John Swinburn

If Calypso had written complex stories—cobbled together from fragments of confusing and deeply disturbing dreams—they would have only reinforced beliefs held by some people that his mental state was, charitably, unstable. But “if” suggests Calypso had a clear choice. He did not. He was compelled, by the voices that spoke to him in those bizarre dreams, to document the stories that emerged from clusters of those nocturnal experiences. Calypso learned long ago he could not choose what to write; his fingers were driven by those irrepressible voices to attack the keyboard with a vengeance. Scenes from his dreams, often seeming utterly unrelated to one another, required him to imagine ways of connecting them so his stories might make at least a shred of sense. But only Calypso could make sense of the links between dream sequences. Everyone else who read or heard the convoluted, often nonsensical, stories took them as simply more evidence of his madness. When Calypso disappeared, leaving a lengthy written explanation for his reasons for leaving and suggesting he might one day return, his departure added to the assumed evidence of his neurosis or psychosis or whatever it was that caused him to behave so strangely. But his behavior really was not strange; the oddity was  in his stories. People often assumed his behavior was influenced by what he wrote, but that was not the case. In fact, it was quite the opposite; no one, though, could make sense of that concept—and that remains true today.

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Like Calypso, my writing often combines fiction with reality, making almost impossible a clear understanding of its meaning, if indeed it has meaning. Frequently, I write in a style I call stream of semi-consciousness, threading observable circumstances in between vague, dream-like veils that may be entirely fictitious or based in altered reality. Or, perhaps, I am making this up. Maybe I am writing with the objective of confusing the reader into believing I am the manifestation of Calypso. It could be something completely different, of course, but there is no point now in trying to explain; doubts already have been sewn into readers’ minds.

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Sleep remains far more attractive to me than I would like. Though I feel much better than I have in the past three months or so, I have been unable to shake being tired much of the time. Mi novia insists I need to listen to my body, which she says is telling me I need recuperative sleep to recover from the beating my body has taken from chemotherapy drugs and related poisons. On one hand, I find sleep quite pleasant (except when invaded by deeply troubling dreams), but on the other I feel I am sleeping a significant part of my life away. Never before have I slept so many hours every night, only to follow the next day with hours-long naps interrupted by brief periods of being awake. It may be improving, though. My periods of wakefulness may be getting longer.

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We went to dinner last night with a small group from church. Mi novia brought a to-go box home with her; she said I should have the leftovers for breakfast today. And I may well do that. But watermelon sounds more appealing to me right now. If I were more energetic, I might take the whole (but quite small) melon out of the refrigerator and cut it into small, bite-sized chunks. Alas, I am not especially energetic. So I may nuke some of the leftovers; I have enough energy to do that, I think. And, then, I will get dressed. For today, for the first time in a good while, I will go to church. The program today, which will be delivered by a member of the congregation, will be celebration (and warning, I suspect, of what might happen if we continue to ignore Mother Earth) about Earth Day.

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Once a person reaches age 70, he or she should be provided with round-the-clock servants. Said servants could be provided to geezers as part of a national service program, in which youths would serve for a period of three years to repay in part their debts for being born and reared. These kids would not be slaves, of course; they would simply be assistants and helpers. Assuming a person lives to age 91, he or she could provide service opportunities to seven young people during the receipt of service. Quite a good idea, I think. It might require us to work out a few kinks, but nothing is simple, is it?

A few months ago I wrote a poem I entitled Negative Space. Immediately, the morning i wrote it, I posted it here, on this blog. I commented about it, giving myself a combination of accolades and criticisms. Until this morning, I doubt I gave the poem nor the post in which it was embedded another thought after that day last August. I came across the poem while searching for a phrase entirely unrelated to it.  That sort of thing happens with a degree of frequency; while searching for a word or phrase I think I might have used in an earlier blog post, I get sidetracked. Something else I wrote becomes the “shiny object” that draws my attention away from my original query. The experience is not limited to searches of my own writing; a post on Facebook or an article on BBC.com or extracts of a paragraph included in a marketing email I receive that trigger the same sort of diversion. Sometimes, I think it’s my curiosity run amok; other times, I attribute the distraction to flaws in my thought processes. The reality probably includes a bit of both, along with an innate tendency to lose focus. That having been said, I remember a psychology graduate student telling my mother, after the student administered a series of psychological measurements to me, that I had an extraordinary ability to maintain my focus while problem-solving. Apparently, either he was wrong about me or that ability did not survive my maturation.  I vaguely remember that the experience took place when I was in my early teens, when I spent a summer in Austin with my mother while she took  post-graduate course at the University of Texas. I recall very little else from that summer…or most other summers of my youth. More evidence of my uncanny tendency to erase huge swaths of time and experience from my memory. Perhaps my brain is inhabited by microorganisms that feed on physical components of memory—when those creatures consume slivers of my memory, those memories transform into the organisms’ own recollections. Imagine a tiny parasite remembering an outing with my/its friends as we rode bicycles across a bridge in Corpus Christi; the poor beast probably would be convinced he was hallucinating.  Back to the poem: I believe these two mid-poem stanzas reveal much about what we know—and don’t—about life:

Experience often is defined by negative space.
Love by its lack, truth by its omission,
interest where there is none, knowledge by its dearth,
and certainty by decisions left unmade.

The whole of one’s life unlived is a study in negative space.
Romantic relationships that could have been, but were not.
The unmade bed, the garden not planted, the journey not made,
children not conceived, and job offers never received.
What could have been, but was not, is as important
as what was allowed but should have been prevented.

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Curiosity is an attribute I value. But only by encouraging it in oneself—grooming it until it becomes almost an obsession—does it reach its potential. That obsession is missing in me, as I’ve mentioned many times before. I lose interest or, more likely, something else draws my attention with more strength. I let the original curiosity freeze in time; not withering, but not blossoming, either. I wonder whether that process is driven by fear that I will never be able to fully understand the objects of my curiosity…better to stop cultivating interest, than to learn I do not have the capacity to fully comprehend them. Or laziness; unwilling to invest the energy in something whose return on investment may be deeply disappointing. That process may be what keeps me from pursuing writing more seriously. Silently asking myself “what if” my creativity is strong at the outset, but plunges as I forge ahead. Fear of realizing one’s own potential inadequacy is more powerful than others’ critical judgments, I think. But, then, I have never been willing to explore the idea as deeply as would be necessary to truly understand whether it is valid. Worth thinking about, within reason.

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Mi novia and I continue watching an episode or two at a time of Killing Eve. With the exception of the occasional truly deviant episode, the program is fascinating. Last night we watched one of those deviant episodes. I hope the remainder of season 4 is more engaging. I would hate to despise the program after investing so much interest in it.

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Today is Saturday. But it could be any other day of the week and it would matter just as much.

The serenity and silence of a landscape free of all but a tiny tribe of select people. Free, too, of the gossip and cluttered, useless thoughts that seem to sustain human interactions. This quiet, calm, soothing, absolutely tranquil place probably exists only in my mind. But there was a time, when the population of the planet was an infinitesimal fraction of what it is today. When peace prevailed. Human voices were soft, woven into a tapestry of sound that clothed the creatures that roamed Earth with a level of comfort that has long since been lost. Violence between predator and prey interrupted the harmony of life in those times, but that regular brutality provided a natural pause between periods of acute satisfaction—just as death concluded life in an eternal cycle that unendingly refreshed the meaning of experience. Noise has since replaced sound. Growling, hissing masses of selfish, demanding people competing for limited space have replaced little bands of nomadic friends who seek to do no more than put distance between themselves and chaotic madness. Worsening friction has set fire to the edges of what we generously call civilization. Heat, in the form of glowing veins of unquenchable embers beneath our feet, has begun to move from the edges to the center. Fables tell us the phoenix eventually will rise from the ashes, renewing all we have carelessly burned. But the lessons of fables are for naught in the absence of morality.

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Without practical execution, philosophy is wasted. But we take our philosophies too seriously, assuming the sudden emergence from our brains of meaningful revelations is relevant and educational. Time that perhaps should be spent questioning our revelations often is instead spent justifying their legitimacy.

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If I had absolute control over the world, I would be eating tacos right now.

On August 1, 1966, 25-year-old Charles Whitman killed his mother and his wife with knives, then made his way to the University of Texas Tower in Austin, Texas, where he shot and killed three people inside the building. In the space of 96 minutes, he murdered those three people, then killed an additional eleven people, shooting from the Tower deck, and wounded 31 others. One of the injured victims died 35 years later of wounds received that day. Whitman was shot and killed by two Austin police officers, who made their way into and up the Tower. Though an autopsy on Whitman, and subsequent exploratory commission, did not reach a universally-agreed conclusion, evidence suggested a brain tumor pressing against his amygdala may have contributed to Whitman’s actions.  I remember hearing about Whitman’s murder spree as it was taking place. As I recall, one of my sisters, who was attending the University of Texas at the time, was inside the nearby undergraduate library at the time; no one was permitted to leave during Whitman’s rampage. I remember it took what may have been hours from the time my family (we were in Corpus Christi at the time) first heard about the chaos until we were able to talk to my sister by telephone and learn that she was safe. Those grueling hours were among the slowest I have ever experienced.

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Four years later, on August 3, 1970, Hurricane Celia slammed into Corpus Christi. The storm intensified, reaching Category 4 before making landfall that afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. Gusts of 161 miles per hour were recorded by the National Weather Service in Corpus Christi. Maximum gusts of 180 miles per hour were estimated  in nearby Robstown and Aransas Pass. My parents’ house was badly damaged by Celia. The roof was ripped off the house and windows were shattered. When the house began to suffer the worst of the storm, we gathered in a hallway for safety. The wind thrust the pull-down attic stairs in the hallway downward, hitting my eldest sister in the head; she was not badly injured, but I was terrified. I remember screaming at my father, who was surveying damage during the height of the storm, to come back into the hallway and get underneath a mattress we had pulled from an adjacent bedroom. That experience revealed to me that I was susceptible to panic; bravery has never been my strong suit. When the worst of the storm passed, we ventured outside, because the house was uninhabitable. My family went looking for a place to spend the night. We were turned away from an elementary school, where the custodian and his friends/family were taking shelter. We ended up spending the night on the wet pews of a Methodist church.  My father and two of my brothers sold the remains of my parents’ house as scrap.  My memories of the weeks and months after the storm are vague. For a few days, the family split up and stayed with various neighbors. My parents then—sometime later—rented a house just a couple of doors down from the one destroyed by the hurricane.  Within a year or two (I just cannot recall details), they had another house built on the site of the one the hurricane had reduced to rubble. The old house, probably built in the 1940s, was unairconditioned and otherwise rather uncomfortable. The new one was small, but modern and air-tight. I left Corpus Christi in late May 1972, immediately after high school graduation, to pursue my college career at the University of Texas at Austin. That period of my life is little more than a blur. I was shy and lacked social skills. But one memory is clear: I periodically bought carne guisada tacos from a little taqueria on 26th Street. They were my special treat to myself. That, and from Hansel & Gretel restaurant, a pastrami on rye sandwiches slathered with spicy German mustard and washed down with a mug of dark beer.

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I wonder why these memories forced themselves to the surface this morning? It’s not August…there’s no obvious reason they should pop up at this moment. But there they are. And, now, I think I’ll join several men of my church for their regular weekly Thursday breakfast, something I have not done in months and months. I must be improving. Still not at 100%, not by far, but making progress.

According to a 1996 article by Mills, Day, and Parkes in Volume 17, number 3 in the European Journal of Physics, some early hourglasses used silica sand as the granular material to measure time, but more commonly “the material used in most bulbs was powdered marble, tin/lead oxide, or pulverized, burnt eggshell.” My memory tells me the hourglasses I have seen must have used something much finer than silica sand. I recall thinking—as I watched an hourglass measure time—the “grains of sand” inside the glass bulbs were much smaller than even the finest sands I have seen on beaches and sand dunes. Physics contributes to everything we experience in every aspects of our lives, but most of us give that branch of science that that deals with matter, energy, motion, and force no more than a rare, passing thought. Most people, it seems to me, tend to avoid discussions of physics because of the topic’s complexities and mysteries. But, in reality, we avoid the subject because we are too lazy to try to understand. At least that describes me. I want to know, but I do not want to go through the mentally laborious process of learning. That process may involve just two primary actions—observation and thought—but it seems far too sophisticated and troublesome for a limited payout. Yet I suspect there comes a time during the learning process when one experiences an AHA! moment that far exceeds one’s expectations of value. I imagine that moment is a revelation of immense proportions, as if one suddenly understands all there is to know about TRUTH and BEAUTY and LIFE and EXISTENCE and…on and on.

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The beauty of a meadow of colorful wildflowers is not sufficiently appealing to overcome our fears, as we watch incoming ballistic missiles destroy buildings and lives all around us. Somehow, though, we convince ourselves that the terror and wanton destruction caused by missiles—both “theirs” and “ours”—is a reasonable price to pay in an attempt to avoid the horrors of defeat. We convince ourselves—or allow others to convince us—that whatever awaits us on the other side of our defeat is far worse than the miseries of war. Perhaps it is. But we cannot compare the aggression of war with pacificism; they cannot exist at the same time, in the same moment. So we assume knowledge on the basis of ignorance.

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One month devoted to writing a semi-autobiographical work of historical science fiction. Or an unauthorized personal memoir of someone who died during the fifth century of the extended Saturnalian Wars—the conflict that will one day take place in the space between the moons of the Alpha Centauri triplets.  That is the problem, I think. Weaving truth and artificial memories into something that can resist the stain of lies is almost impossible. Science fiction must be realistic to be believable; it must be based on dreams or fantasies so accurate that the experiences are closer to memories than to delusions. But the same is true of real-world fiction. If I write about a fictional woman who becomes Prime Minister of Canada, she must have a reasonable possibility of becoming real. For the story to feel believable, it must be capable of altering the social and political landscapes of Canada, transforming a tale into a CCTV recording than can be replayed and edited, thereby altering reality as the story unfolds. Imagine a best-selling author whose novels bend factual experiences to reflect the ways his imagination sees the world. No, this is not science fiction; it is a psychological thriller based on one man controlling the content of the “news” so that his views of world events are absorbed as “truth” by audiences worldwide. I do not even like to write science fiction. I used to read it, on occasion, but no longer. Today, I merge fantasy with facts, creating a blended universe in my head. I may never write about it, but I know it is there, a story waiting to be told. A real story. A story with themes and messages and a riveting series of plots and subplots that conspire to control the reader’s mind. But I do not write that story. I keep it hidden, waiting for the right time and the right opportunity. This is all bullshit, by the way. That, too, is a problem. Because the bones of the boy who cried wolf can crack and splinter, while powerful canine jaws crush his writhing body.

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Blue skies. Warming temperatures. A potentially lovely day…disguised to mask the veil of pollen that will coat the lungs and make breathing an impossible dream.

Ideas fit quite well inside one’s brain, especially when nestled comfortably against rabbit-fur-soft dreams and fantasies and illusions. When those very same snug and serene ideas slam against the coarse realities of action, though, illusions leave contusions. Actions have sharp edges that can scrape against creativity’s soft, smooth lining. leaving bruises and scabs and—eventually—scars. Life, in  general, is like that. The slightest movement of an eagle’s delicate, lacy feathers enable the raptor to steer through the air with stunning precision. Yet even while the bird engages in airborne ballet, its talons transform its prey—a frightened ball of trembling fur—into blood-soaked carnage. The earth is a rough, brutal place. Humans have taught ourselves to judge the pain and gore of predator-versus-prey terrifying and offensive; as if pain has no rightful place on the planet. Pain is a natural physical and mental experience; its avoidance…an outgrowth of fear…is just as natural. But the complexities of the cycles of life are far too tangled for our primitive minds to fully grasp. We are not far removed from being terrorized by darkness and the oceans. If our species were to survive for another thousand millennia, we might begin to comprehend a tiny fraction of what we do not—and never will—know. By then, we would have lost almost everything we once knew, though, and would have to start over. Clever ideas, battered by forgotten experiences, repeated in a perpetually unsatisfactory cycle. Will we continue to stare, in morbid fascination, as the eagle tears at the flesh of her freshly-incapacitated and soon-to-be dead prey? We do not want to think about these realities. The only other option is ignorance. And we go on making competing choices. Ad infinitum.

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A conflict exists between certain ideas involving “moral behavior.” The conflict makes no sense to me. Some people find the concept of hiring a maid or a housekeeper offensive, as if the act of engaging the services of a person to clean one’s house is equivalent to judging the person so engaged to be inferior to the person who makes the engagement. Why is that idea offensive? Is the idea of engaging an automobile mechanic to repair one’s car equally offensive? I see the two situations as quite similar. Both the service providers (I’ll call them contractors) bring certain skills to circumstances requiring those skills. Why would one be judgmental in hiring a maid, but not as judgmental in hiring a mechanic? Consider the tutor who is contracted to help a parent’s child better understand mathematical theories. By engaging that contractor, is the parent judging the teacher to be inferior?  Of course, I realize the attitude the person hiring the contractor may vary from one type of contractor to another; but why would we differentiate between them? Is the work of a maid/housekeeper any less valuable than the work of a tutor or auto mechanic? Perhaps. If one defines Value as the ratio of Function to Cost, an argument might be made that certain functions have more value, based on what we are required to pay to acquire those functions. But isn’t our willingness to pay more (or less) a matter of judgment? Philosophies often are used to justify thought processes. And value judgments. Is there a legitimate way to remove judgment from the equation? Maybe. Maybe not. Hard to say, without introducing morality into the equation. Value. Morality. Cost. Function. Thinking too hard about such stuff can cause one’s brain to fracture into a million misshaped slivers.

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Time for another fistful of pills. And a Boost ( much to my chagrin). And whatever else I can convince myself is appealing. A cinnamon roll sounds especially appealing. Unfortunately, there are no cinnamon rolls in the house. A damn shame. A damn CRYING shame. I could go for my version of congee, too. But at least one of the ingredients is missing. Ach. I feel a bit better than has been the case of late, but I am tired. Sleepy. I got up too early or went to bed too early or otherwise broke my circadian rhythm into fragments; actually, I shattered it into pieces so small I may find it impossible to put it back together again. But sleeping is becoming more appealing with each passing day. I still cannot control my dreams, but I may keep trying.

The only people with whom I was familiar—from my dream last night—are all dead. My late sister, my late brother, and my mother and father. The dream—the setting, its strange circumstances, and the obvious (to me) messages it contained—confirmed for me that dreams do have meaning. Their meanings may involve difficult-to-unravel labyrinthine complexities, but their significance is nonetheless so utterly obvious that missing them must be intentional. Even the most bizarre such dream situations contain messages that are impossible to overlook in the absence of a real, concerted effort to lock them. Their content is so clear that, even hidden behind a cloudy veil of sleep and confusion, they cannot be dismissed as the random firing of neural impulses. But, then, I suppose it is possible that the obviousness of a dream’s meaning is entirely accidental. Meaning is, after all, the assumed assignment of interpretation. The assumption that an interpretation was assigned might be misguided. Yet the clarity of the assumption, sometimes, is so crystal clear and precise that believing meaning to be accidental or random is beyond reason. The precision of the outcomes of evolution is one such clearly non-accidental circumstance. Yet evidence aggressively asserts otherwise. All arguments are guided by perspectives that may or may not be valid. Whether they are, or not, any or all conclusions reached from those arguments may be completely nonsensical, implausible, and wasteful of mental energy. I try to derail my thoughts about the meaning of my dream with logic and philosophy, but those efforts fail. Yet I keep trying, in the hope that I will succeed in deflecting ideas from lodging in my brain. And what’s the point in that?

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Either I forgot or I blocked the thought; I have an early appointment with my cardiologist’s nurse this morning. I had wished for a nearly healthcare-free week—with just one appointment to see my oncologist—but that apparently was too much to hope for. Looking in the mirror is not enough to remind me of my deterioration. The calendar, too, reminds me that I continue aging at what now seems like an accelerating rate. Do we look ‘in” the mirror or do we look “at” it? If we look “in” it, what do we see? Does the reflection reveal who is behind the glass when we peer “in” it?  When we look “at” it, is the image we see more superficial than the one we see when we look “in” it? I have reached the conclusion that the image I see “on” the mirror is more physically appealing than the one the mirror sees when it looks back at me. The mirror sees me as I am; I see the reverse image when I peer at the mirror. The flaws are doctored by the reflection, though they are not corrected. They simply hide behind reality, although what I call vitreous surgery is inadequate to conceal the grave surface flaws. And the blemishes and ideological deformities and defects underneath are clear, if one looks into the eyes—the watery depths where secrets taunt and tease.

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Putting it off is pointless. I must ready myself for my visit to the cardiologist’s office. Or, I could just stay home. “Sorry, I forgot my cardiovascular system has no interest in being analyzed by you and your kind.” No, I have to do it. The medical-industrial complex might charge me for a non-visit. And we can’t have that now, can we?

I became consciously familiar with the musical group, The Killers, only two or three years ago, but I suspect I had heard of and from them long before that. The band became known to a worldwide audience as early as 2004 (I think it was formed in 2001). The group’s song that originally caught my attention—and which I grew to appreciate very much for its tune and its story-based lyrics—is entitled Quiet Town. Two versions of the tune are embedded below: the first one is a recorded studio version with electrical guitars, etc.; the second one is an acoustic version presented on television on CBS This Morning‘s Saturday Sessions a few years ago. Both versions are poignant and mournful, each with its own distinct personality.

Since first hearing Quiet Town on Sirius XM in my car, I have listened to several other tunes by The Killers. Though Quiet Town is my favorite from the group (of those I have heard so far, anyway), I appreciate a number of their tunes. Lyrics written to reflect a compelling story mean far more to me than those that seem to arise from meaningless rhymes.  And thus begins my Sunday morning.

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Though my mostly-solitary-confinement is largely self-imposed, it nonetheless sometimes feels less like rehabilitation and more like punishment imposed by a spiteful world. I do not wear a mask on those rare occasions when in public places, but I behave like a leper. More accurately, I imagine, I must seem like a nervous visitor to the fringes of a leper colony. Until my white blood cell count dips into the “normal” range and stays there for a while, I think my sense of being at elevated risk for exposure to potentially deadly disease will remain with me. My mental/emotional discomfort tends to be greater when in the presence of dense groups of people (which is not necessarily—but often is—the same as groups of dense people); though I understand exposure to a single virus or bacterium can be just as dangerous. Yet I sometimes take the risk, making the irrational argument to myself that I have some degree of physical control of exposure, simply by adding a few inches of space between other people and me.  Emotions have the capacity to overwhelm one’s intellect, which causes me to question the extent to which intelligence is a strength and emotion is a weakness…or vice versa.

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At what point do miniscule changes in color transform something from one color to another? The gradients between colors are too small to allow us to see that differential. Black is dark white. White is light black. Blue and yellow are simply blatant misrepresentations of green; but if they were more nuanced, they might be the same color. Do the cones in our eyes limit colors we can see, or is color an external characteristic that owes its existence to features of light? Or something else? Why is grey so soothing in certain contexts but so depressing in others? Why, in the absence of sight, are the senses of smell and hearing and touch amplified? Or are they really amplified? Is it, instead, that they are simply more readily noticed without the distractions caused by light? Why does the stroke of another person’s hand on my face feel different from the way my own hand feels? We ask all of these questions, and more, from the earliest moments of our ability to use language, but we forget both the answers and their meaning. Simply livings robs us of awe. But we’d have it no other way.

The Times of London. That’s what I’ve called it for as long as I can remember. That is the title that appears in the list of links on my web-site “launcher,” the page I created as a personal convenience for quick access to media sites long before I moved from Dallas to Hot Springs Village. But I think of London may have been my personal addition to remind me of the newspaper’s geographic base. Today, when I look at the paper’s website, of London appears nowhere that I can find.  Not that it matters, except the addition of that little convenience seems to have convinced me that the paper’s name is longer and more restrictive than its creators and those subsequently responsible for its operations intended. The newspaper was founded in 1785 as the Daily Universal Register. I prefer its more recent title. And, though the paper is now paired with a separate one entitled The Sunday Times (formed as a separate publication in 1822), I consider the pair a single publication. But, when I learned that The Sunday Times supported Leave in the 2016 EU referendum, I was disappointed, inasmuch as I have always considered support for leaving the EU to be evidence of intellectual and moral bankruptcy—though that harsh assessment may be a bit over-the-top and may be informed as much by my own bias as by my fundamental understanding of the reasons for either maintaining EU membership or ending it. I could go on endlessly in an opinionated rant, but I’ll pause for now, opting instead to express my contempt for too-cool temperatures, too-grey skies, and ugly yellow pollen.

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Too-cool temperatures, too-grey skies, and ugly yellow pollen are beyond contemptible. They collectively argue—persuasively—for the immediate annihilation of the universe. Let me just leave it at that. I remain tired. Sleepy. Needy of more nap time. Although cancer and drugs and the state of the world may contribute to that depressing state of affairs, there’s more to it than that. My oncologist’s senior nurse practitioner doubled my prescribed daily dosage of sertraline; still just a third of the typical upper limit of the drug’s dosage. Depression. Anxiety. OCD. PTSD. Etc. If any of those ail me, I may be in for an improved outlook on life.

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I am not antisocial, but I tend to be a bit reclusive and introverted. Some people might think I am aloof. In some circumstances, I am sure those people are correct in their thinking. But I am not really detached or indifferent; I just prefer social engagements to be of limited size and duration. I can be gregarious when appropriate and/or necessary, but it is an attribute I tend not to cultivate. It is not that I dislike people; it’s more a matter of being far more comfortable in intimate gatherings than in larger groups. And, of course, those intimate gatherings are much more appealing to me when I am in the presence of people whose personalities match or pair well with mine. That’s probably true of almost everyone, though; isn’t it? Most people have a natural inclination toward engaging with other people whose personalities fit well with their own, I think. But it’s not just the fit between personalities; it’s similarity in interests, philosophies, and other traits that make the presence of other people more appealing. Psychologists have long explored the triggers for positive (and negative) social interaction. One day, their theories will become more than merely suggestions; strong evidence eventually will support them.

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Time to take my damn pills. Not just take them, but fill week-long pill storage cases with dozens and dozens of pills of all sizes, shapes, colors, and intended purposes. I wonder how my body and my brain might react if I just stopped taking them? I haven’t taken gabapentin for a few weeks now, with no obvious ill-effects. But I have noticed that halving my blood pressure medication has coincided with a significant increase in my BP numbers. I probably should be judicious in self-medicating; or, rather, self-un-medicating. And I will be exercise caution. Because I am cautious by nature. Or can be.

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I think it’s Saturday. I thought yesterday was Saturday. Did I think, yesterday, that today would be Saturday or was I convinced today would be Sunday? Naming time segments—seconds, centuries, minutes, hours, days, Mondays, weeks, years, Wednesdays, 2024, etc.—can cause all manner of confusion.

In the dream, a large, injured shorebird rests against the side of my Dallas garage. A few feet away, another bird of the same type, agitated but apparently uninjured, squawks as if in panic. Neighbors drive by and stop, offering to take the bird to a nearby veterinary clinic. The neighbors, in the next scene in this bizarre dream, return and stop in front of my house to say the veterinarian has treated the big, curly, furry dog. Then the dog is put in the back yard, where a miniature version of the animal—an obnoxiously loud puppy—refuses to be silent to give the big dog a rest, for even a second. Members of my immediate family suddenly appear in the garage and grab some pieces of bone-dry but unfired pieces of decorative pottery. This upsets me to the extent that I grab the pieces from them and smash the glaze-ready pieces against the concrete garage floor. I leave the garage, jump on a motorcycle, and chase a couple who are riding another motorcycle. I enter a curve far too fast, losing control and smashing into a white open-slat fence. The newly-planted vegetable garden inside the fence is ruined. I am embarrassed by my behavior, but my embarrassment means nothing to the several families who had just installed the garden. The people wanted me jailed, or worse. But the scene shifts again; I am holding an iPad against the brick wall of a house, while some of the family members scroll through photographs of what appears to be a boat race, on the device. As with almost all my dreams, there was much more. But the links between elements of the dream are so odd and confusing and complex that I could not begin to recall them all. And so I awoke. Late. Very late. Long after first awaking in darkness. My recollection embarrasses me, as much because I threw an irrational tantrum as because I did not think an injured shorebird transforming into an injured dog was especially unusual. Perhaps I have lost my mind, after all. And if that is the case, where do I go to look for it?

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Sleep remains far too attractive to me, around the clock. Perhaps that’s a sign that the chemotherapy drugs still have not worn off. My blood magnesium level remains well below normal, though a bit higher than it was a week ago. And the lab data show I am anemic. But I’m told improvement has been made; and will continue, if circumstances continue to go in the same direction. I do not remember when all…or most…of my blood chemistry levels were in the normal range. Many of them are either low or high. If I had the energy and the inclination, I could review historical data on my patient portal to learn whether the abnormalities began in tandem with the chemo treatments. But, inasmuch as I do not fully understand the interactions/correlations between blood components and chemo treatments, I am not sure what those historical data would tell me. Probably nothing of any substance. At least nothing I can rely on. I could ask the oncology team, and perhaps I will, but I’ll wait until my interest in knowing is sufficiently high to help me remember what I learn.

+++

I should have taken my fistful of pills more than two hours ago. Before I take the antibiotic, though, I must have something to eat (lest the drug upset my stomach, per my PCP). And I’m not hungry. I wonder whether a demi tasse cup of espresso counts as breakfast? If not, I can plan on eating strawberries, grapes, blueberries, pineapple chunks, and some yoghurt. Perhaps some Boost. Avocado toast? I won’t starve. I haven’t yet.

+++

Today’s New York Times Word of the Day is MEDIOCRE. Is it coincidence, or does it have deep meaning with respect to my physical or mental condition? Or both? The NYT should explain before tossing a word out to the nervous masses.

I call it slow-motion impulse buying. It is a protracted process whereby an inevitable but utterly unnecessary purchase takes place following a period of weeks…months, sometimes…of ongoing self-persuasion and justification. So it was with my purchase of a 2010 year-old Honda Pilot, which I sold barely a year later. Several years afterward, the same process led to delivery of a pricey treadmill, its presence in my study coinciding with a recurrence of lung cancer and my inability to devote any appreciable effort to putting the device to use. If I were to devote enough thought to my history of slow-motion impulse buying, I am sure I could re-create a long list of embarrassing purchases that should have been avoided. For years, I have blamed my tendency to confuse want with need for my propensity to engage in such irrational behavior. But more recently I have begun to realize my desire to purchase an item is not strictly avarice or self-indulgence. It is not the acquisition of the item, itself, that prompts me to engage in a lengthy period of internal justification—it is my pipe-dream that the item will somehow allow me to change (or change certain aspects of me) into someone I would rather be. I take time to successfully delude myself into believing I will become a different person…if only I make this one purchase that will somehow transform me; either in my own eyes or in the eyes of others. But when the conversion fails to materialize, I look at myself in the mirror and see an unwelcome reflection; a weak and credulous sucker, an unsophisticated gullible mark who is too easily taken in by marketers who know how to appeal to people who buy into artificial images of who they could become. Of course, I also reckon I might be too hard on myself—I want that to be the case. But that self-forgiveness might be exactly the wrong response—self-pity tends to give rise more of the same. So, what is the solution? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Asceticism.

+++

I have a growing dislike of squirrels. Despite our efforts to dissuade them from emptying our bird feeders, the furry rat-beasts devour pound after pound of seed. Even the “spicy” seeds that used to keep the monsters at bay seem to no longer be effective. The birds liked the spicy stuff; the squirrels avoided it like the plague. But, now, the rodents gorge themselves on hot and spicy birdseed. I am considering the possibility of getting an air rifle. I would sit outside, on the deck, and wait for the demons to attack the feeders. I would aim the rifle at the creatures and fire away. I realize such behavior is inexcusable. But 357-magnum pistols make too much noise. And flame-throwers would endanger both the house and the forest. Shotguns, too, are loud and tend to attract angry police officers. Frankly, I am surprised the birds have not joined in the efforts to keep the squirrels away. They are faster and better beings than squirrels, as we all know. But, since our avian friends seem to be unwilling to fight the gluttonous varmints, perhaps it’s time to pull out all the stops.  I plan to publish an online notice on NextNoxiousNeighbor, offering temporary quarters to feral cats, ravenous foxes, and squirrel-hating raptors. That might do the trick.

+++

We began watching Killing Eve, the British spy thriller series,  last night. As usual, I made a very early night of it, but the beginning of season 1 was sufficiently interesting to make me want to continue watching…eventually. For some reason, I find it almost impossible to watch television (or films) during the day, so the times available for viewing are limited. I suspect my mother’s irrational addiction to daytime soap operas (which surprised me no end, inasmuch as she was a very intelligent woman) has something to do with my aversion to daytime TV. At any rate, Killing Eve is on my list of shows to eventually wade through. I have several dozen others of interest on my list, as well. At the rate I’m going, I may finish my list, in its present form, on my 137th birthday. We shall see.  Speaking of soap operas, The Resident is a nighttime soap opera. I laugh at its blatant disregard for reality (examples: doctors checking on emergency generators in the basement…presumably while janitorial staff fill in for them in operating rooms; first-year residents shouting at doctors that “this patient needs blood…NOW…or he could die!”). I do not watch the program with any regularity, but when I join mi novia on the loveseat while it’s on, I enjoy mocking its ridiculousness. But so many patients have ailments similar to mine…and those patients tend to die…that I think I may need to keep a copy of Merck Manual, Professional Edition readily available to consult in a pinch. For some reason, though, I seem to have lost interest in spending much time watching the big screen in the TV room.  I sleep, instead. And I dream. Last night, I dreamed I was planning on building a set of picnic tables and benches; the dream was set in a place like my Dallas backyard. My niece’s Paraguayan husband and I borrowed a pickup truck to search for lumber in an apartment complex under construction, where he stopped to teach some construction workers how to use markings on a tape measure. There was more. Much more. But it was too convoluted to attempt to document. There was coffee involved; different strengths for different members of my family. And a convenience store…where I accused the owner of overcharging for candy, clearly marked at 10¢ but for which he asked for 50¢ in payment. There may have been trouble brewing.

+++

Damn. I am ready for another nap. But so pleased I wrote so much, even though it is largely irrelevant.

Nothing—except sleep—holds much appeal for me lately. I am not necessarily as tired as I have been; I simply want to sleep. And the passion I usually have for writing…transferring thoughts from my mind to my fingers to the screen…no longer has the draw it had for such a very long time. From the moment I wake up and force myself to get out of bed, I have the urge to get back under the sheet and quickly fall asleep. Perhaps it is the fact that almost my only escapes from the house are visits to the doctor; simple boredom, I imagine. Yet even reading or watching television or film does not capture my interest. Sleep has become an increasingly attractive refuge from wakefulness. I explain to myself that I am tired, but that explanation is no longer as reliable as it has been since I started my chemo treatments in January. And all the supplemental injections and lab tests and bouts of pneumonia in the intervening weeks and months.  There will come a time when this dullness will subside and I will be able to look back at what I have written about this period and understand it better than I do now. That always happens when I experience prolonged periods of odd moods. I suppose I can legitimately call this an odd, moody period. Give it time and it will begin to make sense to me. In the meantime, I will try to relish as much sleep as I can get.

+++

Yesterday’s doctor visit seems to have taken place at the tail end of my sinus troubles. I am not coughing as much as I was, nor am I nearly as stopped up as before. But I was given another prescription for antibiotics, a seven-day course involving two monstrous brick-like pills twelve hours apart. I can barely stomach the enormous assortment of pills and tablets and capsules I am told to take every day. One day, I may simply abandon the prescriptions. I would probably be healthier and happier and more energetic. Western medicine, in which I have always placed a great deal of trust, is wearing thin on me. Healthcare has morphed into a rigidly-controlled regimen designed to pump vast supplies of wealth into the pockets of pharmaceutical and health insurance company executives. Beyond that, it has replaced outcomes with bureaucratic procedures. Medicine, as a “healing art,” is stifled by inflexible processes. Though Eastern medicine probably depends too much on ineffective spiritualism, I suspect its roots remain more closely aligned with the concept of “first, do no harm” than its Western companion. That phrase, by the way, is not part of the Hippocratic Oath. Apparently, though, it does originate with another of Hippocrates’ writings, Of the Epidemics.

+++

Today, while mi novia is out for lunch with a friend, I will remain home for a short visit with a home health nurse. I am not quite sure of the value of the home health service I was offered, but I imagine it cannot hurt. If nothing else, the impending visit will give me the impetus to take a shower. In the absence of the appointment, I probably would put that off until late tomorrow morning as I prepare for my visit with the oncologist. I guess I’ll shower twice in as many days, then. I’d rather sleep. According to multiple sources I’ve read, showering daily is not good for one’s skin; showering every other day is plenty, many experts say (whoever the hell they are). I selectively agree with the experts, especially when they share my opinions.

Years ago, I was offered a job as executive director of an engineering association headquartered in Morgantown, West Virginia. The salary was good, its location—in a college town—was appealing, and I was ready to make a move. But when I received the employment contract for my signature, the offer’s attractiveness disappeared like a wisp of smoke in a high wind. Though my moving expenses were to be covered, the contract provided that I could be released without notice and without severance at any time—and the agreement did not provide for relocation back to the city from which I would have moved. Even if I had been fired within a week of moving. I could have responded to the employment contract more graciously, but I let my temper take charge. I expressed my dismay to the executive search recruiter who had recommended me to the board and who had arranged for my interviews. While I waited for the board to modify the terms of the contract, the offer was rescinded. Even today, as I think back on that experience, I am offended that the search consultant would have called the agreement a “contract.” It was an employment-at-will offer, with absolutely no protection for the employee. I doubted the board would modify the offer; the original offer told me more about the volunteer leadership of the association than I could have learned otherwise. Though I was a little disappointed in the outcome, I was grateful I had not been successfully lured into an untenable situation. I have never changed my mind. I am confident I would have gone head-to-head with that board from the very beginning. The experience should have long since evaporated from my memory—why does it occasionally rear its head, all these years later? Pointless recollections get in the way of relevant memories. And they interfere with things that matter. That job offer and its subsequent withdrawal has not mattered for more than a quarter of a century. But I suppose the fact that it remains wedged in my brain, surfacing every five or ten years, suggests it may have mattered more than it should. I guess the experience taught me something; maintaining one’s composure is preferable to losing one’s temper, even if the outcomes are the same. But, have I ever really learned that lesson?

+++

It is time to get ready for my visit with the doctor. I hope he has a magical cure for my troublesome sinuses and whatever else ails me. Already, I am ready to go back to sleep. This is getting so damn old.

Creativity apparently can fall victim to…something. That something could be a response to massive repetitive doses of pharmaceutical drugs, excessive sleep, anxiety, allergic reactions to plant-based allergens, or a million other numbing influences. Whatever it is, my compete lack of imagination is evidence that some force is at work to stifle my rapidly declining ability to think originally. My thoughts—stuck in quicksand—are unable to free themselves from the muck that drowns them, as they sink beneath a sticky surface of ravenous goo. But stale, artificial memories seem to emerge from the gelatinous bubbles that explode in slow motion when they rise to the surface of the muddy, viscous slime. One memory reveals me as a smoker who, late on a Sunday afternoon, walks several miles to a convenience store to buy cigarettes and wine—only to find that those items cannot be sold on Sunday. And, as I walk toward my home in Dallas, a van-load of former co-workers offers me a ride and then laughs at me for forgetting the “blue” laws. Other memories so painful they will stay with me for days—and would return to haunt me for years—urge me to throw myself from a high rock formation in a western national park, a place I have never seen. Part of this tangle of creative wasteland and false memories feels like it is steeped in gasoline, waiting for a match to set it ablaze. Some it, though, is buried in a nutrient-rich soil that promises to give it an explosive spurt of growth more powerful than the most aggressive kudzu. I feel like a just-emptied balloon—once filled with air almost to the point of bursting—stretched and shriveled to the point that a single breath would cause it to be ripped to shreds, every bit of its elasticity lost. Creativity lost is like that ruined balloon. It no longer has any value, even as a scrap of membrane.

+++

I just called my primary care physician’s office. No appointments are available today, but I have been slotted in tomorrow morning…if they get a cancellation today, they will call. My sinuses are mistreating me. My cough is troubling. My perpetual sleepiness is getting on my nerves. Ach!

+++

The leaves on the trees outside my window are absolutely still. Their pollen-laden strings of greenish-yellow pearls look innocuous, but they are mean; a slight breeze and they will attack with a vengeance. I can imagine the county coroner’s report—Cause of death: multiple strings of miniature pearls strangled the decedent from the inside. I wonder which would be more deadly: the smoke and ash of a burned forest or the pollen forced into the lungs by an aggressive wind. Lime green is a more accurate descriptor of the leaves today, though chartreuse could be used in a pinch. A pinch; like a pinch of cyanide.

Does one find the purpose in life? Or, does one create purpose? Is the very idea of an intrinsic purpose in life simply wishful thinking? There must be thousands of philosophies relating to life’s purpose, most of which are based on the supposition that there is, indeed, a purpose. Many argue life’s purpose is not to find happiness but, instead, to identify one’s usefulness in the lives of others. But what does science say? Can science provide defensible answers? The answers may differ dramatically, depending on the question: what is the purpose of life; what is the meaning of life? It is quite possible that life has an intrinsic purpose. Unlike the more romantic answers to the question of meaning, though, the answer to life’s purpose may be strictly utilitarian. The purpose might be, simply, to provide nourishment within an enormously broad circle of life. Meaning, on the other hand, may be an artificial attribute humans ascribe to mysteries we cannot otherwise understand.  Similar questions may be asked of death, of course. Does death have a purpose? The answer, depending on the respondent, varies. Does death have meaning? The same is true, but the slant is different. Death is said, especially by people who accept spirituality or religion as more than simple notions, to give life meaning. But is there a corollary philosophy—that life gives death meaning? Does it matter?

+++

Only a couple of years ago, my resting heart rate was regularly between 64 and 72 beats per minute (bpm). More recently—around a year ago—it averaged between 78 and 85 bpm. Since the beginning of this year, it consistently has been 90+ bpm, with the occasional jump to the upper 90s or beyond. This morning, I was surprised to see 110 bpm. My exploration of the “meaning” of increasing heart rates yielded conflicting information; for my age and sex, it is not unusual to see it increase. Some resources suggest anything about 80+ bpm is an indication of an unhealthy heart; others say “it depends.” But when it gets high, the consensus is that formal medical assessment (not Google) is in order. And, one of the explanations for an increasing heart rate relates to pulmonary issues, with which I am dealing in spades. Fortunately, I am scheduled to see my cardiologist’s APRN a week from tomorrow. If there is anything of consequence to learn, I suspect I’ll learn it from her.

+++

I thought the completion of my “chemotherapy drugs only” regimen would end the fatigue. And it may, yet. But not yet. I sleep, still, for hours and hours and hours. I do not appreciate it. But, then, again, I do.

Today has been clear and warm, as I understand it. Outside, that is. Inside, I have remained hidden from the bright sun and have protected myself from the cool indoor temperatures by nestling beneath sheets and a moderately light comforter. Just another day inside that’s utterly at odds with the world outside my windows. Within the last day or so, I’ve ventured outside only a little—enough to wreck my sinuses, cause my eyes to become red and puffy, and introduce enough pollen into my lungs to put me in danger of choking to death. These experiences prompted me to search for the “best” locations for weather in the USA—as if I had the wherewithal to relocate to one of more of those “ideal” spots. Most of them are, as I expected, expensive in the extreme. And they are far more crowded than I would like. And various other of their attributes argue against considering them with any degree of seriousness. I just want comfortable temperatures, minimal issues with allergies/seasonal agony, and a social/political environment conducive to human decency. But I’m afraid that is too much to ask.

+++

I stayed home today from a memorial service at church, thanks in large part to my allergies and related discomforts. Had I stepped outdoors, I am afraid I might have succumbed to deadly yellow pollen. I suppose my chemotherapy drugs and related “stuff” has made me especially susceptible to seasonal attacks on my body. That’s what I’ve read…and been told. Chemo makes pollen and such matter particularly capable of wrecking many aspects of my life. Ach! Damn it. Not that damning anything is going to change the world.

+++

It’s almost 4:30 in the afternoon, a good eleven hours since I woke this morning. In the intervening hours, I have slept quite a lot. And my eyes have grown massively red; they feel like I have been dipping my wet fingers in ground jalapeños and then rubbing my eyes. That may be slightly better than ground glass and ground Carolina Reapers, but only by a tiny smidgen. I am breathing pure oxygen from a machine; delivered by tubes to my nose. I cannot tell that it’s making any difference. There is no point in trying, again, to write this afternoon. The output is dull and irrelevant. I have no interests, anyway. I wonder when my oncologist will have another CT scan and/or PET scan performed, enabling her to tell me what, if any, progress has been made? Between now and then, I would greatly appreciate sleep, enforced by sleeping pills and other devices to keep me from consciousness. Blah. I am not hungry, I am not thirsty, I am not ready to embrace the world. Just a long nap.

We classify what, where, when, how, and why we write, I suppose, according to our need for order. For the comfort of logic—and in accord with how we have been taught to think. The rationale underlying the words we record is so much more meaningful and clearer if we can attach a sense of organized complexity to it; but not too much. Not so much that the purity of its logic is hidden beneath confusing layers of intersecting or competing ideas. Or, worse, chaos. Reality, though, is inherently messy. A novel is not necessarily purely a novel; it can be a memoir in camouflage. A blog post can hide joy or torment. Even a a list can conceal thoughts not meant for public scrutiny. Today, the absence of a more meaningful post can illustrate the need for sleep. And it does. Again.

I have been sitting in front of my computer screen for fifteen minutes or more, trying to think of something to write. Nothing comes to mind. In fact, I realize I nod off every few seconds. There is nothing wrong with emptiness, I decide. Nothing fundamentally wrong with the mind’s inability to focus. No, especially after a grueling night of waking repeatedly to fits of coughing in reaction to clogged sinuses. Perhaps I can finally get a bit of rest as the clock drifts toward 6:30. Okay. I will try again.

Thoracentesis is an invasive procedure that removes liquid or air from the pleural space—the gap between the inner chest wall and the lungs. Yesterday, after a quick review of an X-ray, the pulmonologist said he would perform a thoracentesis on me, using a needle inserted into the pleural space to drain accumulated fluid. When I reminded him that his associate—a resident named Bonnie—had been unable to find the build-up of fluid during my recent  ER visit—he said “oh, it’s there.” Both a recent CT scan and an X-ray had revealed a significant amount of fluid, but an ultra-sound did not confirm its presence. “Oh, it’s there.” He scheduled the thoracentesis in a hospital procedure room for 11 a.m., less than an hour later. Though I did not relish the idea of a needle being thrust into my back, if it would make breathing easier I was willing to tolerate the process. But, a short while later, after the doctor began exploring my lungs with the ultra-sound device, he said, “I hate to tell you this...” I waited for him to finish, but his voice trailed off. I worried. He followed up with, “there is not enough fluid to drain.” He went on the explain something to the effect that the appearance of pleural fluid on the X-ray was an artifact of the thoracotomy to remove the lower lobe of my right lung five years earlier. And, then, it was over. The doctor and his APRN left the room, the nurse who would have assisted him wiped the ultra-sound gel from my back, and I was sent on my merry way. No conversation about “next steps,” no discussion of follow-up, nothing. At least I was able to watch the solar eclipse a while later.

+++

During the period of totality, the eclipse was stunning. The darkness that accompanied the eclipse was not like the darkness of night. It seemed like an odd combination of pre-dawn darkness and the darkness that precedes the disappearance of the sun at the end of the day. But the eerie, dim light all around the horizon was unlike anything one expects to see in nature. And, during totality, at the dark sun’s six o’clock, a bright red-orange solar flare was visible shooting out from the black orb. All around the edges of the blackened globe in the sky were white rays piercing the darkness. The air temperature cooled dramatically as the moon shielded the sun. If I had not known that a naturally-occurring eclipse was taking place, I might have assumed I was witnessing the final moments of the sun’s enormous power. Many of the photos of the eclipse are breathtaking. I am so very glad I had the opportunity to view the event. And, to top it off, I was fed homemade pizza. Except for allergies and the occasional brush with lung cancer, life is good!

+++

A couple of hours outside, waiting for and watching the eclipse, wreaked havoc on my body. Even this morning, my eyes remain red and puffy; they keep trying to glue themselves shut. And I cannot breathe through my nose. My occasional sneeze threatens to tear my head from my body. I took a Claritin tablet around 10:30 last night, roughly five hours after I got in bed to “nap” in the hope I could sleep my way through this miserable allergy to air and pollen and water and light and all things natural. And I did sleep…some. But coughing and struggling to open my lungs to oxygen kept sleep at bay for much of the night. I would gladly accept the life-giving force of a hypodermic needle filled with allergy-erasers if such a gift existed. Why, I wonder, is there nothing readily available to me that would chase away my allergies to pollen? This Spring is,  by far, the worse yet for my reaction to the allergens in the air. At this moment, I long to be in a climate free of trees and flowers and pet dander and dust and other irritants that make me feel like I might as well be inhaling ground glass and powder-fine dust of dried ground Carolina Reaper peppers. I may be exaggerating; but just the tiniest bit.

+++

One badly-overripe avocado and three more that, I hope, have just reached the peak of perfection. I am torn between having avocado toast for breakfast and waiting until later to have bacon, avocado, and tomato sandwiches. There’s a pie in the fridge, too; so, if necessary, I could delay the avocadoes until lunchtime to give me the opportunity to have pie for breakfast. Or something entirely different. Ice cream, perhaps. Or a mocha-flavored Ensure or Boost. They want me to maintain or increase my weight, by God; I may do a little of everything. Whatever it takes. Just as long as I never have to go outside during allergy season again.

The male of the human species is not necessarily shallow, but neither is he deep. If he daydreams—if he allows his mind to indulge in innocuous woolgathering—he generally keeps those distractions to himself. Explaining why he loses himself in fantasy simply is not worth the effort. Besides, he is not quite sure of his reasons. He vaguely suspects only that daydreams feed parts of his psyche that, in their absence, would otherwise starve. But attributing to him even those nebulous suspicions may suggest far greater scope to his intellectual complexity than is due. Yet there is something about his daydreaming that offers evidence he may have more depth than is apparent on the surface. If he would ignore his embarrassment about his private visions and freely discuss and explore them, he might learn something worth knowing. But he won’t. His grasp on masculinity is too fragile for that. He buys into the mindless lore that equates masculinity with machismo. And, in his mind, wakeful fantasies have no legitimate place in the embedded culture of maleness—except, perhaps, to provide a means of escape from the prison of prescriptive mindlessness.

+++

I do not relish the idea of going to visit the pulmonologist this morning. He is one of the doctors I saw a few times during my last hospitalization. I have no strong reason to dislike him, but I suppose I do not need a strong reason—any reason at all will do.  I suspect his patient-facing mannerism (AKA bedside manner) has more than a little to do with my displeasure with him. But the doctor’s ability to engage with me in a friendly way is not what I’ll be after. I want an iron-clad guarantee; certainty that he will provide me with an irrevocable cure for whatever ails me. If all goes according to plan, I should finish my appointment with him and be outside and ready to watch the commencement of the  total solar eclipse with time to spare. I will not stare at the sun. Nor at the moon blocking the sun’s impossibly hot surface. Why, I wonder, do we refer to the “surface of the sun?” Is the core of the star very different? Is the sun millions of degrees cooler a hundred thousand miles beneath the surface? I cannot imagine that the center of the star is not just cold, but exponentially frigid—a place where temperatures have ceased to exist and “absolute zero” would be equivalent to a hot day on the Sahara Desert.  Fantasies. Daydreams. Reverie.

+++

The speed of light is far slower than the speed of time. I find it far easier to move forward and backward in time—instantaneously—than to watch light from a star at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy as it reaches my eyes. The light takes far longer. When the extraterrestrials arrive—and they will—they will arrive in time “capsules.” I do not know what form time capsules will take, of course, but I would bet the future of humanity on their existence. And I would bet that a complex relationship between time and distance—far more complex than any other relationship we have ever contemplated—will be the vehicle enabling extraterrestrials’ arrival. I noticed, just the other day, that a massive squadron of time vehicles from the far edge of the universe had landed on the far side of our moon. The vehicles carried with them equipment that will be used to transform a huge chunk of Planet Earth (all of Africa, from the surface of the planet into its core) into an impossibly fine mist. Through gravitational effects, the remainder of the planet will collapse into the vacant space where Africa had been. In less than the time required for a hummingbird’s wing to flutter just once, our planet will disappear. For millennia, humankind has whispered about the “rapture.” We had it wrong. The proper term is the “rupture.”

+++

When I went to bed, very early as has been increasingly usual, my sinuses were stopped up. But dripping incessantly. Each of the seven or ten times I woke to pee during the night, the sheets were damp with cold sweat. What in the bloody hell is going on with my body? Tomorrow morning, I want to wake up—after a delightfully satisfying night of uninterrupted sleep—young, healthy, and dry as old leather (but with skin as soft and smooth as truth and generosity). Between now and then, though, I have to get out of my chair. And I have to shower. And go to the pulmonologist. And view the celestial apocalypse. And have a few chunks of cold watermelon.

+++

Good morning to you.

A new set of sheets, freshly washed, and a new mattress pad, soft and lush from the dryer. When I got into bed last night, the luxury reminded me of the bedding experience one finds in the finest five-star hotels; Ritz-Carlton, Waldorf-Astoria, J.W. Marriott, Four Seasons, and so on. But when I woke around 4:30 this morning, the luxury had transformed into cold, wet discomfort. For the second time in a matter of days, despite the room’s pleasant temperature and an extremely comfortable bed, I woke to find myself—and the sheets beneath me—awash in sweat. My online research suggests the problem might be traceable to one of several causes, among which could be: 1) nightmares; 2) stress; 3) one’s body fighting off infection; 4) anxiety; and 5) a host of other medically-related triggers. I do not remember having had nightmares; not that I would necessarily remember them, had they been the cause. Many of the other prospective reasons could be responsible—so I have been unable to come any closer to an answer. Ach! In the broader scheme of problems one might face in life, night sweats probably is not one of the higher-ranking difficulties. But waking suddenly to a sensation of being surrounded by cold, wet sheets—and feeling cold water pooling on one’s chest—is sufficiently disturbing to merit more investigation. I do not want only answers. I want solutions.

+++

Before getting into my cozy, comfortable bed last night, we enjoyed dinner with (and delivered by) a couple of friends. A third friend had planned to come to dinner as well, but she fell ill yesterday and decided it best not to import to our house whatever ailment she might have. But she made the main course, anyway, and our other friends delivered it. I felt generally decent, but tired as usual, so shortly after dinner I excused myself from being social, opting to relax on the reclining loveseat in our television room while mi novia and our friends engaged in conversation. I would find it difficult to express more emphatically how utterly fed up I am with being constantly fatigued. Yet I have to constantly remind myself that I am fortunate, compared to people whose illnesses are far more taxing than mine.

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The only reasonable justification for sporting a thin, scraggly beard and moustache is the fact that facial hair minimizes the frequency of needing to shave. Men whose facial hair is dense and is amenable to serving as an attractive fashion statement can choose either to shave or not; either way, the “look” can be appealing. Others, whose facial hair is sparse, cannot—with a straight face—claim to make a fashion statement in the absence of a razor. They—we—are simply lazy. And they—I—may delude themselves into believing their thin whisps of facial hair are just as “attractive” as the thick beards of their hairier brethren. Delusional is, indeed, the operative concept. All of this is to say I am in the early stages of deciding whether to keep the pathetic mange on my face or, instead, to shave it off and return to some semblance of respect for my might-as-well-be-nude facial landscape. Time will tell.

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Phaedra, the cat, has spent the last few days being boarded at an off-site cathouse. The quietude in this house as a result is nothing short of delightful. No yowling, no sounds of claws tearing into expensive rugs and leather, no litterbox cat-stench infringing on the aromas of freshly-washed clothes in the laundry room. I realize this vacation from the felonious feline is temporary, of course, but it is such a welcome brief reprieve that I cannot help but celebrate. I would dance, if I could, to demonstrate my appreciation for off-site cathouses.

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The day has begun to dawn. It may be time for me to try to nap in the television room.

We have access to hundreds—perhaps thousands—of available sources for news around the globe, yet the number of unique topics emerging from them constitutes just a fraction of that larger number. Whether our news of choice is from CNN, FoxNews, the New York Times, MSNBC, BBC, NBC, CBS, etc., we tend to view the same news. Granted, the spin might be slightly different, but the stories essentially are limited in number and offer the same content. Conspiracy theorists might attempt to explain the duplication from one news outlet to the next by claiming the media are engaged in widespread efforts to limit and control what we see and hear—and by extension, what we think. I’ll admit a bias here; I think conspiracy theorists are fundamentally stupid, morally flawed, and consume far more oxygen than they are worth. My explanations for what appears to be a limited number of news stories delivered by an enormous number of outlets are these:

1. the media have become extremely proficient at determining what is apt to appeal to news consumers—they give us what we want, whether we know it or are willing to admit it or not;
2. limited resources available to news organizations compel them to make choices about topics to cover—choices that are forced on professional journalists against their most deeply-felt journalistic obligations;
3. we—the consumers of news—have a limited appetite for thought-provoking news reporting, so news media must narrow the options they give us or else they will lose us to their competitors; and
4. competition between news organizations is a critically important driver of their decisions in determining what topics to cover…making their choices to cover subjects already more than adequately addressed elsewhere more appealing than choices to cover truly meaningful new information.

If I were to give these issues more intense thought, I might come to different conclusions. But, for now, I do not have the energy nor the inclination to coerce my brain to be more discerning nor more intellectually demanding. So there you go.

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I got a follow-up phone call from my oncologist’s office after yesterday’s labs and infusion, informing me that an appointment had been made for me for early Monday morning to see a pulmonologist. Later in the day, I noted in my online portal that the appointment schedule had been delayed an hour…I hope to be finished in plenty of time to see the total eclipse play out. The nurse who called me emphasized that I should go to the ER if, between the time of the phone call and my Monday appointment, my breathing were to become difficult. I do not like to hear such ominous warnings at the beginning of a longer-than-usual weekend. But I assume the nurse was just being cautious. I have no reason to believe I will experience breathing difficulties before Monday.  I used to laugh under my breath at “old people” whose every conversation had connections to their health challenges. I now find that I mock myself with some regularity. I suspect there will come a time when my self-mockery will cease to be even remotely funny. That is when the ready availability of lethal doses of oxycodone or some other such drug will become of paramount importance. When ever-so-brief interruptions to matters of healthcare concern are the highlights of week after week after week, I will no longer see burglaries of pharmacies as the province of people who are addicted to drugs. Eighty- and ninety-year old cat burglars seeking supplies of Schedule 2 drugs like fentanyl may not become commonplace, but younger and more agile criminals may become geezers’ suppliers. I think a piece of fiction in which an aging group of terminally ill patients form a distribution network for morphine, etc. might be interesting. What would be a good title? The Geezanasia Gang?

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What the hell have I been thinking this morning? I haven’t taken my fistful of pills yet. That oversight must be addressed. And off I go to swallow my pride and a clot of multi-color pills. I’ll need plenty to drink to make them go down; just taking the pills will require  enough water to ensure that I will be properly hydrated for weeks.

A headache sometime in the wee hours further disrupted an already less-than-stellar period of sleep. But the dream that occurred before or after the headache was even more disturbing than the headache. In the dream, I had just stolen a weighty sum of money—in the form of several small but heavy bags of coins—from an organization (no idea what kind) in which I was involved. I was terribly worried that the theft already had been discovered and that a trap was being set by my trusted friends in the organization to catch me. I slipped out of a meeting of the group and went looking for my car in a huge parking lot nearby. I had stashed the coin-filled bags in the trunk. But it was too late; apparently my friends had moved my car—if I went looking for it, that would somehow prove my guilt. My fear was not based on being arrested or jailed; I was terrified that I would be irrevocably judged as unreliable and untrustworthy by people who had placed their confidence in me. I remember wondering what could possibly have possessed me to steal money I did not need. My embarrassment at my dilemma was much more painful than the idea of being detained and arrested. And I was confused; horribly confused that I had committed an unforgiveable transgression for no apparent reason. The dream seems to have dissolved about the time my fears reached their crescendo. I awoke—more or less—with my chest drenched in sweat. I think it took me a few minutes to fully emerge from the dream. Ach! I am not sure I was drenched in sweat; I may have been awash in shame that felt would be impossible to shake off.

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Yesterday was another adventure in healthcare deviance. Before my infusion of magnesium, the nurse tending to me discovered that I had a slightly elevated temperature of 100.9°F. That discovery culminated in a series of conversations that led my oncologist sending me to get a lung x-ray, prescribing an oral antibiotic, trying (unsuccessfully) to find an antibiotic to be delivered intravenously, and having me stop at an urgent care clinic to get a COVID and flu test. Apparently, my history of pneumonia, coupled with my chemotherapy, makes me a candidate for potentially dangerous infections—hence the seemingly weird precautions. The urgent care clinic tests were negative. And when they took my temperature, it was its usual 97.9°F. I return for another infusion today. I hope all the excitement is behind me. I will not have to return on Monday; the cancer clinic is taking a total eclipse holiday (probably because traffic is expected to be triple the worst days of race season, or worse). Maybe Tuesday? Or, maybe, my hemoglobin and magnesium will have risen enough to make unplanned/unscheduled clinic visits unnecessary. My optimism is going wild.

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For dinner last night, I had about half of a larger-than-average chicken pot pie. I could not finish it, no matter how much I knew I should try. So, I finished it for breakfast this morning. Along with a shot of espresso and an oatmeal-raisin. I might wash it all down in a few minutes with an Ensure or Boost to pump me full of sugar-laden calories. It’s a shame that my newly-embraced and freshly-slimmed-down appetite has stripped musculature from my body, rather than melting away fat. Maybe I should just eat small protein-dense meals, thereby bypassing the problem of losing muscle mass in lieu of losing fat. I think I may have discovered a new approach to diet that, with the right public relations campaign and an endorsement by Dr. Oz, could make me a very rich and deeply flawed human being. My dream illustrated the flaws; all I need now is the money.

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A piece of rare salmon, lightly sautéed in a pan on the stovetop and drizzled with fresh lemon juice, alongside a small dollop of white rice flavored with a mixture of soy sauce and wasabi. But that’s not all, of course. I would add a few slices of cucumber and a simple green bean gomaae (beans topped with crushed toasted sesame seeds infused with soy sauce and sugar) to accompany the fish and grain. There is nobility in that simple breakfast. But I have not felt that sense of nobility in far too long; I haven’t made such a Japanese breakfast in—how long has it been, years? Yes, years. Instead, I have grown used to bran flakes in almond milk—or slices of crispy bacon—or crushed avocados spread over rye toast—or pieces of melon—or bagels smeared with cream cheese loaded with scallions. Or pancakes or waffles or egg dishes or…the list is long and collectively dangerous. Low-calorie, nutrient-dense foods like a few of my Japanese favorites are far better for me, but I am a lazy, self-indulgent American. Back in the days when I viewed meal preparation as an entertaining, educational, healthful, exciting adventure, I felt the sense of nobility build in me as I explored what I called “international” breakfasts. Some of the breakfast diversions were not necessarily as healthful as my favorite Japanese meals, but they were intriguing and probably better for me than gooey cinnamon rolls. You know, those dense chunks of white flour drenched in sugar-infused liquid so sweet that people at the restaurant counter near me developed cavities simply by watching me eat the stuff. Ah, but those days seem to have gone by the wayside. Maybe I can bring them back, though, if I can discipline myself to again devote the necessary respect for the noble foods of globally diverse cultures. Indigenous peoples around the world, including those who were conquered by our mostly-European ancestors, revered the sources of their food and treated food as both a means of sustenance and a “spiritual” gift from the universe. Though I am insufficiently woo-woo to bring myself to call anything “spiritual,” I have become more open-minded about the idea during my lifetime—that long period of time I have spent abusing my body through gluttony and sloth. I now feel real gratitude for the fish and the farmers and the untended natural ingredients that sustain me. Though I have more than a little contempt for people who go overboard in their weirdly woo-woo worship of the “magic” of Earth-based nutrition (including supplements sold by money-hungry gurus who drive Lamborghinis and adorn their artificially-tanned bodies with diamonds), I am growing slightly more forgiving of their inexcusable flaws with each passing day-week-month-year-decade. And that’s all I have to say about that. For the moment.

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More magnesium today. And, if I understand correctly, more tomorrow. Along with another injection tomorrow, ostensibly to boost my body’s ability to produce red blood cells. And I think they want me back on Monday. At least I am awake for the moment; perhaps I will maintain that rare condition for awhile. Still more healthcare stuff. Maddening, methinks. Maddening.

My estimate—that I would spend between one and four hours yesterday getting a blood transfusion—was low. From the moment I walked in the door until the conclusion of the process, six and one-half hours had passed. The transfusions—two units of blood—took about four hours. The ancillaries filled in the remainder of the time. I had hoped I would feel measurably better by the end of the process. Not so. But I’ve read that I might anticipate feeling a bit better twenty-four hours after the process was finished. So, maybe by 3 this afternoon? I hope. I do not feel “bad.” I simply feel tired. Still. Exhausted. Thrilled with the idea of undisturbed sleep…if there is such a thing.

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I walked away from this blog post early this morning and forgot I had started it. A few hours later, after yet another long nap, I nibbled on a few leftovers from a Mexican meal. Much of the meal remained on the plate, though, because it was not in the least appetizing. And, then, I called my oncologist’s office and left a message, asking for a return call. Seconds later, her office called. They wanted me back for another infusion of magnesium and another set of labs. Not just today, but tomorrow and Friday, as well. Ach. I thought the week was going to be mine; mine to sleep as long as I wished, with no oncological obligations. But, no. No. No. Back home now, though, in time to watch the afternoon news if the idea were to appeal to me. It does not. At least I am not the guy at the clinic who, when I left, was waiting to be taken to the hospital for observation. He had been receiving treatment when he felt something was wrong; the doctor gently asked him if he would object being hospitalized for observation. He agreed. His wife, waiting in the lobby, agreed as well. All I had to do was let the fluids drip into my chest, grumble about some slight discomfort, and go home after the magnesium treatment. I cannot complain; not legitimately, at any rate.

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As fogs go, the one I am in at the moment is not so very different from others. I just cannot seem to keep focused on matters that…matter. Instead, I bumble and stumble and do not appear to have the ability to decide what is worth thinking about and what is not. Pollen has begun covering every available surface, both outside and inside. I think the yellow stuff has gotten in my eyes and my chest and, somehow, has managed to burrow deep into the creases in my brain. My thoughts appear yellow, too, making me wonder whether I will ever again be able to see or dream about or contemplate more appealing colors. What if, I wonder, the world around and within me becomes infested with dirty yellow dust? What if smooth blue and green and red bottles disappear, replaced by glass etched by hideous  acidic washes tinted urine-yellow? Yes. What if? My eyes itch and burn from the nearly invisible pollen blown into them by fierce, chilly winds. If I am not careful, my eyes will take on the yellow hues the color the air. And the tiny fragments of pollen will scratch the corneas of both eyes. Jaundiced optical spheres etched by wind-blown clouds that behave like crushed glass. Damn. I would rather close my eyes.

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Early this morning, I watched a video in which a mongoose engaged in a deadly dance with a cobra. After numerous attempts at striking the mongoose, the cobra turned away from its adversary, dropping its guard in the process. In a flash, the mongoose bared its razor-sharp teeth and tore into the snake’s flesh, ripping the reptile’s skin. The outcome of the attack was hidden from view, though, as both creatures’ bodies slid beneath a rusting refrigerator. I suspect the mongoose won the day, but I wonder whether the snake’s fangs sank into the mammal’s body, delivering a deadly—or, at least, a dangerous—dose of venom. It shouldn’t matter to me, should it? And, in fact, it doesn’t. But, then, perhaps it does? Should I feel compassion for one creature or the other? Or both? And if I do not, what does that say about me? It’s worth a thought or two, at minimum.