June 2011 Archives
I am in the queue at Peets, wondering why, vaguely considering the possibility of being elsewhere when the man behind me has the temerity to speak. He asks me if I ever run over people's toes. Now and then, I tell him, miffed at the question. What he says is slithering with perspicacity, after all. The man is all smiles as he adds 'it's a good way to meet people.' He has substantial body odor about him, nothing oppressive. And in another context one would hardly notice. But context is everything. I am in my own context this morning, and it is powerful. Mine is a somewhat anxious context, origins unknown. But I accept it. All moods lead somewhere, it seems. Also, my recent discovery, that no mood lasts forever. Therefore, do not send to know...well, much of anything. Just be. Much like the man behind me in the queue. There is something rather louche about him. Not in the gender sense, but some other indefinable. And I want to get away for whatever reason, not that one needs one. I am already away, conveniently. The barista knows my order, which is rather a complex one, and has gotten every detail straight, but for the presumption that I want nonfat, rather than low-fat, milk. Never mind. He is in the ballpark, as it were, and for this I am grateful.
When my mocha arrives, the only thing truly gratifying about it is the caffeine. The noise of Peets now penetrates like a rusty nail. Downright cacophonous, it is, and the nail-pounding intensity of it is most unwanted. The brew is hot, hotter than usual, and I drink it as quickly as good sense allows.
I am actually relieved to be out the door and on my way home. Rolling along the side of Peets, having stopped to chat with a member of the chorus, I find someone familiar in a doorway, lounging at the base of stairs leading to offices. It is the man from the Peets queue. He could almost pass, I decide, attired as he is in jeans and sport shirt, a Bluetooth receiver in one ear. Still, his manner of lounging in a doorway suggests a familiarity with the streets. He is not quite tucked and crisp and washed, this man, having fallen somewhat off the social ladder, and now making slightly inappropriate jokes to cripples about wheeling over toes and meeting strangers. And if my response is not the height of finickiness, what is?
Because this man could be the next Kerouac. Or the last one. Not fitting in perfectly to Menlo Park society is hardly a cause for concern. In fact, it could spark a certain affinity between the two of us, this man and I. In truth, I do not fit in either. Despite my rather strenuous efforts. I am not fit enough to fit in the eyes of some. How people view me, all the myriad ways, this is something of a mystery, a self-created one. As for this man lounging in a Menlo Park doorway, Laurie Lee probably did much the same on his way across Spain. The truth is I am afraid to interact with those who don't have things together, people who seem on the margins. Am I afraid of becoming part of this marginalia myself? Or is it just a general fear of those without boundaries? I feel vulnerable wandering about the streets. It is no accident that I hang out in a suburb favored by the haute bourgeoisie. Safe. Admittedly dull. But safe.
While not immune, of course. Rolling down Santa Cruz Ave. I speed past sidewalk diners in a restaurant. A woman seated at a table across from a man is smiling and struggling at the same time. Her pleasure seems to emerge from a depth of pain. As though she has waited a long time for such a moment of expression. I wonder if she and the man opposite are on a first date, perhaps having met online. He seems neutral, unmoved. All of this flashing by me as I roll past them in my wheelchair. And I could have this wrong, all of it, my fleeting impression. But I know that sometimes people must pass a long distance before arriving in themselves. And there is nothing wrong with it, any of it. And one should not be afraid.
* * *
Pay attention to what happens and when, because there is a mystery to timing...and often a message. So Bing, one of the prime players in Team Filipina, is just wandering out the door. Why not, her work being over? I am dressed, including my leg brace, talcum powder on my overused butt, and so on. Except for a few last-minute words, which I find profoundly disturbing. We chat, Bing and I do, and in the general course of things she mentions that a couple of her fingers have gone numb. She shrugs. Bing and her roommates moved recently, packing and carrying boxes from one apartment to another. Heavy, she says. Her shoulder aches. Does she have health insurance, I ask? I know the answer. I also know what repetitive strains can do to what those in the physical medicine world call upper extremities. Be careful, I tell her.
Fortunately, 20 minutes later, my time on the rowing machine is cut short by my swelling bladder, which has me back at my PC and doing what little I can. I print off a couple of pages about carpal tunnel, its symptoms and remedies. See a doctor, I add. Easy for me to say. Much harder for me to do a damn thing about it. Although I do scratch my brain. My dermatologist neighbor upstairs? Could he take a look? No, for many reasons, the most obvious one being the gulf between epidermis and body mechanics. Bing deserves better. We all deserve better.
So, back to timing. Synchronicity, for want of a better word. At the very moment that I am printing what I can find of medical advice for Bing, the phone is ringing for me. My 8:30 AM meeting with my publicist. Doesn't that sound impressive? At least, it sounds busy. It even sounds vaguely affluent, as though somewhere the funds exist to pay a human being for promotion. Way cool. I must be one important writer guy. And what the publicist wants to know approaches things from the opposite perspective. What is important to this putative writer guy? If I was to begin writing the odd journalistic feature here and there, what would I write about? Me, of course. I want to tell her this, but the answer would hardly be helpful. What do I want to write about?
The disabled experience, I want to say. Well, what experience is that? Since there is no single one. And what is shared...well, it is elusive, but intriguing. And what is there to say about other disabled people and what they, or we, experience? Oh, I know this is a terribly profound question. But for the time being it is as mundane as my morning one-hour-a-day helper not being able to get medical attention in this land of plenty. It is the absurdity of my anti-fungus toe ointment, a prescribed but generic remedy which during a few transitional days after Marlou's death was revealed...the health insurance veil of Maya temporarily drawn back...to cost $80. I am insured. Bing isn't. And the idea regularly promoted upon the land, principally by the likes of spoiled billionaire brats such as the Koch brothers who are so eminently proud of their $300 million inheritance...anyway the idea is that the members of Team Filipina are feckless and insufficiently entrepreneurial to create their own health insurance. Which brings me back to the contemporary 'disabled experience.'
Yes, let's hold forth on the disabled experience. What the fuck do I know about it, anyway? I mean there are my own reflections and challenges, inner and outer, but something horribly invisible must be happening out in the larger world. I am thinking of quadriplegic life today. Surely the culture of independent living, of disabled people getting into their own homes, hiring their own staffs, managing their own lives...all this must have altered dramatically. How do such people live? Where do they live today? Even in Berkeley where the movement caught hold 40 years ago, even in those days, existing on public support was extremely challenging. Whatever happened to the quads, or their successors, who proudly and mostly happily found their way to independence? Simply from the dimension of medical insurance, California is witnessing the collapse of the state health plan for the indigent. So what to write about? Or in terms of the publicist, talk about in promoting my book?
Something to think about: the brevity and lightness of my involvement in this thing called the Independent Living Movement. In my 18-month stint at Berkeley's Center for Independent Living, I only wanted out of the place. I saw it at best as a stepping stone. And I wanted to step as quickly as possible. Few around me shared that perspective. I never fit in. Still, I did my best. And in a general way the value of what transpired in that era remains all around me. It is a fact that a disabled advocacy legal team had to sue Caltrain in the mid-1990s to make the system wheelchair-accessible.
No, I wasn't much of a family member in the Berkeley disabled community of the 1970s. An outsider, such is the writer's chronic state. Not to worry. What I want to talk about is...what others know better. Where are California's severely disabled people? Let's find out. How do they live? What are their lives like? Let's get a look at this era of skewed wealth and widening social divide. Maybe this is something I can do. Asking the question. Have California's disabled, the severely disabled, fallen so far in socioeconomic status that they have become invisible? I am lucky, that is the thing. I am lucky to have a story to tell and lucky enough to tell it.
When my mocha arrives, the only thing truly gratifying about it is the caffeine. The noise of Peets now penetrates like a rusty nail. Downright cacophonous, it is, and the nail-pounding intensity of it is most unwanted. The brew is hot, hotter than usual, and I drink it as quickly as good sense allows.
I am actually relieved to be out the door and on my way home. Rolling along the side of Peets, having stopped to chat with a member of the chorus, I find someone familiar in a doorway, lounging at the base of stairs leading to offices. It is the man from the Peets queue. He could almost pass, I decide, attired as he is in jeans and sport shirt, a Bluetooth receiver in one ear. Still, his manner of lounging in a doorway suggests a familiarity with the streets. He is not quite tucked and crisp and washed, this man, having fallen somewhat off the social ladder, and now making slightly inappropriate jokes to cripples about wheeling over toes and meeting strangers. And if my response is not the height of finickiness, what is?
Because this man could be the next Kerouac. Or the last one. Not fitting in perfectly to Menlo Park society is hardly a cause for concern. In fact, it could spark a certain affinity between the two of us, this man and I. In truth, I do not fit in either. Despite my rather strenuous efforts. I am not fit enough to fit in the eyes of some. How people view me, all the myriad ways, this is something of a mystery, a self-created one. As for this man lounging in a Menlo Park doorway, Laurie Lee probably did much the same on his way across Spain. The truth is I am afraid to interact with those who don't have things together, people who seem on the margins. Am I afraid of becoming part of this marginalia myself? Or is it just a general fear of those without boundaries? I feel vulnerable wandering about the streets. It is no accident that I hang out in a suburb favored by the haute bourgeoisie. Safe. Admittedly dull. But safe.
While not immune, of course. Rolling down Santa Cruz Ave. I speed past sidewalk diners in a restaurant. A woman seated at a table across from a man is smiling and struggling at the same time. Her pleasure seems to emerge from a depth of pain. As though she has waited a long time for such a moment of expression. I wonder if she and the man opposite are on a first date, perhaps having met online. He seems neutral, unmoved. All of this flashing by me as I roll past them in my wheelchair. And I could have this wrong, all of it, my fleeting impression. But I know that sometimes people must pass a long distance before arriving in themselves. And there is nothing wrong with it, any of it. And one should not be afraid.
* * *
Pay attention to what happens and when, because there is a mystery to timing...and often a message. So Bing, one of the prime players in Team Filipina, is just wandering out the door. Why not, her work being over? I am dressed, including my leg brace, talcum powder on my overused butt, and so on. Except for a few last-minute words, which I find profoundly disturbing. We chat, Bing and I do, and in the general course of things she mentions that a couple of her fingers have gone numb. She shrugs. Bing and her roommates moved recently, packing and carrying boxes from one apartment to another. Heavy, she says. Her shoulder aches. Does she have health insurance, I ask? I know the answer. I also know what repetitive strains can do to what those in the physical medicine world call upper extremities. Be careful, I tell her.
Fortunately, 20 minutes later, my time on the rowing machine is cut short by my swelling bladder, which has me back at my PC and doing what little I can. I print off a couple of pages about carpal tunnel, its symptoms and remedies. See a doctor, I add. Easy for me to say. Much harder for me to do a damn thing about it. Although I do scratch my brain. My dermatologist neighbor upstairs? Could he take a look? No, for many reasons, the most obvious one being the gulf between epidermis and body mechanics. Bing deserves better. We all deserve better.
So, back to timing. Synchronicity, for want of a better word. At the very moment that I am printing what I can find of medical advice for Bing, the phone is ringing for me. My 8:30 AM meeting with my publicist. Doesn't that sound impressive? At least, it sounds busy. It even sounds vaguely affluent, as though somewhere the funds exist to pay a human being for promotion. Way cool. I must be one important writer guy. And what the publicist wants to know approaches things from the opposite perspective. What is important to this putative writer guy? If I was to begin writing the odd journalistic feature here and there, what would I write about? Me, of course. I want to tell her this, but the answer would hardly be helpful. What do I want to write about?
The disabled experience, I want to say. Well, what experience is that? Since there is no single one. And what is shared...well, it is elusive, but intriguing. And what is there to say about other disabled people and what they, or we, experience? Oh, I know this is a terribly profound question. But for the time being it is as mundane as my morning one-hour-a-day helper not being able to get medical attention in this land of plenty. It is the absurdity of my anti-fungus toe ointment, a prescribed but generic remedy which during a few transitional days after Marlou's death was revealed...the health insurance veil of Maya temporarily drawn back...to cost $80. I am insured. Bing isn't. And the idea regularly promoted upon the land, principally by the likes of spoiled billionaire brats such as the Koch brothers who are so eminently proud of their $300 million inheritance...anyway the idea is that the members of Team Filipina are feckless and insufficiently entrepreneurial to create their own health insurance. Which brings me back to the contemporary 'disabled experience.'
Yes, let's hold forth on the disabled experience. What the fuck do I know about it, anyway? I mean there are my own reflections and challenges, inner and outer, but something horribly invisible must be happening out in the larger world. I am thinking of quadriplegic life today. Surely the culture of independent living, of disabled people getting into their own homes, hiring their own staffs, managing their own lives...all this must have altered dramatically. How do such people live? Where do they live today? Even in Berkeley where the movement caught hold 40 years ago, even in those days, existing on public support was extremely challenging. Whatever happened to the quads, or their successors, who proudly and mostly happily found their way to independence? Simply from the dimension of medical insurance, California is witnessing the collapse of the state health plan for the indigent. So what to write about? Or in terms of the publicist, talk about in promoting my book?
Something to think about: the brevity and lightness of my involvement in this thing called the Independent Living Movement. In my 18-month stint at Berkeley's Center for Independent Living, I only wanted out of the place. I saw it at best as a stepping stone. And I wanted to step as quickly as possible. Few around me shared that perspective. I never fit in. Still, I did my best. And in a general way the value of what transpired in that era remains all around me. It is a fact that a disabled advocacy legal team had to sue Caltrain in the mid-1990s to make the system wheelchair-accessible.
No, I wasn't much of a family member in the Berkeley disabled community of the 1970s. An outsider, such is the writer's chronic state. Not to worry. What I want to talk about is...what others know better. Where are California's severely disabled people? Let's find out. How do they live? What are their lives like? Let's get a look at this era of skewed wealth and widening social divide. Maybe this is something I can do. Asking the question. Have California's disabled, the severely disabled, fallen so far in socioeconomic status that they have become invisible? I am lucky, that is the thing. I am lucky to have a story to tell and lucky enough to tell it.
I do not consider the day's options rolling down the wheelchair ramp at 9 AM, only that there are too many. An embarrassment of riches, a wise person would say. I am not a wise person. At best, and only recently, it does occur to me that my need to daily construct a life may not be a failure, but a something else. The word 'opportunity' does come to mind, but there is an overly sunny cast to this which, in this land of success gurus, one must view askance. Never mind. Possibilities, albeit too many, will do.
Or it should do. Life's weeds keep encroaching upon this start-of-the-day experience. Take the morning meditation by the garden. What transpires there by the raised beds is at once baffling and reliably reassuring. Things are growing. Things I have nurtured. Unwanted things are growing also. And it is all following an unwanted course, too late this year. Garlic, for example, normally grows and grows, then as though someone has pulled a switch, virtually keels over. The side leaves wither. The tops turn brown. In past years this has happened so quickly that in the absence of vegetation, I had to dig around to find the actual garlic bulbs. Not this year. While Jane and I are freezing our tushes off in Northumberland, my garlic will be yawning and stretching, barely considering next steps. In any case, it is all demonstrated here, a living lesson, how life and its processes can be encouraged, but not controlled, certainly not scheduled.
At 10 AM the children visiting the man upstairs come bounding down the steps. They are small kids, and everything is a clatter of bicycles, helmets and fatherly admonitions to head for the car. I intercept the dad. I think he should know about the summer kids' concerts. Just a minute, I say, rolling inside to get the Music@Menlo brochure. He notes the dates and I, feeling rather shy about it, suggest that we go together. Thanks, he says, they are off to the park. It embarrasses me, this exchange. I have detained him slightly, but more to the point, I have injected myself into his life. As though I do not have sufficient life of my own. Not enough to do, one might say. As though I feed off the existence of others, extracting their vitality and completeness, vampire-style. This thought signals a general need for change. Something else must happen now, and my repertoire being rather limited, all that comes to mind is additional caffeine.
No, this is completely untrue, for what really comes to mind is the ambience of Menlo Park's coffee options. Peets? Noisy and impinging on this particular Sunday. Something in me feels fragile. What that something is remains elusive. One thing is clear, however. I am not going to achieve greater clarity here by the garden. My neighbor and his kids have departed. So must I. It begins now, the bouncing journey to the heart of that good Menlo land. Which is conveniently located only three streets away. And here they are, the suburban hordes, all five of them crowding through the door to Peets. Inside without inquiring as to the nature of my own personal delicacy, life gives me a real-world demonstration. The five suburbanites rushing past me to their cappuccinos have, like spawning salmon, found themselves trapped in the shallowness. They are queuing with 10 or 12 others. I am rolling back out the door, for this is too much. Whatever.
My next destination? Either the upstairs coffee bar at the local supermarket, which has a Terence-Rattigan-with-Formica feel about it, or a more complicated run down the street to get some money from the bank, then onto the Café Borrone experience. Where the entire staff acknowledge me in a most pleasant way. How are you? What is it like to be so old, so many generations away from us, and may we take your empty fruit plate? Anything else aside from the cappuccino? I am no stranger, that is the thing. Nor am I at Trader Joe's. I muse heavily over the cheese, considering the options and their impact on the rest of the day.
For I have hit on an expedient approach to the bringing of snacks to tonight's meeting. Who or what has decided to meet? My local Jewish congregation. Their annual gathering. The purpose is all business. The attendance is usually substantial, maybe 75 of us, adding up to the cliché count of 150 opinions. Actually, 149. I have none, or very few, uncharacteristically. After all, what do I know about any of this? My ignorance is profound. I am more or less along for the Jewish ride. Which makes me feel like something of a wimp when the congregation gets into vociferous and protracted discussions. They are fiery hot, the issues of rent and how much to pay and where. Not that the latter is an altogether impractical matter, but that I am not very interested. Unfortunately, I leave the governance of the congregation to others.
But not the snacks. This is the only part of the evening that is truly comprehensible. Bring something to eat. Dessert is an option. But I am more practical, if that is the word. After all, I am at the pleasant stage of using up and cleaning out. Most recently the cheese biscuits, a.k.a., crackers, purchased last summer in London. What an embarrassment. How can this be? Nonetheless, I am almost certain that Fudge's biscuits emanate from June and the Waitrose supermarket near Russell Square. And being rather bleary of mind, the box sat in one corner of my kitchen visible and untouched because of an essential misunderstanding. Fudge being the only word prominent from my wheelchair vantage point, I assumed chocolate. Forget it. Fudge is someone's name, and the product inside is crispy and thin and designed to be eaten with cheese.
By a certain date, of course, and never mind that this time has passed. I opened one of the remaining cellophane-encapsulated packs this very morning and sampled a biscuit or two. They were best before...well, you don't really want to know. But it was a good time of year, and Thanksgiving was vaguely on the horizon. Now, whatever is happening to the garlic, nothing terribly bad has been happening to the biscuits. Nothing stale about them, that is the important thing. Lacking in robust flavor, perhaps. So what? You guessed it, they are heading for tonight's meeting along with some cheese. Which brings us back to Trader Joe's where people know me. Including the strange person offering to pluck one of the cheeses down from a high shelf. Sure I say, assuming this is a stranger, thanking her absentmindedly and only looking up at the last minute to realize this is a former chorister. A soprano, I think. Another person who knows me. I am not alone. Although I am the only person lingering over cheeses, particularly concerned about color. I know these people, I am thinking. Actually, the only thing known is unknown, their preferences in the cheese department. I am thinking a blue and an orange. Cheeses with contrasting colors for people in a hurry. Snacktime will be brief. As for the stale...which they curiously aren't...biscuits, I buy a backup package of Trader Joe's savory wheat crisps.
In short, it is all a dream. The past merging with the present. The shortening of my wife's lifespan confusedly merging with the shelflife of cheese biscuits. And what of the country that named and invented them? What do my frequent trips there mean at this stage of my shortening life? Initially a refuge, then over the decades a second home, what is it now? Like everything else, it is that most quintessential British thing, a muddle. An expensive one, that is the only complication. I go there eagerly, that is the only certainty. For now, I pack my bag of cheese and crackers, for that is what it is, this being America...and head for my meeting.
Or it should do. Life's weeds keep encroaching upon this start-of-the-day experience. Take the morning meditation by the garden. What transpires there by the raised beds is at once baffling and reliably reassuring. Things are growing. Things I have nurtured. Unwanted things are growing also. And it is all following an unwanted course, too late this year. Garlic, for example, normally grows and grows, then as though someone has pulled a switch, virtually keels over. The side leaves wither. The tops turn brown. In past years this has happened so quickly that in the absence of vegetation, I had to dig around to find the actual garlic bulbs. Not this year. While Jane and I are freezing our tushes off in Northumberland, my garlic will be yawning and stretching, barely considering next steps. In any case, it is all demonstrated here, a living lesson, how life and its processes can be encouraged, but not controlled, certainly not scheduled.
At 10 AM the children visiting the man upstairs come bounding down the steps. They are small kids, and everything is a clatter of bicycles, helmets and fatherly admonitions to head for the car. I intercept the dad. I think he should know about the summer kids' concerts. Just a minute, I say, rolling inside to get the Music@Menlo brochure. He notes the dates and I, feeling rather shy about it, suggest that we go together. Thanks, he says, they are off to the park. It embarrasses me, this exchange. I have detained him slightly, but more to the point, I have injected myself into his life. As though I do not have sufficient life of my own. Not enough to do, one might say. As though I feed off the existence of others, extracting their vitality and completeness, vampire-style. This thought signals a general need for change. Something else must happen now, and my repertoire being rather limited, all that comes to mind is additional caffeine.
No, this is completely untrue, for what really comes to mind is the ambience of Menlo Park's coffee options. Peets? Noisy and impinging on this particular Sunday. Something in me feels fragile. What that something is remains elusive. One thing is clear, however. I am not going to achieve greater clarity here by the garden. My neighbor and his kids have departed. So must I. It begins now, the bouncing journey to the heart of that good Menlo land. Which is conveniently located only three streets away. And here they are, the suburban hordes, all five of them crowding through the door to Peets. Inside without inquiring as to the nature of my own personal delicacy, life gives me a real-world demonstration. The five suburbanites rushing past me to their cappuccinos have, like spawning salmon, found themselves trapped in the shallowness. They are queuing with 10 or 12 others. I am rolling back out the door, for this is too much. Whatever.
My next destination? Either the upstairs coffee bar at the local supermarket, which has a Terence-Rattigan-with-Formica feel about it, or a more complicated run down the street to get some money from the bank, then onto the Café Borrone experience. Where the entire staff acknowledge me in a most pleasant way. How are you? What is it like to be so old, so many generations away from us, and may we take your empty fruit plate? Anything else aside from the cappuccino? I am no stranger, that is the thing. Nor am I at Trader Joe's. I muse heavily over the cheese, considering the options and their impact on the rest of the day.
For I have hit on an expedient approach to the bringing of snacks to tonight's meeting. Who or what has decided to meet? My local Jewish congregation. Their annual gathering. The purpose is all business. The attendance is usually substantial, maybe 75 of us, adding up to the cliché count of 150 opinions. Actually, 149. I have none, or very few, uncharacteristically. After all, what do I know about any of this? My ignorance is profound. I am more or less along for the Jewish ride. Which makes me feel like something of a wimp when the congregation gets into vociferous and protracted discussions. They are fiery hot, the issues of rent and how much to pay and where. Not that the latter is an altogether impractical matter, but that I am not very interested. Unfortunately, I leave the governance of the congregation to others.
But not the snacks. This is the only part of the evening that is truly comprehensible. Bring something to eat. Dessert is an option. But I am more practical, if that is the word. After all, I am at the pleasant stage of using up and cleaning out. Most recently the cheese biscuits, a.k.a., crackers, purchased last summer in London. What an embarrassment. How can this be? Nonetheless, I am almost certain that Fudge's biscuits emanate from June and the Waitrose supermarket near Russell Square. And being rather bleary of mind, the box sat in one corner of my kitchen visible and untouched because of an essential misunderstanding. Fudge being the only word prominent from my wheelchair vantage point, I assumed chocolate. Forget it. Fudge is someone's name, and the product inside is crispy and thin and designed to be eaten with cheese.
By a certain date, of course, and never mind that this time has passed. I opened one of the remaining cellophane-encapsulated packs this very morning and sampled a biscuit or two. They were best before...well, you don't really want to know. But it was a good time of year, and Thanksgiving was vaguely on the horizon. Now, whatever is happening to the garlic, nothing terribly bad has been happening to the biscuits. Nothing stale about them, that is the important thing. Lacking in robust flavor, perhaps. So what? You guessed it, they are heading for tonight's meeting along with some cheese. Which brings us back to Trader Joe's where people know me. Including the strange person offering to pluck one of the cheeses down from a high shelf. Sure I say, assuming this is a stranger, thanking her absentmindedly and only looking up at the last minute to realize this is a former chorister. A soprano, I think. Another person who knows me. I am not alone. Although I am the only person lingering over cheeses, particularly concerned about color. I know these people, I am thinking. Actually, the only thing known is unknown, their preferences in the cheese department. I am thinking a blue and an orange. Cheeses with contrasting colors for people in a hurry. Snacktime will be brief. As for the stale...which they curiously aren't...biscuits, I buy a backup package of Trader Joe's savory wheat crisps.
In short, it is all a dream. The past merging with the present. The shortening of my wife's lifespan confusedly merging with the shelflife of cheese biscuits. And what of the country that named and invented them? What do my frequent trips there mean at this stage of my shortening life? Initially a refuge, then over the decades a second home, what is it now? Like everything else, it is that most quintessential British thing, a muddle. An expensive one, that is the only complication. I go there eagerly, that is the only certainty. For now, I pack my bag of cheese and crackers, for that is what it is, this being America...and head for my meeting.
Rejoice, for life is good, and the colon is good. And no man should travel down that alimentary road unless he is a vindaloo curry or a Panko-breaded sand dab made by Jane. At least not for the next 10 years. In short, the colonoscopy is behind me. No pun intended.
What lingers, of course, are the questions. There are so many. Why did I not envision doing this with Jane at my side? She was there, of course, and it made all the difference. Most important, why did I not envision something closer to the reality? After all, I was fully conscious of the links to the past. Marlou's colon cancer, of course. Being examined by precisely the same doctor who had discovered her cancer did add to the frisson. But there was more than that. A sense of fated inevitability, a.k.a., doom. The intimation that I was facing something horrible and something horrible would happen. There wasn't even much of a mixture, say 25% fear and 75% well-being. No, it felt unshakably grim and frightening and without any logical basis. Still, there it was, basis-free. Me and my date with the colon.
I had to be careful not to undermine the examination, making the sort of 'accidental' slipup that scuttles the test. Such as drinking or eating within three hours of colonoscopy kickoff. Even taking aspirin too close to the date. Much to be said for consciousness. I did have to watch it, and I did watch it. In fact, I followed instructions, did just what was required, without excessive dotting of the i's or crossing of the t's. Don't eat tomatoes, for example. Silly.
And right on schedule I began guzzling - and there is no other word - this noxious liquid that is designed to, speaking euphemistically, clean out the system. No cleaning seemed to be occurring, so after a couple of hours I called the gastroenterology nurse. Not to worry, she said. Indeed. The 'cleaning' got under way and continued for the next three or four hours, all of the latter spent on the toilet, naturally. Very well. When it was over it was over. I slept rather well, got up the next morning, and there was even time for Jane to take care of a few matters at work.
Stanford University Medical Center. It giveth and it taketh away. I visited Marlou several times here. Fortunately, her imprint is not that strong. She sickened and died at home. Lots has gone on here. Lots goes on here every day, that is the astonishing thing. In many ways this is the most urban phenomenon in and around Menlo Park and Palo Alto, the mid-Peninsula, so-called. This place feels truly city. Humming and urban. Anonymous, and for this purpose, that's fine. The Endoscopy waiting room is straight out of a mid-grade Hilton. I sat there pretending to read The New Yorker, while feeling the gurgling and general queasiness of my innards and praying that there would be no more unwanted evidence of 'cleaning' en route to the colonoscopy room. Funny, the things we worry about.
Donning a hospital gown, getting into a rolling hospital bed, all of this is unpleasantly familiar to me, and I could feel myself shaking as the medical crew went about its tasks. A heart monitor, why me? Do these people know something I don't? A real, true, bona fide intravenous into the back of the hand. Oy. Far too serious, if you ask me, and is there still some way not to do this? One of those clothespin-type clamps on the index finger, monitoring God knows what. Yes, a bit of minor shaking, the body knowing something dire and fearful is imminent. The nurse, one of several, but the nurse for the moment, muttered about giving me a little tranquilizer through her IV. I was no more tranquil than a captured convict.
Then into the breach. An operating room, or a farm-league version, with various medical personnel talking about rolling me on my side. I offered some small advice, positioning a pillow between my knees. And there I was in place for the horrible next stage. Bottom exposed. Not even want to think about the fiber-optic version of Roto-Rooter. So, instead, I was thinking about household matters. That is to say, the mundanities of tomorrow. I was having a handyman over to do a few things around the apartment. Fix a door. Move furniture for the carpet cleaning guys. Dr. Rubinstein had already been by to say hello a few minutes earlier, both of us signing the usual hospital pre-surgery release form. I could hear him in the background. Never mind. I could also get the handyman to replace a lightbulb in the bathroom. Fifty milligrams, someone said. Also, ask him to install some new loudspeakers. All done, someone said.
What? I recall this mundane daydreaming over domestic matters. That's it. Later, Jane told me that the nurse had mentioned the amnesiac properties of the sedative. Naturally, I don't recall. I don't recall the colonoscopy, for that matter, or even much leading up to it. Rolled back on my side, recovering apparently where I was before...although I must have been somewhere else. And feeling rather pleasant. Dangerously pleasant, in fact. I had the sense that anything was possible. I could, for example, slide off the hospital bed and into my wheelchair with the greatest of ease. Already, I was mentally adjusting for drug-induced unreality. The truth being that I was weak. My balance terrible. Not to worry, for I was rolling my electric wheelchair back to the car, returned to my home within minutes.
Later that afternoon I had a small experience. Tiny. But microcosmic. The very sort of thing that the Psychologist I Happen To Bump into on Mondays was discussing just the other, well, Monday. The small experience? I had, let us say, a leakage. Nothing very much. Just a slight amount of the body continuing to 'clean' itself. Of course, I hadn't had the gallon of diarrhea-inducing liquid for almost 24 hours. I had not eaten in more than an entire day. I was eating now, of course, and such leakage should be behind me, shouldn't it? And forget the pun. No, I was in no mood for punning. I was beginning to worry. What permanent thing had gone wrong with my digestive system? This should have stopped, this kind of elimination. I had to collect my wits, what was left of them. Colon cancer? No, we had just ruled that out, in fact banned its possibility for the next decade. Some other horrible structural physiological thingy?
Oh, who knows? By nightfall, my innards were settling down. After all, when one's intestinal tract has just experienced Sherman's March there is bound to be a bit of disruption. But the fear. This, I am realizing, comes from a childhood of unrelenting upset. My mother ranged from emotional outburst to emotional absence. There were no neighbors in our part of the desert. Just long stretches of things being bad without much chance of relief. A pattern, I am learning. Things are supposed to get bad and stay bad. A pattern. Oh well, time for another pattern. Whatever happened to Paisley?
What lingers, of course, are the questions. There are so many. Why did I not envision doing this with Jane at my side? She was there, of course, and it made all the difference. Most important, why did I not envision something closer to the reality? After all, I was fully conscious of the links to the past. Marlou's colon cancer, of course. Being examined by precisely the same doctor who had discovered her cancer did add to the frisson. But there was more than that. A sense of fated inevitability, a.k.a., doom. The intimation that I was facing something horrible and something horrible would happen. There wasn't even much of a mixture, say 25% fear and 75% well-being. No, it felt unshakably grim and frightening and without any logical basis. Still, there it was, basis-free. Me and my date with the colon.
I had to be careful not to undermine the examination, making the sort of 'accidental' slipup that scuttles the test. Such as drinking or eating within three hours of colonoscopy kickoff. Even taking aspirin too close to the date. Much to be said for consciousness. I did have to watch it, and I did watch it. In fact, I followed instructions, did just what was required, without excessive dotting of the i's or crossing of the t's. Don't eat tomatoes, for example. Silly.
And right on schedule I began guzzling - and there is no other word - this noxious liquid that is designed to, speaking euphemistically, clean out the system. No cleaning seemed to be occurring, so after a couple of hours I called the gastroenterology nurse. Not to worry, she said. Indeed. The 'cleaning' got under way and continued for the next three or four hours, all of the latter spent on the toilet, naturally. Very well. When it was over it was over. I slept rather well, got up the next morning, and there was even time for Jane to take care of a few matters at work.
Stanford University Medical Center. It giveth and it taketh away. I visited Marlou several times here. Fortunately, her imprint is not that strong. She sickened and died at home. Lots has gone on here. Lots goes on here every day, that is the astonishing thing. In many ways this is the most urban phenomenon in and around Menlo Park and Palo Alto, the mid-Peninsula, so-called. This place feels truly city. Humming and urban. Anonymous, and for this purpose, that's fine. The Endoscopy waiting room is straight out of a mid-grade Hilton. I sat there pretending to read The New Yorker, while feeling the gurgling and general queasiness of my innards and praying that there would be no more unwanted evidence of 'cleaning' en route to the colonoscopy room. Funny, the things we worry about.
Donning a hospital gown, getting into a rolling hospital bed, all of this is unpleasantly familiar to me, and I could feel myself shaking as the medical crew went about its tasks. A heart monitor, why me? Do these people know something I don't? A real, true, bona fide intravenous into the back of the hand. Oy. Far too serious, if you ask me, and is there still some way not to do this? One of those clothespin-type clamps on the index finger, monitoring God knows what. Yes, a bit of minor shaking, the body knowing something dire and fearful is imminent. The nurse, one of several, but the nurse for the moment, muttered about giving me a little tranquilizer through her IV. I was no more tranquil than a captured convict.
Then into the breach. An operating room, or a farm-league version, with various medical personnel talking about rolling me on my side. I offered some small advice, positioning a pillow between my knees. And there I was in place for the horrible next stage. Bottom exposed. Not even want to think about the fiber-optic version of Roto-Rooter. So, instead, I was thinking about household matters. That is to say, the mundanities of tomorrow. I was having a handyman over to do a few things around the apartment. Fix a door. Move furniture for the carpet cleaning guys. Dr. Rubinstein had already been by to say hello a few minutes earlier, both of us signing the usual hospital pre-surgery release form. I could hear him in the background. Never mind. I could also get the handyman to replace a lightbulb in the bathroom. Fifty milligrams, someone said. Also, ask him to install some new loudspeakers. All done, someone said.
What? I recall this mundane daydreaming over domestic matters. That's it. Later, Jane told me that the nurse had mentioned the amnesiac properties of the sedative. Naturally, I don't recall. I don't recall the colonoscopy, for that matter, or even much leading up to it. Rolled back on my side, recovering apparently where I was before...although I must have been somewhere else. And feeling rather pleasant. Dangerously pleasant, in fact. I had the sense that anything was possible. I could, for example, slide off the hospital bed and into my wheelchair with the greatest of ease. Already, I was mentally adjusting for drug-induced unreality. The truth being that I was weak. My balance terrible. Not to worry, for I was rolling my electric wheelchair back to the car, returned to my home within minutes.
Later that afternoon I had a small experience. Tiny. But microcosmic. The very sort of thing that the Psychologist I Happen To Bump into on Mondays was discussing just the other, well, Monday. The small experience? I had, let us say, a leakage. Nothing very much. Just a slight amount of the body continuing to 'clean' itself. Of course, I hadn't had the gallon of diarrhea-inducing liquid for almost 24 hours. I had not eaten in more than an entire day. I was eating now, of course, and such leakage should be behind me, shouldn't it? And forget the pun. No, I was in no mood for punning. I was beginning to worry. What permanent thing had gone wrong with my digestive system? This should have stopped, this kind of elimination. I had to collect my wits, what was left of them. Colon cancer? No, we had just ruled that out, in fact banned its possibility for the next decade. Some other horrible structural physiological thingy?
Oh, who knows? By nightfall, my innards were settling down. After all, when one's intestinal tract has just experienced Sherman's March there is bound to be a bit of disruption. But the fear. This, I am realizing, comes from a childhood of unrelenting upset. My mother ranged from emotional outburst to emotional absence. There were no neighbors in our part of the desert. Just long stretches of things being bad without much chance of relief. A pattern, I am learning. Things are supposed to get bad and stay bad. A pattern. Oh well, time for another pattern. Whatever happened to Paisley?
The perspective, if one can call it that, has much to do with What Fierce Bodily Manipulation comes next, the larger picture ever elusive, although its presence can also be felt...or else why bother? I am referring to Rolfing, of course. Life, if you think about it, moves through a series of -ings. Much of infancy is dominated by spitting, not to mention crying and far from infrequent farting. Over time, this progresses to running. Somewhat later, petting. Followed by heavy petting. Then golfing. Then Rolfing. One could argue that breathing constitutes something of a leitmotif. Fine, have it your way. As for me, I am currently getting Rolfed. From what little I know this massage technique has evolved, softening its sharp edges, no longer digging deep into the body with all the subtlety of an earth mover. I do recall a friend who emerged from a Rolfing session in the late 1970s looking like a poster child for Stop Domestic Violence, such were her bruises. Suffice it to say, this is not my experience, although there is much, let us say, borderline excavation, not to mention probing, of every bodily limb and surface.
On this occasion Tony - let us call him that because everyone else does - is doing something marginal with the most marginal of limbs, my right arm. I am lying face up on his massage table in my living room, very aware of the pinching of mysterious components within my shoulder. And for once, I actually tell him that things are hurting. More than hurting, alarming me. My right shoulder has fewer working muscles than a Kentucky fried chicken wing, and what keeps it in the socket has much to do with force of habit. Okay, Tony says. He backs off, slipping his fingers under what might be a tendon or a ligament but I would refer to as a cable. Some long hard thingy in the shoulder area which is now pressing and relaxing. There is a reason why a human being puts up with all of this and it has to do with the aftermath. Looser, more flexible, less tense in every meaning of the word. With the muscles on the the left side of my neck continuously pulling my head in one direction, some of that distorting force actually lessens. A good thing, Rolfing.
There is doubtless a spiritual or woo woo component to such bodywork, but it must be said for Tony that he does not burden me with this knowledge. In fact, he does not speak much at all. He even urges me to put on some music, Late Night from BBC Radio 4 being my fave. Chit chat is so minimal that it tends to grab my attention. As it is now. Tony has been digging around my abdomen for buried musculoskeletal treasure. There are large bands of muscle underneath there, he once explained. For now he is explaining something else. The human embryo. How from one cell, to two cells, and so on, things progress to a ring. Yes, the little embryonic cells join hands, ring around the rosie style, and this circle elongates into the earliest manifestation of the human digestive system. Gross, I am thinking. We begin ingesting and excreting from square one? In other words, human development mirrors the American consumer economy. Well, Tony says, to grow, the body needs to process food. So the digestive tract comes first. Not the heart, I ask? Or the brain? Yep, he assures me. I tell him to ease up on the latest shoulder pinching. He pulls another hardened band of muscle up and out of my underarm. Then he runs a knuckle, or perhaps a steel chisel, just under the edge of my shoulder blade. As I say, it's all worth it in the end.
Of course, the end is always in sight for me. Particularly these days. And this account of the alimentary canal, its centrality, its originality, turns out to be downright disquieting. For it has dominated my worries, King of the Worries, for several weeks. I am scheduled for a routine, once-a-decade colonoscopy.
Colon cancer having taken my wife's life, I can exactly pretend to be impartial or even rational on the topic of things colonic. This is the very preventive-diagnostic step that Marlou omitted, so by rights one should feel very good about doing this. If anything turns up, 'anything' such as cancer, there should be time. If nothing turns up, there should be time to worry about something else from now on. No, it's a convoluted mishmash of feelings. Survivor guilt might define one of these, although the term is summarily glib. 'I should die because she did' being a closer description. And there is the other thing, the matter of getting deep into the human guts, where things turn sour, sicken and kill. Not to mention the quadriplegic angle.
What is euphemistically called the 'prep' for a colonoscopy amounts to a major nuisance for the average able-bodied person. For the average mobility-compromised person, numerous trips to and from one's toilet seem particularly daunting. Okay, once I'm into it the afternoon will progress as it will. Perhaps one can read. Afterwards watch a film. I can envision a not overly taxing version of the prep afternoon. But I can also imagine the opposite. On the upside, I can envision a day when I can actually get my wheelchair into the bathroom. This is not possible now, that is the thing. The afternoon promises lots of parking the wheelchair just outside, standing up, walking, sitting down. What can go wrong? A certain amount.
What promises to be very different, and most salutary, is the presence of Jane. She is over the worst of her workload now. Things are settling down toward what might be considered normal. And why don't I read the fine print on the Advice to Those Being Colonoscopied? If a polyp is removed, I read only this morning, one should not travel internationally for the next two weeks. Since Jane and I head for Northumberland exactly two weeks from my colonoscopy date, well, I am just barely not under the wire, over the wire as it were. And what is a polyp? Oy. It's one of those ocean things, like a seahorse, only uglier. They grow on coral, I think.
And the reason you can't travel overseas post-polyp? It's because they swim after you, these things. If your plane ditches in the North Atlantic, the polyp pursues you. It finds you. They always do, these things.
'Pollywog' may have been what I was actually thinking. So what? Don't act all superior. The distinction between a polyp and a pollywog is a subtle one, hardly worth bothering with. The essential question: does the polyp turn into a prince? Or a frog? You know the answer.
The question is more important. It amounts to this. Why would a guy voluntarily do colonoscopies for a living? Actually, their bios are remarkably similar. They all go something like this:
'Well, I signed up for submarine school. And every time someone would shout "up periscope" I would think "up your arse with a periscope." And Eureka! I thought, why not do this as a career?'
It's reassuring to remember that at the end of the fiber optic thingy snaking through the tube system of your interior, changing at Oxford Circus, heading up the Bakerloo, snaking down the platform at one of the suburban stations, and so on...that there is an actual guy watching all this on a screen. Doubtless in color. No subtitles...I supply those myself.
On this occasion Tony - let us call him that because everyone else does - is doing something marginal with the most marginal of limbs, my right arm. I am lying face up on his massage table in my living room, very aware of the pinching of mysterious components within my shoulder. And for once, I actually tell him that things are hurting. More than hurting, alarming me. My right shoulder has fewer working muscles than a Kentucky fried chicken wing, and what keeps it in the socket has much to do with force of habit. Okay, Tony says. He backs off, slipping his fingers under what might be a tendon or a ligament but I would refer to as a cable. Some long hard thingy in the shoulder area which is now pressing and relaxing. There is a reason why a human being puts up with all of this and it has to do with the aftermath. Looser, more flexible, less tense in every meaning of the word. With the muscles on the the left side of my neck continuously pulling my head in one direction, some of that distorting force actually lessens. A good thing, Rolfing.
There is doubtless a spiritual or woo woo component to such bodywork, but it must be said for Tony that he does not burden me with this knowledge. In fact, he does not speak much at all. He even urges me to put on some music, Late Night from BBC Radio 4 being my fave. Chit chat is so minimal that it tends to grab my attention. As it is now. Tony has been digging around my abdomen for buried musculoskeletal treasure. There are large bands of muscle underneath there, he once explained. For now he is explaining something else. The human embryo. How from one cell, to two cells, and so on, things progress to a ring. Yes, the little embryonic cells join hands, ring around the rosie style, and this circle elongates into the earliest manifestation of the human digestive system. Gross, I am thinking. We begin ingesting and excreting from square one? In other words, human development mirrors the American consumer economy. Well, Tony says, to grow, the body needs to process food. So the digestive tract comes first. Not the heart, I ask? Or the brain? Yep, he assures me. I tell him to ease up on the latest shoulder pinching. He pulls another hardened band of muscle up and out of my underarm. Then he runs a knuckle, or perhaps a steel chisel, just under the edge of my shoulder blade. As I say, it's all worth it in the end.
Of course, the end is always in sight for me. Particularly these days. And this account of the alimentary canal, its centrality, its originality, turns out to be downright disquieting. For it has dominated my worries, King of the Worries, for several weeks. I am scheduled for a routine, once-a-decade colonoscopy.
Colon cancer having taken my wife's life, I can exactly pretend to be impartial or even rational on the topic of things colonic. This is the very preventive-diagnostic step that Marlou omitted, so by rights one should feel very good about doing this. If anything turns up, 'anything' such as cancer, there should be time. If nothing turns up, there should be time to worry about something else from now on. No, it's a convoluted mishmash of feelings. Survivor guilt might define one of these, although the term is summarily glib. 'I should die because she did' being a closer description. And there is the other thing, the matter of getting deep into the human guts, where things turn sour, sicken and kill. Not to mention the quadriplegic angle.
What is euphemistically called the 'prep' for a colonoscopy amounts to a major nuisance for the average able-bodied person. For the average mobility-compromised person, numerous trips to and from one's toilet seem particularly daunting. Okay, once I'm into it the afternoon will progress as it will. Perhaps one can read. Afterwards watch a film. I can envision a not overly taxing version of the prep afternoon. But I can also imagine the opposite. On the upside, I can envision a day when I can actually get my wheelchair into the bathroom. This is not possible now, that is the thing. The afternoon promises lots of parking the wheelchair just outside, standing up, walking, sitting down. What can go wrong? A certain amount.
What promises to be very different, and most salutary, is the presence of Jane. She is over the worst of her workload now. Things are settling down toward what might be considered normal. And why don't I read the fine print on the Advice to Those Being Colonoscopied? If a polyp is removed, I read only this morning, one should not travel internationally for the next two weeks. Since Jane and I head for Northumberland exactly two weeks from my colonoscopy date, well, I am just barely not under the wire, over the wire as it were. And what is a polyp? Oy. It's one of those ocean things, like a seahorse, only uglier. They grow on coral, I think.
And the reason you can't travel overseas post-polyp? It's because they swim after you, these things. If your plane ditches in the North Atlantic, the polyp pursues you. It finds you. They always do, these things.
'Pollywog' may have been what I was actually thinking. So what? Don't act all superior. The distinction between a polyp and a pollywog is a subtle one, hardly worth bothering with. The essential question: does the polyp turn into a prince? Or a frog? You know the answer.
The question is more important. It amounts to this. Why would a guy voluntarily do colonoscopies for a living? Actually, their bios are remarkably similar. They all go something like this:
'Well, I signed up for submarine school. And every time someone would shout "up periscope" I would think "up your arse with a periscope." And Eureka! I thought, why not do this as a career?'
It's reassuring to remember that at the end of the fiber optic thingy snaking through the tube system of your interior, changing at Oxford Circus, heading up the Bakerloo, snaking down the platform at one of the suburban stations, and so on...that there is an actual guy watching all this on a screen. Doubtless in color. No subtitles...I supply those myself.
People say they are paralyzed. They can't decide. They are paralyzed with fear. They can't take a step. What's worse is being paralyzed with paralysis. And the latter is enough to make a person roll about a suburban center at maximum warp, in the battery sense. Since my time of wheelchairing about the Menlo Park streets can now be reckoned in years, let us conclude that this is part of my life plan, certainly my occupation. It is illuminating, that is the simple fact. Too much sitting around at home becomes, well, frightening. Precisely what lurks within my premises has never become clear. And bouncing my battery-powered self down Live Oak Ave. leads nowhere but El Camino Real. Still, it is hard to avoid this basic equation. Static equals scary and confining. Moving equals opening and liberated.
So, let's move. Even if at this juncture movement itself has become static. Stuck would be a better word. How many times can one shove the joystick all the way forward, convince oneself that this imitation of pedal-to-metal automotive activity truly equates to speed? Ah, yes, the wind in the face, and supposedly in the sails, asphalt vistas opening for all of 400 meters at a single stretch. Immeasurable. Over in 90 seconds. And arriving at the most predictable of destinations, Peet's.
Still, or worse, everything is different. I haven't seen Jane in a couple of days, and we are meeting now for the briefest of cappuccinos. Even there, seated at a table crowded too close to the door, I am not quite seeing her. She has been so preoccupied with a church fundraising event, so many complex tasks on her shoulders, that she won't be herself for a while. I know this like I know the reality of Live Oak Ave. Part asphalt, part fantasy. But I am working hard on the Jane fantasy, trying to remember that in the rooms women come and go.
Speaking of Michelangelo, there's that other thing that puts reality out of sorts. It is raining. Actually, it is raining rather seriously. The Bay Area has not had so much precipitation in many decades. Doubtless, this is a good thing. Currently it is a confusing thing. Nothing is as it should be. This is summer. Surf's up. The spirit catches a wave too, unless it catches a cold. Okay, mine is probably hay fever. Never mind.
Jane is off to her fundraiser. I am off to Sky Nails, where at 9:30 AM I meet the arriving crew. They usher me in like one of the staff. I have become something of a regular here. Actually, one of the few regular men. That and the wheelchair give me whatever status I have, which is definitely back room. That is to say, the far side of Sky Nails, turned at a few degrees to allow better manicure access. In terms of personal service, the place is without equal. In terms of English-as-a-foreign-language tutelage, we see opportunities for improvement. The woman working on my nails this morning is a new one. I tell her the rain is odd. She shakes her head yes, then no. Even at the end of the transaction the price, $18, is difficult to communicate. As for my nails, she is Michelangelo. This woman cuts and files, then inspects her handiwork from all angles. She lifts each finger, sanding down any microscopic burrs, then considers the effect from above and below. Even a miniscule trace of untrimmed cuticle gets another go. All this, and she is fast.
Paula, my usual manicurist, interrupts to ask if I need any home help. She is a large woman, that is to say tall, particularly for a Vietnamese. She has worked here for years. And the notion that she would want to work for me as a sort of domestic is somehow sobering. She has daughters in their twenties. I have gleaned this information from somewhat tortured conversations, riddled with requests to repeat this or that. I consider her a professional, and that is the thing. I can't quite accept her as a house servant. She needs the hours, Paula says. More work. And it hits me all at once, how this is a sign of the growing American Depression and the sign of my acceptance in this all women environment. I am not looking for hanky-panky, that is the gist. Even though I am, though admittedly not from Sky Nails.
Things are not what they should be. To suggest that the current weather oddity has anything to do with the rapid increase of combustion gases in the planet's atmosphere is to utter heresy. Yes, in these parts the heresy is generally acceptable. On the eastern edge of the Bay Area, say 20 miles away, it is less so. In the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a.k.a., San Joaquin, I would keep my mouth shut. And keep it shut all the way to Philadelphia. Which represents a long distance with a clenched jaw. Fortunately, it is a short distance to the Bank of the West. I cancel the extra bank account that I should have canceled two years ago, just after Marlou's death. Never too late. I even opt for extra overdraft protection, such as my forgetfulness regarding checkbook balancing. How many checkbooks can balance on the head of a pin?
While you are considering that, try to get inside the strange state of anxiety that has accompanied my change of domestic pattern, a.k.a., Jane's busyness and preoccupation. A jumpiness. Fear of death? Fear of abandonment? I toss out these ideas almost in defense, for the real experience amounts to something more primal and elusive. A panicky fear of nothingness which may be how the infant experiences abandonment, although the latter is somehow not helpful. Terrifying nothingness will do.
Which brings me to Keddem Congregation, Palo Alto. Actually, what brings me there, or should, is El Camino Real, southbound, but all it brings me is tsuris. The truth is that I do not drive enough. This is Friday in suburbia. Streets are busy. No, it's not the Chicago Loop, not the Harbor Freeway, but it's busy enough. I fight my way through the second of Palo Alto's business centers, finally hang a left and get hung up. Rush-hour trains, the ones I normally ride, are whizzing back and forth at grade level, as they say.
What they should say is that streets cross rails or rails cross streets, and they are not meant to cross at all. Cross of ages. This is how people die, and they do die at remarkably frequent intervals. Mind-boggling accidents. Tragic suicides. In Britain, for example, I can't think of any place within 50 miles of London, more like 100 miles, in which a person can easily walk across a railway. There are reasons for this, good reasons, but for the time being those reasons do not apply, for this is end-of-era America, and things are falling apart and things are fucked. As for the latter, they are manifesting themselves in the form of an enormous backup of cars. We advance a few hundred yards, then the crossing signals begin to flash, the arms descend, and Caltrain flies by.
I am flying nowhere, except downward, crashing into reality. The latter involves arriving at the monthly congregational potluck/Friday service on time. After all, I have the challah. I have the ceremonial bread. I can't quite recall if these days we do kiddush before the service or after, but that's because I am only a fake Jew. I don't know what I'm doing. I have no background, I have no right to be buying challah, let alone schlepping it. I am a fool. Worse, I am a late fool. The eyes of the village are upon me, because I am the village idiot. They will stone me, these people, Jews and Gentiles alike. They will have good reasons. Maybe I should just stall my van on the railroad tracks and end it all.
Instead, I arrive just as the Rabbi is blessing some Ritz crackers, just in case. Can't blame her. And yes, it is a her, and she's great. I can tell that members of the congregation don't think much of her service. It's nontraditional in that it is a multi-traditional. She borrows from then and now and plucks from yonder and nearby, the Torah, the Hasidic tradition, whatever. We even hear talk of angels, straight from the woo woo end of Judaism, some would say. Some, like me, don't care. I eat, I pray, I even have a go at transliterated Hebrew. We hold hands in the course of all this several times.
All hands on deck. I need as many as possible. Fine, stout men and women, for the seas are treacherous, and why we are sailing God only knows. Which is more than an expression. It is the puzzle at the heart of everything. And the good news is that at the heart of everything, everything has a heart.
So, let's move. Even if at this juncture movement itself has become static. Stuck would be a better word. How many times can one shove the joystick all the way forward, convince oneself that this imitation of pedal-to-metal automotive activity truly equates to speed? Ah, yes, the wind in the face, and supposedly in the sails, asphalt vistas opening for all of 400 meters at a single stretch. Immeasurable. Over in 90 seconds. And arriving at the most predictable of destinations, Peet's.
Still, or worse, everything is different. I haven't seen Jane in a couple of days, and we are meeting now for the briefest of cappuccinos. Even there, seated at a table crowded too close to the door, I am not quite seeing her. She has been so preoccupied with a church fundraising event, so many complex tasks on her shoulders, that she won't be herself for a while. I know this like I know the reality of Live Oak Ave. Part asphalt, part fantasy. But I am working hard on the Jane fantasy, trying to remember that in the rooms women come and go.
Speaking of Michelangelo, there's that other thing that puts reality out of sorts. It is raining. Actually, it is raining rather seriously. The Bay Area has not had so much precipitation in many decades. Doubtless, this is a good thing. Currently it is a confusing thing. Nothing is as it should be. This is summer. Surf's up. The spirit catches a wave too, unless it catches a cold. Okay, mine is probably hay fever. Never mind.
Jane is off to her fundraiser. I am off to Sky Nails, where at 9:30 AM I meet the arriving crew. They usher me in like one of the staff. I have become something of a regular here. Actually, one of the few regular men. That and the wheelchair give me whatever status I have, which is definitely back room. That is to say, the far side of Sky Nails, turned at a few degrees to allow better manicure access. In terms of personal service, the place is without equal. In terms of English-as-a-foreign-language tutelage, we see opportunities for improvement. The woman working on my nails this morning is a new one. I tell her the rain is odd. She shakes her head yes, then no. Even at the end of the transaction the price, $18, is difficult to communicate. As for my nails, she is Michelangelo. This woman cuts and files, then inspects her handiwork from all angles. She lifts each finger, sanding down any microscopic burrs, then considers the effect from above and below. Even a miniscule trace of untrimmed cuticle gets another go. All this, and she is fast.
Paula, my usual manicurist, interrupts to ask if I need any home help. She is a large woman, that is to say tall, particularly for a Vietnamese. She has worked here for years. And the notion that she would want to work for me as a sort of domestic is somehow sobering. She has daughters in their twenties. I have gleaned this information from somewhat tortured conversations, riddled with requests to repeat this or that. I consider her a professional, and that is the thing. I can't quite accept her as a house servant. She needs the hours, Paula says. More work. And it hits me all at once, how this is a sign of the growing American Depression and the sign of my acceptance in this all women environment. I am not looking for hanky-panky, that is the gist. Even though I am, though admittedly not from Sky Nails.
Things are not what they should be. To suggest that the current weather oddity has anything to do with the rapid increase of combustion gases in the planet's atmosphere is to utter heresy. Yes, in these parts the heresy is generally acceptable. On the eastern edge of the Bay Area, say 20 miles away, it is less so. In the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a.k.a., San Joaquin, I would keep my mouth shut. And keep it shut all the way to Philadelphia. Which represents a long distance with a clenched jaw. Fortunately, it is a short distance to the Bank of the West. I cancel the extra bank account that I should have canceled two years ago, just after Marlou's death. Never too late. I even opt for extra overdraft protection, such as my forgetfulness regarding checkbook balancing. How many checkbooks can balance on the head of a pin?
While you are considering that, try to get inside the strange state of anxiety that has accompanied my change of domestic pattern, a.k.a., Jane's busyness and preoccupation. A jumpiness. Fear of death? Fear of abandonment? I toss out these ideas almost in defense, for the real experience amounts to something more primal and elusive. A panicky fear of nothingness which may be how the infant experiences abandonment, although the latter is somehow not helpful. Terrifying nothingness will do.
Which brings me to Keddem Congregation, Palo Alto. Actually, what brings me there, or should, is El Camino Real, southbound, but all it brings me is tsuris. The truth is that I do not drive enough. This is Friday in suburbia. Streets are busy. No, it's not the Chicago Loop, not the Harbor Freeway, but it's busy enough. I fight my way through the second of Palo Alto's business centers, finally hang a left and get hung up. Rush-hour trains, the ones I normally ride, are whizzing back and forth at grade level, as they say.
What they should say is that streets cross rails or rails cross streets, and they are not meant to cross at all. Cross of ages. This is how people die, and they do die at remarkably frequent intervals. Mind-boggling accidents. Tragic suicides. In Britain, for example, I can't think of any place within 50 miles of London, more like 100 miles, in which a person can easily walk across a railway. There are reasons for this, good reasons, but for the time being those reasons do not apply, for this is end-of-era America, and things are falling apart and things are fucked. As for the latter, they are manifesting themselves in the form of an enormous backup of cars. We advance a few hundred yards, then the crossing signals begin to flash, the arms descend, and Caltrain flies by.
I am flying nowhere, except downward, crashing into reality. The latter involves arriving at the monthly congregational potluck/Friday service on time. After all, I have the challah. I have the ceremonial bread. I can't quite recall if these days we do kiddush before the service or after, but that's because I am only a fake Jew. I don't know what I'm doing. I have no background, I have no right to be buying challah, let alone schlepping it. I am a fool. Worse, I am a late fool. The eyes of the village are upon me, because I am the village idiot. They will stone me, these people, Jews and Gentiles alike. They will have good reasons. Maybe I should just stall my van on the railroad tracks and end it all.
Instead, I arrive just as the Rabbi is blessing some Ritz crackers, just in case. Can't blame her. And yes, it is a her, and she's great. I can tell that members of the congregation don't think much of her service. It's nontraditional in that it is a multi-traditional. She borrows from then and now and plucks from yonder and nearby, the Torah, the Hasidic tradition, whatever. We even hear talk of angels, straight from the woo woo end of Judaism, some would say. Some, like me, don't care. I eat, I pray, I even have a go at transliterated Hebrew. We hold hands in the course of all this several times.
All hands on deck. I need as many as possible. Fine, stout men and women, for the seas are treacherous, and why we are sailing God only knows. Which is more than an expression. It is the puzzle at the heart of everything. And the good news is that at the heart of everything, everything has a heart.
