Monday, June 19, 2006

6.18.06 Skimming...

[Musical note: I've been listening to this CD over and over again for the past two days, but not for months before that, and I'm thinking that Coltrane's live performance Newport '63 has got to be one of the best live recordings around.]

Sunday 18 June I let slip intentionally. What with the lengthy post on Saturday and the boredom factor of it being probably high. Today, a day of rest.

For me the day was physically all right, by the end of the day I'd post a solid 7 on the Franky Scale, but would have said 8 if you caught me in the first half of it. No matter, the nausea and other chemo effect subsided to a huge degree since Tues, and Wed, and Thurs, and .... so I'm happy not to complain today. It was spent mostly organicizing my "life" or my small apartment rather, which really had gotten out of hand, piles of bills and medical records and books and brochures on how to have cancer and how to die.

Speaking of which, tomorrow I'll go into details but the Kubler-Ross book is not really my cup of tea — it's not so much a book "for" terminally ill patients but I think it might be quite good for friends, family, care givers, and those of "you" around "us." So bizarre. Then the Steven Levine book was so bad I'm going back to return it. A crock of new-age spiritualist hooey (is that how one spells "hooey"), a nice word for bullshit. And the clincher was one point when he's explaining that "in the Asian language they call this thing X." "The" Asian language? Is that like "the" African language? All them Asians down there in South, Southeast, Northeast Asia... does he include the Middle East? "In Asia they say..."! I was already slightly tilted to one side by what seemed to be an occasionally glib new-age "approach" to how to die, from someone who is clearly only guessing, but then the ignorance and racism wrapped into that surely well-meaning line about Those Asians. Um, nope. (Just think of all the time some of us could have save in graduate school if we knew there was just one Asian language to learn that They all know....?) Anyway, very much not my cup of tea. I think I'm looking into a lacuna, the big empty spot of nothing, or little blind bit of nothing. Still, I can't see anything there, no good books on this. The old standards that tend toward psychology, psychoanalysis, then existentialism (taken broadly) really have a hell of a lot more insight than the ones you find in the "Self Help" section. Come 'ere, I'll give you a little self help. OK, enough of this. I'll explain more on the book review front tomorrow if time allows with Larry and Lefty in town.

It only took them something like 26 hours to drive here from Salt Lake. Hm. (... and I hope I did not disappoint by not talking about orgasms after the subject line above.)

[Request, serious one: If anyone has happened across this blog and has serious cancer, is terminally ill, etc. and it's moving in any way, and if you're interested in communicating one on one, I'd like to do so, or I'd be happy to, as the saying goes. We can arrange something, if so, just let me know. I've heard there are a few such people out there and there are definitely some internet addresses I don't recognize. Possibly being of some service to people like that — which means other people like me — was one reason in my mind when I started this whole thing. Keep fighting. Mr. J.]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

FUCK!!!!! do not go gentle brother and to all those, like he said, keep fighting.