tilda_yaya

08:02 pm: Parasite Eve grants my father the power to lay eggs
One way to judge the quality of a person's writing is to judge the number of self-references. People who use "I" frequently are believed to have less to offer than those who can write about topics larger than themselves. Perhaps I can be forgiven from talking about myself in a journal, but my lack of inspiration makes me feel as if my world has gotten very small.

A good friend of mine thinks I should be a blogger. I suspect this is because she read articles about stay at home moms who manage to make a living on the Internet. She believes that working from home while taking care of my Dad should give me plenty of material to offer the world. Although she is correct to say that life, death and family are classic themes, I am not sure I have any new insights to offer.

On the other hand, the web is full of people writing just to write, and I have heard that if you write a little bit every day, the juices start to flow. It's worth a shot. If I manage to make more than a few entries, I should be doing myself, if not anyone else, some sort of good. I guess for now I need a crutch.

It is interesting how classic themes and literary devices are repeated so often, and so successfully, by the masters. Lately, I've been skimming through http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes, bot to follow comments on tropes in my favorite shows and to see all the interesting information there. Since the site is such a good resource, I'll use one of it's random tropes as a starting point to give myself writing ides.

Today's random trope is Parasite Eve http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ParasiteEve. The terms comes from a video game with a loose connection o a horror/romance novel, so it is actually a concept that matches my interests. The "Your Fail Biology Forever" trope of having a sentient mitochondria which is only kept in line by slave driver nuclei rings true to stories I grew up on, with older fears of betrayal from within, be it from original sin, monsters of the id, or demons which can empower and destroy us.

My father would not know a mitochondria from Adam, but he knows all about being attacked from within your own body. Fortunately, Parkinson's is not sentient but maybe the apparent randomness makes it worse. There is no good fight here, except to do what you can. There is some evidence that "fighting" such incurable conditions can keep you going for a while (along with medications and exercise). If I try to get very Nietzschian, I may assert there is a way of seeing surviving such disorders as a type of special "power", but such thoughts tend to degenerate into "differently-abled" and "gifted with [disease or disorder]" sunshine blowing, and I can't stomach much of that.

If hallucinations and weakness came from other level of existence, call it Dreamtime or sentience at a blind microscopic level, there would be a certain romance to the ramblings of a mind in decay. In a sense the hallucinations and delusions could be messages from the subconscious mind, but I suspect they are less coherent and more a sort of "brain floss" based on scrambled attempts to process thoughts and stimuli.

"Help!" calls my father, who was asleep at the table. "I am falling!" He neither straightens himself, nor opens his eyes when I answer. I assure him he is alright. He does not believe me. I offer to help him up if he will open his eyes.

"I can't get up, the eggs will fall." He worries. I tell him he was not eating eggs. He had some cookies, but they were mostly eaten before he dosed off. I assure him I could help him walk to bed and that his walker was in place.

"The eggs will fall! You have to watch the eggs. It took me all night to lay those eggs." He complained.

"What?" I asked, confused by this new hallucination. He often has digestion issues, but this is the first time he has insisted that he has laid eggs.

"The Easter eggs. I laid Easter eggs. They are in the chair."

"Oh, that must have been a dream. We haven't made any Easter eggs. We can make some next week if you would like to have eggs."

"I know we didn't make them. I laid the eggs. They are in the chair. Be careful." He replies, upset and getting agitated.

I gave in to his urgings to help him up carefully and look for his eggs. I was secretly glad there was nothing in the chair. He let the issue drop as I helped him walk to bed. The next day, he wanted to know what happened to the eggs he laid.

My dad can often hold conversations that make sense. That is to say, he can hold his own with the rest of us, whatever sense we may make on a given day. He does not think he is a hen or a bunny. He just had this glitch in his brain, and his inner Parasitic Eve convinced him heartburn and gas could turn into Easter eggs. He then believes his own memory and logic instead of accepting my reality checks, such as they are. A biological fluke convincing a man that he lays eggs is better than one telling him to take over the Earth and destroying human freedom I suppose, but in terms of hidden powers from a primeval source it is pretty lame.

I can see the power of being different from those around you. Sometimes I can see the power of being weak. I am all for the power to survive in all it's forms. However, even as I slowly learn to kneel to conquer my father's fears, I see no purpose in deterioration and decay. The source of death, demons and potential mutations may lay with us all, but the romance of it pays better as a video game.

If I ever meet the ghost of Eve who lives in our DNA, I will ask why the fool didn't eat from the tree of life before reaching for the knowledge of good and evil. Maybe someday science will offer us that finer fruit and stop the aging process. Until then, I guess we can play games and eat a lot of apples.

Tags: caregiver, dementia, hallucinations, health, parasitic eve, self-centered, sentience

02:48 pm: Sex, Drugs, and Flowers for Algernon
How do people get their hands on brain enhancing drugs? My "Flowers for Algernon" moments are already too frequent, and I am too young to go gently into that good brain fog. In truth, I see no magic pills for me, so I wake up feeling like I was hit by a truck, try to kick start my body with a pot of coffee, and push on.

The distribution networks for brain enhancing drugs are probably either in schools or nursing homes. It's as if the only time people worry about using their brains is when they are in some type of institution. The odd thing is that my brain worked fine back when I was in school. Sure, it was nearly empty, but it zipped along in its way. Now that my brain is slowly falling apart, there is not a pill pusher in sight--unless you count an in box full of viagra ads. I wonder why it's acceptable to market viagra directly to the middle aged (and even the young) but we have to wait until brain fog becomes full on dementia before we get more than "Watch your nutrition and exercise" (both of which I do) or the generic "It's stress" answers to minor cognitive problems. Doctors. Bah. But I digress.

Why is the potential for a dwindling sex life so much more horrific than the reality of a disrupted intellectual ability? Not that it's a question of whether we wants brains or sex. Ideally people should have both, along with everything else in a well balanced life. Maybe it's because people can objectively observe impotence, and it's easy to say "it's biological; it's not your fault". When the issue is mental or subjective (e.g. pain and muscle aches) it seems like more of a character flaw in the person complaining. If the brain fog is inconsistent, it's even more evidence to those judging that the person making errors isn't really trying to do better. After all, if a person demonstrated ability once, why not always?

It must be worse in old age. My mom fell apart, both her brain and body, as MS ate away at her nervous system. It started when she was my age, but other people only really noticed it in the last ten years of her life. When a person is bedridden and unable to speak much, it's hard to deny there is something wrong. Not all old age is like that, but most people eventually face something.

My dad has had Parkinson's over 20 years now, and it's getting so the medications no longer work well. In some ways it's worse for my dad because he is more aware of his body's betrayal, whereas my mom's dementia had progressed to the point where she was child-like, and could be enticed into smiling with a song. Maybe I think about it too much because I am so much my mother's daughter (physically) despite the fact that I was daddy's little girl. Either way, I want a magic pill so that I can avoid this deterioration of self, which I see starting way too soon.

Then again, things fall apart: thoughts, sex, hamstrings...whatever. The truly talented pick a paint brush with their left foot, commission a high tech James Bond walker and hirer a team of monkeys to type a masterpiece for them so they can be published before they die. With talent and determination, a person with any affliction may beat the odds and produce some work of genius, after which all weaknesses will be forgiven. As for me, I have coffee, yoga, and random grumbling on the Internet. It's not much, but it gets me out of bed.

Tags: brain enhancing drugs, brain fog, caregiving, life is not fair, middle age

10:48 pm: Mysteries of the Mundane
I woke up to the sound of the house being robbed. Well, if not exactly robbed, destroyed and torn apart. It was an inside job. Apparently the cat felt ignored. This morning was worse than usual as I had left some cans of soup out on the counter. Thunk.

It's my own fault for being a procrastinator. I like to sleep in the mornings and I know that cats take clutter as a cat toy (because everything is a cat toy). It's not like I expected my bills and papers to stay sorted when I just leave them on the desk like that.

It makes me wonder abut the way different people handle the details of life. Some people would clean so there was nothing for the mischievous feline to destroy. Some would wake up in the morning so the cats would have company. Then again, others would make a funny video, post it to the web and have their own fan club the next day. There are even a few gifted people who could take the experience and write a novel about living with demons, and as they write they would create an entire world peopled with interesting characters who might have to dodge something more dangerous than falling canned goods. I wonder why I am one of those people. I am part of the masses who get up grumbling and clean up the mess while coffee is brewing. End of story (well, for me anyway).

I guess I am a born consumer. At least, I consume stories of all kinds. Why is it that some of us come up with ideas from the most common of experiences? For example, everyone farts but only one person made millions on the farting iphone application. It's not even a question of nothing happening or where people get their ideas. It's a spark of inspiration, which lives in some people to the point of genius. I love those sparks.

Which brings me to the tangential realization that I love Felicia Day. Not in any sexual way, just an example of a sparky genius. OK, maybe I “love” her in more of a envious, “I wish I could be that cool of a nerd” fashion. Still, when it comes to mad creativity, if I were looking of a example of whatever it is, this is a woman who has got it.

I watched all of Season 2 of the Guild in one go today, amazed at how FD takes obsessive gaming and makes it warm, warped and funny. I also took a peak at her book recommendations on http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/666892?view=covers, which makes me uncomfortably close to being an Internet stalker. Not only does FD play violin, act, write and create, but she also seem to read even more than I do. It made me feel good about enjoying the scene where a “tall hot girl” owned her character Codex for not playing shooter games like Halo3. Of course, I am pretty sure FD wrote that scene.

Well, if you can't beat 'em, enjoy them. Here is to all the Felicia Days, Neil Gaimans Terry Pratchetts, and all the heavenly hosts that rule my fandom and rock my worlds. Also here is to the little guys who make that one funny you tube video, or post that one LOL cat that will be an Internet mem forever. Finally, here is to the the rest of us, who waste our fifteen minutes of what might have been fame while looking for parking spaces and cleaning up after our pets. Every once in a while someone will take the little details of our life, shine them up and spin them round, and make us feel them. All we need is a bit of alchemy to turn our last straw into gold.

Tags: creative, envy, fan, humor, life, nerd, the guild

04:07 am: Deep Blue Dreaming and the Kingdom of Missing Socks
"I saw the beginning, just now." My father said this morning. I helped him to swing his legs over the side of the bed and pulled him to a sitting position, "It's not like we been told." He continued sleepily, " It was everything."

"What do you mean?" I asked, hoping he could keep the thought a while. His body was stiff but it was not time to give him his pills yet. I searched for his socks as he tried to gather his thoughts.

"It was ... made. It was everything. It was not like what we were told." He explained, sitting with his eyes half closed. I am not sure he knew I was really there. Since he's been a church-going Christian all his life, I wasn't surprised he saw things were "made", but the challenge to Biblical authority ("what we were told") was new for him. Then he closed his eyes, appearing to drift off before twitching suddenly and shouting, " I don't want to go on the trolley!"

My father is often just on the verge of making sense, and a lot of what he talks about relates to who he was when he was whole, or to something he saw on the news. As someone who spends a lot of time consuming stories and living in her own head, I should be able to walk with him between realities a bit better than I do. Maybe I cannot because he is my father. I was always daddy's little girl, and I am not sorry.

Sometimes I play the "matrix mind game" (aka "Descartes demon) with myself and wonder if I created the reality where I stay home with him, where it is safe, and work from the house. You know the old story--somewhere, in another reality, I am really in a straight jacket or padded cell, dreaming this little house, while my dad tries to get me to see what real. But then again, wouldn't a create a better "Mary Sue" life for myself? Surely I would rule the world, or have minions, or at least a nicer house with a swimming pool? Besides, I've always thought that type of ending was a cheat for lazy writers who need a cut and paste twist. My life is not well written, but I hope I can do better than that.

I get food and coffee ready trying to be present but my mind drifts away. I am an escapist at heart, and Walter Mitty is my co-pilot. So my mind goes to magic, to scenes of of science gone mad, and shape-shifting tricksters. Sometimes it even crosses into news of the outside world, as I imaging people picketing AIG and a giant golem stalking the financial district. I notice my father asleep at the table, his head on his plate. Ate least he ate most of it.

So he naps. I try to work. Sometimes I nap too. It's a day. Chop wood, cary water. Fall in love with a vampire (good to be young at heart). Finally I can procrastinate no longer and log on to do some work over the Internet, reminding myself the the bills are due no matter how I feel. Dad wakes up and want to do something. I have no idea what he can do. We both live between realities. Every Don Quixote needs a windmill.

I fond a monster in our basement. It is a gift monster from my mother. I started feeding it when she was too weak to go down stairs and kept at it since she passed away. It is a laundry basket full on mismatched socks. Every time we find a pair the lucky couple is rescued from the pile of doom, but all one-sock wonders are saved in limbo until a mate appears. We have not fully purged the basket for over 40 years. I am sure I have lacy little girl anklets waiting for me at the bottom. This is the monster for my father to fight.

I helped him spread out a good portion of the socks. The dust makes him sneeze, but he is focused. He started pulling out colors and sized. Matching patterns. I work at the computer ignoring my cats. He allows the cats to assist him as he battles the endless puzzle of our sock collection, dividing them in to sections, even fining a few pairs despite feline interference. Chop wood. Carry water. It is not what we were told it was. Still it is enough.

Tags: aging, caretaker, dementia, dreams, life, philosphy