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Second half of Chapter 8:

Return of the King Bk 2: 08-2 The Scouring of the Shire, Part 2

Chapter 8 is a very long chapter, so here’s the first half:

Return of the King Bk 2: 08-1 The Scouring of the Shire, Part 1

A few weeks ago, while reading David Eagleman’s excellent “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain,” I had a very odd experience.

I was reading this passage:

“In 1976, the American psychologist Julian Jaynes proposed that until late in the second millennium B.C.E., humans had no introspective consciousness, and that instead their minds were essentially divided into two, with their left hemispheres following the commands from their right hemispheres. These commands, in the form of auditory hallucinations, were interpreted as voices from the gods. About three thousand years ago, Jaynes suggests, this division of labor between the right and left hemispheres began to break down.”

And suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, I had huge red blinking text in my head (I won’t make it red and blinking here, just bold):

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

My brain was shouting that phrase at me, over and over:

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

So I sat there for a minute wondering what on earth that phrase was doing in my head… and then it hit me. That’s a title I remember seeing among my dad’s books when I was very small (I was 6 for most of 1976). I remember that I didn’t understand all of the words in the title, but it was such an interesting-sounding phrase. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. So rhythmic, so thumpy, so chewy.

So I googled it and, boom, that’s the title of a book by Julian Jaynes about his controversial bicameralism theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

So, since the text I was reading didn’t actually contain that phrase and I hadn’t read Jaynes’s book and didn’t have any real idea what it was about, my unconscious mind took the author’s name (which I don’t consciously remember but must have seen on the book jacket) and the terms “break down” and “consciousness”, added them up, and gave me the correct answer to a question I didn’t even ask.

And the passage which started that chain of events was in a book about neuroscience and the astonishing complexity and dexterity of the unconscious mind.

“Almost the entirety of what happens in your mental life is not under your conscious control, and the truth is that it’s better this way.”

The human brain. Man. I am so often struck by the AMAZING things our brains will do, things that we take completely for granted.

Barliman Butterbur and Bill the Pony :)

Return of the King Bk 2: 07 Homeward Bound

Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day’s rising
he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.

Return of the King Bk 2: 06 Many Partings

Another new recording for you, yay!

Return of the King Bk 2: 05 The Steward and the King

Something from the archives! I think I recorded it in 2003 or 2004 as a
Christmas present for Henry.

The Bad Beginning, by Lemony Snicket

The Bad Beginning: Chapter 01
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 02
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 03
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 04
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 05
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 06
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 07
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 08
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 09
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 10
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 11
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 12
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 13

Long live the Halflings! Praise them with great praise!

Return of the King Bk 2: 04 The Field of Cormallen

“Yes,” said Frodo. “But do you remember Gandalf’s words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? “

Return of the King Bk 2: 03 Mount Doom

p.s. I have finally added links to Book 1 at the top of
http://kayray.org/kayray-reads/.

In which Frodo and Sam have an almost unbelievable number of close shaves and near misses. I don’t know about you, but I’ll be glad when we stop hearing about gray ashy dark grim horrible Mordor.

Return of the King Bk 2: 02 The Land of Shadow

The very next chapter is called “Mount Doom”, so I think Frodo’s quest is nearing its end! I’ll record it as soon as humanly possible :)

News flash: I am currently not sick. The sore throat got better about 2 days ago. So now it’s just my normal Pulmonary Hypertension-related exhaustion and other stuff. So I might be able to record another chapter for you pretty soon.

It’s been so long since I wrote a blog post about anything significant, and I don’t have time right now for much, because I need to breathe my meds and brush my teeth and get ready to go see my lovely therapist, Jeff. Hooray for Jeff! It’s always a good day when I have a Jeff appointment.

Reading: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman

Listening: “Doctor Thorne”, by Anthony Trollope, from Librivox:
https://librivox.org/doctor-thorne-by-anthony-trollope/

Playing: Monkey City (one of the best tower defense games ever), Atomas, Alto’s Adventure

Knitting: a baby blanket for an upcoming brand-new great-nephew (except I’m having terrible hand pain so I can’t/shouldn’t knit much).

Watching: Better Call Saul (so good!!!), Last Week Tonight, Only Connect, The Americans, House of Cards, Fortitude, and a couple of new things which might end up being good — Battle Creek and The Last Man on Earth. And I’m doing a rewatch of Breaking Bad and 30 Rock.

Henry is living with my sister and her husband in the Bay Area. He’s the full-time nanny for their almost-2-year-old, which I think he finds fulfilling but exhausting. I can’t really live alone because of my health condition, so I’ll be moving in with them too, as soon as they find a big enough rental house. It was lucky that the very week that Henry moved out, a friend had a housing crisis and needed a place to stay for a while, so he’s living in Henry’s room and I have company and help.

Thank you for all the thoughtful comments and emails!

Brutal sore throat. Started out of nowhere on Saturday night, wasn’t too bad though Sunday, and then Monday it got way worse all of a sudden. Like, it hurt so badly to swallow that it made me cry. Monday night was rough. Now, Tuesday morning, it’s slightly better. I can swallow, anyway.

Sigh. This has been a rough year so far.

Hind, a young woman from Yemen, recently let me know that she had made a video translation of one of my Grammar-Land chapters into Arabic! When you watch the video, you hear my voice and can read along in Arabic. Pretty cool! :)

Hooray for Public Domain and the internet!

Hooray! First chapter of Book 2! Sorry it took so long. I’m still not fully recovered from that flu. Or maybe this is as recovered as I’m ever gonna get, I don’t know.

Return of the King Bk 2: 01 The Tower of Cirith Ungol

The last chapter of Book 1! :)

Return of the King Bk 1: 10 The Black Gate Opens

Yay, a new chapter for you lovely people. :) This was my first recording of 2015, and the first since the flu knocked me flat eight weeks ago. I’m still not entirely well, but this morning I suddenly felt like I could manage a bit of recording!

Return of the King Bk 1: 09 The Last Debate

I saw the doctor again a week ago and got antibiotic eyedrops for my sticky, gritty eyes. For everything else (cough, fatigue, etc.) she said to just keep resting. So I keep resting, resting, resting. Finally feeling well enough to play WoW so that helps pass the time.

On Friday, two days ago, I woke up with a goddamned sore throat again. Just about had a meltdown, wondering if the WHOLE THING was going to start all over… But the next day my throat wasn’t much worse and today it’s definitely a lot better, just feels tender still and a little scratchy. And I never started feeling really SICK again.

I’m sleeping well, about 10 hours a night, and eating well. The cough is a little better every day and the coughing fits are less dramatic.

The eyedrops helped immediately — my eyes stopped feeling gritty and itchy in the daytime. However, they’re still REALLY runny in the morning when I wake up. I don’t know if that’s typical or if it means that this antibiotic isn’t working properly.

I’ve been feeling well enough to knit, and have knit Henry and me each a pair of ridiculously thick and heavy socks out of some leftover rug yarn. They’re only 32 stitches around, lol. Ravelry link:
http://ravel.me/kayray/ts2

A friend came over on New Year’s Eve and helped me decorate our tree a little bit. We put on one string of lights and a few crocheted snowflakes and glass balls, and that’s it. I don’t want it to be a big intimidating job to take it all down again.

Yep. All symptoms are much better, but I have deep exhaustion that I can’t shake. On Christmas Eve I had a bit of energy so I made a quick batch of gingerbread cookies and we ran out to get a little Christmas tree (luckily Home Depot still had a few) but then I was so exhausted that I had to go back to bed and didn’t manage to decorate it at all. It’s still sitting there in its stand, waiting…

On Christmas I stayed in bed all day, just completely exhausted. Yesterday I felt a little bit better but I stayed in bed all day anyway, just listing to podcasts and audiobooks and music with my eyes closed, mostly, and playing on my iPad a bit.

I’m tired of the cycle of feeling a bit better, getting up to do stuff, then having a bad relapse. I’m just going to stay in bed till I’m SURE that I’m a lot better.

I think that my throat finally feels completely normal this morning! So that was a 25-day sore throat. A world record?

Still coughing of course. But I slept straight through the night.

Here’s what I’ve been listening to:

DJ Riko’s Christmas Mixes. We love these SO MUCH. Some of my favs are 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2014 but they’re all good!
http://djriko.com/mixmases.htm

Wives and Daughters — Elizabeth Klett’s solo version

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever — my recording, scroll down to December 2012

The Warden — Jessica Louise’s solo recording

A Christmas Carol — my solo recording

Plus random episodes of This American Life and of course The Archers every day.

I felt well enough to go to the doctor today. How stupid does that sound? But it’s true, I was too sick to go to the doctor until a few days ago. This is the 16th day of sore throat and cough, which is a little better every day but still very bothersome. She says it’s maybe the flu, or maybe not, but whatever it is hit me really hard because of all my other underlying health problems. She says to keep resting and I will get better eventually, and she gave me a prescription for a viscous lidocaine gargle which is disgusting but does numb my throat (and mouth) for a while.

I felt well enough to stop at the store for vodka so I could make my annual batch of cranberry liqueur, which I will write down here so I can quit googling the recipe every year.

750ml cheap-ass vodka
sack of fresh cranberries
2 c sugar
1 c water

Cook the water and sugar together into a syrup and cool. Grind the cranberries and vodka up in the blender. Pour everything into a bottle (one of those clear plastic “Simply Fresh” orange juice bottles is just the right size) and let it sit, shaking up the bottle every day, for (optimally) three weeks. I usually can’t wait three weeks, though. Then strain it through a cloth into pretty bottles.

My apartment is FILTHY. Argh. At least I’m well enough to care.

Jeeze this has been a vicious flu. This is the twelfth day of it and I’m finally starting to feel a bit better (as in, I can sit up in bed and type). I’m going to write down the sequence of events here for my own future reference. This will be a boring post. Come back some other day.

Monday the 1st my knees were wobbly, which was odd. I didn’t think much of it at the time but now I realize it was probably a Harbinger of Doom. Tuesday I could tell I was coming down with something.

Wednesday the 3rd I woke up with a mild sore throat, a very bad cough, a headache, and feeling generally ill, so I sat on the sofa with Henry (who was recovering from his own bout of the flu) and watched movies all day.

Thursday it hit hard. Ferocious sore throat and cough, aches, weakness, chest congestion. I felt too ill to get out of bed, too ill to watch tv, too ill to listen to music. At this point I became unable to sleep because of the endless coughing and the horrific sore throat, so I pretty much sat up and coughed all day and all night for days on end. Friday was much the same. Saturday was the same plus a fever of 99-100.8. I managed to keep drinking because I was scared to get dehydrated, but eating was close to impossible. Managed a couple of yogurts and some toast, I think. Henry brought me water and broth, and checked on me every hour on the scary feverish days. Sunday was awful but the fever was better. Monday was awful and the fever came back. Tuesday, awful but no fever; Wednesday, awful plus fever.

Thursday the 11th the fever was gone, throat and cough were microscopically better. I think I was able to watch some netflix that day and listen to music. (That was the ninth day of the illness.) Friday, two days ago, I was able to go out to the living room and sit on the sofa and watch TV with Henry for a while. Throat and cough improving but far from well. Same yesterday. Everything a little better, but still feeling pretty wretched.

Slept much better last night. The coughing fits that wake me up are less frequent and less drastic. Throat still hurts but not as much — for a minute this morning it almost didn’t hurt at all. My thoughts feel clearer.

Ever since Friday I’ve been able to eat but not much at a time, so I’m trying to remember to eat a little something every hour or two. Over yesterday I ate almost two potatoes and some steamed broccoli and applesauce and yogurt and a pomegranate.

I feel like I will actually get better someday; I can imagine it, where I really couldn’t a few days ago.

Christmas will be late this year. I’ve done nothing. All our decorations are still in the closet. I haven’t been able to make or plan anything. Oh well.

In case you’re wondering — yes, I got a flu shot in October.