The Time of Illness

I had two days off. No schedule for radiation, but
The tests for clotting factor went on as usual
Without me. I rested like a long distance runner
My drug fueled system humming along as if I ran
On chemicals alone. Did you know that Warfarin is
Rat poison? This is proof to Z that all medicine is poison
To me it means that someone found a really good use for
Rat poison. I take twice as much Warfarin as Z to keep me
From blowing a gasket, to keep my heart humming along
Like a clock that runs a bit too fast, but steady as she goes.
The bruises that cover my arms and legs don't bother me at all.

Z hemorrhaged again last night but refused to go to the hospital.
She determines that she just needs to cut back on the Warfarin
I ask her why and she says, "What can they do? All they can do is
Give me a transfusion." I wonder why that is such a bad idea. I want
Oxygen. I want oxygen rich blood. I think they might give her Oxygen
But keep my mouth shut. I took her fresh peach cobbler hot from the oven
Vanilla ice cream. She eats it as if she were a starving child and I choke back
The truth that the peaches were purchased at the grocery store and were only
99 cents a pound. I make up a perfectly plausible story about my neighbors friend
Drew who grows peaches in Southern Utah for peach brandy. He always has too many
Brings a bushel basket for the neighbor who passes plenty to me for fresh peach cobbler
Thankfully she doesn't ask about the ice cream. It is Bryer's All Natural, Natural vanilla
She eats it like a starving child. I took certified organic red potato soup, organic milk,
Watermelon cut into bite sized pieces and chilled. I know from having spent a lot of time
With Z that she does not get enough fluids to stay well hydrated. I liked the idea that when
She was in the hospital they pumped fluids into her veins. She says it made her swell. Well,
Yes, when the tissue is hydrated it plumps with pulsing life.

I'm a woman who takes a handful of pills every morning with her first mug of latte.
I don't do a lot of research on the drugs I take or study inserts for dire
Side effects.
Life has some nasty side effects. Life can kill you.
Don't we start dying from the moment we're born?
I took so many risks, still do, daring death to take me
Like a lover, who sees an opportunity when I sleep
I should be so lucky

So, the schedule is set for this week. Radiation every day
Clotting factor and food are on Z's agenda and mine
If all her radiation treatments are in the afternoon
I can take her, park the car and wait with a book
Patiently. I hope I live up to her expectations
I hope I don't disappoint her. Today it was peach
Cobbler and vanilla ice cream, tomorrow begins
The hard part, now that the tumor is bleeding
She's no longer just getting rid of the blood clots
In her lungs. Now the tumor is bleeding. Isn't that
A bad thing? I try not to show my extreme distress
I come home and take a handful of pills with my
Evening cup of Earl Grey Tea and smoke half a dozen
cigarettes. I resolve to keep on doing what I'm doing
As if it will protect me from her loss. What are the odds?

The Morning After the Party

Cyrus and Marly have a little conversation under the picnic table. Everything is cleaned and cleared and we survived the Fourth of July. Oh the joy of a peaceful Sunday in the back yard.




Marley tackles her boyfriend Segundo. She likes rough sex. Humm. Wonder how it is I end up with a little dog who plays rough with the boyfriend? She chases him, throws him down and has her way with him. Atta girl Marley.
My friend T who lives three houses away brings her Chihuahua, Seggie over to play with Marley and then he goes home and sleeps it off. Not Marley, she goes off to dog park with Ms M and Roscoe.

Oh to be a dog and live with me.

Party Prep

Ms M is having a Fourth of July party. I like this part of the party plans. The yard is picked up, the yard furniture arranged, the dogs snoozing in the late afternoon sun or investigating a spider. It's peaceful and pretty. I like the quiet before the fireworks or the crowds of festive drinkers. Cyrus needs to go out one last time before I give him his tranquilizer. The loud noises distress him terribly.

I will post a Do Not Disturb sign on my door and watch the Margaret Cho comedy special I taped on Showtime. That's what independence day means to me. Let the party begin!

Jazz on Saturday

Atmospherics

Atmospheric pressure is the force per unit area that is applied perpendicularly to a surface by the surrounding gas.


Yesterday when I was getting dressed to go get Z for her first radiation treatment we had a downpour. It was the kind of thunderstorm with great crashing thunder that pours buckets of cold rain. It rained so hard when I walked to the car my sleeveless top and khaki skirt got soaked and I was wading in ankle deep water. As I went through the gate I realized that the basement was probably flooding just then.

Every intersection on the way to Z's neighborhood was a lake, and oncoming cars didn't slow down enough to keep from creating a wave of spray. I remember once in my distant past going through an intersection in a sports car and then hitting the breaks to slow for a car in front of me and my breaks didn't grab. I know wet roads are slick. Now standing water in an intersection makes me remember that experience and adds a bit of terror to my ride to pick up Z. As if there were not terror enough in this day. Yet oddly when I get a few blocks from her house the rain stops and there is no standing water in the intersections.

I left home early since it was the deluge. So, despite the heavy rain most of the way, I arrive at her house early. She's not thrilled that I'm there before she's dressed. And it is in the couple of moments of watching her slip into her pants and don her long sleeved T shirt that I notice how terribly thin she really is. She has always worn oversized clothes. Part of that is the length of her incredible legs--it's hard to find pants that fit her hips that are long enough. But most of it is body dysmorphia. Oh she knows she's thin, she's just never been quite comfortable with her body.

I'm apologetic about arriving early. It hasn't rained hard at her house, so she cannot fathom what I mean when I speak of the deluge downtown. Her house is just outside Salt Lake County. It's possible to drive through quickly moving storms and have them stay just over head, so as we head back to town and it starts pouring again, it's as if the storm has found its home and is staying put. But now we are on the upper East bench of Salt Lake heading toward the U of Utah where Huntsman Cancer Institute is located on the side of a small mountain. This rain is running in little streams toward my house down below. Again I think about my basement and my ears pop.

Atmospherics: effects intended to create a particular atmosphere or mood.

She wants me to wait in the little circle where patients are dropped off and picked up, but we're fifteen minutes early for her appointment. I'm jonesing for a cigarette and think its a bad idea to sit in my mommy mobile smoking a cigarette while the cancer patient's family members are waiting for their loved ones to come out after radiation or chemo. So I drive down the hill to the University Hospital and pull in the lower level of the parking lot. It's huge so I can find an uninhabited corner to park in for a couple of stolen moments. I stand outside my old Dodge Caravan watching scrub jays shit from the rafters where it splats on the concrete ramp below. I watch like a criminal afraid of getting caught. I hear children's voices and drop my cigarette and stamp it out. Half a cigarette and my nicotine level is now high enough that I can drive back to Huntsman and park in their lot. Once inside radiation is one level up.

Huntsman is a gorgeous facility. No expense has been spared on its marble floors, it's three soaring stories of pale blue glass so every interior space has a stunning view of the Salt Lake Valley. On a clear day you can see Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake and the Ocher Mountains behind the lake. But today, not so much. It's a steady rain up here. And every drop is headed for my basement which has no drain and a furnace with it's essential parts about half an inch above the damp concrete. Even with the furnace turned off for the summer if that control panel gets wet it has to be replaced. Once the washing machine overflowed it's drain and killed the furnace below. It cost several hundred dollars to replace the control panel.

I am the only person in the huge and luxurious waiting room in radiation. I walk to the reception desk and ask the attractive, middle aged brunette with an unidentifiable accent to please let Z know I'm waiting in the waiting room and not in my car out front. She smiles and says "Off Corze" and disappears for a couple of minutes. When she comes back I'm seated across the room in one of the tasteful chairs, thumbing through a Harper's Bazaar. She smiles at me when we make eye contact, so I figure all's well. An hour goes by. Z was scheduled for a half hour of radiation. And then another woman joins the brunette and they start closing the security gate at the reception desk. This alarms me. I put down the Harper's Bazaar and walk across the big open room. When I get to the desk, I say, "Is my friend Z still back there?" She says, "Yez, Zer ah schtill zeveral Pashunz boc dair," with a reassuring smile on her face. Somehow this does not feel right. I turn around to scan the rotunda and see Z leaning against the marble terrarium. I cannot see her face but it is impossible to miss that lean, old dancer's body and long light brown hair. Oh christ! I rush over apologizing. She is scowling ferociously and says, "What happened to you! I thought you were in a car wreck." I begin my explanation, and she waves my words away in a dismissive gesture with her arm. I keep trying to explain and then realize that nothing I can say will change the fact that she's been waiting where she said she'd be and I was not there. I hate myself.

When I start the car in the parking garage my windshield wipers are swiping like crazy on dry glass making an annoying scraping sound. She says in her newly breathy high pitched voice "For god's sake, shut those damn things off!" And I feel just like a stupid and irresponsible teenager. I have a moment's empathy for her youngest son. It only lasts a second. And then the rain is pouring and I have to turn the windshield wiper on again.

How Sane Do You Think I Am Twittascope?

My Twittascope: Gemini
Things slowly begin to come back into focus today, but it may take another day or two before you fully return to earth. But as the volume is lowered, you are tempted to turn it back up. When that doesn't work, a wave of fear or even desperation could provoke you to express feelings that might be better kept to yourself. There's no need to shock someone with your unconventional desires just so you can experience another adrenaline rush. Thursday, July 2, 2009

Jesus twittascope I'm a gemini, born in the year of the monkey. Cap that off with the fact that I'm bipolar and you have six of me living in here. What do you expect, balance? Get a grip! This is real life! I move from disaster to disaster throughout the day. So really, is this a reasonable request? I was raised to shock. Why do you think my mother taught me to smoke and mix cocktails at five years old? Snap out of it will you?

To Whom It May Concern

If I have made radiation treatments seem terrifying to any of you I am sorry. I have been telling you about my friend's discovery that she has cancer and her reactions to the reality that she cannot treat this with "alternative modalities." She is a life long proponent and practitioner of naturopathy and homeopathy and Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture and magic water, and I have grown impatient, afraid, furious, and terrified that she would not act soon enough to avert her own premature death. It took coughing up a lot of blood to get her in the hospital. It frightened her youngest son who was the one to call the ambulance. My fear has never been that the medical professionals at Huntsman Cancer Institute would be unable to treat her cancer, but my fear was that she would fight them so hard that there would be no radiation, no chemo, no time to save her life. I did not doubt for a second that she could be saved. I feared she would refuse to be saved or wait too long. I feared she had more "faith" in the "alternative modalities" and no faith at all in western medicine. She has hated all but one of the doctor's she's seen so far. The only doctor she's liked was the doctor from India who treated her at St Marks Hospital where they took her when her lungs started hemorrhaging. I am grateful to that one doctor for earning her trust, for making her entertain the notion that western medicine might just work. It is not western medicine, nor radiation or chemotherapy that scares me. It is my friend's belief in "alternative modalities" and her revulsion toward western medicine that scares me. It is like "faith healing" at the expense of medical care, this acceptance of one approach at the expense of the more traditional that scares me. I have no faith "alternative modalities". I believe in science. I am sitting here typing because of science. I'm taking bipolar drugs, drugs to treat my heart arrhythmia, blood thinners to keep me from having to face the future that claimed every member of my mother's family--the slow crawl toward dementia and a nursing home. There is no one to take care of me. And with any luck there will be no need.

My therapist called me while I was gone this afternoon. I need help. I know that. I am on shaky ground, but I keep doing the things that keep me semi-sane. I have not skipped my meds yet. I'm not the one with cancer, but the one with cancer's reaction to her treatment is cause for worry for me. And worry isn't going away real soon. I'm venting on the blog. I've been a recluse for years and now I'm going out every day on one errand or another. It's probably good for me, but I'm hating driving in traffic and having to be nice where ever I go. However the biting my tongue is starting to take its toll on my personality. And apparently my running blog about this situation is starting to piss people off. Let me make this clear. This is me writing about the things that I care about or that interest or concern me. So in that sense, it is all about me. I'm sorry if that's offensive. I am many things, but saintly I am not! I can be a right vicious asshole as we all know. Ask Cal.

Email From An Old Friend

Peggy

I know that with all the caring you already are giving in so many ways to Z the following may not be worth much to you. But I offer it anyway.

I remember the terror I felt, inside, when I first saw this huge machine that would soon be bombarding my body with killer radiation beams. It made a most unwelcome whirring sound as it rotated and zeroed in on the little red targets that had been painted on both sides of my throat.

It bothered (and frightened) me even more when I had to return years later for another bout with the
"terror rays."

I then read in some periodical that an individual should make make friends with the killer machine that can also heal. So I did. I went in to the room before a treatment and just sat on the bench that places you inside the maws of the monster. And I communicated with it.

Following treatments because easier as I let my mind wander n healing ways.

It worked for me.

Scott

Miles Davis, Blue in Green

Sublimation's a Bitch

I have held my tongue so long it's strangling me. I know that the area in my throat and chest that is effected by this tongue holding is the exact area that is strangling my friend. But today, while I waited for the phone call to go pick her up from her first day of prep for Radiation at Huntsman Cancer Institute, I have tried to put my house in order and this house keeping has seriously inconvenienced all the dogs. So I have shouted at dogs to move, go outside, shut up, stay! all day long. I finally took to using a water sprayer to surprise Marley in mid-bark at the kids playing in the yard across the alley.

I have stripped all dog beds or their coverings and washed them. I submerged Marley's bed in the bathtub and scrubbed it. It's been drying in the sun all day and is now a lot sweeter smelling than Marley herself. Tomorrow morning Marley gets another bath. I stripped my bed and washed sheets. And I did all this cleaning because I couldn't leave my phone for fear of missing Z's phone call.

When she called I had my clothes laid out to hop into so I would look respectable when I pulled up at Huntsman to pick her up. I wore a sleeveless white cotton blouse and a black cotton skirt. I wore earrings and a bracelet. I wore my good summer hat--it goes with everything. She was waiting in the circle at the entrance, and as I drove up the hill I saw her standing there dressed in a long sleeved brown top with matching brown pants. She is reed slender and this willowy frame from a distance has the look of the girl I first met at the U forty eight years ago in a room full of boys. I do not look like the girl I was. My hair is shorter and I weigh at least forty pounds more than I did as a reed thin girl. I look my age. But at a distance Z looks just like that willowy girl, that ballet dancing girl. And a lump forms in my chest as I think about the journey we both have taken to end up here now.

Tonight her sister-in-law is cooking for her. Tomorrow I pick her up at 3:30 to take her to Huntsman again for a half hour of treatment. She is feeling better all ready.

Marley on the other hand has her very long nose very seriously out of joint. At least I didn't kick her.

Shopping, Cooking, Feeding

Tuesday has been spent shopping for an all organic and very tasty meal for Z. I found eggplant, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, shaved parmigiana, and organic olive oil. I'm growing basil and oregano and it's organic, so I have the ingredients for eggplant parmigiana. The marinara sauce took longer than anything. I cooked for most of the day. Thank god I have a swamp cooler. It was hot today. I had two burners on for an hour, then the oven for 45 minutes. I wore nice clothes while I shopped and cooked. I say that because I wanted to respect the errands I was on. I wore my favorite white linen sleeveless blouse and a nice cotton skirt. I wore a bit of jewelry. I never do that. I even wore my favorite summer hat.

I made a salad of torn fresh organic leaves of romaine lettuce with a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, and a bit of soy sauce. I fixed garlic bread using a coarse Italian bread, unsalted butter and fresh garlic, wrapped it in foil and baked it.

I found a very nice small watermelon and cut it into bite-sized pieces of cool juicy sweet fresh from the heart of the melon and then chilled it while the marinara sauce and eggplant were cooking.

I bought organic raisins and bananas. I bought raisin, nut, cinnamon bread for tomorrow's breakfast toast. I took organic cream of tomato soup, a small container of sour cream for the requisite dollop for a start on tomorrows lunch. I bought ten containers for serving sized portions. And then I bought a rum cake.

As soon as the eggplant parmigiana was out of the oven, still bubbling around the browned cheese, I packed two servings and loaded all of this nice healthy clean tasty food into my good shopping bags. I included two shallow bowls, a fork, and two napkins. When I got to Z's it was almost 5:00 PM. I just walked in, went down the stairs and into her bedroom. I told her what I had with me, and she chose to start with the watermelon. We reminisced about all the times I cooked eggplant parmigiana for her: the most recent time was when Tom and I were together, the first time was in LA when she and V owned a chic little Indian clothing store. I was the cook for all the vegetarians who worked there. It took all day to shop and cook and plan for the next days meal. I was also a private cook for a wealthy widow in Santa Barbara in my spare time. Occasionally I forget what a good cook I am.

Z ate with relish. She ate everything I served her. I sat and talked while she ate. She didn't have room for the slice of rum cake but promised me she'd eat it later tonight. When she was finished eating she said she felt like a nap. I packed up the dirty dishes, kissed her on her cheek and let myself out.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, I pick her up after her first radiation treatment.

The Elements of Work

This is the chair, this
brown one
An antique office chair from my best Santa Barbara therapist's office when she remodeled.
No, it is not ergonomic.
It's magic and far better than merely
Ergonomic space age functionally
Modern and with no leather, no wood, no
Witness to my own disintegration and like a puzzle
She put me back together again with no king's horses, no king's men. On this chair I could take flight...

Can your chair do this?

Cancelled Dinner Plans

Z just called to tell me she just wants to be alone. She's so tired. I have no doubt. What I wanted to do, and will still do if given permission, is to take food to her. I would prepare well balanced, organic, vegetarian meals for her and deliver them. I could cook a couple of days meals and deliver them every other day. But she says she has cottage cheese and an avocado. That's a snack to me, not a meal. She ate her well balanced and hearty vegetarian three square meals a day at the hospital with relish. How am I going to get her to eat? I have gone over her dietary restrictions and don't find anything in the food plan the hospital sent home with her that would be a problem for me. I make myself hungry just planning imaginary meals for her. Will she let me feed her? She's always loved my cooking or so she says, and so it seems, when she's here eating. I will have to figure this out and fast.

Z Leaves the Hospital Today

Monday AM
I'm leaving shortly to go pick up Z from the hospital. She was going to stay with a friend who lives alone in a two bedroom condo near the hospital, but her friend is fussy about noise and traffic. Z's worried that her coughing will be a problem. Her fussy friend seems to have reservations about sharing her space with someone who might need something. I have never liked this woman, so this just caps it. Now Z goes back to her house where her youngest son, his paramour and her toddler and their baby are living. Z will reside in a basement room. I worry that this will not be a terribly peaceful place for her to go through radiation and chemotherapy. The toddler will want max attention, and any attention Z gets will seem to the boy to be attention he's not getting.

Monday 1:00 PM
I'm now home from picking her up. I took her to her home and was appalled that all the cloths we pulled from her closets are now bagged and pilled up in front of the washer and dryer. Her room is tiny and is packed with things that are stored down there. There is barely room for her bed, and there were no pillows on her bed. She keeps making excuses for the kids for not getting things ready for her. I want to strangle someone.

We talk about her diet. I told her Ms M and I had discussed cooking for her and putting pre-made meals in bags or containers and freezing them. But Z wants to come to my house for dinner. That's fine with me, but I worry about her driving by herself. She insists this is no problem. I have promised myself that I will not argue with her. So, I say "fine, whatever you're comfortable with." I'll fix organic tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, and salad for her. I have some poppy seed cake--it's a couple of days old, but is great heated in the microwave and topped with vanilla ice cream. I have both cantaloupe and watermelon sliced and in separate containers in the fridge. I can feed her this evening without going to the grocery store, but tomorrow I'll shop for things my vegetarian friend can eat. I am determined to fatten her up.

She starts her radiation treatments Wednesday. I begged to take her, but she wants to drive herself. I will work on her about this issue. Her blood pressure is very low. She's on Coumadin. She hates all real medications but it willing and happy to take all manor of bizarre supplements which have been prohibited by the doctor who will be overseeing her radiation therapy. I bite my tongue. I'm on Warfarin which is another name for Coumadin. I love Warfarin. Yes I bruise, but I'm not likely to end up with my mother's vascular dementia while I'm on blood thinners. Yes, I have to work on eating a healthy diet too, but since I have no problem getting enough protein, I don't have the dietary problems she has.

Fran and I In Conversation

Fran said:

I have a very close friend who has been near & dear to my heart since the first grade.
She is from a large family of 12 kids. The extended family has had a series of deaths.
She said to me, you try to pick the best Doctors, hospitals, make the right choices, but in the end, a greater power makes the choices of how things end up.
You do your best to be supportive & help make good choices. Who's to know if this would have happened even if she had rested quietly that day?

At some point, you have to give it up to whatever powers of life that are greater than us.

Your plan was probably wiser, but we don't know if the joy she got from watching that toddler full of life and toddler chaos was something she embraced.

Somehow you have to find peace with the way things are.
Even if they suck, and the pain & suffering are more than you can bear.

I hope this makes sense.
It is meant to help you heal and wrap your head around the way things are right now.

Sometimes we have to breathe deep & get through it. Kind thoughts to you.

I attended a World Beat Festival yesterday.
Celebrating worldwide cultures.....
So many cultures celebrate death, as a part of one's life.

I heard a great song that said death set the soul free. "Don't worry about me, I am free"
If you think of it in this way, passing is a kind of sweet relief from whatever pain & suffering a person was burdened with.

I say this in a very respectful way.
Trying to give you another perspective to see all this in.

Namaste

June 28, 2009 11:58 AM

Utah Savage said...

Fran, thank you for that wisdom. Intellectually I know all this. I would make the choice to go, to let death take me, but I am outraged that death would take my best friend first. Why her and not me? I have lived my whole life as if death were my very best lover, I have courted death in every way. I have tried in a very active way to die, only to wake up with a headache and a sour stomach.

Z has lived her life as if life were sacred and everything that she eats and drinks is holy and sacred and meant to keep her body the temple of her soul.

I have thought my soul was killed off fifty years ago and only the rotting carcass left walking, talking, hiding out like a criminal.

My Twittascope: How Apt Is This

My Twittascope: Gemini

It's important for you to set aside your preconceived agenda because unexpected events today can quickly turn your home life upside down. If you attempt to prevent things from falling apart, you'll probably just speed up their demise. Don't try to hold on to a lifestyle that is no longer working for you. Instead, use your common sense and focus all of your attention on facilitating change. Sunday, June 28, 2009

Ephemera

We may be but ephemera
floating through these waters for an instant
where death drifts common as the dragonfly
no more frightening than life my dear he says smiling
Death winks and he is a handsome lad who carries us in his arms
For just a lovely moment and then off he goes on to other business

I Am Not a Bullshit Artist, But I'm Learning to Play One In Real Life

Shortly after I left her yesterday Z began coughing up blood. Not the smattering of blood that finally got her to see a surgeon in the first place, but lots of blood. Her youngest son called an ambulance. She was admitted last night to the nearest hospital. She has pulmonary emboli. She was dehydrated, was getting very little oxygen to her brain. She sounds so much better today than she did yesterday when she was lifting the baby, and I kept saying, "Don't do that," and she kept saying, "Oh I'm fine." She asked me to get the half empty glass of water from her bedside. We sat on the porch for awhile then went inside. I had to go back out to get the half empty glass of tepid water left untouched on the porch. She never drank even a sip of water in the three hours we worked on closets. The toddler wanted to be in my path to her, blocking the attention flow from our task to him. I know that's what toddlers do. It is the natural order that a toddler would be right in the middle of everything, but he should have been with his other grandmother yesterday. It isn't his fault, any of it, but still... Z probably encouraged his young mother to bring the babies. That would be what she would want even if it isn't the best thing for her. She needs rest and being cared for. She needs a calm, quiet, clean house with someone near to wait on her. She needs a strong female hand. But the only strong female hand she'd accept to run things for her is in the Pacific Northwest about to get married and who has two daughters of her own out of school for the summer.

I have never been much of one to let bullshit go uncalled. So I am not always the easiest of people to be around when you're busy rewriting recent history. I am trying very hard to learn to shut the fuck up and just nod my head.

Emptying Closets

We sit on her back porch for a half an hour or so talking about her recent medical history, and now she admits that Ackerly and Hitchcock are probably better at what they do than the doctors in San Diego she hasn't yet met who will fill Ackerly's prescription for the radiation she was refusing to believe she needed here. She says Ackerly wasted three weeks he could have been treating her. I remember it well and start to remind her and then realize that there is no point now in going over the recent past. She was barefoot the whole time I was there. I thought she looked good, her hair freshly brushed, a bit of color in her face. But she insists she looks half dead. Truth is, in the past several years I have seen her look much worse. Grey and bone thin, hair in a tangle, knotted, skin hanging from her bones. But there is no point looking back. I am here to empty closets. We will go through all her upstairs closets so her son and his girlfriend can move in and put their stuff away. They will put their furniture in storage. She is leaving everything behind but doesn't talk much about returning, though she has said she will come back. This is good that she has stated her intention to come back.

Out of two packed closets she has a small pile of things she will take with her to San Diego, a larger pile she will store in the basement and a huge pile that goes to the Junior League. She has made a pile she believes her new granddaughter's mother can sell. I have a feeling the young woman will just take the whole gigantic pile of once nice clothes to the Junior League drop up the street and be done with it. While we did the sorting I noticed how many things were once mine or my mothers. Z has several once lovely pieces that belonged to her long dead mother. Only two of her mother's beautiful things survived the moths: A perfect little black dress and a good winter coat. We both love the little black dress, too small for me or her or her son's beloved. And so off it goes to the Junior League. The good winter coat is in very good shape and actually fits me quite well. I am now about the same age her mother was when she bought the coat. Or so I guess. It will be warm and dressy enough that if I do go out and wear the new dressy brown dress, the coat will find a warm body inside it once again. It's a long shot. But without the clothes to wear there is very little chance I'll ever venture out again, after dark, dressed for an occasion, so long as I live. Anythings possible I guess.

When I left I turned to see Z drift out to the back porch. We blew kisses to one another. And the two grandchildren, and the young woman were alone in the mess of Z's drifting life, the house undusted since her only daughter left almost a month ago. I have offered to do such things as dust, but we both know it's not high on my list of priorities in my own house, so why would it be a priority of mine for her? Well, it just is. But she has put me off and I have let her. I feel guilty that she has been so reluctant to let me do those kinds of things for her, but she has had her middle son taking care of her for at least a couple of weeks, and it's just not something he would notice or do. I wonder who dusts for him?

Z leaves alone Sunday to fly to San Diego. Nothing will ever be the same again. This is the first time I have ever thought that, though I know things change moment by moment never to be the same again ever. You can see the shape of the mass under her skin, strangling her. They will start Radiation Tuesday.

Now I am cleaning my own closet as if my life depended on it.

June 25th, 2009 The Day of Punctuating Deaths

I set my alarm this morning. I know. Shocking! It was to me too when that sucker went off at 8:06. I hardly ever set the alarm, so when it goes off, there is no snoozing. I get that adrenaline rush that only an emergency sets off. It pretty much poisons me. But I'm out of bed like a shot.

The reason for the ungodly wake-up hour is an 11:00 dental appointment. I've been fighting a recurring toothache in my lower right back teeth. I know from past experience that it involves more than one of those giant molars and there is a bridge between those affected teeth. So all in all, losing those two teeth will leave three spaces that are my main chewing surface. Go ahead, laugh. Remember you may be young now, but you are growing older by the day. One day your teeth will fail too.

I took my shower at 9:30. Well, that was uneventful. Maybe it's a good omen. Clean and shampooed in under ten minutes! Maybe a new record for me. The moisturizing and deodorizing and hair drying takes longer than the shower. Finally I am newly dressed and clean all over. I have forty five minutes before I have to leave the house. More coffee and another couple of smokes.

My dentist's office is in my neighborhood. This is one of the reasons I go to Harold. That and the fact that he's both good looking and an accomplished musician. He, like Tom, my ex, can play anything. I have never heard him play, but know that Tom doesn't exaggerate anyone else's talent. And until my teeth started failing, I thought Harold was one hell of a dentist. But now all he wants to do is get rid of the old dying teeth and put implants in their place. I will not do my "implant rant" now, but I'm sure you can imagine how a poor old woman with no dental insurance feels about implants. I sometimes contemplate having them all pulled and getting myself a set of loverly choppers just to get it over with.

I put my hand on the doorknob of Harold's office at exactly 11:00. It's locked. I look in the almost shuttered windows and see that the place is empty. What the Fuck! This is wrong. I go to the dentist's office next door and ask them if they know where Harold went. They have his number and call his office. Marilyn, Harold's receptionist answers the phone and tells me they moved a year and a half ago. "Well, Marilyn, that doesn't explain why you didn't inform me that you'd moved! Did you send cards to patients?" She tells me the new address and I am not amused. It might as well be in Bum Fuck! She says,"It'll only take you five minutes." It actually takes fifteen. But as I'm driving there I hear on NPR that Farah Fawcett died. I always thought she was a bit to whispy and flaky, but men seemed to like her. Tom used to force me to watch Charlie's Angles. But then I saw her in Extremities and The Burning Bed, I thought she was stunningly good. I saw her documentary about her fight with cancer and it was moving. By the time I get to the dentist's new place, I've mellowed a bit thinking about Farah.

By the time I get home, it's close to 1:30. Ms M is having her latte and smoking a cigarette at my kitchen table watching the news when I walk in. I just get inside when the phone rings. My neighbor T wants to bring her dog over for a romp with Marley and to help me trim Marley's nails.

Marley is a strong and vociferous opponent to the nail trimming procedure but is no real match for the two of us. On my own she'd be a handful. She may look sweet and small, but she's one strong and squirrelly little actress screaming before a single nail is trimmed. Oh the eye rolling hysteria of it all.

The next phone call is the tree guy my neighbor recommended to finish cutting and removing the Navaho Willow the Power Company topped earlier in June. He says he's a few minutes away. I put Roscoe in the big house and grab my clippers. When I was walking T out front I noticed a few over hanging limbs that needed trimming so they didn't smack people in the face as they walked on the sidewalk in front of my place. That's how seldom I go out front and look around.

The tree removal guy seems nice and the estimate's reasonable. We walked the property looking for tree problems and he seems impressed with my forest. He knows his trees. He came here from South Carolina but grew up in St. Louis. I like his accent. We schedule for next week and shake on it. I have a copy of the estimate in my hand.

I go inside and call Z. She answers on the second ring and sounds better than she has in weeks. Then she asks me if I can come over tomorrow and help Rachel, her youngest son's mate, go through Z's closets and clear them out. This is something that I can do, but after I hang up I get a very strange and creepy feeling. It's is as if we are to clean out the deceased's closets. She wants us to decide who gets what and then cart the rest to the thrift store. I wonder if she'll live to regret this plundering of her clothing. But then this evening I remove my closet doors so I can clean it. I too will lighten my load. Take the burden off the living. Make better use of space. I know we are just place holders in this moment.

I was distressed all evening listening to the wall-to-wall coverage of Michael Jackson's death. I am appalled at the wretched excess of it all. As if there were no other news story worth covering today. It reminds me of the Anna Nicole insanity. I know Michael was a monster talent. I get it. He was talented and famous and terribly fucked up. And god help his children and all the other children he fucked-up. I know he was a talented victim and I know he victimized other children. I know I will offend some of you, but I had no doubt about the fact that MJ was a pedophile. It was a shame the prosecution was so bad. There were other cases to chose from. Picking the one they did to prosecute was a stupid mistake. I know someone is tearing his hair and screaming "Leave Michael alone!!!!"

F-22 War Planes Are Not Wanted By Military, Yet House Passes Defense Bill That Includes The F 22. Please sign yet another petition.

Dear Peggy,
Tell the Senate - If you don't stop the F-22, Obama will!

Email your Senators now and tell them to cut these wasteful warplanes so Obama doesn't have to!

The other night the House Rules Committee denied Barney Frank's amendment to strip out unnecessary F-22s from the Defense Authorization bill.1 We were really angry when we got the news, and we weren't the only ones: President Obama has announced that he might veto the entire authorization bill if the planes aren't taken out.2

But there's another chance for our leaders to do the right thing - the Senate is taking up their version of the bill right now, and if they leave the planes out, we can avoid an ugly confrontation.

Email your Senator right now and demand that they keep these wasteful warplanes out of the bill - so the President doesn't have to.

http://www.truemajority.org/nof22

Why the added F-22's were allowed to remain in the House version of the bill is a mystery. But the weapons-builders are a powerful lobby in DC, and sometimes have influence regular citizens don't know about. Fortunately, we've got some powerful allies in our corner too: including President Obama and his Secretary of Defense who called these planes 'a big problem' for the Pentagon.3

Now the fight moves to the Senate where we've got plans to work with the president's team and the Pentagon to make sure that the Senate version of the bill does not include these unneeded planes. You can help by sending an email your Senator right now and asking him or her to get on board.

-Matt
Matt Holland
Online Director
TrueMajority / USAction

A CONVERSATION...

Sitenoise was kind enough to give me the only great laugh in days, and I only read the first character's first few lines.

I was a big fan of Deadwood.

Fuuny man, funny women

“Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women?” inquired Christopher Hitchens in “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” Vanity Fair, January 2007.

That’s a good question. And by that I mean, fuck you.

~Elissa Bassist collects a bunch of writing by women from McSweeneys.net.

I wonder if McSweeney's thinks it's funny to publish in such a small font. You decide.

For Governor Mark Sanford

One more lying, philandering, hypocritical republican scum-bag bites the dust. So who's your blue eyed boy now GOP? Who is your next best and brightest? Who can live up to your high standards?(sic)

Z

There is so much I'd like to say about this incredible friend, and perhaps at some point I'll be able to do that. But now I can barely say her name. She can barely say her name. The tumor is growing, spreading rapidly, and the second look at the biopsy results are inconclusive. There seems to be a lack of clarity about what kind of cancer she has. Squamous? Small cell, non small cell? Lung cancer or not lung cancer. It is now pressing on her Superior Vena Cava. It appears to be attached to her Mediastinum.

I know nothing about the Vena Cava, nothing about the Mediastinum, but when we hang up I look them up. Now I know too much. This is not good. A rapidly growing tumor on the Mediastinum pressing on the Superior Vena Cava can't be anything but dire. And it is still a mass low in the Major Bronchi, growing. This cancer, whatever kind it is, is growing rapidly. Today the pulmonary oncologists at Huntsman meet to discuss Z's case. This is to her a farce. Why can't the best and brightest make a diagnosis and tell her her prognosis and treatment options? For some reason this tumor is mysterious. And her frailty is an issue. She has no weight to lose. No spare pounds on her spare frame. She has elegant bones, but can't lose any weight and survive. If you are proud of your slim frame and your vegetarian diet, take this story as a cautionary tale. I now carry my extra forty pounds proudly, knowing that they might give me a fighting chance in a battle with cancer and other horrors.

There was good news a couple of days ago. The PET scan did not pick-up any other cancer sites. We were jubilant. But now this just pisses her off. The ENT Radiologist was sure this cancer in her upper chest was not the primary tumor. Z's brain MRI was clean. So now it is all a mystery, and she has absolutely no faith in any of the doctors with whom she has consulted so far. Even the oncologist in Petaluma. And faith is the operative word. They so far have given her no definitive answers that offer hope without taking her down an invasive, painful, prolonged process of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. She has seen the patients shuffling in and out of radiation. They are the walking dead. Their skin hangs from their flesh. They are the sexless, neutered near dead. She does not want to be one of them. I understand this. I would chose to forgo treatment too. But I have no children, no grandchildren. I don't have the same incentives to keep living. And I have a genetic predisposition to vascular dementia, the illness that killed my mother. I was the caregiver for my mother. I know how horrible that long march toward a total loss of self while the body chugs along is, since I spent years watching her meanness remain while all other aspects of "personality" dropped away. Savage is that end. The drooling, shitting, pissing, eating goes on as all the rest fades away day by day. So yes, I would chose to go quickly rather than the alternative of a long slow slog toward idiocy. And since I have no dutiful daughter to care for me, change my diapers, feed me like a baby, keep me safe from my own crazy wants...

Today Z's oncologist meets with a group of oncologists to consult with each other on her case. This is a sign to her that they don't know their asses from their hats. And they offer no "alternative modalities." Even the doctor in Petaluma is now on her shit list. No one tells her what she wants to hear. So today after her appointment with Dr Ackerly, she will think it over and then make her own decision. But cost is part of the problem. Let's say the cost is $50,000 and Medicare pays $40,000. That leaves someone with that $10,000 debt. She's eligible for Medicaid. If she decides to go that route they will put a lean on her house to recoup the cost of her care. All of this pisses her off. Her house is the estate she will leave her children. She says it's the most important thing she has. She will not give it to Medicaid. She will chose to die rather than know her kids will lose her house. I'm willing to bet not one of her kids gives a rats ass about her house. But she does. I hear her fear. I understand it. I know I'd feel the same fear even without children. I can do nothing for her now but listen, go where she asks, do what she asks. Her children have legal rights to her help her make decisions. I have only the right of friendship. I have known her longer than her children have, but they don't know me, so my opinion counts for nothing. I understand this too.

She just called me and she has decided on her own that it is a cyst. She is prone to cysts. She will just find a doctor who will confirm her own diagnosis and treat it like a cyst. It needs draining. I ask if she'll go to her appointment today with Dr. Ackerly at Huntsman. She says she might. She feels too weak to go. I say, "Let's call for an ambulance." She says absolutely not. They will take her to the ER and then admit her. She does not want to go to the hospital. They will get their hands on her and she will never go home alive. I know this fear. This fear of losing control over your own life. It has happened to me. I have had a major psychosis. I was kept for weeks locked up and treated with drugs that made me feel lobotomized.

Today I can do nothing but wait for news. I can do nothing more than be her friend, the one she can say anything to. I will no longer argue with her. It is her life. It is her life to live or not and the choice will be hers, and I will hope for the best and wait.

Please Sign This Petition

This is the link to Dr Howard Deans organization gathering signatures for a public option as a check on the greed and disregard of the private insurance companies. Please sign this petition and pass it on. It will not change your insurance coverage if you're happy with it. But for those who cannot get insurance or afford it or if you've been denied treatment by your insurance company, this is an option. Without it we are at the mercy of the big insurance companies.

Thank you
Peggy

A Little Cole Porter from Spain

A little Cole Porter by Spanish musicians and set to images of New York. This is the New York I remember from my last trip in the late 1990's. And it is always jazz I think of when I think of New York. There is a heart stopping moment when the twin towers of the World Trade Center come into view and then another view of the city takes their place and there is no plane or fire or smoke and ash and we were not torturers afraid of our shadows.



I am not ignoring the horror in Iran. I am listening, watching, paying attention, doing what I've been asked.

I have my own battle and it isn't with a theocracy in Iran. It's with a theocracy here at home. Not yet quite so brutal, but it has potential.


SCHOOL COMBO (LEON-SPAIN) play Night and Day (Cole Porter).Profesores de la Escuela de Musica del Ayuntamiento de Leon(Departamento de Musica Moderna)
Enrique jimenez---guitar.
Alfredo Bernal ----sax.
Roberto Gonzalez--piano.
Luis Quiñones---bass.
Fernando Santamarta-Ferchunis --drums-bateria
Category: Music
Tags:
JAZZ NIGHT AND DAY COLE PORTER SCHOOLCOMBO LEON

Sunday Song, So Nice

Posted for Naj at Neo Resistance

Saturday, June 20, 2009

My translation of Mousavi's latest statement (persian text posted before)

In the name of God, the kind and the merciful

Indeed god demands you to safe keep what people entrust in you, and to rule them with justice. [this a verse of Koran]

Respectable and intelligent people of Iran,

These nights and days, a pivotal moment in our history is taking place. People ask each other: “what should we do?, which way should we go?”. It is my duty to share with you what I believe, and to learn from you, may we never forget our historical task and not give up on the duty we are given by the destiny of times and generations.

30 years ago, in this country a revolution became victorious in the name of Islam, a revolution for freedom, a revolution for reviving the dignity of men, a revolution for truth and justice. In those times, especially when our enlightened Imam [Khomeini] was alive, large amount of lives and matters were invested to legitimize this foundation and many valuable achievements were attained. An unprecedented enlightenment captured our society, and our people reached a new life where they endured the hardest of hardships with a sweet taste. What this people gained was dignity and freedom and a gift of the life of the pure ones [i.e. 12 Imams of Shiites]. I am certain that those who have seen those days will not be satisfied with anything less.

Had we as a people lost certain talents that we were unable to experience that early spirituality? I had come to say that that was not the case. It is not late yet, we are not far from that enlightened space yet. I had come to show that it was possible to live spiritually while living in a modern world. I had come to repeat Imam’s warnings about fundamentalism. I had come to say that evading the law leads to dictatorship; and to remind that paying attention to people’s dignity does not diminish the foundations of the regime, but strengthens it. I had come to say that people wish honesty and integrity from their servants, and that many of our perils have arisen from lies. I had come to say that poverty and backwardness, corruption and injustice were not our destiny. I had come to re-invite to the Islamic revolution, as it had to be, and Islamic republic as it has to be.

In this invitation, I was not charismatic [articulate], but the core message of revolution was so appealing that it surpassed my articulation and excited the young generation who had not seen those days to recreate scenes which we had not seen since the days of revolution[1979] and the sacred defense. The people’s movement chose green as its symbol. I confess that in this, I followed them. And a generation that was accused of being removed from religion, has now reached “God is Great”, “Victory’s of God and victory’s near”, “Ya hossein” in their chants to prove that when this tree fruits, they all resemble. No one taught hem these slogans, they reached them by the teachings of instinct. How unfair are those whose petty advantages make them call this a “velvet revolution” staged by foreigners! [refering to state TV and Khameneni, perhaps!]

But as you know, all of us were faced with deception and cheatings when we claimed to revitalize our nation and realize dreams that root in the hearts of young and old. And that which we had predicted will stem from evading law [dictatorship], realized soon in the worst manifestation.

The large voter turnout in recent election was the result of hard work to create hope and confidence in people, to create a deserving response to those whose broad dissatisfaction with the existing management crisis could have targeted the foundations of the regime. If this good will and trust of the poeple is not addressed via protecting their votes, or if they cannot react in a civil manner to claim their rights, the responsibility of the dangerous routs ahead will be on the shoulders of those who do not tolerate civil protests.

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven.

This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism. Imam’s fantastic art was to neutralize these dichotomies. I had come to focus on Imam’s approach to neutralize the burgeoning magic of these. Now, by confirming the results of election, by limiting the extent of investigation in a manner that the outcome will not be changed, even though in more than 170 branches the number of cast votes was more than 100% of eligible voters of the riding, the heads of the state have accepted the responsibility of what has happened during the election.

In these conditions, we are asked to follow our complaints via the Guardian council, while this council has proven its bias, not only before and during, but also after the election. The first principle of judgment is to be impartial.

I, continue to strongly believe that the request for annulling the vote and repeating the election is a definite right that has to be considered by impartial and nationally trusted delegation. Not to dismiss the results of this investigation a priori, or to prevent people from demonstration by threatening them to bloodshed. Nor to unleash the Intelligence ministry’s plain clothes forces on people’s lives to disperse crowds by intimidation and inflammation, instead of responding to people’s legitimate questions, and then blaming the bloodshed on others.

As I am looking at the scene, I see it set for advancing a new political agenda that spreads beyond the objective of installing an unwanted government. As a companion who has seen the beauties of your green wave, I will never allow any one’s life endangered because of my actions. At the same time, I remain undeterred on my demand for annulling the election and demanding people’s rights. Despite my limited abilities, I believe that your motivation and creativity can pursue your legitimate demands in new civil manners. Be sure that I will always stand with you. What this brother of yours recommends, especially to the dear youth, in terms of finding new solutions is to not allow liars and cheater steal your flag of defense of Islamic state, and foreigners rip the treasures of the Islamic republic which are your inheritance of the blood of your decent fathers. By trust in God, and hope for the future, and leaning on the strength of social movements, claim your rights in the frameworks of the existing constitution, based on principle of non-violence.

In this, we are not confronting the Basij. Basiji is our brother. In this we are not confronting the revolutionary guard. The guard is the keeper of our revolution. We are not confronting the army, the army is the keeper of our borders. These organs are the keepers of our independence, freedom and our Islamic republic. We are confronting deception and lies, we want to reform them, a reform by return to the pure principles of revolution.

We advise the authorities, to calm down the streets. Based on article 27 of the constitution, not only provide space for peaceful protest, but also encourage such gatherings. The state TV should stop badmouthing and taking sides. Before voices turn into shouting, let them be heard in reasonable debates. Let the press criticize, and write the news as they happen. In one word, create a free space for people to express their agreements and disagreements. Let those who want, say “takbeer” and don’t consider it opposition. It is clear that in this case, there won’t be a need for security forces on the streets, and we won’t have to face pictures and hear news that break the heart of anyone who loves the country and the revolution.

Your brother and companion

Mir Hossein Mousavi

The Ads Are Gone But the Rain Is Back

Maybe there's a nice liberal advertiser out there that might be selling the work of Paul Krugman or Rajiv Chandrasekaran. I'd advertise for The Nation. But then I read Rajiv at the Washington Post, I follow Krugman's blog and I follow The Nation on twitter.

The only good thing about the wildly inappropriate google ads was the extreme cognitive dissonance. They were fun to make fun of. But I know for a fact that they drove readers away. I may be a whore, but I do have standards.

Susan's right. I said my goal for this year was to publish. I've been distracted from that goal.

Today my friend Z got some very good news relatively speaking. I do not feel so fragile and peevish today. I feel rather hopeful today.

The clouds are back and it's very rainy and cold here. So I'll either read and nap or sit here calmly working on those first three chapters. I'll publish the novel here again. But I won't stop looking for a place to really publish it. I think my poetry is a bit raw and hard. I have written quite a few poems lately. The short stories languish unfinished. I think they hold the best possibility for publication in a magazine or literary journal.

My third husband was one hell of a short story writer and I think all the stories he published were in quarterlies or literary journals at one university or another. Some of my stories are regional. I should start there. There was a time I swore I'd start at the top and work my way backwards, but now I see the effort it takes to put myself out there. I think I'll try to start small and work my way up. I know there's a flaw in my thinking, but I'll keep trying to reach the goal of publication this year. Time seems to be standing still and going at a horrifying gallop.

Cognitive Dissonance

Google Ads doesn't understand me. I am a liberal. I am very liberal. I do not welcome ads for Newt's newsletter or any other crap Newt's peddling, like a film about Saint Ronnie. I hate the insurance companies and the way they've wormed their way into the medicare system. They have no role to play in Medicare except to suck money out of the system and into their pockets. They game the system and add another layer of bean counting bureaucrats on top of the one that managed quite nicely without their layer of rules and restrictions. I hate the private insurance companies and their lobbyists. Do you hear me google ads? We could work together or I could work against you. But I will not moderate my content to suit your right-wing paymasters. In fact, you're right wing content just makes me madder at what a crappy job the folks you advertise for have done running the country.

Let's take the ads for "Medicare Advantage." There is Medicare and there is the extra layer of fees and paperwork and pencil pushers known as "Medicare Advantage," some bastard child of the Insurance Industry and Medicare. We do not need a private insurance company meddling with Medicare. Medicare is the public option I'd like the rest of you to have. "Medicare Advantage" is some Frankenstein monster that the private insurance companies are trying to turn Medicare into. Not public at all. Publicly financed but disbursed to some monster corporation like United Healthcare which bankrupted me when they didn't like the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. Well fuck you, United Healthcare. I hope you shrivel and die.

DOMA is Dumb

Bill Clinton didn't really become Bubba to me until he signed the Defense of Marriage Act. It was such a stupid thing to do. And the only thing that threatened Bubba's marriage was Bubba's philandering.

Don't Ask Don't Tell is another bit of idiocy, but since it deals with the military and the military has always had a lot of neanderthals at the top (I guess rising through the ranks means swallowing a lot of shit on the way) and since pretense and machismo are part of that culture, Don't Ask, Don't Tell just seemed like more military silliness. But DOMA suggests that heterosexual marriage is a fragile institution that could not withstand such a serious threat as homosexual marriage. This seems to suggest that most heterosexuals would, given the choice, jump ship rather than tough it out in their shaky, fragile, boring straight marriages. Maybe Larry Craig and Larry Haggard were just the tip of the gay iceberg, and if given a legal alternative to the boring straight marriages most men were in, would bring the shaky facade crashing down around our sinful (sic) heads.

What I cannot understand is Obama's tepid support for the civil rights of the gay and lesbian community. Heterosexual marriage does not need defending from the gay and lesbian community. The only thing threatening straight marriage is the philandering and lying behavior of the two people in each of those shaky straight marriages.

For a Great Read Call Nick

Nick came over earlier in the week and brought a bag of books from his shelves for me to read. My favorite thing is to read a good book and have a good nap every day. When I work that schedule out I feel I'm living right. Oh I could find enough urgent chores to do every day, but the world will not end if I spend the whole day reading. And with a book as good as this, I can think of nothing better to do, unless it involved writing a book this beautifully written. I just started it to calm myself this afternoon, but I'm already hooked on the gorgeous writing and the WWI setting in a village in France. In case you don't do backwards (or mirror) reading, the translated title is By A Slow River, written by Phillippe Claudel (winner of the Prix Renaudot)

There is a translator's note that says, in French the novel is called Les Ames Grises--litterally, The Gray Souls. Just my favorite kind of book. I do not look for shallow, entertaining and commercial fare when reading books. I hate, positively hate Stephen King. He may be very diverting and grab you by the throat, but I prefer subtlety and depth to entertainment. Yes, dear, I know I'm a snob.

Grief Turns to Rage

I visited my friend Z yesterday. Her middle son is the only family member staying with her now. He believes that the mind is all it takes to heal the body. If she had her mind in the "right space" or some shit like that, she could heal herself. I want to scream when she tells me this, but wait to see what else she says. She says she plans to get the PET scan today and then plan from there. So far she hates every oncologist at the Huntsman Institute. Why? Because they tell her this cancer cannot be treated with radiation and diet alone. Some doctor in Peteluma has told her that it can be treated with just radiation and diet. She hasn't met the doctor in Peteluma, but she has talked to him on the phone and likes his "approach." I have choked back so much incredulity and anger that I'm about poisoned by my own rage and frustration. I know it won't help her if I argue with her, so I tell her I'm glad she's found a doctor she "believes in."

This morning two things have happened to flip my switch from mild irritation to full blown screaming, out of control rage. Marley was outside for ten minutes. When I let her in I noticed she peed on the second step down from the porch. Then she waltzes in the house and shits on the rug. I calmly clean it up and put her back outside. Then I lost my internet connection. I tried to fix it myself to no avail. I called Comcast. It took two tries to fix the problem but by the second try I was so pissed-off I was screaming. Seriously. Screaming! Now it works again, but I'm poisoned by the flood of adrenalin coursing through my system. I'll now back slowly away from the computer and call my shrink for an emergency appointment.

Marley Trains Me

I spent three nights listening to Marley scream her outrage that just because she'd been spayed and just because she has a little peeing problem, she's been banned from sleeping on my bed nestled in my old green TSE cashmere cardigan snuggled up to her bedraggled Mr Doody. Marley seems to be feeling no pain and is unwilling to let a little surgery get in the way of her having fun. I wish I had Marley's plucky attitude. The only problem for Marley is that it just keeps raining. Marley doesn't like the rain. I watch for moments of sunshine and then cheerfully lead the way outside just like I'm pack leader. But Marley knows who's really in charge of this house.

The Great Depression

Here Marley is helping with the tree clean up. I knew then that Marley's hysterectomy was scheduled but she didn't yet. There is so much more going on besides Marley's hysterectomy. There is my best friend and her diagnosis of cancer and her commitment to "alternative modalities" that has the most impact on my feelings. I feel damn sorry for Marley. But I'm terrified that I may lose my best friend and much too soon. So I'm very sad to begin with. Even without the abyss looming I'm sad. It is my nature to be gloomy. It's either gloomy or euphoria. Happy? So fleeting it hardly registers. I have happy moments, but they happen inside the larger sadness.

Anyway, to get back to Marley and her hysterectomy on last Thursday during the day. While she was gone I was in a cleaning frenzy. Frenzied cleaning can take your mind off most everything if you do it right. But during this cleaning frenzy I not only found the pool of Marley pee in the greenhouse, but I also found the secret spot beside the garbage bag full of Navaho rugs neatly rolled and stored under the bed. You'd think I'd have smelled it. But she got between the tool box (full of prescription drugs I dispense to my weekly pill minder which I keep in the top dresser drawer to take out day by day so I never ever miss a days pills) and the roll of rugs incased in plastic bag. There she peed often enough for a small pond beneath the roll of rugs so rank when I dragged it out I cried not tears of sorrow, but the burning eyes and the tears of ammonia exposure. It dripped across the full expanse of the freshly cleaned Persian rugs and dripped on painted concrete floor on it's way to the door as I carried it outside to land on the deck in the pouring rain. One storm after another. Yes, we need the rain, but this much? I know of only one thing other than stress that can trigger an asthma attack for me and that's mold. I can smell it now when I go outside. Do you notice a theme here?

It took hours of trying to make myself flat enough to squeeze enough of my upper body under my heavy brass bed trying to reach every inch of space with a soapy rag over and over until all I could smell is Spic and Span. I worked so hard I dripped sweat, my hair soaked with sweat. I cursed the entire time. The only bright spot in this discovery of another Marley pee pool is that the roll of rugs kept the pee from continuing it's movement toward the east side of this slightly sloping floor and soaking into the Tibetan run under Cyrus' beds . Nothing's square in this place. And since I haven't been willing to find another little disaster I have refused to actually look inside the bag afraid I'll find that the rugs are ruined. But know this, it doesn't take much to make me cry right now, and my hair-trigger is cocked and has blown many times these past few days. Friends arriving unexpectedly have sent me over the edge into a shocking rage. I hope they will forgive me, but I haven't got what it takes to call and tell them I'm sorry about only one of the three things that pissed me off. Partly because I really was mad about several things that they'd walked into like a dare, like a bad move in a bad movie.

Marley came home and I still didn't have a clean house. As it turned out, it was just as well. Marley was in a little kennel with toweling for bedding, and Marley needed to be kept in her little kennel since she's recovering from major surgery. For almost 20 hours Marley hadn't eaten or drunk water. So I wasn't worried about her having to go potty. She came home with two prescriptions to take if she showed signs of pain or agitation. She came home with the plastic collar to use if she obsessively licked her sutured belly. I hoped not to have to use it since it looks like a kind of torture devise to me.

When she fully wakes from the anesthesia she whines pitifully. I give her tiny bits of soft food on my finger which she gobbles. I leave her kennel door open and she takes a couple of wobbly steps out on the floor and squats to pee. Okay, I give her a pass on that one. She is whiney and seems altogether out of sort. I know that feeling. I too had a hysterectomy long ago and it was the anesthesia that was the worst for me. I give her one of her pain pills, the Rimadyl and one of the anxiety pills to keep her from being over active and chewing at her stitches. She goes back into the kennel and curls up to sleep again. Then about an hour later she is awake and whining horribly. She scratching at the bedding in her kennel and a horrible stink is issuing from it's dark interior. I carry her in her kennel into the bathroom, since my nose tells me she's pooped in her bed. As it turns out her bum is leaking baby diarrhea, the color of mashed and runny yam and very foul smelling. There are only a few little smudges of it on her bedding, but her butt and tail are coated. I wash her off, change her bedding, give her on of the pills the Vet sent home with her to calm her if she's agitated. And she's agitated. I put her back into her kennel carry her back to the space by my bed so I can watch her. But now she wakes every couple of hours to whine. I take her out to pee and poop, but she doesn't like the rain. So she stands on the porch. When we come back in she pees on the persian rug before going back into her kennel. I am dancing on the fragile edge of my bipolar balance beam. I have missed two of my doses of the drugs that keep me sane and the drugs that keep my heart beating normally and the high blood pressure medication. I'm off my rocker and have no reserves.

And in the midst of all of this my three back lower right molars have abscessed. I am in agony but I was able to reach my dentist on his emergency number. I'm now taking antibiotics and Lortab. So far no improvement, but we're not dead yet. Nick called and I thought it might be Z so I answered the phone. The minute I heard his voice and started talking, I started sobbing. He's bringing books this afternoon. I'm going to try and read out this rough patch.