Holiday Catch-up

Ludicrous. Skip gave me an iPad for Christmas and I’m reading a terrific book and I managed to leave both of them at home. So I spent an hour at the Southern Indiana Radiation Center (SIRA) with nothing but a bunch of Tennis magazines and Web MD issues to read. I was there to get my annual mammogram and also-- because Skip’s cancer caught us so off-guard-- a chest and lung X-ray (I’m an ex-smoker, too and suffer now from mild asthma). It all went well—or at least as well as they’d tell me at the time; and now I’m back home. I have work to do, but I’m restless so thought I catch up on the blog posts.

Skip continues to do pretty well. He had his 4^th aggressive chemo treatment, which hit him pretty hard: fatigue, blues and joint pain lasting longer than usual. Then on Dec 21, he began what they called “maintenance” treatments—just one drug (alimta) along with an anti-nausea drip. The after effects played out much the same way they always have. Weds, the day of the chemo treatment, and the following day, Thursday, he felt fine. Then Friday, he was a little tired. Then Saturday, Christmas Eve, he felt pretty worn. We spent a quiet evening –read, ate cookies and fudge, made a fire, watched the Tom Waits special on Austin City Limits and opened our remaining presents. But then Christmas Day, Skip rallied (said he felt as though something had actually shifted inside), so we went to our friends’ Christmas party. Wonderful food—ham and a roast, two kinds of ceviche, bean salad, hummus, lots of champagne and sweets galore. And wonderful talk. Our friend L. showed up—a big surprise since she was supposed to be on a great adventurous trip to see Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti project in Arizona with her new girlfriend. But things turned out badly for her—the new flame abandoned her in the middle of New Mexico, taking the rental car and L’s house key with her. L. managed somehow to get back to the hotel, where the inn keeper helped her to get a flight reservation home. “I didn’t bring anything,” she apologetically told our hostess, Tamar; T. quite appropriately hushed her, gave her a glass of champagne, and sat her near me (knowing I’d be a sympathetic ear; actually I was outraged at the girlfriend’s behavior and was so incensed on L’s behalf that she sent me a sweet thank you note the next day). For my part, it was a kind of gentle kick-reminder that as bad as things seem right now, I’m not feeling rejected or unwanted or unloved. Quite the opposite, since Skip is very loving and tender.

The winter continues to be mild. We did have one snow two days ago—bitter cold and icy. Friends came to shovel our driveway- and it was so slippery I couldn’t even walk down the driveway to say a proper thank you. Just blew kisses from the top of the drive and then went to find salt. But by yesterday, things were already beginning to thaw, and today we managed a walk in the park. Skip suffers from chemo chill, so he was bundled up with scarf, hat, and ear muffs. But I thought it was positively balmy and walked bareheaded, with my leather jacket unzipped, gloveless hands shoved in my pockets. Tonight I’m making tostadas and margaritas and we have plans to watch an Australian neo noir, The Square. If I don’t post again before New Year, I wish you all a jolly and safe holiday; and I wish us all some better times in 2012.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

RIP the erascible, frequently maddening but always interesting Christopher Hitchens. God knows I often disagreed with him but I was truly sorry to hear this news yesterday morning Nobody but nobody wrote about cancer with the same esprit and verve. I will miss his blog posts, his smarts, his will to survive, his 'je ne regrette rien" attitude and his gallows wit.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201

essay on CTheory

The essay I worked on all this past summer has been published

by CTheory

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=695

Good news

Dec 3, 2011

Today is Jean- Luc Godard’s 81^st birthday. Six years ago we did a weekend symposium here at IU, to celebrate his 75^th birthday. Jonathan Rosenbaum came down from Chicago with a copy of JLG’s as yet unreleased Histoires du cinema; Jim, I, Nathan Carroll, and Jonathan gave talks; we showed a smattering of both old favorites and more recent films- -and at least one rare film from the Dziga Vertov period. I remember Skip lugging a case of wine we got from the Swiss Embassy to the reception and the great Champagne and Baklava bash we had to celebrate the end of the festivities and to fête the great man himself. This year I’ve been so distracted I would have missed Godard’s birthday entirely if not for Facebook postings from other cinephiles. But I did rally sufficiently to order Histoires, which is finally commercially available here, from Amazon. And I spent a wonderful hour last night trolling You Tube for my own FB Godard nuggets to post.

On the cancer front, the news is good. Last Weds (Nov 23) Skip had a CT Scan to see how the cancer was progressing--or not-- and the results are terrific. The carcinoma (cancer cell growth) in his spine is reduced and the soft tissue in the bone is starting to heal. The lymph nodes in his chest are smaller. The spot on his lung and the one on his liver are unchanged, but no larger. And there are no new spots or lesions. So for now at least, the cancer's progress has been substantially slowed.

He had new labs this past Weds (Nov 30)-- also good. White blood cell count and immature white blood cell count are still fabulous (he could share with the entire family). His platelet count is high. The hemoglobin count is still 9.8-despite the valiant attempts of a dedicated acupuncturist and her arsenal of chinese herbs (thanks, Eliie!) and the sacrifices of several local grass-fed cows. So, the hemoglobin count is not quite the perfect 10 that continues to elude us, but it’s no worse than 3 weeks ago.

Skip had his 4th chemo treatment Weds-- still using two drugs: alimta and carboplatin. When he returns to the center in 3 weeks, he'll be starting a milder "maintenance" chemo therapy, just using alimta —and spending only about 45 minutes in the still pretty depressing infusion center. Dr. Dayton was obviously pleased with himself and twirled his mustache with even more élan than usual.

Asked about travel, Doc D said that if Skip feels well enough to travel in April, we can work his chemo treatment around a plane trip. So--as of now at least, we plan to fly to Stayton for Edith (Skip’s mom)’s 100th birthday in April. The invisible band around my chest has loosened. I feel as though I can breathe again and for the first time in months I feel as though we can make plans.

Back to Godard-- Stayed up late watching Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover, just one of the films that would have not been possible without him.

Black Friday Plus One

11 A.M. The carcinoma in Skip's spine has been reduced by the radiation therapy and he's almost off narcotics completely now. And so we've figured out ways to begin making love again. Twice now in three days. So nice to feel that connection again and to feel that even if I lose him, I'll know who it is I've lost.

He's sleeping now. A pattern is developing. He wakes up early, unable to sleep. Gets up for awhile, and then goes back to his chair for a long morning nap. My son and his family are visiting--they keep very different hours from us. Rise much later-- so the house is quiet. I made pancake batter for a late breakfast, which will probably be more like brunch-- and then maybe we can take a walk in the woods before the storm comes.

I've been reading my friend Laurie Stone's latest work-- still an unpublished ms--

My Life as an Animal: A Memoir in Stories and so far love it. I recognize a way of thinking-- a tone-- at times I hear her voice while reading, see her smile and her triangular open face, fall in step with her quick gait. There's a different kind of logic to the way women tell stories I think-- at least some women (the ones I like to read). This way of looping back-- a circular detour for every plot step forward-- that pleases me, that makes a kind of fundamental sense. Maybe it's there in men's writing too and I just haven't found it. At any rate, Laurie writes that way-- so that a piece about buying at rummage sales opens up to include not only the relationship she is furnishing and domesticating, but remembrances about her mother and death and loss, the newly discovered stories of the people whose things she buys, meditations on liminal spaces and transitions. Very evocative and beautifully written. Nobody but nobody can find the right metaphor, simile, comparison, descriptor like Laurie can. "That's how Richard always looks in pictures, like he's been seized by the authorities and is awaiting deportation."

Third chemo

It's 6 a.m. Skip is snoring not so peacefully in the bedroom. He had a restless night.

I was at a dinner for a visiting scholar last night, ate and drank a lot of wonderful food and wine, and so spent my own toss- and- turn night, overheated and subliminally aware of all the activity next to me.

Skip tolerated the third chemo treatment pretty well. A little extra fatigue, but not much more than that. He's still eating well. Off oxycontin and now starting to come off of the neurontin he's been taking for nerve pain. He had some discomfort yesterday, and it might be too soon for this new withdraw and detox. At least I'm imagining that might be part of his restlessness. That and dreams.

I spent the day of his third chemo treatment, Wednesday, reading and re-reading Joan Didion. Her new book about death and loss, Blue Nights, is as heartbreaking as you might imagine such a book to be. Detailing the death of her daughter, which occurred so soon after the death of her husband, the book shows a woman who is just reeling. Her sandal strap catches on a street grating one day, and she immediately goes out to buy 2 pairs of sneakers--afraid to wear heels anymore, vulnerable and frail-feeling, afraid of losing her balance. That's as good an analogy as any for the larger emotional state she's in.

The heartbreak surrounding death and loss I had anticipated. What I didn't expect was that the book would be such an unflinching and heart wrenching book about motherhood and adoption. When I first read reviews, I didn't understand why Quintana's status as an adopted child was so continually highlighted. It actually pissed me off, since I thought the reviewers were drawing some kind of distinction between the kind of love you'd feel for an adopted child vs. the kind you'd feel for a child you'd actually carried. But now that I've read the book I understand. So much of it is about the particularities of adoption-- the special fear of loss that both adoptive parents and adopted children live with, the way lives can suddenly upend when birth parents and siblings resurface. The heartbreak of not knowing what kinds of genetic predispositions your child might be carrying (when Quintana falls ill there's no family story for Didion to turn to for information or comfort. No " I remember when Aunt Elizabeth had that and survived" to carry her through. And, of course, Quintana does not survive-- which makes everything all the more heart wrenching).

The book is written in Didion's signature style and prose. I've been something of a Didionista since Play It as It Lays-- and in the 1970s Book of Common Prayer was one of those books that I kept revisiting almost obsessively. Beautiful-- the way she interweaves time frames and I love the almost surgical precision with which she shows you what various emotions look like, sound like. Very cinematic in a way. But if you don't like her style, this book will probably annoy you.

And it does lend itself-- even for me-- to that wrinkling of the class nose. Didion and her family are well to do by most standards. And there's a way in which reading about the trips and teaching Quintana to eat caviar can be wearing (in the same way that class in Woody Allen movies can just distract-- who in the hell has such a huge apartment in Manhattan? Who can afford such a place when half the city is in squats?). But for me it was one of those essential books to read-- particularly now.

My one caveat-- I re-read The Year of Magical Thinking before starting this one. I thought it would be good to have the story she tells there fresh in my mind and also I needed to revisit that earlier, exquisite meditation on marriage. What it means to love someone and live with him for a long time, and then suddenly to lose him. Irrevocably. No fantasy of getting him back or sending the other woman a poisoned box of Godiva chocolates. As you can imagine, there are times now when I look at Skip and feel that my heart is breaking. When I told my friend Tamar recently that I didn't understand my mood swings, she said, "I do. You're losing your husband." And there it was-- the very blunt fact of it. So, I thought it would help in some sort of cathartic way to revisit Didion's memoir of losing her husband.

But there was too much carryover from one book to the next for me. Not just events repeated and retold, but retold in exactly the same way-- often in exactly the same language. As a writer I know the impulse-- once you've found the right metaphor, the right image, that single evocative verb, you don't want to give it up for subsequent retellings. But it can be unsettling if you read the books back to back. As though she were self-plagiarizing in a way.

6:30 a.m now and still dark. I have two black, black bananas to use for muffins this morning and strong French roast to brew. I miss the ocean during this time of year almost more than I do during summer. Miss the long walks along San Francisco's Ocean Beach-- grey sky and seeping fog -cold cutting through even my leather jacket. Fires on the beach at night followed by cold Tequila in the Cliff House bar. Play it as it lays.

Standard Time

Skip's gone into the studio two days in a row now to work. He complains about the fatigue and about how long it takes to do things-- to wedge clay for example. Says he can work for about 15 minutes and then he has to rest. But the good news is that he's working. Yesterday when Kasia (one of my grad students) came by with an anti-oxidant rich, muffin basket for us, Skip was in his studio-- Leo Delibes' Lakme-- the choral refrain from The Hunger-- blasting from his little portable radio. He's begun a statue that will eventually be Theda Bara, in one of her more pensive moods.

Later that evening some friends brought us dinner-- a moveable feast, they called it. Fabulous food that they stayed to share with us. Lovely talk and then Kathy scooped up all the dirty dishes and took them away in her Mary Poppins-like bag. So now we have leftovers for dinner tomorrow, plus an extra helping of stuffed pork roast to freeze. Delicious homemade bread, peppers and a beautiful ricotta fruit torte also leftover. Drank some wine. Laughed a lot and watched an old David Suchet Poirot mystery on PBS.

Next chemo is Weds and Skip's hemoglobin count is still a bit on the low side- so I need to get a few more good blood- building meals and glasses of red wine in him before he takes the next treatment.

Gorgeous autumn day today-- perfect for a long walk.