Is this the end . . .

Julia Murney is helping me say a couple of things because I have lost my song and voice and so, I’m borrowing hers to say, for a while, goodbye.

How did we come to this?

The day after the inauguration I noticed the red splotches on my upper right arm, splotches which, within a few months, spread down that arm, then covered the left arm in the same way, top to bottom, next appeared on both legs, top to bottom, soon after painting my torso and back, and here I am, nine months and countless doctor visits and insurance humiliations and additional symptoms later; still sick, having spent Monday and Tuesday of this week mostly in the bathroom, much of Tuesday in tears, feeling a bit better and hopeful yesterday except so fatigued every time I tried to read I fell asleep, and this morning I woke with stomach cramps again, my right heel hurting each step I take, three fingers of my right hand throbbing as if I had spent all night sleep-cleaning with my hands in bleach, and my knees aching so much I was afraid I would trip and fall down the steps on my two trips carrying the pups I’m watching to their morning constitutional, treats, and breakfast, and I feel so disheartened and disgusted and despairing I can’t bring myself to go to the effort to get the thirty or thirty-five new (repeat, mostly) blood tests and chest x-ray ordered by the latest doctor who has, in essence, like all the other doctors told me the other doctors were wrong and she doesn’t know what I have and like all the other doctors, doesn’t think she’s the right one to treat me and all I can think is, any day now, I’ll be losing my insurance anyway because of the inauguration nine months ago and the hateful, idiot bigots who live in and run this country and imagine how I’d be feeling if I lose the ability to get my Wellbutrin.

Yes, it’s a run-on sentence but this past nine months have been a run-on cluster-fuck in my life and the world. And last night, one of my vices slapped me in the face with more ugly reality. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I watch Big Brother. For those of you who have more sense and spend your time more wisely than do I, Big Brother is a reality show where fifteen or so strangers move into a house together and spend a few months trying to be the last two left in the house, at which point the last nine who’ve been voted out by one another become a jury deciding which of the two played the game the best and most deserve half a million dollar prize.

Only, last night, just like in January, a freaking idiot who’d done next to nothing to deserve the title of Winner, won, because the bitter jury members couldn’t stand that the person who deserved to win by virtue of playing the game brilliantly, had outplayed them all — so they denied him the win.

That was bad enough, but that was only five morons so foul and vile they voted for a loser just because they couldn’t be the winner. Still, it bothered me. A lot. What bothered me even more came next.

There is a consolation prize called America’s Favorite where fans call in and vote for the house guest they most like. Over fifteen million people voted — or, there were fifteen million votes, many people doing the vote stuffing thing that happens on these call-in reality/popularity contest shows (perhaps this, too, was Russian interference?) — and only one of the top three was in any way deserving of any admiration, the other two being scum or worse, and the one who won was a misogynist, nasty, hyper-masculine, near-sociopath who’d had NOTHING nice to say about anyone and considered himself morally superior to all of them. A real pig, not unlike the idiot who was inaugurated in January.

I dissolved into breakdown sobs.

Granted, I don’t feel well. Nine months of not feeling well exacerbated by a week of intense to moderate discomfort which is a continuation of these months of never feeling 100% and not knowing from day to day how I’m going to feel or what is going to hurt or not be functioning and having been calling senators every damn day to say “Please don’t take away my healthcare” and then, those Big Brother results, again victory for two undeserving, awful men, awful men rewarded for their lack of talent and humanity; I lost it.

I sat on the couch, a pup on each side of me, a larger dog at my feet, and a cat in my lap, weeping to them, “I don’t belong in this world. I don’t understand this world. There is just so much I don’t get that I thought I got and I will never get and I just am too tired. I can’t fight anymore. I can’t win in a world where these are the choices people make.”

I remember when I believed the world was kinder. And I miss it. I miss that. I miss believing I might be loved, happily ever after, someone to see me — and now all I can see is a world where the majority of people are full of admiration for people who hate and win dirty and ugly and I just, I’ve lost my song, I can’t sing, and I miss the colored lights.

I love Julia Murney. Since I’ve lost my song, she’ll speak for me here. I think it’s time for me to close this blog. It is read less and less by fewer and fewer. Who do I think I am? I know, truly I do, it’s not just me; everyone who has a soul is in existential pain of their own right now. And if after all this time I haven’t managed to find my place, find a partner, find an income, find my health, and worse, have lost my song and lost my writing voice and —well, I can’t keep up with the rules, clearly, I never knew them, or, they change them every time I get close to a win. I am tired. I am lonely. I am defeated. I am broke. I am about to be uninsured. I don’t know where I’m going next. I don’t exactly know where I am now, and so, if I can figure out how to back all the entries up, I think this is going to go away. This will no longer be where I am. Going.

 

 

Reading: “The Days Grow Short…”

In this post I discuss “The Prague Sonata” by Bradford Morrow and “The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells” by Andrew Sean Greer, .

I have read much less than usual this month for reasons joyous and not so; friends and new beginnings belonging to the former category, my continuing health saga and personal stressors belonging to the latter. The relevance of beginning a book blog entry with this self-involved I-paragraph being I have become increasingly stingy with my time and increasingly prone to dropping off to sleep during what used to be my reading time. And it’s September, not just in 2017, but, in my life — for me, on this go round, it is at least Fall, if not Winter, and so my time — what I do with it and how I think about it — is of paramount concern. Which brought September Song by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson to mind. This lyric:

Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you
These precious days I’ll spend with you

I am — during these, my precious days, careful with which books I choose to share myself, my thoughts, my heart. So you can be sure if I write about one, it has been at least a pleasant companion. Otherwise, I just fold after about page 50, thank it for its efforts, and move on. I don’t write about those books because even though I didn’t enjoy them, they are the product of someone’s heart and love and good intentions (almost always) and time, and I think to say unpleasant things about books (or, most anything except the current administration and all sorts of bigotry and hatred) is more damaging and revealing about the speaker than it is about the book.

Kindness is always a better choice, and very much needed in the world these days — so I am striving to have kindness be my default, even (especially?) in those instances when rage was once my go-to.

So, here are my latest reads, both of which, as coincidence (or not) would have it, have to do with time.

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, Andrew Sean Greer, Hardcover, 289pp, June 2013, Ecco Books

I recently read and loved Andrew Sean Greer’s latest novel, Less [which I talked about here] and so I determined to explore his backlist, thus, this 2013 book.

In 1985 Greta’s beloved brother, Felix, has died. Soon after, frustrated by Greta’s lack of energy for anything but mourning, her partner, Nathan, departs. Despite medication and the support of her devoted aunt, Ruth, Greta is inconsolable. She agrees to electro-convulsive therapy, the first treatment of which finds her awakened in 1918.

In 1918 she wakes with her 1985 consciousness, but is somehow connected to another version of herself which is both different and the same, surrounded by the same — but again, different — people in her life from 1985. And 1918-Greta is also having treatment for depression which sends her(them?) to the 1941 version of the three (one?) of them.

It’s a little complicated and we only hear inside 1985 Greta’s head as she tries to change the lives of the 1918 and 1941 versions of herself and others, which, it seems, the 1918 and 1941 versions of Greta are also doing as they hop around in time.

I am a huge fan of Andrew Sean Greer’s writing. It is rich in heart and forgiveness, insight into human nature, and the ability to evoke both the frailty and strength, foibles and fine points, light and dark of characters and situations. In this ambitiously structured novel he draws parallels between  the massive, tragic, and mostly needless loss of lives from AIDS, the 1918 flu pandemic, and World War II; in doing so he creates many beautiful images, heartbreak, and the lyrical, near poetic sentences I so loved in Less. Late in the story, speaking about her ex-lover (in 1985’s iteration) Nathan, Greta says this:

Those separate men, the different men he was, in different worlds. Perhaps it’s because I knew Nathan so well, and knew his moods; of him thinking beside me: so quiet! Of him silencing the alarm so I could sleep another hour: so kind! Of him reading some infuriating news in the paper: so angry! I could roll them all into one ball and put it in my brain as one person. Even before my travels, I had met and lived with these different men: the quiet one, the kind one, the angry one. Just as Nathan had lived with those same men himself. For others are not the only ones forced to face our other selves; above all, we must face them. On my last visit to 1942, Felix showed me a photograph of the two of us. It had been taken the week before. And while I knew it was not me, I could not tell which one it was. Perhaps one day they will invent a camera to capture the fleeting self — not the soul, but the self— and we can truly see which one we were, on any particular day, and mark the shifting lives we lead that we pretend belong to one person alone. Why is it so impossible to believe: that we are as many headed as monsters, as many armed as gods, as many hearted as the angels?

It’s something like the aha-moment/magic discovery of the book for Greta, or, the discovery of magic, when she begins to comprehend all the possible Me’s who exist in each I. And while I sometimes found parts of the narrative to be difficult to follow, and here and there a little self-help-y prosaic and banal, even those passages, like the above quoted, were grounded in wonder and hope, two elements of which there can never be too much and which make a fine foundation for any novel.

The Prague Sonata, Bradford Morrow, Hardcover, 528pp, October 2017, Atlantic Monthly Press

[I requested a copy of this novel and was sent one. I do not know the author, and have no connection to the publisher, I found the synopsis intriguing and so asked to be included in the list of bloggers/book people who got advance reader copies.]

I have not read any of Bradford Morrow’s eight previously published works of fiction, so I came to the Prague Sonata fresh, unencumbered by expectations other than this — like The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, about which I just wrote — the novel was blurbed and praised by Michael Cunningham, a writer whose work I very much admire, and in synopsis it sounded like a thick, rich, sprawling epic of old school heft.

That, it was. Its five-hundred-plus pages play a score of emotional richness, its themes and motifs introduced, reiterated and expanded, crescendo after crescendo — each memorable and developed in singularity — merging, melding to become a whole which has been artfully puzzled together into something symphonic, seamless, an entirely unique composition meticulously created from its various counter-themes into a harmony of a textured, layered, masterful epic.

It is early 20th century when Otylie’s father dies, a casualty of war, having left his nine-year-old daughter who he’d been training to be an accomplished pianist with a music manuscript she knew to be his most prized possession. Otylie swears never again to sing or play music and in 1939 Prague when war again intrudes into her life, she divides her father’s treasure in three, knowing by then its provenance may be historically important making it a valuable artifact she does not wish to lose to the invading German beast-Nazis. She keeps one movement for herself, sending another by messenger to her husband who has disappeared into the underground resistance movement, and a third to friends.

Fast forward to the beginning of the 21st century when neophyte music historian Meta Taverner — whose father in a very different way had encouraged and ended her career as a concert pianist — is given the middle movement of the sonata by Irena, friend of Otylie who carried the manuscript out of Czechoslovakia when she survived the death camps, and now, in New York, chooses Meta to unearth the first and third movements, thus fulfilling the promise Irena made to Otylie, whose fate she does not know.

All of this plot is performed in the first fifty pages and advanced and refined in the next 475 during which Meta pursues her quest to make Otylie’s sonata whole again and, too, to discover its composer. The narrative moves back and forth through time following both Otylie and Meta in their separate trajectories until those paths melt into one another in a finale of rhapsodic consonance.

Bradford Morrow interweaves many themes through each time period: Music. War. Love stories. Friendship. Truth and Lies for Good and Evil. Ambition. Parent-Child. And others. There are elements of mystery-writing, tinges of gothic villainy and distress, romance novels, and all of this delivered in an enrapturing literary fiction format that transports the reader into other worlds. It is tempting to speed through to discover the fates of the characters, but then one would miss the abundance of historical detail, musical scholarship, and well-crafted prose. Listen to this excerpt (borrowed from the Grove Atlantic website for the novel, [CLICK HERE]):

With reverent delicacy, she turned the pages one by one, eyes traveling across the busy staves that filled each leaf. This wasn’t going to be easy to play. Unaware she was doing so, she hummed an occasional phrase, tapped her toe gently on the floor. Meta might have sat down with the manuscript at her piano and performed it then and there. But she didn’t want to listen to it until she’d had time to study the piece, learn what its composer was saying.

This was not your everyday second movement of a sonata, despite Irena’s recollecting that’s what it probably was. Brazen in its initial runs, the music settled now and again, only to move away into knotty clusters of sixteenth notes, like an impish acrobat who pretends to teeter off his tightrope high above the crowd, flails his arms as if he’s about to fall, until, nimbly, in slow motion, he moves on.

Then, a plunge off a cliff—everything shifted to blacker registers. Gone was the acrobat. Gone were the playful, bucolic pace and tone of the earlier passage, which was, it now occurred to Meta, a feint, a dramatic setup. The meat, the soul of the dolorous passage had such a rich, slow sadness to it that, surprised, she turned back to the opening and reread the movement up to this radical shift in mood.

With its moments of staggering power and slyness, the music seemed as fresh that day, to this young woman in her barbell flat, as it must have sounded when it was conceived. Who was the conceiver, though? And where were the fore and aft of this noteworthy craft?

Lovely, yes? Musical and poetic and evocative and compelling; which neatly sums up Bradford Morrow’s The Prague Sonata.

**********

And so, I finish here, exiting to get back to cherishing and contemplating time in these Septembers — the current month, and the Fall of my life. Fall has always been my favorite season with its voluntary shedding of its summer clothes and the faith in the promise of Spring renewal such shedding implies. I leave you with the inimitable and brilliant Miss Betty Buckley and her version of Weill and Anderson’s September Song. Enjoy my dears, and please, don’t waste your time on the waiting game. Much love and light and, my dear ones, truly, thank you for spending these precious days with me, I am so grateful you read me, it has brought me much joy. Now, here I am, going.

 

 

Medical Updates – not important

SORRY to the people who come here for book-blog. I didn’t want to have to tell the story of my latest adventure in the nine month slog through medical mysteries to a bunch of people so I’m posting it here. Feel free to skip. After nine months of it, I wish to hell I could just skip it too.

Okay my friends, today was another in the misadventures on Charlie’s medical journey.

The day started badly because I was up every hour last night, gave up at 4, my stomach was a mess again today, but I had determined a few weeks ago I would not skip the gym no matter what. Well, I changed my mind today while at the gym. Long story I’m not telling but it became clear that I am delusional about my age and abilities and place in the world. I think I’ll be skipping the gym for a while.

When I got home, I waited until 9 when the rheumatologist’s office opened because I had not gotten a call reminding me of appointment, nor gotten anything in the mail (the one who was canceled because of my insurance coverage — or lack — had sent a 35 page questionnaire) and I called them, explained I wanted to verify I had an appointment at 11:15. The fellow said, “Yes, didn’t you get my message?”

No, I didn’t.

“I told you that you need to bring your lab results or have your doctor fax them.”

I never got that message.

“Isn’t your number 301-471-1251?”

No, it isn’t.

“Oh.”

I gave him my real number and he said I had to have the lab work, doctor notes, etc. I explained that I could NOT drive to Hagerstown, pick them up, and get to Gaithersburg in time for the appointment. And that the doctor had said WEEKS ago when appointment made that they would send them. Keep in mind, this is the doctor who gave them my wrong number — or, they took the number down wrong — who knows.

SO,  called Hagerstown and explained and asked if they had ever sent the info as they’d said they were going to. Turns out they had not. This information after I’d been on and off hold for fifteen minutes. SO, she then comes back on line and says, “Well, we’ll fax it now, but for future reference, you need to come in here and sign a release — but we’ll do it this time because you have an appointment.”

I semi-lost it. I said, “YOU made the appointment. YOU told me you’d send the information and did NOT ask me to sign anything. I’ve already SIGNED a release there allowing you to have and disseminate and get my information — and if that was NOT enough then you should have CALLED me and told me IMMEDIATELY that you were NOT going to do what you’d TOLD me you were going to do — AND I MIGHT ADD, this was all after you had first referred me to a doctor who did NOT take my insurance despite specifically saying you had checked that they did thus putting this appointment off by a month.”

She hung up on me. I assumed the info would not be sent. But, it was.

I get there. Fill out more forms. The doctor comes out to get me. She is very nice but it turns out the reason I could get in on such short notice is because she just opened this practice. Every patient there was new.

Needless to say, as with every other doctor to which I’ve been, she hadn’t read my file. Had no idea the history or why I was there. In her defense, she hadn’t been SENT the file.

SO, I had to explain everything. English is not her first language. We had some difficulty understanding one another. She asked me the same thing over and over — and like the dermatologist had at first, she fixated on thinking the Wellbutrin had caused the rash — I had to explain three times before she finally got it that the rash started BEFORE the Wellbutrin and was why I originally WENT to the doctor NINE FREAKING MONTHS AGO. The day after the inauguration. By which point I had been crying, daily, sick with fear and horror since November 9. TWO FREAKING MONTHS.

She then proceeded to read my file OUT LOUD while I was sitting there. She does NOT think I have lupus. She said they did NOT do all the tests they should have if they thought I had lupus. She said she doesn’t think they should have ruled out cancer yet. She said they were wrong to tell me to stop taking Vitamin D while on Plaquenil, that she has had plenty of patients on Plaquenil who also take D.

Then she starts with the, “So, you don’t have Hepatitis, any of its forms, no HIV, almost all your blood tests are normal.”

I have been told MANY times what I do NOT have, and I am grateful I am as healthy as I am. Really, I am. BUT I’VE HAD THIS RASH ALL OVER MY BODY FOR NINE MONTHS and now, the last few, on and off muscle issues, joint pain, return of digestive problems, concentration issues. I mean — THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG.

She explained to me why she doesn’t think it’s lupus. She tested my muscle strength — resisting her push/pull — uhm, SHE’S TINY, lol, I could have lifted her.

She too, like EVERY OTHER DOCTOR, asked me over and over, “And it doesn’t itch?”

NO FFS IT DOES NOT ITCH.

Anyway, she was clearly stymied, too. She wrote up an order for 30 more blood tests and a chest x-ray and said get those done and come back in a week. BUT HERE IS THE TOPPER — she said:

“If I were you, I would get to Johns Hopkins and start in the dermatology department because this doesn’t look or present like anything I know or your other doctors have known.”

My insurance BARELY covers her. I doubt very much it’s going to happily send me trotting to Hopkins.

She said something about I don’t have inflammation of cells from biopsy results but I do have separation of cells or something — I have no idea, by then when she’d freely admitted she had no idea what it was and was going to run all the blood tests over and some more and ADDED BONUS some urine tests, too, and I had quit listening.

She also said, “Your blood pressure is a little high.”  It was 140/90. It is USUALLY 120/80 but at every doctor visit it soars. I told her this. She said, “Yes, you’re probably tense with all this.”

YOU THINK?

Look, she was perfectly nice. I’m sure she is probably a good doctor. And I’m near sure that no one is ever going to be able to tell me what I have.

So, that’s it. I have an urge to get into my bed, under the covers, and not come out for a few days — but, I can’t. Which is probably a good thing. But, I will have some free time because I am not going back to gym — for now — I need to re-evaluate many, many things and consider carefully the delusions in how I see myself and what the hell I’m doing and why I have wasted my life.

One good thing — I was able to pick up my copy of Hillary Clinton’s WHAT HAPPENED at Curious Iguana, and just walking in there made me feel whole and healed for a few minutes.

Love to you all —

not-so-miracle Charlie

Not Knot. Who’s There?

Sundays when I was young began with hunger; we were Catholic and we couldn’t eat before mass so as to be purified to accept the body and blood of Christ at communion. After church, I was most often left to spend the day with my aunt, Sissie, who lived with and cared for my grandparents: Mom-Mom who suffered from early onset senility, and Pop-Pop who suffered in silence. These were the parents of my father who had died when I was seventeen months old.

Sissie and the house in Libertytown were my sanctuary, the place where Miracle Charlie was born. Sissie offered refuge, a safe place where I could explore who I was, I could be whoever and whatever I dreamed without fear of being judged, belittled, condemned, or disowned. Sissie and Libertytown and Sundays were unconditional love.

Sissie and the house in Libertytown were comfort in a world where I often felt out of place, targeted, ridiculed, and in danger, while at the same time I also felt as if who I was and what I was worth were not seen, not understood, not respected, and not valued.

Sometimes, still, I admit I allow that NOT consciousness to overtake me, become my focus, weaken my sense of who I am and upend my peace; in those sorrowful times I look to others I admire and project onto them their disapproval and dismissal of me.

They’ve nothing to do with this, you understand. I understand. But in those times it feels to me as if they — that amorphous community of shiny, glowing, better / prettier / smarter / richer / stronger / braver than me’s — are purposely dis-including me, having parties and conversations to which I am not invited, from which I am actively left out. Sometimes they do this with — I imagine — a snort or a sigh or rolled eyes amongst themselves and the, “Oh, there he is again, when will he get it that we just don’t want him around.”

Sometimes it feels as if I have proof. For example; not having checked into Grindr for a while, to return and find I’ve a message and to discover the message is not from any of the fellows with whom I’ve attempted liaison-ing, but, rather, from a firm offering liposuction.

Yes. That. Desired, wanted, pursued on Grindr — a space specifically invented for hooking up? Is that my experience?

Not.

Or, to have been in a Twitter conversation, commented, and had the shiny-brights promiscuously hearting and commenting on one another’s responses but not mine, or, better, their party of delighted agreements with a dissenting riposte to my opinion. Included? Joshed with? Responded to on Twitter — a space specifically invented for making community with the like-minded? Was that my experience then?

Not.

It is then I get the feels (as the kids say) about all I am not.

Not.

The election in November took me to a scary NOT place. A feeling that this was a country where so many people considered me and all the things in which I believed, the ways in which I thought we ought to behave, as NOT.

But, then, Secretary Hillary Clinton is a miracle. She has been vilified, discriminated against, slandered, belittled, ruthlessly attacked, lied about, and yet survived attempt after outrageous attempt to destroy her, always behaving with dignity, grace, and continued faith in the fundamental goodness of humanity despite an abundance of loathsome, repugnant people seemingly determined to convince her otherwise.

She not only survived the election being stolen from her, she came through with honor. Did she go low, weep and whine and worry about whether she was adequately loved and rewarded for who she was and what she’d said and done?

Not.

She knows who she is. She has followed her heart and her conscience and so, what others think of that or do with that is not in her control. She accepts that and keeps living her truth.

And here I am, a person who wastes life energy getting upset when people dis me on Grindr or don’t heart my Twitter posts.

Is that who I want to be? Is that who I am?

Not.

Today, and lately, too often lately anyway, I have begun in hunger brought on by this knot of not. I am not sharing this not to shame myself nor to solicit sympathy or “love you’s” — but, rather, as a reminder that NOT is not about lack in our lives, it’s about how we look at our lives.

When I am feeling unloved, living in lack, eventually I remember to open my eyes and look at all the abundance in which I live, the opulence of love with which I am daily embraced, the wealth of tender kindness, attention, affection, devotion, and selfless, whole-soul companionship with which my life has been blessed.

When I am feeling overcome by NOT, eventually I remember to remember how I am not alone in feeling this way, to remember how difficult is the world right now, how stressed and pulled and in need of comfort and snuggling and affirmation is everyone — and just as I don’t have the energy or time or fortitude EVERY MOMENT to comfort and lift others, neither do others have the resources to make sure my delicate constitution isn’t upset by their imagined slights.

This isn’t to Pollyanna say there aren’t people who dismiss you, snobbish elitists who can’ be bothered by those they judge not of their class or import, or mean rednecks wanting to wipe you off the face of the earth, or nasty gaybois who think you’re old and fat and not hot enough so it’s okay to go out of their way to tell you so. Yes, the world has plenty of people who will behave horribly and, for whatever reason, treat others badly.

They’re not my business. Not.

My business is me. My business is to continue to cultivate my own personal faith in which it is not necessary to live in hunger nor to practice martyrdom nor to measure sin and wrong; but, rather, a faith in me, in knowing I have (almost always) followed my heart and done my best to be good and kind and affirming to others, to keep living my truth.

And so, whatever anyone else does with that, whatever anyone else thinks of me, however they respond to me, to whatever degree they do or do not Twitter-heart me, or Grindr-respond to me, it is out of my control. Is any of that to do with me?

Not.

Beautiful Sunday, dear ones. Best energies to all those in the path of these storms. Much love and light and courage to live your truths and count the plus, rather than live in the minus. And here I am, going.

Moontans … an excerpt from “Libertytown”

I am feeling the need to re-visit old blogs & writing. This is from my unpublished novel, Libertytown, and I first posted this in June of 2015.

here we are going

Having been informed by my physician that I’ve a vitamin D deficiency, I have been trying to take more sun. But, it’s the night I love. Tonight, the lightning bugs are painting glorious blasts and bursts of light in the backyard, it’s quite magic. I was sitting, watching, and came to mind my old life and a section of “Libertytown”, my un-published novel, inspired by my love of the energies of the night sky, and what one man in my life made of that love, did with that love, how he ruined me by knowing what it was I loved and how to use it against me. So, here, from “Libertytown”, some Moontan.

LIBERTYTOWN (an excerpt)

After the EVITA load-out, I’d, in essence, lost him. We’d talked on the phone just those four times but never had we discussed my touch, his explosion, as if none of it had ever…

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Reading: Mrs. Fletcher (No, it’s not a Murder, She Wrote satire)

Mrs. Fletcher, Tom Perrotta, Hardcover, 309pp, August 2017, Scribner

I read Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers in 2012 which I know only because I use Goodreads to track my reading history and I check when entering a book to see if I’ve read other works by the author.

The first thing that earlier novel has in common with Mrs. Fletcher is I was enticed by its blurbs and synopsis. The Leftovers was all about what would happen to those left behind were the biblical rapture to actually occur; an irresistible fantasy for a lapsed-Roman Catholic-agnostic like myself. Mrs. Fletcher‘s promos promise a “feverish turning of pages” through a  “hilarious, provocative … joyride” by a “smart, fearless … wet-your-pants-funny satirist” as he explores what seems a fascinating premise about up-to-the-minute issues facing the world today, like parent-child relationships, on-line persona versus real-life person, and the various comings of age one now goes through in a world of much longer lives with many more options for personal relationships of varieties both deep and shallow, erotic and platonic; irresistible for a lapsed real-life personality who lives behind various on-line personas like myself.

The second thing The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher have in common is the promise of the premise was not — for me — kept.

In all fairness, it started with the title. I couldn’t divorce the name, Mrs. Fletcher, from years of the same-named mystery-solving-novelist character played by Angela Lansbury on Murder, She Wrote.

That aside, Mrs. Fletcher — here named Eve — is divorced, director of a senior center, and her only child, Brendan, is leaving the comfort of his upper-middle-class suburban, popular-jock-boy life for college. Brendan is expecting to continue his partying and privilege at an elevated level, while Eve is dreading what she fears will feel like abandonment and loneliness. The conflict and comedy(?) come from the expectations of each one’s expected experience more or less happening to the other.

Eve is drawn into online porn portals, begins unusual and unexpected friendships and pursuits, and revels in her new privacy and life, at the same time Brendan becomes a pariah at college and suffers agonizing loneliness. Eve is affected by sexual text-messages from unknown and shockingly inappropriate (to her mind) people, while Brendan’s attempts to alter things with his texting fail, distancing him further and further from what he desires. This reversal of expected fortunes extends to Brendan’s one sexual escapade, which reveals him (to himself and others) to be a near-predator rather than the skilled stud who buys condoms in bulk he thought he was, while  Eve’s multiple forays into new erotic territories reveal her to be far more open and sensual and attractive than she’d considered herself before.

Other characters in the novel are also grappling with loneliness, sexual desire and identity and need, and — to one degree or another — hiding parts of themselves, channeling life-energy into who they imagine themselves to be as opposed to actually being those people; as if everyone in the novel is living a double-life: the civilized, following the rules of polite society persona presented to the world, and the fantasy-self, the daring, boundary-free, get what they want, be fully who they dreamed of being self. It’s Life-porn — that best self, what if, yes I could if only scenario we have running in our heads when imagining what life could be.

And this novel — and most of Mr. Perrotta’s work is, essentially, just that: Life Porn. He specializes in almost but not quite satirizing and exposing the flaws and foibles of the middle and upper middle class suburbanites and communities about whom and which he writes. And he writes well with a hip kind of mass-market-faux-literary-fiction rhythm and just enough cynical judgment to let the very people about whom he writes nod in agreement that they can see their neighbors in his stories.

It’s a frustratingly fence-straddling lack of commitment to real social satire, the “isn’t this awful” combined with “aren’t we cute” thing that rankles and disturbs. And judges. Eve toys with exploring sexuality, but, without spoiling, reverts to suburban-polite-society-republican conformity.

In a novel that seems to aim for wanting to explore the effect of new ways of communicating and the availability of all sorts of connections, and too, the numbing effect of same, no one seems much changed by what goes on. There is never really anything at stake.

And that’s fine. Mr. Perrotta has every right to write whatever he likes; and it’s skilled story-telling, fast reading, and interesting enough. BUT, there is so much more gift there — in the possibilities of the story, the richness of the subject matter, and in the author’s clear intelligence and emotional insights — one can’t help wishing he’d gone further, deeper, beyond the expected and more into the boundary-free, behind the public persona, Life Porn reality that lots of us are living today.

Reading: Fall-ing out of August

In this post I visit Katherine Heiny’s Standard Deviation; Andrew Sean Greer’s Less; Carys Davies The Redemption of Galen Pike; Ross MacDonald’s The Wycherly Woman; and Liz Nugent’s Unraveling Oliver.

Impeach The Motherfucker Already. Me, modeling my pussyhat and ITMFA pin, made for me by my dear Twitter pal, Dierdre.

August is coming to an end, a time when I usually remark about how quickly the year has flown and look forward to my favorite season, Fall. Not in 2017, I’m afraid. It seems since January we’ve suffered through at least a decade, every day bringing a new horror, abomination, defilement of decency, and a lowering of the bar as to what constitutes acceptable behavior, all thanks to the sociopathic buffoon who somehow managed to ride a wave of hate and deceit into the highest position in the land, surround himself with racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, classist, fascist  toadies, bigots, and hypocrites of every stripe, all of them determined to chip away at all that is good and kind and right about this country, to reverse the progress we’ve made toward equality and peace, and move the world backward to a time when only old heterosexual white men claiming to be christian had any power or say.

I wake every day with only a few seconds of joy before I remember what’s been done and being done to this country, to this world, and I am filled with fear and sorrow.

So, I escape into literature. As much as I can. Here then are the last few with which I filled my end of summer days.

Standard Deviation, Katherine Heiny, Hardcover, 336pp, May 2017, Knopf

From the accretion of telling, penetrating details in episode after sharply, wittily drawn episode Katherine Heiny builds a hard to describe but fascinating whole in her debut adult novel, Standard Deviation.

Graham Cavanaugh divorced his first wife, the outwardly staid, stable, and sturdy Elspeth, to wed his second, the unbound, unfiltered, and unafraid Audra, a union which produced Matthew, a son whose results on educational and emotional tests fall outside the standard deviation, resulting in a diagnostic label of Aspberger Syndrome. How these four characters interact with others and navigate the confusing, noisy, complicated modern world is the landscape Katherine Heiny uses to map many varieties of love, leaving, and loss in ways insightful, humorous, touching, poignant, and ultimately eloquently revelatory.

Katherine Heiny manages the sleight-of-prose trick here of using humor — and this is funny, indeed in a sophisticated, sly, dry way — to explore the unknowable distances and secret, private spaces in all relationships, even the most loving, tender, and treasured. Autistic Matthew is hardly the most emotionally reserved and touchy of the people here; all have their own manner of arms-length-ing others, an observation the author elucidates subtly through action. One is taken by surprise as one comes to the end of what started off feeling like yet another light-hearted, near-sarcastic take on the dilemmas of the privileged but has turned into a moving examination of what love is, what it takes, what it does, and how it grows and goes and sometimes, makes for wisdom.

Less, Andrew Sean Greer, Hardcover, 272pp, July 2017, Lee Boudreaux Books, Little Brown and Company

One of the many pleasure of reading is discovering an author whose voice speaks to your soul and realizing, “They have a backlist!” So it is for me with Andrew Sean Greer and his most recent novel, his sixth published work, Less.

There are novels with indelible opening lines, for me, the ideal being Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays:

What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask.

It has stuck with me since the first time I read it. Of course, it’s followed by another 200-some wide margined, amply spaced pages of exquisite genius during which Joan Didion manages with her precision of language and laser focus what most novels — no matter the page count — never even hint at.

Point being, I remember Play It As It Lays not just because of its opening line — which is brilliant — but because what follows is equal to the opening.

With Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, the order is twisted: when you reach what seems the inevitable, only possible final line, the preceding 250-some pages — which might have seemed twee or gimmicky in less skilled literary hands — feel earned and right and have that heft of, “Oh, I’ll always remember this.”

And what more can one ask of a book but that it gives you something you will always remember?

So, perhaps I ought synopsize rather than babble. Our hero, Arthur, a self-defined failed (or failing) author about to turn 50 receives an invitation to his boyfriend of the past nine years wedding. To someone else. Desperate to avoid the ceremony without saying no and seeming broken, he accepts a motley deluge of invitations to literary events and opportunities which will take him around the world, making it impossible to attend his long-loved one’s nuptials to someone else.

On the trek which takes him through Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan, he falls in love (maybe) and suffers humiliations real and imagined and faces his fears about and the realities of being a gay man alone, turning 50, which equals being a corpse in the youth-oriented world of modern gay life and hookups. Listen:

Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if someone came upon naked Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his scalp, like those old double erasers for pen and ink. He has never seen another gay man age past fifty, none except Robert. He met them all at forty or so but never saw them make it much beyond; they died of AIDS, that generation. Less’s generation often feels like the first to explore the land beyond fifty. How are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the opposite — do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray, and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on past pleasures that will never come up again?

It goes on, even more eloquently, in ways that made this 50-something, aging gay man with no role models, none of the cohorts I knew when young having survived (in life, or in my life) to show me how to age, especially how to age alone; and age alone here, in a location where the gay community is of limited scope, limited imagination, and just as youth obsessed as the WB network. So, there, on page 22 of a novel mostly funny and warm and comforting, I cried in recognition.

There are so many funny, touching, glorious, beautifully structured, recognizable moments in this skillfully, artfully written novel, I could spend pages and pages quoting, but that would waste the time you ought to spend reading this remarkable, moving novel in which the angst of aging, regret, and self-delusion are described full-blown with humor and warmth and compassion. This novel is uplifting without being saccharine and I could not have loved Less more.

The Redemption of Galen Pike, Carys Davies, Paperback, 176pp, April 2017, Biblioasis

I’m fascinated by good short stories and many of the ones in The Redemption of Galen Pike are very good, one or two bordering on great in the manner of Paul Bowles, Flannery O’Connor, or Elizabeth McCracken. While the settings of the stories vary widely, most of the primary characters are located in the same place: lonely people, living in the empty chasms of unknowingness between people, the spaces between. Some are trying to bridge the abyss, others are resigned to their solitude and sorrow. The prose is deceptively simple while managing to contain depths and shadows and layer after layer of meaning and surprise — there are many twists, unexpected gasp-making and/or tear-inducing reveals.

Piece of advice: You’ll want to read them all, right away. Don’t. It takes away from the impact. They should be savored and spread out, because reading them together gives them a sense of sameness they don’t really deserve nor benefit from. And if you MUST read them all at once in the first go-round, then go back and read them again, slowly, one a week or so, when you’ve time to savor the language and the emotional construction.

The Wycherly Woman, Ross MacDonald, Paperback, Bantam, January 1073, Bantam

I was turned on to Ross MacDonald by Eudora Welty. or, rather, by the collection of their correspondence, Meanwhile There Are Letters, which I love and adore. Too, once I knew I had to sample his work, I hied it to the local used bookstore and picked up a few mass market Bantam paperbacks from the late sixties, early seventies for $3.98 each, all of which posted original cover price of $1.25. Discounting the problem that print this small is something I try to avoid now in deference to my weary six-decades-of-heavy-reading eyes, I love the look and feel  of these paperbacks, they hurtle me time-machine-heartwise to my protected, rural youth where the only place to buy books was the Read’s Drugstore in Westminster, which had a wall full of books, every one of which it seemed imperative that I have. I got my allowance on Saturday, and, usually, we went to “the city” that day and I would blow my $2 on a book and a comic book; I was a sucker for true love and heart-throb and romance comics, an addiction which was disapproved of by my mom, who refused to buy the comics for me, so I would take them to the checkout myself, when no one was looking, and all hot and tingly with shame, knowing I was again doing something I wasn’t — as a boy — supposed to be doing,  I would usually get (or imagine I was getting) a sneer of disapproval from the clerk. How early we learn shame.

But I loved those comic books, the intensity and the colors and the style. And, in the same way, I love my Ross MacDonald paperbacks, now browned at the edges, brittle, aged. Except for the writing which is as fresh and vibrant and sharp as ever it was. The clipped noir dialect. The snarked snaps of hard-won wisdom from the rode rough and put away wet, been there, done that, hard knocks, hard-headed, soft-touch, iron willed, bloody knuckled hero, Archer, are brilliant. I mean that — brilliant.

I’d tell you the plot, but, it isn’t the plot you read these for. It’s the style. As is often the case in MacDonald’s Archer series there is a screwed up family, someone missing or dead, lots of wrong turns and detours and misdirection and deception and good intentions gone bloodily, homicidally bad.

Loved it. Not unlike one of my old family reunions, albeit with a few more bullets and knife wounds.

 

Unraveling Oliver, Liz Nugent, Hardback, 272pp, August 2017, Gallery/Scout Press

Full disclosure: Let me begin by saying that I’ve a personal connection to this book. That’s right. I’m in the acknowledgements. Well, okay, maybe not technically, but, Liz Nugent does say:

Thank you to Duchess Goldblatt and her loyal devotees, ….

You only need read my title page to see I have LOOOOONG identified myself as a devoted catechumen  of Her Grace, Duchess Goldblatt. So, see there? I’M IN THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OF A GREAT BOOK. Life goal = check.

Now about this book, Liz Nugent’s fiction debut which was named Crime Novel of the Year by the Irish Book Awards — it’s a WOW! Don’t pick it up unless you have a stretch of uninterrupted time in which to read because you won’t want to stop — may not be able to stop.

Bestselling children’s author, charmer, and sociopath Oliver opens the book by saying, “I expected more of a reaction the first time I hit her.” He’s just brutally beaten his wife. His sick reasons for the attack and the truth of him are subtly and surprisingly revealed, strand by horrifying strand, clue by riveting clue, through short chapters in alternating first person voices from the people who have known him throughout his life — or, thought they knew him.

Liz Nugent has a great gift for tessellation, the colorful and grippingly intriguing pieces of the mosaic of Oliver’s life compellingly meted out in fast-moving plot and prose. Wonderful read.

**********

So, there we have it, my last five reads of August and a paragraph or five of my rage let loose. I am truly grateful for the gifts of literature and the work of authors — past and present and future — which serve to help me escape, and to elevate and educate and illuminate. Thank-you writers, thank-you editors, thank-you copy editors, thank-you agents, thank-you publicists, thank-you indie booksellers, and thank you Twitterati, who enrich my world in ways indescribable, incalculable, and unbelievably loving and light-giving and peace-making.

Love to all, even those buffoons and bigots I now think I hate but am working to see the light in, and so, here I am, going.

 

 

Reading: Try to remember . . .

Try to remember meaning 1) I finished these books two weeks to two days ago and have already mostly forgotten them, and 2)the following warning, it may well be MY fault, and not the doings of the innocent books. So don’t take my word for it — read other reviews, or, better, give them a try yourself.

Full disclosure: Current events — political and personal — are making reading more difficult than usual for me. Ever since I began reading, it has been a refuge to which I could retreat, the plots and people provided by authors making up the walls of my castle and its moat, keeping the real world at a safe distance; but those fantasy boundaries have been breached by the invading forces of fascist hate-mongers and chronic-un-diagnosed illness.

I’m trying not to blame the books I read for their failure to protect or rescue me. But, I’m only human, and some days lately, barely that. So, caveat: I’m in a mood.

The Sisters Chase, Sarah Healy, Hardcover, 304pp, June 2017, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I finished reading this two weeks ago and what sticks most in my memory is how poorly it was edited. There were numerous instances of sentences having been written two ways and not edited into one, parts of both versions remaining, not fitting together. Too, there were homonym and usage errors, and many instances of the same word being used in nearby sentences not for effect but, rather, in awkward, lazy structure. The writing and the production of the book felt rushed and while reviews and blurbs had called it a cunning and surprising thriller, I found it to be predictable from the very beginning, populated by singularly unpleasant characters behaving in odious ways. Not for me.

Killers of the Flower Moon; The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann, Hardcover, 352pp, April 2017, Doubleday

Perhaps not the best time to read a non-fiction book about crooked, duplicitous white male government officials — elected and non — conspiring to take advantage of and wipe out a minority group, murdering them casually and without fear or reprisal in order to gain more wealth and power. No, it isn’t about the current usurper of the presidency and his complicit gop cohorts, but, rather, an episode from the 1920’s during which the discovery of oil on Osage land resulted in further pillaging of Native American properties and human rights. Its investigation — long and labyrinthine and marked by deceitful and homicidal law enforcement officials — was, in essence, the birth of the modern FBI as founded by J. Edgar Hoover, who was himself a repugnant and amoral human being. As foul as the story is, the writing by the sure-handed David Grann is extremely accomplished, shaped like a well done, fast paced thriller — albeit, at times, a convolution of difficult to follow connections and names and familial relationships.

City of Masks (Somershill Manor Mystery #3), S.D.Sykes, Hardcover, 336pp, Pegasus Books

Palace intrigue; people pretending to be what they’re not; power and money hungry fools stooping to any level to get what they want and then MORE of it; secrets and traitorous spies for foreign, unfriendly governments out to cause destruction and ruin — no, not about the current moskvich poseur and his cronies who illegally occupied the White House, but, rather, 14th century Venice where Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill, is temporarily stuck with his mother, hiding from a tragic event in his past, soon caught up in a murder mystery that takes him to the darkest places in the carnival city and his own heart. I thought it a little long but fascinating historically and cleverly constructed. And, eventually — spoiler? — the good people triumph.

The Misfortune of Marion Palm, Emily Culliton, Hardcover, 304pp, August 2017, Knopf Publishing Group

Privileged white people doing horrible things and behaving in despicable, entitled, covetous, avaricious ways. No, not about the gop and its current figurehead, but, rather, about a mother who has embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from her daughters’ school, her once trust-funded husband who she knows is not as rich as he thinks and barely able to leave the house, their equally gluttonous and oblivious peer group, and their two daughters — teen Ginny and pre-pubescent Jane, both of whom are damaged and troubled, and what happens when Marion leaves everything in her life behind, taking with her just a backpack filled with the cash she’s purloined. Written in third person, albeit close third, the style is distancing — which is probably fine since none of the characters are people one would want to know, but the effect is something like watching one of Robert Altman’s lesser films where all the concatenation of utterings and actions of vaguely disagreeable to downright abhorrent characters adds up to little conclusion other than a feeling of having been forced to attend a social event from which one departs saying, “I don’t like those people and those are hours I’ll never get back.”

**********

Well, there it is. I warned you I was in a mood, and I’ve spared you diatribes about the two books I started and gave 50 pages before snarking, “Not today, Geraldine.” It’s difficult drawing the line, more and more — Hell, IS there even a  line anymore? In any event, here I am, dear ones, going.

We Interrupt This Book Blog…

#LoveWins

Those of you interested only in my book blogging, take heart; I’ll soon post about the five or six books I’ve finished since my August 8 entry. I’ve read less this month than I did in July, which I believe has to do with being in a period of spiritual and psychological adjustment — a sort of “turn off and re-boot” like one does with a wonky computer, hoping when power is restored the malfunctions will have been magically corrected.

Sometimes, alas, the hard drive is exhausted.

In my case, eight months (or, turns out, maybe three years) later, the geek squad has been unable to arrive at a diagnosis or a cure. The symptoms are unpredictable from one day to the next — hell, from one hour to the next, and run the gamut from fatigue to memory/retrieval/articulating problems to severe gastrointestinal distress to headaches to joint pain so intense it is difficult to move whatever part of my body is being affected by a combination of the above listed.

While these symptoms are unpleasant, what is worse is this uncertainty; in addition to not knowing which symptoms I’ll need to cope with at any moment, I also don’t know the root cause of these symptoms, don’t know if I will ever have an answer, don’t know if an answer would result in a solution, don’t know if the symptoms will continue to multiply, and just generally am mired in a lot of not knowing and wondering,”Why is this happening?”

Which makes sense. In an “it doesn’t make sense” way. Because this outbreak — the manifestation of whatever this is — began the day after the inauguration in January 2017. I had been daily crying since November 9, 2016, the day we discovered how many tens of millions of racists and haters there were in this country, and that their fascist overlord and his jackbooted co-conspirators had somehow rigged the system so the presidency was denied the most qualified person who had ever run for the position, a woman who had spent the last few decades standing up with dignity in the face of a relentless campaign to slander her, yet still served with grace, maintaining her belief in the possibility and potential and equality of all people even when some of those naturally her cohorts, on the so-called left, also fell for the culturally embedded  misogynistic bullshit smear-campaigns aimed at her — those whispers being led by yet another old white man, this one claiming to be so liberal.

I was broken. She deserved so much better — she always had. Let’s face it; had she been a heterosexual cis white man, her accomplishments from college on would have won her the presidency at least twice, decades sooner. She deserved better.

I was broken. Another heterosexual cis white man had ridden culturally embedded misogyny and bigotry and bullying and bias to power — and dirty-tricked and cheated his way into it — and people in power had KNOWN of these tricks LONG BEFORE the election and NEVER exposed them.

I was broken. Because I am self-centered and see the world through the prism of ME I conflated what happened to Secretary Clinton with what had happened to me in my life — albeit writ larger and of course, much worse, but still, the same experience. I’d been repeatedly denied possibilities and praise and portals because I was a gay man. I’d been repeatedly pilloried by heterosexual white men in power, and seen those same men who were far less capable and deserving succeed and beat out myself and my female friends, and all the while, those heterosexual white men were chuckling together — often on a golf course or in a locker room — absolutely convinced they deserved every ounce of their privilege, considering themselves naturally superior to we other, and, often, becoming furious (or dismissive) when we suggested — either quietly or loudly — that perhaps the playing field (or, golf course) was not even, that they were winning because they were advantaged, odds skewed and distorted in their favor and on their behalf and they were complicit in this plot.

It happened, again and again, and was still happening, and Secretary Clinton being robbed of the presidency felt as if all the progress for which we had struggled and sweated and suffered abuse for, all the times I was fag-bashed and snickered about, all the times I had failed myself by feeling I had to lie about myself to be safe, all the all the we had all been through had just been erased.

And a rash appeared on my upper right arm. And within a week, my upper left arm. Then my lower arms. In another week it had moved to my legs. Then, soon after, my torso and back. My body from the neck down was spotted with red circles and blotches and now, countless trips to multiple doctors and drug after drug after cream after steroid after malaria pill after biopsies after “you have cancer” after “no it’s probably NOT cancer” after “you have lupus” after “this drug can cause blindness but let’s try it anyway even though we don’t know what you have” after having to be near a bathroom for hours at a time because my intestines are convulsing after headaches so bad I can’t read after joint pain so bad I can’t walk after fifty-seven years of too often being treated as “less than” being exacerbated by having to struggle for adequate medical care since I am covered by insurance so sub-par that I have to drive to another state to find a rheumatologist who will accept it and then, only after a month of calls and re-calls and — after all of this bullshit —

Still, no answer. Still, the why is this happening?

And not just with my malady, but with the election and the wannabe-totalitarian despot.

And it feels as if the geek-squad is trying everything they can to repair the hard-drive, but, I worry; Maybe it can’t be fixed this time.

And so far in life when I have bottomed out into hopelessness and despair, self-pity and melancholic anguish, rather than surrender and die, that’s when I re-boot.

Which, I know, one thousand words after being introduced in the opening paragraph, perhaps took too long to get to. But, it’s taken me since November 9 to get here, a long eviscerating period of mourning and heartache and fury and confusion and fear and disbelief and frustration and — well, you get it.

And, what is my re-boot? Simple. And what it has always been, every time, so you’d think by now I’d be able to get there faster. But, here goes:

It is what it is. How I see it and what I do with it defines my reality.

I know, ridiculously simplistic self-help blather ignoring the circumstances of the modern world and power structure and yakkety-yak-blah-blah-lah-di-dah-pollyanna bullshit.

Or, not. Or, rather, you are entitled to your own re-boot process and opinion, but as my dear aunt said to me, many times:

“It doesn’t matter what anyone else says or does or thinks, you are only responsible for what you say and do and think.”

And, in addition, as my dear Duchess Goldblatt said to me:

“When we count our losses, we turn the balance sheet over to see what’s been gained, you and I.“

And so, in the past week or so, after a particularly awful Tuesday where I was treated with disrespect and rudeness by yet another doctor with no answers who had not bothered to read my file before walking in the room and knew nothing about my case, an appointment after which I went to my car already near tears and was then informed via message that Barbara Cook had died, I hit bottom. I cried so hard, so long, with a wailing of WHY and HOW MUCH MORE that I exhausted my sorrow. There was nothing left.

So, at zero, hard drive crashing, that was where I looked at myself and said, “What have I gained from all of this? And what will I do with it?”

I don’t know. Exactly.

But here’s the start; Every day I remind myself in notes, in talks with me, on Twitter, that I still believe LOVE WINS. Which reminder reminds me to share some of my LOVE, every day, to send out into the world the energy I wish to receive. And, interestingly, after the eight months of not knowing, I’ve now evolved past fear and anger to acceptance.

Whatever this is I’m having, lots of people have far worse things to deal with every day, and my days are full of people who love me, people I enjoy being with, books, Twitter-pals, Barbara Cook’s songs forever, the knowledge I once made her happy, many pets to whom I am uncle, and a fresh, new, and welcome perspective on WHY.

Like a toddler just learning the world or a well-trained actor preparing for a role, I am now examining my thoughts and words and actions and assumptions (and those of others) with the magic WHY? Why do I think this or that? Where did that belief/idea/notion come from? Have I thought about it, lived it, or did I accept a cultural trope and make it part of me? What is the motivation?

We accept so much without questioning. Too much.

Who says having a job and making money make one more valuable than a person whose activities and pursuits are not remunerated? Who says marriage or monogamy are the ideal relationship model? Who says the love between two people sexually involved is more valuable than deep friendship, and deserves state sanction and protection and benefits? Who says just because you call it a sport or put people in uniforms and call them a team they should be allowed to beat the shit out of each other? Who says calling it an army makes it okay to kill people? Who says the imaginary boundaries we’ve imposed upon the earth make us different nationalities, rather than recognizing that we are all one people and patriotism is actually another form of bigotry? Who says everyone has to be thin, buffed, teeth straightened, hair this and thatted, bodies shaved and painted and adorned a certain way to be beautiful? Who says imaginary friends are any less fantastic and loved and important than corporeal friends?

Who says my “illness” is an illness rather than exactly the way my body should be functioning now; perhaps it’s a gift, this so-called illness that’s brought me here to this re-boot, given me to ask so many WHYS? and to re-examine my life, doing that Goldblattian-inspired tally of what’s been gained?

Who says almost 2000 words is MORE than enough for one blog post?

Oh, I do, so, Love and Light my dear ones and thanks for sharing the journey, and before I go on any longer, here I am, going. (Spread some love today.)

Reading: The End is Near – So What? Perk the hell up!

In this post I talk about American War by Omar El Akkad, and The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs.

The day after the January 2017 inauguration of the criminal buffoon now occupying (well, when he’s not off stealing taxpayer dollars by vacationing at one of his own properties) 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I discovered a rash on my upper right arm. Since then, it has covered my entire body from the neck down. I have run an obstacle course of medical providers and insurance hell, and I am no closer to an answer than I was in January — in fact, in many ways, I am worse. I cannot help but see my decline and inability to heal as reflection of the damage being done to the country and the world by the gop and its illegitimate siege of the presidency, achieved by vote fixing, voter suppression, russian intervention, and decades of hate and fear mongering. So, reading a dystopian novel about the results a few decades from now of this sort of red vs blue hate in this country, and a memoir about a woman’s living and coping with disease, was both a foolish and an instructive thing to do. Here I am, going.

American War, Omar El Akkad, Hardcover, 333pp, April 2017, Knopf Publishing Group

The venal fomentation of hate and divisiveness which has long been the strategy of the Republican party, has now careened out of control into the surreal ascendance of a sociopathic, narcissistic moron to the presidency; a man who will stoop to any level to aggrandize himself and gain more power, riches, and worship, who lies with the ease others of us breathe, and who encourages civil disobedience and violence, encouraging a class war — a conflict built mostly on myth, fictions, and unfounded bigotries and fear of “other” — using the tactics of fascist authoritarians throughout time to distract the people from his pillaging of the country, from his complete ineptitude at and disinterest in bringing prosperity and union to the people he is meant to serve and lead.

Interpret and project from these signs and omens and realities what a future might be like if we continue along this path of rupture, acrimony, and animosity, and you will arrive at the place where Omar El Akkad’s sadly prescient novel, American War, begins and ends.

Which might be why it took me almost a week to finish it. There is no other reason: the writing was very, very good; the plotting and pace excellent; the protagonist, Sarat Chestnut, drawn with complicated, fascinating detail. But, the fact that less than a year ago the goings on, atrocities, and unhappy endings of this novel would have seemed an outrageous, impossible dystopian take-off, but now, since November of 2016, seem not only possible, but likely, made this — for me — a very difficult read despite all it has to recommend it. So, be warned.

The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying, Nina Riggs, Hardcover, 288pp, June 2017, Simon and Schuster

Being in the eighth frustrating and now sort of terrifying month of dealing with an illness that remains undiagnosed, increasing amounts of “symptoms” which may or may not be related (or, even, symptoms) — since no one seems to know what it is I have, and a now four week long effort to get an appointment with a rheumatologist who will accept my insurance and perhaps be able to explain my floating joint pains which I thought were the beginnings of arthritis but now, like my digestive system explosions may, I’m told with worried looks by the dermatologist now seemingly in charge of my case, may be connected to the mystery illness — no, not even an appointment, I am still waiting for a referral to a mystery rheumatologist one state away! — and despite that lack of diagnosis and referral, taking a medicine normally prescribed for malaria which may with extended use cause macular degeneration, my long-time biggest nightmare as it partially blinded both my aunt and mother, and which requires twice a year visits to an opthalmologist, visits which no one seems to be able to tell me whether or not are to be covered by my insurance; being in this morass of often feeling like hell, fighting the depression of not knowing, not getting answers, and being treated like a second class citizen because of my insurance — because had I better coverage (which I cannot, could not ever afford) I would have LONG AGO been referred, seen, treated — and KNOWING I am STILL better off than a lot of people in this richest country in the world where adequate healthcare is STILL BEING DEBATED AND DENIED — well, perhaps this wasn’t the best time to read a memoir by a woman who had terminal cancer, who died before the book went to print.

Then again, perhaps it was.

Nina Riggs writes about her illness — no, wrong, Nina Riggs writes about living a life, loving a family and friends, and being fully alive while dealing with the medical establishment’s responses to a body out of whack and the knowledge that her death is imminent.

She is funny. She is honest. She is brutal. She is terrified. She is hopeful. She is sad. She is angry. She is exactly the kind of literate, delightful, upfront, caring, warm, witty, audacious, fascinating, embracing and embraceable person with whom one wants to be best friends.

Her journey from “one tiny spot” of the kind “no one dies from” to stage four cancer, during which her mother and another dear friend die of cancer, is fascinating and instructive. The writing is exquisite and powerful, honest and moving without ever being maudlin or self-pitying — both of which are my go-to reactions to my little medical issues, so I was terribly shamed by the forthright and courageous manner with which Nina Riggs lived until she died.

And managing to write about it — the effects of the illness, the psychological and emotional process of trying to deal with the knowledge one is going to miss one’s children’s growing up, dealing with the decay of her body and her energies — with such spirited candor; I found it miraculous.

By the time I reached her husband’s Afterword, I was sobbing and renewed. And awestruck. Would that I could deal with any of the petty annoyances of my life with some small portion of the grace and insight with which Nina Riggs lived her life.

Read this book, not as a guide to how to die, but a primer on how to live.

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And so, there it is, or, was; the dystopian novel affirmed all my worst fears and worries about the world in which we are living, where we are heading, while the memoir that ends in death, inspired my best self, a sloughing off of my self-pitying, poor me energies and a determination to move through whatever time I have with more grace and good humor.

Who knew? Not me. Which is lovely, always, to have more to learn and space of self into which to grow, and so, here I am, going (and growing). Oddly enough, about an hour from now, to another doctor appointment.

So, so long for today dear ones, much Love and Light to you.