Tonight’s post is short. Because of something I saw my mind has wandered into the idea of creating a chronology of some of my deeds and misdeeds, of some of my regrets and some of my triumphs. There will come a time when these memories are gone, gone like dust wiped off a table in anticipation of the next dinner guest. I am going to list every year 1956 to 2019 and try and put beside the year two or three events that still resonate.
What sparked this was my decision to take a picture to post on the blog. I walked up under a bent sunflower that stood about 8 foot high. Quickly I raised my camera and took a shot, I figure I would have to adjust it a bit. When I sat down here at the ELPL, at my table for writing, I started to tweak the image. When I upped the exposure I discovered that inadvertently I had caught a bee working this plant. Conversely when I upped the exposure I lost the clouds that were so wonderfully placed behind the very large flower. Ultimately I opted for a collage to capture both the bee and the clouds.
Making the choices on what to focus in prepping that photo started me down the rabbit hole. What events should I try and capture in my writing over these next few weeks? What images were more important? I can tell you that on Tuesday November 8 1960 I got my ass whupped by my Aunt Sugar. I was 4 ½ years old.
How could I remember that date so clearly? Well, my dear Aunt had taken my cousin Billy and myself to the polling station where the election was being held. It was Kennedy and Nixon on the ballot.
Really I don’t know who started it but Billy and I started going back and forth, while we were with my Aunt Sugar inside the drawn curtain of the voting booth. At first quietly and then quickly escalating to shouts, we kept repeating Kennedy no Nixon, Nixon, Kennedy!!!. Eventually shouts morphed into shoves and shoves turned into a tussle. We knocked over the election booth. It was just a three sided curtain atop a folding table, but boy was my aunt pissed. If you need to guess, you don’t know me. I was the Kennedy supporter.
So right now the list goes like this:
1956- Born during a thunderstorm in Salem Memorial Hospital.
1957-
1958-
1959-
1960- Got my assed whupped for my damn liberal leanings.
Over the next few days I will be filing in the years as best I can. This should be interesting.
Sitting in the waning sunlight of a late summer’s day the old man listened to the sounds around him. The man knew deafness was coming by degree. Still, there were sounds that still stirred emotions in him.
At some distance from where he sat, let us say about a mile, someone on a broad boulevard opened up the throttle of a motorcycle. He knew it was probably a Harley from the visceral and guttural sound it made. The old man remembered his youth and hanging with people who owned motorcycles. He spent hours with his friends as they worked on their bikes. The smell of the oil and the gasoline had never left his senses. His mind was filled with sensation echoes, the feel of grease on his fingers and the intoxicating smell of burnt exhaust fumes. Those people were dead now. Gone too soon. Gone too soon.
Listening intently the old man strained to separate out the sound of crickets from the ever present tinnitus in his ears. He could tell the chirping of different birds. He could hear the wind in the trees. But the quieter sounds were gone. Someone in the distance was using a circular saw. The old man hoped they were wearing ear protection.
In the distance the old man heard a train whistle blow. It blew again and again. The old man thought about the rules for warning whistles on the big diesels these days. Things were a bit different when he was young. He knew what some of the signals were back then.
He remembered clearly that an almost endless whistle meant disaster. The farm town where he grew up had numerous at grade crossing, none with cross bucks. About once every year or two someone, either because of inexperience or drunkenness, would try and outrun a train. He had seen what happened when the burst of speed from an old Chevy ended badly. When the unceasing whistle blew the whole town seemed to be called out to the scene. The old man scrunched his forehead wrinkles, he wouldn’t open that box in his brain tonight. Hidden in his grey matter’s engrams were scenes of carnage that would never be erased; they were beyond awful.
The old man starting humming an old Jackson Browne tune, Song for Adam. When he thought back on the days of motorcycles and Hoppin’ Gator and weed the lyrics of that song would often cross his mind. With warmth tinged with sadness he would think of a friend who he last saw riding off on his bike out over the causeway through the swamp. He wasn’t a suicide like Adam in the song but his candle did not burn long.
Ah the bugs were getting bad and he had not put on bug spray. The old man made a mental note to come to his memories, these particular memories tomorrow.
He was dressed in a leather jacket, leather boots, jeans and a black Bell helmet. 38 cents put a gallon in the tank of his BMW R50/5. A buck and a quarter filled it up. With an average 99 mpg and a top speed of about 90 mph he could ride a long way into the heart of America. Pulling his wallet out he was ready to take that ride.
The young leather clad man had lived in the same town his entire life. Right now, his heart told him he needed to go, an ache in his soul made it clear to the man he really wanted out. Thing was everyone with any spark in this small town wanted out. Every one under the age of thirty was tired of being judged from behind partially closed curtained. Bland bitter people with chained dreams tried to tell anyone who would listen how to live. Every single teenager and twenty something was sick of being told, cut your hair and go get a factory job.
19 with a high draft number and a ramblin’ urge, he wasn’t planning on going back for his second year of college. His spinster aunt who had always like him-it paid to say please and thank you- left him $3,000. Her gift had paid off the bike easily and gave him enough money to go.
The old woman had hated the wagging tongues of the little town. The things they had said because she didn’t marry. ‘To hell with them’ she had thought as she drafted her will, ‘I am going to free that boy’. As the pump boy finished topping off his tank, the young man had a map in his pocket and enough “fuck you Smallsville” money from his aunt to take on America, pulled two ones from his wallet and handed it over. He waited for his change, change that would surely smell like gasoline.
Today is my son’t birthday. A number of year’s ago I would have stated, today is my autistic son’s birthday. John Lee has grown so much.
He is still autistic but his personality is defined by things far outside that box. He is a deep thinking individual with a unique perspective on life. He enjoys international travel. He enjoys his work for an internet service provider. He is focused on graduating this term with a degree in computer science from Michigan State. He likes elk steak and hard cider. He loves fresh octopus. He even likes that little Japanese pastry balls with octopus in them.
I hope his life goes well. A few years back I posted the item below on Facebook. It still mean something.
Sleep well this night John Lee after a day of celebrating. May the four winds guide you as gracefully as they have guided me.
Ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
“People are not primarily evil. Evil behavior is a secondary consequence of the fact that most individuals
don’t have the courage to leave the evil crowd.” -Petr Ludwig
“Whatever madness that was happening that day was actually happening.” -Neil Gaiman
My family will not let me watch the evening news. Personally I struggle to listen to the morning newscast I used to love. At those times that I have to go out to a website that has banners of the day’s headlines, I am genuinely shocked at the madness that surrounds me. Moreover, I am shocked at the people who acquiesce to the evil that is growing day by day in the halls of governance.
Weariness overcomes me as I try to contemplate all the mistakes of the big money boys’ club that have brought us here. I call their actions mistakes only in the sense the actions taken by them did not foster the betterment of the public as a whole. These actions were not mistakes in the sense that without values of citizenship in our country, and without a belief in stewardship for the future, their choices were made to make ungodly rich, those who were merely super rich before.
How do we not lose heart in the world that currently surrounds us? Is it because we are simply allowing our emotions to drag us dow that we feel the acids churning in our guts with each sound bite?
A writer I read recently said that to move from this place of darkness we must acknowledge we are going unconscious-we are losing awareness. She asserted that we must look at the larger context.
What does that really mean, the larger context? Well, we can start with the concept that life is very short indeed and that we have limited energy. We should not be burning our limited energy on unproductive routines and habits. We can’t get hooked in the cycles of pain that some in media foment. We can’t get hooked into the cycles of I’m right and you’re wrong that fill social media interactions. We have to take a macro view of all that is happening so as to free our compassion on a day to day, one to one basis.
With rawness and vulnerability the writer argued we can have a positive impact on the world. We need to trust in basic goodness. I guess that this means we live our lives based on our greater values acted out in a smaller scale world. I guess it means that we believe that being good might cull another good person out of the evil of the crowd. The evil in the world is massive and our singular acts of basic decency won’t end genocide, won’t end the mechanics of greed, won’t assure that we won’t have the living shit kicked out of us. Our singular acts of decency will help bolster a greater communal mind set of decency, humanity and resilience.
Once when I was watching Billy Bragg at a small venue concert he said our real enemy is not the evil of those in power but in cynicism. Cynicism motivates us to give up, leads us into a selfish self pitying cocoon. Mr. Bragg urged us to participate in the world and to keep our actions above board. He too believed that our individual acts would bolster the humanity and decency in those around us.
The title is a bit misleading. Stilton Cheese and paperwork are two discrete topics. However, as I walked to my writing space I was thinking about both of them.
As to Stilton cheese. I don’t have any. I haven’t eaten any recently. I am not sure I know where I can buy real Stilton, international borders being what they are. Also agricultural protection being what it is. I have memories of coming through customs returning from London two decades ago and being asked if Stilton was a hard cheese. I had some with me. The custom agent very carefully stated if Stilton was a soft cheese I wouldn’t be allowed to bring it in. I mustered my best, “Well, I believe it is classed as a hard cheese.” I got an OK and in it came.
Okay, I have not been watching Wallace and Gromit either. I haven’t been shopping at any of the little gourmet shops around Lansing. I haven’t even ventured into the dairy aisle at Meier’s of late. But last night I dreamed of Stilton cheese. About the only fragment of the dream I can remember is that I was gifting people small quantities of Stilton cheese in hermetically sealed packets. The people I gave the cheese to got angry. Almost to a person they began throwing the packets at me with force. They were all grumbling but I don’t remember what the issue was. I woke up. I had to pee. Okay that is it on the Stilton.
Paperwork. Oh my God. I have two big pieces of paperwork to create quickly. One piece is a FMLA application form for my leave to have the cancer extracted from my kidney. It took a bit of searching on the State of Michigan’s website but I got the two forms I need to get FMLA approved. My form is now filled out. The issue is how to get the one to the physician who must execute a separate form. I am in Lansing. The doctor is in Ann Arbor. U of M uses a web portal to communicate with me. I took about 10 minutes trying to navigate it. Found out stuff I didn’t know, like I need a colonoscopy and a vaccination for tetanus and pertussis. Need to get those, pertussis is resurgent and it will screw you up.
What I didn’t find was how to get the FMLA form to the doctor. I ended up sending a note to U of M Medicine’s customer service link on the portal to see what to do. My guess, if what I have seen from then so far holds true, I should get clear and concise directions tomorrow.
The more screwed up part of the paperwork trail today was trying to sort out what I have to file to retire with the State of Michigan. There are no flow charts. There are no online forms. All there are are links to generic discussions about retiring. I, after having circled around in that hell online, decided to call the Office of Retirement Services. I ended up talking after a 9 ½ minute wait to a profoundly unhelpful technician. Apparently nothing regarding retirement can be done online, it is all paperwork.
Having gotten a human I asked him about some insurance nuances that the website seemed to imply could be in my favor. Now understand, I went to the site that covers my situation, a long term employee who missed getting a pension by two years. I am a baby boomer 401k participant. There was one line that seemed to imply I might be entitled to a specific benefit and it was on the “Defined Contribution” page. I was told by helpful Harry that I probably didn’t qualify, but I might because different departments of the State of Michigan stopped offering that benefit at different times. WTF. I told him was unit I worked for, how long I had been there etc. He said I had to fill out the paperwork to retire before they could tell me what benefits I have and how much insurance will cost me.
The problem is that how much things will cost me will play a factor on the when of when I retire. It is a cluster. I will wait for the paper packet. I will fill it out. I will send it in and I am sure I will wait. Bureaucracy, ugh. Stilton and paperwork.
It is a hot and muggy day today. I am grabbing a couple of minutes here to write because the radar indicates I will never make it home before the storm rolls in. The calculus is this, the the storm is 10 miles away moving at 40 mph hour. My home is a 35 minute uphill walk from here through totally residential neighborhoods. Odds are good that if I don’t accept the ride I have been offered I will get soaked. No options exist for shelter on that 35 minute walk except one lone covered bus-stop.
Mind you I don’t’ mind getting wet. I am also not afraid of getting drenched. I have plastic bags to shield all the electronic and valuable paper stuff in my purse from the elements. What I am afraid of is the potential of getting fried by the one billion joules of energy containing in a single lightening strike which is desperately and urgently trying to find its way to ground.
Dying, lightening, flying, being rejected and being alone…all qualify as top ten fears. Having kidney cancer, hell that wasn’t even on the radar. Okay, my guess is that we all can agree to a fear of death being in most people’s top ten dreads. Even the most fervent of believers (in whatever or whoever) have to have some iota of doubt. The fear of death is borne of uncertainty and/or the potential for meaninglessness. There can also be a bit of fear of pain wrapped into the consternation we humans have regarding death, either pre or post the onset of the body’s failure. Most people can intellectually accept my fear of death.
The fear of lightening, well only a select group of us will hold onto that fear. Even my own grandmother gave me grief about my mostly irrational fear of lightening. (Admittedly I have had this fear since a young age). My grandmother would hold up her arm and it had a thin brown strip of a scar its entire length. That was what she claimed was left from when lightening struck her as she was out in the garden as a much younger woman. She used this visual aid to basically make the argument that your time comes when it comes and lightening isn’t the thing that you should tremble at.
I was good on flying up until my good friend Darvon drove me to the airport at the end of my freshman year at MSU. On the ride there we smoked a joint the size of Delaware. I felt “just fine” until the plane was taxiing to the runway. Then encased in that aluminum cigar tube, I realized I was headed into the sky and that if something went wrong there was basically nothing for me to do but die. It was, as they say, a moment of stoned righteous clarity.
Hey I have dealt with this one. Thank you God for the benzodiazepine that is Valium.
The rejected and alone thing came from being overweight, isolated and ridiculed as a kid. As God is my witness it was not until I was in my last two months of high school that I even had a hope that I would really develop a relationship. Still, when the real relationships came I just stone screwed those up with insecurity and insensitivity.
Part of this fear comes from doing the work I do. Each day I see people who have burned their bridges with family irreparably, or who have outlived every peer they ever had. When you talk to these people there is an ache that is palpable for which there is no balm, for which there will never be a respite. No I am too social. I don’t want to be in this box.
I don’t come back to the loneliness fear as often as I do to lightening or death or even flying, but it is in the top ten.
Maybe I should get a good therapist. Maybe I should just suck it up. Whichever, I have to go my ride is here. Bye now.
The first day of the workweek has come and gone. I got my work done. I tried to make the best choices I could. At the end of the day, I always have questions. When the books are closed on the workday, I always have doubts. Still, I do our best and I hope I have come to a just outcome.
When I first took this position my initial supervisor told me, “Don’t be petty and don’t be cavalier; these are peoples’ lives we are dealing with”. He also told me not to be impressed by clothing or put off by virtually illiterate vocal patterns. He told me the key was to look and see what each person had done to build a wall against a relapse to drug and alcohol use.
Every day I’m trying to live by those words. Today showed me the truth of that. The person I saw at 3 PM was a person with maybe a ninth grade education. He was struggling but he was holding down a job at a machine shop. More importantly he knew what he needed to stay away from a relapse. He had people in place to hold him accountable. He had a sober group to hold him accountable.
On the other hand my 4 o’clock had all the right paperwork and said all the right things, but when you dug into it you found that he had no depth to his commitment. He still had the same friends. He still went to the same places and he had never taken a course about avoiding a relapse. He talked real fine but his words were hollow. Eventually the issue of the inconvenience of not having a license became the chief topic of conversation. He isn’t ready yet.
I don’t always make the right decision. But some people make my choice easier. If you are not committed to change then I can’t do anything for you.
The nerds are here, this Sunday night. It is a good thing because it has driven me out of the house and to a picnic table in the backyard. My absence from the cool comforts inside means that I will write.
It is muggy out here. It is in the high 70s F or about 25 C. The sky is an orange red color facing east. All day we have received warnings that the weather will turn bad, severe thunderstorms and the like, but so far all we have gotten right here is high humidity.
I have walked today. My average daily walk, that is my purposeful walk from point A to point B is about 3 ¼ miles. My total walking averages just slight above 5.6 miles and sometimes reaching 6 ½ miles a day. This counts all the walks to and from the dishwasher, to/from the washer and dryer and to or from various miscellaneous tasks. My average number of hours standing upright for 2 minutes is about 17. My average exercise is about 40 minutes.
Today I have done the mundane and the sacred. There has been one load of laundry washed and dried. There have been two loads of dishes washed and dried. Also there was an hour spent in evening church.
Including the pastors, the pianist and the usher (me) there were 17 people. However, it is the end of summer and August is always sparsely attended, at least in the evening services. The service was simple, a basic order of worship. We got down on kneeling pads and asked forgiveness for acts of commission and of omission. We prayer for justice for the imprisoned and comfort for the ill. We took the sacraments and sang old times hymns.
Why do I go, when it is clear from my postings that I ambivalent about the meaning of faith? I go because it calms my spirit to have someone tell me that what I have done to date is forgiven, not forgotten. I need not bear insurmountable guilt, and I do need to put things right. Whether you are Buddhist on the mat deep in meditation practice, or a Lutheran or Episcopalian on a kneeler, we need to let the past go and quit worrying about the future. We have to focus on living in the best, most honest now.
One person asked me about the date of my surgery and for some of the details. We talked for a couple of minutes. I did read all the details in the letter received from U of M Hospital yesterday. Nothing really new except putting down on paper all the dates and ties I have already been told. And then there were the rules pre-surgery about not eating or drinking and taking medications at least four hours before the surgery.
Well at 8:45 the dark has pretty much overcome my ability to write. With this I say good night and offer you my best wishes for the week. Say a prayer for those suffering injustice. Think positive thoughts for those facing pain and uncertainty. So a good word to someone this week. Uphold the weak. Live the best you can in this moment.
Today is a Saturday. Outside there is full sun and warm temperatures. Today is the 50th anniversary of the second da the Woodstock music festival. As I set these words down I am listening to the Jefferson Airplane’s performance of Wooden Ships. According to the liner notes this version is very long. One of my all time favorite songs. I guess I will see how it feels.
Most nights I have been trying to get something down on paper, well electronic paper. Last night I was just too tired. I spent most of the evening watching an old Canadian television show, a sort of Rockford Files set in Newfoundland and Labrador called Republic of Doyle. Very simple plot lines, cute people and smatterings of Newfie speak. Tree instead of three is an easy example, but there are others. The trade off was not really worth it. , I smiled at the antics but I felt bad about not writing. I am trying to make sure that something gets down most days and I feel guilty about last night.
I had thought about going to the movies last night. Didn’t happen. Instead, Francie and I went this morning. We went to a 10:35 am showing of Blinded by the Light. It was yet another story of Pakistani children growing up in England. This is a whole sub genre of Brit flicks. Bend it like Beckham was probably the first I saw. East is East was another. There is a constant thread in these movies about the Pakistani sense of obligation to family butting up against western concepts of the primacy of the individual. This battle was on full display in Blinded.
The movie has a great deal of heart wrapped up with the music of Springsteen and just a dash of 1940s musicals/Bollywood dancing. The poofy hair styles, the Boy George style hats, the balloon pants, well gosh, we did wear those for a time didn’t we? Don’t expect a hard hitting drama, the film is a very amiable piece of fluff. Still there are many worse ways to spend a couple of hours on a warm summer day.
If you go and see the film you have to stay for the credits. If you have not heard it yet, there is a song Springsteen wrote for the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone movie. This quiet gem didn’t get used in that film. But what Bruce crafted remains a beautiful song. You can pull it up on Apple Music and probably on YouTube. But sitting in a cool theater after most of the audience has left listening to this very sweet and very warm song adds something to the whole experience.
Today just for the record is not a cancer day. Angst has been dialed down to 1. I did get an envelope from U of M with instructions on the handling of myself immediately before the surgery. It also gave me directions to the a meeting at the anesthesiologist’s office. Finally, there was a follow up appointment with the doctor post surgery. These will one day be written down on shared calendars. But today is not that day.
Tonight the nerds will invade my house. I may have to go out for pizza to give them space. Sigh.
Post Script. I listened to the entirety of.the Wooden Ships, it was nice but it was of the era. I have heard versions I have liked more. But if I was trippin’ balls in the middle of a mud-field in 1969 it would have been heavenly.
Woodstock Didn’t Happen in August 1969 – At Least Not for Most of Us.
August 15, 1969 Richies Havens took the stage. He was performing on a platform erected in the middle of a farmer’s field in upstate New York. Thousands of people were pouring in. Then tens of thousands. Then hundreds of thousands. As Mr. Havens began to sing, thus commenced the performances of what would be the truly legendary Woodstock Festival.
What happened between that first night and Sunday morning two days later would become iconic. Nothing would compare to this for decades.. Woodstock at that point was just a event that kept growing; it would become a cultural touchstone. From that moment forward we were Woodstock nation, those of us that were under 30.
For years I would get asked the question when I told people I grew up in New Jersey, “Did you get to Woodstock?” I lived five or six hours away. I was 13. I had no money and I had very protective parents. While they could stop not stop me from slipping out and smoking a joint over behind the grade school, they could stop me from taking a long holiday with half a million people. My folks were not just going to set me free to go listening to that damn caterwauling.
Intellectually I knew Woodstock had happened. I got glimpses of what I missed on TV broadcasts. Right after the festival Dick Cavett had the Jefferson Airplane and on to perform. Crosby Still and Nash showed up to hang out and talk. As I watched that hour of late night TV I regretted not finding a way to get to the concert but for God’s sake I was 13. I do know two people who went. One of them was actually the blond haired kid on the cover of Life magazine the week after the concert. I knew that a giant humongous concert had happened. I knew the heavy bands had played. But I also knew I I was not part of it..
Nope for me Woodstock happened on May 11, 1970. On that day Woodstock Music from the Original Soundtrack and More was released on the Cotillion label. Within days somebody in my little cadre of ne’er do well friends had snapped up a copy and it had found its way to Pedricktown, New Jersey. The first time I heard it was sitting out at Phil Gerrill’s place on Sparks’ farm. Someone had a portable record player and we were smoking some joints and one very steady handed person dropped the needed on the opening groove on Side 2. Within a heartbeat Country Joe McDonald was shouting out the Fish Cheer, “Gimmie a F, Gimmie a U ….”
Over the next few days, and definitely over the rest of that summer we wore those six sides out. We listened again and again to I’m Going Home by Ten Years After. We kept playing Hendrix’s take on the Star Spangled Banner. Soul Sacrifice by Santana was burned into my ears. Even Joe Cocker’s slow reading of With a Little Help from my Friends got played and played again. The six sides of that collection became our hymnal for the summer of 1970. Marijuana was our sacrament.
My guess is that for just a whole swath of American youth between May 1970 and when we all returned to school the day after Labor Day, that massive collection of music was a defining common experience. We all rued the fact we were not there. We all swore that if they ever through another big festival like it we would be there. We got toasted, we hid the roaches and we sang out of tune at the top of our lungs letting our freak flags fly. We the youngest of the boomers fought with our parents and let our hair grow out. We got our bell bottoms with patches that said things like Mr. Natural and 13. In the those months when everything was so damn confusing, the vision that was Woodstock was burned into our brains.
Times were truly confusing. Nixon had invaded Cambodia. Remember I mentioned the three LP set hit the market, May 11, 1970? A mere six days earlier National Guardsmen had gunned down students at Kent State University killing four of them. Altamont had occurred the December prior. Both of these events battered us and left our confused.
Cutting off the plastic from around that trifold record jacket, smelling that fresh vinyl and the energy of what was condensed into this tracks gave us hopes and dreams. We really did become a Woodstock Nation, at least for a little while. Yeah the concert may have been in 1969 but the tsunami that was the music played there on that New York farm hit in the summer of 1970. When the FM underground radios stations started playing track after track, that is when Woodstock happened for the rest of us.
So quickly the cycle from bud to withering petal. We watch it when we are young oblivious to the passing of time. We watch it when we are old in a manner that resembles how we once checked our wrist watch. The time between bud and faded glory feels for all the world like a quarter of an hour felt in its passing when I was young. Time is relative.
Last night I continued my WD assigned mission. WD’s charge to me was that I am to write some pieces not in the first person.
To do this last night I set down a vignette of an occasion day in my lifetime. Specifically I tried to capture an hour of one day in my lifetime. I grabbed a Tuesday scene.
So as opposed to my usual listing of what I had for lunch, the tale was populated with two characters, one kind of me and one a thought I have had about the lady walkers from Sparrow Health Systems office. This office is right near my office. What I put down last night and this morning is another in the fits and starts of trying to get this story teller to tell larger stories. At the worst the post I created will, at some point in the future, be a prompt to jog my memory about what my life was like at the end of my working career. Note the bit about the wind is absolutely true.
I mention this story because I cleaned it up on my break at work today and also during the first part of my lunch hour. So that there will be no guessing I took the photos today. I got the $1.79 pizza. I did not eat at the table, the worn table pictured at the top of the story. I walked back and ate at my desk.
So the first thing I did was to finish the story. The second thing I did was to take on an extra case and blow my planned schedule all to hell. A Petitioner came to the wrong office, Lansing instead of Livonia. He was from Muncie, Indiana and well I had enough time open to at least hold the hearing even if I had to write it up later. As I talked to him I realized I had met him before and so I searched my files. I had seen him about four years ago, but because he did not have a full year without using alcohol or drugs I sent him on his way. We didn’t even finish the hearing. Since we last met he had changed a great deal. He lost 100 pounds, was a vegan (mostly) and had earned a Master’s degree. He impressed me and had the needed proofs. He got a full license.
The final thing I did was to call my local doctor’s office and tell them that I had decided to go to the big cancer center hospital in Ann Arbor. My call to them went to voice mail. I emphasized that I loved my doctor and that he has now saved my life twice. I made up some bullshit, although what I said was partially true, about being concerned about aftercare follow up when my doctor and his most senior partner retire in December. The real reason is my concern about the local hospital’s rating relative to infections (and a host of other stories of problems with care),
I did emphasize that I really appreciated my doctor. In response I got a voice mail back saying all the local stuff and follow up had been cancelled. It was polite. It was surgical. I hoped it would end there. Still, I knew it wouldn’t. At about 5:20 I got a voicemail from the doctors office. I know from experience this late of call meant the call was from my doctor himself. The fact that the message went on for a minute and a half told me he had something to say.
The watch on my hand as I write this says it is 7:59 pm and I still have listened to the message yet. My stomach is churning. Here is doctor, a person I like, that I have left for the bigger and in many ways better place for cancer care. But I feel like I have abandoned him. Eventually I will listen to the message. I just don’t know if it will be tonight.
I will have my kidney surgery on October 1, 2019 in Ann Arbor Michigan. I will then recuperate for six weeks. My plan is to return to work the day after Veteran’s Day assuming the creek don’t rise.
There is something to be said for Tuesday cheap pizza day slices.
The discount ritual had been going on forever.On one side of the two-sided strip mall was a hot dog cum breakfast
eatery.It was the kind of place where
you could two eggs sunny side up, with hash browns, brown toast and coffee for
a flat $6.99.For years Tuesday’s midday
had been the joint’s cheap dog day.If
you bought anything else, say an order of fries ala carte, you could buy a dog
covered with meaty chili sauce and onions for a dollar fifty.Two dogs, fries and a glass of water put you under
six bucks.
The “deli” on the other side of the building had responded
for decades with Tuesday cheap pizza day.On Tuesdays a slice of cheese or ham pizza, a bag of chips and a pop
would run about $5.25 all tax included. The differences between the two were
this.The pizza “deli” was fast, the folks
there had a system. The “Coney Island Dog” well it had flavor.The Coney dogs were tasty. The chili seemed
to be cooked on premise.The fries were
closer to crisp than most.But even a takeout
order would take you twenty minutes. Time as we all know is a precious
commodity.
To get to food Josh would walk from his office over to one
of the two restaurants.His path was through a ragged city park, across
a parking lot and then into the deli or to the Coney Island.To and fro without stopping was about an 18-minute
round trip.His health tracking watch
loved the walk, but he never would tell it about the food he would purchase.
About half of the trek was in the unkempt park and other half across black top
parking.
When it was warm, say 85 degrees, Josh would loosen his
tie.The tie together with a pale blue button-down
shirt were his uniform. The path he by habit followed would lead him under a semi-circle
of trees. About twenty-foot-tall each, these softwoods ringed the outfield of
the community baseball field.As he
passed under them the trees would be kicking out oxygen at a high level. Their
fresh air and shade would make this first half of the walk tolerable.
The trek across the parking lot was everything the walk
through the park was not.Josh would
become a character in live action version of the video game Frogger. Josh
though of playing Frogger back in the bars in the eighties every time he
crossed this parking lot. Also, the black unshaded asphalt surface sucked up
the sun’s heat.This increased the
overall temperature he experienced by 10- or 15-degrees Fahrenheit.Dodging cars and abandoned shopping carts he
would eventually find his way to “fast” food.
To make sure he was opting for the right food, Josh mentally
rifled through the work he had to do this afternoon.No real breaks on the docket.While he was allotted an hour for lunch, he
would be far better off if he just used 35 minutes or so.The pizza place won out in this equation.
A little sweaty from the outbound walk Josh in a polite tone
asked, “Ham, one slice please, some regular chips and a small root beer”.
Before he finished his order the folks behind the counter were halfway into
bagging it to go.Yeah, Josh had been
here a time or three before.The root
beer might seem an odd choice, but it was the only non caffeinated item on the
drink menu.Josh carefully avoided caffeine.
Time wise he was good. He flew across the parking lot pop in
one hand a bag with chips and pizza carefully balanced in the other.Josh was feeling good as he headed back
through the park.Josh scanned his
surroundings.He figured that almost any
city park in this part of the country looked like this one, at least to some
extent.The grass which used to be moved
weekly now waived, in the largest part of the park, like grasses had waived on
the prairie when the great herds of buffalo migrated.The part of the park that was mowed, was
mowed at best every other week.Shredded
napkins and shards of paper pop cups were thrown about from where the city
employees had run them over in a more whole state with those big ass industrial
mowers.The city would, if it could,
sell this park.The auto plants that had
paid the lion’s share of the taxes and wages in this town had long ago moved to
more rural settings. The city was wounded by a million little cuts like this.
For the size of the park there was a major incongruity.The semi circle stand of trees by the
baseball field were airy, attractive and cooling.The park overall despite its ragged state, was
an inviting place.But for all these
positives of this old park, and all the foot traffic (from the health-conscious
walkers), there was only one picnic table.
There in an open area not near any shade, at the edge of the
tall grass, sat a table that was designed to be accessible.The five planks of the table surface extended
on one end two and a half feet beyond where the benches ended.This, of course, was to allow a differentially
abled person to sit and join with others who were eating their midday meal or
some other snack.Rightly, this table
was designed to offer as many people as possible a place to enjoy a meal. But
it was the only table.
As he headed back toward his office and with the heat
amplifying black top behind him, Josh had decided he would sit at the
table.He never ate outside.Most of his meals were taken at his
desk.Most of his meals came from white
boxes that said Lean Cuisine.Most of
the time he would drink water.
Approaching the table, Josh saw another person sitting
there.She had a name tag on. Josh could
tell by the colors she worked for the health care company in the building next
to his.He knew this because being a
health care company, it encouraged its staff to walk every day.Whenever he left his building between his cases,
he would see groups of women with this same name tags walking up and down all
the sidewalks near his office.
Josh in his mind decided to inwardly call that solitary
woman Joan.It might be her name. Who
knows but to Josh she was a Joan. He could have read her name tag but that wasn’t
going to happen.Joan as she sat at her
desk in the cube farm that was her office, had been thinking that it today it
would be nice not to walk during her lunch hour.It was just too warm.Joan didn’t want to stay inside either.Joan would have sat under the trees but the
trade off for being cool would be dirtying her clothing in some manner. She had
a corporate dress code to live by.
Joan had brought a sandwich, homemade chicken salad with cherries
and walnuts.She had brought a
peach.She had brought a bottle of
water.‘Nope’, thought Joan, ‘No hot
sweaty march for me.I am just going to
eat my sandwich at the edge of the tall grass at that picnic table’.
Joan sat alone and was well into her sandwich when Josh
approached.She hadn’t really perceived
his motion; her eyes were fixed downward on her iPad.She was reading a book on how to retire early
at some exotic locale and live on the cheap.Time in her life was slipping away, and she wanted this all to count for
something.She wanted leisure and joyful
rest when her working days were done.She was one of the few in her office her maxed out her 401K. Joan was a
planner.
Josh was a little nervous as he approached the picnic
table.He wanted to eat outside but he
didn’t want to make the woman sitting at the table uncomfortable.The man decided he would simply ask if she
would mind if he sat at the other end of the table.If the answer was yes, she minded, he would
eat on the back steps of his office.If
the answer no he would sit down at the accessible end.He approached the table, he coughed, and then
Josh said in a moderate and modulated tone, “Would you mind if I grabbed a seat
and he used the hand carrying the pop to point to the opposite side and the
other end of the table from where Joan was.
Startled Joan looked at the man.He had said something, but she had been so
engrossed in her reading she didn’t hear it.But he was pointing down the table and away from her.He wanted to sit.He was clean and he had a loose tie.His hair was wild but all in all he seemed
normal.“Sure, go ahead,” she said.
Josh placed his pop on the table. The sweat from the warm
air hitting the cool skin of the wax paper cup began to form a dark circle on
the unstained tabletop as soon as he set it down.Once, this table has been brown and stained
with preservative.Now it was gray and
weathered like driftwood you would find on the stony beaches of the Pacific
Northwest.Josh set the paper bag with
the pizza and chips down next to the pop and he swung his legs over the
bench.He was determined not to bother
the reading woman.He figured he would
wolf down the slice, follow that with the chips and then get up and head off.
For the majority of Josh’s walk the air had been still. Not
a breath of air stirred.No sooner he
sat down but the paper bag, now empty of the chips and pizza, tried to fly
away.Deftly he grabbed it and crumpled
it and placed it just far enough under one of his legs on the bench so it would
not be blown into the park. The gust of air was a surprise.
As they sat the table, Josh focused on eating and Joan
intent on her reading, the wind kept blowing in fits and spurts.As they sat there, Josh began to hear a
hollow mournful sound.Listening closer
it wan’t one sound but rather a couple of sounds; one was low and really carried
a bass note.A second tone he heard was
higher up the scale something like the trill of a very oversized panpipe.
Joan looked up trying to figure what was making that
racket.She looked around but could see
nothing.She glanced down the table and
saw the man at the end was looking about.Joan applying her normal rational
logic decided the sound was not dangerous, so she returned to her readings.
Josh thought to himself as he looked around, ‘I have heard
this sound before.’He glanced around
the parking lot that abutted the park and he saw it.As people were wont to do from time to time
someone had ditched an empty semi-trailer in the abutting parking lot to await
a pickup from a rig headed either to or fro.This was still a town of machine shops and skilled labor.Josh looked at the lines of the truck and he
saw some hollow metal work that ran under the frame of the trailer.He guessed that the wind was catching the
trailer just right and was turning it into a musical instrument.
He stopped to listen, what was his memory of?‘Ah’, he thought, ‘This is the sound of
ECM.’Back when Josh had been at college,
he had bought lots and lots of LPs.Many
of them were what was derisively called Euro jazz by his music inclined buddies.One of the artists Josh really liked was wont
to put large pieces of metal on a beach to get sounds like the ones the truck
was generating. The artist would then play a saxophone along with those mournful
or graceful tones the wind would generate.Josh remembered that music could be eerie, but he also remembered could
be so very calming.Who was it, Terrie
Rypdahl or Jan Gabarek?
Joan was growing more annoyed by the damn moaning wind.She clicked off her iPad, slapped the cover across
its face and got up. She was clutching the iPad under her arm and holding her
lunch bag in her other hand.As she set
off for the office the man wished her a good afternoon and offered her thanks
for her letting him sit down.“No worries”,
she responded. Quickly the man and the table were gone. Quickly Joan was
entering her office.
Josh just sat there for a bit listening to the changing
tones of the sound coming from the trailer.He lingered a little long but then he headed back to his office.‘Dis’, he thought.‘Dis was the name of the album’.He would be searching for that lost memory
tonight when he got home.His senses had
been stirred.
Joan on the other hand would forget the noise entirely
within a matter of minutes.
So the Tim Burton story goes like this. In years past my family we would go to Toronto at least twice a year. One of my personal traditions on those trips was to drag my children to a foreign language movie. My hope was that I would expose them to different aspects of other cultures. What I really wanted to do was to give them a larger world view.
20 years ago there used to be a four plex just north of the corner of Bloor and Avenue Roads in Toronto. We saw quite a few Indian and Argentinian films there. A favorite was, “The Year my Parents Went on Vacation. “ I think I got this habit from my brother John. He used to drag me to Fellini films when I was in my teens. I owe him a great debt of gratitude for opening my eyes to non-mainstream cinema.
Alas, that theater closed. In conjunction with the Toronto International Film Festival a new theater was built on King Street. It was called the Bell TIFF Lightbox. If you want to see a foreign film in downtown TO this is pretty much where you have to go these days.
Well, one evening in late November all those years ago I found myself at the Lightbox family in tow. I had walked in to see what was on the schedule for the weekend. When we walked in we found out that they were mounting an exhibition of artwork from various Tim Burton films over the past two decades. There were giant models of characters from the Nightmare before Christmas, Beetlejuice props and similar.
They were also running a Tim Burton movie marathon. For 40 bucks ahead you could buy a ticket and sit through every Tim Burton movie ever made. As would be expected one of my children dropped into the ‘daddy please’ mode. Loren started whining about buying tickets. He really got into a froth over this.
The only people in the lobby of the Lightbox at that time were the people behind the ticket counter and some docents for the upcoming exhibition which was to open the next morning. As is often the case in Toronto there was this one homeless guy wearing a very hairy herringbone overcoat just standing around.
To shut Loren down I began emphasizing that while Beetlejuice was one of my favorite films and Big Fish was the among he best films I’ve ever seen, that Tim Burton owed the world an apology for the second Batman movie. I want on at length of what I perceived the defects in that movie to be and stated that I would never pay to see a batch of films that included the second Batman movie.
The docents and ticket takers we’re losing it. I couldn’t quite tell what the joke was. They looked at me and looked at the floor and cracked up. Loren looking downcast was led from the theater.
Later that night we got back to the hotel room and we had on the 11 PM local CBC news feed. About 12 minutes into the broadcast one of the talking heads indicated that a major exhibition of Tim Burton's works was being staged at the Lightbox. Loren would not let me change the channel so we stayed watching the TV waiting for the interview with Tim Burton.
Yeah, you got it right. The camera crew filmed at the Lightbox. Yeah the homeless guy standing about 5 foot away from me was none other than Tim Burton. Do not think that my family has ever let me forget this. No. Mr. Burton I apologize.
As is often the case on Saturday mornings I made my way to work. While my caseload has been light, the flotsam and jetsam has built up on my desktop. Some times you just need to be a clerk. Today, I needed to scan things in and match to the electronic files I work with. Also, I had one relatively old case that needed to be completed. Couple of other cases needed me to tweak the addresses in the Order or a paragraph here or there. And then there was all that e-mail to sort through. Worked from about 8:30 am to just before noon.
I walked both to and from work. The time round trip was just under an hour. The distance I have walked today is per one of the various health applications on my phone is four miles. My Apple Watch says I have walked at the pace sufficient enough to rack up my required component of exercise for the day.
As I type this I am facing the belly of the beast of governmental inertia. Right now my son and I are waiting to be called back to get his stolen passport replaced. My wife and I came in last weekend. My other son and I came in yesterday. All in all, I will have been sitting in this waiting room for a good four hours before getting our papers in order is all over. What next?
The time line is this. In late August both the older and younger son will return to school. One will go to the community college. The other will go to Michigan State. If all goes well the MSU student will graduate in December. At times this has been tough sledding. However, if he makes it there will be a cape and gown and the whole shebang and an engineering degree.
So how does this visit to the “Passport Hub” fit in? My wife and I plan to retire in January. The real date may be in February when I burn up the last of my leave. The plan is to be in Portugal on February 1, 2020 and to remain there for four months. We have a place lined up to rent. We have a number for the monthly rent negotiated.
In order to spend four months in Portugal, we must secure an extended stay visa. The visa process takes several months and cannot be undertaken without the physical passports being delivered to the Portuguese government or its agents. Assuming the passports came as they usually do this will mean we will be sending them off in mid-September.
So, school for the college students-late August. Passport to Portugal-middle of September. What follows next is the partial resection of my kidney. If you have been following along you know I have developed cancer for a second time, a discrete and separate cancer from the first I survived 12 years ago. As a result on October 1, 2019 I will be lying on a gurney in Ann Arbor, Michigan until they whisk me away and do their robotic handed cutting on me. Two days in the hospital and six weeks recovery.
Pain, agony and Tylenol. This will occupy me from the start of October until Veteran’s Day. On November 12th I will most likely return to work. What follows will be the rush of the holiday seasons. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and then the last few days I will work at my job of 19 years. I am aiming for a party on January 10, 2020 to say good-bye to friends and foes alike. I will be at that time be lining up care for my home while I am in Portugal.
So many moving pieces. Also, my wife wants me to get our back porch fixed. I have to text the contractor probably tomorrow afternoon. And there is the painting that needs to be done. And then…well you get the drift. And then there is the airline tickets. And the travel insurance.
There will be very few days in the next six months that will be easy, very few indeed.
“‘Twas gonna write a longer piece tonight but my emotions derailed me. My feelings arise from nothing about me. My son might be having vision issues. This is of concern. A visit with an optometrist has been set. You know that when it rains thing, it is pouring right now.
I had made a small business important decision when I picked the date on which I would retire. At that moment I decided I would begin to rebel. Small things would be my field of uprising. I have always refused a uniform that involved more that a tie and button down shirt. Other’s wear expensive suits. In years past I would maybe, but not now.
The easiest form of rebellion was my socks. I have been looking at both shoes and sox from a company called Soxy. I really like their made in Portugal foot ware. The ones I really want have neon colored soles and laces to match. But oh gosh, $200 for a pair of shoes, nope.
Their socks are something different. They are bright. They are stripped. They are jigsaw pieces. Still, for these socks there is sticker shock. I decided that I would respond by shopping retail nearby. Funny that. I found one store that had some decently made socks with a unique nature to there. Ergo, the avocado socks above.
Every single day I make sure to put on a pair of the most outrageous socks I can find. So adorned off to work I head. The road to the end of this work-a-day existence is going to be colorful.
Ah cancer.
When they told me I had a tumor I literally said, “Fuck it, the goatee is coming back”. I have been working photos of my grisly rabbit warren of facial hair onto my Facebook page. I have been keeping it trimmed. I don’t have the genetics to grow much in the way of factual hair. Don’t know why, it just is. Still, a goatee I can manage.
For the run up to surgery I am just going to let the face fuzz keep growing. I may in actually buy the socks from Soxy. I might even get the shoes. To quote Bryan Ferry, I am going to, “Dance away the heartache, dance away the tears, dance away the heartache and dance away the fears.”
Oh yeah, I got the word today my surgery will be in Ann Arbor on October 1, 2019. I will be having part of my left kidney removed. I have not had the guts to call my current doctor to let him know I am going to have someone else conduct the surgery. I will call on Monday.
Seven weeks. I will try to make each day count, just in case.
A post script. As I type this I am listening to a live version of Jealous Guy by Roxy Music. Music has meant, and means, so much to me. I would urge you if you are reading this to make sure you listen to some music tonight. It could be Euro art jazz or gritty swamp blues. Whatever just fill you mind with a joyful sound.
I had a light day at work, but it didn’t feel like it. Laws have changed since I have taken on my position. Now the easy cases are being siphoned away. The people who have two drunk drivings are heading into a different system that puts them back on the road much more quickly. This diversion leaves me only the rough and hardened alcohol and drug dependent folks to deal with. I am seeing people with 7 drunk driving cases over 29 years with a conviction for methamphetamine and another conviction for criminal sexual conduct while intoxicated for good measure. Four of these in a day can sap you of your strength. Four of these in a day can leave you empty of soul and heart.
No matter how ragged I feel as I head off to the library to create these blog posts, something usually cheers me. Sometimes it is the play of the light across the landscape. Thomas Hart Benton and Edward Hopper come to my mind when I look up into these midwestern trees. Sometimes it is the little fruits of a summer of nurture that make me smile. Like Guy Clark said, “There are only two things that money can’t buy, true love and home grown tomatoes”. A dose of light, a splash of the color red and I am energized again.
While these things cheer me they do not take away from the reality that I have a serious disease and that I must deal with it. Now, having made a decision to commit to surgery, I have to wait again. Now, having made a commitment to work with a new surgeon, I have to wait again. Really it took all I could muster to call the phone number of the new doctor yesterday. To have the response be, “We will put you on his callback list for next week,” was deflating. When you have cancer you want things to be immediate.
I don’t have the ‘get this out of me urgency’ I did with the prostate cancer. What I have is an urgency for the pain I know is coming to be over. What I have is the need for an organized path that I will follow. Yes, I know we don’t get to live life like it is a mathematical formula, but how I long for something approaching 1 +1 = 2 in my life right now.
Tonight I wanted to write about how hard it is to make a decision to put your medical care in the hands of someone you do not know, and will never really know. I wanted to talk about how hard it was going to be to tell my current physician’s office that I was going another route.
I wanted to say I made the call to U of M today and committed to the surgery. I made the call. However, the doctor is out of town until next week. It will only be then that I find out when they can work me in. I will not cancel the first appointment until I am committed to a locked down date in Ann Arbor.
This is surgery, this is my life. My guts are churning.
As he walked toward the library building and the round oak colored table where he would take on his self appointed task, his eyes darted about. No one except a sole bicyclist was traversing his horizon.
The man on the bicycle was moving quickly and with focus. His head was down only occasionally bopping up to see if he was nearing an obstacle. As he peddled the man on that new and shining bike had a head filled with thoughts about the upcoming school year. His lease started on August 1st and while classes would not start for several weeks, he knew he had plans and preparations to undertake. This taut and athletic rider was entering his junior year. The pressure of getting admitted into his major and focusing on what track he would be taking were consuming his time and his mind space . The bike and this ride on a warm evening would allow him to turn it all off.
The walker watched the bicyclist pass. The older man felt a tinge of sadness. Once he had been someone very like the solitary rider on this warm night. Decades ago he had made choices, some direct and some simply by inaction. As the bike and its rider disappeared into the distance the writer walking to his station pulled himself back to the here and now. He banished thoughts of trash can parties in the dorm and the pleasant part of the aftermath of such events. The soft and gooey parts, not the hangovers and barfing. He focused on where his next footstep should fall. He looked up and saw the colors, experienced nature’s wonder. There they were, a metaphor for where he stood in life.
Two groups of blossoms off the same stalk were right there in his field of visions. One group of the flowers were thriving, bright and purple. These blooms stood out, a beacon to the attention of the human eye and most likely to the senses of honey bees. But time was coming into mid-August. Time for the bright blooms was quickly passing. As he looked carefully at the almost glowing blooms he saw they were nestled among faded petals. Wispy and shriveled like thin tissue paper that had dried, these blooms hung. The blooms he was now focused on were the ghosts of summer hanging on the stems and stalks they shared with the bright purple eye catchers.
Stepping back the walking man grabbed a quick photo of the duality present here on this warm August night. He mused to himself. His mind told him there is in all life the necessary requirement of death. In all success there are the seeds of the unraveling. In every blossom there is both the reality of beauty and the inevitability of decay. He was not conflicted or saddened or touched by any of those harsh emotions that come with acknowledging the inevitable. Tonight he was struck with the unique joy these intertwined blossoms, the bright and full of life and the dry and faded, had given him. Purple and faded white were a lesson to any eye open to the experience.
“Joy seems to come unbidden, just erupting at the oddest times. It isn’t possible to plan for joy, yet when it comes, it is an unmistakable overflowing of feelings of delight in the world and its mysteries.” -Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara
Had a long talk with my primary care doctor today. Bottom line was that why he kept emphasizing my choice in the matter, the U of M cancer team kept coming out on tap in each of a number of categories. All in all I think I will be having the surgery at U of M. I will have to start making phone calls tomorrow to get all the details sorted. There will be a more detailed post tomorrow (or soon). However, I wrote a post about my brother’s photo. While the piece it got dark. Hard to type in the dark mostly because I cannot see the keyboard to correct mistakes.
60 years ago back in June, my oldest brother graduated from Penns Grove Regional High School, or ReHi as it was known. I remember being at either his or my sister’s graduation. We the whole damn family were seated on wooden chairs in a big auditorium in what to me seemed like a massive brick building. I remember the auditorium was hot and I was squirming in somebody’s arms, either my those of my mother or my sister’s. I vaguely remember the big stage in the room. In that I was either three or four (if it was my sister’s) these images qualify as one of my earliest memories.
At this point in time I only vaguely remember John III, as he referred to himself then, being a member in our family home. I think I remember him being there when we were watching TV a couple of times. There were always family fights over what to watch. I remember talking to him once about a box of cereal or pasta that involved either cowboy and Indian cut outs on the box or plastic western figures stuffed inside as a prize.By the time I was four he was away at university.
So today when the librarian of my old high school was having a birthday I started looking at some old year book posts that somebody was uploading from 1959. The first page that I saw knocked me back. There was my eldest brother with his flattop hair cut. I had seen this picture once at some point in time but I don’t remember reading the stuff below his picture. Then I looked at the whole page and I saw that he had signed it.
To you it may sound silly but to find something signed by my brother floating around on the internet just really surprised me. It reminded me how much I miss him, and my parents, and my other brother. Life goes on but to see him so young and with so much living ahead of him it made me smile and it made me a little sad. We don’t realize the gifts we have until we are looking long into the rear view mirror. Miss you bro.
I didn’t write yesterday. And I didn’t write the day before.
As to the day before, I was at a popular music concert at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, Michigan USA. The concert was by Bryan Ferry and he was performing all of the Avalon album by the prog rock band Roxy Music.
The show was solid. Ferry sand and played with passion. The band was tight. The songs not off the album were crowd pleasers, things like Do the Strand and Virginia Plain. He did a wonderful cover of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. For a 73 year old man he still rocks. Not just a little, he rocks hard. On top of it all he does it all in a suit.
Managed to work in a dinner with an old friend before the show. We ate at the theatre and the food was wonderful. It had been decades since my dinner companion and I had seen each other not on a television screen. Good food, good conversation.
Yesterday was a bit of a continuation of the day before. We had stayed in downtown Detroit and so we ate breakfast at the hotel. We took our time getting up and getting out of the city. Still, it was Sunday morning and not much was moving.
We stopped in Brighton to early celebrate my wife Francie’s birthday. We were also late celebrating our good friend John’s birthday. We talked about travel to Europe and cancer. It is hard not to have cancer crop up with my situation as it is.
I did laundry when I got home. I went to church. Not much to write about there? Well, the pastor a Lutheran of good repute gave a sermon about living heaven on earth. Kind of aligned with some Buddhist thoughts I have read. So it goes.
Well, that brings me to today. Work was nasty cases. People were just so lacking in self awareness. It is kind of hard to explain if you don’t do this work. There are shadings of the truth and then there is abject bottom of the barrel just lying to save your ass. Today was the latter. At one point I shouted at a gentleman, “I don’t need any more of your exposition.” My wall mate texted me and asked it I was having a rough day. God’s honest truth, the second I said the word exposition I realized the person I was talking to did not know what the word meant. Aye yi yi.
I did take some time out to create a letter to my primary care physician to lay out the issues I have already laid out in previous posts. Young doc at cancer center vs retiring doctor at generalist hospital. I will see if he calls me back tomorrow. I want to nail down what I am doing soon. So it goes.
