the parsley.blog.landscape.life

I first got interested in plants and gardens when I was about 9 or 10.  I still have my ancient, yellowed, taped-together copy of “The Forgotten Art of Growing, Gardening, and Cooking With Herbs”,  a book that profoundly shaped all my pioneer-woman fantasies for years thereafter.

I was a self-taught plant nerd.  I spent many hours absorbed in plant books after that first herb book. I learned about other kinds of plants, but I was always especially interested in herbs, and their very distinct personalities and smells. there was something deeply mysterious about the way herbs smelled; the seeming kinship between the smells of lavender and rosemary; the bizarre way that a certain kind of mint smelled like chocolate, and a type of thyme smelled like lemon. what did it all mean? and it was fun to think of using herbs for medicine, concocting remedies for unimportant or imagined illnesses, needing no adult to dispense them.

I read in my various herb books about the “doctrine of signatures,” the old idea that medicinal herbs had some visible trait that would inform you of their beneficial uses.  it might be that a plant had a leaf shaped like a lung, or little pores on the leaves indicating it was good for the skin, or a red root to let you know it was good for the blood. this now seems like rank superstition, but in fact in its time it was considered advanced science.  if this kind of idea came in part from folklore or backcountry healer traditions, to make it a ‘doctrine’ in Renaissance science was to recreate it as a specialized body of knowledge, only for the top experts to understand and apply properly.  it’s a few short steps from doctrine to dogma, from that which might be useful to that which we believe because we are told to do so.

people are pattern-seeking animals.  we have the ability to read our environment in minute detail and keenly observe its subtleties; we also have, it seems, an equally powerful ability to assign incorrect meanings to what we see, to detect a pattern that retroactively fits what we have already decided must be the truth.

last year, I had an illness that caused me pain.  it was incorrectly diagnosed at first, and I had a few months of unnecessary suffering before an identity and a name was finally assigned to this illness. once it had a name, it also had a treatment; an enormous relief, since I was so exhausted from the pain. or at least I thought that was the reason I was exhausted. I thought at the time I had only one illness.

I was tired in the fall.  I know I was footsore and exhausted in Chicago, but I would expect that after so many hours and miles on my feet.  I’ve done the same thing in other cities, from Paris to Seattle, so my tiredness in Chicago didn’t seem out of line.  and of course I was trying to do too much last fall, because I’m always trying to do too much. I’d gone through years of short sleep and overwork; tired I knew about.  but gradually it became clear that this was something else.  something was very, very wrong.

I have been very fortunate.  I have health insurance and conscientious doctors.  they’ve been extremely assiduous in ruling out every disease that could possibly fit my symptoms.  I’ve had tests upon tests, tests for diseases you never heard of, and have been scrutinized from every angle.  and nobody has accused me (at least to my face) of malingering, faking, or hysteria.

I have been very unfortunate.  the diagnosis and the name I eventually got for my illness is not a clearly lighted path to treatments and cures.  instead it is just a faintly medical-sounding way of saying “we don’t actually know what’s wrong with you.”  there is an observable pattern of symptoms and many other people have had the same thing, so at some point they came up with a name, and they gradually decided it’s (probably) not something wrong in the head, and the official line is that it is a Real Disease, though a deeply mysterious one, and presenting enormous temptation for the assignment of meanings that very likely have nothing to do with the real cause.

nobody can tell me when I’ll get better, or even if I ever will.  there are no cures or even good treatments for this thing. there are multiple plausible theories about what causes it, and some of them don’t even require a belief in the moral weakness of the sufferer.  it has a stupid name, that makes it sound like I just got kinda tired, that doesn’t adequately convey how much it hurts, how miserable it actually is.

there will be no more miles of urban exploration for me for a while.  how long a while?  I don’t know.  at the moment, my range of motion, the landscape available to me to travel, has become very small.

people are pattern-seeking animals.  did I mention that already?  for this reason, mystery illnesses are very unsatisfactory.

everyone wants to figure out what happened to cause the bad thing, and thereby be reassured that they, somehow, can think of a way to protect themselves from a similar catastrophe.  people stare at car wrecks for the same reason.  detecting a pattern seems to offer the possibility of safety, of control. I understand this to be human nature, and I don’t resent it.  much.

surely medicine has got everything figured out? there are no monsters at the edge of the map where the known world ends…right?

there was one doctor…just one…who brightly said to me, “Now that you’re disabled, this might be a great opportunity for personal growth!”

because I was taught ethics and morals, I showed great restraint and did not kill her.  but I could have.  even in my weakened state.  I may be disabled, but I can still fight dirty.

I can’t yet speak as though I have “adjusted to my condition.”  I don’t quite yet have the trick mastered – of being cheerful, being accepting, being philosophical, making the best of my situation.  I understand from the movies and from popular magazines that these are things I eventually ought to become.  and if I am only determined enough, have an indomitable enough spirit, I might find my way to the miracle cure or otherwise overcome “my condition.”  I recognize that narrative.  it is a very compelling pattern.  I would like to look at myself and see that narrative unfolding.

or, perhaps, I could righteously seek justice against somebody or something that has done this to me.  it is very unsatisfactory to be in so much pain, and so angry, and have no appropriate target for my anger.

well, what I would really like is to have the power to fix myself, since I like fixing stuff and figuring stuff out.  as there are for all mystery illnesses, there are various forms of snake oil available to me for “my condition,” obtainable at varying levels of expense and trouble.  but I don’t think anybody could mix up a batch of snake oil that would meet my exacting standards, or be as good as what I would concoct for myself.  I would require it to be very green, and very thick, and very smelly, so that you would know it meant business.  there would be nothing gentle or contemplative or woo-woo about my snake oil.  it would be the nastiest stuff imaginable, and nobody would ever mistake it for yoga or meditation or aromatherapy.  it would have nothing to do with correcting my various mistaken attitudes.  it would just do the damn job.

when they finally figure out what causes the disease with the stupid name — and I do believe that they will, and that it is not actually a psychological, spiritual, or moral condition —  I hereby predict the following: expert-types will look back at all these years of people being pointlessly, miserably sick, and say of COURSE, it is so OBVIOUS, this disease looks EXACTLY like it should, it is so plainly and patently a disease of (auto-immunity, endocrine disruption, viral infection, broken mitochondria, demonic possession, pick your favorite).  look at that big fat signature right there, the clearest possible sign of what we were actually dealing with all along. the pattern was so clear!

and people will forget that they ever attributed the mystery illness to “stress”, or the hurlyburly of modern life, or suppressed emotions, or whatever. just as we’ve now forgotten that people once thought grief caused cancer, or that melancholy temperament caused TB, or that worry, tension, and overwork caused ulcers — what today we would call “stress.”  (at this point, I am just about ready to declare “stress” the least useful word in the English language.)

in the meantime, because there isn’t any good snake oil for what I’ve got in my HMO’s formulary, there isn’t much left to do besides hang around and wait for something to change.  and do the little things that I can, which some days seem sort of OK, and some days feel like a small, faint, pathetic shadow of actual life.

fresh air, green stuff, and sunshine are not really considered serious modern medicine, but I do actually have some doctors smart enough to recommend them.  and I, in my turn, am smart enough to know that there is actual research about the health effects of exposure to the green stuff.  and I’m saving up a good rant about the lack of non-strenuous public open space in Los Angeles, not that I would be the first to make such a rant, but being sick gives a whole new angle on the urban experience.  what I wouldn’t give for a dopey little pocket park or a nondescript urban square just down the street.  I would totter down there, sit on a bench, and be buddies with people twice my age who would understand what it is to have to hobble and totter when what you would really like to do is climb mountains and explore cities.

I got a for-real camera, since I shouldn’t let a little thing like being disabled stop me from spending lots of money on new toys, and was promptly intimidated by the manual.  so much left to learn.  would I once have thought I’d be grateful to have the chance to lie around, catch up on my reading, and learn how to use a fancy new camera?  it’s not a chance if it’s not a choice.  it’s not a bad thing to do some reading, but what I’d really like to do is to go back to Paris.

I understand that is not an option right now.  I even understand what a tremendous privilege it has been to get to go once, and that it is greedy to want more, and even greedier to want to go on to see London and Tokyo and Amsterdam and Cape Town and all the other cities on my endless wish list, to see the rain forests and the outback and the Northern Lights.  I understand that the ability to see new things with your own eyes is a rarely granted temporary privilege, revocable at any time for any reason, and that I am not owed an explanation.  I understand all these things.

however, as a poet once wrote:  I know. but I do not approve.  and I am not resigned.