Finite Optimism

Toward the end of his book “No Time Like the Future,” Michael J. Fox introduces the poem Antigonish, by William Hughes Mearns.

Said to be inspired by a ghost haunting a house in Antogonish, Nova Scotia, the poem goes like this:

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

I wish, I wish he’d go away . . . 

When I came home last night at three

The man was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall

I couldn’t see him there at all!

Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!

Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door . . . (slam!) 

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

Fox uses the poem as a metaphor to explain the hallucinations produced by one of the drugs meant to counter other side effects of a different drug, taken to moderate his Parkinson’s disease.

From the previous chapter, though, an equally apt comparison, one likely Fox makes on purpose: Describing fear he felt while on a safari in Africa, he writes the following, after first seeing a leopard sunning in a tree, and then the paranoia brought on later by thinking another is nearby:

“The leopard from the previous day hadn’t scared me. It was the leopard in the tree at twilight – the one that I didn’t see, the one that probably wasn’t even there – that scared me stupid.”

Coming from a family where paranoia doesn’t just run, it gallops, that line, and the poem that followed it, spoke to me. As, oddly, does Fox’s optimism, even an optimism he admits is finite. Because with that paranoia comes an increasing pessimism, a pessimism that belies a life of faith or, as Tolkein put it, “hope without guarantees.”

So, like Fox, I have some mental work to do. And I’d best get to it quickly. After reading this memoir, that’s probably a sentiment Fox would agree with.

This book started slow for me. I got it for Christmas and started reading it then, but then finished it in a gulp this week. It’s one I’m going to have t re-read, and one worthy of that effort.

Seems an odd poem to put into a foxtrot . . . 

A Few Updates

First, the mattress.

Because of course there are still pandemic-related shortages of everything, we still do not have our new mattress. We might have it in early June. Might. I'm hoping we do, because although I wasn't complaining about the old mattress, I and my acid reflux have come to loathe it. It will be nice to be able to sleep propped up even a little bit.

Second, the depression or whatever it is.

It has lessened, but does still come around when anxieties pile up. And they do pile up.

Third, work.

I don't have a post related to it to share, but nonetheless. It is going better, which is party why the depression is easing a bit. I actually got mostly done a document today that I've been putting off since early February. It did take them until today to get most of the comments on it resolved, and we still have a few issues, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a train.

Other stuff is also going well at work. The drill in April went as well as could be expected, so I'm wrapped back in the wooly comfort of working from home again. I do have to go out on Wednesday for more drill position-related training which for some reason couldn't be done in April, so that's a pain. But this too shall pass.

Fourth, Scouts.

I am in charge of the spring camporee coming up next weekend. We're doing the Entrepreneurship Merit Badge. And that has heightened the anxieties in some areas. It takes a lot of coordination to get these things organized, and that means talking to people. TALKING TO PEOPLE. Can you imagine the HELL that's been? Because pandemic- and work-from-home-related, I have taken several steps backwards in my progress to be less reluctant to talk to people in person or on the phone. The pandemic has meant a lot of silent running, and that's made progress hard to make. So much so a student in one of my English classes who also suffers from pandemic-induced reluctance to talk to people wants to use me as a source for a paper she's writing on the subject. Woo.

Good news is it's mostly pulled together, the spring camporee. Now I just have to wait for the actual performance of the thing.

Fifth, Projects.

I'm drowning in projects, folks. And keep taking on new ones before the old ones are done. I started on replacing the fence between us and Brett, mostly so I can get the corner by the raspberries done before they explode into foliage and thorns and make working in that corner a lot more difficult.

And of course the water heater in the camper broke when we used it at a campout in April. Rich Bingham is going to come on Saturday to help me replace it, but that means ARGH MORE SOCIAL ANXIETY and it's going to kill me. But it should work to get the work done and maybe give us a water system that works better in the camper. as we're replacing the pump too.