Inside the Pantheon - Prednisone Dreams - CycleBlaze

June 3, 2025

Inside the Pantheon

Just what sort of wing nut is this guy?

Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall, as the great man once said, one of the most consequential and divisive men of our era, and a man who I’m surprised to find myself startimg to feel at all charitably about, much less to be coming to looking at him with respect, admiration, even almost edging into love now as that I do now, realizing that he's a lot like me.

We're all unique.  There's not a person amongst us whose attributes and life stories and latent possibilities is exactly the same.  Some stories are more interesting than others though, because they're more consequential to what matters to other folks.  They've got the voice of Stacey Kent, or the innate running talent of Gerry Lindgren, or the special talent and the fate to be in the right place and time on the planet to suddenly have the most money by far of any other soul on earth and as a consequence has an immense power over the lives of nearly everyone around.  He can't take credit for the gift that god and his parents gave him when he first stepped on the stage, and he can't be faulted for walking out of the wings at precisely the right time to make the most of that gift.  He's one of the MEGA-winners of the Lottery of Life.

And because they have this exceptional gift that society values, all these extreme wingnuts standing around some metaphysical circle looking inward toward the Great Mandela with the Tree of Life are all know-it-alls to one degree or another because they so far excel the folks around them that they’ve come to believe that they're The One, the soul with the vision that understands life better than anyone else.  And they know what needs to be done, and if they have enough power they're going to sweep us along in their wake or smite us down for defying them in their most perfect vision.  Under His Eye.

  • Do you remember the fable of the blind wise men, all standing around and feeling a different part of an elephant's anatomy and imagining they know the whole beast?  They're all wrong of course, because they don't see the big picture.  Because they're just on the periphery seeing their piece, and they don't have the gift of self-awareness that lets them know what they don't know and perhaps they should have a side-bar with the other demigods to get a well rounded opinion.  Maybe you’re an urgent care clinic and some guy waltzes in moaning about his most terrible headache of his long life - some moaner who claims he Never gets a significant headache, as if that’s at all likely.  So you send this unfortunate off with a prescription for antibiotics just in case that will help even you and he both know that’s unlikely instead of scratching your chin and saying - hmm, maybe I don’t know what’s going on here and steering him somewhere for a second opinion, one that could have changed the course of his future life right there.  For example.

Or Rashomon and the samurai, if you're a foreign film buff.  Exactly the same situation.

Or, bringing it a bit closer home, maybe let’s step into the center of the circle ourselves  for some reason, surrounded by a Pantheon's worth of somewhat lesser demigods, scoping you out for some reason and trying to decide just what ilk of elephant you are and decide for you what’s best for your life..  For the moment, you’re the elephant in the room: maybe you’re ther because you’re in a  in a pharmaceutically induced acid trip of some kind and are creating a public nuisance that needs to be addressed:

  • One demigod thinks you should go on Valium temporarily, so as he can get some sleep andjust Calm the Fuck Down, Dammit!  Just quit when you're done, so you don't end up as Doctor House when you're done.
  • Another session a different side of you, thinks that you might be certifiably inside back rheee but just no one's noticed or had you in their bulls-eye before, and you'd better start getting onto anti-psychotic drugs, Right Now, because you could be a risk to yourself or others.  Just don't get hooked and end up homeless and shivering in the ice or snow on a sidewalk somewhere, totally unnecessarily because they're wrong, and you aren't psychotic.   you're undoubtedly a weirdo, a wingnut of much smaller import, but you're not psychotic.  You're just on the meds a different demigod prescribed for you for an unusual medical conditi: rheumatoid arthritis, day.
  • A few others, probably lower on the spectrum - nurses, GP's, are actually are more insightful than those higher-ups, and know enough that they don't know it all,  other opinions are needed and likely more time to allow the situation to evolve and think I should stay in hospital for a few days more under inspection.  Just in case.
  • Or maybe you're fhe psychiatrist, and in your 45 minute long zoom session with you and your mate have come to what's the broadest view, sees most accurately around about 300 degrees of the circle.  Knows you're not psychotic,thins you're a hypopsychotic - a new term  to you, but one that matches your lived experience as a far our weirdo, and now wants to check you out across that spectrum: just what ilk of thes fish are you, Mr elephant?  Which extreme of this sine curve do you live on?  Do you ever get violent and place risk to yourself or others!  Or are you off on the other extreme, like Jack and his roll of toilet paper, sitting in the shotgun seat as he rides west across the continent, writing out his roll of toilet paper that will land at some rypist's desk, keying one TP sheet at a time into her Olympus so that they can publish what's to become one of the formative works of the generation, a work that launches a thousand peace marches and be-ins and initiates one of the great turning points of the area.  Are you this guy, who came to sing about the war and instead landed on the group W bench surrounded by murderers and rapists, all for having been arrested for being a litterbug.  The war will have to wait about a half hour, sorry about that.  Or are you maybe this guy holed up in a cabin in the Montana woods somewhere, a lonely genius who's cast a darker eye on the mandala and starts randomly mailing packets of anthrax to mailboxes around the country,
  • Or, are you one of these wingnuts, way out on the wings of a different spectrum, maybe born dumb as a rock but given a billion at birth to piss away as you see fit, or a victim of some environmental condition that drives you insane at an untimely age and you think your horse would make a first class senator and puts you there,

Are you Kerouac or the Unibomber?  Are you Caligula or some other more contemporary creature that comes to mind at the moment?  Pretty vital quipestion, one critical to get right, right?

But you're problem not this poor undoubtedly confused beast.  He's one of those other animals that Gerald talked about and delighted us with from reminiscences of life on Corfu many years ago.

So like I said, the psychiatrist concludes that I'm in all likelihood more like Arlo than Caligula, but to be on the safe side thinks the prudent thing is to put me on relatively mild psychotics for a few more spins around the circle - just don't get addicted, OK.

But because he really is one of the demigods, has asked a staggering array of insightful, probing questions, he comes to the conclusion that you're pretty extreme, but out toward Arlo's tail of the curve. And because he's who he is, he's come to the opinion that you and your mate whose been sitting off to the side but fully participatory through this entire event are both intelligent and self aware enough to know if that something's come up that changes the picture, and believes us when we say we're just a short Uber lift from the nearest ER and will promise to go there immediately if it looks needed.

So he offers his opinion.  He's ok with us going home today under those conditions, and one other: he thinks you need to get the prednisone out of your diet, ASAP.  Because even though he knows you have GCA because he's read the intake notes, and knows of GCA, he's not a demigod in that domain so he doesn't know that the course of action he proposes is likely to leave you permanently blind in both eyes.  No one's herpard yet from the one missing piece in this particular problem, who would be the demigod managing your disease.  That would be the rheumatologist, still waiting unseen out in the wings somewhere waiting to make the contribution only he can make.

So we fill in a missing gap for the shrink, who no doubt will assimilate this into his very impressive knowledge base and will likely never forget iit if he ever examines an elephant like me.  Because as open minded and self aware and learned or naturally gifted as you may be in any way, in all likelihood you don't know as much about any facet of your existence than any one of these local wizards surrounding you.  There's only one critter in the room positioned to see the big picture - the elephant in the room.  And you're entitled to express your opinion and priorities in the matter, and you get to reveal them and you get a vote.  And so does the mate you've partnered with for so long and so well.  She gets an equal vote, and between the two of you have discussed it in advance and have easily come to consensus.  Your number one priority is to preserve your sight for as long as you can.  You're bothe quite clear eyed about this and would rather you die earlier sighted than live longer otherwise.  And as a more trivial consideration, you'd sure like to make use of that plane ticket to London you purchased some while back.

But that's just an opinion, just like everyone else in the circle.  And even you're the elephant in the room, you're not the decision maker.  That's the pantheon, who by now have retired from the room to share what they've seen with each other, and one by one vote their way toward consensus.  In the meantime the two of you just wait, hoping for the best, and in your own way, pray.

Help!  Help!  There’s an elephant in my room!  And he’s been sleeping in my bed! And it’s me!

And a note on the SOTD, which I'd completely forgotten about but is so perfect to the times and I listened with more understanding than I did back in the other day.  I was really surprised that it's an original and that Peter Yarrow authored it.  I expected to find it was a cover and wondered who really dreamed it up.  That young fella must have been on something too.

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Comment on this entry Comment 5
Andrea BrownI'm stumbling to keep up but I got most of the references. I think. I do agree with the Arlo designation, although would like to stay out of the pantheon of demigods for now. BTW, the children's film "Moana" has a great song about demigods, called "You're Welcome". You'll want to watch the clip because it's hilarious.
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1 day ago
Scott AndersonTo Andrea BrownWell, that was a short stint among the gods! Banished from the Pantheon! I understand, know why you're there wearing multiple hats, and we appreciate both of them. Thanks for the careful readership, and for the hot tip.
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1 day ago
Patrick O'HaraKeep on keepin' on Scott! Carpe diem. I am grateful and thankful for you sharing such a personal story. It lingers in the bones. Wishing you all the best heading into your next adventure. Tail winds.
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1 day ago
CJ HornWow we are so lucky that you are so verbal. I recognize much of your experience having been an elephant in the room myself a time or two. I think we are lucky to be in the left coast in times like these. A place of innovation and thinking outside the box. My favorite takeaway from this entry is the word “quipestion.” Whether real or invented, intended or accidental, I love it.
Keep on keepin’ on, traveler. Just mind the gap.
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13 hours ago
Scott AndersonTo CJ HornThat is pretty cute, isn't it! Two things are going on here though - it's a head-on crash between the keypad and my vision issues (and not my hyperactivity, except tangentially). I was at this for a couple of hours. I woke up at two for the usual reasons, and thought I'd knock off a quick, short post before going to bed for a couple more hours. It didn't happen, and two hours later it just kept coming out, one odd association or remembrance or refinement at a time.

Which is fine. It's a side of me you've been familiar with when it drove you nuts that I'd come home in the wee hours after playing chess over at Hoover's house. Why are you upset, since you were asleep anyway? I just didn't get it at the time. My apologies, 57 years later.

The trouble now though is that my vision is at the worst then, just before I'm due for my next prednisone dose. It's hard to look at the bright screen, the keyboard is blurry, and I'm continuously hitting an adjacent key. I'm working at training myself away from early work like this and time boxing it into a different slot. In this case you get some gibberish generated from the spell checker, but also I regularly hit the all caps key when aiming for the A key. It's one of the reasons that I suspect that the mad king also has GCA fronting his malicious insanity.
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6 hours ago