John Swinburn

An attribute of autumn I once found delightful but now find depressing and burdensome is taking place as I write this. Trees are losing leaves as if the trees were rejecting poisonous attackers, flinging them to the ground in an attempt to survive the onslaught of climate-adjusted winter. Streets are slick with leaves, made even more slippery with periodic heavy rainfall. Driveways hide beneath thick layers of brown and orange and yellow and red exfoliation. Entryways to houses beckon visitors with colorful nests of leaves, the majority of which appear to have some sort of glue that is activated by footsteps and, then, is deactivated when the leaves touch floors inside houses.

I wouldn’t find leaf-fall so troublesome if everyone else would just let the leaves fall where they may. But they aren’t satisfied to do that. No, they must blow the leaves into piles, thrust them in large bags, and haul them away to a spot where the leaves will be dumped and sucked into the jet stream to be deposited back on the yard next to where they originally were collected. I’ve noticed this year that the vast majority of leaves are a sickening orange-yellow reminiscent of a certain someone’s hideous head of hair.

I wrote recently of the odd turn in my life of late in which my tendency toward self-diagnosed ADHD transformed into laser-focused fixation. Though not resolved, I’m able these days to direct my attention outside myself and to exclude cancer from every thought. (Yes, I know, but it only appears like I’ve just exposed myself as a pathological liar.)

The reason I know this to be true is that I’ve written posts with nary a mention of the beast and a few other ruminations with only a hint.  My mind has wandered down strange lanes strewn with the detritus from military parades and raucous celebrations of art in the clouds. Some of it, admittedly, was forced. Like the lengthy and badly written poem with which I attempted to put a round peg in a long, thin saw kerf one fifth the peg’s diameter. But, forced or not, my mind has drifted. That’s what I’m used to. I’m used to paying superficial attention to everything around me so that I know something is happening but I don’t know what. My state of mind is usually best described in the lyrics to a song:

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear…

And I don’t know whether I ought to pay closer attention. Would doing so transform me into a person whose knowledge is extensive and useful? Or would it make me into a monster whose head is so cluttered with irrelevant data that the only way to describe it would be:  extreme chaos? Well, I’m not apt to pay closer attention unless something mysterious and beautiful happens to my brain, so I’ll have to settle for lesser chaos.

***

For the record, I woke up yesterday morning at just a few minutes before 5:00 a.m. My wife was already up. She was getting ready to drive to Little Rock with me for my appointment. I had no coffee, no water, did not take my “morning pills.” I simply got dressed and we drove away. On the way, before we’d even reached the edge of the Village, we’d seen eight deer (five just down from our house) and a red fox (I watched it streak across the vast parking lot of one of the largest United Methodist Churches in the Village.) This morning, I’m in the process of trying to force down the remainder of a cup of cold coffee. It was hot when I started typing, but I tend to get wrapped up in what I’m writing and I let my coffee get cold. That’s just wrong. Coffee should be consumed when it’s at least moderately hot. Cold coffee has its place, but its place is in the company of ice cubes later in the day. For the record.

***

I seem to be developing a greater affinity for sugar than I’ve had in the sixty-four years preceding this one. I’m not crazy for the stuff, but on occasion I find myself wanting something sugary. This morning, I’m in the mood for a cinnamon roll or a piece of French toast. I’ll have neither, of course, because those are not things we eat around this house. At least not often. And I do not have the ingredients nor, more importantly, the inclination to make either one of them. I’d have to learn the ingredients first. I tend to learn by experimentation, so there’s really not enough time to experiment if I want to eat breakfast before my sixty-sixth birthday.

I noticed my increasing willingness to consume sugar when I brined a pork loin recently. Usually, I include only about a fourth of the sugar that the recipe calls for. This time, I used almost the entire amount. I noticed a difference in the flavor of the finished product, too. It was a little too sweet for my taste, but I could tell that if I’d used half of what the recipe called for, I would have hit the sweet spot. Groan.

***

Costumes are not required but are encouraged for tonight’s mystery dinner. My wife borrowed her sister’s cat outfit, consisting of  tail, a pair of cat ears (neither are real…don’t worry), and some makeup with which to paint whiskers and a black nose. I will try to find the revolting red makeup and paste-on gaping wound, turning myself into…what?…an injured person. I also have a mask I could wear, but it would hide the injuries and make me cranky because I can’t breathe while wearing the mask. I get cranky when I can’t breathe. I wish I’d given more than passing thought to this before now. Last year was the first time in memory that I went to a dress-up Halloween party. We won’t go to a party thrown by the same people ever again because, quite frankly, they are annoying and stupid in the extreme. But they removed the curse of dress-up, so they have that as a redeeming value. Absolutely the ONLY redeeming value. I’d rather like to learn they are moving away, perhaps to a little underwater retreat where they’ll try to learn to get by on the oxygen they get from the water with which they fill their lungs. Okay, I’ll stop. I shouldn’t wish such things on people, even mean-spirited dim-wits whose behavior suggests an affinity for an orange-haired tyrant. Okay, I’ll stop. No, really. We’ll see what I look like when it’s party time. Maybe I’ll post a photo tomorrow. Maybe. Probably not. Because it will look embarrassingly similar to the way I look without makeup. And there’s nothing attractive about me without makeup.

***

I wish Hemingway hadn’t used the title The Old Man and the Sea, because it’s the title I want for a book I may one day write. I blame the fact that the title already has been used for my inability to get started on my book. The title would have fit so perfectly with my book, which would feature Kolbjørn Landvik, a man about whom I’ve written several times before. I think I may have placed him in different times and in different roles, but the one for which I think he’s best suited is the one in which he sets out in his little boat and slips into the sea off the coast of Norway. Unlike Hemingway, I’m not going to use my character as a testament to male hormones (maybe I’m being a little harsh). Instead, I’m going to delve deep into his mind, where I’ll learn whether I’m right in believing the behavioral attributes we assign to maleness and femaleness are purely social constructs and have very little to do with our body chemistry, our DNA, or our core beings in any real sense. But Kolbjørn Landvik won’t be consciously pursuing the answer to that question. He’ll just be living as an actual human being.  I think he’ll have a granddaughter, though she is not a granddaughter by blood. She is the daughter of his adopted daughter, though he never really adopted his “daughter” nor does his “daughter” consider herself to be his child. She is, instead, in love with Kolbjørn Landvik, but he doesn’t know it. Nor does she, not consciously. It’s apt to be an impossible-to-tell story set in a place and time I’ve never been, exploring emotional ties I’ve never had. They say “write what you know.” And you should. But not always. Sometimes it is best to break the rules and dream. Only by the reactions of readers will the writer know whether he succeeded or not. My job, now, is to tame my ADHD and get down to writing this story so I can share it with someone willing to read it and give me feedback. I will do that. But I’ll have to wait until I’m a bit older before I do.

***

Some mornings, and this is one, I wish I had someone who shared my odd early-morning hours and with whom I could share my odd sense of what would make interesting conversation. Instead, I write fleeting, unconnected thoughts that few people read and fewer still read completely. Unfinished would-be conversations between me and someone who doesn’t exist. That’s what these expansive diatribes are. They serve as my journal of sorts. My moods, put down in the uncertainly unreliability of “the cloud.” One day, maybe I’ll back all this up again onto my external hard drive. Which will then be ruined when cold coffee is spilled on it. And all of my words will simply vanish forever, as if they were never written.

Whine. Whine! Whine!!!  Okay, there. Maybe it’s out of my system. I have a tendency to make minor inconveniences into major dislocations of my enjoyment of life. “Mountains out of mole hills.” “Much ado about nothing.” The “problems” about which I wrote most recently, involving newsletters and deadlines and poor, poor me having too little time and too much responsibility are, and were, unworthy of space on this screen. So let me shift gears and write about something that may or may not matter, depending on one’s perspective.

The “caravan” marching toward the U.S. formed in Honduras. The participants, depending on who you believe, either are fleeing intolerable conditions that threaten their lives and safety or are seeking opportunities not available to them in Honduras. Of course, non-Hondurans may have joined the caravan as it snakes its way across Mexico. Non-Hondurans, too, either are fleeing intolerable conditions or simply looking for a better life than the one the left behind.

I heard someone say, just last night, that he has no objection to immigration, but only if it’s legal immigration. Illegal immigration, though, is intolerable. I didn’t engage the commenter for a variety of reasons. But it occurred to me, from the context of his remarks, that he felt illegal immigrants simply choose to ignore the law and, instead, try to make their way in to the United States illegally because it’s faster. That perspective identifies members of the caravan as law-breakers who have chosen speed over lawful entry. And, I think, it may assume the process of entering legally is long, but not too long. Finally, his perspective does not classify participants in the caravan as refugees; they are, instead, parasites. Bear in mind that I’ve not had the conversation with the guy so I can understand his motives. I’m making all manner of assumptions about them.

If my friend who opposes illegal immigration were to explain my support for the people in the caravan, he might suggest that I have more regard for the outcome of the caravan’s march than for the laws that would prohibit its members from pouring across our borders. And I suppose he would be right. I would tell him that inflexible laws that fail to accommodate humanitarian emergencies do not deserve my respect. I would tell him that process should never be the sole governor of decisions whose outcome could be either life or death.

There would be more to the conversation. But the components necessary for the conversation to change one or both of our minds would be missing. The missing components include the hard facts about: 1) what, exactly, are the laws surrounding immigration and refugee status; 2) realistically, how long can prospective immigrants from Mexico and Honduras and Guatemala, etc. expect to wait to be admitted to the U.S. legally; 3) failing to get into the U.S., either legally or not, what fate likely awaits the participants in the caravan; and 4) in the event participants in the caravan who make it to the U.S. border (many apparently simply want to stay in Mexico) were allowed in to this country, how would they be integrated into our society and at what cost, borne by whom?

Many more facts would have to come into the conversation, as well. And my friend and I would both have to stake our positions on where to draw the line between acceptable levels of “unauthorized entry” (let’s stop calling it illegal immigration for a moment) and acceptable levels of social support for unauthorized entrants. Because, no matter how much compassion I might feel for people fleeing economic oppression or real violence, I have to acknowledge that, at some point, our ability to pay the economic costs of entry (whether authorized or not) reaches its limit. I think the problems with immigration in Europe clearly illustrate that social and economic systems not designed to accommodate enormous influxes of migrants tend to break down in chaos.  Put in simpler, but less charitable, language, when does economic self-preservation override humanitarian compassion?

Migration, immigration, humanitarianism, compassion, empathy, foreign aid an assistance, and the rule of law collide in ways that neither “side” likes to admit. The immigration issue is far more complex than most people seem to understand. Yet the solutions we offer are simple: Build a wall to keep “them” out or open our doors to those in need. Neither solution is adequate. In fact, both solutions are woefully inadequate and probably would have consequences no one can realistically anticipate without excruciatingly meticulous research. Even then, policy decisions would be apt to overlook critical facts or overstate the relevance of others.

If my words seem less argument one way or the other and more hand-wringing confusion, that’s exactly my point. Arguments either way fail to adequately address the scope of the problem. Confusion does, indeed, reign. In my opinion, the only truly reliable long-term solution is to help build the economies and civil structures of countries who are supplying the bulk of immigrants. In a nutshell, make life tolerable at home for would-be immigrants so they don’t see walking thousands of miles with their children as their last remaining hope.  That solution is so, so big it seems impossible. But it is possible. In my mind, though, it’s possible only with the radical redistribution of wealth out of the hands of the richest and most powerful and into the hands of the rest of the people who live in abject poverty. Easy-peasy, right?

Ultimately, the problems of immigration and migration and refugees are stoked by poverty. I foresee a global disruption in which the richest people alive become targets of the poorest. While the rich control the money and can finance their own protection, the poor have the advantage of sheer numbers. A bloodbath of global proportions would leave both populations in shreds. I foresee bloody borders around the globe. Maybe even in my lifetime.

When I look at white billowing clouds in the sky (not this morning…it’s dark), I can see a thousand shapes. Dogs, birds, human faces, you name it. Once I remember seeing what looked like a long stone wall alongside a highway. I’m in good company with such hallucinations. It’s not uncommon for me to hear the phenomenon discussed or to read about it in sweet stories about children who, while looking innocently skyward, see fairy tale figures dancing through the sky. It’s not just clouds, though. The hallucinations occur while looking down at the ground.

Yesterday morning, I gazed outside at the leaves and dead branches littering the ground beneath my window. I was surprised to see, quite clearly, the head of a laughing dog, a boxer, looking back up at me. The rest of the dog’s body melted into the ground, but the face and hears and the open mouth were clearly visible. I stared at the image for thirty seconds or more. It didn’t move. But when I let my eyes drift away for only a second, it was gone. I tried to return my gaze to precisely the same spot. It was a useless attempt to recapture the dog’s image.

Those children and I who saw things that aren’t there may have experienced a phenomenon called pareidolia. The term is defined as a “psychological phenomenon that causes some people to see or hear a vague or random image or sound as something significant.” The explanation of the phenomenon goes on to say, “Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for seeing patterns in random data.” Actually, I rather hope that neither the kids nor I are coping with either pareidolia or apophenia, because both terms seem to carry with them a close relationship with psychoses of one kind or another. Yet I see the terms, especially pareidolia, bandied about to explain the sightings of animals on the surface of the moon and Jesus on toast and tortillas.

I’m not sufficiently intrigued by the idea this morning to explore it further. My “exploration” took all of three minutes on Google. But with a little dressing up of the language, I suspect I could convince an unsuspecting reader who wandered by that I knew whereof I speak. That speaks more to others’ gullibility than to my “gift of gab.” (Side note: “Gift of gab” is defined as “the ability to speak with eloquence and fluency.” What term would be used to describe “the ability to write with eloquence and fluency?” I do not know. But I want to.)

And that’s all for now.

I heard back from my primary care physician this afternoon. I was surprised to hear back from him, after the lambasting I gave him for failing to respond to my phone calls and online messages. His reply suggested that he had only just seen my messages, as they are funneled through staff for handling so he doesn’t see all of them. I felt like a jerk. I sent him an apology.

He mentioned in his message that he’s spoken with my oncologist. The two of them believe, subject to information provided by the as-yet-unscheduled biopsy, that I am a surgical candidate to remove a portion of the right lung where the tumor is located. I wish I could get the damn biopsy scheduled ASAP. The oncologist’s office called today to tell me the first available date for the biopsy is October 31; however, I learned that they had scheduled it to take place in Hot Springs, while the doctor recommended I go to Little Rock for the biopsy. So I told the scheduler and she said she would get back to me. Nothing yet. I do have other tests on the calendar. This Wednesday morning, I go in for a lung function test. Then, next Monday, I go in for a CT scan of my head. The oncologist wants to know whether there are any issues suggesting cancer has spread into my head (she says nothing suggests that has happened).

Naturally, commitments I’d previously made had been thrown out the window. The only things I think I’ll be able to complete as committed this week are: 1) smoking a pork loin for Friday evening’s dinner with the church Long Range Planning committee; 2) attending said dinner and planning session; and 3) spending all day Saturday at the church, participating in a congregational long range planning workshop. Though I signed on for those things, they no longer hold the appeal they once did.

I had scheduled an appointment for today to see a Nurse Practitioner who works with a dermatologist. I kept the appointment. She prescribed something that I am to apply to my scalp three times a day for a week or so, then reduce over time; that should eliminate the itching I feel on my scalp. I sure hope so. Otherwise I may have to scalp myself. But, of course, when I went to pick up the prescription, it was not ready. Late this afternoon the pharmacy called to say it was ready. But we were about to leave for an evening engagement, so the drugs remain locked at the pharmacy. Maybe soon.

I’ve mellowed since allowing myself to be consumed by ennui’s second cousin in the wee hours of the morning last night. Thanks to messages from good female friends,  I have forced myself to awaken from my morose stupor. (I don’t know why I used female as an adjective just now; I may have to examine that one day when I return to my explorations of my mind.)

Tonight, we attended the last HSV Open Mic Night of the year. It was well-attended, with around 200 people in attendance. The guy who agreed to take the reins from me last year seems to have done an admirable job; better than I was doing. I remain proud that I grew it from babyhood to an audience of 150, but the guy who took it over has done better than I could have done. The fact that he’s a musician and knows lots of local musical talent helped. And his professional history as an impressario of sorts didn’t hurt, either. Regardless of the reasons, he excelled beyond what I was able to do with the event. More power to him. Tonight’s acts were excellent, by the way. And I saw my friend Craig, the venue manager, and let him know of my health news. Unlike some folks, I don’t feel compelled to keep my diagnosis a secret. I rather prefer to put it out there, in the open, so I don’t have to remember who is in on the secret and who isn’t. It’s selfish, but it serves a purpose.

My wife made apple pie this afternoon. She planned to make it yesterday, but I was perfectly willing to put it off. It’s my birthday pie. I shun birthday cake. Birthday cake is for conformists. I bend just enough to allow for a sweet pie. I’d actually be even happier with a savory pie, make with meat or perhaps shrimp or lobster, but I’m already stretching tradition by eschewing birthday cake. I need to maintain my membership in the North American middle class; if eating sweet pie accomplishes that objective, so be it.

I am trying to remain upbeat and, for the most part, I’ve been successful. A couple of meltdowns have proven to me that I’m not the tower of strength I never thought I was. But I’ve been pretty solid. I’m feeling reasonably solid tonight. I just can’t imagine having to maintain this sense of solidity while facing a snail’s pace of action on the part of the medical community. Waiting weeks for a vital test seems unreasonable to me. But so does turning people away because they have no medical insurance.

On an utterly unrelated note, I learned today that in Garland County, where I live, the early voting ballots failed to include the Democratic candidate for Arkansas Secretary of State. By the time the error was caught, 220 people had already voted. Voting was stopped and a new ballot will be available as soon as possible. But those 220 people who didn’t have the opportunity to vote for a Democrat for Secretary of State have every reason to be enraged. I doubt the county will do a damn thing to rectify the situation for those voters.

Until this very early morning, I’d done only a little research into lung cancer and its treatment. Now, after having explored the matter a bit, I wish I hadn’t done my investigation. Ignorance, they say, is bliss.

Unless the doctors have been utterly wrong, my prognosis involves the potential for some truly unhappy experiences. Surgery for lung cancer is invasive, dangerous, and involves an extraordinarily unpleasant set of circumstances. It’s not simply “cut into the chest and remove a tumor.” It’s far more involved than that. Typically, a patient spends five to seven days in the hospital following surgery, with a tube (or tubes) coming out of his chest and attached to a special canister to allow excess fluid and air to drain out. I remember the chest drain after my open heart surgery fourteen years ago; it’s ugly and unpleasant. At least that was a temporary situation that led to a more positive outcome.

Lung cancer surgery is messy stuff. It’s painful from the start and the pain and discomfort lasts for quite a while, from what I’ve read.  According to material I found online at cancer.org, the complications of surgery can include “reactions to anesthesia, excess bleeding, blood clots in the legs or lungs, wound infections, and pneumonia.” The site goes on to say, “While it is rare, some people may not survive the surgery.” The site doesn’t explore options. Such as “what if the patient opts against surgery?” I am thinking about that now. I just realized it’s only a few minutes past 2:30 a.m. I thought I woke up a bit before 5:30 a.m., but I fooled myself. And I’ve just about finished my first cup of coffee.

Here’s what I found on a website of the National Institutes of Health:

In fact, many patients with NSCLC (non-small-cell lung cancer) have been cured by surgery. However, there are also many cases that fail to achieve a cure following surgery. In fact, 30% to 55% of patients with NSCLC develop recurrence and die of their disease despite curative resection. Therefore, many patients eventually die of their disease due to recurrence after surgery. Furthermore, surgery itself possesses a certain amount of risk. Although treatment-related death is relatively uncommon, there is still a significant risk of mortality, and most patients experience a decrease in lung function after surgery. Thus, despite the advances in surgery, treatment by surgical resection is less than perfect, even when a complete resection is possible.

“Most patients experience a decrease in lung function…” Is that something I’m willing to live with? Until I began looking into the realities of the disease, I had been under the impression that I was facing something uncomfortable and deeply troublesome but not truly deadly. “This is 2018,” I said to myself. “Lung cancer killed my father, but that was many years ago. Advances since that time must have made the disease less deadly.”

That’s what I told myself. But the more I explored it, the more I came to realize I had been deluding myself. Lung cancer hasn’t become any less deadly. It’s just as lethal today as it was when my father died. Maybe it takes more time to do its dirty work today, but it still does its dirty work.

So, as I contemplate this new information, I have to ask myself: Is it worth going through the misery of a fight whose outcome is not subject to any positive guarantee? Would I have more time to experience life more fully by simply rejecting treatment altogether than by spending time in a hospital and at home as a wounded invalid than by subjecting myself to treatment? I suppose I need to listen to doctors and surgeons, rather than depend on a Google search to inform me about life or death matters, but I don’t want to delude myself into thinking “oh, they’ll just do surgery and my problem will be solved.”

I realize, of course, that I’m exploring life and death decisions in the middle of the night, relying only on Google for my facts. And I realize that’s stupid and the information upon which I’m relying is probably not the most trustworthy. I know I need to talk to oncologists and surgeons and others who really know the topic. I know that. But I know, too, their jobs are to give patients hope, even when hope is a candle whose wick is short and unlikely to last very long. I want to know what’s real, not what’s possible in a fairy-tale world.

I realize, too, that I’m making a lot of assumptions. I haven’t even had the biopsy yet. But the oncologist’s matter-of-fact suggestion that surgery is the likely first step in treatment led me to bypassing a bunch of possibilities and wishes and hopes. Though I have no desire to ignore real “what if” scenarios, I have no interest in escapism for the sake of delaying the onset of reality. The fact that the medical professionals have found what appears to be a 2.6 cm mass in my right lung is serious. The likelihood that it’s malignant, borne out by the PET scan “brightness” scale, is more serious, still. The oncologist’s comments that essentially dismissed radiation and chemo as first lines of defense/treatment suggests the tumor is, indeed, a serious matter. All the “stuff” I’ve read that presents lung cancer as a damn serious and often fatal disease makes me think, again, that “this could be serious.” Could be, hell. Is. And that’s scary.

I’ve not “given up.” There’s more to learn, of course. It’s possible that I might live a perfectly happy and reasonably healthy life for years to come after surgery to remove a piece of my lung. But I don’t want to fool myself into thinking such surgery is likely to leave me “well.” One isn’t “well” if one is missing a significant piece of one’s lung, methinks.

All of this thought of  what it might be like to be me after surgery suggests I’m being very, very selfish. What about my wife? What does she think? Good question. She’s not apt to share what she thinks. She’s never been one to open up that way. I guess she might open up if she were to think my thinking runs counter to hers. Absent knowing, though, I can only base my thinking on what I think and what I know and what information flows my way.

My father’s death from lung cancer was horrible. He was in constant pain for at least the last few days. Morphine did little to relieve his agony. I don’t plan on suffering through what he went through. I’m just not willing to do that. On the other hand, I don’t want to cut things too short too early. I know. It’s very early to be thinking such stuff. But that’s what one does in the wee hours when one has nothing else to occupy the emptiness.

The best part of melting into a puddle of hot wax, gravity spilling it into low spots in one’s mental terrain, is that hot wax eventually cools and becomes malleable. After a day and an evening of allowing myself the luxury of fear and anger, this morning I’m cooling into a lump I can mold into something presentable. One must be presentable on one’s birthday, mustn’t one? Yes, today marks my official entry into geezerhood, though I’ve been claiming membership since I was in my early fifties. I’ve said for years that one becomes a geezer when one “attains adequate age and eccentricity.” Inasmuch as I am by proclamation the arbiter of the definition of geezerhood, I get to decide the adequacy of both attributes. Pretty slick, huh? There are days I’d like to be the arbiter of things of more grave import, like whether all members of a governmental administration are subject to being dispatched through the use of a heavy-duty wood chipper. All right, enough of that little slither toward darkness!

Today, I reached sixty-five years of age. That stuns me. I have always believed I was destined to be younger than that. And I believe it still. I am no more sixty-five years old than doughnuts are made by mixing cement with powdered meat. The very idea is anathema to me! Okay, I’ll admit my physical age has reached that spot on the calendar. Mentally, though, I feel very much like an adolescent, still poking around my psyche in the hope of finding something that, once and for all, allows me to understand and articulate who I am. Apparently, adolescents are slow on the uptake. That something obviously doesn’t exist. Finally, on the morning of my sixty-fifth birthday, I’m coming to realize that we never finish understanding nor articulating who we are; we’re in a process of perpetual change. There’s no moment in time at which we can say with rectitude, “This is precisely who I am,”  Defining this is a lifelong endeavor. And it’s never finished.

For most people, though, the pursuit of the unanswerable question of who am I? does not become a fixation the way it seems to be for me. Most people either get used to the idea that they’ll never know or they delude themselves into thinking they do know. But I have never been able to satisfy myself in those ways. Even this morning, as my sixty-fifty year begins to unfold and I’ve just announced that I know the question can never lead to an answer, something nags at me. Intellectually, I understand that the question has no definitive answer. But emotionally I think the answer is there, somewhere, hidden under a hitherto unused fold of cerebral matter. If I look long and hard enough, I’ll find it. What I’ll do with it once I discover it is beyond me.

But back to the wax with which I may mold myself into something presentable. If I allow it to cool too fast or harden too much, I’ll become stiff and inflexible. But if I attempt to shape it before it cools enough, I’ll flow into an unrecognizable flow of goo. The key is to allow the wax to reach and maintain a fictile stage, a point at which I can bend and shape myself to respond to the world around me.

I vaguely remember thinking, as a teenager, that I needed to leave some of my youthful attitudes behind me as I entered adulthood. I still feel that way. Some of my ideas and attitudes about life are better suited to a teenager than to an avowed geezer. I guess I’m still wrestling with adolescent angst at an advanced age. And I’ll keep seeking an answer to that unanswerable question: who am I, at my core?

The mind can wander into strange places, miserable dark alleys littered with the carcasses of dead animals and reeking with the stench of drunk old men defecating in their clothes. One’s mind can saunter into dangerous territory when the pressure is on. By pressure, I mean  fear steeped in anger and intensified by a mixture of too much wine and a few shots of whiskey.

I didn’t plan to wade into an acrimonious mood last night, but that’s where I went. The more I thought about the fact that my doctor never returned my call, after I returned his, the more upset I became. I allowed myself to grow more and more upset with him until, finally, I drifted through those dark alleys and smelled their ugliness. I  reacted.

I logged into the patient portal and unloaded on my doctor, sending him a message expressing my anger that he didn’t return my call and hadn’t bothered to respond to an earlier portal message.  In the clarity of early morning darkness many hours ago, I realized there may have been a thousand reasons he didn’t respond. He might have been ill and didn’t make it to the office. He could have faced an onslaught of patients sick with the flu. His computer might not have been functioning properly. His staff may not have delivered my phone message to him. So many possibilities. But I focused on the one that fit my mood, that he simply ignored a patient, the most important patient: me. I suspect he might decide he doesn’t need nor want a patient like me. He doesn’t need an ungrateful patient who fails to recognize that the doctor has other patients, some of whom might actually be more needful of his attention.

Goddamn! I thought I was perfectly capable of handling admittedly bad news like an adult. Instead, I soaked my self-pity in alcohol and lashed out in anger at someone I might need to help me maneuver through the morass. Dumb shit. Okay, I’ve done enough self-inflicted damage and have engaged in sufficient self-recrimination. What’s done is done.

If an as-yet unconfirmed diagnosis can have the effect of making me lose it like that, how am I going to handle the results of the biopsy if they are what I expect? That’s my concern at the moment. How am I going to respond to actual data that support the diagnosis? I’ve been just fine with this entire process as it unfolded until last night and then suddenly I allowed myself to fall apart, basically, and lash out at my primary care physician. Fortunately, I did it on my computer in the privacy of my study. It could have happened in his office. I should be kept in a cage.

***

Hours, I mean MANY hours, have passed since I wrote the paragraphs above. I was unwilling to post them because, by so doing, I would have admitted to being the deviant prick I’ve turned out to be. Well, what the hell. I am who I am. I wish I were someone else, but I think I’ve written recently about wishing. It’s a fool’s game, the passtime of idiots.

Tonight, my wife took me out for my pre-birthday celebration. We went to a new restaurant in Hot Springs, a place called 501 Prime, that I believe is by far the best restaurant Hot Spring has seen since I moved to the area. I had ribeye. My wife had prime rib. I started with a combination plate of oysters on the half-shell; the oysters were east coast and west coast…maybe a Gulf oyster. My god, they were orgasmically good! As was the beef. And the Beefeater’s gin martini. And the no-name cabernet sauvignon. Damn! What a nice meal! As stupid as it may sound, I thought as I was eating the dinner that the meal could have been my very last high-end dinner. You know, I was thinking that cancer could eat away at me faster than I could get back to an upscale restaurant. That’s such bullshit. I deserve better than to treat myself like a blundering imbecile. Christ!

On the other hand, I have to recognize that, if the lung cancer diagnosis is confirmed, things could go south in a hurry. So I need to prepare by making my plans apace. It won’t hurt me to create a plan that won’t be used. It can help to create a plan that might need to be used sooner than I might want.

Jesus! My mind is wandering where I would rather it not go! Let me focus, instead, on French rosé and the beauty of the restaurant that served our meal tonight. I think it’s a biblical verse that says, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” 

I promised myself that I wouldn’t get all maudlin, nor would I go overboard with fear or regrets, over this diagnosis. And I need to force myself to grow up and stick to the plan, the plan in which I behave like an adult. Okay. I’ll do it. I will. Starting right now.

I thought a while ago about the fact that I’ve never participated in an orgy Who thinks such things? Okay, enough. I’ll post this and wonder why I didn’t have the good sense to treat this post like so many other “drafts.”

Here it is, my 2700th post on this blog. That’s the number of actual published posts. One hundred eighty-nine additional unpublished drafts wait in the wings. I wrote about ten of those drafts last night. I’m glad I didn’t publish any of the ten I wrote last night. They would only reveal how much of a phony I am, how my facade hides the person I’d rather not reveal. Ha! I openly reveal quite a lot of my flaws, so the ones I hide must be truly astonishing. Indeed.

Lately, my posts have veered away from fiction and poetry, my two favorite things to write, and into journal entries about my life experiences. I am not sure whether that’s good or bad. My fiction and poetry have potential, I think, so ignoring them is apt to cause what skills I have to corrode and weather and weaken. My non-fiction and rants and the like hold little promise, but they might one day remind me or someone who matters to me what was on my mind during what is shaping up to be an odd time of my life. So I don’t know. Lately, nothing I write seems to grab me by the collar. Yet I continue to spoil blank screens by filling them with words.

2700 posts. That translates into 7.39726 years’ worth of posts, if I had posted just once a day. I can’t possibly have had enough ideas worth sharing to merit so many posts. So I can only conclude that I suffer what some would uncharitably call diarrhea of the fingers. Some people speak just to hear themselves talk. I type just to see what I’ve written. It’s not all bad. It’s almost impossible to produce that many posts without something decent spilling out from time to time. But the sheer volume makes it hard to wade through and find those rare gems that might merit consideration for inclusion in the “collected works.”

I’m not in the mood for writing in celebration of my 2700th post this morning. But at least I recorded the event for posterity. You can’t ignore posterity. Unless you’re the Republican party under 45.

My cardiologist’s nurse just called to say my stress test was normal. I told my wife this morning that I hoped the nurse would return my call to report the doctor was stunned that my heart was healthier than that of a twenty-five year-old professional athlete. “Normal” is okay, though.

Now, all I need is for the next series of tests and biopsies and the like to have similar findings and I’ll feel compelled to treat my body better than I have thus far.

I told myself I’d document this chapter of my medical experiences. To anyone who has signed up to receive automated email announcements of my posts, let me apologize for the multiple intrusions. At least this was a happy (from my perspective) intrusion.

I had my PET scan this morning, which is about all I can say about that. It was only mildly uncomfortable to stay motionless on a table for about twenty minutes while the machine took pictures of the inside of my torso. I have no idea what it showed, nor when I’ll learn what it showed. Perhaps I’ll know when I meet with the oncologist on Friday afternoon, the doctor to whom my primary care physician referred me for a needle biopsy.

While I was at the clinic undergoing the PET scan, the oncologist’s office called in the hope of having me visit with her during her time in the Village today. I would have been happy to, except that I was having a PET scan less than fifty yards from her main office. My cardiologist’s nurse called while I was being PETted, returning my call, to say she does not yet know the results of my cardiac stress test, but that she’ll call when she does. I’m surprised it takes so long.

I’m still calm about the entire process so far and I don’t see any signs of that abating. As the song says, “Que será, será.”

On the way home from my PET scan today, I stopped at recycled clothing stores, where I spent a total of $9 on two pairs of slacks and one windbreaker jacket with the old Hot Springs Village logo embroidered on it. The slacks are a bit snug, which is one of many reasons I’m planning to starve myself a bit in the coming weeks and months. I’ve allowed myself to grow into the corpulent old man I told myself I would not permit. I’ll fix that bastard!

This evening, we are meeting friends for dinner at a restaurant on the far side of the Village. Saturday evening we’re going to 501 Prime for dinner, an early celebration. Sunday is my 65th birthday. “Que será, será.”

Old Whitesboro Christian Church

After Restoration

Several years ago, when we still lived in Dallas, after we closed our business and retired, I had the idea of restoring an old church. It came to me during one of our aimless weekend drives in March 2013. We stumbled upon the town of Whitesboro, a town directly north of Dallas between Gainesville and Sherman, and noticed an old church building on one of the town’s main streets with a “for sale” sign in front of it. It has been a Christian Church once upon a time, but had long been abandoned. I had the idea that we might buy the church, restore it in some fashion, and create a business in the unique space. On whim, I took the real estate agent’s name and contact information and made a call. I learned that the sellers were asking $45,000 for the property. I didn’t have that much readily available at the moment (yeah, like, I’ve EVER had that much readily available), but it seemed to me like a steal, even with the knowledge that it would require a lot of restoration. So I contacted a friend and asked, half joking, whether he’d like to go halves withe me and restore the place. He, too, was a shade short of cash. And, of course, I suspect it would have cost an additional $100,000, at a minimum, to make it usable. At any rate, the idea went nowhere, though it nagged me for a long, long time. I really wanted to buy that place. But I knew nothing of Whitesboro and its market for…anything. Coffee house? Event center? Wedding chapel?  Who knew? I didn’t.

So it was best that I didn’t buy it, I decided. But I learned one recent afternoon, returning online to visit the whim five years later, that someone bought it in May 2013. And they restored the old church into an event venue that, apparently, caters mostly to weddings. I found the venue’s website, but it doesn’t say much; mostly, it’s a site with “romantic” photos of weddings and photos of the accouterment intended to recognize and celebrate special relationships.

I’ve explored dozens of opportunities—make that multiple dozens of—to invest in a business or a building or an idea that I’ve opted for one reason or another to abandon or pass by. I wish I had a time dislocation device that would enable me to interrupt the space-time continuum for just long enough to see what would have become of my investment had I not turned away from it. (“To have used “time machine” in the previous sentence would have been lazy and uncreative, if somewhat less pretentious,” he said to himself.)