John Swinburn

Lately, I’ve been bitten by new car fever. Not just any new car fever, though. New car fever involving a Mazda MX-5 Miata Grand Touring 6-speed manual. I might seriously consider such a beast except for one important factor: the car’s recommended fuel is 91-octane or higher premium. Who in their right mind would buy a car that requires premium fuel? Damn. I sure like the looks of the car. And I bet it would be fun to drive. But, alas (added for the benefit of a some-time reader who thinks “alas” is the linguistic equivalent of pretention), I shall not invest money I don’t have in a car that prefers gasoline that I refuse to buy. Instead, I will sulk and continue driving my wife’s seventeen-year-old hand-me-down Toyota Camry.

During the last seventeen years, we’ve put only about 9,000 miles per year on the car. That’s not much. Especially considering that we’ve averaged about 16,000 miles per year on our newer car, the 2016 Subaru Outback. Though I call the Subaru my wife’s car, it’s actually the “family car.” We use it when we’re driving together, when I’m almost always in the driver’s seat. I am a steering wheel control freak. I much prefer to be the driver than to sit in the passenger seat, under the driver’s control. But I’m getting better about that.

It’s unusual for me to be sitting at my computer at 10:00 a.m., typing a mindless post that will add no significant value to the world’s literature. The reason I’m sitting here is this: I requested (online) an appointment to have my eyes examined and I’m waiting for a phone call to confirm a date and time for my appointment. I think my prescription could use some tweaking, at least, and I know I need new lenses. My frames are at least five or six years old, so they probably are ready to break (actually, I’m relatively sure they have broken and were repaired, so they’re ready to break irreparably). So, it’s time for an entirely new set of glasses. Two sets, actually, inasmuch as I do not want to find myself with broken glasses and no backup. And I want slip-in sunglasses. It’s only money. And a lot of it.

I don’t want to derail my recuperation by saying anything too early, but I have a hint of a sense that my esophageal nastiness may be improving ever-so-slightly. My cough seemed to have almost disappeared after only a single dose of a codeine-laden prescription cough syrup, but then I made some comment about it and it returned. I haven’t taken more of the cough syrup because the warnings associated with it suggest I could die a horrible, horrible death from side-effects. I’d rather not risk it, but if that’s what it takes…

Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to swallow again? And wouldn’t it be deliriously wonderful to be able to eat spicy foods?! And foods with texture?!  Oh, the joy of the very idea!

Today feels like Monday for some reason, though I can’t say why. The only reason I have to feel Mondays these days is that my chemo treatments are on Mondays. I do not have a chemo treatment today. I have one next Monday. So why would today “feel” like a Monday? It’s not like I need to go to work today, though going to work might be kind of nice, especially since going to work usually suggests that a paycheck will follow at some point. I miss paychecks. I really do. I should have thought about that before I retired. Actually, I should have thought about retirement when I fell into a career. Had I been smart, I would have chosen a career that involved a generous pension for pensioners. As it turned out, I have no pension. Never did. Never will. I have only savings. If I live long enough, I will have Social Security income. We decided to defer claiming Social Security until I turn seventy. Based on recent health-related matters, the likelihood of that happening is considerably less than it was just a few month ago. So now I’m wondering whether I should go ahead and claim it. See, that sort of thinking is what makes today feel like a Monday. That’s the sort of thing that might engage one’s thought processes on a Monday. I suppose I can consider today a late-week Monday. Nothing’s to stop me from deciding to do that. Nothing but rational thought and concerns that I might be branded as ripe for involuntary institutionalization. So maybe I’ll let it slide for now.

In case I was wondering, which I was, I’m hungry. I feel like something substantial, though what that substantial something might be remains a mystery.  For the last two nights, we’ve eaten meatloaf. My first meat in ages, it seems. I was able to swallow it, which was wonderful. The serving size, though, was monstrous. I should have split it in two, but I didn’t. I greedily consumed the entire thing, gaining ten pounds in the process, I suspect. No, the meatloaf did not weigh ten pounds, but as we all know, once ingested, the weight that food adds to one’s body increases exponentially. For example, if I were to eat two ounces of meat, those two ounces would multiply by two as I swallowed them. By the time those four ounces reached my stomach, those four ounces would multiply by themselves, resulting in sixteen ounces, the entirety of which would be affixed to my weight. I would, therefore, gain a pound by eating only two ounces of meat. Now, imagine what would happen if I ate an entire pound of meat! Here, I’ll show you:

16 x 16 =256 (I swallow 16 ounces, 256 ounces, or 16 pounds, would make their way to my stomach)

256 x 256 =65,536 (by the time the meat reaches my stomach, it would weigh 65,536 ounces, or 4,096 pounds)

Clearly, by eating just one sixteen-ounce rib-eye, I would gain 4,096 pounds! Obviously, then, one ought not to eat such large, luscious, mouth-watering steaks, no matter how hungry one believes oneself to be. Instead, one ought to rub a single leaf of celery on one’s lower lip, allowing the flavors of the celery to just barely activate the taste buds. It’s the healthy thing to do.

To look at me, you’d think I might have reached my peak weight. But you’d be wrong. That unhappy event took place several years ago, when I lived in Dallas. I was still working at my business, traveling more frequently on business than I wanted, and eating more than any human should. Based on my height and other factors, my “ideal” weight should be around 165-175 pounds.  My weight reached 251 before I finally decided to do something about it. I began walking a lot. And I lost a lot of weight. I didn’t get even close to my ideal weight, but I dropped to just over 200 pounds. Since we left Dallas, though, I’ve not gotten a lot of exercise. I returned to old bad habits. My weight climbed, reaching a peak of 234 last October. I looked and felt rotten.

If my cancer diagnosis has had any positive side-effects, it has been a forced change in my dietary habits. Since my surgery last November, I’ve lost more than twenty pounds. I haven’t been exercising, so the loss can be attributed almost entirely to diet. I wish I could exercise, but I just don’t have the strength or stamina to get up and walk (or do any exercise, for that matter). Since I began radiation and chemotherapy, my health care team members have urged me to consume lots of calories. “This is not the time to lose weight,” they say. And I haven’t lost a tremendous amount, not since early January, when my weight had dropped (since surgery) to about 223. My weight loss since chemo and radiation began has amounted to about ten pounds.  I wish I could say that was intentional, but it wasn’t. The pain associated with swallowing has, no doubt, contributed to my “success.” I’ve become an unintentional vegetarian. And I’ve discovered I can’t swallow bread and its brethren (e.g., pizza crusts, biscuits, hot dog or burger buns, etc.).

Is there a word for someone who doesn’t eat bread? I’m glad you asked. I looked it up. I didn’t find a word for it, but I found an intriguing French idiom: “Ça mange pas d’pain.” It is translated as “It doesn’t eat bread.” Its meaning is to suggest that something (and undertaking or an item) can’t hurt. While the action or thing may never amount to much or be of much use, if it costs nothing and entails no risk, there’s no reason not to do it. (Thanks to Languagehat for the education on this matter.)  Languagehat gives an example of the idiom’s use: “Passe un coup de fil à ton médecin, ça ne mange pas de pain !” “Give your doctor a call, it doesn’t eat bread!” You see, don’t you, how my mind works? I’d much rather continue down into the bowels of the rabbit warren to learn more about language and French culture and God knows what else than talk about my weight, but I’m trying to mend my ways. So, back to the matter at hand.

The paucity of meat in my diet of late hasn’t bothered me in the least. (I have a very hard time swallowing meat because it hurts like holy hell as it slowly descends my esophagus, meat’s fibers apparently attempting to shred the lining of the organ as it makes its way to my stomach.) I’ve seriously considered trying vegetarianism, but my favorite wife is not inclined to give up meat entirely (or, I think, even to reduce consumption significantly). So, how about pescatariansim? I’m game. I could happily live on a diet rich in fish and shellfish and mollusks and other sea creatures. If I could find a reliable source of fresh halibut cheeks, I could survive quite nicely on that food source, alone. Well, I’d need to supplement it with vegetables and the like, but you get my drift. I’m not good at returning to and sticking with the matter at hand, am I?

I’m quite sure one of the bad habits that has contributed to my weight gain over the years has been my consumption of alcohol. I like beer and wine and hard liquor. I enjoy them immensely. And I tend not to limit my intake. It’s sort of like knowing I should limit my intake of meat to three ounces per meal (if I’m a meat eater) but ignoring what I should do and, instead, consuming an entire sixteen-ounce rib-eye steak, along with a fully-loaded baked potato. One or two glasses of wine is fine. One or two bottles, not so much. Since my surgery, there was only a brief period before my follow-up treatments when I could consume alcohol. So, most of the time since mid-November, I have essentially stopped drinking it. Okay, I’ll admit that I’ve broken the “rules” and have had the equivalent of a glass of wine once every two or three weeks. But, basically I’ve stopped drinking. That, coupled with my inability to swallow most normal food, seems to have resulted in weight loss. If given a choice between drinking alcohol and returning to “normal food,” I’ll choose the latter. I’d rather have both. But maybe, during this three-plus-month period of semi-abstinence, I’ve learned portion control. Both alcohol and food. I get full much faster than I used to, which I take as a good sign.

Exercise, though. That’s missing. And that’s necessary. For now, though, I just can’t. And, unless my $##!@ing cough doesn’t get resolved, I can’t even imagine trying. Yes, my cough seems to be getting worse. And the dimwit oncologist keeps insisting it is related to acid reflux. Okay. I’ll admit I’m not a doctor, but I think I’d be aware if I suffered from acid reflux. And, so far, the pills she’s prescribed have done nothing to address the cough. And the cough syrup she supposedly prescribed for me last Friday has yet to be acknowledged by the pharmacy. Frankly, I’m not sure the nurse navigator has been particularly helpful, by the way. I explain issues to her and she seems to suggest that she agrees, “but the doctor makes the final call, soooo…” If I could actually speak to/communicate with the doctor, I might let her know what I think. But, then, that might not be the best way to relate to the physician who determines the level of chemical poisons injected into one’s blood stream. How the hell did I get off of the subject of exercise, veering into the potential for murder-by-injection at the hands of an irate physician?

A very good sign, within the last couple of days, is that I haven’t spent those days comatose in my recliner. So, it appears the worst of the post-chemo fatigue has lifted. Today, I plan to drive around and do errands. First, I have to go to the local compounding pharmacy to renew my prescription for one of the drugs intended to mitigate my problem with swallowing. This particular drug, a stand-in for another one for which a nationwide shortage exists, is mixed in with a tar-like goo whose nasty flavor is ostensibly hidden beneath the taste of grapes. In reality, the stuff makes me thinks of post-digested rotted grapes mixed in a slurry of road-repair tar and hatred.  Blechh!  Then, I will go to the bank to deposit a check for the Writers’ Club (I seem to be the perpetual treasurer, a role I’d like to relinquish to someone else). Thence to Walmart, where I’ll buy razor blades; if I shave just once more with the blade in my razor, I’m afraid they’ll find me dead, my throat slit with a dull blade. At some point this morning, again connected to my role as treasurer, I must drop off a check to ensure the Writers’ Club continues it membership in the Village Arts Council. I’ll probably go to the Post Office and, if my prescription for cough syrup ever reaches Walgreen’s, to that pharmacy to pick it up. Such a busy day! I should go to a grocery store, too, in search of esophagus-friendly edibles. I’m afraid macaroni and cheese gets old. And it’s so damn caloric!

It’s obvious, isn’t it, that I could spend the entire day writing about things that matter only to me? Yes, my writing is narcissistic. Such is life. I’d really like to return to French phrases and spend the day listening to and writing about them. After learning of “Ça mange pas d’pain,” my mind wanders back to one of my favorite French phrases (actually, my favorite English translations of a French phrase): Le jeu n’en vaut pas la chandelle, which translates into “the game is not worth the candle.” By the way, listening to French phrases online is fascinating. I love the sound of French, but replicating the sounds of the French language is beyond the capabilities of my tongue and lips. If I could suddenly be fluent in three more languages, I would select Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. Selecting only three, though, is really hard. I’d like to, if I may, add German, Italian, Vietnamese, Hindustani, and Arabic. Thank you for that.

Based on what I’ve written here, I think the subject of my overweight has slinked away from my conscious mind, replaced by things more intriguing. And I’m grateful to have been saved from that, as well.

While my wife sleeps, I slink into her study and borrow her computer. She won’t mind, unless I spend too much time, robbing her of the opportunity to commence her morning ritual of examining the outcome of the world’s overnight gyrations. So I’ll be brief. More or less.

I watched bits and pieces of the Oscars last night, an exceedingly rare engagement for me. I mean, I haven’t watched the Oscars in years and years and years. Oh, I might flip through the channels and pause, but I almost never spent thirty or forty minutes watching them, as I did last night. My time wasn’t wasted, but neither was it invested in something that has the potential of changing my life. But the time I spent watching the actors and directors and cinematographers and such was informative. I learned that many of them either were deeply moved by their selection to receive an Oscar or they are, indeed, polished actors. Some of them shed tears. Perhaps the tears were real, perhaps they were formed in the eyes of alligators. They looked real. Well, some of them did. Lady Gaga, a woman about whom I know very little yet about whom I tend to be deeply judgmental (and not in a particularly positive way), seemed to have hired an alligator to manufacture her tears. Others seemed genuinely overcome with emotion; I prefer their stunned disbelief to overly-dramatic expressions that, in my perception, seem wooden and deeply artificial.

Yet who am I to judge? These are people who have been judged by their peers, the latter of whom have determined their performances to be worthy of lavish recognition. Wouldn’t I be overcome if my peers, whoever they are, heaped praise on me? Wouldn’t I be overwhelmed to be set upon a pedestal and to have my work identified as the product of a genius? Well of course I would. Not gonna happen, but I’d be astounded and deliriously happy, I think. But, then, I think…would it mean more for my peers to lavish praise on me or would I find my intended audience a more satisfying judge? I guess both would be meaningful in their own ways.

It’s a little late for me to go to film school. I’m not going to learn screen-writing in my old age. I doubt I’ll even finish a novel. Hell, a completed short story would be a stunning accomplishment for me. Who reads short stories? Who pays attention to those brief excursions into a writer’s mind that explore odd and emotionally malformed destinations? I think a new association is in order: The International Association of Deviant Short Story  Consumers.   It could be Short Story Deviant Consumers.

If there is justice in the world, my computer may be repaired and ready for use later today. In the absence of justice, I may sit in my recliner and complain about life in the computer desert. I could complain about other things. Health issues. Mental issues. The relativity of poverty. The problems with absolute wealth. The general unfairness of time and the fact that it behaves more and more like an hourglass the later in life it is examined.

My mind is racing through a rabbit warren this morning and I can’t seem to corral it. There are too many things to think about and not enough depth in my brain to allow them adequate exploration. Too much to think about. Too little meat on my mental bones. I’m a little more like a skeleton this morning than I was yesterday. Mentally, I mean. Physically, too, though. I weighed myself this morning and discovered I’ve lost three more pounds, though I don’t know where they went. I suspect they’re resting at the bottom of the rabbit warren, engaged in conversation with a forest of bones. The bones speak, of course, because they are suspended from strings tied to the ceilings of the rabbits’ subterranean den and the bones click against one another as rabbits scurry by, creating breezes that rattle what I’ll call bone-chimes. I know, you’re thinking the writer has lost his mind. But it’s not that; it’s just that the images in my brain haven’t been properly cataloged and collected to form a rational thought or two.

About that weight loss. I’m okay with it, despite the fact that the doctors aren’t. I prefer a thinner me to a corpulent me. Corpulence doesn’t become me. Well, it does. But I don’t have to like it. If only I could couple my weight loss with a corresponding gain in physical strength and stamina, I would be happier than I am at this very moment. But happiness isn’t the be all end all of our existence, is it? No, something else holds that banner. We just don’t know what it is.

Sanity is overrated. Insanity gives us the opportunity to discard all the unkind, unpleasant, unhappy aspects of existence, replacing them with the sounds of bone-chimes in the bowels of rabbit warrens. Even in that confusion, the existence that stands in for life is a decent alternative.

None of this means, of course, that I’m engaged in struggles with insanity. Instead, it simply means that sanity is an abstract concept that doesn’t lend itself well to “normal” assessment. Sanity and its aberrant twin are artificial notions that hide biases in plain sight. Strange twists that suggest I’m “crazy” are merely tricks to make others uncomfortable. I enjoy misleading. It’s one of the perverse joys of writing.

Geek Squad called. They can fix my computer so I can use Microsoft Office 365, but the fix won’t last: “Your hard drive is failing.” So, I asked them to replace it. No charge for labor and only $54 for parts. Much better than the cost of a new notebook. But, I may still get a new one, sooner or later, to satisfy my need for instant gratification in case of another failure.

Before my conversation with the geeks, I called my brother in Mexico. Mine was a very late return call. I visited with him for a bit and spoke to my sister, who has been visiting them for a few days. She had been in San Miguel de Allende at a writers’ conference and decided to take a bus to Ajijic for a short visit. Though the conversations were short and I was feeling tired, I’m glad I made the call. My sister suggested I think about making a trip to Mexico in the summer and again in the fall, the latter in connection with my brother’s “big” birthday. I’ll think about that. I hope my other “big” trip doesn’t conflict. I checked. It doesn’t. But I’ll have to explore practicalities.

I’m feeling much better than I did this morning, but still on the low side of only moderately decent. I hope I continue to improve. One-fingered typing is unpleasant. So I will stop.

I’m struggling with my iPad this morning, typing with one finger. I took my notebook to the shop yesterday. Cheyenne, the tech to whom I relinquished my technological soul, promised she and her crew would repair my computer. She promised it will be ready for me on Monday at 11. I hope I’m ready on Monday at 11. I was okay yesterday morning, but I cratered again yesterday afternoon. I fell asleep in my recliner again and awoke in time to attempt to eat dinner. I managed a bit. And I ate more ice cream, which is packing on enough calories to keep my weight up and increasing. That’s actually a little disappointing, though probably healthier than losing weight.

The doctors want me to down 8-10 glasses of water a day. I’m lucky to go through two. Swallowing is hard and my chest feels like it is about to explode when I’m able to swallow a mouthful. Enough of this BS.

I’m ready for something different. A different environment. A different attitude. A different lifestyle. I wonder whether life on a Caribbean island would suit me? Or, perhaps,  life in the desert of New Mexico or Arizona? I think I’m too old and set in my ways to adapt to a foreign country, though it might be gentler on my psyche than living in the throes of a psychotic narcissist’s daydreams. Not mine. 45’s. The bastard.

I wonder whether I will recover my old self after my cancer treatments? Will my body return to its old, comfortable ways? Will I ever breathe the way I once did, the way I did before an entire lobe of my lung was removed? Will my esophagus ever heal enough so it doesn’t hurt to swallow? Will the pains I feel in my chest and back and gut ever cease? None of my pains are excruciating, but they’re sufficiently disturbing to make me feel like I’m no longer me. They’ve displaced who I was and replaced him with an intellectual invalid whose body is no longer mine. Instead, my body belongs to an old man who can’t think clearly. If I could scream without waking the neighborhood and without destroying the remnants of my lung, I would. I need more than a road trip. I need to relocate to another planet, a place ablaze with molten bones that light up the universe as the universe erupts into its last screams. There. That should have emptied the rage, should it not? But, no, it simply ruined an otherwise unhappy morning.

This is the problem with one-finger blogging. It elicits rage. It causes angst and anger and madness unmatched in modern times. I will stop this or it will only get worse.

Yesterday is gone. It slipped away almost unnoticed while I slept. The day started reasonably well, except for the pain. I was alert and aware. But after I wrote my blog post, complaining about the pain I feel when I swallow, the day disappeared into a vaporous cloud, a day I barely remember. I spent virtually all day in my recliner, either napping or making my way to or from a near-comatose state.

I should have expected my final two radiation treatments, coupled with my third chemo treatment, to have left me tired and ruined. But I didn’t. I didn’t anticipate that I would have lost such a long, long stretch of time to fatigue. After a full night of sleep, I spend another day essentially comatose. And, then, I went to bed early and stayed in that state for most of the night until around 3:00 a.m., when I woke and felt the effects of too much time reclining, with almost no movement. My muscles ached, my bones creaked and hurt with every movement. I got up, thinking I might be up for the duration, but the aching was more than I could comfortably deal with, at least upright, so I went back to bed. I finally got up around 6:00 a.m. I don’t feel as beat this morning as I did yesterday, but I can’t be sure this shred of energy will last. We’ll see.

If I can muster some energy today, I’ll take my computer in to people who might be able to repair the bastard. Something happened to it the other day that wrecked its usefulness to me. I can no longer open any Microsoft Office 365 programs; I get an error message. And I can’t open Google Chrome; I’m stuck with Microsoft Edge. And, unless I use my wife’s computer to retrieve passwords, I can’t check email. I’ve been threatening to replace my notebook computer. This may be the time. I’d like something extremely light, perhaps a Chromebook, but I want to be able to use MS Office without any complaints; I’ve heard that Chromebooks tend to be persnickety with MS Office. Persnickety computers tend to raise my hackles, elevate my dander, and otherwise annoy me to the extent that put me at risk of smashing the beasts against boulders. My mood this morning elevates that risk.

Something’s percolating in my brain this morning, a plot for a story built more on characters than the plot in which they find themselves. The plot first populated my brain while I was taking my one and only creative writing class from Michael Mewshaw while I was a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The plot revolved around the gentrification of an old, blue-collar neighborhood. The protagonist was a man who bought a house in the old neighborhood and found himself in love with the people there. His wife wanted those people to change. She wanted to trigger the gentrification that would replace the old-timers with younger, wealthier, better-educated people who would update and upgrade the houses in the neighborhood. I wrote the story. It was probably badly done. Mewshaw identified hundreds of holes in it. I don’t think he was impressed. But I haven’t forgotten the characters in that story, nor have I completely forgotten the plot. I’m relatively sure other people have since written the story, far better than I, and have built those characters into people who readers either loved or hated, depending on the readers’ perspectives. But I still think about the story and I may one day finish it. I think I may still have the original somewhere. I know I still had it a few years ago. But I may have thrown it away since. It was never very good and did not merit saving. Yet I did, for some reason. Maybe I saw in it something that Mewshaw didn’t. Or maybe I just wished it was the beginning of a brilliant writing career. If the latter, I was horribly wrong. The fact of the story’s neglect burns inside me. Not a burn like a raging fire but, instead, a burn like and almost-dead ember still hot enough to sear a memory into one’s brain. I don’t recall what title I gave to the story. And I don’t remember how, or whether, the plot developed. It wasn’t a good plot. But I was deeply attached to the motivation of the protagonist. I think, in fact, he was modeled after an older version of myself, as I envisioned who I was, and would become, at the time. I didn’t turn out that way, though. I was never to be the hero who saved a neighborhood from gentrification. I’m not quite sure how I turned out, what I did that might justify a story. For some reason, remembering the story I wrote so long ago (what, it’s been about forty-five years ago, right?) is incredibly depressing. Suddenly, I sense that I’ve spent 45 years simply getting by day-to-day without actually accomplishing a damn thing. Suddenly is the wrong word. I sense that every minute of every hour of every day; occasionally, though, that sense explodes into the daylight and is much more vivid.

Regardless of whether I have more energy today than yesterday, whatever strength I have won’t be spent writing about old memories or a lifetime of inadequacy. Instead, I’ll try to swallow the contents of a bottle of Ensure, shower and shave, and haul this computer to town. If I can emerge from yesterday’s fog, I’ll try to recover a piece of myself and do something productive. What remains to be seen. Maybe just tend to my scorched esophagus. I won’t be any good to anyone until that problem is fixed. Some lyrics from a John Gorka song, Armed with a Broken Heart, grab me at this moment, for unknown reasons. But here they are:

This sudden loneliness has made me dangerous
Please don’t watch me while I fall apart
‘Cause I’m sad and I’m angry
And armed with a broken heart

Recently, over lunch with a couple of friends from my church, the subject of Donald Trump came up. We’d already eaten, so it didn’t ruin the meal. One of the women said she had engaged in conversation with someone who claims to be capable of seeing into the future. The “seer” was asked whether the self-important narcissist would be impeached. No, she said, his end will come when the investigation into his extensive criminality reaches to family members closest to him and promises to bring the entire clan down. When he realizes there is no way out, he will commit suicide (I think she said by handgun) in the Oval Office.

After my recent posts concerning suicide and my sister’s volunteer efforts to help bring people back from that awful edge, I wonder whether she would have had compassion for Trump? I wonder whether she would have been willing to attempt to coax him back from the edge? I don’t know. I simply don’t. Perhaps, if I were a better person, I would try to convince him that taking his own life was not the answer. But I don’t think I’m that good. Instead, I think I might suggest to him that presidents before him had tried to take their lives and had not succeeded. This, I might say to him, is another opportunity to claim credit for a “first” in presidential politics.

I realize the very suggestion of such a crass and cruel thing paints me a demon. So be it. That’s the mood I’m in this morning. It’s all make believe. I have absolutely no belief that people possess special powers that enable them to see into the future. In those rare cases in which predictions come to pass, I attribute them either to chance or to strong research and highly educated guesses.

I’ve never had an interest in a self-styled clairvoyant’s predictions about my future because any such prognostications would be valueless. They would be wild guesses clothed in mystery—prophesies spun from the soothsayer’s assumptions and dreams. I choose not to invest energy in worries that might arise from unfounded beliefs built on foundations of vapor and dust.

***

On an entirely different subject, I think I’m in the midst of what I’ve heard called chemo-brain or chemo-fog. For the last few nights, I’ve forgotten to take my massive batch of “nighttime pills.” So, last night I set an alarm for 9:00 p.m., which I intended as a reminder to take them. The alarm sounded and, instead of taking the pills, I drank an ounce of aloe-vera juice (which I’m also supposed to do to help sooth the pain in my esophagus). I woke up at 4:00 a.m. to pee and, when I was in the bathroom, noticed that my evening pills were in their container, undisturbed. So I took them. That completely screws up the schedule for the remainder of the pills I’m supposed to take during the remainder of the day. I look forward to a drastic reduction in pill consumption as my cancer treatments end. I suspect, though, I’ll have to soldier on through at least late April before I can leave the majority of the stuff behind me. I can live with that. But this chemo-brain is not a happy experience. I forget things and get confused in short spurts. I hope it’s the chemo and not the start of something permanent.

***

Last night we planned to celebrate the end of my radiation treatment by going to a favorite pub for a drink and dinner with friends. But then we became aware of the fact that another restaurant was offering its New Orleans menu for the last time last night. So, we opted for the latter. We both had friend oysters and assorted sides. It was all good. And I had a Rogue Dead Guy Ale. Its taste was good, too. But all the food, as good as it tasted, was hard as hell to swallow. My esophagitis reduced the meal’s celebratory joy by a factor of eight. Bah! We’ll go to the original pub for a celebration on Friday or Saturday night. I hope by then the problem will have subsided. It will be, after all, several days after my last radiation treatment. My ale was the third alcoholic beverage in literally months. I’m still supposed to minimize consumption of alcohol for quite some time to come, but I’m willing to break the rules a bit for a celebration. So, whenever we get to the pub, I’ll try some wine or, perhaps, a gin martini. Ahhhh, that sounds delightful.

I’m surprised that my post yesterday, in which my sister’s disdain for “Suicide is Painless” was the focus, didn’t jolt my memory a bit harder. That memory was, I suppose, a precursor to remembering that today, February 19, 2019, is the ninth anniversary of her death, February 19, 2010. And Facebook reinforced that memory, when it reminded me of what I wrote that day:

Mary Eleanor Swinburn, my sister and one of my best friends, died this morning. She taught me that material possessions are meaningless; she lived that lesson and was one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever known. This world was better that she was here and it’s a sad place without her. I am heartbroken that she’s gone, but I celebrate her life.

We (family and friends) called my sister “Melnor” or “Mimi.” And we watched her rage through bureaucracies as she helped people, who were unable to look out after themselves and were being pushed and shoved around by them, get what was due. She could curse a blue streak when injustice threatened to harm people, but she could be as gentle and comforting as anyone I’ve known when someone needed support.

Nine years. It’s amazing that so much time has passed yet losing her is still fresh and painful. That’s the way it is with people you love.

I remember my late sister’s outrage at the lyrics of the theme song for the 1970 film, “M*A*S*H.” She was a volunteer at the time for a suicide hotline. The lyrics of the first few stanzas of “Suicide is Painless” angered her to the point that she condemned the film entirely, if my memory serves me correctly. Here’s part of what upset her so much:

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
I can take or leave it if I please
That game of life is hard to play

I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card of some delay
So this is all I have to say
That suicide is painless.

And I understand her anger. I learned this morning the director’s [Robert Altman] son, Mike Altman, who was fourteen years old at the time, wrote the lyrics. Young teens tend not to understand the depths of depression unless they have experienced it for themselves. They can’t put themselves in the shoes of people who are experiencing emotional pain so great that suicide seems like the only real way to make it stop.

I was only seventeen or eighteen at the time and may not have understood, either, except for the fact that my sister was so vocal about the insensitivity of the lyrics. She spoke of how dangerous, in her eyes, they could be to individuals on the brink of making a decision to end their lives. And that sunk in with me. Despite the fact that I always found the music, including the lyrics, appealing.  Though painful. Yes, those lyrics caused me to tear up back then, when I was an emotional teen.

The meaning of the song’s lyrics, though, amount to nonsense, the sort of stuff one would expect from a mush-minded teen. Yet, coupled with the tune, they triggered something deep inside me. I think I felt a sense that I understood people who felt such emotional pain they might end their lives to relieve themselves of the mental anguish. That compassion, if that’s what it was, stayed with me through college. I actually felt that I completely understood the pain they felt. That sense is still with me, but in a fundamentally different way that I can’t explain, so I won’t try.

Today, the buzz word for people who actually feel others’ emotional pain is “empath.” I am skeptical of the word, its meaning, its connotations, and the legitimacy as applied to people. I say one can be empathic but not be “woo-woo.” I don’t buy that a person can feel another person’s pain any more than I believe a person can read or think another person’s thoughts.  I read something this morning I find especially silly: “A person who is a psychic empath has a rare and special gift of being able to feel the emotions around him or her as if they were their own emotions.” [Credit where credit is due: https://psychicelements.com/psychic-empath.] Bah! My curmudgeonry is showing.

Back to my sister. I’ve written several times about her that “the underdog was her pet.” And that’s true. She was a champion for people who faced especially tough challenges. There was a bit of Don Quixote in her psyche, I think. So she felt compelled to draw her sword to challenge the lyrics of a song she thought dangerous and offensive. As I think back to her outrage over those lyrics, I am proud of her. That she was so outspoken about something that really mattered.

I have no idea why this train of thought entered my mind this morning. I guess the tracks just run through my brain and the locomotive followed.

Who in your sphere of friends keep secrets that, if  told, could break hearts, ruin marriages, destroy friendships, shatter families, or otherwise upend moderately tranquil worlds? Perhaps the person in your sphere of friends who keeps such potentially explosive secrets is you. What have you done, or even thought, that you would never want revealed, even to your closest confidant?

For some, the secret may be grotesque and horrible; a brutal murder or vicious attack that left its victim physically or emotionally devastated. For others, it might be a lengthy extramarital affair that ended but whose love remains bottled up inside. And for still others, it could be something simpler but just as impactful: theft of money from a mother’s purse or father’s wallet that would, if revealed, unravel familial trust; a wife’s well-hidden alcohol dependency that her husband thought had been conquered.

I have vague memories of reading about a “game” in which participants wrote their closest held secrets on a piece of paper, folded the paper, and dropped it in a box. The game leader then pulled each paper from the box and wrote the contents of the slip on a chalk board. The object of the game was to guess which participant wrote which secret. Obviously, I’ve forgotten elements of the game; no one would be willing to risk revealing their secrets in such a way. Although, perhaps it would work if the participants did not know one another and hid their real identities. I think learning the most intimate secrets held by strangers would be both interesting and cathartic. I suspect that learning those secrets might make mine seem less onerous, easier to carry. But learning others’ secrets would not free me to reveal my own. We hold our secrets as if they were deadly poisons; we think their release would surely kill someone, either ourselves or someone close.

It’s possible, of course, that I may be wrong about secrets. Maybe most people don’t have secrets they guard like the crown jewels. Perhaps I, alone, can remember things I want no one else to know. But that can’t be true, either.

That box into which people drop their secrets is appealing. I’m curious to know what strangers wrote on those pieces of paper. Knowing their secrets, though, would make them more intriguing. I’d want to know more about why the secrets are so private, why it is so important that they be kept. How did the events leading to the secrets unfold? Those questions are what make people so interesting. Sometimes. I suspect there are those whose secrets would be dull and uninteresting. I suspect some people live tedious, vacuous lives. Some people might consider mine as fitting that description. We don’t know what others face and, because we won’t share those secrets, we can’t compare our lives to theirs. Perhaps that’s for the best. We shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, only to our wishes and dreams. That’s enough, though, to hurl us against the edge of the universe and make us cry out in pain. This is going off-course, so I’ll leave it there.

Between unsuccessful attempts to fall asleep…and moments in which consciousness finally eluded me…last night, I escaped the bonds of rationality and reason. During those in-between moments when I was neither awake nor asleep, my mind took me to a point in the future when I will be utterly alone. It is at that point that I will be free to make decisions, if I am alive and sentient, unrestrained by the effects of my choices on other people. And that’s where my mind took me last night, half-awake and half-asleep.

In my fantasy, if that’s what my fugue-state was, I had sold everything I owned except for some clothing and a few personal effects. My most pressing thought was to make a decision on where to go—where could I go to start a new life with nothing chaining me to the person I had been before? I suppose sleep found me before I found that magical place, but I remember three places were on my mind: the Florida Gulf coast, the outskirts of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Costa Rica. What a bizarre mix.

What’s most odd about this partial-conscious dreamscape is that I was attempting to completely escape my past life. My intent was to cut all ties to the self that had existed theretofore. I was planning to launch a new me in a new place. That’s an absurd fantasy that a very small number of people ever try to achieve and fewer still actually achieve it. I wonder whether my escape from my past life was, in some Freudian way, actually an attempt to escape from my cancer. Despite my confidence that this cancer will be beat, I know it’s possible that it will return. So, perhaps, my effort to escape to a new place was symbolic of my desire to escape from the reality from which I know there is no escape.

Sometimes, I overthink things. I allow myself to delve into places in my mind that would best be left undisturbed. I should allow my mind to concentrate, instead, on taking my medications, eliminating the pain I feel when I swallow, and thinking of the real future over which I have a modicum of control.

Most people on Earth are “better off” in some way than at least some other people. Some have access to more food. Others live in more secure or better shelter. The surroundings of some are more reliably safe. Others can depend on a healthier or safer food supply. Some people have more money to buy a more reliably secure lifestyle. Others live in the lap of luxury and never want for any basic needs. Some people are isolated from physical and emotional threats that plague others. Unfortunately, a significant number of people live in constant fear, not only for their own physical and emotional safety but in fear of inadequate or unsafe food and water and shelter.

For each of those people, where does society draw the line between having too little and too much, in comparison to others? Does the person with a barely adequate supply of safe and reliable food have an obligation to share with others whose supplies meet neither measures? Is the person fortunate enough to live in secure shelter obliged to share it with those whose shelter is worse or less secure?

In each case involving people more fortunate than others, we can say they are privileged in some form or fashion. They live more comfortably than others, at least along a single dimension. Does that good fortune carry with it an obligation to share? Or, if not, does that good fortune carry with it a moral obligation to at least feel guilt for undeservedly having “more” or living in better circumstances? For the sake of contemplation, let’s assume that no one along any continuum has “earned” his or her place. Everyone has worked hard to achieve whatever he has. The “luck of the draw” has enabled those with plenty to acquire more than they need. That same “luck” has withheld largess from people who suffer from paucity.

The point of these questions, and this contemplation, is to frame ideas of obligation. What are we obligated, as humans, to do? And, perhaps as importantly, to feel? Should I feel guilt at my good fortune in comparison to a poor beggar on the streets of a village in an impoverished country? Does feeling guilt count against any obligations I might have to share my largess? Does simply recognizing my privilege count in any way and, if so, how? Am I under any moral obligation to minimize the extent of my privilege so that someone else might rise part way toward that privilege I once enjoyed?

None of these questions have “correct” or “incorrect” answers. They are just questions that merit some attention. Yet they “feel” like they ought to have correct answers. They “feel” like we ought to know when we have too much and, therefore, should share without expecting anything in return. But we don’t know. And that’s the source of guilt; not knowing how much we should share or, knowing, not sharing.