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Recently, I’ve had an opportunity to devote some intense thought to the saying in the title of my post, i.e., “The greatest pleasure is relief from pain.”  And while I know that there are many great pleasures in life, some so fine and worth pursuing and enjoying that it’s hard to imagine what could be greater, yet when one is in deep pain from emotional causes or from physical injury, the devout prayers one sends up to whatever being or force one happens to believe in, or the simple secular longing for equilibrium and away from the extremes of pain are so strong that I begin to agree with the anonymous author of my quote.

Now, first of all I must say that no one else is responsible for my quandary vis-à-vis pain.  About a month ago, I over-stretched a muscle or tendon in my left hip, and instead of putting ice and then heat on it in the recommended fashion, decided (or rather simply neglected decision-making altogether) in favor of waiting it out.  It was only a minor mishap, and it would heal, as all my previous mishaps had before.  Only then one night in an equally stupid fit of hubris, I leaned out sideways and down from my new high bed to pick up something I had dropped, and raised myself back up by the inflamed muscle without other support.  My hip had never given me any trouble much before, or when it had–and I had to admit to myself that occasionally I’d felt a twinge when sitting too long in my easy chair–the twinge had always disappeared again.

Loyal to me and my purposes, the hip only fussed a little at me in the next two weeks, but I just ignored it and assumed that it would stop after a while, if only I stayed active.  But then came the real test:  I went on vacation and exerted myself and slept with a heating pad on my back in intervals all night long–and contrary to what I had supposed, and what seemed at first to be working, I should’ve been using ice–until one fine night, after gradually getting worse and worse, the hip and my lower back and waist all combined to overthrow my dominion over pain:  I was actually crying aloud with pain from every movement, however gentle, and could not get up out of bed without it taking me at least ten minutes to do so.  I kid you not.  I sat up for hours at night on the most comfortable couch it’s been my good fortune to meet, with the heating pad still on my back, and yet I had aggravated my anatomy to such an extent that every movement still brought pain.  When my host (my brother) arose the next morning, he asked me “Are you ready for those pain-killers yet?”  He had offered me a strong dose of over-the-counter meds the night before, but I had been too afraid of taking so many pills:  but by the next morning, my whole body was crying out, “F— that, I want those pills!”

It was time to come back home anyway, so I dosed myself up with as much pain medication as was available and I was able to travel for the requisite 3 hours in the car to get to an emergency room near home.  Not that it was pain free:  every jolt and bump and sudden stop on the road was another agony, but luckily I was doped up enough with the pain meds that I didn’t scream out with pain and distract the driver or cause an accident.  Then came the next part of the ordeal:  the examination to make sure that it wasn’t actually my liver or my spleen or my kidneys or my gall bladder or etc.–I knew what it was, but doctors like to hedge their bets (and mine), so I put up with it.  They ended by giving me some stronger prescription muscle relaxant and pain meds, and discharged me.

This story has several morals, the most significant one of which is that as we get older we can no longer assume that our anatomies are going to keep tolerating various abuses as they did when we were younger.  Another is that when you’re in pain, ignore the “stiff upper lip” routine and admit you’re not a superheroine and do something about it.  Finally, when someone offers you relief from pain, unless they are a known felon and pusher (which my brother with his pain pills was not), seriously consider taking the pills the first time they’re offered.  And remember:  every time your vacation to Jamaica is cancelled, or you have to pass up the champagne with dinner because you have a headache, or you don’t get to go to the amusement park as you’d planned, there’s always one pleasure greater than all those things rolled into one that you may someday experience, though at some cost–“The greatest pleasure is relief from pain.”  You can quote me on that!

Yes, I know, I promised not so long ago to increase the number of my posts so that I was closer to my original blogging schedule of at least 2-3 posts a week.  But life intervenes, in that inimitable way it has, and right now, I am away from home, waiting for my close relatives to come back from family soccer morning, sharing my solitude with 3 cages full of 8 baby bunnies that my brother and his son–the unforgettable Charles, who earlier if you will recall compared me to “Aunt Josephine” from The Wide Window in A Series of Unfortunate Events because I worry about him–have adopted.  Sad to say, the baby bunnies had sores and worms when they were brought home, which is what occasioned their sympathetic adoption in the first place, but my brother and nephew have treated them and brought them nearly to full health, with only a bit more to go before they can be caged outside in a warm hutch for the winter.

When I was young, I also had a rabbit, and my brother had one, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, or else I’ve forgotten some of its habits.  “The habbits of rabbits,” to coin a phrase, are funny.  They clean their paws, ears, and bodies much like cats, but make a great deal of noise licking and biting the water bottles that are attached to their cages.  They also eat a lot, almost constantly, it seems, though whether this is from boredom or necessity I don’t know:  you’d have to ask the rabbits in question.  They have big appealing brown eyes, and mostly pale, orangish-fawn colored bodies with the usual little white tails, except for the mottled and speckled two of the litter, which have the fawn and dark brown-sepia colored markings.  For some reason, evidently companionable concerns (it can’t be for warmth, since they’re inside the house), they can have a whole cage for space and yet prefer to sleep and cozy right on top of each other when they’re not eating or drinking.  They aren’t big on manners, since often when they’re eating, one or more of them will place both paws in the food bowl, effectively blocking the access of others.

Right now, the males and females are in separate cages, but my brother and nephew aren’t ruling out the possibility of increasing the litter for sale later on.  One thing’s for sure:  rabbits don’t smell like cats and dogs in their “toiletry” habits, which is great, because as long as the cage is clean, they are pleasant animals to keep inside (always barring the noise of their water drinking, which if it weren’t water ingestion would make you think you’d taken in a host of dipsomaniacs).  Another certainly (which my nephew and my brother both assure me of) is that I’m going to have to read Watership Down to fully appreciate rabbit culture.  And there, it’s a literary post in its way after all, with a commitment to read and review later on.  For now, I’m going to celebrate the family birthday we’re here for, and wish you the best until such time as I post again.  Hoppy trails!

Yes, my post today is about monsters.  Once again, monsters have solicited my attention (I actually went in search of some of the more literal ones, but more of that anon).  The first monster that I want to write about, however, is the monster of vanity.  As Adrienne Rich points out above, “a thinking woman” (which I like to believe I am) “sleeps with monsters.  The beak that grips her, she becomes.”  Having been gripped by the monster of wounded vanity (why is it, I asked myself, that so often when I write my little heart out fewer people read, and when I don’t write for a whole week, my stats go up?), in my injured pride I said, “Take a holiday from writing, you aren’t being appreciated anyway.”  (So as you see, from only being momentarily attacked by the vain impulse, I let it have its head and actually became that empty being for a week, one who could be writing but isn’t, out of a sort of misdirected, misbegotten spite.)

Then, I found yet another quote about monsters, also apropos of this situation:  as Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes said, “Imagination abandoned by Reason produces impossible monsters:  united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.”  The fact of the matter is, I wasn’t being reasonable, but was indulging an overactive imagination.  What about the many times when I had written frequently, and been rewarded not only by readers on my stats, but also by “likes” and even more by comments in return?  So, even if sometimes people do seem to be reading more when I don’t write, they are at least reading, and my monstrous vanity should be restrained in its imaginative excesses by a dose of Reason, since I would like to be thought of as somewhat “artful” in my pursuit of literary topics and truths.  This is what I told myself, today when I checked my stats again and was once again puzzled, but decided to write anyway, because I have been busy off fighting game monsters for almost a week now, and felt it was time to stop sulking and do a post.  Maybe compare notes with others who’ve had the same experience?

As George Seferis (Giorgios Sefiriades) made clear in his speech for the Nobel Prize, “When, on the road to Thebes, Oedipus met the Sphinx, who asked him her riddle, his answer was:  Man.  This simple word destroyed the monster.  We have many monsters to destroy.  Let us think of Oedipus’ answer.”  So, it’s not necessary to be an absolute drudge in one’s keeping of a series of posts, only a thinking woman [I take it Sefiriades wouldn’t have excluded Woman from the universal expression “Man”] who says something when she has something to say, and leaves the readers to enjoy what’s there when and if they can get around to it, just as she posts when she can get around to it.  Without fancy excuse or offended rejoinder.  And if by being more a part of Humankind and admitting to some faults one can best slay them, then all to the better.

Finally in my pantheon of notable quotes for the day, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche had this to say about monsters and mirror images:  “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”  I have been playing (for at least the last five days, off and on) the Monsters’ Den:  Book of Dread follow-up game Monsters’ Den Chronicles.  It’s a new offshoot of the original game and has such weapons as vampiric swords and armor which suck your enemies’ health or power (or both, if you get a really prime piece of equipment), and “shadow” warriors on both sides, who mimic the abilities of the main characters or suborn their powers as their own.  Nietzsche wouldn’t have been amused (or would he?).  In this game, a misguided group of negative religionists have founded a dungeon that the player’s characters must go through, “defeating”–the word “killing” is rarely used–the enemy as best they can.  It’s not a matter of simply having a different religious preference (thank goodness for that, or who in their right mind would want to play it and incur the self-reproach of not being tolerant towards others’ beliefs?); it’s a matter of fighting “real-life” monsters like vampires, nightmares, banshees, ghouls, the general undead, and the acolytes, neophytes, and armored beings who keep them going.  That makes it safe for everyone’s conscience.  Certainly, however, the combative edge one needs to maintain means being ruthless, and many of the weapons and skill sets encourage this.

Why do I play, and what is the main thing I feel this game gives me?  Strategic lessons.  It’s not a multiple explosion, car wreck, violent blood spatter kind of game, but merely a game which occasionally has some imaginative visual effects of spells and potions and hits on enemy targets, and which sedately shows a small pile of bones like the ones on a pirate’s flag when you finally beat each enemy.  It requires careful thought and negotiations between various pieces of equipment you find/purchase in order to get the best “bang for your buck,” and you must constantly be on your guard and calculating the best means of balancing four characters’ differing skills and talents against any number of from one to six opponents of sometimes quite a superior number of “hit points” (life expectancy, potency, abilities).  I feel that my strategic thinking about what weapons to use in life has improved (whether we’re talking about words or tactics for living):  quick calculations of possibilities and potential outcomes is a skill like any other, and while some prefer to work crossword puzzles, I find this game more compelling (at least for now) than the crosswords I used to work so frequently.  And that’s my say (now, Nietzsche might think I’ve looked too long into the abyss and given it a chance to peer too deeply into me in return, but I don’t feel I’m a monster yet, if ever.  I’m extremely unlikely to assault anyone or act out in strange ways, as is the effect of some other sorts of computer games of the more violent variety, and as a really keen incentive, this dungeon system has a shopping emporium!  Could anything be more appealing to your average peaceable warrior than a chance to buy and sell equipment, potions, and miscellaneous items and upgrade all at the same time?).  Seriously, though, having fought my demons (even the vanity one) by taking a few days off and trying not to worry too much about stats (except the gaming kind) has given me a much needed breather from end-of-the-summer doldrums.  I do hope to continue to post regularly, but I thought a small dose of honesty wouldn’t come amiss, just in case you thought I had given up the ghost (let’s see, now, how many hit points does the average ghoul have….?).