Friday, September 08, 2006

9.08.06, Slow Waves

Friday hasn't brought much excitment, just some fatigue and tiredness (the former I mean technically after the chemo side effect) after a rough night's sleep last night. Franky Scale would clock in around 5. It's so arbitrary, as we've said, but on average I'll drop one right in the middle. It's mostly nausea, the coming and going of a stomach that rises up the throat, or that flips over one way and then the other.

For now, to alleviate these annoyances I'm going to talk some poems with a friend. Get away in the mind. Maybe something spontaneous and guest-bloglike will occur.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Kafka coulda he woulda but even he couldna thought up sucha as that last, about the missed procedure "you" missed. A clear nominee for the award!
It's good to hear of another good writer over there in the land of 38 parallels.

Someone gave a talk at Rotary yesterday, on listening in poetry... And sure, first up in that speaker's mind was Sowol and his "Azaleas," but then second? Listening. How do we listen to poetry? As kids, to Longfellow? As friends of a poet, at a reading? And then something happens, we get caught, and it's Keats with his "Modern Love," or Pound with his Metro, Korea and Sowol and Azaleas, and then? Bishop! "Insomnia"!
I will never reveal the third poet, the third poem, for that talk at the Rotary meeting.
But "Azaleas"? That first line is Ah Oh Eeh Ah, Na pogiga, and you have to wonder, Just what is going on in that next room? Ah. Oh. Eeh. Ah. Or Bishop! Only Bishop could have "...sleep, or" in one line, and "sleeper" in the next, as if defying you the reader to do anything except gasp. And then all those poems you have read and memorized sit there behind, as another takes shape through your own writing, your own pen.
Some doo-doo brain who didn't know what writing it was like published a book called The Anxiety of Influence, when actually it's the Ah Oh Eeh Ah of influence, if you ask me.

Slarry said...

Dear Scott:

That damn yucky nausea. I’m glad you are still writing and “talking” poems.
Another new creation perhaps?
Just checking in. I know the day after is always gross and hard.

I’ve been thinking about you and reading a very interesting article in Esquire Magazine.
Hmmm....

Saw my own doc yesterday-- a few more tests but generally ok.

The chemo regimen continues to sound predictably awful.

I just got through reading from the book: WHAT DYING PEOPLE WANT
and found a poem by Emily Dickinson:

The Mystery of Pain:

Pain----bas an Element of Blank----
It cannot recollect
When it began----or if there were
A time when it was not-----

It has no future----but itself----
Its infinite realms contain
In Past----enlightened to perceive
New Periods-----of Pain
( from page 76 )

I hate that you are in pain and having to participate in a war
where you have to rage and fight all of the time, just
to get past the nausea, fatigue and pain, for even
a modicum of normal.
It just pisses me off and I wish there was something I could do.
Is there anything I can do?

Lefty found this quote from one of the Buddha books:

“Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of
another person’s suffering.
It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing
that we can do nothing to
save the other from his pain.”

--Sheldon Chop

I’ve been thinking about this all day and you, and there has to be
something I can do or more to offer you other than just my love, empathy
and support. Today I am more mad than sad--
or more accurately, equally as mad as I am sad about all of this shit.
Keep fighting, dear brother. You are so loved and respected by so many.
Not much of a conciliation considering it is about your life--

I hope the Brans finally made it.
Did they make it there?

I love and miss you. We all do.
Keep in touch.

Much love--

Sheri

Anonymous said...

Mr. Jones:

The Princess wants me, your anonymous reader, to write something "cute." Nothing is cute about someone who has consumed more alcohol in the last 5 hours than she has had in the entire last year (the Princess makes a mean dirty martini).

We wish you were here.

Mr. Jones said...

Me too. She used to walk around the kitchen with an empty glass in her hand and coyly say "Dirty martini? Will you do it?" I know when I've been had. Sure would have been fun tongight thought. Ah. -Mr. J.