Thinking in two places at once

   A few mornings ago as I was driving, I felt unusually calm. It was during the morning commute, and although I was not in a rush, I had the impression that everyone else was.
   Often, when there is a lot of frantic activity around me, I tend to get caught up in it. If I feel that people are being inconsiderate or rude (and driving seems to bring these things out in many people, including myself), the feelings that I have about the world can quickly change from those of relative satisfaction into agitation. Sometimes at these moments, I feel like I don't want to be part of it at all any more.
   As the traffic flow accelerated and the drivers appeared more aggressive, I began to feel constricted. I could sense those familiar feelings of despondency arising, but on this occasion I could see them as a thought, without their immediate metamorphosis into something like an undeniable reality.
   Many, many times, I have attempted to think myself down from this kind of escalation by trying to amend my very emotional response with a rational thought, reminding myself that the deep hurts I have felt were not necessarily what were happening in the current moment. Unfortunately for me, this technique has been a mostly losing proposition. Although I have been so terribly frustrated at times in these endeavors, it makes what happened this particular morning that much more remarkable, as my thoughts at that moment seemed to happen independently of my attempts at intervention.
   I have tended to think about this experience in a kind of moralistic way (i.e.-I reacted in a 'better' or more 'appropriate' manner on this occasion), but believe now that I really don't know why I experienced this change at that particular moment. I've thought a lot about the possible explanations, written them here, edited them, then rewritten them, but I think I'm just going to leave it as a question.

Nest building

   I took the picture below as I passed the small pile of stuff seen below. It appears to be comprised of mostly grasses and perhaps a few small twigs, and I imagined that it was gathered to build a nest when I first saw it. It is spring here in San Francisco, and many of the birds around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park are preparing for, or have already had babies.
   As I thought about it a bit, I figured that what is in the picture may not in fact nesting material, but perhaps the leftovers from a lawn mowed nearby.  Anyway, it got me thinking about material, in general, and it's relation to that which has not yet been realized.
   Most people that visit the park seem to focus there attentions on the babies already born there, but I find it much more beautiful to see a blackbird or great blue heron with a few sticks or dried grass in their beaks. The image holds the idea of the possibile before the completed task. Even a nest, finished as it may be, can hold this potential for me, especially when there are only adults visible in it; the likelihood of a developing life in an egg or eggs below remains hidden, almost literally pregnant with possibilities.
   To embrace the idea of the unseen is so wonderful, because it involves keeping my senses and self open to what is around and inside of me, including feelings, smells, and the minutiae of the physical world.
   As the grasses in the picture below could have been used to construct an object for something which has yet to exist, the process of writing and the words that I choose to use are the materials that I find available to construct and realize ideas that I have, and the ones yet to formulated.

Perhaps my next blog entry is in there

Smoke coming from my nose, peripherally.

   I have been having nosebleeds pretty regularly for the past six months or so, and finally decided to go to a specialist a couple of months ago. I had been to an ear, nose and throat doctor a few years back when I suffered from the same thing then, and the doctor had cauterized some blood vessels in my right nostril, which stopped the nosebleeds. That worked for a couple of years.
   I was hesitant at first to go back for this procedure, as I figured that it had not really solved the problem altogether; I also hadn't loved the bedside manner of the doctor that had performed it. Eventually, the nosebleeds became more regular, so I decided to search out a different physician, and made an appointment.
   The new specialist put me at ease with his likable personality, and I felt like we hit it off immediately. We talked about a variety of things, many of which did not include my nose. I enjoyed his company.
   He performed a cauterization, but approximately ten days later the nosebleeds returned, and back I went.
   He seemed a bit surprised to see me again so soon, but back up there he looked, bright light strapped around his forehead like a coal miner heading into my nose. He identified and thoroughly cauterized a small, raised area in my upper right nostril that he felt certain had been the site where the nosebleeds had been emanating from, but I soon got another one, exactly four days and five hours later.
   It's interesting how certain things can make one so precisely aware of time.
   The doctor had told me that if this cauterization didn't work, he would do it the next time with a laser, and when it didn't, I was in his office again.
   He explained what the procedure would entail, showed me on a tongue depressor what the instrument did when it contacted something (it blackened it!), and informed me that I'd smell something like burning flesh. For some reason, that description didn't shock me as much as I feel like it should have as I think about it now. Perhaps it was the beginning of the surreal quality of the entire experience.
   He began, and I immediately got a whiff of, then saw peripherally, that there was quite a bit of smoke coming from my right side. As he continued, he asked an assistant to come in to help him by holding my right nostril up so he could see the area better. It was then that the vapors seemed to increase a lot. I noted this, and he admitted to being surprised by the amount.
   I looked to the face of the assistant to see if her expression transmitted anything about what was happening in front of her, but it revealed nothing that I could positively identify.
   It really was quite a unique experience to see smoke coming from my body, and the fact that my head was tilted up and back to the left, right nostril flared and in my field of vision, made the smoke difficult to see clearly. The event was at the same time hazy, dreamlike and undeniably visceral.
   As I write about it now one week later, I am reminded of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein theorizing about pain and subjectivity. He posited the question of how a person can know for certain that the pain that they feel is their pain, and not another's. I remember being both amused, but also fascinated by the idea when I first read about it.
   My own body's emission of smoke struck me as undeniably real, yet as if it was happening to someone else, too. It felt as if I could have been watching myself, but using someone else's vision.
   How wonderful it would be to have that option regularly.