playing, most often it trips me up. Those many pieces were written to some kind of hard-drive inside me and the only way I can tap into it is to just 'let my mind go.' Play from impulse only.
The most striking example of that was after I'd officially 'quit' taking piano lessons at sixteen and was then asked to perform for the national 'American Medical Association' convention in Phoenix at the Camelback Resort. I worked up the most difficult piece I'd ever attempted to perform all on my own to entertain them with, and I think because I didn't have my security blanket there (a piano teacher in the background) my mind was fighting me on it. I was introduced, came up on stage and sat down at the piano, placed my hands into position . . . and froze! I couldn't remember anything beyond the first chord. I literally sat there for over a minute, until I started hearing some mumbles from the crowd. I almost got up with an apology and walked off the stage. Last second I made the decision to just play the first chord and then 'let it go.' See what happened. It worked. That internal hard-drive took over for me. It was the weirdest thing.
Writers say; 'Keep writing every day!' Musicians say; 'Keep practicing every day!' Fitness experts say; 'Keep exercising every day!' and I think that holds true for everything you do. Because I also happen to believe something else: 'You either use it or you lose it.' Just as the gifts of your life, the accomplishments, come to fruition equal to the effort you put into them, they can also fade without it. And before you say, 'Hey, you're contradicting yourself;' yes, it is harder for me to get through one of my classical pieces now versus twenty/thirty years ago . . . I'm thinking maybe my hard-drive's gotten a little corroded. But all is not lost or forgotten. Just, er, a little rusty. And here's another theory I have that ties into the above.
It's about creativity. I've long speculated that perhaps creativity is a quantifiable, physical element, a gene you either possess or you don't, like any other gene you have in your body . . . for blue eyes, or the ability to roll your tongue. And I think it can be exercised as well. Here's what I theorize this potential gene might actually do. I imagine that as it's exercised and gains strength, it draws energy, inspiration from a source of frequency in our surrounding universe mankind has yet to label or identify. It taps into that band, which if I'm correct and it's out there, is just another version of the ones that carry radio waves or WIFI. Four hundred or so years ago people thought the world was flat. A hundred years ago people would've laughed themselves silly if you'd talked of radio waves or WIFI. So, who knows? Perhaps that band, that frequency captures and stores the energy we generate from our use of creativity; our ideas, our physical efforts using it; making like a mega hard-drive that all someone who was born with the 'creativity' gene has to do is tap into to make use of. It might explain how three or four different writers come out with almost the identical movie or song or book at the exact same time. Maybe they tapped into and downloaded the same file folder, because that idea in particular was being given a lot of mental energy and power to it at that time. Exercising their creativity by using it everyday gave that gene within them the strength to stretch out and connect with that mega-hard-drive. Just like some people have a gene that makes them more prone to a particular disease, or a gene that makes them more psychic, some people, I believe, are more sensitive to the source of energy where creativity is stored.
In a roundabout way my mother used to theorize on this herself, advising me that if I had something significant I would invent/create that I wanted to be mine, to claim ownership of, don't weaken or corrupt the energy of it by advertising it ahead of time, or even speaking of it out loud. She said it would weaken its power and I'd be apt to find the rug pulled out from under me. She was a firm believer in keeping silent as the grave until the right moment . . . keeping the focus, the energy internalized until finished and ready to unveil the masterpiece. Too weird, I'll bet you're thinking right now. But if you think about it in the context of above; maybe that was her way of saying; the more you externalize the creative process with verbal words and energy, the more the mega hard-drive gathers it in, making it accessible to others who are tapped in as well. Real Twilight Zone kind of stuff, right? Well, mom was very much into Metaphysics. I've never formally researched the principles put forth by it, but I'm fairly sure a lot of her advice to me in our brief time together came from their ideologies.
So, there you have it. I don't look at myself as any different from anyone else. I believe I happened to have inherited the 'gene' for creativity. Luck of the draw, I guess. I had relatives upline that were dripping with it. I also inherited the gene for gray hair, mondo oily skin, pesky extra fat-cells and a double-chin. I had relatives upline that were dripping with those, too. It's all relative. Take care all . . . talk to you soon!
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