The Road To Tennessee - Part I

It has been 60 – give or take a dozen days – since my cousin Jean invited me to the farm in Tennessee where she grew up. For some time I had been aware of my relatives there but we had never met so I was largely unfamiliar with that part of my family. It was a Friday afternoon. Jean and I packed ourselves into her car and hit the road for what would be a four hour trip.

I have to admit for more than a hundred miles there was nothing of major interest to see. I’d even asked about Tennessee’s population because from what I’d seen there wasn’t much of one – no houses, no buildings, just a dense canopy of trees. In addition, powerful thunderstorms were traversing through the south and we weren’t fortunate enough to avoid them. About two hours into the trip, we drove right into inclement weather. Whenever possible I avoid driving in rain but this time I wasn’t behind the wheel. I nervously sat back and tried to enjoy the ride. The downpour turned torrential completely obscuring the road but Jean’s car, a sturdy E-class Mercedes gripped the asphalt carrying us through.

Once we were about 12 miles from the farm Jean informed me there were two ways we could arrive -- the more scenic drive along a hillside ridge or by continuing along the highway, which was faster albeit a longer distance. Because it was my first time I voted for the scenic route. It was around 6pm in July and the summer days were still long with the sun high above the horizon. And then Jean turned onto the ridge.

I could hardly believe my eyes since the drab scenery from earlier had left me suspecting Tennessee was a not-so-beautiful state. For miles we had stared at a landscape of nothing but trees, highway and shrubbery and then finally I understood what my cousin meant by “the ridge.”

A valley of beautiful pastures and trees spanned for as far as my eyes could see. The brunt of the storms had passed hours before but fluffy lingering clouds spotted the sunny skies as if an artist had expertly placed them there with his brush. Yes it was July, but fragmented storm clouds littered the valley as if they had crash-landed leaving a debris of fog and mist along the ridge. The view was confusing yet beautifully mystical, magical even. The foggy hillside suggested a wintery European countryside but at the same time it was unseasonably warm and humid outside.

I can’t fully explain why but two words immediately entered my mind: “Sacred ground.” I immediately envisioned the methods used by Native Americans in determining what qualified the land as sacred. There was no way this place couldn’t have been considered so. In all of my travels I have seen phenomenal landscapes and breathtaking views but only once before (back in California) did I experience a similar reaction to the one I was having on that ridge. It wasn’t the view alone. There was an energy I felt, something I can’t readily explain.

Ten minutes later at the farm I happily stepped from the car and stretched my legs. It was still warm even though the storms had cooled the air. I surveyed the farmhouse to realize it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. In fact it was a ranch style home not unlike ones found in L.A. or Atlanta. Many of my relatives were waiting and I was finally able to match faces to voices I had only heard on the phone. It was only minutes before I excused myself to the restroom. I made my way to the commode and gazed through the window above it. And I witnessed the gorgeous view pictured above. I was so happy Jean had invited me to visit this beautiful place.

For a day and a half we ate farm food and breathed farm air and then unforeseen circumstances necessitated our return to Atlanta. I have to admit the quick return trip was fatiguing, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Within 48 hours of our return I began my inevitable descent into a hazy cloud of paralyzing malaise. And to my chagrin it would be nearly six weeks before I fully understood why. -TO BE CONTINUED-

Don't Get It Twisted

Months ago, I decided to stop following news on health care reform. It just seemed too much of a circus. Each week, if not each day, the media flip-flopped, portraying different angles on the story. It’s going to pass. It's not going to pass. It’s going to pass. At the end of the day it was dizzying and left me with that childhood feeling of “eeny meeny miny moe.” If reform of any kind were going to occur, it seemed it would only be on the luck of a draw.

The whole debacle left me questioning our politics and more importantly our value system. How did the things we care about become so unforgivably skewed? I remember when Janet Jackson performed at the 2004 Super Bowl and exposed her breast. It turned the media on its head forcing networks everywhere to be super diligent about language and nudity.

I find it peculiar that the human form and unsavory language are such magnets for outrage, but violence is seen as completely acceptable. Just last week, I turned on the TV while eating lunch and stumbled onto the movie “30 Days of Night.” The film was nearly over, but I’d flipped to it just in time to see someone being decapitated. By American standards, images of murder and dismemberment on the airwaves [at noon] are not seen as problematic, but the sight of a nipple or the utterance of a curse word cannot be tolerated. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems a little backwards if not ludicrous.

Now that the health care bill has passed outraged opponents have attempted chaos with random acts of vandalism and incivility. There was even talk of death threats against democrats who had voted for the bill. Are these the actions and values of a supposed civilized world?

Before the bill’s passage, political respect, courtesy and diplomacy seemed to have flown out of the window. Consider Congressman Randy Neugebauer’s uncontrolled outburst when he yelled out “Baby Killer!” during a fellow congressman’s speech. Or even more egregious when the president was interrupted by Congressman Joe Wilson yelling out “You lie!” How do we, as a society, foster respect for one another when our political “leaders” lack it toward each other? It’s disturbing to live in a population where so many people are supportive or apathetic toward something like war, but when it comes to universal health care they become proactive and put their foot down to say no.

Not too long ago, I was engaged in a conversation about relationships and the idea was thrown out, “Is it better to be right or to be happy?” I didn’t immediately grasp the concept of this idea, but I understand it today. We sometimes become so focused on being right that we end up compromising not only the integrity of the relationship, but also of the issue at hand. No one is happy (including us) but then we grasp at straws trying to take solace in the fact that we at least proved ourselves right.

Backwards? Ludicrous maybe?

House Of Cards

Shortly after high school, one of my good friends called to let me know she had visited a psychic. She was freaked because the woman she consulted with seemed to know so much about her personal life. At the time, and for many years to come, I was afraid of psychics. I didn’t want anyone telling me things I didn’t want to know. And there was also the question of fraudulence. Had I even wanted to see a psychic, how would I know if they were the real deal or just some charlatan trying to make a buck?

Fast forward to 2006. It was a Saturday night and I had agreed to meet my friend Tim at a popular Hollywood club. As is my M.O., I was running late, but I knew it didn’t matter. Tim is a big boy and very sociable. When I finally walked in around twenty minutes late, I found Tim talking to a group of four or five people. There were two from New York who were visiting a friend who had just moved to Los Angeles. Tim introduced me to the group and pointed out that one of his new friends was psychic. A million questions ran through my mind, but the first was, “How did Tim already find this out?” I hadn’t been that late, so clearly the cute and bubbly girl had used this information as an icebreaker.

After Tim declared, “She says she’s psychic,” I didn’t really know what to say. There was an awkward silence as I wondered how to turn this news into a conversation. The pregnant pause floated and then I rebounded with a question, “So what is it you see when you’re having a psychic episode?” I wish I could remember her answer, but the truth is I don’t. The setting seemed wrong for such a conversation. The club was fairly crowded and dark except for the laser light display. All of us were standing beside the bar, on the edge of the dance floor and the music was loud. By the time she answered, I had already judged that she was young and kooky, so I didn’t pay much attention to her response.

Eventually, Tim and I broke away and as was our custom, we closed down the club. After management had evacuated patrons from the venue, we stood outside talking. Little did I know I had received my first unofficial psychic reading. Apparently, while I was chatting with some of Tim’s new acquaintances, the psychic girl had informed him that there was an extremely dark energy going on with me, so much so that she asked Tim not to mention it. For some reason, she thought there was something going on with my grandfather (or that he had just died), but both of my parents’ fathers had passed away decades before my birth. I must admit I was annoyed and dismissed everything the girl said as trickery and buffoonery. I told Tim she was probably just using the conversation to flirt with him. Later, when Tim and I finally parted ways, I drove home thinking this is why I never wanted to see a psychic, for fear of being told something negative.

About a year later, I was visited by darkness and negativity. First, I was diagnosed with a rare form of thyroid cancer and while I was battling it, my mother passed away. In many ways I felt as if I had been thrown into the abyss. And the memory of Tim recounting the young girl’s story resurfaced. I wondered if this was the darkness she had (fore)seen.

In October of last year, on the recommendation of a friend, I sent my birth date to a reader of tarot. I never heard back from him nor did I reach out to him again. And then last Thursday, I received a call from the reader apologizing for taking so long. He had suffered a lot of personal problems and my reading had fallen off of his priority list. As such he had repeated another reading just before calling me. It is funny how the universe works. Just that week, I was suffering through quite a bit of personal turmoil and his call could not have come at a better time. Amazingly, he began to describe the exact situation that was causing me anguish and proceeded to talk in specifics about other issues that were going on in my life. At one point I was almost shaking from his accuracy. At the end of the call, I felt more peaceful and I thanked him for taking so long to get back to me. In some way, the reading of my cards had created order in the chaos.

For over a year now, I have had a deck of tarot cards at my house. I have two books on how to read them, but my study of them wasn’t all that eye opening. The main thing I do remember from one of the books is that tarot can be used to make sense of all of the chaos. And certainly all of us can use a little of that.

TO LEARN MORE OR TO READ AN EXCERPT
of my sci-fi/fantasy/adventure novel, “The Unveiling: 1.0,” please visit TheUnveilingSeries.com.

Sticks And Stones And Broken Bones

Over the holidays I had friends visiting from Paris. Unfortunately, they flew in on the eve of Atlanta’s first winter snowstorm. At most there was maybe an inch of accumulation, which immediately began to melt. But this is where the real problem began. The combination of melting snow and freezing temperatures meant ice was forming to create extremely hazardous sidewalks and roads.

The following day, and against my better judgment, I ventured out with my guests. It was extremely cold, but sunny. Even though temperatures were well below freezing, the sun managed to dissolve much of the ice. The highways were fairly open and surprisingly safe. My first thoughts were it’s not as bad as I imagined, but that was only until we reached downtown. Because there are much taller buildings there, many of the streets are caught in the shadows of the skyscrapers around them. To my dismay, these streets were covered in ice. At one point, I turned the car off of a perfectly clear street not realizing the block I was turning onto was slick with black ice. The car began sliding even though I had firmly applied the brakes. Luckily I was able REto coast down into an area where I regained traction. I tried paying closer attention and successfully parked at our intended destination – The Georgia Aquarium.

This is where the real trouble started. Once we left the parking structure, we found ourselves surrounded by a thin layer of snow and ice. We tiptoed ever closer to the aquarium entrance and then, when we were just across the street, one of my friends slipped and fell. As I watched, I prayed that she hadn’t hurt herself, but her face twisted in pain. The first words out of her mouth were “I really hurt my arm,” and when she pulled up her sleeve, I had a sinking feeling. The contours of her right arm (and she is right handed) were slightly off.

We gathered her up as she grimaced. The impact of the fall hadn’t seemed terribly bad, so each of us began speculating as to what could have happened to make her arm appear quite so tweaked. Maybe she had dislocated her wrist (is this possible?) We wanted it to be something simple or at least less severe than a break, but in my gut I have to admit I felt it was broken.

RECEIVING HEALTHCARE IN THE U.S. SYSTEM
After several hours in the ER, we were informed that Camille had indeed broken her arm just above the wrist. It is a sensitive area, which can affect the mobility of the hand. The important thing was getting her the care she needed, but the issues of our current healthcare system came to light. Camille is French and receives her healthcare through the French system. She did not have travel insurance and was therefore not armed with any kind of policy that would cover her care under the American system.

As we all know, Obama is struggling to reform healthcare in the U.S. When I hear people fighting against reform, I fear they have never needed serious care, which I have unfortunately needed in the past. Through my own experiences, I have witnessed first hand how ridiculous and unpleasant our current system can be. Should anyone think we are not in need of reform, I am here to say you stand corrected.

Imagine how disheartening it is to be suffering from a serious illness and have the first question asked of you, “do you have insurance?” Each time we are handed a clipboard of paperwork and asked to sign on the dotted line as a promise to pay should our insurance companies choose not to. The protocol demonstrates what the main focus of our industry is; the almighty dollar and the bottom line. Psychologically, it doesn’t instill confidence. The inherent message is that the actual care is secondary to primary financial concerns.

And what makes our current system even more ridiculous is that no one (but the insurance companies) seems to understand what the actual prices are. In the past six months, I have had various lab work done. At the end of these visits, I was sent to a cashier to settle my charges. Each time, I was shown a breakdown of services rendered and it was then explained to me what portion I was responsible for. I was flabbergasted as, on some occasions, I was asked to pay upwards of $400. I always opt to be billed because the actual invoices never correspond to the figures given to me at the cashier. Without fail, they have always been a fraction of what I was originally asked to pay. Apparently, even the actual providers are unaware of the discounts negotiated by the insurance companies, meaning their calculations and the insurance companies’ rarely correspond. Truthfully, I have no idea how today’s politicians are calculating the supposed costs of healthcare when our very own health professionals don’t know really know the numbers.

While my friends were visiting, I felt envious of their system. Rarely are they asked to pay anything when injured or ill and they aren’t made to feel that their ability to pay has bearing on the quality of care they will receive. And when they do have to pay something, it is generally a small and well known, quantifiable amount.

I hope one day our system can be reformed so a patient’s care will be the primary focus rather than how it will be paid for. As long as our system is seen as a lucrative venture for doctors and insurance companies rather than a healing one for patients, it will ultimately be the patient who suffers.

I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK! TO LEARN MORE OR TO READ AN EXCERPT
of my sci-fi/fantasy/adventure novel, “The Unveiling: 1.0,” please visit TheUnveilingSeries.com.