A Pilgrim’s Digression

One of the benefits of waking up for work before five AM is that I catch the final minutes of Coast to Coast AM, the early morning (or late night, depending on your point of view) talk show in which host, guests, and callers discuss paranormal and other pseudo-scientific phenomena.

I consider this a benefit because if I formed my impression of Americans and how they think solely from mainstream sources such as daytime talk radio and cable news, I’d probably believe that we are all exceptionally rational human beings. Instead, by listening to Coast to Coast, I’ve been given a glimpse into the erratic minds of people who listen to radio at four AM and then decide to call in to report their experience with “visitors” from a parallel universe. Somehow I think these late-night denizens of the airways are far more typical of Americans than otherwise, especially when you consider that according to a recent study, educated people are more likely to believe in the paranormal than the uneducated or religious.

[The study] “of 391 U.S. college students done in 2000, found that participants who did not believe in Protestant doctrine were most likely to believe in reincarnation, contact with the dead, UFOs, telepathy, prophecy, psychokinesis, or healing. Believers were the least likely to buy into the paranormal.” Monsters, Ghost and Gods: Why We Believe

The reason I bring this subject up is not that I am a coldly rational skeptic, but because indeed I am fascinated by stories of ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and the like. However, I like to think I do approach the subject with a skeptical, questioning mind. What amazes me about Coast to Coast is that people call in with the most outlandish stories, and their wild tales are accepted as true by the host and his guest.

Sometimes I feel the host and his guests aren’t skeptical enough of their own beliefs and stories, as well.

For example, this morning when I turned on the radio, George Noory was talking to someone named Joshua P. Warren, a paranormal researcher who, judging by his photo, looks a bit too much like the kid in high school drawing Metallica logos on his notebook in the back of the classroom while his science teacher drones on.

The subject under discussion was this photo of construction at the White House, taken during the 1950’s and first appearing in David McCullough’s biography of Harry Truman. If you scroll down to the magnified view of the image, you will see what appears to be a transparent image of a man standing amidst the construction.

Now, if I saw this photo in the McCullough biography, and if I noticed the “ghostly” man at all, my first thought would not be “Oh my god it’s a ghost!” My first thought would be “double exposure.” Because that’s what it looks like, and that is the simplest and most likely explanation. Or perhaps the picture was taken with a camera with a long exposure time, and someone moved, causing their image to be blurred. Who knows…but my first thought is not “Ghost!”

My wife and I enjoy watching the show Ghosthunters on the SciFi network, and I find myself both believing and disbelieving at the same time. However I rarely end an episode of this program convinced of anything, because so much “proof” of paranormal activity is based on unverifiable human sensory perception–a person senses that something is watching them–or else on fallible technological evidence, such as recordings, photographs, or (most laughable of all) fluctuations in temperature within a room. So often I think that, as in religion, we believe in the paranormal because we want to believe, not because there is any evidence worthy of our belief.

Furthermore, sometimes we can be influenced to believe by accepted “wisdom” concerning the paranormal. For instance, the idea that photographic equipment can capture paranormal manifestations invisible to the naked eye is a staple belief of paranormal “researchers,” and most ordinary people interested in the subject believe it. Similarly, a prevalent idea is that when a ghost or presence is in a room, the temperature will lower dramatically as the being sucks energy from the room. Thus when a person sees a blurred human image in a photograph of construction at the White House, they have been trained to think “Ghost” when in fact the image may be perfectly explicable by reason.

To give another example, I live in an eighty year old house here in Washington. My landlady is 94, and her husband died a painful, prolonged death in the house a few years ago, finally going out of his mind in his final days. There may have been other deaths in the house. Thus, given accepted wisdom about the kinds of houses that are haunted, this house seems like a likely place for the paranormal to manifest itself.

My diet of literature and TV shows about ghosts and the paranormal also influences what I expect or believe possible. I hate to be alone in the house. I don’t like looking in mirrors, for fear of what I might see behind me. I hear a lot of noises at night, including creaking doors and the crack of wood as the house cools. I’ve been awakened in the night with the oppressive fear that something is in the room with me, literally hovering near the bed.

The latter in particular disturbed me, for awhile. I don’t sleep well, anyway, and I used to attribute it to the “presence” in the house.

Then at some point, it occurred to me that if I wake up in the night with this feeling of oppressiveness about me, why do I immediately attribute it to the paranormal? Could it be I’ve been conditioned to think “ghost” because of all the crap about ghosts I’ve loaded into my brain over the years? Could a more likely explanation be that I just woke up out of a pleasant sleep, and so naturally my brain is not going to be functioning at its highest, most rational level?

We’ve all had the experience of being in that twilight state between sleep and waking, and thinking something that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. But in the light of day, we look at it and think, “How ridiculous!”

It is probably no coincidence that people tend to see ghosts mostly at night. There is probably a psychological link between how our brain works during sleep and in those periods just before or after sleep, and our mis-perception of reality at that time.

In short, I think more often than not ghosts and the like can be explained by reference to our brains and our environmental conditioning, rather than to any measurable manifestation.

And yet, I still am attracted to the kinds of “evidence” people such as Joshua Warren propose as proof of the existence of ghosts. Why do I want to believe? I don’t know. In the end, I think like a lot of people, I just like a good scare and the feeling of creepiness when I hear the sound of a voice on a recording of an empty room.

At some point, there has to be room for faith in life–belief divorced from evidence. But for the most part, I hold these two parts of my being separate, the part that believes on faith, and the part that demands evidence. There is no need to reconcile them. Humanity itself is unreconciled to its own humanity, thus our belief that we become like gods upon death, transcendent and immortal.

Summer is winding down. Within two days, Brendan will be back at school; Lynn has already been back to school since early last week. Not much changes for me, since I am not on an academic schedule, but my life, too, becomes a little emptier without wife and son around on my days off.

Other than school beginning, it isn’t really the end of anything. But over the years I’ve become accustomed to marking the end of one year and the beginning of another with the start of the school year rather than on January 1st. It’s an old habit I will probably never lose.

When I was a kid, I actually loved this time of year. For about one week after school started, I was excited about school. It passed. But I still love the Fall and view it as both an end and a beginning.

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Lately for no particular reason, I have been feeling supremely happy with my life. Nothing special is happening right now, but for whatever reason I feel good. Furthermore, the smallest event is likely to trigger that feeling of glowing warmth inside, like someone just gave me a wonderful present.

Late yesterday evening, I was watering the rose bushes, and I got that feeling. We cooked chicken and corn on the cob on the grill last night, and I got that feeling. Lynn and I were sitting together watching “Mad Men,” and I got that feeling.

Maybe it’s a combination of things triggering these feelings. On the one hand, at odd times I’ve had the recurring thought that this is likely to be my Grandma’s last summer. So the nearness of death makes me appreciate the life that I have. Also, the weather has been extremely mild this weekend. Today, the high is only supposed to reach 79, which is spectacular for August. Additionally, Lynn and I have really been enjoying each other’s company lately. We have been playing a game of Scrabble together in the evening, something we used to do back in the first days of our relationship. The sex has been pretty good, too.

Also, last week my mother-in-law, two nieces, and a nephew came to stay with us for several days. Ordinarily, such a visit might be the cause of extreme strife within our marriage. I know that there was a time when I would have been one miserable S.O.B for a week, while they visited. But, for one thing, I wasn’t home all week (On Monday, I went back to D.C. to work and did not return until Thursday, one day before they left). And for another, seeing how much Brendan enjoyed having his cousins here for a week was a real pleasure. I’m sure he is going to have some great memories of this summer.

Also, before I left for work on Monday, they threw me an impromptu surprise birthday party. My birthday is not until October, but my mother-in-law said that since they never get to celebrate it with me in October, she wanted to have a party this week.

That little party was so unexpected, I had to choke back a few tears.

Every little thing seems to trigger an emotion, now.

I remember when I was little, one of my favorite fairy tales was the Three Billy Goats Gruff. I can still remember sitting on my grandma’s lap while she read that story to me from a book that had been my Dad’s back in the fifties, when he was little.

I never really got the point of the story, other than troll’s live under bridges. That triggers another memory: riding with my grandparents across the Memorial Bridge in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and hearing my grandpa say “We have to pay the toll” except what I heard was “We have to pay the troll.” I got down in the floor of the car and hid until Grandpa and Grandma laughed and told me what he really said.

The point of the story, muddled as it is, seems to be that if the grass is greener on the other side, go get it. Just make sure you have a big brother to kick the troll’s ass.

Well, I am at a point in my life where I don’t particularly care whether the grass is greener on the other side of the bridge. I’m happy with the green grass of home.

One way I can tell I am getting old is that, though I still love the Beatles music dearly, in the song “She’s Leaving Home” I identify more with the parents than the runaway girl. I found myself rather teary eyed at the verse:

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that’s lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband
Daddy our baby’s gone

And yet another symptom of the end of youthful romanticism is that I used to think the song “Fixing a Hole” was about the treatment of depression: “I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in.”

Now, I think the song is just about basic home maintenance.

I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in…
I’m filling the cracks that ran through the door…
I’m painting my room in a colorful way…

Who said the Beatles were all about drugs and sex, anyway?

Here’s an interesting way for you to occupy a lunch break. Put the Beatles on your iPod and go to songfacts.com and read the commentary for each song, as you listen to it.

What I find fascinating is how there is no simple interpretation of even the simplest Beatles song. Of course there are those who interpret everything as either about drugs or sex, but the fascinating thing is how people personalize these songs and totally disregard such anchors of interpretation as authorial statements of intent.

So what if Paul said that “Fixing a Hole” was literally a song about fixing a hole in the roof of his home in Scotland; I say it’s about recovering from depression. That’s what it means to me. And someone else sees it as a song about recovery from drug addiction. Still someone else says the song is about the freedom to let your mind wander while smoking pot.

And people argue about these issues, too, as if the misnomer “Song Facts” must literally be true and we can, indeed, establish hard facts about the meaning of songs.

One of the funniest arguments isn’t even about interpretation, but concerns something that ought to be a verifiable fact. At the end of the 1967 song “All You Need Is Love,” one of the Beatles can be heard in the background singing, almost chanting, the chorus from the 1963 hit, “She Loves You.” But is it Paul or is it John? There is a raging argument about that in the comments section. And people seem genuinely angry about it. Take this one guy, for example, who insists on his point of view as if he were Simone de Beauvoir arguing a vital point of epistemology with Jean Paul Sartre:

“This is definitely not like Paul! Not even close…obviously you don’t listen enough to their music. I mean, to say someting like that if you are not well versed in their history is sensational. This song is VERY John.”

I don’t know how anyone can doubt the greatness of this music, when you have passionate people like that arguing such miniscule points of contention as if they were medieval scholastics debating theology.

Anyway, you still learn a lot from reading the info at Song Facts in conjunction with the music. For example, did you know that in the background of the song “Paperback Writer,” you can hear John and George singing Frère Jacques in falsetto?

You might also learn that the man who burned his mind out in a car (from “A Day in the Life”) is actually Tara Browne, an heir to the Guinness fortune who died in a car accident. The “news” in the song comes from two stories Lennon read in the Daily Mail, one about Browne and the other about a surveyor who counted 4000 holes in the roads of Blackburn. In saying that there were enough holes to fill Albert Hall, the surveyor–who presumably could be found out with a little research–unwittingly provided one of the most comic lines in all of music history: “Now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.” The comic part being that, of course, a hole can’t fill anything.

Whether you have time to waste, or want to know more about the Beatles music, this is a decent, informal place to start. However, as with any wiki, one should not necessarily trust it as an authoritative source. Authoritative sources are so boring, though. I much prefer, “I heard it from my brother who got it from a roadie that traveled with the Beatles.”

The word is that the FBI is going to report the 2001 Anthrax case “solved.” The more I read about the supposed murdered, Bruce Ivins, the less certain I am that he is the culprit, however.

Today’s Washington Post story, “Tales of Addicton, Anxiety, Ranting” only confirms in my mind that like Stephen Hatfill before him, Ivins is a scapegoat for investigative incompetence. At first glance, an alcoholic who, so his therapist says, made threats against his colleagues, would seem a likely suspect. However, his descent into addiction and mental illness seem only to have occurred after the FBI made it clear he was their prime suspect.

Some of the ways in which the FBI harassed him included telling his children and wife their father was a murderer–once going so far as to stop Ivins and his wife in a public mall and telling his wife that her husband was a murderer.

They also tried to entice Ivin’s son to implicate his father by offering him the reward money plus a sport’s car of his choice.

I think addiction, anxiety, and suicide look less and less like guilty behavior, and more like a natural response to this kind of stress.

Anyway, the FBI is going to lay out their case against him soon. FBI to Show How Genetics led to Anthrax Researcher. At this point, I am a skeptic. I don’t think there can be a case made proving him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, or even on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. I am more inclined to believe that an over-zealous government hounded an innocent man to commit suicide.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time, but I put it off until a confluence of recent events brought it to mind again. First, while driving to Pennsylvania to pick up her mother, two nieces, and a nephew and bring them back to Virginia, our GPS system utterly failed my wife and caused a brief, but intense marital spat. Second, there was an article in today’s Washington Post titled Why we hate our GPS devices. I think I have some insight into why we both love and hate these devices, and I think the Post article only partially gets it right.

My brother-in-law bought me my Garmin GPS for Christmas last year. He is a truck driver, and he had bought one for himself and thought it would be a good thing for me to have, considering the driving I do.

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I’m finding it really difficult to sustain much of an interest in the rest of this Presidential campaign.  That’s sad, because I recognize its historic nature, and I’d like to be able to tell my grandkids all the details of Obama’s road trip through Europe and the Middle East, and how he stirred our hearts and the world changed that day, etc., etc.

But I am missing it all.  I am not watching the news.  I am not listening to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.  I am not even reading the news online, save for an occasional odd story about millions in damaged money that mysteriously turned up at the Treasury over the course of several years.  The story begins like a treasure hunt: a man shows up at the treasury over the course of several years with thousands, eventually amounting to millions, of dollars that has been buried and damaged by the elements.  He tells Treasury officials the money was found while excavating a tree in Mexico.  The Treasury exchanges the damaged money for new bills wired to a bank account.

By the end of the story, it seems less a mystery than a story about an ingenious way for Mexican drug dealers to literally launder money.

But politics, politics…aye, there’s the rub.  I have no interest.

To some extent, I think the primary season was so exciting and anxiety-filled, there is little in the general campaign season to excite interest.  Obama seems more and more like a typical politician, and a rather stodgy one at that.  All the excitement seems to have gone out of him and his campaign, as if there can be no public displays of humanity inside the campaign bubble.  I suppose we can expect no more “dirt off your shoulders” moments.

Even holidays at Obama’s house sound about as enjoyable as a 19th century Christmas with the Ingalls family in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.  I remember reading the “Little House” books as a boy and being quite astonished at the lack of presents the children received for their birthday or a holiday.  Well, recently there was this report from the UK that the Obamas do not give their children Christmas or Birthday presents because they want them to know some “limits.”

It makes me wonder if the Obamas force their kids to spend Sunday being seen and not heard while studying Poverty in America.

I am all for setting limits on children’s gifts, however not to give any gift at all seems extreme and downright cold.  Why not set a limit of one gift, or two gifts maximum?  That seems more in line with the spirit of what Christmas means anyway.  Christ himself only received three Christmas gifts, and not one of them was a toy.  Seriously, what is a baby going to do with Frankincense?

McCain is no better, in terms of providing some degree of excitement to a boring campaign season.  I did listen to a little Hannity and Colmes last night, and the liberal commentator Susan Estrich commented that McCain’s campaign reminds her of the last days of Bob Dole’s run for the Presidency.  One of these days soon, McCain is going to slip up and let loose with a “Where’s the outrage?!”

On WMAL in the morning last week, Fred Grandy remarked that he believed John McCain was on “mood enhancers,” by which he meant anti-depressants, specifically Zoloft.  McCain’s behavior seems too subdued, his mood seems too even.  He has no feeling for anything that happens, no matter the subject.  Even when he seems genuinely angry, such as when he is criticizing Obama for not recognizing the success of the surge, his anger rarely rises to the point of feeling.  He simply looks tight-lipped, like a man who is tamping it all down, all that emotion, right down into the pit of his stomach where it will become his first major heart attack.

All in all, there has been little to sustain interest in this campaign over the months of June and July.  But the summer is winding down.  School begins for my wife in a little more than two weeks, and for my son the week following.   College will be back in session about the same time.  Labor Day is around the corner.

And we all know there is often some big event that occurs in August, September, or October that can galvanize public interest.  There was 9/11, of course, and all that followed that fall…but also Katrina.  Gas prices have to some extent roiled the otherwise still waters of the summer, but I don’t know if that issue will extend into the Fall, now that gas prices are coming down a little ($3.75 for regular at the Sheetz where I buy my gas in Virginia).  It seems ridiculous to think that $3.75 is cheap, but it is a relief to finally see the numbers go down, even if only a little.

Anyway, what will be, will be.  The months ahead may be full of turmoil and anxiety, if Obama can’t pull definitively ahead of McCain, and then I will start paying more attention.  Right now, I am just enjoying the long weekends, the pleasant weather, and steak on the grill.

The results of grandma’s CT scan were not heartening. The tumor has grown; her doctor suggested that she try another form of chemotherapy, and yesterday she had her first treatment.

I called her around 4:30, and knew when I heard her speak that the news wasn’t good. She sounded different, tired. After she told me the results, I said, “You sound more tired than usual. Is this new treatment worse than the other chemo?”

She said no, that the treatment is actually easier than before, taking only two hours instead of the usual four to five. She said she has some chest congestion she can’t get rid of which has made her tired. The doctor said it was just an ordinary cold, however.

I asked about the side effects of the new chemo. She said the only thing the doctor mentioned is that she can’t drink any cold beverage for about a week after treatment. She has to drink liquids at room temperature or warmer. Apparently cold liquids will results in a kind of long term brain freeze that, as you can imagine, would be pretty uncomfortable. Grandpa made the joke that she will no longer be able to drink cold chocolate; it will have to truly be hot chocolate.

Grandma said that what she was really going to miss is ice cream. She and grandpa have made a habit of going out for ice cream in the evening, and now she won’t be able to do that, at least not the first week after treatment. Since her chemo is every two weeks, that gives her a window of about a week to indulge, but the threat of a painful side effect might make it difficult to enjoy her treat even when she knows she should be safe.

We didn’t talk long. She seemed glad when I asked her about the weather, and she talked a little about grandpa’s vegetable garden and all the good beans they are getting. No tomatoes just yet. Maybe by the end of the month.

Finally, as we were saying goodbye, I said, “Well I am glad you are continuing treatment. You have to fight.”

She said, “Yes, but you know it’s just something we have to accept. I’m not going to get better.”

It. Accept it.

True enough, but it’s like consenting to live with the person who you know is going to murder you one day.

I slept reasonably well last night. I still woke up about every hour, but was able to go back to sleep easily. Then I woke up about a half hour before the alarm went off, and I didn’t go back to sleep. But I don’t feel too bad, today. Just normal. About average. I don’t remember my dreams.

At the bus stop last week, I found a little pink Croc, probably this one. It’s infant-size, and I thought, “Someone will miss that.” So I hung it from its strap on a screw on the back of the bus stop sign.

Today, it was lying in the grass. I picked it up and put it on the curb. Maybe the pink will catch someone’s eye as they drive by, but maybe not. It’s a very small shoe.

If not, I’ll get to see how long it remains on the curb. I am betting it will only last until winter, and then the first snow will cover it, and a snowplow will bury it even more with the sooty ice scraped from the street, and then it will either be swept away by the street cleaners or washed away in the dirty winter rain.

My bad dreams seems to be spilling over into my life at home on weekends. I slept poorly roughly half of the time I was home this weekend, not always because of bad dreams. I am easily awakened now, for reasons I don’t understand. Also, I seem unable to fall into a deep enough sleep. Deep enough to dream, but then I wake up frequently in the night, and sometimes I have difficulty going back to sleep.

This afternoon, I lay down and took a nap around a quarter of two. I woke up within fifteen minutes, having had another nightmare. In this dream, I received a phone call from someone who sounded like a great aunt. I assumed she was calling to ask me how my grandma was doing.

Grandma has been much on my mind this weekend, because she went for a CT scan last week and the results are supposed to be in today. Whether or not she continues treatment for her cancer is dependent on the result of these periodic tests.

I have been putting off calling her today, because I am not sure I want to know the news. It’s been a year since her diagnosis with pancreatic cancer. How much longer can she reasonably live?

Anyway, in the dream, I talk to this person who I assume is a relative. I tell her I have not called grandma, and in my head I feel guilty because I haven’t called.

Finally, as the other person talks, I begin to detect oddities in the voice and in what she is saying. She seems to be repeating what I say, for the most part, not adding anything to the conversation.

I ask, “This is Aunt Mary Ann, right?”

There is silence on the other end. Then the voice says, menacingly, “Subtle. Very smooth.”

And she hangs up.

In the dream, I have this sickening feeling that this person knows something, or is going to hurt me in some way because I talked to her like a family member.

Probably, the dream is no more than an expression of guilt over not calling my grandma today. I need to do that and get it out of the way.

But what about my other nightmares? I had a therapy session today, but forgot to mention my sleep problems. I did talk about grandma and my feelings over her situation extensively, however.

I mentioned how I felt when I went to my great-grandma’s funeral at the beginning of the month, how it seemed like an eerie preview of the funeral to come. In retrospect, it almost seems like a nightmare itself, right down to the way my grandpa and his brothers kind of made light of their mother’s death by only postponing their fishing trip long enough to put their mother in the ground.

I know that puts a harsh angle on their actions, but as I told my therapist, the whole thing seemed rather surreal, not like a funeral at all. And I was left wondering, how is grandpa going to act when my grandma dies? Will he go fishing then, too?

My therapist didn’t say anything, other than to repeat back to me what I’d said I felt. Sometimes I feel like I’m in echo chamber. I wish I had one male friend who lived close by, with whom I could just go out and drink and talk. But this isn’t exactly the kind of thing men talk about when drinking…”Oh, my grandma’s dying…I’m afraid I’ll cry at her funeral, and no one in my family ever cries.”

But I’ve got a therapist. I’m going to see him again in two weeks. I’m thinking about scheduling my next appointment for one week later, and seeing him every week for awhile, until I start to feel like I’m getting a better grip on things.

I’m going back to Washington tonight. Here’s hoping for a good night’s sleep.

Whenever I see a man wearing a pink shirt, the theme from Miami Vice always starts playing in my head. I think it was Don Johnson who first popularized pink in men’s fashion back in the eighties.

I went out to lunch today and saw not one but two young men in khakis and pink dress shirts, walking down the sidewalk together along with three other men. I don’t even know if the term yuppie applies anywhere in modern culture, anymore, but that’s what I thought of: yuppies named Brad and Chip, blond hair and pink dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up. All they needed was a sweater draped over their back, the arms tied around their neck.

I see a lot of pink shirts on men, and I wonder what it means. Or maybe the better question, as my therapist would say, is what does it mean to me?

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