My name is Cletus and I have an arrow in my neck

Let’s begin with what may well be the most awkward line of supposedly realistic written dialogue, ever, in any published book from any legitimate publisher:

“The lecture I had from my boss sure tightened my sphincters!”

I’m not going to name the book or the author because it wouldn’t be kind: The book in question is a practical guide to pain relief, not a novel or work of literary non-fiction, and the author is a compassionate professional healer, not a battle-hardened professional writer. 

So why cite this bizarre bit of dialogue, which sounds like it was badly translated from Hungarian into Esperanto into Turkish into English, at all?  Because it’s one of a series of equally ponderous “common expressions,” along the lines of “I’m experiencing such unusually high levels of stress these days it could very well be that my head is likely to explode!”, that the book lists as examples of how our words and our thoughts not only express, but actually affect, how we feel physically. 

(Incidentally, I say “along the lines of” because I didn’t actually buy the book, and the only line I jotted down verbatim, as I sat in a Barnes & Noble flipping through it, was the one about “sphincters,”  and then only because it was so unintentionally funny.  I mention this — and, specifically, the fact that I was sitting rather than standing — for reasons that will become clear in a moment.)

In any event, according to the book, if we say “she’s a pain in the neck” often enough, sure enough we’ll soon get a pain in the neck, which in turn will lead to chronic headaches. 

But how this theory applies to chronic knee pain, for example — to the best of my knowledge, there any no common expressions to the effect of, “the busy traffic flow in this morning’s rush hour is really causing my kneecaps to ache” — isn’t at all clear.

Furthermore, most expressions of this sort are “dead metaphors,” because we don’t give much thought to their literal meaning. We say “pain in the neck” when we’re in polite company; otherwise, we’d be more likely to say “pain in the ass,” without any intended change in meaning.  Does that mean that when we leave work, where we have to be businesslike, and have a beer with our buddies, where we can speak more casually, the ache in our neck will suddenly migrate to the location of one of our sphincters? 

Needless to say, no.

More important, this glib explanation for chronic pain minimizes the host of physical factors, from injury to illness to overuse, that can cause pain, while at the same time giving readers the false hope that by editing their metaphors, they can take a short cut to improving their health. 

Worse, the author’s theory also trivializes the far-more-subtle and mysterious psychological and, for that matter, spiritual factors that cause us to feel and behave the way we do.    

To be fair, the book did contain other theories and treatments.  As for why I was reading it to begin with, let me put it this way:  I am a marketing consultant by profession, and spend 60 percent or more of my working hours writing and editing advertising copy, brochures, annual reports, website copy, press releases, marketing audits, e-mails, memoranda, and marketing plans, and when I’m not writing or editing, I’m peering at PDFs in my role as a creative director working with designers.

In my leisure time, I write books.  I’ve published one novel, and am at work on a second, and a non-fiction book I wrote two summers ago is currently being marketed by my agent.  I’m also working on a new book about the relationship between clients and their agencies.

In addition, I write book and DVD reviews and essays on the visual arts for the (wonderful) pop culture site PopMatters, and, of course I post to When Falls the Coliseum whenever I get the chance.  The book reviews require me to read many books rather quickly, and whenever I have a free moment, I’m reading still other books, especially contemporary novels, for pleasure.  Sure, I walk the dog, and play basketball, and shovel the snow, and travel, but otherwise, it’s all words, all the time.

What all this close work adds up to is a constant, nagging tension headache, always in my left temple. I wake up with one virtually every morning and, though my mid-day is blessedly pain-free on most days, I go to bed with one virtually every night. 

I can’t lie down on a couch with my head propped up or I get a headache.  I can’t work in front of the computer too long or I get a headache.  Needless to say, I do both, anyway.  (Work too long, and get a headache.)  I can’t turn my head to the left for more than a moment, or I get a headache.  And I can’t, ever, read standing up, as one would do in a bookstore or at a magazine rack, or I get a truly fearsome headache. 

Hence, the reason I was reading the pain-relief book, and the reason I was doing so while seated.

My skepticism about this particular book notwithstanding, I’m more than willing to try alternative as well as mainstream forms of relief.  In addition to the usual regimen of acetaminophen, hot showers, cold packs, massages, physical therapy, and stretching, I’ve tried, over the years, chiropractic, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, and meditation. 

(One thing I haven’t tried is simply not working in front of a computer, because with a 95-year-old father, an 88-year-old house, a 13-year-old dog, and a 12-year-old daughter to provide for, not pursuing my chosen profession in these painful economic times simply isn’t an option.  Besides, I love marketing communications, and I love to write.)

Of all the alternative therapies I’ve tried over the years, the one that worked best is, at least in my mind, the weirdest one of all:  Something called energy therapy.  I encountered it for the first time at the end of 2008, at a New Year’s party, when a casual friend who moonlights as an “energy worker” asked if he could try his hand at relieving my headaches.

I said sure, and he proceeded to wave his arms around behind my neck and over my head in slow and mysterious ways, resembling, a bit, a mime pretending to swim through a murky stream.  At no time during this did he touch my head or neck.  At no time did I turn around and look at him, and except for peripheral glimpses was only aware of his mysterious arm motions from the subsequent descriptions of my wife and some other friends, who were sitting across from me. 

As my friend performed these seemingly nonsensical actions, I felt curiously relaxed, as if my body was collapsing in on itself, but in a good way.  Even more curious, I had a distinct mental image of a thin wooden dowel being vertically extracted from the base of my neck on the left side, just above the shoulder joint. 

I said nothing about this as he did whatever it was he was doing.

When he was finished, my friend informed me that he, too, had experienced an odd mental image.  He had envisioned me, he said, in a previous life, being shot in the back of the neck with an arrow and, with his odd motions, had been “extracting” the shaft. 

Remember, I hadn’t told him of my own image until he told me of his.  As a result, on the ride home from the party, I couldn’t get out of my mind the thought that in some previous life I had been a scruffy prospector (whom I named Cletus just for the hell of it), who had been killed by an Indian’s arrow. 

Ridiculous?  Well, of course.  I know few people who are more skeptical than I am.  I don’t believe that we have had past lives, and thus I certainly don’t believe in something called “past life regression.” 

And yet, the following morning — call it power of suggestion, or placebo, or what you will — I woke up completely headache-free for the first time in months, and felt energized for the entire day. 

What, if anything, this all means, I can’t pretend to say.  I do know that I will make a formal appointment with the energy worker when I get the time (which unfortunately and needless to say probably won’t be any time soon.) 

And I do know that while traditional Western medicine — analgesics, physical therapies, surgery, and all the rest — only go so far, the same is true of non-traditional therapies, and in particular those of the glib and metaphorical sort.  I suspect that our knowledge of the human body and psyche is akin to the knowledge our ancient ancestors had of the world beyond their little villages, and that there are enormous mysteries still to be explored. 

In the meantime, I am grateful that I have only tension headaches and not migraines, and that I get these headaches as a result of reading while standing up rather than reading while sitting down.

I’m also grateful that there are those who, at the risk of ridicule, are willing to explore the farther shores of human experience in search of better lives for all of us.

And, most of all, I am grateful that my name is not Cletus and that I don’t (at least not in my current incarnation) have an arrow sticking out of my neck, nor, for that matter, a pain in any of my sphincters.