Every year, within a day or two of my father’s birthday, my thoughts wander into a poem written by Rudyard Kipling. The poem—If— is said to have been among my father’s favorite poems.  I did not know my father very well, despite having spent more than half of what was then the first half of what was then my entire life in his presence. Being told he had a favorite poem, though, introduced me to a side of him that I had not known previously. The same thing happened when I was told he could play the piano. Who was this man with whom I had spent so much of my life? I should have known more about him…especially in light of the fact that he kept a copy of Kipling’s poem pinned to the wall above his desk. Two lines from that poem are forever etched into the corridors of my mind:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim…

+++

Just shy of an hour from now, three of us (mi novia, mi sobrina, y  yo) will leave the house in search of radiologists. The radiological team will direct magical rays at my chest in an effort to eliminate the cáncer. I wish them well in their endeavors.

+++

The evidence is clear; Phaedra spent time on my desktop. She left physical testimony that she wandered about my keyboard, depositando pelo de gato in her wake. I could use those depósitos de pelo de gato as proof of her actos criminales. Podríamos publicar fotos policiales de la gata descarriada en las oficinas de correos cercanas. La Oficina Federal de Detención de Gatos emitiría un Boletín de Puntos de Control para ella. Pronto, la pondrían encadenada. ¡Justicia!

+++

Dajcie mi waszych zmęczonych, waszych biednych,
Wasze stłoczone masy pragnące swobodnie oddychać,
Nędzne odpady z waszego rojnego brzegu.
Przyślijcie tych bezdomnych, miotanych burzą, do mnie,
Unoszę moją lampę obok złotych drzwi!

+++

氷の入ったマルガリータをください!

Much of my pliable energy—the strengths on which I have relied for most of the last 70+ years—have become hard and brittle over time. Now, all the forms’ energies—including physical, mental, and emotional—starve for oxygen beneath years of thick accumulated grit and dust. The heat and desiccation of time has scorched and dried every layer of my experience into impermeable protective coatings, each one as hard as diamonds and as strong as steel. When once I could look into a mirror and see someone young and strong and aching for wisdom, today, I see an old man at the nadir of weakness and in the full bloom of stupidity. I see someone whose seeds of intellect have dried in disuse and whose power has been replaced by infirmity. I am not alone in squandering my potential and maximizing the damages caused by my most egregious flaws. It seems to me most human beings allow themselves to wither and decay as they approach their peaks, effectively giving up on themselves at precisely the point when their misspent energies are most needed. They waste their accrued stockpiles of money, time, knowledge, capabilities, and all their remaining resources just moments before those collections could have enabled them to avoid complete ruin. The rest of us—who have yet to reach that point of no return—watch in pity as we, too, unknowingly cross that brutal threshold that cannot easily be crossed twice. But the fact that it is not easy does not mean it is impossible. It means only that the odds are against us and that—probably—we will not try to avoid crossing it a second time.

+++

The clock on my computer screen reads a quarter past two in the morning. I have been awake for at least forty-five minutes and out of bed for half an hour.  I hoped, when I decided to get up and sit at my computer, I would succeed in documenting the thoughts on my mind; a success I have not enjoyed for the last several days. I tried on a few occasions, but to no avail. Here I am though, trying again. Hoping I might be able to slash away some of the underbrush I have let accumulate…replacing it with at least a few thoughts worth having and even fewer worth sharing. The value of my words might be considerably greater, I realize, were I to discard the negative thoughts they c0ntain. But a shroud of positivity remains a shroud. No matter how  much thought I give it, I am unable to replace a negative shroud with a positive veil…or a positive sheet…or even a neutral thumbprint on a large white blanket. Fifteen minutes of clear liquid…flavorless juice…from a piece of translucent citrus fruit. Blandness, I suppose, is more appealing than annoying or threatening. And that is a useless observation; if, indeed, it can be called an observation. It may be more appropriate to call it useless label or a transitory judgment. Or a tomato. It might be just as useful to call it a cake pan or a circular saw. Or an  introductory course in portraiture with oils.

+++

My niece is coming for a visit late today. That knowledge should help improve my mood. My mood really should not need improvement, though. But reading what I just wrote tells me the mood needs some work. Once she gets here, though, I suspect my mood will improve of its own accord. That’s just how it works.

+++

The thing to do, I think, is to try to get back to sleep. Maybe I’ll give that a shot. And maybe I’ll write more later today or tomorrow or some other time.

Yet again, I’ve been up since 3, but unable to write anything of consequence. Everything I’ve written thus far has collapsed into scraps of damaged letters and malformed syllables. Fragments of incomplete ideas lay scattered across the monitor in front of me; thoughts shredded into a thousand pieces—unable to coalesce into coherent, meaningful expressions. My fingers rest on the keyboard; paralyzed. Incapable of reacting to instructions from my brain, they await commands that never reach them. Those mandates go off in different directions, instead, adhering to guidance better suited to circumstances utterly unlike those in which I find myself. I strain to listen to the colors of the trees, rustling in the wind. I feel the sounds of fruit ripening beneath the soil under my feet. I smell the flavor of wind rushing through the bare branches of shrubs torn from the sky. Destiny spills emphatically from ruptured pipes, demanding answers to questions posed in languages no one can understand. Confusion stands at the ready, with explanations nobody wants….or needs. All the solutions to none of the problems are laid bare on mounds of queries, hungry for answers to questions that could be doppelgängers to insistent answers. All of this is the price of misunderstanding and truth. And so it goes. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man crazy and pondering his demise. A reinterpretation of these thoughts could lead to absolute understanding or endless confusion. So it’s pointless to try figure it out. No point in it at all.

The question, ultimately, is this: do chains represent gentle, flexible tethers or unyielding hardened steel traps? Even more important questions: who set them? And for what purpose? The answers are not as important as the people who provide them. Some answers leave scars—disfigured trails of cruelty. The words can be identical, but their meaning often depends on the facial expression of the person providing the response. Grins and grimaces convey distorted messages…ideas as different as thunder and grapefruit juice. It does not have to make sense; it requires us only to think in colors with radically different densities.

The wee hours of the morning are conducive to introspection. The mysteries of silence and darkness in the early hours coincide with dimensions of self that hide behind curtains of anonymity. Thoughts that one can share only with oneself—no matter how they try to hide in those dark moments—rise to the surface of consciousness, revealing aspects of personality both fascinating and troubling. Yet I wonder whether those revelations really are components of personality but are, instead, features of one’s self-portrait that remain hidden beneath layers of discarded paint that conceal the artist’s fears and passions. I often return to a concept whose magnetism is so powerful that it overwhelms any concerns I might have about what the idea might say about me. Regardless of what it may divulge about me, I cannot help but explore it; open it up and let the masks fall away. Instead of answering questions, though, stripping away the masks creates more lines of inquiry. Simple questions grow into quests. Daylight, though, will interrupt the inquisition. The sun’s intrusive rays will not infringe on my solitude for an hour and a half, but that brief delay is insufficient to ensure success. I need more control over daylight and darkness. I need powers that normally are reserved for fantasies.  Not “need.” “Want.” I’ve heard it called a hunger for power. A thirst for control. Greedy desire for for unchecked influence.

Years ago, I wrote about my wishes:

I like the idea of writing the autobiography of fire. The concept suits me. Fire draws us in, pulling us closer. But fire refuses to let us get too close. We cannot be close enough to safely understand the rage of combustion; we can only guess at how fire feels, what occurs at the precise moment when something solid becomes a superheated gas that disappears into smoke. Fire embodies passion. Raw, unbridled passion.

But it’s more than that. Suddenly, though, I am tired. I have no energy to overcome this damn radiology fatigue. I will just sleep my way through it.

I changed the configuration of my study yesterday. The transformation, relatively minor, reminded me there is only so much I can do with my “retreat” space. Oh, I could do more if I had an unlimited budget and access to talented architects and skilled craftsmen, but I have neither. I did what I could do with no money, severely limited skills and abilities, and impatience driven by reality. If time and resources did not constrain me, I might have added a few hundred square feet of floor space, floor-to-ceiling windows (with views of the Chicago skyline on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other), and an endless array of luxuries…like an espresso maker connected to a water line, a full-time massage therapist, and a grand piano (plus the ability to play it flawlessly). Impractical does not begin to describe my wishes. In my heart-of-hearts, I am a fantasist. Instead of all those unfulfilled wishes, though, my reconfiguration amounted to this: I turned the desk by 90°, moved my computer and a small table, and shredded  or otherwise discarded a considerable amount 0f paper that had hidden my desktop.

+++

For what purpose, I have to ask myself, did I want to rearrange my study? No special reason, I have to admit. Just change. A different view. An attempt to distract myself from a somewhat depressing reality. What the effort did, instead, was to focus my attention more keenly on how little control we have over the world and our place in it. I learned nothing new, of course; I just refreshed my perspective. Each of us experiences an incredibly short span of time in which we have consciousness. We have no way to compare the vast stretches of time before we became conscious and after that consciousness ceases to exist. We existed before we knew we existed. And we know we will exist in some form after our conscious existence ends, but we know little else. Perhaps it is impossible to know anything beyond what we already know about the before and after periods. Maybe that’s why we spend so little of our conscious time contemplating what was and what will be? Perhaps we should not even be asking questions for which there are no answers. Instead, maybe we should devote our energies to seeking questions that CAN be answered. Yet what good would that do us? We may or may not ever know. Billions of people have come and gone before us; probably asking the same questions and cursing our curiosity when we realize the answers have never been f0rmulated.

+++

My pain does not adhere to a scale devised by people who feel and think only in small whole numbers. My pain can be legitimately compared to the discomfort that causes a giraffe with a broken ankle to grimace…or to the anguish an antelope feels as a lion’s claws rips through its flesh. In the first case, “4” on a scale of 0 to 10 might be a gross exaggeration. But a “10” would be entirely insufficient to describe the level of an antelope’s agony in the second. A physical state that causes pain many times worse than unanesthetized vivisection can be described only by using exponents of no less than 10 to the power of 99 (10⁹⁹). So why is it that nurses insist on patients limiting their pain levels to a wholly inadequate scale? I feel guilty of whining if I assign a “7” to the pain in my gut, because I try to compare that pain to how it might feel to be torn to pieces by the blades of a rusted chain saw. My gut may hurt mightily, but is it only 3 whole numbers less than the unimaginable agony of having one’s limbs sliced off with poorly-maintained tree-trimming equipment?

+++

I opened my eyes, expecting darkness. Instead, soft light—dim enough that it cast no shadows but bright enough to expel every shred of darkness—filled the room. Somehow, daybreak had come and gone without announcing its arrival or departure. Yet here it…something…was, an indescribable day-part that had swallowed a piece of time to which I had grown accustomed over more than seventy-one years. I had awakened to the realization that I had missed unrecoverable moments. Never would I know, with certainty, what the experience would have been like, had I been awake. The probability was high that the missing moments would have been virtually indistinguishable from hundreds and hundreds of other moments I had experienced…but likelihood and certainty can be as different as night and day. I had no way of knowing exactly how this experience differed from all those other experiences. Memory was the only clue available to me, but we all know how utterly unreliable memory can be. And memory is of no use whatsoever when its switch is set to “off.” So, in reality, I could rely on no clues. None. If I had been able to dredge up a memory, it might have been something artificial; a dream crafted by a mind operating at less-than-capacity. My sub-par, barely functioning brain probably could not be trusted to replicate an experience I had never had. I could rely on it only to create almost inaudible conversations taking place in distant rooms, behind closed bank-vault doors. I recognized those voices, but not all the words they used. They whispered, as if lowering the volume of their indistinct utterances would disguise the sounds. They were right, of course. I could only make out a few of the words; enough, though, to realize they were planning on performing an illegal surgery on me, without my consent. I could hear one of the speakers slide on a pair of leather welder’s gloves, her voice getting giddy with excitement over what she was about to do. Her companion, who I surmised was a forensic accountant, tapped the number keys of an ancient calculator. My concern, experienced through a foggy mist of anesthesia, was that neither of them had been properly trained in the administration of anesthetics; and that I would be fully awake and able to feel excruciating pain for the full duration of the surgical procedure. That procedure, I learned from listening to their banter, would involve replacing my right kidney with a mechanical device that had kept Sergio Mendez alive during his battle with long COVID. This was nonsense, of course, but it was so damn vivid I could not dismiss it as simple hallucination. There are no “simple” hallucinations, by the way. Hallucinations are, by their very nature, complex reconfigurations of a labyrinthine web of pre-experiential nerve adjustments. But that is neither here nor there. The point is this: light and darkness belong in the same chapter as the prologue, which competes with theft and altruism.

+++

My conversation with the hospice nurse yesterday was not particularly informative. He was a nice guy, but I remain unsure why he was referred to me and he was unable to enlighten me. Before he left, he set up an appointment for me with a palliative care nurse. With each passing day, I become less certain of what the future holds. That’s probably a good thing. I measure time by the number of pills left in the bottle. Time is refreshed with each prescription, whether new or refilled. Yet time is a finite resource…if, indeed, it is either finite or a resource. I still wonder about the purpose of time and how we would cope with the world around us in the absence of all the measures of time. Would we notice its absence? Do we notice when we have “too much time on our hands?” Do we know what, exactly, that phrase means? We live in an eternal state of confusion…until we die, at which point we can no longer communicate the extent to which we are perpetually confused.

We are here and it is now.
Further than that,
all human knowledge
is moonshine.

~ H. L. Mencken ~

I am not quite sure what to expect this morning, when one or more representatives of Arkansas Hospice will come to the house to educate me. The visit, I assume,  probably will be purely informative; clarifying for me the concepts of hospice and palliative care. Having arranged for both levels of care for my late wife in her final days, I think I have a reasonably good understanding of the concept. However, I was in a state of shock and confusion during the waning weeks and days of the five-month period between her initial hospitalization and her transfer to in-patient hospice care. My “reasonably good understanding” might have been labeled “bewildered denial” by the doctors and nurses and mental health professionals who surrounded us during those wretched months-long moments. Still, I am familiar with—and deeply support—the notion of minimizing patients’ pain and discomfort when the approaching outcome of those conditions is inarguable. Prolonging patients’ physical pain and stoking their unjustifiable emotional hope is, in my opinion, the epitome of selfish cruelty. That having been said, though, I have not been given a time-dependent prognosis…so, it may be a bit early to begin a process that’s equivalent to “picking out a coffin.”  But I am operating in the dark; I may be alone in my ignorance of what “everybody knows.” The situation may echo the one in which my wife’s surgeon, thinking I already had been told the results of the biopsy of her breast tumor, said to me, “This (referring to my wife’s diagnosis) is a horrible disease. All we can do is to do our best to try to win the next battle so we do not lose the war.” She won that war, but lost the next one. The triumph in my first skirmish with lung cancer was a temporary win. Maybe Arkansas Hospice will be in a position to share what they know of my future. We shall see.

+++

We abandoned Ballard, the television series that was sold as a riveting follow-on to Bosch. We remain entranced by The Bridge, which began with the discovery of a body found on the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden. The Bridge was first distributed in 2011; it’s just as intriguing 14 years later, I think, as it must have been when it was first broadcast.

+++

After the visit with Hospice, I’m off to my second (of this round) radiation therapy around noon today. I do SOOO love all this attention. Now, if only someone would perform a vivisection that I could watch later, on replay, that would make my day!

Under this tree, where light and shade
Speckle the grass like a Thrush’s breast,
Here, in this green and quiet place,
I give myself to peace and rest.

~ W.H. Davis ~

I willingly bought into the sales pitch for the new Amazon Prime television series. The promotional teasers did not do a good job of selling the show to me; I did that myself. I believed what the marketers told me I would get. Despite evidence to the contrary, I allowed my anticipation to build—I convinced myself the show would be at least as interesting as the marketing spots led me to believe. The new series would readily fill the emptiness left in my entertainment schedule with the demise of Bosch. Three back-to-back episodes of the new show—Ballard—did not fulfill the promise. I found myself harshly judging the script writers, as I listened to actors try and fail to deliver lines that could have been (and probably were) written by unemployable highway weed crews. These so-called “writers,” I imagined, were thirteen years old and immensely proud of their profound stupidity. But I might be unfairly relentless in my condemnation of their literary skills. Probably not. But maybe. Now, though, I question whether my appreciation of Bosch was entirely unearned. Was my adoration of Bosch a side-effect of my chemo-induced catatonia? Should I be embarrassed that I recommend Bosch to people who might consider my high esteem of the show a sign of irreparable mental decay? Or should I give it one more shot? I doubt I’ll be able to put myself through another of its mind-numbingly stupid and deeply improbable storylines again. The Dukes of Hazzard probably was more intellectually stimulating and emotionally riveting than Ballard can ever hope to be. Yet another reason to stick with the Scandinavian Crime Noir genre. I suspect I would get more out of a revival of Sunday morning church sermon re-runs that I would get from Ballard. Dammit. I just wanted to experience mindless entertainment. At least it was mindless. The production cast has considerably more work to do to make it entertaining.

+++

I could return to my old standby topics: cancer and other such downers. But I won’t. Not for now, anyway. Instead, I’ll pretend I am emerging from a cocoon suspended by a single silken thread from the highest point in the atrium of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. Below me, last night’s crowds left a mess of cigarette butts and wine stems and nearly-empty cocktail glasses reeking of whiskey. A few scraps of police “crime scene” tape litter the floor, as well, and cover elevator doors…warning guests to stay clear of the drunk, disorderly, and deceased who clog the clear-glass passenger cars. The $1400 Brooks Brothers suit I am wearing will be wrinkle-free when I leave the cocoon, as if it had just been pressed. Theatre-style spotlights, trained on me from the floor, will draw attention to me, but most guests will be staring instead at the magnificent magenta costumes worn by a flock of wingéd racoons soaring in formation from one balcony to the next. San Francisco is a city absorbed with itself; the only West Coast city known to have written its own fictionalized autobiography. The book’s publisher, Liquid Serpent, has published only one other book, Latter Day Saints and Sinners: Diving for Taffy in the Great Salt Lake. Both books were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, but the nominations were later withdrawn without explanation. Oh, the SF book’s title is Fermenting Okra on Telegraph Hill.

+++

I’ve been awake far too long today. Three hours so far this morning. I crave sleep and conversation, but not at the same time. My gut prefers sleep; something to take my mind off the pain that slipped back into me without warning. I imagine the pain will dissolve into the sheets…or into the creamy white leather of the sofa.

Food is not the answer. Pharmaceutical products do not provide the answer. Exercise offers answers, but not to the questions posed. Meditation offers advice, but in a language only ascetics can understand. There is danger in asking the wrong questions; especially when all the answers come in packages suitable only for perfume and falsehoods. You are not the right person to listen for an answer and now is not the right time to hear it. No one wants to rely on the wrong advice given one hundred years too early or one second too late. Timing is a pointless exercise when the faceless watch has no hands.

+++

I plan to write the unauthorized autobiography of a political assassin. The book will begin to take shape ten years after death, thereby giving me a more accurate perspective on what my life and death were like. Autobiographies are written far too early and they are penned by the wrong people. Only after the commotion surrounding a person’s death is a measured perspective of the deceased person’s life possible. And the author of an autobiography often is too close to the subject. Distance, both with respect to both time and the relationship with the writer, is necessary if the published product is to be as open and  honest as one would hope. Autobiographies drafted by the author often omit unflattering portrayals of the writer. Conversely, those same books frequently contain bald-faced lies, stories manufactured to make the author seem more intelligent, better looking, taller, and more stable financially. In many cases, the autobiographer describes an entirely different person than the one he/she ostensibly is writing about. For example, a baker who has worked as an icing-maker for his father’s cake-decorating shop may present himself (in his autobiographical work) as an accomplished big game hunter and president of several small European countries. He may augment that artificial experience by telling lies about his time in the Kansas State Navy, when he was awarded the Multi-Dimensional Heroism Trophy for saving the lives of several hundred Kansan sailors whose submarines were under attack by flocks of rabid piranhas. In fact he never served in the Kansas Navy; during the time he says he served, he actually was in prison for running a fentanyl smuggling ring between the Vatican and the Confederate States of America. The lesson? Fact check before you find yourself awaiting execution by guillotine for a crime you may not have committed.

+++

Why write this absurd drivel? Why not? I base these stories on the time I spent in Federal prison in the Achilles. I had been convicted of money laundering, sex trafficking, and counterfeit stamp collecting for a Pachedermalian gun runner named Lucinda Popcorn. The money was good, but the jobs were few and far between, so I took on some side gigs for a banjo counterfeiter, Bubba Stradivarius. Bubba was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

+++

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Extraneous sounds. Barely audible shreds of irrelevant noise. Scraps of imaginary whispered debris—the only remaining evidence of the eerily silent echoes that once competed for limited space in the boundless emptiness of his mind. But was it really his mind? Did it belong to him, or was it just trickery, a reflection of a mirror image in that invisible territory at the intersection of sight and sound?

+++

I got a call from Arkansas Hospice yesterday, inquiring as to my interest in exploring hospice and palliative care.  Unless “they”  know something more than I do, I think it’s a bit early yet to delve too deeply into hospice care. But, what the hell, I might as well have a refresher on  the matter. On the other hand, I do not want to give the wrong impression…I have no interest, yet, in accelerating the timeframes involved in this fairly serious issue. Perhaps I should revisit the topic with them…maybe set an appointment for the first week in June 2075 to go over the introductory process in excruciating detail…

+++

Here I am, again, trying to decide what to write. Three hours into the day, I’ve decided not to worry about it. What a brilliant decision. I should make brilliant decisions more often.

+++

Yesterday’s breakfast—biscuits and gravy—was not what I would call an especially healthy breakfast. But it was satisfying…but could have added a bit more sausage to the mix. But…no. A healthy breakfast  is always a better choice. Except when it’s not. A deeply unhealthy breakfast can be delightful in the right circumstances.

We do not know what we are looking for; only that we are looking for something that will become apparent when we find it. But the explanation of the target of our search will be far too convoluted for us to know what we have found…only that we found something that is extremely important, but for reasons that are beyond us. And that’s the way it usually is with us; vitally important stuff that’s crucial for us to understand is absolutely, perpetually, eternally inaccessible. The answers to our questions become more urgent with each passing second…at the same moment the questions become harder to understand…because the languages in which they are written and spoken are completely unrelated. Which leads us to a corner of the universe which has never before been explored; one of those scary spots.

+++

The differences between healthy curiosity and meddlesome intrusion may not be the stark differences you imagine, at all. Instead, point of view might be the driving factor. Simple perspectives often contribute to how a person treats an expression of inquiry. The resident next door may consider his questions of you to be simple and straightforward…intended to be taken as a compliment of  his admiration of your handling of matters at hand. You, on the other hand, might label his apparent curiosity as blatant interference; the behavior of an over-eager nosy neighbor whose brashness you find offensive. What good might it do you if you were to made to understand the true—and perfectly innocuous—motive behind that offensive curiosity? On the other hand, how might your assessment be influenced by the knowledge that sinister motives prompted the neighbor’s interest? In either case, your judgment is colored by paranoia…its influence or lack thereof. Even when paranoia is dismissed as having no responsibility for one’s assessment, the very fact that it was considered a potential factor highlights the fact that it is almost always worth considering. Now, does all of this make sense to you? If it does, do you find that disturbing? Would you rather use much simpler filters to examine the the relative importance of all aspects of your life? And if that facet of existence commands a significant amount of your time, can you hold out any realistic hope that any aspect of your life might eventually become “normal?”

+++

I hold out little hope I will ever have a firm grasp on physics…quantum physics, in particular, but conversations about any regular old physics leaves me confused and embarrassed at the depth of my ignorance. Yet I continue to periodically engage in feeble attempts to understand such matters. Anyone else with even the most basic, crudest, and stunningly unsophisticated appreciation of physics would be judged far more knowledgeable. No matter how hard I try, I cannot fully comprehend the differences between the odor of emotions and the taste of gravity. Similarly, I simply cannot discern any obvious differences between light lavender, and the way numbers—especially prime numbers—smell. The fundamental complexities of the universe are far too elegant to be understood within the confines of a single human brain. Only when multiple brains are working collectively at the same speed and in the same direction as the others in close proximity can people have even a remote hope to truly “know” things that are hidden before us. I would explain these complexities to you if your brain had sufficient powers of concentration to get beyond the fourth level of GIANT UNDERSTANDING. Only at that “crimson” level is it possible to successfully blend colors with different kinds of sheep’s wool, thereby creating casual sounds that mimic hard-rock piano with just a hint of smoked coconut flavor. This is all bullshit, by the way. And I know it, of course.

+++

More when the time is right.

My thoughts are far from profound this morning. They are merely mundane remnants of incomplete ideas—poorly-formed notions left withering in the absence of fuel to keep them alive and growing. Thinking back on what once almost seemed flashes of near-brilliance, reality becomes clear: more often than not, they were just reflections of the surface scum of a pond of stagnant water.

Trust and hope are built on evidence—not on empty promises and blind confidence. The most successful con-artists, though, create believability by openly challenging their own lies. Using masterful and brazen manipulation, the most skillful schemers offer absolute assurances comprising nothing but vapor. Their convincing delivery of guarantees that have no substance supporting them can lead even the most astute among us to fall victim to their tactics. Their contemptible strategies have become so commonplace that the concepts of trust and hope seem obsolete—notions in which only the thoroughly gullible still believe. Human decency and morality…such desirable, but quaint, philosophies.

At a time in history—now—when trust in human decency and hope for strength in secular morality are so crucial, it is hard to tell whether the display of those attributes is real or not. Caution against being misled has become so vital that it grows into fear and the inability to know what is real and what is artificial. Who or what can we believe? We are advised to “have faith,” but urged to “be careful.” “Trust but verify” is the hallmark of this environment in which nothing can be accepted at face value. A line from Leonard Cohen’s  Hallelujah highlights the enigma: “Your faith was strong, but you needed proof.”

+++

The time between 3AM and 5AM simply vanished this morning. I spent almost all of that time at my desk, but I have not written enough to have filled all of those minutes. Where did those two hours go? How can such a long stretch of seconds and minutes just disappear…without a trace and without a memory?  The same thing can happen with longer periods; the months between starting first grade and my first Christmas break from school, for example. Or my junior year in high school. The entire span of time I spent in college. Adulthood. And old age is zipping by faster than the speed of light. Is it possible, I wonder, for a person to experience reality at different speeds in different dimensions? That might explain the sensation of feeling young and old at the same time. Like learning to talk and learning to drive simultaneously. Or being born and starting my first full-time job just hours apart. It may be just my imagination, but I seem to have a vague memory of planting the first redwood tree in Muir Woods about 1377 years ago, give or take a month or so.

+++

I occasionally find myself awake in the wee hours. Someone from my distant past…or more recent…may enter my mind for just a flash or for several minutes. Almost every time that happens, I wonder whether the person on my my mind at that moment is thinking of me simultaneously. I know the unlikelihood of that coincidence is astronomically high, of course, but I wonder whether it could occur, anyway. When that thought goes through my mind, I am SOOO tempted to try to reach that person (assuming they’re still living). I realize, of course, it would be quite disturbing to the person on the receiving end of my phone call. Disturbing to the point of instilling fear that I might be a stalker or worse. I put myself in their shoes; it could more than a little upsetting, I must admit. Downright scary, actually. But it’s completely innocuous; just a fleeting thought. It could be flattering, actually. I wonder: am I alone in having such a fleeting thought?

+++

Dawn is approaching. I can tell by the very dim blue-grey spots of sky showing through the deep dark forest background.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is one of his prose works from which is drawn this famous quote/poem, No Man Is an Island. The devotional, according to Wikipedia, “covers death, rebirth, and the early modern concept of sickness as a visit from God, reflecting internal sinfulness.” Donne wrote Emergent Occasions while he recovered from a serious sickness. Donne, then, considered his illness constituted a holy message concerning his own sins.

Washed away by the sea. That simple phrase, alone, is poetic. It summons a wide array of emotions, from loneliness to emptiness to grief to regret…to a swirling combination of them all that will not release us from its grip.  And it recognizes the extent to which something of overwhelming significance can be expunged, its remnants disappearing beneath the waves as if it never mattered.

My mother, who was an English teacher, used Donne’s words and his insights in her classes and in her conversations with me. I do not recall our conversations addressing any religious overtones in Donne’s work. In fact, I recall very little about those conversations… only that they took place and they prompted me to think about the intersections between language and emotion.  I doubt I ever questioned her about whether either one could thrive without the other. But I remember thinking that language might languish without emotion—and emotion would remain grey and hidden without language.

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That year, 2020, was the point at which the spokes rusted through. The axles broke. The tires’ knotted steel treads began showing through where the rubber had worn away. Humankind would have been wise to have floored the accelerator and turned the steering wheel—hard—just as we approached the most dangerous curve above the highest cliff. The freedom we would have felt, just before smashing into the rocks where they meet the sea, could have left an eternal imprint on our souls. If we had souls.

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The view from my windows is odd this morning. Like I am looking at trees through dirty panes of glass, smudged and unwashed for decades.

A short set of radiology treatments for me is in the planning stages. As soon as the radiologist completes the necessary calculations, etc., they will begin a 2-week (two consecutive 5-day sessions) series of treatments in an effort to eliminate or minimize pain associated with the spots on my spine. Yesterday, the oncologist’s nurse prescribed some very low-dose fentanyl patches that are applied to the skin and left for 3 days, then replaced with another patch for another 3 days. Laws (and/or treatment protocols) limit the strength of the initial prescriptions, but if necessary the strength can be increased over time. I hope the patches, which can be used to supplement the painkiller pills (or vice versa) prove effective. Time will tell.

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The post I began writing early this morning remains unfinished. It began as an effort to use comedic fiction to deaden the unpleasantness swirling around in my head. Instead, it evolved into a verbal Rorschach test that took a wide array of disconcerting directions. Two hours or more into it, I set it aside in the hope my head would clear, allowing a more appealing voice to leave its linguistic emotional mark on the screen. When I returned to it later this morning, my attempts to replace the dark smudges I had abandoned earlier grew into an even more dense and ominous layer. So, I gave up, surrendering to the reality that beating one’s head against the sharp edge of a guillotine blade is not a shortcut to serenity. And here I am. So, what can I say? Well, mi novia is at the pharmacy right now, picking up my pain-reduction patches. Earlier today, she took my car to have its windshield—damaged by a rock on the first of our unsuccessful trips to M.D. Anderson—replaced. And we’re expecting someone to come by later this afternoon to install our dishwasher, which could not be installed when delivered by Lowe’s because its original installation was considerably more involved than most “slide in” dishwasher installations. The installation is one of the dozens of things we need to have done by someone else because I am no longer sufficiently strong and agile to do it myself. The sense of worth that comes with the feeling that one can figure it out and get it done by oneself becomes vapor. I have never been the world’s most skilled handyman, but I’ve been able to wing it fairly well for most of my life. My confidence in my perseverance and in my physical capabilities has gone by the wayside. That’s the way of the world. There may have been a time when I mocked old men who were bitter about being unable to tie their own shoes without help. Now I think I am one.

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I saw some posts on Facebook this morning…or yesterday…about fresh, sweet Georgia peaches. Now, when I think about those posts, the glands in my neck urge me to drive to “peach country” to pick some peaches off the tree. But I might fall off the ladder while trying. Maybe I’ll order them online.

“If we were honest with ourselves, we would admit our lives are fictions, narrative yarns we spin from experiences as we witness them, not necessarily as they are. We write the stories of our lives on the fly, stitching together thin fibers of personal interpretation into whole cloth.  We dress ourselves in clothing of our own making; some wear gossamer gowns, others wear costumes made of canvas.”

Changed by a few minor editorial decisions over the years, the preceding words reflected my thinking of nearly nine years ago. Looking back at those syllables and sentences, I realize my words may not have quite conveyed the essence of their intended meaning. Had my mood been slightly different when I wrote them, originally, I might have phrased the message in another way:

“We do not know ourselves, so we peek through a veil of ignorance, looking for clues that might help define us. We then mold our personalities around impressions of how others see us—or how we want to be seen—creating characters who bear little resemblance to the person behind the mask as we look into a mirror.”

A lot has changed over the last nine years, though. The fragility of life has been emphatically asserted, more than once.  That fragility, though, has been counterbalanced by the steadfast, unyielding, and irrevocable permanence of death. Life is not assured, but death is guaranteed to follow life. Pain tends to interrupt the clarity of philosophies, except when emotions are anesthetized, which is a rarity.

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My visit with the radiologist yesterday confirmed for me that my cancer has metastasized to two vertebral structures, in addition to several lymph nodes. The good news…that some existing spots improved with the first new chemo…was counterbalanced by the bad news of the expanding reach of the cancer. I knew from the start that a recurrence of lung cancer usually means the disease is incurably terminal, but I’ve held out hope that I might be among those “one in a million” to prove that certainty is unreliable. That hope must be an emotional reaction to such news. Today, I return to the oncologist for a visit to follow-up on last week’s chemo session. I will inquire about alternative pain meds; the ones I’ve started taking increasingly over the last few weeks are not as effective as I’d like and they can cause some side-effects that can be worse in some ways than the pain they are meant to combat. For the last few weeks, the usual fatigue has been increasingly accompanied by bouts of pain.  In recent days, the pain in my gut/chest has become more frequent, to the point of being almost constant. It is not excruciating, but seems to be making incremental progress in that direction, as if it is approaching pain as a desirable objective. Sleeping through it would be nice, but it awakens me sometimes, which is more than a little annoying. Last night, I woke in the wee hours, drenched in sweat. When I returned to bed after the obligatory pee, the cold, wet sheets made me feel like I was crawling into an icy tent, its Gore-Tex floor sitting atop a snow drift. I’ve never actually crawled into an icy Gore-Tex tent floor sitting atop a snow drift, but I think I know how it would feel, now.

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It’s hard to maintain a good mood when in pain. And when I’m in a bad mood, I do not want to be around myself. Pain makes it worse. Even moderate pain. More severe pain degrades my mood even more, making living with myself yet more difficult. If I were someone else, I would not tolerate my presence in a particularly bad mood…but when it’s me, I have little choice. It’s best to isolate myself until my mood passes…or I do. That’s intended to be a little dark humor, by the way.

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Mi novia says caring for me is not a burden; that she knows I would do the same for her. And I would. But I also know it’s stressful and nerve-wracking and tiring. My appreciation of what she is dealing with is immense, but not enough to make it any more appealing for her. And the likely progression of the disease is apt to make it even more difficult. That is one of the reasons I’ve always said I would like to build a stash of medications. Ach, never mind. It’s too late now to gather enough to accomplish the desired objective. Unless, of course, anyone reading this diatribe would anonymously provide me with 15 grams of sodium pentobarbital in injectable liquid solution and access to a physician willing to do the deed. More dark humor.

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Enough typing for this morning. I have to get ready to go out and about.

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As a child, I learned that sounds arise from vibrations of an object that disturb the media surrounding the object. These disturbances create variations in pressure that propagate as waves that our brains interpret as sounds upon reaching our ears.  Well, that’s not exactly what I learned, but it’s close…yet not sufficiently accurate to be classified as a fact. Our ears implies that non-humans reading these words do not hear sounds. If we examine the assertion more closely, the statement suggests some non-humans are capable of reading the words on this screen. Beyond those fantasies, the claim that our brains interpret media disturbances as sounds is sheer folly. However, that claim happens to be entirely accurate to the extent that listeners to Fox News insist that the noises they process from their radio and television and computer speakers carry information. In truth, those noises are cleverly disguised right-wing propaganda designed to mold brains that are as malleable as lime-flavored gelatine in a hot bowl.

My intent, when I started writing this morning, was to explore the sounds of thunder. Which, as we know, are noises that arise when lightning bolts rapidly (almost instantly) heat the surrounding air to almost inconceivably high temperatures. This heating, followed by rapid cooling, causes the surrounding air to expand and then contract, producing a sound wave we hear as thunder. Again, though, the question arose in my mind: what is the identity of this we who hears the thunder?  Obviously, this simplistic explanation of the sound of thunder fails to account for the millions of realities the scientists decide to omit from their explanations.  Who, by the way, are these scientists? Are they the same group of people who practice the special version of voodoo we call meteorology? In the name of all that’s holy, I hereby assert that meteorologists are simply practitioners of the occult pseudo-science called weather-forecasting. Believe me, I know whereof I write. I have actually engaged in dialogues with meteorologists—conversations that raise the hairs on the back of my neck and in the curves of my knees.

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I would continue to document my exploratory pseudo-journalistic discoveries, but I am scheduled to appear before another “ologist,” this morning. A radiologist…a man who, ostensibly, may be able to aim tiny beams of invisible light at microscopic cancer cells, causing those demonic cells to explode in bursts of magic and supernatural transmogrification unequaled in modern times.

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By the way, I want to thank Meg and Patty and Hope for their words of encouragement for yesterday’s post. Their actions just show how one’s world can change by employing the right medium for one’s begging endeavors.

I do not look forward to the home-nurse visit today. I’d rather go back to bed. In fact, I do not know whether she will come today, but I suspect she will. I knew better than to get up so damn early, but the other option would have been to stay in bed with my eyes open and my gut behaving badly…pain, but not bad enough to warrant taking hydrocodone. At some point, the pain either will slip away for awhile or will merit giving in to those damn little pills. And I should take my “morning” pills, too. And the other stuff. I am not delighted by needing pills to make the day moderately tolerable. I’ll sleep later; that’s certain…I was up just after 2. Again. Three+ hours ago. And still futzing around with the blog.

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I may return to this blog later today. Or post this one, then write another one. The following paragraph will appear to have been written by a man in the throes of drinking a few pints of unicorn blood. I do not consume unicorn blood before 6:00 AM; so, no worries. I’ll feed the cat. Maybe that will turn the day into a winner.

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Tomorrow—July 1, 2025—is the first day of the downward spiral toward the conclusion of the final six months of a year that ushered in the demise of the first quarter of a dying century. Put in other ways, that same moment marks both the commencement of a once-in-a-lifetime calendar experience—a celebration of an eternal new beginning and the mourning of the disappearance of a moment in time that can never again be captured. Yet never has there been a moment in time that could be captured. Time can be lost. It can escape. Moments can slip away, but they cannot return…undamaged. Time cannot be retrieved. It cannot be preserved. Time cannot be bottled or canned or pickled or otherwise maintained for eternity. Time is an immeasurable commodity. Clocks and calendars can can measure what was, but not what is—because, once measured, it is gone. Future moments of time can be estimated, but not measured. In fact, time is simply a prediction—or a memory—an imprecise estimate of beliefs, presented as if they were immutable facts. The same is true of wealth, thirst, hunger…and so much more. All things…places…times…temperatures…circumstances…represent comparisons. Today versus tomorrow. Here versus there. Then versus now. Hot versus cold. Hunger versus satiation.  Contexts. Spectra. Continua. But comparisons and contrasts grow weaker and weaker with each expression. Every iteration becomes more difficult to defend. Eventually, our efforts to identify relationships between time, temperature, and taste become sordid and meaningless.

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If you did not read this, I will understand. It’s not worth reading.

Finally, after months of wishing and hoping my treadmill would disappear, it happened. We presented it to the guy who maintains our HVAC system…and whose wife visits us regularly to do the housework we are either incapable of doing or unwilling to do. I justify my avoidance of sweeping, mopping, dusting, and otherwise making the house look and feel livable by looking at the scrawny, elderly man who peers at me from the mirror. I also defend the choice of hiring a housekeeper by arguing that we may have more reliable financial resources than she and her husband have. But when I see him park what appears to be his expensive, luxurious, and fully-equipped extended-cab pickup in front of my house, I conclude that my meager fixed-income probably represents considerably less  than his potentially limitless financial resources. And, then, I envision their flush bank accounts, overflowing with massive stacks of hundred-dollar bills, and their safe deposit boxes crammed with giant bars of gold bullion and countless ten-inch layers of of ten-carat diamond rings. I imagine them driving into the Rolls-Royce dealership at the beginning of each month, trading their pre-owned Rolls-Royce Phantom for another one…one newer and cleaner and oozing prestige. But…maybe not the top of the line Rolls-Royce Droptail; after all, they’re working people, too, like the rest of us. Hmmm.  I think I’ve seen each of the two of them sporting Vacheron Constantin and Audemars Piguet watches, snatched from hand-crafted watch-cabinets made of pure-heart sycamore and ebony wood.

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It’s hard to say whether the chemo was responsible for the way I felt yesterday. Whatever it was and—to a slightly lesser extent—remains seems to have put the brakes on me again yesterday. My naps were shorter than “normal,” but they encroached on my day considerably more than would be ideal. When I woke sometime before 5 this morning,  I knew immediately I would miss today’s Music on Barcelona event at church this morning. And I knew I would miss the meeting of the Council of Past Presidents’ Meeting this afternoon. Though I doubt I could contribute anything of substance to the meeting, I feel like I again dropped the ball on one of my only truly visible church functions of the year. Wednesday, I will ask my oncologist to try to determine the reason the latest chemo treatment apparently is giving me grief. Or, if it’s not the chemo, what is responsible for delivering pain and fatigue and other unpleasantries so early in this phase of the seemingly endless regimen?

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Peppercorn. That is an odd name to affix to a noise that ostensibly describes little black balls. I would say the same thing about a noise used to describe an aperture belonging to a lagomorph with two pairs of incisors…that is, a rabbit. Purity is a different word, entirely. Who would use that noise as a meaning for tainted coal? No one, in my opinion. Humor is just one simple step away from insanity. But simplicity is not quite as simple as we’d like it to be. Simplicity is complexity hidden in a different framework…a framework incapable of supporting the superstructure of a gigantic concrete and steel bridge.

This page has remained empty until just now, roughly five hours after I awoke—when I began my day with espresso, a banana, and the protein drink I usually mis-label as Essence, instead of calling it by its proper name, Ensure. I had intended to blog during those wee hours, but instead I skimmed depressing news, read posts I had written in another blog at around the time I was closing my business, and otherwise piddled unproductively. Phaedra suggested she was not yet ready for breakfast at such an early hour. But I insisted. After I scooped her up in my arms and deposited her in front of a full bowl of delicious cat food on the laundry room floor, she got the message. My interest in writing has waned in the last five hours, so I think I will take advantage of the situation by taking another stab at sleeping.

I watched the frequency of reader visits to this blog decline. The stories that rattled around in my head echoed against empty spaces. They were not really “stories,” either. They dissolved into ideas; then, fleeting thoughts. Finally, incomplete prophesies that no longer met the definition of predictions…not even constituting words any more. Just shattered syllables. Unintelligible noises…incoherent sounds, incapable of conveying meaning. Gibberish. Blather. Damaged decibels. Fractured silence. Broken contemplations. Lunacy in the form of quiescent, loud, peacefulness. Bellowing silence.

I cannot blame yesterday’s chemo treatment—because the pain began before the treatment started. And I seriously doubt I can legitimately attribute the pain to a previous treatment, the most recent of which took place many weeks ago. In fact, I wonder whether the tenderness, the stabbing torment, or the other manifestations of the aches and agony are related to my cancer or its treatment? Theories abound, of course. Doctors and nurses and other people who have experienced—or know others who have experienced—such pain posit a broad range of possibilities. But most of those ideas assume a relationship to cancer. None of them have drifted into the deeply unlikely, though…no one has yet proffered damage from dog bites or an allergy to water or a measles variant. Some ideas, though, seem (to me) plausible, but not sufficiently so in the eyes of medically trained observers to merit focused attention on matters that might demand expensive, insurance-reimbursed tests. And, of course, I have no idea what those tests might be. I’ve begun to think I’m willingly giving consideration to utterly absurd possibilities—bypassing perfectly realistic ideas that should be explored first.  While enduring my chemo yesterday, I overheard an old man telling another patient that he’s never had COVID, thanks to the wonders of ivermectin. Under her breath, one of the nurses in the treatment room said something to the effect that the drug “seems to work wonders on sick horses.”

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Clothing designed as penance-wear might conjure solutions that can solve my dilemma. Perhaps I should wear a hair shirt…clothing stitched from fabrics capable of imposing on me the appropriate punishment, suffering, sacrifice, and penance for whatever “sins” I may have committed. Something that can be translated into a penitential “reward” that forgives me for drifting into the realm of “sin.” It sounds quasi-religious, doesn’t it? Fortunately, I do not buy any of it. I refuse to be shuttled from hell-hole to demonic hell-hole. But do I have the ability to overcome the hellacious climatic conditions of eternity? I’m taking bets on it.

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The magic light switch that wirelessly controls the lamp in my study has stopped working. Should I take that as a sign? If so, what sign should I assume the switch is delivering? Do Not Enter? No Trespassing?  You Break It, You Buy It? Keep Off the Grass? No Smoking? ID Required for Entry?

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My mind is bouncing off the windows…hitting them so hard I’m afraid one or more of them may break at any moment.

Hoarding cash and precious metals is an act of impotent desperation. Neither symbol of worth fulfills the promise of safety. Neither delivers on assurances of survival. Neither possesses intrinsic value. Their significance comprises false hopes, cobbled together with shreds of self-deception—fired by unearned egotism. They represent counterfeit expectations of a future that is neither promised nor necessarily desirable. Even the richest among us eventually die; memories of them fade and disappear into wretched history. And some of the poorest live on, their words and actions overshadowing their poverty and the suffering they endure at the hands of unprincipled upper-class thieves and swindlers. And, then, there is the vast middle; who often feel shame for their longing for riches. But not enough embarrassment to erase their lust for pecuniary gain. In the end, what does it all matter? Very few of us care enough about the world to change it. We simply muddle through, watching from the sidelines as pernicious power-mongers desperately fight to accumulate empty promises made of their wishes and dreams and our futures.

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Today is another consecutive day when my mind scurries unsuccessfully to find something to think about. Something to which my brain is able to devote both observation and analyses. When was the last time I felt sufficiently intelligent to make any sense of experience? Have I ever felt I possessed adequate understanding to interpret the world around me? To attach any plausible meaning to humanity’s circular psychoses that just swirl around what appears to be a drain? Almost a year ago, during one of the many periods when I tend to question life’s meaning or value or purpose or…whatever…I turned to two philosophers whose ideas seem to be at odds with one another. But, in reality, the concepts are not mutually exclusive; they simply present views from different angles.

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My chemo begins anew today, with a reduced dose of only one drug and the elimination of another. My oncologist (and I and others) hope the chemo does not lead to another lengthy hospital stay. Two weeks in the hospital was approximately miserable. I had a PET scan yesterday morning, the narrative results of which were viewable online yesterday afternoon after the physical therapist left, following his weekly visit. The results seem to be a mixed bag; several comments seemed to offer a ray of sunshine (indicating a reduction in size of some cancerous spots), but others indicated new or worsening concerns. I will inquire of my doctor today. Later this afternoon, a home-visit nurse will come by to check my vitals and harangue me about my apparent inability to drink enough water. Ach. I should not complain, yet I do. It gives me a modicum of purpose.

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Mi novia went to Lowe’s while I was having my PET scan yesterday. She ordered a new oven, microwave, and dishwasher. I kick myself for waiting so long to do it. If we had done it when we bought the house about three years ago, I would have had more time to enjoy them. I tend to procrastinate on things that will improve our environment. At least we’re not doing it as a precursor to selling the house. But things change. They always do.

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I ate a burger and fries for lunch yesterday, loading myself up with protein in advance of my visit with the oncologist. That wasn’t the motive, but it seemed like it might have been. I don’t know the difference between motive and desire anymore. What, exactly, is the difference?

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TIme to leave. Ach.

There are two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything

is a miracle.

~ Albert Einstein ~

There are no mundane things outside of Buddhism,

and there is

no Buddhism outside of mundane things.

~ Yuan Wu ~