In the Den
I am home after five weeks away. We arrived home yesterday afternoon with enough time to unpack our car and generally shake off the physical issues of our 8,000 mile cross-country extravaganza. I drove every one of those miles and remind Kim of that every time I want her to do something for me. I think after 24 hours, I have run that line of reasoning into the ground and will have to find other rationalizations for my general laziness. I am a person who feels better doing my unpacking right away, so everything in my bags are in the hamper or back in their respective drawer of shelf. Everything is back to normal again…almost. One thing that changed was that I have learned that I should be avoiding Advil PM due to its content of 38 mg in each caplet of diphenhydramine citrate, the “gentle” sleep palliative that is meant to supplement the pain reduction of ibuprofen. I have been taking 4 of those bombers every night for the past ten years or so. I have thought of that as a “clinical dose”, but What I am now told is that it may be responsible for advancing dementia. While some may think this explains a lot, I will suggest that with the exception of trouble grasping a proper name from my memory banks, I haven’t seem any signs of early onset senility. Nevertheless, among the things that I least want to afflict me as I age is dementia, so I have now stopped taking the stuff at bedtime. I am substituting Extra-Strength Tylenol, so let’s see how that goes.
I slept well last night, but being back in one’s own bed after five weeks is a variable that is hard for other things to overcome, so that may not be the best test of my new drug regime. After listening to Empire of Pain on the drive home last week, its amazing I am willing to take any drugs. I learned all about the entire pain complex and its history starting with Aspirin from its German Bayer origins in 1897. Germany is also the origin of the drug morphine, which another German invented in 1803 and gained significant traction as a painkiller during the American Civil War. While Heroin was invented in England in 1874, it was first widely marketed by the Germans at Bayer starting in 1898. As the Sacklers did with OxyContin 90 years later, Bayer initially marketed Heroin as non-addictive and therefore harmless and of no significance as a recreational drug. Oops.
I now know that aspirin, ibuprofen, opium, morphine, heroin, oxycodone (also invented in Germany in 1916), Percocet (a combination of Oxycodone and Acetaminophen), Percodan (a combination of Oxycodone and Aspirin), OxyContin, and the various additives like diphenhydramine citrate all have side effects that have to be closely monitored and managed. Duh! It so happens that I have not had any bad side effects of using aspirin or ibuprofen, so I’m not sure why I should think that Advil PM will tag me, but I figure stomach aches are one kind of tell, but mental lapses may not be so easily attributable to medication and thus may go unnoticed. So, after a decade, I went cold turkey on Saturday night and haven’t looked back yet.
Today I went on a forced march to do what I do, which is work to settle myself, which at this moment means unpacking the twenty or so boxes I sent home from Ithaca, plus the heavy stuff I loaded into the car. One of the things I bought and had delivered was a pair of CopperFit gloves, which ai think are perfectly suited to this sort of work where work gloves would be too cumbersome and no gloves would likely leave my hands cramping or scuffed up. I was ready for action. I put a new blade in my utility knife for good measure. There were two kinds of boxes, those with clothes and those with memorabilia worth keeping. As I’ve noted, I spent a goodly amount of time triaging stuff in Ithaca, but I knew that i would have a second bite at the apple when I did what I was doing today. I had no intention of doing things like looking through pictures, but its hard not to spend a moment or two considering the items I was unpacking. As an example, I kept a copy of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was owned by my mother when she was in school. The original book was published in the U.S. in 1885. My mother was born in 1916 and presumably read it sometime around 1930. The copy I have was published in 1918 and it is inscribed as being owned by a cadet. I am not sure that means a West Point cadet, but New York State is a small enough place to think that that might well be the case.
As I’m sure you have heard at one time or another, Twain caught a lot of flak about the book in many ways and from many quarters over the years. Originally, the book was considered somewhat scandalous for racial reasons, like frequent use of the term “nigger”, as well as for what was thought to be its coarseness in how Huck Finn, speaking in the first person, talks of things like scratching an itch, which was considered a crude reference. In addition, the book was banned and considered too course for children. And then as we got into the 1960s, people like Norman Mailer ragged about the book because he thought it treated serious themes too glibly. And, of course, it gets slammed even today for being not woke enough. Clearly, the standards of literary propriety have gone through lots of changes in 137 years and I suspect any book as well-read as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a book that is considered one of the great American novels, is bound to get put into the crosshairs.
Taking a moment to glance at this book that made my harsh cut of keeper books when I was in Ithaca, was something I felt compelled to do. Today was spent gathering the stuff into two large piles (clothes and stuff) and tomorrow I will figure out what gets put where and whether any stuff I already have here needs to get put on the toss list to make room. That’s especially important with the clothes in both the pants and shirt categories. The memorabilia like the book, will, by definition, find a home somewhere, probably in the office or living room. Kim and I have already agreed that the office will be the room that gets overpopulated with memorabilia so long as it doesn’t cross the line into becoming cluttered.
I have bearded the lion in its den. I have faced up to the beast of my own history, I have looked it in the eye and I have brought it to bear. Tomorrow, I will take the tamed beast and put it on my shelves.