Non disputandum

JM, Tiffany, 4.24.08

Tiffany is one of my favorite roses.

A favorite essay: Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero.

A favorite history: Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence.

A favorite detective show: Inspector Morse.

A favorite spy novel: Smiley's People.

A favorite sequence of English language novels: The Alexandria Quartet.

A favorite collection of essays: Paul Fussell, Abroad.

A favorite book for which there is no category: Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana.

A favorite beer: Modelo.

A favorite wine region: Bourgogne.

A favorite newspaper: The New York Times.

A favorite literary critic: George Steiner.

A favorite literary magazine: Granta.

A favorite composer or two: Mahler. Messiaen.

A favorite blog: Carver's Dog.

A favorite non-fiction book or two: Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus.

A favorite year: 1979.

A favorite season: summer.

De gustibus non disputandum.

an empty wind

JM, Coral tree, Vermont meridian, Griffith Park, 4.21.08

So I lost my anger, all of it; like a broken heart, it happens suddenly. You wake up one morning and it's healed and you look under your pillow wondering where it went. But it has been a good thing, this anger that has kept me marching for over a year; it made me more observant, more aware, maybe even more alive through times when sorrow often was the dominant emotion and I didn't feel alive at all.

We all get to spend our consciousness mostly in the way we like. A lot of people encounter problems when they wed their consciousness to specific results, like passing the bar or owning a home; as Sartre said, consciousness is an empty wind, blowing towards objects.

To spend consciousness on anger seems like a waste; peace and love, man. But anger is the most certain path to catharsis, to purgation, and after the purgation comes the beautiful time.

It's no less than walking out of the ocean: you were wet and in rushing water, for too long; then you got out, shook yourself like a setter, now you're dry in the warm air. The sand feels most comfortable of all after an exhausting swim.

Wincing

diagram of our rose garden from my garden journal (click to enlarge)

I was a judge at a high school journalism conference on Friday, and I enjoyed doing that, because for me it was a full-circle moment, having participated in so many of them when I was in high school myself. But what I wonder about is why more journalists aren't involved with these.

Some advisers (that's what they call the high school teachers who handle their school's newspapers) told me that the perception is that "professionals" are too hard on students. That doesn't sound right.

I was far harder on other judges, in fact, than on students, even though everyone was very nice to me. One told me she didn't read the LA Times---I couldn't understand that, even if, like I do, you don't like the direction of the paper and haven't for some time. I suppose I winced too visibly for comfort, and later came a correspondence at 3:51 a.m. seeking an apology.

When I was in college, my father even used to include the newspapers of the past week in my care packages. And I'm glad he did, because I got to follow most memorably writings on local architecture, and it was a key time in LA for developments such as the Pacific Design Center and also megastructure downtown. And Sunday without the New York Times was unthinkable.

I did apologize---it's easy to grab an apology from me---but I still don't understand being in journalism and not reading the local paper. This morning I was clicking around the local blogosphere and I just couldn't find anything nearly as interesting as most of the local newsprint news I found.

~~~

Yesterday Bill and Sherzad were over and I overcooked a lamb loin. I rarely make that kind of a mistake but I wasn't even thinking about the time. I have roasted so many chickens lately that as soon as sticking something in the roaster I automatically thought, "OK, I'll just check it in 45 minutes." So the lamb, which was just under two pounds (chickens are generally between three and four) ended up a little dry. Stupid mistake.

It disappeared anyway.

~~~

We are coming out of a time in which we fairly had some blinders on. Before Lynn's surgery there were people, places, issues; now, after six months of chemo, we're rediscovering these, sometimes joyfully, sometimes painfully. I still haven't set foot in a church---"Lynn didn't deserve this," I keep telling myself. Nobody does; so what's the point? The Pope visits America, it's Passover, etc. and I'm indifferent to all of it.

April, spring. Lynn is just starting to grow some hair again; the rose garden is full of blooms, but it pales next to the tense rebirth: from patient to survivor.

Beebe

Mr. Beebe has shuffled off his mortal coil.

Mr. Beebe was a foundling, found near Pico and Arlington in 1990. Do you remember where you were that summer?

Beebe soon grew adventurous and mischievous, always maintaining a poker face through his varied nettlesome antics. A calm cat, he rarely seemed surprised at anything, though he could grow quite indignant very suddently.

My own relationship to Beebe was tangential. He recognized me as a competitor, and usually walked away from me, though he maintained a circumspect eye on me. He seemed very satisfied that he had enough dander to make me take a pill whenever I was visiting.

The other notable cats in my life, notably MieMies (with whom I am pictured, in the sidebar) and Isabella (here seen drinking a margarita with me on her couch and here seen expecting a lamb lunch), are girls. Mr. Beebe was a tom and therefore more jealous than the others, but also less demanding. The relationship to Izzy in particular has grown a bit strained over the past few months, as she forgot my birthday. I never felt such emotions from Beebe.

At the time of Mr. Beebe's departure, I hadn't seen him in over a decade, and missed two opportunities last summer. One day I was on his block and looking at windows, but no Beebe.

So hug your cat. As Mr. Beebe's nearest relative once said, "They only break your heart in the end."

Mr. Beebe was a week shy of 18. He leaves behind a poetess on the Silver Strand.

Hiatus

JM, swordferns, 4.12.08

Roses at their apex. A good week for that. Unseasonably warm with spare spring shade; bagels, lox, cream cheese for breakfast; watching the Masters, in and out of the garden.

Where is everybody going? It's still impossible to know; it's always impossible to know. Consciousness is never tedious but sometimes it is a burden, especially when you're obliged to measure it in time, or measure it against a trapping. So many stories of so many people going badly all around; the economy is bad, the City is bad. A day like today though is a hiatus.

A severe episode of anger and suddenly I realize how I've been operating on an unnatural cycle of my own, of pain followed by anger, for well over six months. But pain goes away slowly, like a fog; anger, when it comes, it grows and then bursts, it's over, you wonder how you can freight it for so long. You never wonder that with pain.

Lynn's spring

She cannot help herself. Even after eight double-chemo cycles, even with a scarf covering her head, she still needs to give. Yesterday she spent most of the day baking two flourless chocolate cakes. Today she sprinkled on powdered sugar and almonds and wrapped them in cellophane and boxed them and garnished them with nasturtiums. Then when we got to Cedars, she presented one to her doctor's staff and one to the cancer care center staff.

Her final double chemo, cycle nine, was today. It started four hours late. While every day might be a celebration, this is no particular milestone other than the fact that they will stop killing her cells with these two drugs as of today. She'll have more tests, extensive ones in a month, and a repeat three months after that.

I was going to send out an email. Forget it---it's been too exhausting; I don't have one in me. Six months has been a damn long time. We're both spent, emotionally, psychologically, and Lynn is physically. For those who still peek here...this is it. Suffice it to say what we have said since her surgery October 4: she continues to test very well.

I told people at the start that Lynn had the character to go through this but I didn't. Every day, nearly hourly in fact, I proved I was right about myself. I have done things, seen people, written much---but it has felt like one long decompression chamber session; and I don't know how to step out of it yet, and probably won't for a while. But the fact that this chemo has ended is some kind of step towards a new kind of experience---for both of us.

Third hand

~
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
---Hunter S. Thompson


I like to think that the Internet is a normal environment, but it keeps disappointing me. I like the Internet because it's interactive, but what it seems to do over and over is to allow people to get to know each other's personal biography far more quickly than ever before. With this kind of knowledge in hand, reversals of friendships are often very sudden, even spookily so.

On the one hand, it should stand to reason that the Internet accelerates wierdness the same way it accelerates everything else. On the other hand, the suddenness of the reversals are depressing.

And on the weirdest hand of all, the third hand, it probably doesn't matter much that there are such sudden reversals anyway. Because whatever you were typing with the other two hands is just text for the moment, text that can also be diminished or even transformed in a moment by the third hand, the hand on the enormously adventurous mouse that is the interactivity of the Internet.

~