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