Flambzooey !Riddle me this, Riddle Me that

Who are “they”? (Ch1 part 1)

<picture: All-seeing eye>

Zoom

Who watches us and why? If we are alien to them, we pique their curiosity. Or maybe they know us, and we serve as an example –a paradigm –a model of the way things are. Imagine that! We don’t normally think of the human condition as a paradigm –we invent paradigms to escape the human condition. Things get sort of messed up where we are at, so we need to span out in search of uncluttered places. The Utopian ideal is always where you are going –never where you are.

As the clock goes tic-tock, you’re running out of time.
Won’t take no back talk, find a word to rhyme.
When the sun comes up,
Daylight’s on my back.
It’s a bitter cup,
Like dollar cone-y-ak.

I’m headed out to places unforetold
Can’t hang out, this face is getting old. –SNC: Mystery of the Lark

We might even sail the seven seas in search of that paradigm called paradise. How far then might our watchers go?

<picture: zoom galaxy>

From an unspeakable distance the view screen is all in black. Then there is a faint shimmer of light –Then another –and another. It might end up looking like a nebulous cluster of stars –or just a gray area on the view screen. Yes, my friend, there is a place called Gray Area-25. It’s the 25th rung of the ladder and once you get to the top, where do you go from there? Some pray for another ladder to drop down from sky, others find it lonely at the top and wish to be among friends at the bottom. It’s a tricky situation, but then we do have a zoom button.

Let’s look further in. Before us lies a field of stars, each unique in its own way, yet all are much the same either way. In the midst of all that is a cute little blue planet with a voice that speaks louder than all else. What is it saying? Time is moving too fast; it emits a squeaky little radio noise –and we can’t decipher that. Slow it down! Then becomes apparent a broadcast from the northern hemisphere, saying, “It’s Howdy Doody Time.”

What does it mean? A quick run through the universal translator suggests it is a form of greeting. Apparently, the inhabitants of this little blue planet sense that you are watching them, and they just want to say hello.

The inhabitants have chosen a little wooden puppet as ambassador of Earth –but that’s just one in the myriad of curiosities about this place. Most species live to hunt, eat, and reproduce, but this one seems to have a unique agenda. One cannot escape the feeling they are not playing with a full deck –maybe their genetics have gone awry. Or, maybe, just maybe –it’s a long shot –but maybe they are ready for this:

“They are we and we are they and everybody’s come together now. See how they fly like pigs in the sky; see how they run. I’m crying. Tell me it’s a bad dream, standing in an Eifel town. Singing Hari Krishna, couldn’t get a visa, been a naughty boy you let your people down. You are the Iceman, he is the Eggman, but I am the Walrus. And that was twenty years ago today.” Paraphrased by Post-Phrase(tm)

It was in 1967 that the Beatles gave their rendition of who “they” are. This was definitely profound though hardly prophetic. I mean, really, what’s up with this pigs-in-the-sky bit? That is to say, “Yeah, when pigs fly!”

Yet there is something in plain sight that we may have overlooked. You don’t know who “they” are, but if you were to find out, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Case in point: go to Google and look up Organization of American States. What? –You never heard of “them?” They rule half the planet, and “they” have a mission to secure democracy. Did you get the name of the chairperson to the OAS? Is she the reason we need to press 1 for English? I am sure she makes bigger decisions than that. So, now that you know who “they” are, does it really matter? The secret government is not really a secret; they are simply not talked about, so “they” are either far beyond us or insignificant. And “they” are not the ones in question.

We are “they” –we are the drama –we are the show. The view screen comes from a place we may never know. It is here for the show. We zoom in on a little blue planet all abuzz with good intentions, all of which must inevitably go wrong, yet any given spot is much like any other. Why not Wisconsin? Let’s zoom in on Madison. And at the heart of this metropolis is the Dane County Medical Center. Then at the center of this center is an emergency room –let’s call this scene on the view screen our show, and the name of this show is…

Traumazine!

The year is 1967, it is Friday, July 21st, at about six o’clock…

Dr. Cyr spent his usual morning at the emergency room. Then around 2:40 PM someone must have put up the sale sign for leg injuries. The ER has its eye days, and its contusion days; this was, apparently, leg day. Orthopedics is a rather strenuous profession. An orthopedic surgeon needs to be a person of robust physique; smaller framed doctors, such as Leo Cyr, would opt for less physically demanding areas of medicine. In other words, Dr. Cyr was well beaten down by evening. To top things off, his current patient had participated in a knife fight. We should have no doubt that we don’t make enough clamps and retractors to stop this man’s bleeding. Dr. Cyr certainly did fight for this man’s life, but some days are fated for defeat.

The easiest part of the job is actually the hardest, this is known as calling the time of death. Nurse Jones patiently waited for Leo to say the time for the record, but he stood there glassy-eyed staring at the clock on the wall. “Doctor?” She prompted. He replied, “Please, tell me there’s a full moon out tonight.”

Nurse Jones took the initiative to jot down the time as 9:15 PM. She stepped over to Leo, and said in a hushed tone, “The moon is full tonight. That explains the lunatic fringe. And you sir, are on the fringe. Go home. Get some sleep.”

An ambulance had just rolled in. The paramedics were bringing a pregnant woman in through the IN door as Dr. Cyr was going through the OUT door. He was certain to keep on going except the tide was turning toward deliveries and away from traction. Just out of curiosity, he asked the paramedic about the woman’s condition. Now, we can’t really say which way the tide was turning because the woman was complaining that she had a miscarriage. It was obvious to Dr. Cyr that her water had broken and she was definitely in labor –and we might just assume this was yet another example of the lunatic fringe. We might assume such things if we don’t know any better.

Of course we can’t question the rational of a woman in labor. She claimed to be a month overdue and she was very worried about a miscarriage. The key here was simply to get her into L&D, yet that was not about to happen. The baby was about to happen though!

The ER beds were all occupied so Marie Angelo would need to have her baby in the waiting area. Normally, we don’t need to hear about the labor pains –just show us the baby! In this case, a couple of kids were watching; both wide-eyed as if in shock, and it was clear that anyone in the waiting area that didn’t know about labor pains was in for a quick education.

“Let’s get some privacy for her!” Dr. Cyr shouted. Marie was screaming in pain. Dr. Cyr was screaming back at her telling her to stop pushing. She was screaming back at him, saying, “What? You think I’m trying to push?”

So the doctor called out for 5 cc of Lessitrol. No, I forget the name of the medication, but it stops muscle contractions. He also ordered 5 cc of some kind of sedative. And then Nurse Jones slid up to Dr. Cyr and said, “I thought I told you to go home.” Leo looked at her and said, “Just this one, okay? Then I’ll go.”

We should recall that all of the ER beds were occupied and at least one of them had a dead guy. The proverbial irony of the ER is that one soul checks out to make room for a new soul coming in; this is a fanciful philosophy that alludes to a recycling of souls. We don’t know if that’s the way it really works, but that idea seems to keep things running smoothly in the ER –it seems to keep everything sane.

So there we have it, a man in a knife fight checks out and baby Mark checks in. Marie held her new son in her arms, and Dr. Cyr leaned over the bed rail to get some vital information from her. Then he began laughing uncontrollably. Nurse Jones once again urged him to go home, but he pointed out the cause of his laughter; it wasn’t only because he was tired and thus slaphappy. The baby had grabbed his finger and it wouldn’t let go.

At least Leo could now get some sleep in good conscience. It would have been a different matter had he gone home feeling defeated. The entire day went so horribly, yet that one little baby changed everything. From a distant point of view, we don’t know if the watchers are watching for scientific reasons, or just for entertainment. Maybe a day in the life of Dr. Cyr on a view screen was merely an episode of some cosmic soap opera. They might wonder if his day ends as a comedy or a tragedy –or, if there is an unpredictable twist to the story, that might make watching all the more popular. There are times we feel like life is a movie, but there are other times when we want privacy; do the watchers know which is which? Let’s assume though, if we broadcast our lives on radio and television we must be living out the movie. We must be seeking publicity. Let’s assume the watchers are smart enough to know that.

Outside looking in

Marie Angelo had just turned twenty on the 20th of June ’67. She grew up quite sheltered from the rest of the world. Her mother was a grade school teacher, and she died when Marie was six. Her father was a government research scientist and raised Marie with the help of a nanny. Marie never attended any school of any sort; she was home taught. Her nanny, and teacher, wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree –so to speak. Furthermore, Marie’s father was a strict man who forbade any discussion of sex in his house. So even at the age of nineteen, Marie had no idea as to how she got pregnant. 

Marie’s irony was that she grew up with television as her window to the world. In a sense, she too was a watcher with a view screen from an undisclosed distance. Perhaps she was as alien as any alien out there in space; the werewolf meets Frankenstein in the Creature Double Feature, which is followed by 67 race discrimination protestors killed in Detroit on the evening news. Dr. Timothy Leary preached on the benefits of LSD, and “free love” was in the airwaves of TV. Yet, for Marie, all of that was an ongoing soap opera and movie. To her, none of that was reality. She was on her own at the age of eighteen; that’s when her father fired her nanny.

Marie’s father died when she was nineteen. He left her the house, the car, and a generous passbook bank account. She was tired of being cut off from the world, so in that year she cut loose. Well, of course, she knew how she got pregnant –I have the letters arranged the wrong way –there was no question in how, the mystery was in who.

Marie was asked to stay in postpartum recovery. Mark needed to stay a few days in the nursery for clinical observation. He was rather lethargic as babies go, not wanting to nurse, and not responding to the usual stimuli.

Dr. Cyr wanted Marie to sign some papers. Yet he noticed she didn’t understand the words –she could read some words, but she had never been taught some of the harder words such as “permission” and “prerogative.” She could understand spoken words okay though. Well, even I have difficulty reading certain words on hospital forms!

The problem was that Dr. Cyr needed approval to have a specialist treat Mark. The baby’s kidneys were not functioning properly. There were several ways to treat this condition, though it seemed to Leo a good idea to have a dialysis set up as a last resort. In those days, dialysis was a rather new concept, and it took quite a specialist to arrange for that. Leo was going out on a limb too. His heart went out to Marie. He was not about to let her only living relative die without a battle. In any event, it did seem that renal failure was immanent.

On day 3, Leo spent a couple hours with Marie trying to collect a family history. He spent several hours at the library. But then, going through city records was a problem. Marie’s father had some sort of security clearance that prevented much of his history from appearing in public records. A much bigger problem was in trying to track down the baby’s father. Getting any kind of useful history was probably a lost cause in this case.

On day 5, Mark was put on dialysis. A man lives in a castle on a hilltop, and he commutes via helicopter. He is the inventor of the kidney dialysis. The castle formerly belonged to a notable archeologist, and though there is a stark difference between an inventor and an archeologist, anyone who lives in that castle becomes much like the one who lived there before. A spirit dwells in that place! Such is the Native American Legend of Ciscochi –Any man who dwells in that place becomes that spirit. And then this legend lives on in tradition. A spirit dwells in the office of a corporation such that any CEO who sits in that office becomes just like the CEO before him. Of course, this spirit lives in the Oval Office as well. Yet the point here is that this spirit (of the Ho-Chunk Nation, formerly Winnebago) dwells in a hospital in Wisconsin and it makes one medicine man (or doctor) behave just like the one before him. Similarly, patients come and go, but the illness stays. The Spirit of Ciscochi is strong in the hospital! Sometimes though, the spirit of the Moon –the tide of change –is stronger.

On day 6, Dr. Cyr did something unusual. There was no telling how many times he walked past the hospital’s chapel without an inclination of wonder as to what was in that room. On this day however, he stopped, he went up to the chapel door and looked inside. It wasn’t so bad in there. In fact, it seemed rather nice and peaceful. He went into the chapel and decided to kneel and pray. Yeah, we know how guys pray before a football game, or salute the flag before a baseball game, but this was a different kind of prayer. When all the efforts of men seem to fail, we may need to appeal to a higher power. Leo may have prayed to God to save Mark’s life –we don’t know that though because his was a silent prayer. Maybe he was praying for personal strength and guidance. We don’t know that either. We do know that a tear fell from his eye as he prayed. Leo was hurting inside –and we know that a certain baby was breaking his heart. That much we do know! Would an all-knowing god presumably know any less than we do?

On day 7, Mark died. Leo held Mark’s little lifeless body in his hands and called the time of death. This was Friday, July 28th, 1967 at 22:46. On days such as this, it may be easier to think of life as a movie –you are not in the movie, you are just watching it –just as the watchers do.

Leo found himself in the cafeteria getting a cup of coffee. Nurse Jones was sitting across from him at the table. She said to him, “…And on the seventh day, the Lord rested from all the work he had done.” She paused, and then she said, “…And on this seventh day, Mark will rest too. And you sir should also get some rest. Go home Leo! Baby, go home!”

There is one defining day in the career of any young doctor. This is where one advances from merely performing medicine to practicing medicine as a medical professional. This is the point where one cuts those strings that hold them back. For some, this is the point where they become stone faced and heartless. For others, this is when one becomes an arrogant pompous ass. Still, others have a variety of ways of dealing. In all medical cases though, this is when one ceases to perform medicine and proceeds to practice. Sure it sounds strange when a doctor has been practicing for thirty years –you would think he had got it right by that time, but that’s just the joke of it. This means you have gone from playing god to praying to God. This means that you finally understand that you are only human. I think this is the storyline the watchers are really looking for –and I think the reason we send radio messages out into space is to tell the watchers what we have become.

This was Leo’s defining day; he had to break the bad news to Marie. She didn’t seem particularly upset by this news. She simply replied, “I understand.” Then she stared off into space. There was a long pause in that, so Leo decided to give Marie some alone time. He said, “I have to go home now, but I want you stay here another day. Would you do that for me?” Of course, this was Marie’s defining day too; reality was no longer that image one sees on the viewing screen –she was now in it!

On Saturday, Leo had the day off but he stopped by to see Marie anyway. He asked her if she was going to be okay, and she replied, “No… but then I was never okay to begin with.”      Yet her tone wasn’t that of depression, rather Leo understood it as self-realization, and it was an upbeat tone that suggested she was not only about to get on with her life, but also to start living life.

She said to Leo, “I have a dumb question that I know the answer to, so there should be no harm in asking. Would you go with me to the funeral?”

Sure, that was a dumb question. Doctors don’t get that involved with patients. Yet her request seemed more along the lines of just in case she passed out or had a heart attack at the funeral –well, it only seemed prudent to have a medical professional on hand. I mean, doctors go to football games just in case –if you know what I mean.

Leo answered, “I don’t want to go to that funeral. I really don’t want to accept the fact that Mark died; that I failed him. My job isn’t to put babies in the ground; my job is to send them home. Then again, my job is also to send you home. So where am I sending you? –to an empty house? The way I see it, your house might as well be a hole in the ground just like Mark’s new home.”

Marie looked puzzled, asking, “Is that a yes or a no?”

 Leo just laughed and replied, “I… I guess… that’s a yes.”

Inside looking out

 

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