Keep Calm II - The Spawning

Introduction

Surely you’ve seen many variations on the old British “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON” poster.  And possibly you’ve even read “Keep Calm and Read These Quotations.” In that post I gave some background about the original “KEEP CALM…” poster, and then shared a number of quotations from my “KEEP CALM…” desk calendar (with commentary, of course).

Well, nothing says efficiency like “uninspired sequel,” so in this post I recycle my earlier idea, having gathered up the best (and better yet, the worst) of the quotations from the second half of my calendar.  I promise this essay will be more entertaining than TV coverage of the ball dropping in Times Square.  If I become aware that you watched that parade but didn’t read this post, I will find you, and I will kill you.  No kidding.  (Yeah, kidding.)

(Wondering about “The Spawning”?  I like to tack that on to the name of any sequel I happen to generate.  I got it from James Cameron’s first feature film, Piranha II – The Spawning, which, oddly enough, wasn’t actually a sequel but was billed that way to seem more appealing.  Weird, huh?)

Keep calm and mull these over

“Never retract, never explain, never apologize—get the thing done and let them howl.” —Nellie McClung, Canadian politician and social activist

This advice could easily be trotted out in support of retrograde parenting techniques like spanking kids, or telling a kid to do (or not do) something “because I said so.”  The problem with a platitude like this is that it makes sense only in context—and yet it uses the word “never,” which seems so absolute.

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“I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” —Zora Neale Hurston

This quip seems fine in the context of its narrator, who lives among those who, being victims of racism, “hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal.”  But out of context, this quote is troublesome, given that oysters are rich-people food, and so few oysters contain pearls you’d need access to a vast quantity to complete the metaphor.  It’s easy to imagine this statement coming from the wrong narrator, like some callous 1-percenter shucking off the plight of the 99-percent.  And “oyster knife” is even worse than oyster, since all these single-purpose kitchen gadgets carry a strong whiff of Sur La Table.  Very confusing messaging here.

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“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” —Matthew 7:7

Again, only a highly specific context could make this quote meaningful.  As generic advice dispensed by a desk calendar, it’s useless, and a classic example of the weakness of the passive voice.  Who will open the door?  Who will give stuff out?  Success of this kind depends entirely on who hears the request or the knock at the door.  If Matthew is willing to step up and say, “I’ll open the door to you” and “I’ll give it to you,” then we can safely abbreviate this expression as  “Go ask Matthew.”  That would actually be kind of handy.  “Dad, can I have ice cream?” / “Go ask Matthew.”

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“You turn if you want to; the lady’s not for turning.” —Margaret Thatcher

I cannot find inspiration in this quote because I cannot understand it.  What the hell does it even mean?  I am so lost.  Is it a riddle?  A vague reference to ballroom dancing that I cannot make sense of despite having taken months of ballroom dancing lessons?  The only food for thought I find here is a long-debated matter of family history:  did my father, or did he not, actually once say to me, “You’re not very bright, are you”?

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“You can’t build a reputation on what you intend to do.” —Liz Smith, gossip columnist

This strikes me as very true … and yet people—and moreover companies—attempt this pre-fab reputation thing all the time.  I’m reminded of these little Lucite plaques I saw strewn across cubicles at a startup that read, “Commemorating our launch and future success.”  How do you commemorate something that hasn’t happened yet?  (Congrats, Liz … so far you’ve given better advice than a politician, a great writer, a biblical hero, and a former Prime Minister.)

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“No one can figure out your worth but you.” —Pearl Bailey, American actor and singer

I totally disagree with this one.  I believe one’s self-assessment of worth is not always (or perhaps not even often) very accurate.  Think of Luke Skywalker going off to fight Darth Vader, against Yoda’s advice, before completing his Jedi training.  Remember how that came out?  Luke got his fricking hand cut off, and—even worse—spawned the next movie, Return of the Jedi, which royally sucked!  Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum you’ve got people with low self-esteem who sometimes need to be nudged toward success by somebody (e.g., a boss or parent) who has greater faith in them.  I for one am gratified at having achieved things beyond what I’d have attempted on my own volition.

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“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way that you carry it.” —Lena Horne, performer & civil rights activist

I like this quote, even though—or perhaps because—it’s not inspirational.  Note that Ms. Horne is not necessarily saying “You can bear this load if you carry it properly.”  She could be saying, “You are carrying it wrong and will be broken down.”  Why do I like this if it’s not inspirational?  Good question. I’d love to be inspired right now … it’s been a tough year.  I guess I’m feeling cynical, so my BS detector has been turned up to 11, and find this quote refreshing.

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“If you have education and intelligence and ability, so much the better. But remember, thousands have reached the top without any of these qualities.” —Frank Loesser, composer & lyricist, in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”

Now we’re talking!

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“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.” —W.C. Fields

This is very prescient, prefiguring our modern “fail fast” ethos.  The trick, of course, is recognizing the right time to bail.  As the French philosopher Montesquieu wrote, “In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.”

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“Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you must do is put it on your head.” —James Baldwin, American writer

This is almost inspirational, except for its undertones of nepotism and the notion that most of our politicians have been bought and paid for by big business.

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“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” —Mary Anne Radmacher, American writer

Great quote, emphasizing character vs. personality (cf. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), and inward resolve vs. brash public display.  And it ties in nicely with the next one:

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“Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.” —Edmund Burke, 18th-century British statesman

I love this quote, and not only because I dislike grasshoppers. Is my dislike anthropocentric?  Maybe.  And perhaps, as with the Aesop’s Fable of the grasshopper and the ant, this anthropocentrism is unfair.  Speaking of glorifying ants, consider this next quote:

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“With patience and saliva the ant swallows the elephant.” —Colombian proverb

Has this ever actually happened?  A single ant managed to gradually dissolve and consume an entire elephant?  How did the elephant not defend himself?  Really bizarre imagery.  In considering that vast amount of saliva, I’m reminded, unfortunately, of a joke I played on a temp once.  Our office had this little envelope-licking device consisting of a small vessel with a foam brush attached.  The vessel had run dry and I said to the temp, “Look, I hate to have to ask you to do this, but could you possibly refill this for me?”  He was like, “Well yeah, no problem … I mean, I just take it to the sink, right?”  I replied, “No, no!  You can’t seal an envelope with water!  You have to—” and here I pantomimed repeatedly spitting into the vessel.  He looked horrified for a moment, until I burst out laughing.  Is there a moral to this story?  I hope not….

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“It’s more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement.” —Mabel Newcomer, American columnist

I like the second part of this quote, but the first part is problematic.  Do we ever really know where we are going?

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“If there’s one thing you’ve got to hold on to, it’s the courage to fight!” —Bessie Delany, American dentist and civil rights activist

This is a fine quote, but why does my calendar mention Ms. Delany’s being a dentist?  Obviously her moral authority derives from her work as a civil rights activist ... why dilute it with her dentistry? What is it that dentists have the courage to fight?  Plaque? Or is the point that she had the courage to tackle a career in this male-dominated field? Could be. After all, have you ever met a female dentist? And for that matter, have you ever met a male dental hygienist?  (Okay, I feel like we’re getting off in the weeds here….)

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“The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.” —Florence R. Kennedy, American lawyer and activist

Hear, hear!

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“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” —Moms Mabley, American vaudeville comedian

This is obviously meant as a warning against refusing to embrace change. As such, it’s not strong enough. If you always do what you always did, you may end up getting nothing. That is, even if you take comfort in predictability, and are complacent about the status quo, don’t assume you’re okay—you may soon become trodden down by the march of progress. Good advice, but can a warning like this be inspirational? At the moment I’m more inclined to sigh than to beat my chest.

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“Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 19th century American poet

Generally, when confronted with sexism from a long-dead writer, I try to give him or her the benefit of the doubt (in the spirit of “those were different times,” etc.), but what word could we substitute here for “manly”?  We could try “bold,” but then the quote becomes redundant since “without fear” and “bold” are essentially the same thing.  When we also pause to consider whether “Longfellow” was even this guy’s real name, it’s tempting to conclude that he’s basically saying “Don’t be a chick.”  Now, I do want to cut this guy some slack—after all, as I described in my previous Keep Calm post he did demonstrate real heroism during his life—but my calendar should have found a better quote from him.  For example, this one: “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”

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“Fame is an accident; merit a thing absolute.” —Herman Melville

First of all, Melville is the man.  (I don’t mean that in a sexist way, mind you … this expression has become gender-neutral.  For example, Virginia Woolf is also the man.) If you haven’t read Moby Dick yet, it’s time.  Second, I love this quote even without the authority of its source.  So many people get famous who shouldn’t be, like Paris Hilton.  Others have huge merit, like Jo Ann Beard, without gaining nearly the fame they deserve.  I hope people like Ms. Beard intrinsically value their own merit so they don’t become bitter.  And let’s not forget those who are chock-full of merit who don’t even want fame.  (Can I think of an example?  Nope.  That’s how effective these fame-avoiding merit-blessed people are!)

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“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” —Julian Norwich, 14th-century Christian mystic

There’s nothing very mystical or even profound about this. Nobody would think anything of this quote if it were anonymous; like so many of its kind, its putative importance comes only from the assumed authority of its source. In that sense it’s perhaps the predecessor of the celebrity tweet.  My other issue with this notion is that it’s demonstrably false in so many situations.

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“For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.” —Theodore Roosevelt

These are great words regardless of the source.  Meanwhile, Teddy Roosevelt really did live by them, working tirelessly throughout his life instead of resting on the laurels of becoming the youngest US president in history at age 42 and winning the Nobel Peace Prize at 47.  I admire the spirit here of focusing on the work, not just the achievement that it (ideally) leads to.  Unless something better comes to mind, I plan to make “live in the harness” my New Year’s Resolution for 2017.  (To be clear, this harness doesn’t just mean my career, but all the things I’m harnessed to:  work, parenting, cycling, blogging....)

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Physical Therapy

Introduction

My brother told me a story of a trip to the public pool. The staff was moving lane lines around to prepare the pool for the next program. They’d asked everybody to get out, but one guy was lost in his own world and didn’t hear them—he just kept swimming. Finally they pulled in the lane lines next to him anyway, and one of them clipped his hand. He raised a huge stink and was yelling at everybody for hurting his hand and they just ignored him. Finally my brother said to the guy, “Why don’t you go blog about it.”

I think that’s a good cautionary tale for any blogger. In my opinion, the point of a blog shouldn’t be to complain in public to whoever will listen. Feeling sorry for yourself in such a forum is even worse. I promise to keep these ideas in mind as I write about my recent history with physical therapy. I’ve done a lot of PT after breaking my femur fifteen weeks ago. If you’ve done PT yourself you may relate; if not, you’ll get a glimpse into this gloomy realm. I’ll also offer up some thoughts on where life philosophy meets physical therapy.

Beginning

My first exercise, technically, was just getting out of bed to go to the bathroom. At the hospital they encouraged me to be up and about as much as possible, but “possible” was a slippery concept. Just being vertical would make me dizzy, and by the time I’d dragged myself and my walker the twenty or so steps to the bathroom, I felt like I was about to pass out. A couple weeks after my surgery, I learned that it wasn’t worth it to stand to pee: that much exertion significantly increased my pain for the next several hours. A “field trip” down the stairs to entertain guests became possible by the second week or so, but the trip down and back would be my big effort for the day.

My more formal physical therapy began more than a month after my injury. Why so long? Well, the first two weeks I couldn’t really leave the house—I was in too much pain and became exhausted too easily. (I’d lost about 30% of my blood during the operation and was only gradually recovering from severe anemia.) After that, my leg was still in so much pain it seemed cruel to even move or touch it. If legs could talk, it would have said, “Just leave me the hell alone!”

I was also scared. A friend had described a post-surgery machine that forced his leg to bend; not only was this excruciating, but he could hear scar tissue being torn up inside his leg. Letting somebody inflict pain on my already hurting leg was a terrifying prospect. (Pain is much easier to handle when you’re inflicting it on yourself; check out this post for more on that topic.)

By the time I made it to the PT center I could get around on crutches pretty well, but couldn’t bend my leg enough to sit in a chair. (I’d worked hard to get my knee to bend at all. I would sit at the edge of the bed, supporting the bad leg with the good, gradually lowering them until the pain became too great.) My first therapist-prescribed exercise was perhaps the simplest of all of them, but also the worst. I was to sit on the bed, legs stretched out straight in front of me, and flex my thigh muscles. Both legs were atrophied from spending so much time in bed—I’d lost fifteen pounds after my accident—but at least my left leg could still flex and become taut. The right leg wouldn’t do anything. It was like a prosthesis or something. The physical therapist swore she could see a little flicker in the muscle, but I couldn’t. She might as well have been asking me to wiggle my ears.

Not until my wife took me to the pool did I convince myself I didn’t have major nerve damage sufficient to paralyze my leg. In the pool, I could actually lift the leg. This proved that the brain and the leg were still talking. Before that, I really worried that they weren’t.

Tedium

Is it possible to write about the tedium of PT without being tedious? I’ll try. More exercises were added to my regimen. One was to massage what was left of my muscle, pushing it toward the kneecap from either side (above and below). I was also instructed to sit in bed, loop the belt from bathrobe around my ankle, and use the belt to draw my foot toward me, so as to make my knee bend more. This was impossible at first because I couldn’t even bend my leg enough to put my foot flat on the bed. So I looped the belt under the knee and pulled up. Excruciating. I took to lying on my back in bed with my straight up, foot propped against the wall, to let gravity help pull the foot downward. I’d bend the leg as much as I could, then hold this for thirty seconds. Ten sets of this, twice a day, along with the other stuff. Painful, demoralizing, and boring.

Normally I’d satisfy the boredom problem by listening to music. But for the first month or so, I didn’t dare listen to the music I like, for fear of forming unpleasant associations. (Think of the main character in Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange,” who is tortured while hearing Beethoven, and afterward can no longer hear Beethoven without freaking out.) So instead I tried to listen to a Top 40 station. This just added insult to injury—I could become sick of a song before I’d even finished hearing it for the first time. So I tuned in to a classic rock station, only to discover that it played Steve Miller’s “The Joker” so regularly I seemed to hear it every time I did my exercises. At first I was amused, what with “pompatus of love” and so forth. But then it got really old. I started to think maybe Steve Miller had died. What else could explain all this airplay? Eventually I got really sick of that song; I doubt I’ll ever find it tolerable again.

Life philosophy meets PT

I saw this caption on cute doggy calendar at the physical therapy office: “If you love life, it will love you back.” I see two problems with this little aphorism. First, it’s demonstrably untrue. After all, I was in the process of loving life when I suffered this crippling accident. Second, this notion is almost exactly backwards. It’s easy to love life when it does seem to love you. I’m more inspired by people who stubbornly love life even when it doesn’t. I think often of something a close friend once said to me: “I ought to be really depressed right now but I won’t take the bait.”

What is the more stirring cinematic moment for you: Leonardo DeCaprio’s character in “Titanic” standing at the prow of the ship yelling, “I’m the King of the World!” or the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” who’s lost both arms and legs in a battle but yells at his departing opponent, “Come back here and take what’s coming to you! I’ll bite your legs off!”? To be plucky and sanguine when life seems hateful is far more inspirational to me than kidding myself that life is fair.

So it is with physical therapy. In the absence of any sign that I’m getting anywhere, I have to hold out hope, and go through the motions as if I had some guarantee of success. “Success,” of course, is a humble prospect here to begin with: all it means is eventually—after what ... four months, six months, a year?—getting back to the place I started, if I’m lucky. (More immediate goals are even more humble: only recently did I achieve the dream of being able to step into a pair of jeans normally, without holding on to something for balance.)

How do you manage to love life when you’re basically under house arrest and can’t do the things you normally enjoy? Years ago, I made a list of the top 20 things I do for fun, so I dug up that list and discovered I can still do ten of those fun things. Not so bad. Plus, I’ve added to the list: now, when I do my PT, I sometimes have one of my daughters read to me, or we do a Mad Lib. (Here’s a highlight from today’s Mad Lib: “So now you know how illegal politicians learned to murder like cats and dogs—from their ignorant pets!”)

The bike

Using my bike on the indoor trainer has been a useful form of physical therapy. A little over a month after my surgery I was able to climb on my bike (using a shower stool) and put my feet on the pedals. I couldn’t pedal a whole revolution, of course, as my knee wouldn’t bend enough. But through much effort I could get incrementally closer. At first I could only get the right crank to go from 3 o’clock to about 8 o’clock. I’d back-pedal to about 3 and hold it for 30 seconds, rest, and then forward-pedal to about 8, hold it for 30 seconds, and repeat, for about 10 minutes total. Each day I would try to get the pedal a little higher up. It hurt like a mother but at least I was in familiar territory.



At the PT gym, I managed a full revolution one day. This was on a stationary bike with the saddle jacked way up. Encouraged, I raised my bike saddle at home, and within a day or two was getting so close to a whole revolution that one day I ordered my left (i.e, good) leg to turn all the way around, dragging the right leg through it. Agony, but exhilaration. The next day, I bit the bullet and turned ten whole revolutions in a row. By the end I was in tears, whether from pain or relief I can’t say. Once that feat was accomplished, the return to regular pedaling (and normal saddle height) was a matter of refinement. The basic ability had returned.

Life philosophy meets PT – revisited

“That which does not kill you will make you stronger.” This bit of pop-philosophy, the darling of college freshmen, strikes me as completely false. The more accurate statement, in my opinion, is “That which does not make you stronger will kill you.” Think of all the ways people gradually kill themselves: booze, cigarettes, overeating, sloth ... these activities don’t feel like they’ll kill you, while you’re doing them, but they gradually are. They’re sure not making you stronger.

Of course, I’m being disingenuous here, and doing a disservice to Nietzsche. His point is probably more along the lines that enduring suffering, and living through a painful ordeal, strengthens your character. But I still take issue with this. True, the willingness to suffer is a gateway to mental and emotional fortitude, but the suffering itself can be good or bad. If, for example, you’re stupid about training or PT, and simply ignore all pain (whether it’s the kind that indicates intense effort or the kind that indicates you’re causing damage), you’ll end up hurting yourself—getting tendonitis or worse—and then you’re sidelined and most certainly not getting stronger, either physically or psychologically.

With physical therapy, a systematic approach—under the careful guidance of a physical therapist who knows what he or she is doing—is key to getting better. Suffering alone will not heal you. Often you must do what doesn’t come naturally, and retrain your body to behave itself. Needless to say, doing what doesn’t come naturally can get you into so much trouble if you blindly flail away. Structured, targeted suffering, of a more careful nature than the “that which does not kill you” variety, is needed.

(Re)learning to walk

Over the months my mobility has improved. I’ve gone from the walker (depressing and geriatric) to crutches (less depressing, more suggestive of a sporty injury) to one crutch (Tiny Tim) to a cane (geriatric all over again). Cane shopping was a drag. I looked at the canes at Walgreens and was shocked at how ugly they were. Most were fake wood and one was the color of streaky feces. All of the canes were too short. So I made the rounds of the cane shops: Canes R Us, the World Cane Emporium, and that boutique-y place up in Kensington, Ye Olde Cane Shoppe.

No, there aren’t really any cane shops, but my physical therapist referred me to a crazy medical supply place that looked like the home of a crazy hoarder. Stacks of stuff from floor to ceiling, with narrow walkways carved out. A salesman there, who looked and sounded like Philip Seymour Hoffman, advised another, “The long canes are in the back. We hide them so the short people won’t buy them.” I’d wanted an aluminum and foam rubber cane that looked like a loaner from a hospital, because a nice wooden cane would make my physical infirmity seem permanent. But all they could offer was a wooden cane, cut to size.

The musculature in my leg got so fouled up by the surgery that my brain stem seems to have given up on the whole limb. I guess this makes sense. For most of human history we didn’t have the medical technology to fix a broken femur, so the brain developed tactics for getting by without a working leg. I worked up a host of unconscious compensations.

At first, I would practically lock my right knee when I walked, and swing the right leg around to the side, in an arc, instead of swinging it straight forward, because that way the knee wouldn’t have to bend to keep my toe from hitting the ground. Moreover, my instinct was to put weight on the bad leg very tentatively and for as short a period of time as possible, so the left leg would shoot forward instead of my gait being balanced. I would swing my right arm to help swing the leg forward, rather than using the leg’s muscles. Watching myself in the mirror at the PT gym, I realized I walked like a drunken mummy zombie.

The absurd thing is, these habits have persisted after the leg developed much of the strength and flexibility needed for a normal gait. My brain just doesn’t trust the leg. So I’m in the peculiar position of overriding what comes naturally and applying conscious thought to walking. Normally, thinking while walking makes you more, not less, awkward (try it!) but this is the best I can do for now. There’s still a lot more strength-building and flexibility-gaining left to go.

A final note

My mom has praised me for my determination and doggedness in doing all my exercises. She kind of has to praise me—it’s her job. It’s what moms are for. But in case she actually means it, and in case you yourself had thought anything of the kind, I assure you that anybody in this situation would be just as diligent. When your body is broken, you want it back, and you’ll do anything to get there. Training for sport is totally different: you can always think of worse things than not being perfectly fit for your next big race or group ride. But there’s not much worse, for a relatively young, fit person, than limping his way through the rest of his life