Mere Life-the little stuff-poetry

The poetry class turns out better than I thought it could. For one thing, Kathleen, the teacher, is the real deal: a great poet, smart, direct, unflinchingly emotional. For another, she can teach. She reads, sees the bullshit and calls it out in a gentle way. And there's the matter that I'm the only student- I'm the best damn poet in the class.
The class is for people who've published a little and want to get a book-length manuscript together. My project is called BOOM! in love; a book of love poems. The method is something like this: first I draw up a map, a story line of everything I've loved for the past twenty years or so. Then I eat some of those neon orange mushrooms that grow in Carpenter's Woods, take off all my clothes, sit in a sweat lodge and write poems about it all.
Okay, I was lying about everything after the part about the map. But the map makes sense. It points to all the emotional termite-mounds in the landscape and that's where the poems seem to be. Beats that ol' geiger-counter and metal detector method that I had been using.

Here's one of the first poems from the map. I translated it into Italian because it seemed operatic enough.

note from a libertine, dying

it was not a lack of love
and not, i swear, a love of lacking
love.
it was not a wanting of a better thing
or a eye to the future
or an ear to the past
it was
the flood of you, just you
that washed away the ground
and left me in
a kingdom made of air.

•   •

biglietto di un libertino, morendo

non è stata una mancanza di amore
e non, lo giuro io, l'amore per la mancanza di
amore.
non era un volere di una cosa migliore
o un occhio al futuro
o un orecchio al passato
è stato
il diluvio di voi, proprio voi
che spazzato via la terra
e mi ha lasciato in
un regno fatto d'aria.

Mere Life

It's the meeting with Barbara Burtness, the charming and literate oncologist. I have a book for her, it's Peace on Earth by Stanislas Lem. It's a funny book and a little silly. She says that she's coming down with a cold and so we shouldn't shake hands. Nice to worry about colds in the consulting room where we worried about cancer.

There is no evidence of cancer, she says. It begins to sound real, like I hadn't heard it before. There is an effervescence in her voice and I guess that this is as close as professional decorum lets an oncologist come to the end-zone victory dance.

Yeah, I guess a lot of her battles don't end like this so you probably learn not to over-celebrate the ones that do. Cancer teaches the Middle Way.

So we talk about follow-up and about tending to my radiation damage and she says goodbye and we shake hands and then laugh at this terrible breach of prophylaxis. I promise to wash, we laugh again and then she's gone.

So that's it. After a year, the cancer's gone. Actually, after a year of focussing on cancer, there's nothing left to think about. I'm no longer in the middle of Life-and-Death-Struggle-with-Relentless-Enemy. I'm reduced by a single conversation to mere living. Whatever will I do?

What will I do with the time and the consciousness? What will I do with this blog for which I have developed some curious feeling of attachment-something like love. Can I abandon it now that the raisin of its être is all dried up?

No, of course I can't. At the least, I have to answer the question about what I will do now that I'm reduced to mere living. Gotta justify just being, mere life: what's it all for?

•   •   •

There are two kinds of answers, a Lesser and a Greater Vehicle. The Lesser answer is that there are a bunch of fun things to pursue and there's some extra energy to pursue them. I am not at a loss for thoughts about fun.

One pursuit is this poetry obsession. A writing center called Muse House just opened in Chestnut Hill. As near as I can tell, it's the real deal. Actual, accomplished writers with experience in thoughtful coaching and teaching. The poetry teacher is a Kathleen Bonanno (what will I say to her at New Years? Buonanno, Bonanno? Probably.) Her book-Slamming Open the Door-is compact and powerful and dense with truth.

Class starts tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

Radiation and Relief

The bad news is that it's radiation damage that's messing up my tongue and untrilling my r's. The good news is that it's radiation damage and not a tumor. The radiation damage may get worse, the tumor certainly would get worse.
There's a lot of talk about nerve damage and fibrosis and words like progressive and cumulative. But the distinction gets made between 'living with cancer' and 'living past cancer', and right now I'm at the beginning of living past it.
How do I feel? I feel like I want to take a nap and write a book and go for a sail and catch a fish and cook it on a little grill on deck and share it with the friends who know the best jokes. I feel like I want to call my dear friend B who is waiting for her test results and tell her that there's some good news out in the world and some of it's for her.
I feel like a drink with Gilmore and a dance with J. I feel like swapping recipes and cooking lies. I feel like moving and when I think about it much, I see a tiny cabin and a boat.
It's a different blog now: Stay tuned.

While We're Waiting

I went to State College and spent the weekend with Peter. Lots of talk of streams and fishing, clean water and dirty minds. Spent a day kayaking Black Moshannon with my dog and another at something called Crik Fest listening to country music and talk of compost and bees and sustainable dreams. Between that and goodly amounts of beer, I didn't dwell on today very much.

If I plan this right, I can leave from South Philly a bit late and fret about traffic and being late for the appointment.

Studying Up for your MRI

Taking an MRI exam is, from the point of view of the slab of meat that's being examined, a lot like taking a PET scan. You're strapped down a bit more, but for us experienced radiation hands, it ain't much. Otherwise, you're slid into  a long coffin-like tube and you tell yourself that you're not actually buried alive. Then you pay attention to your breaths and give a lot of thought to not-moving (which is harder than moving, I tell you).
The only difference is that the MRI machine makes noise. Imagine someone banging on a drum that was filled with scrap metal and you'll have some sense of it. The sound track runs alongside the one you select for your earphones. You don't get lost in the music, it's more like you're cast adrift in a noisy gym where everybody is working out to their own playlist.
Visually, they'll give you a chance to mount a mirror on your head restraint. The angled mirror allows you to look out of the tube, between your feet and into the control room and also through a second glass to the other MRI room. I recommend the hell out of using the mirror. What it does is give you a view of people in action, but no sound. So it's like looking at an aquarium, the view of which I find very soothing. I watched the two technicians gesturing to each other, I saw water bottles opened and felt my mouth go dry. I watched a woman about my age enter the other room, bent over at the waist and clutching her hospital gown as if it would protect her from something. Was it just amerinormal modesty? Was she in pain? Was it the last gesture that despair allows you when you're caught in the cancer hospital? Then a third tech, stout and blond entered the control room and acted out the pantomime of someone doing pushups from a wall. Was she holding back the sea? Repelling Syrian demonstrators? Kneading a roomful of bread? Don't know.
Except for the lack of bubbles, they all could have been little goldfish, one tank behind the other.
I'm sure there's a psychotropic preparation for an MRI like ativan or bourbon. If I'm unlucky enough to take the exam again, I'm sure my study routine will include one of them. Unfortunately, all I did to get ready was to take a walk a few blocks from J's house. Here's what it looked like:

This is right in the City of Philadelphia and it's just one of hundreds of spots that can get you ready for exams.