Dancing
A golden spike has fallen from my ear.
Think Promontory Point, Utah...joining the Union Pacific from sea to shining sea...only think smaller. This golden spike is barely discernible on my pillow. Joe, my doctor/acupuncturist put it in my ear, observing as an aside, that it would fall out. When or why, I didn't ask. This is best with Joe. His workings are mysterious and hard for my Western mind to grasp. All I know is that his needles put me to sleep. Insomnia, not to mention a certain level of anxiety, have been getting to me. And now there's this golden spike on my pillow. It's small enough to be a working prop in a flea circus. Something a flea acupuncturist could use to great comic effect. For a flea audience. Never mind. The thing is on my pillow, replacing my head, which lifted itself only moments before, having finally slept soundly.
Funny thing, anxiety. When you're in its grip, the focus narrows and options shrink. It's hard to see what's happening, because everything jiggles. Like looking through binoculars while you're riding a skateboard. Which I don't recommend and, lacking the neuromuscular wherewithal, have never tried. Never mind. Don't do it. You want to see what's happening, get the needles. Especially, get the golden spike.
I rolled out of Joe's office feeling better already. Though I was certainly dreading the rest of the week. Marlou's cancer is insidious. There's no way around it. Just like there's no way around Millbrae. And that's where I'm headed on BART, the regional subway system. That's where train and tube, above ground and underground, connect. There's a golden transit spike driven through them, Caltrain and BART, the tracks adjacent, the transfer easy. The only problem is that Millbrae is a long haul from Berkeley.
First, there's a deafening, rattling roar in the concrete tube beneath the waters of the Bay. Near the hour-long journey's end...Colma, South San Francisco, San Leandro...the din erupts again. That's OK. I've been virtually asleep between the two locations, the mysteries of acupuncture sending me to slumberland faster than BART through Daly City. When the train doors whoosh open for the last time, I stare dumbly at the Millbrae platform. I do the same at the pneumatic exit gate for wheelchairs. My plastic ticket goes in the turnstile, then goes out where I inserted it. Able-bodied turnstiles assume the passenger is walking through, so the ticket goes in here and emerges there, two feet away. I know this. I understand that the disabled turnstile doesn't work this way. It's ticket in and ticket out in the same slot, then the gate opens. Something about this mechanical activity seems terribly profound just now. In another era, I could attribute this to recreational drugs. But not today. The profundity of the turnstile and how it works has given me pause the way Joe has given me needles. It's happening in my ear and everywhere else. It's happening in Millbrae.
There's an elevator up from the BART tracks, and another one down to the southbound platform of Caltrain, the suburban commuter line. I check the schedule. Odd, because I checked it less than 15 minutes before. The schedule doesn't change that quickly, particularly the one residing in my pocket. It says what it said a quarter of an hour earlier. That I have 30 minutes in Millbrae. Or, somewhat orthagonally, I could have 45 minutes in Millbrae, then catch the southbound express. Either way, I would arrive in Menlo Park at virtually the same time. The fact of this, the two trains and their near simultaneous arrivals, has left me stunned. Stunned and sleepy. God only knows what Joe puts on those needles.
There has to be a Starbucks around here. There's a Starbucks around everywhere. If you're out darting polar bears and tying an invitation on their claws to attend a neighborhood meeting on global warming...somewhere close, say a couple of ice flows away, there's a Starbucks. In fact, the bear will wake up groggy and probably head there you. Which is why it can't be that hard to get caffeinated in Millbrae. I don't have to point this out to anyone, and no one points it out to me. My wheelchair joystick is pointed toward El Camino Real, and I'm there in 30 seconds, traffic whizzing by.
Traffic is what you take trains to avoid. It's surprisingly loud, the tires and the crunching bits of gravel and the muffled engines. A hundred yards in either direction, there's nothing but cars and office buildings, parking structures, a coffee shop. Urbanscape, familiar and vast. It's disquieting, the general effect of cars. When you're in them, you're moving, and they're moving you. When you're on a sidewalk fronting a musclebound thoroughfare like El Camino, all you want to do is get away. Businesses turn their glass walls to the street. Nothing cozy or even human scale around here. Yes, there's a sidewalk, but note there are no sidewalk cafés. Rolling past the "Welcome to Burlingame" sign, I can't tell if there is considerable distance behind me or a bold newness ahead of me.
There is a shopping center. You don't have to be a nativeborn Californian to intuit that just beyond the Safeway there's a Starbucks. I roll in the door, order a grande latte and consider next steps. One logical option: hang out here. There are old copies of the New York Times wafting about. There's a view of the comings and goings of SUVs in the parking lot. Above all, back at the Millbrae station, there are two trains. It's still half an hour until the second one, which goes twice as fast as the first, and the two of them practically bump into each other like old friends, at Menlo Park. Why not? Why not hang loose and hang free? I don't know. I'm nervous. Better get back to the station. I ask the Starbucks girl to put a price sticker over the hole in the plastic lid. I don't want coffee dripping on me as I bounce along the sidewalk toward the station.
And that's what's happening now. I'm jolting the Joe, brown latte splashing on my jeans. While the other Joe is back in Berkeley, jolting someone else with his needles and his batteries. One would think that acupuncture comprised enough input for this day, that the caffeine was superfluous. It was. But something is driving me. It's also steering me. That's why I turn off El Camino toward the station and, instead of tooling down the sidewalk I remain in the road. Yes, it's what Californians dub an access road, a.k.a., a frontage road. But this is rush hour and lots of people want access...to the station, the commuters in it. And they want frontage or, at least, roadage. Which explains why theres so much honkage. Some driver behind me is leaning on his horn. Just because some dazed quadriplegic has the effrontery to be rolling straight down the frontage road at 8 miles an hour. I would flip the guy the bird with my free hand, the other hand being on the wheelchair. But right-handed bird flipping is currently a neuromuscular impossibility...though a worthy rehabilitation goal. I know full well this is madness, rolling down the street. Honk, I am thinking. Or, to quote the nation's president, bring 'em on.
Wisely, I pull into an empty parking space. I don't know what has gotten into me. But it's something I don't like to think about. Something desperate and speedy and futile. It's born, doubtless, of life experience. But maybe it needs to die. I, after all, have grown into a new role. I am the optimist in a relationship.
At first, my optimism regarding Marlou was simply this: I could die first. While true and mindful of life's cruel ironies, this wasn't the sunniest of outlooks. As Kurt Vonnegut famously put it, man is a dancing animal. And this dancing, I always assumed, requires some starter optimism. But with Marlou, I have learned the opposite. You start with the dancing, and the optimism just might follow.
I need to be wary of a certain grim anticipation. It's my crisis-ready stance, my karmic kung fu posture. Which is okay, if you know what's going to happen. And no one does. It's like trying to stay awake all night in case there's a robber or an earthquake or a call from the Nobel Prize committee. No one knows what's going to happen. And the pain of having love taken away, well, that can't be anticipated either. Yet one can get a preview. I keep telling Marlou that I don't regret anything about our relationship, including its possible foreshortening. This relationship has made me, I tell her, or opened me, or sent me on my path. Nothing about this can be wrong. Including the tears.
When Caltrain rolls in, the coach with the disabled lift is out of position. The guard apologizes and asks me to be patient while he radios the driver to pull forward. And this is what happens, the entire rush-hour train moving a couple of meters south, just for me. I know many of the people who work these trains. I almost feel that I work them myself. It doesn't matter if wait for Marlou's PET scan aboard the train, or on the platform. Life will tell us what it wants, when it wants.
Which turns out to be remarkably soon. Next day, Marlou drives off before 8 a.m., and I drown my sorrow with a morning go at the rowing machine, followed by a latte at the neighborhood bookstore café. No one is selling books at this hour, but there's a rising tide of muffins and a queue of un-caffeinated patrons. The espresso machine is hissing, and so are the Chronicle's critics...they hate every single new movie. This doesn't make sense to me. Friday's movies can't all be bad.
Then it hits me, though my usual critical stance errs on the side of scathing...that discerning pages of all-bad-reviewed movies normally comfort me -- not this morning. When Marlou has driven off to learn her medical fate. This morning, which follows a night of excellent sleep, the first I have had in quite a while. Maybe that's because, there's no sense in worrying yet...it will take days before the doctor phones with carefully chosen words and invites us in for a chat.
Or it may be the acupuncture. My latte is finished now, but I'm not quite done recalling the events of the last day or two. It will fall out, Joe said. I couldn't see what he had twisted into my ear, but I felt the usual twang of an acupuncture needle twirling into place. I wanted to ask if my ear would fall off, if that's what Joe meant. But being in an oddly energized state, I thought about the joke rather than said it. Like any joke, there's a part that isn't funny, a place where truth pokes through. I can imagine my ear falling off. Other parts of my body have, in a sense. Besides, I'm focusing on something else. It's how Joe, the doctor, delights in these audacious moves. The unseen and unexplained ear piercing...the "it" that feels like a major nose stud...the "falling out" timeframe unstated. He's onto the next thing, a mysterious injection. We both delight in this mystery. Joe is a dancing animal.
Which explains why, caffeinated and bran-muffin-fortified I roll back to our apartment just as Marlou rolls in. We exchange pleasantries. The trial is over, the jury out, the verdict expected next week...but it arrives the next hour. Marlou is fine, remarkably fine. Some tumors have shrunk out of sight, or to be more precise, out of PET scan. Others have withered to a borderline range, barely on the medical radar. Not that there won't be more chemotherapy, just be on the safe side. Which is where we've been all along, safe and side-by-side. Marlou and me and Joe and his wife Pam...and without knowing it, we've all been dancing.
Think Promontory Point, Utah...joining the Union Pacific from sea to shining sea...only think smaller. This golden spike is barely discernible on my pillow. Joe, my doctor/acupuncturist put it in my ear, observing as an aside, that it would fall out. When or why, I didn't ask. This is best with Joe. His workings are mysterious and hard for my Western mind to grasp. All I know is that his needles put me to sleep. Insomnia, not to mention a certain level of anxiety, have been getting to me. And now there's this golden spike on my pillow. It's small enough to be a working prop in a flea circus. Something a flea acupuncturist could use to great comic effect. For a flea audience. Never mind. The thing is on my pillow, replacing my head, which lifted itself only moments before, having finally slept soundly.
Funny thing, anxiety. When you're in its grip, the focus narrows and options shrink. It's hard to see what's happening, because everything jiggles. Like looking through binoculars while you're riding a skateboard. Which I don't recommend and, lacking the neuromuscular wherewithal, have never tried. Never mind. Don't do it. You want to see what's happening, get the needles. Especially, get the golden spike.
I rolled out of Joe's office feeling better already. Though I was certainly dreading the rest of the week. Marlou's cancer is insidious. There's no way around it. Just like there's no way around Millbrae. And that's where I'm headed on BART, the regional subway system. That's where train and tube, above ground and underground, connect. There's a golden transit spike driven through them, Caltrain and BART, the tracks adjacent, the transfer easy. The only problem is that Millbrae is a long haul from Berkeley.
First, there's a deafening, rattling roar in the concrete tube beneath the waters of the Bay. Near the hour-long journey's end...Colma, South San Francisco, San Leandro...the din erupts again. That's OK. I've been virtually asleep between the two locations, the mysteries of acupuncture sending me to slumberland faster than BART through Daly City. When the train doors whoosh open for the last time, I stare dumbly at the Millbrae platform. I do the same at the pneumatic exit gate for wheelchairs. My plastic ticket goes in the turnstile, then goes out where I inserted it. Able-bodied turnstiles assume the passenger is walking through, so the ticket goes in here and emerges there, two feet away. I know this. I understand that the disabled turnstile doesn't work this way. It's ticket in and ticket out in the same slot, then the gate opens. Something about this mechanical activity seems terribly profound just now. In another era, I could attribute this to recreational drugs. But not today. The profundity of the turnstile and how it works has given me pause the way Joe has given me needles. It's happening in my ear and everywhere else. It's happening in Millbrae.
There's an elevator up from the BART tracks, and another one down to the southbound platform of Caltrain, the suburban commuter line. I check the schedule. Odd, because I checked it less than 15 minutes before. The schedule doesn't change that quickly, particularly the one residing in my pocket. It says what it said a quarter of an hour earlier. That I have 30 minutes in Millbrae. Or, somewhat orthagonally, I could have 45 minutes in Millbrae, then catch the southbound express. Either way, I would arrive in Menlo Park at virtually the same time. The fact of this, the two trains and their near simultaneous arrivals, has left me stunned. Stunned and sleepy. God only knows what Joe puts on those needles.
There has to be a Starbucks around here. There's a Starbucks around everywhere. If you're out darting polar bears and tying an invitation on their claws to attend a neighborhood meeting on global warming...somewhere close, say a couple of ice flows away, there's a Starbucks. In fact, the bear will wake up groggy and probably head there you. Which is why it can't be that hard to get caffeinated in Millbrae. I don't have to point this out to anyone, and no one points it out to me. My wheelchair joystick is pointed toward El Camino Real, and I'm there in 30 seconds, traffic whizzing by.
Traffic is what you take trains to avoid. It's surprisingly loud, the tires and the crunching bits of gravel and the muffled engines. A hundred yards in either direction, there's nothing but cars and office buildings, parking structures, a coffee shop. Urbanscape, familiar and vast. It's disquieting, the general effect of cars. When you're in them, you're moving, and they're moving you. When you're on a sidewalk fronting a musclebound thoroughfare like El Camino, all you want to do is get away. Businesses turn their glass walls to the street. Nothing cozy or even human scale around here. Yes, there's a sidewalk, but note there are no sidewalk cafés. Rolling past the "Welcome to Burlingame" sign, I can't tell if there is considerable distance behind me or a bold newness ahead of me.
There is a shopping center. You don't have to be a nativeborn Californian to intuit that just beyond the Safeway there's a Starbucks. I roll in the door, order a grande latte and consider next steps. One logical option: hang out here. There are old copies of the New York Times wafting about. There's a view of the comings and goings of SUVs in the parking lot. Above all, back at the Millbrae station, there are two trains. It's still half an hour until the second one, which goes twice as fast as the first, and the two of them practically bump into each other like old friends, at Menlo Park. Why not? Why not hang loose and hang free? I don't know. I'm nervous. Better get back to the station. I ask the Starbucks girl to put a price sticker over the hole in the plastic lid. I don't want coffee dripping on me as I bounce along the sidewalk toward the station.
And that's what's happening now. I'm jolting the Joe, brown latte splashing on my jeans. While the other Joe is back in Berkeley, jolting someone else with his needles and his batteries. One would think that acupuncture comprised enough input for this day, that the caffeine was superfluous. It was. But something is driving me. It's also steering me. That's why I turn off El Camino toward the station and, instead of tooling down the sidewalk I remain in the road. Yes, it's what Californians dub an access road, a.k.a., a frontage road. But this is rush hour and lots of people want access...to the station, the commuters in it. And they want frontage or, at least, roadage. Which explains why theres so much honkage. Some driver behind me is leaning on his horn. Just because some dazed quadriplegic has the effrontery to be rolling straight down the frontage road at 8 miles an hour. I would flip the guy the bird with my free hand, the other hand being on the wheelchair. But right-handed bird flipping is currently a neuromuscular impossibility...though a worthy rehabilitation goal. I know full well this is madness, rolling down the street. Honk, I am thinking. Or, to quote the nation's president, bring 'em on.
Wisely, I pull into an empty parking space. I don't know what has gotten into me. But it's something I don't like to think about. Something desperate and speedy and futile. It's born, doubtless, of life experience. But maybe it needs to die. I, after all, have grown into a new role. I am the optimist in a relationship.
At first, my optimism regarding Marlou was simply this: I could die first. While true and mindful of life's cruel ironies, this wasn't the sunniest of outlooks. As Kurt Vonnegut famously put it, man is a dancing animal. And this dancing, I always assumed, requires some starter optimism. But with Marlou, I have learned the opposite. You start with the dancing, and the optimism just might follow.
I need to be wary of a certain grim anticipation. It's my crisis-ready stance, my karmic kung fu posture. Which is okay, if you know what's going to happen. And no one does. It's like trying to stay awake all night in case there's a robber or an earthquake or a call from the Nobel Prize committee. No one knows what's going to happen. And the pain of having love taken away, well, that can't be anticipated either. Yet one can get a preview. I keep telling Marlou that I don't regret anything about our relationship, including its possible foreshortening. This relationship has made me, I tell her, or opened me, or sent me on my path. Nothing about this can be wrong. Including the tears.
When Caltrain rolls in, the coach with the disabled lift is out of position. The guard apologizes and asks me to be patient while he radios the driver to pull forward. And this is what happens, the entire rush-hour train moving a couple of meters south, just for me. I know many of the people who work these trains. I almost feel that I work them myself. It doesn't matter if wait for Marlou's PET scan aboard the train, or on the platform. Life will tell us what it wants, when it wants.
Which turns out to be remarkably soon. Next day, Marlou drives off before 8 a.m., and I drown my sorrow with a morning go at the rowing machine, followed by a latte at the neighborhood bookstore café. No one is selling books at this hour, but there's a rising tide of muffins and a queue of un-caffeinated patrons. The espresso machine is hissing, and so are the Chronicle's critics...they hate every single new movie. This doesn't make sense to me. Friday's movies can't all be bad.
Then it hits me, though my usual critical stance errs on the side of scathing...that discerning pages of all-bad-reviewed movies normally comfort me -- not this morning. When Marlou has driven off to learn her medical fate. This morning, which follows a night of excellent sleep, the first I have had in quite a while. Maybe that's because, there's no sense in worrying yet...it will take days before the doctor phones with carefully chosen words and invites us in for a chat.
Or it may be the acupuncture. My latte is finished now, but I'm not quite done recalling the events of the last day or two. It will fall out, Joe said. I couldn't see what he had twisted into my ear, but I felt the usual twang of an acupuncture needle twirling into place. I wanted to ask if my ear would fall off, if that's what Joe meant. But being in an oddly energized state, I thought about the joke rather than said it. Like any joke, there's a part that isn't funny, a place where truth pokes through. I can imagine my ear falling off. Other parts of my body have, in a sense. Besides, I'm focusing on something else. It's how Joe, the doctor, delights in these audacious moves. The unseen and unexplained ear piercing...the "it" that feels like a major nose stud...the "falling out" timeframe unstated. He's onto the next thing, a mysterious injection. We both delight in this mystery. Joe is a dancing animal.
Which explains why, caffeinated and bran-muffin-fortified I roll back to our apartment just as Marlou rolls in. We exchange pleasantries. The trial is over, the jury out, the verdict expected next week...but it arrives the next hour. Marlou is fine, remarkably fine. Some tumors have shrunk out of sight, or to be more precise, out of PET scan. Others have withered to a borderline range, barely on the medical radar. Not that there won't be more chemotherapy, just be on the safe side. Which is where we've been all along, safe and side-by-side. Marlou and me and Joe and his wife Pam...and without knowing it, we've all been dancing.
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