Letter Never Sent

Last weekend, I was laid out by what I presume to be the Flu. I came home Friday and curled into a blanket burrito and went to sleep until Sunday afternoon. I have never been so sick. While phasing in and out of delirium I had some time to reflect. Here’s what I came up with:

1. We are weaker than we realize. Human frailty is real. When everything works, we don’t think about it. But as soon as it doesn’t, you realize how important health is. I tend to bulldoze my way through my daily life and forget how much I rely on my body. It’s hard to do anything when you can’t even sit up. Will is nothing without the Body.

2. The body and its adaptive life systems are strong. The entire time I was sick I marveled at my body’s response to fight the illness: fevers to raise the core temperature and drive out invaders, diminished appetite (why take in when your tissues are busy purging), and increased excretion from every quarter to clean house. I knew that if I could stay hydrated my immune system would rally and do its job while I slept and stayed out of the way. We still know so little about how our own bodies function.

3. Sleep is repair time. Normally most of us can get by with 6 hours of sleep or less a night. But, we should be sleeping better. It is not time wasted. While we admire the mechanistic efficiency of our computers, we should not attempt to emulate this mechanistic way of life by depriving ourselves of sleep and rest. When we sleep our bodies go through various repair and optimization routines for managing hormones, neurotransmitters, memory, digestion, tissue repair, etc. Good sleep is optimal rather than wasteful.

4. Death can be a relief.

“A death that ends the incurable ills of life is a blessing.” – Publius Syrus.

When you get really sick you can understand how death might be a relief if there were no end to the illness. Knowing that you are going to get better makes it easier to deal with. Sickness is so totally at odds with life that it is difficult to live with it.

5. Sickness tells you what to eat. Whenever I woke up and tried to eat or drink something, I only wanted a few simple things: watered down orange juice, ice water, and as I got better, simple foods like hearty cereal, fruit, or eggs. No fatty foods, no spicy foods, no large portions of anything. That sounds like a good way to do it all the time.

6. We are functions, not beings. The human body is a collection of processes rather than a thing. Human life is best perceived in time and movement. The idea of living itself contains this concept of movement. To live is to move. If you look at human behavior from a completely alien point of view, we are self-replicating, environmental processors. We consume other organisms rather than raw materials. We break down what we consume and use it to propel ourselves forward through time and against the natural entropy of the universe. Life as an organizing principle of the Universe?

Halloween is a holiday like no other. It’s a good entry into the holiday season: light on the symbolism, heavy on the community involvement. Now that I can afford as much candy as I want I’m no longer under the thrall of candy. But when you’re a kid, few things are as compelling as candy. Where does it come from? Why does it taste so good? Why can’t we eat it for dinner?

When I was a kid Halloween was my favorite holiday. It combined many of my interests: free stuff, candy, and grossing people out or being silly. When I was about 11 or 12, I was into “special effects”. I had several different latex masks and an assortment of fake moustaches and books on the subject I had picked up at various places including the Clown Factory in San Antonio. For some reason, San Antonio had a lot of options when it came to Halloween costumes and magic stuff. There was Elbe’s on Broadway with the wooden nickels, and a few other places I am forgetting.

For Halloween I would often make my rounds and then come home, change into another costume, and go out to the same houses for more candy. It was a once a year situation, so you had to make the most of it.

I am convinced that our obesity problems are caused primarily by one aspect of the typical American lifestyle: the widespread use of prepared meals (fast food, dining out, frozen dinners, sodas, and snacks) for daily eating. While we may be less active than in generations past, the real difference is that Americans rely more on prepared food for the bulk of their diet than ever before in the past. The lower the income, the lower the quality of the food, the greater the degree of obesity. As food preparation has been outsourced effectively to industry, consumers have compelling alternatives to the time-consuming work of cooking and cleaning. Naturally, they take the path of least resistance on a day to day basis. Over time this results in extra calories being stored as fat, which never get used simply because we keep eating the same calorie-rich foods in larger amounts.

With that in mind, over the next few weeks I will experiment with a couple ideas:

1. No sugar, soda, dairy. Beverages will be confined to black coffee, water, and maybe the occasional beer. Juices and sodas either have too much sugar or carcinogenic chemicals.
2. More cooking at home. Although, it is surprisingly difficult to prepare meals without dairy or tons of easily digestible carbohydrates.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

I have always been interested in wildlife, especially birds. It’s easy to see why they are so fascinating. Birds are one of the only animals you are likely to see if you live in the city. They don’t need to hide or skulk around in the shadows like earth-bound creatures. They are indifferent to us because at any time they can take to the air. Birds may come down to visit, but they belong to a world of flight and mobility we can only dream of.

Recently, my interest has increased. I have been reading more and more about birds; observing them more closely than ever before, amazed at the variety of the different species around me and the complexity of their lives and history. My whole perspective has changed. Where before I just saw a bird, I now see individual species, sexes, plumage, behaviors, and lifestyles. Miniature dramas of life: battles for territory and mates, the pursuit of prey, the care of young, and the defenses against predators.

The more I watch, the more I wonder at the economy and handicraft of Nature. Every bird is perfectly adapted to its lifestyle. The shape of the beak shows you what it eats. The shape of the feet and the wings shows you where and how it eats. Some beaks are made for crushing seeds and others for snatching flying insects out of the air. Some feet are designed for perching while others are perfect for swimming.

Sunday I went out to Lake Lewisville where they have a small environmental learning center (Lake Lewisville Environmental Learning Area) and park near the dam with hiking trails into the surrounding countryside. I took a pair of binoculars with the hopes of spotting a few birds.

It was a nice little area. As soon as I passed the gatehouse, I spotted 4-5 wild turkeys just off the road. I drove down to the end of the road near the damn outflow where a couple of people were fishing for large bass that hang out waiting to gobble up the dazed fish coming through the flood gates. One guy had a couple good-sized striped bass (4-5 lbs) on his stringer. His family was waiting in the minivan as he fished, so I gathered he was catching lunch. On the opposite bank of the Trinity River, a flock of white Great Egrets were roosting in the trees along the water’s edge. A good place to live if you eat what you can snatch out of the water, as they do.

I drove back up the road and parked at the head of Cottonwood and Cicada Trails. I only spotted a couple birds that day, but they were pretty nice. I saw two members of the tyrant flycatcher family, the Western Kingbird and the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher which are common in the fields around Dallas. Both are fun to watch and easy to spot as they love sitting on power lines or barbed-wire fences where they wait for flying bugs to wander within reach. When they spot something they launch off their perch and somersault in the air, grab the bug, and land back down on the wire. Tyrant flycatchers derive their name from the tendency to fiercely defend their nests against predators. You will often see them dive bombing hawks and crows that get too close.

Although I heard bird song from within the surrounding trees, the only other bird I got close enough to see was a beautiful Indigo bunting singing from the bare branches at the crest of a tall tree.

It was good to spend time in nature, even for a little while, and it was amazing that such a place could be less than two miles from a major interstate and just a few minutes from my house. If you enjoy wildlife and the outdoors, bird watching is an inexpensive hobby you might enjoy.

The highlight of my hike was walking through a tunnel of trees and looking over my shoulder to see three small butterflies hitchhiking on the back of my shirt. They clapped and unclapped their wings, lapping at the sweaty cotton for precious salt with their curled, hollow tongues. For a moment I felt like St. Francis of Assisi.

My father emailed some family photos my aunt scanned in. Family photos can be so cryptic. Look below at the expression on my grandmother’s face. She didn’t normally look so sour. It makes you wonder about the circumstances. I like these photos where they were dressed up and standing in the yard. There are many similar with family arranged in front of the house or the family car. I miss them both very much. They were such unique individuals.

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