Emergency Retraining

For something that’s called ‘surgery’, today’s operation was pretty easy on the patient. Crack of dawn arrival, answer questions, get undressed and get unconscious. (The anaesthesiologist turned out to be a fellow brewer, so there was some shop talk in there.)An hour and change later, you wake up groggy with a wicked sore throat and a keen desire for breakfast and a nap. Your escort takes you home and puts you to bed. She kisses your forehead if you're lucky.
The term of choice for something like this at Fox Chase is 'procedure', as if to emphasize its kinship with other procedures like chopping an onion or planing the bevel on a sheer clamp. There's even a suite of rooms called the Short Procedure Unit, although no cutting boards or block planes are on display around the place.
The procedure is called a direct laryngoscopy or DL as we old cancer hands say. The sore throat comes from the breathing tube and all the pocket tools that are forced down your throat while you’re out. The grogginess is partly the drugs and partly the sleep deprivation that comes from waking up at five a.m. after a less-than-restful night.
Here’s what the procedure netted: nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but nothing definitive. There was a big, sore ugly down there, but what was it? The good doctor says that it could be an ulcer where the tumor used to be, could be scar tissue and it could be the surviving remains of the tumor.
So he snipped out a piece and sent it off to the lab to be frozen and analysed. I guess that's a procedure too. The answer to the ‘could be’s’ above? It will be another week before we know. Stay tuned. I know that I certainly will.
•   •
Cancer or not, you still have to walk the dog. Tonight it wasn’t so easy. I usually let go of her leash, tell her to heal* and walk to the park. When one of us has had enough, I put out my hand and call ‘touch’ and she comes to me. I say ‘give me your face’ and she sticks her head in the leash and we go home.
Tonight’s problem was that I couldn’t say ‘heel’ or much of anything else. It’ll probably be a few days until my dog-walking voice returns. So before we went out, I whistled (no damage to my whistling muscles), held out a treat and she came. Two more reps and she had it. Then I stamped my foot and pressed her rear down to a sit and gave her another treat. She got that one on one try. I held out the collar, she slid her head in and off we went.
I’d call that procedure an immediate success.


*slip of the keyboard there-of course I meant 'heel'.

Fling

Tomorrow's the biopsy and J decided that we should have a little fling in the face of whatever's coming next. So we went home, to New York, to the place where we were young and always will be. The two things we both love are art and food so we planned for museums and restaurants and a food court or two.
We spent a whole day at the Met. (that's the Metropolitan Museum of Art for you out-of-towners.) This is the view from one of the better tables at the Met's wine bar.
The obelisk you see outside is a 68 ft. tall monument that's called Cleopatra's Needle although it's a thousand years older than the Liz Taylor look-alike. It's been in that spot since 1881, some seven years before my grandfather showed up in the city. The EXIT sign is purely coincidental and we won't read anything into it.

The view from the Wine Bar at the Met.

•   •   •

It's almost impossible to come back to Philadelphia from New York without feeling a bit humbled. Philly's a great place to live and we have some really nice urban stuff here, but New York is Imperial. It's the head of an Empire and all the nations send their treasures there and then people come from all over the world to admire it. Oh what a piece of work is Man(hattan).

Merry Christmas!

Correspondence

Dear Lynn,
Back in the States for a few days after nearly two months in China. The
Great Cyberwall they have created there prevented me from reaching your
blog. You must definitely be an Enemy of the People (Enemy and People have
always to be capitalized in china).


.....


big hug, Julio


•   •   •


Dear Julio,

You know that i was too young to get Senator McCarthy's attention and that i totally failed to make Nixon's enemies list, so this is very good news indeed. I've always wanted to be an enemy and to be one with a capital E is beyond imagining.

.......

ti abraccio, lynn

The Future

At a time like this, how do you think about the future? How do you make even the simplest plans? So far, I've figured out two rules. One is that you don't make any promises that you can't be reasonably sure of keeping. No lecture committments next spring, no cruises booked for Valentine's Day.
The second rule is that -in order to avoid complete paralysis-you have to keep two things in mind:

•You're going to live
and
•You're going to die

If you can keep those two thoughts in mind, it shouldn't take long before you realize that they're both true and always were.
The net is this: sometimes you act on thought number one, sometimes on number two. Either way you can't go wrong and, best of all, each mode of thinking spices up the other.

So I ordered the stuff to build another kayak and I set my kid up to start renting out my house. And I made sure that someone will take care of the dog.

Merry Christmas.

Bad News/Good News

Bad news gets to you slowly in Cancerland, kind of like a Caribbean squall that you see
coming toward you in the distance as you tack upwind. Dr. Ridge looks, feels, tries to get past my gag reflex to feel around, quits. He says that it could be scar tissue, could be tumor.
I knew that. So doc, what’s the chances of tumor? Can’t say. What happens if there is a tumor? Surgery. How bad is the surgery? It’s rough, you’ll meet with the reconstructive surgeons before hand to talk about repairs.
Reconstructive surgery? That suggests that there’s going to be some destruction first-a World Trade Center on the side of my head. This was when I had the ‘blood runs cold’ feeling, that sense of ice in the chest.
‘Of course it could be scar tissue’.
‘Umm, how often does someone have 35 days of radiation and then wait five weeks and have scar tissue clogging his throat?’
‘Not often.’
‘So we’re probably looking at surgery, right?’
‘We’ll know for sure after a biopsy.’
It’s scheduled for December 30th.
•   •
On the other hand, Thunderclap Press in going to publish a book of my poetry next month. The little chapbook will be called BOOM! Poems for a Certain Generation. I’ll keep you posted.

Tomorrow at Fox Chase

Tomorrow I see the surgeon. Aboard the SS Cancer, he or she is the captain of the ship, the one who steers the course, the one who helps you avoid overdoing the nautical metaphors. In this case, he is the very tall and very imperious Dr. Drew Ridge.
He’s the one who’s going to tell me where I land on the continuum between
cancer free and hospice bound. In the middle there, there are lots of variations on doing surgery:  some of the surgical possibilities are high-tech and relatively bloodless, some of them look like something you’d do to a farmyard animal.
Am I nervous? I don’t think so, but I notice that I haven’t slept real well for the last few days.
Tonight, to mark the occasion, J and I went out to dinner. We had a seven-fishes tasting menu at a joint called Matyson. The seven-fishes is a Roman Christmas tradition. Its back story involves noble Roman families competing in providing lavish entertainment to the Pope and his entourage. In this country, it’s become the property of folks from the South (of Italy). Since it’s almost impossible to pull off at home-seven fish courses in one meal?, get real- it’s a treat to find it in a restaurant.
The highlight was this gorgeous piece of crisp-skinned red snapper on a bed of sweet potato cubes with a few mussels and a broth made from the mussel jus.
J drank Vouvray, I had a bottle of Allagash Tripel (batch 148) that I’ve been saving for a year or so, waiting for the night before Cancermas to pull the cork. Delicious, spicy, round and still assertive. It stings my radiation-roughedup mouth a little but you could forgive anything for that taste.
And so we toasted. “To you.” she said. In a fit of originality, I replied “No, to you.” And then we both agreed on “To tomorrow”.

Life Summary-Preliminary Considerations

As I think about writing a life summary, there’s a crew cutting down the Norway Maples across the street in Fairmount Park. This is a good thing because these invasive trees very quickly crowd out the native species and in the process choke off the food supply on which our native bugs and birds and mammals depend. Left to itself, our forest would be replaced in fifty years or so by a sterile tree plantation.
The tree service contractors won’t get them all-even I can see three big ones that they missed. These survivors will drop seed and outgrow and sun-starve the natives around them and in a few years all the good work will be undone.
It would be sweet to think about permanent solutions to the problem of the dying forest and here’s the way I think about it now:

norway maple in fairmount park

it's mostly the muscles that want to swing
the axe that whacks at the base of the forest-killing weed tree.
as much as you think you know about the death of the
woods and the invading foreigners starving out
the birds and bugs and butterflies,
it's really the sound
as it echoes off your bark
and the hard deceleration of the axe as you feel it leaf
through the wood of your arms and into your trunk
and the tickle of the trickle of sweat along your ribs
as you make the first warm day of spring.

the day after you salted the stumps and planted
the little oaks and beeches and wild blueberry,
they sent a crew out into the neighborwoods and asked each household:
"Did you hear those norway maples fall?
Did you see the sun again on the forest floor?"
And when it turned out that no one did, you went back
to the woods and there-the norway maples unchopped and arrogant,
not caring about your axe or the pathetic fallacy,
sneering at the doomed little oaks,
knowing quite well that no one was listening
and they, therefore, were quite safe.

later, later when the woods had died
and the last fox tripped starving through
the plantation that we let in place where
the woods would wood,
you had to wonder:
is swinging the axe
and a tired back all that ever mattered?
are the sweat and the sound the only
wages of the day?
and if they are-
where do you go and
who do you thank for that?

Part of me roots for the forest, another part is happy just that they’re doing the work. So how shall I make my own life summary? Is it a list of forests saved or a list of days spent happily chopping?

The Bucket List-Part One

When I started thinking about a Bucket List, I surprised myself.  There wasn’t much on it, and what was there was none too dramatic. This may be a sign of a life well-led or just a lack of imagination-I’ll leave that call to you. But I don’t really get sky-diving, I’d like to travel but don’t feel a lust for anyplace in particular and I’ve already met everyone I want to know, thank you.
This may be the foundation of a critique of the BL idea itself. Why wait for a bad diagnosis to do what you want? What’s stopping you now, pilgrim?

The one thing that comes to mind-one itch that I’ve had for a while-is that I’d like to get rid of my stuff and die owning a pocket knife and an iPhone. More or less.
Part of this impulse stems from my own weird animism: I worry for my poor little books and antiques and art supplies. Who will take care of them? Will they feel sad? (Yes, it’s not for nothing that this is called the Pathetic Fallacy.)
Another part is that I imagine my daughter faced with a house-full of crap and not much time to deal with it. I imagine the dumpster outside the door filled with daugerrotype cameras and rubber-stamp type kits. It all seems like such a waste.
I played with this idea in a poem-published this year in Urban Legends- that has this bit at the beginning:




I dream that my house catches fire.
Not a little fire-that would be a pain in the ass.
I mean a real level-the-motherfucker inferno,
a light-up-the-sky, smell it in Camden
con-fla-smokin'-gration.


and also contains this:



Now the fantasy heats up (so to speak).
All of the crap I’ve brought back to my nest
One flight at a time
is suddenly transformed into pure choice.
No thing left, just possibilities.
Vaporized nouns leave me solid verbs behind.


There’s more to my Bucket List, but that’s enough for today. It’s made me a little sad: sort of like having to leave the party early or losing touch with a friend. It’s stopped snowing and I think I’ll walk the dog again.

The Incredible Shrinking Lynn

My friend, Hugh Gilmore, wrote this in his column. It’s about watching me shrink.




And each day, this muscular guy who started out with a big torso and thick arms slipped farther into his shirt and jacket, until by the culminating 35th day of radiation he looked like a little kid wearing his big brother’s clothes.



And my dear friend Brenda writes from deepest Mississippi that she's reluctant to call for fear of disturbing me. Here's what I think about life while you're waiting:

clothes call

through the hospital halls, jaws locked, eyes straight ahead
march the lock-legged legions of the sick in clothes they wore
when they were well. costumed each as a former self.
All wrapped up in yesterday sinking through today
with collar buttons on chests and pleated waists
and sleeves rolled up to where their hands end.

On the street outside, the man with two kids shows off
his teenage jacket, boyhood pants.
the lady who left her husband last year does her hair
like it was on her wedding day.
the off-duty cop flashes the chains as he sports
for stuff and something on the street.
the priest goes by in his jogging suit
point guard for the gospel according to.
the bhikku wraps his saffron robe
in winter tweed and suffers not a whit.

And then the bell strikes one, two three
and everyone strips off their past
and stares blinking in the fierce light of now
and someone-the cop? the lady?
starts to giggle and the bhikku smiles
and then the hospital echoes like a horn filled up
with its own music as Extra Large hits the floor
and Medium, naked, begins to laugh.

Whiplash or Everything You Know is Wrong

J is unhappy. It seems to her that someone should know more than they’re letting on about my diagnosis and that I shouldn’t have to wait two weeks to find out what’s next.
So she calls the oncologist for a little doctor-to-doctor chat. (I called this person last week. All I got was a nurse returning my call saying shut up and show up.) Anyway, when the grown-ups put their heads together, there’s a slightly different version of reality.

First, it turns out that more chemo- isn’t an option. ‘Studies show’ that the amount I got was the right amount and anything additional is just toxic to the patient.
The mass that remains on my tongue might be malignant or it might be scar tissue and inflammation. The purpose of the visit to the surgeon is to find out what that little two centimeters is all about. He’s going to stick his fist down my throat, maybe attach a periscope, perhaps strap on a scuba tank and go in for the biopsy. I’m not too sanguine: the thing was quiet all during treatment and for four weeks afterward. Scar tissue wouldn’t start growing after lying dormant for a while, would it?
What are the probabilities one way or the other? Again, any reference to ‘chance’ or ‘probability’ makes the line go dead silent. J doesn’t know, she says that because my tumor was HPV dependent, the science is all new. I think she’s covering for her profession, but I’m glad that she could make the call and grateful that she did. Me? I’m still balanced on a knife edge, just a slightly different one.

The funny thing (ha-ha) is that I’m not rooting for an outcome, not fantasizing getting a pass and skipping out of the surgeon’s office singing. I’m just waiting, walking the dog, writing to you, editing a novel that I hope will see the light of ink, and thinking about a Bucket List.

More on my Bucket List tomorrow.

The End of Optimism

Every time  I got strapped down to the radiation rig, I thought that I was going to be lucky: that the x-rays and the chemicals would work and I would be clear of cancer when they were done. I fantasized going on with my life with this episode fading slowly into the background until it became an anecdote. I imagined the whole thing being diluted by other concerns until my memory of the stories of treatment became more real than my memories of the treatment itself. I almost envisioned telling my grandchildren.
It was a quiet, robust optimism-the power of positive radiation made plain, and it was dead wrong.

The vision now is that either I’m really messed up by the surgery and then carry on in that condition until I’m either cured or killed by the tumor or I simply skip the surgery and let the thing progress. The advantage of the latter course is that I have more time in a relatively healthy-or at least intact-condition. The Fox Chase website warns that the surgery interferes with eating, breathing and talking, three activities that I’ve grown to love. There’s also a wonderful sentence on the site about trying to avoid ‘breaking the jaw or splitting the lip’ during surgery and I fervently wish them good luck with that. I'll have to find out how radical the surgery will be before I choose.

In eight days, I see the surgeon. Lots of time to think about things like what to do, bucket lists, life summaries, who gets the cookbooks, stuff like that. I’ll keep you posted.

It’s Inconclusive

I got a call from Dr. Skarbnik, one of my two oncologists. Here’s what he found out: The lymph node under my jaw is cleared of cancer, but there is still a 2 cm. malignant mass on my tongue.
My next appointment is with the surgeon and we all know what surgeons think is the best solution. The surgery could leave me unable to speak and it will certainly ruin the headshots I use when I audition for major motion picture roles. Dr. Skarbnik holds out the possibility that another round of chemotherapy may do the trick.
I have no way of knowing what the probabilities are-the chemo- option may be just a way of softening the blow.
In the meantime, I’m going to use my voice to say ‘I love you’ and ‘Good dog!’ and ‘you really did a good job’. What will you use yours for?

Tricks

The CAT scan for the tumor is over in a matter of minutes. May I see the images? No, you may not, we have more patients to deal with. Very well, then.
On the way back to my car, I feel the lump in my jaw. Is it bigger? Maybe. Then I notice that my throat is sore-right in the spot where the tumor was discovered. And then there's that ear-ache, just like the one that I had before treatment.
Time to think about something else.

The Verdict

It’s easy to forget that all this life-squelching radiation and platinum infusions have a purpose. They’re supposed to kill the tumor before it kills me. It’s easy to forget about the tumor because the cure is itself a disease and the recovery from the disease is right here in my life and every day.

But we’re about to find out if all this was to any purpose. On Thursday, I go for a CAT scan of the tumor which was living and growing just under my right jaw. There are three possible outcomes, three potential headlines to be generated by the scan. One is that it was all for nothing and it’s time to kiss my ass goodbye. Two is that the thing is dead and I’m going to live. The third is that there’s still too much inflammation from the x-rays to be able to tell and we have to wait another eight weeks and look again.

My daughter asks me if I’m nervous about the outcome and I tell her that I’m not.
For one thing, I can feel that the tumor has shrunk and that its influence has diminished. More importantly, there’s nothing to be nervous about. The job is done, the votes have been cast, there’s nothing to do but read the results. In the meantime, there’s just now and questions about what kind of chocolate to put in the truffles that I’m bringing to somebody’s party this weekend. Back when I got the diagnosis-stage 4, you may remember, I pretty much wrote off the rest of life-so if there’s news, it will be good and if the outcome is bad, well that’s not news.

As I said to Archibald McLeish and Tina Turner just the other day: “Don’t Cry For Me, Arch and Tina.” And that's what I say to you too.
•   •
Here’s a curious side bit on The Verdict. The doctors told me that they’d do the scan on Thursday and tell me the results the following Tuesday. I wondered what the point of the five day delay was.
“Does it take that long to read the CAT scan?”
“No, it’s just that we don’t have clinic again until Tuesday.”
“Are you telling me that someone will know my fate on Thursday and I won’t know until a week later?” (Notice how I used my indignation to inflate five days into a week.)
Doctors are really cute when they’re caught looking guilty and so-after some staring at the floor and shuffling of the feet- one of them thought it over and allowed that I could call on Friday and he’d tell me the results. Good man.
•   •
There’s a tone creeping into my voice these days-especially on days when i have a voice at all. When someone first asks what going on? or how the heck are you? and I have to give a serious answer. The note is a touch defensive as if the questioner had a right to be disappointed. What? You? Cancer? Oh. Maybe it’s shame or at least embarrassment.
That’s the problem with all this rah-rah stuff about having the right attitude in the face of The Monster. If the right attitude will kill the tumor, what the hell was wrong with your attitude that you got it in the first place?

Chocolate Mousse for the Recently Radioactive

Swallow this:

Eating is really drinking, so if you don't make enough liquifying saliva of your own, you'd better figure out how to eat things that are already wet. That gives you a menu of blender drinks and supplements and after a few weeks, a diet of boredom. But there is one thing that goes in your mouth dry and light and then dissolves into creamy liquid goodness-it's mousse au chocolate (or chocolate pudding if you hate the French).
I've been making it and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't too. Why should the sick guy have all the fun?
Here's what you do: separate two eggs, putting the whites in a large bowl and the yolks in a cup. Make sure that you don't get even a speck of yolk in with the whites. Measure out two or three ounces of chocolate (figure on using a candy bar's worth) and put it in a small dish and then in the microwave. Melt the chocolate in short bursts, stirring each time. You don't want the chocolate to get too hot or it will cook the eggs when you add them.
When the chocolate is melted, whip the egg whites until they form stiff peaks-a minute or so with a hand-held electric mixer. Be sure not to whip them back into a liquid. Add a tablespoon of Myer's rum and half a tablespoon of really good vanilla extract to the egg whites. If your doctor is one of those humorless medics who forbids alcohol, add an ounce of very very strong coffee-don't be afraid to use a bit of instant coffee to intensify the flavor. The stiff foam of the whites will collapse, but don't worry about it.
Add the egg yolks to the melted chocolate and stir them in. Then pour the chocolate-egg yolk mixture into the egg whites and gently stir them together until you have a light brown mix. Pour this stuff (we can call it mousse now) into cups and refrigerate for an hour or so until they set. You can multiply this recipe up: as long as you keep a half an ounce to an ounce of chocolate per egg, you'll be fine.

If you picked a good chocolate, what you have is magic. Dry turns to moist and chocolate explodes in your mouth. Of course, the better the chocolate, the better the mousse, so don't be stingy. Even if nothing else has tasted good in a while you may actually enjoy your food for a minute or two-a good thing whether you have cancer or not.

Me, Mike Douglas and a Certain Cancer

I’m navigating my way through cancer land and the news story that’s playing like a sound track for my little adventure is the accounting of the cancer of Michael Douglas, the actor. Like me, he has head and neck cancer-Stage 4 and, according to the stories, he-like me-has an 80% chance of living through it.
His story and mine have some other parallels-we’re the same age, same ethnicity, we both have adoring and beautiful life partners, and we both seem to have enjoyed a pretty good time so far. Sure, I missed out on the fame, fortune and Hollywood part and (poor Mike) he probably never crossed the ocean in a sailboat, taught culinary school in Italy  or saw the Dodgers play at Ebbet’s Field. Six o’ one, I say-no reason for him to feel jealous. We’re both getting great care and neither of us is entitled to rail against cruel fate.
There’s one other thing we have in common: both of us trooped in and out of doctors’ offices with a set of symptoms for a long time before anybody said “Hey, that’s cancer!”. I’ll bet Mike had the ear aches and the sore throats. Maybe he even found himself spitting up bits of blood from time to time. Chances are that someone snaked a tube down his nose too and looked around and didn’t see the cancer that was growing there. Didn’t see it until it became a dome-light flashing stage four blocking traffic in the middle of his life.

So, here are some things that are puzzling about this whole business, some questions  that I’m thinking Mike and I might both want to get answered:

• What makes this cancer so hard to see? Is there anything Mike or I could have done? Is there some chance that he doctors who missed this diagnosis could give some thought to what went wrong.What can we all  do now to help make this mistake less likely for other people?

• That 80% survival rate is important. It that suggests that both of us have cancers that started with an Human Papilloma Virus  infection- a sexually transmitted condition. (Regular squamous cell cancer of the head and neck has a lower survival rate).
HPV by itself doesn’t necessarily lead to cancer. In most people it’s harmless. The body fights off the infection, and the virus becomes inactive.  Certain HPV strains lead to warts, annoying but not malignant. Other HPV strains are deemed "high-risk" because they occasionally develop into a persistent infection that can progress to cervical cancer in women and head and neck cancer in men.
It turns out that HPV is one of the few cancers that can be prevented with a vaccine. Right, a vaccine. Like the ones for mumps and chicken pox. Should we (Mike and I) make a big deal out of this? Should we use our star-power to tell the world that there’s a cancer that’s preventable with a vaccine? That we got it, but you don’t have to? Should we mention that
these HPV cancers could be stamped out in a generation?
Maybe Mike and I should take this little moment to suggest that anyone with children ask their doctor about Cervarix and Gardasil, the two vaccines that are proven to prevent HPV when they’re given before a person becomes sexually active. We could do a commercial together (although I might have to coach him how to say his lines)

• One other thing: if we each have an 80% chance of making it then there’s a 64% chance that we’ll both make it. When we do Mike, I’ll buy you a drink.


In the interest of full disclosure: Although the opinions expressed and faulty thinking promulgated are entirely the author’s,  Our Lady of the Sick Co-incidence has fixed it so that the author has a close personal relative employed by a major vaccine manufacturer.

Questions of Taste

This is from a letter to a friend in cambridge who's finishing up grading papers-

i am still mostly self-absorbed in my struggle to recover from the medical treatments. it's all profoundly boring and blatantly unavoidable. what's up right now is that i can't  taste or even eat in a normal way. the radiation is beamed right at the salivary glands which dry up and stop producing. aside from a chronically dry mouth being pretty annoying-it can wake you up in the middle of the night-it means that chewing doesn't prepare food to be digested, it just crumbles it up. the dry crumbly food isn't swallowable-you need moisture. in the end it seems that all eating is really drinking. the condition is called xerostomia.

the same dryness seems to destroy taste-i guess the taste buds work best when wet-so there is little pleasure in the eating i do. instead meals have become a sort of game. i total up the calories consumed and try to get to a number that will help me regain some of the weight and muscle that i lost.

 when i look in the mirror i see a loose-fleshed, plucked bird. thanksgiving just having passed, the image is not a fortunate one. friends tell me how good i look, but that's what friends do i suppose. sleeves that once stretched to accommodate my arms now hang loosely-i think they look a little sad, but maybe i'm projecting.

 my diet is built around a dairy-based commercial drink called Ensure. the vanilla version is the least offensive. i eat some mandarin oranges, which come with their own liquid and i make mousse au chocolate which dissolves very nicely on the tongue. there are a few other drinks and some concoctions out of the blender that enable me to liquify what should be solid and fool my throat into accepting it. i also borrowed a juicer and i buy big bags of carrots and celery in the italian market. i have become a defacto vegetarian-the thought of blending up a chicken thigh or a lamb loin makes me want to gag-and i guess i should be grateful for the attendant karma. 

my internet sources say that the changes are probably permanent-one doesn't recover from xero-whatever that's induced by radiation. my doctors are more optimistic, they say that something-spit or sensibility may return. they talk about three months or so. i'll keep you posted.

aside from my narcissistic blog, i'm not writing a thing. not a single poem although i do have a book of poetry being published next month by thunderclap press.(it's called BOOM! subtitled 'poems for a certain generation' ) i have some food writing that i could get to, but the thought of writing about food now seems like bullshit: a man living on industrial human feed shouldn't (or maybe can't) wax persuasive about the joys of learning to cooking for oneself.

i'd love to know about the results of your wine tasting. i'm always glad to hear that the wine fields are expanding for that means that wine has a chance to become more of a daily delight and less of a precious treat. i can't imagine though, how austria could be outdone by 'other countries', i'm still a fierce partisan of Burgenland. my interest in wine has become mostly academic-my poor arid mouth can barely stand to have a sip of wine in it. i don't know if it's the acid or the tannins, but what i experience is an unpleasant burn. i can enjoy a single glass of beer though and when i do, i can pick out some of the old familiar flavors. if i brew again, i'll make something low in carbonation to be easier on the tongue.

The Way to Save

You gotta hand it to cancer: it’s a real money-saver, a veritable fountain of thrift. Check this out. It’s been about 90 days since I started treatment and look at the money I’ve saved:
With some help, I used to go through four or five bottles of wine a week. At Pennsylvania prices, that’s about a grand in the course of 90 days.
There’s not much dining out when you can’t chew, so conservatively that’s another six hundred in the bank. We haven’t done much damage to the fancy beer lately either, let’s say one-eighty there.
Whatever shopping impulses I might have had have gone dormant, so that’s a hundred or so and I haven’t spent anything on clothes which saves at least another ten bucks. Oh, and of course there's the matter of razor blades. There's no shaving when the x-rays cut your whiskers off so that's another eight bucks or so.
So put it all together and that’s $1898. that’s still in my bank account that otherwise would have ended up supporting Philadelphia’s hospitality industry.
Pretty miraculous, huh? If you ask me nicely, I may explain about the miracle cancer diet. It really melts the fat right off of you. Really.