One measure of silence

There is a Spanish expression that literally translates as "one measure of silence" (as in a silence in music). It means a time in your life when you take a rest, or wait for something, and generally don't do much. This is exactly what my Christmas holiday has been like.

It isn't like there was nothing to do. I've been so busy, as the readers of my blog well know, that most of the stuff in my houseboat was still in bags and piled up. My bedroom was just clogged with stuff! I had the most definite intention of using the time to tidy up things and get my houseboat in a homely shape. But all I did was freeing up the bedroom just about enough. My computer is still on the floor, and the pieces of wood I was going to use to build the computer table are lying around it. And please don't ask me if I sorted out the plumbing.

I can blame the cold, of course. It's been pretty cold all this winter, and it doesn't look like it will let up. Half the mornings, the pontoons are icy. Inside the boat it's confy enough, as long as I keep next to a heater. And I guess that's the problem, it's difficult to tidy up or DIY while keeping constantly at close distance of a heater. My consolation is that, when another houseboat owner invited me for dinner on his houseboat, it was definitely colder than mine. I didn't put on my coat because I felt it would be rude, but I wanted to so much!

Instead of doing things, I've been hanging around with friends, taking long walks and reading lots. I visited my ex in prison, the poor thing is having a really hard time, it looks like he may have hit the wall this time. The "intimidation of witness" charge is about him throwing some bolts at my neighbour's windows and breaking them, apparently it happened when he was blind drunk and he doesn't remember a thing, but there are plenty of witnesses. Maybe it's the first time he's got incontrovertible proof that he's as bad when drunk as everybody tells him. And of course, he can't get drunk in prison. He went to the doctor to get something for his panic attacks and the doctor's attitude was mostly: "Well, that's what you're here for, and anyway, if I gave you anything the other immates would fight to steal it from you." I guess at that point he figured just how deep he was in. He was really glad to see me. It's at times like this when people discover who their real friends are, and he's just discovered he's got only one, and that I could do better than having him as a friend for old time's sake.

And I've been reading lots. At a time I found nothing better to read, I started reading "The Tibetan book of life and death", a Buddhist monk's take on the famous Tibetan Book of the Dead, a present from my Buddhist mother. My Buddhists friends would be delighted if they knew I'd been reading that. I usually tease them saying things like: "But what's your hang-up with suffering? What problem do you have with life having some suffering in it? I like variety!" 

Reading the book got me wondering about fainting. Specifically: does your brain switch off completely when you faint? The question came about from remembering that a couple of times I've fainted, the most surprising thing was that no time at all seemed to have passed. If you asked me, between me falling and me coming back there was no more than a second or two. But obviously, something like about a minute, or at least half a minute, must have passed, because it gave time for people to gather around me looking worried. Some research on the Internet proved that if your heart stops beating for about half a minute, your EEG will go flat. It doesn't really take that much. As far as I know, in your normal faint your heart doesn't stop beating, but your brain certainly isn't getting enough blood to function. My guess is that you might flatline for a few seconds, but I don't think anybody knows for certain. (How many healthy people have actually fainted while connected to an EEG?) The interesting conclusion, if that's the case, is that a lot of people already know what dying is like, if you define dying by "whatever you might experience when your brain completely shuts down". 

The only problem is, people expect lots of exciting things to happen when they die, like angels singing and lights and what have you, and fainting is... well, not much at all. I remember the field of vision going dark, interestingly not all of it at the same time but in patches, up to complete blackness, then nothing. I didn't feel falling and I didn't hurt when hitting the floor. The most absolute nothingness, not even time passing. One measure of silence.