Stoical Summer At 74 Degrees

Yes, I am back. For how long, who knows. Asymmetrical Blogging. Frankly, I am not particularly vested in blogging consistently weekly any more. Weakly, maybe. I have a lot to say and write but I am not sure most people care much either way. It is just the way it is. I live my life. So, check in when you wish. Or not. Your call and decision. Maybe there will be something new. Maybe not. Is it not suspenseful? I decided to write before I lost the will this morning... 

Last summer, my window's air conditioner stopped working. Pushing buttons was meaningless. I thought the AC was destined for the junk yard. In one last desperate attempt at resuscitation, I took the unit to the bathtub and turned it so any water within would drain out. My hypothesis was that water was causing the AC not to function. There was an incessant beeping, while it was plugged in (would have been paranormal if not plugged in like a poltergeist. Call the priest) telling me something was wrong.   

Water dribbled out...I plugged the unit back in. And alas, it came back to life, albeit with the controls still useless. A resurrection! The unit was internally committed to full blast AC at 74 degrees. The on/off function only controlled by plugging the AC into the outlet. Pretty binary.  

So, I was happy this July 1 when the summer heat finally got me to crack and put the AC in the window, that the unit sparked to life. And, I left it on 24-7 until Labor Day. I hate a hot house. This July 2020 was the hottest on record. So, the AC's steadfastness was greatly appreciated. Like a soldier half-blind, it trudged on. While I worked on students' schedules for school, like Sisyphus, only to have the boulder roll down twice afterward with the implementation of the internal Cyber School which changed hundreds of schedules and then the typical drop and adds where students' decide they don't want the classes they signed up for (which drives me crazy), the AC hummed onward. I worked from home all July and rolled onward and upward. I still sweat but it was controlled. I just took a hot shower for the first time since July 1 a moment ago. I love fall!

Early in July, I had another event happen that unnerved me quite a bit. On the edge of the Susquehanna River, ready to launch the kayak--and peering at the blackened sky from an encroaching storm where it was unclear if it was going to pass over or skirt us--I got hammered with a case of vertigo. Essentially, I was paralyzed. I felt as if I was in a Dali painting of melting clocks and surreal skies. Fortunately, my buddy and I had decided to wait before launching out into the river and it was fortuitous, as if the vertigo had happened on the river I would have been immobilized when the storm hit; my kayak could have capsized and I would have bobbed down the river like a cork.

My pal pulled the Civic up to the launch ramp, I crawled in like a drunk man and started to sweat profusely, and he then slapped the kayak onto the roof rack like it was the first time he had ever done so. It was and it showed. All we needed was duct tape. It was a mess. The storm hit, he had to pull under a bridge to get shelter from the pelting storm and finish the strap job, while I felt like puking. Which I did when I got home, several mason jars worth, followed by dry heaves, for about two hours. He attributed my nausea to perhaps social-emotional stress from COVID and related consequences. I didn't concur with his diagnosis. I put my symptoms into Google--loss of balance, immobile, nausea and vomiting--and Dr. Chrome said it was vertigo.    

My diagnosis seemed accurate. The change of barometric pressure of the storm seemed to re-calibrate my inner right ear's gyroscope. For decades, I have had pressure on the right side of my head and something deep in all of that was re-set. The day before another buddy and I had mountain-biked to total exhaustion in the sweltering heat and I think that and some other things just put my body and mind in a very-dilapidated state for a window of time. Then, the storm was the final blow. I was dehydrated, I had not eaten for most of the day, and had been enjoying some bourbon and a pipe the night before. A perfect storm. Literally.

After a week or two, I started to get back to full strength. Like the AC, I just powered on at 74 degrees after almost having a total collapse. I also think that I may have had COVID back in March. So, life was the bowling ball and I was the pins. And I got knocked down hard. It was the third most awful medical illness (the vertigo) that has ever happened to me after my burst appendix/emergency surgery/month-long recuperation and the prior Lyme's Disease; I believe that the consequences of Lyme's eventually resulted in my appendix going south, due to unresolved bacterial infection. Outside of nearly dying at birth and having some neurological and physical issues from it, and my incessant left knee problems, I have been pretty healthy my whole life. Unusually so. I am from tough German and Irish stock.  

But, the vertigo was like a unnerving death swoon. I was very thankful my pal was there. I have gone out on the river alone a lot but just this spring, decided that this wasn't a good idea. It may have saved my life. There is a lesson there also that being alone is dangerous. We all need people to help us, as we cannot do it alone.

Finally, another movement of philosophical clouds happened this summer. Although I am still a Christian and believe that Christ died for sinners like me and was raised on the third day for my justification, I am pretty much disgusted with the American evangelical subculture. Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife and their super-weird sexual escapades, is just another bizarre episode of a movement that is sad, stupid, sullen, and frankly satanic. I repent for ever giving it a dime. 

The evangaweirdos canine and slavish obeisance to Trump, the shock troops of the movement, has made me ill from the get. I warned all of my Fundie friends of the dangers of the alliance. And pretty much every one of them defended it. Accusing me of being a Clinton fan. I remind people of all political stripes that it is logically consistent to really despise both major parties and what they have come to represent. Like the whores in the story of Solomon's sword and the baby, which party cares more is hard to tell. As far as I can surmise, both are willing for the baby of our country to be chopped in half. Take that you Founding Father and your infatuation with senatorial/imperial Rome. Rome II. Civil religion, my arse. 

I believe Jesus to be the remedy to all of this, but not the consumer god fashioned by our own hands. I no longer believe in the institutional American church. Interesting how little time Jesus spent in the synagogue. And when he did, they wanted to chuck him from a cliff. That's where I am at. I have passed through the crowd. You can take your sermonettes, music, your fog machines, your lights, and jam it where the sun don't shine. I am not bitter. I really don't care. The ultimate insult to these self-promoting and sick charlatans.        

So, enter the ancient philosophy of Stoicism (not being stoical, to clarify). Stoicism is a philosophy that essentially boils down to this: Life can be hard. We often don't control what comes our way. The storms of life are too big and too bad to stop. The best we can do is to make choices in light of the realities of life's adversities. To change the things we can and to make our peace with the things we cannot. Not the Serenity Prayer but a Life Philosophy. A calm demeanor, an internal setting of 74 degrees, despite the controls not working, in the scorching and sweltering oven of affliction. It is the best we can do; fine to cry but not too long. At some point, we have to face it, walk through it, and not bewail it. We can shake our fist at the sky and give it the finger, but the storm doesn't care. It is a waste of the limited time and energy we have to fight the fates and the furies. 

Stoicism is coming back in a big way. I am not the only one on the old road. As the canine evangelical subculture becomes more and more craven and depraved the longer it butt-sniffs Trump Inc. and gets humped from the back, a lot of people are searching for something that gives them tools to respond to life's challenges. And Stoicism offers a way through to navigate the storms. Stoicism falls short in the end of really dealing with the sin nature, which is at the root of all human suffering (both individual and corporate). Yet, it really doesn't need any supernatural revelation to be real and to work. Stoicism looks at life as it is, on the ground, and deals with it from the bottom up. As such, it is self-explanatory and self-defending. It needs no City of God, Summa Theologica, and Calvin's Institutes. 

Although, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is a great read.