I knew nothing but something

Today I cruelly  read the beginning of "The Wasteland" to my children. Suddenly, and impulsively, this seemed like the thing to do, out of nowhere, in Leila's living room while sitting on a bunch of magic cards and shoving away cute little barking dogs. Or were they barking in another room? I don't remember. I suddenly felt that I had to read to them about April. It came to me. 

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. (From THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD, The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot, 1922)
Then it came to me again an hour later through the telephone: April Fool's Day! Did I will it to be? I think I did.  This is the day that I have my fourth surgery. Not the dreaded mastectomy. It is to be another incision into the same incision, I will be unzipped and scoped again, spared this time from an entire breast removal. Ah yes une lumpectomy de quatre. C'est magnifique n'est-ce pas? Est-il fou? Oui. Je connais. D'accord. I knew this. I knew with crystalline clarity that I would get a call this morning from Nancy, and that she would tell me that I was not having a mastectomy, that the surgeon had decided that I would have a fourth lumpectomy, and that it would be in April. I hope this one works smashingly well. I hope that my surgeon can put on her tiny little goggles and shrink herself down into a mole, with silky soft fur and a divine body and dive down into my breast and swim in there with her blind eyes and feel with her little soft paws in and out of the little milk ducts as they curl gently in and out and around and in and out like a lazy stream, and then gently but cunningly claw out any of the uninvited high-grade cells with the perfection of a truffle seeking pig. I hope she can sniff them out. I hope she takes hours and hours in there and is as careful as careful can be. While I am sleeping on the cot I will smile at her through my sleep and hold out my hand and whisper "Ya got me feeling hella good so let's just keep on dancing" like Gwen would say, and I'll think please rock this beat. And I hope that I wake up clean. Because I think this will be my last chance to avoid having a complete mastectomy. Why I don't want to have a mastectomy (and why I'm in awe of the power and strength of the women that have done this. HARPER, HOLLI, ANDREA,  DIANE, and TOO MANY OTHERS I bow down to you): It's a much larger surgery involving muscles and lymph nodes and skin grafts and things like "flap removal" (uh....uh...) and tattoos and nipples being thrown in the trash and muscle and skin grafts (I might have made up the muscle graft part) and fat grafts (I have some extra fat for sale) and pain and pain and pain and reconstruction and plastic surgery and swelling and lymphedema and physical therapy and arms that don't work and shoulders that don't work and a stomach that doesn't work and a boob that is fake in one or several ways. One boob. If you only have one boob removed this brings up a whole new can of worms. Like...if I had one breast removed, should I have the other breast removed too? Or should I have the one that's removed reconstructed to a smaller more manageable more American size? If I had THAT done, then I should I have its larger twin on the right side reduced? So I'd have a fake reconstructed Frankenstein breast on one side, and then the real one reduced? How in the fuck would they ever be the same size or even look anything like each other? This whole thing becomes mind bogglingly crazy and almost funny. Should have them both cut off? (You would not believe how many people have told me to do this. Strangers have actually ordered me to chop off both of my breasts. Everyone thinks they know what I should do.) Or: chop both and then keep my terrain flat as Kansas and wear balloons to please men? That would make me thinner and clothes would fit better. Baby this is my chance to be slim and be a real clothes horse, a hanger, like Patti Smith or a real model! Who gives a shit about that? I used to. I'd rather just keep my body the way it is, as imperfect and flawed as it is - I'm kind of used to it. I like to sleep with it. Although last night I didn't sleep one wink.  Trying to balance my mental health with my lack of sleep. Do I take pills that make me sleep and then worry about becoming addicted to pills, or do I lay awake looking at the clock at 11:15, 12:48, 1:17, 2:39, 3:48, 4:11, 5:06, 6:58, 7:27?  In eighth-grade I weighed 90 pounds at almost this height, but had large huge bouncing breasts and I was famous across the land for that. Was that an omen for now? What a stupid fucking thing to be known for. So my latest final plan, as Burnyce would say, is: Tuesday, April 1 here we come! I am doing other lumpectomy! I am completely delighted that my latest final surgery lands on April Fools' Day. This could not be more perfect. It pleases me. I embrace the absurdity of it all. I want it to be even more absurd, more sticky, more strenuously ridiculous. What else can I do to make this sublimely inane? Shall I break my leg on the way to the hospital? Or maybe I'll be involved in a freak breast accident the night before where my right healthy breast will be accidentally stabbed by an over enthusiastic dinner guest as he waves his fork around in a fit of pique over who was just cut on Project Runway. Perfect.

STATUS

Heart monitor off

No cardiac events

Sticky glue stuck on me

Carotid arteries to be ultra sounded on Thursday - they will sonogram my neck to see if there are any tiny babies floating in there or sticky glue or brie cheese or Conan's pizza clogging up my neck tubes. This is an extra cautious precaution just so that we can be sure my brain is about to be syncoped to death or shut off.

Didn't Miami sound machine say 

"TURN THE BEAT AROUND! LOVE THAT SYNCOPATION!" ??? I remember thinking what the fuck's syncopation? What a dumb ass word. I didn't know that when they wrote that lyric back in the early 80s, when my next-door neighbor Clay (only real person I know who got famous) was helping them rockstar jam it on the piano on stage, that they were foreshadowing February 9, 2014 when I was going to experience my own syncope. Maybe they're not related to me. Maybe I'm getting too self-centered, ya think? Actually I'm not trying to be too self-centered, in fact I have to try to remember myself, because I feel myself becoming less important less substantial as the minutes go by. I'm not doing much of anything worthwhile. 

In fact it got so bad that a little while ago I went online and looked up my rate your professor comments. College students go on this website and write whatever they want about teachers they've taken, and they use this site all the time to help pick professors to take for classes. (Luddites insert your we're going to hell in a handbasket comment here). I had some good reviews - people said they really liked me ("You like me!" Who said that?) la la la sunshiney unicorns, and then one that was written just about a week ago that said "I really hated this professor and so did everyone else in the class. She was really hard and opinionated. Then at the end I learned a lot and it was worth it." really? Everyone else in the class? Now I know it feels like to be Lindsay Lohan. Well maybe not really.

That was a very good and important use of 73 seconds. 

A tall Texas tall cool drink of water guy we know went to law school, and then amazingly became a judge, and now amazingly is on the Texas Supreme Court. (Don't worry successful person I shan't out you). He sent me a message today on Facebook that he has been reading my blog and wanted to know what I thought about science and the universe and books. So I told him. I suggested an essay by Carl Sagan to read and he said he was reading it. I am honored that he'd ask my opinion. Get it?

Here's a link to that essay. I make my freshman comp students read this the first week of class and then we discuss it in great detail. I force them to think about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking: 

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/sagan_science.html

These small reports represent the highlights of my day. See what I mean? Who am I? A driver, a person who makes toast. A typist. Or at my laziest, not even a typist, more like a person who blats to Siri. I'm not a judge. Or am I?

Free yoga for breast cancer ladies tomorrow at noon. Will I downward dog it up or simply savasana for 60 minutes?

Splurged on Betsy Johnson jammies at Dillards today.

Ate a huge crusty hero sandwich today, tearing it lamb by limb on a hot porch while scrubbing birdshit. 

Many things are happening at once and nothing is happening ever.

I waste time. 

I waste things.

But I can share other much better writing:

More from Eliot:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.