tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26440885461570967962024-03-04T22:40:02.923-06:00Furtherest Thoughts, Fartherest AdventuresAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-47168479021670522812014-09-16T11:42:00.000-05:002014-09-16T12:02:47.841-05:00rinse our toes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rinse our toes</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9/ 13/ 14</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am running out cleverness and the skill produce it from a top hat.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My number of pertinent anecdotes is getting low. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wit to counterbalance my tiresome litany of complaints is sputtering. I feel like an insufferable bore reading what I write; how can a faithful reader not feel the same? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I tire of metaphors; I think I am getting too old for them, ancient relative to similes. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It's silly how constantly I'm guarding against cliches and cryptomnesia and big words, for that matter. It's hard work protecting one from oneself, from stodgy syntax, wonky jargon, and being impelled to use at least three items in a series; and then there's energy wasted on making sure that the of parts of speech are in agreement </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">within</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the series. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Energy is mostly what's at stake here. The choosing of ones battles. [omit / cliche] Do I peck out another sentence when to do so automatically commits me to peck it out at least twice when you factor in my addiction to mid- sentence editing? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Energy is at premium these days. How much time spent just to avoid wasting it; and time is precious in much the same way. How much of it spent just to save energy? A lot, I know for that's for sure, in both cases. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As children, if life had not already made its terminal aspect known -- by disease or by dearth (add alliteration to my engrained habits) -- we could afford to be wastrels. As with change from a dollar let to fall from holey pockets. As with six half-eaten chicken nuggets swimming in twenty half-squeezed packs' worth of ketchup? [omit/ similes]. Of time and energy, we had a surfeit [omit / big words] [rearrange stodgy syntax]. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You and I are not children anymore. We can't afford prodigality. Not with nuggets. Not with nickels.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nor time. Nor energy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When climbing into bed saps you and situating yourself beneath the sheets downright drains you and waking is the biggest bummer of all, it's time for a break. Sadly, a nap won't do because it creates a cycle of bummers -- three by my count, in agreement grammatically, as snug as bugs in rugs. [cliche] </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whew! Chronocaloric expenditure. [nonce jargon/ keep!]</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9/ 14/ 14</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John Gunther memorializes his son, Johnny, in the book </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Death Be Not Proud</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Johnny died at seventeen of glioblastoma multiforme. (Upstart!) "One morning, [Johnny] said to the technician who took his blood count, "What's the point of going on with this? What does it all lead to." </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I imagine this a common consideration of the terminally ill as it is to many of the terminally alive, I am certain. I confess to struggling with both malaises along the way.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in Johnny’s case above ,he refers to a nasty diet that he’s been on and after discerning no results helpful results would sure like to know what that bother is. In my case, belowdecks[sic] [auto- corrected incorerectlty to icarly] [ I have considered rim the same thing about this journal and as a consequence, this blog. Do I abjure the thought of them? On the contrary ,keeping-up with them has become one of the highlights of my weeks; moreover, sharing them with gracious readers one is of my great pleasures, but . . . </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Time and energy . . . tick tock, zip zap. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You might think thief is racing [opportunity for me that it may camy on ab breze foreordained for me as such a constant wroniter as [ me For example, no, it's not] in my thickening confusion, things are taking a turn for the Joycean.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9/ 15/ 14</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, this is where I am -- tired by just about everything i try to it do with anything approaching gusto, confused at every turn, breathing hoarsely at every stop. It may time to refocus my energy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But first . . . </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Prolegomenon Reprised.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9/ 16/ 14</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not for pity. Not for sympathy. Not for applause. Yet not for nothing, I hope.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And now . . . revised focus Number One: Fantasy Football -- it's only week been two weeks and my teams are already looking abysmal.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So . . . join me on this my lacuna. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can gather beyond the lazy sediment and rinse our toes in the freshening eddies.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-654231470561160122014-09-04T20:37:00.000-05:002014-09-04T20:43:48.431-05:00upon a time, along the way.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Upon a time, along the way.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9/ 4/ 14</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Upon a time.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One score minus four years ago, his mother brought forth a new Scott boy, conceived in nunyabidness, and dedicated to the proposition that all newborn Scotts are boys. This particular boy's name was and continues to be Winter Michael Scott and today we celebrate his presence as we did his entrance sixteen years ago . . . with delight.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His mother will concur that the labor proceeded swiftly and without travail. Strike that, reverse it. Stuck in time and womb, this continent of a baby took its sweet time, as continents are prone, making its first appearance. Something like ?hrs from water break to umbilical snip. I was delirious, faint, and falling towards the ceiling -- as good a time as any obstetrical phase to foist an infant on a guy. Fortunately for me, mine was an alien child.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No nurse' s deft swaddle could disguise the fact, especially when a granny's unhooding, the right to which being won by arriving first on the scene, was defter by far. Of all the I things was not prepared for, I was least prepared for a mini-Beldar, a newborn Conehead, that is. Relative to passing-out flat on the floor, this was the moment of crisis. I performed my first real of act of fatherhood. I abruptly and by no means securely shoveled Winter into the (hopefully yet doubtfully) well-prepared arms of a nurse or a granny. No dibs required or requested. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Me notwithstanding, Winter made it to the observation deck. Not the right name? Suspect identification room? He made it is the main thing . . . 10.5 lbs, 23.5 inches . . . a veritable lunker -- purplish and powdery -- no alien, my very own brand new baby Scott boy. Today is his sixteenth birthday and we are delighted to celebrate it. The intervening fifteen arrived far too swiftly but very little travail. Strike that, no travail worth mentioning stacked-up, as here, against the perennial honor it is to recognize annually the pleasure that Winter brings to us day after day. (Orange </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Orange</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> you glad I didn't say "daily"?)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Along the way.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In no meaningful order that I can discern, Winter . . . </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> . . . is a better musician, more mellifluous singer, more diverse instrumentalist than his clunky old man. However, out of respect for his elder, I will retain prolific lyricist until such a time that I deem it such a time. You can hear him nights surreptitiously reciting, honing, scratching his head, urging his rhymes into seeming effortlessness. (K-nock, k-nock . . . orange </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> glad I didn't say "bedtime?")</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. . . surely but surely is growing taller me at six even and surely with a view to at least reach his namesake, Uncle Michael, at six-five and, to all appearances, counting.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. . . is more mature at sixteen than I was at sixteen and currently is out-maturing me in proportion -- as in : act your age, not your shoe size. Sigh even still . . . me at age sixteen, shoe size ten with wiggle room for wriggle room; Winter today and maybe even tomorrow, shoe size twelve maybe even twelve and a half. Sigh even still . . . he's got me every which way you slice it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. . . became smart, is becoming astute, will become wise. But never at a rate which outpaces his destiny when he becomes healthily disillusioned with grammar.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hey, Winter, remember . . . </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> . . . that time at Disney World when a plus-sized boy came rip-roaring at every bit of 10 mph on a toddler-sized coaster which emerged from a tunnel built-into a kid-themed restaurant giving the munchkin-ride all it could handle -- hands up, girth pushing the limits of the car’s safety restraints. Funny enough as is, but funnier than I could stand for the rest of the trip when my new found hero, checking his audience below for satisfactory attentiveness, braced unnecessarily for a four foot drop, and declared, “Best! Ride! Ever!” -- a sarcasm so skillfully wrought that I have yet to quit envying the invention of it and yet to quit laughing at anytime I think of it. I guess it’s a you had to have been there sort of thing; luckily, we were there, you and I.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. . . how we went golfing with your Paw Paw all the time and you would scarcely believe it when we surmised there were no snack carts running that day -- hot as it was, hungry as you were, and how every time you had simply never. I confess . . . I usually felt a bit indignant myself -- no purple PowerAde or Pibb for Paw Paw, no Snickers or Nestea or droopy ham and cheese sandwiches for anyone and the three of us simply had never! But don’t forget vindication when we retrieved our telescoping Shakespeare rods and nabbed bluegill after crappie, after bass from the teeming course ponds and how we stopped for cold beverages and plump sandwiches on the way home -- famished and parched as we were.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. . . when we went to parks and I would tell you to quit throwing rocks and you’d obey instantly or at least take a break to replenish your arsenal until such a time as you deemed it such a time to recommence throwing rocks; or I would crawl through a spiderous plastic tube to meet you on other side and we’d scare each other into ricocheting giggles.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. . . that one birthday you beat me at bowling? that one when you decided you had had just about enough of one Mr. Chuck E. Cheese? that one when you came to peace with the notion that not all presents </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>given</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to you would necessarily be </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>opened</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by you? ditto candles lit and candles blown-out?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. . . that long ago birthday, was it the first? the one you got tossed like sea bass at a Korean fish market -- was it to my Granny or your nurse?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course you wouldn't remember that . . . no, me neither, just checking . . . like a sea bass at a Korean fish market indeed!</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. . . this -- Best! Son! Ever! Especially that.</span></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-57305177474545992912014-08-31T12:23:00.002-05:002014-08-31T13:52:26.580-05:00again with the goo?!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Again With the Goo?!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">8/ 29/ 14</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<img height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMHP9eRQ-d_9Cw5kN0acZSqEGEEg5XqwtJ66fBKlwQPoFSItd0t_rvuOW0Szzi5lxVGB4ex9m5azzfBmwW5lATRJqj6RGSwjIJdfu5lmNObiwwA0XEBGEmrzd9kzTSmr3LAV94RL2cfiwy/s200/photo%252815%2529.JPG" width="150" /><br />
<br /></div>
[<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>As I’ve mentioned several times lately, I am in the process of tidying my writing for posterity and personal satisfaction -- to the extent that either are necessary. Here I’ve plucked a few kernels from my previous blog which focused on first go-round with chemo. It was interesting (sort of) that 2012 ran approximately parallel to 2014 – experience-wise. The blog is called </i><a href="http://swallowsocrates.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Swallow, Socrates</a><i> – go to find now-revised poetry and redacted sentiments; go to scan for additional kernels, stay for the ‘visuals’ pages. Unfortunately, the chronology of posts runs counter of the dates on your 2012 Calvin and Hobbes calendar.So there's scrolling to do.</i></span>]<br />
<br />
March 3, 2012<br />
<br />
Is it odd to not to feel sick <i>enough</i>? I don’t feel as if I have gotten my money’s worth of chemo today because I don’t <i>feel</i> sick enough.<br />
<br />
I want my chemicals to make haste.<br />
<br />
Tomorrow, I’ll regret this bravado. Today, this trifling nausea is a waste of my time.<br />
<br />
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhll9VRRcEvO-49YxtcZgSzeIwshzlYZTrEXIDBhU31-062bWlBsBNrErPYo7nTZvNxvyFVBttz4qwUjDlu-WYB61-ZeSJ2jhyWs3FJg3YGLBMQYMJHzdmL-MXpWLgF0uFZVfo9h-ocQar2/s320/photo%252823%2529.JPG" /><br />
***<br />
<br />
March 5, 2012<br />
<br />
I crack my egg and see what lies beyond my ego’s goo. Beyond my goo, I see you. You with your tower of unpaid bills. You beneath the overpass, starving and cold. You in the shower, your ablution for rape, for a false shame. You serving life for the crimes of a free man. As far as I can see, I can see you.<br />
<br />
. . . then you’ll go through it all over again -- all of you. All of us. Trading in our minor peeves for crippling tumors now and then and sometimes swapping our fathomless pain for hilarious mirth.<br />
<br />
It's tough luck being sick. A once healthy self-awareness becomes self-obsession -- the ego awash with egotism. There’s not much you can do about it. Get your binkie and your saltines and your PowerAde, and brace yourself for a sense of solitude. <br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
3/24/ 12<br />
<br />
I have two nieces and a nephew in Mobile for whom my zombified gait has been explained away as a hurt leg. Better than if I was just too lazy to play freeze tag -- which would be an avuncular faux pas . . .<br />
<br />
After witnessing a seizure, my oldest niece came to me later and asked, “So you have a hurt leg that sometimes makes your body shake?” I smiled and said, “Yes.”<br />
<br />
Tell kids you have a brain tumor and they imagine themselves dressed up as you for Halloween. Tell them you have a neurological impediment to your motor functions and they imagine you’re a jerk for using words too big for them. Tell them you have a hurt leg and at worst they’ll examine the area for boo boos and look at you skeptically before resuming their game of freeze tag.<br />
<br />
The good thing, the great thing rather, is that kids know you will be just fine. You’re big, you’re strong, you’re an Uncle, by golly, and best of all, you’re silly . . . just so silly.<br />
<br />
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGz2GOW5EVzZXY9LmJQY7LhEk9KgOSQa1Sw5fPyGbke6NwpeKMF7WZhdW79R1tD6OmKp-NMUkVCbpe7CWfA1Utg0uziJdgurtLXRyr0iPdi4XzNbO252yiSs4K2Skok4eCldO79MrbFEhi/s320/photo%25286%2529.JPG" /><br />
***<br />
<br />
April 8, 2012<br />
<br />
My wife and I were the sole waiters in the paint-flecked waiting room. After a few minutes we were joined by a young girl and her mother. The girl wore the tell-tale bandanna of the cancer-bald patient. Her face was fraught with worry and fear beyond her years. Sallow and gaunt, she sank into a musty couch.<br />
<br />
. . . I awaited my chance to offer the girl a smile. Smiles, I knew, were therapeutic in their own right. Yes, I would give her a smile. But she never looked my way . . .<br />
Then the door opened. A woman entered. I scanned her for tell tale signs of disease. There were none. Not quite at the lady’s heels, a dog followed. It was obviously old—a hitch in its giddy up, wiry fur beginning to thin. What breed of dog it was, I can’t remember It was medium sized and cute for being ugly.<br />
I wouldn’t mind a cold ward now and then if there was the prospect of an ugly dog to pet. Smiles are therapeutic. Animals make me smile. <br />
<br />
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKh8Zi-vKwlSxwL1_wLprOmVa59iFZm-ZxYnQJA7MLAt0zYf60vaZazBTkzBg7CC6rVzMJiFTZmyGOSb6GpQVGzy-oO5wMAKrzYBBT1evigf2gc8VQ36DrgCcl13YUxJhqvD-h-yIT4aIu/s320/photo%25286%2529.JPG" /><br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
Let dreams be goofy and waking life be normal and out of body sensations be anomalous. Above all, let Jonathan be sensible.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
. . . that harrowing moment or string of moments when you find it hard to believe that the life you’re living is the life you’re living. This can be a good feeling—a dramatic change in your circumstances for the better, be it a lottery won, or a sublime view of the ocean. Or a bad feeling—a dramatic change in your circumstances for the worse, be it a fortune lost, or an impending tsunami. <br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
My state mind does not match my state of brain. <br />
<br />
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicTvJ_JOcaxNaaHnppM8w8gZATXdWQnJshFf-gQjl1u9TsFOXO-W4gjYjZWUA-N_Y5OjjTN-JVVugTdv45vf5k0IGcsMDem5i4AjZG2iEXiI4tC5a_rpERqVzjXCv6uGjHR65kTkDewNaG/s320/photo%252815%2529.JPG" /><br />
<br />
***<br />
. . . so I have to be vigilant. It’s hard not to live in fear. It’s hard to play. It’s easy to lose hope. It’s easy not to play.<br />
<br />
***<br />
I am on drugs that divert my attention from anxiety, depression, despair, and the impenetrable darkness of reality to the prettiness of that butterfly over there, all float and flap, flower to flower, flying on felicitous sky. <br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
6/30/ 12<br />
<br />
Laughter, medicine-wise, doesn’t even make a great placebo. Merriment has all the relief value of a donut without the deliciousness. Aspirin can mask a headache with the help of a frown just as well as it can with a smile. Smile too hard and your headache will get worse; dare to laugh and the throb will turn to daggers.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
July 3, 2012<br />
<br />
. . . but the perimeter of the tumor is smudged into the darker grays in much the same manner as Bob Ross gently drags his brush from a cozy rock into a happy stream -- you know the difference between stone and water, but the closer you look, the more you’re not so sure.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdN6LyM66my-xdhRUF1BJ241yFDBppzOxldMCe4LK9qn4sie3Wr2au2getngbXm3LeEE6jg6_staFG31QiHha_zanikptA8WNZ98Ss1bsKDq24_Jn21CP02B8Cymlzi_wzwZPRd5IDxt_/s1600/img005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqdN6LyM66my-xdhRUF1BJ241yFDBppzOxldMCe4LK9qn4sie3Wr2au2getngbXm3LeEE6jg6_staFG31QiHha_zanikptA8WNZ98Ss1bsKDq24_Jn21CP02B8Cymlzi_wzwZPRd5IDxt_/s320/img005.jpg" width="246" /></a></div>
<br />
***<br />
<br />
July 15, 2012<br />
<br />
The body is notoriously smarter than the mind. The mind takes that gnawing burn in the stomach to be the clutches of satanic claws. The mind assumes that the least wooze is the largest war ever waged on the flesh of man.<br />
<br />
In summation of today’s post, I am still a whiny baby and I am still a fortunate man.<br />
<br />
. . . I continue to have seizures (Think: charley-horse combined with a tongue in the power-outlet accompanied by a fearful disembodiment and an abjection in relation to your own will.)<br />
<br />
<img height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjefO693JXlj5e_DFVUF-2zvt71KwUZPi0cXgnqbdGEZAE0d_BBwI4UVLauWQWkS58AGx9AUOXZvpvWQ4vFXHECc1SPRC3AjDZvbYiOoOxlAWfrTI8NBW9btfQ_Y967r2EuSDt7vtZeJznb/s320/photo(14).JPG" width="240" /><br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
9/ 30/ 12<br />
<br />
Here is a list of times when I’ve been more of a baby:<br />
<br />
1) When I was a baby.<br />
<br />
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9lFK2ShuaSnT8Eep4ks5jnPwsDT9KJ1duHVYwBsc3w83f5rCyZWRFkyemnxlvRIkRI9JMCcGVNt0phgyQs6gIXQt7vavjBKIiy34WZzx_DTbAApqlHEP85iF_-nHne0kAJtAYLKfwZIUA/s320/photo%25288%2529.JPG" /><br />
***<br />
<br />
12/ 22/ 12<br />
<br />
Have a happier new year, everyone. I’ve got to say, I like its chances.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha7KYm6RXHtaROb0m30P1a5LbQaCLMD9nPYDu2lBDNVpHbvm-siOvkKJHRu_LtQn7uyqi6_s7RcdlMM3l8rKfuZbUT5UJ5mp2n_oBLcgKnZVMM8SYiu8nQdWVPOQkCf892lGFMYHNwEGQV/s1600/photo%252837%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha7KYm6RXHtaROb0m30P1a5LbQaCLMD9nPYDu2lBDNVpHbvm-siOvkKJHRu_LtQn7uyqi6_s7RcdlMM3l8rKfuZbUT5UJ5mp2n_oBLcgKnZVMM8SYiu8nQdWVPOQkCf892lGFMYHNwEGQV/s320/photo%252837%2529.JPG" /></a></div>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKgTTVQ6BY_WViJNIunYqcIWIkYT6V1pKACb78Y3yfDbcwPqxEIaMHqshG846vtQZs6JYud9hWGgZPuG_X0nhFSf_nIyLeBBWvB-U9zf8hQ2PuNmg7Z7w5IyzMwTxGxkseR_-eNmYuUS9z/s320/photo%252811%2529.JPG" /><br />
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<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-65361469995460356632014-08-23T16:00:00.003-05:002014-08-24T09:24:13.235-05:00in lieu of flowers . . . koi<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Lieu Of Flowers . . . Koi</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">8/ 19/ 14</span></div>
<br />
<br />
I have a sophisticated folder of last will and wishes The folder itself is of the vanilla Manila variety,in need of TLC, is all, its original purposes in thick permanent ink -- scratched through ineffectually in school-grading red. Honestly, I have no real idea what my folder looks like these days; I'm just guessing that it's one of the two kinds I’m most familiar with -- pristine for finally replacing the standard, type, as the one above. Whether for shame or dilapidation, I'm sure there have been improvements to the articles concerning my demise -- at least in their spruce condition, if not in their perfect legality.<br />
<br />
In the early of hours of preoperative procedure (Biopsy 1 ca.2007), the decaffeinated, unPop-Tarted, hours, we are called-back to an available admissions desk shortly to be joined by an understandably foot-dragging lady blowing and sipping on a piping (standard issue Styrofoam) coffee cup, her jonesing right hand jiggling the red stir straw to many feasible points of departure. The coffee was probably the dregs of yesterday's. I did not begrudge her (much) her morning beverage; although, I did envy her option.<br />
<br />
In this fog, came the now all-too familiar rigmarole. But at the time, I was not prepared for the barrage of questions, much less delivered with a nonchalant rapidity which I found incommensurate with the matter at hand. Had I had anything to eat or drink (here I expected a McMuffin to appear from her sleeve) after midnight? Did I smoke (and here expected, could she bum one)?<br />
<br />
In no particular order or foreseeable limit: Allergies? History of seizure? Accept blood? Any ports, stents, catheters, prior surgery detritus, history of hurt feelings? Sexual activity? Religious preference in case God forbid . . . ? etc. etc, increasingly including words like stool and cancer, etc., etc.<br />
<br />
Still nonchalant, she asked if I had an advance directive or a living will. She asked through the diminishing steam from her buckling cup peering over glasses a la Huck's Aunt Polly; she asked, it seemed to me, in a tone of presumptive disappointment. But it was true, we had neither such stuff on hand. She recommended remedying that fact. She stacked my admission papers -- stapling some, clipping others -- affixed that mundane talisman to my wrist in case, God forbid, there be confusion between me (right parietal resection) and some McMurphy (frontal lobotomy) getting jumpy in the next bed.<br />
<br />
She excused us back to the waiting area. I stood feeling oddly ashamed for not having a living will or advance directive. They say of casinos that you should only go with what you're prepared to lose. I walked into the brightening waiting area on my way to play blackjack with death -- lamentably unprepared to die.<br />
<br />
I lived to procrastinate another day.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><><><></span></div>
<br />
<br />
It wasn't long before my papers and folder were in order. Proper forms have been kept current -- signed and dated by someone not in my immediate family. This is a taller order than you might think. You find out who your real / inebriate friends are come moving day; you find out who your extraordinary/ morbid friends are come signing and dating day. <br />
<br />
After the GBM diagnosis, we've been at clinics and hospitals often enough but for forgetfulness or extenuating circumstances , it took us until recently to deliver the material to an appropriate receptor of such -- preferably one situated at a computer but I suspect any smiling person in scrubs in the proximity of your department would get the job done.<br />
<br />
<><><><br />
<br />
What's value of mourning? The cost of grief? The price tag on that arrangement of lily and iris, it's beautiful, right? Whoa! not that <i>beautiful</i>, am I right? Anything cheaper . . . say that little crimson and white football . . . right beside you . . . looks like a piñata? Pricier? No way! Back to Target for us, Virgil. They had that one card, remember, with the sad-eyed basset hound and on the inside that said "I be so sad too." What do you mean chintzy? We'll put a gift card in it. I don't know . . . Outback. No more than a dead man needs flowers. He was <i>your</i> father, you tell me.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><><><></span></div>
<br />
Ah, to be on file! Letting it be known: Keep an eye on the vitals screen and a hand on the plug. Divvy my organs and distribute them expeditiously. Don't bury me, burn me to ashes, feel free to distribute those at your leisure with or without sentiment; conversely, carry me quick to ol' Virginny and scatter my body there from the banks of King James River, out into the Chesapeake . . . whatever suits you as long as you gyp the worms.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><><><></span></div>
<br />
What is the cost of bereavement after taxes? The value of tears as soon as they leave the the lot? Who keeps the change, heaven or earth, when the tab is tallied and set on your table?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><><><></span></div>
<br />
In lieu of flowers . . . cash. <i>Antemortem</i>, if you please, posthumously if you must. Some suggest a donation to your favorite charity in the amount of what you were willing to spend on daisies and a spray of lesser known flora. If that's the case, may I further suggest that you had your eye on the crimson and white football all the while and you were only waiting for Virgil to turn his back, and that your favorite charity is me? Against your not being comfortable with an arrangement so crass . . . we are registered at the UAB Hospital’s gift shop, Bed, Bath, and Beyond ("Beyond" department) and Target. Outback is fine; Ruth's Chris is better.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><><><></span></div>
<br />
<i>The Penny</i><br />
<br />
Imagine my shock when I discovered<br />
The cost of koi, one lone, piebald koi<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Was in the hundreds.<br />
Did you see the look on my face<br />
In that moment, that one, blurred moment<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I thought, <i>In such a world I can ill-afford</i><br />
<i>To fall in the pond retrieving my wish-wasted penny.</i><br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-51328138496020792382014-08-16T11:10:00.000-05:002014-08-17T10:40:49.475-05:00so rare, so rare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>So Rare, So Rare</i></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: xx-small;">11/ 14/ 14</span></div>
<br />
A day after last week's doctor's appointment, one of my NPs called to let us know that my blood platelets were low by about half -- a nearly inevitable case after chemotherapy. New rules while my platelet count rebounds (and good ones of thumb, for that matter): 1. Don't get stabbed -- platelets help stop the bleeding. 2. Don't go the ER in the case of stab wound -- the place is pernicious with cooties -- platelets are integral to the immune system's efficacy.<br />
<br />
Luckily, lately, my cautiousness has been up by about double . . . as in doubled -up on the kitchen floor clutching your hurt back, as in double-down on your incautiousness and you'll be bound to an ER rife with airborne cooties.<br />
<br />
Luckily, last week, my shiny burgundy four-wheel walker arrived. Believe me, for an emblem of misfortune, this gal is a beaut. She shimmers, she rolls. She has brakes on her ergonomic handles. She sports . . . wait for it . . . a fold-down seat if pushing wheels becomes too exhausting. Under which seat . . . wait for . . . can't wait storagecompartment! Need to tote a turkey sammich? Stash! Bag of crunchy Cheetos and a fistful Oreos? Stash, stash.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: xx-small;">8/ 12/ 14 </span></div>
<br />
<br />
Sorry. It's not like me to get sidetracked.<br />
<br />
During last Friday's Avastin infusion, the man in the chair next to me began to have an allergic reaction to some new drug he had dripping into his arm. He became alarmed and alerted the nurses, trying to explain the matter as one by one they tuned-in, recognizing the potential gravity of the situation.<br />
<br />
I love nurses. There's a wide and well-oiled sidetrack here, but I'll trundle on.<br />
<br />
The man said he felt on fire, he felt he was going pee himself, if he hadn't already. The nurses hurriedly attached new IV bags in an effort to reverse the new drug’s the ill-effects. Things got worse. A headache joined the fray. His composure began to slip. His vitals went haywire; his heart sped. The nurses hustled, communicating their expertise with calmness.<br />
<br />
The man went blind.<br />
<br />
As he went blind, I cannot say to what degree of severity or even truth, the blindness came on; I do not <i>need</i> to know exactly, but I know well enough the blended timbre of panic -- the blue-jay's worried call from branch to branch, the goose's hyperventilated hiss, the dolor of the abandoned dove, the ten-octave descant of a maniac hawk.<br />
<br />
Crows calling for doom, sparrows for mercy.<br />
<br />
I cannot say for sure how already dead the man thought that certainly he was as the soothing voices of the nurses became disassociated with the calmness in their faces. However, I <i>can</i> speak to death's mission accomplished as being preferred over its loitering terrors.<br />
<br />
Dead or not -- he lived. At least throughout our acquaintance. He panicked was all. I know I would if I came-to blind. Just to think about it makes me wish I hadn't written about it.<br />
<br />
Rest in peace tonight, man no longer beside me, seeing and undecaying. Pills for crows, crust for sparrows.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">8/ 11/ 14</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<i>Here is our lullaby . . . </i><br />
<br />
So hush now lah-lolly<br />
Lailai lailai lah-lolly<br />
Lah-lolly-loo<br />
<br />
My gal will tote you<br />
Compartment so rare<br />
She’ll stash you then eat you<br />
So rare, so rare<br />
<br />
So hush now lah-lolly<br />
Lailai lailai lah-lolly<br />
Lah-lolly-loo<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: xx-small;"><><><> </span></div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: xx-small;">8/ 13/ 14</span></div>
<br />
I did not get sidetracked. I got tired.<br />
<br />
To get back on track and hopefully to stay awhile . . . the depletion of platelets is inevitable in whom there has been a long-fought battle of cells, I was told as much by my team of white coats, learned as much from their complementary glossy pamphlets; and, I know as much by now.<br />
<br />
However, I have discovered that inevitability is harder to take in stride than eventuality by ambush is to plan for. The given is taken for granted -- especially as time wears on and slowly-but-surely becomes the order of the day. The inevitable pales in your rearview, ducks out of sight; it reappears in no real hurry to catch you up, just keeping tabs. <i>Memento mori</i>, it seems to wink. <i>Memento</i> <i>sanguis</i>.<br />
<br />
"You're gonna die, Bud, and it might just be your own blood that kills you or . . . a transfused understudy or . . . some other eventuality. But as you were told, as you learned, as you know for certain -- inevitability will catch you up and emerge from you're blind-spot -- all high beams and tooting horn.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><><><></span></div>
<br />
Wait. How did <i>I </i>get so already dead all of a sudden? I hate it but I'll have to backtrack.<br />
<br />
Here I am.<br />
<br />
There I was, considering platelets -- their betrayal, my pathetic reliance on their allegiance. Because I need roughly 100,000 parts per micro-liter more than I currently have which puts a damper on my cataract surgery hopes; then, not four paragraphs into this journal post, I got on the fast track to here. Here I am, surely going blind, no surgery in sight.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
There I was . . .<br />
<br />
a car on my tail, some unimpressive Latin, a meaty lecture held forth regarding what <i>will</i> and what <i>might</i>, it struck you as presumptuous but sensible enough, brief comment on platelet depletion, of all things -- a lullaby, there was uncertainty and indeed presumptuousness, a few point-of-view swaps which struck you as art for art's sake, a strong, I mean <i>strong</i>, exhibition of prose poetry resonating with the music-lover and bird-enthusiast alike, there was a shout-out to nurses, description of my new walker -- its beauty and capacity, the man beside me in the in the infusion room who went from afire to wet to blind before I could catch-up with the plot on Divorce Court . . .<br />
<br />
Here I am again. Practically dead to hear me talk. Virtually living the life opaque.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC-1m_VgWsAU3mChF9z-QpuQxXw89RUyJmIq8o1SYFlMxEOHZV1FqRQ3_Y19urT2gZujD2EsqTBp68XbwwKBTHkDRQ5K85i9DI9RMqnl-fXn9C7VQxojIVYhfifIM9W6e6KS45jb9flEg/s1600/photo+(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC-1m_VgWsAU3mChF9z-QpuQxXw89RUyJmIq8o1SYFlMxEOHZV1FqRQ3_Y19urT2gZujD2EsqTBp68XbwwKBTHkDRQ5K85i9DI9RMqnl-fXn9C7VQxojIVYhfifIM9W6e6KS45jb9flEg/s1600/photo+(1).JPG" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Go or No Option</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-28027340336708591462014-08-09T20:21:00.000-05:002014-08-09T20:23:30.085-05:00i spy with my little eye something but barely<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>I Spy With My Little Eye Something But Barely</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;">8/ 4/ 14</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div>
Today . . . MRI, labs, doctor . . . as scheduled. The plan . . . chemo no more, Avastin three more, back to 4 mg of steroid up from 2mg, some new arrangement of MRIs, labs, and doctor visits. And then back to Great Monitoring Project in which I am perennially engaged ; although I’d prefer an engagement with a great monitor lizard. Poisonous-ness moot.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
8/ 5/ 14</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
For the first time ever, as I always do, it seemed I did my research online, this time on the <i>déjà vu</i> phenomenon -- a phenomenon I am familiar with, these days, or at least was cognizant of in days gone by.<br />
<br />
As I suspected, there is a link between Google and the answers I sought; more to the purpose, a link between brain diseases and <i>déjà vu.</i><br />
<br />
I’ve been walking under clouds of diaphanous recall -- vast clouds -- not the sort of cloud one walks under and catches a drizzle-drop on the ear --vast clouds -- the sort of cloud that burgeons, darkens, threatens but never culminates in storm. <i>Déjà vu </i>clouds. Recall with no purpose, recall with no end.<br />
<br />
Lately, I’ve been walking <i>through</i> not just <i>under</i> these clouds -- diaphanous clouds, a sight barely seen, sheer yet clearly bulging with ado about the surreal. My disease walks me under and through these accumulations of faux import at every fifth or sixth turn, it seemed. Fascinating, no doubt, but for my part, give me Edna waking or scootching tiles any day. Hallucinations are bogus . . . illusory images born of suggestions from the real world -- creepy but actual. That is to say, when hallucinating, I am actually seeing what I’m seeing, out joint with my personal understanding of dynamics, sure, but not out-of-bounds in terms of possibility, or even what I take to be rational.<br />
<br />
I know about movement and I recognize it when I see it . . . in hummingbirds, in Janjiis. I know about cause and effect . . . in theory, in practice. I know about perception . . . its reliance on synapses, its relation to pre- existing cognitive footholds.<br />
<br />
However, I am infinitely nonplussed by <i>déjà vu</i>. Is it a realm with amorphous borders that one walks into benightedly like into an child's very recent divestment of pee in the shallow end at the Y?<br />
<br />
Is it a time? A multidimensional, non-delineated, omni-absence situated neverywhere? If so . . . will it consume me, can I escape it's event horizon? To shake it off will I need a DeLorean? A musty wardrobe?<br />
<br />
Could it be I took left when I should have taken a right?<br />
<br />
A <i>right</i> into family in front of the TV watching, as ever, brand new houses being rejuvenated or laughing at last night's Letterman on the DVR. A <i>left</i> into family in front of the TV, as forever and forevermore, watching Leno (it can't be) and laughing (nope no way, not on my watch!); a <i>right</i> to arrive at a corridor<br />
of glass conjoining the parking deck and the clinic proper.<br />
<br />
A <i>left</i>, to arrive at a corridor's glass, my corridor, my glass and its view of my town and its populace hastening to a dream I had just now about smudged handprints, about cars and what all they're missing down there, and the warmth in diagonal sun-rays. That one ray I'm always drawn to, drawn <i>into</i> just now, only to emerge mid-turn, at a corridor (mine or that dude's in the wheelchair shimmying towards the sun, watching the town as one might a cloud he expects to dissipate anytime now or then . . . <i>whichever</i> when turns him (us?) loose.<br />
<br />
Nope, you can keep the voodoo confabulations; I’ll take my too-tall man and periphery faeries.<br />
<br />
After the great seizure event of 2012, I needed to have physical therapy to learn how to walk again which included balance exercises one of which involved standing upright on a ball with a rubber ring around it for my feet. Once situated and balanced, my therapist would lightly prod my back and shoulders to test my stability -- she called these prods “perturbations” and I instantly fell in love with the term as it related my improvement, and eventually I fell in love with the notion -- remembrance as a function of re-learning, or memory as a light-speed portal to the past or even, speculatively speaking, to the future or an unmoving now. The stuff of <i>déjà vu</i> and old pictures.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Perturbations in Photograph</i><br />
<br />
I am the ghost of the child who is<br />
<br />
In sepia tones unwrapping gifts<br />
Beside his young-again mother<br />
<br />
Tiny against the Alamo<br />
Blue-striped socks hiked knee-high<br />
<br />
The trailing of the two climbers<br />
Halfway up the blazing white hill<br />
<br />
In tuxedo tails bearing a ring<br />
Bashful beside the flower girl<br />
<br />
Horrified in the batter’s box<br />
Jealous of Danny’s base-on-balls<br />
<br />
A friend among celebrant friends<br />
On some auspicious day or other<br />
<br />
Hunched-over the gray cul-de-sac<br />
Astride a gravelly football<br />
<br />
The monkey topsy-turvy<br />
Deep in the lead-based jungle-gym<br />
<br />
I am the man of the ghost who was<br />
The specter of double exposure<br />
<br />
Angel in vigil for bone-dust dogs.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-52226101560573318882014-08-03T09:35:00.001-05:002014-08-03T09:39:22.759-05:00and just like that<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>And Just Like That</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>7/ 28/ 14</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Upon the Lapse of My CPR Certification </span></i><br />
<br />
<br />
And just like that, I’m sure to crack your ribs,<br />
To leave you short of breath<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Both now and later.<br />
<br />
I’ll suck instead and puff, implode your chest,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Flatten your heart and lungs<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>While bystanders expect better of me.<br />
<br />
It’s probably for the best; they change the rules<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A lot—add compressions,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Subtract respirations, hone-in<br />
<br />
On infant pressure points. The Heimlich<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Is the same as ever—squeeze<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The bejeesus out of the wide-eyed,<br />
<br />
Asphyxiant; still, the bystanders expect an expert<br />
Launch, a near-comic vector to feel safe<br />
With their own maraschinos and steaks.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><><><></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<br />
And just like that my wife, Adrienne, hitherto a superbly qualified caretaker in matters of my oligodendroglioma (seizures, for instance -- easing me into the terror, calming me throughout,easing me out of the terror. During aftershocks and persistent tremors . . . abiding, patient, faithful with a cool rag and quick to dim lights), got promoted to GBM responsibilities without corresponding compensation. What she lost in bargain . . . a sous chef with a decade of experience, a fair-to-middlin house-cleaner, a hoister who knew to bend at the knees, a co-converser specializing in articulation and audibility . . . the list goes on but I’m already blushing. Yep, what a guy I was yesteryears when our only worries were my drinking, my gambling, my intermittent ability to keep Hamburger Helper on the table . . . oh and my oligodendroglioma. Yes, a regular, regularly neck-bearded, gentleman.<br />
<br />
Hello, my name is Jonathan, and yesteryears, I was a liability.<br />
<br />
Hi, Jonathan.<br />
<br />
[whisper from the chips and dip] Poor SOB, don’t he know . . . once a liability, always a liability . . . [crunch-dip-fingerlick-crunch-dip-fingerlick-thumblick-smack]<br />
<br />
[whisper from the chips] Poor SOBs don’t know they’re almost out of dip [finger-swipe-suck] yessir, that’s liable to do it.<br />
<br />
Let there be no mistake about it, she is the sacrificer-in-chief. When I get tired, I take a nap. When she gets tired, she goes about her business baking pies, knitting baby otter sweaters, watering foliage . . . honestly, I don’t know,<i> I’M</i> taking a nap. She is the contributor-at-large -- making the bacon, bringing home the bacon, cooking the bacon as God intended (who would I be to argue?) -- floppy in the middle with a minimum yet absolutely necessary salty crispiness along the way to fatty, practically raw lobes at the end of each dripping slice.<br />
<br />
She is CFO. She keeps the ledger, the receipts, the positive outlook; I keep the smile upside down.<br />
<br />
She is the COO and I require increasingly cumbersome move-about machines. Bear in mind that someone needing move-about machines in the first place is usually not fit to assist with their most cumbersome aspects -- their stowage and assemblage and general moving-about of the move-about machines.<br />
<br />
Of course, I am CEO. I wear the pajama pants in this family.<br />
<br />
Beyond <i>my</i> dependency, there’s that of the teenager who needs rides hither and yon, and just like that, thither and back. To places like death-defying locales to climb mossy rocks with teenaged friends and then, on the spur of of the moment, to an alternate locale at the request-via-text of a girl whose own mother does not want drive so far as all that, could they re-route mallward to loiter among random punks. ;), give momma a chance to rest ;p? <br />
<br />
She, Adrienne, I mean, (I have no real idea what tired momma does in her spare time but I suspect she has an impressive cache of toenail polish and is running perilously low on cotton balls, could her daughter stop by Walgreens on the way home?) is my pinch-voice when pills run low and Walgreens needs to be made aware, my designated distributor of pills into their respective cases, and my search captain when the time comes, as it invariably does, to comb through the carpet in an effort to recover invariably camouflaged pills.<br />
<br />
So here I am, in the nictatation of a frog’s eye, before you can “say mallward to loiter”, just like that, feeling (in some far less ridiculous ratio, of course) like this:<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>On the Intergalactic Distribution of Talents</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Light echoes star to star.<br />
Time groans deeply in worm-<br />
Holes like a tuba.<br />
Five years to tie my first laces.<br />
<br />
Hydrogen huddles and breaks<br />
Into everything. Particles fox-<br />
Trot, waltz and tango.<br />
Six months and I manage a two-step.<br />
<br />
Perennial Maypole of spiraling<br />
Suns. Earth wobbles but never<br />
Falls Down.<br />
Yet my jogging days are over.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-16319127498397528682014-07-26T21:04:00.001-05:002014-07-26T21:04:06.675-05:00stars<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Stars</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i>“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” – Walt Whitman </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>When I heard the learn’d astronomer,</i><br />
<i>When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,</i><br />
<i>When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,</i><br />
<i>When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,</i><br />
<i>Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,</i><br />
<i>In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, </i><br />
<i>Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.</i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
7/ 23 / 14</div>
<br />
I’m going to change the line-up for a while. I've been revising, cataloging and generally rooting around in my poems over the last several months; I've set aside ones that might suit this journal and turned-up a few and so I’ve decided to start sharing them sporadically and briefly mentioning their place in my world. It should probably be noted that all of these were written before the GBM set-in -- all old ones hopefully not fulfilling their own prophecies.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
<br />
My first and beardiest and most beloved philosophy professor not only succeeded in swiveling my head around and around -- stopping at intervals on, say, my naivety, my illogic, my stable of misbegotten notions; he saved me from a void cosmos by connecting the dots between Aldebaran and the Hyades, bridging the gap between Cassiopeia and Canis Major -- see stars, see stars run.<br />
<br />
See my adviser at new school, inquire after seats in the astronomy class -- see hydrogen, see hydrogen fuse.<br />
<br />
With continuing pleasure, I took the next level; with diminishing pleasure, I took the next-level astronomy tests -- see physics, see it call my bluff.<br />
<br />
I graduated with a degree in Philosophy (minor English) the diploma for which abides dustily alongside a diploma I earned with a degree in English (minor Philosophy). In other words, I’ve read Plato’s Republic four times.<br />
<br />
I carried on my life’s impecunious way picking-up micro-nuggets of knowledge and developing half-formed solutions to the recondite. I carried on, trying to unlearn order --and <i>chaos</i>, for that matter. I carried on snipping ballast sacks -- so beige and burlap -- from my hot air balloon -- so colorful and plump.<br />
<br />
And back, naked-eye descrying the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades.<br />
<br />
And on, pecking-out poems and stories that were not as magnificent as I thought them to be or as<br />
lackluster as I swore they were.<br />
<br />
And back: Six degrees of Francis Bacon; Jane Eyre vs. Wuthering Heights for all the Bronte marbles; Kant, Hume, Hegel -- oh my; Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare -- oh, snap.<br />
<br />
And on and on, all the way here . . .<br />
<br />
<i>Sidereal</i><br />
<br />
At thirty-seven, memory<br />
Stripped to bare skin—a consequence<br />
Of medicine and the sickness<br />
Itself—I wish I could recall<br />
The Milky Way without planet,<br />
Constellation, or Cynosure.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
As when on drives to Knoxville<br />
From Bland, the anonymous stars<br />
Would scale up the sky, as slow as<br />
The hours, as the lollygag miles<br />
To the never nearing coal-stack<br />
Of the Smokeys.<br />
<br />
At thirty-seven, the shapeless<br />
Clusters and random amble<br />
Are gone; and my wish, more<br />
Than a brain without panicked cramps<br />
Or tumor, is to have my catalog cleared<br />
Of Messier, mythology,<br />
And hydrogen fusion;<br />
<br />
I’d like<br />
To press my face to the cold glass<br />
And see in Leo’s place a velvet cloak<br />
Pricked-through with the pins of God’s<br />
<br />
Own angels, embroidering<br />
A miracle of sorts having<br />
Nothing to do with light years—<br />
A consequence of nothing known.<br />
<br />
<br />
And nearly there (as below) . . .<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>The Upshot of My Sciences</i><br />
<br />
When I go loam,<br />
I hope to meet<br />
A maple leaf<br />
To hold my hand.<br />
<br />
When I go worm,<br />
I hope to find<br />
A sopping earth<br />
To take me in.<br />
<br />
When I go kale,<br />
I hope to grow<br />
A purple furl<br />
To greet you with.<br />
<br />
When I go cloud,<br />
I hope to blot<br />
A zenith sun<br />
To stake my claim.<br />
<br />
When I go sea,<br />
I hope to crest<br />
A toppling swell<br />
To thank the moon.<br />
<br />
When I go oak,<br />
I hope to have<br />
A maple tree<br />
To neighbor with.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
<br />
I don’t think any of this – the versification nor the commentary – represent a terminal condition of my heart; more than likely, they represent a careful consideration of my life without either, and why or whether whimsy seems to have edged-out the awe owed the unadorned beauty of reality.<br />
<br />
I <i>can</i> tell you this, I believe there is some correlation between what seems to be a slippage in my fascination with the empirical and the dunderheadedness accreted during times of my infatuation with the so-called sublime.<br />
<br />
Beyond that, I can suggest that the continual struggle in my brain is a notable factor in my increasing dunderheadedness. In other words, I got dumb. Not necessarily as a result of constantly conflicting ideals, but as a coincidence of bodily corrosion and the vicissitudes of fortune. I got dumb. Mute <i>and</i> dull. It’s hard to dodge the spitballs of an indifferent goddess while timing deflections of astral bowling balls -- aflame and careering. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-28508716607075859672014-07-20T14:51:00.000-05:002014-07-20T14:51:12.754-05:00pain and hallucination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Pain and Hallucination</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">7</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">/ 9/ 24</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Right now, rather, right then, a moment ago, I was staring mindlessly at picture frame wall hook and had been for at least fifteen seconds. It may not sound like a lot of time but it is a lot just to be fixed on a picture frame hook, and fifteen on a doorknob here and thirty on what I've just written which in itself took every second of five minutes . . .now hooks, now the knob, and for just this last little bit . . . that ellipsis. This is no namby pamby stare, here. It's electromagnetic. Once latched . . . attached, until someone cuts the power by some stronger distraction and then I'd be released to redirect my magnificent stare -- just then on my rapidly cooling mug of coffee. At this moment, I'm letting it languish at room-temperature.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When I'm not stuck, odds are, I'm unglued. I can't latch on to anything. My thoughts or those of others. The written word or the words I'm writing. You can imagine why this would stir the stew out of me. The prospect of walking becomes more daunting when I'm unglued; each step is crucial to the overall endeavor; each step is one nearer the master plan, which includes arriving in full bipedal triumph at the refrigerator eight feet away. I stumbled four feet shy of the fridge and fell to the floor. Contributing factors . . . I was doing dishes, as is my wont, and being unglued at time, (one must be able to ambulate and navigate simultaneously), I let slip the necessary focus for a physically and mentally handicapped person, or to keep it politically correct -- a double-dip crip (if you've taken offense, you might want consult your physician, it could be that you are a triple cripple). Two more factors contributing to my stumble and ultimate collision with the refrigerator: the transition from unglued to stuck again can happen in the time it takes to reach for a Mac & Cheez pan and notice a dish of brownies a mere stack of dinner plates away. I like doing dishes. I looooove eating brownies. I reached, placed my non-reaching palm on the the slick stone for balance . . . Ha! Well-played, Jonathan. Final factor that I will bother mentioning . . . I stumbled four feet away. I am six feet tall. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If no harm , no foul . . . I call foul. </span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">7/ 11/ 14</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If no foul . . . allow this faint complaint . . . Ow! Ow! Ooh John Jacob Jingleheimer! Ow! Fouls notwithstanding, I call harm. To tune of a compression fracture of lumbar number one.This fall was from the other side of the same counter (different day). One and eighty pounds from five feet up . . . J.J.J Schmidt! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Insult to injury [1] no sooner had I begun my writhe-about, lowing like a woeful cow spectacle than a picture frame (second frame dismantled in as many weeks) fell onto my head. Insult to injury [2] no sooner had the paramedics reached me, I became aware that I was still in my ratty pajamas -- one of the EMTs gave me the heads-up on the relative brightness of the cool kitchen, where I <i>had</i> been, and the blazing blue sky inhabited solely by the sun at zenith, where I was quickly being hustled.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The difference was truly astonishing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">7/ 15/ 14</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I have portable fan that sits on my bedside table that does not oscillate that oscillates.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I have a cat that won't sit still, in fact, she hasn't since she first showed-up; I'd give her a name, if she'd just sit still. Probably Snowball if she was black.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There's a man in the yard who is too small be homo-sapiens but far too huge to be one of my periphery faeries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Bathroom tiles scootch slowly towards me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Bricks jut and retreat, jut and retreat like insane piano keys considering a not-nice joint jettison.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Cracks in sidewalks move slowly away. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Two women on my wall are artwork. Corrine's hair is made of hectic magenta butterflies. Her head rests on a pale forearm, the forearm is perfectly still and given to movement. Just a slight raise at the elbow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Edna is on a bench under a dark sky in a white dress considering the skull on her lap. Once in a while she rises to walk to a shore she nor I can see. We see a storm on our left. Once in a while it pauses mid-swirl.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The periphery faeries don't like being seen straight on; they dispatch many mini-sprites to inflict harm on my person while I sleep; I wake to find unwarranted bruises, inexplicable rashes, and itchy scratches on my belly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Humming birds with a magnificence of color beneath their blur, rare sights in the first place, most fabulous of hallucinations,dart-flit-vanish, flit-dart-vanish. A few days ago, during a quadruple- check, one hovered for me. A humming bird!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm an inveterate quadruple-checker. If unglued, I can go as high eight checking on a Great Dane</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">soliloquizing <i>from</i> and <i>on</i> a stump.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After all, I would've hated to miss . . . </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Jacob Marley's scornful face out of switch plates.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Obi Wan's robe collapsing, bodiless. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> Cujo at my passenger window, not slavering yet but working-up some foam.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ascensions of Christ into sun-punched cumuli. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">7/ 20/ 14</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">[<i>Last week I promised poem incorporating multiple uses of a single line; I offer it here knowledgeable of its altered form from the one I hastily promised; accept this untitled villanelle. It suits.</i>]</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The good news is the bad news verbatim</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There be lizardy dragons around these parts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The dragon was a worm until you slayed him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Like, love, or absolutely hate him, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You must admire his work in the jading arts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The good news is the bad news verbatim.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We were famished so we skinned and ate him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We were lonely so we opened our hearts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The dragon was worm until you slayed him --</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A snaky lizard peddling original sin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Through tinsel and popcorn -- vouchsafing smarts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The good news is the bad news verbatim.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A crawler, a wriggler, then you obeyed him, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Now he's leviathan chum taunting sharks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The dragon was a worm until you slayed him -- </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A dragony ass straining with floating carts </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Accepting applause despite obvious false starts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The good news is the bad news verbatim -- </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The dragon just a worm until you slayed him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-28104641212276750332014-07-12T13:16:00.003-05:002014-07-13T11:46:58.721-05:00arjuna and the specter of isaac<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Arjuna and the Specter Isaac </span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
6/ 30/ 14<br />
<br />
<br />
The good news is the bad news verbatim. If I still had any Eastern philosophy left me, I'd run that line by the Bhagavad Gita, any Western and I'd see what I could see in the way of Kierkegaard. If was any sort of poet, I'd've long since ditched this rather starving introduction to start composing poems which experiment with that line as the first, writing a new first line, then using the first first line as the second line, and so on . . . second to third, third to fourth and so on until the poem (tentatively titled "Arjuna and the Specter of Isaac") is perfect. Oh, don't you worry, it will happen, the first line is already the 18th line in my head.<br />
<br />
Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Trust me, this is not a trick question or covert personality test.<br />
<br />
Heads up, pencils down.<br />
<br />
If you chose "good news first" you are an optimist, confident that good news will trump the bad news by a large enough margin to take it too badly anyway. Also, you are a pessimist, worried that the "bad news", if left to its own devices while the good news is being aired, will stir up more trouble than the good news is worth.<br />
<br />
Heads up, seven up. (Irrelevant but fun to remember the carefree days.)<br />
<br />
If you chose at all, you chose superfluously, since the bad news is the good news verbatim; and you will soon make a note not to trust me, at least not when the concern is trick questions; and now that you know trusting in me is ill-advised, I might as well reveal the results of this covert personality test on Facebook. (Stay tuned for my immediate public apology on Twitter and it's recapitulation on all major news outlets like CNN, your aunt Dale, Facebook, and Twitter.)<br />
<br />
The news is as follows and as follows: I have taken my last round of chemotherapy. I have taken my last round of chemotherapy. I don't have to choke-back pernicious, rattling, gargantupills anymore. By the identical token, they won't let me choke-back pernicious, rattling, tumor-corroding pills anymore.<br />
<br />
There is limit to how much poison the body can take and all the tumors have to is do exceed that limit for a while -- a tug-of-war the body rarely wins. The body sports abrasion-prone palms, tumors wear cleats. Tumors are anchored by Fezzik, the body is anchored by your aunt Dale.<br />
<br />
Heads down.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It's all in my head. True—at least mostly.<br />
<br />
If I've heard it once I've heard it a good few times . . . my tumors; the scrumptiousness of oysters; the importance of being earnest, etc; and there is the way in which "it" is "all" in each of your heads too . . . nascent tumors; the disgustingness of oysters; importance of being quippy.<br />
<br />
What has been in my head recently has been, in fact, my tumors. Not the nascent ones but the<br />
current tenants. Real deals that exist in real space that happen to be confined to the same real small place. Spaces and places inside my cranium, situated as comfortably as I can manage, in my right<br />
parietal lobe, a few dim stars (that's how I think of the new ones as they appear in the MRI images) cropping-up in gadolinium dye and ostensibly headed toward the temporal lobes and, due to malignancy, threatening further encroachment.<br />
<br />
And then there's Pops. Riding high near the primary motor cortex where the doing of things gets done. Which is why so many things of don't get done. Pops the progenitor, original space-hog.<br />
<br />
And I feel its presence. I've seen its picture many, many times. I've studied its biology and its biography. But not only do I know of it, I can attest to its existence as a tangible occupier of my noodle. And so too with new ones, but less concretely. I don't know them well but I'm figuring them out.<br />
<br />
I can hear learned protest . . . "This notion is psychosomatic through and through. He has headaches that he <i>thinks</i> he can specifically locate geographically and define topographically. He has phantom sensations, ones he <i>thinks</i> he should be able to feel, as if from the outside in."<br />
<br />
Yes, as if that way. And as if from the inside out. And as if from the inside in. Call it delusion, imagination, or the eternal Lite-Brite of a buck- shot mind.<br />
<br />
I call it apperception, introspection, and concentration . . . I'll take imagination, too. From where else could I extract the germs of creativity if not from its Petris dish in my head? <br />
<br />
Yet, I feel I’m doing poorly with my explanation of this phenomenon. I'll attribute this to its oddity. It’s not a workaday topic; to speak of it is to ask the listener/ reader to rustle-up some cognitive vittles probably not ready at hand. Sometimes me and the listener/ reader connect, sometimes we don't.<br />
<br />
Perhaps to confuse us all further, I’ve inserted an excerpt from short-story ("Waiting"), in which the main character relates his experience with this odd but real case:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have heard about silence that screams but this is new—the confusion in cacophony, the exclamations, the top-pitched frustration is so noisome and unconnected that I hear nothing. I retreat into my right-parietal. My tumor is in here with me. I am used to feeling it from a distance—from my other lobes but now I have joined it. I am inside the absence. Because that’s what brain tumors are. Physiologically, they are growths, cystic and tangible; but the real space they delineate is filled with nothing or, at best, a vague notion of something missing. Like the subconscious knowledge of the unpacked meds sitting on your nightstand as you grind farther and farther away down the interstate. Like the empty pit in your guts, so dull and distant, that prophesies an impending appendicitis.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> In here, perceptions are dull. The outside world moves slowly as in a dream. And the dream is pointless. You in a chef’s hat making mud-pies; you in a cloud and becoming rain. Dull and pointless but perfect for keeping the sharper perceptions at bay—those terrors of a brain in full synaptic barrage. From here, through the glial-veneer, the waiting room is in a light fog on a placid lake as seen through the wrong end of binoculars. The fish are glugging through arms of light Sounds are subdued. Like a silenced pistol going <i>thwup</i>, like a muted guitar string going <i>pung</i>, so are the voices and actions of the outside, public space . . .</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Andrew, dying quicker than the rest of us, , is tidying the waiting room. As if compelled by a mission, he moves from table to table making neat stacks of the magazines. He stands behind the several empty chairs and aligns them just so. He looks like a golfer lining up a putt. Or an unlikely feng shui master . His ring glints in the fluorescent light. I have never seen him so vital, so purposeful. Something in the anomaly feels right—like <i>his</i> is the correct universe, a truly unparalleled universe, and that it’s safe to leave my brain. He draws me out . . .</span><br />
<br />
To find out what transpired before our hero retired into his cranium or to find out what transpires next:<br />
<br />
<div>
<a href="http://mixedfruitmagazine.com/issues-3/waiting/" target="_blank">http://mixedfruitmagazine.com/issues-3/waiting/ </a></div>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-71470800721610312922014-07-05T11:24:00.000-05:002014-07-05T11:31:31.995-05:00hold the door mr. phillipshead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hold the Door Mr. Phillipshead</span></i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
6/ 27/ 14</div>
<br />
I have been moved to the head of my class. Not for embodying scholarship or to exhibit proper conduct for the edification of my peers. I have been moved to the head of the class so I don't lose sight of the teacher or lose touch with the lecture; I have been moved so I can make it through lunch before logging-out for the day and hopefully soon to make it clear to dinner without kaputzing completely.<br />
<br />
"Attention, class. I am moving Jona . . . Jocelyn Quinn, send one more text and I swear that thing's mine . . . I am moving Jonathan . . . what do you mean <i>which</i> Jonathan? . . . you know as well as I do that <i>that</i> Jonathan has been relocated for exhibiting improper conduct . . . Class, just shut up! Shut your lips and listen, Jonathan . . . <i>this</i> Jonathan . . . I'll tell you what, Mr. Phillipshead, why don't you go impress Mrs. Boysenberry with your little routine . . . now, if everyone is ready . . . Mr. Scott is coming up here.<br />
<br />
He hasn't done anything wrong, he just needs a little . . . Jocelyn Quinn! Put it. . . put it right here in my hand . . . what do you mean put <i>what</i>? . . . hold the door Mr. Phillipshead . . . "<br />
<br />
They've put me on Ritalin. I went to the doctor on Monday to have some blood drawn and give a urine sample; they got all the blood they could hope for and could've hoped more; what they did not get was the memo.<br />
<br />
Re: FYI Jonathan H Scott DOB 12-14-75, cannot pee on demand, not one drop.<br />
<br />
Readers, F-<i>your</i>-I, they don't really need your urine so much as they would appreciate it; besides, they give credit for effort -- especially on pop-quizzes.<br />
<br />
Anyway . . . Ritalin. They've added Ritalin to my pharmaceutical cornucopia, my horn of that's a'plenty, thanks. In the doc's office I wasn't grasping just why, for all I know, they just wanted to put a cork in my cask of complaints; it seemed counter intuitive for all I knew . . .<br />
about . . . about . . .<br />
<br />
Ritalin. Right! For 1, I have a hard time staying focused in the morning when I do most of my "work". And B of all, I have a hard time concentrating on the task at hand when there's another task tomorrow and the one I just forgot. For 3, I have a hard time sleeping at night -- all the thoughts . . . glioblastoma, eggs for breakfast, fried <i>no</i> scrambled <i>no</i> a banana, what for tomorrow's journal? urine sample indeed! Missed the memo, memorandum remember random, scrambled <i>no</i> randomized eggs, but fried, over medium <i>no</i> easy, just take 'er easy man, like Sunday mawnin', ooh I said eeezay, eassah like Sunday mawnin’ you should go to church, yeah and wear your purple suit, purple, two nude Ps reposing on an <i>ur</i> carpet . . . probably needing<br />
<br />
. . . to pee. Great! Juhhst great! Yogurt, was it?<br />
<br />
They put me on Ritalin. I'll give it a go. Another pill for my AM case. What could it hurt that ain't already? My liver? The likelihood of operating heavy machinery? Besides, it's in the cards, a done deal from when deals like this were done. Spectacular. Oracular. The pills are purple.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
[Here is a poem I wrote over 7000 pills ago.]<br />
<br />
℞<br />
<br />
An epitome of the false<br />
Dichotomy: blessing or curse,<br />
For good or for ill—<br />
My anxiety and its pharmacy<br />
Of combatants. <br />
<br />
On one hand are the tunnel walls<br />
Withstanding the terrific<br />
Sea, the sand, and careless whales;<br />
On another are the bland<br />
Visions of a dimwit.<br />
<br />
The crystal in the window,<br />
Once prismatic and slinging<br />
Spectra the whole kitchen over--<br />
Now mud-washed, flings ho-hum<br />
Shadows on sheet-rock.<br />
<br />
.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-19763830646171401592014-06-29T11:42:00.000-05:002014-06-29T11:42:20.549-05:00interlude: cabbages and kings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Interlude: Cabbages and Kings</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
6/ 25/ 14</div>
<br />
<br />
Purple is my favorite color. I'll go ahead and make it official. It's not mandatory to have a favorite color or make it official unless you're pushing five and have yet to, you might as well have one ready for the girls who will pester you until you relent or "choose" one they have chosen for you and that will be your official color irrespective of the fact that your favorite color is red.<br />
<br />
My first favorite color was red. I am pretty sure this was a side-effect of trickle down fandom. I was born in Virginia. My grandfather's easy chair reclined in Virginia. My father attended UVA. For regional reasons, we were Redskins fans; and the girls at J. B. Watkins Elementary were licking their chops; notorious for doling out dookie browns and, worse than that, pinks, I offered them red. Red stood fast for years. Out fandom or habit or just to have a color loaded if required in the spur of the moment, it stood until high school.<br />
<br />
There may have been trendy lapses along the way . . . a black, ensued by discussion on whether or not black was a even a color, with your pigmentists on one side and your fourth-grade physicists on the other . . . something neon tangerine or pastel lymon maybe. But my third favorite color was blue. A virtual heresy. The color of the Dallas Cowboys. An attempted usurpation. The color had already been claimed my brother. But the the most egregious apostasy of all was admitting the input of girls. Known to grow-up faster than boys, by the time I got to high school the girls I knew had matured beyond the bathroom and their Barbie pinks and into a penchant for bringing boys into a fashionable light or palette,depending on your faction. It turns out my eyes are blue, almost preternaturally so, when matched with blue shirts; they bring out the color of my eyes -- a desirable effect, as it turns out. With no ado, my color was blue.<br />
<br />
Next, naturally, given my teen Romanticism and subsequent brush with naturalism, my colors took their cues from our variegated earth. Mud red as of Alabama creek beds. Forest green as seen along I-540 from Ft. Smith to Fayetteville. Fire-orange sunset streaking the Pacific between Lanai and Maui. And, closest to my heart, any autumn amalgam, but preferably on snaky routes between Cades Cove and the Peaks of Otter.<br />
<br />
In the earth tone group, I should probably acknowledge the influence of grunge flannel as witnessed knotted around my waist, draped over the shoulders of a campfire damsel, or worn in defiance of Boy Band Cerulean.<br />
<br />
But now purple. How, why, or when, I don't know and I can't afford a psychologist to not particularly know alongside of me. It certainly doesn't bring out my eyes, or flatter my skin tone.<br />
<br />
I had probably always admired purple deep down. Perhaps for being braver than me. Perhaps for being richer than me. For being lovelier? More bathed in the milk of majesty? I certainly cannot remember ever being directly opposed to it. I had never been probed by purple aliens nor hurried-off a stage by juicily rotting eggplants. I don't think I ever noticed purple on my six as a tidal-wave of clover at my heels or suffered betel nut loogies jettisoned in ambush from a cabbage patch.<br />
<br />
I think it was out of the blue. From thin air, let's say, to avoid confusion. A couple of years ago, I was in the market for a new suit of clothes -- specifically for my son's band banquet, consequentially to fluff-up my wardrobe.<br />
<br />
Round and round Kohl's . . . nothing catches my eye, round and round JCP . . . nothing jumps off the rack . . . until purple does . . . from a carousel of ugly ties. It was like at first sight, beyond admiration.<br />
Leery of my grin, my wife tries to cauterize this fresh wound at first blood and leads on. A purple shirt materializes in the clearance aisle. Do I have any fancy pants to go with this? We'll look when we get home. Home . . . away from my hideous tie, my out-of-style shirt. Too risky.<br />
<br />
I arrived at the banquet proud in purple. Back then my sudden inspiration; meanwhile an incubating intrigue; now my favorite color.<br />
<br />
Everything's coming up purple these days. It's as if my have eyes have gone Terminator, scanning the red-gray, the yellow-gray, the fireburst-gray, locking-in on purple. It seems that Kohl's and JCP stock it exclusively. If there are pansies, they are violets. I had never seen a purple car that wasn't trying too hard or being ironic until recently . . . these days every third or fourth one is rocking it amethyst or cruising on magenta.<br />
<br />
It's bizarre but true. You'll just have to believe me. I wouldn't call it mystical, but I'd allow mysterious. You would think there is some reason why I point and call out "purple" whenever I see purple like a toddling talker from a grocery cart when helping to choose grapes or at a picnic when a dragonfly alights on the basket's handle. As fortune would have it, I currently talk like a toddler -- a blurting exultancy, ecstatically not-quite sure.<br />
<br />
Not mystical but indeed mysterious why the auroras behind my eyelids morph from mustard to lavender.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-28773895935822764082014-06-21T18:30:00.000-05:002014-06-21T18:30:01.875-05:00orca to fry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Orca to Fry</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
6/ 18/ 14</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' whut Ah'm liable do to yet." Zora Neale Hurston --<i>Their Eyes Were Watching God</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
This time around, respecting chemotherapy, steroids, and the tumor(s), I decided to monitor my condition more diligently than last time. I have done well. In the beginning, I devised a system by which to keep track of my symptoms. "Devised a system" is probably too impressive sounding. I can't even manage a spreadsheet. The system I devised was to keep a running log.<br />
<br />
> Symptom name [severity scale: 1 = worst to 10 = no sweat]. Of course I had to create a random baseline for the scale at the outset to leave wiggle room between Apocalypse Now and Toy Story 3. (3 because it's plenty frightening in its own right.)<br />
<br />
For instance (an abridged excerpt):<br />
<br />
<b>Steroid</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Baseline @ 4mg set 4 / 3/ 14<br />
Cognition [6.5] > Confusion [6.5] > Memory [6] > Frustration/ Anger [6] > Frustration/ Depression [6] > Fatigue [6] > Speech [6.5] > Faintness [7] > Headache [6.5] > Ache right eye/ temple [6.5] > Nausea [7] > Faintness [7] > Vision [4] > Sleepy [6] > Bowels [7] > Vision [4] > Gait [4.5] > Balance [4] > Headache [7] > Nausea [6.5] > Short Breath [7] > Appetite [6] > Numbness (left mouth/ tongue^[4.5]^, left hand ^[4]^, left leg/ foot ^[6])<br />
<br />
[Bracketed numbers are adjusted when I set a new baseline with [x!] if worse [y+] if better. If no change, then no change. Altogether new complaints are underlined. Eg, <u>Cataracts </u>[5!]<br />
<br />
There you have it . . . Excel for troglodytes.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I saw my optometrist of 26 years on Monday to see if there was anything to be done to improve my vision. I wasn't holding out much hope; I had been just assuming it was irreparable as long as the cause was chemotherapy, steroids, or the tumor(s) -- as given as they are to skip down the lane holding hands, swapping bubble gums.<br />
<br />
But I was wrong.<br />
<br />
In the waiting room in my wheelchair, skinny legs and all, another roadside attraction, I fomented my doubts and ticked off the reasons why my eyes would just have get in line. When the optician came to take me back for preliminary tests, I could see it in his face, "This guy has bigger fish to fry."<br />
<br />
Try orca, buddy.<br />
<br />
After running all of the usual tests, the optometrist was beginning to think that nothing was wrong, that my new vision is actually better than current lenses, maybe just an updated prescription was all I needed. We were excited. He was excited.<br />
<br />
He was wrong.<br />
<br />
Cataracts in right eye, left eye to follow sooner or later. But I was wrong about there being nothing to do about it. There's eyeball surgery. That's surgery on the eyeball. Awake. I'm picturing, <i>vividly</i>, Kubrick's Alex in rehab. (I said, Ah, no, no, no.) In truth, I'm rather eager to get it done. I want some serviceable peepers again . . . almost more than anything, even more than the rectification of my dratted, mostly ineffectual, voice.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"De lake is coming!" Tea Cake gasped. It's comin behind us!" Janie shuddered. "Us can't fly."</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Zora Neale Hurston --<i>Their Eyes Were Watching God</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
I take research as part of diligence. Also as part of self-affliction. Not necessarily as fuel for any mild form of hypochondria -- which I own up to -- but it is important to heed something like: just because you're hypochondriacal doesn't mean your maladies are not compounding by the moment; perhaps in ways analogous to one of these:<br />
<br />
Tether ball.<br />
<br />
Push . . . good push . . . game face on . . . slap . . . bonk opponent's face, slap . . . opponent bonks back, smack . . . oh OK this is how it's going to be, smack . . . alright then, so be it . . . punch . . . dodge, punch . . . dodge, dodge, dodge, punch <i>at</i>, fingertip, fingertip, swat air, swat, swat . . . whiff mightily, fall.<br />
<br />
Roller coaster.<br />
<br />
Enter the maze, join the shuffle. Hear the screams, consider retreat. Buck-up, there are six year olds behind you. Fate has it, be alone in your car. Buckle frayed belt, test restraining bar for your own self. Lurch, gasp. Hear teen recite, hands and legs inside. Be off, don't scream. Ascend, ignore clacks, the clacks the ratcheting clacks, descend, <i>FAST</i>, scream, let your breath rejoin you, continue because you must, you're tied, barred, you doubled checked.<br />
<br />
This is the sense I'm getting.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I take combing the World Wide Web as part of research, on account of I'm a fool. Here's as foolish a method as any. I enter the malady plus the suspected perpetrator. For instance: cataracts + (tumor/<br />
steroid/ chemo). I scroll through Google's suggested surgeons or a certain Robert Southey poem. Then I proceed to that behemoth compendium, <i>Wikipedia</i>, because if everybody doesn't know then who does, really?<br />
<br />
Next, I find a forum of the likewise tormented and nod and empathize -- because now I know I'm not alone; then I shake my head and eke a whimper -- despondent now that I've had my doom pronounced in black and white and certified by no less a personage than Vickie's uncle Bruce who died back in '04 from a case precisely mirroring my own (I guess Bruce was left handed),and if Vickie doesn't know then who does, really? Bruce now in Abraham's bosom frying minnows? I doubt it. McribsBback234? That fool? No way.<br />
<br />
Then it's back to my search results where I should have scrolled down farther in first place. At least to that well-organized lodestar, <i>WebMd,</i> under the auspices of which I have had great success with self-diagnosis. There was the common cold, the tummy ache, the neck crick, the dog tick-- to name only four.<br />
<br />
Of course, I always cross-reference my pile of complaints with those of Peggy Ann McKay. I'm gaining on her.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/sick" target="_blank">http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/sick </a><br />
<br />
Sure, my prospects for play on Saturday are not quite as sunny; yet I don't begrudge Peggy her sudden remission. It gives one hope come Saturday next.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
A man is up against a hard game when he must die to beat it. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Zora Neale Hurston, --<i>Their Eyes Were Watching God</i></div>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-86649364445889881102014-06-15T12:00:00.001-05:002014-06-15T12:00:24.505-05:00arkansas, one more look back<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Your Mom's Insistence Disregarded</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
6/ 9/ 14</div>
<br />
If you're lucky there will be a rest area beyond the next rise because you've fooling yourself about "mind over matter" ever since you crossed the point of no return, which is to say the end of your driveway as you we're leaving; and now you've been in a horn- locked battle of bladders with fellow passengers, which is to say wannabe Wan Kenobis as you pass exit after exit not wanting to be the one to cry "uncle" by leaning dash-ward to wonder aloud if the gas-supply situation had been properly monitored . . . Well, now that you mention it . . . So and so could use a smoke, some other and whom wouldn't mind a Slim Jim and a Mellow Yello, one and all might as well stretch their legs. Whatever on planet earth you do next, do not be the one to suggest the next the rise, getting a few more miles behind you before you stop. Scornful and chagrined, your fellow travelers will call your bluff and there you'll sit all a'squirm with collective minds zeroing-in on your matter.<br />
<br />
If you're really lucky there will be a state welcome center beyond the next rise. They have pamphlets and brochures . . . Here's a presidential library, there's the Spinach Capital of the World. Behold the Christ of the Ozarks. Witness healing springs. Visit Old Town Van Buren. Be sure to pick up your dog tick on the way out. They're complimentary. Very much like refreshing cups of OJ going into Florida. Except mandatory . . . Welcome to . . .<br />
<br />
Arkansas!<br />
<br />
The Natural State. Like the state in which my very own dog tick will soon make camp for the night. Boy-howdy, could you be an unluckier dog tick than mine? At first, rejoice, I'm a chemo induced bleeder, sit back and sip to bursting.<br />
<br />
Same token: I'm a chemical assassin, poison to suckers, come taste death.<br />
<br />
It did. Yet it left its little red bump and had me fretting the tell-tale bullseye bite mark; but a couple days in, I felt comfortable that after all this cancer hullabaloo it would <i>not</i> be some pimply punk parasite to take me down.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Super Stores and Uncle Scores </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">6/10/ 14</span></div>
<br />
A few more highlights from my trip.<br />
<br />
> One day at Walmart (to pay less and to appease the Ghost of Northwest Arkansas), Elena Jane of the triune boyfriend offered to assist in the pushing of my wheelchair. A roll or two into the feat, she resigned, citing as main reasons: I am too fat and too bald.<br />
<br />
> Elena and Walmart continued: What the goldilocked scamp won't tell you is what brought us there that day. I won't either. It would be insensitive. Stooping. Altogether too undignified of me. Well, I <i>suppose</i> I could say this much . . . the pharmacy brought us, an unfortunate condition, an unfortunater bodily operating system.<br />
<br />
> The Prescription--hail the liquid form! At least for any family that fit the contagion profile. Per the baby's nurse, I was in the clear. Sad sight. Three grumbling grown men, three far from eager little girls, in single file, pleading for amnesty, envying Jonathan's immunity. Hail the liquid form, at least, my dear family, hail and appease Lord Inoculation.<br />
<br />
> Later, Bella the Tall, apprehends an injustice, "Heyyy, why doesn't Uncle Jonathan have to take the medicine?" Now mostly engaged, Abrianna the Furtive, would also like to know as much. Jonathan the Jester pounces, "Because Uncle Jah-ah-on-athan is too fat and too bald to take the medicine." Elena the Culprit laughs. And laughs. And laughs.<br />
<br />
> I only fell twice and for convenience sake it was on the same occasion. Sometimes Rome is your brother's house where they sit in extra comfortable chairs and you, as you must when in Rome, do as they do. One such chair was in the guest room. I certainly don't <i>require</i> extra comfort as an excuse for falling, but here I blame it roundly, saving back just a smidgen of blame for my spindly legs and an inconsistent center of gravity. First fall: forgetting to factor in cushiness, my initial surge to rise from the chair lacked thrust enough to stand; after a half-second of hope for recovery, I fell, rump first, back to the chair. Second fall: I missed the chair proper, landed on the chair's arm and after a hopeless half-second, I fell again. Fortunately, Rome's guest rooms are carpeted.<br />
<br />
> I spent most of week with Chris and the girls so tales of other Arkansan relatives are few. Limited visiting means conversation and catching up takes the fore. But every evening there was some contingent of Scott's or another milling about the kitchen, paper plates variously laden, Solo cups mismatched -- original drinker's initials sweating in the hands of drinkers-come-lately.Contingents potentially comprising Mother of Many -- the Pasta Salad Refurbisher, Father of Just As Many -- the Grand-baby Bouncer, Brother Michael -- the Blond Tower, Brother Andrew -- the Quietly Attending; and the Most Honorably Mentioned, the Ones and Onlies nieces and nephews: Geoffrey Jonathan, Brandon Michael, Isabella Clarene, Abrianna Lynn, Elena Jane, Marylia Felicity, and Johnny Robert.<br />
<br />
Thus, I survived my first full week away from home since the new diagnosis, only a vanishing tick-bite worse for the wear.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-75250774207506817702014-06-08T11:54:00.000-05:002014-06-08T11:54:53.572-05:00with shakespearean gristle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Drive There . . . But First, the Arrival</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
6/ 4/ 14</div>
<br />
<br />
I took my show on the road last week. Three nieces awaited my arrival with what I take to be in retrospect the last of their bated breaths. They're a vociferous trio, these, but more delightfully distinct personalities among sisters you'd be unlikely to find.<br />
<br />
The youngest feigns shyness until she's certain I'm a decent enough uncle. Meanwhile, she hides behind my big brother's leg like one being sought in a child's game, unwittingly unconcealed. When she's certain that I'm an uncle to be trusted with her imagination, she tests my worthiness with an over-the-shoulder anecdote. I prove myself with silence, an adult with all ears. Then she unfurls her saga. One that involves a boyfriend and a boyfriend and a boyfriend.<br />
<br />
The next niece I will not call a "middle child". In general, it's a disrespectful phrase; and in her case, it's a porous encapsulation. Her "middleness", if anything, is an enviable "otherness". Her mind does not seem to be distressed by "lonesomeness" but seems to relish being left alone in hiatus-- a sibling ready to play on the trampoline, a little girl just as ready to disappear. Where she goes when she goes, I don't know, but I'd like to tiptoe behind; I'd bet it's a wondrous place with kites of purple chiffon riding silver drafts; I'd bet it’s a terrifying place circled and swooped upon by impatient condors. <br />
<br />
The oldest is tall. <br />
<br />
Which is to say nothing of her personality.<br />
<br />
Unless to note how she occasionally climbs into the sapling boughs of herself to observe in her sisters the shortness she's been molting all the while. Except to mention the way in which she still looks up to find candy on on top of the refrigerator but now must learn to look down to find scraps of treasure on an ever-receding floor.<br />
<br />
Or to say, she is broaching her beauty on the awkward side of grace.<br />
<br />
These kids have parents.<br />
<br />
A mother whose beauty is a brooch worn meekly on the other side of the jacket she wears to teach other mother's children, an emblem of kindness and patience. Their mother is my sister-in-law by whose friendship I've been graced even before serendipity steered her my brother's way. She let me help cook despite my being more suited to eat; more satisfyingly still, she let me retain my status of glad dish doer despite my being more apt as dish breaker.<br />
<br />
A father breaching his beauty on the could-not-give-a-spoonful-of- oatmeal side of gray. The good side, reader. Not the Just For Men side. Their father is my brother of the nick-of-time branch that time I was swinging like a horse thief from a rope swing over a gulch of jagged train track ballast and teen-tossed bottles. <br />
<br />
My brother of the time he met my wife and I that time in Memphis . . . last week to make the exchange. My corporeal being for a week without bedmate snoring. Don't believe her if says she didn't make the trade underwritten by enthusiasm. All other possibilities aside, she was reluctant to agree to the trip, what with me being fresh off a round of chemo and a face acquaintance with a bathroom sink. Notwithstanding recent events the drop-off/ pick-up was made in Memphis. Actually, in agreement of one of terms of the trip, the traditional rendezvous was rerouted to circumnavigate the perennial construction constrictions of I-40/ I-55. And to eat at Fuddruckers, naturally, a collective hour out of<br />
the way according to Google Maps and in accord with my inability to comprehend the caprice Google Maps, let's call it a buck-thirty.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Now With Shakespearean Gristle to Beef Things Up</span></i></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
6/ 5/ 14</div>
<br />
Why such a travel-time-busting locale? Reader, do you enjoy burgers? Prize deliciousness? Have you ever been to a Fuddruckers? If no then to this hamburgery go, and quickly too. Farewell.<br />
<br />
Anybody left?<br />
<br />
Let's the Rest [sing] Hey non nonny nonny, hey nonny, ask needless questions, expect needless answers.<br />
<br />
If still nonplussed and/ or now offended, let me try a different angle.<br />
<br />
There was a time my brother and I worked at the Fuddruckers in Birmingham. He in the kitchen helping me flip meats and shake Buffalo wings and expedite orders when slammed, me on the floor helping him run food and buss tables and sweep stations when in the weeds. We joining forces at closing time against the inch-deep grease under the grills and the filthy-shoe marred and tarred white tiles in the dining room. We expertly constructing our signature burgers and rendezvousing on the patio under the awning sweating in full view of disillusioned guests and disappointed managers. Break-time considerations and an ill-advised location for me and my brother even way back when.<br />
<br />
There's proprietary mustard, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love,<br />
remember. And there is a fixins bar, that's for thoughts.<br />
<br />
Why? Reminiscence and nostalgia, Reading Friends.<br />
<br />
And so, an hour and fifteen minutes (on average) south of Memphis, TN, my brother from Mountainburg, AR and I (and my wife in reluctant cahoots) from Alabaster, AL, meet in Southhaven, MS to eat at a restaurant stashed away in the corner of a sketchy Harrah's Casino, itself stashed away just beyond the babiest babbling inlet of the Mighty Mississip'. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-84405299057527950012014-06-01T10:49:00.002-05:002014-06-01T11:00:17.980-05:00gator from the deli<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Lumber like the wind"</i>-- Alex, Walking With Dinosaurs</div>
<br />
<br />
People literately come up to me none of the time and ask me, “Considering your acute and chronic sedentary lifestyle, how do you maintain your weight such that when they ask you at the clinics if your weight is still the same you can say "yes"?”<br />
<br />
And so I have never been compelled to answer but gladly <i>would</i> to emphasize my achievement:<br />
“Consider, also, I am in a satiety battle with my steroids literally all the time-- give or take a few figurative times.”<br />
<br />
Asked, compelled, or gladly, I will share anyway, of course. Exercise.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, I am somewhat aided by my disability, not as much as I am impeded, but not entirely without effect, lightening-the-load-wise.<br />
<br />
My legs being of opposing minds and different skill sets with respect to forward movement and balance, there are certain counter-measures required for safety and desired for fruitful activity. Taking these precautions in many ways exerts more energy. There are no easy ambles. No distance-efficient strides. Each small step is a plant and push.<br />
<br />
My right parietal lobe being no strict landlord and neither temporal lobes being opposed to subletting or partying, my spatial recognition seems to be getting crowded-out by the trans-lobal interlopers or gypsy-sacked and absconded with to foreign glials.<br />
<br />
One the most discombobulating occurrences of these conjunction malfunctions is what I'll call the widening gyre of a routine function. For instance, doing dishes is kind of my jam. My chore <i>tous les jours</i>. [I will not say pardon my French, I will not say it in a pinch, I will not, I swill not, nor shall I flinch.] Exkyoose my Seuss.<br />
<br />
Dish-doing is easy. Especially for a long time food service guy. Doing domestic dishes is almost laughable by comparison, it’s almost fun. When I plug in the usefulness factor, the onus is often a pleasure. If you know I’m stopping by, leave a little stack. I’ll stay for dinner, don’t even bother to protest. Even if we had casserole. No . . . especially if.<br />
<br />
But in these multiform days, the cakewalk chore is becoming a cakewalk of the church fundraising sort. Because surely the cabinets are moving. The last time the plates were ninety degrees and three steps away relative to the dishwasher. And this time—eighty-five and four, just enough deviation to need to<br />
calibrate.<br />
<br />
They seem to be small degrees, and they are, but when confusion is combined with effort, there are circles to be done. Circles to be done on disparate legs. Therefore, circles made wider by a push exceeding the plant. The pivot cannot hold. The plates will fall.<br />
<br />
For the time being, this pitiable orbit is only contained by the open door of the dishwasher and the stone counter beneath the plate cabinet; but as I carom off the sink then by incidence into the stove, this wobbly sphere could form a weebly cytoplasm, could paisley itself between the bar and the fridge, then slip all sci-fi into a glioblastomic infinity, through all which eternity I am damned to vaguely remember where the steak knives go.<br />
<br />
At any rate, doing circles burns calories.<br />
<br />
As usual, there are dietary concerns. And here, in lieu of putting this example into practice, I'll put it in the second person. You won't mind, will you? I won't.<br />
<br />
A diet high in salty foods will reveal itself about the chin, cheeks, and jowls. Too conspicuous for your liking. Here are some options for reducing sodium intake: 1] Quit substituting pork fatback for lean ground beef in your Double Cheese Chili Mac Hamburger Helper. 2] Eat a carrot (not an option). 3] Here’s my go-to alternative: grow a big fat beard on your big fat face. Low to no testosterone? Not a problem. Raid your church’s living nativity storage closet, shoo the goat, and borrow a magi beard or three; or your University of Liberal and Suspect Arts Theatre Department’s prop closet, shoo the coeds, and co-opt a Tevye; or your uncle’s Uncle Chik’s secret closet, shoo the goat, and nab his late wife’s bearded lady get-up.<br />
<br />
If diet and exercise aren’t cutting it, try an aesthetic technique—a little <i>trompe l’oeil</i> (beg pardon). For example: since black is famously slimming and orange is the new black, go to a Bass Pros Shop, get you some gator from the deli, and bag yourself a hunter’s vest. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-52490314473214013912014-05-18T18:14:00.001-05:002014-05-18T18:14:42.276-05:00opalescent images<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Minority, Me</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
5/ 12/ 14</div>
<br />
Location, location, location. That's what they say right? As to where you want to set up shop, as to where you want to rest your head at the end of a hard day, as to where you want to end-up when you stumble and fall in the men's room. I can speak to the first two as well as most, I imagine; however, I can't imagine not being in the minority of those who can speak to the third.<br />
<br />
Location: high traffic area, safe part of town.<br />
Location: low traffic area, safe part of town.<br />
Location: low traffic area.<br />
<br />
Following a 7:30 MRI in the old wing, my wife and I make the 10 minute, often grueling (for her) trek to the nearer (to civilization) wing where my neuro- oncologist holds court on the 5th floor; this for an 8:30 appointment to interpret the opalescent images ne'er-do-welling inside my skull. My MRI had gone smoothly and quickly. We were making great time. No rush.<br />
<br />
We exited the elevator and I requested a pitstop at the immediately adjacent to themen's room. I put the brakes on my wheels, grunt myself to my feet, look both ways (now your basic pedestrian), and take up my cane for what should be a relatively pedestrian visit to the john.<br />
<br />
To make a short story shorter: I did what I came to do, about-faced, and proceeded toward the sink to wash my hands as good citizens will and then, as bad walkers are prone, I tripped on my lagging left foot. It was one of those slow-motion instances. As I went floor-ward, I sensed mine was an exquisite swan-fall, imbued with grace and elegance. As the left side of my face, obeying all applicable laws of physics, caromed off sink's countertop, I was disabused of any such sense.<br />
<br />
Wince but don't weep, empathic reader. I came to rest in a low traffic area--a location which is theoretically the most prime of all the men's room real-estate . . . floor-wise.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Well Hi Dee Ho and Lah Tee Da</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
Cringe but don't cry, sensitive souls. I came to rest at a hospital--a pretty choice spot . . . bodily injury-wise. Within a minute (although I'm not entirely sure, I had just taken a non-malleable, immovable bit of architecture to head), a knowledgable orderly, a knowledgeable nurse, a concerned citizen, and two of my hyper-knowledgeable nurse practitioners. After all, we were about a hundred yards away from my doctor so I was in good hands, even better when the paramedics arrived. Neck braced, body prodded. Brief biography provided upon request: name, DOB. Location? Kirklin Clinic. Located at? UAB hospital. Precisely? Bathroom floor.<br />
<br />
Giggle but don't guffaw, peanut gallery. Low traffic area. Pretty exclusive neighborhood.<br />
<br />
Beyond that . . . a bonus. A record breaker-- if not to be entered into Guinness' book (they've been contacted) then logged in my personal annals--shortest ambulance ride, as the crow flies . . . about a hundred yards away.<br />
<br />
So short was the distance I needed to travel that just as soon as I had been boarded, gurneyed, hoisted, situated, oxygenated, re-quizzed, transported, admitted, braceleted, transferred, asleep, back-to- sleep, discharged, wheeled, elevated, recepted, checked-in . . . whiz bang, toot sweet . . . I was meeting with my doctor not four hours later in our usual location. <br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Upshot</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
According to my doctor and MRI images, there were no new tumors nor old ones asking for elbow room; and even though my list of expressed clinical concerns (worsening confusion, memory, vision, etc.) was pretty exhaustive (and it occurs to me just now that a particularly prominent issue went unmentioned--my very recent face-<i>splonk</i> and subsequent brief hospital stay) my Avastin and chemo course will continue and, if it maintains its current success, conceivably be suspended after two more rounds. At which point, we'll go back to the medicate and monitor dance-- a turn for the pleasanter considering my present yarksome state.</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-79802939801621192302014-05-11T14:56:00.000-05:002014-05-11T14:56:16.298-05:00in which dollar tree is exalted<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>This Is What It Looks Like When Doves Die</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
3/ 30/14</div>
<br />
I've seen a lot in my days, but not these.<br />
Best, I see my crosswords propped on a thigh,<br />
My thigh, don't get me wrong. My femur twig,<br />
A mighty easel for a figurer<br />
<br />
Of the grandiose. Worst, I see the girls<br />
In tights sampling toothpick teriyaki.<br />
Don't get me wrong, they are in between<br />
The middle-distance menu<br />
<br />
And me. I leer at middle distances<br />
Apparently and ogle stir-fried rice. <br />
These days--through a squint diffuser,<br />
Through otiose spectacles equipped<br />
<br />
With dark glass for UV susceptible<br />
Eyes like these blue beauties of mine,<br />
My onion mourners, lascivious<br />
And blind. Don't get me wrong; I am not blind.<br />
<br />
I see clues as well as anyone,<br />
I detect yens to simply be seen.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><> </div>
<br />
My vision. Sometimes contributive, sometimes deleterious. Though probably not needing an un- rhymed quasi-sonnet for a journal introduction, it is getting more pitiful. When contributive, it is actually integral. Otherwise even my lurching days would be over. Gone, those halcyon days of only <i>almost</i> falling every time I put my worst foot forward. As for making it to the Olive Garden restroom all by my big boy lonesome, arrivederci. <br />
<br />
My cane keeps me upright. My hands keep me steady. My vision, though undeniably pitiful, keeps me in the bipedaling game. Whether by scootch or sidle, as long as I can see the cobblestone below by the gas lamp above, I'll see you in the middle distance. <br />
<br />
When deleterious, my vision fibs. It says, "The handrail is hip-high. Use it. Reach. Relax."<br />
<br />
A dove alights on a wire in the far distance.<br />
<br />
Nearer, The Dollar Tree beckons, "Come feast your eyes on my wares. Walk in wanting, walk around<br />
needing, walk out set for life."<br />
<br />
A second dove alights on the wire in the far distance.<br />
<br />
I stumble and catch myself by my funny-bone, exclusively. My vision snickers [King Size, $1, come feast, Regular Size, $1, come do alright by yourself], "I said hip, didn't I? Would you believe I meant to say thigh-high?"<br />
<br />
The first dove dies, plummets from the wire in the far distance; the second dove dies, plummets. Two falling lovers veering for each other. Birds of a feather fluttering together. Wings merge. A pair of full breasts in mythic tandem. They rise, fly toward me from a now reasonable distance. I arise, my funny bone still quite the comedian. They are one, majestic plurality of Being, now in the middle distance becoming . . . oh, nope, just one, that first one, I guess . . . yep, yep, a little iffy around the edges . . . but yes no, a fat, singular scat machine gearing up over my head.<br />
<br />
My vision comes clean [42oz Prell, $1, Salmonella-B-Gone, $1, Sackful of snackable Snickers, $ 1], "I'm sorry, but that was good, you should have seen yourself."<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Deluge</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
4/ 6/ 14 </div>
<br />
My drool.<br />
<br />
Sometimes in thin, translucent bungees. Sometimes in meandering rillets.<br />
<br />
I'll move on but suffice it to say: Ponce may have missed the fountain of youth, but I've stumbled into the one of decrepitude.<br />
<br />
[Don’t picture this as incessant, it's mostly just when laying down and only from corner; I’ll let you when a cascade simile becomes more accurate.]<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A Golden Opportunity for Velcro </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
4/ 28/ 14</div>
<br />
I lost my wallet on Friday. Because I left the house. On Saturday, I was none the wiser. Because I rarely leave the house on consecutive days. I left the house on Sunday so became wise to the missing wallet. Because to leave the house is to conceivably need my credit or debit cards, but I'm nearly always with someone in possession of identical ones to those. I'm much less likely to need my insurance card and less likely still to need my driving license because I've ridden on an ambulance a time or two more than I've driven a car in the last couple of years. <br />
<br />
Sunday, Monday--some the wiser, none the richer. A sprawling, educated search availed not. A delimited (cards would have to be cancelled soon) yet more focused search prospered not. <br />
<br />
But, around here, hope springs temporal. Because last week I lost an upright bottle of balsamic vinaigrette under my chin. Directly. As in, if anyone had asked me after I asked them if I had just asked them if anyone had seen where I put the balsamic vinaigrette I might have nodded and knocked the bottle flat with my chin at which point it would have been under my nose. Directly. As in . . .<br />
<br />
So, around here, maybe hope springs ephemeral; but we don't often lose it, and I'm holding it out for my wallet.<br />
<br />
Well and good. The cards had to be cancelled which brings me seamlessly to my key topic. My speech's recognizability as human on the telephone. I have spoken on the phone as many times in the last 36.5 hours as I have in the last 365 days. As my pinch (and lovely, of course) phone-talker, my wife tried to cancel the cards and have new ones issued; but she could only lay the groundwork I would have to supply the permit. Name, date of birth, home address, last four of social, affirmative to yes or no question, "you're welcome and thank you, too."<br />
<br />
Recognizably human and in almost as discernibly English as the middle-Asian gentleman being of service to me at Capitol One, if I dare say so myself. And I did and I am none the wiser, richer, or fluenter; however, I will soon be one stiff new wallet the prouder, and one glistening new photo-ID the hilariouser.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-79326692642937255772014-05-04T10:28:00.000-05:002014-05-04T10:48:28.351-05:00banditry <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
[An offering composed solely in epigraphs; before you applaud my diligence, know that I stockpile these things with a view to borrow them when one might buoy or bolster my own work somewhere down the line. I have tried to approximate a typical journal entry with respect to overall theme and semi-cohesiveness within the post itself—the former being a tinge gloomy, the latter being hit and miss. Either way, it's a stretch. Sources at the end.]<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>“Are You Done With That and May I Use It?”</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
2/ 29/ 14</div>
<br />
<i>Mysterious Preamble:</i><br />
<br />
My friends, we had a hard time as youths; we suffered from youth itself as though it were a serious disease <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><1></span> Art is sad and/ life is vapid [but] can we thumb/ our nose at the very sea? <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><2></span>. It seems to [me] that life [is] immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man [be] carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we commit our first major sin at seven . . . ruin ourselves for love or hate at ten . . . [clutch at redemption] on a fifteen- year-old death-bed? <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><3></span><br />
<br />
<i>Tiptoe Into Topic:</i><br />
<br />
Having had to encounter single-handed during [my] period of eclipse many physical dangers, [I] was aware of the most dangerous element common to them all: of the crushing, paralyzing sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats a man struggling with natural forces, alone, far from the eyes of [my] fellows. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><4></span><br />
<br />
Have you ever hoped so much it hurt, literally hurt like . . . like bruised ribs, and then, finally, letting go and the air comes rushing in, and you can breathe so never mind hope because at least you can breathe?<br />
<br />
Never had bruised ribs?<br />
<br />
Well they hurt and it’s hard to breathe. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><5></span><br />
<br />
I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories like these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><6></span><br />
<br />
I wanted the moments of my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. I might as well try to catch time by the tail. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><7></span> But that’s always the way with looking back. You either . . . come to terms with the madness of living a life at random or treat<br />
the concatenation of all your yesterdays as a lifelong strand of nonsense. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><8> </span><br />
<br />
It is not [me] the novelist and me the poet, but one man interpreting life as emotion. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><9></span> All [I can do is] hope . . . eat, sleep and cringe before [my] omens. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><10></span><br />
<br />
<i>Tangent</i>:<br />
<br />
Your eyes, too, must be readjusted , for/ Here people, owl-like, see only by dark, and grope by day.<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <11></span> “The world,” she thought, “is full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them.” <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><12> </span><br />
<br />
[But] in a world that contains the present moment why discriminate? Let it exist, this bank this beauty, and I, for one instant, steeped in pleasure . The sun is hot. I see the river. I see trees specked and burnt in the autumn light… far away a bell tolls, but not for death. There are bells that ring for life. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><13></span> Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy:--in the force of imagination that . . . exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud pictures. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><14></span><br />
<br />
<i>Anecdote</i>:<br />
<br />
I live . . . that is to say . . . [have] not yet died—in a ruinous place. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><15></span> When my path was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil . . . <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><16></span> all day, I wandered in the glittering metaphor/ for which I could find no referent. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><17></span><br />
<br />
Spade plucked his cigarette from between his lips. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><18></span> ‘In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak . . .’<br />
<br />
‘. . . but for that route thou must have long legs . . . <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><19></span> [to] discover if there is anything to be got at last for the said grim and time-bang’d conch.’ <br />
<br />
‘I don’t believe it or disbelieve it, [Jonathan]. I don’t know a damned thing about it.’ <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><20></span><br />
<br />
<i>Poem</i>:<br />
<br />
To be occupied or conquered is nothing—to remain is all. --Anne Sexton<br />
The shadow whose lack you feel . . . Friday’s tongue. – J.M. Coetzee<br />
Nothing is so mute as a god’s mouth. – Rainer Maria Rilke<br />
<br />
<br />
O God, stop frightening me with your terrors. -- Job<br />
Whether for misery or joy -- D. H. Lawrence<br />
When I’m dead, know . . . . I’ve kissed and cried over this. -- Charles Darwin<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Pithy Conclusion/ Magical Reprisal</i><br />
<br />
We are oppressed at being humans, humans with our own real bodies and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace, and we keep trying to be some sort of fairy-tale universal beings <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><21></span> -- the chief poetic energy . . . floating among cloud[s]. <span style="font-size: xx-small;"><22></span> <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Works Borrowed From:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><1> Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><2> O’Hara, Frank.“Night Thoughts in Greenwich Village” Collected Poems.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><3> Greene, Graham. The Heart of the Matter.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><4> Conrad, Joseph. Almayer's Folly. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><5> Me. The Gist of Elijah. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><6> Jones, Lloyd. Mister Pip.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><7> Jean-Paul, Sartre. Truth and Existence.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><8> Me. The Gist of Elijah.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><9> Moore, Marianne. “Picking and Choosing”.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><10> Bowles, Paul. The Sheltering Sky.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><11> Warren, Robert Penn. “Inevitable Frontier” The Collected Poems.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><12> Forster, E. M. A Room With a View.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><13> Woolf, Virginia. The Waves.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><14> Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><15> Dickens, Charles. Bleak House.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><16> Job 29:6</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><17> Robert Penn, Warren. “Time as Hypnosis”.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><18> Hammet, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><19> Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><20> Hammet, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><21> Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes From the Underground.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><22> Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda.</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-52147953997192273952014-04-27T18:13:00.000-05:002014-04-27T18:18:26.096-05:00obviating paper-cuts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Obviating Paper-Cuts</i> </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
4/ 18 / 14</div>
<br />
<br />
“<i>And then suddenly there was no more music only the scratching of the needle on the revolving disc</i>.” Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point<br />
<br />
I have reached a significant milestone in my writerly life. I have made my last submission for publication consideration. The process wherein I have tried to discover by research or happenstance a literary journal or arts review that seemed to publish poems and stories with similar styles and sensibilities as my own. That sounds more professional than it really was for me which is not to say I wasn't earnest in my efforts. I wanted to be published. It's thrilling to see my words in print or online--words wrought with the hope of doing them justice, words accompanying my name into the marketplace to be scrutinized.<br />
<br />
My name. Jonathan H. Scott. The "H" is for Harold. That's right kindergarten gigglers, junior high smirkers--Harold after my grandfather who died just weeks before I was born. I am proud to have my name out there, just think, my name known briefly and even though in the tiny world where poetry is deemed to still serve purposes, to even still exist in proper terms.<br />
<br />
Some writers insist they write solely for its own sake. How else bail-out "the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions" (William Wordsworth) when it sloshes into the hulls of our moody souls? And I trust those people, never mind the tongue in my cheek. How else trust my own motives when I've been so willing to set my writing adrift into the unforgiving sea of jaded editors with languishing graduate degrees.<br />
<br />
To get back to it, I have made my last submission. At some sooner or later point, I will receive my last rejection; at some point, sure, an acceptance might roll-in, against all odds, and if posthumously then . . . what a gas! An acceptance will come, theoretically, which will be my last; if fact, I may well have already received it. certainly the next will be my last. Don't worry, instructions will be left to the executor of my authorial endeavors as to how to gratefully accept the honor and patiently await the one or two contributors copies in which my work will appear. In my mailbox . . . hint: It opens on hinges, protects bawdy catalogs from the elements.<br />
<br />
I am somewhat saddened by this inevitability. I am somewhat relieved by its arrival. But I am in no way overcome by maudlin sentiment. I'm fine, literature will be fine, poetry will survive, as will my name. Fur and far.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, saddened. Because, I am leaving a community of unwitting compatriots, all of us striving to achieve a modicum or more of our dreams to write and call ourselves writers and, having dared as much already, continue to write. Each of us annealed by the vagaries in our tiny worlds of observation and reportage--the poetry and the process. <br />
<br />
Nonetheless, relieved. Because the process consumed the poetry. It became a chore: the scouring of my catalog for decent poems, the winnowing of those for good poems, the sieving of which leaves presently personal favorites vulnerable as advance guard for the merely<br />
decent. It's just a whole ordeal, is all I'm saying, a chore of laundry proportions.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, not overcome by sentiment. Because at the end of the day, herecat the end of this authorette era of mine, time is sparse, wearing gossamer, and probably best spent determining its value and determined to spend it accordingly.<br />
<br />
This farcical poem that I wrote several years should have given me sooner pause. (It has to have been several years; just look at the nods the USPS and paper products.)<br />
<br />
"Submission (submission)"<br />
<br />
<br />
The tongue that is cut by licking the gummy envelope<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Is the one bitten when others speak of credits.<br />
<br />
Include a brief biography, awards, previous publications—<br />
No problem, finished, now what?<br />
Self (as opposed to an agent) Addressed (as in to my parent’s house)<br />
Stamped (as in Scarlet Letter) Envelope (the noun, not the verb)<br />
<br />
Never the verb in the world of things--<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>One who stuffs words<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Into little spaces like so much<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(too little)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>cushioning into the throw (as in away)<br />
pillow.<br />
<br />
The tongue that praises the not-the-licky-kind postage stamp<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Is the one in the cheek of the aspiring (as in lungs filling with water)<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Writer who writes<br />
Thank you for your consideration (deliberation over the extent to which appreciation<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Is to be regarded)<br />
I look forward (where else?) to hearing from you soon (before I die).<br />
Sincerely (sincerely),<br />
<br />
My name here.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-10856410600847007822014-04-19T14:40:00.001-05:002014-04-19T14:40:14.655-05:00vivid and vague<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Novelty Like No Other</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
3/ 14/ 14 </div>
<br />
Here are the first six paragraphs of a novel I started in December of 2009 and finished in January of 2011, inasmuch as I ever feel done with a piece of prose fiction. It is called “The Gist of Elijah” and I think this excerpt belongs here in my journal. But to belong is a feeling, to <i>have</i> belonged is a hope. This might as well belong here.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i>He feels like he’s suffocating in the thickest, sweatiest humidity of his life. The words from the left page are oozing into the crease of the book’s spine, and the word’s from the right page are dripping over the edge onto the floor. He wants very badly to finish reading. The absurd words, leaking and smudging, are fighting his small will, and he knows it’s a waste of what remains in him to fight. He will never finish. Three times he has tried. Three times he has been distracted. So much time recently and so close to the end.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>He keeps his place by draping the book across his chest. His chest is still rising, if slightly. Half of the ceiling is lit by long fluorescent bulbs. One is flickering. He thinks the trouble is with him. He blinks. It flickers. It does not occur to him that the trouble may not be with him. Because the trouble is always with him these days. Nothing rings but his ears. Nothing reverberates but his laboring heart. He looks to the unlit half of the ceiling and curses his eyes with a small sibilant sigh. It exhausts him to sigh.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>He wants to sleep. A television is on in another room. The theme song is just familiar enough to drive him crazy trying to place it. He can’t so he imagines his own favorite song playing in his head. After a few measures, the song turns to water and babbles as a brook to something larger than itself. Two grey clouds settle over each eye. He thinks of rain, of his row of mint, of a rack of lamb, of Christ the Shepherd, of Psalm 23, of still waters, of rain, of grey clouds. He lets the shadows lull him to sleep.</i><br />
<br />
That was how Elijah Stenson died, according to Elijah Stenson. The doctors said he had been dead for three minutes before he bolted upright and yelled, “Leave my liver be!”<br />
<br />
Stenson died for good seven months after he died for three minutes. In the interim, he hired Justin Latterly to write his biography. Within five minutes of meeting him, the old man had told Justin about the false-alarm demise. And that was all for the day. He sent the young man home.<br />
<br />
“Write that up and come back Friday,” Stenson said. “If I croak before we finish this thing, that’s how it ends.”<br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: center;">He croaked before they finished.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
This is an excerpt from a query letter in which I have just left off groveling to a prospective publisher and have now moved-on to the synopsis portion—in many ways, harder than writing the novel itself. For context in this entry, in the novel and possible insight into the rest of however much of the rest of my memoir. It certainly belongs here.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
<br />
An old man dies and lives to tell about it. Unfortunately for Elijah Stenson, he is hounded by a past that he is reluctant to reveal. Desperate for a friend, Stenson hires Justin Latterly to help him tell his story. Justin is a disillusioned grad student and night-shift grill cook who’s own pile of problems is mounting daily. In an attempt to escape this reality, Justin accepts the ghostwriting job with high hopes—too high, as it turns out.<br />
<br />
The narrative follows a multi-corded braid of interactions with a variety of characters—each with their own crisis to ply. A girlfriend’s betrayal, a sister’s tragedy, a mother’s illness, and a strange woman’s incessant vagaries each threaten to topple Justin into an ever-near despair. Meanwhile, the writing project is going nowhere. Over the course of six months, the old man’s reticence and penchant for distraction has Justin on the verge of madness.<br />
<br />
The story resolves when, for the second time in his life, Elijah Stenson dies. Although Justin never finishes Elijah’s story, he discovers that it’s in the gist of the story that the moral is learned.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
And this here.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<><><></div>
<br />
I will croak before I finish this thing. A virtual no-brainer by virtue of this thing’s nature—a chronicle of dying until I die or become unable to keep chronicling. So, unlike Elijah Stenson, I won’t really have the luxury of an ambush, unless from a bed frame’s corner or an orb-spider’s web, that is.<br />
<br />
I have been feeling pretty crummy lately. Beyond the steady gripes. And I’ve been frequently<br />
returning to old Elijah’s deathbed—the one he gets up from. There is not much to say about the one that pins him down for the count. There rarely is about those kind. And herein flit my thoughts.<br />
<br />
Drawing from the experience of near-death at the Bluffs in Arkansas, I have had a sense of what this (Elijah’s) drawn-out version might entail—different circumstances yet probably approximate sensations, frantic streams of consciousnesses. Moreover, I’ve had a fascination with the scenario; but I’m not interested in resurrection and arising with a tale to tell. I'm lying back and telling mine now.<br />
<br />
Fascination? A haunting, recurring, daydream, now vivid now vague. At the risk sounding more macabre than intended, I’m curious about the vaporous zone between slipping-in and slipping-out. What wild ideas without conscious pinpoint, what unprecedented rows of mint, what words I would use to describe them but pass with me into which element—my first guess is carbon but I suppose hydrogen has dibs. To me, it’s the outer limits of my cherished imagination either drawing its most ignominious blank or conjuring its most sublime vision.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-36545449520930559632014-04-13T10:32:00.002-05:002014-04-13T10:42:45.323-05:00tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Dignity Preferred, Alas Deferred</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
3/ 10/ 14</div>
<br />
Avastin Day:<br />
<br />
<br />
Wake at first alarms. The wife's bedside table intoning some preliminary o'clock, clearing its throat for the official wake-up call due not even <i>she</i> knows when. The son's rapid fire crickets silenced with a swat--snooze once, he'll be fine, twice, he'll be frantic in the shower, three times, he'll miss breakfast and start the day frustrated.<br />
<br />
Rise when the alarums subside and the excursions begin: school, work, activity. Now available, I know, for I have been counting flushes and footsteps, I use the toilet with an urgency which woke with me back around Preliminary o’clock, AM. On any other day, I walk crookedly and arrive eventually at the Kuerig, make (read: wearily push a button hoping to have wearily put down a mug at some point prior) cup of medium roast. I detach a banana, pocket a cereal bar, and walk shakily back down the hall, past the bathroom, and get situated in front of the “news”—involving sports, involving terror, involving sparsely-concealed inventiveness. Of course there are more morning details but not to follow here.<br />
<br />
Because this is Avastin day. I seem to recall. My short term memory capacity is on the decline, most noticeably in cases of the next day’s plans for school, work, activity . . . for whom those plans apply is rarely me; but just in case I’m be in charge of oven preheating, casserole inserting, cooking time inputting, I like to apprised, if only to forget forthwith. Forgotten plans for tomorrow—classic cases of memory escape. Of others, more in upcoming entries because they have become more salient in relation to the progression of my condition. So, as only crossword puzzles and I say, “Anon (with ‘more’).”<br />
<br />
One morning detail on Avastin day has already been taken care of. Partially. It occurs to me with a sigh and eye-roll. Once again I have thoughtlessly emptied my bladder without a urine sample cup. I will pee again before 2:00 PM. Surely. It’s only 7:30 AM. There’s coffee in the queue, juice to join in an hour or so, water and/ or tea at some point. I will pee again and then I’ll fill my cup.<br />
<br />
But this is Avastin day. When I ask her, my wife confirms the date; when I ask her after another sigh, she affirms that she’s in charge of dinner. Under Avastin day sort of pressure, I very well may not pee again. And if I don’t before I get to the clinic, all those preloaded beverages will not be well enough primed by 2:00 PM to serve the purpose. In fact, cannot be well enough primed.<br />
<br />
To explain, here’s a grim tale.<br />
<br />
There once was a man whose color was peach. He knew of blues and browns and yellows and many more, he had even met a silver and was jealous. On peach days, his day, he was driven to a squat building on wheels. There was a time when he would have proudly driven himself to the squat building<br />
on wheels but after a series of debatable events, he relied on graces for a time. Until a time when he’d no longer be peach.<br />
<br />
Every morning, the man had an important yet simple message waiting for him. Was today a blue day, a brown day, a yellow day or one of the others' days? Silver’s day? He hoped not—such was the man whose color was peach’s admiration for the man whose color was silver. Or was it peach day? As it had been on that very first day.<br />
<br />
On that very first day of being driven to the squat building on wheels, the man discovered a simple yet important detail waiting for him. Even though it was just the first day, the man already knew why he had come. He had come to pee in a cup.<br />
<br />
Inside the squat building on wheels, the man whose color was peach was greeted by a fellow whose torso was huge and whose smile seemed inappropriate, quite frankly, all things considered, given the circumstances of the hour.<br />
<br />
Anon, the fellow whose torso was huge and whose smile seemed inappropriate, quite frankly, all things considered, given the circumstances, of the hour opened a door for the man whose color was peach. The man entered. The fellow followed . . . and watched.<br />
<br />
Ever after, there was a man whose color was blush.<br />
<br />
Every other week there was a day whose name was Avastin. On days whose name was Avastin, the man whose color was now and ever after blush knew what he had to do. He had to pee in a cup. And on most days whose name was Avastin, he remembered. He remembered, quite frankly because his color was, after all, blush. But on some of those days, he forgot to pee in a cup beforehand and the man whose color was blush became the man who, quite mildly, was just oatmeal out of luck.<br />
<br />
Footnote: Years later, I've gone back to relying on the graces of others to tote me to and fro. I have not driven a car in over 3 years. It is illegal to drive in Alabama until 6 months after the driver's last seizure; beyond that, in my tenuous condition, it's plain ill-advised, regardless.<br />
<br />
Final note: I've been told that my color is blue.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-32812519612008505792014-04-07T19:52:00.000-05:002014-04-07T19:54:26.567-05:00yucksome?!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Celebrity!</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
3/ 7/ 14</div>
<br />
Nausea, headache, dizziness—they are the celebrity brain cancer complaints, the who's who on the multiform red carpet; for me, currently and thankfully, those are infrequent. Fatigue: that's my pet complaint these days. And I can't help but feel a little chippy like my lay-about fatigue might be perceived as a snub to their preeminence. <br />
<br />
Then again, they are not so special really--nothing nearly so special as human celebrities (and here I'm<br />
thinking, say, Kirk Cameron . . . uh . . . Shannon Doherty and uh . . . now I'm drawing a blank) --it's not as if these symptoms are exclusive to the tumorous; anyone can wake-up on any given day (as long as one has five or eleven items on ones to-do list critical to the successful completion of the whole week ahead) feeling yucksome on some level.<br />
<br />
So I am tired all the time. Tired like I've been looking at this pulsing cursor for 30 seconds with only just now something to show for it, tired. Tired like I can nod off over a meal like a suckling infant, tired. Tired like I would get out of bed to relieve myself of this impending cataclysm of bladder eruption but it's cold and everyone knows that cold air is denser than warm air which means a veritable wall of carob syrup to push through on my way so I'll just wait until noon, tired.<br />
<br />
Nausea, headache, dizziness. I get those too. In fact, I have one of my most faithful headaches right now; it begins in the afternoons behind my right eye until joined in a neighborly fashion behind my right temple; its a weak not even cursor pulsing headache, but it's my headache and I'll complain if I want to. Ditto my other Lesser Maladies. If not debilitating, they are certainly foreboding.<br />
<br />
For now, I am tired all the time. You may not know it to look at me unless you saw me doze off to my son's electronic compositions set at 11 a-la Spinal Tap on a just underway "trip" to the Publix down a pot-holey, neglected state highway. Unless you catch a glimpse of me chin to chest in the bread aisle. Or espy me here in bed propped against my armchair pillow slipping just-a-quick-nap-ward, about to stymie this hypnotic cursor. Good afternoon. Sweet dreams. See you at bedtime.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Asterisk? </i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
3/ 8/ 14</div>
<br />
If gambling on baseball park concessions, would the following Texas Hold 'em/ suspect ingestion scenario be considered cheating?<br />
<br />
You contribute an ante of a Coke, fizzy if over-iced but you think "I shouldn't even be here, I've been off syrupy soda and midday caffeine for months, why risk it?"<br />
<br />
Too late now. The flop. Your son (because, unlike you in your wheelchair, he can see over the counter) is ordering a bag of popcorn. Ugh. You've played this hand before, before it played you, that is. You've already decided to muck when the action comes around but when all that comes is the concessionaire announcing a temporary outage of this selection. "But, if you'll wait," she says to my son with a wink. A tell? "Fresh corn is popping." A promising turn. The stakes are a little high but the others in line have checked around to you. And what about that wink? You raise. Some call. The pot is chopped.<br />
<br />
No blood.<br />
<br />
But sometime during the chute-and-bag and the butter-drizzle and the concession lady's hand-off to<br />
your son, the popcorn goes stale. You'll need your soda to hold up but your soda has flattened while you were away. Nonetheless, you feel committed by virtue of the brash popcorn contribution. You wisely check around until you feel it’s time to pull the trigger. You came to play, you came to win. You knew all along what you were willing to lose; you know every time brimming with perverse anticipation. Come what may.<br />
<br />
But first you sneak a peek at your pocketed pair of chemo-strength anti-nausea pills. You swallow one. Your son might have seen you but the river comes in the top of the eighth. You stretch nonchalantly, sorely regretting having forgotten all about both peanuts and cracker jacks, you push all in . . . first inning’s hot dog, last week’s bun, last year’s mustard. You came to win. Come what may. But the question remains did you cheat? And will it be worth it, that asterisk blighting your son's memory?</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-73249409732619310272014-03-30T09:17:00.000-06:002014-03-30T09:17:07.097-06:00fork tender feelings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Tender Assertions, Archetypal Intimations</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
3/ 4/ 14</div>
<br />
There’s a tasty little “southern experience” in the Birmingham area-- Dale’s Southern Grill. Having worked at Cracker Barrel for five years, I was not particularly impressed at first; but it was very near home when home was very near my parents, two miles and upstairs respectively, and it had become my mother’s go-to joint. She only eats veggies and fish (cause they don’t have any feelings, I think it’s something in the way. . .), she went for the cabbage, stayed for the salmon, and went back for the carrot soufflé. I went to be polite, stayed for the pork chops (cause <i>I</i> don’t have any feelings), and went back for the bran muffins. And back for the free meal . . . and quality time with mom.<br />
<br />
And I went back to Dale’s last week, my wife subbing nicely as supper companion she too for the veggies but not for the fish (cause, with no further sentiment necessary, fish grosses her out). I was determined to try something new, protein-wise. I wandered off the grill menu and strayed to comfort foods. I decided to try the meatloaf and so naturally I ordered the pot roast when our server re-arrived to re-inquire— me, the very picture of resolve. I think what clinched the flip-flop at the moment of crisis was the “fork-tender” claim. A juicy portion of meatloaf stands a good chance of leaving the kitchen as a crusty brick divvied from a mortar of ketchup. Age crusts all eventually. But fork-tender withstands the hardenings of time, becomes more tender in spite of it. Age will sponge all in due course but in such cases it will have to dole and dole and dole from deep-welled crockery of irreducible gravy.<br />
<br />
It is one thing to belabor a metaphor and quite another to double back and highlight the fact. Beat the horse then confess to PETA (cause <i>they</i> have <i>all</i> the feelings).<br />
<br />
Anyway, it's like I've been saying . . . Ouroboros. The serpent eating its own tail. A ubiquitous yet diversely depicted image seen across cultures and through millenniums symbolizing eternal recursion. The snake swallows itself for all time. This could represent infinite surety, safety and/ or protection, and just as easily infinite jeopardy, peril, and/ or vulnerability--thus ubiquitous yet diversely depicted.<br />
<br />
So . . . Ouroboros. I opened my mouth to order my food in the moment of crisis, the impromptu entree flip-flop affecting my nerves, my nerves affecting my recently much-improved ability to speak. I faltered, lost confidence and voice. Our server leaned-in, offering her ear. "What's that, hon?"<br />
<br />
In turn, I leaned-in, widening my mouth with "pot roast" defying utterance somewhere in the back. <br />
<br />
One more cock of the neck nearer and she said, "I'm sorry, I'm hard of hearing anymore." A polite, professional save but ringing true as well.<br />
<br />
Another slight lean into her then I unhinged my jaws and swallowed her head (voice muting ear), head which I have been choking down my gullet ever since and ever will--an un-gravied brick. If only I had stuck with meatloaf, I would never have been compelled to say, "That's OK, I'm hard of speaking anymore."<br />
<br />
But neigh, neigh, neigh . . . Ouroboros.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2644088546157096796.post-5332737672882994902014-03-23T12:34:00.000-06:002014-03-23T12:37:37.989-06:00intergalactic stereotactic <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Life’s Malarkey</i></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
2/ 25/ 14</div>
<br />
Rocket science and brain surgery remain the standard up to which the luminosity of the rest of our wittedness is to be held. As in, “You dolt, it’s a grilled cheese sandwich, it’s not . . . exactly rocket science;” they remain the earmark by which the knuckled-protrusivity of the rest of our headedness is to be compared. As in, “You inveterate mome, it’s cheese toast, it’s not exactly . . . brain surgery. Brain tumor biopsies are both.<br />
<br />
I’m not saying the rest of us are moronic (though a few of us do seem to be aggressively so) just that most of us undoubtedly apply our unique geniuses to other boggling pursuits. It’s like a great poster once said: “Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater than yours. Albert Einstein.” Or, put less myopically-- forthcoming physics-wise--by a nearby nail-clinging kitten: “Hang in there, kid, you and I are going places.”<br />
<br />
I'm saying that the science and the surgery combined astound me.<br />
<br />
My first biopsy opened this wonderment when it opened my skull. I was apprised of this surgical necessity but not as prepared for its aftermath as I would have liked. Or so I though at the time. In retrospect, who knows how petrified I'd have been if more prepared, how much more resolutely resisting the fog settling in my cranium when the time came for alphabet recital?<br />
<br />
"OK, wise-guy, now backward," this up from a rabbit hole, echo-ey.<br />
<br />
"Backways around?"<br />
<br />
"Right. Starting with Z,Y,X . . ." from a teapot, itty-bitty-ily.<br />
<br />
"Got ya. Z,Y,X, four, three, turquoise . . ."<br />
<br />
It's called craniotomy. It requires scalp-slitting, skull-splitting, and staple-fitting. And trauma. First came the typical post-op misery. A monumental thirst made more miserable for the assurance there was no quench in the offing— in case they needed to go back in. Shoot, for some ice chips you can go back in now. Next, an epic journey into delirium through nausea down into the abyss of head-lessness, and back up into redoubled thirst.<br />
<br />
"Now ice chips?" from a desolate soul.<br />
<br />
"Not yet," from a soulless soul. "How bout these little minty thingies you can chew on that they say works pretty good."<br />
<br />
"They say it, do they? Well, if <i>they</i> say it . . . stock me up!" from a realm nearly black beneath an undulating awning of bat wings, filled with the anguished moans of tortured janjiis.<br />
<br />
Then, the first of four ICU seizures. It seemed to immediately follow a series of beeps from my monitor. Nurses arrived with fitting concern. Kept me safe from myself, made some notes, went wherever it is they go. The second verse, same as the first, the beeps a little bit louder and the convulsions little bit worse. The nurses arrived from wherever it was they went.<br />
<br />
My mother arrived from thin air. Already praying and massaging my racked left-side. As the episode abated, not when it ceased (be it known), mom had questions for the nurses. My mother gathers no moss down the path of getting to bottom of things.When the third seizure struck, my sundry team of medical professionals did not panic, but did allow that they maybe should get more meds and a longer white coat involved.<br />
<br />
Two of the nurses left my bedside, my mother presuming, I presumed, en route to two red phones--one labeled "meds", one labeled "longer coat"; for her part, she picked up her ever-blinking gold phone and resumed her prayers. The third nurse jotted on my chart in a calm, conceivably pantomimed manner.<br />
<br />
My body settled by slow degrees. Mind and muscles were exhausted. The room narrowed and dimmed to yellow gray as my eyelids fell, unresisting. Time passed. I'm sure of it. I felt it moving from all sides, from all times--a post-seismic miracle with which I’m familiar though of which I’m not the least comprehending. Time passed soothingly forward, smoothly back like a farmhouse porch-swing; it levitated like a leaf in a gentle updraft and descended on its crackly umbrella of dead veins. Time passed when it passes, or passes when it passed. I'm sure of it.<br />
<br />
But when the beeps beep, first in a frenzy from the grog, then in piercing, staccato ricochet off the walls . . . rude. <br />
<br />
I think I had decided back then, but right now I cannot remember [how to spell remember] if I appreciated the warning beeps or if I’d have rather taken my shocks in the customary way—in the natural course of life’s malarkey. I've never had the “aura” or the metallic tastes which many epileptics talk about preceding an episode—their beeps, so to speak—so I still can’t say for sure; though I suspect an occasional heads-up would be nice. Especially while eating good BBQ or about to be discommoded while en-commode, so to speak.<br />
<br />
Comparatively, my second biopsy was a delight. For starters, it sounds cooler: stereo-tactic needle biopsy as opposed to craniotomy; it evokes a pretty nifty <i>Star Trek</i> vibe whereas craniotomy smacks of <i>Hannibal. </i><br />
<br />
Of course the “needle” prospect is off-putting. Gums and needles. Veins and needles. Brains and needles. Pines and needles, now that's the stuff you're looking for. Pins and needles, worst case scenario.<br />
<br />
As it turned out, the prep for the operation was the most “painful” part of the ordeal. I use the quotation marks because I've had knee surgery, appendix surgery, epididymus (I'll let Google do the heavy lifting on that) surgery, and the cranium one. Call it uncomfortable. Because in order to perform stereo-tactic biopsy the surgical team needs precise coordinates to access the target tumor and in order to do that they need real time images of the target brain and in order to do that they need the target human to keep his head still and (last one, I promise) in order to do that the surgical prep team must bolt a metal cage to the target head. I have pictures somewhere. Neo-Frankensteinian, classically ridiculous.<br />
<br />
Next, after the AMA mandated hour minimum between set and go, I was on my way to the operating room, rehearsing my ZYXs, lightly sedated and only locally anesthetized. I knew I was not to be fully knocked but had forgotten the implications--drill, needle, bore, resect, retract. Awake with the option to banter. A miracle with which I was utterly unfamiliar. <br />
<br />
But it's just like an erudite T-shirt of mine once told me: “One may say that the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. Albert Einstein.”<br />
<br />
P. S.<br />
<br />
Yes, rocket scientists and brain surgeons possess lofty minds, but never underestimate the unique genius of a perfect-cheese-sandwich maker. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01884256302440323099noreply@blogger.com0