gesundheit

Achooooooo, my body roared onomatopoetically. I was driving. The notion that you can't keep your eyes open while sneezing haunted me. (I have since learned that some people can do it, keep their eyes open during this natural-reflex blast that can reach 200 mph. I'm not one of them.) I could tell I was in for one of my violent sneezing jags. An allergy thing. Comes out of nowhere, then stops when it wants to, no matter what I do: blow my nose, throw cold water on my face, change direction or position, or locale, pray, grovel, beg. I can sneeze 15 or 20 times like this. maybe more. It's exhausting. Does your heart really stop when you sneeze? Is that why people wish divine blessings upon the afflicted? Or the alternative safe and secular cry of "health!" in German? These days, even that is controversial, for god's or God's or gods' or goddess's or goddesses' sake. As if one became an atheist or agnostic apostate by exclaiming "God bless you!" Gawd. Achooooooo again. The lake on the right, where a year or two ago a woman driving slid or wandered off the roadway and went into the lake and drowned in water only several feet deep. I tried. I did. I tried to open my eyes. And, no, forget about the popular nonsense that your eyeballs can pop out if left open while sneezing. I had never heard of that silliness until I did some fake research for this fake article. Acheeeeeeeeeew! Here we go. Ahhhhhhhchaw! I can't pull over. There's the abutment, the wall, holding up the train tracks, the 10' 9" overpass, tragically hit so many times by inattentive truck or bus drivers. Open eyes come in handy in this stretch. Why these sneezes? Reach in back for the tissue box. Blow nose. Twice. While driving. Throw tissues on the floor. Gross. But I have to drive. Achooooo! When will this stop? Is it humanly possible for me to exert more effort, more concentrated focus and control, to keep my eyes open. I'd settle for keeping one eye open, to drive; the one eye of the drunk trying to drive but here I was stone-cold sober withstanding a sneeze attack, a sodden gale-force ambush. And what about ACHOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHA willpower? A try-harder, try-some-more, exert-more-will society expects the will to reign supreme; believes The Will (der Wille), Willpower (die Willenskraft), can prevent or conquer woeful habits, addictions, or like-minded disorders. Really? Try it for a sneeze, cough, or diarrhea. Try willpower for an incontinent bladder, projectile vomiting, or the slip of the tongue you really did not want to vocalize. Try willpower to abstain from the last potato chip in the bag, the first chocolate, the just-one-more binge episode tonight on Netflix. Willpower is overrated. Back to driving, navigating the lake parkway at dusk. Achoooooiiieeeeee! When will this end? Exit the parkway. Onto the boulevard. Ah. Breathing. Ah. Easier. A creeping invasion of calm. Home. Sneezeless.

flinch

As the rebar comes flying through your windshield, you flinch. You flinch as the ponded puddle at the curb is about to inundate you. An infinitesimal moment before the crash, you flinch. As would I. Similarly, we hunch our shoulders against the wind, rain, or snow. We squint at the blinding light. We brace ourselves for the verbal daggers flying toward us.

Tell me. Does the flinching, hunching, squinting, bracing, wincing, cringing, or shrugging alter the results one iota? And yet we seek these armours, these paltry shields, involuntarily. (Are they ever voluntary?)

Powerlessness 101.

check swing

A player (rookie catcher Andrew Susac, of the San Francisco Giants) checks his swing. He holds back. He has a second thought, within a nanoseconds-limited cage. He reconsiders, and halts the muscular force of an intentional swing. In unintentionally casting his batting fate to Fate, Susac in turn receives a gift from the baseball gods and goddesses: the baseball sails over first base, ricochets off the leg of an umpire, and Susac finds himself on second base. A rally ensues. This is so not Western. In the Western world, will prevails. Will and willpower conspire to conjure results. Or so we are told. But in this instance will was thwarted. Willpower wilted. And the results were better than expected or anticipated.