A good news statistic: the blog has reached nearly 2400 pageviews, including 60 in Russia. Thanks to all who have been following along and often sending very thoughtful and encouraging messages, and Privestsvija to my Russian reader(s).
The last week, however, hasn't been a great one, marked by what seems like increasing fatigue, continuing struggles with intestinal problems (despite higher dosages of Imodium), and a loss of appetite. Yesterday, for example, we went to school to pick up a paper that Mohamed needed and then spent a pleasant 30 minutes in the English office. I had already taken an hour nap. Our plans were to stop at Lowe's and then have lunch somewhere. But a few blocks after we left Washburn, my mind and body shut down. The trip to Lowe's was scratched, but we still thought we could have lunch. By a couple of blocks later, there was no way I could stay awake through a lunch, so we stopped for take-out. Once home, I forced myself to eat, though chewing each bite was a conscious decision, and as soon as I had finished, I headed to bed for over two hours of sleep, clutching Philip Roth's "American Pastoral," a book I love and am re-reading for the second or third time, and fell asleep without even opening it. Later we did a grocery store run, picking out some chicken salad and croissants for dinner. But by six o'clock I needed another hour's sleep, and after that I could barely make it through half the croissant.
I also got some tanning lotion, despite Mohamed's assurances that I look fine the way I am. But since my summer uniform (shorts and a t-shirt) reveal skinny white arms and legs ("they will say how his arms and legs are growing thin"), I look at myself and think I look sick. I don't want to look like a spray-tanned dancer from "Dancing with the Stars" (or like John Boehner--a "color not found in nature," as Pres. Obama said), just, for vanity's sake, to be not quite so pale.
All of this is tiring (I'm tired of being tired) and a little scary. One possibility, suggested by the oncologist, is to stop the chemo for three days. I think I'd like to try this. Mohamed is adamantly against doing so: my body isn't going to suddenly recover in three days, and who knows what the cancer will do when there's nothing chemical fighting it. And I certainly share those concerns. Since the beginning I've taken 3/4 of the standard dose of Votrient (the full dosage drove my blood pressure to unacceptable levels despite taking three blood pressure meds), and Dr. Van also suggested that maybe we should go to 1/2 of the dose. That, too, sounds scary, but we've known all along that there will be a point at which my body can't support the chemo. We go back to the cancer center in about 10 days, so until then, I'll just keep the current schedule and hope that my appetite comes back and I can find some new sources of energy.
One day at a time (to fall back on yet another cliche)...
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
Since today is Memorial Day, I'd like to take some time to remember my parents. Like all memories, these are not completely trustworthy, and since I don't have any siblings, there's no one to check them; over the years they've hardened into their own stable form. I think sometimes that I'm unfair to my father and feel bad about that. My dad (Howard, Sr., so I was called Johnny till I was 12 or 13) died of lymphoma on my birthday 30 years ago this July at the age of 68. My mom, Ruth, died on my friend and colleague Virginia's birthday 27 years ago at the age of 76. She died of pancreatic cancer three weeks after the diagnosis. It has been a long tradition to take Virginia out for dinner on her birthday. My partner and I had taken a break from the hospital vigil to take Virginia to Steak and Ale (a lot of good memories at that defunct restaurant). When we returned home, the hospital called to tell us to come immediately. My mother hadn't been in a lot of pain until the last 24 hours, but I watched her lose a little more strength each day. During those last hours, she had a morphine drip as the pain had dramatically increased. Her poignant last words were "Kill me before I die."
My mother was seven years older than my father. She didn't marry until she was 35 and had always worked in banks, first in Ames, then in Story City. She loved fancy clothes, and I have many pictures of her and her best friend all gussied up, ready to take a trip to Chicago or Minneapolis. My father drove a milk truck in Ames after spending two years in the Air Force. He was always extremely nervous and impatient with others, so he had a hard time keeping a job. For most of my childhood, he sold parts at automobile dealerships in Ames and Story City, moving from one to another in what seemed like an unending circle. One year, much to my discomfort, he was a janitor at my school. He wasn't great with kids, and that year was not a happy one for either him or me.
For the first thirteen years of my life, we lived on the second floor of a big, old white frame house with my mother's parents living downstairs. My grandparents doted on me, and my grandma would slip me milky coffee in the morning and quiz me from the World Almanac. She got dressed up in heels and jewelry at least once a day to play bridge with other women her age. We lived on a huge double lot with two gardens, three grape arbors, and tons of room to play. I remember many evenings of playing Capture the Flag (I have no idea now how the game was played). Story City had a movie house that showed two different movies a week (admission ten cents for children) and a public library where I spent hours. In the summer, we rode our bicycles (without helmets, of course) a couple of miles out of town to a Lutheran camp where we could go swimming.
Depression-era products, my parents never took vacations and rarely ate out. They built a house of their own (cost $13,000) in 1958, just before I entered high school and only when they could pay for it in cash. It was just a block away from where I'd lived before. I remember how impatient I'd get with them when they talked about Depression hardships and prices, and it was only much later that I understood they were talking about history only twenty years earlier, as if now I reminisced about 1992. My father didn't want my mother to work, and although she agreed, after her years having her own money, she chafed. Finally, he allowed her to work at home, so once a week, she and a couple of other women, drove to Nevada, the county seat, and picked up 5,000 envelopes (ten boxes of 500 each), which she addressed using an old black manual typewriter. There couldn't be more than a 1% spoilage rate and no errors. Most of the time, they were for Father Flanigan's Boys Town--5,000 pale blue envelopes every week. When it was time for her to cook, I'd take over. I learned to insert one envelope while I rolled the other one out. She typed from voter and motor registration rolls, and we compiled a long list of funny names. My favorite has always been someone who was named Fartney Blast.
Everyone loved my mother, a tiny and funny woman, who had mysterious ailments that prevented her from eating fresh fruits and vegetables, but not desserts. There were always freshly baked cakes and pies and cookies at my house, which made it a popular place after school. My father was somewhat more difficult but later in life found a secure job selling parts at the local Chevy dealership and discovered golf, which seemed to relax him. I came out to my parents in 1967. I had been called for the Vietnam war, and I had "checked the box," as we said then. And then I had to explain to my parents why I had gone from 1-A to 4-F overnight. Much to my surprise, my father was less upset than my mother (though I think they had suspected that I was gay). But after a short time, everyone adjusted to the new reality. I spent the 1970s with one man, whom my parents loved, as his parents did me.
They were good people, and I remember the seventeen years in Story City with enormous affection. We weren't a demonstrative family and we certainly didn't have much money, but I had everything I needed, everything I wanted. It's hard to believe how long it's been since my parents died. They would hardly recognize the America of 2012. But I know that they would still love their son as much as they always did in their very different ways, and so it's fitting that I remember them and honor them on this day of commemoration and gratitude.
My mother was seven years older than my father. She didn't marry until she was 35 and had always worked in banks, first in Ames, then in Story City. She loved fancy clothes, and I have many pictures of her and her best friend all gussied up, ready to take a trip to Chicago or Minneapolis. My father drove a milk truck in Ames after spending two years in the Air Force. He was always extremely nervous and impatient with others, so he had a hard time keeping a job. For most of my childhood, he sold parts at automobile dealerships in Ames and Story City, moving from one to another in what seemed like an unending circle. One year, much to my discomfort, he was a janitor at my school. He wasn't great with kids, and that year was not a happy one for either him or me.
For the first thirteen years of my life, we lived on the second floor of a big, old white frame house with my mother's parents living downstairs. My grandparents doted on me, and my grandma would slip me milky coffee in the morning and quiz me from the World Almanac. She got dressed up in heels and jewelry at least once a day to play bridge with other women her age. We lived on a huge double lot with two gardens, three grape arbors, and tons of room to play. I remember many evenings of playing Capture the Flag (I have no idea now how the game was played). Story City had a movie house that showed two different movies a week (admission ten cents for children) and a public library where I spent hours. In the summer, we rode our bicycles (without helmets, of course) a couple of miles out of town to a Lutheran camp where we could go swimming.
Depression-era products, my parents never took vacations and rarely ate out. They built a house of their own (cost $13,000) in 1958, just before I entered high school and only when they could pay for it in cash. It was just a block away from where I'd lived before. I remember how impatient I'd get with them when they talked about Depression hardships and prices, and it was only much later that I understood they were talking about history only twenty years earlier, as if now I reminisced about 1992. My father didn't want my mother to work, and although she agreed, after her years having her own money, she chafed. Finally, he allowed her to work at home, so once a week, she and a couple of other women, drove to Nevada, the county seat, and picked up 5,000 envelopes (ten boxes of 500 each), which she addressed using an old black manual typewriter. There couldn't be more than a 1% spoilage rate and no errors. Most of the time, they were for Father Flanigan's Boys Town--5,000 pale blue envelopes every week. When it was time for her to cook, I'd take over. I learned to insert one envelope while I rolled the other one out. She typed from voter and motor registration rolls, and we compiled a long list of funny names. My favorite has always been someone who was named Fartney Blast.
Everyone loved my mother, a tiny and funny woman, who had mysterious ailments that prevented her from eating fresh fruits and vegetables, but not desserts. There were always freshly baked cakes and pies and cookies at my house, which made it a popular place after school. My father was somewhat more difficult but later in life found a secure job selling parts at the local Chevy dealership and discovered golf, which seemed to relax him. I came out to my parents in 1967. I had been called for the Vietnam war, and I had "checked the box," as we said then. And then I had to explain to my parents why I had gone from 1-A to 4-F overnight. Much to my surprise, my father was less upset than my mother (though I think they had suspected that I was gay). But after a short time, everyone adjusted to the new reality. I spent the 1970s with one man, whom my parents loved, as his parents did me.
They were good people, and I remember the seventeen years in Story City with enormous affection. We weren't a demonstrative family and we certainly didn't have much money, but I had everything I needed, everything I wanted. It's hard to believe how long it's been since my parents died. They would hardly recognize the America of 2012. But I know that they would still love their son as much as they always did in their very different ways, and so it's fitting that I remember them and honor them on this day of commemoration and gratitude.
Friday, May 25, 2012
In the last blog entry, I talked about the "diminished thing," as Frost put it, which is my life these days. It was, in part, a catalogue of some of my daily experiences. But what the oven bird asks in all but words is what to make of this diminished thing, so perhaps the last entry leads to, suggests, entails (but not begs) the question of what I make of all this, of how I deal with it. (My language gene is constantly irritated by people who use "begs the question" in this context. To beg the question is a logical fallacy; it's to argue in a circle, assuming, somewhere in the line of argument, what you're supposed to be proving. It's not appropriate in my sentence, though from the frequency with which I hear it used that way, I think the battle may already have been lost.)
I'm not sure, however, that I have anything very enlightening to say on the subject. I don't think that we usually act on general (and generalizable) principles; we make our choices ad hoc and try to muddle through as best we can. For a few years now, my Washburn e-mail tag is a quote from George Eliot: "We must be patient with the makeshift of human understanding." And that's what we have: a makeshift understanding. It's what we have and all that we can ask for. And it's enough.
For forty years now, I've been a contented atheist, even now in the foxhole--or in my case, the hedgehog hole, since, using Isaiah Berlin's distinction, I'm definitely a hedgehog, not a fox. The world existed for billions of years without me and will continue to exist once I'm gone. Against all probabilities, I was born and existed. That doesn't seem to me depressing at all. When I'm gone, I'll leave behind some traces, some ripples that will slowly (I hope) dissipate. No soul, no spirit, no lingering awareness. I can't explain why I find that comforting (other than the fact that the concepts of heaven and hell make no sense to me and have no appeal), but I do.
I also live almost entirely in the present--no Proust's madeleine or even Zuckerman's rugelach to bring back an overwhelming flood of memories. It's not that I don't love my past. I do; at almost every stage of my life I've had wonderful, bright, lively, funny friends and experiences. And when I'm with those friends, either in person or in e-mails, recalling specific moments is always fun and cheering. I love telling stories about the past--as long as I have an audience, either someone who shared them or someone I think "needs" to learn about them. But when I'm alone, I rarely relive those times for my own pleasure or amusement. Again, I can't explain why this is so; it's just the way I live.
So, too, I don't think (and never have) very much about the future. When I need to make a practical decision, even the most important ones, I just do it without thinking much about the consequences. When, just as one example, one night I felt bored, I decided it was time for another year abroad. I didn't weigh the consequences; I just went online to the Fulbright site, discovered the deadline had passed, but thought what the hell? it can't hurt to apply. When they said there were possiblities in Syria, Oman, and Yemen and asked whether I would accept one of those, I replied yes without hesitation. And when they offered me Morocco, I took the time to look at a map to see whether I'd prefer El Jadidah or Meknes and typed an immediate response. I know that being more thoughtful about decisions might have spared me some unforutnate results, but to do so is just not my nature. And now, not thinking about the future (except in the most practical and necessary terms) has certain advantages. It's not really denial of the realities to come; it's just a continuation of the way I deal with things. I know that there will be a point when the pleasures are so severely diminished that life won't seem worth living. I certainly have no moral or ethical objections to suicide, and I would like to be in control of the end of my life. But I'm pretty sure that I'll be too cowardly or too afraid of missing something good to choose that option until it's no longer my choice to make.
And so in the present, I muddle through. I try to enjoy all that I have and try to limit my complaints (though I do wish I'd stop making those small groaning noises that are all too frequent, too indiscriminate, and, I'm sure, more irritating to Mohamed than he'd ever express). Do I get discouraged? Sure. Frustrated? Ditto. But then something that I read or see makes me laugh or makes my blood pressure rise or gives me another sort of satisfaction. And then I climb the stairs or put my sock on or savor my bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats (I'm a simple sort). That's my "makeshift understanding," and that's what allows me to keep on keeping on, as we used to say in another place in another time.
I'm not sure, however, that I have anything very enlightening to say on the subject. I don't think that we usually act on general (and generalizable) principles; we make our choices ad hoc and try to muddle through as best we can. For a few years now, my Washburn e-mail tag is a quote from George Eliot: "We must be patient with the makeshift of human understanding." And that's what we have: a makeshift understanding. It's what we have and all that we can ask for. And it's enough.
For forty years now, I've been a contented atheist, even now in the foxhole--or in my case, the hedgehog hole, since, using Isaiah Berlin's distinction, I'm definitely a hedgehog, not a fox. The world existed for billions of years without me and will continue to exist once I'm gone. Against all probabilities, I was born and existed. That doesn't seem to me depressing at all. When I'm gone, I'll leave behind some traces, some ripples that will slowly (I hope) dissipate. No soul, no spirit, no lingering awareness. I can't explain why I find that comforting (other than the fact that the concepts of heaven and hell make no sense to me and have no appeal), but I do.
I also live almost entirely in the present--no Proust's madeleine or even Zuckerman's rugelach to bring back an overwhelming flood of memories. It's not that I don't love my past. I do; at almost every stage of my life I've had wonderful, bright, lively, funny friends and experiences. And when I'm with those friends, either in person or in e-mails, recalling specific moments is always fun and cheering. I love telling stories about the past--as long as I have an audience, either someone who shared them or someone I think "needs" to learn about them. But when I'm alone, I rarely relive those times for my own pleasure or amusement. Again, I can't explain why this is so; it's just the way I live.
So, too, I don't think (and never have) very much about the future. When I need to make a practical decision, even the most important ones, I just do it without thinking much about the consequences. When, just as one example, one night I felt bored, I decided it was time for another year abroad. I didn't weigh the consequences; I just went online to the Fulbright site, discovered the deadline had passed, but thought what the hell? it can't hurt to apply. When they said there were possiblities in Syria, Oman, and Yemen and asked whether I would accept one of those, I replied yes without hesitation. And when they offered me Morocco, I took the time to look at a map to see whether I'd prefer El Jadidah or Meknes and typed an immediate response. I know that being more thoughtful about decisions might have spared me some unforutnate results, but to do so is just not my nature. And now, not thinking about the future (except in the most practical and necessary terms) has certain advantages. It's not really denial of the realities to come; it's just a continuation of the way I deal with things. I know that there will be a point when the pleasures are so severely diminished that life won't seem worth living. I certainly have no moral or ethical objections to suicide, and I would like to be in control of the end of my life. But I'm pretty sure that I'll be too cowardly or too afraid of missing something good to choose that option until it's no longer my choice to make.
And so in the present, I muddle through. I try to enjoy all that I have and try to limit my complaints (though I do wish I'd stop making those small groaning noises that are all too frequent, too indiscriminate, and, I'm sure, more irritating to Mohamed than he'd ever express). Do I get discouraged? Sure. Frustrated? Ditto. But then something that I read or see makes me laugh or makes my blood pressure rise or gives me another sort of satisfaction. And then I climb the stairs or put my sock on or savor my bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats (I'm a simple sort). That's my "makeshift understanding," and that's what allows me to keep on keeping on, as we used to say in another place in another time.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
After the last entry about the "Oven Bird," two long-time friends (I've known them both for over 40 years) wondered about the fact that after introducting the poem's idea of dealing with diminished expections, I spent the rest of the posting writing about poetry and criticism rather than with my own experiences of living during the last year (the surgery to replace my femur and part of the hip joint took place exactly one year ago today) with a diminished quality of my life. One asked as well whether the cloud of depression "wafted" around my days.
I don't think (but who can trust our consciousness?) that I was purposefully avoiding the implications of Frost's poem. What I wrote reflected what I had been thinking about over the previous few days, though, as I said, Frost's lines had been floating through my mind for a long time. Partly, too, the blog showed my refusal to give up the teacherly side of my personality. But perhaps a few more personal reflections are in order. To answer the question about depression first, no, it's not something that plays a part in the way I think about things. I certainly have as many neuroses as anyone, but depression has never been one of them. (Now that I've ruled out depression, anger, guilt, and I can't remember what else as components of my emotional character, I'm beginning to think that my friend Jill may have been right in suggesting--years ago to be fair--that I have a low EQ.) But I am aware, during all the waking hours, of the limitations and discomforts of life as I live it these days.
I'm aware of, and unhappy about, the fact that I will never go to France again. And what is going to seem silly, every time I see a commercial for Worlds of Fun, I'm reminded that I'll never ride a roller coaster again. I'll probably never travel very far, nor have the uninterrupted energy to cook a full meal. I'll probably never sit through an opera again, or when one of my talented friends is in a musical in KC, never travel to KC, have a good dinner, and then watch him on stage. I'll never again take my german shepherd, strong and badly trained on a leash, for a walk around the lake.
More important are the daily discomforts and assuming that they are going to become progressively more significant. My shoulder has been feeling much better lately, but for over a year now, I can't reach across the table with my left arm or lift a bottle of milk from the refrigerator with my left hand. I can't raise my left arm very high or far for a toast. I can't stand up from a chair or couch without a moment's hesitation and bracing myself with my right arm. Every time I go up and down stairs, my hip creaks and I half pull myself up using the railing. Because, I assume, of the daily anti-coagulant shot, a small cut looks fine at first, and then a few hours later, it's turned into an ugly scar which takes several days to go away. By the time I'm up in the morning and have had my best energy of the day, I shower, and then I sit on the edge of the bed, tired from all the effort, trying to summon the strength to put on my right sock. I can't go to a restaurant without taking Imodium first, locating the restroom, and wondering what I should order that isn't going to provoke an immediate reaction. When I first started the chemo, lots of food tasted "off." Diet-Coke has never tasted the same, and much more seriously, I rarely enjoy wine any more. Recently, however, food tastes fine, and it looks appealing, but after I eat about half of what's on the plate, I have no more appetite. I can't even force myself to take another bite. For the last couple of weeks, the need for naps seems to have become more frequent. I always take a book or magazine to bed, but I no longer even make the pretense that I'm going to read. The book is only a security blanket. Instead of clutching a pillow, I like the feeling of holding the book as I drop off. Scariest of all is that for the last couple of weeks, by the end of the evening, I've been having terrible cramps and can't sit or lie comfortably.
So there's a partial catalogue of dimished hopes and possibilities. Some I've become inured to (my right arm works just as well for lifting the half gallon of milk out of the refrigerator). Some--like the small groans I make each time I stand up--I hope Mohamed has become inured to. All are frustrating; each has changed my self-image from someone who was always energetic and adventurous to someone whose physical energy is indeed much diminished. Most important, because most frightening, is not knowing just what these limitations mean, just where in the arc of living with cancer I am, what each new twist implies. But there are still enormous pleasures left in life, much that's just as exciting and pleasurable as it's always been--friends, laughing, reading, becoming infuriated over politics and issues, discovering new authors and ideas, sex, and loving and being loved.
What I've really not expressed often enough in these postings is how much Mohamed does for me every hour of every day. No one else really sees the downs or the fears, no one hears all the groans. There is never a hint of complaint, never a request that he doesn't fulfill. Without Mohamed, the last year would have been diminished in ways I can't even imagine--and don't want to. If I'm not depressed, if the frustrations and fears are manageable, it's because of Mohamed's support and love. It took me a lot of false starts to get it right, but at just the right time, I finally did.
I don't think (but who can trust our consciousness?) that I was purposefully avoiding the implications of Frost's poem. What I wrote reflected what I had been thinking about over the previous few days, though, as I said, Frost's lines had been floating through my mind for a long time. Partly, too, the blog showed my refusal to give up the teacherly side of my personality. But perhaps a few more personal reflections are in order. To answer the question about depression first, no, it's not something that plays a part in the way I think about things. I certainly have as many neuroses as anyone, but depression has never been one of them. (Now that I've ruled out depression, anger, guilt, and I can't remember what else as components of my emotional character, I'm beginning to think that my friend Jill may have been right in suggesting--years ago to be fair--that I have a low EQ.) But I am aware, during all the waking hours, of the limitations and discomforts of life as I live it these days.
I'm aware of, and unhappy about, the fact that I will never go to France again. And what is going to seem silly, every time I see a commercial for Worlds of Fun, I'm reminded that I'll never ride a roller coaster again. I'll probably never travel very far, nor have the uninterrupted energy to cook a full meal. I'll probably never sit through an opera again, or when one of my talented friends is in a musical in KC, never travel to KC, have a good dinner, and then watch him on stage. I'll never again take my german shepherd, strong and badly trained on a leash, for a walk around the lake.
More important are the daily discomforts and assuming that they are going to become progressively more significant. My shoulder has been feeling much better lately, but for over a year now, I can't reach across the table with my left arm or lift a bottle of milk from the refrigerator with my left hand. I can't raise my left arm very high or far for a toast. I can't stand up from a chair or couch without a moment's hesitation and bracing myself with my right arm. Every time I go up and down stairs, my hip creaks and I half pull myself up using the railing. Because, I assume, of the daily anti-coagulant shot, a small cut looks fine at first, and then a few hours later, it's turned into an ugly scar which takes several days to go away. By the time I'm up in the morning and have had my best energy of the day, I shower, and then I sit on the edge of the bed, tired from all the effort, trying to summon the strength to put on my right sock. I can't go to a restaurant without taking Imodium first, locating the restroom, and wondering what I should order that isn't going to provoke an immediate reaction. When I first started the chemo, lots of food tasted "off." Diet-Coke has never tasted the same, and much more seriously, I rarely enjoy wine any more. Recently, however, food tastes fine, and it looks appealing, but after I eat about half of what's on the plate, I have no more appetite. I can't even force myself to take another bite. For the last couple of weeks, the need for naps seems to have become more frequent. I always take a book or magazine to bed, but I no longer even make the pretense that I'm going to read. The book is only a security blanket. Instead of clutching a pillow, I like the feeling of holding the book as I drop off. Scariest of all is that for the last couple of weeks, by the end of the evening, I've been having terrible cramps and can't sit or lie comfortably.
So there's a partial catalogue of dimished hopes and possibilities. Some I've become inured to (my right arm works just as well for lifting the half gallon of milk out of the refrigerator). Some--like the small groans I make each time I stand up--I hope Mohamed has become inured to. All are frustrating; each has changed my self-image from someone who was always energetic and adventurous to someone whose physical energy is indeed much diminished. Most important, because most frightening, is not knowing just what these limitations mean, just where in the arc of living with cancer I am, what each new twist implies. But there are still enormous pleasures left in life, much that's just as exciting and pleasurable as it's always been--friends, laughing, reading, becoming infuriated over politics and issues, discovering new authors and ideas, sex, and loving and being loved.
What I've really not expressed often enough in these postings is how much Mohamed does for me every hour of every day. No one else really sees the downs or the fears, no one hears all the groans. There is never a hint of complaint, never a request that he doesn't fulfill. Without Mohamed, the last year would have been diminished in ways I can't even imagine--and don't want to. If I'm not depressed, if the frustrations and fears are manageable, it's because of Mohamed's support and love. It took me a lot of false starts to get it right, but at just the right time, I finally did.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Robert Frost ends his poem "The Oven Bird" with these lines:
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Joyce Carol Oates begins her review of Anne Tyler's latest novel, The Beginner's Goodbye, by quoting these lines in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books. "The Oven Bird"--and especially the phrase "what to make of a diminished thing"--has been haunting me recently, so its appearance in the review seems a good occasion for a few thoughts. In the review, Oates reinforces what I've felt about Tyler's recent work: that although I, like Oates, enjoyed the modest humor and compassion of Tyler's early work, the last several novels have been so quiet that there's not enough dramatic energy to hold our interest. I used to love Anne Tyler. Once, thirty years ago (tempus really does fugit), I read several of her novels in a row and was so impressed that I wrote her via her agent. I got a lovely and funny handwritten reply from her home address in Baltimore (always the setting of her books). A few years later, again impressed by one of her novels, I wrote her at the same address. She was still there (Baltimoreans have a firm sense of home and place, she said), and again she wrote back. So it's been sad to have been disappointed by her newer novels and to cross her last one off the list of books to download.
"The Oven Bird" is a sonnet, describing the loud songs of an oven bird who has, as the poem progresses, less and less reason to sing. In one startlingly original line, Frost uses a mathematical ratio ("Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten"), the world already diminished by 90% by mid-summer. But the oven bird continues, knowing "in singing not to sing" ("I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free"--the traditional reasons for singing no longer applying to the bird). Rather its song becomes a question about the meaning of the diminished thing which is this world. The bird is, of course, like Frost the poet, the "dark" Frost not his public persona. Frost's poetry is an extended and various meditation (framed in words) on our diminished natural and personal world (Frost's poetry rarely deals with the mediating social world). And for me over the last few months, that question has been my own: what to make of, how to deal with a diminished world of possibilities and still keep, well, not singing, that would be frightening for everyone, but thinking, talking, writing.
I always taught "The Oven Bird" in the second half of the American lit. survey, and there was almost always a student who, despite a footnote explaining what an oven bird is and despite the fact that the poem takes place in the middle of a woods with nary a human in sight, would conclude that the bird was a Thanksgiving turkey, the oven was, well, an oven, which was probably a symbol of hell, and then suddenly the whole poem became symbolic of the beauties of American democracy or the perils of endzone celebrations or god-knows-what. The students would often become indignant when I wrote "WRONG" or "LMAO" in the margin. "Aren't all interpretations valid?" (No.) "If I can support my interpretation, isn't it valid?" (No again. We can all support our beliefs or else we wouldn't believe them.) I'd invoke Popper's idea of falsifiability, but that never worked very well. I'd try forbidding the word "symbol" in any essay, quoting Nabokov on students' finding symbols as like discovering their own tracks in the snow. That didn't work any better. On student evaluations, one word that they often used to describe me was "opinionated," which wasn't meant as a compliment. My modest ambition in teaching poetry was to teach students that the basic unit of a poem is a sentence, not a line (students paused at the end of each line, whether it was end-stopped or not, and started the next as if it were the beginning of a new thought, often reducing the poem to nonsense) and that the poems we read consisted of English words conveying first of all a literal English meaning. Does that mean a poem has one and only one meaning? the students would ask. I hope not; otherwise, I'd have been out of a job.
Often after that class, I'd teach Critical Reading and Writing, and, wondering what I was doing and why I was doing it, I'd launch into a discussion of Deconstruction with its focus on what's not there: here an aporia (impass), there a passage sous rature (having been "erased"), and everywhere absence as presence. I used to teach Derridean Deconstruction by starting with a Kabbalistic creation myth: tsimtsum, or contraction. Unlike most creation stories in which a god fills a void by creating something new, in this myth, since the creator initially fills the world, there is no space for creation. So the creator contracts to create a space for creation, an absence that enables presence. And then, to apply the principle, we'd attempt a deconstructrive reading of Mishima's story "Patriotism," focusing first on all the words that derive from pater and mater, and noticing that in column two, there was either absence (there is no 'matriotism,' for example) or negative connotations (to be a patron is good, to be matronly not so much) and then seeing how the story, inadvertently, deconstructs itself by undermining these pairs. So, too, with actor/witness, in which the first term is the strong one, but in the story realizing how the actor (the male hero) is actually dependent on the witness (Mishima always describes the wife as, for example, the moon to her husband's sun), while by the end of the story, the wife/witness becomes the truly independent actor.
As you can tell, I was always proud of my attempts to demystify deconstruction to a group of students who had had trouble reading a sonnet and whom I had just told to be nothing if not literal. Ah well, as American writers from Emerson to Ellison, from Whitman to Fitzgerald have argued, consistency is overrated. And, like the oven bird, as you also can tell, while feeling that I live in a diminished world, I just keep talking and writing.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Joyce Carol Oates begins her review of Anne Tyler's latest novel, The Beginner's Goodbye, by quoting these lines in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books. "The Oven Bird"--and especially the phrase "what to make of a diminished thing"--has been haunting me recently, so its appearance in the review seems a good occasion for a few thoughts. In the review, Oates reinforces what I've felt about Tyler's recent work: that although I, like Oates, enjoyed the modest humor and compassion of Tyler's early work, the last several novels have been so quiet that there's not enough dramatic energy to hold our interest. I used to love Anne Tyler. Once, thirty years ago (tempus really does fugit), I read several of her novels in a row and was so impressed that I wrote her via her agent. I got a lovely and funny handwritten reply from her home address in Baltimore (always the setting of her books). A few years later, again impressed by one of her novels, I wrote her at the same address. She was still there (Baltimoreans have a firm sense of home and place, she said), and again she wrote back. So it's been sad to have been disappointed by her newer novels and to cross her last one off the list of books to download.
"The Oven Bird" is a sonnet, describing the loud songs of an oven bird who has, as the poem progresses, less and less reason to sing. In one startlingly original line, Frost uses a mathematical ratio ("Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten"), the world already diminished by 90% by mid-summer. But the oven bird continues, knowing "in singing not to sing" ("I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free"--the traditional reasons for singing no longer applying to the bird). Rather its song becomes a question about the meaning of the diminished thing which is this world. The bird is, of course, like Frost the poet, the "dark" Frost not his public persona. Frost's poetry is an extended and various meditation (framed in words) on our diminished natural and personal world (Frost's poetry rarely deals with the mediating social world). And for me over the last few months, that question has been my own: what to make of, how to deal with a diminished world of possibilities and still keep, well, not singing, that would be frightening for everyone, but thinking, talking, writing.
I always taught "The Oven Bird" in the second half of the American lit. survey, and there was almost always a student who, despite a footnote explaining what an oven bird is and despite the fact that the poem takes place in the middle of a woods with nary a human in sight, would conclude that the bird was a Thanksgiving turkey, the oven was, well, an oven, which was probably a symbol of hell, and then suddenly the whole poem became symbolic of the beauties of American democracy or the perils of endzone celebrations or god-knows-what. The students would often become indignant when I wrote "WRONG" or "LMAO" in the margin. "Aren't all interpretations valid?" (No.) "If I can support my interpretation, isn't it valid?" (No again. We can all support our beliefs or else we wouldn't believe them.) I'd invoke Popper's idea of falsifiability, but that never worked very well. I'd try forbidding the word "symbol" in any essay, quoting Nabokov on students' finding symbols as like discovering their own tracks in the snow. That didn't work any better. On student evaluations, one word that they often used to describe me was "opinionated," which wasn't meant as a compliment. My modest ambition in teaching poetry was to teach students that the basic unit of a poem is a sentence, not a line (students paused at the end of each line, whether it was end-stopped or not, and started the next as if it were the beginning of a new thought, often reducing the poem to nonsense) and that the poems we read consisted of English words conveying first of all a literal English meaning. Does that mean a poem has one and only one meaning? the students would ask. I hope not; otherwise, I'd have been out of a job.
Often after that class, I'd teach Critical Reading and Writing, and, wondering what I was doing and why I was doing it, I'd launch into a discussion of Deconstruction with its focus on what's not there: here an aporia (impass), there a passage sous rature (having been "erased"), and everywhere absence as presence. I used to teach Derridean Deconstruction by starting with a Kabbalistic creation myth: tsimtsum, or contraction. Unlike most creation stories in which a god fills a void by creating something new, in this myth, since the creator initially fills the world, there is no space for creation. So the creator contracts to create a space for creation, an absence that enables presence. And then, to apply the principle, we'd attempt a deconstructrive reading of Mishima's story "Patriotism," focusing first on all the words that derive from pater and mater, and noticing that in column two, there was either absence (there is no 'matriotism,' for example) or negative connotations (to be a patron is good, to be matronly not so much) and then seeing how the story, inadvertently, deconstructs itself by undermining these pairs. So, too, with actor/witness, in which the first term is the strong one, but in the story realizing how the actor (the male hero) is actually dependent on the witness (Mishima always describes the wife as, for example, the moon to her husband's sun), while by the end of the story, the wife/witness becomes the truly independent actor.
As you can tell, I was always proud of my attempts to demystify deconstruction to a group of students who had had trouble reading a sonnet and whom I had just told to be nothing if not literal. Ah well, as American writers from Emerson to Ellison, from Whitman to Fitzgerald have argued, consistency is overrated. And, like the oven bird, as you also can tell, while feeling that I live in a diminished world, I just keep talking and writing.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The three days since the last post have been more of the same: some happy social occasions (with a lot more scheduled for the next two weeks) and the now familiar downs--way too frequent and exhausting trips to the newly tiled and worker-free bathrooms and sleeping more than I would like. (Sorry about that. I know that most of my readers would love the freedom to take long, leisurely naps.) I did e-mail my oncologist to ask whether there is a medication stronger than Imodium, whether if not I just have to resign myself to gulping four or more a day, and whether it might be possible--without too many risks--to take a couple of days off from the chemo to see if my body might regain a little of its previous equilibrium.
I've had the time to read a long and fascinating book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. The teacher in me kept thinking that an exam over the book would be incredibly easy to construct: short definitions of ten terms that inform the book:
extractive political systems
extractive economic systems
inclusive political systems
inclusive economic systems
critical junctures
creative destruction
vicious circles
virtuous circles
the iron law of oligarchy
historical contingency.
The book is an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) overview of the historical, economic, and political causes of prosperity and poverty throughout time (from the Neolithic Revolution to the present) and throughout space (dozens of countries on every continent). The argument is, in short, that extractive institutions, where the elite control the state both politically and economically, may create short-term prosperity for the few, but that the prosperity is not sustainable. (Although the book refuses to make predictions, it clearly suggests that because of the extractive nature of modern Chinese politics and economics, China won't be able to sustain its current economic growth.) At critical junctures (the three major ones that the authors focus on are the Black Death, the colonization of the Americas and Africa, and the Industrial Revolution, though there are also less dramatic ones), the elite will try to maintain their powers. They fear creative destruction and thus discourage or forbid innovation, thus damning their states ultimately to failure. The iron law of oligarchy suggests that in extractive societies, even if one set of elite is displaced, it will normally be replaced by another extractive system. The authors argue, however, that this "law" isn't like a law in physics; it's a tendency only, and one that may predominate, but that does not always hold true. Although the book rejects such explanations of poverty as those based on geography (South America had more natural resources than America, yet the U.S. and Canada developed inclusive economic and political systems and hence became more prosperous) and on culture, in favor of historical explanations, the authors also stress that nothing is absolutely determined, that historical contingency can never be underestimated. The most important and original argument of the book, however, is that inclusive political systems precede inclusive economic systems. That is, the authors reject the notion that as countries develop economically and move to more inclusive economic systems they will inevitably become more inclusive politically.
For over two years now, I've read everything on my Kindle. Despite having loved books as physical objects since I was a kid, I've never really missed the feel of paper, the turning of pages, the dog-eared corners. This time, however, because the book covered so much ground, for almost the first time, I wanted to flip around in the book, to look back and ahead to see if I couldn't put all the information into a clearer framework. There are so many details of place and time that I sometimes lost the thread, not of the argument, but of the organizational principle. I've got a first generation Kindle, and I assume the newer ones are friendlier. That said, the Kindle remains the best present I've received in a long time. If anyone from Amazon is reading the blog and would like to offer me a huge paycheck for doing a commercial, I'm open to an offer.
I've had the time to read a long and fascinating book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. The teacher in me kept thinking that an exam over the book would be incredibly easy to construct: short definitions of ten terms that inform the book:
extractive political systems
extractive economic systems
inclusive political systems
inclusive economic systems
critical junctures
creative destruction
vicious circles
virtuous circles
the iron law of oligarchy
historical contingency.
The book is an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) overview of the historical, economic, and political causes of prosperity and poverty throughout time (from the Neolithic Revolution to the present) and throughout space (dozens of countries on every continent). The argument is, in short, that extractive institutions, where the elite control the state both politically and economically, may create short-term prosperity for the few, but that the prosperity is not sustainable. (Although the book refuses to make predictions, it clearly suggests that because of the extractive nature of modern Chinese politics and economics, China won't be able to sustain its current economic growth.) At critical junctures (the three major ones that the authors focus on are the Black Death, the colonization of the Americas and Africa, and the Industrial Revolution, though there are also less dramatic ones), the elite will try to maintain their powers. They fear creative destruction and thus discourage or forbid innovation, thus damning their states ultimately to failure. The iron law of oligarchy suggests that in extractive societies, even if one set of elite is displaced, it will normally be replaced by another extractive system. The authors argue, however, that this "law" isn't like a law in physics; it's a tendency only, and one that may predominate, but that does not always hold true. Although the book rejects such explanations of poverty as those based on geography (South America had more natural resources than America, yet the U.S. and Canada developed inclusive economic and political systems and hence became more prosperous) and on culture, in favor of historical explanations, the authors also stress that nothing is absolutely determined, that historical contingency can never be underestimated. The most important and original argument of the book, however, is that inclusive political systems precede inclusive economic systems. That is, the authors reject the notion that as countries develop economically and move to more inclusive economic systems they will inevitably become more inclusive politically.
For over two years now, I've read everything on my Kindle. Despite having loved books as physical objects since I was a kid, I've never really missed the feel of paper, the turning of pages, the dog-eared corners. This time, however, because the book covered so much ground, for almost the first time, I wanted to flip around in the book, to look back and ahead to see if I couldn't put all the information into a clearer framework. There are so many details of place and time that I sometimes lost the thread, not of the argument, but of the organizational principle. I've got a first generation Kindle, and I assume the newer ones are friendlier. That said, the Kindle remains the best present I've received in a long time. If anyone from Amazon is reading the blog and would like to offer me a huge paycheck for doing a commercial, I'm open to an offer.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
One more example of students' amusing us: Carol, my friend from graduate school days, reminded me of a student who had quoted from the Bible and had scrupulously included the reference in the bibliography: Ghost, The Holy. (You can call me Mr. Ghost. You can call me The. Just don't call me late to the Pentecost.)
The last three days have been marked by very pleasant ups and very difficult down periods. Thursday morning, we went to Washburn to deliver some papers, saw several old friends in the English office, and then went out for a nice, long lunch with Danny, the new department chair. Unfortunately, on the way home, I got very sick. We made it home before disaster struck, but barely. And then I had to crash. I think that one of the most frustrating things is how difficult it is to explain what it means to "crash" or "hit a wall" or however we want to describe it. It's not just being tired. It's as if both mind and body shut down suddenly and completely. The simplest thought, what should be the easiest movement become impossible. Except for Mohamed, most people see me for a few hours when I'm up (and socializing always energizes me) and the blog is, I think, generally optimistic in tone. But there are many hours, especially in the evening, when I feel as if I can barely function. Once home Thursday afternoon, I slept for a few minutes, but then the phone rang and a Bulgarian friend was in town and wanted to visit. He's a talker and has a penetrating voice. I enjoy his company, but after two hours, I couldn't concentrate on (or comprehend) anything he was saying. And the rest of the evening, though I stayed awake, was absolutely miserable.
Friday, the workers came in the morning (the two bathroom are now, after two weeks' work, finally tiled, and after two days, the yard has been relandscaped, so at least after the disruptions my OCD has calmed), but once again it was hard to sleep during the day. That evening, we went to Lawrence for an end-of-the-year party at Danny and Tami's. It was a very nice occasion. And I got to see even more people that I don't see as often as others. When I came in 1972 to Washburn, three of us, all Ph.D.s, were hired into a department that had only two professors with doctorates. The next year we got a new chair, and in 1974, two more new professors were hired. Those were turbulent and often divisive years. Two old-timers had applied to be chair and gotten no support from the others in the department, so there was bitterness over that. The old guard, who had always thought of a master's degree as sufficient, felt threatened. But then the department settled, and things ran smoothly for a long time. Although of course the department had its eccentrics (we are an English department after all), we all generally got along. When we did interviewing for new hires, we "showed well" and got many first-rate colleagues. I remember asking one candidate whether the interviewing had been too tiring and got the response, delivered with some amazement, "Not at all. You actually seem to like one another." After decades of relative stability, starting in 2006, the department began another period of great change. In my four years as chair, I hired five tenure-track professors; two more were hired after I retired, and there are more in the future. It is very good to see, as the gathering Friday suggested, that there is still that feeling of camaraderie, a lack of rivalry among the new hires. Once again, though, by the time we got home, I had hit the wall. I could barely make it to the couch, and climbing the seven stairs to the bedroom seemed impossibly difficult.
And yesterday, the pattern was repeated: a burst of energy in the morning, a huge crash, a lovely belated birthday dinner with my oldest colleague and co-writer of four books, Virginia, and then a complete internal revolt that not even four Imodium (not all at once) could calm. Up and then down, alert and then unthinking...and behind it all the nagging worry that maybe the downs are more frequent or lower, the energy flags more quickly than before.
Basta! Happy Mother's Day, and now let's have a spirited argument about attachment parenting and the Time magazine cover story. That'll get the synapses firing.
The last three days have been marked by very pleasant ups and very difficult down periods. Thursday morning, we went to Washburn to deliver some papers, saw several old friends in the English office, and then went out for a nice, long lunch with Danny, the new department chair. Unfortunately, on the way home, I got very sick. We made it home before disaster struck, but barely. And then I had to crash. I think that one of the most frustrating things is how difficult it is to explain what it means to "crash" or "hit a wall" or however we want to describe it. It's not just being tired. It's as if both mind and body shut down suddenly and completely. The simplest thought, what should be the easiest movement become impossible. Except for Mohamed, most people see me for a few hours when I'm up (and socializing always energizes me) and the blog is, I think, generally optimistic in tone. But there are many hours, especially in the evening, when I feel as if I can barely function. Once home Thursday afternoon, I slept for a few minutes, but then the phone rang and a Bulgarian friend was in town and wanted to visit. He's a talker and has a penetrating voice. I enjoy his company, but after two hours, I couldn't concentrate on (or comprehend) anything he was saying. And the rest of the evening, though I stayed awake, was absolutely miserable.
Friday, the workers came in the morning (the two bathroom are now, after two weeks' work, finally tiled, and after two days, the yard has been relandscaped, so at least after the disruptions my OCD has calmed), but once again it was hard to sleep during the day. That evening, we went to Lawrence for an end-of-the-year party at Danny and Tami's. It was a very nice occasion. And I got to see even more people that I don't see as often as others. When I came in 1972 to Washburn, three of us, all Ph.D.s, were hired into a department that had only two professors with doctorates. The next year we got a new chair, and in 1974, two more new professors were hired. Those were turbulent and often divisive years. Two old-timers had applied to be chair and gotten no support from the others in the department, so there was bitterness over that. The old guard, who had always thought of a master's degree as sufficient, felt threatened. But then the department settled, and things ran smoothly for a long time. Although of course the department had its eccentrics (we are an English department after all), we all generally got along. When we did interviewing for new hires, we "showed well" and got many first-rate colleagues. I remember asking one candidate whether the interviewing had been too tiring and got the response, delivered with some amazement, "Not at all. You actually seem to like one another." After decades of relative stability, starting in 2006, the department began another period of great change. In my four years as chair, I hired five tenure-track professors; two more were hired after I retired, and there are more in the future. It is very good to see, as the gathering Friday suggested, that there is still that feeling of camaraderie, a lack of rivalry among the new hires. Once again, though, by the time we got home, I had hit the wall. I could barely make it to the couch, and climbing the seven stairs to the bedroom seemed impossibly difficult.
And yesterday, the pattern was repeated: a burst of energy in the morning, a huge crash, a lovely belated birthday dinner with my oldest colleague and co-writer of four books, Virginia, and then a complete internal revolt that not even four Imodium (not all at once) could calm. Up and then down, alert and then unthinking...and behind it all the nagging worry that maybe the downs are more frequent or lower, the energy flags more quickly than before.
Basta! Happy Mother's Day, and now let's have a spirited argument about attachment parenting and the Time magazine cover story. That'll get the synapses firing.
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