System

I know I'm dehydrated. So I have a system. Every five minutes or so I take five sips. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. In this way perhaps I can finish 16 ounces of lemonade.

Happiness in a bottle.

Ten sips. 

I joined a breast cancer support group for six weeks. Ironically I started chemo the week after the group ended. The women in my group who were doing chemo are very strong and they inspired me. They tricked me. They're better than me.

My new friend Leah from the support group helps me think about this stuff. 

15 sips.

She talked about the gap. The gap between authenticity and something else. I'm not sure what she meant by the something else, maybe the gap between reality and what other people think when you're going through the shit. I do notice a gap, but I am not the one that fosters it. I'll tell you anything, but if you don't ask you won't know. You and I are already so alone and so misunderstood - why foster any gap? He and she and you and ours and I will be dead soon and what do we want left? "She was polite" ? Fuck that. 

Here's one of my favorite poems, hopefully you already know this one by heart, if you don't you should:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
       love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-- Mary Oliver

20 sips.

The nadir is approaching. 

nadir[ ney-der, ney-deer ]

noun

1. the point on the celestial sphere directly beneath a given position or observer and diametrically opposite the zenith.

2. the point of a horoscope opposite the midheaven: the cusp of the fourth house.

3. the lowest point; point of greatest adversity or despair.

In chemo this means that 7 to 10 days after they poisoned me to death, my white blood cells and red blood cells inside the spongy marrow of my bones have completely croaked. The former football blokes of my immune system are laying about in their asylum whites, draped across a rocking chair very palely trying to get a small teaspoonful of oatmeal up to their pale and cracked lips. When they want to move, they shift their pale lashed blue European  eyes from one side of the room over to the window where they look out at the mountains. They can't do a thing. If you cough at them they will fall off of their chairs. They are ready to be taken and hurt and run over and drained. They await crushing.

If you do chemotherapy during this period, it will permanently damage your bone marrow and kill you later, kill you forever, kill you while it's killing you, and you'll be dead and you'll be killed. At any rate, I'm approaching a time where I am not supposed to be around very many people or germs or nadir devils. Inherently, I think this is total bullshit. I've always been an extremely strong person and I don't feel any less strong right now. But I suppose I shall wash my hands and not roll around at a preschool, or a fall fast, or a Halloween party, did anyone tell you that one of the problems with this is it's fucking boring as shit? No making out with strangers at a bar anymore. Today.

25 sips.

I made a station on Pandora - of kinda of old timey country rainy day high lonesome blue mountain music. I call it. Comforting beauty. Hem. The Weepies. Patty Griffin. The Wailing Jennies. Decembrists. Nickel Creek. Neko Case. Heard a snippet of something lovely yesterday but can't recall it now - that's bugging me. Will figure it out. 

From "Tourniquet" by Hem:

Brooklyn, I’m broken -- I’m breaking apart -- 
Greenpoint pins down my hand, Red Hook pierces my heart --
And my blood runs into the Gowanus Canal
Where it sinks to the bottom

And it hurts like hell. 

Tourns out tourniquet is a very popular name for a song.

Turns out turn-a-kit is a very popular name for a song.

Turns out tourniquet is a very popular name for a song.

From "Tourniquet" by Evanescence:

 I tried to kill my pain

But only brought more 

My god my tourniquet

Well those are a few examples of the word tourniquet being used as a song title.

Having my students do a research paper about how the Internet is affecting life. What a stupid topic, right? Of course it's affecting life. So they need to narrow it down to something very specific. I've been thinking about one thing specifically. I think that instant communication can create artificial intimacy. I shall now argue both sides:

I mean come on, you just met the guy and got his text message and now you're mad because he didn't text you back instantly after his meeting with his boss? When you were all feeling vulnerable and stuff cuz Ms. Muffintin blew you off at the lunch? It's not like you're married to him or he's your mom - why should he be tethered to his phone and jump to respond to you about a stupid question about how his fucking Thundercloud sub sandwich went? Was the mayo just so good and not the wrong kind this time oh goodie! You're getting all pissy because Mr. New is not responding to your text messages fast enough, but you don't even really know him. You're an idiot- a needy annoying cloying pushy pill. This whole "you text me, I text you" thing 24 hours a day is a completely artificial construct that exists only in our own minds. You don't actually HAVE a relationship with him. 

Waaaaiit a second there pardner! Don't you ever watch Nova or any of those astrophysicist shows? Don't you think? Or are you stuck in whatever thinking you developed by junior high? Are you informed? Are you ignoring science? Can you think objectively or are you some Luddite? God you're a frump! Have you read Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan or seen Neal DeGrasse Tyson or anything about the nature of reality, neuroscience, the universe, everything theory, or string theory? Don't you know that everything that we perceive is only a construct made up in our own brains, made of neural networks and synapses? In fact there is an actual, real, not fake, astrophysicist whose theory is that what we perceive as reality right now is only a future computer programming being sent back to us right now and we are just part of that program, like the matrix. Even if you hate that idea, modern science shows that any relationship we ever have with anybody only exists within our own minds. Our brains perceive. The perception occurs inside you you idiot. You like your friend Fred? Maybe it has nothing to do with Fred, but your reaction to what your perception of Fred is. You can long for Fred when he is far away - you can call him. We thought this was admirable in WWII but now all of a sudden it's "weird" to "love" someone who's "not right there?" How close minded! Or you can just think of Fred in your mind. That's where he is, to you, actually. So since it all exists in our own mind anyway, why can't you have an honest or "real" relationship with somebody who isn't there? Why can't a quadriplegic person have a full rich inner life and loving relationships with people around them? Why can't you have the same thing with somebody who lives 10,000 miles away? Or on a spaceship? Or does not exist? Why can't you conduct an entire relationship by text message or Facebook or email. Maybe you can?

These are some of my thoughts.

30 sips.

Eliza Gilkinson is on. Like her song Coast:

Think I'll go down to the Coast for awhile,

Find a little cabin by the Sea.

Think I need to be alone for awhile,

Find out what ever became of me.

Did you ever think that it would be like this?

Ah, the price you pay for lo-ove.

Now the price you pay for everything.

Think I'll go out for a little drive,

Maybe I'll take the long way home.

I'm probably more than just a little high,

But I need some time to be alone.

I'm gonna find out what it means to me 

Ah, to give it all up for love

To bet it all on what things seem to be.

----

16 oz