The fog rolls in

Some days the fog rolls in so thick that you can’t tell the sun is rising. The lifeguard stand, jetty, lighthouse, and even the ocean disappear.

Recently, the workings of my mind have suffered a similar kind of obscurity. I have been told, for years, that I am a bit of an absent-minded professor. Dates, along with times and sometimes other digits, too, but dates, wow, they have been my downfall.

However, this discombobulation is different. There is the muddle-mindedness that still lingers after chemo, and then there’s the fact that I received three doses of anesthesia within a month.

Thankfully, my reaction to being put under is not as bad as when I had elbow surgery in 2015. That’s when I found out the hard way that I do not react well to having ketamine in the mix of compounds used to sedate me. I know now that I need to review the anesthesiologist’s plan with them beforehand.

I recently emailed colleagues about BREATHING BETTER, the upcoming yearlong course for Feldenkrais® teachers. I explained how this latest addition to my postgraduate MASTERING THE METHOD program evolved from an earlier one known as IDEA IN ACTION. My friend and former officemate, Seth Paris, had to remind me that those seminars had grown out of the “Lesson of the month club,” which I taught in Santa Cruz back in the late 1990s.

[Even if I had wanted to look the history up, that would have been a challenge. All of the electronic materials for the course and the calendars associated with it were in long outdated software on long gone computers. There are probably some paper records buried deep in my file cabinets, but since, like everyone else, I don’t see whatever I don’t see. I hadn’t even bothered to go looking for them.]

A couple of weeks ago, I got in the shower without removing my brilliant bone-conduction headset. Granted, the left side of my head, jaw, and neck continue to be numb nearly two years ago post-op, but still, that was a bit much.

[Though those AfterShokz headphones do fine with sweat, morning misty, and even light rain, being inundated by much water knocked the boom microphone out of commission for good. The speakers, however, still work just fine!]

It sure seems like I’m not alone. Friends have told me how, thanks to the peculiar lingering effects of the pandemic, many of them have been feeling dazed, losing track of time, and gotten more forgetful. This is not something I wish on anyone.

The marine layer of coastal California, the source of our local fog, traditionally keeps summer cool. Thanks to this phenomenon, folks often refer to “May Gray,” "June Gloom,” "No Sky July," and "Fogust.”

Now that it’s autumn, you can see the morning dawn over Monterey Bay. It’s time for the mental fog to lift as well.