I Still Can't Find My Way Home.

Exile in the Ozarks.

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Haley Reinhart’s cover of Blind Faith’s Can’t Find My Way Home

This is the second time I’ve posted this song to my newsletter because it feels oh so apt. I’m sure I heard Blind Faith’s original release in 1969. I was eleven-years-old and already listening to KISR-FM (Of course it was pronounced “kisser.”) KISR was the AOR station in Fort Smith and we all listened to it all the time. Anyway, the song came back to me a few years ago when I came across Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George’s cover . Recently, I was reading a profile of Jeff Goldblum and he described how the song always made him cry and how he recently came across a cover by Haley Reinhart that had the same effect on him. Of course I gave it a listen right away. Mom said, “That’s such a sad song!” and started to weep which caused me to fountain my own tears. And, yeah, it’s good, good enough I want to share it with you.

But I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home

I feel double about being near the end. Of course, Mom’s closer to her end than ever before (aren’t we all), and as I’ve already mentioned, it’s a theme I think about a lot regarding myself. And then, for myself, I feel like I’m at the end of one period of my life and will embark, G-d willing, on another. I’m in an old / new home. My mother may have lived in this house for forty years, but this is the first time I’ve ever lived here and I’m still trying to make it into my home. For me, this means sustaining and nurturing some sort of Jewish community, finding and enjoying friendships (this overlaps with Jewish community but extends beyond), having some sort of love life, and finding ways to be transformed by the arts. In no particular order.

Now, I’ve picked up and moved my life several times before (Arkansas to Missouri to Cambridge to NYC to San Francisco to Madison) but it was always been a destination of my choosing. Alma does not fit in to my life plan. But plans change.

I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my life, times I’m ashamed of, when I’ve been actually wasted and couldn’t find my way home. It’s a sad song that catches me as I step off from one place and onto another. Once that step is taken, there will be two points that create a line into my future from this uncertain present. For the time being, I feel stuck. I know I can’t go back. As Steely Dan says in Pretzel Logic,

Those days are gone forever.
Over a long time ago.
Oh yeah.

I just don’t know yet which way is forward. Home isn’t behind me. Home, where I am now, feels like life in galut, exile. And the future, I have no idea. I’ll be sure to let you know when I find out.

My sleep schedule is still abstract and minimal.

Some nights, Mom gets me up every thirty minutes to help her use the bathroom, ask for a drink of water, turn up the heat, turn down the heat, untangle her covers, reassure her I’m still in the house, help her through a bad dream and etc. One or two nights a week, she’ll sleep for four hours before getting up. Of course, the fact she sleeps so much during the day injures her sleep at night, so, I’m trying to keep her up more / longer during the day. That’s difficult because I feel so sorry for her. When I’m sleepy I want to sleep. And I want Mom to be able to sleep too and not suffer. During a recent spider incident, I was insanely sleepy. I tried hard not to be impatient. Mom seems to be a little worse than she was at her best a year ago. She’s quieter and not so interactive. She seems more “lost” than she used to be. She still talks about going home, but not as much as she used to. That’s actually rather sad. I want her to want and need and be passionate about something, anything.

When Deputy Hesson arrived around 10.30p, he was pleasant and supportive.

I was asleep, but the sound of Mom talking in the kitchen woke me up. I came downstairs and found her having a frantic conversation on the telephone. She told me she had called the police because a couple from her church was threatening her. Mom was very upset. She was scared. Soon enough, Deputy Hesson arrived. I gave him a quick brief on the situation when I let him in: I’m the caretaker / son, Mom has dementia, she had a bad dream, and she called 911. The deputy spoke with Mom to make his own assessment of the situation, comfort Mom, and then he had to dash off to help with a fire. I gave Mom a Xanax and we watched a Hallmark xmas movie to get her out of her head. I don’t know how many more of these events I can handle.

If I had listened to the deputy sheriff 18 months ago, I wouldn’t have tumbled down a flight of stairs.

The circumstances of another deputy’s warning have been reported in a previous update. The good news is that my left knee, torqued in my fall, is all better now, but it made climbing and descending the multiple staircases in the house difficult and decidedly uncomfortable. But that’s all in the past now. What the future holds is, I hope, a strategic partnership with a handy man who has come over to the house to look at chores I have in mind and prepare an estimate. Besides the banister that came off the wall and led to my spill, I need to have a couple of grab bars installed in Mom’s shower. What has turned out to be the big chore has to do with the door the EMTs kicked in about 20 months ago when they rescued Mom and took her to the hospital. It’s a heavy metal door in a wooden frame. It’s the frame that’s splintered. I had imagined that the broken pieces would simply be replaced with some new pieces of wood, although not so simple that I could do the job myself. Well, the handyman scotched that idea when he explained that the door and the frame are all of one piece, something I should have remembered from my time served (prison vibe deliberate) at Home Depot. So, the entire door needs to be replaced. C’est le guerre, dear reader. I’ll keep you up-to-date on this project’s progress.

The pineapple is delicious.

My Yiddish continues to improve. For example, I can say, “The pineapple is delicious,” which will come in handy the next time I’m in a Hawaiian shtel. I’m starting to get the hang of gendered nouns and the gendered articles that go with them. And my vocabulary is expanding to include colors, food, greetings, and household items. To support my study, I found the one and only college Yiddish textbook (used) and what I think is the only Yiddish / English dictionary, a new, expanded edition. My goal is to be able to read Yiddish literature and not be completely lost if I were to find myself on the streets of Crown Heights in Brooklyn.

My Hebrews is still in the very beginning stage. I have a textbook, associated videos, and vocabulary flash cards. My goal is to be able to read Torah and understand what I’m reading. That’s a pretty big goal, but I have the time to accomplish it, I think.

I’m continuing to take chess lessons by losing games to my friend, Joe.

I’ve doubled down on my training and am playing the computer about once a day. This is in addition to puzzles and lessons. The more time I spend on chess.com, the more impressed I am with what it has to offer. After every game, I take a look at the analysis and that’s like taking another lesson. The computer shows me, move by move, the best move to make compared to the move I actually made. It is very satisfying when I see I made the best possible move. The site has added a feature where it explains why the move is the best move as the computer’s moves are sometimes difficult to understand. After all, the computer is thinking ahead maybe five to ten moves and I can’t see that far. Heck, I have trouble seeing ahead two moves. Maybe I’ll improve. In the meantime, I’ll study more and play more. I’m enjoying it.

Rikki has our number.

Rikki has become our regular aide every other Monday. She’s an interesting person. She is relatively new in home healthcare. Prior to joining her agency, Home Instead, Rikki worked at an bespoke slaughterhouse. She was on the floor doing the real work. She told me that the local Muslim community would bring in goats and instruct the staff on how they wanted the goats slaughtered and dressed. Gradually, the customers started hanging around to watch the process and say prayers and turn the whole process into a ceremony. Finally, the manager of the abattoir said enough was enough and declined to do business with the Muslims anymore. The number of OSHA and health regulations being flouted could potentially shutter the facility. So, that was that. It was an interesting story and Rikki told it well, but I was disinclined to ask her for more details about her previous line of work. After all, she worked on the floor of a slaughterhouse. How many stories could she possibly tell before getting into the gritty details of what it was like to work on the floor. I’m sure Rikki has a wealth of anecdotes, none of them particularly appetizing.

Rikki isn’t vaccinated and does a pretty good job of wearing a mask. I’m refraining from asking about her reasons for her decision about vaccinating because it might color what I think of her. Rikki is very sweet and works very hard and has established rapport with Mom. Why spoil a good thing? But then there’s omicron. I’m trying to figure out a way to have Rikki tested before she comes into the house.

The other day, a pack of feral dogs came scrambling down the driveway.

According to my count, there were eight of them, each one completely different from the other. There was a small black dog and a big white dog with black spots. There were brown dogs and brown dogs with black spots. etc. It was a very energetic pack of dogs and lingered in our carport only long enough for a quick conference before tearing off through the brush. Seeing the dogs made me fear for the deer we live with. I don’t know how many distinct deer families live around us, but I have counted seven fawns around the house. Best case, those dogs may merely pester those deer. Worse case, the dogs could prey on them. That’s unpleasant. I get the whole “circle of life” thing. I just don’t want a deer gutted on the property. The biggest animal threat to my own personal wellbeing is a snapping turtle that lives under our decks and sojourns in front of the basement door I use to go in and out of the house. I don’t think turtles carry rabies, but I do know they have tremendous jaw strength.

Therapy is…

In my last update, I told you about getting someone new to manage my meds. (My nurse practitioner was uncomfortable managing the variety and dosages of what I rely on.) Now, I’ve met with a new therapist, twice. Both of these visits have been telephone appointments. Of course it not fair to have an opinion about my new therapist after only two sessions, but I do have a solid complaint already. We won’t be able to meet more frequently than once a month. My therapist tells me she has a crushing case load and is doing the best she can. I don’t believe monthly session are frequent enough for my issues. I haven’t complained yet, but I’m going to. Of course, I just read an article in the newspaper that ALL therapists have a crushing case load, so there’s no telling whether my complaints will be positively answered.

Boldly going…

Ever since I installed our new Roku television, I’ve been watching more Star Trek. Amazon Prime has, what appears to be, the complete seasons of the different series. This doesn’t include that latest season of Discovery, but I won’t be looking for new Star Trek to watch for Quite Some Time. At present, I’m alternating between Star Trek Next Generation and Star Trek Enterprise and am quite enthusiastic about the latter. Although I had already seen a few episodes of Next Generation, I’ve never seen the series in sequence and never appreciated the continuity from one episode to the next. I’ve reached the point in the narrative wherein Picard and Worf squash a Klingon civil war. And I have never seen any episodes of Star Trek Enterprise so all of that is fresh ground for me to cover. I think it was very brave of the creative team to make a series about the backstory to all of Star Trek. It’s been interesting to see explanations of how certain technologies developed and Easter Egg plot points. The first thing I noticed though was that Star Trek Enterprise isn’t burdened with the Prime Directive (not to meddle with other civilizations). That opens up all sorts of interesting plot possibilities. Technologically, it’s interesting to have a Star Trek ‘verse where the transporter is considered to be experimental and unreliable. Of course this leads to more flying of more spaceships which I’ve always believed to be the essential point of any Star Trek and the big hurdle Deep Space Nine either did or did not successfully surmount. But all this is more Star Trek content than I had intended to share.

Jewish Stuff

I’ve enrolled in three more classes offered by Hadar. The classes include these:

• Re-reading Torah with the Sefat Emet

• Filling Gaps and Fulfilling Visions - Midrash and the Rabbinic Imagination

• Talmudic Personalities: Get to Know the Rabbis
  

OK. Here come the subtitles.

Sefat Emet is a book written by Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (1847 - 1905), a Hasidic rabbi. The book is a compilation of his Torah commentaries.

Midrash are stories the rabbis told that fill apparent “gaps” in Torah. For example, why were angles ascending and descending the ladder in Jacob’s dream? Why was pharaoh’s daughter bathing in the Nile when she discovered baby Moses instead of luxuriating in her own private bathtub? Why are there two creation stories told back to back in Genesis? Midrash gives us many explanations.

My rabbi in Madison is on sabbatical and the congregation is pitching in to help out while she’s away. For example, I’ll deliver the drash (kind of a sermon) on January 22, 2022. I’m also helping organize our Friday night Shabbat Gatherings.

And, in the end…

I’ve reached the end of this missive. There’s so much on my mind. If you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas! Please, dear reader, be safe. It’s a wild world out there and I wouldn’t want to hear about you ending up in trouble. And this includes taking care of yourself as you take care of yourself. I’ve been virtually connected with folks, but other than that, I’ve been all but completely isolated and there’s a wear and tear I’m sure you’re aware of. We can probably get through this, and I know that’s not an optimistic way to state my case, but it’s all I’ve got.

Until next time,
Yours,
Brian.