Book, film, fentanyl, parent tricks!

     I'm reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. It made my wish list because of my writing workshop instructor's high recommendation (he characterized Yates as a major 20th C. post-war literary novelist who has gone largely unnoticed and unheralded). I'm about three-quarters through it, and I love it, both for what it does to me as a reader, and for me as a writer. The story is so compelling, yet not much really happens outside the characters' own heads. All about suburban ennui, middle class angst, the search for greater meaning in work and family life, means justifying ends, and traditional vs. progressive roles of men and women as viewed in the fifties. (If a woman doesn't want children, might she be insane?) Pretty bland stuff. But Yates does the trick of energizing a story that in lesser hands would be a yawnfest by infusing the characters with such specific motivations and actions and flaws that there's instant empathy and, therefore, interest. Even the summary narrative and quasi-scenes sing. Describing the worries of two young children who are, compared to the main characters, only roughly sketched in, Yates puts us in their heads just before they drift off to sleep, "as their toes reach for a cooler place in the sheets." Ah! What a great and telling detail (it's warm in the plain little tract house, they've been in bed long enough to be restless, their worries make them tense) -- a clearly human gesture, so commonplace that the mere expression of it is startling. Beautiful.

     Another point of admiration is pacing and structure. Each character has a rather complex backstory, but somehow Yates slips it in almost between the lines of the forward action. There's very little "flashback" -- a lot of it comes about as summary narrative in the form of in-the-moment thoughts. So tricky, so seamless. I can't express how much I love this book.

     Another inspiration that came my way via Hopie and Andy -- and Netflix -- is the film "Starting Out in the Evening." I hadn't read the novel, but there are many moments in the movie that I am certain come directly from the book, particularly some odd gestures like the graduate student suddenly kissing the old writer's hand; smearing honey on his face; the way they lie side by side, crosswise, on the bed, like corpses. These bits, strung together, pull the characters to life, but it's their motivations -- again, specific, particular, complicated -- that create understanding and empathy. And like Revolutionary Road, nearly all of the "action" is interior: what choices will each person make, and why? How will they respond to each other in light of new information? How will their relationships change? How will they change? 

     I'm a sucker for complicated characters in ordinary situations, and writing that elevates them to individual human status. I haven't written a lick in two weeks, but because of these two influences, the book and the film, I'm jazzed about picking up the next scene of my novel. Not bad.

     Saw Dr. J yesterday, who upped me to 50 mcg fentanyl patches and suggested we take off a couple of weeks before going back for another round of chemo. OK. 

     After five and a half years, I still feel very much a rookie at this parenting business. However, occasionally I stumble onto something that works and makes me feel like a genius. Therefore, I hereby present a Parent Trick:

     M took A to work with him this morning -- she is excited because she will get to sit in on two meetings, which makes her feel very grown up, since "meeting" is the euphemism M and I use when we go somewhere she is not invited. "Miss Amanda is coming over tonight to hang out with you." "Why?" "Mama and Papa have to go to a meeting." Worked for my parents, and so far, it's working for me and M.

     Off to read and, perhaps, write.

     Rough week, physically; fentanyl has already lost its magic -- the infusion nurse says my previous use of it probably has something to do with the speedy resistance -- and it's getting harder to eat. Pain is pretty constant, a matter of degrees. 

     Christmas was nice, although we never did finish decorating that damn tree. Hopie and Andy were with us. Santa brought a microphone for A. Lots of books all around. 

     I'm waking up at night, twirling. Worried about everything, but specifically:

• Getting sicker, and options narrowing
• Finances -- if I'm unable to continue with school in a few weeks, I'll lose my stipend, and then what?
• How my increasing reliance on bed is affecting A
• The mounting pressure on M

     A is tucked in, and I'm going to try to watch a movie with M. The treatment I had on Friday has put me under the clouds the last couple of days, so this will be a test of attention. I hope it's a good flick.

Up and not so running

     M and A dragged our Christmas tree home a week ago. M wrestled it into the stand and stood it upright without my help. (A relative term; typically my help comprises holding the trunk with two fingers while he squirms on the floor, tightening and loosening screws, asking, "Is is straight now?") He strung it with big fat colored lights. Two nights later he unstrung the colored lights, which were shorting out periodically, and replaced them with those tiny white lights that everyone decided during the Reagan Eighties were somehow less tacky than the lights of our youth. That's when tinsel took a mortal hit, too, I think.

     Now, we have a beautiful tree with lights but no ornaments. Strangely, A hasn't been begging to decorate the tree. She's excited about Christmas, but she's not nutzo like Hopie and I were at her age. On the other hand, she's always been able to entertain herself, to be satisfied, with what's right in front of her. Can't find both shoes she wants to wear? No worries, these others will do nicely, and there are two. That's just how she rolls. Nice little presence in our house. 

     I, like the tree, am up but not exactly good to go. Treatment yesterday took everything out of me; we got home at 1:30, I went to sleep and woke up six hours later. Last night I slept 12 hours. I still feel groggy, and there is so much I want to do for Christmas. A should have presents gathering under the tree (right now there are Amazon boxes and, I believe, a screwdriver or two). Hopie and I should be conspiring about brunch Christmas morning -- bagels and lox? Something sweet? Who will provide the champagne for mimosas? Or should we get M to mix a batch of bloodys? Which night would Hopie like to bring over some A gifts, so she and Andy don't have to schlepp everything Christmas morning? So far, none of that. I haven't even hung the excellent, sparkly, and very likely magical kissing ball A made in pre-K last year. It really is stunning. Glitter.

     M's parents are driving to Atlanta to celebrate their new grandson's first Christmas. He will be almost five months old. He is an excellent baby. M and A are at his folks' house right now, about a half-hour down the road, dropping off goodies for the Atlanta contingent. What's weird about that: I had nothing, but nothing to do with those presents. Not even the wrapping. I don't know what M is sending beyond a little something he carved from wood and painted. (M is a talented artist, imaginative and patient.) I ordered a treat for the baby off the Interwebs and had it sent directly. That's it. I feel like I've dropped off the face of Christmastown. Makes me sad.

     Tonight we have our annual secret gift exchange with friends. (I was unsure I'd be up for it, until I went to workshop on Wednesday night, which was at the professor's house and featured chili and lots of wine. It didn't deplete me at all, so I have confidence about tonight.) I'm almost completely unprepared, and have relied on M for help selecting and acquiring the thing. It's 1:30 Saturday afternoon, the babysitter comes at 7:00, and there's still one more element to the present I have to get done before wrapping. Maybe a nap first. 

     So, in summary: Sloggy sleep, white lights, lots to do, lots foregone, lovely children, just a bit more sleep, please.

     Doesn't seem so different from most Christmases, now that I think of it.

Ten things about my father

My father's name was Gus. Among other things, I remember that he loved:

1. Naked Lady Night in Waterford -- Nude model, artist friends, sketchbooks, and an egg timer. And wine.
2. Ideas -- Politics, astronomy, mathematics, economics
3. His own half-baked theories, presented with conviction -- "I just told you a fact!"
4. Taking a scorching-hot bath in the late afternoon
5. Great American and European cities -- San Francisco, New Orleans, Quebec, London, Copenhagen, Prague, Florence
6. Food and wine -- red wine and red meat prepared "almost bloody" at fine restaurants, or dinner at Eleanor's farm or the Pink House
7. Painting, drawing, playing the piano
8. Silliness -- John Cleese, Martin Short, Jon Stewart
9. Alabama football -- The decal of on the back window of his 1968 Chrysler was Bear Bryant walking on water, with the slogan: "I believe."
10. His family and friends -- His brother Henry, his wife Faye, me and Hopie, Eleanor, Eleanor's granddaughters (who called him Grandfriend), his granddaughter A (who knew him as Grappa), all the Waterford women who cheerfully spoiled him rotten (who knew they were being totally played), Victor, Harry, Chuck, Clayton, Allen, Andy, and M.

Bloglaw

     Well, after an exhaustive investigation, consisting of googling "blog comments libel" and clicking the first of a bazillion hits, I discovered at least one ruling that finds bloggers cannot be held liable for potentially defamatory comments by anonymous posters, even if the blog owners monitor or limit comments (and thus appear to exercise editorial discretion). The immunity is founded on the Communications Act.

     Here's the 2006 law.com article. 

     What it doesn't address is whether comments posted by identifiable individuals, rather than anonymous posters, might implicate the blog host. And the ruling's more than two years old. Maybe there's been an update. 

     I became intensely interested in this topic this morning, after an exchange with an author friend whose personal life and character have been savaged in the last few months by a handful of vicious but vocal blog commenters. (The overwhelming majority of Internet posts I've run across regarding this author are reasonable: polite if not extremely complimentary of the writer himself as well as his work.) One of the worst offenders, in my opinion, was a genius who linked to his own, personally identifiable -- as in picture of the guy on the homepage -- livejournal site. I'm all for free speech. I'm also all for manners, generosity, intelligent discourse, honest disagreement and common sense.

Novel crank

     Whew! Third and final submission for the semester to novel workshop: check! This thing is coming slowly for me. As much as I loved poetry workshop this fall, I should have followed the advice of my novel workshop instructor and committed single-mindedly to prose. It was too easy to take a break from the long form (which intimidated me to begin with) and dash off a poem or two instead. And polish. And revise. 

     Once I get cranking on the story, I love it -- but there's definitely a learning curve when I put it away for more than a couple of days. I reckon it is all about momentum at this point.

     Something else that's not working the way I'd envisioned it is this blog. The purpose was to blather about illness here so I could keep it out of my fiction, but you write what you know, I guess. Small wonder there's not one but two characters in the novel with life-threatening conditions, struggling to work out all the dynamics and deal with the pressures I'm slogging through in real life. Bleh. Maybe in revision one of them will turn into an organ grinder whose main conflict is lack of monkey.

     M fussed at me this morning for following my own judgment rather than doctor's orders, and saving some antibiotics that were prescribed a couple of weeks ago for now, when I actually do have a mild sore throat and fever. My thinking was that I didn't need them before, and good thing I have them now. M's argument was that the doctor said I needed them and I should have finished them as directed. He doesn't need an even sicker me to take care of. I understand that, but I feel it's my job to monitor my health, not his. If the tables were turned, we'd each be making the other's argument.

     A went off to school this morning proudly sporting brand new shiny black patent Mary Janes. The child could not be more fabulous.

Medicine and magic

     The Fentanyl is definitely helping blunt the pain. The cost is full consciousness. Hard to tell yet if part of why I'm sleeping so much is that I'm finally comfortable, or if it's 100% drug-induced. There are other side effects that haven't kicked in yet: all narcotics affect appetite and motility, but apparently there is a new wonder-treatment for that, in the form of an injection. Cause I can't get me enough needles.

     Also saw that the CA125 is, finally, going in the right direction. (That's a blood marker that tends to rise with malignancies, though not reliably. Normal is 0-30. Mine was 60-ish a few months ago, and up to 125 several weeks ago. Yesterday it was back down to 75.) I have been willfully not looking at my CA125, but Dr. J mentioned it on Thursday, and so I peeked at the paperwork after the blood draw yesterday, and even though it is notoriously unreliable -- I mean, like, they tell you not to pay attention to it at all after you've had one round of chemo, and I've had, um, I have no idea how many rounds I've had, ten, maybe? -- it's a spirit-lifter when it's on the way toward normal, like a rainbow, elevating but not substantive, but still, why would they bother counting it if it has no bearing at all? 

     Run-on sentence much?

     A and M are downstairs having an earnest conversation about Christmas tree lights. A keeps using the word "magical," not the schmaltzy kind, but the real-live fairy kind, as in, "I bet those lights are magical." M agrees. I love their voices. 

     

Glam Scam

     Yikes! Poor Darin Strauss, whose novel, More Than It Hurts You, I've admired in these pages, is featured in The Village Voice as an author who has been burned (and lived to tell the tale) by blog commenters who never actually read his book. I followed the discussion over at LROD where Strauss first became entangled, after which the blog owner did the right thing and planned a discussion of the book on a certain day -- so as to give the commenters time to actually read the thing. Despite the host's good intentions, the book discussion was a bust. Seems most of the people who'd dissed the author didn't care to do the work of backing up their opinions.

     Anyway, the Village Voice article highlights the difficulties of 21st Century noveling. It's not hard enough to write a novel, and to get an agent, and a book contract, and see it published and marketed, perhaps even with a book tour, underfunded though it probably is. No, in this cynical, snide, e-anonymous era, an author must also negotiate (or not) ignorant missives from assholes with keyboards. Success enjoys its own company only for a short time before it devolves into a target for the loudest and crudest and least likely to succeed. 

     Nobody ever said writing was an especially glamorous business, but yeesh. Sorry this happened to a good guy like Darin Strauss. Sorry it happens to any writer who's achieved what most, if not all, writers strive for.

     

Is it better to be alert and in pain, or asleep?

     Well, feh. Fentanyl it is. Is there an alternative? There is. It's called OxyContin. You know, the zippy little bump that turns housewives into hobos.

     Fentanyl and fat. Lots and lots of fat. Direct quote from Dr. J: "Don't even talk to me about that vitamin water shit; you need calories, and real food."

     So, the theory is this: The Fentanyl will smooth out the rough edges, enabling me to feel like, I don't know, getting out of bed and eating a Big Mac. The hydrocodone is for breakthrough pain -- perfectly OK to pop one on top of the Fentanyl.  My sister just called to say she is on her way over with "fattening crap." So, when I go in for chemo, I should feel like a shiny new nickel, my body will tolerate it better, I can get enough of it into my system to beat back this fucking tumor, and everything will be rainbows.

     Unless I fall asleep. In which case, jamming fat into my face may be a challenge.

     My friend Julia is lovely, and so generous. She is a massage therapist. I started seeing her once a week four and a half years ago, when this Second Wave hit. When things were going to hell in 2007, Julia brought her table to our house. She waived her fee. When I was too weak to come downstairs, she jumped up on the bed with me and gave me the most relaxing massages imaginable. It was a point of pride for me when I was well enough to resume our appointments in her cozy office. But this morning, it was pouring rain, I was stressing about the Dr. J appointment, had slept poorly, and so I asked M to call Julia to cancel. Instead... she invited him to take my spot. She is an angel. She told M that she would come to our house next week, to make things easier. I am so grateful to her, but it makes me sad that we are edging once again toward that dark place where just driving ten blocks is too much for me.

     Hard to live in the moment. Hard not to anticipate difficulties.

Pain mania

     The psychiatric definition of mania is "profuse and rapidly changing ideas... irritability, and decreased sleep" (Random House Unabridged, 2006). It doesn't mention anything about emotional instability; it seems to do more with cognitive misfirings.

     In any event, I am concerned to the point of sleeplessness (would that be overly concerned?) about my prescriptions for nerve pills and pain medication running out. The more I hurt, the worse it is, predictably. Not only did I awaken several times last night frantic that I wouldn't have enough pills to get me through today, but I dreamt I had run out of pain medication. The label says to take a pill every four hours as needed. Lately, I've been living in four hour increments, with the goal of waiting perhaps four and a half hours, even five -- to prove to myself and Dr. J that I am not yet at the point of needing the ghastly Fentanyl.

     Cancer presents all manner of choices. Would I prefer to be needled in the arm, or in the chest catheter? Would I like to lose my appetite due to chemo or disease progression? Would I rather be incapacitated by pain or by narcotics? The answers are not as clear as you might expect. Catheter-chemo-narcotics seems logical, until you consider what you're giving up. When the nurse draws blood from the catheter, you are very much, undeniably, for all to see, a cancer patient. When you lose your appetite due to chemo, your strength is depleted exponentially -- not only are you unable to eat enough to sustain your body, but the chemo is making its own caloric and nutritional demands, so it's just freaking impossible to keep up, and you start looking like wasted Cancer Girl (or, in my case, Cancer Boy, as my figure is gone and my britches are all satchel-ass). Narcotics relieve the pain, but they also relieve you of the capacity to think, to write, to recall, and to stay awake for stretches longer than the average three month old baby. Driving is out of the question. Wine. Reading a story to A.

     The trick, see, is to hold the need for these choices at bay for as long as possible. Resistance may be futile, but so is drooling one's way through the day.

     My friend Amy (my very wise therapist) reminds me that pain is in itself stressful, and crazy-making. Relieve the pain, she says. 

     I'll pop a nerve pill and consider it. And in the meantime, I will be willfully grateful that I still have choices.

My audience of one, or, "Brains can't save her now!"

     It's quite true that being smart, or generous or funny or happy, or pretty or wealthy, or devout or even centered and mature, holds no sway over cancer. Yes, studies show (apparently) that educated people with health insurance have better prognoses than underprivileged people; it sucks five ways from Sunday to be on the wrong side of middle class in this country. But I'm talking about the individual, cellular level here. Cancer doesn't care how well I did on my SATs.

     Which brings me around to that "audience of one" I've been thinking about for a week, since an anonymous commenter posted the provocative idea in response to my extended whine on writing. The connection whacked me in the head by way of a quiet email late last night, barely three days after I'd sent a small batch of poems to the Virginia Quarterly Review: rejection, of course, and not even the typical "though your work shows obvious merit" line they usually give me when they decline my fictions after stewing on them for over a hundred days; I heard the unmistakable sound of the door slam and the lock click on this one. My head spun.

     I like smart; I strive for smart. I want to be in that club so damn bad. Among the literary publications and magazines I submit to, I consider several to be whip-smart: VQR, Paris Review, The Atlantic, Harper's, Boston Review. Certainly there are others I'd love to get into -- Missouri Review, AGNI, Tin House, Ploughshares, actually there are lots of them -- but I am drawn to the first set due to what I perceive as their intellectual prowess. They are on the pulse, taking on the giant issues of the day, publishing thoughtful essays and critiques alongside accomplished fiction and poetry. Politics is more than a fictive theme in these publications; it's a driving force. They have that big-picture perspective that tags them as brainiacs, the ability not only to see societal patterns in individual acts, but to embrace existing in this most unforgiving space, willfully (rather than haphazardly) presenting a cumulative commentary on the world as it turns in the moment. They live outside their own precious heads.

     I suppose it would surprise no one to learn that my parents put a premium on smarts. Or that they were not just politically involved, but prescient, moving their young family from their hometown of Montgomery to Washington, DC in 1965, eschewing the mindset they'd grown up with and making a difficult, determined reach for change, for the future, years before it was even remotely acceptable. They had vision. The acted on it.

     I often wonder, if I'd been born in the Depression-era Deep South and come of age under Jim Crow, if I'd have had the vision and the will my parents demonstrated. I do not believe I would.

     My mother worked on Capitol Hill for Sen. Mike Mansfield's Democratic Policy Committee, got a law degree, and worked at Treasury. A young up-and-coming Washingtonian, everyone said, smart as a whip and ready to do great things. Her trajectory was abruptly reversed by illness; in 1983, she died of cancer. She was 48.

     My father ran an association on alcohol and drug policy, and became an international expert on the failure of prohibition, and an advocate for the disease theory of addiction. He was endlessly gracious and had impeccable manners, but privately, he made it understood that he did not suffer fools gladly. By the end of his life (he died in 2004), he refused to suffer them at all -- it seemed he had little tolerance for most people. I understand that to be a classic pattern of aging, where one becomes more oneself as the years go by.

     Anyway, hard acts to follow. 

     I've spent my life trying to live up to the level of smartitude so clearly valued in my family, and feeling out of my league. Trying to compensate, I stacked up achievements instead, as a kind of proof that I was worthy, that there were brains between those ears, even if, during family trips or holidays, I was the clown. I went to an academically middling but artistically competitive university and won every acting award they gave out. Afterwards, I wormed my way in the back door of a TV newsroom and got hired as a reporter, and scarcely three months later, was promoted to anchor and producer. (I was 22 years old.) Lookit, see me, interviewing the people who make the world go round? Telling other people what's news? I would repeat this pattern twice more, in advertising (copywriter to associate creative director within a year), and in the cradle of intellectualism itself, the University (adjunct to fulltime instructor, even lacking an advanced degree, in one year). 

     All the while, writing. And now, I'm doing what my own mother did, though in a manner decidedly less intellectually robust than law school/Capitol Hill/family: I'm back in school, for an MFA.

     It's pretty clear to me that I'm trying to get my father's ear. There's no way he'd be interested in this novel, but the act of completing a novel itself would impress him. My mother loved fiction and poetry, but I didn't get a chance to know her as a grownup, and so any speculation about what kind of novel she might admire feels fruitless. 

     The motivation behind my achievements thus far has been to prove that I'm smart. I choose smart friends, I married a smart man. I genuinely like smart. Maybe I can write a smart book. The lessons my parents instilled in me help make living artful and worthwhile, but they do not help with simple survival. Where can I go to learn how to fuck with cancer's plan?

     I've heard or read more than one writer say, in effect, that they write in order to save their lives -- in order to live. I like that, but I don't think it works that way. Cancer won't care when VQR comes calling. On the other hand, this weekend I recklessly submitted some stories (and a batch of poems) to a bunch of journals, many which are notoriously slow in responding. Six months is a lifetime; who knows if I'll be in any shape to accept an offer of publication? A small act of hope.

     Meantime, I'm still trying to envision my audience of one. 

Citizen's arrest for public stupidity

     In the Sunday NYT, Timothy Egan crawls way out onto the elitist limb where I and many others have perched, squirming, lo these last eight years, averting our gaze as the seeds of anti-intellectualism sprouted into an insidious, full-on clusterfuck of stone idiocy in hardback and trade paperback. Hyperbole aside, it's nice to have some company out here; someone who is willing and able to get published his spot-on indignation over those meatheads, presumably in possession of opposable thumbs but nevertheless lacking the ability to rub a noun and a verb together, who insist on sucking up the oxygen in American bookstores. All two of them.

     It's not that I begrudge idjits their God-given right to large advances, publicists, and marketing. It's that these historically precious resources -- the advances, not the idjits -- have become practically extinct in the last, what?, week, since the publishing industry went off the rails and onto life support. Yes, it was largely self-inflicted (see "last eight years" above), and precipitated by the Not So Great Depression, certainly. Still. The choice to offer Whalin' Sarah Palin a seven-figure book deal while edging out, I don't know, me, is hardly a moral dilemma on the scale of Sophie's Choice. Who shall thrive in difficult times? The fittest! Who shall be published in a whack market? The writer! Who shall be left to do the necessary work of fixing toilets? Joe the Motherfucking Plumber!

     See? Not so hard.

Conundrum

     Ooph. No chemo yesterday due to a fever I didn't realize I had. Also, I had a pretty intense meltdown and called an audible just as Elaine-the-best-infusion-nurse-ever leaned down to access my port (for the uninitiated, which I hope you are, that means just as she was about to stick the IV needle into the catheter in my chest to draw blood for lab work). "Do we have to do this today," I asked. The answer was no, absolutely not, good call, way to take control, take a week off and feel better, we'll re-do the schedule, going to call your doctor, be right back.

     Well, here's the thing: because of escalating symptoms, I am scared the chemo is not working. Yet the nurses and my doctor tell me I haven't been on it long enough for it to do its thing; I have yet to complete a three-week cycle. So, while I'm afraid it isn't working and we're wasting valuable time, I'm also afraid to skip it, and frustrated that my body finds ways to confound our best efforts. First my blood counts crashed, now a sudden fever. And I keep getting sicker.

     Cancer Blows, Reason #973: BORING. The world folds in on itself. All I talk about, think about, write about, is me. My body, my illness, my pain, my blood, my cells. Cancer snares me in a self-perpetuating web of self-involvement, and bores the everliving shit out of me. 

What were we thinking?

     Off to Week Three of the new chemo regimen, and hoping my blood counts aren't too shot to get the medicine. M is taking me to the infusion center, and my friend Amy will meet us there and hang out with me so M can run a thousand errands. His brother is flying in this afternoon to surprise their father for his seventieth birthday, and for the sake of ease, we somehow planned to have dinner here tonight. M has made a birthday cake and hired Chef Bill to whip up a fabulous dinner... but M still has to run to the airport to pick up his brother, pick up the food, get the table set, pick up A from school, etc. How is this easier than going to a restaurant? Obviously we were out of our minds when we planned this. Shit, we still haven't entirely cleared the table of Thanksgiving linens and assorted utensils. Brother is spending the night with us tomorrow night, which calls for some attention to the guest room. I bet he'd like sheets.

     My aim, if I'm feeling up to it, is to help M as much as I can, and possibly do some thinking on that "ideal reader" issue a commenter raised a couple of days ago, and post here later this afternoon. 

     Or maybe a nap.

My body not my body

     Sometimes it's hard to determine if I'm following my body's signals or creating them. It's become a struggle, in the last two to three weeks, to keep a normal schedule. Each day I am a bit more exhausted and uncomfortable than the day before, so I limit my outings, do less, lose stamina, and can handle even less the next day. It's not sleep I crave, it's oxygen, nutrients -- fortification. Something substantial to give me weight, to anchor me to the ground. The sensation I have is that my body is a shell, hard-edged but hollow, and drifting.

     M skipped his own class tonight, left A at home with her sitter, and took me to school. He hung out for three hours while I was in novel workshop, then drove me home. By the time we walked in the door, I felt completely spent: lightheaded, empty, aching. I did nothing all day, literally, in an attempt to store up energy. Marking up manuscripts and writing workshop letters was just ridiculously difficult, draining. I took a shower and had to rest for fifteen minutes before getting dressed -- then had to rest again.

     I catch my image in the bathroom mirror these days and see a woman receding: drawn face, whispy hair, pale eyes. I look sick. I look old and hunkered. I am not old. I wonder if this is how elderly people feel -- is cancer as withering as aging, or more, or less?

     Everyone knows how depleting chemotherapy is. I'd argue, though, that illness itself is the most challenging, the most damaging. It's impossible to feel like the medicine is working when the medicine is making you feel like shit. Or is it the cancer that's beating you up? Is the persistent pain a sign the chemo is not checking the tumor at all, or that the disease is progressing, or possibly both? Fuck all, you see the dilemma.

     Still, fighting through penetrating exhaustion -- there should be a word for this kind of tired -- to do normal things, like going to class, ultimately helps me feel stronger by giving me the illusion of control. Which is all any of us has to begin with.

     Thank God for M.

Things that help me feel strong

     This week's reminders:

1. A laser-like focus on writing, on structure
2. A fridge stocked with food from sweet friends
3. Writing; making progress with the novel, especially when it comes easily
4. Watching A Room With A View in bed while M carves wine stoppers in the chair beside me
5. Helping other writers work out narrative and structure problems
6. Reading a story or passage or poem that leaves me breathless (Brodsky's "Stone Villages")
7. Not worrying about prepping the guest room for M's brother's visit this weekend
8. Getting dressed and walking to the cafe -- not that I've done that lately, but maybe today
9. Watching A recognize the irony, and the humor, in her own selfish response to that classic motherly lesson about children around the world having little to eat (A, whining: "My tummy hurts because I ate too much." Me: "We're lucky, yadayada." A: "Well, I'm not feeling lucky right now."  --> laughter)
10. M and A

A Kerouac kick in the pantaloons

     After all my boo-hooing about not feeling like a real writer (and using the feeling as an excuse to, um, not write), a very kind writer named Manuel sent me this classic Jack Kerouac quote (6/22/47)*:

"Another thought that helps a writer as he works along -- let him write his novel 'the way he'd like to see a novel written'. This helps a great deal freeing you from the fetters of self-doubt and the kind of self-mistrust that leads to over-revision, too much calculation, preoccupation with 'what others would think.' Look at your own work and say, 'This is a novel after my own heart!' Because that's what it is anyway, and that's the point -- it's worry that must be eliminated for the sake of individual force. In spite of all this insouciant advice, I myself advanced slowly today, but not poorly, working on the final draft of the chapter. I'm a little rusty. Oh and what a whole lot of bunk I could write this morning about my fear that I can't write, I'm ignorant and worst of all, I'm an idiot trying to achieve something I can't possibly do. It's in the will, in the heart! To hell with these rotten doubts. I defy them and spit on them. Merde!"

     Misery, meet company.

     And thanks to Manuel, who is working on a book he expects to finish at the end of this month. 

     Off now to work on mine. 'Cause did you know? I'm writing a novel.

* From Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947 - 1954

Writers, real writers

     I had chemo yesterday and I feel like poo, don't feel like thinking about it, so instead I'm thinking about people who inspire me.

     I had the pleasure and the pain, late Thanksgiving night, to run across the New York Times 100 Notable Books 2008 list. Pleasure because, obviously, it's a list of books I've either read and loved/admired or hated and possibly admired, or books I might love or hate. (I stop reading a book pretty quickly if I don't at least admire the writing.) Pain because it was late, I was exhausted, and couldn't stop following the links, googling the authors, and updating my wish list. Although I often disagree with the NYTBR, reading it is like having a discussion with other like-minded, book-obsessed people: always stimulating. I was heartened to discover that many of the books that made the 2008 fiction/poetry notable list were debuts. Maybe I'm mis-remembering years past (or, more likely, failing to remember at all), but it seems there is a bumper crop of first novels, story collections, and poetry books this year. Nam Le's The Boat has been on my list since it came out last spring. (Also, bonus, he's brainy and gorgeous.) 

     I could go on for days about books I hope to read, but the broader point of this post is to acknowledge the authors who manage to write at all. I am reminded constantly how hard it is to write, never mind to write well. I can come up with a thousand excuses to procrastinate; many a successful effort is cataloged in this blog. Drafting this novel of mine has proven to be more of a struggle than I'd expected. Not the actual writing so much, which I enjoy and comes easily, but the ass-in-the-chair aspect of it. I'm good at improvising, so I trust myself to follow the characters and come up with a compelling story. I'm good at writing (I think) on the sentence level, and even on the chapter level. But because I've never tried a novel before, I don't know if I'll be any good at the entirety, at finishing -- and I get lazy quick when I'm not certain I'll succeed. (See: Algebra I; high school; disaster.)

     I'm impressed with the other writers in my novel workshop. They are writing. They are not afraid of the mess. They are real writers.

     I admire my instructor, who has written a dozen novels and has an extraordinarily loyal readership. He is a real writer. 

     Likewise J. Robert Lennon and Rhian Ellis, both authors, both steeping in fiction (teaching, running a book store), both blogging about writing, reading, and publishing at the smart and thought-provoking Ward Six. They are real writers.

     Poet Seth Abramson, a current Iowa Writers' Workshop student, has recently won some high-profile accolades for his work, and his first book is coming out next spring. Seth is a real writer.

     I admire my friend Lily, whose first novel has won or been shortlisted for awards and fellowships, and is now being shopped around by an excellent agent. (Lily also started submitting short stories to journals just a few months ago, and already has met with success. Go, Lily!) Lily is a real writer.

     And just today, I read that my friend Valley just completed the first draft of her first novel. An Anne Lamott-style shitty first draft, according to the author. I seriously doubt it's shitty; I know it's thrilling for Valley. It thrills me, and I haven't read a lick of it. But Valley makes her living as a writer and book reviewer. Valley is a real writer.

     I've always made my living as a writer, too -- journalism, then (God help us) the more lucrative and much less substantial advertising. Still, while I think of myself as a writer, I don't consider myself the type of writer I want to be: a writer of fiction and poetry. A novelist. At the moment I feel like a tourist, a dabbler. It's not because publication eludes me; I know that publication doesn't amount to authenticity. It's that I don't have that ass-in-the-chair ethic yet, and I don't know that I'll ever have it. I write when it's fun for me (i.e. easy); I write when there's a deadline (i.e. out of fear). If left to my own devices, however -- I know my own propensity toward laziness -- no matter how much I want to say I have written a novel, I doubt I'd have the discipline to do it without prodding. Saying I am writing a novel is painful and embarrassing, because I feel like a poseur. It feels disrespectful, somehow, to make a claim on that sacred territory.

     I don't know what the fuck I'll do when I'm finished with my degree and have no one expecting twenty pages of me every couple of weeks.

     Meantime, cheers and great thanks to the real writers who help me, for the moment, keep the faith.

     

     

Steroid psychosis

     What a week. I had chemo on Friday morning, then gave a reading Friday evening. The reading went exceptionally well -- I felt calm, comfortable, and the story was well-received by the 75 or so people in the audience. Very energizing. Then I came home and slept, hard. M's parents came by yesterday and, unlike the immediate aftermath of most Topo Gigio treatments, I was perky enough to hang out with them for a couple of hours. That's major progress.

     You'd think the fact that I'm getting a slightly lower dose of chemo than before (which actually adds up to a higher amount over three weeks) is what made the difference, but you'd be wrong! We also ditched the Decadron, a steroid that helps quell nausea and, incidentally, didn't anyone tell you this?, just a little tip, can bring on the batshit crazies in some huge percentage of patients. When I told Dr. J a couple of weeks ago that for three days after chemo, the world seemed about to end, he immediately suggested we drop the Decadron. But it was the infusion nurse who snapped it into perspective for me and M on Friday: "Steroid psychosis! We see it all the time with Decadron. Google it when you get home." 

     So. While I'm thrilled to know that the source of my... how you say... emotional delicacy was a pre-med, and apparently a non-essential one at that (no horking at all without it, phew!), I find myself in a familiar state of dismay over having lost all that time to crying; over freaking out my family; over assuming, as I often do, that nothing can be done and I must take my lumps. A long-term cumulative effect of sliding health, trauma and chemo -- and I've had "a helluva lot," as Dr. J never fails to remind me -- is fuzzy memory. So I don't recall being out of my mind with Decadron when I was on Gemzar or cisplatin (or whatever it was) last year. M does remember it; when he googled "steroid psychosis" this morning, he said it all looks very familiar, and I am not alone.

     One of my favorite shows on the teevee is "House," as I've mentioned before. Part of what I love about it, aside from the consistently complex characters, is that the medical cases always present the physician's paradox: how to save the patient without killing the patient? I guess the fish an oncologist is frying really are that big; the smaller ones (what's a little psychosis in the grand scheme of things?) don't seem worth mentioning.

     The week overall: a net gain.

Procrastinating

     Well, putting it off will bite you in the butt every time. 

1. I've put off paying bills this month, and -- woopsie! -- Comcast got so testy they disassembled the series of tubes that connects our house to the Interwebs. (I'm writing this from campus.)
   
2. I've also had great success this past week putting off the novel writing. So much so that I have a chapter due tonight for Workshop tomorrow... and as is apparent, I'm blogging instead.
   
3. I have piles of emails to go through. 
   
4. I'm wearing superstylish ca. 1997 jeans because I've made such a project of laundry it just seems too, too much. I don't even have to schlep it anywhere; we have a lovely washer and dryer in a huge laundry room on the second floor of our house. Literally, it takes three minutes to get a load going. Too much. 
   
5. Ancillary to Point 1 above (am I using that word correctly?) is that I have put off sending a chunky October invoice on a freelance job. Getting paid would certainly make paying bills less stressful. 
   
6. Now that the election is over, M and I are in negotiations with our souls over whether to ditch cable TV. Part of what makes that idea palatable, in addition to the savings, is that pretty much everything is available for free viewing on the Internets. That is, as long as one pays the Comcast bill on time. Also, we have not actually sat down with the Comcast bill to see how much money we would, in fact, save because, um, it's a bill, and I'm putting off looking at bills.

     Feh.

New plan

     I had a good appointment with Dr. J today. Good in that he was all, Sure, let's try that! Sounds good! I told him I thought the blood counts crashing a few weeks ago was an anomaly and he agreed to an accelerated chemo schedule. Instead of every other week, we're going for three weeks on, one week off (which apparently is the protocol for Topo Gigio). Cutting back on the Decadron (steroid) to try to smooth out my crazies. And the physical exam was OK, i.e. soft, smooth belly, no apparent -- what? -- lumps? Yik. Anyway, I am more confident when we're aggressive.

     I'm still in pretty persistent pain but my outlook is more hopeful. And I got a swell birthday card from A today, with drawings and declarations of love for Mama. And a cool, original Modern Library edition of Absalom, Absalom! from my sweetheart M, an appropriately Southern gothic choice under the circumstances. And cards and calls and treats from friends and family. Nice day.

Oil pastels

     After a rocky weekend, I've perked up considerably this afternoon. A and I are hanging out in the front parlor -- there's a beautiful glow from the changing leaves outside, and lamplight against the orange ceiling -- while M bakes bread and makes chicken stock and beef stew. I hear the football game on the TV. Very cozy. A has decided to mount an art show after Thanksgiving, and is inspired by the fall colors. She is using oil pastels to sketch trees. She says she prefers them to crayons, which are "baby," and to regular pastels, which are too chalky and smeary. This is some little artist we have here.

     It felt good to get out a little this afternoon. A was playing with some friends across the river, so M and I got some coffee and walked around the neighborhood while the sun was still out. Now, it's cloudy and cool and just beautiful.

     Busy week ahead; I hope to hang onto this good energy.

Chemo today

     M is going with me this morning for what I hope will be an efficient infusion. My faith in this drug continues to wane because I am not feeling better, I'm feeling worse. Pain is more of a constant than an incidental, and eating reliably causes increasing discomfort. I'm getting to the point where I just don't feel like doing much of anything; going to campus is a major deal even though it's only ten blocks away. Just getting myself into the shower and walking a block to Starbuck's is now something I negotiate with myself every morning. Unless my feet are out in front of me, I'm uncomfortable, so staying in bed seems reasonable. That's not good.

     Next Thursday we meet with Dr. J to see where we are and make adjustments. A year ago when we saw him on Nov. 13, he made the glorious suggestion that we stop the cisplatin, as it seemed to have done its thing. Much celebrating. Next week, I'm afraid he's going to come at me with Fentanyl patches and the news that we've exhausted our chemo options. 

     I'm nowhere near ready to hear that.

Already doing the right thing

     Can a Web site change a nation? Of course not. But it can start to change some minds, win over dissenters, and pull people together toward common goals.

     Barack Obama and Joe Biden have launched change.gov -- and the site's inclusiveness follows through on Obama's election night pledge to listen to everyone, especially those who disagree with him, and to be a President for all Americans. It invites visitors to share their ideas and their stories, and to participate in government. It is comprehensive and beautifully designed and right on time.

     I am so down with these guys. I know they're going to make mistakes, but man are they good.

     

Did Bush bust my artistic ability?

     Blogging over at the excellent Ward Six, author J. Robert Lennon considers the positive effect of an Obama presidency on his own ability to write fiction. JRL's startling observation is that for the last eight years, Americans -- and American artists -- have toiled and ultimately faltered under the weight of a political ideology that displays roiling contempt for the very people it purportedly serves. 

     I've always been well aware how deliberately the Bush administration has run counter to my personal morality, and have indeed been steeping in an ugly brew of anger. I have considered the corrosive effect the Bush/Rove contempt has had on the constituency as a whole (the national mood). For some reason, I have never applied it to my personal psyche. I don't know that I feel as directly affected as JRL seems to feel, but I think he has a point: if there's been a collective impact, it has to have been borne by individuals. And it's going to show up in art, and perhaps in the creative impulse, or lack thereof.

     At the least, JRL has raised the possibility for me to blame any troubles I've had writing in the last few years squarely on the sloping shoulders of George W. Bush.

     Will writing fiction become less burdensome for me under Obama? I don't know; I guess it depends on whether I find greater motivation in repression or liberation. I think this blog proves I'm pretty damned motivated by my anger. The word "spew" springs to mind. And apart from the current whackjobs in the White House, I have plenty of things to fear and doubt. 

     Sure, I hope writing gets easier for me. If it doesn't, though, no matter; I'll take Obama's promise of hope and optimism and sure-footed leadership, for my little daughter's sake. For the first time since I became a mother five years ago, I feel I am no longer inadvertently imperiling my (Chinese-born) child by raising her in a careening, rudderless nation. That's worth all the stories I can write in a lifetime.

WEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PRESIDENT OBAMA

Will gladly say so long to this kind of fun

     As though we need further proof that SaPa is a dipshit or a snake, or both: after voting in Wasilly this morning, Palin was asked whom she voted for. She demurred.

     Either she has the reasoning ability of a preschooler, or she voted for felonious Internets titan Ted "The Tube" Stevens. 

     Psst, Gov'nor! I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours. 

     My own experience was easy-peasy. Small line, helpful -- even cheerful -- poll volunteers, no trouble with the touchy touchscreen, and now I'm sipping free Starbucks. 

     Hopie and Andy are coming over tonight to watch the returns. Virginia polls close at 7:00, and I just read on Pollster.com that we won't see any of those super-reliable exit polls until 5:00 or later. Maybe I can get some writing done today.

     Happy, happy election day!

     

So proud!

     It's raining and chilly in our Virginia town this morning, but the voting lines are long. M took A to our polling place at 6:15, and they were done by 7:30. M said the people in line were upbeat and excited, and that A was so well-behaved that people commented on her composure. 

     I expect the wait to extend throughout the day, so I'll walk up the street as early as I can after a 10:15 business call. There's a Starbucks on the corner where I'll wait in yet another line to claim my free cup of coffee. 

     I go all weak-kneed over the displays of patriotism and love of democracy that come out, despite the ugliness, on election day. Very moving, very inspiring.

     Very determined to send McPalin back to Arilaska.

     VOTE!

Frayed nerves

     Jumping out of my skin today.

     You?

And the winner is...

     M won a pumpkin carving contest at work with this entry, lovingly named "Awkward Teen-O-Lantern." 

     Pulled me right on outta that funk I was in.

Stupid

     So much to ridicule tonight, starting with kindergarten, whose grownups apparently are unacquainted with five- and six-year-old people. This week's Big Dumb Idea concerns a Halloween party during school tomorrow. Here's what I think when I hear "Halloween party": Halloween costumes. Yes? No. The directive is for the child to "dress as your favorite story book character." Never mind that my child wants to be a fairy queen ballerina ghost, a costume she has been planning for weeks to wear for Halloween, which is an awesome fake holiday and which tomorrow is. Halloween. Other children may dream of dressing up as spiders, or witches, or hobos. Because it's Halloween all across this great land of ours tomorrow. Halloween, not to be confused with Story Book Day, which is not a fake holiday in America because it is lame. 

     So, fucked once again by kindergarten and the evil choice between fighting the stupid and ensuring our daughter doesn't feel hopelessly odd and left out, we must now come up with an additional costume based on an emergency favorite story book character, which we are having a tough time doing because we are frightened of, not delighted by, wolves and trolls and chubby brother-and-sister teams who shove old ladies into ovens. 

     According to the overinvolved, understimulated kindergarten party planners, making our original, excellent fairy queen ballerina ghost costume just wasn't challenging enough.

     Stupid kindergarten.

     In other dumb, nine percent of eligible voters still have not made up their minds. Oh here's a choice for you, intelligent, ethical leadership to dig you out of the ditch you've put yourself in or a flaming vat of lying dogshit. Hmm. Don't know? FAIL. Forfeit turn. Disallowed to vote. 

     Honestly, I don't care what the undecideds do; I just want them to go away. I want to stop hearing about them, their smug, coy "power," how they're the key to the election. Get the fuck out of the way already.

     Stupid.

     This, too, from today's boneheaded McPalin dolts.

     And this, from the Old (and I mean old) Guard.

     And this.

     Oh, and there's this crap to look forward to.

     All this, and so much more, in just one day. And I didn't even have to go off the blogs.

UPDATE 10/31/08

     God in heaven, this AP article puts the number of "persuadables" at 14% and clarifies who these people are: the accepted euphemism is "low-information voters," but I prefer the more accurate moniker, "stupid fuckers." 

Funnel

     Several things give me the sensation lately that the world is shrinking -- my world is shrinking. The election first. The closer we get, the narrower my reading becomes; in the last couple of weeks, I've found myself sticking close by and constantly refreshing WashPo, NYT, HuffPo, Politico, Wonkette. My fingers type the URLs almost automatically. I have no use for other news, never mind other outlets. I have fallen off my habitual grazing of writing sites in favor of all politics, all the time. I'm a junkie who can stand ever less time between hits. 

     Second is writing. The novel is stalled. Anxieties burst forth in short poems. Nothing is lyrical anymore -- everything I write is pistol fire. Time seems short.

     Third is this fucking illness. Less time between hydrocodone; whereas a few weeks ago I could count on several hours at least of feeling OK, these days I'm hurting within an hour of getting out of bed. When I eat, it no longer surprises me that I feel like shit immediately after. One of the chemo nurses told me to blame the medicine, not the disease, but it's hard when I feel progressively worse. 

     Socially I'm caving in on myself. One of the hardest parts of being sick (and being treated with poisons) is that it becomes increasingly difficult to plan ahead. I've been invited to a birthday tea for a close friend this Sunday, but I know I'll be feeling like hell by 3:00. Should I accept the invitation and hope for the best? My inclination is to let everyone off the hook and send regrets. 

     A's birthday party was a low point last Sunday. I'd had chemo two days earlier, and was in full-throttle freakout (steroids? anti-nausea meds?) by the time the guests arrived, a blathering snotty mess. The prospect of functioning -- i.e. acting like a real grownup person -- in the thick of a dozen kids and their parents was just overwhelming. I was so afraid of pulling attention away from A and having the highbeams on me, I didn't make it downstairs until the tail end, hence disappointing the most important person in my life on the most important day in hers. Fucking awful. 

     I was very, very sick in 2007. Gather-the-family kind of sick. And I recall the perverse urge to pull away from A. I don't remember much about that spring, but I do remember thinking that she was going to have to get used to me not being there, that she and M were going to have to learn to do things without me. It must seem crazy -- it has seemed nuts to me, until recently. Now, though, I'm getting to the point where the logic doesn't seem quite so twisted. I understand the impulse, even as I reject it. That scares me.

     So. Shrinking, funneling, retreating. Illness is isolating. Cancer is a whirlpool.

Rain

     Just when the leaves start to get beautiful, we get rain. It happens every autumn; this year, after an exceptionally dry summer, we welcome it, but still -- I'm not ready for those leaves to wash down into the gutters. 

     A spent the night with her lifelong friend Tori last night (Tori is also from China, adopted by her mother about eight months before A came home), and M went to a friend's house to prep a spit for a pig roast today. They're both there now. I hope A gets some seasonal new clothes for her birthday tomorrow. My sister and M's parents and her godparents can always be counted on for an updated wardrobe at birthday time. God knows she needs it; we sent her out today in a summer dress with a too-small sweater. It's alarming how children shoot up like sprouts after a downpour, and I have a thing--a leftover anxiety from my own childhood when I felt I had nothing but ill-fitting clothes, too tight, too short, too worn--that A will have clothes in her closet that fit and are appropriate for the season. I am projecting, of course, but I think this is a basic thing that will help her know in her bones that the grownups are paying attention, and are actively taking care of her. Clean sheets, clean clothes that fit, clean fingernails, art supplies, books and music. Basics. 

     My treatment yesterday went fine, but the aftermath was, and continues to be, trying. I don't know if it's the Zofran or the steroids that make me crazy-tense, but I've been alternating fits of hollering at the TV and crying for the last two days. Going to have some hot tea and read Everyman, which we're discussing in Novel Workshop on Wednesday. I also have a new poem to turn in on Monday. Strike that: I have to write a new poem for Monday. 

     Feeling weak and cranky, but I got A's birthday presents wrapped and ready for tomorrow. Art supplies, a cookbook, a fancy math set with a compass and protractor, Hello Kitty stationery, peach hand lotion, a CD of Chinese Lullabies by the Beijing Children's Choir (her old copy is scratched, but she still tries to play it), some face paints, and a "diamond" ring from the vintage shop down the street (which M let her pick out last week). 

     She'll be six tomorrow. I hope she knows, or comes to understand, how desperately M and I love her.

So over it

     I haven't written as regularly in the last week or so for several reasons. The Republicans have jumped the shark -- or, more precisely, continue to jump the shark, over and over again, day after day. Just when you think it cannot possibly get more shrill or ridiculous, out comes some random asshole suggesting Palin's big shopping accident is somehow eclipsed by Obama's use of his campaign plane to fly to Hawaii to visit one of the two most important women in his life, the grandmother who raised him, who is on the verge of death. And look, over there is Nancy Pfuckinpooter insisting that oh I can't even tell what evil she is trying to weave on MSNBC today, I'm too weary and disgusted to follow along with these desperate blowhards. Not to mention the candidates, one of whom (and she shall remain nameless) cannot define "preconditions" in the context of international relations or, shit, anything else, and who thinks elitist refers to "anybody who thinks they're better than anyone else." GAH. I am ready for the circular firing squad to commence. Please, God, let the Earth spin off its axis just long enough to create a 12-day rip in the time-space continuum; I'll gladly forfeit the next two weeks if it'll spare the nation this stinking nonsense. Really, am I the only one who could use a nice long nap? Not even my vast supply of nerve pills, generously dispensed, seems to be helping.

     The other thing is that I feel like crap most days, which is not conducive to writing about feeling like crap. I have a chemo scheduled for tomorrow, and I have to say -- bring it on. Very anxious about this week on, week off pattern. As in politics, two weeks is an eternity and the bastards may just have enough time to get the best of us. So, scared.

     We're throwing a birthday party for A on Sunday afternoon, for which I am trying to gather, or at least conserve, energy. For reasons unknown to me or M, she has taken to calling herself "Hip-hop," so the sheet cake we ordered (M usually makes the birthday cake, but we're going low-effort this year) will feature a festive pink Hello Kitty motif and the message, "Happy Birthday, Hip-hop!" I adore my almost-six-year-old girl.

Random anxieties, worries

     UPDATE: Barack Obama is suspending his campaign for a real, legitimate, heartbreaking reason. This trumps the tally of pitiful distractions below. Prayers to the Obama family tonight.

     As my mother used to warn when I was five and whining: tone. Tone.

1. Limbaugh and other conservative mouthpieces stirring the uglypot
2. Ricky Dicky Davis, Part A: spicing up said uglypot with stale Rev. Wright dogshit
3. McPalin attributing more credibility to some random fake plumber's assessment of their opponent as "socialist" than they do to anyone with an actual brain
4. Nancy Poopinfucker making her own crappy contribution to the uglypot with her assertion that fully one-third of Virginia isn't real
5. Ricky Dicky Davis, Part B: implying there's something sinister about millions of people just like me and M donating an average of $86 to Obama/Biden
6. Bachmann Bachmann Bachmann

     God, there's too much to fully catalog. On top of it, I don't feel well. My energy is waning and the I'm eating more hydrocodone than ever. A asked tonight when I am going to feel better, because she wants to go places with me. My time with her lately has been limited to snuggling on the big blue sofa, or in bed. 

     Anxious and worried. 

Yes we can!

100,000 supporters in St. Louis. This is thrilling! Oh, my.

Why authenticity matters

     The New York Times runs a story on Cindy McCain's experience as a political wife in and out of Washington. The details of her story are not new -- her implication in the Keating Five thing, her addiction to pain killers, her isolation. What's interesting is Cindy McCain's announcement to British media that she intends to use Princess Diana as an example for comporting herself. 

     Never mind that Princess Diana was, well, a royal princess. My five-year-old likes that idea, too. Forget for a moment all of Diana's well-aired psychological and emotional difficulties. The qualities Cindy McCain chooses to focus on and attempt to emulate are Diana's lauded efforts on behalf of the world's poorest, neediest people, particularly children. AIDS babies, land mine victims, sick orphans. 

     The trouble with Cindy mimicking Diana's humanitarian efforts is that the impulse is at odds with Cindy McCain's life story and, as is clear from her record, her true nature. Yes, there have been many philanthropists, primarily women, who train their sights on the world's least fortunate to mask the pain of their own misfortune; even lazy armchair psychologists like me know that the do-gooders relate to the suffering of others because in it, they recognize something about themselves. Diana is the poster child for this Poor Little Rich Girl Makes Good dynamic. 

     But Diana's impulse seems to have been genuine, a repudiation of the difficulties of a failed marriage played out on a world stage, an extension of her expressive love of children and empathy for the downtrodden, and in keeping with her inner life. Organic; authentic.

     Unlike Diana, Cindy McCain's difficulties have been entirely her own doing, in direct relation to her outsize ambitions. She was the only congressional spouse implicated in the Keating Five scandal. She was not merely a troubled political spouse who found comfort in pain killers and came to be dependent on them; she stole from her own charity to support her addiction and lied about it to salvage her husband's career (and in the process, threw other careers, not to mention needy people, under the bus). 

     It's all well and good to admire the charitable example set by Diana. It's quite another to announce to the world that you intend to follow Diana's example when you've already wrecked your reputation doing just that. (The article reiterates that Cindy McCain never actually went to Rwanda in her fabled 1994 humanitarian mission during the genocide.) She's a poseur. She has proven repeatedly that her first interests are herself and her husband's career. I wouldn't trust Princess Cindy to collect money at the PTA bake sale, never mind as an ambassador for the very people on earth who can least afford her politically expedient motivations and attendant fuckups.

     Running a sleazy, shameless campaign that is by all accounts antithetical to his own true nature has proven unsustainable for the multiple personality disordered John McCain, and probably doomed his shot at the White House. And while it's fine that that Cindy ask herself WWDD -- there are few among us, after all, who actually live up to our ideal selves -- her chances of attaining anything close to the grace to which she allegedly aspires are dim indeed.

     Mrs. McCain, we knew Diana. Diana was a friend of ours. You, madam, are no Diana.

Pulling my hair out

     Figuratively, literally. 

     I'm going to miss the first hour or so of the debate tonight due to novel workshop. My money is on McCain raising the Ayers thing, using the same transparently flawed logic he has brazenly tried to advance for the last ten days: he'll claim he doesn't care about some "washed up old domestic terrorist" or Obama's gay Connecticut marriage to Ayers, blessed by that scary Rev. Wright who hates America, but that the American people of whom Obama is not one deserve to hear the truth and that it's a question of truthfulness and truthiness and truishness, which ryhmes with Jewishness, which reminds him, did you see that the socialist Obama's own Negro supporter, Jesse Jackson, is warning that the terrorist Obama administration will abolish Israel from the face of the earth, and every grandma and grandpa in the Sunshine State had better run for their lives? I'm just sayin.

     Elsewhere, from atop my head, my hair continues to flee. Trying as desperately as my man Joe Biden to sidestep the combover. I've asked M to let me know when it's too sketchy to ignore -- when the part is a bit too wide, too white -- so I can avoid embarrassing myself and everyone else and put a hat on already.

     Was all weepy and hurty yesterday. I think it must have something to do with the decimated blood cells... I felt tres fragile all day, and fussy last night. Keeping up with economic and campaign news didn't help, but I'm a junkie. Today's better, me-wise; the economy persists in sucking out loud.

     And the infant mortality rate is, shamefully, higher than that of 28 other countries.

     And the Dow is down 735 points.

     And we'll all be eating beanie-weenies and bark inside a month.

     But, yeah, come on, McCain. Tell me all about Bill Ayers.

Ten more things

     While I don't subscribe to the notion that a sunny attitude will upend cancer, I do believe in making myself feel good. You know, for the hell of it. A periodic inventory of gifts and graces helps me feel strong. This week's list:

1. Listening to A's side of a phone conversation with her new baby cousin and his parents
2. Being on the couch with the Sunday NYT, student poems, and my laptop
3. The smell of chicken stew M is cooking 
4. Utter certainty, confirmed with every news cycle, that we're right; that the nation will do the right thing and choose optimism over cynicism; that the batshit haters are the minority; that people are good
5. Going all day on one hydrocodone
6. Being well prepared for meetings at school tomorrow
7. Hearing all about my child's lovely manners from a friend who hosted A for a playdate
8. Talking with my sister-in-law, who is glowing and clearly over the moon ten weeks after giving birth
9. Writing a poem about illness that is not at all true (or at least is not my experience)
10. M

Are we done now?

     Newsflash: Sarah Palin abused her power and is in violation of Alaska state law. Essentially, Troopergate is a mini-scandal about unethical behavior. Unethical behavior from Sarah Palin. Could we not have dispensed with this nitwit Jerry Springer episode before it was thrust onto the world stage? We could have. But we were being mavericky in our selection of an unknown as a running mate, and we were too giddy with our silly surprising selves to save The Country We Love Above Ourselves the embarrassment of the Palin Posse even though we knew -- or pretended we knew -- about this investigation before naming her and her dipshit husband and her nineteen children or grandchildren or auxiliary children or whoever they are to the ticket. 

     Newsflash: (Didn't we already do one of these?) John McCain makes an attempt, at last, albeit halfassed, after weeks of stoking the flames, to tamp down the seething mass of ignorant hysteria that is his base by refuting that Barack Obama is -- what could be worse? -- an Arab. "He is a decent family man, a citizen." 'Cause, you know, there are no Arabs who are decent, who have families, who are men, who are citizens of the United States or elsewhere. So refuckinglax, everybody, even though you have John McCain's personal permission to be as angry as the six-headed beast that you are. Go ahead, get furiouser and furiouser, work yourselves into a frenzy, imply that Obama is a treasonous terrorist liar, but for God's sake, keep your collective voice down to a low roar and do it respectfully. And whatever you do, don't call him an Arab.

     Newsflash: And yet they're still at it. SaPa is still urging crowds to "connect the dots" between Obama and "his associations" and that insufferable nugget Tucker Bounds is blaming the lynch mob venom at GOP rallies on Obama's economic policies and the current fiscal crisis. WTF? Obama is, as always, gracious and calm. (Warning re: the ABC blog link -- the dingbats come out of the woodwork to comment; brace yourself for stupidity on parade.)

     News Summary: Why can't we skip the voting part and declare this thing over already?

Welcome to the Not So Great Depression

     Oh, I was all set to write funny, but then I turned on the TV and watched the whole goddamn economy crumble in, like, an hour, and now I'm in no mood.

     Brothers and sisters all over the world are in a blind spastic panic, unloading their investments and driving down the markets. Cashing out their bank accounts. Stuffing bills under mattresses. Opening wide to tweezer gold fillings into little cups. Pilfering their own copper pipes. Jesus.

     Rumor at school is that SaPa is coming to our little hamlet for a Hate-a-Thon sometime in the next week. I'm still waiting for her to explain (or be asked -- psssst, Couric: HINT) how Obama will "diminish the prestige of the presidency," while the close association of her own snowbilly lapdog Tard (Todd?) with the AIP will somehow elevate the reputation that W has methodically shredded in the last eight years. Grumpy Old McCain is back at it with the Ayers crap in a shameless effort to salvage a Straight Talk Express whose wheels came off weeks ago and whose smoldering carcass is still stinking up the bottom of the canyon. 

     None of this is enough to really do me in today -- I'm feeling like a shiny new nickel after the bloodsucking a couple days ago. But the cumulative effect, combined with the attempt to demonize, otherize, that one-ize, didja know he's black, wink? the honorable, patriotic, classy Obamas is so far beyond despicable I can't really get my head around it. I've been politically aware since about 1968, and I've never, never been so saddened by overt ugliness such as the McCain camp is launching, and its rabid supporters lapping up like blood-starved hounds. It's gone beyond insinuation to straight-up racism and fear-mongering. [This links to an elegant articulation by Seth Abramson of the real danger and potential legal implications of Palin's inflammatory rhetoric. An informative -- and chilling -- read.]

     Please, Mrs. Palin, explain how this elevates the prestige of the presidency. 

     Sickening.

     Chemo is on for tomorrow; we're going to try alternating weeks and begging the insurance gods to pay for Procrit. 

My life as a vampire

     The blood-taking went well today. I've had transfusions before, but always in concert with surgery or hospitalization, meaning I recall very little of them. Today I was wide awake (for the most part) and a little queasy considering those crimson bags hanging above my head, their bloody tails snaking into my chest catheter. It's ghoulish, no doubt, but I'm thankful there are people willing to donate. It took about six hours. Afterwards, M and I stopped for fried chicken ("chicken on the bone," A calls it) and came home and watched the stock market crash. Then I slept for three hours. 

     The theory is that I will feel -- what? perky? -- by tomorrow. Chemo's on for Friday. Yeehaw.

     My sister is on her way over to watch the Town Hall Debate, a genteel euphemism considering how thuggish the McPalin campaign has become over the last few days. Inciting violence now, they are -- openly, it would seem -- against anyone and everyone who doesn't favor their flavor of Kool-Aid. Obama. Biden. Journalists. Democrats. People with brains. Sarah Palin is a pig. McCain is a hypocrite (he voted for the bear DNA project he derided as pork in the first debate; that's the least of it) and a caricature of himself; a man who has sold his soul. I can't imagine his first act every morning isn't throwing up in shame. 

     Hopie's here -- showtime.

Today

     The last three days have been extraordinarily odd. I've been following politics, of course, and managed to read NYTBR, and watched back-to-back episodes of "House" last night (greatest show on TV) -- and in between, I did nothing but sleep. Hard. With dreams and everything. Lots of dreams about kittens in distress.

     That's what insufficient red blood cells do, I gather; deprive the ol' body of oxygen, effectively putting it to sleep.

     Today I have to go the hospital for another CBC (complete blood count) prior to tomorrow's 7:45 a.m. transfusion. Then, I have to go to school for a meeting about an upcoming event I'm coordinating, then it's on to Poetry Workshop from 4:00 until 6:45. And I think I need to stop to put gas in the car.

     Poops me out just thinking about it, but I already missed one workshop a couple of weeks ago, and I love the class. Love it. 

     Apart from feeling veeeery sleeeeepy, the pain's not too bad today. I'll eat a pill before I leave home and hope it lasts.

     So. Effectively there is no point to this post. Blah blah blah.

Staggering incoherence, Part Deux

   ...In which word salad is reformatted and represented as amusing poetics.

     From Slate, by way of Seth Abramson's The Suburban Ecstasies, I offer "The Poetry of Sarah Palin."

On Good and Evil

It is obvious to me

Who the good guys are in this one

And who the bad guys are.

The bad guys are the ones

Who say Israel is a stinking corpse,

And should be wiped off 

The face of the earth.

That's not a good guy.

God help us, there are many, many more.

Staggering incoherence

A blurb in the NYT, which SaPa claims to read "my copy of," features this actual string of words from the actual mouth of the actual woman John McCain would seek to install up there in Warshin'ton should, God forbid, they be blessed with the awesome blessing of service in this great state of Alaska and, also, America:

"If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for all of us."

Pop a Pepcid and read all about it.

In the tank

     Well, I have nothing much to say about the VP debate that hasn't been said better by smart people all over the Interwebs. The dum-dums weren't listening last night, they were cooing; I have no use for them. Call me in the tank for Obama, if you must -- the genesis of that suddenly ubiquitous phrase is a mystery to me --  but at least I'm swimming with funny, bright people. 

     M offered to forward to me a Time snippet about why "women dislike Sarah" -- including fallacies such as "she's too pretty," "they're afraid she'll make them look bad," etc. Infuckingfuriating. I can't stand Sarah Palin for the same reason I turned against Susan Allen, long-suffering wife of Republican legislative delegate turned governor turned congressman turned senator turned "rising star" on the national stage who shot himself out of a canon and landed in Macacaland just a couple of years ago. Anyway, as a journalist twenty years ago, I covered his hijinx and caught on but quick that not only is he inauthentic in presenting himself as an "aw, shucks" tobacco-spitting, cowboy hat-wearing Southerner (???), but his wife is equally inauthentic in presenting herself as a button-nosed cutesy nitwit who defers to dumb men. (Not even smart men; dumb men.) It turns my stomach, the winking, the gee-whizzing, the flirting. It turns my stomach because, as a baby reporter with zero experience and blonde hair, I used those same tactics to try to get dumb men -- in my case, the peabrains in the police and sheriff's offices in Chattanooga, TN in 1984 -- to give me the information I needed to file stories. I wasn't asking for scoops; I just wanted the same access the boy reporters got. And every time I ran up against a brick wall, which was daily, sometimes hourly, I resorted to the only thing I knew how to do: I smiled, I flirted, I ingratiated myself. Sometimes it worked, mostly it didn't. I got pulled off "general assignment reporting" and promoted to anchoring (this was at a piss-poor CBS-affiliate TV station; I was 22; it did not escape my understanding that they'd have pulled a monkey off the street to anchor those newscasts, so low were the pay and the expectations). I hated myself for playing the game. I had slimed myself; had betrayed my gender and my mother's example and feminism and was caving to the most insidious kind of sexism. I may as well have slept with the fuckers in return for basic facts of a crime or court case. And now, I feel a twisting deep in my gut -- that old familiar, visceral stomach-turning -- every time I see The Two Faces of Sarah. Tough and confident? You betcha. Fine. Pandering and flirtatious? Wink! "Gee willikers, can ya help me out here? I just don't understand you big strong men from Warshin'ton, DeeCee!" Wink!

     Puke.

     An apt segue to what happened at the infusion center today, or didn't happen. No chemotherapy for me, so in the tank are my red blood cells and platelets. Fuck. First time I've ever been turned away. I have to have a blood transfusion. They scheduled it for Tuesday. I feel like poo.

     And I'm scared I'm not going to be able to tolerate Topo Gigio, and then what?

     Maybe I can summon that witch doctor dude from up there in Alaska to come pray over me.

Foundationally I'm just ill about it

     It is a terrible thing to lose one's words -- or not to have a word.

     I guess in that case, one must invent a word.

     In the course of the last couple of horrifying/screamingly funny Katie Couric convos, SaPa has thrust into the lexicon  foundationally, which, near as I can tell, means something akin to fundamentally, though in the non-context of her word salad could also mean basically; theoretically; in my pretend fairy-world; or they told me not to say fundamentally because it'll remind people I'm a batshit fundamentalist extremist, so I'm gonna throw out something that starts with an 'f' and no one will notice, especially if I wrinkle my nose.

     I just want to mention a couple of things I'll be looking for tonight. First, everyone is counseling Joe Biden to hold the hell off lest he appear to be condescending to or, God forbid, attacking his delicate female opponent. I think this counsel is patently sexist, especially considering the McCain goons have been instructed to "let 'er loose" and are, at this very moment, creekside in Sedona feeding her red moose meat and blasting the Rocky anthem. So, um. How come she gets to chew Biden't ankles with her wolverine teeth, but he's not allowed to respond in kind? She's allowed -- expected -- to use wise-ass sarcasm, but he's not? Yes, I want to see him be respectful; I expect that from her, too. No, he does NOT have to be, for Christ's sake, deferential, or worse, reverential, as some pundits have suggested. (I assume they know what the word means, since they're on the teevee.) Reverent because she's a she? Respectful because she's a mother? Polite because she can't take it, or because it would be ungallant of him not to roll over and let the little lady scratch him to pieces? Sexist sexist sexist.

     Second, the format heavily accommodates SaPa's perceived strength -- that ability to say shit without saying anything at all. (Why is that valued, again? I always forget.) "In our great nation of America" is her new "um," replacing the "here in Alaska" phrase she repeated so frequently in her gubernatorial debates as a placeholder while she gathers her... her thoughts? Whatev. Anyway, my understanding is that there is no room for Ifill to ask follow-up questions of the type our Gotcha Gal Couric asked, which exposed Palin for the shallow, incurious, ill informed beauty pageant contestant she is. Over and over and over again (thanks, CBS!). 

     The anti-intellectuals will say she slammed it home. They'll say she's just like them. I say they're exactly right. Which makes my argument that the uneducated stupidshit should be nowhere near the Oval Office. 

     Heaven forbid we elect an educated, intelligent person who's actually been paying attention.

     Loaded for bear. I got your loaded for bear right here, cretins.

     UPDATE: Meanwhile, McCain seems to have foundationally misplaced his entire brain. On MSNBC this morning, McCain foundationally forgets that he foundationally voted FOR the bill he now says foundationally puts us on the brink of economic disaster, foundationally speaking. Call me crazy, but I suspect this is new GOP strategery: forget the multiple crises we face, focus on driving thinking people criminally insane with mindbending doublespeak. 

Upbeat or else

     The New York Times runs an article today about Vitamin C and cancer. It's so confoundingly paradoxical -- and obvious -- that it infuriates me: some new study finds that taking large doses of C to boost the immune system, both to ward against infection while on chemo and to engage the body in attacking cancer cells, makes cancer cells stronger. 

     No shit. The reason this disease is so obscene is that it is literally the body turning against itself. What's bad for the cancer cells, chemo, is also bad for the healthy cells -- so of course it follows that what boosts healthy cells also strengthens and lengthens the life of the fucking cancer cells. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars went into the research that concluded that water is wet? Jesus.

     My oncologist once said to me and M, "Oh, we can cure cancer. What we haven't figured out is how to keep the patient alive while we do it."

     Anyway, reading that article brought me to another NYT article/public discussion about the expected emotional response to cancer, and how damaging those expectations are. I knew when I posted the other night that I am not alone in feeling pinched by this myth that a good attitude is paramount, and reading this article, and especially the back-and-forth of the public comments, shows it's on a lot of other minds, too.

Well, shit.

     Took a shower this morning, and after drying my hair, noticed it all over the bathroom. I'd like to report that I had the blower set 0n PowerBlast(tm), but that's not the problem.

     Why is this so upsetting? I've lost my hair too many times to count; each time I fall apart. I mean, of all the things to worry about...

     There are some things that distinguish this occurrence. First, I guess I was under the impression from my doctor and the infusion nurses that hair loss is not a sure thing with topotecan, that some people don't lose any hair at all. And because I always assume I am the exception to the rule (for whatever reason), it took me by great surprise to see it blown all over the floor. Second, I haven't told anyone at school about chemotherapy; I don't know how many people even know about the cancer (I was a skinny pixie with a close crop when I started last fall, but my hair had grown in to the point where it looked, I thought, like a fashion decision). Now I'm going to have to explain no hair. Without coming off totally self-absorbed. Fuck.

     Third and by far most important: A has been waiting for my hair to "grow long" for as long as she can remember. (She was only a year and a half old when I got sick again in 2004.) Her hair is down to her bottom, and wild. Naturally, she wants my hair to look like hers, wants to be able to braid and bow my hair, to use the same "products," as she calls conditioner (where do they pick up the jazzy lingo?). Now, at age 5, she will need me to explain to her why I am taking medicine so powerful it leaves my head quite bereft. And so we usher in the conversation about Mama being sick, again. Doublefuck.

     At the moment, my hair is chin-length. Crossing my fingers that I won't lose all of it -- that it will thin, but only to a point, and that I may be able to get away with a super-short boy-cut. And not have to explain anything to people at school. And when A asks why I cut my hair, I will tell her, gently, gently, that some new medicine is making my hair misbehave, so it's better that I keep it short for a while.

     I've never worn a wig, and won't. Baseball caps in summer, scarves in winter are my speed. Still, regardless of what I do, I look like the Kancer Kid. People treat me differently, look at me differently. Know more about me (or think they do) than anyone has a right to know. It's not the loss of hair, it's the loss of privacy that is so upsetting, no matter how many times it happens.