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.

On faith

     Predictably, stuff's coming out in my poetry (and my novel, now that I think of it) that illuminates what I didn't know I was thinking. This self-discovery is part of the narcissistic lure of writing, of course, and which writer was it who said she cannot be expected to know what she thinks until she writes it down?

     I write, therefore I am.

     Anyway, the process, coupled with the hyper-awareness of turmoil, both global and domestic, has really set my reptilian brain to percolating. The upshot is great confusion, an erosion of faith, perhaps, but at the very least there is a paring of what I believe not to be true. So, that's something.

     Regarding cancer: I have no faith in the theory that attitude has any bearing whatsoever on the biology of the disease, either its progression or its retreat. Attitude is inauthentic, by definition, largely because of the faith our culture has placed in this theory: there is enormous pressure for the patient to act heroically by minimizing ill effects (smiling through it); to keep the schedule; to appear brave. Show me a cancer fighter on the teevee, I'll show you a martyr. We so hope that acting tough will result in victory, we are unwilling to acknowledge that (what I suspect is) a great majority of cancer patients privately fall the fuck apart. The upside of this clarity, I suppose, is my faith in people's capacity to do what they have to do. Note that this is not the same thing as toughing it out, powering through, taking one's lumps. Rage is a coping mechanism; depression, a protective device. I have no use for bravery, or even goodness. Consider all the brave people with stellar attitudes who've succumbed to a "long battle with cancer," and the opposite -- those pitifuls with piss-poor manners who scream and kick and cry and endure many remissions, or perhaps are cured. Cancer is not who I am; my response to it is not representative of my character. Cancer is nothing more than a piece of my struggle, one of many. And everybody's got somethin'. 

     I have faith in healing efforts as they extend toward me from an authentic heart. That is to say, I have faith in the love of my doctors, my family, my friends, my colleagues. I have come to believe it doesn't much matter what they do, as long as they're accepting of my visceral responses. As M and I tell A, it's okay to feel sad/mad/bored. I have faith in my personal biology, and have become (I think) better at following my body's signals and needs. But really, it's like my hair caught fire twelve years ago and I'm still hopping around beating my head with a wet towel. There's nothing deliberate about my response to this disease. It's al-Qaeda in the caves, elusive and enigmatic, indistinct, and multiplying. What can you do, strategically, tactically, but cross your fingers and hope?

     What about maturity? The ability to control one's emotional response, to temper, to decide? A raving bunch of shit, in my experience. Yet we're expected to be able to control, or at least limit, the big scary emotions that accompany any misfortune -- grief, rage, sadness, we're supposed to move through them by stages; to get over them. (Thanks for that, Kubler-Ross.) 

     I have no faith that I can control my fear; I have great hope that I can come to peace. For now, I'm relying on love and nerve pills. 

     Note to self: faith in books, next time.

     This post is a bald, rambling mess. Feh. It's as close to true as I can make it tonight.

     

Paul Newman and yard signs

     We're getting a short reprieve after two days of rain, so M and A took her new magnifying glass and a sketch pad out to the park to see what they might see. I'm reading about the passing of Paul Newman, as elegant and graceful a person as has ever been put on earth. I admire his life for a great many reasons, primarily his determination to just do what he did, all self-deprecating and careful to resist the ego trappings inherent in movie acting. I admire his long marriage to a woman who was clearly his equal in every way. I admire his charity work -- Newman's Own, according the the New York Times, has donated over $175 million to charitable causes, and his foundation for pediatric cancer camps has blossomed into a global effort. 

     What I admire most about him, I think, is his devotion to authenticity. There does not exist an interview in which he seems to be trying to impress. He is so completely unselfconscious that he can tell a reporter that, with age, he has *not* become what (we presume he and) the rest of us aspire to: less angry, less judgmental, etc. Certainly other people have observed -- my father among them -- that getting older not only illuminates more of our flaws, but actually exacerbates them. I know I am becoming more myself the older I get: more outspoken about what I dislike and disagree with, crankier, shorter-tempered, less willing to put up with shit. Less able to rein it in. I guess in my interior life I am becoming more authentic, but I still will say "yes" because I think it's what others want to hear, or hold my tongue in the interest of being polite when what the situation really calls for is for me to call someone on their assumptions or ugliness. A skirmish.

     All this to say, my friend Amy and I are kind of despairing of the lack of yard signs in our city this election season, and I believe I know what's going on. On the Democratic ticket we have an African American man; on the GOP, a white woman and a flailing old crank. Of the four candidates, it is considered impolite to talk about their defining characteristics, for fear of entering inadvertently into a conversation about racism, sexism, or ageism. (Or anti-intellectualism, aka stupid-as-fuckism, or religious extremism, or poor taste in hair, woops, that's sexist, God, the shit really piles up when considering SaPa). So. We know not where our neighbors stand on these candidates, because to expose our preferences in our yards is to literally stake out a dare. I dare you to tell my what you don't like about Obama. I dare you to insinuate McCain is too old. I dare you to speak the truth about Palin, a painful truth I already know, which need not be aired in polite company: that she is an embarrassment to all serious, thinking people. 

     If the tickets comprised Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, and Joe Biden, this town would be yard signed and bumper stickered to comic effect. We're used to talking about that kind of candidate, the one who's so familiar to us personally that it forces us to talk about the issues (but not abortion, still off-limits). 

     There seems to me a reticence in my little corner of the world to wear your politics on your sleeve this election year. It's too personally revealing, like dropping trou and flashing the neighbors, then daring them to admit they saw you do it by flashing you right back.

     It would feel really good to put up a sign. Not just supportive of my candidates, but a gesture of personal integrity. Authenticity.

     I bet Paul Newman didn't worry about yard signs. I bet he just wore a hat.

Train wreck

     I cannot bring myself to look away... The colossal spectacle up the road in Warshin'ton, as SaPa calls it, is stunning and, if it lacked the potential to put us all in the poorhouse, might actually be anthropologically fascinating. 

     Palin was less articulate than a seventh grader in her responses to Katie Couric. She is an insult to small town America, not a reflection of it. As a person who grew up in a rural town of fewer than 300 people (artists, writers, policy wonks, thinkers -- some Democrats, some Republicans -- all engaged) in an area of the South that was (and is) peppered with such hamlets, I take personal umbrage, because I can do that, at the notion that Sarah Palin is remotely representative of Tiny Town USA. She is a fool. If that makes me a condescending elitist, I'll take up that mantle with glee. 

     What's happening on Capitol Hill tonight, after McCain mucked up the works, is too grotesque to ponder. That doesn't stop me from hitting refresh four times an hour at HuffPo, Wonkette, Politico, Washington Post, and NYT. The only possible good I can see coming of any of this is that President Obama will be in the White House to truncate our depression, and our Depression.

     Chemo #2 tomorrow morning. I'm hydrating. 

     Note to self: this weekend, some thoughts on what I have faith in, including people and books, because it feels important at this moment in history to be really clear about that.

Boondoggle!

     This will be a rant about a thing that bugs the everlivin' crap outta me. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me a giant waste of funds. No, it's not the 700 billion dollar bailout. Trillion. Whatever. No, it's not the millions in earmarks Palin requested so she can build a widow's walk atop the manse in Wasilla, the better to see the Kremlin from. No, it's not even the relentless lies the McCain/Palin campaign is paying tens of millions of dollars for, under the guise of political advertising, to pollute our public airwaves.

     This is insidious. This is personal.

     This is the big fat check M stroked this morning for kindergarten field trips and "special programs." There are ten -- ten -- planned this year, two of which are free. The hit parade includes:

• $5.00 for a pumpkin-picking junket to a farm in October 
• $4.00 for a day at one of the stuffiest history museums in the South
• $13.00 for three plays about Pocahontas, Rumplestiltskin, and Rikki-tikki-tavi 
• $15.00 for a "young scientists" program; there are no details about this one
• $1.00 for another farm visit in May
• $7.00 for -- are you ready? -- a trip to the local botanical gardens. Because as every parent knows, five year olds loves them some botanical gardens.

     This is a public, inner-city school with a significant population of free-lunch kids. And they want parents to fork over $45.00 for what? For kindergartners to gaze at nineteenth-century sculpture and plants? 

     Full disclosure: A was in the pre-K program at this school last year; same deal. I emailed the principal to offer alternatives to these cost-prohibitive excursions: poll the parents, I suggested, and take the children to see what people do all day at work. I'm in graduate school, let me show them what that looks like. Annie's mother is an artist -- let's visit her studio. Plus, this is a burden on our household budget, and I am certain we're not the only ones. There is no opt-out feature; no Plan B for children whose parents can't pay up, or think it best not to. I never got a response from the principal. 

     Fucking hell, what is wrong with taking kindergartners on a nature walk around the block to collect leaves and squeal at bugs? They gotta herd them onto a bus and schlepp them to places only people with blue hair and powdered faces get off on? For money?

     Nothing against old people, but my child is five. I suspect her interests are a bit different.

     Can you imagine having more than one child in this school? "Pony up $135 you didn't count on spending this month or your children will be left out, identified as the losers they are, teased mercilessly and ostracized for life." Man, I feel for the families who didn't budget for it and just cannot afford it.

     M (wisely?) wrote the check and got it into A's bookbag before I ever saw the extortion note. So much for feeling all smug about paying bills and having a little pad through the end of the month. 

     So, yeah. Kindergarten can suck it, again.

Still more things that help me feel strong

1. Paying bills; having enough left over to get to Oct. 1
2. The change of light that comes with the Southern fall; whiter, lower, but every bit as intense as the blue of May, the gold of July
3. Collecting seeds from waning morning glories and flowering tobacco
4. Feeling like a rock star after a few days of puny
5. Chalking up the rock star feeling to a vat of caffeinated Starbuck's and a big fuck-you to the directive to knock off the caffeine whilst in the company of Topo Gigio
6. Anticipating A coming home, stepping up to M's camera tripod as though it's a microphone, and "reading" what she's dubbed The Daily News in a loud, disturbingly authoritative voice; "Today, we will count votes. How many voted for Barack Obama, raise your hands, great, Hillary Clinton? Great. Kindergarten is adopting a live fox who lives at the zoo, please give money, that is all of the news."
7. Friends and admired writers who drop by this blog to encourage and compliment; lifts me like helium; thank you
8. Skipping out on poetry workshop but getting a note from my greatly admired poet-instructor declaring she "cannot wait to discuss" my poetry with me; more helium
9. Wearing vintage Nikes and blue jeans and running around campus sans pain meds; no pain; more helium
10. Getting shit done; picking up A's vaccination records from the pediatrician; stopping by the circulation desk to confess I've misplaced a library book; catching a really nice break from the guy at the circulation desk (he renewed the book, so no fines); billing freelance clients; reading manuscripts for novel workshop tomorrow night; getting out of my own head; feeling as though I can do this; I can do this; I can do this

House of Pain

     Something else I had put out of my mind is a rhythm my family falls into when the stress of chemotherapy gets at us: A gets a cold, M catches it and it turns into something big and feverish. This happens almost like clockwork, usually when I'm just starting a new therapy, and it happened this weekend. 

     So far for me, the direct effects of Topo Gigio are minor compared to, say, Gemzar or Carboplatin. I had the crazies, as I reported earlier, and have been sleepy all weekend, but the most curious consequence is hunger. I'm ravenous, mostly for comfort food like M's homemade bread and split pea soup. As with other drugs, certain foods are so unappetizing I can't mention them, but bland things like crackers with butter, potatoes, rice... make way. I've been remarkably clear-headed since the mini-breakdown Friday night, which is unusual and, of course, welcome. Yes, I sleep a lot, but in between, at least I'm not fuzzy or dotty. That I know of.

     All that to say: of the three of us, I'm probably feeling perkiest. A is overcoming like children do, but still not her usual self, and M is stoic and miserable. 

     And so the ill effects of my illness spiral outward, knocking down the people closest to me. For me, this domino effect causes the most distress: the most worry, the most fear, the most sadness. Goddamn it all.

Offbeat observation: McCain's eyes

     Amy and I talked yesterday about the bizarre change in John McCain's eyes over the last week or two, at least since the convention. It's not only the stunned, empty, expressionless gaze -- it's the color of his eyes, or rather, the lack of it. He has blue-blue-blue eyes, or did have. Lately, though, it looks as though he's either been sporting deep brown contacts or skimming the top of Cindy's ivory-handled pill dispenser. 

     When I asked my sister last night if she'd noticed McCain's eyes, she immediately said, "Yes! They're all pupil -- all dilated pupil!" So, it's not just me.

     Here's my theory: The geniuses pulling his strings have decided it would be suicide if he came out wearing glasses, which I cannot believe he doesn't actually need, considering his robotic attachment to the TelePrompTer and frequent misreading thereof. So, geniuses took the opportunity to fit him with contact lenses... but not your ordinary contact lenses! No, these are the kind used by Hollywood stars to appear easy, open, and engaged. The principle is based on the biological fact that babies' eyes are huge in relation to their faces because large eyes engender in humans feelings of love and an urge to protect. (Think about those infuratingly adorable Hummel figurines you want to smash to smithereens.) And in soap operas -- I know whereof I speak here -- actresses routinely use big brown contacts to make their pupils appear dilated during love scenes; one of those involuntary biological cues to potential mates that we are interested.

     So. John McCain. At once trying to look younger (no glasses), garner love/empathy (a robotic Hummel), and telegraph a real, human soul. 

     Too bad those contacts don't actually sharpen his vision, in any conceivable way.

Some things I'd forgotten about chemo

     Went in yesterday, after a nice, calming cranial-sacral massage from my friend Julia. Just walking into her studio makes me feel like I'm being taken care of: she always has yummy-smelling oils going, and puts on my favorite music without asking. It's very soothing and centering. Julia and Amy are part of my ad hoc E-Team; without them, I know things would be very different, probably intolerable. Their presence in our lives and in our home when we'd fallen into the darkest trenches last year -- it was a light, a dependable rhythm. I wouldn't be here without them.

     So then, it was off to the infusion center, where our favorite nurse (and friend) Elaine took good care of me. All the nurses came in to give hugs and say, awkwardly but plainly, that they were glad to see us, though were sorry I was back. Everyone asked about A and we will be kicked out of the place next week if we fail to bring pictures.

     It was a little disconcerting to be such an oldtimer that I knew the routine; it was almost like I hadn't gotten a ten month break. Everything was familiar and expected. Tapping the port, hoping for a decent blood return to indicate it's not clotted, and to draw blood for the CBC. After the numbers come back, it's showtime, with premeds: Zofran for nausea, Dekadron for I don't know what (it's a steroid). The Zofran makes me lose my mind, which manifests later in the day... I had forgotten what a crazy-making drug that is for me. After some hydration, the tiny packet of topotecan is hung above my head and drips for thirty minutes. No allergic reaction, thank God (was allergic to Taxol my first time out -- nurses were calling for the crash cart before someone yanked the line out of my arm -- yikes!). Then we were done. In and out in less than three hours. Not bad. My friend Amy brought me home, and I slept until about 7:00. 

     That's when the fun began. I woke up with a horrendous headache, weeping uncontrollably, over nothin'. M sent my sister upstairs and, as always, she soothed me and reminded me it was the medicine. She rubbed my head and nerve pilled me and we watched Chris Matthews screeching at anyone who could a word in edgewise, and I started to feel better by the time A came up to get ready for bed. She reeeeeally wanted to sleep in our bed again (second night; Amy says a second round of separation anxiety is typical when they start kindergarten and are staring down the barrel of being six) but M got her into her room and read her a story, Don't Let The Chicken Ride The Bus!, and they were done: heavy breathing, not a peep, weeee! She's still, Saturday morning, wearing the giant Mama sleep-shirt I loaned her so she could feel like I was in the room with her. I adore her, and often consider eating her.

     Today I'm planning to be quiet and listen for side effects. That, or go to brunch with my sister and some friends followed by a political rally. That sounds reasonable, right? 

Topo Gigio

     And the winner is... topotecan! Yes, it was a late entry into the lineup, a definite dark horse, a come-from-behind, an upset. To flog the flimsy metaphor until it wimpers, the wimpy little has-been outpaced the rest of the pack to win decisively in the final stretch.

     We start tomorrow.

     Let's think about topotecan. It's been around forever, forever comprising my direct experience: at least eleven years. (Before me, beyond me, there was nothing.) Its side effects are said to be relatively minimal. It attacks cells by interfering with their growth; they don't grow, they die. It whacks out the blood counts, but I don't know of a drug that doesn't. And its most appealing feature is that it is a quick infusion of thirty minutes -- none of that hours-long Gemzar nonsense -- meaning I should be out of the infusion center in a few hours tops (it all depends on how quickly the lab can do the CBC, which varies wildly at the hospital where the party happens.) Three weeks on, one week off, restart. 

     The bad news is that I have an illogical (I'm sure) regard for topotecan as a lightweight, last-ditch, ineffective hail mary that only gets pulled out when it's pouring rain under the stadium lights, the fans have left the bleachers, and the coach from the visiting team refuses to just run out the clock so we can go the fuck home already.  

     In my head it's the... wait for it... Sarah Palin of chemotherapy.

     Why? How can I have such a strong opinion and weak expectation of a drug with which I've never rumbled? It originates with the very, very bad idea (for us) to attend a cancer support group/information session in March 1997 at the hospital. You know who goes to those things? People who've just been diagnosed, and people who are on their way out the door. I'd had surgery on Valentine's Day; I don't even think my hair had left me yet. Anyway, M and I were young -- I was 35, he was only 26 -- and we didn't realize how fresh we were into this thing. Compared to us, everyone else looked old, sick, scared, and angry as hell. 

     I remember this woman sitting next to me, fiftyish, having been through the fuggin' mill, skin blotchy and hair thin, who was firing questions at the doctor as though it were a private consultation the rest of us were being allowed to sit in on. She wanted to know about intraperitoneal chemotherapy (the "bellywash" where they skip the veins and put the weed killer directly into the abdomen, yik, never had that done), she wanted to know about why her CA125 wouldn't come down below 62 (I remember this very clearly, curiously), she wanted to know how she could lose the extra sixteen pounds she'd put on, and she wanted to know how long the topotecan would work. I remember the oncologists' answers: it's not appropriate for the type of tumor you have; I don't know; eat better and get exercise; I don't know. There was another woman, there with her husband, the two of them looked desperate in different ways, she impossibly thin, with waxy skin and wide sunken eyes, he with twitches and stutters and a voice so soft it didn't matter, in the purest sense, that he was asking questions. "Topotecan. We're moving in that direction. It's the last thing we're going to try; it's our last option. What are the chances?" Meaning what were her chances. 

     These are questions I will never ask; statements I will never make. I know now what I didn't know then -- that the white coats are just for show. Oncologists are alchemists, fooling around with beakers and calculations and elements and hoping they don't blow up the lab. They don't have any way of knowing, so why ask? Why let someone else plant the idea in my head that I have some percentage of life left in me? They don't know. It's a good thing I know they don't know.

     So, yes. Topotecan. Henceforth to be thought of and referred to in our house as Topo Gigio, everyone's favorite imp of an Italian clown. See his antics? What a scamp!

Kindergarten sucks

     Back to School Night tonight. Me and M. Forty minutes in a sweltering 100 year old auditorium on foldy chairs suffering senseless PTA announcements/antics ("If you can guess what's NOT true about the principal, you win this shitty t-shirt. Ready? True or false: Mrs. J-- likes the beach!") and musing between us whether we were, in fact, witnessing the political debut of the Republican party's Vice Presidential nominee for 2012, followed by another clusterfuck, this one with giant parents perched on wee chairs in Classroom 117, and featuring a shitstorm of paper, instructions, admonitions and procedural doodads. No shit, the most pressing piece of information we got was that we should "make sure our kindergartner gets a good night's sleep" because they're phasing out naptime in October.

     Getting the hang of the homework journal/daily agenda/pocket folder/backpack tango is as tricky as the tango itself, and as frivolous. (We're supposed to staple A's homework into one of those black and white composition notebooks. Why she can't do the homework in the composition book, that already has pages with lines, is an enduring mystery.)

     In other news, Sarah Palin is still stupid as fuck.

     The mood... the mood. Can you blame me? I'm drinking wine from a box.

     Kindergarten can suck it.

Pickin' my poison! (This is not a post about Palin'.)

     Gosh, it's time to decide which chemo to try! 

     

In this corner, we have Cisplatin, a quiet, light-on-its-feet option that is deceptively powerful. The pros:

• Worked wizz-bang to take down a big fat bellyrat not once but twice (aaaaaahhhhh... and the crowd goes wild)
• Most side effects minimal; a little joint pain, a little hair pulling, nothing you wouldn't expect in a match like this

     The cons:

• I last engaged Cisplatin to work its quiet magic 11 months ago; does it have the wherewithal to thwap again with the same intensity and smooth efficiency, or has the sly, shape-shifting Chimera that is the tumor become inured to Cisplatin's many charms?
• It's a nerve-beater; my tingly little fingers and toes are already numb... can they withstand more punishment?

And in this corner, that clumsy old monster, the Cyclops-like Carboplatin. Nothing subtle about this big galute, a first-line footsoldier weilding a mace and a pack of Marlboro reds. The pros:

• I'm checking with my friend Amy on this (who somehow, over the years, has committed to memory every surgery, treatment, dosage, and side effect I've ever endured... and in the right order) but I don't think I've mixed it up with Carboplatin since I was first diagnosed in 1997. That bodes well for effectiveness.
• I'm sure there's another plus to this heavyweight, but I can't think of it at the moment.

     The cons:

• Oy, with the side effects. This thing attacks the cancer and, for good measure, rips out every white cell and platelet in my tired little bloodstream. Exhaustion. Loss of appetite. Not to mention baldy-bald-bald-bald. 
• I don't want to be a conspicuous cancer patient, i.e. skinny, bald. I've done that too many times to count. I always gain weight; the hair always grows back. I always hate it. 
• I just spent A's college tuition on my hair.
• Did I mention I don't want to lose my hair?
• Also, more importantly, the low blood count thing means hypersensitivity/proclivity to infection. "Stay away from people with colds," the guidelines say. I'm a graduate student with a kindergartner at home. All I can do is laugh at that advice and cross my fingers that I'll be able to finish the semester, keep up with A, and die of something other than cancer or a head cold many, many years from now.

     M and I are going in to talk with Dr. J on Thursday, and in the meantime, I am mindfully thankful that I have options. 

Palate-cleansing poetry post

     To get that icky Palin taste out of my mouth, I want to think about poetry for a second. Specifically, the self-revelatory nature of contemporary poetry. Some contemporary poetry. 

     OK, the poetry I've been writing.

     Truly, though, it's not my own personal bag (I don't think). There is a tendency as a reader to attribute facts, characteristics, situations, perceptions in a poem to the poet himself. Now, I know there are plenty of people who can't tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction, who assume that the fiction writer believes what his characters believe, has done what his characters do, misbehaves as his characters misbehave, etc. Those people are dolts. (Have I mentioned that one of the most delightfully solipsistic aspects of blogging is the ability to refer endlessly to one's own previous witticisms? Why, it's positively self-referential!) But poetry is understood generally to be self-referential; it is therefore revealing of the poet's deepest intimacies. 

     I've mentioned here (there I go again!) that I can't seem to write about anything but The Subject That Dare Not Speak Its Name. That's cancer to you. And yet, I'm in a poetry workshop with a bunch of strangers and an instructor so talented she makes my palms gooey (true, I have a bit of a girl-thang for her), and I'm supposed to let it all hang out? I don't think so. No. The reason I'm drawn to fiction is because I get to sidle up to the truth, crab-like, without having to spill the actual beans. And while there's more room on the page, perhaps, for a poem to be oblique (like, nearly indecipherable to a literalist like me) than there is for narrative prose, which demands clarity, there doesn't seem to be any way to fudge the intimate facts of my life in poetry.

     Maybe I just haven't found my metaphor yet. Or... could be I'm in so far over my head I'm coming out the other side. 

     At any rate, just want to go on the record here saying I feel uncomfortable turning in the pieces I've been writing, because they're all about... you know. My crush on Sarah Palin.

Willful ignorance: just plain stupid

     If I said all I have to say about McCain/Palin, this blog would self-immolate. So I'll stick to this, a not especially original observation:

     Remember when it was, like, fashionable in, like, high school, to pretend you didn't make good grades and weren't one of the smart kids and the only thing you were really interested in deepening was your Hawaiian Tropic Tan? 

     Remember how you were pretending?

     Remember the truly stupid kids who gleefully basked in their dumbitude?

     Have you seen the 1983 Wasilla High School yearbook? Wait, I mean, the Palin administration? 

Yet more things that help me feel strong

1. Finishing and turning in the first draft of the first chapter of my first novel to my novel workshop mates. Even if it's caca, it's done. It was an unexpected shitload of work, much more difficult than I'd anticipated.
2. Having a new poem almost complete for poetry workshop tomorrow night. Ahead of the curve. Writing poetry is a shitload of work, too, but I guess I'm not good enough at it to worry it down to a nub the way I did the novel chapter. Poetry: comparatively easy.
3. Staying on top of pain with opiates. Knowing I can control it for now.
4. Reading widely and finding that the number, depth and breadth of credibly reported articles exposing the McCain/Palin lies increases exponentially each day. 
5. Understanding that I have not yet, but must in the near future, read credibly reported articles in conservative venues and hold my nose and delve into the shit-spout that appears credible to people who are predisposed to believe/agree with it -- i.e. Drudge, Fox News, etc. "Reading eclectically" as my father-in-law puts it.
6. Knowing my limits; deliberately dodging, for the time being, the gloom about Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch, Fannie, Freddie. Pulling a Palin and eschewing knowledge!
7. Eating nerve pills. Proceeding as normal.
8. Helping A look for "sparkle babies," also known as "twinklies," above the transoms. (These, I gather, are baby fairies.) Knowing she is this close to being sure it's all make believe, but remains eager to suspend her disbelief.
9. Keeping the potted plants lush and thriving: lavender, basil, clematis, cucumbers, peppers, impatiens, jasmine, begonias, cereus, morning glories, blooming tobacco -- all breathing, all beautiful.
10. Not flinching at three short fiction rejection notices in one day. Deleting the emails. Submitting the stories to other journals. Forgetting about them. (sorta)

Saturday morning

     M and A have gone off on some adventure or other. I slept poorly last night, having watched the coverage of Ike slamming into Galveston, and I woke up and put the TV back on, then promptly fell asleep. I vaguely recall A whispering in my ear, "Mama, did you turn on the TV or was it fairies?" I think I said fairies. Anyway, the house is quiet. M has a car show tomorrow he's preparing for (he has a 1964 Series II Land Rover) and I'm sure he took A to the art supply store to get a gift for a friend whose fifth birthday celebration is this afternoon. I like to think about M and A tooling around town in that musty truck, she in her booster seat beside him, he wearing some kooky old hat. I love them.

     I am in the homestretch of a first chapter (if you consider homestretch to mean barely begun) for novel workshop; I'm due to turn in tomorrow for Wednesday night workshop. My problem is one of mental momentum: everything I see lately somehow will fit perfectly into this book. So, in it goes. Saw a crazy tease for baby footwear on CNN sometime overnight; it's going in. What this means, of course, is that I am still formulating the characters, still deciding what I want to write about, still procrastinating actually writing it. 

     I did not hear back from Dr. J's office so I choose to assume they didn't have a chance to mull over my predicament. In any case, it's unlikely I'll start chemotherapy this coming week, though they've waved me in pretty darn fast in the past. Trying not to worry about it. Trying.

     M and A are home -- A says she found evidence of fairies in the car. Gotta go!

Seven years

     What I most recall about that day: the perfect blue sky... the slow dawning as we watched NBC coverage at the ad agency where I worked... driving to the grocery at lunchtime, picking up a bag of chips, and parking my car under a tree on the street, listening to NPR, and crying... talking to my father that evening, who was very nearly speechless... waking up with M at 3:30 the next morning, crying in bed... crying all week... all month... into Christmas... feeling helpless.

     I'm watching the rebroadcast now, and I still cry, and I still feel helpless. Helpless and, in light of the disastrous failure of our leaders over the last seven years, furious.

     

I don't have a title for this one.

     Joanne called from Dr. J's office late yesterday afternoon, as I was leaving to fetch A from school. The plan is for Dr. J to consult with Dr. W on my chemo chart/history and get back to me. I hope getting back to me means an appointment in the infusion center, not some rhetorical conversation about limited options and pain relief. At least they're not talking about surgery -- that I know of. Hope I didn't jinx it just then.

     I went to workshop last night (novel) and we talked about favorite first lines in literature. The consensus seemed to be that lines that set the tone/voice or introduce relationships or settings are nice, but what really pulls a reader in is putting characters in play -- putting them in peril, giving them a sharply defined dilemma, conveying the whole world of the novel. Somehow.

     I favor lines that give a narrator (first or third person) a reason to be telling the story right then, right there. Kind of a, "Well it all began when..." sort of thing. For instance:

• "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude) 

     That's a famous example and for good reason. Does an awful lot of heavy lifting, and it's lyrical and beautifully rendered to boot. Another:

• "Fifteen minutes before happiness left him, Josh Goldin led his summer intern by the elbow to share in the hallelujah of a Friday afternoon." (Darin Strauss, More Than It Hurts You)

     Again we're looking backwards and forwards at the same time, and I love that hallelujah image. It's as though the narrator is taking the reader by the arm and saying, I'll get to why happiness left him in a minute, but first you need to know what came before. It all started when..." Here are two more that suck me in but good:

• "First, I had to get the body in the boat." (Rhian Ellis, After Life)
• "My name was Salman, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." (Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones)

     WHAM! We're there. How can you not keep reading? Although with the Sebold, the first thirty pages or so were among the roughest I'd ever read; I nearly couldn't continue. Actually, I quoted the first two sentences here, but the first one does the work with the past tense, was, telegraphing that this is a narrator whose earthly existence is in question. The second line is the payoff.

     One of my favorite writers, whose work lately has been pejoratively labeled chicklit (lately, because the term and the notion didn't exist when her books hit U.S. markets), is Banana Yoshimoto. Youngest person ever to win the Japanese equivalent of the National Book Award when she was 22 or thereabouts. She was translated to English for the first time in the late eighties/early nineties, and a whisp of a novel that came out in Japan in 1991, Goodbye, Tsugumi, was released in the U.S. only in the last three or four years. (I don't have it in front of me.) Anyway, the first line is:

• "It's true: Tsugumi really was an unpleasant young woman."

     Here's what I love about it: It sets a chatty, conspiratorial tone. It establishes three brains: the narrator, the reader whom she is addressing, and this character named Tsugumi about whom we are eager, suddenly, to learn everything. Yoshimoto's sentences are just this simple and straightforward throughout her work, yet the cumulative effect is a deep reckoning with what makes people tick; their motivations. Their fears, needs, and desires. And how can they help each other thrive? It's subtle, gorgeous writing. 

     The first line of my novel is crap, but I'll make it better once I find out what the thing is about. The only way to do that is to (cough) write it. 

     I'll just be over here, writing, if anyone's looking for me.

Someone else is having a rougher day than I am.

     Just took a deep breath and called Joanne in Dr. J's office to ask her advice: do I need to come in for another talk, or a checkup, or can we all just agree that it's time to start chemo and go ahead and schedule it?

     After telling me that what I was saying was reasonable (God bless her), she said, "Well, you know, it's Wednesday, so he's in surgery right now." (Yes, I know that Wednesdays are surgery days; he's generally not in the office.) "I'll talk with him when he comes out and call you back, and we'll go from there." Great! 

     I hung up, and it hit me: that woman he's doing surgery on today is more scared, more uncomfortable, more freaked out, and possibly in deeper shit than I am. 

     Whatever strength I manage to gather for myself today, I will share with her.

It's time.

     I almost didn't make it out the door with A to get her to kindergarten on time this morning. Woke up (to the cat crying) feeling very puny. A was in bed with me, snoring away. My sister and I took her to the political gathering last night, where she was a big hit and I didn't say anything too terribly vapid, then we all came home and my sister and I drank wine on the bed while A tried to settle down. Needless to say, we were up late. Anyway, I didn't want to wake up A any earlier than necessary this morning. 

     M is off being corporate for a couple of days, but he's almost always the one who gets her off to school. They have their quiet morning routine. When I do it I invariably feel like I'm blumbling through the whole process. Really, A is such an easy child; drop a coin in her slot and she just goes, does what she needs to do, finds her shoes, brushes her hair, puts together reasonable outfits, figures out her own snack, etc. It's like having a roommate who's three feet tall and says adorable things. I'm the one pulling wrinkled shirts from the bottom of the pile, wondering if microwaved coffee from the bottom of yesterday's pot still contains enough caffeine to propel me the three blocks to the elementary school, and marching into the building as though I know exactly where I'm going, when in fact we're all supposed to wait outside until the first bell rings. 

     But there was an additional worry this morning, which I blame entirely for all the stumbling around -- I blame the Republicans, too, while I'm at it -- and that is the queasiness, the dull but distinct ache deep in my belly that is more apparent than it was even a week ago. I felt pretty good two days ago, I think, so I'd better follow the same routine of a huge triple-strength espresso and a granola muffin for lunch. As if my eating habits are causing the trouble. (I mean, I know they're not helping, but having a bowl of buttery pasta at ten o'clock last night did not this pain in the belly make.)

     Before my sister left last night, I told her I am going to call Dr. J today and tell him it's time; try to get some kind of treatment going next week. Some kind of chemotherapy. And while I revolt against the notion of another surgery, I'll take it if that's the best option. I'm still so very, very scared he will tell me there's not a lot they can do, and to keep eating the hydrocodone to mitigate pain until it doesn't work anymore and we'll switch to Fentanyl which will make me comfortable and out-of-my-mind sleepy, and I'll just become groggier and less with it and will miss fucking everything: A and M, writing a novel, writing poems, writing stories, reading. Impossible to read in that condition. That condition being disease progression.

     Anyway, I am sucking up strength today from wherever I can get it. M is in a different time zone and won't be home until late tonight. I'm going to call my sister, or my friend/therapist Amy before I call Dr. J. But first I'm drinking coffee (brewed, not nuked) and reading Huffington Post. (See, I had the presence of mind to make a linky-thing there, not too bad.)

If all politics are local...

     M is on a business trip (being the business man he is!) and so A and I will go quite unescorted this evening to a reception a friend is holding for a woman running for school board. I had a mild panic attack about this in the shower this morning. First, I am an introvert to the point of social incapacitation; I stopped answering the telephone about eight years ago, so scrambled am I by the expectation of reciprocal conversation. Cocktail parties, well, you can imagine. At a Christmas open house several years ago, I introduced myself to the same woman twice within five minutes of arriving... and she explained (again!) that we had met several times before. She was kind of mean about it. But that's not the source of my discomfort tonight (my sister will be there, and I know the hostess well, and A is always a perfect diversion). 

     No, what's put the fear into me is that I, mother of a public school kindergartner, have no idea what the issues are, nor any clue what they ought to be. Um... should I complain to this woman about the kindergarten supply list? Seems a little micro, no? What about all the crap they send home jammed in A's gi-normous My Little Pony backpack? (My Little Pony? Or is it Hello Kitty? Dora? Whatever, it's pink.) Can I complain about A having to memorize a whole new lunch code for this year? Does she expect complaints? Suggestions? As a parent, shouldn't I be following budgets and curriculum proposals and Virginia's aptly abbreviated SOL (standards of learning) program and application of No Child Left Behind bullshit?

     So essentially, I'm bugging over impressing someone whose job it is tonight to impress me. Sounds like a crap date. 

     I know which lies SaPa and the McCainerator repeated about my candidates an hour ago, but I have nothing intelligent to say about my child's education. Nor anything unintelligent. I got nothin'.

Woopsie. It's about cancer.

     Well, shit. I thought I was writing a poem about my daughter. A simple little thing about tucking my child in. 

     Turns out it's another thing about illness. 

     Part of what bugs the shit out of me is that my filter seems forever altered; I apparently am unable to see anything through a lens other than the contorting lens of cancer. I want to rip these spectacles off my head and smash them for good, but I can't.

     Like my mother said, everyone has something. (My mother died from breast cancer in 1983.)

     The poets in my workshop are going to grow weary of this beaten subject, but fast. As long as it stays out of my fiction... 

An inventory of favorite poets

     The poetry workshop I'm taking this semester is being led by a Pulitzer prize winner. I have long admired her work, and as a guide she is fantastic. She asked students to "return to your old favorites" and let her know which poets we plan to read and pay attention to as we craft new poems in the next several weeks. Here's my list.

• Joseph Brodsky
• Stan Rice
• Frank O'Hara
• Sharon Olds
• Mark Strand
• Mary Oliver
• Rita Dove
• Wallace Stevens
• Raymond Carver
• Claudia Emerson
• W.H. Auden
• From my mother's volumes, read and recited in our house growing up: Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth, Byron, E.B. Browning, Cavafy, Yeats, Burns, Shakespeare

     I know nothing about poetic form; nothing about how to discuss poetry. I know what I like; sometimes I know why I like it. I hope to learn much more.

     Meantime, I also have a poem to finish for workshop. To my knowledge, it is not about cancer.

More things that help me feel strong

1. Railing against Rovian Republican fables
2. Playing Connect Four with A; watching the wheels turn as she thinks one, two, three moves ahead; her delighted giggle when she wins; her resolved sportsmanship when she doesn't
3. Running the dishwasher and unloading the dishes; feeling the burn on my neuropathic fingertips from the still-hot plates
4. Listening to the local independent station on M's huge old tube radio
5. The sound of hard rain on the roof after three months of dry; trusting that the new roof will keep the water out
6. Cutting lemon for hot tea
7. Following US Open tennis
8. Donating (more) to Obama/Biden
9. Seeing M's mannerisms in A's gesticulating explanation of why he cannot go first in the next round of Connect Four ("Dada, do you get this? Because it doesn't seem even a teeny little bit to me like you get it.")
10. Being socked in with M and A on a stormy Saturday afternoon

     A is still in the excellent fairy-princess outfit we threw together this morning. She has fairy dust on her cheeks and loose, wild hair. Her fingernails, polished pink, are absolutely filthy.

Friday night

     Hurting tonight, and sad. M fetched A and took her out to meet some friends after work. Since she was expecting me to pick her up, he told her I didn't feel well, which made her sad. It breaks my heart that my five year old worries about me, as does my husband, and sister, and everyone else who loves me. Sometimes I can just barely stand to think about how they feel; most of the time I can't stand it at all.

     There is a princess tea party tomorrow for one of A's friends. I told her I would feel better by morning, and promised to help her put together a "beautiful, beautiful princess dress," as she calls it. I will eat as much pain medication as it takes to be able to do that with her tomorrow. Tonight, nerve pills. 

Adoption, children, and Cindy McCain

     I was going to step back. Focus on writing fiction. But I am compelled to write the truth here.

     Cindy McCain, in introducing her husband tonight in the final night of the RNC, said the adoption of the McCains' daughter from Bangladesh was a mercy mission.

     I cannot think of a worse reason to adopt a child (other than a determination to abuse the child). 

     M and I adopted our fabulous daughter for the same reason that we would have given birth; for the same reason other parents choose to become parents -- because we wanted a family. We wanted a baby. We wanted to be parents. 

     NOT because we were "saving" a child.

     It's the most important distinction. 

     Can you imagine growing up in a household that presented itself as your savior? Poor little child, you would have perished had it not been for us, our generosity, our sympathy. We didn't want a family, we wanted a cause. Congratulations, you're it! 

     I can't think of anything more demeaning than growing up thinking you owe not only your existence but your survival, your food, your clothes, your fortune (literally, in the case of the McCains) to two mortals who plucked you from the brink of desperation.

     Children deserve to feel unconditional love; they thrive on it. They need to feel that the reason they are in this world, in this home, in this family, is because they -- they -- are wanted for who they are. 

     Imagine anyone congratulating Cindy's humanitarianism for getting pregnant. "Oh, you've done such a generous thing." What?

     As a grownup with occasional outward signs of illness, I cannot abide pity or condescension. I appreciate when people make allowances for my infrequent limitations, but I would not hesitate to deck someone who kept company with me because it made him feel superior.

     Cindy McCain's attitude toward her beautiful daughter is shameful, elitist, and damaging. She would have done better to stroke a big fat check to Mother Teresa's orphanage and make way for people who want children because they actually want children. 

     John McCain is lauding her right now for "her concern for people less fortunate than we are," and intimated their daughter is among them. I count their daughter among those people, too. Poor, poor precious little girl.

Is this good for me? This cannot be good for me.

     I know we go all gooey over a "vigorous debate" in this democracy of ours, but truly, the heights to which my blood pressure has climbed in the last three days have got to be unhealthy, at least on the cellular level. And it's on the cellular level that my little body is giving me lip, after all. Maybe I'd better knock off rubbernecking the Twin Cities trainwreck and get back to fiction. 

     Although I've not written any fiction so brazen as that Rovian fantasy Palin laid on us last night... Gasping, still gasping...

     Here I go, to work on the novel. See me go? Here I go.

And another thing...

     Here is a quick roundup of lies lies lies the GOP has been spouting in the last day or so. Honestly, I don't get my news from Huffington Post, but it's a good spot to wallow in the collective Democrat (human?) agony at the moment.

From small minds come breathtaking lies

     M and I were destined to despise everything about Palin -- including her bizarre, grating accent -- and so we pat ourselves on the backs this morning for fulfilling our destiny. The condescension oozing from this self-righteous, small-minded fundamentalist was outdone only by her unearned swagger. The Mayor of Munchkin City actually asserted she possessed more "executive experience" and "actual responsibilities" than the Obamas (yes, both of them) when they worked as community organizers in Chicago lifting up poor, disenfranchised people whom the U.S. government had left for dead. 

     How fucking dare she.

     Do they think that saying a lie makes it true? No. They think that saying it makes us believe it.     

     Did we know, for instance, that she has "lots" of foreign policy experience because Russia and Canada are just, you know, right over there? 

     Did we know that candidates' children are off limits, except when it's politically expedient to flaunt them and promise policy around them, as she did with her youngest son? Or hold up their service to America as a personal qualification, as she did with her oldest son? 

     Did she know we could hear her when she disparaged Obama's and Biden's legitimate, honorable service to the country, but held up McCain's equally honorable military service as an ultimate qualification? 

     Did she realize she had an audience of people, apart from the frenzied masses before her, capable of discerning bullshit when she claimed that Obama will raise taxes, forfeit Iraq, negotiate with terrorists and leave us more vulnerable than George Bush?

     Did Rudith Giuliani, as an exhausted Andrea Mitchell called him, know the microphones were on and the cameras rolling when he claimed, in a laugh-out-loud moment, that the 20-month governor/Queen for a Day has more executive experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined? Because she got a road paved?

     Do the McCain mouthpieces realize they are talking to live human adults when they claim that Sarah Palin is a friend to the environment and champion of alternative energy?

     Do the rightwing airbags know we can see their lips moving when they tell us this anti-choice, gun-toting mommie dearest is a feminist?

     How can they square all this? They can't. So they lie, and hope we bite. They are despicable. 

     As is her taste in eyewear.

     Even Peggy Noonan is losing her shit.

Travel, pain, Palin and babies

     Wow -- that was some trip. Eight hours in the car with a five-year-old who is *hopped up* on the prospect of changing a newborn's diaper, starting kindergarten, and eating Swedish fish. I worked on my first poetry submission for workshop, but scrapped the whole thing by the time we pulled into town. It was about a guy who is struggling to say something to his friends, who are gathered and partying in his kitchen. In other words, crap. Guess what I wrote about instead.

     The baby rocks the projects, of course, and A was a good little cousin, for the most part. Neither the new mama nor I had any clue that a big spankin' lump can form under a baby's chest when he's processing all those birth hormones; we found out by calling the emergency pediatrician. Man, the tales Old Wives never got around to telling... Anyway, he's perfect and beautiful and damn near edible.

     On Palin: call me predestined to hate her pious guts, but that pride she feels that her daughter "decided to have her baby" followed by the unmistakable nudge of a double-barrel to the ribs the boy must have felt when the world was informed his girlfriend intended to make a child-groom of him -- well, they're all smiling just a bit too hard. They say she's a feminist who would strike Roe v. Wade from existence in a sweep so broad even rape and incest victims would be forced to carry pregnancies to term. A feminist, you say? I'm supposed to like her because she has a million children? A job? A vagina? What the fuck? I pray (yes, Ms. Palin, I do) that voters will see this for what it is: the most cynical VP nomination imaginable. 

     In other news, the coverage of and response to Gustaf was breathtaking. Everybody pat everybody on the back. Over and over. In fact, let's raise money for all the victims of the relatively victimless non-event. We're all Americans today. Tomorrow we can go back to forgetting what a great job Brownie did. Today's a day for prayer and overreaction. Houma needs some help, for sure. So do the gazillion families who remain displaced, struggling, perhaps nearly destitute after the bumbling three years ago. But yeah, you boys were Johnny on the spot with this little gust called Gustaf. Unfurl the flags! Revise the McCain Web site! (Maybe if they can figure out how to raise money online for hurricane relief, they'll be able to translate this new concept into campaign fundraising... and change the face of politics in the twenty-first century!) Last thing about Palin: John McCain, when asked why he chose her, said she would "change America." How's that?

     M and I, impersonating a family of pack-mules, got A off to Kindergarten this morning. I cried, just like I did on the first day of preschool last year. I felt then like I might be on the upswing; skinny, hairless, gasping but glowing with promise that I felt better, was getting stronger. Today I'm thirty pounds heavier, can walk three miles, and know I have this thing inside me that sooner or later we're going to have to address. I'm a bit uncomfortable, physically, and I did eat some hydrocodone on the trip to take the edge off. I slept a lot. Now I have to go write a novel.