School, boys, masks

I got schooled today. I tried to teach my classes and act one went off fairly well. Act two was a major flop. Luckily I had my intrepid Vicki with me to drive me and walk me and get tea for me and guide me. Here we are sitting in the back of a lecture class where I was supposed to be intelligently participating and getting my students all enflamed with philo-sophy. I mean the literal translation of the word, an all-consuming lusting love for knowledge and  facts and more and more and more.

I was mainly focused on trying to sit upright and trying not to think about a particular animal cracker that had tried to go in to my mouth a few minutes previously. Its prosthetic processed dust glueness was still bothering me mentally and physically. 

Dr. Payne was illuminating all of us about the globalization of the economy but I could not cohere. Then I committed an act of treason, I grabbed Vicki and we got up and walked out of the lecture, something he has forbidden anyone ever to do during his lecture. Dr. Payne please forgive me, I know you will. We did not slam. I had to go.

I felt pretty good last night but that is gone away. I was just rereading my history from the last cycle and it seems like after about 12 or 13 days I might start to feel pretty good. This is not necessarily making me happy, this is not necessarily happy making. 

This is truly preposterous and ridiculous and unreported. It harkens back to the mommy myth. When mothers always pretend to each other and in this way hurt each other. Pretty little moms wear a big fat sick sharp metal blind cool mask and they strap it on motherfucking tight. Through clenched teeth and pointy teeth and slit eyes they lie through the mouth of that mask. They brag brag lie lie brag that YES! their baby YES! sleeps through the night, and their baby YES! eats oakra raw, don't you know it, and YES! he visibly shuns Keeblers and literally gets off on broccoli and READS-n-FEEDS-n-HEEDS remarkably. Yes the babe is breezy easy summers eve, a piece of fuckin cake - just everything is going Tony the Tiger Grrrrrrrreeeeeeeeaaatttt. 

This mother mask- donning is a  form of civil warfare, in which the troops are all on the same side, yet they are so stupid and blind that they lash out with their weapons and accidentally chop off each other's heads and stab each other in the eyes and the hearts, their masks and their weapons are the same things. I deplore this war

There's a good book I recommend called the Mask of Motherhood. I encourage you to read it if you're a motherhood or live in a society that has any mothers in it:

The premise is the same as with any bullying, or just the whole schadenfreude thing, or just maybe human nature where we want to feel like we are better than everyone else: 

We put on a false front so that we can look like we have our act together NO WAIT A SEC - I MEAN SO WE CAN LOOK BETTER THAN THE OTHER LAME MOMS, but the result is that it makes all the other whatever-you-ares everywhere feel badly. Is the same thing going on with chemotherapy?  

I mean like people say "Yeah chemotherapy was just dreadfully dull and somewhat uncomfortable, kiss kiss, good luck!" or "oh I was so fatigued" or "I just wanted to lay around and rest all day," but they don't say "I felt like a melting pool of drooling vomit that's not clean enough for toxic waste pollywogs to inhabit." Or "my tummy was pressed in six inches and then twisted by a mean freakishly large Indian-burning bully second-grader that was 8 feet tall with cheese breathe." Or "you'll not want to be present during your own chemotherapy or possibly after." 

They really just don't say that. They don't. Which leads me to several conclusions: one, I am an inferior chemotherapy participant, although I can make a fairly good spectator. Two, the mask strapped on. Three, something in the middle. 

My doctor remains rather unexcited about all this and just keeps repeating things like, stay on top of the meds, come in for fluids if you feel dehydrated as advised. As advised. As advised. As advised .

Even this blog is sickening to me now. I don't even have anything interesting to say, I just want to float away and wake up another day. Bet some of you want me to also

I've been thinking a lot lately about David Foster Wallace. A tres bien writer. Reader. Knower. A loss to you and you may not even know it.

"Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being."

- David Foster Wallace

I mean the end of his life was so sad, he could not function, he could not eat, he could not write, he could not be, he could not read . He could enjoy the house being clean. He went to 140 pounds sans the will to live. Just from depression. I don't mean the word "just" (I take it back) - depression is a Grand Canyon that you literally have never visited if you have never visited. 

He had a whole team of people trying to keep him alive, including his wife. He said "it's not going to get better" and he went. The thing I was wondering is, who was on the team of people trying to keep him alive? I mean he had quit taking antidepressants that was devastating for him. I just wonder if they had put him back on antidepressants, or under some kind of awesome ecstatic drugs you can put someone on to make them happy at least temporarily? Why didn't they put him on LSD, morphine, opium, ecstasy, pot, whatever it takes to make you happy just for the day or the minute? Demerol? Just so you can get a little bit better? Are we so terribly barbaric in the way we treat horrible illnesses? I just really wonder about all the stuff. 

"Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else."

- David Foster Wallace

Our brains are so delicate in their chemical balance. A few ounces of this or that can kill you or ruin you or elevate you. Why didn't somebody fucking elevate David Foster Wallace? 

I am not really mad, I'm just simply ignorant, I simply don't know. But it's horrifically sad that he is not here. 

Good boys. Gone.

Same thing with Jeff Buckley - drowned in the Mississippi but but not before bestowing grace upon the earth. Go seek him out and listen, here's one set of lyrics:

GRACE

There's the moon asking to stay 

Long enough for the clouds to fly me away 

Well it's my time coming, i'm not afraid to die 

My fading voice sings of love, 

But she cries to the clicking of time 

Of time 

Wait in the fire... 

And she weeps on my arm 

Walking to the bright lights in sorrow 

Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow 

Oh my love 

And the rain is falling and i believe 

My time has come 

It reminds me of the pain 

I might leave 

Leave behind 

Wait in the fire... 

And I feel them drown my name 

So easy to know and forget with this kiss 

I'm not afraid to go but it goes so slow