For Halloween: The Great Pumpkin

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“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” was one of the first televised Peanuts specials, and one of the best. Here are a few selected scenes dealing with Linus’s misguided belief in the Great Pumpkin (who will only rise from the most sincere pumpkin patch in the world), and Sally’s reaction when she realized that she’s wasted her whole Halloween evening.

“YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION!”

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High-tech medicine

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My father’s radiation therapy in the mid-1970s was really brutal. It scorched his entire torso, and it did no good anyway, as his cancer was far too advanced.

My mother’s 1990s chemotherapy in the 1990s was much milder. She was only nauseous a few times. Taxol made her hair fall out, which really stunned her; I think it was the worst thing about the treatment for her. But the chemo extended her life considerably, without much affecting her quality of life.

And now it’s twenty years later, and I’m doing a tandem combination of radiation and chemotherapy. The radiation is directed straight at my left tonsil; after the first few treatments, I haven’t noticed many ill effects, apart from a little neck soreness/stiffness. The first few chemo treatments were similarly mild (apart from a little nausea and fatigue).

When I go in for radiation, I lie on the table and let the nurses fasten on my Radiation Mask:

They also give me a plastic hoop to grip with both hands, so I don’t flail my arms too much. The treatment is about ten minutes long; the machine makes all kinds of space-age humming and beeping noises. Then the attendant comes in and unbuckles me.

My mind wanders during the treatment. Early on, I found myself thinking about the plastic hoop. It’s ridged, and slightly flexible –

When the attendant came in to unbuckle me, I handed her the hoop and said: “This is a dog toy, isn’t it?”

She chuckled. “Yep. The medical version costs a hundred and fifty dollars. I bought that one at Petco for seven ninety-five.”

File this one under “health care costs,” and “high-tech medicine,” and probably under “human ingenuity.”

Pity the poor dog going without his toy. But it’s in the name of medicine, after all.

Woof woof!

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Smoking, take two

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(Note: this is a rewrite of a blog I wrote back in 2011, with maybe a few updates, in the light of recent events.)

Both my parents smoked. I have distinct memories of sitting in the front seat of our family car, with my father in the driver’s seat on my left and my mother sitting to my right, both of them puffing away, the ashtray overflowing. I couldn’t breathe. I finally spoke up about it when I was about nine or ten years, and it actually inspired my mother to quit smoking.

This, however, didn’t stop me from taking up the habit myself. I got a free sample of Lucky Strikes at Fenway Park in 1983; I smoked one or two of them; soon after I was in Morocco, and smoking a pack a day; soon after that I was in Tunisia and smoking two packs a day.

I kept this up until 1998. Remembering the family proclivity for cancer, I resolved to quite when I was forty, and I managed it, just a few months shy of my forty-first birthday.

I have been reasonably healthy on and off since.

And now, fifteen years later, I discover that I have throat cancer, the main risk factor for which is – ahem – smoking.

Go figure.

I freely acknowledge that it’s my own fault. I knew there were bad genes on both sides of the family, and I knew that smoking could only be bad for me. But I kept it up for fourteen years.

Foolish, naturally. Most of those fourteen years between ’84 and ‘98, I was just smoking out of habit; I even (as do most smokers) kept it up while I was sick with colds and the flu. I even smoked at meals. I was smelly and utterly obnoxious, and probably nearly burned myself to death more than once. I realize that now.

But I remember one beautiful morning in Tunis, before I developed my two-pack-a-day habit. I left the house around 8am, bought a pack of local cigarettes, lit up, and –

That first puff was heaven.

So it wasn’t all bad.

But it probably wasn’t worth getting cancer for.

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The Visigoth crowns in the Cluny Museum

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For a long time I only knew the Visigoth crowns from a poem by Elinor Wylie, which a friend recently quoted to me:

I cannot give you the Metropolitan Tower;
I cannot give you heaven;
Nor the nine Visigoth crowns in the Cluny Museum;
Nor happiness, even.

When Partner and I were in Paris last October, I noticed that the Cluny Museum was very close to our hotel. We went there on our last full day in Paris. It’s an old building with a Roman foundation; there are lots of old relics from the days when Paris was called Lutetia. As you ascend through the building, you find all manner of other works of art: later Roman, Dark Ages, Holy Roman Empire, medieval France.

And among those works of art are the Visigoth crowns.

They are not big chunky Burger-King style crowns in the Halloween-costume sense. They are delicate circlets encrusted with sapphires and pearls and other polished stones, festooned with slender strands of gold. (I counted only eight of them, and was a little disappointed. Then I learned that the ninth, the crown of King Suinthila, was stolen in 1921 and has never been found again.)

They were never meant to be worn; they were to be hung above a church's altar, as a symbol of royalty. With a little modification, however, they would look like something an Elf might have worn in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

I want lots of things from museums the world over. I want Suzanne Valadon’s portrait of Erik Satie, which hangs in the Modern Art Museum in Paris (though I’ve never seen it in person). I want the Salomon Ruysdael waterscape that hangs in the RISD Museum only a few blocks from our apartment here. I want Ilya Repin’s gorily tragic “Ivan the Terrible and His Son” from the Tretyakov in Moscow, which would look nice over the sofa. I want a Rembrandt here and a Koons there, and a couple of the Monets from the Metropolitan in New York. Also I might throw in a couple of the Unicorn tapestries from the Cloisters, and I wouldn’t mind the Bayeux Tapestry (if only I had a room big enough to display it in).

But I think I would trade all of the above for one – just one! – of the Visigoth crowns from the Cluny Museum.

Is that so much to ask?

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For Sunday: Maria's dance from "Metropolis" (1927)

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“Metropolis” is one of my favorite movies. It’s a wild science-fiction romp from 1927; it’s silent, but you can now see it with its original musical score, which is very expressive.

Here’s the plot: the city of Metropolis is divided between the lofty towers of the rich and powerful and the dark underground cities of the workers. A woman named Maria (played luminously by Brigitte Helm) is preaching to the workers and telling them to expect a “mediator.” The dictator of Metropolis, in an attempt to stop Maria, asks crazy Doctor Rotwang to create a evil robot replica of Maria; the robot proceeds a) to stir up all kinds of discord in the underground cities, and b) to dance at Yoshiwara, the hippest nightclub in the tower city, and drive all the upscale men insane with lust.

This is the false Maria’s dance. It’s beyond amazing. (Just so you know: the young man in bed is the true Maria’s boyfriend (who also happens  to be the dictator’s son), having visions of the Apocalypse.)

Enjoy.

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Ivy

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Providence is full of Ivy. Brown University is Ivy League, after all, and there’s English ivy (Hedera helix) growing all over the place. A friend of mine, freshly arrived in Providence from Montana, plucked some ivy leaves off the wall and mailed them to her family and friends in Billings, to underline the reality of where she was.

Ivy wants to go up, away from the ground, against gravity. There’s a nearby building with two ivy tendrils curling up its walls like arms outspread. And up up up they go!

I always think of my mother when I see ivy. When my father built our new house in the early 1960s, my mother decided that she liked ivy, and planted shoots of it all along the north side of the house and along the roadside.

Those shoots were stubborn. They didn’t die, but they didn’t grow. A few leaves stuck out of the ground, year after year. And then, after five years or so –

They exploded.

The entire north side of the house was engulfed with ivy. And do you know what ivy does to the side of a house, especially one with wooden shingles? It chews it up, om nom nom. If you try to pull the ivy down, you rip away half of the wooden shingles at the same time, and you reveal the dark mottling that the ivy has produced on its way up the wall.

Mom got her wish, and how! But she wasn’t happy that her plan had gone beyond expectations. She managed to get most of it off the shingles, and she repainted, but she couldn’t get the ivy off the brickwork. This picture, taken in May 1971, shows the ivy covering the exposed brickwork:

It looks nice, doesn’t it? Nice rhododendrons in front of the house, and a nice ivy-covered chimney.

But Mom was watching that ivy every moment, to make sure it didn’t leap onto the wooden shingles again.

Ivy is aggressive.

And now, a song:

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The power of getting away

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“The Power of Getting Away” was the spectacular title of a blog written by my Australian blogmate Attila Ovari not long ago. The drift of his blog was: How often do you detach yourself from your regular routine – the office, the news, national politics – and just think about yourself and your family and your own needs and wants?

But, to me, the title suggests so much more than that.

Getting away. O dear. If only we were able to get away – to escape from our lives and “forget for a while” (in JRR Tolkien’s words) “the dreadful doom of life.”

To bury our heads in the covers and sleep for another hour, or two, or ten.

To call in sick to work for a day, or a week, or a couple of years.

In a word: when something which is (presumably) overpoweringly powerful requests your presence, to be able to say “no.”

Best of all, I think, was the late Rue McClanahan’s comment on the TV show “Maude” many years ago (I paraphrase, probably badly): “When it’s my time to die, I’m going to be somewhere else.”

I want to be elsewhere when it’s my time too, if that’s at all possible.

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Young adult fiction

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“How did you spend your weekend?” Apollonia asked. “Gambling? Moping?”

“Mostly moping,” I said. “Also reading young-adult fiction.”

She roared with laughter. She, of all people, knows what I mean. Apollonia is the world’s most tragically obsessed Twihard, and would happily pluck a leftover egg-salad sandwich out of the garbage and eat it, if there were any chance it had been gnawed on by Robert Pattinson. It goes without saying that she knows the Stephenie Meyer books by heart, the way Islamic clerics know the Koran.

Naturally all of us read the Harry Potter books, though they were “too young for us.” Why? Because they were well-told stories, and entertaining, and full of conflict on every level. They ask questions like: why is my family (and Professor Snape, for that matter) so mean to me? Why won’t Hermione and Ron realize they love one another? Why is Lord Voldemort trying to kill me? Also, the books are funny and colorful and full of incident. (There are some dull patches – the middle third of “Deathly Hallows,” in which Ron and Harry and Hermione wander in the wilderness and snipe at each other, was pretty deathly itself – but overall these books move pretty briskly. And who doesn’t like a six-hundred page book that moves along briskly?)

Also, some years ago, I discovered Diane Duane’s “So You Want to Be A Wizard” series, which is serious fun. Who doesn’t want to be a teenage wizard? You get to save the planet, and sometimes the entire galaxy, over and over again. You get to meet interesting people like the Archangel Michael and Satan. And Diane Duane can really write; she’s light-years ahead of Meyer, and I think she writes more fluently than Rowling. Naturally you really ought to read the books in order, but I didn’t, and I don’t think I missed out too much. I especially like “A Wizard Abroad,” in which a New York girl (and secret wizard) is sent off to Ireland to visit relatives, and ends up discovering an entire world of Celtic folklore, helps to reenact the Battle of Moytura, and (incidentally) saves the world one more time. (Diane Duane also maintains a great Tumblr in which she interacts with readers and fans – I don’t know how she finds the time – and is very obviously a funny and generous person. This makes me like her writing even more.)

And if you still find yourself with time on your hands, try Rick Riordan’s Greek-mythology series – the five novels of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and the three novels of “Heroes of Olympus” he’s published for far. (The fourth, “The House of Hades,” is due out around the time that this blog is to be published; the series is set to conclude a year from now.) These are reimaginings of Greek and Roman myths, set in modern America; they’re goofier than the “Wizard” books, and the humor can be juvenile, but the stories are gripping (let’s face it, Greek mythology is good source material), and there are some nice touches. (If you saw the first movie based on the series, “The Lightning Thief,” rest assured that the books are much better.)

I could go on. Do Tove Jansson’s Moomin books count as Young Adult? Parts of them skew a little young (even for me!), but I love them anyway.

J. R. R. Tolkien said it best, in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”:

In describing a fairy-story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: “this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty.” But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that began thus: “this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy”; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate. Is there any essential connexion between children and fairy-stories? Is there any call for comment, if an adult reads them for himself? . . .

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Stinkhorns

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Now and then, growing out of the mulch in front of my office building, there’s an outcropping of the most amazing mushrooms:

“What in the hell are they?” Apollonia squealed when I pointed the latest batch, which (as you can see) are especially evil and healthy-looking. “They smell rotten. Can’t you smell them?”

“Not a thing,” I said. (To be fair, I have a terrible sense of smell.) “And they’re beautiful. What colors!”

I looked them up later. They are stinkhorns. (I always thought “stinkhorn” was Apollonia’s maiden name.) They stake out lawns and driveways, and keep coming back forever once they’ve established themselves. They are Phallaceae, and if you look at the above picture, the name will probably make sense to you. There are many horrifying variants, but ours are Mutinus caninus, the “dog stinkhorn,” and maybe the “dog” part will make sense to you too if you look at the picture again. Stinkhorns are gooey and disgusting on purpose. They attract bugs with their smell and nasty texture, and the flies and ants carry the spores around. They start as an egglike growth like a puffball, and then – in just a few hours – they manifest their adult form. Here’s a time-lapse film of twenty hours in the life of a dog stinkhorn:

Nature is trying to send us a message through organisms like these.

But what’s the message, do you suppose?

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Sweet are the uses of adversity

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I am ailing. This is a shame. But there’s no reason I can’t get some benefit from it.

Once in a while, when talking to people, I just touch the side of my neck (where my tumor is) with people who know about my illness, and they become much more agreeable right away.

This is awful of me, I know. But what would a bad thing like cancer be without some positive side?

People are afraid of illness generally. A lot of people are unfamiliar with cancer altogether. One of my coworkers asked me the other day: “What would happen if you didn’t do any treatment at all?” (I had to explain to him that cancer is a death sentence if not treated; mine would probably metastasize to my jawbone and lungs, and I would die a very painful death within a few years at most. His jaw dropped, and his eyes were like saucers. He obviously had no idea it was that bad. Apparently he thought that cancer was like a bad cold – nasty, but you get over it eventually.)

People at work (who know about my condition) treat me with respect, for the most part. I don’t deserve it – I’m a horrible person in general – but then again, I’ve been in the office for over twenty-five years, and I deserve respect for my seniority if not for anything else. If it takes the realization that I’m seriously ill to make them pay attention, then so be it.

I love being treated seriously.

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Hair loss

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My friends all know about my cancer now, and their reactions have been very diverse. But the most remarkable of all – which I got from two different people, mind you – was: “So will you be losing your hair?”

The first time, it caught me completely off-guard. The second time, I had an answer prepared: “Probably. I can put it in a box and ship it to you, if you’d like to have it.”

Honestly, though, I wonder if I brought it on myself. (The hair loss, not the cancer.) I have bragged more than once about the nice thick hair that Heaven granted me. Only this last spring, two of my (younger) colleagues were commiserating about the fact that they were balding. “I don’t have to worry about that,” I gloated to them. “I don’t have the gene for it. Look at what a nice thick handsome head of hair I have!”

They laughed dutifully, but they were both glowering at me.

And, you see, Karma is now paying me back.

The radiation therapy, being directed very specifically toward the tumor in my throat, will cause only a little hair loss – perhaps part of my beard and some of the hair on the back of my neck.

The chemotherapy, however, will probably take care of the rest. In the words of one website: “You will very likely wake up one morning with all of your hair on your pillow.”

Delightful.

But, as I keep telling people: isn’t that what hats are for?

And, thank goodness, I look charming in hats.

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For Sunday: John Dowland's "Dear, If You Change" (1597)

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This song, first published in 1597, is (I think) one of the most beautiful ever written: John Dowland’s “Dear, If You Change.”

Enjoy.

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Shameless plug: artist Drew Green

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I have been on Tumblr for a couple of years now. At first it seemed odd and pointless, and not really intended for someone like fifty-plus-year-old me.

Then I discovered Tumblr members and communities that were friendly to people like me.

And there I discovered Drew Green.

He is an Atlanta-based artist and illustrator. He has a number of personal projects, and he makes money in the meantime by doing commissions.

Here’s how it works: you give him some likenesses – like a photo – and tell him what you’d like. (There’s a fee involved, but it’s surprisingly small, considering the work he’s doing for you.)

His style is cartoonish, but in the best and most professional sense – like the classic Warner Brothers or Disney illustrators. Here’s one of my favorite examples of his work – a gay couple and their son at Disneyworld:

Isn’t that charming?

I kept seeing him post on Tumblr, and finally last spring I sent him a picture of Partner and me at the top level of the Eiffel Tower in Paris last October:

He returned to me, almost immediately, a sketch based on the photo. It was shockingly good. I asked for one small change, which he gladly made. A few weeks later, I received this image:

Both Partner and I are delighted with this. I love showing it to other people. My friend Troy said: “He really caught your sullen expression!” Another said: “I’ll be able to say I knew you before you became a cartoon character!”

Here’s some information on his work and his commissions. His rates are very reasonable, and he’s a very nice guy, and I love his work.

(I told you in the title this was a shameless plug.)

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Raymond Burr

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Raymond Burr was a handsome second-string actor who started his career in the late 1940s. He evolved into a movie villain (as in “Rear Window"), and then a heroic TV actor (as in “Perry Mason,” and later “Ironside”). He was handsome and broad-shouldered, with a deep gruff voice. He gained weight in the 1950s and 1960s, but it gave him gravity.

Also, he was gay.

He met an actor named Robert Benvenides while working on the “Perry Mason” show. They fell in love, and spent the rest of their lives together. Hollywood couldn’t endure this, of course, so the studios created a fiction about marriages and children. (Raymond was married to a woman for a while, back in the 1940s, but it ended in divorce and no children.)

He was reputed to be very generous. IMDB reports the story that Errol Flynn told him that, if he died with ten dollars in his pocket, he wouldn’t have done his job. It inspired him to be philanthropic, and he always helped his friends.

He died in 1992, and Benvenides was his sole heir, but Raymond’s family contested this. They failed, thank goodness.

How times have changed! Look at George Takei! And Neil Patrick Harris! And Ellen de Generes!

Partner and I have talked about marriage. Sadly, we’d end up paying more income tax married than we would as two “single” people. But our mutual employer, Brown University, regards us as Domestic Partners, so we enjoy some advantages that way. Also, we have not found any local institutions that discriminate against us. Lately (with all my health-related adventures) I simply introduce Partner to my doctors and nurses as “my life partner,” and he’s welcomed immediately.

How easy we have it, and how difficult Raymond Burr and his partner Robert Benvenides had it, only twenty years ago.

The world is moving in the right direction.

Slowly.

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Check all the boxes that apply

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Partner and I got our flu shots very early this season. We’re both older, and I’d just been diagnosed with cancer, so we agreed that it was probably a good idea for the two of us not to get the flu this autumn/winter.

CVS (and many other pharmacies) offer flu shots for free (for those of us lucky enough to have health insurance). They have a cute little kids’-tea-party table and chairs set up behind a screen in the back of the store; you fill out a form, check a few boxes, and then the pharmacist gives you a little tiny jab. (Usually it’s administered by Alexander, the handsome Russian pharmacist. We were disappointed this year because he wasn’t available, but the on-duty person was a lovely funny person, and she was almost as good as Alexander.)

The form was routine:

ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO LATEX? (No.)

ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO EGGS? (No.)

DO YOU HAVE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:

·        HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE? (Yes, a little.)

·        HIGH CHOLESTEROL? (Certainement pas.)

·        DIABETES? (No.)

·        KIDNEY DISEASE? (Are kidney stones the same thing? Maybe a little. Okay, then I’ll say ‘yes,’ and explain if necessary.)

And then:

DO YOU HAVE CANCER?

I stared at the question as if it were written in Hebrew. “What am I supposed to say?” I hissed to Partner.

He glanced over at my form. “I think the answer in your case is ‘Yes,’” he said calmly.

Reader, I cannot tell you how difficult it was for me to check that box.

It got a little easier after that. ARE YOU ON MEDICATION FOR CANCER? (Not yet.)

And I gulped and gave the form to the pharmacist, and she glanced at it and gave me my shot.

So – you see? That wasn’t so difficult.

It’s just the idea, that’s all. “Cancer” is a hard word to say out loud, especially when you're talking about yourself. But, believe it or not, it gets easier to say.

Cancer is just a stupid condition, after all, like high blood pressure and kidney stones. It’s treatable. In a few months, I’ll be better, I hope.

And I’ll be around next year to have another flu shot.

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Feebleness

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I don’t start radiation treatments until Monday October 21, but already I’m exhausted.

What? You think I’m full of self-pity? Listen: I’ve had five teeth pulled, and a feeding tube stuck into my belly, not to mention the mental back-and-forth I’ve been going through.

The idea of cancer doesn’t bother me as much as it did a month ago. It’s just a fact of life – my life, anyway. I just need to get through the treatments (which should be done by early December, not really so long from now).

But the early procedures have made me tired, and the anticipation of my radiation and chemotherapy treatments makes me tired too.

I’ve been napping on weekends, which I never really did before. I think of myself as active and alert, but I find myself logy and weary now.

From my “Comprehensive Cancer” notebook, given to me by my doctors and nurses: “Think of your cancer treatment as a time to get well and focus only on yourself.”

This is very tempting advice for a lazy selfish person like me. To hell with other people!

But something else inside me just wants to go to bed with a book and a crossword puzzle.

From Stevie Smith:

Oh would that I were a reliable spirit careering around

Congenially employed and no longer by feebleness bound

Oh who would not leave the flesh to become a reliable spirit

Possibly traveling far and acquiring merit.

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Saints and talismans

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I have cancer, and this is no time for quibbling about what helps and what doesn’t. Lots of people of different faiths have said they’re praying for me, and I accept their prayers gratefully. Why in the world would I be stiff-necked enough to say: “Nah, I’m an atheist. Save your prayers”?

And I am not un-superstitious. I read Tarot cards, after all, and I look at horoscopes, and find profitable information in them. (Not the newspaper ones, kids. The real ones.)

So who am I to scoff at talismans and charms?

When my father was diagnosed with cancer in 1975, I was in my sophomore year at Gonzaga and just on the verge of converting to Catholicism. As you can imagine, I became very devout in no time at all. I attended mass almost daily, and said novenas, and prayed like a banshee.

Dad died anyway, in May 1976, despite all my masses and novenas. But it didn’t stop me from believing, deep down in my soul, that prayers and talismans are effective, if you only use them correctly.

For years I carried two holy medals on my keychain: Saint Dymphna (who guards against mental illness) and Saint Peregrine (who guards against cancer).

Somehow both of them disappeared from my keychain some years ago. And look what happened!

I found Peregrine and put him back on my keychain a few weeks ago, and told him to get back to work.

Also: Partner, being a cradle Catholic and understanding my state of mind, recently gave me a medal of Saint Blaise (who guards against afflictions of the throat).

Whatever happens now, I’m prepared.

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Sufferers, losers, and survivors

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There’s a language which appears to have grown up around cancer and cancer patients and cancer therapies. I think I’m considered a “sufferer,” although I’m supposed to be “battling cancer” also. Biff! Bam! Ow!

Those who have managed to overcome their cancers are “survivors,” and I approve of this term. Cancer, as one of my doctors told me the other week, usually comes to people as a terrifying and sudden bolt from the blue. “One of my patients,” she said, “said it was like mowing your lawn on a sunny day, and then suddenly a big truck comes screaming into your yard and crashes into you.” Something like that you can only survive; there’s no other word for it.

Here’s the expression I hate, though: “he/she lost the battle to cancer.”

Sorry, kids. My mother and father did not “lose their battles,” nor did my sisters, nor my niece, nor my aunts and uncles. They sickened and died, as does everyone sooner or later. Most of them were diagnosed very late in the course of their illnesses, so they didn’t have much chance to undergo successful treatment.

Much is made of “positive attitude,” and how it improves your odds. Certainly, psychologically, I see the point. It’s impossible, as one of my survivor friends told me not long ago, to think about cancer all the time; it makes you crazy and gloomy. You need to cheer yourself, and reassure yourself that not everything ends in tragedy. As yet another doctor said a few weeks ago: “If you look at prognosis statistics – and you probably already have – don’t let them worry you too much. You’ll either be one of the people who live, or one of the others. There’s no way of telling.”

My mother was a terrible patient, but she lived seven years after her diagnosis at age seventy-two. Her cancer never quite finished with her; she underwent repeated bouts of chemotherapy over the years, and each was a little harder for her to deal with; finally, in her seventy-ninth year, it was just too much for her. She began to decline seriously in September, and by November she was gone. Along the way, she exhibited every behavior you can imagine: self-pity, fear, anger, selfishness, mean-spiritness. Also kindness. Also a strange late-autumn sweetness.

My sister Susan, diagnosed in her forty-sixth year, was an angel. She suffered miserably with her cancer, but I never saw or heard her angry or upset. She spent time picking out her own coffin and the clothes and jewelry she’d be wearing at her own funeral. She was a wonderful person, and I kick myself that I didn’t see more of her and call her more often during her last few years.

My sister Darlene: I don’t know. We weren’t close. But I think she made great use of her last years: she underwent a clinical trial, and she did community work right up until the very end. She was always tough, and a good citizen, and I salute her.

My poor niece, who died only a few years ago in her forties, was surrounded by her family, and comforted by her faith.

None of them were “losers.” They sickened and died, but they were by no means “losers.”

So don’t speak to me of the “battle against cancer.” Cancer’s not an ideology or a bad guy or a rebel army. It’s a disease, that’s all.

We’re all terminal, after all. None of us is coming out of this alive.

All that really matters is how we use the time we’ve been given, cancer or no cancer.

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For Sunday: John Cale sings "Paris 1919"

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I bought this John Cale album in 1978 or 1979. I didn’t love the entire album, except for this song, and the song “Graham Greene.”

This song has everything: strings, harpsichord, harp, bizarre elliptical lyrics:

Efficiency efficiency they say
Get to know the date and tell the time of day
As the crowds begin complaining
How the Beaujolais is raining
Down on darkened meetings on the Champs Elysee

You're a ghost la la la la la la la la la la
You're a ghost la la la la la la la la la la
I'm in the church and I've come
To claim you with my iron drum

La la la la la la la la la.

Enjoy.

Reading list

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As of this writing, I’m still pretty bouncy: I’m working, and living a normal life, and walking to work, and eating relatively normally. In a month or two, however, I will be pretty house-bound: the radiation and chemotherapy will make me tired and achy, and there are dozens of other unpleasant side effects which may manifest also.

I will need distraction.

So I am pulling together a stack of books to read as the year darkens and as I become less active.

I pre-ordered Thomas Pynchon’s “Bleeding Edge” from Amazon, and got it a few weeks ago. I’ve read a few pages, but Pynchon’s a difficult read, so he’ll be good for a dark November day.

Also a book of stories called “Sesqua Valley & Other Haunts,” recommended to me by my Internet friend Flora Gardener in Ilwaco, Washington. The author, Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, is an acquaintance of hers, and the stories are part of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, so I’m looking forward to them.

Also Rick Riordan’s latest “Heroes of Olympus” installment, “The House of Hades,” which arrived in the mail only the other day. Okay, it’s young-adult, but who cares? Riordan writes very well, and it’s an entertaining story. I had a hard time putting it down after I unwrapped it; I made it through the first twenty pages, just enough to see that it’s good, and sighed, and put it down.

Also a pre-calculus book given to me by my student employee Ralph, who listened to me complaining that my Coursera calculus course was too difficult for me, and realized immediately that what I needed was pre-calculus. When I’m sick of fiction, I can relax with some numbers and formulae.

Also: “The Power of Now,” by Eckhart Tolle. My friend Joanne sent it to me, and I’ve browsed it, and it’s not bad. If it teaches me to live in the moment and relax a bit, then I will have really learned something.

Also it’s probably time (as Flora reminded me a few days ago) to reread E. F. Benson’s “Lucia” books. I first read them in college, and fell desperately in love with them. I haven’t reread them for years. I’m long overdue.

Also: I can listen all the music I've collected over the years. And I can finally watch all the pre-Code movies I have on the DVR. And . . .

I’m not saying this will be fun.

But I think I’m looking forward to some downtime, and some serious (and not so serious) reading.

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Lupini beans

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Some time ago, Apollonia’s family was having a conversation about the actress Ida Lupino, and the (very demonstrable) fact that she made some pretty awful movies. Then Apollonia’s brother-in-law Rocky inserted: “What about lupini beans? Do you think Ida Lupino’s name has anything to do with lupini beans?”

And a fresh argument broke out.

See the picture above if you’re unfamiliar with lupini beans. They’re an Italian specialty, which you can probably find in your local supermarket (especially if there’s a big Italian community in your neighborhood). They’re not really beans, but the huge seeds of the yellow Mediterranean lupine. They contain a toxin, by the way. They have to be soaked and blanched and rinsed and salted and all kinds of things before they’re fit to eat. Then you still have to take off the husk before you eat them.

But they’re really pretty good, once you taste them. Also, they’re full of nutrients.

When Apollonia’s sister Augusta heard that I was ill, she rushed into action and sent me a jar of lupini beans, which she’d seasoned herself with olive oil and herbs. This was the accompanying note:

“My friend Ida always suggests a few lupini a day. They are loaded with fiber & protein – but don’t overdo it – too many can cause gastric lupinoma and gastric bezoar composed of multiple lupini beans. Surgical removal required. Enjoy!”

Also, she sent a can of air freshener, in case the outcome of the lupini beans was unfortunate (as it might be) for Partner and/or me.

I ate half a dozen of them, and I thought they were pretty good, and no air freshener was required. Partner is wary of them and hasn’t tried them yet.

Oh hell they’re just Mediteranean lupine seeds! What could they possibly do to you?

(I told Augusta, when I wrote her a thank-you note, that I hoped I did develop a gastric bezoar. You can use them as an antidote to poisons, and they also strengthen your aura.)

(You just wait. I will have a glorious aura.)

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Radiology 101

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When you have radiation therapy on your head or throat, they create a clever little mask for you, like so:

You wear it during the (brief) radiation treatment. It keeps your head in place without twitching, and it’s marked so that the doctors and nurses can tell where to aim the radiation.

I had the mask made yesterday. The nurses took a sheet of perforated plastic and heated it in warm water to 150 degrees until it softened; then they put it over my face and molded it to my features until it hardened.

Then I heard the word “tattoo” mentioned.

Then, all of a sudden, one of the nurses lunged in and jabbed me in the middle of my chest with a needle, and made an insignificant little mark. That’s the tattoo that’ll be used to help them place the mask and aim the radiation.

All these years I’ve put off getting a tattoo. Now I have one, and it’s a stupid red dot, right where no one can see it.

Also, regarding the radiology mask: I desperately wanted to take a picture of it when it was done, but they took it away too quickly. But I imagine it looked something like this:

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It only hurts when I laugh

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It was a shock when, a few weeks ago, my radiologist told me that I needed to have a feeding tube installed. “You may or may not need it during your treatment,” he said, “but we prefer that you have it put in now, because you’ll be very weak later.”

So, terrific, hooray for the protocol. Feeding tube installed, 4 October 2013, approximately 9am.

Jesus, it’s big. I was expecting something small, like the nozzle on a can of WD-40. Instead, I now have something like a garden hose implanted two inches above my belly button.

Getting a hole punched in your belly hurts for a few days. I suppose that’s a silly thing to say, but (for whatever reason) I wasn’t really expecting it. I spent the weekend aching and cradling my belly, walking with a hunch, wondering how long this was going to go on, and assuming (of course) that it would be the rest of my life.

Over the last few days, the incision has mostly healed. I am now able to walk upright and almost normally. But some movements that involve the abdominal muscles – especially getting up from a seated or lying-down position – still give me a twinge.

Also: I can now burp without pain! Also, I can cough!

Sneezing is still a little painful, however.

Also laughing.

Oh this is the last straw. I can’t laugh? Whom do I need to talk to about this?

As James Thurber said when his blindness prevented him from seeing a beautiful girl embracing him: “Dear God, this goes just a little bit beyond a joke.”

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