5/17/24

 Friday, May 17, 2024

MaryBeth was in the hospital last night, Geri minding E while Sharon tended to her mother.  Geri got home at 10 p.m. and unwound for 2 hours watching Lawrence and Alex.  I couldn't sleep and was up till 1 a.m., then up again at 4:30 to enjoy my overnight oatmeal and prednisone pill around 5.  Then, resolved not to start my day with blustering, rude Joe and strange Mika, I watched several YouTube pieces on William Blake, an almost lifelong favorite of mine, perhaps mostly for the few lines I so frequently turn to

Every Night & every Morn

Some to Misery are Born 

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to Endless Night 

It's hard to believe that William Blake truly existed, that he walked this Earth, wrote his lines, drew and painted and engraved his images, and saw his visions.  Has there been anyone like him other than Shakespeare perhaps?  I suppose I, like everyone else, was introduced to him in high school, perhaps by Brother Coogan, and again in college, by John Pick, but I recall being most "into him" during my first year in the Marine Corps, more than 60 years ago, when I enjoyed his lyrical poems so much and tried to understand his prophetic poems while stationed temporarily at Naval Air Station Glynco outside of Brunswick, Georgia, where I became a fan of Sydney Lanier and The Marshes of Glynn.  (How's that for a run-on sentence?_

Blake lived during the reigns of George III and George IV, during the revolutionary eras in America and France.  He died almost 200 years ago yet he seems so incredibly modern, so contemporary,   How often I think of the lines I quoted above about the "lottery of birth," its impact on me and my sister, and indeed on everyone.  Consider Donald Trump, born a millionaire son of a racist, domineering father who instilled in him a dog-eat-dog, zero-sum game worldview and life philosophy.  Then consider the overwhelming majority of other human beings on this planet.  William Blake never would have fallen for Bill Clinton's brazen bullshit that all you need to succeed in America, or anywhere, is to work hard and play by the rules.

I'm thinking today of the opening stanzas of Blake's London:

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. 

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear 

Are we not today utterly beset by Blake's "mind-forged manacles"? We are surrounded by agents hellbent on mining our weaknesses and causing us woes.  Misinformation, disinformation, lies, misleading half-truths, messages expertly designed by marketers, advertisers, politicians, public relations professionals, foreign and domestic "influencers," and hidden persuaders to make us unhappy about this, that, or the other thing, to make us want something we don't have, this product or that service, this politician in office rather than that..  We live each day in a war zone in which the mission of the warriors is to penetrate our conscious and subconscious mind to affect our behaviors not for our benefit, but for the benefit of the persuaders.

Prednisone, day 5.   I've heard too many stories of patients being quickly healed of their PMR pains after 1 or 2 days on prednisone.  I worry that on the morning of day 5, my shoulders will still painful and my fingers stiff and painful.  My lower back stiffens up as usual after being on my feet and active for a while, though I am not as concerned about that as I am about the shoulders and hands/fingers.  The final step in the diagnostic tests for PMR is responsiveness to prednisone.  Am I misdiagnosed, or simply expecting too much, too soon, considering how wracked I was just 5 days ago and how much better I have been since?

Dem boids.  Lilly showed up at about 6:30 and I let her out at 6:45.  I turned on the Merlin app on my iPhone and Merlin said the air was filled with the sounds of a Northern Cardinal, an American Robin, a House Sparrow, and a Brown-Headed Cowbird.  Spring has sprung.

Leo Bloom: I beg your pardon?

Concierge:  Who d'ya want? Nobody gets in the building unless I know who they want. I'm the "concierge". My husband used to be the "concierge", but he's dead. Now I'M the "concierge".

Max Bialystock:  We are seeking Franz Liebkind.

Concierge:  Oh... the Kraut! He's on the top floor, apartment 23.

Max Bialystock:  Thank you...

Concierge: ...But you won't find him there... he's up on the roof with his boids. He keeps boids. Dirty... disgusting... filthy... lice-ridden boids. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Boids!... You get my drift?

Leo Bloom:  We... uh... get your "drift". Thank you, madam.

Concierge:  I'm not a "madam"! I'm a "concierge"!

Major Accomplishments:  (1) I lay down on my bed for the first time in two months.  (2)  I was able to get up and out of bed from lying down on my left shoulder.  (3) I stripped my bed and washed the linens.