Latest Posts

Number Two.

Author: September 23, 2016 16 Comments

IBEATCANCER

Don’t ask me how I’m doing.

Having passed the two-year mark as a cancer survivor is something I should be happy about. And I am, but it’s complicated. I really celebrated the first year as the first of many milestones to come. At the time I still had things to overcome and I felt like I really hadn’t fully recovered my health, like I hadn’t completely bounced back. And I wasn’t sure I would fully recover. That was, oddly, something to celebrate. I felt there was a clear demarcation between me before cancer and me after cancer and that it was something I would deal with for the rest of my life.

It’s still something I’ll deal with for the rest of my life, but, in spite of all the changes, in spite of the fact that I have scars, both internal and external, in spite of having to wear bracelets with health information in case I’m left unconscious in an accident, in spite of still having a plastic bulb in my chest even though I no longer need to be pumped full of poison, in spite of taking a handful of medications twice a day-okay, not a literal handful or even a metaphorical handful really, but more than I ever took on a regular basis before-I still feel like the same person I was before. The before-cancer and after-cancer line is blurred, and I’m left wondering where to go from here. I’m left wondering where I will go from
here. During that first year, and even during the second, I went into every doctor visit with a sense of dread. What if the chemo didn’t work? What if it comes back?

I don’t think I’ll ever be entirely free of that feeling but at least it’s diminished. Before cancer I hadn’t seen my regular doctor in so long I couldn’t have picked him out in a lineup even if he were the only one wearing a white coat and maybe one of those head mirrors that you’d think should have a special name but, no, apparently it’s just called a “head mirror” which makes me wonder why stethoscopes aren’t called heart-listeny-tubes but that’s another story.

Before cancer I could joke about my health because I never got sick. The only reason I ever went into a hospital was to visit other people. It felt like cancer broke a winning streak. At the time that was strangely reassuring. I didn’t want cancer, or any disease, but as long as I never got sick there was always a dark cloud in the back of my mind that sooner or later the odds were going to catch up with me. When I was diagnosed I thought, well, I wish the odds could have caught up with me gradually instead of dumping a heap of tumor on me, but at least I can keep playing
even if I am losing a bunch of chips now. Why I put all of this in gambling
metaphors since I’ve never been in a casino in my life is a mystery. Besides I could always keep that cloud at the back of my mind with the reassurance that luck is an illusion, not something that builds up but has to be paid back eventually. Or to put it more succinctly, shit happens. So does cancer.

But as the two year mark got closer I started feeling I was on another winning streak, and this time that cloud was not only bigger but it was, and is, harder to push it to the back of my mind. Shortly after my diagnosis one doctor told me, “If you’re gonna get cancer this is the one to get.” Testicular cancer is in the easily treatable category, and, although my memory has been left a little fuzzy, I believe that same doctor was the one who told me I had a good chance of being cured. I’d never heard the word “cured” associated with cancer before. For a while I used it too but I won’t say it again. Saying I’m “cured” carries too much temptation to live as though nothing happened. And it feels unlucky.

This anniversary carries other, weirder, even more complicated feelings with it. I don’t want to go through cancer again but I do wish I could relive it and do it better. I survived so I must have done something right. Or did I? My wife took on too much responsibility, did too much that I should have done. If I could do it again I’d make decisions and be more conscious instead of just drifting through treatment.

There’s another feeling, one that doesn’t have a name. It’s not survivor’s guilt even though I know people who lost their fight with cancer. I have friends who didn’t make it. I know others who also survived, who laugh now about how easy their treatment was, that it was only a year or eighteen months. For me it was a just a little over three months. It’s not a competition, and it’s not one I’d want to win even if it were, and it wasn’t easy. I had health issues along the way. My white cell count crashed, leaving me vulnerable to infections which, luckily, I never got.
And yet I was able to keep going. Why was it so much easier for me than it was for others?

When I was first diagnosed, and for a long time afterward, I felt a connection to others who had or who’d fought cancer. It was reassuring. We were part of a club. As the experience recedes I feel less connected. I think maybe there was some mistake. Maybe I didn’t really have cancer, that I’m guilty of some weird fraud.

I also think about all the people who supported me: my wife, the doctors, and just friends and family who offered their sympathy and support. I feel unworthy of all that they did, and feeling anything but happy to be alive and healthy now feels like a betrayal.

My rounds of chemo came in threes: one week I would have five days in a row of treatment, then the next two weeks I’d just go in for a shot on Monday. Even though I say luck is an illusion three still feels like a lucky number to me. Two straight lines connected will leave one side open while three will form a triangle. The rule of three is one of the three secrets of all great comedy-the other is timing-and while two’s company three is a party. So even though I’m currently simmering in a complex stew of strange and even contradictory emotions there is hope.

Ask me how I’m doing a year from now.

Fun With Cancer, Happy Birthday., Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

The Finished Product.

Author: September 21, 2016 15 Comments

Last week I shared a few pictures of a pottery piece I was working on, a fish bowl, and quite a few of you expressed an interest in seeing the finished product. You can skip to the bottom to see the result but in the meantime the project caused me to wax lyrical. So here’s a poem I composed to go along with it, but first here’s a reminder of the work in progress.

fishbowl6

fishbowl7Ode On A Piscene Bowl*

What is beauty, and how is it defined?

And why do we see it everywhere we look, including the sky?

Surely it’s innate, not limited to those whose tastes are refined,

Since, as Shakespeare said, it’s in the beholder’s eye.

Is it really that simple? Take the Mona Lisa and her mysterious smile.

Her appeal has transcended ages

And prompted all sorts of wild speculations.

According to Freud, patron saint of psychiatric sages,

It’s her ample bosom that draws us in. B.F. Skinner, meanwhile,

Says we’re conditioned like rats to respond to her temptations.

 

Now I’m getting off the subject, but it’s difficult, as you can see.

If you try to take the Mona Lisa you’ll be arrested as soon as you touch it,

So instead just take my advice, which I promise you is free,

But you get what you pay for so don’t blame me if it breaks your budget.

Let’s get back to the issue of beauty now

And whether what it is can be answered simply.

Is beauty truth, truth beauty, and is it eternal or is it transitory?

And do we answer that question differently when we’re old than we do when young and pimply?

It’s an inescapable truth that what we once loved we might later disavow,

But that is another story.

*Apologies to John Keats, Ogden Nash, any other literati, glitterati, the Illuminati, and anyone stumped by this Gordian knotty

And here’s the finished product. It didn’t turn out quite like I’d hoped but that’s the way these things go.

fishbowl8

That really is all of it. It seems like there should be more.

Submitted For Your Approval.

A Matter of Etiquette.

Author: September 19, 2016 13 Comments

etiquettePublic transportation etiquette is not written in stone. In fact it’s not written down anywhere as far as I know, although I don’t have any of Emily Post’s oeuvre handy at the moment. I do have some general rules I try to follow. For instance I believe people should board in the order of their arrival at the bus stop. When I got to the stop the other day there was an older woman already there so I was fully prepared to defer to her. We waited and then I could see the bus a couple of blocks away, behind a line of half a dozen cars.

The bus stop was at an intersection and the line of cars pulled up just as the light turned red, leaving them stuck there. And the bus was stuck too, about half a block away. I realize in city terms a “block” is not an absolute measure and the term has confused me ever since I was a kid and my parents would talk about “taking a walk around the block”. I had a bunch of wooden blocks with letters on them but they were so small it was easier to step over them than walk around one. And the size of blocks varies from city to city and even from block to block. In New York, for instance, a block may only be two or three hundred feet long on one side while in Boise a block extends twenty miles, but that’s another story.

Let’s just say the bus was within easy walking distance. And the etiquette in such a situation varies from driver to driver. Some prefer that the passengers-in-waiting get up and walk to the bus so when the light turns green they can go on without stopping. Others prefer that we wait to be picked up at the authorized bus stop. I usually defer to the former, but the woman at the stop next to me was remaining firmly seated.

And there’s the conundrum. If I walked down to the bus and was let on I’d be getting on ahead of her. And if I wasn’t let on I was going to look like a jackass. And either way the driver was going to have to stop and pick her up. So my only choice was to stay put, but I also sat there wondering, didn’t she know the etiquette? Most people in that situation walk down to the bus. If it’s hot or rainy or cold or even if it’s a really nice day it’s better to get on the bus sooner rather than later even if it means a bit of extra walking.

Then the light changed, the cars moved, the bus stopped in front of us, and the woman next to me picked up her cane. And it made sense why she wasn’t interested in taking walking even an extra half a block.

I just wish I’d gotten on the bus first. I don’t need Emily Post to tell me I should have let her take the seat closer to the front.

 

Adventures In Busing.

This Doesn’t Mean Something.

Author: September 17, 2016 5 Comments

nailsI looked at what had been scribbled on the back of this bus bench and my second thought was, I’ve really got to rein myself in. My first thought was, How intriguing. “Nails be ur trap.” Yes—obviously the artist meant coffin nails and that, paired with what looks like part of a readout from a cardiogram on the lower right make a comment nature of mortality. If I’d kept going I might have shoehorned the other tags into this grand masterpiece too but instead I stopped because I felt like I was turning into Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters. Except instead of seeing Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower in everything I was seeing art. I see a bunch of leaves fallen on a sidewalk and start thinking, well maybe someone put them there, arranged them in just that pattern as some kind of a statement, and only come out of this reverie when I walk into a lamppost, but that’s another story.

I would resist the impulse to tie all this together but I can’t so strap in: I’m diving into a bumpy train of mixed metaphors. This fits with a nagging thought that’s been in the back of my mind ever since I opted to take an art history class instead of wandering the halls for an hour each day. The whole idea of “art history” is based on a collective agreement between a bunch of people that we’re going to look at this artist but not that artist and pretend the whole thing fits into a neat line with cave painters at one end and, oh, let’s say Jackson Pollock at the other. Your endpoint may vary, especially since Pollock died in 1956 and history, including art history, has arguably continued on since then.

The problem with this line of thinking is it can quickly spiral out of control. After all every human endeavor that we consider historic or worthy of recognition is based on a collective agreement that it’s, well, worthy of recognition. And there’s a lot of stuff that falls by the wayside.

How do we decide what to keep and what to throw away? Is it random? Could be a trap.

American Graffiti.

Mixed Nuts.

Author: September 16, 2016 4 Comments

nuts-Hey Phil. Phil, you here?

-Yeah, a little shaken, but I’m here. What’s up Wally?

-Just checking. Everything got crazy there and now it’s gone quiet. Really quiet.

-Yeah, I know. I’m okay with the quiet. Better than dealing with—

-HEY EVERYBODY! AL’S IN THE HIZZOUSE!

-Whoop. Let’s party like it’s 2006.

-GOOD ONE PHIL!

-I’m Wally.

-DON’T BE A HATER PHIL. WHERE’S MY MAN BRAZZY? BRAZZY, YOU HERE?

-Da.

-AWESOME. THIS IS MY GUY!

-Ich hasse dich so sehr.

-HE’S THE MAN, AM I RIGHT EVERYBODY? LET ME HEAR EVERYBODY SAY YEAH!

-You two want to be alone?

-DON’T BE LIKE THAT. YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU PHIL!

-I’m Wally.

-WHERE’S PHIL?

-Over here, next to your Teutonic twin.

-Ich verachte Euch alle.

-Some of us can understand you, Brazzy.

-Mein Name ist Bertholletia.

-YOU SPEAK SPANISH PHIL?

-I’m Wally. And [sigh] the most common language there is Portuguese, and anyway he’s speaking…forget it. Yes, Al. Yes I do.

-Dies ändert nichts

-COOL, COOL. WHAT’S HE SAYING?

-That you’re his best friend in the world, Al.

-HA! YOU BET I AM! EVERYBODY LOVES ME! AM I RIGHT EVERYBODY? LET ME HEAR EVERYBODY SAY YEAH!

-Wenn es einen Gott ist, werden Sie das erste zu sterben sein .

-YOU SAID IT BRAZZY! HE PHIL, HELP ME OUT HERE. WHAT’S HE SAYIN‘?

-I’m Wally.

-YEAH. WHAT’D HE SAY?

-He’s trying to butter you up.

-WHOA, HARSH BRAZZY, HARSH. I KNOW THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU MEANT BUT HARSH ANYWAY. I HAD SOME COUSINS WENT DOWN THAT WAY.

-Ich würde Sie mich zerquetschen, wenn ich könnte.

-He says he’s sorry.

-THANKS PHIL. I GOT THAT. AND BRAZZY REMEMBERS GOOBER TOO. A MINUTE OF SILENCE FOR OUR OLD FRIEND GOOBER.

-Y’all keep it down.

-WHO SAID THAT? SOUNDS LIKE GOOBER! GOOBER, YOU HERE?

-Der einzige von euch, die erträglich für mich ist.

-Y’all make more ruckus than a mess of hounds done got a possum.

-Who is that?

-Pecan.

Not Non-Fiction, Quick Takes., The Weekly Essay

Fishing For Compliments.

Author: September 14, 2016 23 Comments

A recurring theme in my part-time pottery hobby has been fish. It started one night when I was going through the instructor’s box of patterns and found a fish one, so I used it to make a pencil jar and a coffee mug, both of which now adorn my desk.

Also pictured: Mark Twain, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Star, and a few unmentionables.

Also pictured: Mark Twain, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Star, and a few unmentionables.

I also just made some flat fish for, er, some reason. They’re purely decorative.

schooloffishAnd that, combined with a desire to find a bigger project, gave me an idea. I started making more fish.

fishbowl1 fishbowl2 fishbowl3fishbowl4Then I formed them around a mold and a base. I applied vinegar, which makes clay stick to itself, gradually building up layers.

fishbowl5fishbowl6It’s a fish bowl. Get it?

fishbowl7I have no idea how this will ultimately turn out which is why I’m sharing the process with you now. Pottery tends to explode or fall apart or do other strange things and, as the saying goes, the journey is more important than the destination. So I’m sharing it now before the destination disintegrates.

Quick Takes.

Get A Ride!

Author: September 13, 2016 8 Comments

Yesterday I wrote about how, like any good Star Trek fan, I celebrated the 50th Anniversary on September 8th with a marathon of episodes and movies, including Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home which I first saw in the theater with a friend who I thought was a bigger Trek fan than me. He had a whole series of books, and comic books, and was the only person I knew–prior to the recent reboots, anyway–who knew Uhura’s first name.

And then as we were coming out of the theater he said, “Well, it was pretty good except for that crap about the whales.” And I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought every fan knew that Star Trek’s science fiction was merely a smokescreen that allowed Gene Roddenberry to take on controversial subjects like racism, sexism, and, um, the environmental threat posed by invasive species.

Tribbles were actually a metaphor for the zebra mussel. Source: Wikipedia

And for a while I thought, Well, he’s just not a real Star Trek fan. It was a terrible assumption on my part. I was falling into the No True Scotsman fallacy, and not just because James Doohan’s accent was fake, but that’s another story. Fans come in many types and varieties. All that makes someone a Star Trek fan is that they enjoy Star Trek, right? Besides I have a conundrum that’s got me questioning whether I’m really a fan. In his book Get A Life William Shatner shares a story about his decision to walk from his hotel to a horse show one morning. It was a crisp, sunny day and he was feeling his oats. It was only when he realized how many miles he’d be hoofing it that he started to panic. At an intersection he talked to a couple in a pickup truck stopped at a red light, explaining who he was and begging for a ride. They pointedly ignored him but before they drove off the woman yelled, “Kirk sucks! Picard rules!”

I have trouble believing this story because I don’t think any true Star Trek fan would turn down the chance to give Captain Kirk a lift, and yet I also don’t think any true Star Trek fan would doubt William Shatner, especially since that book was such a love letter to fans. So, how do I solve the conundrum?

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/trekkies/n9511

Ramble With Me.

Stretching Belief.

Author: September 12, 2016 10 Comments

Like any Star Trek fan I’ve been celebrating the 50th anniversary watching episodes and movies, including Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home which is still a favorite after all these years. Most science fiction requires some suspension of disbelief and Star Trek requires a lot. And I’m okay with that. There’s a lot that I can just take in stride. Ships and bases floating in the depths of space lose all power but the artificial gravity still works? I can accept that. Warp speed means the ships already travel faster than the speed of light but they have to do an extra-special slingshot around the sun to go back in time? I can accept that. The planet Vulcan looks nothing like Earth and yet has an atmosphere safe for humans? Yeah, and most aliens–including many of the species that make up the Federation council are perfectly comfortable in an Earth environment. I’ll just go with it.

This, though, is just impossible for me to believe.

The problem is I’ve never met a bus driver who’d let someone blast music, even at the back of the bus. As soon as the guy cranked that up he’d be told to turn it down and if he didn’t his ass would be thrown off at the next stop.

Maybe I’m overthinking this, though. Maybe the driver’s a fan. Maybe there’s something I don’t know about the route between San Francisco and Sausalito. Hey, if I can accept that transporters are able to break a person down into a highly energized beam then reconstruct them exactly as they were in another place I can accept a guy blaring music on a bus, right?

Please share your theories below.

Up next: the crew parked an invisible Klingon Bird of Prey right in the middle of Golden Gate Park. Why didn’t any joggers bump into it?

Adventures In Busing.

Empty Space.

Author: September 10, 2016 2 Comments

Gentrification doesn’t benefit everywhere equally. Even though some neighborhoods just blocks from where I work are being torn down and rebuilt into towering apartment complexes and condos I can walk the same distance in another direction and find derelict buildings. A rising tide lifts all boats unless they have leaks.

The Jim Reed Showroom, a former car dealership and warehouse down on Church Street, intrigues me. The area is home to a few businesses and a few bars, but the former car dealership, which would seem to be prime real estate, has been empty for at least twenty years now. It’s only a matter of time before someone does something with it but I wonder what’s taking so long.

It’s also a prime spot for graffiti. Most of the graffiti isn’t that interesting. Yeah, sometimes I have to be a critic. But what is interesting to me is where the graffiti is placed. Here’s a satellite view of the place from Google Maps. I’ve added a few modifications of my own.

showroomThe red arrows mark the graffiti-heavy spots. The front of the building, facing Church Street, has had a bit of graffiti over the years but not a lot. It’s the 16th Avenue side that has the most graffiti–especially a couple of loading dock doors. There’s a bit behind the building, facing Hayes Street, but not much. And the side behind Play Dance Bar, Tribe, and Suzy Wong’s House of Yum has almost nothing. You’d think that would be the prime spot for graffiti since it’s protected, even hidden, but the taggers want their work to be seen. And they mostly choose a spot that faces a small park, although it’s not a public park. That space with the trees and paths you see on the left is fenced off and exclusively for the use of people who work in the businesses next door.

showroom1 showroom2

Anyway the desire for visibility may be why, even though a few windows are broken and there’s not much security around the place, there’s no graffiti inside either. At least not as far as I can see. I haven’t been inside–really–but through the windows I can see a place that’s eerily deserted and quietly collapsing in on itself.

showroom1

 

American Graffiti.

It’s All Plasma.

Author: September 9, 2016 5 Comments

physiologyScientists have announced that our tongues can detect another taste: starchiness. For millennia there were only four tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Then umami was added in 1985 although technically it had been accidentally discovered decades earlier by the Japanese who were doing research on giant fire breathing reptiles. If you’re keeping count that’s six now, although if you’re keeping count it’s because you’re a primary school teacher frustrated at having to update your lesson plan and the colorful cartoon tongue hanging in your classroom again. And this discovery raises serious questions about what scientists will discover next. It’s bad enough that in middle school science class we learned that there are three
states of matter-solid, liquid, and gas-and then halfway through the year had to add plasma, which was very strange because the year before we’d learned that plasma is part of our blood but now we had to remember that there’s a different kind of plasma which is a state created by high energy atomic nuclei, and it’s important to keep one separate from the other and remember which one is in the human heart and which one is in the heart of the sun. And then it turned out nature might have at least fourteen other states of matter, not including my Aunt Lena’s Jell-o salad which everyone, including scientists, agrees is unnatural and should not exist. And we have absolutely no idea what other categories of matter, taste, or even color will be uncovered by scientists. We already know that while the human eye can detect three color wavelengths the mantis shrimp eye can detect twelve which must make mantis shrimp primary school classrooms very interesting. When I was a kid all primary school classrooms had a series of colorful pictures around the wall with all the colors of the rainbow from red to purple, but in mantis shrimp classrooms they must go all the way to, I don’t know, hyper puce maybe.
The discovery of new layers to our senses reminds me of synesthesia, a neurological condition that allows the senses of some people to intersect, allowing them to “see” sounds or “taste” colors even without the assistance of that bearded guy who passed out the sugar cubes while Pink Floyd played “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun”. Synesthesia enjoyed a brief surge of popularity in literary circles, or at least in creative writing classes when I was in college where we were encouraged to mix up the senses in our descriptions, coming up with images like “the mahogany smell of coffee”. After years of being told not to mix our metaphors it was as hard as wrapping our tongues around the idea of more than four states of matter, especially with my roommate who always went off and left the coffee pot on so that my best description of the smell of coffee was “wet ferret plasma”.
The important thing is it was an intersection of art and science, two things too often assumed to be separate, even though by the time synesthesia trickled down to creative writing classes it was a cliché, an important lesson for science too: most discoveries eventually get superseded by something else.

 

The Weekly Essay