Tuesday night, I reported to the NY Eye and Ear Hospital for a sleep study. I was referred by my ENT and Allergist - I've had chronic dry scratchy throat and clogged ears for many months, and also woken up every now and then during the night feeling my throat kind of clogged also. Indications are that I may have apnea or something, so I was eager to do the study.
The technician showed me to my room - a nice big comfortable looking bed with my own tv and small bathroom. Before she hooked me up to the EEG and such, she gave me a 4-page questionnaire to fill out. Now, anytime something major is going on in my life, I think about it with more attention to detail than I normally would. So I'd already been focusing on my sleep habits. Do I really feel well-rested when I rise in the morning? Is my regular napping a sign of a healthy response to the normal cycles of energy and sleepiness throughout the day, or a sign of a pathology?
So the questionnaire added to my suspicions about what is going on, but in a way that was frustrating. Most questions just allowed for a yes or no answer, and I would have liked to give a more nuanced response. Yes, I get sleepy during the day, but my corporate job requires me to rise in the morning earlier than I would like to - that's why I tire by late morning or early afternoon. However, the technician had warned me about the questionnaire, telling me more than once to fill it out as best as I could. So I didn't stress over it.
Then she went to work on me. When she was done, I felt like I had wires and tubes covering my entire head. There was even a tube that sort of went into my nostrils. How was I supposed to breathe through my nose with that crap in there? The nice thing was that she left traces of her perfume on the tubes and other pieces of tape, so for the first couple of hours I smelled that, which was nice. There were also bands around my chest and abdomen and a tube taped to my index finger to monitor my breathing and movement. She told me to lie back, got me all situated on my pillows, covered me with a sheet and blanket, and left me to my task: to try to sleep.
I never sleep well the first night I'm in a strange place, even without tubes and wires on me, making me itch and preventing me from moving easily. So the answer is no, I didn't sleep well, but I slept some, hopefully enough for them to make a good assessment of what is going on while I sleep.
I cleaned some of the gunk out of my head when it was over, and walked through the still-dark streets of Manhattan back to the subway. In a few weeks I will see my ENT and we'll go over the results, and decide what the next step is.
This being the weekend, I had a glorious sleep last night, only getting up when I felt like it. I may not need a nap today, which shows that when I don't have to get up at an unreasonable hour to work for the Man, I sleep adequately. But if I did need a nap, I would have no problem with that. Occasionally, you read about studies that show that a huge percentage of the adult population is sleep-deprived, even people you would like to be well-rested like doctors and airline pilots. And many people get through the day only through the wonders of caffeinated beverages and other stimulants.
Well, I stay away from caffeine for the most part. And when I feel tired, I give in to it as is convenient, and I sleep. And when I get up after a 10-minute nap, I feel more alert. Yes, I have no doubt that I may have a sleeping disorder, and I look forward to getting treatment for that so my throat and ears will hopefully feel better. But whatever happens, I reserve the right to sleep anywhere and at anytime I feel necessary. It's what I've always done, and noone has yet convinced me that is anything other than a very healthy habit.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
A thought
On the Saturday after September 11th, I was grateful to be asked to sing with a pick-up choir organized by Gwen Toth for the funeral at St. Francis Church of Father Michael Judge, the Fire Chaplain. At that service the homily was given on the passage from John's Gospel, "Greater love hath no man, than that he lay down his life for his friends." For the rest of my life, whenever I hear that verse, I will think of that day, that week. Of the sadness, the sorrow, the horror, the outpouring of feeling. Of the sacrifice of those who died, who were our neighbors, our friends.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
My heart belongs in another century?
Tonight I am getting all ready to attend the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo tomorrow. I may go on Labor Day, Monday, also. I will be clothed in replicas of 15th century garb, including shoes and hat and shoulder bag. I can't wait - I'm an excited Faire geek, what can I say?
As a child, I fell in love with Renaissance art, particularly that of Michelangelo after reading Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy" many many times. Then in college I fell whole-hog in love with Medieval and Renaissance music, so much so that I majored in music, to the point of getting a Masters degree in music as well.
Now I knew Faire lovers back then, but I kept my distance from them. It seemed to me that they were a hedonistic lot who only got involved in Medieval and Renaissance re-enactment so they could set aside modern mores and ethics and engage in decadent peasant-ish rolling in the hay. I felt some contempt for them, and stayed rooted in the modern day, even as I made an emotional connection to the music and art that I loved so well.
And then just 18 months ago, all that changed. I made some new friends who regularly attend Faires, especially their home fair in Tampa, Florida. They invited me down to attend the Faire with them, it sounded like it would be a fun escape from wintry New York City, so I went. And it was fun. How much of it had anything to do with the Renaissance I leave to another person to work out. It is silly, childish, but also fun and yes, escapist. But I guess my life in recent years, after going through divorce and starting over, allows for some things I would never have previously considered.
Last weekend I was in Washington, DC, and so I spent a few very enjoyable hours walking through the galleries of our National Gallery, looking at art from the 13th through 17th centuries. As I looked at various paintings of the Virgin and child and adoration of the Magi, I found myself noticing the clothing of the background characters especially, getting more ideas for what kind of outfits I would like to wear at future Faires.
I may not really be leaving my century behind for another when I immerse myself in this play-acting, and the music-making I do. But there is something there that speaks loudly to me, that feels true. I can lose for a few moments the cardboard assemblage I have called myself all these many years, and begin to build a new character out of real cloth.
As a child, I fell in love with Renaissance art, particularly that of Michelangelo after reading Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy" many many times. Then in college I fell whole-hog in love with Medieval and Renaissance music, so much so that I majored in music, to the point of getting a Masters degree in music as well.
Now I knew Faire lovers back then, but I kept my distance from them. It seemed to me that they were a hedonistic lot who only got involved in Medieval and Renaissance re-enactment so they could set aside modern mores and ethics and engage in decadent peasant-ish rolling in the hay. I felt some contempt for them, and stayed rooted in the modern day, even as I made an emotional connection to the music and art that I loved so well.
And then just 18 months ago, all that changed. I made some new friends who regularly attend Faires, especially their home fair in Tampa, Florida. They invited me down to attend the Faire with them, it sounded like it would be a fun escape from wintry New York City, so I went. And it was fun. How much of it had anything to do with the Renaissance I leave to another person to work out. It is silly, childish, but also fun and yes, escapist. But I guess my life in recent years, after going through divorce and starting over, allows for some things I would never have previously considered.
Last weekend I was in Washington, DC, and so I spent a few very enjoyable hours walking through the galleries of our National Gallery, looking at art from the 13th through 17th centuries. As I looked at various paintings of the Virgin and child and adoration of the Magi, I found myself noticing the clothing of the background characters especially, getting more ideas for what kind of outfits I would like to wear at future Faires.
I may not really be leaving my century behind for another when I immerse myself in this play-acting, and the music-making I do. But there is something there that speaks loudly to me, that feels true. I can lose for a few moments the cardboard assemblage I have called myself all these many years, and begin to build a new character out of real cloth.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Melancholia
I remember one night during college sitting in my friend M's car as she drove me back to campus. We had a nice chat along the way, and even when we got there, she let the car idle while we continued talking.
We found we had quite a kinship - similar personalities - similar dispositions. Under the right circumstances, we treasured responding to life with a certain melancholy. It was rather a romantic thing, as if we had learned it from the Bronte sisters and Dickens. When things got overwhelming, the proper thing was to succumb to the darkness, until such time as it abated and we could return to the world of light, sound and activity. There was a certain bittersweetness to being afflicted this way.
And in society, there is an expectation that people of artistic temperament are prone to spending time wallowing in the darkness. That seems to be where the insights into the human condition that so ennoble the resulting creative work come from.
I never gave any credence to this last idea. I felt that if people of creative genius were afflicted with mental disorder, they created in spite of the disorder, not because of it. And I always felt that the people who came up with this theory of the suffering artist could not be artists themselves.
Well I emerged into adulthood still prone to occasional bouts of this melancholy. I never thought to call it depression, but eventually people began to appreciate that depression was a serious thing and should be treated as mental disease just like other debilitating mental diseases. But I did begin to wish that I could escape having to go through these episodes in the darkness. You know, there were days and sometimes even weekends when I lay on my bed unable to move. That was not good.
Treatment in the way of psychotherapy followed, and changed my life in an infinitely positive way. At one point I even followed a regimen of anti-depressants to help put my brain back in solid working order. Thank God for these drugs, and woe that the great geniuses of days gone by could not have been saved by them, and had to suffer as they did.
Am I still melancholy? Do I still take pleasure in a good stanza of gravestone poetry? Are walks in the rain still one of my favorite things? Do I have a deep understanding of what it means for tears to be my meat? Yes, my friends, there is still much that is bittersweet for me. But one of the great mysterious things is how melancholy and happiness can co-exist for me. Sometimes more of one than the other, but these two mood pugilists are in there slugging it out, happily battling for dominance of my demeanor.
We found we had quite a kinship - similar personalities - similar dispositions. Under the right circumstances, we treasured responding to life with a certain melancholy. It was rather a romantic thing, as if we had learned it from the Bronte sisters and Dickens. When things got overwhelming, the proper thing was to succumb to the darkness, until such time as it abated and we could return to the world of light, sound and activity. There was a certain bittersweetness to being afflicted this way.
And in society, there is an expectation that people of artistic temperament are prone to spending time wallowing in the darkness. That seems to be where the insights into the human condition that so ennoble the resulting creative work come from.
I never gave any credence to this last idea. I felt that if people of creative genius were afflicted with mental disorder, they created in spite of the disorder, not because of it. And I always felt that the people who came up with this theory of the suffering artist could not be artists themselves.
Well I emerged into adulthood still prone to occasional bouts of this melancholy. I never thought to call it depression, but eventually people began to appreciate that depression was a serious thing and should be treated as mental disease just like other debilitating mental diseases. But I did begin to wish that I could escape having to go through these episodes in the darkness. You know, there were days and sometimes even weekends when I lay on my bed unable to move. That was not good.
Treatment in the way of psychotherapy followed, and changed my life in an infinitely positive way. At one point I even followed a regimen of anti-depressants to help put my brain back in solid working order. Thank God for these drugs, and woe that the great geniuses of days gone by could not have been saved by them, and had to suffer as they did.
Am I still melancholy? Do I still take pleasure in a good stanza of gravestone poetry? Are walks in the rain still one of my favorite things? Do I have a deep understanding of what it means for tears to be my meat? Yes, my friends, there is still much that is bittersweet for me. But one of the great mysterious things is how melancholy and happiness can co-exist for me. Sometimes more of one than the other, but these two mood pugilists are in there slugging it out, happily battling for dominance of my demeanor.
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